First Post

I've decided to start a weblog so I can more easily share my opinions no one's asking for. Instead of talking about my boring life, I'll stick to hopefully-interesting topics that distract me from whatever I'm supposed to be doing. For this special series premiere, I will be talking about someone who was banned from a sports forum I now help moderate, because it's the last time I argued with someone who was that perfect, lovably detestable combination of so very wrong and so very arrogantly sure he was right.

He claimed to be a Yankee fan, but you might have trouble guessing, since the only thing he seemed to do was constantly berate Alex Rodriguez for the same tired reasons everyone else does. Before anyone asks, I'm one of those rare creatures, a Yankee fan who likes A-Rod, and I welcome discussion on the subject, but don't give me that crap that he isn't clutch. He hasn't performed in his last three postseason series, but that's a very small sample size to judge a player by, and runs you score in the first inning are just as valuable as runs scored in the ninth, and he is one of the best run producers playing today.

I digress... in any case, the first encounter I had with this banned user was probably the only significant argument we had over something that wasn't Rodriguez related, and it was also probably the most befuddling thing I've seen someone who appeared to have some actual baseball knowledge try to defend. He was praising Boston's David Ortiz, which is fine by me, since he's a great player and by all accounts and even greater guy. At the time, he was a strong contender for MVP. He ended up finishing much lower in the voting than the second he did the previous year despite overall better numbers. Why did that happen? Because his team didn't make the playoffs, of course. It's impossible to be valuable to your team unless it's good enough to qualify for the postseason. Unless you also play defense, like Alex Rodriguez in 2003, apparently. The only way to be the MVP if you DH is to have absolutely monster numbers and be on a playoff team. Never mind the Red Sox actually won more games in the season than the World Champion Cardinals, even with the much tougher schedule.

Anyway, why was he talking up Big Papi? The monstrous power numbers the last few seasons? The unreal play with the game on the line in the same time period? No, David Ortiz was apparently great because he bunted for a base hit in a game the Red Sox were losing. I'll repeat with more detail, David Ortiz was great because he bunted for a cheap single when the Red Sox were losing the game by four runs. Why does this make him great? Because it shows he's a team player. Only selfish, fat assholes like Jason Giambi swing away when the team's losing. Truly good players take an easy base hit in a game that in all likelyhood is already decided. Because as we all know, solo home runs kill rallies more than really slow guys on first base. David Ortiz wasn't playing for himself, he was trying to get things started for his team. By bunting. While down by four runs. In the eighth inning, by the way. This may seem extraordinarily stupid to you even if you don't follow or really understand baseball. That's because it is.

Don't get me wrong, Ortiz is slow, but being on first base and slow is much better than being out. I know this more than some people apparently do, for example, this same person who though Giambi wasn't that good in 2006 because he had a low batting average. Never mind that Giambi got on base about as well as anyone and had great power numbers despite being complete sapped of his strength at the end of the year with a bad wrist, he wasn't valuable because he hit the ball at the shifted defense a lot instead of taking up his game a level like Ortiz by bunting to the left side. Who cares that two fat, slow guys get on base at the exact same 41.3% clip? One was much better because his batting average was 30 points higher. David Ortiz WAS better than Jason Giambi in 2006. But not because of that.