Let me preface this by saying, I like Bill Simmons. A lot. One of my favorite columnists, so long as he is talking about basketball or football.
Unfortunately, today, he has a mid-season baseball column. As he explains...
Just realized that we're hitting the All-Star Break without me writing a single column about the 2005 baseball season. Inexcusable. Since I watch every Red Sox game and follow the American League intently, let's hand out some midseason awards for one of the weirdest AL seasons in recent memory:
As best I can tell, when he says "follow the American League intently," he means he follows the Red Sox and Yankees intently, since three-fourths of the column is related to one of those two teams, he calls David Ortiz one of the 13 biggest stars in baseball who should be automatically included in the ASG each year, and anything not relating to the Yanks or Red Sox gets little more than a cursory mention.
Oh, and he says this about the Rangers (in a section on how bullpens are terrible this year, where his evidence consists of the Red Sox pen and the pens of the Yanks and Orioles):
Texas has John Wasdin as their main setup guy -- the same guy I once nicknamed "The Blair Wasdin Project" on my old Web site.
Let's see...John Wasdin has pitched in seven games this year for the Rangers. He started once, came in in long relief three times, and came in in the late innings with a decent-sized lead three times. Yet Simmons is calling him the Rangers "main setup guy".
My guess is that Simmons saw Wasdin come in in relief of Chris Young in the nationally televised game against Houston two weeks ago, where Wasdin gave up a couple of runs in the 8th and was yanked for Cordero, and just assumed that he was the Rangers' setup guy. And the only reason he even noticed Wasdin is because Wasdin used to pitch for -- you guessed it -- the Red Sox.
Simmons makes these sorts of basic mistakes all the time, when it comes to baseball. It frustrates me. I'd prefer it if he'd stick to the NBA and the NFL, and just talk about movies or something in the summertime.