Fire Gardy

I, along with apparently every other Twins fan, made the trek to Chicago over the weekend to watch the Twins play three games at Wrigley Field. I will admit, I really don’t like the Cubs.  Not sure why.  I just don’t.  However, taking in a game at Wrigley field is great.  We had phenomenal seats, provided by a college buddy of mine.  I was unable to watch the Milton Bradley game on Friday as I was traveling, but we watched the games on Saturday and Sunday. 

One of the reasons I find Wrigley field so much fun is there is a bunch of stuff to do (read: bars) around the stadium.  What do we have at the dome?  One bar, a hospital and a bunch of freeway entrance ramps. That’s not fun. 

The game on Saturday was delayed, but it turned out to be a great day for baseball.  Not too hot, and the sun eventually came out.  My cubs fan buddy Mike (who provided the tickets) said the Twins were as impressive a traveling fan base as he had seen.  The Twins fans were loud, and not including me, not too obnoxious. 

So we take two out of three on the road.  I’m happy with that.   We really cannot lose any of the next six games at home.  Neither the Pirates nor the Astros are very good.  I think Perkins is back for his start on Thursday, and I am interested to see what the team does regarding Crain.  It is clear he can’t be used in a game anymore.  He just doesn’t have the ability to get major leaguers out.  Whether or not he can regain this ability is still TBD.

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I’m just going to pop down a few notes today, about the recent games and some administrative notes about the site.

• Yesterday, right before the game started, I mentioned that Mauer has apparently been sick for a while, and it’s coincided with an extended stretch of power-free hitting. He must read The Blog, because he promptly hit a home run yesterday. I love it when Mauer makes me look like a fool for questioning him. Perhaps I will start a new Mauer-criticism policy.
• I haven’t been able to watch either game, unfortunately. I listened on Gameday Audio on Friday, because a) MLB.tv blacks out games for local teams, and b) for some reason, I don’t have cable television in my cubicle. On Saturday, I was in the dentist getting stabbed in the face by a masked stranger. Let me just say this: if we hadn’t won both of those games, I’d be ready to kill right now.
• Although I thought this was amusing. My dentist is in Wrigleyville, so on the way home my iPhone grabbed this photo:
• 
• So that’s when I realized that they’d started the game. I thought it was in a rain delay. Note that it’s the seventh inning. Argh.
• Also, a little note about the site. I recently attempted to improve the speed of the Twitter feed at the top of the page by hosting it at Google App Engine instead of on one of my own domains (each of which are just as slow as this one). Google advertises that their platform is fast, and scales really high, and blah blah blah. Sounded like a good idea. Well, it seemed okay at first, though there were more failures than I would have liked. But then this afternoon it just completely shit the bed. My app on App Engine became completely unresponsive, and Google has thus far been completely unhelpful. So I say “Fuck this” and I’m through with trying to put the Twitter feed thing on App Engine. It has been pulled from the site for now. If there is popular demand, I may bring it back.

I’m glad we won the series, and hopefully we can complete the sweep tomorrow. And hopefully an asteroid doesn’t strike the earth or something … that’s about the only thing that could possibly keep me from watching the game.

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Remember when Joe Mauer used to be good at baseball?

It was a simpler time then. A time of ice cream and apple sauce and those little sparkler things that never actually hurt anyone but always seem like they’re about to. And Mauer was putting on a ridiculous hitting clinic, absolutely tearing up the American League.

It was May, 2009. In Mauer’s first 29 games this season, he hit .431/.516/.873, with 12 HR, 7 2B, 35 RBI, and 28 R. He was on a tear. The man could not be stopped.

In the 9 games since then, he’s hitting just .351/.415/.405, with 0 HR, 2 2B, 1 RBI, and 6 R. He’s still sneaking the occasional single through the infield, but he’s completely lost his power.

The difference between an IsoP of .442 and an IsoP of .054 is the difference between Ruth and Tyner. Not only is it not the same player, it’s not even the same league. (Possibly not even the same species.)

Well, apparently he’s been feeling sick lately.

Joe Mauer is sick, but in the lineup. He said he started feeling bad in Seattle. He looked and sounded horrible when I saw him this morning.

“Just pull a Michael Jordan.” I said to him.

“Sometimes you play better when you’re not feeling well.” Mauer said. “Maybe it will help.”

He really started looking bad in Seattle, and it hasn’t abated. Since the beginning of the Seattle series, Mauer is hitting .310/.375/.379 — decent for a catcher, but this isn’t the superstar we bargained for.

He’ll probably never post a 1.300 OPS for a month again, but we sure need him to get up over .800, each and every month. So hopefully he can kick whatever’s ailing him and start hitting again soon.

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Alright folks, I hope you have a little bit of time on your hands, because this is going to be a long one. Remember that blogger who wrote about Ibanez and steroids, and then the newspapers picked it up and blew it out of proportion, and Ibanez himself targeted this blogger and offered him his stool? Well, the mainstream media continues to circle their wagons to protect themselves and each other. Today we’ll be reading Geoff Baker, of The Seattle Times, who is very, very angry about the threat to his livelihood. Oh, and he’s also really proud of himself. Bold is Baker.

Figured it was about time we had this discussion, given all the fuss about Raul Ibanez and his comments on that blogger who raised the “issue” that he “might” or “might not” be on performance enhancing drugs. Besides, I’ve since gotten emails from student journalists pleading with me to inject some reality into this debate. So, here goes.

Alright, here we go. I assume Baker’s going to give us some brief history of this Ibanez/blogger altercation.

Back in 1998, I wrote a story about a guy who lied about having served in the Vietnam conflict.

This is … not the backstory I was expecting.

His name was Tim Johnson, and he managed the Blue Jays to 88 wins in his only major league season as a field boss. The reason he managed only one season in the majors is because of me and nobody else.

Are you … bragging about that?

I’d been getting tips about what he was telling players and, after a trip to the Dominican Republic right after the season, in which I spoke to several Blue Jays and was given more avid detail, decided to write the definitive piece about his one year as a manager. I got players quoted on-the-record, including former Cy Young Award winner Pat Hentgen.

So you had access to the players, and they talked to you. Including a Cy Young Award winner! Wow, those guys usually stop talking to anyone once they receive their trophy.

It took legwork. I knew what I was doing.

I love that line. It’s straight out of a crappy murder mystery which is solved by a washed up alcoholic who’s describing his life before he descended into his booze-induced hell.

In my previous life as an investigative reporter, I’d helped get an escaped murderer recaptured and jailed for life in Lorton, Va., by publishing his claims of innocence.

It’s a good thing people believed your writing, then.

I’d pointed an accusatory finger at a Hell’s Angels associate who targeted a police informant — one of my sources — for execution and had him shot five times in a downtown street (the guy somehow survived).

Is this from that same murder mystery?

Had that Hell’s Angels “associate” vaguely threaten to kill me later on, after the story, but fortunately, somebody else got to him first and blew him away in a Montreal restaurant.

The death of others is fortunate. Also, does it seem to anyone else that he’s implying he had something to do with it? Geoff Baker is one of those guys at a bar who makes sure he always has the tallest, wildest story to tell. No matter what you’ve ever done in your life, it’s nothing compared to the awesomeness of this guy’s life.

I could tell you more, but don’t want to bore you.

Yeah, all this talk of intrigue and killings is boring. Let’s get back to a much less boring topic, the business of professional journalism.

The bottom line is, in this business of professional journalism, if you do it right, there are consequences to everything you publish. If you don’t figure that out, you’re a a fool.

That’s the bottom line? That there are consequences to everything you do? Isn’t that true of, like, everything?

The day before my Tim Johnson story was published on the front page of the Toronto Star sports section in October 1998, I sat with a college buddy at a Toronto Argonauts CFL football game, trying to enjoy an afternoon off. I told him about the pending story and said: “This franchise will never be the same.”

That’s right, it won’t be the same. It’ll forever be known as the franchise that had a beat writer set out to take down the manager.

Nor would Johnson’s life. I told him that, too.

You sound like a real confrontational guy, Mr Baker. Did you enjoy telling Johnson that you were trying to destroy his life, and that you were sure it’d make your career? It’s a dog eat dog world out there, you know.

I understood the consequences. Knew I was about to ruin a man’s life and career. Knew the franchise would be set back years because of it. And it was.

I have principles, damn it. That’s why I don’t feel bad about destroying lives and businesses. I have to make a name for myself and get promoted, and if I have to crush a few measly little people on my way, well, then it was their own fault for being in my way in the first place.

Everything I predicted came true on all counts.

Well, you’re just a bad mofo, aren’t you sir?

My story caused a firestorm the next day. The big Canadian national TV sports network, owned partially by ESPN, led their broadcasts with my story, showing pictures of the actual newspaper. Toronto is a competitive newspaper town, with four dailies, and not every writer out there bought what I was writing. That’s natural in this business. Nobody likes being scooped. I had my reputation questioned by some, especially since it was my first year on the beat.

So other people also thought you were publishing a huge story like this and deliberately trying to ruin someone’s life to further your own fledgling career? I’m not surprised at all. Because it’s fucking obvious.

But I was ready for it and answered all comers. Johnson held on pleading innocence for a month until the late Boston Globe columnist, Will McDonough, wrote a column mentioning that Johnson had previously told the same lies when he was a bench coach in Boston. That was really pre-internet time and it took a while for news to spread from city to city.

Yeah, things are much better now, with the internet. Wait, that wasn’t what you were trying to say? Oh.

Once my story that Johnson — who’d claimed he’d never told any players he’d served in Vietnam — was corroborated in a second city, he had no choice but to ‘fess up. At the winter meetings that year, he issued a tearful apology and blamed his lying on a psychological condition called “survivor’s guilt”. It does exist, and maybe he did have it. But it didn’t matter.

Damn right it didn’t matter. My career was taking off, and his was going down the drain, and that is all that mattered.

The Blue Jays brought him to spring training the following February, then fired him after a month because the players he’d lost in 1998 were now ridiculing him behind his back even more in 1999.

So … how did those players respect you after you used your access to air the clubhouse’s dirty laundry? I understand the players love that.

It was inevitable. And I knew it before I wrote the story. I knew Johnson would not survive what I published. How could he?

Well, he probably couldn’t. And maybe he should have been fired for this without being tried by the media beforehand. But in this hectic world with the new 24/7 media cycle and all, well, we have to be willing to forgive all the media’s craziness. What’s that you say? This was 11 years ago, and it wasn’t that crazy back then? Well, I’m sure you still don’t want any blame for this.

And because I knew that, I had to make absolutely certain that I was writing what I was for the right reasons.

Or at least could say some reasons that sounded right, really quickly, like they were obvious and you hadn’t planned them out beforehand. I know what they teach in journalism school. I know because of how all journalists act.

Had he really “lost” the players on his team? After all, they’d won 88 games — despite being sub-.500 right up to the final month of that season.

Sounds like exactly the kind of situation where that end of season run is explained by great clubhouse chemistry. It’s not like the story about Willie Randolph losing his players which led to, you know, the team losing games. But I’m there’s some secret you know that says they managed to win despite a horrible clubhouse environment, but you can’t tell us how you know that.

I was told, privately, by coaches and players that it was a team in turmoil, despite the outward appearance and bushload of wins when the team was all but out of the playoff race.

I told you I knew how journalists act.

That players were making “cuckoo” signs behind Johnson’s back because they knew he’d never served in Vietnam but continued to tell war stories. That good coaches were about to be fired because they’d clashed with Johnson about his lies. That team management knew little about the severity of the inner-clubhouse problems.

So Johnson was a bad leader, the players were dickheads, and management was oblivious. It’s a good thing you knew exactly which life to ruin.

So, I wrote my story. And I ruined Tim Johnson’s major league career. All these years later, I believe Johnson has been unfairly ostracized from a game that tolerates criminals and cheats, just not Vietnam liars.

So you’re saying you think people took what you wrote to some sort of extreme, and missed the exact point of what you wrote? I think I’ll remember this, in case it comes up later.

But I also understand why he can’t come back.

Because he clashed with Geoff Baker On The Rise, and that’s something you Just Don’t Do.

He’s spent years managing in the independant leagues and in Mexico. Heck, he had Chris Jakubauskas with the Lincoln Saltdogs right before the Mariners signed him. For the record, Jakubauskas thought he was a good manager, as do many of the players who served under Johnson. Doesn’t matter. He’ll never manage again in the majors. His career .588 winning percentage as a manager is the best in Blue Jays history.

First, he had a .543 winning percentage. Secondly, it was in exactly one year. Kind of a small sample size, don’t you think?

Do I feel guilty at times? Of course. But I don’t dwell on it. I knew what I was doing and knew he’d never manage again before the item went to print. I walked into his office the following spring, a few weeks before he was fired, and told him we’d both have to live with each other.

But not for that long, because he was getting fired, and you weren’t. So, in your face Johnson!

But I looked him in the eye when I said it.

Yup, confrontational.

He wasn’t thrilled with me, to say the least.

What an ass. Doesn’t he know that you’re Geoff Baker On The Rise, and that everyone should be thrilled just to have you notice them in the process of crushing their souls?

Told me he respected that I could look him in the eye and talk to him man-to-man. And I could. Those words meant something.

Touching?

But even if he didn’t really mean it, or if he’d thrown me out of his office, I didn’t need his blessing on that. I had my own, from within.

Nope, not touching. You didn’t even believe him. That’s cold blooded.

This was no hit-and-run job. I believed in what I was doing, didn’t go at it halfway, and was ready to take the consequences.

Sure seems like you wanted the consequences.

In the end, he suffered far greater than I did. Why?

Because the media sticks together? Because he was a crappy manager who told false stories to his players in order to motivate them? Because you created a toxic environment in the clubhouse, in the process of being there every day, and then wrote about it and got his ass fired? It could be many things.

Because I was right.

Oh. I shouldn’t have tried to guess like that.

Now, can the blogger who wrote about Ibanez say the same thing?

Wait, what? Oh, right, the Ibanez v. Blogger case of 2009. I forgot that’s what we were talking about, given these 1000 words about The Great Geoff Baker, Destroyer of Men. I believe in journalism school they call this “burying the lead.” In regular school they call it “narcissism.”

No, he cannot. Because he never really takes a position.

Well according to the newspapers and ESPN, he did take a position. And that position was “Raul Ibanez took steroids.” You’re not saying that you, other newspaper writers, ESPN, and hundreds of others have completely misread a blog post and are using it as a strawman to gang up on blogs in general, are you?

He throws some innuendo out there, under a provocative headline, then couches it with a bunch of well-researched statistics on park factors, and the like. Makes it all look like a fact-finding mission.

Yeah, in journalism school they teach you to toss out any notion of well-researched statistics or anything like it, because real men wear felt hats and smoke cigars and journalists are real men. Or something like that. You wouldn’t want your research to look like a fact finding mission. You’d want it to look like an auto-biography. Right?

But come on. Baseball is a game played by men.

Real men? Who smoke cigars?

When you cover this sport for a while, you realize that these “issue” pieces some writers try to hide behind when they passive-aggressively go at a different topic really won’t fly.

They won’t? Then why have they been flying for 60 years in magazines and newspapers?

Everybody knows what the “elephant in the room” is beforehand. So, no matter how much research you couch it under, the real issue is what everybody — especially media-seasoned ballplayers — is going to focus on.

Okay, so no matter what you write about, people are going to get what they came in with. They’ll ignore your research, they’ll ignore your conclusion, and they’ll just come away with the foregone conclusion they were already convinced of. For example, Raul Ibanez saw his name and the word “steroids” in the same sentence, got so pissed off he could shit, and then offered said shit to anyone who’d listen. For another example, mainstream journalists saw “.com” on there, and all they could think of was “Fuck blogs.” So you see, Baker made a great point here. People are idiots who don’t read. Even people whose fucking job it is to read and analyze information.

And in this case, the blogger really didn’t have a leg to stand on. That much was clear when he was eviscerated on national television by Fox Sports columnist Ken Rosenthal, a longtime baseball writer for the Baltimore Sun.

He didn’t really get “eviscerated,” did he? I mean, Rosenthal came out guns blazing, saying that it’s inexcusable for anyone, anywhere, ever, to live by any values different from those he personally lives by. That bloggers, by virtue of the fact that some newspaper writers read blogs, should be held to the same standards of newspaper writers themselves. That even considering that a player did steroids is completely inexcusable. If you feel like watching it, which I encourage you to do, go here. It’s 10 minutes long.

I’ve seen some commenters to various fan blogs the past 24 hours try to say the blogger “held his own” but let’s get real. It was ugly.

Yeah, so he’s not a very attractive man. Big deal. He still did a reasonably good job of getting yelled at on television without getting angry or breaking down in tears, which most people probably would have done. Especially since he was being wrongfully accused of something because Rosenthal can’t be troubled to read something if it’s not printed on a paper.

I give the blogger — I won’t mention his name because I’m reluctant to give him his 15 minutes — credit for going on with Rosenthal.

His name is Jerod Morris, you fucking asshole. And he was just on fucking television. You’re not going to be the one to prevent him from getting “his 15 minutes.” Even if you are The Great Geoff Baker.

If it was me on the air instead of Rosenthal, I would have torn the blogger to shreds in much the same way. Maybe even worse.

Damn right.

I know Rosenthal and spoke to him at the ballpark yesterday after his ESPN appearance with said blogger. When you go on TV and radio a lot, you learn how to destroy people like the inexperienced blogger on-air.

And you know what happens when you don’t go on TV a lot (or ever)? You don’t know how to prepare, you get easily flustered, and you look like a stammering dope who can’t answer even the simplest questions. And while Morris suffered each of these, none of them were terrible afflictions. I’d say he did well for a first time.

It was like that Korean dude pounding on Jose Canseco in Japan the other day.

Did you watch that fight? It was nothing like that. The fight was far more boring and pathetic. Although there was a big guy beating on a helpless little weasel, so it was definitely entertainment worthy of Geoff Baker’s time.

But I give the blogger props for standing up and taking his blows like a man. There is not enough of that in the internet world these days. Not enough accountability.

There’s a lot of accountability in the mainstream media world, though. Selena Roberts is proof of that.

And the fact he was ready to stand up for what he believed in gives me hope that he can one day rise to better things. That his blogging career was not just ruined by this one misstep. I don’t think his was.

You don’t seem to understand the concept of blogging. This isn’t like being a major league manager, where there are exactly 30 jobs. Or a major league beat writer, where there are 60. There are, like, 250 million available jobs. It is simply not possible to ruin a blogging career. Do you fucking realize how hard you’d have to try to ruin my blogging career?

It took some guts to wade into this topic.

Have we gotten to the crux of the issue? That the mainstream media wants to control “this topic,” that they want to run the conversation and pick the issues and when to talk about them? That if some lowly blogger says something in a forest and a newspaper writer hears him, that the mainstream media will swoop down, with all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, and make sure that little blogger is never heard from again?

But when you go all-in, you’ve got to go all in. He didn’t do that. When you write about topics like killers, or Hell’s Angels, or major leaguers and steroids, you can’t pussy foot around.

Because men taking drugs to get better at playing a kid’s game is the shit people get fucking killed for. That’s why you have to take it Geoff Baker Serious.

You’ve got to go at it hard, directly, with no b.s. and be able to defend yourself afterwards. This blogger couldn’t because he went in only halfway. He tried to raise the “steroids issue” then claimed he really wasn’t pointing a finger at Ibanez.

You have to? When you write about how the world we live in has changed to the point where simply having a great month is enough for fans to think you may have done steroids, you have to “go at it hard” and be ready and willing to prove that the guy did it?

Maybe he didn’t read his own headline.

“Steroid Speculation Perhaps Unfair, But Great Start in 2009 Raising Eyebrows.” Doesn’t sound like the kind of barn burning accusation you think it is.

I taught journalism at Concordia University in Montreal from 1996 through 1998, before things like blogs were even envisioned.

Blogs were invented in 1997.

Much of what I see written in the blogosphere today would have failed my very rigid course.

That course was rigid, just like Geoff Baker.

There are students I had, now working as professional journalists, who, I hope, learned something from that.

But I thought you said people don’t learn? Oh, I get it. They learn once they become professional journalists. Is that it?

Most of all, I hope they learned that if you’re going to try to be a big man, or woman, and go after big game, you’ve got to have your ducks lined up.

I hope they learned that when you’re a professional journalist, you have to be politically correct, lest some woman develop a wad of some sort because you used the male form of the pronoun in a generic, both-genders kind of way, just like every other fucking language on earth. This shit is important.

Because these half-baked insinuations I read online just would not fly back then, nor should they now.

Morris insinuated nothing. He pointed out that others had raised the question, and decried that as unfair.

We can call it “citizen journalism” or “grass roots democracy” or any other cute label you want. But it all boils down to this: can that blogger look Ibanez in the eye and make a case for what he did? He was scrambling to sound coherent in a debate with Rosenthal, so I sincerely doubt it.

How did you look on your first TV appearance? And was there a long-time pro there, ripping into you for all he was worth, tearing down your career and your efforts and your very being?

And that’s where we’re at. This is not about journalists “protecting their turf” against bloggers.

Yes it is.

We have some excellent bloggers in Seattle, who write all kinds of interesting statistical analysis, some correct and some a little out there.

I wonder which he considers Dave Cameron.

But it’s a good blogoshpere. And still, there is a serious distrust of these bloggers by players and teams themselves because of the accountability factor. Anyone can take shots from a distance.

You mean like Raul Ibanez is doing to Jerod Morris?

But can you look someone in the eye? And that’s what it boils down to.

Geoff Baker is proud of the fact that he can spend 3000 words telling someone they suck and posting it on the internet, and then claim that he’d be able to look the person in the eye and make the case that they do, in fact, suck. Does that make you a journalist? Because I know plenty of people who are Geoff Baker Level Assholes, who love to look people in the eye and tell them to fuck themselves.

And what exactly is the “it” that is boiling down to this?

Local bloggers have tried to gain access to the Mariners clubhouse. I’m obviously not out of touch with the local blogosphere. I see where it is, where it’s going, and as local BBWAA chairperson, I’m not entirely opposed to limited access even though some of my bretheren are. But there would have to be limits. In no way would I ever open the floodgates and let everyone with a “dot.com” address into specialized “press” areas as some sports have contemplated. I’d like to see some kind of formal training involved.

You’d be okay with it as long as there were some sort of litmus test and training involved, to make sure that the bloggers who were allowed in wouldn’t use their access to, you know, rock the boat or anything. Newspapers got it good here, see, and we’re not going to let it any punk kids that’ll blow that for us!

Some bloggers are highly passionate and dedicated and might be considered “journalists” had they ever obtained some type of formal training. Heck, in the right circumstance, I might even hold the journalism classes for them, my past experience as a college lecturer being of use in this case.

That’s probably a good idea. But it probably shouldn’t be Geoff Baker teaching the class. After all, he knows nothing at all about responsible blogging.

But there is a training that has to occur. You either learn it in school, or learn it on-the-job at a paper before going out in the field.

Or from being a blogger for a while. Or from getting access and misusing it and getting ripped by a player or his manager, and learning that you need to be more responsble.

Or from me.

Or … literally anything but that, okay?

But you have to get some training before you head out there. That way, you don’t embarrass yourself nationally, as this blogger just did, or risk ruining a ballplayer’s reputation when you may not be right.

Geoff, were you trained to make sure you were right before attempting to ruin someone’s reputation, or career? Because, you know, you didn’t even fucking read his article. All you did was get really mad and paint a very, very broad brush about bloggers. Oh, and tried to jump on the “destroy this guy’s life” bandwagon, because that’s what you do.

Again, can you look somebody in the eye? It’s as simple as that.

I got it! The reason this is such a big deal to him is because Geoff Baker used to be cross-eyed, and was never able to look people in the eye when he was younger. Then he got those glasses that help you straighten out your eyes, and now he’s really proud of the fact that he can look people straight in the eyes. It makes you a fucking man’s man.

It’s no different from being in the schoolyard in fifth grade. If you’re going to talk smack about someone, be prepared to stand up for yourself and ride out the blows.

That’s what Geoff Baker did, until he was able to look people straight in the eyes. Then they were the ones who had to ride out the blows!

That goes for writing about Ibanez, or Yuniesky Betancourt, or John McLaren, or Bill Bavasi.

There are no links to previous articles here, so I can’t be sure that Baker isn’t just unaware that McLaren is no longer the manager, or that Bavasi is no longer the GM. Or if he’s just not using the names of the current guys because if he did, people might think he was accusing them of blogging, or something. Should I give him the benefit of the doubt?

In this business, you can’t afford to give in to momentary fan frustration and lash out at players and team officials.

Yes, in your business. Where you’re not allowed to cheer. Bloggers are not in your business.

Sure, some people do it in this business. Nobody is perfect. But there is always a price to be paid. It’s not as simple as doing it from your “basement” or “office” or whatever. You have to have the defense ready in your head, and be prepared to defend your reputation in any forum, when you venture potshots at people from my position.

Is Jerod Morris in your position?

And that’s why you see mainstream media taking fewer potshots than bloggers.

I see them making plenty. Like the ones they’re constantly making against Piazza and Sosa, against whom there has never been credible evidence other than the accusations of sportswriters. The mainstream media just doesn’t go fucking insane when it happens.

Because at the end of the day, reason and fairness has to win out.

In the land of sportswriters, “reason and fairness” are actually the same words as “professional journalism.”

Nobody’s perfect.

Except Geoff Baker.

But it’s always better to err on the side of caution — and do a little more legwork — than to have Ken Rosenthal destroying you on national TV, when your only defense is mere cliches and half-hearted insinuations.

Frankly, it’s too bad Morris didn’t point out that Rosenthal didn’t even bother to read the article. Because it was pretty obvious.

It’s rarely about us “soft pedaling it” or currying favor with the people we cover, either. I laugh at those suggestions, which I still see made by bloggers who have no idea what they are talking about. I get accused of it from time to time by bloggers too lazy to try to consider why I might be saying something.

Do you ever explain yourself, or do we just have to trust you?

Folks, I took on an 88-win manager in his first season of a multi-year contract when I was a rookie beat writer 11 years ago because the circumstances warranted it.

Isn’t that the whole point of this? That you were a rookie then, and hadn’t built up a career you needed to fight to protect? You know, the career you’re currently fighting to protect?

Do you seriously think I cared whether McLaren liked me or not?

Do you seriously think McLaren would have given you the same access whether he liked you or not?

Time to get real. There’s a difference between being fair and critical and being an attack-dog. You learn things like subtlety and nuance when you do this for a while.

Yes. Jerod Morris was being fair and critical, and concluded that there’s no way to know whether Ibanez did anything and that it’s too bad some people are speculating that he did something wrong. Rosenthal attacked him, and you attacked him. Given that I don’t think that’s what you meant … maybe you should try again.

Some writers pander to the blogosphere, focusing on popular stats or topics, or targets, to curry favor. Trust me, I know exactly what to write if I want all Seattle baseball fans to like me and worship what I print. But it’s never about that. It can’t ever be that way.

We do have to trust you!

This is serious stuff.

Geoff Baker Serious?

When you have the power to ruin reputations and change lives, it can never be abused. Or gone at in a half-hearted way.

Most people don’t consider “the ability to write and publish an article about a game” to be the same thing as “the power to ruin reputations and change lives,” but I think that misunderstanding says a whole lot about just who Geoff Baker is.

And the ability to think about those things beforehand, truly, is what separates real journalists — serious ones, not Jason Blair types — from basement bloggers. Speaking only for myself, I would never let things deteriorate to the point where I’d be scrambling around on TV like that blogger yesterday. I’ve written some controversial stuff over the years, some well-received, some not, by the public.

Yeah, since you have your Professional Journalist Card, you know how to prepare for TV interviews. They don’t cover that in Blogging School.

But I’ll defend it to the day I die. I can and have looked folks in the eye.

Okay, okay, fine! You can look people in the eye! We trust you!

And that’s really, when you cut away all the nonsense about “the fan’s pulse” that I heard on TV yesterday, what we’re talking about here. Accountability. Not just to others, but to yourself. Can you, in your heart of hearts, defend what you did? Because when you strip away the b.s., you’re all alone on something like this. There won’t be any friends there to save you. No editors to hold your hand. When stuff blows up, it’s you out there against the world. And if you don’t truly believe in your story and yourself, it’s a lonely place to be.

Geoff Baker would know, I guess.

So, if that belief is waning, the trained professional truly thinks twice. If you can’t live with the consequences of what you do, don’t do it. Don’t put yourself in a position where you’ll have to wind up on a national TV stage with a too-bright camera light making you look even more nervous than you already are,

I don’t think Morris expected his post to blow up the sports world for a news cycle. And, speaking as a sports blogger in the midwest, we don’t really think anything we write is going to result in us winding up on national television.

And I can’t tell if finishing his article with a comma was a somewhat clever indication that this story is not over, or if it’s an amusing example of a newspaperman writing without an editor, or if that’s just how Geoff Baker fucking rolls. And frankly, all three possibilities are great options.

But what are my thoughts, you ask?

Given how venomous and desperate mainstream writers are getting, and how quick they are to turn even the most innocuous issue into another chapter of the ongoing Sportswriter vs Blogger war, I think they can see the writing on the wall. Morris actually wrote a well thought out and well-researched article about Raul Ibanez, but Ibanez was only a case study, an example, of a larger trend emerging in this country. And the perpetrators are fans in a bar, bloggers, and professional sportswriters alike.

Morris wrote that that’s a problem:

It will be a wonderful day when we can see a great start by a veteran like Ibanez and not immediately jump to speculating about whether steroids or PEDs are involved. We certainly are not at that point yet, however.

I think he’s right. And I think it’s a blemish on the face of sports media that they were unable to understand this article for what it was, and attacked it for what they assumed it was.

But at least we all learned that Geoff Baker is the baddest man on earth. And he can see straight.

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I only watched the first six innings of the game because I was tired.  I would use this time to get on a rant about the uselessness of time zones, but I won’t.   When I woke up to two text messages that read as follows:

This is getting ugly

and about 15 minutes later from another friend

How the hell do you go into the ninth with a ten run lead and need to call on Nathan to bail you out?

So I rushed to my computer to see what in God’s name happened, and saw that our lovely bullpen teamed up with Baker to almost blow the game.  Now, Baker pitched very well, but I question the decision to leave him in.  You know he will give up a big inning.  It hadn’t occurred through 8 innings, so by process of elimination it was going to happen in the ninth.  Why leave him in?  Why not bring in Guerrier or someone to start and finish the ninth?  What is probably a worse decision is bringing in Crain with the bases loaded.  There is no way he gets three outs without giving up a run.  No chance in hell.  This is Jesse Crain we are talking about.  Anyway, a win is a win (is a win, for some reason Gardy felt like saying it three times on the post game show which apparently FSN re-airs at 6am).  The offense looked good, especially in the sixth.  Delmon Young had his first extra base hit since April, but he still sucks.  Hopefully this Span “dizziness” thing isn’t serious and we won’t be without him for long. 

Who bats leadoff today? Tolbert? Gomez? Not good.  I think we need to move Mauer back to the 2 hole.  But I bet Gardy does something like Tolbert-Harris-Mauer…. Not cool.

Although I do like that Gardy admitted he might be willing to leave Harris at short and play Punto at second when he comes off the DL this weekend.

Another bit of good news: we have a late afternoon game today followed by 4 day games.  Dick mentioned that maybe redmond catches this evening (I think the game is at like 5 central time or something) then Mauer can catch Thursday afternoon and the three day games at Wrigley since he can’t DH him.

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I normally don’t like to deal in the rumor trade, but friend of FG.com Twins Territory has posted a report saying that, apparently, the Twins have their eyes on a college outfielder by the name of Brett Jackson.

Apparently the Yankees and Giants also like him, and he has 20/10 vision. Sounds good, right?

Well, look at this picture:

Look at his body. Note that a good hitter has his head directly above his ass throughout his swing.

Intelligent reader Thrylos recently pointed out that a balance problem exactly like this one could very well be the problem with Delmon Young.

Oh, and another thing! If his vision is so good … what’s he doing swinging at that pitch? Is his unwillingness to take a bad pitch the reason for the Twins’ interest, or is it his lack of a power stroke?

This is me hoping some other team makes a mistake on drafting Jackson. The Yankees or Giants may be able to fix his swing; I know for a fact that the Twins won’t be able to.

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Yesterday, Posnanski took a look at some interesting things about what makes an offense tick, and the difference between good teams and bad teams; he was, of course, focused on the Royals. But I thought this bit was interesting:

I took a look at every team in the American League and came to the unsurprising conclusion that teams with good 2-3-4 hitters tend to score more runs than teams with crappy 2-3-4 hitters. I know … that’s one of the reasons why I didn’t finish the post. It’s not 100% by the way — when I did the analysis, the Twins had the third best 2-3-4 hitters (by OPS) but were seventh in runs scored. But for the most part, it works … the bottom five teams in OPS for 2-3-4 were also the bottom five teams in runs scored.

He ended up not really writing that much about the connection between 2-3-4 hitters and the overall offense, because a) it’s pretty obvious, and b) the Twins kind of break the whole thing down.

First of all, I’m surprised — and delighted — that the Twins boast the third best OPS for 2-3-4 hitters in the league. And actually, after thinking about it, the Twins could rank even better, if a) Mauer had been there in May rather than Casilla/Tolbert, and b) Casilla/Tolbert stay the F out of the 2-hole for the rest of eternity.

But what does not surprise me is that the Twins are an outlier in the 2-3-4/runs-scored relationship. It’s been the problem for the Twins’ offense all season — we have two of the best players in the league, a very solid leadoff man, a very solid cleanup hitter,* and five spots in the lineup that are offensive not in the traditional run-scoring sense of the word, but rather in the insulting, foul-smelling sense. As in, “the bottom of the order is coming up next inning, might as well make a beer run.”

* I’m sure everybody noticed, but Kubel finally blasted a home run yesterday. In fact, he hit a three run homer in the first and again in the second inning. I don’t have nearly enough time to look through game logs, and my Retrosheet database is incomplete — so I don’t know how many times that has happened. What I do know is that it was awesome. Another thing I know is that Kubel hadn’t homered since May 13. That’s a pretty long drought. Before that he hadn’t homered since April 25. That’s also a long drought. As everyone knows, I’m a huge Kubel supporter. But he really needs to pick up his homer pace here. Morneau is leaving him in the dust.

It’s unacceptable that a team with playoff aspirations trots out a daily lineup that is 55% black hole. I mean, they score a lot of runs and win when the top four spots in the order hit like crazy, and that happens surprisingly often. But they’re not going to get a 10/15 with 4 HR, 10 RBI, 11 R performance from those spots every night … which is why you have this thing called a “rest of the team” in the first place.

I know Crede has potential to hit home runs and not get on base — if he’s healthy, that’s his game. And Cuddyer showed a flash of being a productive middle of the order hitter, but he’s in stage three of his Post Contract Seasonal Plan. The stages:

1. Suck for an extended period of time
2. Show a flash of awesomeness like you’re going to break out and hit like you’re being paid to
3. Get slowed by a series of nagging injuries which keep you either out of the lineup or ineffective
4. Sit out most of the rest of the season
5. Cash a big check

As a Twins fan, I don’t like Cuddyer’s new Seasonal Plan since he got his big contract. But if you’re Cuddyer, it’s not that bad.

The real problem is that Gomez can’t hit (yet?), Redmond needs to retire, Punto and Tolbert — why do we have two? — should play a combined 1-2 games per week, Harris is an average player at best, Casilla has regressed to the point where he doesn’t deserve to be on the 25 man roster any more, and Delmon Young is the worst position player in baseball.

Frankly, it’s incredible that a team like that can even consider themselves decent. It really speaks to how great Span/Mauer/Morneau/Kubel really are.

Oh, and we really need to do something about the bottom 55% of the order. This simply can’t continue.

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Scott Baker started for the Twins yesterday afternoon and turned out a fine performance.  Although that Cleveland lineup is terrible.  It has exactly one good hitter: Vic Martinez.  If we had walked him every single time he came up in this series it probably would have been for the best.  Anyway, I’ll take a good start from Baker if he gives it to me.  Even if it is against a AAA team and Victor Martinez. 

The top four guys in the lineup were tremendous.  Kubel, Morneau, and Span  homered, Mauer scored 4 runs.  Great day to be at the top of the Twins lineup.  The bottom was as terrible as usual.  Gardy said he wanted to stretch the success of the top of the lineup all the way through the bottom.  That isn’t possible when the bottom of your lineup consists of no-talent ass clowns.  They aren’t slumping, they are just no good.  Harris-Redmond-Tolbert-Gomez isn’t even the worst bottom of the order we could have fielded.  Throw Punto and Young in there and its probably worse. 

Liriano goes tonight against King Felix for the third time this year.  I am bracing for the worst.  And by “bracing” I mean consuming many, many beers.  I’m setting the over/under on innings pitched for Liriano at 4.5.  Leave your picks in the comments section.

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Kevin Slowey was cruising for 6+ innings last night, until things got bumpy in the 7th.  I blame Robby Incmikowski (or whatever the hell his name is) for this.  For those of you who weren’t watching the FSN telecast, after the sixth inning Incmikowski said something along the lines of  “Kevin Slowey now has his sixth consecutive quality start in the books”  Not if he gives up 4 runs in the seventh he doesn’t.  What a jerk.

The homer Mijaresgave up was unfortunate, but Vic Martinez is a great hitter from both sides of the plate so I don’t think its an issue.  At least there was nobody on base. 

The Twins again featured a lineup that had more black holes than I care to count (four) at the bottom.  Hopefully Cuddyer and Crede come back soon.  Then we will have a lineup that looks something like this:

1. Span
2. Mauer
3. Morneau
4. Kubel
5. Cuddyer
6. Crede
7. Harris
8. Free out, I mean second base.
9. Gomez

As much as I want to like him, we can no longer put Young in the lineup.  He is simply over matchedby even mediocre major league pitching.  Gomez has shown both on the field an in the stats book that he makes up for his inability at the plate with his exceptional defense.

Once again Joe Mauer has proved he is the second coming.  Speaking of Joe, was anyone else bewildered (upset?) that Ullger held Mauer up at third (I don’t recall which inning it was, I think it was the third)?  He was about halfway home and running at full speed and Ullger throws up the stop sign.  If I were Mauer I probably would have kept going.  At the very least it would have been a close play at the plate.

If Harris isn’t the starting shortstop for the forseeable future Gardy and I will have words.

In other news, check out the sweet new Budweiser Roof Deck going in at Target Field.  Looks like a great place to have a few dozen beers and watch the Twins.

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Well, the weekend series with the Rays was uninspiring.  I’m sure we all knew that with Baker and Liriano going on Friday and Saturday that the Rays would have at least one big inning per game.  I really don’t know what to think about these two.  Liriano bothers me more because he really seems lost when he puts runners on.  Baker gets out of jams every once in a while, usually after a homer with runners on, but still… 

I don’t know how many more starts we can afford to give Liriano.  Its not that early anymore.  We have a tough west coast road trip on the horizon. Perkins is due back soon.  Swarzak has looked good.  All of these are reasons that Liriano needs to go somewhere to get his act together.  Whether that be AAA (which I doubt, since he has shown he can dominate AAA hitters, and still suck in the Majors), or just go down to Florida and work with a sports psychologist and some pitching coaches.  Everyone seems to agree that his problems are largely mental.  There isn’t an obvious flaw in his mechanics like with Baker in a few of his early starts.  We can talk over and over again what should be done, but I think its clear nobody really knows.  If Perkins comes back healthy,  and Swarzak has another good outing, I bet they move Liriano out of the rotation.  Which is for the best.

Another problem that needs to be taken care of is Delmon Young.  Can’t we put him on the DL for a long time with one of those “anxiety disorder” things that everyone seems to be doing?  I mean his mother did just die, so its not like it is TOTALLY unbelievable.  We can’t keep trotting him out there everyday, as he is the worst outfielder in the AL (to go along with Nick Punto also being one of the worst everyday players in the AL).  As Gleeman pointed out yesterday, Gomez makes up for his terrible offense with excellent defense, thus making him slightly above replacement level.  Young on the other hand is atrocious on both sides of the ball, thus making him one of the worst in the league in terms of RAR.

Harris needs to be in the lineup everyday, not because he is a great player, but because he is the best middle infielder on the major league roster.  Hands down.  Do we call up Steve Tolleson at any point soon?  When Punto comes back he is going to have a guaranteed spot in the lineup, so my guess is either Casilla or Tolbert go back to AAA.  Probably Casilla because a) Gardy hates him, and b) Tolbert can play at third, second and short. 

These last two problems are very frustrating because the top 6 on this years team is probably the best top 6 the Twins have had in a while.  However, the bottom three are the worst bottom three that any team has had in a while.  Span-Mauer-Morneau-Kubel-Cuddyer-Crede is outstanding.  Young/Gomez-Punto-Tolbert/Casilla is downright awful.  Plugging Harris in the seventh spot makes it slightly better, but Gardy needs to come out and say “Harris is my everyday shortstop”.  Until he does this, I firmly believe that Gardy thinks a Punto-Tolbert middle infield gives the Twins the best chance of winning ballgames.  Which it doesn’t. No questions. We can’t have a repeat of 2007 where s horribly inept player is allowed to play everyday all year.  When someone sucks replace them.  Don’t let them work their problems out while helping the team lose.

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