Daily Facepalm – 1.13.12

Good teammate

To the surprise of no rational Cubs fan here or elsewhere, Alfonso Soriano is a good teammate.

During his time in Chicago, Theo Epstein has come to realize what a tremendous teammate Soriano is and how willing he is to help younger players. Epstein considers Soriano an excellent clubhouse presence, and after a 32-homer, 108-RBI season, the Cubs president contends that he will need a player of note in return if he is to trade Soriano and assume a majority of the $36 million left on his contract. Soriano will only accept a deal to an East Coast team, so the Phillies, Rays, Orioles, Yankees, and Marlins are teams that could benefit by him.

I don’t believe the national media has taken a shit on Soriano like the Chicago media has in recent years, but it’s been remarkable and enjoyable to finally see Soriano treated like the player he was always known to be. Prior to joining the Cubs, Soriano was known as one of the friendliest players in the game, one of the better teammates, someone who smiled all the time and just loved to play baseball. Upon arriving in Chicago and not winning the MVP, Cy Young and Manager of the Year Award, the Chicago media decided to flip that story around and pretend otherwise.

The fans bought in. Soriano was booed relentlessly. He was called names that I can only imagine were racist. He was called lazy, a piece of shit and so on and so forth. It was disgusting and embarrassing to be a Cubs fan while it happened.

Then last year, Soriano rebounded, had a pretty good season and all of a sudden he’s a team leader, a positive clubhouse presence and someone who goes out there every day and does his job with a smile on his face. In other words, it only took the Chicago media 6 years to learn what every other person in the media already knew.

Them Chicago sportswriters are a bright bunch of people.

NFL Hall of Fame

The football Hall of Fame released the candidates for 2013. Here are all the articles that talked about steroids or performance enhancing drugs in the NFL:

It’s almost like they don’t care about steroids in the NFL. It’s also like they don’t treat the Hall of Fame like a shrine. Like in baseball. The shrine that has a bunch of piece of shit human beings already in it. What can we learn here? That the football writers are significantly smarter than about 65% of the BBWAA. And most baseball fans.

Michael Bourn market shrinks

Also in that article by Nick Cafardo was this bit about Michael Bourn:

Nobody really knows what happened to the Bourn market. He’s a top defender and a good leadoff man.

I have a pretty good idea what happened to the market. GMs have realized that signing guys who rely heavily on speed to large contracts are not such good ideas. Although the Soriano contract has actually turned out OK (in that it’s not as bad as it might have been), the Carl Crawford contract looks to be so bad at this point that it’s going to hurt the market for speed players for awhile. A leg injury and their outlook changes entirely.

Dontrelle Willis

Saw this title on Cubs.com: Inbox: Could Willis crack Cubs’ roster? A lot of shit would have to go wrong for that to happen. So let’s just hope an already bad team doesn’t have a bunch of players go down to injury making them even worse.

Nate Silver

Nate has a fantastic article about the crowded waiting room at the Hall of Fame. It’s a must read for all fans. It’s not something football fans or their sportswriters need to read, but those who root or write about baseball, yes, they need to read it.