badnews

Although the space allotted here can't possibly suffice to elaborate in detail on the long list of Rich Hill's lousy canards -- including the picayunish, the rabid, the ungrateful, and especially the stubborn -- I'll use what little space I have to change the minds of those who hurt people's feelings. Unless you share my view that the problem of primitive barmpots serves as an excuse for Hill to express his own hostility and frustrated need for power, there's no need for you to hear me further. Accordingly, there are those who are informed and educated about the evils of blackguardism, and there are those who are not. Hill is one of the uninformed, naturally, and that's why his plans for the future are a cesspool of clericalism. (Yes, a theme that appears repeatedly in his crusades concerns his desire to create a factitious demand for his violent expedients, but that's a different story.) Hill sees the world as somewhat anarchic, a game of catch-as-catch-can in which the sneakiest riffraff nab the biggest prizes. One of his favorite tricks is to create a problem and then to offer the solution. Naturally, it's always his solutions that grant him the freedom to stifle the voices of those who are simply seeking to be heard, never the original problem. Hill can fool some of the people all of the time. He can fool all of the people some of the time. But he can't fool all of the people all of the time. We must educate the public on a range of issues. If we don't, future generations will not know freedom. Instead, they will know fear; they will know sadness; they will know injustice, poverty, and grinding despair. Most of all, they will realize, albeit far too late, that Hill occasionally shows what appears to be warmth, joy, love, or compassion. You should realize, however, that these positive expressions are more feigned than experienced and invariably serve an ulterior motive, such as to break up society's solidarity and cohesiveness. Hill's provocateurs contend that there's no difference between normal people like you and me and noxious oafs. This is precisely the non-equation that Hill is trying to patch together. What he's missing, as usual, is that he has had some success in challenging all I stand for. I find that horrifying and frightening but we all should have seen it coming. We all knew that we should empower the oppressed to control their own lives. (Goodness knows, our elected officials aren't going to.) If we let Hill sow the seeds of vandalism we'll be reaping the crop for quite a long time. He keeps trying to deceive us into thinking that the ideas of "freedom" and "metagrobolism" are Siamese twins. The purpose of this deception may be to slander those who are most systematically undervalued, underpaid, underemployed, underfinanced, underinsured, underrated, and otherwise underserved and undermined as undeserving and underclass. Or maybe the purpose is to precipitate riots. Oh what a tangled web Hill weaves when first he practices to deceive. Hill complains a lot. What's ironic, though, is that he hasn't made even a single concrete suggestion for improvement or identified a single problem with the system as it exists today. He gets a lot of perks from the system. True to form, Hill ceaselessly moves the goalposts to prevent others from benefiting from the same perks. This suggests that he argues that he is clean and bright and pure inside. To maintain this thesis, Hill naturally has had to shovel away a mountain of evidence, which he does by the desperate expedient of claiming that it's okay to prosecute, sentence, and label people as pouty degenerates without the benefit of any evidence whatsoever. A final word: We should give Rich Hill a taste of his own medicine.

Kevin Gregg is one of those mirage closers it's nice to have but not smart to acquire. They suck for another team, go to a new team and do decently with saves, usually with a high WHIP, and then some other team trades for them and they suck again. This is pretty much an identical situation as to when the Dodgers traded for Danys Baez. Or when the Braves traded for Dan Kolb.

I have zero sentimentality about Kerry Wood so I don't think much of the crying in this topic. This reminds me of when the Red Sox got rid of Garciaparra, and oh, they cried, they cried, they cried. Who's got a better chance of going into the Hall of Fame, Kerry Wood, or Garciaparra? Garciaparra, obviously, but neither guy is going. The point is, the Red Sox got rid of Garciaparra and the earth somehow continued to revolve.

Is like saying "Matt Murton needs to hit for power against righties and he'll be alright" or "Corey just needs to shorten up his swing and he'll be alright?" I've seen this line used a couple of times. The idea that they don't have sinkers in Japan. He can hit them. He's got a groundball-generating swing that hits them directly at any infielder. I like his unique combination of high strikeouts, high G/F ratio, and low power. It makes him really special as a ballplayer.

Joe Kerrigan is a funny guy. Him and Brett Myers nearly came to fisticuffs.

You're kind of backsliding now, you said he'd be more than just a useful player in the majors. Derrek Lee only posted a .760 OPS after May 1st. I think that shows where he's heading. Nick Johnson could be had, I imagine, my impression is after he got nothing for Dmitri Young and Cordero blew out his arm, he started to realize this whole "try and make every trade the Scott Kazmir trade" angle was not working.

People in this thread who said Peavy was as good or better than Santana: Meph, Rob People in this thread who expressed reservations about trading for Peavy, and/or disagreed with Meph/Rob's characterization of him: I don't want to go back and count, it's over half a dozen. You're embarrassing yourself with this over-the-top "what is wrong with everyone why does everyone think this thing that is clearly wrong and I must bombastically correct you for the error of your ways" schtick. You're exaggerating. Over half a dozen? I think not. That is over the top. You may call it bombastic posting, but if you feel strongly about a subject I don't see a reason to put a little verve into it, instead of everyone trying to out Spock/robot each other. Plus, in order to get embarrassed I would have to care about the reputation of this little internet persona, which I don't. I basically get ganged up on about petty nonsense in nearly every thread I post in, oh no, I'm not proclaiming Jay Jackson is Tim Lincecum just yet, I'm such a negative guy, everybody pile on. That's part of what I don't like about these boards, what starts as a one-on-one disagreement turns into 7 people taking cheap shots at you personally instead of your argument. I just wish there was less damn posturing. Uh-oh, somebody thinks the fact that Josh Hamilton recovered from drug addiction does not make him a better baseball player than if he never took drugs in the first place! Better send out 10 guys with "internet tough guy" attitudes to deal with the problem.

What is that about? I didn't say Jake Peavy sucked. I said he can't compare to Santana.

My general impression is that on a number of points you are correct but some of the time you simply intimidate people through scorn into agreeing with you regardless of what may be true or not.

Yeah, but what I am supposed to say when people are agreeing with this kind of thing for no reason? You want hyperbole? Here it is, if Santana's home park was Petco his season ERA would be 0.59.

It's possible to comment upon someone's point of view without commenting upon the poster themselves, right? I'm pointing out perfectly rational reasons why Peavy is not as good as Santana. Yet some dare to venture he is better? Hey, if you want to let that slide that's okay, that's a little too much for me though.

I wouldn't trade Soto for Peavy straight up. How did everyone in this topic become convinced that Peavy was as good as Santana just because Meph said it? Jake Peavy had a 99+ ERA in 2006, when did that last happen to Santana? How many times has Santana gone over 200 innings and how many times has Peavy? Why is it Peavy craps the bed at every single playoff opportunity, he's like the anti-John Smoltz. Why do Peavy's home/road splits suck so bad in 2008? Oh yeah that doesn't mean anything, just the fact that a lot more of his flyballs are turning into home runs away from Petco. Peavy is unfit to carry Santana's jock. Saying Peavy is better than Santana is like when Dan Quayle compared himself to Jack Kennedy. Let's take a look at his postseason career: http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/boxscore;_ylt=AnckIT4wChv_G8NE_6DV.cmFCLcF?gid=251004124 FAIL http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/boxscore;_ylt=AnckIT4wChv_G8NE_6DV.cmFCLcF?gid=261003125 SUCK http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/boxscore;_ylt=AnckIT4wChv_G8NE_6DV.cmFCLcF?gid=271001127 As George Orwell would put it, DOUBLEPLUS SUCK. How does your team score 8 runs with your ace on the mound and not win? Not only that, he sounds terrified of pitching in the AL, which Santana was great at.

All right, I'm in a betting mood. I've already got a bet with RedFlash that Jose Tabata doesn't turn out to be anything special. Now let's go for Derrek Lee. I bet he doesn't post anything better than an .805 OPS in 2009. And while people say "there are worse things" look at the money he's making, you could probably get a .780 OPS out of a year of Sean Casey making nothing. I see more talent in Dan Johnson than his career .763 OPS indicated, he actually makes better contact than I thought he did. Heck, think about this. You know who's the Rich Harden for 1st basemen? Nick Johnson. Replace Derrek Lee with Nick Johnson, when Nick Johnson is healthy he's a badass. He's not healthy that often. Nick Johnson is the kind of lefty that would help this lineup.

Why do we need anyone to replace Derrek Lee? Honestly? Derrek Lee sucks. Salary dump is enough reason to get rid of him. Plus his questionable "team leader" abilities which only seem to account for whining about fans booing and bitching that the team didn't go after Torii Hunter. Since May 1st he posted a .760 OPS, how hard is that to replace? Nick Punto practically had the same OPS in that time. I don't even think you need any kind of back-up plan at all.

Rich Hill is sort of in the same spot Cliff Lee was though. I don't understand why every other team's losers have trade values but ours don't. Rich Hill is probably not much more sucky than Tom Gorzelanny.

I'm pretty sure you've said a lot of things that have turned out to be very wrong, but I don't understand what the point of mentioning one of them is.

You made a list of pitchers, but you didn't make a list of pitchers that fit the bill. I already said Soriano gets good looks at lefties. Why are we still bring up lefties? Most of the guys on that list are control artists. Smoltz stays in the zone. Haren stays in the zone. Those guys don't even use so much breaking pitches away as they use breaking pitches in the dirt. We're really determined here to pretend like Soriano doesn't swing at breaking pitches low and more importantly outside too often aren't we? It's going to be like an Emperor's New Clothes thing, isn't it? I mean really, Kevin Brown? Kevin Brown's bread and butter isn't throwing crappy breaking pitches low and outside. This isn't even plausible. Kelvim Escobar? Come on. Why don't you just list random pitchers.

Sabathia's lefthanded, he hangs around in the zone most than more pitchers, and his really bread-and-butter pitch is his fastball. Soriano will get some good looks at lefthanded pitching. Soriano has 13 career strikeouts in 38 ABs vs. Bronson Arroyo. Is this because Bronson Arroyo is a strikeout badass? No, it's because Bronson Arroyo has an arsenal of crappy breaking pitches, none of them that good, for Soriano to chase. I really can't think of anyone in the majors who uses a breaking pitch more than Arroyo. Here's another example. Why does Soriano have 14 strikeouts in 39 ABs vs. Zito? Yes, Zito is a lefty, but what is significant about Zito? The answer is, no one throws fewer first pitch strikes in the majors (he's usually the leader from year to year) than Zito. Zito will throw crappy breaking pitches outside of the zone all day long until he finds a hitter he actually stands a chance of getting out. I mean, yes, Barry Zito used to be good, but Soriano has a .363 OPS against him, there's probably no major pitcher in baseball more terrified of throwing strikes than Zito.

Hell, you're not the only one. I'd like to know that too. And I'm on the anti-Soriano side. These fools keep throwing him the high balls that tail into the hitter that he simply crushes. A lot of the times though, Soriano gets a lot better look at low/outside breaking pitches against lefties than he does righties. I mean the reason his numbers against lefties are so good is that he beats the **** out of Phil Dumatrait, Paul Maholm, Tom Gorzelanny, Zach Duke, the Pirates and their army of incompetent lefthanded pitching are screwing up our numbers in reality. I'd also like to know, did anyone in baseball face more 0-2 counts than Soriano in 2008?

I don't buy the "small sample size, bad luck" explanation though. How stunning is your bad luck when you swing at crap down and away a foot off the plate?

His home/road splits are worse than Preston Wilson's 2003. There's more but that's all I need. Game over. Worse than Preston Wilson's 2003, worse than Vinny Castilla's 2004, worse than Jeromy Burnitz's 2004, they're simply awful. I don't like Hamilton because I think the media has brainwashed everyone on him. He's viewed as an elite player and he's not even remotely close. In short, here's what happened - this board has turned into the John Carpenter version of "The Thing." "The Thing" is Josh Hamilton love, and I'm Kurt Russell and the rest of you are all infected with craziness. So now, while we're sitting here in the snow waiting for the fire to go out, try and justify to me why a guy who has a worse OPS on the road than Cristian Guzman's overall OPS.

It looks like the Soriano Defenders are winning, so I'd just like to throw in my 2 cents. My impressions of Soriano is that he beats up on bad pitches and mistake pitches from good pitchers, and lefthanders more in general. Soriano is obnoxious because of his contract. Like Mo Vaughn, it's not Mo Vaughn's fault that dumb GMs gave him a contract like that, but if you're a fan of his team, how do you not dislike Mo Vaughn? Those were fun days for the Mets. I've not sure I've ever seen that much money allocated so poorly. Anyway, where was I? Soriano. He's annoying because he looks totally incompetent at the plate. He gets into an 0-2 faster than any other hitter in major league history, it seems. And in the playoffs, it's the same crap every year. "Hey, there's a breaking pitching that's starting 9 inches off the plate and will finish 2 feet off the plate! Let's swing at every single time we see that pitch and never lay off of it! Hell, I'm making a ton of money, I've never hit that pitch before in my life but that just means the odds are in my favor." Would anyone argue with the idea that Soriano is the least intelligent "good hitter" in baseball? Whenever I watch Soriano during the playoffs, it's like that episode of The Simpsons where Krusty bet against the Harlem Globetrotters and acts all frustrated. In this case "Come on, he's using a freakin' ladder" becomes "How the hell do you swing at that low and outside breaking ball that's nowhere close every single time?"

Just a note, when the Cubs finally do win the World Series I could see it as the horribly-flawed-team-unexpectedly-sneaks-into-the-World-Series-via-the-wild-card-and-disappears-next-season scenario, so I wouldn't complain too strenuously.

His pitches/plate appearance are so insanely high I don't think he's even going to have close to this low an ERA again. Last year he was at 4.40. I still stand by statement that I don't think he's that great.

You're treading close to the Barry Zito defense.