Wow. Just…wow.

With the new MLB Collective Bargaining Agreement in place, odds-making site Bodog.net has placed odds on who will fail the new HGH blood testing. Here’s the screen grab…

I don’t take to calling people names.

My feelings in image form.

Search through this site and you’ll be hard-pressed to find name-calling.  Strong opinions?  All the time.  Calling people out for dumb things?  Hundreds of instances.

But name-calling, not so much.

But Zach Houchins is an idiot.

For those unfamiliar with his story: He was a baseball player drafted by the Washington Nationals earlier this year in the 15th round.

Shortly after the draft, his Twitter account was spread around and it had some naughty, naughty things on it.

From The Washington Post’s Adam Kilgore, who described it best: “In June, Houchins deleted his Twitter account, which included rampant epithets depicting African-Americans, many phrases objectifying women, an objectionable term to describe homosexuals and at least one epithet used to describe Chinese people.”

Yikes.

I was interviewed at the time by NBC 4 in Washington, DC, about social media and how he could fix this.

The Nationals will not sign Houchins, who will return to college in the fall.

He apologized to the team for his actions (which is a good thing), but his quotes about the situation are astonishingly stupid and show little true remorse.

Houchins, talking to Bill Lasden of MLB.com said, “I’m not a racist, not at all. … Four of my best friends, two of them are black, one of them was my roommate. He is probably one of the closest people I’ve ever been around. … Me and my four best friends became so close, it’s just how we talk. It wasn’t anything derogatory or anything like that. It’s just how we talk.”

More from Houchins (via Kilgore): “Honestly, in my eyes, there was no lesson to learn,” Houchins said. “It’s just what I said got blown out of proportion, and I paid the price for it.”

So you are allowed to use racial epithets filled with centuries of hatred because your roommate is African-American?

Really, there is no lesson to learn?  You were drafted by a Major League Baseball team who now wants NOTHING to do with you because of what you posted.  You could have signed a HUGE contract and now will go back to eating in the dining hall and there is NO LESSON TO LEARN?

Who blew what you said out of proportion?  Every reaction I’ve seen has been quite reasonable.

You said stupid things and when you had an opportunity to show that you actually learned from the mistakes, you acted like an even bigger idiot.

For your sake, I hope your pitching arm gets you into the big leagues, because it’s quite clear that your mouth is keeping you out.

For over 100 years, baseball has judged pitchers using ERA (Earned Run

Nuke Likes ERIP

Average).

The time has come to stop using a baseless “statistic” as the centerpiece number pitchers are propped up against.

Stay with me here:

ERA is the only statistic in major sports that means nothing.  It effectively measures nothing, whereas a slight alteration would provide much more insight into a pitcher’s effectiveness.

What is ERA?

From Wikipedia: “In baseball statistics, earned run average (ERA) is the mean of earned runs given up by a pitcher per nine innings pitched. It is determined by dividing the number of earned runs allowed by the number of innings pitched and multiplying by nine.”

Why ERA is stupid

Batting Average tells you how likely a batter is to hit EVERY TIME UP.  A player with a .250 average gets a hit one of every four trips to the plate, on average.

This is useful in guesstimating the odds of success in a plate appearance.  25% of the time, this player will get a hit.

ERA is completely speculative.  It basically says “IF this pitcher pitched nine innings, this is how many runs he would give up.”

According to www.baseball-reference.com, in 2009, pitchers pitched complete games (nine innings…unless they only needed to pitch eight…) 152 times.  Impressive…until you see that there were 4,860 games played that year.  That translates out to 3.1%  In 2010, there were 165 complete games out of 4,860 (3.39%).

So pitchers are graded against an event that happens less than 3.4% of the time?

That’s stupid.

And when you consider the age of relief specialists that sometimes come in for one inning or one batter, it gets even sillier.  Certain pitchers may only compile 50 innings a year, so a stat based on nine-inning chunks is irrelevant.

Fixing the Problem

The solution is so easy.

So easy, in fact, that baseball is already halfway there!

WHIP, which measures baserunners per inning is a tremendous stat that can logically apply to starters and relievers.

Baseball should scrap ERA and replace it with ERIP – Earned Runs Per Inning Pitched.

Using this system, all pitchers can be compared on an apples-to-apples level.  Starters and relievers – and swingmen that switch from the rotation to the bullpen – can have a relevant measuring stick.

Make the change, baseball, and use statistics the right way.

Looks like somebody didn’t learn about keeping their Twitter mouth shut.

Zach Houchins, a recently-drafted Washington Nationals player has been posting disgusting, offensive racist things on his Twitter feed.  Like, REALLY bad.

Can you ever really delete your Tweets?

NBC 4 in Washington, DC, interviewed me for the story:

View more videos at: http://www.nbcwashington.com.

Manny Ramirez sent shockwaves through Major League Baseball when the slugger announced his immediate retirement just one week into the 2011 season.

While 38 (a baseball graybeard) Ramirez left despite having game-changing ability, box office appeal and media mojo.

The other shoe to fall came quite quickly as the Commissioner’s office announced that Ramirez had failed a test under the Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program and was facing disciplinary action.  His retirement means he won’t be disciplined, but will have to face the music should he try to play again.

Let me translate:

Manny being Manny got in trouble.  Manny didn’t want to be in trouble.  Instead of dealing with the consequences, Manny picked up his ball and ran away.

When drugs are involved, you immediately think steroids.  Ramirez has been suspended before for performance-enhancing drugs, so the fact that he was caught again shows stupidity, arrogance or both.

While Ramirez played most of his career on teams I actively root against in Cleveland and Boston, he was always fun to watch.  He came across as a bizarre guy, but not a villain at all.

But as baseball is moving past the “Steroid Era,” and names like McGwire, Bonds, Palmeiro, Sosa, Clemens and others are gently erased from the sport’s official lexicon, the way Ramirez is exiting leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

It appears quite likely that he used performance enhancing drugs to bolster his capabilities.  Those bonkers stats turned into monstrous contracts.  And with his fortune in place (or one would hope), he can walk away with millions in the bank and no worries in the world.  He and his family can live a life of luxury for decades based on income gained by cheating.

And if that doesn’t cast him as a white collar villain, I don’t know what could.

I love the start of a new baseball season.  All of the predictions become virtually meaningless.

My beloved Baltimore Orioles are off to a 2-0 3-0 start.  It’s early, and they could always finish 2-160 3-159.  There’s plenty of time for bad things to happen to them.  But…maybe those won’t happen.

Maybe this will be a magical season…