Idiots Write About Sports

Got home from work last night, just in time to watch Arthur Rhodes — proof positive that just because you’ve managed to change closers for three consecutive years doesn’t mean you should try to make it four in a row — turn a taut 3-2 game into a 6-2 Cardinals victory. For you glass-half-full types, at least Rhodes didn’t add to his league-leading blown save total since the A’s were already trailing. For the rest of us, it’s another sign that the entry of Rhodes into a ballgame means that, if the A’s aren’t already trailing, they will be in short order.

What’s infuriating about all this is not that Rhodes cost Oakland a chance for a ninth-inning comeback. Well… actually, that is pretty infuriating. But what’s especially infuriating, in an I’m-so-angry-I-can-melt-glass kind of way, is how Rhodes reacted to his latest poor performance.

He blamed somebody else. Which, frankly, is as predictable a behavior from him as another ill-timed gopher ball.

Here’s the scoop: bottom of the eighth, two on, two out, and Rhodes has a 2-2 count on Reggie Sanders. The wind-up, the pitch… and on a ball that could have been called a strike or could have been called a ball, umpire Bruce Dreckman called it the latter. So Sanders drilled the 3-2 offering to deep left center, and before the ball even burns up upon re-entry, Rhodes started jawing at Dreckman. Which is when Dreckman tossed Rhodes out of the game, fulfilling the wish of A’s fans everywhere who’d like to do much the same thing everytime Rhodes comes trotting in from the bullpen.

Let’s cue the world’s smallest violin for Arthur and hear his poignant tale of woe, as recounted in the San Francisco Chronicle:

I’m getting tired of it, just fed up with it. [Sanders] should’ve been out on that 2-2 pitch, and we should’ve been out of the inning. It was nothing like this last year. I guess 2004 is a new year for everybody.

If this all sounds terribly familiar, it’s because Rhodes has made a habit of blaming umpire calls for his poor performance all season (if only he saved ballgames with such startling regularity). I remember one game — I want to say it was the May 5 loss to the Yankees, but I may be wrong — where Rhodes gave up a game-tying home run on his first pitch of the inning and let the go-ahead run score after throwing 33 more pitches. And he had the audacity to bark at the umpire about the strike zone then, too.

There was also the May 30 loss to Cleveland — that’s the one Rhodes lost by uncorking a wild pitch (he lost the previous night, too). The culprit that night? The Global Anti-Rhodes Conspiracy aided and abetted by catcher Adam Melhuse. As Rhodes explained to the Contra Costa Times:

I’m hitting the glove, and [umpire Bill Hohn is] telling me it’s not in the strike zone. [Melhuse] is not setting up in the middle. He’s setting up inside. I’m throwing the ball over the black and it’s hitting the glove. Call strikes. … [Hohn] missed a couple. In a tight game like that, you’ve got to call strikes.

Of course, in a tight ballgame, a relief pitcher should also be able to perform his job competently, and that doesn’t seem to deter Rhodes.

Look, I realize that pitchers are going to blow a ballgame here and there. They’re not robots out on the pitching mound. But I also expect Major League-caliber pitchers not to crumble everytime an ump calls a ball on a borderline pitch. And I also happen to think that if a pitcher does blow a ballgame here and there — or in Rhodes’ case, everywhere — that he should be man enough to can the alibis for a while.

And Rhodes’ teammates seem to agree, if you read between the lines of the bland pronouncements of support they’re mouthing to the newspapers. Said Damian Miller of the Worst Ball Three Call in the History of Organized Sport from last night’s game: “[The pitch was] close and could have gone either way. We just didn’t get the call.” That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement of the Baysball, which shows just how horrific). But he does need to do something dramatic and he needs to do it soon. The bullpen has been a problem all season long, and to date, the A’s have made two roster moves: 1) designate Chad Harville for assignment to make room for Rich Harden and 2) call up Justin Lehr to let Billy McMillion rest his “injured back” — where “injured back” is defined as “God, the guy we signed to a three-year contract needs to get his head together.”

Three years ago, after a particularly disastrous road trip, the A’s sent Frank Menechino, Carlos Pena, and Jeff Tam to AAA-Sacramento and traded Jeremy Giambi to the Phillies for a warm body that turned out to be John Mabry. Those moves seemed designed primarily to shake the A’s out of their complacency. On the face of things, it seemed to work. Here’s hoping Beane and company do something similar in 2004, even if it means leaving Rhodes behind in Missouri and eating his contract during the seventh-inning stretch at the next homestand.

If you haven't seen this yet, I suggest you place all breakable objects out of reach before reading it:

http://www.cbs.sportsline.com/mlb/story/7442888