Well the other day a stole an idea from Andrew Sullivan about giving awards to people who write or say stupid things. My very first award, the Mariotti Award, went fittingly to Jay Mariotti. I was set to give him another award for saying the Sox will need to Carlos Lee to keep producing after his “breakthrough season”. Whatever. His average went up, his OBA went down, and his other numbers are about the same. We’ve heard this line before.
But then I saw an even dumber comment about Lee from Teddy Greenstein in today’s Tribune. Writing about the possible moves the Sox could make he states:
“Williams could make a deal for Lee in a minute, but he's loath to trade the Sox's most productive player (.291, 31 homer, 113 RBIs).”
Most productive player? Lee doesn’t even come close to the productivity of Thomas & Ordonez who each have an OPS of 925+ while Lee came in at 830. It’s amazing that so many reporters do not go beyond analyzing average, home runs and rbis. For crying out loud, when it’s your job to follow baseball, the least you could do is educate yourself on the relevant measurements of what makes one a “productive” hitter. If there are any GM’s out there who think Lee is the Sox most productive hitter, I hope Kenny Williams can accommodate them with a trade. But frankly, I would put my money on Williams being the only GM who might believe such a thing.
So congratulations Teddy Greenstein. You are the second Mariotti Award Winner.