There Is A Special Place In Hell Reserved For Adrian Beltre

Jack Zduriencik had reason for optimism heading into the 2009-2010 Major League Baseball season. His team had come off an impressive 85-win campaign the previous season, and after having traded for Cliff Lee (in this humble blogger's opinion a top-5 pitcher) and signing Chone Figgins away from a division rival, why not be optimistic?

Yeahhh.... About that....

In life, not everything works out the way you want it to. Sometimes you go into a store only hoping to spend 10 dollars, but you end up spending 20. With the 2009-2010 Mariners, they went in only wanting to spend 10 dollars, but ended up going into such deep debt with a loan shark that they ended up floating at the bottom of the Puget Sound with two broken legs encased in concrete.

Allow me to set the mood here.

In the 2009-2010 Season, the Mariners were totally, consistently, inarguably, unabashedly (and historically!) terrible at offense. Allow me to do my best stutter impression. They placed last (30/30) in Batting Average, .236, last (30/30) in Slugging Percentage, .339, last in On Base Percentage, .298, had the fewest runs, 513, fewest hits, 1274, fewest doubles, 227, fewest triples, 16, fewest Home Runs, 101, and, surprise!, had the fewest RBI's, 485. In total, they were so bad, I couldn't even count the number of games where Felix Hernandez would come out during the 7th nursing a 1-0 lead, drape a towel over his head, and contract his entire body in anticipation of the sound of the other teams bat hitting ball. 

CRACK. *Felix Hernandez rips towel off his head, jumps up, leans over rails, and affirms that other team just scored two runs off [hapless reliever X]* .... *Felix thinks about how C.C. Sabathia is getting over 7 runs worth of run-support per game in New York*......*Felix re-drapes towel and cries*

Getting lonely, King?

And that's what makes this year, and this Cy Young award winners season, particularly frustrating.

In other areas of the game, the M's showed life.

They had a top-ten team ERA of 3.93, a 21^st ranked defense by Fielding Percentage (.982) but 10th ranked by UZR (15..8).Heck, they had 2 gold glove winning outfielders (ichiro and guti) to boot.

If they could have gotten some hitting from the get-go (only Ichiro produced this season, per usual) and justified holding onto Cliff (perhaps for a dream contract re-extension run this summer!?!?), they could have made a run at the division. Instead, we crapped the bed, and ended up trading Cliff within the division (practically gift wrapping the world series berth for the Rangers).

Wipe that smirk off your face, you never even averaged .280 for us

Which brings us to Adrian Fucking Beltre. I really hate that guy. For years he was our ace defensive third baseman, AKA the "hot corner". Before he came to us, he was also (at least for a short while) a monster offensive player. He wasn't that for us. In 5 years, his batting averages were .255, .268, .276, .266 and .265 with pedestrian slugging percentages and a passable home run rate. We let him go before the 09-10 season because we signed Chone Figgins (only moderately productive, clearly on the downside of his career) away from the Angels. Then, we found out Chone couldn't play third base so we moved him to second and slotted Jose FATpez (er, Lopez) into third base.

Boy that turned out well.

And after quietly signing with the Bahhhhstan Red Sox, check out the numbers Adrian Fucking Beltre (AFB for short) put up:

Beltre

Avg .321

Slg .553

Ops .919

102 RBI 

28 HR 

189 H 

84 R 

40 BB

Adrian Fucking Beltre. Why couldn't you have put up those offensive numbers for the half-decade you played for us?

There is a special place in hell reserved just for you.

You crushed my dreams of years of King Felix/Cliff Lee, anchored by great defense and the hitting prowesses of Dustin Ackley, a 369 (or whatever) year old Ichiro, and Franklin "Death to Flying Things" Gutierrez.

You crushed them, you bastard.

...

Thissss fuckin' guyyyy

...

Howie Stalwick who? Turns out there's a reason you have to ask.

OK, so, Howie Stalwick of the Kitsap Sun newspaper in Tacoma obviously doesn't have his sights set on securing a better sports writing gig anytime soon. I reached this conclusion based on the amount of wrongness about the result of the 2010 AL Cy Young race that he was able to pack into merely one paragraph of his November 22 "column." (Come to think of it, maybe this was done in order to secure himself a better gig later on, as Colin Cowherd's continued success in sports media demonstrates.)

As you may or may not know, Felix Hernandez was named the AL Cy Young winner, despite compiling a somewhat mediocre 13-12 record. This caused every 135 year old baseball fan in the country to cough himself (and let's be real here, I mean him, because they didn't let women VOTE when he was watching Christy Mathewson win 80 games per year, much less watch baseball) into a conniption. I mean, 13 wins??? Why not just go ahead and give the Cy Young Award to a DH already???

Except that this result was a testament to how far Cy Young voters have come. Unlike years past, voters decided not to punish Felix Hernandez for pitching on the worst team in the American League (Mariners finished 61-101). Instead, it appears that the voters looked to less known, yet more important, statistics in order to decide who the winner was.

And by god Howie Stalwick just won't stand for it.

"Ultra classy of David Price to say Felix deserved the award."

Way to imply that Hernandez was completely undeserving without actually saying it. Also, way to ignore the fact that if David Price had come out and said "Screw King Felix, and let's see some papers while we're at it!" would have made him the biggest dick in the world. Seriously, outside of John McEnroe or Barry Bonds, is there any athlete who HASN'T congratulated someone who beat him out for an award?

"but we still maintain that a dude who goes 19-6 pitching in a season-long pennant race in the rugged AL East deserved the award over a 13-12 guy pitching in the AL Worst."

AL WORST!! Get it? Worst instead of West! CLASSIC Stalwick!

Also, for what it's worth, "rugged" seems a fairly homo-erotically chosen word to describe a division of teams in baseball.

" Earned run average might be the most overrated stat out there"

Actually, that award goes to "wins," the stat you just cited to prove that David Price had a better season than Felix Hernandez.

Run Support in 2010

Felix Hernandez: 3.75 runs per game (worst in AL)

David Price: 7.03 runs per game (12th best in AL)

So, maybe, just maybe, the fact that David Price's offense scored him almost twice as many runs per game than Hernandez's did helped account for the fact that he won 6 more games. Or maybe I'm not as good at logic as Howie Stalwick. One of those things is probably true.

"Price’s 2.72 ERA compares favorably to Felix’s 2.27 when you consider that Felix pitches half his games in the baseball equivalent of Yellowstone National Park."

1. It's interesting that we can surmise that Safeco's slightly larger dimensions helped account for a rather large differential in ERA, but a much larger difference in run support cannot account for a difference in wins.

2. Hernandez's road ERA: 2.42. Price's? 3.46.

3. Hernandez's ERA vs. teams with winning % of .500 or above: 2.26.  David Price's? 2.67.

4. Other categories Hernandez led Price in:

§  Strikeouts

§  ERA+ (earn run average adjusted)

§  K/9

§  WHIP

§  BB/9

§  BAA

§  GB%

§  FIP (Fielder Independent ERA)

§  WPA (Win Probability Added)

§  WAR (Wins above replacement player)

§  Innumerable other important categories I'm too lazy to list.

If anyone ever tries to tell you that David Price was a better pitcher this year than Felix Hernandez, nod politely and make a mental note to forget everything they tell you, keeping in mind that this person undoubtedly believes that Derek Jeter is an incredibly "clutch" defender.

Bill Plaschke *REALLY* likes Davey Lopes

You may know Bill Plaschke and his ever-flapping jowls from his many appearances on "Around the Horn," where he and resident chalkboard eraser Woody Paige engage daily in an uncanny impression of a high-pitched dog whistle. Bill Plaschke, who, for the record, has never actually watched a sporting event in his life, has long nurtured a man-crush on Dodgers GM Ned Colletti that would make Ace and Gary from SNL blush, despite Colleti's outstandingly mediocre track record as a GM in a perpetually weak division.

However, it appears a new challenger for Plaschke's love has emerged. His name? Davey Lopes. Yes. The Davey Lopes.

See, according to Bill Plaschke, the Dodgers lack of success in 2010 wasn't due to underperforming regulars such as Manny Ramirez (eventually traded), Russell Martin, Casey Blake, or Matt Kemp, or even others that were injured, such as Rafael Furcal. It wasn't due to a bullpen, that, outside of setup man Hong-Chih Kuo, was pretty shaky.

No. The problem, you see, was a lack of grit. A lack of gravitas.

Enter Davey Lopes.

"Remember him? The tough Dodgers second baseman? The centerpiece of the legendary Dodgers infield? A celebrated coach for the Philadelphia Philliesduring their two recent trips to the World Series?"

I remember him, but not like in a "Oh Man, DAVEY FREAKIN' LOPES!" kind of way. I mean, I remember it being mentioned that he was their first base coach. I'm not sure being a first base coach ever results in someone being "celebrated." But continue.

Later Wednesday I called Ned Colletti, the Dodgers' general manager.

"Bring Davey home," I said.

"Hmmm," he said.

The jealous lover can detect something is awry.

So now the cringe is slowly leaving and the raw beginnings of distant hope are slowly returning, because I think it could happen. I'm guessing they are already talking.

For the first time in 29 years, Davey Lopes could soon be a Dodger again.

Seriously, why do I get the feeling that Plaschke required eight cold showers and four ham sandwiches to finish this article?

With the kind of bargain basement lineup they are going to throw on the field next year, maybe Lopes would not even be worth one win. But with his potential to unlock the likes ofMatt Kemp and James Loney and Andre Ethier, maybe he's worth plenty.

In other words, "Unless Davey Lopes has magical powers that make players play better, he won't be very valuable." Solid point, Bill.

He's tough like Bowa was tough, but he knows when to back off. He's smart like Schaefer was smart, but because he once played, he can relate better to younger players.

1. Obviously the Dodgers were too big of pussies to win last year. And were dumb. Big, dumb pussies.

2. Fact: many coaches and managers have had problems with players. Fact: 99.9% of those coaches and managers played baseball at the professional level.

3. Davey Lopes, in three years as a manager for the Milwaukee Brewers, managed a 144-195 record. Yeah, his teams weren't really that good. But it would seem to prove that Davey Lopes isn't Baseball Jesus either.

Lopes won a Gold Glove, but he was best known for his base stealing, with 557 stolen bases and an 83% success ratio. He took that knowledge to the Phillies, who led the major leagues in stolen base percentage during his three seasons there.

This year, the Phillies were successful on a baseball-leading 84% of their stolen base tries. The Dodgers finished 28th out of 30 teams with 65%.

Unless the Dodgers also plan on trading for high percentage base stealers such as Shane Victorino, Jimmy Rollins, and Chase Utley, I'm not really sure how Davey Lopes, aside from pinch running himself every time a Dodger batter reaches base, is going to improve this.

This also completely misses the point of what actually troubled the Dodgers this year: core players having down years at the plate or being injured, and a terrible bullpen.

Now is that time, for both Lopes and the locals who once adored him. Watching the Giants spending the winter dancing might be a little easier for Chavez Ravine folks to take knowing their backs are being covered by an old Dodger.

Last sentence = <3