Cedric Benson Arrested Again; Dan Rooney Heard Yelling “Hey Look Over There!”

ESPN:

AUSTIN, Texas — Cedric Benson is in trouble with the law again.

An Austin police spokeswoman says the Cincinnati Bengals running back was arrested on Tuesday and booked into the Travis County jail where he posted bail and was released. An arrest affidavit says he punched an employee of an Austin, Texas, bar on May 30 after being kicked out for getting into an altercation with another patron.

What a criminal! Everyone’s looking at this and not at the Steelers, right? Let’s all pay attention to these criminal Bengals and how criminally criminal they are! Buncha criminals!

Come to think of it, I’m having trouble remembering what happened to the Steelers this past offseason… I know they re-signed Antwaan Randle-El, I remember Limas Sweed got injured…

OHHH! Now I remember the big thing! They hired Sean Kugler as their new offensive line coach. Crazy offseason, huh? Nice to know the Bengals are still the lone controversial crime-related team in the division. Yessiree, sure are criminals over there. Can’t believe they root for such criminals. Cough.

Another Huntington Trades Column: Digging Up The Dead Horse’s Corpse And Having Sex With It

I am not getting into another full-on argument about the Pirates’ trades (my doctor says if I continue ranting about these at my current pace, I’m looking at a heart attack sometime around next Wednesday – and yes, I only have a doctor for the purpose of old timey jokes), but I will make one comment about Bob Smizik’s blog post today, entitled “Huntington trading report card: F”.

Nowhere in the column does he mention the words “free agency” or “years of control”. This makes the entire column irrelevant.

This is a flagrant piece of statistical cherry-picking and conveniently-ignorant journalism designed to further preach to a choir of irate Pirate fans, rather than an attempt to make a rational, legitimate case against Huntington’s executive decisions. It’s irresponsible, manipulative, and offers nothing to the greater discourse of a well-worn topic.

I’ll stop there – I can feel my heart shooting me a dirty look.

UPDATE: A friend of mine couldn’t resist leaving the following lengthy comment on Smizik’s post…

Sidney Crosby Loses Hart Trophy To Guy Who Scored Twenty-Two Fewer Goals

Complaining about season-end trophies is the second most pointless waste of breath in sports behind complaining about All-Star selections, so I’ll keep this short:

Henrik Sedin won the Hart Trophy over Sidney Crosby.

Henrik Sedin scored 29 goals this season, Sidney Crosby scored 51.

Henrik Sedin finished with 112 points, Sidney Crosby finished with 109.

Henrik Sedin plays on a line with his identical twin Daniel, who’s averaged over 30 goals per season over the last four years. Sidney Crosby plays on a line with Bill Guerin, who is 39, and Chris Kuntiz, who missed 32 games and finished the season with 13 goals, neither of whom is Crosby’s identical twin.

Vancouver finished the ’08-’09 season with 100 points (3rd place in the West) when Sedin was not the MVP, and 103 points this season (3rd place in the West) when Sedin was the MVP. The Penguins finished the ’08-’09 season with 99 points (4th place in the East) when Crosby was not the MVP, and 101 points this season (4th place in the East) when Crosby was also not the MVP.

Daniel Sedin, Vancouver’s second-best forward, missed 19 games this season. Evgeni Malkin, Pittsburgh’s second-best forward, missed 15 games this season.

Which of the above statistics jumps out the most? The fact that Vancouver finished slightly higher than Pittsburgh in a tougher conference, on a team which also has arguably the best goalie in the NHL? Or the fact that Sidney Crosby scored twenty-two more goals than Henrik Sedin while playing on a much worse line?

I’m guessing that the hockey media isn’t blind to the fact that promoting someone other than Crosby and Ovechkin for a change — as NBC found out during the Olympics with Ryan Miller — helps the sport grow as a whole, and thus benefits everyone. I only say this because, if you didn’t notice, Sidney Crosby had a better individual season than Sedin and was far, far more valuable to his team, and did not win the NHL’s MVP Award.

Like I said, second biggest waste of breath in sports.

Carlos Beltran’s Back

The Commercial That Got Dino Ciccarelli Into The Hall Of Fame

Dino Ciccarelli was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame today.

Ciccarelli had a more than deserving career, but personally, I’ll always remember him specifically because I used to sing this “Dino Pebbles” commercial whenever he had the puck (both in real life and in Sega Games):

“D-D-D-Dino, stop lickin’ my face!” is gonna be on his Hall Of Fame plaque. If they run it by me first, I mean. Which I assume they will.

I Know, I Know, I’m Twelve

I had the site Fangraphs.com open in one of my Firefox tabs, and my 8th-Grade brain couldn’t help but chuckle at this fortuitous abbreviation:

Now that’s my kind of website! (spoken in my old timey comedian voice). Perfect for multitasking.

Pens Re-Sign Matt Cooke, Clinch Three More Years Of Lame Booing In Boston

P-G:

Left winger Matt Cooke has agreed to a three-year contract with the Penguins.

His annual salary-cap hit will be $1.8 million.

Cooke, a fixture on the Penguins’ third line and their penalty-killing unit, would have become an unrestricted free agent if not re-signed by July 1.

3 years at $1.8 mil per seems maybe a teentsy bit high for a third-liner, but this signing falls squarely into the category of “sometimes it’s better to slightly overpay and just have the dude” signings, like a mini Brooks Orpik deal.

The Pens probably could’ve replaced most of Cooke’s on-paper production with a Wilkes-Barre candidate or cheaper free agent, but Cooke has scored a more-than-respectable 28 goals in two seasons with the Pens, he’s still only 31, he’s been healthy for most of two years, and his role as a veteran agitator as well as a familiar, known quantity on their third line makes this deal worth it for the Pens. Plus even if a third-liner is slightly overpaid relative to his role, we’re still only talking about a $1.8 mil cap hit, and in the grand scheme of things, the Pens wouldn’t gain much shaving $1 mil or so off their payroll by rolling the dice on a cheaper, inexperienced replacement.

Overall, this makes a lot of sense for both sides. It’s a painless, no-brainery start to what should become an increasingly difficult offseason for Ray Shero and Co.

This Brandon Moss Piece Is The Saddest Thing I’ve Ever Read

Bucsdugout directs our attention to this Post-Gazette piece on outfielder Brandon Moss, about how he’s rediscovered his swing since being demoted to AAA and his new, positive outlook on his baseball career. Not really mentioned in the piece? Brandon Moss is still a really, really terrible baseball player.

“I have been doing pretty well the past month or so,” said Moss, batting .236 until a midweek 0-for-10 stretch amid the attention on a third Class AAA Indianapolis teammate to get promoted within one week –none of them named Brandon Douglas Moss.

So…he was hitting .236, which is terrible, then went on an 0-for-10 stretch when Jose Tabata and Pedro Alvarez were in the midst of being called up, which made him unable to hit, because…[ERROR:UNDEFINED] In short, he was hitting poorly, then hit worse. Why are these numbers being mentioned in an article about how Moss has really turned things around in the minors?

Fortunately, as us stat-folks know, and Moss himself proclaims, batting average is hardly the be-all and end-all of a player’s worth:

“To me, average doesn’t mean everything, because you could hit five balls hard and right at someone. Me, I look at on-base percentage [.295] and slugging percentage [.380], just look at those numbers. If your on-base percentage is good, in relativity to your average, and your slugging percentage is up there, that tells you what you are swinging at and how hard you are hitting it.”

Ow. OWWWWWW. Moss talks about how OBP and Slg are more important than batting average (true!) and about how his .295 OBP and .380 Slg relative to his average means that he’s in some way playing well (not true!) A .295 OBP is sub-Jack Wilsonian. A .295 for a corner outfielder in triple-A is absolutely pathetic, and should in no way be mentioned in a newspaper article unless that article is titled “Here Is A Baseball Player With A Terrible On-Base-Percentage”.

This honestly may be the most depressing article I’ve ever read. Not “depressing” like, “what a bad article” (although it’s that too), but “depressing” in the literal sense of, this human being is delusional about his career and the author is perpetuating this delusion and I am now a sadder human being than I was before reading this.

Did Chuck Finder at no point really say to himself “Wow, all of these facts are the opposite of what Brandon Moss is saying to me – by printing them next to his quotes, it makes him sound delusional and will depress anyone who reads this”? Deadlines truly are a powerful, depressing force.

NEWS IN BR…F: Friday, June 18th, 2010

• Americans To European Friends Of Theirs: “We Did Get Robbed, Right?”






• MacLean Named Next Coach To Be Fired By Devils






• Phil Jackson Now Just One Ring Shy Of The Mandarin






• Canadiens Trade Wrong Goalie To Blues In New “Splitting Heirs” Remake






• Rob Blake Announces Retirement, Will Play Wing On Bruins’ Power Play

The Pirates Suck, But At Least They Suck And Now Have Guys Worth Owning In Fantasy

Ten game losing streak, shmen shmame schmoozing schmeak! (I sure showed that losing streak!)

The Pirates are terrible and really hard to watch, but at least they now have some dudes you can pick up in your fantasy baseball league without being a total A-hole! Here’s the front page of Yahoo! Fantasy today:

Woooo!!!! Raise the Jolly Roger, the Pirates have three potentially above-average humans on their baseball team!!!

[Cue “We Are Family” then cut to footage of this Yahoo Fantasy homepage during the next FSN Rain Delay]