Humor from Smizik: Intentional?
Bob Smizik is not known for humor--he is better known for being irritating--but I did get a chuckle out of his column today, entitled "Will contract extension be Littlefield's last?"
Set up ostensibly as a kind of Time-Magazine-style forced-objectivity exercise examining the low and high points of Littlefield's accomplishments to date, the column begins to get funny, not surprisingly, when after going through the standard and well-known list of Littlefield blunders, it attempts to make a case for extending his contract:
The data points, such as they are:
Not much of an argument, I would say.
Set up ostensibly as a kind of Time-Magazine-style forced-objectivity exercise examining the low and high points of Littlefield's accomplishments to date, the column begins to get funny, not surprisingly, when after going through the standard and well-known list of Littlefield blunders, it attempts to make a case for extending his contract:
Considering this litany of failure and mistake, why does this extension feel good?
Because there are lots of positives in Littlefield's record, too.
The data points, such as they are:
- He inherited bad contracts from Bonifay and managed to extricate the Pirates from them.
- He has built a good farm system (at best, this is arguable)
- "He has an air about him that inspires confidence. He seems to know what he's doing." (Uhh...what?)
- "He has brought in good people to assist him." (again, arguable)
- "...there's something to be said for continuity, a vastly underrated part of success."
Not much of an argument, I would say.
posted by Billy at 8:56 AM
5 Comments:
My favorite part was where he pretended (I'd assume) that if Littlefield keeps failing miserably that 2008 will probably be the end of his time here in Pittsburgh. You know, because it takes a full 7 years to evaluate whether a GM is doing a good job or not.
"Chris Young would look good in a Pirates uniform"?
Really? Young still might be the #3 starter at Indy if he were still with the Pirates. (He may be better than Santos but is he better than Snell, Gorz, Burnett?)
In my experience, Smizik likes to make up points and ignores most of what's really going on. I emailed him about this once and sent back a replied written in capitalized bold 20pt font that said "I'M RIGHT, I'M SMART, YOU'RE DUMB," effectively.
Seeing Young in a Pirates uniform would be more than we ever saw of the guy we traded him for (Herges).
He may be better than Snell this year time will tell. He also is 2+ years older than Snell and getting paid 2 or 3 times as much as Snell. Could the Pirates have used him last year or this year? Hell yeah. But the reality is that if he had stayed in the Pirates organization he would have been behind so many pitchers who were better than him that it is likely that he would be riding the pine for the Sacramento Kings rather than still pitching professionally.
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