The latest news here in Boston is that Billy Wagner will be heading to the Red Sox after all.  Wagner has a no-trade clause with the Mets, and a club option for $8 million next season. The trade was initially thought to be a no-go, because in order for Wagner to waive his no-trade clause, he demanded that the Sox decline the option, and the Sox refused to do so.

Huh?

Billy Wagner has been a very good closer over his career, but he’s also coming off Tommy John surgery, and while his two innings of work this season have been impressive, I can’t imagine why he thinks he’ll make more than $8 million next season.  He’s insane not to demand that the Sox pick it up, and the Sox should consider themselves lucky that he’s not doing so.  Similarly, the Sox are crazy for not agreeing to decline it immediately, given the Eric Gagne debacle of a few years ago, and the fact that they already have Jonathan Papelbon under their control (though he’s arbitration eligible).

Wagner knows he’d be a setup man in Boston and wants to be a closer somewhere next season.  He has stated that he wants to reach 400 saves, and hopefully become the leader in saves by a left-hander.  Is it possible that he cares about his legacy in baseball more than money?  Man, that would be refreshing, but it’s just so hard to believe.  The cynic in me thinks he’s talked it over with his agent, and his agent thinks there’s someone out there who’ll pay more than $8 million for his services next year.

I just can’t figure out who.

The Pittsburgh Pirates traded Nate McLouth to the Braves for three prospects.  When you trade the best player on your team for prospects at the beginning of June, it’s a clear indication that you’ve given up on the season.  According to this ESPN report, Bucs manager John Russell says “the trade should not be taken as a sign the Pirates aren’t serious about winning”

I understand that managers have to be both the public face of the corporate end of their franchise as well as the leaders of the sports end of their franchise, and it’s not an easy job, but Russell’s in a completely untenable position.  What he ought to due is lash out in a tirade against the economic system that keeps the margins for small market teams razor thin.  Instead he just throws this out there:

“The players lost a friend, a teammate and a good player.  They might be thinking that we’ve thrown in the towel, but it’s time to turn the page and play baseball. It’s time to move on.”

But that’s exactly what the Pirates did!  They threw in the towel!  Not that I blame them, because by this point in the year, you know whether or not you have enough to compete, and if you don’t and you’re a small market team, the next option is to start selling off pieces to stockpile talent for next year.  Last year it was Jason Bay.  This year it’s Nate McLouth.  It’s the state of baseball.

For once, though, I wish someone would just come out and say it.

I suppose I should be angry, saddened, outraged, or some other emotion after hearing that Manny Ramirez has been suspended fifty games for violating the league’s substance abuse policy.

I just don’t care.

I’m not surprised in any way (other than the usual surprise I get when people are actually caught by the testing, since a $20 million salary should get you access to drugs that aren’t testable).  If I have any emotion at all, it’s anger towards all of the fans who are now expressing righteous indignation about Ramirez.

In an era where fans are disappointed when a player puts up a .299/.398/.529 statline, and where every player who needs a day off or has a lingering injury has his manhood and value to the team questioned by round-the-clock sports coverage, why is anyone surprised when a player does something to come back from injury quicker or boost that statline.  How can anyone feign anger?

I don’t know if Zack Greinke has a nickname yet, but since Big Z is already taken by Carlos Zambrano, and he’s bigger than Greinke, I vote for Little Z.  Or maybe just Z.  Or Z-G.  Whatever.

Two years ago, at my auction draft, I picked up Greinke near the end of the draft for $6.  He had pitched only six innings the season before, not because of any physical injury but because of psychological issues.  No one doubted that he had talent; it was a question of whether he would harness it.

Greinke pitched mostly in relief that season but was put in the rotation in September and looked good.  I protected him for 2007, where he finished 13-10 with a 3.47 ERA and 183 strikeouts in 202.1 innings.  I assumed this was the Greinke peak – good strikeout totals, decent ERA, win total suffering because of the team he played for.  Still, I extended his contract out to 2011.

Damn if it doesn’t look like a good signing right now, because Greinke is far and away the best pitcher in baseball right now.  After six starts, Zack is 6-0 with three complete games, two shutouts, and fifty-four strikeouts.

He has given up two earned runs, though.  Bum.

The only pitcher I can remember starting this hot is Pedro Martinez in1998, but he wasn’t getting wins because the team wasn’t scoring runs.  Pedro ‘98 was 2-0 with a 2.28 and 57 Ks, which is outstanding but still nowhere as good as this.  Then again, Pedro stayed like that all season.  Will Zack keep it up?

Most people, when writing about March Madness, will go ahead and give you their brackets, and their upset specials, and who didn’t get the right seed, who should have been in, and who should have been out.  I’m going to give you some completely different stuff that you don’t care about.

• Cry all you want about which bubble teams got in and which bubble teams are out – the highest seed to reach the final was a number 8… does it really matter?
• Hasheem Thabeet is drastically overrated by college hoops fans.  DeJuan Blair did a Vicki Sue Robinson on him earlier this year.  (GET IT??  HE TURNED THABEET AROUND??  I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!!)
• If Tyler Hansbrough succeeds in the NBA, it’s going to be on guts and determination.  I don’t think it’s a good thing that I look at him and think, “Hey, he’s a more talented version of Eric Montross.”
• Speaking of North Carolina, they have zero chance of winning the championship without Ty Lawson.  Zero.
• This is the best Washington team since the ‘04-’05 team with Nate Robinson and Brandon Roy.  That team was guard loaded and didn’t rebound as well as this team.  Of course, since I root for the Huskies, they’ll probably be bounced out in Round 2.
• I’ve seen enough of Boston College to know that they’re streaky enough to win the whole tournament (yes, I just said that).  I’ve also seen enough of them to know that they’re almost a mortal lock to lose to a less talented team after falling apart for a ten minute stretch.
• I’m rooting for Akron to make a big splash in the tournament, only so some misguided sportswriter can complain about how the nickname “Zips” is racist
• Just because you picked that Cinderella team to reach the Sweet Sixteen doesn’t mean anyone wants to hear about it.
• Just because the team you picked to win it all got beat by Cinderlla doesn’t mean anyone wants to hear about it.
• I wish I had four TVs.
• What the hell is a Hilltopper?

It’s very rare that I have any sympathy for steroid users, but Jay Gibbons is the exception.  Gibbons was suspended for violating Major League Baseball’s drug policy, and was later named in the Mitchell Report as an HGH user.  The Orioles cut Gibbons before the start of the 2008 season and, presumably because of the furor over steroids in baseball, no one else offered him a contract.

A few months later, Gibbons took the step of sending a letter to all 30 clubs asking for another chance.  He admitted his mistake (though explained it was to help rehab from a wrist injury).  He was willing the play in the minor leagues and earn his way back to the majors.  He was willing to donate most of this salary to charity.  He just asked for “a second chance to play the game that I love.”

The Milwaukee Brewers took him up on his offer, signing him to a contract and sending him to their AA affiliate in Huntsville.  Gibbons played his way to AAA, but the Brewers were competing for a playoff spot and he never reached the big club.

He became a free agent at the end of the season, and was signed by the Florida Marlins, with an offer to compete for a job in spring training.  He was cut today after going 5-for-16 with a homer and seven RBIs in the spring, with the cited reason being that they had no room for him on the roster.  I think that’s a load of crap.

Gibbons is a corner outfielder/first baseman/DH type, sort of like Kevin Millar was when he could still roam the outfield.  Obviously the National League doesn’t use the DH, so that limits Gibbons to left field, right field and first base.  So one would imagine that the Marlins already have seasoned players at those positions, right?

The Marlins right fielder is Jeremy Hermida, who is decent enough that there were rumors last season that he’d be traded to a contender near the deadline.  It didn’t happen, and Hermida isn’t an All-Star by any stretch of the imagination, but no one could expect Gibbons to beat out Hermida for a job.

Gaby Sanchez, projected by ESPN to be the Marlins starting first baseman, has played a total of five games above the AA level.

Cameron Maybin, projected by ESPN to be the starting centerfielder, has 32 games and 81 at-bats worth of major league experience.

RotoWorld projects Scott Cousins to beat out Hermida for the right field job.  Cousins has never played a game in the major leagues.

Alfredo Amezega, one of the few Marlins with legitimate major league experience, has a bum knee and will be on the DL until May.

Michael Ryan, who like Gibbons was signed as a non-roster invitee to spring training, remains on the roster.  Ryan hasn’t played in the majors since 2005.

Are any of these guys instilling great confidence in you?

Here’s the quote from Marlins manager Fredi Gonzalez:

“You don’t want to keep a guy like that too long where he doesn’t get an opportunity to get a job someplace else. He’s got some years left. He showed the bat skill a little bit. He swung the bat well. I think if somebody gives him an opportunity in the right situation, he could help.”

I realize that Gonzalez is the Marlins manager and can’t really speak the truth on this one, but allow me to translate Marlinspeak into English:

“This guy is good enough to play at the major league level, but we’re a really cheap ballclub, and we don’t really care about winning, unless it’s a fluke occurrence like in 2003 when we had dirt-cheap young pitchers under our control.  We’d much rather let young players toil for a losing ballclub and then trade them to the Yankees or Red Sox for more young players than give a player with a proven track record a chance to play here.”

What’s even more puzzling is that Gibbons has already said he’d play in the minor leagues.  So… the Marlins don’t have any open roster spots at any level in their organization?  I mean, I’m sure Gibbons would rather play for another major league team than play in the Marlins minor league system, but that’s it?  There’s no room on the team?

Here’s hoping he gets a shot to play for a real team.

So… A-Rod is out six to nine weeks due to surgery to repair a torn labrum.  It’s a temporary surgery, a stop-gap measure to allow him to play this season, after which he’ll have surgery that will supposedly fix it for good.

Consider me skeptical.

Two names come to mind when I think about this situation: Curt Schilling and Ken Griffey Jr.  To be sure, being named in the same sentence as Schilling and Griffey is normally a compliment, but in this case, you don’t want to be named in that sentence.

Schilling had a serious shoulder injury that required surgery, but tried to rehab the shoulder without it (for reasons which won’t be discussed here) so that he could return later in the year.  The end result was that Schilling’s career was effectively ended, as rehab failed and he had to have surgery anyway.  He missed the entire 2008 season, and while he hasn’t decided whether or not to attempt a comeback, it’s unlikely he can pitch at the same level he did before the injury.  A-Rod is going down that same path.  While he’s elected to have surgery, it’s not the complete surgery required.  Should everything not go according to plan, he may eventually need the complete surgery before returning to the Yankees lineup, and his rehab will be longer than it would have been had he just gone out and had it fixed the right way.

I think about Ken Griffey for where he was in his career when it started going downhill.  Aside from an injury in 1995 that limited him to 72 games, Griffey was for the most part an everyday player, and there was nothing to suggest a slowdown in production.  At age 30 he had 438 home runs and was averaging nearly fifty a year over his previous five years.  Then the injuries started to mount, and while he still averaged about twenty-five round-trippers a season (a respectable figure), he became Above Average When Healthy Ken Griffey instead of Perennial All Star and Future Hall-Of-Famer Ken Griffey.  The man who was once a shoe-in to break Hank Aaron’s home run mark now has no shot of clearing 700.

Will it be that way with A-Rod?  I don’t know.  It would have been that way with Barry Bonds, had designer steroids not propped him up at the end of his career.  A steroid-free Bonds probably breaks down before reaching 600.  How will a steroid-free A-Rod fare?

So, A-Rod’s coming clean…. sort of.  He was outed, and so he admitted using steroids.  Commendable, I guess.  Sort of.  Maybe.  Here’s the part that screams I AM STILL LYING to me (from SI.com):

Rodriguez says a cousin, whom he would not identify, first introduced him to a substance he referred to as “Boli” that could be purchased in the Dominican Republic and brought to the United States.

“It was his understanding it would give me a dramatic energy boost and was otherwise harmless,” Rodriguez said in a prepared statement before the question and answer portion of his press conference. “My cousin and I, one more ignorant than the other, decided it was a good idea to start taking it. We consulted no one and it was pretty evident that we didn’t know what we were doing. We did everything we could to keep it between us. I stopped taking it in 2003 and haven’t taken it since.”

If you read into the comment, this is A-Rod using the Bonds Defense – I used steroids, but I didn’t knowingly use them.  If A-Rod’s guilty of anything, he contends, it’s being naive and ignorant.

Sorry.  Not buying it.

When Bonds used the “I didn’t know what it was” defense, everyone jumped on him, supposedly because finely-tuned, high-paid athletes know exactly what they’re putting into their bodies.  I tend to think exactly the opposite is true.  The average person doesn’t know half of the chemicals they ingest on a daily basis, and finely-tuned, high-paid athletes don’t either — because they pay someone else to know.  They have nutritionists and personal trainers who define their fitness regimen and their diet.  So to me, it wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility (aside from all of the overwhelming supporting evidence) that Bonds could have been ignorant to what he was taking, because the stuff he was being given came from someone in a position of authority.

A-Rod’s source was his cousin.  Think about that.  If a personal trainer, not just a guy you hired at a gym, but a guy you know well enough that he’d do jail time for you, gives you a substance and tells you that it’s safe, legal, and effective, you’d accept that at face value and take the substance.  If your cousin gave you the same thing… don’t you think you’d do some research?  I mean, unless he’s a personal trainer and the kind of guy who would do jail time for you.  Maybe he is.  I don’t know A-Rod’s cousin.  But I doubt he’s an expert on fitness and nutrition, and this it invalidates the excuse of not knowing.

ESPN has this story about Jason Varitek resigning with the Red Sox. The quote that interests me is this one:

“Friends who spoke with Varitek over the winter say he never understood why the Red Sox wanted to cut his pay, why they were only willing to guarantee his deal for one year, why the economy and his 2008 struggles had cut into his market value or, remarkably, why his decision to decline arbitration was costing him so much money and limiting other teams’ interest.”

I’m really hoping those “friends” were somehow misquoted, because otherwise, Tek might be the dumbest person on Earth. I mean, he already admitted not knowing that when he declined arbitration, any team that signed him had to give up a draft pick. That in and of itself is inexcusable, but you could deflect the blame onto his agent for not explaining all of the details.

This cluelessness borders on criminal negligence. How can you not know why the Red Sox wanted to cut your pay, when you were statistically one of the worst offensive players in Major League Baseball last year, but were making $10 million dollars? How can you not know that the Red Sox, who have an aversion to long-term contracts, wouldn’t want to guarantee more than one year to a 36-year-old catcher who can’t catch up with a decent fastball anymore? How can you not know why other teams don’t want to give you that same guarantee, especially when they have to give up a draft pick to go along with it?

This is like O.J. not knowing why the Goldman family is upset with him, why he’s no longer the spokesman for Avis, why he doesn’t get phone calls from ex-teammates anymore, and why he hasn’t been contacted about appearing in the next “Naked Gun” sequel.

I didn’t want to write about this.  I swear I didn’t want to write about this.  Last week this was just a sporting curiosity, but now it’s become a national story.  If you haven’t seen this anywhere yet, the Covenant School defeated Dallas Academy in girls’ basketball by the score of 100-0.  This probably sounds like an absurd score to you, and that’s because it is.  The reason I didn’t want to write about this, is because everything about it should be intuitively obvious to anyone with a modicum of common sense.  The unfortunate truth, however, is that there are people who don’t see anything wrong with a final score of 100-0, or how it was achieved.

I coach youth sports.  I’ve been coaching for more than fifteen years, and I’ve been on both sides of a lot of lopsided victories.  One thing I know is that kids aren’t stupid.  They know when a team is better than they are.  They know when a team is running up the score, and they also know when a team is patronizing them by not trying.  There’s a balance in between than needs to be maintained in this situation, but it’s really not hard to find that balance.

In baseball, you start holding up runners on the bases.  You stop giving steal signs.  You replace your pitcher with someone who needs the work.  You take your starters out of the game.  I’ve even had a coach pull his 3-4-5 hitters out of the game against me, citing “injury”, so that he could put three weaker players who had already been taken out of the game back in.  You’ve got options.

But here’s where the balance comes in: you don’t tell your players to strike out on purpose.  You don’t tell your players to stop running hard.  You don’t tell your players to stop playing defense.  You don’t tell your players to bunt if it’s not part of your normal strategy.  If you do these things, it’s no better than running up the score.

Basketball, admittedly, is a much different sport, and it’s probably more difficult to keep a disparity in talent from showing up in the score book.  Jeff Miller’s piece on ESPN Rise explains that women’s basketball is a sport “particularly susceptible to blowouts”.  You can’t tell your players to stop shooting, and you can’t tell your players to stop playing defense, and you can’t tell your players to stop running.  But there are things you can do.

Various people who were involved with the 100-0 game, both participants and spectators, have mentioned that Covenant kept launching three-pointers even after the game was well in hand.  I don’t really see an issue with that.  While a 3-pointer (obviously) is worth more points than a regular shot, it’s a lower percentage shot, and in my mind it’s probably better to be shooting threes in a blowout than it is to be posting up players in the paint, assuming there’s a shot clock that requires the offensive team to shoot.  What’s not clear from reading the coverage of the game is whether or not Covenant was working the shot clock and firing away only when it was into single digits.  What is clear is that the team was playing a press defense for most of the game, until, as one spectator claims, the team reached 100 points, which is absolutely inexcusable.  By all accounts the Dallas Academy point guard was not very skilled at bringing the ball up the floor, and Covenant’s point guard took advantage of that, stealing the ball away whenever possible.

Covenant’s point guard scored 48 points, in what was described as “Steal and layup. Steal and layup. It was a layup drill.” (which makes me wonder how many threes they were actually taking, if the game was a layup drill).  I’m singling her out only to point out that none of these kids should be singled out.  There is such pressure placed on youth sports in this country, that players will do what their coaches tell them to do or what keeps them on the team, to the detriment of what’s fair and what’s good.  Kids will bean an autistic teammate if their coach tells them to.  Kids will practice until they drop if they’re worried about being cut from a team.  If a coach tells his kid to keep stealing the ball away, that’s what the kid is going to do.  If the coach says “Hey, back off and let her bring the ball up the court,” that’s also what the kid is going to do.  Even better, take a timeout and tell the whole team to drop into zone defense and stop going for steals.

There are a number of differing views about who’s to blame in this game.  Some people think that the opposing coach is at fault, for a variety of ridiculous reasons including not pulling his team off the court at halftime, or not confronting the coach of the other team while the shellacking was taking place.  Others blame the administration from the losing team for scheduling teams that are vastly superior to them (most of these people ignore that the boys’ team from Dallas Academy beat Covenant the last time out), or for even fielding a girls’ team at all when their total female enrollment is only twenty.

All of this is deflecting blame from the coach who pushed his team to not only shut out an opposing team in basketball, but drop 100 points on them in the process.  And there’s no way anyone can possibly defend that.