Adam Dunn Was A Bad Choice

Newsflash, America, the Reds are once again an awful, awful baseball team. When your club is so bad they can’t even compete in the drudgery that is the NL Central, then not only is it time to abandon ship, it’s time to start selling assets like you’re Ken Lay at a pre-crash Enron. Therefore, we all once again eagerly await one of the time-honored and favorite parts of the baseball season-- figuring out which silver-tongued GM is going to screw the Reds for the best players during this year?*

You see, despite the team being so wretched, there are still solid pieces playing for Cincinnati. However, one of them is not Adam Dunn. For some reason, people tend to think positively of an ox that hits almost exclusively in the most prolific hitters park west of Fenway. Because of this, ludicrous questions still persist in my area of the world such as: “Is Dunn is the answer to the New York Yankees continual 1st base needs?” The answer? NO!!


The local Fox affiliate here in New York has a thing they do nightly that says “It’s 10 PM, do you know where your children are?” Adam Dunn is similar, except “it’s 9:00 PM, do you know that Adam Dunn just struck out again?”

Have you ever seen a mentally challenged person eat something they're not supposed to? Like a wooden dowel or some paste? No one wants to say anything to correct them, because that would be impolite, and we are a compassionate society that frowns on gestures such as that. So instead all the people just stand there and stare, mouths agape, wondering what exactly caused God to favor some and not others. The MCP (not to be confused with OPP, the OCP, or WCC**) sees this attention, and instead of wondering "why the heck are these people staring at me," his face morphs into an ecstatic grin and starts clapping his hands with delight. According him or her, attention is good, no matter where it comes from. It's a similar feeling that comes from defecating oneself, or blogging, which in some quarters is precisely the same thing.


This is what Adam Dunn looks like when he's trying to field a ground ball hit to the 1st baseman. The ball bounces, Dunn does his little jerry-clap, the ball bounces off his chest, and in an ultimately futile effort to make a routine play for nearly all 60 starting 1B's in the MLB and AAA, he kicks the ball off into the 1st base dugout. Before you know it, Dontrelle Willis is cruising his way onto 3rd base, flashing gang signs, and calling himself Daisuke Mastublacka. Jason Giambi looks like Keith freaking Hernandez compared to Adam Dunn.

Did I forget to mention that Dunn is hitting a better-than-career-average .250 right now, and that his career OPS is only marginally better than the league average at his position? New York, or any team for that matter, would have to overpay drastically for a guy who is really not all that good.

So, a Dunn fan might say, why not put him at DH? Because New York already has six, the majority of them are injured, and the team doesn't need any more. Besides, I know we've all moved on from the concept of using batting average as the metric for player evaluation. But don’t you want someone who generally hits northward of the Mendoza line? Next thing you know, you'll be advocating for Andruw Jones, and that guy has the Mendoza line installed in his house.

Seriously, this is Andruw. Look at his numbers.

Dunn reminds me a little bit of that fictional player that appeared in the commercials for MLB '06 "The Show." Remember that ad campaign? Remember those commercials? He was a black dude was playing in Osaka, Japan. Here's essentially a direct quote from memory:

"People in Osaka don't care about hits, RBI's. They care about the long ball. I'm not a ball player, I'm an entertainer!!" The guy had an absurd stat line of like .196 AVG 32 HR 39 RBI. That's basically what we'll get with Adam Dunn. I'll ask any and all baseball teams to stay as far as bloody possible away from him, and that does double for the Yankees. If NY traded for Dunn, they would be the ones who are mentally challenged.

*My money’s on Ned Colletti. He’s like Jim Bowden, only dumber, and Bowden pulled off the mother of all hose jobs last year. You can’t even rip guys off like that in fantasy baseball.
**Also known as "Harvard on the Hudson.”

UPDATE: Here' the commercial I was refering to. The video isn't working for me for some reason-- you tell me if I got his statline right.

Fear Delmon

Reading the essential AOL MLB Fanhouse, I came across this little tidbit on the Rays and their lack of hype.

So where's the respect [for the Rays]? Where are the "Fear Delmon" T-shirts and Carl Crawford Nike ads?

Why, indeed? The very least Delmon Young can get is a t-shirt. If anything symbolizes the “Booyah” generation, it’s athletes with freakish athletic talent coupled with penchants for criminality, destruction, and a flagrant disregard for authority. If Michael Vick is given million dollar contracts for dog fighting, and Sebastian Telfair is given shoe contracts for gunplay, then Delmon Young is absolutely a role model for the new generation of criminal athlete.

Delmon signed out of a California high school for six million dollars, immediately making him the highest paid Devil Ray since Jose Canseco. At age 18 he started out in single-A ball, where he racked up minor league all-star selections and player of the year awards. After a banner year in 2005 for both on and off the field activities, Delmon finally made it to the show for good at the end of 2006. Although he’s put up respectable numbers in the majors, his projections are far more impressive for the destruction outside the realm of traditional baseball.

Delmon has made it a practice to physically assault umpires, which according to notables such as William Ligue Jr., is every fan’s dream come true. In the minor leagues in 2005, Young gave an umpire a chest bump that Lou Pinella would be inspired by, earning him a paltry suspension of three games. A year later, Young would become the standard bearer for nihilistic rebellion when he intentionally hurled a bat at an umpire for handing out one of the worst third strike calls ever seen in AA baseball.

C'mon, that pitch was outside
A 50 game suspension resulted, but it did not slow Delmon’s progress in “Booyah”. When asked by a reporter how he felt about being held back in the minors, Delmon said that the organization was “cheap,” and that “when it comes to free agency, [there’s] no use trying to stay around there for the long haul.” Rational observers might think that because of the bat incident and attitude, the Rays felt Delmon lacked the emotional maturity that’s required for the major leagues. Madness! A similarly talented Ken Griffey Jr. was in the majors at that age, but he did have to suffer through occasional spankings by his father in front of Jim Lefebvre and Harold Reynolds.

And speaking of family pedigree, according to police forces in the district, Delmon is also a known accomplice (or sibling) of Washington D.C. arch criminal and drug lord Dmirti Young, whose sole presence has single handedly caused crime statistics to skyrocket, with long term residents wishing for the halcyon days of the crack epidemic and Marion Barry. Experts now say Southeast DC is a war zone markedly worse than Detroit on Devil’s Night, or a post-liberation Fallujah. If Dmitri is Avon Barksdale, then Delmon is Stringer Bell.



Tampa Bay is no place for Delmon Young. Rumor has it Tropicana Field was created to house homeless people in case of a Katrina-like disaster, with the intention of performing sociological experiments when the residents eventually dissolved into cannibalism and madness. This vibe is palpable throughout the arena, and does not make for a pleasurable viewing or playing experience. Young will not stay. In that well placed tirade against the team mentioned previously, he said that his goal was to “Get your six years and leave.” Can you imagine the publicity he'll get when he's a Yankee? By that time Joe Torre will be dead, replaced by an animatronic robot who cares little for things like "character" and "hustle."

Is there any player in sports who we should fear more than Delmon Young? Of course not. Marcus Vick and his twin gats doesn’t have the army that Delmon has behind him in southeast. After getting fired by the Celtics, Bassy won’t have the money. Until LeBron James starts doing drive-bys out of the Hummer that his momma bought him, Delmon will be the athlete that symbolizes the "Booyah" generation. And that, my friends, is outstanding.