It's Hank, Cash & Joe's Fault!!! Those Pricks!!!

Thanks, Bill Madden, for this genius piece about how the failures of this season are the fault of the GM, the manager and the owner.

If you haven't already, go read the article. It explains how everything boils down to Hank's inability to take charge and be a full-blown asshole like his dad used to. And how Girardi's mismanaged the team. Oh, and how Cashman built the team.

It's Hank's fault for not getting Santana. Yeah, we knew that already. The Santana deal will be second guessed for the next hundred years. Or at least until Santana is a walking corpse from years 4 through 7 of the contract he inked with the Mets.

It's Cashman's fault for constructing a bench that involves Wilson Betemit and Morgan Ensberg... because as we all know, the 24th and 25th guys on a team's bench typically represent a 10 to 15 game swing in that team's overall record... right? Right? Anybody? Bueller? Bueller? No? Okay, moving on.

It's Girardi's fault because of the Manny game... in like... April. Oh, and for resting Damon for a game this week. And for using Damaso Marte, when he's "clearly a situational reliever."

So lets start with the assertion that Marte is "clearly a situational reliever."

Damaso Marte in Pittsburgh: 47 innings, 1.157 WHIP, 47 K's, 3.47 ERA. And just for the record, here's what RHB's did against Marte in Pittsburgh - .214/.299/.321, and here's what lefties did against him - .258/.310/.394.

To clarify, there's nothing situational about a lefty who's better against righties than lefties. Marte has had a bad week and a half. It's not a fucking incrimination of his entire career. It's a bad week and a half.

Just for the hell of it, lets play the blame game for this season.

1) Robinson Cano - .262/.302/.393 (OPS+ 84) is having a throw-away year. He's been fucking awful. This is obviously Brian Cashman's fault.

2) Derek Jeter - .284/.346/.396 (OPS+ 98) is in the midst of the worst season of his career. This must be because of the differences between Torre and Girardi, so we'll blame Joe Girardi for this.

3) Matsui, Posada and A-Rod's injuries - Three extremely productive hitters have missed majorly extended stretches, with Posada missing almost the entire season and Matsui having seen only 69 of 120 games. Surely the effects of The Curse of the Hank!!!

4) Chien-Ming Wang - 8-2 in 15 starts at the time of his injury, this guy won 38 games in 2006 and 2007. The fact that the Yankees are unable to dominate after the loss of a bonafide top-of-the-rotation starter is very obviously the fault of Cashman. He should have cloned the DNA of Sandy Koufax just in case something like this happened.

5) Hughes, Kennedy & Chamberlain - Two of them dramatically underachieved, all three got hurt at some point, and yet, one of them has developed into one of the best starting pitchers in baseball... but he's not here now. Kennedy might not be as good as anybody thought, Hughes has some injury issues, but has looked great during his rehab stint, and Chamberlain is a golden God. Again, the fault of Cashman for pinning his hopes on pitchers who don't cost $150 Million over 7 years.

And now, for the record, lets see what else Cashman's done this year.

1) Stole Xavier Nady & Damaso Marte from Pittsburgh: The trade market the past few years has been SAVAGE!!! Cashman gave up NOTHING GOOD, and got back a 29-year old outfielder with an OPS+ of 147. And Marte, who was closing games for Pittsburgh at the time he was dealt.

2) Rented Pudge Rodriguez straight up for Kyle Farnsworth: Yeah, Farns was pitching well, but Yanks fans still hated the prick, nobody trusted him in September or October, and he was going out the door in 2 months anyway. Pudge was the only available guy who could come near Posada's production, and he's here.

3) Sidney Ponson, Darrel Rasner & Dan Giese: Their names should go into the history books next to Aaron Small and Shawn Chacon. Do you guys realize that we got 178 innings of serviceable baseball from these three scrap-heapers? Kennedy, Hughes, Chamberlain and Wang have all suffered significant injuries... and yet we've been able to hang around.

Show me another team in baseball FUCKING HISTORY that's lost 4/5ths of their rotation over the course of a season, and even played above .500 ball! Do it!! I fucking dare you to do it!!! And they did it because of a 31-year old free agent who was once drafted in the 34th round of the draft, an alcoholic ex-convict, and a waiver-wire pickup from the fucking Nationals in 2006.

Cashman has pulled half this roster out of his fucking ass. Girardi's juggled his lineups and rotations all year just to keep 9 guys on the field. And Hank's kept his mouth mostly shut... except for that asshole time that he bitched out Mike Mussina... and Mussina magically turned into a 15-game winning dark horse for the fucking Cy Young.

Oh, and the time when Hank bitched that Joba should start. How was that working out before Joba got tendinitis? Wait, I'll tell you. In 12 starts, spanning 65 innings, Joba struck out 74 batters and worked a 2.76 ERA.

Yeah, Hank's a dick. And Joe and Cash are fucking awful. Give me a break Bill Madden. Just give me a break.

Joba Owns Beckett And Red Sox; What Does Lupica Say?

Word up, Lupica haters!

This week, Lupica wrote another fucking column about Clemens, and how George Bush shouldn’t give him a pardon.

Who gives a shit, really?

The only person in the world who isn’t tired of Clemens is Lupica.

Give it a rest, Mike. The guy is a total tool. We get it.

Move the fuck on.

Blurbs…

It was pretty neat, I thought, that Charlie Manuel criticized Jose Reyes for being a hot dog on the same day Manuel's shortstop, Jimmy Rollins, couldn't make it to Shea Stadium on time.

Apples, meet Oranges.

A-Rod's friends now are out there saying the whole thing is Cynthia Rodriguez's fault, she drove the poor guy into the arms of other women, and I'm thinking these are the kinds of friends angling for a shot at "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?"

Sports, Lupica. Try covering it sometime.

Nice job plugging another worthless TV show.

You don't have to like Billy Wagner,

Good.

or the way he blows sky high sometimes, or everything he says, whether he is standing in front of his locker or talking on the radio.

And if you are a Mets fan, you can already be wondering about whether Frankie Rodriguez or somebody else could be the closer here before long.

But you still have to say that Wagner is one of the most interesting people to ever hold down the job of closer in New York.

He sucks in the clutch, and he’s a joke in the post season. He’s got a big mouth and he’s a team divider.

This is why he is “interesting” and deserving of space in Lupica’s dumb column.

You can have “interesting”; I’ll take Rivera.

On Saturday, Joba pitched the best game in his short career, beating the Red Sox in Boston, with Josh Beckett going for the Sox.

Josh Beckett, Mike Lupica’s wet dream from Boston.

Remember this quote by the dwarf?

"The Yankees have a lot. Just nobody like Beckett." - Lupica, 4.18.08

Every sports writer in New York wrote a story about Saturday's game.

Here’s what Lupica had to say…

The Yankee broadcasters kept saying that it made no "sense" for Joba to put a fastball up in Kevin Youkilis' eyes the other night, and I'm wondering what sort of "sense" it made when Joba put two over Youkilis' head last season.

That’s all, folks!

No story, no column, nothing. Just bullshit about Joba throwing at Youkilis again.

Imagine the sports media without Lupica…we’d never learn anything about the Yankees.

Or anything else relevant.

A tough young girl from Sunny Valley, Ore., named Camala (Cami) Million, won the fifth go-round rodeo at the Imus Cattle Ranch for Kids with Cancer last week, and turned in a record time of 19.62 seconds doing it.

Wow, did you snort a line of cocaine with Imus while discussing this story with him?

Even between one season and the next, it remains one of the most amazing things in sports that the Knicks and Rangers, combined, have won two playoff series in the last eight seasons at the Garden.

New York Mets: one playoff series win in the last seven seasons, with the highest payroll in the NL for the last five years.

But hey, at least they got two last places finishes under their belt during that time.

And that neither one of them, despite piles and piles of money spent, has made it past the second round of the playoffs.

Yet once again, no mention of the Mets payroll or lack of success in October.

Can Carlos Delgado win Comeback Player of the Year just for the way he's come back in the same season?

Ask Robinson Cano. He would have won it the last two seasons.

And possibly this season.

The bushier Giambi's mustache gets, the more he looks like a bouncer.

Uninteresting, unfunny and uninformative. Typical Lupica.

If Mike Pelfrey had an unusual nickname, people might get as excited about the way he's pitching for the Mets as Yankee fans are about Joba.

Joba’s ERA is 1.3 points lower than Pelfrey.
Joba’s WHIP is .2 lower than Pelfrey.
Joba has 20 more K’s in 45 less innings.
Joba just owned the Red Sox.
Joba was converted to a starter after every bitch in sports media said it was the wrong move.

Throw all that away; Yankees fans are excited for Joba because of…his unusual nickname?

Sports journalism at it’s finest.

If you're Brian Cashman, you have to make the trade he just made with the Pirates, no questions asked.

But there has never been a single time when the Yankees have traded prospects when we didn't hear that it was the greatest trade ever

So every time the Yankees have traded prospects, it was considered the greatest trade ever?

Typical Lupica: blowing things out of proportion to prove his point.

and the prospects they sent off to a team like the Pirates really didn't matter in the whole grand scheme of things.

Cashman quote : “We ended up paying a pretty steep price in terms of four useful players. But the deal makes a lot of sense for us on several levels.”

Never a single time, right Mike?

Fucking asshole.

More Bullshit Regarding This Worthless Article...

I know Mister Six already covered this Lupica article, but it pissed me off so much that I had to add my two cents.

The story about Rodriguez Tuesday really should have been about the time he spent with a cancer patient, an 18-year-old named John Challis he met last week in Pittsburgh.

This story was about the time ARod spent with John Challis. Cheap tabloid shit like ARod hanging with Madonna is so much more important to sports fans than ARod cheering up a terminally ill kid.

Nice priorities, Mike.

Challis was in New York with his dad Tuesday and Rodriguez ended up giving the young man a tour of his Manhattan apartment and then giving John Challis a ride with him to Yankee Stadium. But because he is A-Rod and sometimes he can't keep the genie in the bottle, so to speak, the paparazzi outside his apartment cared very little about John Challis and wanted to shout out questions only about Madonna.

Congratulations, Mike. You just compared yourself to grocery store tabloid gossip writers - you know, where failed sportswriters go to collect a paycheck.

Nice job, ass face.

Just because that is the world A-Rod lives in and the one we live in.

Sports fans live in a sports world and read the sports section for sports stories that sports columnists usually write about. Not only did you choose to write about a trash story, but you somehow got it past your editors to link ARod to steroids because he hung out with Madonna, a former girlfriend of steroid freak Jose Canseco.

This is the shit that you write about? What the fuck kind of sports writer are you?

We already know the answer to that - you fucking SUCK at writing about sports.

Madonna Is A Steroid Dealer

There's really no other explanation for this latest nugget of Lupica genius.

Cashman smiled. "There's some story going around today about him and Madonna. That's the drama."

Yup, that's the drama. Which is to say that this is really just the latest bullshit that the General Manager of the most famous baseball team on the planet has to address. People aren't asking Cashman about deadline trades. They're not asking about Joba's progression as a starter or Mussina's resurgence, or the fact that despite missing 20 games this year, A-Rod is only 3 homers behind Josh Hamilton, Grady Sizemore and Carlos Quentin's 19 for the league lead. Cashman's talking to you about Madonna.

Think about that. Think about how fucking ridiculous that is. That the private business of two adults requires commentary from Cashman because one of them happens to play for the Yankees. Could you ever, in a million fucking years, imagine someone asking Cashman about who's waxing Derek Jeter's carrot this week? Jessica Biel? Minka Kelly? Jessica Alba? Vanessa Minnillo? Maybe it's Adriana Lima or Jordana Brewster!!

Another thing... has anybody ever noticed that Jeter seems to have the "Good Luck Chuck" effect on women? Carey married Nick Cannon. Biel's all tight with Justin Timberschmuck. Alba's engaged and pumping out a unit. Vannillo's with Nick Lachey. And Lima's engaged to Marko Jaric! Everybody he dates seems to marry the next guy that sticks around for breakfast.

A little over a year ago, almost 13 months exactly, there were the pictures of A-Rod in Toronto with a blond "exotic dancer" named Joslyn Noel Morse, the two of them not just photographed together but having been seen entering a strip club together, which still seems like bringing coals to Newcastle.

Yeah Lupica. A little over a year ago. And guess who the only person who still cares about it is? That's right! You, mother fucker!! You've got the memory of a 3 foot tall Lup-iphant. You never forget. And you also never forget to ram these crappy non-stories up the anal cavities of your non-readers. Where's the connection between these two events?

When asked about his blond friend in May of 2007, Rodriguez said, "No comment."
Which is what he said Tuesday on the field at Yankee Stadium when asked about the report in US Weekly that he had been seen making some late-night visits to Madonna's West Side apartment. Rodriguez said "No comment."

Well, there you have it. That's tabloid journalism at it's finest right there. It doesn't get much better than that if you're reading US Weekly or The Sun or The National Enquirer. Wait, you mean... this piece was run in the New York Daily News? A credible news publication that claims to have the number 1 sports section in the city?!

A-Rod said "no comment" about the stripper, and then he said "no comment" about Madonna. The only explanation is that "no comment" is A-Rod slang for "Yeah, I fucked that bitch doggie-style!" He needs his own way of saying things because he's the best right-handed hitter in the entirety of baseball. To make sure there's no confusion.

Now, if these stories about him and Madonna are true - and just for the sake of conversation today, let's say Rodriguez wasn't visiting Madonna for their book club - that means he has joined another kind of list, one that in the old days was supposed to have included Jose Canseco, who has been hinting for years, without proof, that A-Rod may have had more than a passing interest in steroids.

Here's where the magic starts! With a signature Lupica run-on sentence. Look at that baby go! SIX FUCKING COMMAS!! TWO HYPHENS!! This sentence is it's own paragraph. For an ordinary sports journalist, you write this sentence, you spell-check and your work is done!

Just in case you got lost in all the words and punctuation, lets examine what Mike's saying here.

Canseco screwed Madonna ----> Canseco did steroids
A-Rod might be screwing Madonna ----> A-Rod must have done steroids too.

By this logic, do you know who else has used performance-enhancing drugs? Guy Ritchie! Not to mention Chris Rock, David Blaine, Chris Paciello, Billy Zane, Andy Bird, Mark McGrath, Charles Barkley, Carlos Leon, Tupac, Dennis Rodman, Anthony Kiedis, Isabella Rossellini, David Duchovny, Big Daddy Kane, James Albright, Vanilla Ice, Lenny Kravitz, Antonio Banderas, Matt Dillon, Prince, Sandra Bernhard, JFK Junior, Sean Penn, Keith Carradine, David Lee Roth, Warren Beatty, Basquiat, Rosanna Arquette, Megan Mullally, Kelly McGillis, John Starks, Henry Rollins, Jennifer Grey and Henry Rollins.

Oh, and Naomi Campbell. I guess that explains her obvious 'roid rage.

There we have it, courtesy of New York's shortest journalist. The link between steroids and famous celebrities of all kinds is clearly Madonna. Thank God for you Mike Lupica. Now the healing process can genuinely begin.

Coming Next Week: Amy Winehouse spotted in Yankee Clubhouse, Giambi Suspected of Crack-Use.

Fred Wilpon Approved This Message

How sad that the great Mike Lupica has to be a fan of such a shitty team.

As the Mets keep tripping over their own collective two feet, Lupica has to keep finding ways to make them look good. Lupica's taken the "Yankees Suck" route a million too many times, and now he's trying to find a new way to keep Fred Wilpon in his bed.

So Mike is now taking the route of "Met Apologist Of The Decade".

Read this bullshit and see how pathetic Lupica has become.

Yes, it's worse than ever.

Now what for the Mets?

It is a particularly good question for Fred Wilpon and Jeff Wilpon and Omar Minaya and even Tony Bernazard, a Mets vice president suddenly regarded as the John Dillinger of the National League by people who've never met him.

Right. Lupica never slammed someone he never met. What a load of horse shit. Everyone is saying Bernazard is a piece of shit, except Lupica. What does that tell you about the guy?

You ask where they go from here as much as you do all the Met ballplayers, unless you think the firing of Willie Randolph is the crime of the century in baseball and the people who did it can never come back from it.

Yes, crime of the century.

Typical Lupica, completely blowing things out of proportion to prove his point.

Now the people in charge go back to work and prove to their fans that they still know what they're doing, that they didn't turn into a complete bums with this one act

They are bums because they have the highest payroll in the NL and they SUCK. Their GM put together a team full of senior citizens and is putting too much faith in Wright and Reyes.

Wright has never heard the word "hustle" and Reyes has trouble tying his shoes. Hey, at least he runs fast.

Johan so far has been a bust, Wagner is a joke, Beltran will never live up to his contract, Castillo is signed for 4 years…need I go on?

It is absolutely fair to say that Randolph is the same guy who won 97 games two years ago and brought the Mets to within a swing or two of a World Series I believe they would have won.

Oh fuck it - the Mets only have two World Series titles; we won't mind if you want to change history and say they actually won their third in 2006. Go ahead!

Maybe we can all pretend the Mets didn’t collapse in historic fashion last season too.

It often happens like this in sports: You hire someone knowing who he is and end up firing him for the same reasons. It happened to Randolph the way it has happened to a lot of them. You can make the case that it even happened to Joe Torre at Yankee Stadium.

Considering Torre wasn't fired, you can't make the same case for him. Thanks for trying.

As bad as the Wilpons and Omar looked this week, they do have some work to do to catch up with the way the old man (Steinbrenner) did it in his prime

Lupica must be referring to how many World Series titles Steinbrenner has over Mike's new love interest Fred Wilpon.

Mike can keep slamming Steinbrenner, but at least the Yankees aren't the embarrassment of NY and the MLB.

Mr. Wilpon, can you please untie Lupica from your bed so he can get his dignity back and continue slamming the Yankees? Watching him try to defend your crappy team is bringing a tear to my eye.