Bill Plaschke Has Power

Bill Plaschke's idiocy knows no bounds, and it has such a power over me that i'm actually doing to defend Ned Colletti. Passionately.

Excuse me while I barf.

Colletti finished his season's work late Monday night, acquiring enough players to satisfy most of the team's postseason needs.

All but the one that burns brightest.

The lack of an ace starting pitcher is still hanging out there, blinding and brutal.

Colletti has done a masterful job of collecting every other imaginable championship piece, but none of it will work without an ace starter.

"Not again!"

Those were my exact thoughts after reading the opening paragraph of his article.

You see, Plaschke has written this column before, and since then, the Dodger starters have put up a 3.33 ERA in August, so i'm convinced that he's just writing about the rotation because he didn't get his way.

Though I think it would be best for somebody to remind Plaschke that he also didn't get his way when the Dodgers kept Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier. Oops.

Who will set the tone the way Cole Hamels set the tone for last year's Philadelphia Phillies?

Again with this shit? Can you imagine how bad Plaschke would be flipping out on Chad Billingsley, Clayton Kershaw, or Randy Wolf if they had a 4.26 ERA like Hamels does? Jesus fuck.

Furthermore, was Hamels even an "ace" last year by Plaschke's own standards? Probably not considering that he had pitched in one postseason game and was mediocre in it. Hamels was unexperienced and raw, and he took a shit down everybody's throat in the playoffs. Why? Because he's fucking good. How hard is this to understand?

Pitchers with superior skills pitch well? Holy fucking shit. Where do I sign up for this newsletter?

The Phillies have Hamels and Cliff Lee. The St. Louis Cardinals have Chris Carpenter and Adam Wainwright. The San Francisco Giants have Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain.

Yup. All great pitchers.

If the playoffs began this week, their top starter would be Randy Wolf, who has 274 career appearances but zero in the postseason.

Wait, so now an "ace" needs to be a great pitcher and have postseason experience? Why do the standards keep shifting?

If you recall, Plaschke wanted the Dodgers to deal for Roy Halladay, but exactly how many postseason starts does he have? Zero. How many does Lee have? None. What about Wainwright? Nil. Lincecum? Nope. And Cain? Negative.

So out of the three duos that Plaschke covets, four of the six pitchers don't even fit his own definition of an ace. Better yet, the two guys (Halladay/Lee) Plaschke wanted to trade for have a grand total of zero playoff starts between them. Sweet logic, right?

Being so delusional must be grand. Imagine being able to convince yourself that Sandra Oh looked like Jessica Alba. You could bag your dream girl every night.

Their second starter would be Chad Billingsley, who has disappointed the organization with his inability to either act or pitch like an ace. Not to mention, his career postseason earned-run average is 7.24.

The way he acts? Completely subjective. Being an ace? Also subjective. The terrible ERA? Tiny sample size.

Their third starter will be Clayton Kershaw, who will be a postseason ace in coming years, but not now, not at age 21, not with the sort of inconsistency that could end a game early.

"Sometimes, with young guys, you don't know until you know," Colletti said.

Holy mother of fuck! Colletti is the voice of reason in this article? Wow, that's when you know Plaschke has truly hit rock fucking bottom as a columnist.

It could be that Colletti overvalued his kids. It could be that Logan White's system has slowed in its development of kids.

When has Colletti ever overvalued his young talent? Seriously.

And is Plaschke really saying that the system isn't developing players anymore? It's only been slow in the sense that the Dodgers have graduated like 20 prospects to the majors in the past few years and don't have many upper level guys in their system anymore. You know why though? Because they're all either already traded or already playing for the Dodgers. The fuck is Plaschke on about with that angle? It's a clusterfuck of dumb that makes my brain hurt so bad.

The bottom line is that, in acquiring Lee, the Phillies traded from a system that had four of Baseball America's midseason top 50 prospects.

The Dodgers had zero players on that list.

And out of the four Phillies players on that list, how many did the Phillies end up trading to the Indians for Lee? Only one, Jason Knapp. The same guy who still can't get on the field because his arm is fucked. Yeah, i'm gonna go out on a limb here and say i'd rather have Chris Withrow.

Judging from raw statistics, the Dodgers' pitching is set, with the league's best ERA and lowest opponent batting average.

But postseason pitching is about raw, period. It's not about cold statistics as much as swagger and savvy and stuff.

So in conclusion, statistics don't matter to Bill Plaschke unless he's using them to bolster his argument against Dodger pitchers, then he can use numbers in the most misleading way possible to say that Dodger pitchers suck.

Got it?