Time for a good hodge-podge post.  Full of all sorts of fun stuff, and very little substantive analysis.  I do have a fairly big Royals post to put up, hopefully by the end of the week.  Until then, enjoy some odds and ends from this fabulous Tuesday in sports.

Good for Billy

The lone offensive bright spot for the Royals this season continues to be Billy Butler, who last night had his first career five hit game.  Billy has a 116 OPS+ and a very respectable .356 OBP.  His top BR comp thru age 22 was Keith Hernandez, but his top career comp continues to be Ken Harvey.  If he lands somewhere in between those two, he would end up with a pretty decent career*.  Even so, Billy, I would highly encourage you to grow a moustache and sleep with Elaine Benes…it couldn’t hurt.

* I just read that sentence again…god, it sucks to be a Royals fan…

Let’s change gears and have a little quiz:

Player 1: .286/.340/.434/.774

Player 2: .276/.299/.390/.689    

Just know that two years ago, we were about to trade player one for player two.  Of course you can guess that player one is Billy, and player two is Yuniesky Betancourt.  Yes, the Yunieski Betancourt who is hitting .143/.139/.200/.339 with a –11 OPS+ since moving over to the Royals.  I know, I know…blah, blah…he sucks ad nauseam. 

Now we’re looking at a game where we have 14 hits, and yet only manage to score 5 runs as a positive.  You don’t have to look too far to realize that somebody with a higher batting average than on base percentage might be part of the problem, and you don’t have to look much further than that to realize that giving up our 2008 minor league pitcher of the year to get him (and he’s an upgrade to what he had there before) could very possibly suggest that we have a front office that might not really know the best way to put together a major league roster.

But this guy does!!

At Least We’re Not the Mets Pt. II

Unwilling to let his VP of Player Development run unopposed for the Mayor of Batshitcrazytown, Mets GM Omar Minaya yesterday used all of his cognitive skills to draw insaney-like conclusions as to why a reporter would, well…report news.

It seems as if Adam Rubin, New York Daily News’ Mets beat writer, is the one who broke this story about VP Tony Bernazard going all Real World Obligatory Drunk Fight on a AA shortstop.  Well, with turning a blind eye to the fracas no longer an option, the organization had to pull the plug on Bernazard’s employment.

Given that Bernazard wasn’t exactly a favorite (sans Minaya) within the organization, death-match proposal aside, it seemed pretty logical that he would be canned.  And he was.  But, the intrepid GM had his own thoughts on Mr. Rubin’s intentions.

Minaya used flawless logic to connect the dots between Rubin’s story, and his seemingly obvious ulterior motive.  You see, at some point in the past, Rubin had either a sit-down meeting or a conversation in passing with team COO Jeff Wilpon.  The nexus of said meeting??  What it takes to get a job in the front office of a major league team.  And apparently, Wilpon wasn’t the only one subject to Rubin’s querys. 

Says Rubin:

“I covered the minor leagues back in the ’90s, the Birmingham Barons, the White Sox double-A team, actually when [current Mets manager] Jerry [Manuel] was the White Sox skipper — so I would ask them, probe them, about how do you get jobs in baseball. If you ever kind of hear about anything in baseball that might be suitable, how do you go about pursuing a job like that? But that was the extent of it.”

Seems logical to someone who isn’t insane.  But Omar Minaya is.  Evidence??  Accusing Rubin of intentionally digging the story out, reporting it, having it directly lead to Bernazard’s sacking, all for the purposes of taking his job.  Fortunately, Rubin called him out on it, causing Minaya to stick his foot in his mouth worse than Mikey.

At least he didn’t sign Mo Vaughn for $100 Million or anything.

Sigh…how ‘bout football??

Bush & Tush = Kaput

If a highly-touted, generationally talented running back who probably accepted close to $100,000 of tainted under the NCAA table funds while in college*, and subsequently has never, and probably will never, reach his once near-unanimously touted once-in-a-lifetime potential and a skanky, overly-ass-tastic, vacuous, only famous for her self-promoted sex-video made with an R&B singer that nobody knows about and reality show made with a family that nobody cares about can’t make it…well, then what hope is there for the rest of us??

* The end of that particular hyperlink was the word “bushprobe.”  If I even attempt a joke here, I think my head would explode.

If I knew nothing of physics, and therefore no knowledge of what a black hole was, you could probably convince me that a black hole was made up not of pure gravitational energy, a point of infinite density at the event horizon, but rather was a theory of what would happen to your brain upon repeated viewings of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” I don’t see any way that I wouldn’t believe you.

But I won’t let this take descend into a sophomoric jibe against the inane E! stars.  I won’t make a Khloe Kardashian Chewbacca joke.  I won’t compare Bruce Jenner’s face to my mother’s tuna-noodle casserole.  Can’t do it!!  Won’t do it!!  This blog will not sink down to that level!!

No, these two fine, upstanding citizens deserve to go on with their lives.  Their breakup was amicable, and since there was no foul play or cheating involved, I’ll…

…wait…

what’s this??

Aww, Geezis…that burns…in the worst way…

Wanna be a balla??  Shot calla??

Todd Haley says, “Eh, no thanks.”  Haley, Kansas City Chief’s first year head coach has resigned his play-calling duties to offensive coordinator Chan Gailey.  Gailey, the only marginally sufficient cog left over from the shit bucket that was the 2008 Cheifs, will try to repeat the magic trick that he pulled with KC’s O last year.

Really, who else but Gailey gets credit for turning a kid from Costal Carolina who shouldn’t be let any closer to an NFL field that Jason Whitlock into a competent starter behind center.  Of course, while this year we are without pizza boy’s favorite target, we do have a legit starting QB, which will allow us to move the ball on offense without having to rely on gimmicks.

Also, it seems as if precedent played a role in Haley’s decision to relinquish the responsibilities.  The move is similar to what Ken Whisenhunt did when he came on board as the Cardinal’s captain, giving Haley play-calling responsibilities despite having called the plays for a team just taken to the Super Bowl.

On top of that, while ruminating on this decision, Haley reached out to both Whisenhunt and Bill Parcells.  Amazing.  Not that he would actually do that…well…yeah, that he would actually do that.

Due to being virtually shut out of Arrowhead since Scott Pioli’s arrival, most of the media is taking a very cautious look at the Chief’s front office.  The skepticism is running at a record high, and is unlikely to come down until the season starts.  I see one of two things happening:

1.) The Chiefs are only letting certain information out in an effort to control the media.  The less info the better, and good news will look better because there’s no bad news to compare it to.

or

2.) We’re running a football team.  It’s none of your damn business.

These are not dumb men, but they have a football team to run.  In an age in KC sports when incompetence is at an all-time high, it’s nice to see that there are guys who might actually be doing things right.

I tend to think that what’s going on at Arrowhead is #2.  Let’s just hope that come November, we’re not using the same number to describe the product on the field.