The Jose Lima All-Stars
Posted by Rob Rabies on 06.11.2007
Who cares about Prince Fielder when you've got the suckitude that is Craig Biggio? Forget the MVPs, Rob Rabies will show you the worst of the worst, The David Carusos of Major League Baseball.
Gary Sheffield—eh, I don't really care. This is another media-created story drummed up to help Colin Cowherd fill an extra 30 minutes each day. Sheffield is a world-class douchebag, and I think that he's racially obsessed. That's all I'm devoting to the former carjacking victim.
Moving on:
It's been kind of a blah first two months of the season. A-Rod started off hot, so everyone was obliged to fellate him, then he cooled off and everyone is back to thinking he sucks. Another 9th inning HR in Boston later, he's great again.
In the greatest baseball movie of all-time, Major League, there is a conversation between apathetic Indians owner Rachel Phelps, and her lame-duck GM Charlie Donovan. Verklempt at Cleveland's ability to actually approximate an MLB-caliber team, Phelps ponders ways to make them even worse so that she can move the team to Florida (and get rid of all of us for better personnel ). Being the wiseass that he is, Donovan puts forth the following options:
A series of fines for good play
A $50,000 bonus for the guy voted Least Valuable Player.
For all the talk of 1/3rd season MVPs (and good work on that fellow 411-ers), I think that we should devote at least some attention to the worst of the worst, the Michelle Wies of the diamond, so to speak. Just like Neo had Agent Smith, and Kate Beckinsale has Rosie O'Donnell, Prince Fielder and Magglio Ordonez need their mathematical opposites as well. For this express purpose I present:
C: Jason Kendall, Oakland Athletics: God he's horrible. A few years go he was the talk of baseball because he was the rare catching specimen who could hit for a decent average and was a threat to steal 20-30 bases a year. Well, the wear and tear finally caught up to him. Kendall's been so bad that the A's are going to put Mike Piazza back behind the dish whenever he returns from his shoulder separation. If that isn't an indictment of Kendall's horrid play, then what is? David Ortiz could steal standing up on Piazza.
Here are some of his splits this year:
1.01 RC/27—Basically if you had 9 Jason Kendalls, you would average 1.01 runs a game. That's an offensive juggernaut. By comparision, All-Ugly catcher Jorge Posada is careering it with an average of over 8 RC/27
He has two extra base hits in 200 plate appearances, and he's hitting a robust .194/.236/.204
Let me reiterate that: His on-base-percentage is lower than his slugging percentage. You wonder how such an anomaly wouldn't rip a hole in the fabric of space-time, causing the end of life as we know it. Fortunately, the only constant in the universe is the speed of light, and not the fact that slugging is always higher than OBP.
With Kendall's horrific-ness in mind, let me present to you the Jose Lima All-Stars, the worst of the worst.
Of course the LVP has to be Kendall. This guy couldn't hit Britney Spears if he lost 30 pounds, learned ebonics, and bought thirty pounds of iron pyrite chains. But let's take a look at the rest of the lineup…
In order to qualify, I put a minimum of 150 PA down, as it's hard to penalize part time players for sucking a goat's ass, or guys who have been significantly injured.
Without further ado:
C: Jason Kendall (obviously)
1B: Richie Sexson: This one was surprisingly close. Nomar Garciaparra, Adam LaRoche and Ryan Shealy all made a hell of a push here. Fortunately for Shealy, he lacks the necessary PA's here. Sexson's line: .197/.294/.383. So for a robust 13 million a year, the Mariners have a first basemen hitting below the Mendoza line who plays subpar defense, hits for occasional power (8 HRs, 34 RBIs), and does nothing else well. Pathetic work, Little Sexy.
2B: Craig Biggio: 3000 hits approaching or not, Biggio is not an ML-caliber position player at this stage in his career. I'm sure that he'd make a great bench coach, but nearing 40 years old he lacks the requisite tools to hit big-league pitching at this point in his career. Guys like Josh Barfield have a lower OPS and fewer HRs (by one), but for pure shitiful play, it has to go to Biggio, he of the .228/.277.372 line. He has 16 doubles in a bandbox park, but still only has 3 dingers, 17 RBI and an RC/27 of 3.55. That's St. Louis Cardinal-esque offensive inefficiency….ouch.
SS: Adam Everett: And we wonder why Houston is so terrible this year. You might be tempted to include Omar Vizquel here, but his defense is still good enough to give him the edge over Everett when batting is taken into account. Everett does nothing well. He's the rare 0-tool player. And OPS of .593, a SB % of 66, 0.5 BB/K ratio, the facts are simple—Everett sucks.
3B: Alex Gordon: Poor defense, a lack of power, horrible plate discipline—it's all pretty disappointed for the second coming of Christ. From the way that various pundits were pimping his abilities this year, I'm still waiting for Gordon to walk across the Missouri and hit for cycle 9 straight times.
Hyperbole aside, he's a very talented rookie who has struggled mightily this year. In retrospect, it's easy to bash Dayton Moore and the Royals brass for moving him up from AA to the MLB level, but it's coming increasingly apparent that some time at AAA Omaha would have helped Gordon out mightily. He's hitting .190 with 3 HRs and 8 goddamned RBIs. By no means would I give up on him as an MLB prospect, but he's obviously not as MLB ready as Miguel Cabrera was, revisionist history aside.
RF: Nelson Cruz:.188/.245/.306. He's on pace for about 110 K's and around 30 walks. He hits for little to no power and isn't a threat to run. He could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch.
CF: Corey Patterson: Peppermint Patty hits like a "bitch with a skinned knee and shit". He's still a threat to run, and he used to have power, but as his career continues on, it's still amazing to think that this guy was once the third overall pick. Then again, it was the Cubs, who if they had to pick a date out of a lineup of Alison Stokke, Bea Arthur, Charlize Theron, and Angelina Jolie, would pick Maude.
LF: Emil Brown: Good news—he's led the Royals in RBI the past two seasons. The bad news—despite leading an offense the caliber of the cast of The Ringer, Brown couldn't hit his way out of a piss-soaked paper bag this year. His outfield defense makes Manny look like the Say Hey Kid, and he's already 32 years old. I'll take a complete lack of upside for $1000, Alex.
DH: Mike Sweeney: Hitting for a higher average than Frank Thomas, but his OBP is 60 points lower. Still has above average power, but he's making 11 million a year to be a thoroughly mediocre hitter. Pathetic
Starting Rotation:
Jeff Weaver, RHP: The Sandy Koufax of this team. If anyone doubts the efficacy of Dave Duncan as a pitching coach, I present to you Jeff Weaver. 6 starts, 22 innings pitched, an ERA of over 14. He's looking like a genius for taking that one year deal to enhance his appeal as a free agent in the offseason. The odds of him getting anything other than a minor league deal this offseason are astronomical. Opponents are hitting .459 against him. Awesome.
Jae Seo, RHP: Private Seo has managed to rack up 50+ IP already despite an era of over 8. I don't know what's more amazing, the fact that he's that bad, or that Tampa keeps trotting him out there to emulate Cape Canaveral. I had three doubles against Seo last week.
Casey Fossum, LHP: The answer to the above question. I'm trying to imagine how an MLB rotation could vacillate between James Shields to Seo and Fossum, with Scott Kazmir somewhere in between. Granted Fossum has since been demoted to the pen, but isn't that somewhat of the point of this team? To be that bad? Fossum's splits: 7.71 ERA, .332 BAA, 1.70 WHIP.
Kameron Loe, RHP: Another run of the mill Rangers starter with an ERA north of 7 who allows batters to hit for Pujolsian averages against him. I think MLB should mandate that all Texas starters get a Chan Ho Park tattoo on their ass.
Tony Armas, RHP: He was on my fantasy team for a cup of tea last year before he got hurt. I swear I'm generally a better fantasy owner than that. Like Fossum, he was jettisoned to the pen. His ERA is over 8. What else can you say? He's a black hole of ability.
Relief Pitchers:
Kirk Saarloos, Danys Baez, Luis Vizcaino (no, not that one): Just go to baseball-reference.com to check out how much these guys blow. Just typing this is taking another three inches of drop off my curveball.
Closer: Joe Borowski: 17 saves or not, an ERA of 6.91 as a closer is absofuckinglutely horrendous. How he still has this job is completely beyond my comprehension.
After all that suck, I've gotta keep this ending brief, as the collective terriblicity of these players has me circling the drain. I'll……….seee…………you….next……….weeeeeeeeeeeeee
