The weather, the food, the general sense of bonhomie…. it’s been a delightful Fourth of July weekend. Howevah…..
Ryan Howard should not be going to the all-star game. The National League is going with four first basemen- Howard plus Albert Pujols, Adrian Gonzalez and Prince Fielder. Dumb.
Howard has an .845 OPS. Gonzalez’ is .969 is a pitcher’s park on a bad team where he gets pitched around all the time, and he’s excellent defensively. Fielder is having a gargantuan year- 1.056 OPS with 76 RBI. Yes, RBI is Howard’s thing and people are religious about RBI, but Fielder has 16 more RBI than Howard. Howard has nine more than Gonzo- which amounts to nothing if you factor in the teams and home parks invo
Don’t even get me started about Pujols, who is essentially Lou Gehrig, and I’m not sure that comparison doesn’t flatter Gehrig.
The fourth-best player at his position is not an all-star.
Charlie Manuel taking care of his guys is of course part of this, but Charlie ought to be thinking about winning the game, since the NL never does. That ought to mean thinking in terms of defense, and trying to get some versatility on the team.
You can’t blame the fans for Howard, by the way. They picked only Pujols.
Interesting night at the Barnstormers Saturday. Not the game, which was lousy, a 9-2 loss to York. Afterward they released Quincy Foster, a speedy leadoff-type OF who’s been a longtime fan favorite here and was a big part of the club’s first season and year-two championship.
Foster is 34 and was hitting .180. Other player moves were coming that made a release necessary. Still, Foster may have sealed his fate during a closed-door meeting with manager Von Hayes last week in which, Foster admitted to me Saturday, “I said some things I shouldn’t have said.”
What amazes me is how baseball, for lack of a better term, seems to get in people’s blood. Hayes probably made over $12 million playing in the majors, and the amount he makes with the Barnstormers must barely make it net-profitable. He has a family living in Florida. He probably isn’t getting closer to returning to the majors as a coach or manager by working in the Atlantic League.
AL players tend to be much different from green kids in the affiliated minors who are likely to listen to a manager, if for no other reason, simply because he made The Show. AL guys are older, have been knocked around a little, and may tend to think they know what’s best for themselves and perhaps even the team better than Skip does.
I’m not saying Hayes is always right and the players are always wrong, nothing like that. I just don’t understand why guys like Hayes want to put up with it. It just fascinates me, or something.
“Moneyball,” is one of those books I could have written and wish I had. The story of Billy Beane and Sabermetrics is simply one of the best baseball books ever. That said, I always thought it beyond bizarre when someone optioned the book to make it into a movie. Much less a fairly serious studio movie funded by Sony. So, apparently, did Michael Lewis, the book’s author, who of course took the cash anyway.
Apparently it now isn’t going to happen. Steven Soderbergh’s script, if that’s the right word, is evidently the reason.
In other news:
Here’s a real dog-bites-man-level scoop: The Big Ten plays a lousy non-con schedule. The Pac-10 does not.
Here are last week’s Low Post videos:
On Charlie Manuel and the Phils.
