It’s Election Day!
Ladies and gentleman of America and to our readers in Korea, today, something wonderful happened in election history. Something majestic. No, I’m not talking about how I can continue to not worry about having to refer to Ron Paul as “Mr. President” (yeesh). There was another election in America on this day, and for this, our eyes were not on Dixville Notch and where their 17 total voters will pledge their support, but rather, on another small town called Cooperstown, New York.
Yes, friends. Goose Gossage (or as I know him, Richard Michael Gossage) was the lone entrant into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. So you all know what this means, right?
WE CALLED IT! WE SOOOOOOOOOOO CALLED IT! THAT WAS ALMOST A MONTH AGO! EAT IT EVERYONE ELSE!
(By the way, in my mind, there was rather colorful confetti flying around as I made that announcement. We now return to your previously scheduled unwarranted and undeserved boasting).
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! WHOOOOOOOOOOOOO! HIGH FIVES ALL AROUND!
We have so many people to thank. First and foremost, we’d like to thank our readers, specifically Melissa, Rich, and Danny O for their participation in our balloting process. We couldn’t have done it without you (and Rod Beck thanks you too). And I’d also like to thank… Umm… No. No, that’s about it.
POP THE CORK! Wait, no, not that one. Let’s use that other one. It’s cheaper.
December 14th, 2007 at 10:26 am
You’re right that it’s not a bad deal by any stretch of the imagination. I still don’t think that Eckstein will help much if at all.
Anybody have any idea how FieldTurf (the Rogers Centre uses it, I think) tends to handle groundballs? Faster? Slower?
He might be an upgrade over McDonald, but that’s not a compliment to David. It’s a condemnation to McDonald. But we’ll have to wait and see if moving to the AL will severely affect Eckstein’s numbers, though.
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December 14th, 2007 at 11:24 am
Most projections have Eckstein returning back to the .270/.340 hitter he was in Anaheim.
Yeah, I agree that it is no complement to Eckstein to say that he is a big upgrade over John McDonald, but still, he is a big upgrade over John McDonald.
And given this market, in which the other options at this time were Cezar Izturis and Adam Everett, and given the very favorable terms of the deal, I felt compelled to praise, and praise liberally.
I mean, yeah, Eckstein is probably going to be only worth about 1 extra win above replacement over the whole season, but that is still 1 win above replacement level, at and McDonald was actually below replacement level.
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December 14th, 2007 at 11:52 am
I know this is only one metric of evaluation (and pretty much everything else agrees with you), but surprisingly, Runs Above Average favors MacDonald, who was -12 runs on offense but 20 runs on defense. Eckstein was 2 on offense but -7 on defense. Just throwing that out there.
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December 14th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
ugh, drinking Cuervo straight from the bottle… how can people submit themselves to that kind of torture?!?!
be classy, people, drink patron…
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January 9th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Is that a picture from Lynn Swann’s gubernatorial campaign?
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January 9th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Deval Patrick.
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January 9th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
But Paul, what’s cheaper than Andre?
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January 9th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Glad to see the baseball writers finally caught up with us. Has anyone come forward yet to admit they voted for Beck? Nick, please expose the guilty party.
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January 10th, 2008 at 12:40 am
Nope, my lips are sealed! I feel honor-bound not to reveal their names, if they will not reveal themselves!
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January 10th, 2008 at 2:13 am
I’ll bet dollars to donuts it was Danny O.
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January 10th, 2008 at 10:26 am
I voted for Beck.
I used the tried and true “All-star team” method of voting for the list of players.
Have I heard of him? (Y/N)
As a relatively recent convert to the church of baseball, and largely ignorant of its history, I didn’t feel like poring over obscure stats for the 20 names in the list.
At least I got Goose right, eh?
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January 10th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
But Rich, you were not alone. There was another. Someone else voted for Beck.
Show yourself!
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