In the last year, the Yankees have gone out and acquired such players as CC Sabathia, Nick Swisher, Wade Boggs, A.J. Burnett, Curtis Granderson, Mark Teixeira, and Javier Vazquez. And that’s just who I can think of off the top of my head without looking it up*. Within that timeframe, they’ve also managed to win a World Series title. You’d think after all that, they’d rest on their laurels, whatever the fuck that means. But no, not these guys. For today, they’ve gone out and trumped everything they’ve done in the last year by announcing the signing of America’s greatest living ballplayer, Mr. Marcus Thames.

According to Jon Heyman’s twitter, it’s a minor league deal worth $900,000 if he makes the team. If he makes the team? Pffft. That 900k is as good a guarantee as you’ll see in this world. The rest of the American League can pack up their shit, I guess.

* They may or may not have acquired Wade Boggs

Hey Jake, what do you think of your new teammates since joining the White Sox last summer?

“I couldn’t believe the amount [sic] of rednecks this team had on it. With Jim Thome leading the way and then you meet a guy like Jermaine Dye who you think is going to listen to rap music and he puts country music on and talks about going deer hunting with Mark Buehrle. I said, ‘What is going on here, you know?’ But we have a tremendous bunch of guys.”

Interesting. You know this is on the record, right? As in, I’m printing this shit. You wanna re-word that? No? We’re leaving it as is? Okay sweet, thanks.

Via here.

The Kansas City Royals reached a contract agreement on Thursday with free agent outfielder Rick Ankiel. The contract is for 1 year at $3.25 million with a mutual option for a 2nd year at $6 million that will surely not be picked up. I would assume. But who knows?

Seriously, what the hell is going on in Kansas City? I’m tired of making jokes about them. The only value that a signing of Rick Ankiel could possibly have to a team like the Royals is that he could be flipped at the trade deadline. But what are the odds that his performance in the 1st half of 2010 will make him an attractive trade acquisition for a team fighting for the playoffs? I just don’t get it. This is totally a signing for the sake of signing a guy, which for a team like the Royals who have payroll restrictions, makes absolutely no sense. I’m beginning to wonder if Dayton Moore’s offseason plan was not so much to improve the Royals, but rather to get bloggers like me to ask a bunch of rhetorical questions about his team, such as “what the fuck”, “what the hell”, “are you fucking kidding me”, and “seriously, what the fuck”? Let’s take a look at the Royals projected starters:

Jason Kendall C
Billy Butler 1B
Alberto Callaspo 2B
Yuniesky Betancourt SS
Alex Gordon 3B
David DeJesus LF
Scott Podsednik CF
Rick Ankiel RF
Jose Guillen DH

If you were building a playoff team, which of those nine guys would you feel comfortable with?

Seriously, Zack Greinke should kill someone.

Via here

The Kansas City Royals have agreed to terms with free agent outfielder Scott Podsednik. The Royals’ depth chart currently shows Podsednik will be a leading candidate to start in either CF or LF on opening day. Oy.

Can someone please check up on Zack Greinke for me? I’m a big fan of his and I’d like to see him continue pitching in the Major Leagues. But clearly, his GM has other plans for him that involve holding a revolver in his right hand, flipping open the cylinder,  using his left hand to fill the cylinder with a handful of rounds, closing the cylinder, bringing the revolver up to his mouth, and pulling the trigger a handful of times.*

* Or once, depending on his strength after the first one.

I’m going to tell you a little story. It involves a rag-tag bunch of sucks who sucked their way to 79 wins during the 2009 MLB season. They called themselves the White Sox, and boy did they suck. A quick glance at their individual player performances show that the main reason they sucked was because of their team OPS+ of 91. That’s not gonna get things done. Four of the biggest culprits for their team OPS+ being so bad that I’m going to cherry-pick right now for the purpose of making Dayton Moore look like an idiot were 2nd baseman Chris Getz (74), center fielder Brian Anderson (67 in 185 at bats before being traded), 3rd baseman Josh Fields (68), and of course, the previously mentioned Scott Podsednik (98). The End.

Now I’ll admit, that wasn’t much of a story, but it allows me to make a smooth segway to another rag-tag group of sucks who sucked their way to only 65 wins during the 2009 MLB season. They called themselves the Royals, and they sucked even worse. Amazingly, they too finished with a team OPS+ of 91. Like I mentioned before, that’s just not gonna get things done. So this offseason, the General Manager of this rag-tag bunch of sucks named Dayton Moore decided to take the suckiest hitters from the previously mentioned White Sox team and add them to his roster. I guess his plan is to…yeah I’m not sure. But all four of them (Getz, Anderson, Fields, and Podsednik) are in line for a starting position. Unbelievable.

At this point, I am 100% certain that I’d be a better GM than Dayton Moore.

Juan Pierre displays perfect pre-bunt form

If you’re a White Sox fan, you’ve been hearing the term “true leadoff hitter” or the phrase ”we’re lacking a true leadoff hitter” for a couple years now. You may have even spoken them yourself. I’d imagine you did so while standing near a water cooler or coffee-making machine with a co-worker friend of yours.

“The White Sox could really use a true leadoff hitter,” you would say. “Someone who can get on base a lot and can run, like Hickey Runderson. I mean Rickey Henderson. Did I just say Hickey Runderson? That’s weird. His name should have been Hickey Runderson though, am I right? [Forced laughter]. Anyhoo, back to my point, Kenny needs to bring us a true leadoff hitter. If he can do that, I’ll be happy. Hey we doin’ lunch today at Applebees?”

Then the two of you would exchange a couple more seconds of banter and part ways. You’d go back to your desk and search the White Sox message boards for any kind of evidence that Kenny Williams would be bringing in a player who fits your own definition of a true leadoff hitter. Although to be fair, if your definition is some kind of variation of Rickey Henderson, good luck finding him. On Tuesday, you got your wish in Juan Pierre, or as I like to call him, the Black Scott Podsednik. Blacksednik. Yeah that’s who he is. He’s Blacksednik. Read the rest of this entry »

Jim Caple and Paul Lukas seem to think so.

HT UniWatch

The following is the guest post from esteemed commenter Paris Hilton Lazy Eye. If you would like to chime in with your own guest post, please, for the love of all thing holy, email it to Hef.

As you all have probably heard about by now, Miggy Cabrera decided to prepare for one of the most important games of the season by getting absolutely obliterated and getting in a domestic dispute after coming home around 6 am. Because I know you are all interested, I wanted to share my thoughts about this with you. Don’t complain, at least this isn’t about Eli Manning.

Cabrera has been the best hitter on the Tigers this year and it isn’t even close. The fact that he has been able to put up the numbers he has while being surrounded by a bunch of guys whose batting styles resemble a gorilla humping a pumpkin is nothing short of amazing. Without Cabrera, the Tigers probably finish down near the basement with team AIDS. Read the rest of this entry »

Your move, Sideburns

As baseball fans, we all get suckered into the MVP debate every year even if we claim not to care.  It’s a rite of passage. I have my guy, you have yours, and neither of us will be changing our pick regardless of how silly our argument might be. Which side of the debate you fall on is usually based on how you define the word “value”. To some, a player’s value is measured at least partially by looking at his team’s overall success. To others, the value of a player can only be measured solely on how good he is. Being the young hipster that I am, I tend to lead towards the latter. But I’m not willing to completely dismiss the first point of view. Read the rest of this entry »

Before you begin reading, a quick disclaimer: the following is 1000 words on an individual inning between the White Sox and Royals on a mundane Monday night. I will not hold it against you if you stop reading right now.

On Monday night, the White Sox beat the Royals 8-7. It was a sloppily played game by both sides in poor weather conditions, but the most important fact if you’re a White Sox fan is that they were able to pull out the win and are now within 2 games of the Tigers in the AL Central. At least that’s what the box score will say. If you actually watched the game like I did, you would have noticed that Ozzie Guillen nearly cost his team the game in the 8th inning. Read the rest of this entry »

Throwing a perfect game has its perks, and one of those perks is showing your lack of personality to a nationwide audience.