Scapegoats: Guys who came up empty in '07
Here's a thought: Maybe baseball should've taken the millions of dollars spent on the Mitchell investigation and put it toward developing beyond-reproach drug-testing facilities and procedures. Nah, that's crazy talk. Between the Mitchell charade and whatever they're paying Dane Cook to unleash his ferocious brand of unfunniness on baseball fans everywhere, MLB has wasted an awful lot of cash this year.
Daisuke Matsuzaka, Boston Red Sox: He's been a more-than-passable third starter, but he lands on this list owing to the expectations. He was supposed to be an ace, one capable of throwing pitches that gyrate like Shakira and make a hissy-sloopy sound as they break 16 inches across the plate. Hell, we tracked his last-minute, contract-hour flight across the U.S. as if the fate of democracy hinged upon it ("Dice-K is rumored to be noshing on honey-roasted peanuts and sipping ginger ale").
Perhaps it's time to accept what Matsuzaka is (a pitcher likely to be a productive part of the BoSox rotation for the next several seasons, even if he can't throw a fastball past the league's quickest bats) and what he's not (a top-o'-the-rotation supadupastar with 11 pitches and six arm angles in his arsenal). From an aesthetic perspective, I'd still rather watch him throw than most anybody else on the planet. Sometimes, OK is good enough.
Willie Randolph, New York Mets: He's lucky that the New York tabloids are occupied with the Bill Belichick cheater/Eric Mangini snitch story arc and the Knicks/Isiah Thomas sexual-harassment trial, both of which are more in Mike Lupica's whiny-moral-arbiter wheelhouse than any incident not involving George Steinbrenner, the suggestion of hush payments, and three fetching flight attendants. It can't be ignored, though, that Willie seems to have lost his mind in the heat of what should have been a cakewalk to the NL title.
His bullpen usage patterns over the last few months have been ... um, creative. Your closer has a dead arm, so you sit him for nearly a week and then ask him to get his first six-out save of the season? Uh oh. It hasn't helped that the rest of the 'pen has regressed to the mean after a way-way-way-above-expectations 2006. Oh, about that -- my steroid scorecard still reads Guillermo Mota 1, Sammy Sosa 0.
Randolph is a bright guy and an eminently likable one. He's always the classiest guy in the room, unless John Wooden or Morgan Freeman are hanging out nearby. But here's what he had to say after the Metsies lost their fifth consecutive game in drippy, passionless style on Tuesday night: "For us, there is a calm and there is a feeling of wellness, even though it hasn't looked that way." It's time to ditch the indoors voice and throw a few chairs, fella.
