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.”

So ESPN’s “Baseball Tonight” and ESPN.com have started pushing Buck Showalter’s plan for realigning baseball.  But if you take even a minute to think through what Buck is proposing, his plan makes no sense at all!

Even setting aside the most glaring flaw, which is that Buck’s plan proposes contracting two teams as if that were totally a simple matter, and completely ignores what an utter disaster the previous attempt at contraction was, the plan has another glaring inconsistency which both Buck and co-conspirator Steve Berthiaume seem completely oblivious to.

If you watch the video, Buck first lays out how he is going to get rid of the unbalanced schedule, so that each team is going to play every other team in baseball exactly 6 times per season, 3 games at home and three away. But then right after that, he unveils his four new divisions, and he and Berthiaume proceed to prattle on about how great these new divisions are going to be, because all the teams in each division will be in the same time zone, which will supposedly enhance regional rivalries, cut down on flight times, and prevent fans from having to stay up late to watch games in distant time zones.

Huh??

If Buck’s plan is carried out and each team plays every other team 6 times, then why are these divisions even necessary at all? None of the alleged benefits of these new divisions that Buck and Berthiaume spend so much time praising will come to pass at all if each team plays every other team exactly 6 times. Teams will have to fly farther, more often, fans will have even more games outside their time zone they’ll have to stay up late for, and regional rivalries will be much reduced because the fans will only see that rival team three times a year.

In fact, all the supposed advantages Buck touts for his new divisions were exactly why baseball returned to the unbalanced schedule in 1997, the same unbalanced schedule which Buck hates so much and wants to now eliminate. By playing each team in the division 18 or 19 times, there is less flying, more games at reasonable hours, and enhanced rivalries.

In other words, part A of Buck’s plan completely cancels out part B! It’s like these are pieces of two completely separate and incompatible plans! But nobody at ESPN seems to have noticed!

In fact, given Buck’s playoff proposal, which is based solely on record, rather than division, there is absolutely no point in having divisions at all!  You might as well just have one single 28-team division, if the teams are all going to have the same schedule anyway, and you’re just going to take the four teams with the four best records plus two wild cards.

Crazy Buck Showalter.

Stupid ESPN.

While reporting on the story that three members of the Nippon Ham Fighters baseball team has been diagnosed with swine flu (including former MLBer Terrmel Sledge), ESPN makes a mistake that’s all too common.

For the last time, they are not the Ham Fighters. They are simply the Fighters. Nippon Ham is the company that owns them. You’re a sports news organization, ESPN. Please, at the very least, get this right.

Step right up, get your Saturday afternoon reading right here!

First, Baseball Prospectus Unfiltered has a must-read interview with Chili Davis on being the only Yankee to get a hit—and a home run, at that—in Pedro Martinez’s famous, 17-strikeout game in Yankee stadium from 1999.

Home Run Derby has the sad-hilarious (sadlarious?) pictures of some of the worst seats in America’s major league ballparks.

Squawking Baseball takes Buzz Bissinger to task for some inopportune words about baseball salaries.

Speaking of money, the Biz of Baseball links to a report that Harold Reynolds and Hazel Mae, formerly of NESN, will be joining the new MLB Network. I have to wonder if he will inappropriately hug her.

Joe Posnanski has a nice, long, director’s cut of a story he wrote about A’s reliever Brad Ziegler.

Sox Addict has ESPN leaving single, red socks in LA laundromats.

FireNedCollettiNow is discouraged by Manny’s inaugural GDIP. Given the name of the blog, I’m shocked, shocked.

And last week, while in North Carolina, I penned my weekly column for the Boston Metro about the Angels and their deceptively craptastic offense. Of course, later that same day, they acquired Mark Teixeira. Oops.

What the heck is up with ESPN.com’s wack new policy of treating singular cities and team names as if they were plural nouns in their news headlines, as in “Tribe acquire Anthony Reyes” or “Arizona triumph over the Giants” rather than “Tribe acquires” and “Arizona triumphs”?

Has anyone else noticed this? Because it’s been happening all the time lately.

Did ESPN secretly get bought by the British or something? Bring in a whole bunch of British editors? Because that’s not how we ever said those things here in America, and last time I checked, Bristol, Conn., was still firmly in American hands.

I just hope this weirdness doesn’t catch on with real Americans like that stupid “untracked” crap.

So, I was looking at baseball statistics on ESPN.com when I noticed an ad promoting ESPN’s newest hire, “11-time sportswriter of the year” columnist Rick Reilly.

Then I noticed this text add, below the Riley ad:

“Teeth Whiteners Exposed”

7 Teeth Whitening Products Tested, Rated, and Reviewed. A…

www.best-teeth-whitening.com

And then I made an appointment at my dentist. Because it takes more than $2 million a year to have a winning smile. It takes dedication to dental care. And Reilly has both.

Seriously, Rick, those are some crazy white teeth. Did Greenberg give you a makeover or what?

Oh, ESPN. Not only did you force me last night to listen to Jon Miller and Joe Morgan pat themselves on the back for an entire inning after “discovering” that the left field foul pole at Yankee Stadium was “in the wrong place” (It’s not. It’s fine. It’s called an optical illusion. The left field fence at the corner is angled, making it look like the two are not aligned. You’ve wasted my time), you think that us New York baseball fans are morons by showing us a stock-footage shot of the Manhattan skyline. Any New Yorker paying attention at this point would have noticed something odd. On the TV screen, the Empire State Building was lit up in green and red (above). Problem is, it’s only ever green and red around the December holiday season. Had it been a live shot, they would have shown the building lit up in blue and white on one side (Yankees colors) and blue and orange on the other (Mets colors) to commemorate the Subway Series games that were going on at that moment.

Way to go, fellas.

It wasn’t enough that we all had to be dragged through the Miguel Tejada ordeal by ESPN (yes, fine, big deal; but why make a spectacle out of it?), the Mother Ship from Bristol has decided to criss-cross the Caribbean from the sunny beaches of the Dominican Republic to the northern coast of Colombia to bring us the apparent bad blood between its two most prominent baseball players, Orlando Cabrera and Edgar Rentería.

According to an upcoming report in ESPN The Magazine (and published today at espn.com), there is rising animosity between the two shortstops originating in a business deal gone bad related to Colombian professional baseball, Cabrera and Rentería’s family.

To make a long story short, Cabrera bought the Cartagena franchise “Los Indios” last year from Rentería’s family business, Team Renteria (who runs the professional league down there) only to sell it right back after the short one-month season. Cabrera claims he’s owed money in from his cut of ticket sales, advertising and TV deals. Rentería alleges Cabrera bought the franchise only to run it into the ground out of what Rentería considers spite and jealousy; what’s more, he is saying:

“I won’t accept dealing with him. I think he’s disrespected so many baseball people in Colombia who have been working to improve the sport. And that’s not something I can accept, even with an apology from him.”

And…

“He wanted to buy one team so he could wreck everything that’s been done with the league,” Edgar says. “I think he did it out of malice. You should ask him what he has against the Renterías. For several years, people have told me that he’s jealous of me. People have always known me more in Colombia than him, and I think that bothers him.”

There are a couple of things that surprise me about this story; one of which isn’t ESPN’s gullibility in believing there is a story here. Just like in the Tejada case, they found a fissure and wedged their press pass deep enough to create a gaping void. Again, there may have been journalistic recency to the Tejada story, but ESPN was marketing the thing like it was a heavyweight title fight. And in this case, just as the White Sox are playing the Yankees in prime-time, and as Orlando Cabrera is at the plate, the TV anchors point to the story as it’s being published on ESPN’s website. What? Does ESPN get the final say in what’s news?

But again, that doesn’t surprise me.

What does surprise me is Rentería’s handling of this situation. In Colombia, baseball is an afterthought; it’s like Lacrosse, you know it’s there, but you think only college kids are playing it every now and then. The exception to the rule is Rentería’s name. Just like ESPN correctly points out, he became a celebrity after his game-winning hit in the ‘97 World Series. Hell, I was watching the game on public access TV in Colombia – There were three public channels back then. Unlike Rentería, Cabrera is lesser known, and that I dare say is a direct result of Rentería’s fame (and quite literally, Rentería was scouted by Cabrera’s father, who also gave the Expo’s Orlando’s older brother, Jolbert, before Cabrera himself made it to the big leagues).

Colombia’s major and most important daily, El Tiempo, relishes in Rentería’s success. Their coverage of Rentería’s career seems to imply that he is Colombian baseball. Check that, Rentería is Colombian baseball. If Rentería has a bad night, it’s news, if he hits a home run, it’s news. Ironically, just tonight as ESPN published their story, Rentería’s line at the plate sat under the “Grandes Ligas” headline (Major Leagues) on El Tiempo’s website (ironic also that El Tiempo was caught with their pants down, and in haste, after the embarrassment of being scooped, they decided to buy the story from ESPN and run a word-for-word translation).

Cabrera does gets some coverage, as he’s made a name of himself, mainly due to his leadership and gamer attitude. And he’s always mentioned every year when the Colombian media select the sportsman’ of the year. But make no mistake, ask any Colombian to name a ball player, and Rentería will be the overwhelming response.

So what does all this have to do with this squabble over the $25,000 Cabrera invested (keep in mind these two players make millions)? Nothing! And that’s why there’s no story here. ESPN makes it seem like because there just happens to be two Colombian ball players in the league, it’s news that there is some tension where one would assume would exist cordiality and friendship. What? Do all players from Hawaii have to get along? Canadians?

I don’t blame ESPN; the New York Times had a similar piece during the 2004 World Series (theirs was of the positive spin kind) that still commodified the difference these two ball players represent. And it’s a natural thing for the MSM to take a “cultural” angle to any story and run with it; but ESPN took it to the gutter.

Even after reading ESPN’s masturbatory story “Behind the story”, it’s still not clear to me how the reporter “discovered” it, or why it’s relevant to us. In fact, Team Rentería’s communication director, Fabio Poveda Ruiz, published an open letter on its website, criticizing the writer behind the story, Jorge Arangure, for various factual inaccuracies, and for relying on stereotypical descriptions of life in Colombia.

What is really sad, however, is Rentería’s handling of the situation. This is a personal matter between his family and his family’s business and Cabrera. It’s no secret that Rentería has had issues with being in the spotlight (main reason he got shipped out from Boston), but he didn’t have a choice in becoming the face of Colombian baseball, he simply was ordained by the nature of Colombian sports and sports journalism where idolatry supplants true, good-hearted sport fanaticism. In fact, it was because of his prominence amongst Colombians that I was able to land an interview with him for a magazine I work for here in Atlanta that caters to the Colombian community – instead of being open to the opportunity to engage, he asked me to get it over with quick after he took batting practice.

At the time I figured, hey, we’re a small magazine, I should appreciate any second I get. But it’s clear now; like many prominent Colombian sports figures, fame and fortune get to their head to a point where they forget what their role is. In this case, Rentería fell for the oldest trick in a reporter’s notebook. By speaking publicly about his problems with Cabrera, he dragged his fellow country man through the mud; Rentería says Cabrera is giving Colombian baseball a bad name, but what’s clear to me is that not even Yamid Haad, the next best Colombian prospect, who was suspended for using steroids, did as much damage as this “story” will.