Kuzul

His team facing elimination in the Junior College West Regionals, Bryce Harper went 6 for 6 with four home runs, a triple, a double, and 10 RBI in a game this weekend. 

His team won by a final score of 25-11 (there was a stiff wind blowing out in Lamar, Colorado where the game was played) to propel his team, College of Southern Nevada, to the Junior College World Series in Grand Junction, Colorado.  He had hit for the cycle in a game a day or two before.

This performance pretty much has to cement Harper as the first pick of the 2010 Draft.  Key game, lights out performance against what should be the very best junior college competition.  It’s hard to imagine a player doing much more than that.

With Scott Boras as his agent, I really can’t see Harper not breaking Stephen Strasburg’s bonus record.  At age 17 and playing junior college ball, Harper is two years ahead of the next best high school position player in the country. 

Harper won’t be the last player to get his G.E.D. in order to go play junior college, but he’s the first, and the Nationals are going to have to pay big money (my guess is around $16.1 million, roughly a million more than Strasburg got) for the privilege of signing him.

I think it’s going to get done, however.  After the money the small market Reds gave Aroldis Chapman, there’s really no doubt that the Nationals can afford to cough up a record-setting price for a talent as great as Harper’s.  Also, while Harper has the leverage of being able to go back to junior college for another year, I just can’t see him doing it, because he obviously has nothing left to prove at that level.

In a year, he’ll be a year older, and there’s a good chance he won’t be significantly better there next year than he was this year.  Or he could get hurt, particularly since he plays catcher.

I’ve commented many times (and so have others) on Scott Boras’ fundamental conflict of interest in representing so many players.  Boras has his own interest in waiting until the August deadline to get absolutely every penny to be gotten, because he’s going to represent so many top draft picks in the future.  The more he gets for Strasburg and now Harper, the higher the bar going forward.

It would be nice to see Harper sign soon enough that he can start in the short-season rookie league and see if he can hit his way up to the short season A league, where most of the 21 and 22 year olds drafted out of four year colleges start their professional careers, before the end of the 2010 season.

I expect that the Nationals would bring Harper along relatively slowly, because you would want to be really ready when his six year clock for free agency starts.

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The Giants looked truly terrible against the A’s this weekend, getting swept and scoring only one run in the three game series.  It doesn’t get much worse than that on the scoring side.

After this performance and in light of the recent road trip to L.A. and San Diego, where the Giants couldn’t buy a run, I thought I’d take a look and see if their problem was they just can’t hit on the road.

As it turns out, however, they’ve actually scored more runs on the road so far this year than at home: 89 (11th in the NL) on the road and 86 (13th in the NL) at home.

The real problem is that team hasn’t pitched as well on the road.  The Giants have the second lowest runs allowed total at home (58), but are only seventh lowest on the road (91).

The Giants have obviously played better at home (13-8) so far than on the road (9-13), but the difference isn’t extreme for this early in the season.  Still, a quarter of the way through the season, the Giants  look like a team that can’t score anywhere and are only a great pitching team at home.

I wish I had some recommendations for what the Giants could do to improve at the plate.  They will have streaks where they score some runs, but their fundamental problem is that they look an awful lot like the team that couldn’t score enough runs last year to make the postseason with only a few over-the-hill, injury-prone veterans like Mark DeRosa and Aubrey Huff added to try to squeeze out just enough runs to squeak into October.

At the margins, the team could do things like demote John (“Looks Like the Second Coming of Todd Linden”) Bowker and call up Joe Borchard.  However, it seems clear to me that the only way the Giants can really turn the offense around is to trade for a real hitter after the All-Star Break.

Unfortunately, I can’t see them getting the bat they need, unless they’re willing to trade one of their really honest-to-goodness pitching prospects like Madison Bumgarner or last year’s first round pick Zack Wheeler.  That, or Jonathan Sanchez.

There are some other players I would want if I were a general manager ready to trade off a veteran slugger, like, say, Lance Berkman, but I’d want a legit prospect in exchange for anyone really playing well, unless the Giants are willing to take on all of the veteran’s remaining salary commitments.

I don’t see Buster Posey as the answer in 2010, even when the Giants are ready to call him up.  He’s hitting well but not phenomenally so at AAA Fresno, and I’m doubtful he’d give the Giants much more than they are getting out of catcher Bengie Molina or first baseman Aubrey Huff at the positions Posey can play.

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After tonight’s 13-1 drubbing by the Diamondbacks, the Giants have to be giving some serious consideration to dumping either Todd Wellemeyer or Brandon Medders.  Both got blasted tonight.

Wellemeyer now has a 5.71 ERA, due mostly to his inability to throw strikes.  He’s allowed 27 walks in 41 innings pitched.

Brandon Medders had a 3.86 ERA coming into tonight’s game and leaves it with a 7.20 ERA.  The thing is he really hadn’t pitched as well as his pregame ERA indicated.  His line is now 15 IP, 26 hits, three HRs, and six walks allowed and only eight Ks.

The obvious candidates to replace these two if the Giants decide to make a move are AAA right-handed pitchers Eric Hacker and Steve Edlefsen.  Hacker is 27 and has been great as a starter for Fresno.  After eight starts, he’s 7-1 with a 2.20 ERA and a line of 45 IP, 37 hits, zero HRs, and 12 walks allowed and 38 Ks.  The walks rate really jumps out at you compared to Wellemeyer.

Edlefsen is 25 and now has a 1.57 ERA after 23 relief innings pitched with good ratios.  He had a fine year last year as he shot through the Giants system, posting a 1.95 ERA in 49 appearances and 69.1 IP, pitching across three levels (A+, AA, and AAA).

Unfortunately, neither Edlefson nor Hacker is on the Giants’ 40-man roster, which means someone has to be taken off and potentially passed through waivers to free up space.  My guess is that this means that Wellemeyer gets another couple of starts and Medders gets another couple of weeks before the Giants give up on them. 

That will also give Hacker and Edlefsen a couple more weeks to show whether or not they’re really ready to be major league pitchers.

In the long term, Edlefsen is the better bet.  Aside from being two years younger, he’s now 18-6 in his minor league career with a 2.50 ERA and good ratios.  As you might have guessed from his last name, he’s originally from Minnesota.

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What to make of the Hanley Ramirez brouhaha?  I’m still not sure.

I’ve been busy with work and I’ve kind of wanted to see how it would play out. Now that he’s back in the line-up, the one thing I can say for certain is that it’s a very ticklish situation.

Hanley made a mistake not hustling after that ball he kicked, but I can somewhat see where he was coming from. He’d hit a ball off his shin, and soon after he tries to make a play and ends up kicking the ball into the left field corner. I can see how that would be intensely frustrating and might lead to a stupid decision.

I was a lot more disturbed by all the really stupid things he said afterwards about how manager Fredi Gonzalez’s opinion carried no weight because he’d never played in the majors, how his teammates weren’t hustling either, and aren’t as good as him so they have no right to be angered by his conduct, etc. Hanley really comes off as a spoiled brat.

That being said, he’s the Marlins’ franchise player, both in terms of talent, performance, and also contract commitment. There’s pretty much no way they can trade him and get equal value in return.

Still, it’s got to be disheartening to everyone in the Marlins organization that Ramirez is so immature. Hanley is 26 this year and in his fifth full season in the majors, which means he’s right on the cusp between being young and immature on the one hand, and being a full-fledged prima donna on the other.

Also, it’s not the first time Ramirez has been accused of jaking it. He and Dan Uggla got in a shouting match in the locker room last season over what Uggla thought was a lack of sufficient effort on Hanley’s part.

It causes real problems when a team’s best player is perceived as giving less than his best effort. If he stays in the line-up, it causes dissension among the other players. If he’s benched, obviously that hurts the team too. In fact, if a player is going to be a big jerk, better to have a Barry Bonds type of jerk. Bonds got special treatment and was a real pill, but no one ever doubted his effort on the ball field (although in truth, Bonds sometimes didn’t run out ground balls and pop-ups and embarrassed himself a couple of times by giving up on fly balls he thought were home runs but stayed in the yard).

Deep down, I don’t think it’s over, even though Hanley was back in the line-up and helped the Fish with three hits today. There’s a lot of season left to play, and I have a feeling there will be problems again later in the season. We’ll see.

Also, my favorite problem child Milton Bradley was back in the Mariners’ line-up after two weeks of some kind of therapy for his anger/stress management issues. Of course, I’m not sanguine that Milton has turned a corner because he’s been down this road many times before.

I’ve said before that I don’t think Bradley is the worst human being in baseball. However, he’s got serious emotional problems that can’t be dealt with without several years of intense therapy. Unless he continues to talk to a mental health professional at least a couple of times a week for the rest of the season, I think it’s just a matter of time before he blows again, particularly if he continues his current struggles at the plate.

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Pat Burrell just cleared waivers (no surprise there) and is now a free agent whom any team can sign for around $300,000 for the rest of the 2010 season.

With Mark DeRosa currently on the DL and possibly needing season-ending wrist surgery, I would expect the Giants to think long and hard about signing Burrell at a bargain price. 

You have to think after Burrell’s performance in the AL last season and his lack-there-of this year that only an NL team would give him a shot (except maybe a team like the Royals) to see if he can relive his former Phillies glory.

Giants’ GM Brian Sabean certainly loves his over-the-hill veterans, and Burrell could, at least in theory, provide the Giants with the right-handed power bat they’re lacking.

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The D’Backs released relief pitcher Bob Howry after acquiring Saul Rivera, for cash considerations, from the Indians.

Howry finished the ’09 season strong, but was horrendous in his first 14 appearances this year. He posted a 10.67 ERA in 14.1 innings of work. Howry surrendered 18 hits, six HRs and six walks while recording just six Ks. It doesn’t get much worse than that.

Howry turns 37 in August. His career might be over. Because he was effective at the end of last season, Howry can continue to play if he’s willing to prove himself in AAA.

The Rattlers are on the hook for the lion’s share of his $2.25 million 2010 salary.

Rivera appears to be a slight upgrade. He had two fairly decent seasons as a middle reliever for the Nationals in 2007 and 2008, but pitched poorly in 2009. He began this season at AAA Columbus. 

While there, Rivera posted a spectacular 0.53 ERA in 17 innings of work; although his ratios aren’t as impressive as his ERA.

Rivera is no youngster either, he’s 32, which likely explains why the Indians gave him up solely for cash considerations.

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Obviously, very impressive.

One thing I noticed watching the highlights on espn.com a few minutes ago is that Stephen Strasburg used his curve ball as his strikeout pitch.  It’s obviously an extremely effective pitch against hitters who have not seen much of him (it was only his second AAA start) and very hard to adjust to after seeing his big fastball early in the count.

I have the feeling, though, that Strasburg will have to learn a change up and use that pitch, instead of the curve, as his primary second pitch, if he wants to have the same success at the major league level as Tim Lincecum.

Coming out of college, Lincecum’s primary two pitches were fastball and curve.  Once he reached the Giants, he very quickly developed a sort of split-finger change up, and almost overnight he became a Cy Young winner (in his second year and first full season at the major league level).

The Giants are an old school team, going all the way back to 1883, and their current pitching coach Dave Righetti has that same old-school mentality. He understands that at the most basic level pitching is about changing speeds and location and having command.

There are several advantages of the change up over the curve ball.  First, the change up, if thrown properly, looks exactly like the fastball coming out of the pitcher’s hand and arm motion.  The curve is thrown with a different arm motion and considerably different spin on the ball leaving the pitcher’s hand, which makes it much easier for some hitters to tell if the pitch is something other than a fastball immediately after it leaves the pitcher’s hand.

Second, the change up is much easier to control than the curve ball.  Almost all pitchers have trouble controlling their curve balls consistently.  When it’s on, like it was for Strasburg last night, it is perhaps the most difficult pitch in baseball to hit, particularly if the break is sharp and down. 

However, there are many days when even the best curve-ballers have trouble throwing the pitch for strikes, and this is particularly the case if the curve breaks sharply.  Curve balls without a sharp break are a lot easier to throw for strikes, but pitchers end up losing a lot of those pitches to the bleacher seats if they throw them regularly.

Third, the change up takes a lot less out of a pitcher’s arm than the curve ball or the slider.  Breaking pitches are much harder on a pitcher’s arm than the fastball or the change up, which is basically thrown like a fastball, but with a grip that prevents all the arm momentum from being transferred to the ball.

Both the slider and the curve ball require a lot of arm torque, and they put intense stress on the pitcher’s arm at the elbow and the shoulder.  Giants’ announcer Mike Krukow, who once had a great overhand curve, has a line about how when pitching prospects enter professional baseball they are asked whether they want their shoulders to hurt or their elbows to hurt.  If they say shoulder, they are taught the curve; if they say elbow, they are taught the slider.

In fact, the primary reason why blown elbow tendons and Tommy John surgeries are so prevalent in the professional game today, compared to days of yore, is the primacy of the slider as the primary off-speed pitch.  The slider is easier to learn to throw with command than the curve ball, and a good slider is a great second pitch to go with the fastball, both because it’s easier to command than the curve, but also because it’s harder to differentiate the slider from the fastball coming out of the pitcher’s hand than the curve.

It’s a common misperception that the fastball takes more out of the arm than breaking balls.  It stems from the fact that the fastball is obviously thrown hard.  However, it is thrown with a more natural motion than the breaking pitches, and good breaking pitches really require as much arm strength to throw properly as the fastball.  In fact, it’s usually the the hardest throwers that have the sharpest breaking curve balls and sliders, because these pitchers have the most arm strength.

The Giants and Dave Righetti are sold on the fastball-change-up combination in large part because the Giants turned Jason Schmidt into one of the NL’s top starters by convincing him to trade his plus curve ball for a change up as his primary second pitch.  In his career before coming to the Giants, Schmidt had been primarily a fastball-curve ball pitcher, and he had arm problems and a great deal of inconsistency.

The thing that is so impressive about Lincecum is that he made the transition so quickly in his professional career.  Generally speaking, when a young pitcher has a curve ball as good as Tim Lincecum or Jason Schmidt, it’s very difficult to get him to give it up for a change-up which is almost certainly not as good a pitch as the curve ball at least at the outset.

The beauty of the change-up is that because it takes less out of the arm than a breaking pitch, it can be practiced, practiced, practiced until it becomes a reliable major league pitch.

Strasburg has better stuff than Lincecum, and Lincecum had great, great stuff coming out of college.  What has made Lincecum a two-time Cy Young winner after only three seasons, is Lincecum’s exceptional ability to learn the nuances of pitching and the major league game as quickly as he has.

For example, Lincecum does not throw as hard today as he did when he first reached the majors.  He’s given up about three mph on his fastball, in order to have better command of the pitch and to keep himself fresher in the late innings. 

It takes an extraordinary amount of confidence and feel for the game for a young pitcher to give up speed on his fastball.  It’s obviously worked, however, as his walks rate has dropped each year as his strikeout rate remains roughly fixed.

If you watch Lincecum pitch now, he still throws the curve-ball, but if he’s locating his fastball and change-up, he rarely throws the curve more than ten times in a start.  Mainly, he uses the curve ball to steal called strikes, because the hitters are forced to look for the fastball or change-up on every pitch and can’t get the bat off their shoulders when the curve ball comes in.

Strasburg certainly seems to have an idea of how to pitch already, above and beyond his amazing stuff, and he seems to be a hard worker at this point in his life (he wasn’t when he first arrived at college, but he apparently had a come-to-Jesus moment early in his college career that he’s been able to maintain ever since). 

He certainly spouts all the right cliches about “working harder” and not taking “anything for granted” because “this game is going to humble you in a second” in this espn.com article after yesterday’s masterpiece.

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This article from the Tacoma Times indicates that Ken Griffey, Jr.’s days as a Mariner are numbered.  Aside from his awful start at the plate and the fact that he can’t play the field because of his sore and gimpy knees, he’s apparently not been the force in the clubhouse he was last year. 

In fact, the article reports an anecdote that Griffey was not used as a pinch hitter in a recent game, because he was asleep in the clubhouse in the late innings.

I’ve long felt that keeping old guys with little left to contribute on the field around because of their supposed great influence in the clubhouse is way overrated.  Better to have someone on the bench who can actually help you win some ballgames out on the field with a timely hit, a great defensive play, or scoring the run from second on a short hit to the outfield.

The Mariners decided to bring back Griffey in November 2009 for a $2.35 million 2010 (according to Cot’s baseball contracts ).  I thought it was a mistake at the time .

In December 2009, the M’s acquired Milton Bradley with the hope that having Griffey around as an older brother figure would get Miltie to straighten up and fly right.  A fool’s errand, I thought.

It didn’t work out that way, of course, and there were a lot of reasons at the end of the 2009 season to think that neither move would. 

At this point, the M’s would probably be best served by the old two-for-one (to paraphrase Dodgers’ announcer Vin Scully) and dump both Griffey and Milton Bradley in one fell swoop.

The Mariners are dead last in the AL at 12-19, but it’s only early May, and they’re only 5.5 games back.  It would be a good time to do a little house-cleaning and make a fresh start of it with 130 games still left to play.

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What with Jason Heyward’s, Wilson Ramos’ and Starlin Castro’s hot starts (to name only a few), there is perhaps even more hype than usual about the next top minor league prospects to get the call up.  One player I’ve been hearing a lot about is the Florida Marlins’ Mike Stanton.

About the only bad thing I’ve heard about Stanton is that a clear majority of major league executives think Jason Heyward has more long-term up-side than Stanton, and that’s mainly because execs are blown away by the Jay Hey Kid.  Like Heyward, Stanton is big-bodied 20-year-old centerfielder with loads of talent.

I saw a post on mlbtraderumors.com that quoted Marlins’ owner Jeffrey Loria as saying the team doesn’t want to call Stanton up until they’re absolutely certain he will be ready to stay for good.  That’s BS, of course.  This is the Marlins we’re taking about. What Loria really meant was there’s no way the team is calling Stanton up until they’re absolutely certain he won’t have super-two status and they get to underpay him for another season before he becomes arbitration eligible.

One thing is for certain, however: Stanton is ready to be promoted to AAA.  After exactly 100 at-bats in AA ball so far this year, Stanton is hitting .340 with a 1.317 OPS.  He clearly has accomplished all he needs to accomplish at this level, and if the Marlins aren’t ready to call him up to the majors, there’s no down-side in promoting him to AAA, and letting him rough up those pitchers for awhile.

The latest word on Buster Posey is that the San Francisco Giants think he needs more time at AAA Fresno to work on his defense behind the plate.  Posey is hitting at a level right now (.345 with a .970 OPS after 29 AAA games) where you have to think he’s ready offensively, at least for a catcher. Given what a good place Fresno is reputed to be for hitters, the Giants should probably wait until Posey’s OPS tops 1.000 if they plan to play him extensively at 1B at the major league level.

Right now, with Aubrey Huff hitting well at 1B and Eli Whiteside hitting well as the back-up catcher, there really isn’t any good reason to rush Posey up to the majors unless Bengie Molina’s hamstring injury is more serious than we have been led to believe and requires a trip to the DL.

As for the old-timers, Aaron Rowand and Andruw Jones are having big years.  I have heard reports that Rowand tried out a new work-out regime this past off-season and retooled his swing in Spring Training, as reasons why Rowand might be off to hot start.

I don’t know.  During his time as a Giant, Rowand has never looked like a player who wasn’t working out enough.  Particularly, he has traps (shoulder muscles) you usually see only on football players, and it makes me think he’s long been something of a gym rat.

I haven’t seen enough of Rowand hitting so far this year to have noticed any big changes in his stance or his swing, but it’s possible.  However, I still wonder if, given Rowand’s career progression, 2010 isn’t just the one in three seasons when Rowand is a great player.

As I’ve mentioned before, Rowand had tremendous seasons in 2004 and 2007.  He was mediocre in 2005, 2006, 2008 and 2009.  In other words, he is due for a big year in 2010, at least based on his career trends.

The up-and-down nature of Rowand’s career, I think, has something to do with the fact that Rowand is not a very patient hitter (free swingers tend to be more inconsistent) and the fact that he has had a lot of injury problems in his career (he runs into walls and gets hit by a lot of pitches—at least 110 in his major league career to date).  Of course, part of it is just dumb luck, which doesn’t make for accurate predicting of future performance on a year-to-year basis.

As for Andruw Jones and his hot start in 2010 (.984 OPS so far), here’s my theory.  Jones was a tremendous, tremendous talent, comparable to Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Cesar Cedeno (I’m throwing him in just to make the point that having all the talent and potential in the world doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll live up to it), and Jason Heyward.

In fact, Jones had some tremendous seasons, hitting lots of homeruns and winning ten consecutive Gold Glove awards in center field (many of which he actually deserved).  However, Jones was always a big-time party boy.  When I had part of a season ticket plan in the bleachers at what is now AT&T Park from 2001-2003, we all used to chant “Gold Club! Gold Club!” at Jones whenever the Braves were in town and the Giants were at bat.  If you have forgotten Andruw’s Gold Club escapade, here’s a link .

(The internet means you never get to live down your peccadillos anymore, no matter how much time passes; however, one thing that amused me about Andruw’s 2001 testimony is that he was so matter-of-fact about it and apparently felt no shame about it; needless to say, Andruw’s conduct really didn’t hurt anyone.)

Anyway, when steroids reached their crescendo in the MLB, Jones was one of the many players reputed to have used and abused them.  As opposed to Bonds, McGwire or Clemens, who used PEDs to enhance their workouts and push themselves to unbelievable levels of performance on the field, I’d bet dollars to donuts that Jones’ use was in the Jose Canseco mold, where ‘roids were used as a substitute for the long hours of hard work it takes to be the best in any of the major league sports.

Given his enormous talents to begin with, ‘roids were all Jones needed to maintain himself as a major star, peaking in 2005 and 2006 when he hit 51 and 41 HRs, respectively, his career highs.

MLB’s first steroid policy took effect before the the 2005 season, but only called for ten game suspensions for first offenses.  MLB and the players’ association agreed to the 50 game suspension for first positive test regime before the 2006 season, but it wasn’t until a significant number of players began to get hit with 50-game suspensions and the events of 2007, culminating in the release of the Mitchell report on December 13, 2007, that most of the steroid abusers really began to clean up their acts.

Meanwhile, in 2007 at age 30, a year when players with Jones’ talent traditionally have been at or near peak performance, Jones hit only .222 and his OPS dropped by 170 basis points from the year before.  In 2008, his performance fell off a cliff, and he finished the season with a .158 batting average and a .505 OPS.  The drop-off was, no doubt, exacerbated by the fact that Jones played his home games in Dodgers Stadium, a terrible place to hit, in 2008, after his prior years in the friendly confines of Atlanta.

Nevertheless, Jones was unbelievably bad in 2008, and I distinctly remember how doughy looking his body was in a Dodger uniform.  In retrospect, the change in his body was classic steroid withdrawal, where the body, which has largely shut down its own testosterone production in response to being bombarded with artificial male hormones, has not yet regained the ability to produce male hormones naturally.

It was clearly something of a wake-up call to Jones, and I suspect that he has begun working out since the 2008 season in a way he hasn’t since at least the time he first established himself as a start for the Braves. He’s also had time for his testicles to start pumping out testosterone again naturally.

Jones didn’t hit well in Texas last year, but at least his power stroke came back, and his bat seems to be all the way back this year.  However, Jones is now 33 this year, so he’s definitely in the decline phase of his career.

Four years ago, Jones was a no-doubt-about-it Hall of Famer, and probably a first ballot electee.  Now, it’s a lot more doubtful.

I think that Jones will eventually make the HOF, because he really was a great player for a nine year period for the Braves, doing everything you would expect from a HOFer.  I also think that, while known steroid abusers are going to suffer in the HOF balloting in years to come, eventually time will heal the sportswriters’ wounds and a lot of the best of these players (Bonds, McGwire and Clemens) will make the HOF. 

It will be a lot tougher for Rafael Palmiero and Gary Sheffield, who put up fantastic career numbers but were never really the best players of their era.  Because of their steroid abuse, the veterans committee isn’t likely to overrate their astounding offensive performances like it has for the hitters of the 1930′s, another great offensive period in baseball history.

Where Jones falls into this mix remains to be seen.  If he is able to put up a few more strong seasons before he retires, it will make a big difference in how he’s finally remembered.

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The Dallas Braden/Alex Rodriguez feud is still going strong, and while part of me feels that Braden ought to let it go and move (which he appears to be doing tonight with eight perfect innings against the Rays so far), all of me feels that Alex Rodriguez is one of the bigger punks in the game.

This article quoting A-Fraud on espn.com kind of says it all.  Rodriguez could have simply said he didn’t mean anything by stomping on the mound as he ran from third back to first in front of Braden who was pitching and apologized if Braden felt Rodriguez was showing him up.  Instead, ARod had to get in a shot, which shows what a s*#$ he really is: “Now, look, I really don’t want to extend his extra 15 minutes of fame.”

No wonder Braden hasn’t let it go.  Basically, what Rodriguez comment says in so many words is: “I’m the great Alex Rodriguez, and I get to do whatever I want on the field.  If players who aren’t as great as me don’t like it, they can go lump it.”

Whether or not stomping on the mound on the way back to first breaks any of baseball’s unwritten laws, one thing is for certain: One of baseball’s most venerable unwritten laws is that you don’t show up opposing players on the field. 

You don’t stand there at home plate admiring your long home run for five seconds, you don’t make a pistol with your fingers and shoot batters you’ve just struck out, and you don’t yell “Hah!” at infielders trying to catch an infield pop-up as you run by. 

It’s not professional, and all the players playing at the major league level should act like professionals.  Not all major league players act like professionals, of course, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that they all should.

A-Rod is a pussy.  I know that’s sexist, and I apologize to the women who read this post.  However, every boy who ever played in a schoolyard knows exactly what I’m taking about.  A-Rod is one of those hot-shot golden boys who, because he can play ball better than anyone else, thinks he’s better than anyone else for all purposes.

Everything about A-Rod indicates a lack of moral fiber.  He told wild lies about his past steroid use, and when he got caught red-handed, he told wild lies about how he hadn’t admitted his use even to himself.

I’m also still convinced that being the biggest star and getting the highest salary are more important to Rodriguez than winning rings.  And it isn’t enough that he’s the best paid player in baseball.  He also has to rub other players’ noses in the fact that he gets special treatment because he’s the big star.

The very best players are not necessarily known as well-rounded human beings.  Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Mark McGwire are all men with some pretty serious character flaws of one kind or another.

Still, I certainly wouldn’t feel any sorrow if an A’s pitcher (not Braden—hopefully, one of his teammates will step up) and give Rodriguez an ouchy that hurts a lot.  Not to the head, of course, but a fastball catching him flush in the middle of the back would be just about right.  If Rodriguez thinks his sh%& doesn’t stink, somebody should come forward and show him there’s a way things are done and not done in the professional game.

By the way, Braden just completed his perfect game against the Rays, one of the best teams in baseball.  He probably isn’t spending a lot of time thinking about A-Rod as I write this, but there would be a certain justice to it if he dedicated his immortal performance today to Rodriguez. 

Even if A-Fraud ends up being the next juicer to break the all-time home run record, Braden did something today that Rodriguez will never do on a baseball field.

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