June 5th, not bad

Nice to see the season end as early as it did. Much better than in 2006 when the Oilers-Canes series lasted until about the middle of September. Kudos to Wings I guess, but that's enough of that for a while now. Time for that franchise to have a prolonged slump, the place wasn't sold for early round games and I don't know if it was the TV feed or not, but the building sounded awfully quiet. Much louder in Pittsburgh anyways, though I did notice that when watching games on CBC HD, the crowd noise was much more drowned out than on regular CBC. So well done to the Detroit Braves, now get lost.

Apparently the Penguins are going to have to trade Malkin, let Hossa go, raise ticket prices to match oil and whore Sidney Crosby out to a thousand fat chicks just to get under the salary cap, which seems to be $8.71 million dollars. This is so stupid and yet it's everyone's favorite rumour. I'm listening to Nick Kypreos right now, yelling away at Darren Millard about how STUPID it would be to pour $20 million dollars into two players in the cap system. Next to Nick is Bill Watters, vigoriously agreeing and calling Richard Peddie a rapist. Oh wait, a commercial break for Millard to clean spit off himself. Ug. Ray Shero is the GM of the Penguins, and a regular reader of this blog. Listen to me, Mr. Shero. Your team was lucky enough to plummit into depths of Godawfulness reached only by the Leafs in the fantasies of the rest of Canada. As a result, you've been able to draft in the top two four years in a row. You have two of the three best young players in the NHL, and they both play center. You are SO LUCKY to have the CHANCE at having and re-signing two players good enough to merit $8.7 million a year (for Crosby). Like Denzel says in Training Day:
"Okay, the dick lines up straight like that right? To the right of it and to the left of it are pockets, right? In those pockets are money. Look in either one of 'em, pay the bill."

Now, if you want to trade Malkin because he had (until the finals) a terrific playoff, an MVP-nominated season, took over the Penguins midseason when Crosby got hurt, and established himself as either the 1 or 1A center Pittsburgh, well that's different. That's not what Nick and Watters are saying by the way, they think he HAS to go because having the two best young centers in the NHL, with the cap leaping every year and a new arena coming to Pittsbugh in two years (I think), is foolish. It's a different argument to say he should go because it's the best time to trade him. I don't like fantasy sports mentality lots of people take with team rosters, the coldness that goes into discussing trading players, but whenever you're talking about trading a player at his peak there's always a reason to listen to that argument. That's Malkin now, he's at the absolute peak of his tradeability, the only way he'd have higher trade value is if he was already locked into a long-term contract. That's impossible, given that this is his second season. So perhaps the fantasy mentality isn't a bad one in this case.

Kypreos, in his infinite SCREAMING, I mean, WISDOM, apparently was told there was an offer from Los Angeles, Malkin for Dustin Brown and Anze Kopitar. That's a good trade, a GREAT trade even, if you look at it in a vacuum. If you're Shero, you certainly consider it if you lose Hossa because you're replacing a big winger with another big winger, albeit one with less scoring skill but much more checking ability. That trade also looks good, even necessary, if the Penguins don't re-sign Ryan Malone either. Malone's a restricted FA who, if you listen to Kypreos and Watters, and you have to because if God spoke to you directly it wouldn't be as loud, will want $5 million. If you make that trade, you're committed to Malone, Fleury, Stall, Orpik, etc. and, this is my whole point here, if you're going to trade Malkin, a 21-year old 106 point player, you better be fucking sure. And not just sure of the trade itself, but of the effect that trade will have on your team. This proposed deal probably won't happen and is only meant as an example to illustrate this fact: there's two kinds of trades. Ones you can look at on their own, just the players and picks involved, and ones that you have to evaluate based on not just the transaction, but the ripple effect afterwards. If you trade Malkin to sign Fleury, Stall, Malone, you better not just get the right players back but hope that those three are worth it as well.

With hockey done and the eternal NBA season mercifully ending soon, baseball takes center stage. BJ Ryan has blown his last two save opportunities, including today where, after the retiring the first two batters, blew a two-run lead to the Yankees. I don't like seeing people lose their jobs, I like organizational stability with coaches and managers having enough time to implement a team culture, like Joe Torre in New York or Bobby Cox and Leo Mazzone (until 2005). That said, JP Riccardi has to go at the end of this year. Manager John Gibbons was on pretty thin ice last year but has shown a greater willingness this year to try a few things, like stealing bases, hit-and-run, and bunt. Now for most teams those are bad things, products of old-fashioned ignorance of the percentages that exist within baseball over the course of a season. For the Blue Jays, a team who can't score runs (4th worst in runs in the AL), can't hit with runners on base (4th worst in runs batted in) and can't hit homeruns (3rd worst), these are necessary risks you have to take. Any port in a storm.

Back to Riccardi. Releases struggling Frank Thomas who they still have to pay $8 million to hit for Oakland, and in the off-season released Reed Johnson, a favorite of all Jays fans, in favor of Shannon Stewart. The choice was Stewart's offense over Johnson's defense, except that at this point Johnson is on pace to hit .266 with 5 homers and 65 RBI's, while Stewart's on pace for .253, 3 HR's and 37 RBI's. Johnson is also one year removed from a .390 OBP, so his offensive production is just FINE thank you, he has better outfield range than Stewart and can actually get a ball from the outfield to home plate without looking like he needs to lie down with a damp cloth afterwards. Riccardi also overpaid Vernon Wells, WAY overpaid AJ Burnett, and made the bizarre decision to give John MacDonald a contract extension, then sign David Eckstein who can hit a little better but defend worse, THEN trade for Marco Scutaro ALL TO PLAY SHORTSTOP. Scutaro's been a pleasant surprise actually, Eckstein is short and tries hard and people like that I guess, and MacDonald is, of course, the best defensive shortstop in baseball (no I won't source that because while he's pretty friggin' close, no stat in the world will back me up on that). But how many mediocre shortstops/utility infielders does one team need? The payroll keeps getting higher and while the pitching is fantastic, it's coming pretty cheap so all the cash is going into the team's terrible "offense." What happens when Marcum, McGowan and Litsch want new contracts? Oh, and their draft record sucks and they never bring in any impact Canadians (that's draft-wise, Stairs doesn't count). Anything else?

Raffi Torres, Denis Grebeshkov, Rob Schremp, Taylor Chorney and a 1st round pick for Evgeni Malkin. Yeah? Of course "yeah," because this year's draft is SHAPING UP TO BE THE DEEPEST DRAFT IN YEARS. If you don't believe me, flip on Hockeycentral and YOU WILL SOON BE A TRUE BELIEVER! KALI MAH!