This Week in Ouuuuurrrr Baseball

Busy week in baseball with the winter meetings in Nashville complete and it figured to be what with the shitty free agent market this year.

Big Deal of the Week:

Give yourself a pat on the ass if you saw the Tigers/Marlins blockbuster coming, ‘cause not many people did. This one is reminiscent of the last Marlins salary dump with Miguel Cabrera playing the role of Josh Beckett and Dontrelle Willis as Mike Lowell. If the Tigers get anything from Willis this year, it’s gravy, because dude flat out sucked last year. A 5+ ERA in that park says either his stuff isn’t what it was or he was just a tricky wind up guy that everyone’s seen enough to where it isn’t tricky anymore.

Detroit may have emptied out their farm system, but if you’re gonna, guys like Cabrera, given his age and pedigree, simply aren’t made available anymore. If you wanna come back to me with some sort of eating or weight remark, go ahead and close your browser window and turn on Around the Horn, ‘cause that’s probably a better use of your time. Baseball is a fat fucker’s game. It’s fun to take a look at cats’ rookie cards then look at what they look like now and speculate what kind of designer drugs they’ve been sticking in each other’s asses, but after Woody Page and Bill Plaschke get kicked off, go grab your high school year book, take a look at your Ethiopian ass. Now head over to the bathroom and take a look in the mirror. You can stop to catch your breath if you need to. Baseball players don’t like to exercise. If they did, they’d become marathon runners or football players or something. Baseball players are static and lazy and they spend weeks on the road eating bad food late at night and consuming their fair share of booze. I don’t care if Cabrera comes to the plate with whole, raw porterhouses shoved on his bat like a shishkabab as long as he brings that stick. Dude rakes. And he’ll probably be worth the 2 guys with any future that Detroit gave up.

And I’m not willing to call it stupid on Florida’s part. If you believe the papers, the Dodgers, Angels and Yankees weren’t willing to cough up the guys Florida wanted. If you don’t move Cabrera now, he loses value if you trade him at the deadline as he’s half a year closer to free agency not to mention the risk of him being injured during the season. So they took what they could get. Andrew Miller’s probably no worse than Willis right now and Cameron Maybin is the best in Detroit’s system. Not to mention Florida has a solid history of identifying young talent.

Big Signing of the Week:

Despite typical Scott Boras posturing to the contrary, Andruw Jones took a tuw year deal to look disinterested in centerfield in LA. This muwve could go a fuw different ways for a fuw different reasons:

· Is Jones already declining as severely as his numbers indicate? His line drive % has fallen the last 4 years and his homers are on the decline similarly. If he’s not hurt, why isn’t he hitting the ball as well and as far?
· Does Juan Pierre find his way to the bench, left field or out of town? If Pierre remains in the lineup every day but moves to left field, this signing is just shuffling the deck chairs on Tim Cruws’ speed boat. Not only would Pierre be one of, if not the, worst left fielders in baseball history, every time he comes to the plate, that’s one less time that Andre Ethier or Matt Kemp will, both of whom shit bigger than Juan Pierre.
· Is GM Ned Coletti willing to have this be his move this offseason and go to Spring Training with the club he has now? Bringing in Jones so he can trade off Kemp for pitching could be a mistake of the magnitude of Pedro for Delino. Or Jeff Kent could smash Kemp’s head in with a cinderblock the first day of camp.

Whether it was contract-year-induced pressure, bad luck, or God’s way of saying, “Hey dickhat, nice fucking spiderweb elbow tattuw. When you retire are you gonna try and be an extra in American Me II?” Jones looked like shit last season. Everytime he was at the plate, he was swinging like a fat kid who’s pissed off because his mom is making him play baseball when he’d rather be licking the slab at Cold Stone Creamery and playing Xbox. I thought guys swinging so hard they fall down was some douchey cliché until I saw him do it. Repeatedly.

Personally, I think this is another classic LA contract, paying a guy for what he uwsed to be, but if it somehow solves the Juan Pierre problem, I’d give him as much money as he wants.

Movemaker for the Sake of Being a Movemaker of the Week:

Hey Washington Nationals: If you’re gonna get every player who used to play for a different team, here’s a hint: Pick a different team than the Reds. What better way to open a brand new ball park that looks exactly like the ball park in Cincinnati than to field a roster with Dmitri Young, Austin Kearns, Wily Mo Pena, Aaron Boone and Felipe Lopez. I heard Tom Browning and Hal Morris were in town and they didn’t win any elections.

I can’t believe Peter Angelos was afraid he’d lose market share to this outfit. Fuckers used to play in a soccer stadium.

Giant Douche of the Week:

Ken Rosenthal. British Tabloids, the Weatherman, and the 19 year old sophomore think this dude is never right. I hate this smarmy, shrimpy dickhead. Only a true asshole takes Peter Gammons almost dying as an opportunity to steal his gig and do it a thousand times worse. A clock is right twice a day, but a cock isn’t ever right.
Guy has refrigerator poetry magnets with players and teams on them. That’s how he comes up with his bullshit rumors.

Honestly though, the guy’s a pawn and he’s either ok with that (and a total fucking pussy) or he’s so stupid he doesn’t know he’s being used. Every super secret insider source he has leaks him information specifically to communicate it to the other people in baseball to try to affect the value of people rumored to be traded or signed. His rumors are the story, there isn’t really a story. He just writes what he’s told to write, collects his check and serves absolutely no purpose other than to give dumbasses reasons to wring their hands and talk radio hosts things to talk about during drive time.

Here’s hoping someone tells him to leak something derogatory about Milton Bradley.

Turd Sandwich of the Week:

Tony Larussa. As if you needed another reason to hate Tony Larussa. His GM is desperately trying to get something of value for disgruntled Scott Rolen (who incidentally is disgruntled because Tony Larussa is a Turd Sandwich), so what does Larussa do? Bad mouths Rolen in the papers. Hey Tony, in case you haven’t noticed, your fucking team has no talent outside of Pujols, you might want to let your GM have whatever shred of leverage he has left to get you some better players to manage. If you’re really interested in managing at all. I heard that Tony Larussa only manages the Cardinals because he gets free booze and gets to play grabass with Dave Duncan for 9 months a year. True story. Rosenthal said so.

Worst Motherfuckers of the Whole Week:

Relief Pitchers. David Riske-- $13M (At first I thought this was the dude from Sledgehammer). Scott Linebrink-- $19M. Francisco Cordero--$46M!
I bet John Rocker is extra super duper sorry that’s he’s a racist, hillbilly fucker now, isn’t he? (Though he probably actually likes working at Walmart. The chicks who shop at Walmart are easy. Smelly, generally unsuccessful, ugly and hopeless, but easy.)

‘Til next week….