By Jeff Moss
June 17, 2011
DetroitSportsRag@gmail.com
And now to end your work week, here are Mossisms™ on the Light Side. And as always, if you would like to substitute Mostaccioli with Palmina sauce for spaghetti, there will be a $4 upcharge.
Is a 1.030 On-Base Plus Slugging Percentage Good?
On Thursday the trailer for the movie Moneyball Pitt was released. The film based on the book of the same name famously focuses on Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane and Seth from Superbad in their quest to build a team using sabermetrics.
(Watch the Moneyball trailer here: http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood-prospectus/post/_/id/466/scouting-report-on-the-moneyball-trailer)
And if the movie starring Brad Pitt and written by Aaron Sorkin does well at the box office a sequel could be in the offing. So who is going to play Dave Dombrowski in Moneyball 2: Batting Average on Balls in Play Boogaloo?
The Tigers GM surely earned a big part in the follow-up based on his asinine trade of second baseman Scott Sizemore to Oakland for middle relief pitcher David Purcey.
And this Sizemore deal might go down as Dombrowski’s most idiotic transaction since he dealt Jar Jar Binks Jurrjens for Edgar “I Don’t Practice” Renteria.
Let’s just take at the aftermath of the deal on the three-week anniversary of the trade:
1) The Tigers STILL have no viable option at third base (Sizemore’s current position in Oakland) or second base (the position Sizemore has played all of his life.) They continue to run out Ryan Raburn at second. An abortion who can’t field the position and who is an anemic hitter. Their current answer at third is a guy (Don Kelly) with a career OPS of .622.
(To demonstrate how bad Kelly’s career has been, Cubs PITCHER Carlos Zambrano has a career OPS of .641!!!! And this isn’t based on a small sample size for Zambrano. He actually has MORE CAREER at-bats than Kelly!!!! In other words, a PITCHER for the Cubs would be a better option at the plate than OUR CURRENT THIRD BASEMAN!!! I am sorry to go all Jake Jarmel on you, but this is fucking maddening.)
2) Not only did the Tigers trade one of their better hitting prospects (Sizemore had a career OBP of .388 in the minor leagues), but they did it for a left-handed MIDDLE reliever. Not a closer. Not a set-up man. Not a starter. But a fucking SITUATIONAL LEFTY!!!!
3) But wait there is more. When asked on Wednesday if it was a good idea to have FOUR lefty relief pitchers, Jim Leyland responded by saying it was “too many.”
Yep, the Tigers own manager thinks that four lefties in the pen is retarded. And when Brad Thomas gets healthy they will have FIVE of them!!!
4) When the A’s acquired Sizemore they sent him down to AAA for a few games and let him transition into playing third base.
Since his call-up from Sacramento, Sizemore is hitting .381 with a .458 OBP and an Albert Pujols-like OPS of 1.030.
I mean, who would want a second or third baseman with those kinds of recent splits?
The trade made absolutely NO SENSE three weeks ago and it makes even less now.
Between the Placido Polanco debacle and Sizemore quickly entrenching himself as the A’s third baseman of the future, other GMs will now know where to look when they have a gaping hole at the hot corner:
Second base in the Tigers organization.
This Can’t Be Real
So the other night I am about to go to bed when I get an email notification that I have a new follower on Twitter.
When I checked my inbox I thought someone was playing a practical joke on me. So who was my newest Twat disciple?
Detroit Lions team President Tom Lewand.
I must have looked at my iPad screen about 30 times thinking there HAD to be some kind of mistake. Keith Olbermann has gone easier on Sarah Palin than I have been on Lions ownership/management in the last decade.
My next thought was this had to be some imposter of Lewand playing a practical joke. But when I looked at the other people “Tom Lewand” was following on Twitter it became quite evident this was the real deal.
I was in utter disbelief. I mean this is the guy that I nicknamed “Breath Mints” because of the excuse he gave to a cop when he got pulled over for a DUI last year.
My next guess was that Lewand must be following thousands of people on Twitter and he saw that the team’s play-by-play announcer (Dan Miller) and one of the beat writers (Tom Kowalski) were following me so he decided to do so as well.
Except Lewand was only following 129 people.
So I still have absolutely no logical explanation on why Lewand is following me, but based on his Twitter page the guy can’t be all-bad.
He is also tracking:
Howard Stern
The Howard Stern Show on Sirius/XM
Howard (Stern) TV On-Demand
The Official Twitter Page of Les Miserables
Look, if before his death Osama bin Laden would have announced that he was a huge fan of Richard Christy and Sal Governale and his favorite musical number was “A Little Fall of Rain”, I probably would have moved to Afghanistan, joined Al-Qaeda and strapped a bomb to my underwear.
This is just so confusing though. I feel like Valjean when Bishop Myriel saved “24601” from a return to incarceration by telling the police the silver that he stole was actually a gift and that Valjean had forgotten the very expensive candlesticks.
Yeah, yeah, you don’t get the reference. Who cares? My new friend “Breath M…” errr, I mean, Tom, got it and that is all that counts.
Wow, this is going to take some getting used to.