Me Joba No Baba

In case you missed last night's Yankees/Red Sox game, Joba Chamberlain struck out a lot of Red Sox. Twelve of them in 5 and 1/3 innings to be precise. He also gave up a fair amount of runs in that time. Four of them all in the first inning to be precise. After striking out the side (after walking the first two batters of the inning) Joba busted out his classic 360 degree celebratory fist pump. The Yankees were losing the game at the time and thus this has garnered some calls on local sports talk radio. Michael Kay's defense of Chamberlain was that while he does not approve of the action, he thinks it's best for ballplayers to just be themselves and do what works for them (I wonder if he feels the same way about Jose Reyes's celebratory antics. I honestly don't know). This is a fair point but Kay can never seem to make a clean break. The next thing he said was that there were probably people who didn't like Gandhi. Not quite as bad but this only reminded me of this classic Kay rant:

That Didn't Take Long

In regards to Robinson Cano having lots of talent Michael Kay just mentioned (in a disparaging, condescending tone) how lots of people said Cano's 2008 season was a failure despite hitting 14 home runs and driving in 72 runs. Michael, you forgot to mention Cano's career-worst 86 OPS+, his hideous .305 OBP, or his lackluster defense.

So nice to have baseball, and the big Kay, back.

So close...

While scrounging for topics to keep the audience's attention during today's shellacking of the Royals in the Bronx, Kay brought up how this afternoon's crop of starting pitchers in baseball featured three players who you would consider the "ace" of their staff. Kay cited Josh Beckett, Scott Kazmir, and Johan Santana as examples. As he long-windingly made this point I thought to myself that Kay may actually be setting himself up to say something that might actually be slightly intelligent. It only took a few more seconds, however, for Kay to keep talking and make what he had to say implode in on itself. Kay said that despite the three pitchers he mentioned all being the ace of their respective staffs, Mike Mussina had a better win-loss record than all of them. The tone in his voice and choice of words Kay used implied that because of this, Mussina was a better pitcher than Beckett, Kazmir, or Santana. Anybody who knows anything about baseball knows that a pitcher's record is a very poor indicator of their actual on-field performance. Michael Kay calls approximately 130 baseball games a year, yet somehow he does not understand this.