Coupla Quick Notes

Vlad Guerrero just keeps getting more embarrassing. I just watched him hit a slow roller up the middle that Derek Jeter ran down on the outfield grass facing the wrong way, twist his body sideways and snap off a half-speed throw that Guerrero beat by the width of Joe Buck's objectivity. The play took four minutes and forty-eight seconds; an overweight ant running uphill through molasses could have beaten that one out by two strides.

Then Guerrero removes his batting helmet and puts on his bonehead, getting himself doubled off first when Nick Swisher caught a lollipop in shallow right and found the baserunner languidly trespassing in the second base hole. If Bobby Cox were the manager of the Angels he'd have walked to first base to yank his DH from the game.

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Remember that choker, Alex Rodriguez? He's batting .419 with five homers as I write this, including several key hits. How has he turned it around?

It's obvious: Kate Hudson. No wait, it's that he finally unburdened himself about steroid use. No, no, it's Derek Jeter's leadership. No wait...

No, wait. ARod is one of the 20 greatest players of all time. A guy like that is going to endure cold spells, as he has in other playoff appearances, but he's inevitably going to get hot for nine games (so far). This performance isn't surprising; in fact, it was inevitable.

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I'm not put off much by umpires blowing judgment calls. Law enforcement professionals know that eye witnesses are extraordinarily poor at correctly identifying crime scene details and that their testimony is almost completely unreliable. (That doesn't stop them from using eye witnesses when it's advantageous to them.) Any of us would blow our share of safe/out, fair/foul, ball/strike plays that are measured in millimeters at full speed.

But umpires not knowing the rules is unconscionable.

It's now happened twice in the ALCS -- and I can't help but notice that both times the break went to the Yankees. The Who's On Third routine in Game 5 wasn't ultimately determinative, but the Game 2 goof on a wild pitch that went into the stands cost LA the game and altered the series.

I don't think it's anything but a coincidence; still, how can I be sure?

Ultimately, we can talk all we want about replays, but before we do, how about employing umps who know the rules?

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The Fox crew has made a point of reminding us that the Yankees haven't been to the World Series since way back in 2003. Oh, the suffering!

I'm sure all the fans in Pittsburgh and Kansas City are sobbing in sympathy and reaching for their checkbooks to send a donation. The same in Seattle. And in Dallas. And Toronto, Baltimore, Minnesota, Oakland, Anaheim, Atlanta, Washington, Cincinnati, San Diego, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Queens and Chicago's North Side.
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Vlad the Impaled

Watching the playoffs, the saddest thing to see -- after the seeming inevitability of another purchased World Championship for the Yankees -- is the dramatic decline of Vladimir Guerrero. Hitless in his first two games and having whiffed in his previous at-bat on a pitch half a light-year from the strike zone, Guerrero was the last guy the Angels wanted at the plate with the bases juiced and two down in the seventh inning of a tie Game 2.

Guerrero is a lesson in the importance of plate discipline. For 12 years, Vlad the Impaler made mincemeat of Major League pitching by swinging at everything in the same zip code as home plate. From his first full season in 1998 to 2007, Guerrero's lowest OPS was .943 despite Stevie Wonder's batting eye.

There is only way to bat .300 with power while swinging at everything but the pick-off move: possess mad skills. Vlad was so endowed. However...

Starting last year, his 33rd on Planet Earth, Guerrero's skills began to erode. His OPS the last two seasons slumped to .886 and .794, and he's failed to hit 30 home runs each of the last three years. His value, as compared to a replacement-level player at his position dropped from a high of seven wins, accomplished several times, to about one-and-a-half win in 2009.

To be fair, Vlad missed a third of the season this year. On the other hand, he DH'd almost exclusively. Counter-intuitively, the replacement level hitter at DH is actually weaker than at right-fielder.

Guerrero's problem is that he can no longer compensate for his miserable plate discipline with an uncanny ability to hit everything. Pitchers know they can make bad pitches, and as long as they're not hugging the plate, they can get him out.

That's what was on display when he batted against a suspect Joba Chamberlain in Game 2. In 45-degree temperatures, Joba had come into the game one batter earlier and issued a free pass to the previous batter. But Guerrero swung at all four pitches he saw -- two of them balls -- and struck out, leaving three runners aboard.

The prognosis for Vladimir Guerrero in 2010 is pretty poor. Time waits for no one, and it doesn't appear that he's learned anything about how to hit. It's a shame too, becuse he was on a Hall of Fame trajectory had he only improved on the one glaring weakness in his game.

Plus, he could have helped beat the Yankees.
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