Saturday 9 February 2008

You Don't Know Dick

Nation,

First let me start of by introducing myself. Will & Johnny run a great blog here, and they were kind enough to ask me to contribute every now and then. So you’ll probably hear my various rants in the style of some of my favourite blogs (other than The Southpaw, of course) such as FireJoeMorgan. In case you hadn’t already noticed, I’m a huge Colbert & Jon Stewart fan, so you’ll probably have to bear with more than a few references. Alright now that I got that out of the way, time to get down to business.

Just when you thought Dick Griffin couldn’t seem any more retarded, here he comes and throws us another curveball. Time for a (hopefully recurring) segment of “You Don’t Know Dick” (thanks, Jon Stewart ).

According to the wonderful Toronto Star, Griffin and his cronies have made some suggestions about the future of the Jays. Who the fifth starter is, whether or not Barajas is better than Zaun (answer: he’s not, but thanks for coming out), and some other intriguing facts. Apparently, JP is trying to trade every good player away!

“Why do lemmings feel obliged to plunge off a cliff? It makes no sense, yet they do it year after year. When Carlos Delgado was their best player, the Jays couldn't wait to get rid of him.”

Salary had absolutely nothing to do with that. It’s not like the Jays could afford him… cause I’m 100% sure JP didn’t want to have Carlos Delgado on his team at all. I mean come on, fan favourite, terrific offensive player, scores runs. JP’s totally against scoring runs. Good call guys.

“Wells replaced Delgado as their top talent, the team tried for two years to pawn him off before finally giving up and signing him long-term.”

Right. I mean, trading Wells would be a lot worse than signing him to a ridiculous contract considering how inconsistent Wells is.

“Now that Alex Rios has established himself, Toronto tried to trade him for Brad Penny in '06 and Tim Lincecum last season. Both efforts ultimately failed, so they will sign him long-term. The common thread is that none of the three were drafted or signed by the current regime.”

Yeah, I mean had JP offered Howie Clark or Chad Motolla the Giants would have JUMPED at the opportunity. Giants GM Brian Sabean is pretty stupid, I can’t believe JP offered Rios for a good player. God, JP is a terrible GM.

But the crown jewel of the article? Griffin and his cronies have outdone themselves.

HOW MANY WINS DO THE JAYS NEED TO EARN THE WILD CARD? TO WIN THE EAST?

Wild Card AL East


Richard Griffin 97 96


Mark Zwolinski 99 95

Cathal Kelly 98 95

According to Griffin, with all things being equal, the Jays would need more wins to come in second place than to come in first place. That’s right – 96 wins gets you the division, and 97 gets you second place. Now, I’m no mathematician, but I could have sworn if the Jays won the East with 96 wins, they could probably win the East with 97.

What Griffin and crew MEANT to say was that it’ll probably be easier/better for the Jays to win the division than the wild card, with Cleveland, Detroit, Boston, NYY, Seattle, LAA all being the crème of the AL crop. But what they said, was that you need to win more games to come in second place than to come in first.

That, my friends, is another surprise, in the always amusing world of “You Don’t Know Dick”.

Twitchy.

3 comments:

halejon said...

When were the Jays trying to "pawn off" Wells? I mean, that's totally made up, right? The only thing I remember was Penny rumours and Minyana expressing interest last year, and it went nowhere.

The Southpaw said...

I think what they're talking about was in 06, before Wells signed the massive contract. Like you said, there were rumours about Penny + Kemp or something to that effect for Wells.

Other than that, I don't remember the Jays trying to trade him...

Twitchy.

halejon said...

So by "tried for two years to pawn him off", they mean "were rumoured to have been given an offer for him the season before his walk year but turned it down before it got at all serious".

Let me just adjust my sports goggles to "Griffin" here...