Thursday, March 29, 2007

A Minnesota BBWAA guy spits up-- AN ACTUAL PLAYER GETS BETTER INK

Now the 2nd wave of BBWAA back-room politico has come out with an article in praise of a closer not named Mariano. See, BBWAA guys, especially those from Minnesota, have been in complete control of information you and I get about baseball players for a long time. That's over with as of now, and they're of course spitting up about it.
  • The big difference with them is they still vote for AL and NL post season awards worth millions of dollars to them and others. Many news outlets no longer allow their writers to vote. With a dimished pool, it's easier nowadays to skew the results by using guys guaranteed to vote a certain way, as I explained in detail about the 2006 AL MVP and the 2005 AL Cy Young awards.
A number of managers and players have voluntarily, without prompting and without necessarily being aware their words would be acknowledged or recorded, mentioned their high opinion of Mariano Rivera. I'm talking about people in the game. Recently, Jonathan Papelbon's spontaneous praise caused Rivera's name to be mentioned multiple times in the press.
  • This flummoxed BBWAA members, as they specifically keep Mariano's name out of the papers unless he gives up a run or something equally horrible. Now, the BBWAA guys WHO ARE NOT IN THE GAME BUT JUST MANIPULATE DATA AND PERCEPTION TO FILL THEIR PERSONAL AGENDA, are coming out with articles to try and push Papelbon's words out of the public mind.
In other words, they want to change reality. WORLD FAMOUS CELEBRITY AND Minnesota whiner Jim Souhan is near the top of the list of sputterers. The sub-title of his article draws your attention to his guy, Joe Nathan, to convince you that Papelbon isn't the only one who wants to be the best.
  • "The most impressive thing about the closer is not just his effort to become the game's best, but that he's getting better."
Souhan, nobody said Nathan wasn't any good or that he wouldn't get better.
  • By Jim Souhan, Star Tribune