Is this how we're going to do it... revealing each of the 104 steroid test failures one-at-a-time every couple of months? It's a great strategy because it keeps the story, which of course is already four years old, alive and well for another two-three decades. Looks like we're starting with the superstars and working our way down. I can't wait to find out in 2028 whether John Mabry and Neifi Perez were loading up.
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Kudos to the Yankee faithful for booing Alex Rodriguez during his current slump. Apparently they can remember his positive steroid test from four years ago, but not his hip surgery from three months ago. Or the way he carried the team for most of the season way back in 2007.
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Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports reports that Nationals manager Manny Acta will be canned as soon as the Lerner family can find a big name with whom to make a splash upon hiring. I know that Acta is a moron because his team is 14-97, but if he actually had some major leaguers on his team, he'd get smart real fast. From what I read, Acta is highly respected and has kept his cool in a terrible situation.
More importantly, has no one in the Lerner family -- a distant cousin, ne'er-do-well brother-in-law, next door neighbor, Lexus mechanic's daughter -- read Moneyball? Or studied successful franchises? Or paid attention to recent trends in managing? Or watched a baseball game this century? Had they done any of these things, they'd have discovered that the guy in the dugout is a middle-manager who has little influence on his team's record. The strategies are mostly rote decisions mapped out over 100 years of common experience. While a manager can really affect his team's emotional state, that's not useful unless they have Major League skills in the first place.
Moreoever, Lou Pinella has already vividly demonstrated in St. Petersburg how little impact a concensus genius can have on a roster of truck drivers and pedicurists. The Lerners should save the managerial splash and instead dip their toes into farm development. There's nothing wrong with their club that three good infielders, two top starters and a bullpen couldn't solve.
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Sometime soon, I'm going to write a piece on the Texas Rangers. They've chosen defense over offense and it's helped bulk up the chronically weak pitching and catapult the team into first place. It's the same formula that Tampa Bay used last year, which was the strategy embarked on by Billy Beane in Oakland after the world caught on to his preference for under-valued, inert, walk-happy sluggers . These kinds of strategies are pretty transparent and will require the aforementioned teams to alter the plan as soon as the whole baseball market catches on and begins driving up the price of defense.
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