The Crap Factory

We were up past our bedtime last night so we're a little sleepy today. Two cups off coffee has barely gotten this thing off the ground. Also, I'm on vacation starting at 5 today, so the motivation is nearing an all-time low.

Having said all that, I figured I'd ramp it up slow here at the habitrail, so I headed over to The Hardball Times, where I found Gleeman's piece on Adrian Beltre's break out year, or more specifically the career path he took to arrive here.

His lede:

"Whenever a player has what I would call a unique career path, one of my favorite things to do is reconstruct their career, year by year, to create what looks like a more normal pattern of development."

OK, let's see what the kid's got, maybe he's on to something...

"Beltre is a very maddening player to get a handle on, because he debuted when he was just 19 years old and actually had his two best seasons (prior to this year) in his first two full seasons, at the ages of 20 and 21."

OK, so Beltre's a particularly difficult case...

"But if you do a little creative mixing and matching, you can actually make Beltre's career resemble a 'normal' one ..."

AGE      AVG      OBP      SLG      OPS      GPA

19      .215     .278     .369     .647     .217

20      .240     .290     .424     .714     .236

21      .257     .303     .426     .729     .242

22      .265     .310     .411     .721     .242

23      .275     .352     .428     .780     .265

24      .290     .360     .475     .835     .281

25      .334     .380     .646    1.026     .333

Hmm... what? I'm sorry, did I miss something? No, I didn't. It turns out that one of Aaron's "favorite things to do" is simply rearrange a player's seasons' stats so they go from worst to best. Aaron, GET OUT OF THE FUCKING HOUSE! GO TALK TO A GIRL, HAVE A BEER, SOMETHING, ANYTHING.

Then he closes with this...

"If you think trying to figure Beltre's career out is difficult, trying putting yourself in the Dodgers' position. They've now had Beltre in the organization for a decade, including seven years at the major league level, and they've invested millions of dollars, thousands of at-bats and countless hours of coaching in him. They stuck by him through his various struggles and now he's having his best season, and perhaps one of the best seasons ever for a third baseman, all at the age of 25.

And in about two months, he'll be free to choose another team to play for."

Am I reading this right? Is he trying to elicit sympathy for the Dodgers on the grounds that he might exercise the same right as every other ballplayer on Earth? Including this season, they've paid him $14,140,000 for three average seasons, two not-so-hot seasons and one great season. In the words of the UrClown, "boo-fuckity-hoo."