TDL’s Sports, Wrestling, & Otherwise

With Moises Alou officially gone for the season, the Mets are rumored to be trading for every corner outfielder in the league. With gigabytes of Mets blogs out there and reams of paper in the New York Media… I wanted to sort through the most likely options to see who they could get in a trade and what it might cost them.

1) Barry Bonds: Let’s get this out of the way now: I don’t hate Bonds. Never have. I don’t think Bonds has done anything that any other guy in the league does. This has been a hotly contested topic between Hulse and me over the last few days. I am very much pro-Bonds. He is very much anti-Bonds. His arguments can be summed up thusly: 1) locker room cancer, 2) asshole, 3) pending prosecution, 4) 43, 5) Would probably only be good for 40 or 50 games. My arguments can be summed up as 1) For such a “locker-room cancer” you rarely see too many former teammates come out and say what an asshole he is, 2) Costs no talent off a barren farm system, 3) A guaranteed contract probably has a prison clause, 4) the mets have 1,000 reporters in their clubhouse every day anyway… they’re going to notice that they now have 1,200, 5) The Barry Bonds Show takes media pressure off everyone else.

Granted, if Bonds is looking for eight-figures this season and a guaranteed 2009, I say “enjoy retirement.” If he’s looking for a pro-rated eight figures this season and a club-option for 2009 with a buyout. Why not? Bonds OPSed 1.045 last year. Mets fans aren’t going to accept him? Please. If any fan base on the planet that would accept him it would be New York fans. His defense sucks? Over-rated. Between having one of the more mobile center-fielders in the league and stellar late-inning defensive replacements… I think the defensive issues can be hidden. Besides the fact: he was worth something like 100 runs for the Giants last year and cost them around 11 in fielding. +90? Should the Mets make it to the World Series, he’s a legitimate DH. Yeah, I’ll take it.

Pros: Barry f’n Bonds, costs nothing but money.
Cons: Ubiquitous “locker room cancer” which may be more a media creation than anything, defense, media feeding frenzy, really don’t need another lefty bat.

2) Matt Holliday: I covered this a bit yesterday. Matt Holliday is one of the more over-rated guys in the league right now. He is the definition of “ballpark creation.” In 327 games at Coors Field, Holliday has put up a line of .364/.427/.659. In 309 road games, his line evaporates to .277/.341/.450. This ends up giving him a pretty stellar total line of .321/.385/.556. As a double-bonus, the Rockies are going to want an absurd amount for him. This could possibly be the absolute worst thing the Mets could do. A top five center fielder and the organization’s top prospect for a ballpark creation and bottom five center fielder in the league. Sign us up!!!

For the record. If Carlos Beltran and Fernando Martinez are packaged up in a trade with Aaron Heilman and other prospects there is one acceptable deal: Ken Griffey Jr, Bronson Arroyo, and Adam Dunn with an extension.

Pros: none.
Cons: Ballpark creation, costs way too much.

3) Raul Ibanez: One of these years I’m going to have to pick a division and lay money on baseball prospectus’s predictions for each team. The Mariners turned in to a media sweetheart this year after the Bedard trade. BP was unimpressed, pegging them as a 76-win, third place team. I find it difficult to grade this trade because I honestly can’t ever remember seeing a Raul Ibanez at-bat. Apparently, he’s played a whole six games at Shea Stadium but I can neither confirm nor deny this. All I know about him is that he doesn’t seem to get injured much and has a decent bat. I can’t imagine that the Mariners would want more than a low-level prospect or two for him as he’s gone next year and I’m pretty sure they threw in the towel on this season, picked it up, and then threw it in again just to be sure.

Pros: Possible compensation round pick next year, low-cost
Cons: The Mets will absolutely re-sign him to a two- or three-year-deal if he has a remotely decent season, 36.

4) Randy Winn: Another pretty OK option. The only real problem I have with Winn (other than paying him $8M next year) is he replaces none of Alou’s power. The Mets have a plethora of soft-hitting left-fielders at the moment. There’s really no need of another one. Much like the Mariners, I can’t imagine that the Giants would want a lot for him. I’m pretty sure if you called and offered them one or two almost-ready-for-primetime prospects that they’d jump on it. The Mets have a bunch of AA and AAA outfield guys and the Giants would probably be OK with a couple of those for their impending awesome 2010 season.

Pros: Everyday player who will solidify the line-up, low cost.
Cons: No power, guaranteed next year blocks F-Mart.

5) Adam Dunn: This is the plan that I’m on board with. A trade for Dunn with an extension is the Mets’ best-case scenario. Dunn can cover the corner outfield position this year and replace Carlos Delgado next year. This also takes the Mets out of what is sure to be a ridiculously over-priced Mark Teixeira auction. The knock against Dunn is that he strikes out a lot and he’s an apathetic guy who “doesn’t play the game the right way” or whatever. For me, strike outs are not much different than a popout or 4-3 ground ball. As for apathetic guys… I tend to not hold that against people who have been mired on perennially crappy teams.

For a moment to vent: it bothers me to no end that Adam Dunn is dismissed as a product of his ballpark while Holliday gets a pass for this. Four seconds of research would dismiss this as Dunn’s home and road numbers are almost identical.

Pros: Addresses a lot of problems. Replaces Delgado’s lefty bat next year.
Cons: Unneeded lefty bat this year.

6) Bill Hall: The Brewers just made a trade for CC Sabbathia and they’re going to trade their primary 3B/utility infielder/play everywhere player to the Mets? For what? Unless the answer is “someone that helps them this year” then it’s the wrong one. Surprisingly enough, even small- or mid-market teams occasionally are in the playoff race and don’t care much about the Mets need of a replacement. The Brewers are going to want Aaron Heilmann (at the very least) for this deal to happen. Pulling Heilman out of the Mets bullpen will turn their pen into a joke.

Pros: Uh, righty utility player.
Cons: Never going to happen.

7) Jason Bay: I do not mind this consolation prize if the Adam Dunn trade doesn’t work out. Bay had an off year last season but seems like he’s back to normal. Very odd that Bay still has an extra year on his contract. It seems like he’s been dying a slow death in Pittsburgh. Although, I can’t assume that Pittsburgh would be very keen on sending any more talent to New York.

Pros: Righty
Cons: Expensive. With a cost-controlled year left, the Pirates aren’t just going to give him away.

—

The guys saying the Mets don’t “need” another corner outfielder are kidding themselves. While I enjoyed the Angel Pagan Experience, the Fernando Tatis Experience, and the Endy Chavez Experience — I don’t have any illusion that it will last all season. I’ll be happy to go to war with what we have, but if they can pull a rental for prospects trade, I’d be more comfortable.

On Mike & The Mad Dog, John Heyman suggested that he “thinks” the Rockies would do this trade.

Carlos Beltran and Fernando Martinez for Matt Holliday and Willie Tavares. Gee, Jon, ya think they’d do that? One of the best center fielders in the National League and their top prospect for a creation of your joke of a ballpark and a less than mediocre center fielder. Maybe he “thinks” the Mets should bend over and get raped by a Coors Light can, too. That is a trade that a Colorado sports’ talk radio caller would come up with.

This man has a Hall of Fame vote.

If the Mets send anything significant to Colorado for Matt Holliday — whose home OPS is about 300 points higher than his road OPS — I think I might be done.

I’m a sucker for heist movies — the more ridiculous the better. Give me one that has a group of guys hacking in to the Los Angeles Traffic Software and driving Mini-Coopers through subway tunnels along with blowing up a section of Hollywood Boulevard to drop an armored car in to said tunnels and I’m a happy guy.

That said, I was very disappointed in Ed Norton’s character not figuring out to screw with the weights of the three armored trucks such that the heaviest truck was the one NOT carrying the gold. I guess that’s supposed to be part of his character’s “lack of imagination.” It didn’t allow Marky Mark’s character to come up with some ridiculous insight or gut instinct to figure out which truck it was in. “Steve would never drive the truck northwest on a Tuesday. That magnetic properties of the sun would make the gold heavier and the truck would go slower. It’s got to be truck three!!!” Something like that.

Great formulaic heist movie. I need to watch the original.

As it’s been getting kind of serious around here for the last couple of weeks I figure it’s about time to lighten up for a bit and blow through the six-ish drafts of books and TV and movie stuff in my draft queue before getting back to depressing myself with our sham political system. Let’s even take a break from the fantasy novels that I’m relatively certain no one but me cares about.

I don’t remember exactly where I first read about Bill Jenkinson’s The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs: Recrowning Baseball’s Greatest Slugger. It must have been listed as a source to one of my previous baseball books. When I read the blurb about it on the NYPL’s website, I pegged it as a statistical study of Babe Ruth’s career numbers and, in particular, his 1921 season (not a typo… it pays more attention to his under-appreciated World Series-losing 1921 season in lieu of his World Series-winning 1927 season). When I read the “104 home run” title, I presumed it would be something about ballpark dimensions and such and be a distinctive study of tape-measure home runs and retro-fitting current stadiums (like… the Oakland Coliseum vs. Shibe Park, The Cell vs. Shibe Park, The Metrodome vs. Griffth Stadium, Fenway vs. er… Fenway) to see where Ruth would have wound up for the season if he played in those stadiums. Sounds interesting, right?

I thought so, too. Turns out, this book wasn’t that all. I don’t think. Really, I read the whole book over three weeks and still really don’t know what the author was trying to prove other than “Ruth Was The Greatest Baseball Player Ever.” The 104 home runs may have been referring to the ones Ruth was robbed of when he hit 500-foot outs or he may have been including the home runs he hit in mid-season exhibition games. Honestly, the argument wasn’t presented concisely enough for me to even figure out what the author was trying to say.

By the first chapter, I was pretty sure I was in for a long, long read. In the first 20 pages Jenkinson professes his love for Babe Ruth and his disdain for modern-day sluggers. He also tells us he spent something like ten years exhaustively researching every home run Ruth ever hit. Instead of going through box scores, he tried to find as many primary sources as possible and piece together an actual distance for all of those home runs. He looked for people who were at various exhibition and barnstorming games to get their stories and, in some cases, have those people show him exactly where home plate was in the game and where the ball landed. He then listed all these accomplishments.

Exhaustively.

A standard paragraph in the first few chapters was something like: Ruth then traveled to Philadelphia where he belted four homers against the Athletics. One of those is rumored to have gone 550 feet but my research puts it around 495. The Yankees were only up by three games on the Senators at that point and Ruth felt ill. But the Babe felt guilty leaving the team in such hard times. On the way to St. Louis they stopped off in French Lick, Indiana and played an exhibition game against the Church of the Assumption All-Stars. Babe put on a show that day! Can you imagine modern players not only playing in exhibition games but having 30 scheduled in as part of the regular season? Sometimes even on the same day as real games? When Ruth finally made it to St. Louis he was exhausted but he couldn’t leave the people without a show. He ate a dozen hot dogs and struck out three times but hit a triple off the wall 450 away.

And that goes on. And on. And on for something like 2,487 pages.

What I DID get out of the book were a couple of well-constructed arguments to defend the more dishonest claims made by Ruth’s detractors. For example, the oft-heard point that he’s over-rated because he didn’t face the best competition because the league wasn’t integrated. While the latter part of that statement is true, the former isn’t. Ruth was one of the few major league players who actually DID face Negro League pitching… playing in a fairly large number of games against Negro League teams. The book mentions the confirmed number of home runs he hit off Negro League pitchers (I can’t remember it). It’s not like when Ruth played Negro League teams he suddenly turned in to .094 hitter who slugged .188. Another well-constructed point is this: professional athletes really didn’t have the options then that they do today. If you were a professional-caliber athlete and wanted to make money in the 1910s or 1920s then you either played baseball or boxed. He draws this comparison to the current crop of Latin baseball players. If you’re an excellent athlete in the Dominican Republic, you play baseball. If you’re an excellent athlete in the US, you play whatever you feel like — and baseball’s probably a distant third option. A third point mentions that some of Ruth’s career numbers are hindered by the time. He spent something like 100 games over the course of his career suspended for doing crazy things like “barnstorming” and “not hating black people.” He was also frequently sidelined with things like chest-colds and the like and would miss five or six games at a clip with things such as “chest colds.”

To say I was disappointed in this book would be a gross understatement. I thought it was going to be a statistical analysis or something like that. It turned out it was just a baseball book designed to canonize Ruth and give a laundry list of his accomplishments. If anything, I spent three weeks to get a couple good arguments if I’m ever in an argument in which I have to defend Ruth.

Best sub-plot in the book was the description of Ty Cobb’s disdain and hatred for Ruth because of the popularity he gained by hitting home runs. Cobb insisted that anyone could do what Ruth did and, to make the point, hit three home runs in one game before going back to playing “real baseball.” Another fun story: Ruth was covering third when Cobb decided it was time to come in spikes up. Ruth tagged him with the ball. In the face. And knocked him out cold. Apparently Cobb never came in spikes up on Ruth again.

Not a particularly fun book to read, though. Recommendation to avoid.

McCain: John McCain believes it is strategically and morally essential for the United States to support the Government of Iraq to become capable of governing itself and safeguarding its people. He strongly disagrees with those who advocate withdrawing American troops before that has occurred.

Obama: Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months. Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda.

For the purpose of full disclosure: when I believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction I was for this. As it turned out they did not and we managed to destabilized something of a stable country and contribute to $4.50/gallon gas. Don’t get me wrong — I realize Saddam Hussein was not a particularly nice guy and all and life in Iraq seemed pretty awful. But, let’s be honest here — really no more or less awful than most other Middle Eastern countries where they may or may not still burn women at the stake for learning to read. I mean, we LIKE Saudi Arabia and they still sentence women to death for witchcraft or, my personal favorite, punishing women for having the audacity to get raped. So, the question is: how does the candidate best clean up GWB’s mess?

For the most part, I totally agree with Obama’s principal for getting the F out of dodge. Here’s the problem: we screwed it up… aren’t we kind of on the hook to fix it?

Most reasonable people (as we think of reasonable people in the US) would say: OK, you have three separate and distinct belief sets in this country. Why don’t you try our screwed up system of states? You’ll have three loose-associated states under one federal government. You can all have your own rules and policies and the federal government will just be there to apportion things and fairly distribute the dead dinosaur juice proceeds. Here’s the problem: religious people aren’t reasonable… like ever. Reasonable people tend to not blow themselves up to make a point.

I appreciate the fact that Obama stood against the war the entire time. In retrospect, he was right and the rest of us were wrong. However, his plan to fix things involving pulling US troops out of the country and expecting an unstable government to not immediately revert back to a military dictatorship is short-sighted. He’s asking three distinct groups (all of whom believe they have God on their side) to agree. This was, fortunately, something our founding fathers realized: government by the Bible is not good government.

On the other hand:

McCain: The answer is not unconditional dialogues with these two dictatorships from a position of weakness. The answer is for the international community to apply real pressure to Syria and Iran to change their behavior. The United States must also bolster its regional military posture to make clear to Iran our determination to protect our forces and deter Iranian intervention.

Obama: Obama will launch the most aggressive diplomatic effort in recent American history to reach a new compact on the stability of Iraq and the Middle East. This effort will include all of Iraq’s neighbors — including Iran and Syria. This compact will aim to secure Iraq’s borders; keep neighboring countries from meddling inside Iraq; isolate al Qaeda; support reconciliation among Iraq’s sectarian groups; and provide financial support for Iraq’s reconstruction.

Getting in to a never-ending battle with counties in the Middle East is stupid. Why do we continue to put on this insane posture that these countries on the other side of the world pose some threat to our national security? We have satellites that can watch these people from space. If they launched a nuke, we’d know it practically the second it went into the sky. If there’s one thing that the United States is very consistent in it’s responding in kind when attacked. Responding. Wouldn’t it make far more sense to ensure that someone can’t, I don’t know, climb on the R-train out on Coney Island with a suitcase nuke and detonate it under Times Square? Or get on a Metro-North train in Poughkeepsie and bring it to Grand Central? Or drive halfway across the Golden Gate bridge? Aren’t these all more important — and more likely — then a random launch from Iran? Aren’t these all more important than having this cowboy mentality that we’re going to bring the Middle East in line? How’s that been working out over there for the last, like, forever? Isn’t there a wildly misattributed quote that defines insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? This goes for both guys. Obama’s going to launch a diplomatic mission to make these guys see the light? Really? Have you ever had a reasonable “Creationism vs. Evolution” argument with someone that didn’t end with your eyes glazed over and your mouth agape? Didn’t think so.

So, this pretty much sucks. I agree with McCain’s position on fixing what we screwed up but agree with Obama’s position on not stirring up a hornet’s nest in two other countries.

Point: Draw. (3-1, McCain).

I think I would have enjoyed this movie more if it was filmed in California or something. The problem for me was dealing with the idiotic decisions Tom Cruise makes in his absurd trek from North Jersey to Boston. For instance… a ferry? Dude travels three hours up the Hudson River and decides to take a ferry instead of driving, literally, 20 more minutes north to take a bridge? And, if that bridge wasn’t there anymore, there’s one another five minutes north… then another five minutes north… then another ten minutes north. Worst route to Boston ever. Seriously. A ferry? Dude goes to take a ferry when he’s just seen people get turned in to dust? We’re worried about staying away from people who might want to steal your car but you immediately go to a chokepoint? How does he know the ferry’s running? Wouldn’t it make worlds more sense to try and find a bridge since, you know, you don’t need a person to operate one?

I find the whole thing kind of ridiculous. I remember reading that this movie was “great science-fiction.” Maybe the original book was great science-fiction… but the movie decided that the bad-guys had been monitoring Earth for a million years. They’ve been watching that long but couldn’t figure out what would bring about their end?

I guess it could have been worse. The monsters could have invaded a planet that was 80% water while being deathly allergic to water.

Also, there’s nothing quite as funny as 5′4″ worth of Tom Cruise overpowering 6′5″ worth of Tim Robbins.