DUIs: Everyone's Doing It!

Major League Baseball has a problem... and I'm not talking steroids, inflated salaries, or declining attendance. I'm talking DUIs. It's tough for me to climb up on my high horse and criticize ballplayers for their drinking and driving habits since I earned myself one when I was 18 years old. But 18 year old me also didn't have  millions of dollars in the bank and couldn't afford a cab ride home from a house party the way Shin Soo Choo probably could. Not acceptable behavior on my part, but even more asinine for Choo, who blew 2.5 times the legal limit (Sobriety test on video!). I paid my pennance for my crime, and you can bet $3,000 and 6 months without a license did more damage to me than it does for a major league ballplayer. 

The point is, we're all human and humans tend to be drawn towards adult beverages. The NFL has known this for years. They offer a free car service for any player in any major city that has been drinking. The system is said to be completely anonymous and the drivers are said to be mostly retired police officers and trained security personnel rather than just Joe the Cabbie. It's a brilliant system that needs to be adopted in all professional sports immediately. Whether athletes want to believe it or not, they are public figures. When I was arrested, I disappointed my family, my friends, and myself (collectively, only a handful of people). When Miguel Cabrera gets arrested for the second time with a bottle of scotch in his hands and asks police officers to shoot him, he sets a bad example for millions of fans both in the US and back home in Venezuela.

We're 5 months into the year and six MLB players have already been tagged with DUIs in 2011. Cabrera, Derek Lowe, Adam Kennedy, Coco Crisp, Austin Kearns, and Choo have all been nailed. Total amount of fines/punishments levied by the office of the commissioner: ZERO. A little over a year after a budding MLB star was killed by a drunk driver in Nick Adenhardt and still MLB turns the other cheek to this nonsense.

Fortunately, the MLBPA and the owners appear to be having some preliminary discussions regarding the topic. Too little, too late? Let's hope not. So as Derek Lowe comes to town tonight following an arrest that saw the 37 year old driving drunk while drag racing through the streets of Atlanta (a grown ass man street racing is a whole other issue), I can honestly say that I've never been more in favor of booing. I'm hoping to see some well thought out signs and hear stories of creative heckling tonight at the ballpark! Let these guys know that their personal conduct obligations don't end when they step into the dugout.

The Worley-Bird!

Get it? Because those things on your roof are called whirleybirds and Vance Worley pitched for the Phillies last night? Yeah, I agree... not as funny as it first sounded in my head.

But Vance Worley did get the job done last night and that's what really matters. In fact, he was riding a 21 inning scoreless streak until a few borderline ball/strike calls let him to give up a run. Not a bad start for a career, but I wouldn't get used to it. The fact remains that while Vance Worley is looking like a stud right now, the minute Joe Blanton is healthy, Worley will be back down in the minors. He's 23 years old with plenty of time left to develop and the best opportunity for regular action will be in the minors. With 3 or our 4 starters throwing complete games pretty much whenever they feel like it, some of our bullpen arms are already under-worked. Kyle Kendrick only pitches once a week and Dany Baez has thankfully been left to ride the pine pretty often. Worley will continue to be your #1 "In Case of Emergency, Call Reading" guy for the better part of the season.

Also, in case you hadn't noticed, Raul did exactly what I said he would... fail at becoming the world worst slumper. Naturally, that's a good thing for the Phillies and it's nice to see some semblance of power from the $12M man in left field. It also gives Ruben and Charlie some piece of mind knowing that they can let Domonic Brown get daily at bats in the minors for a few more weeks before pressing the panic button.

So Cole Hamels Pitched Well...

... which means only one thing: Get ready for a meltdown next time out!

All kidding aside (am I kidding?), Cole was lights out last night on pretty much everything but one ball left up in the zone to Mike Morse that found its way into the seats. It was an impressive outing in what has been an impressive start to the season. A 4-1 record this early in the season is certainly something Cole isn't terribly used to. If we were to erase his first ugly start of the season, his peripheral stats would be up there among the best in the league, even rivaling those of Roy Halladay. Are we finally seeing the Cole Hamels of 2008 make a sustained run at it? Like I said above...let's give it one more start.

Lunch Time Link Dump

• Roger McDowell is apparently a homophobe. The Braves pitching coach has been suspended two weeks for some interactions with fans where he made some gay slurs and insulted a father in front of his two kids... and this is all alleged to have occurred during batting practice. AT&T Park in San Francisco is one of the few ballparks in the majors that still maintains a "bullpen" in foul territory along the base lines rather than in its own area of the outfield. Without some sort of barrier between fans and players, relief pitchers are pretty much heckle-bait all game long. Not that I'm making an excuse for McDowell, who is probably more famous for the Hotfoot and other dugout antics than his pitching acumen. 

•  I've discovered an old SI.com article of things we miss in baseball and for the exact same reasons I mentioned above, they seem to miss the bullpens being in foul territory. They also miss "fans running into the field" and "wimpy middle infielders" to put into perspective what kind of writer we're dealing with. I do, however, find the first item on the list intriguing: Stirrups. Not just colored socks, or those white socks with a vertical stripe up the side. Actual stirrups you wear over your socks. I never really understood the reason for them, but hell if I didn't make sure my stirrups were pulled as high as possible during little league. Of course they were usually stretched out and dry rotted from the years and years of other kids wearing them, but that's nothing a few safety pins didn't fix! Bullpen carts and Youppi were two other good ones from the list.

• Possibly the most surprising and under the radar news of the year so far is the impressive start by Bartolo Colon. I had him listed at the beginning of the season as a zero risk, high reward player and so far he's been the latter. He's averaging a K/IP and keeping the Yankees in every game he's played, last night's fine performance included. The fat man seemed destined to be hanging up the spikes for good, but a couple of Yankee injuries made way for a spot in the bullpen and now a Phil Hughes implosion has made it likely that he hangs onto a starting job for at least a little while longer. He throws with finesse and deception. He's not the CY Young winner he was in 2005, but he's eating innings as thoroughly as he's eating pizzas. 

• As successful as the Bartolo Colon move was, Derek Jeter's new contract is looking like just as big of a failure. $15M this year (and at least $34M the next three) isn't a terrible deal if your team leader is batting at a decent clip and playing stellar defense. But Jeter isn't really doing either. In his last calendar year of baseball, Jeter is batting .257 with 6 HRs. And yet though 26 games this season, Jeter has led off 16 of them. His defense is as sub par as ever (despite his Gold Glove awards that can only be attributed to blackmail). The Yankees are in a really tough spot right now. Do they risk moving Jeter down to 7 or 8 in the lineup to see if he can right the ship? Do they need to bring in another player to share time with their $15M man? A solid year of sub par performance at age 36 is more than a slump. 

• ZooWithRoy.com made the "Huge Butt" announcement last week that they'll be working with Iron Hill Brewery to produce a ZWR Beer this summer. Naturally, that means a trip to Iron Hill Brewery is in order. One of my biggest selling points when trying new beers is the art on the label and you can bet that "So Cuttered Hoppy Wheat" will have some sort of Penguin/MS Paint image worth the price alone. 

• Reading through an article on PhilliesNation the other day about Baseball Prospectus rankings for players kind of showed me that for the most part their top 5 rankings have panned out pretty well from season to season. But that got me thinking about how actual draft picks work out. Luckily it only took about 30 second worth of Googling before I found this article on the rankings for 40 years of #1 overall picks from 1964-2004. For every A-Rod, there's a Matt Bush. The list counts down from the outside and the median #1 overall pick turns out to be Phil Nevin. Which pretty much explains why the MLB draft is such a crap shoot.

• The Common Man  over on Platoon Advantage has been doing a series of family trees for trades and signings that produced other players. In the latest installment, he shows how a 1967 draft pick would eventually turn into David Wright. It's pretty wild to think about and certainly a little far fetched considering all the moving parts involved in the deal, but I'd love to see a Phillies family tree that traces Granny Hamner to Bobby Abreu or something... I'm just too lazy to do the research myself.

How do the bats stay sleeping with 45,000 people chanting U-S-A?

So the Osama Bin Laden thing happened. That was pretty cool. Text message alerts turning into fan's whispers turning into a bipartisan roar of U-S-A is much more listenable than Bobby Valentine and Orel Hershieser. Hacksaw Jim Duggan would be proud! Personally, I had all but forgotten about Bin Laden and figured he was destined to die in a cave somewhere in the Afghani mountains, but the breaking news last night (which subsequently took over Twitter and Facebook for about 12 hours) was pretty sweet (not to mention an assured reelection for any democrat up in 2012).

But this isn't a political blog. I don't care where they buried the body and I don't need to see DNA evidence. What I do need to see is RAUL IBANEZ HIT A FREAKING BASEBALL!?!?

His current 0-34 streak puts Raul just two away from the title of "All-Time Phillies Slump Master." The Phillies have lost more games than any other professional franchise for a reason. Consider for a second some of the all time bums and slump artists that have come through this town. Pat Burrell seemingly went for half seasons without getting a base hit, yet he doesn't even appear on the top 5 of this list. Danny Murtaugh (36), Len Matuszek (36), Desi Relaford (36), Denny Doyle (35), and Joe Morgan (35) are your leaders in the clubhouse. I don't think any of them would have let Chris Young's 85MPH fastball blow them away with such ease.

The major league record for 0'Fors is 46 ABs and I suspect that Ibanez will disappoint us with that record too by falling somewhere in the 42-45 game streak before he finally legs out an infield single on a ball that probably could have been called an error if the scorers didn't feel sympathy for Raul. The real fact of the matter is that Raul Ibanez, despite his best efforts, isn't a capable major league player anymore. We paid a lot of money for two half seasons of great play, but it's time to call a spade a spade here and cut your losses. Domonic Brown has officially been recalled from the DL and optioned to AAA so you have to assume that he'll be back with the Phillies within a few weeks. I've reached the point where I'm ready to give him the Old Yeller treatment behind grandpa's shed. I expect this kind of performance from Wilson Valdez! It's off to the glue factory for you, Ibanez!

Not so fast, Kyle Kendrick. Don't think you can just sneak away without any blame too! The Phillies have 9 losses and two of them are on your shoulders. You can point to your 2.08 ERA and your career low in WHIP all you want, but you're striking out absolutely no one and you can't get the job done in anything other than mop up duty. 3 innings against the last place Mets at home? is that really too much to ask for?

The rest of the bats didn't exactly hold up their end of the bargain either. I full expected a Placido Polanco double to the gap or a Ben Francisco moon shot would be the end of the night, but it wasn't to be. Still, with a NL Best 18 wins, a few injured guys with promising news, Blanton finally out of the rotation, and a pitching staff that is hitting their stride, things are still looking good. Forgive me if I've come to expect perfection!