Tommy's Thoughts #3

I'm releasing the column a day later than usual. I wanted to give you guys some time to ponder the implications of the new power rankings, and besides, I spent Monday chilling out and celebrating Patriotism. Since LM headquarters are in the fair Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the organization gets Patriots' Day as a paid holiday. To everyone out there who doesn't enjoy this patriotic bonus, it sucks to be you!

The day off gave me a chance to clean up my home office, which I trashed last night after DLBP's shocking Sunday comeback. While sweeping up shards of glass from several shattered picture frames and plastering over the multiple holes I punched in the wall, it occurred to me - last week's loss was a hell of a lot like the shellacking the British Army took in Concord a few hundred years ago.

Let's recap, since I know you ignoramuses have no idea what I'm talking about.

LAST WEEK


The biggest, meanest army in the world marches into territory they've long dominated. Expecting token resistance, they set their sights on the rebel leaders and their stash of weaponry. However, having squandered the element of surprise, they find their would-be prisoners have flown the coop. They march on to capture the cannons, but suddenly find themselves assailed on all sides by common men armed to the teeth. While the vaunted fighting force attempts to fight in a conventional manner, the rebels' guerrilla tactics leave them helpless and confused. They flee for their base and are only saved from a complete rout by last-minute reinforcements.

The Battles of Lexington and Concord...or LM vs. DLBP week 3?

Going into the week, I had my team geared up to outslug Manny Ramirez and outhit Jimmy Rollins, thinking that would be the key to beating DLBP. As late as Saturday, this plan was working perfectly - mammoth performances from Chipper Jones and Chase Utley totally neutralized Manny's similarly amazing line. Rollins, struggling with an injury, had one hit all week. LM smacked the cover off the ball and delivered our best performances yet on the pitching end. The score was strongly in our favor - 14-1 one day, 11-5 the next. And yet...

That John Forest is a sly devil. Although he potentially had much to lose, he trotted out Jair Jurrjens and Tim Wakefield on Sunday, while confining C.J. Wilson to the bench in a totally genius move. Meanwhile, he coached up his offense to go after some of the less awe-inspiring statistical categories. When the smoke cleared from the LM offensive barrage - 16 dongs is a new one-week high for the 2008 LOWV season - we were stunned to find ourselves on the short end of an 11-8 stick. DLBP's secret: capturing most of the pitching categories, and offensive stats like SB, 3B, K and GIDP. The guys on his roster I thought would matter, mattered not. His offense eluded my grasp.

Safely benched, Wilson's Sunday afternoon meltdown left no blemish on the Pies' line, while the starters and 'pen came up with 3 wins and ridiculously low ERA and WHIP to dominate the pitching cats. If it wasn't for LM free agent pickups like Cliff Lee - the Lord Percy-equivalent in this increasingly strained metaphor - it could have gotten really ugly. As it stands, we will retreat to lick our wounds after a painful defeat.

As difficult as it is for me to admit, DLBP should now rightfully rank above LM in any evaluation of the teams to this point. A combination of excellent roster-building (with a special tip of the hat for picking Jurrjens in the second round of the rookie draft) and fine team management can be credited for the win. Well done, D'Lucious. You asshole!

THIS WEEK

Bluster Foney ranked Snaturals 8th, just four spots behind LM, in yesterday's power rankings. That's all well and good, but an analysis of our Week 3 stats shows a wide disparity between the two teams - LM would have taken it 14-5, with Snatty taking 2B, 3B, offensive K, GIDP, and pitching K. While Ortiz has awakened from his slumber, it's unclear if his breakout will be able to close the gap in HR (16 to 4) or OPS (.960 to .804) between our clubs last week. Hint: no.

Still, Snatty is not to be underestimated. Last year he won our two matches with an aggregate score of 19-18, including a 9-9 tie towards the end of the season. How the hell did this happen? I'm still at a loss to explain it. It seems to me that this stat is the Ocasek/Poriskova of last year's season. The more you think about it, the less it makes sense and the more your mind hurts. Move along, nothing to see here.

Keys to victory this week: Keep mashing. Keep that bullpen intact. Keep grabbing quality FAs while Snatty canoodles with his woman and flies off on vacations. Keep that child molester Orlando Cabrera away from LM's ball girls.

If we don't win a solid victory this week, there will be floggings.

INCISIVE OBSERVATIONS

Lacey Underalls: 43-13-10. Peaver and K. Felix dominant. Fuck me!! I had to watch my DVD of the 2006 LOWV season just to get my emotions in check.

FC vs. PMF matched top offense against top pitching, though the latter has been hindered by injuries. The result was a predictably close 12-9 score. PMF did well to hold the line against the absurdly hot bats of the Clatter, but the Poor Man still finds himself looking up at teams like Guapo and BB, who he has seemingly outplayed thus far this year, but against a much tougher schedule. On the plus side for Bobby Walls: Doumit and Doumit and Doumit well.

Just one week after an encouraging victory over Guapo, the wheels came off for unB and he was destroyed by Equipe. Not only did this loss drop unBeleaguerable to his customary 13th in the standings, it also allowed ERdR to inexplicably claim that it is the 7th best team in the league. Hahhahahahahaa, no seriously, hahahahaahaaaa stop you're killing me.

I'm not sure that Bonomatory Influence's roster would even make a decent major league team.

Who did BB blow to get his schedule? The defending champ still has yet to post impressive numbers but notched his second straight win over an increasingly desperate Flash and his 203,893 first basemen. Pinning his hopes on Gallardo, Liriano and Bailey is an incredibly risky strategy. But who are we kidding - this GM is so persistent, he almost talked his way into Mike Jones' quarters after dark. (Quoth the skipper of Mothership: "Dude, you're crossing a line here.") Do NOT count the champ out. Rick is already tinkering with his team, grabbing Nick B-burn and kicking tires on trade possibilities across the league.

Speaking of The Mothership, folks, this run is for real. Jones' talent evaluation skills are clearly on point this season, with his big auction prize Fukudome kicking ass and newly-slim Boof Bonser falling off the roster, just as predicted. After handling Snatty, Mikeman is up to 3rd place and likely to stay in playoff contention as some perennial powers still struggle to pull themselves together. The only thing missing from this Cinderella story are some epic boasts on Shortpants to accompany the team's 32-22-12 record.

Snatty and unB continue to rival one another for most dingers yielded - by my calculation they are now even at 26. (The Record Book feature is sweet but they sure do take their sweet time updating that shit.)

Two bad offenses battled to a draw in the Guapo/VR tilt. Guapo won a convincing victory by virtue of his solid pitching staff, including an excellent outing from Zach Grienke. VR tallied no holds and no saves, keeping his team in contention for the worst bullpen of 2008.

OVERHEARD AROUND THE LEAGUE

When is a slump not a slump? When it's a conspiracy involving vagina.

Ryan Howard's early season lull is not unusual; it often takes top sluggers a while to round into form, and we at LM have little doubt that as the temperature warms and the ABs mount, RyHow will again be cranking bombs out of the yard on a nightly basis.

However, we didn't make it to the playoffs two straight years by crossing our fingers and wishing for luck. LM leaves no stone unturned when it comes to ensuring success. And recently, we've begun to wonder if Howard's April swoon isn't purely due to early-season rust. Turns out that instead of honing his stance and watching video on opposing pitchers, Howard is working his fingers raw sending texts to a piece of pale Philly tail - and LM security has become very concerned that the young lady in question has an ulterior motive...

Following up on anonymous tips and Internet message board gossip, LM operatives have determined that this woman, known to us thus far only by a pseudonym, "Wet Blanket Wanda," has captivated young Ryan with her feminine wiles and feminine boobs. "He's texting her all the time, sending her tickets," reports my source. Ready for the bombshell? WBW's roommate is the sister of an LOWV general manager! Freak coincidence, or malevolent plot to derail LM's season?? I think you know the answer.

In case you're curious about LM's strategy in these types of situations, I will refer you to Season III, Episode 10 of The Wire.

(In general, we take most of our organizational cues from Marlo Stanfield.)

SHORTPANTS - MY TAKE

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

LM PENIS / GENIUS

This week's penis: Frank Thomas. The Big Hurt flew off the handle this week when he learned that LM's Thursday lineup included an idle Jeff Kent at UTIL, while Frank sat the pine. He stormed into my office with his chubby face filled with rage. "Tommy, what the fuck?!" he cried, all pissy because I started a guy with an off-day instead of him. I tried to calmly explain that we had huge leads in all the categories he's good at and needed to preserve our averages and K totals, but he just kept bitching, so after about 30 seconds I blew out of my chair and we were into a full-scale screaming match. I called him a washed-up, slow-bat, Mitchell-report-snitching mother fucker; he called me some names that I won't repeat here, because it's MY goddamned column!

Needless to say, we agreed to disagree, and I cut that AARP-card-carrying shit bird before the week was out.

This week's genius: Larry "Chipper" Jones, whose Week 3 line was enough to make a grown man cry. 6 R, 13 H, 2 2B, 4 HR, 7 RBI, 3K / 1 GIDP, .565 AVG, 1.774 OPS. Honorable mention: The magnificent Chase Utley, who as of this writing has homered FIVE games in a row. Gentlemen, to you I say: You're the best! Around! Nothing's gonna ever keep you down! You are to fantasy baseball what this clip is to Bollywood musical numbers.

DANK FARM NUGS

Some draft picks, like Jurrjens and Cueto, are already making news in the LOWV. All the while, Hershiser's Heroes continue to simmer on the back burner. So far, it looks like Orel's charges are still on track for major league stardom. Our hurlers are straight-up dominant. Rick Porcello is assassinating hitters in high-A (0.64 ERA in 3 stars: 12K in 14 innings), leading Jim Leyland to say "This is a different cat. He's not in awe of anything." Phillippe Aumont was untouchable in a lengthy outing for the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers and Aaron Poreda induced many a ground ball to lead the Winston-Salem Warthogs to victory.

On the offensive end, Jason Heyward continues to see the ball well, and Josh Vitters smacked three dubs in his first game with Class A Peoria, a city I have obliterated hundreds of times while playing the video game Rampage.

I know you don't care now. But like Mothership last year, you'll soon come running into my arms for a bushel of my fine, fine prospects in exchange for some 30something on your roster...

ENDQUOTE

"Wanger's been on a tear, though." Chris Sahl, convincing me to lay aside my doubts and start Chien-Ming Wang against the Red Sox on 4/16.

Wang's line? 4 IP, 8 ER. Thanks for the advice, commissioner of lies.