Idiots Write About Sports

Bill Plaschke — the overly maudlin columnist for the Los Angeles Times — thinks that Eric Gagne should be the National League MVP.

Let me repeat that to see if it sounds any less ridiculous: A guy who’s pitched just 70 innings this year — admitedly without blowing a save situation — should be the National League Most Valuable Player.

No. It still sounds crazy.

The only thing crazier than Plaschke’s contention? Gagne apparently agrees with him:

So for all this, should Eric Gagne win the Cy Young Award?

I say no. And he agrees with me.

For all this, if the Dodgers make the playoffs, Gagne should be named most valuable player.

“The MVP award is better for a relief pitcher than the Cy Young,” Gagne said in his clipped French accent. “The Cy Young is for pitchers who throw 200 innings, who get 20 wins, that sort of a thing. The MVP is for everyday players, and relievers are like everyday players.”

All right, then. Let’s take that argument at face value. But isn’t there someone having an MVP-type season just a few hundred miles north on the 101?

Plaschke anticipates your reservations.

“Barry Bonds has been consistently amazing again in San Francisco,” Plaschke writes, “but nobody has been a daily savior like Gagne.”

Nobody, huh? Let’s just look at how the Giants have been winning their games recently.

Sept. 3: Barry Bonds scorches a ball off the right-field wall to advance the potential winning run to third in the bottom of the ninth of a tie ballgame. The run immediately scores on a sacrifice fly.

Sept. 1: Bonds hits a two-run single in the top of the ninth to break a scoreless tie with the Diamondbacks. He does this after spending a night in the hospital due to an irregular heartbeat.

August 30: In his first game back since his father’s death, Bonds hits a home run off reigning Cy Young winner Randy Johnson. It turns out to be the difference in a 2-1 Giants victory over Arizona.

August 21: Bonds hits a 10th inning homer to beat the Atlanta Braves 4-3. It’s his second walk-off homer in three days (See below).

August 20: The Braves, deciding that Bonds won’t beat them today, walk him to load the bases in the ninth. That sets up Edgardo Alfonzo’s game-winning single.

August 19: That aforementioned walk-off homer? Bonds hit it here for a 5-4 win.

I’ll leave out Bonds’ two-homer game in New York on August 12 to give him 650 career home runs, since that was a Giants’ loss. I’ll also not really delve into the fact that he did all this with his father’s illness weighing on his shoulders. And it’s probably not worth mentioning that in the games Bonds missed while on bereavement leave right before and just after Bobby Bonds’ passing, the Giants, who normally win about 65 percent of their games, went 0-4 and 3-3, respectively.

Sounds like a guy who’s been a daily savior to me. Barry Bonds is winning games outright for his team. Eric Gagne is preserving wins, and the biggest argument in his favor — his consecutive saves record — is based on a statistic whose dubious and arbitrary nature we’ve already discussed.

So for the final word on Bonds’ standing as an MVP candidate, we turn to the eloquent Robert Fick, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle after the Giants’ sweep of the Braves: “I hope I don’t ever see f— Barry Bonds again because I don’t give a s— what anyone says. He’s the f— best.”

If it helps Gagne, we can always translate that quote into French for him.