Idiots Write About Sports

See, Dodger fans? It’s not so hard to make ax-grinding, sabermetrics-and-young-people-hatin’ Los Angeles Times hack Bill Plaschke happy when hiring a new general manager. All you have to do is make sure that your final choice is pedestrian and uninspired.

Pedestrian and uninspired choices please Plaschke!

He will be named as the new Dodger general manager in a morning news conference which, to be true to Colletti, should take place behind a batting cage.

That’s where the guy has lived for the last two decades, first in Chicago, then in San Francisco, often in first place.

Wow — if I read that passage properly, it looks like the Dodgers just hired a homeless dude to run the team. He lives behind a batting cage? I knew San Francisco real estate prices were outrageous, but that seems pretty severe.

Oh, silly me — Plaschke’s getting all metaphorical on us. Ned Colletti’s a grizzled baseball lifer, not one of them number-crunching punks like Paul DePodesta. Never mind that Colletti got his start in baseball as a numbers-crunching punk, handling the Chicago Cubs’ presentations in arbitration cases. And before that, he was a newspaper writer, which doesn’t sound to me like taking up residence behind a batting cage, but it at least explains why Plaschke is willing to give him the grace period that DePodesta never received. Ink-stained wretches gotta stick together, you know.

But we’ve interrupted Plashcke mid-ramble:

Months after the last Dodger regime traded Paul Lo Duca, Colletti worked out a Giant contract for Mike Matheny.

While the last Dodger regime didn’t see the value in Adrian Beltre, Colletti was signing Omar Vizquel.

Two moves that helped the Giants finish four entire wins better than the Dodgers, who, as Plaschke will remind us, were Hell’s Own Ballclub in 2005. As to the wisdom of signing a 37-year-old shortstop to a backloaded contract, well, we’ll direct you over to Rob McMillin’s analysis.

As for me, reading Bill Plaschke’s column has made me faint, like I’ve spent a few minutes sniffing paint fumes. If you want further deconstruction of his drivel, check out the Web Site Formerly Known as Fire Jim Tracy for a mono-sentence paragraphy-by-mono-sentence paragraph analysis that concludes with:

Classic Plaschke. You have the half-truths, with information clearly and purposefully left out. You have the egotistical and omniscient Greek chorus dropped into the middle. You have the embarrassingly hypocritical reassessment of the minor league system after DePodesta was fired. You have the name dropping of Plaschke’s source whores, friends, and lackeys. You have the Orwellian insistence that red = green and Adrian Beltre = good baseball player.

In other words, the Times has farther to fall.

Update: This analysis from FireJoeMorgan.com is also lover-ly.

For years, the Giants have succeeded despite a brooding superstar and a mid-level payroll. Colletti has been in the middle of all of it.

Let me replace some words in that first sentence to make it accurate:

For years, the Giants have succeeded because they had the best player of the last twenty years, and possibly the best player ever.

There. That’s better.

Hey, I'm still wondering just how well signing Beltre to a monster deal worked out for the Mariners. Didn't they completely suck this year? besides which, I'm still trying to understand what relevance not dumping a huge wad of money on Beltre has to signing Omar Visquel.

Plaschke is an idiot who proves it almost daily on "Around the Horn", where he only looks sane when faced up against Woody Paige.

"I'm still wondering just how well signing Beltre to a monster deal worked out for the Mariners"

Poorly. But since to acknowledge as much would undermine Plaschke's central thesis that Paul DePodesta is a no-good, terrible man, it must be ignored at all costs.

Look for this peculiar form of Plaschkian analysis to crop up time and again, as we learn such undiscovered factoids that Jeff Kent is not a moody, anti-social teammate but rather The Most Respected Dodger and that the 2002 Giants cruised to a pennant on the wings of character guys like Shawon Dunston with only minor contributions from Barry Lamar Bonds.

Good ol' Plaschke. Never let the facts get in the way of the pleasing tale you wish to spin. bad sign when even your hindsight is 20/400, though.

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