C’Mon Guy: Special Blog Edition

Ridiculous.  Absolutely ridiculous.  I was watching Sportscenter on Wednesday.  I guess that makes this whole thing my own fault considering what garbage it has become in recent years, but I at least can save some face based on the fact that my roommate was the one who turned it on.  Sure I should have left the room, but my couch is comfortable and I’m lazy.  So Sportscenter appears on my television and it happens.  A question, an astonishingly stupid question, was raised for discussion.  ”Which Joe had the better year as a manager: Torre or Maddon?”  What I expected to follow was the obvious answer, the ONLY answer, that is acceptable to that question.  ”That’s a stupid question and you clearly don’t know a damn thing about baseball!”  What actually followed was people pretending that there’s actually a comparison between the two.  Please allow me to break it down for you. I’ll start with what I can only imagine is the ESPN reasoning behind the discussion. I’ll follow that up with sound logic and reasoning.

The ESPN Approach:

Joe Torre - Torre was very successful in New York. He was always in the playoffs and won a the World Series a few times. Now his new team is in the playoffs. He must be a top manager in the league.

Joe Maddon - We don’t know much about Joe Maddon. We never got to watch his team because our channel only shows the Yankees and the Red Sox, but he made the playoffs so he must be a good manager, like Joe Torre.

Reality:

Joe Torre - I must start by saying that I do not dislike Joe Torre. I have nothing against him personally. I hate the Yankees, yet I never had a problem with Torre. Even when he was leading the evil empire to total domination I never disliked Joe Torre. He’s a very likeable guy, but just an average manager. How can you say he had a great year managing the Dodgers? Is it really that amazing that he was able to take a team that went 82-80 last year and improve them to 84-78 this year? An improvement by 2 in the win column is hardly a remarkable achievement, especially considering the poor level of play by the rest of the teams in the division. Even in a terrible division this season, the Dodgers needed to acquire one of the best hitters in baseball (and Casey Blake and Greg Maddux) in order to take the NL West. I doubt there is a rational person out there (that knows anything about baseball) that would argue against the fact that without Manny Ramirez, the Dodgers are a .500 team at absolute best. Without ManRam, the Dodgers finish with a worse record than they did last year! Great job, Joe!

Joe Maddon - The Tampa Bay DevilRays owned baseball’s worst record just last season. The 66-96 Devil Rays finished 30 games out of first place, behind the Red Sox. They did not acquire any great players this off-season or prior to the trade deadline. What they’ve got is a manager named Joe Maddon. So what can be expected from baseball’s worst team that failed to make any big personnel moves and has to play 22% of their games against the Red Sox and Yankees? Winning 80 games and finishing in 3rd place would be a remarkable improvement. So what do you call the AL East title and a 97-65 record? I’d say that’s downright silly.

Joe vs. Joe - Joe Torre’s team improved by 2 wins over last season. Joe Maddon’s improved by 31. Torre’s team needed to acquire Manny Ramirez, Greg Maddux, and Casey Blake during the season in order to take their weak division from the Diamondbacks. Maddon’s team acquired Chad Bradford to help keep them at the top of one of the best divisions in the league and ahead of the Red Sox. Joe Torre’s team finished with a record that was 13 games worse than Joe Maddon’s team despite the fact that Torre’s 4 highest paid players combine to make more than Maddon’s entire team. That is not even including the additions of Manny Ramirez and Greg Maddux, who are now 1 and 3 respectively on the team’s payroll and combined to make $30 mil this season (almost 70% of the DRays payroll).

I could go on, but I’m getting angry that I ever had to make these points because the “professionals” at ESPN thought it would be cute to compare two guys with the same name. I’d be willing to bet that if you asked Joe Torre the same question, he’d probably laugh thinking that you are just being nice and flattering him. He knows Joe Maddon had a better year than he did. That is in no way a knock on Torre. If you ask any manager in baseball, they’ll probably tell you that Joe Maddon had a better year than they did. Terry Francona will tell you Joe Maddon had a better year than Francona did. Charlie Manuel will tell you that Maddon had a better year than Manuel did. Willie Randolph will tell you that Maddon had a better half year than he did, but only because he didn’t have Guillermo Mota this season. Even Joe Maddon would tell you that Joe Maddon had a better year than Joe Maddon did. Figure that one out.

So to everyone at ESPN, particularly those involved with Sportscenter… C’mon guys. You’ve gone from being a good sports channel with a great show to the channel I try to avoid because when it’s on, my entire house suddenly smells like it’s filled with steaming piles of dog crap. I don’t know how you get the odor through my television, but c’mon guys!

Mike Wilbon is still cool.