The All Kick-Ass Century Team

Who says you can't make up an All Century Team eleven years into the century? Answer: Everybody. So if you fall into the category of everybody you can just think of it as the all 2000-2010 team. That's catchier anyways. Here we go!

1st Team

C- Jorge Posada
1B- Albert Pujols
2B- Chase Utley
3B- Alex Rodriguez
SS- Derek Jeter
LF- Barry Bonds
CF- Andruw Jones
RF- Ichiro Suzuki

SP- Roy Halladay
SP- Randy Johnson
SP- C.C. Sabathia
SP- Johan Santana
SP- Roy Oswalt
RP- Mariano Rivera
RP- Billy Wagner
RP- Joe Nathan

2nd Team

C- Joe Mauer
1B- Lance Berkman*
2B- Jeff Kent
3B- Chipper Jones
SS- Miguel Tejada
LF- Manny Ramirez
CF- Carlos Beltran
RF- Vladimir Guerrero

SP- Curt Schilling
SP- Andy Pettitte
SP- Javier Vazquez**
SP- Mike Mussina
SP- Tim Hudson
RP- Jonathan Papelbon
RP- Francisco Rodriguez
RP- Francisco Cordero

*Berkman split about half his time between the outfield and first base. Most of his defensive value came from first base, so I chose to put him there.
**Before you crucify me, you should know that if I strictly went by Fangraphs' WAR, Vazquez would actually be on the first team. Yeah, he's THAT good. However, I gave Santana the nod over him because Vazquez's only real advantage over him was innings pitched. Santana has easily been the more dominant pitcher.

So there you have it. The best players of the century. I expect both these teams to hold up all the way until year 2100, as there will most certainly not be a better shortstop than Miguel Tejada or a better reliever than Francisco Cordero over the next 89 years.

Keep this post bookmarked. Your great, great grandchildren will be impressed by my prophecy.

REPRESENT!

One of the commentators on TBS right now during the Yankees/Twins game, talking about Andy Pettitte:

Sometimes you can get guys out on just reputation alone.

Fact: three of Pettitte's eleven wins this year came without him ever throwing a single pitch. The opposing teams (Seattle, Cleveland, and Baltimore) saw his name on the scorecard, said "fuck that" and waited to take their chances against Burnett and Vazquez (who, coincidentally, both lost eight of their own starts based solely on reputation).

I need the Twins to win at least one game in this series if I'm gonna have any chance at winning the $10,000 "Bracket Challenge" on MLB.com. Hopefully the Yanks know about Mauer's rep and just give him second base every time he steps up to the plate.

The Not-So-Social Morgan Network

School just started up for me again, which means boring professors galore and plenty of free time to look for pieces of sports literature that frustratingly tickle my funny bone in just the right spot. What better way to come back from a long hiatus than to take a look at 'ol Joe's "JoeChat."

IT'S T-SHIRT TIIIIIIIIIIIIIME!

Jay (South Korea: Love ur work Joe! Last night's gem against Washington locked up Halladay for Cy, do you agree?

Joe Morgan (11:09 AM: Well, the fact that Jimenez has not been able to win, I would say yes. Jimenez has pitched well, but he hasn't been able to win and Halladay has won. I think with the fact that the Phillies have won that Halladay will win it.

Number of forms of "win" used in paragraph: 5
Number of forms of "win" necessary in a Cy Young argument: 0
Number of min left in this boring International Business class: 97
Number of billion dollars Mark Zuckerberg has made from Facebook: 22

M@ (Hattiesburg, MS): As wide open as the AL CY Young race is, I haven't heard Jon Lester mentioned once, even though his numbers are better than C.C.'s. across the board, an equal to Felix. For instance, opponents hit .243 off CC, .213 against Felix and .214 against Lester. Did his flirtation with a no-hitter against the Yankees Saturday put him on the map, finally? Who would you give the CY to?

Joe Morgan (11:12 AM): I think he's always been in the race in my mind. I like what Felix Hernandez has done, but he has won only 12 games.

Irrelevant.

People say that he doesn't get support from his teamamtes,

Hernandez has 12 losses. In those 12 losses, the Mariners have scored a grand total of 14 runs. 14. As in two more runs than the number of games lost. As in 1.2 runs scored per game. For 12 starts, saying he didn't get support from his teammates was almost literally true. He was literally 1.2 runs of support away from getting literally no support from his teammates. Literally.

but guess what, every award is a team award.

No it's not. As a matter of fact, I can't think of any actual "team" awards besides the World Series Title. Other than the super obvious ones like Silver Sluggers, Gold Gloves, and MVP's, I mean.

Anyways, among A.L. pitchers with at least 160 innings pitched, Sabathia ranks 8th in run support with 7.31 runs per game. Hernandez is dead last (42nd) with 3.75 runs per game.

You can't win the MVP without your teammates.

Yes you can. The M.V.P. award, according to trustworthy Wikipedia, stands for "Most Valuable Player", not "Most Valuable Team-Player As Deemed By Joe Morgan And His Painstakingly Outdated Chass-Like Ways Of Looking At Things" (or M.V.T.P.A.D.B.J.M.A.H.P.O.C.L.W.O.L.A.T.).

Do we look at an MVP candidate and say his team didn't give him a chance to drive in runs?

Who's "we"? Because my answer to your patronizing, sarcastic, condescending, leading, naive, ignorant, arrogant-poised question is... HELL YES!

Also, the Seattle Marines scored less runs than any other team in baseball this year. The Yankees scored the most. You will ignore this information.

The fact is that Felix has won 12 games and CC has won 20.

True fact (well, technically King Felix has 13 wins now, but at the time of the JoeChat this was a true fact). You know what else is a true fact? Felix beat C.C. in ERA, FIP, xFIP, WAR, K's, IP, CG, K/9, BB/9, K/BB, HR/9, and WHIP. True fact.

It is harder to win in a championship environment in New York than in Felix's situation.

Yeah, it's easier to win when your team scores 3.75 runs for you per game and more difficult to win when your team scores 7.31 runs per game. Poor Sabathia man... King Felix has it easy, bro! He's got a castle and a queen and servants and shit!

Just look at AJ Burnett this year.

Awesome example. For heaven's sake just last year this guy threw 207 innings, struck out 195 batters, and posted a 3.1 WAR! What happened? All of the sudden he comes to New York and can't pitch anymore?! Are you kidding me??? Sack up and grow a pair Burnett, this is the Damn Yankees!!!



(**browses at Burnett's Baseball-Reference page**)



....Nevermind all that. Apparently Burnett pitched for the Yankees last year too. My bad.

Felix has done a good job this year, but he's not in the same difficulty level of pitching this year as CC.

Major League Baseball has been around since 1869. During that span the world has witnessed things such as the invention of the automobile, airplane, radio, television, air conditioning, computer, telephone, Coca-Cola, Beatles, Jersey Shore, and--above all-- Facebook. The world has developed drastically in almost every way over the past 141 years. However, what has not developed is the ability of sportswriters (specifically Joseph Morgs) to ignore the ever-so-attractive "wins" category when evaluating pitchers. I'm fairly certain that even Snooki could understand the basic concept if it was written at a 3rd grade level on a spray tan can label.

I'm tired. Class is over. Time to devote the next couple hours to coming up with an idea that will allow me to--much like Mark Zuckerberg did after inventing Facebook--drop out of school and become a billionaire.

!!!!

Attention, Fire Joe Morgan fans: happy to announce that FJM will ride again, this September 22, on Deadspin. #FJM

If you come across some hilariously bad sportswriting, (I know: what are the chances?), email us through the site. #FJM

Via Twitter

Obscure Basketball News

Apparently, something happened tonight. Too bad no one publicized it.

Apocalypse

ESPN SportsCenter just used WAR in displaying how valuable Joe Mauer has been to the Twins over the past three seasons... no joke.

...What are we gonna write about now?

WAR All-Stars - First Month

So in the pre-season, I did a little post creating an objective All-Star team for each league using just WAR from CHONE. To keep myself busy, I figured at the end of each month, I could do an update using FanGraphs' WAR so far through the season. This team will be assembled using the roster rules for the actual All-Star game (including the recent update to 34). For NL DH, I'll just plug in the best wRAA who isn't starting.

Of course, at this point, this should be mostly hilarious thanks to a pretty small sample size. That, of course, makes it even more fun. One small difference from FanGraphs' WAR: I believe in looking at as many reasonable data points of defense as possible, so for the defensive component, I'll be taking the difference between DRS and UZR. This will probably be a little wonky because UZR, I believe, doesn't update as frequently as DRS, and one week of data makes a lot of difference at this point. Oh well, I don't particularly care. I'm also going to add DRS to pitchers.

American League
Starters
SP - Francisco Liriano, MIN (1.1)
C - Joe Mauer, MIN (1.0)
1B - Justin Morneau, MIN (1.5)
2B - Robinson Cano, NYY (1.7)
3B - Evan Longoria, TB (1.3)
SS - Alex Gonzalez, TOR (1.1)
OF - Nelson Cruz, TEX (1.6)
OF - Carl Crawford, TB (1.4)
OF - Vernon Wells, TOR (1.4)
DH - Jose Guillen, KC (0.6)

Bench
C - Matt Wieters, BAL (0.5)
1B - Paul Konerko, CHW (1.0)
1B - Daric Barton, OAK (1.o)
1B - Kendry Morales, LAA (0.9)
1B - Miguel Cabrera, DET (0.9)
2B - Ben Zobrist, TB (0.9)
3B - Alberto Callaspo, KC (0.8)
SS - Elvis Andrus, TEX (0.8)
OF - Franklin Gutierrez, SEA (1.4)
OF - Austin Jackson, DET (1.1)
OF - Magglio Ordonez, DET (1.1)
OF - Shin-Soo Choo, CLE (1.1)
DH - Vladimir Guerrero, TEX (0.5)

Bullpen
SP - John Danks, CHW (1.1)
SP - Ricky Romero, TOR (1.0)
SP - CC Sabathia, NYY (1.0)
SP - Carl Pavano, MIN (0.9)
SP - Clay Bucholz, BOS (0.8)
SP - Matt Garza, TB (0.9)
SP - Feliz Hernandez, SEA (0.8)
SP - Andy Pettitte, NYY (0.8)
RP - Kevin Gregg, TOR (0.8)
RP - Joel Zumaya, DET (0.7)
RP - Matt Thornton, CHW (0.6)


Nation League
Starters
SP - Roy Halladay, PHI (1.7)
C - Brian McCann, ATL (0.7)
1B - Albert Pujols, STL (1.2)
2B - Chase Utley, PHI (1.5)
3B - Pablo Sandoval, SF (1.0)
SS - Stephen Drew, ARI (1.0)
OF - Colby Rasmus, STL (1.6)
OF - Josh Willingham, WSN (1.2)
OF - Michael Bourn, HOU (1.1)
DH - Ryan Braun, MIL (1.0)

Bench
C - Bengie Molina, SF (0.5)
1b - Adrian Gonzalez, SD (1.0)
1B - Joey Votto, CIN (0.9)
2B - Kelly Johnson, ARI (1.3)
3B - David Wright, NYM (0.9)
3B - Andy LaRoche, PIT (0.9)
3B- Mark Reynolds, ARI (0.9)
3B - Chase Headley, SD (0.9)
SS - Rafael Furcal, LAD (1.0)
OF - Marlon Byrd, CHC (1.0)
OF - Ryan Ludwick, STL (0.9)
OF - Andrew McCutchen, PIT (0.8)

Bullpen
SP - Tim Lincecum, SF (1.5)
SP - Ubaldo Jimenez, COL (1.5)
SP - Adam Wainwright, STL (1.4)
SP - Johan Santana, NYM (1.1)
SP - Ryan Dempster, CHC (1.1)
SP - Brad Penny, STL (1.0)
SP - Josh Johnson, FLA (0.9)
SP - Randy Wells, CHC (0.9)
SP - Jonathan Sanchez, SF (0.9)
RP - Carlos Marmol, CHC (0.6)
RP - Tyler Clippard, WSN (0.6)
RP - Sean Marshall, CHC (0.6)