Red It, Watched It, And Wept - Week of 1/13/13

Monday: And the Caravan is painted red and white . . .

When you think of Paul Daugherty’s self-righteousness (and admit it, you do whenever you read anything by him), you conjure up him blasting bloggers with their new-fangled statistics or being a plain-old stick in the mud. However, every once in a while, Doc gives a mea culpa on something we really cannot recall him criticizing. Today’s acknowledgement? He was wrong about those rubes out in the sticks that attend the Reds Caravan. You see, Paul used to think that the Caravan was a kitschy attempt to get those out-of-towners interested in the Reds despite the fact that nobody is allowed to be interested in Jimmy Anderson other than shareholders of Sam’s Club. However, now that the Reds need to compete with the Cardinals and their high dollar folks from Creve Coeur, it’s perfectly okay for players to visit Parkersburg, especially since local Cincinnati fans have a penchant for quitting on their team.

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Tuesday: Now that Community is off the air, all we have are these Prospect Rankings.

It’s that time of the year again for the Reds Community Prospect Rankings at Red Reporter! This means it’s your chance to vote on the best prospects in the Reds’ farm system depending on how many alt-accounts you have. It also means you get to argue over whether or not someone has the ability to develop into a 2-3 starter or a 3-4 starter by looking at their splits and their "intangibles." Some may view this as an annoying quirk among bloggers. However, we view it as an opportunity to interact with those guys who login, never post a comment, but vote and rec everything under the sun. Remember kids, one of the perks of being a first round draft pick or an international signing is being overvalued in lists like these. Don’t deny these players this opportunity.

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Wednesday: Comment of the Week

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Thursday: ANGER! OUTRAGE! FROM EVERYONE! TO EVERYONE ELSE!

The only thing we love here at RIWIAW beyond baseball players and sportswriters doing illegally-like things, is when sportswriters launch into really dumb hyperbole on topics of general interest. That’s why we want to THANK KEN ROSENTHAL SO MUCH. The second most annoying bowtie-wearing sports personality on television decided it’d be great to compare sabermetric aficionados to what is mostly known to be a vocal and aggressive political movement. THAT WON’T CAUSE ANY BACKLASH AT ALL. Politics aside, every good controversy needs a scapegoat. However, when the vast majority of Hall of Fame voters view sabermetrics the same way that Jane Fonda views the Tea Party, you’re probably just looking for an excuse to go ad hominem on people. To place blame on sabermetrics as to why a bunch of old holier-than-thou writers decided to ostracize players who they feel are morally inferior makes about as much sense as labeling someone a cheater who never did anything against the written (or unwritten) rules of baseball. But hey, that fills column inches too!

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Friday: The Money Store: Where America Goes for Recession.

What do you do when you are a Hall of Fame pitcher that can no longer shill for lecherous and exploitive subprime mortgages because the company you supported was bought-out by another company partially responsible for the collapse of the U.S. economy? Well, if you’re Jim Palmer, you decide to raise money for scouting! No, not Boy Scouts, because that would actually be something magnanimous. Nope, when Palmer is not trying to sign up members of minority communities for loans at the low-rate of 20%, Jim Palmer, in all his altruism, helps raise money for baseball scouts by attending swanky fundraisers in Beverly Hills. The organization putting on the fundraiser, the Professional Sports Foundation, gladly pats itself on the back for raising more than $4 million since its inception eleven years ago. This, at the very least, goes to show that even professional baseball players, whose average salary is at $3.44 million, think this a pretty dumb effort.

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Saturday: No Rules, Just Trite

Ever since Jon Heyman was outed as Scott Boras’ A-1 leak in the press, Scott Boras has had to use more conventional means to advocate for his clients. This includes his standard negotiation tactics of surface bargaining and being keenly aware of his adversary’s BATNA (YEAH, WE HERE AT RIWIAW COMPLETED THE HARVARD NEGOTIATION PROJECT, SUCKAZZ.). Most importantly, this includes comparing Kyle Lohse, a player with a career ERA of 4.45 to a steak dinner. That’s okay though. Have you seen the number of people waiting outside Outback Steakhouse on Saturday evenings? They’re not there for the Alice Springs Chicken.

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Sunday: ‘Cuz there are no reasons.

In an attempt to be as flagrantly self-promotional as Pete Rose himself, we here at RIWIAW (we’re using the royal we because, admit it, you’ll be watching too), will be tuning in Pete Rose’s new reality show tonight and live-blogging the results. Why? Because we hate ourselves almost as much as we hate Mondays.