So here’s the deal: Today the New York Post Daily News ran this gossip item and I know it’s last minute, but it’s Halloween and if nobody shows up to Citizen’s Bank Park dressed as half-A-Rod-half-horse, then we Phillies fans have dropped the ball.

Honestly, if anybody else commissioned a portrait of himself as a centaur, I’d say, “that guy is awesome. I want to have a beer with him and vote for him for president.” But we all know A-Rod has no sense of humor. So this is just kind of…weird. Still funny, but I’m pretty sure I’m laughing at him and not with him.

I’m going to post my own World Series preview later today, where I go position by position. But first I wanted to point out that Philadelphia Daily News columnist Bill Conlin has his own preview up, where he compares the Phillies lineup to the Yankees lineup. Much of the column is fine, but he starts out with one big, steaming turd:

Leadoff: Jimmy Rollins vs. Derek Jeter

The Yankees’ captain is a first- ballot Hall of Fame lock. Rollins adds to his credentials year-by-year. Both are run scorers and producers. Give Jeter the edge as a pure hitter, Rollins check marks for power from both sides and speed. Jeter’s intangibles are off the charts. Rollins revels on the Big Stage.

RINGS: Rollins 1, Jeter 4.

EDGE: Even.

Even? Wow. That’s pretty bold. Jimmy Rollins had a terrible year, while Jeter had a career year and if not for Joe Mauer he’d probably be your AL MVP. Really, here’s all you need to know about the Rollins vs. Jeter debate. A leadoff hitter’s job is to get on base. Rollins was much better at getting on base after the All Star break, but even then his OBP was only .305, which is absolutely terrible. Jeter’s OBP this season was .406 and his career OBP is .388, a much higher mark than Rollins has ever posted in a single season.

I love the Phillies and I love Rollins, but it is impossible to make an intelligent argument that Rollins is a better leadoff hitter than Jeter, which is probably why Conlin keeps things so vague in his column. Rollins gets “check marks for power from both sides” of the plate? Against lefties, J-Ro had two more home runs than Jeter. Against righties, Rollins had one more home run. Does that make up for the 100 points of OBP? Or Jeter’s 40 point advantage in slugging? Bill, did you take into account that Jeter played in a league with stronger pitching? Bill, when you give Rollins check marks for speed, is that because he had one more stolen base this season than Jeter? Because that seems pretty negligible. And did you notice that Jeter actually had a better stolen base percentage? Because that actually seems relevant.

Come on, Bill. Rollins is the man, and when it comes to making bold predictions and giving good quotes he has no peer. And you could make the case that Rollins is a better defender, even though ultimate zone rating suggests Jeter had the better season defensively, as well.

But Jeter is the better leadoff hitter, and it isn’t close.

Today the New York Times has a story about all the bitter Mets fans who can’t decide who to root for (or against) in the World Series.

Mets fans, let me make it easy for you. (Don’t worry, I won’t use any big words.)

The unfortunate reality for everybody in America who isn’t a fan of the Phillies or Yankees is that no matter who wins, you all lose.

One of the two fanbases is about to get insufferably obnoxious. You thought Boston was bad after the Sox won their 2007 World Series? You ain’t seen nothing yet.

It’ll take the Yankees fans about five minutes to go back to being every bit as insufferable as they were in the late nineties, when winning was their birthright. There is no chance — none — that nearly a decade of playoff stumbles has humbled this bunch. They do arrogance like Bob Ross did puffy clouds.

When the Phillies won their World Series last year, we Phils fans viewed it as nothing short of a miracle. We didn’t boast too much, because we understood that whoever or whatever higher power is in charge of dolling out karma clearly fell asleep at the wheel and we got lucky. But this year, if the Phils beat the Yankees there will be one inescapable conclusion: our team really is this good. And we’ll make sure you’re reminded of it often.

Like I said, either way one group of fans will get a much unneeded ego boost.

So who to root for? Simple. There are a lot more Yankees fans than Phillies fans. A lot more. If you want to minimize the level of obnoxiousness in America, the Phillies should be your choice to win the series.

Sure, there are other reasons to root for the Phils. A Phillies victory would further chip away at the notion that the AL reigns supreme. And it’s always nice to remind the Yankees that money can’t buy happiness. And wouldn’t you just love to see a close up of Kate Hudson consolling her man as he cries into her surpemely toned shoulder?

But really, it all comes down to minimizing assholishness. That’s what a Phillies victory would do.

After a fantastic honeymoon in Fiji, where we were cut off from television, internet, and all other forms of media other than the Fiji Times (which doesn’t publish baseball standings), the blushing bride and I returned stateside yesterday. We landed at LAX around 4 p.m. to discover 1. The Phillies were still alive! 2. They were scheduled to play the Dodgers in the NLCS and the first game was to start in an hour! 3. We’d miss the first half of the game traveling from L.A. to Tucson!

What to do? Our flight was oversold, so we volunteered to take the next flight. That gave us time to watch the game in the airport bar, and we scored free roundtrip flight vouchers to boot.

You might be wondering, “what kind of a baseball fan schedules his honeymoon during the playoffs?” But consider: 1. The last thing anybody wants to do after surviving his or her wedding is return to work on Monday. 2. Going to Fiji in the spring and missing the annual spring training baseball weekend with the guys was not an option. (Neither was missing the holidays.) 3. Jimmy Rollins has already predicted a Phillies-Yankees World Series, so I knew the Phils would still be alive when I returned.

Anyways, I’m back. But being away from baseball for over a week and then returning in the middle of October is a bit of a weird experience. Here are some observations from a guy who is jumping into the 2009 playoffs midstream:

1. I can’t believe that in the 1.5 weeks I was gone, the Phils’ bullpen situation seems to have actually gotten murkier. Which is not to say it’s gotten worse. Just less certain. Last postseason, the Phils went almost exclusively with a bullpen rotation of Romero, Madson, Lidge. This postseason Manuel is just making it up as he goes along. He is really grasping at straws, and his lack of a plan is making all us Philly fans a little edgy.

2. When was the last time Manny got a haircut? Did Joe Torre just stop caring about that?

3. What is up with the east coast? Did you guys even have a summer this year? It’s snowing today in Boston and the weather forecast for the Yankees-Angels series is horrid. Is this a global warming thing or what?

4. Vicente Padilla really is an asshole. Don’t you think?

5. When I said that Suz and I got to watch the Phillies-Dodgers game in the airport, I meant we got to watch all but the final three outs. We had to board the plane before the game ended. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that a nine inning game played between two teams not named the Red Sox or Yankees could last more than four hours. But this game started at 5:07 and was still going when we boarded our plane at 9:20. I know it didn’t help that Manuel used pretty much his entire bullpen. But it really doesn’t help that commercial breaks during the playoffs are twice as long as those during the regular season. Can we do something about this?

6. Chase Utley is in a funk. He’s made two throwing errors in two games and he hasn’t had an extra-basehit in the NLCS. Granted, it’s only two games. But he’s got this look on his face like something isn’t right. With any other player, I’d chalk it up to a slump or nerves. But with Utley, anytime he’s not playing well I worry he’s hurt. Because, frankly, he almost never struggles and when he does we almost always find out after the fact that he was playing with a broken this or a torn that. It’s a tribute to Utley that we worry for his health whenever he turns in anything less than a Hall of Fame performance.

7. So let me get this straight: While I was gone there was a kid in a balloon and for a whole day people stopped what they were doing to watch this kid float away, only to find out later the kid wasn’t actually in the balloon but was instead hiding in the attic? And we still don’t have healthcare reform? And Rush Limbaugh can’t buy a portion of an NFL team, but he can judge the Miss America pageant? Is that everything? Am I caught up?

8. I bet the Red Sox faithful really wishes Theo would have shelled out the cash for Teixeira. His decision to sign with New York could haunt Boston for years to come. This winter, the pressure to sign Matt Holliday is going to be enormous. Sarah is already starting to obsess over him. And not just because she thinks he’s hot.

9. Tsunami warnings make me glad to live in the desert.

A few days ago, I received my copy of the most recent ESPN The Magazine in the mail and read the article written by Tim Keown describing the current mindset in Arlington in regards to pushing their pitchers physically beyond the comfort levels of the average Major League franchise.

The article is worth reading in its entirety, but in a nutshell Keown surmises that by not coddling their arms with restrictive pitch counts and pushing stronger cardio and long-toss work in the hot Texas sun, the Rangers, led by team President Nolan Ryan’s imposed regimen, have turned around a staff who have for years been considered among the worst in baseball.

But this post is not about the Rangers, and I am only mentioning them because of what the Yankees are currently doing with Joba Chamberlain. By now, I’m sure most of you are aware of the phrase “Joba Rules”, referring to the annual innings limits that the club imposes upon their potential future ace. It is thought that if you allow a young pitcher to increase his workload dramatically from year to year, the risk of future injuries escalates. And in today’s baseball world where the enormous value of quality talent making the league minimum is well understood (yes, even by the Yankees), no one wants to be the guy who ruined a promising career – or, more accurately, several seasons of cheap yet dominant performances.

In 2008, the Yanks limited Chamberlain to 100 innings, and this year, it was already up to 130 prior to his start on Sunday. So what did the Yankees do? Oh, just your average “pull your starter after 35 pitches” routine. That’s right. The Yankees had Joba on a 35-pitch limit, which was enough for three innings (surprisingly). Me thinks they overreact.

It’s certainly understandable that teams want to protect their assets to the best of their abilities. And with the Yankees as mortal locks for the playoffs, they can experiment with this without real repercussions in the standings. However, is this really the best solution?

The most drastic scenario that I hope wasn’t even considered for more than two seconds is to have shut down Joba for the rest of the regular season. The Yankees could obviously use Chamberlain in the rotation come playoff time, and simply shelving him for the next month could very well leave him unprepared for that. Another potential route was the one we initially thought the club would take, which was to give Joba a longer period of rest in between starts than normal. But they scrapped that idea as well and simply decided to start him on normal rest albeit with the stipulation of the 35-pitch count. I suppose that with the rosters expanding in September, that finding relievers to come in after Joba maxes out isn’t much of an issue at the moment (the Yankees now have 15 pitchers in the bigs). But why are they reinventing the wheel?

The most traditionally sensible thing to do was of course simply put him into the bullpen until the playoffs. There really aren’t many truly “high-leverage” situations that the Yanks should be facing with such a cushy lead, but at least the guy could get his work in when he was needed.

So why was this option nixed? This is pure speculation on my part, but I wonder if no one in that front office wanted to deal with the worst (okay, maybe not) case scenario – what if he was great in that role? The “should Joba be a starter or reliever” debate should never have even happened (200 innings vs. 70 innings. Which workload do you prefer your best pitchers handling?) but ridiculously, it still is happening in the papers and on talk radio. Perhaps the Yankees simply didn’t want to add fuel to those ridiculous flames. Or, less conspiratorially,  it was simply a case of being able to guarantee Joba routine work. But that’s no fun, is it?

In the end, there really is no easy answer. But I do know this – a month ago, I thought that capping annual innings for young pitchers wasn’t a bad idea. But actually seeing it in practice in such a severe form as this is making me seriously consider the alternatives. Maybe there is something to what Nolan Ryan is preaching. Maybe clubs are coddling their young arms too much which in turn makes them less capable of handling the workload necessary to be the best players possible. At the very least, it is safe to say that there is no such thing as a fail-proof plan. Each pitcher is different and some can handle the workload while others can’t.

So the true question is, how do you know which is which? For the Rangers, you push them to see who doesn’t break. For the Yankees, you impose a gradual process that may never test their limits. I suggest that we all keep a close eye on what’s going on in Texas. If their young pitchers are still effective and healthy in a few years, we may see this approach take hold around the league.

Or maybe expecting every pitcher to emulate the work habits of a legendary fireballer who, despite pitching over 5300 innings over his 27 year career, was still able to throw a 95-mph fastball in his mid-forties, is just bat-shit insane.

At the beginning of this season, we asked if putting Joe Torre and Ned Colletti together in the same organization was going to mutually exacerbate both of their well-known predilictions for big-name “experienced veterans.”

Clearly, the answer is a resounding “YES.”

Dangling well-known veteran players in front of Colletti and Torre must be like dangling porn videos in front of Hideki Matsui, because over the past two weeks the Dodgers have gone on a wild spree of acquiring big-name veterans, trading at least 4 prospects and putting down at least $7.5 million dollars combined to acquire Vicente Padilla, Ronnie Belliard, Jon Garland, and Jim Thome.

None of this makes any sense, no matter which way you slice it.

First of all, the Dodgers still have the best record in the entire National League. Yes, that’s right, best record in the whole league. They are a mortal lock for the playoffs, because even if the some how lose the division, they will end up with the wild card. So acquiring these guys for the “stretch run” makes no sense.

But at the same time, it’s not like you really need these guys for the playoffs either, when you cut about five guys from your pitching staff. At least, the Dodgers better not be stashing these guys for the playoffs. Because if you are a Dodgers fan you gotta be pretty frightened if Colletti and Torre are planning to make Vicente Padilla and Jon Garland a big part of their playoff plans.

Because the more important point here is, none of these guys are all that good. Ron Belliard has a career OPS of .753, and he’s already on the downside of that. He’s basically Tony Abreu, only 10 years older at 3 times the price. Oh wait, I forgot, he’s an “experienced veteran.”

As for Padilla and Garland, I’m not sure what to say, other than that these guys are scraping the bottom of the replacement level barrel. Padilla struggles to even achieve replacement level, and Garland has hovered just a smidgen above it for most of his career. Are these guys really going to give the Dodgers anything that they couldn’t get from guys they already have, like Charlie Haeger, Eric Stults, and Scott Elbert?

And as useless as the first three guys are, I consider Jim Thome the most useless acquisition of them all. Oh sure, Thome is a probable hall of famer and all, but he hasn’t played an inning in the field in more than two years, and now here he is on a National League team as a glorified pinch hitter. Thome even spoke with Ned Colletti on the phone and explicitly told him that he could only be asked to play first base in an absolute emergency. What use is that on an NL team? You can’t even double switch with him. Is 40 days of that that really worth a whopping 2.5 million dollars PLUS a minor leaguer?

Maybe Matsui has it right. I’m pretty sure you’d get a better return on your investment investing in porno tapes.

There are a lot of brilliant moments in the movie The 40-year-old Virgin,” but the moment where Paul Rudd’s character works up the nerve to ask his boss to play a different DVD in the electronics store where they work is one of my favorites.

David: Hey, Paula.
Paula: Yeah?
David: I gotta tell you something. I’m really excited about it. Uh, for the first time today, I woke up, I came to the store, and I feel confident to say to you that if you don’t take this Michael McDonald DVD that you’ve been playing for two years straight off, I’m going to kill everyone in the store and put a bullet in my brain.
Paula: David, what do you suggest we play?
David: I don’t care. Anything. I would rather… I would rather watch “Beautician and the Beast”. I would rather listen to Fran Drescher for eight hours than have to listen to Michael McDonald. Nothing against him, but if I hear “Yah Mo B There” one more time, I’m going to “Yah Mo” burn this place to the ground.

That scene perfectly sums up the way I feel about the Geico commercials that I’m forced to watch in between every inning of every game on MLB.tv. There are a couple of different Geico spots, but they all feature the stupid cavemen and they’re all set to a 3 Doors Down song called “Let Me Be Myself.” And if I didn’t think 3 Doors Down sucked before, I surely do now. The generic lyircs. (”Please, would you one time / Let me be myself / So I can shine with my own light / Let me be myself”). The overproduced sound. I dread the end of each inning. I rush to the computer to hit the mute button. Please, MLB.tv, get rid of those cavemen commericals! Or at least, play them less frequently. I’m begging you.

I get really tired of all these ESPN “analysts” who don’t seem to know anything about any teams outside of the two eastern divisions. Do they even watch west coast games at all? Are they already asleep on the East Coast by the time the West Coast teams play?

What’s been really annoying about the ESPN guys this week, is how they are pretty much all saying that the Dodgers’ recent struggles since the All-Star break are due to the starting rotation and the bullpen, when in fact the pitching has been rock solid and it’s actually the offense that has been struggling.

For example, in his latest article on the ESPN.com “Baseball Tonight Clubhouse” page, Steve Phillips says the following:

They have been struggling as of late because of their starting pitching. Injuries to Chad Billingsley and Hiroki Kuroda have impacted the staff. The wear and tear on their bullpen over the first half of the season also started to take a little bit of a toll in recent weeks.

Now I hear you saying, “Wait a minute, this is Steve Phillips we are talking about here. He’s well known for knowing nothing well.”

But the problem is that it’s not just Steve Philips. Even Buster Olney, who supposedly has a background as a real journalist, has no idea what he is talking about on this issue either. In his most recent chat Olney is asked why the Dodgers are struggling and he answers:

I think the Dodgers are underperforming, for sure, but they’ve also seen their bullpen erode and their starting pitching (which was thin to begin with) fray.

Later somebody calls him on his bullshit, and he only exacerbates the situation in this exchange:

Mike (Lake Forest)

I keep hearing people, including you, saying how the Dodgers bullpen and starting pitching have been a problem. Do you people watch the games before you comment on them? The Dodgers problem has been that they are not scoring runs. They keep losing 3-1 or 4-2. They are very rarely giving up more than 4 runs.

Buster Olney

Mike: So if what you’re saying is accurate, why did Torre change closers the other day?

It’s really as if Olney doesn’t pay any attention to the Dodgers at all and is just making shit up. Because if he had watched the game he is referring to (in which Torre used Broxton in the 8th and Sherrill in the 9th), or even if he had just read the freakin’ AP game recap, he would have known that Torre did not “change closers” at all, but rather pitched Broxton in the eighth because the heart of the Cubs lineup was coming up, and thus that Torre actually had *more* faith in Broxton, not less.

But the more important issue here is that the Dodgers pitching staff has in no way been the problem since the All-Star break.

While it’s true that the Dodgers have gone a mediocre 18-19 since the break, the pitching staff has actually had a significantly better ERA since the All-Star break than before the break, at 3.41 after the break compared to 3.58 before.

And while it’s true that Billingsley and Kuroda have missed starts, their spots have been more than adequately filled by Jeff Weaver and Charlie Haeger.

To say the Dodgers starting staff “was thin to begin” with is also ridiculous. The Dodgers have one of the deeper staffs in baseball, having got good to great performances from no less than 8 starters: Billingsley, Clayton Kershaw, Kuroda, Weaver, Eric Milton, Eric Stults, and Haeger. The only starter who has been truly bad is Jason Schmidt, but the Dodgers had so much depth they could easily afford to shelve him. In fact, the Dodgers have the third best starting pitcher team ERA in all of baseball this year at 3.66, behind only the otherworldly starting staffs of the Giants and Cardinals.

And no, signing Vicente Padilla is not a sign that the Dodgers are thing on starting pitching. It is a sign that Ned Colletti is an idiot, because the Dodgers still have plenty of other, better options like Weaver, Stults, James McDonald and Scott Elbert.

To anyone who has actually been paying any attention to the Dodgers, it is obvious that the problem since the break has been the offense, because whether the team wins or loses, the final score is almost always something like 2-0 or 2-1.  And sure enough, even the most cursory look at the stats freely available on ESPN’s own site shows that whereas the pitching staff’s ERA has improved since the break, the teams OPS has declined from .766 with a .354 OBP before the break, to .741 with an execrable .336 OBP since.

Alternatively we could take 30 seconds to look up the fact that the Dodgers runs scored per game has fallen precipitously since the All-Star break from a robust 5.03 runs before the break to a middling 4.32 runs since the break. But apparently that would be too hard and it would be easier just to make stuff up and shoot down participants in your live chat as if they were the idiots with no facts.

Really, what is the point of even watching ESPN anymore if these talking heads whose sole job is to sit around and watch baseball games and analyze them can’t even be bothered to watch the games (even though it’s their job), or to at the very least look up basic stats like team ERA or runs scored? Or at the even least-er, make their interns go do it for them?

Sure, there are exceptions like Rob Neyer and Keith Law, but otherwise it’s getting to the point where the average baseball blogger knows far more about far more players and far more teams than these guys who get paid to do this stuff, even though most bloggers have actual real jobs too.

Update: One day after I posted this, John Kruk and Peter Gammons joined the chorus, going on the ESPN.com “Baseball Tonight Minute” to blame the Dodgers pitching for their woes, with Kruk saying “Their starting pitching is a concern – it’s been a concern all year… knowing that they had no depth in that rotation, and now it’s starting to show.” And then Gammons chimes in that “the Dodgers have got to get their bullpen straightened out.”