Stephen A At It Again

Is the Philadelphia Inquirer allowing Stephen A Smith to audition for Baseball Tonight by allowing him to write baseball columns? I have no other idea how to explain his sudden interest in the Phillies. But it does make for some good laughs.

We hear the Phillies look better, feel better, are better, and will remain better than they were last season. But, as usual, we're still waiting to see the evidence: enough wins and a position atop the National League East.

The Phillies have played 120 games. After 120 games last year, their record was 59-61. This year it is 64-56. I only minored in Math, but to me, that seems like a five game improvement. And I didn't even have to use a calculator to determine the difference either.

But it's not too soon to point out that, even while the Phillies entered last night 19-12 since the all-star break and hot enough to be one of the better teams in the majors, all the heat and euphoria they have generated still have them looking ahead at the New York Mets and mired in yet another dogfight over a postseason berth.

You could replace Phillies/Mets with Yankees/Red Sox, Cubs/Brewers, or Indians/Tigers. There are still 40 games left to play this season. I have no idea why Stephen A is so insistent on making dire predictions with 6 weeks left to go. Probably because he doesn't know what he is talking about.

Both teams are winning, but not as much as they should.

How much "should" they be winning? The Mets have the second best record in the NL. The Phillies have the fourth best record. Atlanta has the fifth best record in the league. This seems about right. But they should be winning more. Should.

As of last weekend, nobody but the Yankees was better than the Phillies offensively.

Who in their right mind would compare an American League Team to a National League Team? The Yankees' 9 hole hitter has a .818 OPS. The Phillies' 9 hole hitter has a .498 OPS. Surprisingly, having a designated hitter will allow a team to improve their offense. That statement should have read, No team in the National League is better than the Phillies offensively (unless you ask Joe Morgan).

The Mets have been reduced to relying on the heroics of Moises Alou (.583 batting average and nine RBIs in three games)

Welcome to the world of limited sample size. I am still in a bit of shock that he would actually use Moises Alou's last three games to justify the word heroics. All he had to do was point to Alou's stats for the month of August, which have been very good. Instead he used the last three days.

Stephen A: We sure have had some great weather in the month of August.

Me: It rained for the first ten days.

Stephen A: Yeah but it has been sunny since Tuesday.

Me: I hate you.

Stephen A Smith's Expert Analysis

Stephen A Smith wears many hats, though none of those hats fit him very well. And I'm not blaming the hat maker. His time is stretched very thin by his responsibilities at ESPN, both with television and radio, so maybe we, the readers of the Philadelphia Inquirer, should excuse it when he writes his mandatory column about the Phillies? Hmmmm? Nope, not possible. Just because he is a busy guy does not give him a free pass for the nonsense he writes. And it is a lot of inane nonsense.

Ryan Howard is a stud, and the Phillies are lucky to have him.

I agree.

He is the team's lone bona fide slugger and the man largely responsible for their contender status in the National League playoff picture.

There are so many things wrong with this sentence, I don't even know where to start. Is Ryan Howard the best home run hitter on the team? Yes, undoubtedly so. But Chase Utley has a comparable slugging percentage this season and was on pace to break the million year old record for most doubles in a season until his injury. Does that not qualify Chase Utley as a "bona fide slugger"?

If the definition of “bona fide slugger” is a guy that hits the most home runs, which it appears that is what Stephen A is implying, then Dave Kingman was a bona fide slugger in comparison to the majority of player that have ever played baseball. If your definition of “bona fide slugger” is a guy with a very good slugging percentage, then Dick Allen would have been considered a "bona fide slugger". And I’m sure if you asked most people, they’d consider Dick Allen to be a "bona fide slugger" than Dave Kingman. So who is their right mind can claim that Ryan Howard is the Phillies' lone bona fide slugger?

He takes it one step further by claiming that Howard is the man “largely” responsible for the Phillies’ contender status. What a ridiculous statement. The Phillies have the best offense in the National League. Ryan Howard is a big part of that. But so are Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Aaron Rowand, and Pat Burrell. To see that any one of those guys is largely responsible for the Phillies’ current status is a joke. In fact, people should focus their attention less on why the Phillies are still contender and more on why they aren't running away with the division.

As we've discussed many times, the Phillies offense is awesome. Very awesome. So awesome that it has taken the putrid performance of Adam Eaton, the poor performance of Jaime Moyer, injuries to Freddy Garcia and Jon Lieber, and a mediocre to bad bullpen for the Phillies to remain behind the mediocre Mets. But I don’t imagine Stephen A Smith actually pays that much attention to the Phillies, what with his busy job of yelling on television and radio. Plus he probably had already filled up his quota of Sixers and Eagles columns for the summer, so he had to write something about the Phillies. This is just the first thing he thought of without doing any sort of research.

Almost everywhere you look, you see raised eyebrows when home runs are flying out of ballparks, when pitchers approaching their mid-40s are still managing to win 10-plus games with ERAs under 3.00.

This year, the National League is averaging 1.00 home runs per game. That is the lowest league wide average since 1998.

There is exactly one pitcher in all of baseball that is over the age of 33 with an ERA under 3.50.

Adam Eaton is on pace to win 12 games with an ERA of 6.36. In fact, 43 pitchers won 10 games in the National League last year. I don't know when ten wins became some sort of seasonal milestone.

This is what we call a series of exaggerated statements by an author that has no other way to support his point.

After losing to the Braves, 5-4, on Friday night, the Phillies stood at 17-11 since the all-star break.

The Phillies won on Friday night, 5-4. Which is the complete opposite of what Stephen A wrote. And after Friday night they were 17-10 since the All-Star break. But who cares about facts? The Philadelphia Inquirer certainly does not. How can you take someone’s opinion seriously when they can’t even get a simple fact on whether a team won or lost the night before you send the article in?

The Phillies are still a second-place team. They are still a team with a suspect bullpen, with no dominant closer.

If Brett Myers is not considered a dominant closer, I don’t know who is. Stephen A really likes to throw around subjective adjectives. And unfortunately, these ridiculous statements will incite the mindless drones that read the paper, and they will then in turn use these same statements when arguing why Pat Burrell is worthless and how they are just waiting for the Phillies to "choke".

Bona fide slugger. Dominant closer. Those adjectives sure do seem important when you first read them. But they don't mean anything. Hack Columnist Tip 124: When you can't make your point using facts, just use qualitative statements. You can't defend them, but other people can't argue against them either.

Take away Milwaukee's Prince Fielder and Ryan Braun, and it's a one-man race to NL MVP honors.

First off, Ryan Braun in not even in the conversation for NL MVP. Assuming he plays every game from now til the end of the season, that will add 114 games. While the baseball writers have made many questionable decisions in the past, I would be shocked if they were dumb enough to consider a guy who played less than 120 games for MVP.

Now to the statement about a one-man race to NL MVP. I'm really not sure who that one man is. Chipper Jones? Miguel Cabrera? Hanley Ramirez? Chase Utley? Matt Holliday? Albert Pujols?

Yes, Ryan Howard has a lot of home runs. But there are a lot of guys in the NL who are having very good to great years that also will garner consideration for the MVP award. And it is only August 12, way too early to be handing out MVP awards.

This article is just a microcosm of the problems that exist with The Philadelphia Inquirer. They are supposed to be the “elite” newspaper in the Philadelphia area, yet they continue to print columns that are either subjective opinion with no supporting facts or factual statements that are 100% incorrect. But hey, it gives us something to whine about on the Internet. That is, as soon as we are done playing with our calculators in our parents' basements.