Ian Kinsler's Heel Turn

There's an important lesson for Ian Kinsler in all this:

Don't act like a complete jackass unless the local media really, really loves you.

Boras Fails! Except Math!

One of the narratives going around today is how Scott Boras, in getting his client Shin-Soo Choo picked up by Texas, "failed". 

Look, as the producers of the American version of Godzilla were told after their "flop" of a movie grossed $379M worldwide, "Fail like this every time". He got an outfielder on the wrong side of 30 a 7 year contract worth $18M a year. This, in a year when free agents recently signed to long-term deals are the second hottest item (after David Price) on the trade market, because, hey, someone figured out what the words "decline phase" means. 

Game 163

It's not quite the postseason, the one game playoff to see who gets the chance to play a one game playoff to advance to the next round of the American League playoffs. The National League side has been reasonably set for a while now; only an impossible run from the Nationals combined with a complete collapse from one of the NL Central front-runners would have shaken things up. It was only a question of seeding, with the Reds and Pirates duking it out to see who got to host the Wild Card game, and the Dodgers and Braves cruising home with 10+ game leads.

MLB Preview - AL West Edition

Mariners outfield headed this way? No problem.

Once, long ago, I was privileged to attend a game at Safeco Field in the company of the esteemed Derek Zumsteg, a man who is both a gentleman and far more knowledgeable about baseball than I will ever be. During the announcement of the Mariners' starting lineup - one that featured Willie Bloomquist hitting second, shortly after his unfortunate "clamming" incident, and Miguel Cairo playing first base - he started booing.
'nuff said. Here's the AL West.

Great Moments In Amazing Expanding Strike Zones

On Monday Night, the Rays were mounting a comeback in the top of the 9th inning when this 4th ball pitched to Ben Zobrist was errantly called a strike to end the game:

What made this call so bad was that it was the third called strike of a six pitch at bat where no single pitch even came close to the strike zone. Rays Manager, Joe Maddon said in his post game presser "That can't happen in a Major League Game." Unfortunately, the Rays had to beat the 26th man on the Roster and he's a ringer...

This prompted me to consider the MLB worst calls of all time. Here are a few of my favorite bad calls:

The Ryan Game

It seems like a no-brainer.
If the Texas Rangers and Nolan Ryan are at odds, then the Texas Rangers do whatever it takes to fix it. After all, if there is one player in that franchise's history who is indubitably iconic, it's Ryan. If there's one guy who's not associated with all the sludge and insanity that this team has been heir to since Bob Short put it on a flatbead and hauled it out of DC, it's Ryan. If there's one guy who genuinely makes people feel good about the Texas Rangers, it's Ryan.

Not So Much A Baseball Town

Presumably not interested in Adrian Beltre's OPS+

There is only one conceivable response to freshly minted Los Angeles Angel of Anaheim Except When The Traffic Backs Up On The 5 In Which Case You Want To Be A Los Angeles Angel Of Taking 91 Maybe As A Bypass Josh Hamilton's comment that Dallas is not a baseball city.

Duh.

Yes, Texans play a lot of baseball. Yes, Texas has produced a lot of great talent - some guy named "Ryan" springs to mind. And yes, the Rangers are currently riding high with a monstrous lineup, a strong pitching staff, and a ballpark that would not drive former Arlington beat writer Mike Shropshire to drink (more).

But.

It's Dallas. Home of the Dallas Cowboys, the most football-crazed city in the most football-crazed state in the country. Never mind that since the turn of the millennium, the Cowboys have been the worst of the four major sports teams in the DFW area - worse than the Rangers, definitely, but also worse than the Stars and the Mavericks. Maybe owner antics both positive (Mark Cuban's resurrection of the Mavs) and negative (Tom Hicks' greedhead shenanigans with the Stars and Rangers) obscured that fact, but it doesn't matter. Dallas is the Cowboys is Dallas. Maybe that would change if the 'boys Romoed their way to a couple of consecutive 0-16 seasons, but I doubt it. Denying this - or being horrified that someone said it - is shove-your-head-in-the-sand stupid, a willful denial of the obvious and the factual.

And really, it's unnecessary. Football's number one? Sure, but that doesn't mean that the Rangers are sitting out by the Gas'n'Sip at 2 AM waiting for John Cusack to show up. They ranked 3rd in baseball in attendance last year. They pulled 3.4 million people through the turnstiles. In a town where they're not the priority, they still seem to be doing all right.

Which points us, I suppose, at the real issue here, which is to say the half-assed Manicheanism of the sorts of folks who aggressively stir up trouble in the interests of a loud - not good - narrative. Dallas is primarily a football town? Big freaking deal. Until they park life-sized statues of Leon Lett in front of every stadium entrance in Arlington to keep people from seeing Rangers games, it has precisely zero impact on whether people in Dallas can enjoy baseball, too.

On second thought, forget I said anything about those statues. I don't want to give Jerry Jones any ideas.

This Is Why They Play 162 Games

Playoff odds? They're ABOVE 9000!

You only need to be in first place for one day. The last day.
It doesn't matter if you're 13 games out midseason. That you're starting a rotation made up of five rookies. That your best starting pitcher tested positive for performance-enhancing hollandaise sauce and got suspended for the stretch run. That your outfield was composed of guys who'd signed long-term leases in Pawtucket and guys who'd bombed in Kansas City and a guy who was better known for his workout video than anything else. That your midseason power upgrade came from a guy who looked like he was locked into a AAAA career path. That your bullpen was put together with duct tape and rejects and former minor league first basemen. That you play in a cavernous shell of a stadium that the city fathers have gutted for their cheating boyfriend of a football team, that your payroll is tiny and your location status is in limbo and your decade-ago success has been turned into a punchline by every jock-sniffing sports radio blatherer who decided in grade school that fractions were proof that math was just too damn hard.
That you're down, 5-0, in the last game, against the team that you've got to beat, against their big mid-season pitching pickup. That you're pulling guys out of the bullpen whom the announcers have never heard of because your starting pitcher imploded in the 3rd. That you're relying on guys named Moss and Smith and Donaldson.
A's 12, Rangers 5. This is why they play 162 games.