There Are Two Sides To Every Story.

Right, since my purposes are to A) entertain you and B) talk baseball, I better get cracking because I haven't really been doing that of late so I apologize.

Anyone here read SI? Yup, me too. I think Selena Roberts' Point After is a great article and has many a valid point, but the stuff she says about the bloggers...it isn't all true. She says that we're fickle people who forget the old stuff and forget too quickly. And while that's true of your generic sports blogger (not naming any names)...I don't read that kind of blog. It's boring and reporting stuff I already know. Are these the blogs most people read? Well, kind of.

If you look at the top MLBlogs as of last year it's a mix. But all the blogs I read are less analytical and gimmicky and more on the bigger picture. Not to say I never read the other blogs, but I don't like reading the high-traffic ones. They have enough readers, they don't need me, and it frustrates me to see more people reading those than other, more deserving blogs (Hyun Young's, for example, should have made the top 57 or whatever it was # of fan blogs, pop on over and start building up her traffic, guys!) But I try to make my blog as entertaining, biased, and grudge-holding (as much as it pains me to have something in common with Sean Avery) as humanly possible. If it's not working, just tell me. And it would be kinda nice to crack the top 57 myself, yeah, a pipe dream, I know, but if there's anything glaringly obvious (besides being a D-Backs fan) that I can improve and make other people want to read this...just let me know!

Okay, speaking of grudges, youse all know about my grudge against a certain arbitration-eligible division rival pitcher...and if you don't, no, it's not Jonathan Broxton. And how far I went to prove that the sportswriters' love for him is not in proportion to his relative skill level. Sigh. Also, I really don't think his windup is that great or that unique and his pitches aren't all that spectacular. Whatever, I know if he had a blog it would get a million more readers than mine but I am going to be very fair right now.

Why does he deserve that $13 million that he so wants?
He draws in a LOT of fans for the Giants. People love him, people write about him, the Giants get more money. If he left would people come to see Joe Martinez and Barry Zito? Probably not. The Giants consider him their ace, and most teams pay their ace more than they pay their other pitchers. I can see how you'd want to make more money than Barry Zito, if I was a better pitcher than him and played for the Giants I'd want to, too. And he puts in a lot of innings, probably the most underrated pitching stat, and aside from chronic flu seems pretty healthy.

Why not?
He's not the best pitcher on the Giants. Matt Cain is. Martinez and Jonathan Sanchez could be better than Lincecum, for all we know. They need to be more consistent, but that's slightly irrelevant. And you can't blame the Giants for being squeamish after they overestimated the value of the Cy Young award (even if Lincecum has two). He's still pretty fresh and could be a burnout. And the walks he gives up...when you have that many strikeouts and don't lead in BB/K ratio... And, if you look at the D-Backs...how much money are they paying any one player (not specifically anyone)? The highest people on the payroll are Byrnes, Hall, and Byrnes, methinks. And are any of them on the 40-man roster? No. Everyone on the team makes less than 11 million dollars. Compare, say, Justin Upton or Dan Haren with Lincecum...or hell, even Mark Reynolds (they say chicks dig the long ball) and is he really worth that much more than him?

Also, in Dbacks-land, former starter Doug Davis has joined the Milwaukee Brewers. Congrats on your signing, Dougie!! Hope you have a good year out there with Trent Oeltjen and Craig Counsell.