Hot on the heels of my meekly disseminated NL East Preview comes this weekend's roundup, replete with baseball-related online oddities that you might have missed and will soon wish I had.
How about a little West Coast Agony to start things off? Rey Ordonez, you’ll remember, recently signed a minor league deal with the Padres, rekindling a spark of anger I’d thought buried over his stellar hitting performance with the Devil Rays last season. In 117 ABs, our double play ball and bird flippin’ friend did this:
.316 BA .328 OBP .487 SLG
As a Met, in 2937 ABs, he turned in this performance:
.245 BA .290 OBP .304 SLG
He went from "horrible, even for a shortstop" to "good, especially for a shortstop" and while I'm aware that 117 ABs aren't statistically significant, I consider them emotionally significant as the anger they engender would be justified if he had hit that well in even ten ABs. Rey Ordonez as a good hitter crumbles my walls of baseball logic like the Kool-Aid Man, whose decanted humors Padres management has certainly been imbibing if they think he can keep it up. This article seems to suggest someone does:
The bigger task for Ordoñez will be to prove he's not only a superior defensive player but that he can handle the bat. The eight-year big league veteran needs to show his offense is closer to the .316 he was hitting with Tampa Bay last season before his knee injury than the .188 he logged with the Mets in 2000 that caused him to lose his job.Oh, I see. It was his performance in 2000 that told us he can't hit.
While searching for evidence of Rey's futility at Baseball Reference (a useful and especially fast source), I checked on a few of our current Mets to see if their pages were sponsored. Instead of spamming its readers with pop-up ads for products I just don't understand, Baseball Reference supports itself on colorful sponsorships of player pages. For instance, I could hand them fifteen dollars and for a year whenever sorry souls looked for Rey Ordonez' statistics, they'd find a little message from me at the top. Perhaps a link to this site, with the disclaimer: "not the title of his biography"; you get the idea.
Sure enough, plenty of our lovable Amazin's were sponsored. The following are worth a look:
Roger Cedeno : heartwarming; hysterical.
Tom Glavine : it's not BALCO, but it is pretty weird.
Jae Weong Seo : no pressure, kid.
Jose Reyes : the Mastaitis family tells it like it is.
Mike Piazza is still up for grabs, bloggers! He only costs an amazing seventy bucks for the year. (Prentice Redman, however, is a steal at five.) I tried to check the price on Steve Trachsel's page, but it was just sponsored by a pizza place. I wouldn't call them though; I hear they take forever to deliver.
Ba dum ching! I'll be blogging all week. And I'm so sorry.
One final bit of nonsense. This page has a list of Florida Marlins promotional giveaways, and tucked away among the championship tee-shirts and star posters you might expect are these gems:
Who wants to be the father bringing his son to his first game on Mike Lowell Russian Nesting Doll night?
"What is it, Daddy?"
"Um. Well. It's a doll. You open it, and, uh, there's another smaller doll inside."
"Why, Daddy?"
"I...I don't know. You just hold onto it while Daddy opens up a beer with this handy bottle opener the usher gave--"
HELLO AND WELCOME TO PRO PLAYER STADIUM. I AM FELO RAMIREZ, HERE WITH DAVE VAN HORNE...
"It's talking, Daddy! I'm scared!"
"Don't worry, bud, I'll make it stop."
...WE HOPE YOU ENJOY THE GAME.
"There we go, son, all over. See? Nothing to be--"
HELLO AND WELCOME TO PRO PLAYER STADIUM...
"That's it, forget the whole thing. We're leaving. Bring the doll with you, son; your sister might like it."
And we wonder (or ESPN thinks we do) why baseball isn't the national pastime anymore.
That's it for now. If you're still bored, please direct your attention to the blogs on the right. They're nothing like us, I swear.
No comments:
Post a Comment