Grover Gets His Fire Joe Morgan On

Only three games tonight, and we don't like any of them. Instead, I'd like to go somewhat off-topic for a moment and discuss this horrific article that someone actually got paid to write. My apologies to the masters of the genre over at firejoemorgan.com, but I can't resist this one.

I don't even know where to start. Let's go with my second-favorite team, the Tampa Bay Rays ("second-favorite" here meaning "the team that will make me rich as soon as they finish 162 games"). In one breath, he tells us that they're a nice story, but that "you have to be realistic with a franchise that has never come close to .500." Relying upon the performances of teams with entirely different personnel to project the performance of the 2008 team is dumb enough. But then this guy contradicts himself in his rankings by stating that they are a "real good ballclub capable of standing the test of time." Nice work.

Rant #2: This gentleman claims that the Yankees "lost their fantasy ace." I am guessing that he means Chien-Ming Wang. I can't be 100% sure, however, because although Wang has 8 wins, he also sports a 4.07 ERA, a 1.32 WHIP, and appears to be striking out batters at a rate of less than .6 per inning. I just went to check out my fantasy league (yes, that's right, I'm a tool), and all of those number except the win totals would drag down the average team in our league. Now the guys in my league are pretty sharp, but Eric Mack's byline describes him as Sportsline's senior fantasy writer. Hey CBS, if you're looking to upgrade your fantasy sports staff, eight guys in my twelve-team league know more about fantasy pitching than Eric Mack.

Rant #3: Saved the best for last. Mr. Mack ranks the Angels as the third-best team in baseball. Now, I'm a reasonable man. I don't expect people to bother with concepts like third-order records or Adjusted Equivalent Runs, even if it's, you know, their job. But the Angels have scored 308 runs this year. They've allowed 306. Is it too much to ask for a baseball writer to know that? I mean it's right there in the expanded standings of any sports website. Seriously. Just awful.

Of course, it's this sort of idiot groupthink (the Yankees will make the playoffs because they're "The Yankees," the Angels "know how to win the close ones"), that ultimately allow smarter people to take advantage. Now if we can just translate that into some positive results. Maybe we'll stop writing things like "Bush is awful and the Brewers don't hit righties well," which ended up looking about as smart as this article. Ouch.