JP Riccardi Is On Baseball Tonight Right Now

Whoda thunk ESPN could replace Steve Phillips with an equally terrible, if not worse, former GM. We all know he's just keeping the seat warm for Omar Minaya.

David "MVP" Eckstein destroys Chris Rongey

*Audio of DME royally destroying WSCR The Score 670 weekend host Chris Rongey* (call starts 56 seconds into the audio)

Chris Rongey does not believe in numbers. See baseball players are judged and payed based on what people see with their eyes. Because everyone knows that numbers are "drastically misleading". They are so misleading that life would be better off without them. Who needs medicine, engineering, electricity, motors, electromagnetic telecommunication, science in general for that matter. The day people started keeping data and formulating statistics in sports, is the day athletic competition died. I dont need to see numbers to know David Eckstein is the MVP, in all our hearts!

Steve Phillips got fired from ESPN for making the exact same blind comments that his "eyes" don't always agree with the "numbers". In fact, I wrote an entire post about Phillips theory of judging players based on his eyes, oh and Phillips loves rhythm too. I know everyone thinks he got fired for tapping Miss Piggy, but I chose to believe it was for being a complete and utter moron.

Nothing would make me happier if this Chris Rongey character got fired and had to go work in Wyoming or somewhere that doesn't actually have sports. I know he probably has a family, but refuting the reliability of numbers in favor of your own cognitive perception is moronic. If he could find numbers to back up his own cognitive perception then we can talk, but just throwing out random outdated beliefs does not make you right in the least.

Some memorable quotes from the conversation in the mp3 file.

Before putting us all to bed...tell us what your point is

DME's first comment was that batting average is a bad way to evaluate the White Sox offense. I thought this point was fairly clear, so why does Rongey have to twice ask for the point when it was given in the first 10 seconds of the conversation. Oh, and demeaning the caller by calling him boring, stupid, and wrong is probably not the best way to make yourself seem smart. Try some facts besides what your "eyes" see

I dont care what your looking at. You saw him play and you're suggesting that Jayson Nix is as good a baseball player as Alex Rios.

Why so against numbers Chris Rongey? Twice he berated DME for trying to present numbers. It would have been a waste of time anyway. Considering Matthew Berry thinks FIP is fly balls in play, what are the odds Rongey knows what iso, babip, wOBA, or UZR are. I would say about zero cause those things involve numbers. If Rongey ever goes blind, the universe will cease to exist I suppose.

Rios was an all-star a couple of times. I'm pretty sure he's made his case as to how good he is...he has a track record. He has proven over his career he can do it. Jayson Nix has yet to do it.

You know, Ted Williams was an all-star once or twice in his career. Now his head is being frozen in a basement somewhere in case they start cloning people some day. Once being an all-star doesnt make you currently good, nor does it even mean you were once good at baseball(see lance carter, tom gorzalleny, et al.) Do you know guys who didnt have a track record just a few years ago? Ryan Braun, Evan Longoria, Tim Lincecum, and Matt Kemp. 2 years ago all of them were definitely worse than Alex Rios. Alex Rios is an all-star!

I really think numbers can dramatically lie to you. I really think that...I dont care what your looking at. You can dissect all the numbers you want, but Jayson Nix is not a better ball player than Alex Rios

Wow! Really? Really? Like you're being serious. Numbers lie. You are able to sorts through million of individual plays that occur in every baseball game throughout the entire history of baseball with your brain? If you can do that, then you picked the wrong profession my friend. That type of skill can make you some serious money out there. But maybe numbers do lie sometimes. Like you are soooooo entertaining that i think you make $300,000 dollars a year for being so awesomely entertaining, based on what my ear "hear", but in reality you only make $30,000 a year. Wow, way off on that one. Oops

You're really into sabermetrics aren't you? We don't care about your stupid blog.

Dude! You forgot to mention that we live in our mother's basements. No, actually we're fairly accomplished law and med students who discuss sports as a hobby not as our lives purpose. Oh, and dude went to Illinois State University. My old druggy roommate who got expelled for selling dope still got into Indiana. How dumb do you have to be. It was probably a tuition thing.

1) Jason Varitek was an "allstar" last year. Bad argument w/ regards to Rios
2) Carlos Quentin's 2007 on the D-backs: .214/.298/.349 in 263 PA
Jayson Nix 2009: .224/.308/.408 in 290 PA
3) "You're into sabermetrics, aren't you" isn't an argument as to why DME is wrong

Steve Phillips Secret Lover

So, at first, I thought this was just a pic of some fan with Phillips that my friend labelled as a joke "Steve Phillips Secret Lover" But, NO, this really is Steve Phillips secret lover! (Although I should have been tipped off when Steve Phillips actually had a fan...)

One, the obvious, really!? This girl!? Really!? You're going to risk your marriage over this girl!? Although granted, here's a better photo of her...



But here's the strange thing, Phillip's wife knew about her! This girl, Brooke Hundley, had been stalking Phillips and his son and been coming to the house!

You can listen to a 911 call of Phillips' wife calling the police when Hundley came to the Phillips' house
His wife kept saying she will call Phillips to get her name, what must that conversion be like:

Steve Phillips: Hey Honey, how are you?
Marni Phillips: I'm good, how are you?
SP: I'm fine, what's up?
MP: So you know that girl you've been fucking on the side and that keeps coming and threatening us?
SP: Yeah, what about her?
MP: Well even though she has threatened me several times, I have not found out her name, what is it?
SP: Um, which girl exactly?
MP: The ugly one
SP: Oh, HER, yeah that bitch is fucking crazy, her name is Brooke Hundley
MP: OK great, I'm going to call the cops back so they can chase her down
SP: Great, so what's for dinner?

At least, that's how I pictured that conversation...

Next, had people learned anything from Steve McNair! Really!? People are dumb

Lastly, what does Steve Phillips have to do to get fired!? Jesus, after all his shittiness and you add this scandal on top of it and he's STILL on the network. Michael Irvin had one little DUI

Pitching insight from the immortal Steve Phillips

Steve Phillips was announcing the Mets/Braves game on the slow Monday baseball day. I don't really know what Steve's position is. There is the play-by-play guy, which i believe was Dan Shulman. There is the color analyst, which was Oral Hershieser if i'm not mistaken. And then there was Steve Phillips sitting in the corner, awkwardly chiming in random words wisdom from his many successful years in the baseball profession. It feels like ESPN is just trying to use Phillips in any capacity possible until his contract runs out. I equate it to the expiring contract of Larry Hughes and his simply sitting on the bench. Maybe ESPN can trade Phillips' expiring contract for perhaps Rob Dibble's expiring contract on fox sports.

Anyhoo, Phillips shared his theory as to why Johan Santana has had such low run support from the Mets in his 2 years in the big apple. It all comes down to "rhythm". As the Mets GM, he had noticed that some pitchers had a certain rhythm on the mound that would influence the course of the entire baseball and game and every individual on the field. Apparently, Santana is so good because he lulls the opponents to sleep, however the effect is also compounded on his own teammates. Hence, Santana may pitch 8 innings one run ball, but if the team doesnt score behind him the start is considered a failure.

Once again Steve Phillips proves that his eyes see things that your tiny little brains cannot. It's kinda like a sixth sense. If only Johan Santana has Sidney Ponson's rhythm, all the worlds problems would be solved.

Steve Phillips is making my ears bleed: part 2

My jaw just literally dropped from listening to what Steve Phillips just said while broadcasting the Mets/Reds game. I couldnt believe how he just kept going deeper and deeper into his imaginary universe. Luckily i'm tivoing the game so i can transcribe exactly what he said.

SP: Judgements are the most important factors in baseball. There's a system out there that rated Derek Jeter the worst SS in baseball. His range is much less than it was before, but i dont think he's the worst SS in baseball. There's a system that says Chase utley is the best 2B in baseball. I think he's good, but i dont think he;s the best 2B in baseball. He's good but he's no the best. Because the statistics dont match what my eye say, it makes me doubt the veracity of any of the numbers that are part of their system.

DS: So you chose your eyes over the stats.

SP: Yeah, i do. But scouts do. It's like reputation and defense dont always walk in sync with each other...There are certain players that are number accumulators they find themselves in situations to pick up that rbi up or down 3 runs

I dont think i need to FJM this crap. It's pretty self explanatory. Steve Phillips thinks that his eye is better at accumulating/condensing/rating the defensive capabilities of every baseball player in the entire league than an excel spreadsheet on a computer. He then contradicts himself by saying sometimes reputation leads people to believe things that are not true. Which obviously Phillips has done himself with Derek Jeter. He believes Jeter is awesome defensively cause of his reputation, fuck the statistics. What good have they every done for anyone.

Even if the 'eye' is better at judging players than spreadsheets, it definitely isn't Steve Phillip's 'eye' that should be doing the evaluating. Heck, he was the one who didn't 'see' that Mo Vaughn was 350 pounds when he decided to give him a garbage truck full for benjamins.

Also, who needs those guys that accumulate meaningless stats like home runs and rbi's. I'd rather have ronny cedeno who has one big grand slam against the phillies as opposed to the meaningless 110 rbi's Aramis Ramirez accumulated over the entire season. Boy does he suck!

How does Steve Phillips have a job?

Steve Phillips, baseball's worst GM and analyst, is on tonight's Baseball Tonight special. During a roundtable about whether or not the WBC presents a problem for teams who want to protect their investment in players, Phillips said something to the tune of: "We shouldn't be worried about the effects of the WBC on players. Look at the 2006 WBC. Did anyone get hurt? Was anyone affected." He says this "not just as a baseball fan, but as an ex-GM."

Does no one remember Jake Peavy? Following the added workload of the WBC, Peavy's ERA went up by 42%, his walks went up by 25% and his home run rate increased by 28%. He went from being 34% above league average in terms of his ERA to 1% below.

Looking deeper into the stats, we find that Peavy's BABIP was a bit high (.316), which clearly accounted for the 15% increase in hits between 2005 and 2006, while his HR/FB rate remained constant. However, this all happened to coincide with Peavy's 6% decline in groundballs and 8.1% increase in FB's, which led to an increased homerun rate and FIP increased of 21%.

All and all, it seems like Peavy's number were probably affected by some combination of luck and/or fatigue. While Peavy's most of peripherals remained relatively constant, his control was clearly affected by some measure -- and walks tend to be relatively luck neutral. Thus, I am tempted to side with the latter explanation (fatigue).

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EDIT: Now the roundtable is talking about the youth movement in baseball. Never one to say something intelligent, Steve Phillips -- again in his opinion as "an ex-GM" -- is advocating drafting High School players over College players, despite all statistical evidence that points otherwise, because you can get "younger players."

Side note -- Phillips was notorious for signing aged veterans -- like Mo Vaugh, Bobby Bonilla and Kenny Rogers -- to expensive contracts during his brief tenure as the Mets GM.

Ay yi yi.

Sunday Night Baseball is Gonna Suck, More

There had been speculation that the broadcast duo of Joe Morgan and Jon Miller for Sunday Night ESPN baseball was going to split up ending their reign of terror on baseball fans everywhere. But ESPN decided to go a different direction by adding STEVE PHILLIPS to the sunday night broadcast. Dear GOD no!! Thats like throwing gasoline on a fire, like letting Michael Jackson babysit your kids, like cheating on OJ Simpson. Just don't do it!