The month of July has passed, and the failures were innumerable. This was a VERY good month to start this league, as we had some real scumbuckets taking the stage. First of all, the standings for the month:
Suspended Indefinitely - 41
Cap'n Kanani - 36
You Dead, Dawg - 35
Conduct Detrimental to Team Baseball Team - 30
Billz - 24
Steve Howe's Pocket Mirror - 8
The above scoring system is based on "Failure Points". If your team is doing good at failing, you get a lot of points! It's easy to see that there are a few teams doing really well, and one team that's really failing at failing!
Now for the individual leaders. Some of these numbers are quite stunning:
Errors: Suspended Indefinitely comes through with a shocking 24.25 errors (it's based on an average) That means each player is contributing over two errors per month. Outstanding! Yuneiskey Betancourt fades them all with an astronomical 5 errors per month! And you're the shortstop????? Maybe LeCroy could do better!
Strikeouts: Cap'n Kanani's squad whiffs an unbelievable 187 times in July. That's more than 20 for every single player on his roster. The big loser? Brandon Inge, who goes reaching an incredible THIRTY FOUR times!!!!
Batting Average: CDTBT hits an impossibly low .177 in July, easily 50 points lower than second place. What's the secret? Ryan Langerhans at .109, Rickie Weeks at .125 (take that to AAA!) and Scott Hairston (a former bag boy at Red Owl, by the sound of it) at .146. It all adds up to fail city!
Double Play Ball: Cap'n Kanani leads all squads with 17 rally-killers. Miguel Olivo bangs into 4 all on his own. Try bunting, failure!
ERA: CDTBT completely blows up, with an ERA of 10.59! Credit something named Ryu, who's ERA north of 30 helped seal the deal. Special mention goes to Billz and his 8.33, led by a Japanese man of 39 years pitching for Pittsburgh.
Home Runs: You Dead, Dawg just edges out Suspended Indefinitely with 28 hogs given up. Jose Contreras gives up 9 all by himself!
Walks: Suspended Indefinitely just keeps putting them on, at a rate of 62 in the month of July.
Losses: A lot of losers in this category, but none more than Suspended Indefinitely, who records an outstanding 16 losses, just edging You Dead, Dawg, who had 15. Jeff Weaver and Mike Maroth contribute 4 a piece! Way to go!
And then there are the teams... wow talk about some failing organizations...
Attendance: No surprises here, Tampa Bay only rakes 288,301 fans for the month... and even that was inflated by the visiting Yankees and Red Sox. They dipped below 10,000 fans twice during the month!
Home Losses: Pittsburgh loses 9 times at home. No wonder their fans walk out during games.
Runs Scored: All those games and the Brewers could only score 46 runs for their home crowd. In the words of Mel Allen, how about that?!?
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Now, this league was developed and nurtured to do one thing: reward failure. I'm tired of constantly heaping praise on athletes who exceed our expectations and excel at sport. Let's start acknowledging the worst of the best: our major league failures!
With that in mind, I'd like to introduce a new award. This will be given to spotlight one performer each month. It will be reserved for those truly special failures, guys who go out and just repeatedly fail all month. The kind of performances that would guarantee them a trip to AAA, except for mitigating factors - they have too much service time, too large of a contract, the team is too shitty, etc.
And so, I give you the first winner of the monthly Jose Contreras Award:
Jose Contreras!
The White Sox have jumped off the cliff this season, and Jose has done the shoving. Guys like Alex Shitron and Juan Uribe have helped - and don't forget Jermaine "You really should've voted for me over Morneau for MVP despite the fact I field like I eat hot wings, that is to say MESSY" Dye - but Contreras has been the solid force behind all of the failing. His numbers in July are the reason Chicago has become so pathetic that they are battling with Kansas Damn City for last place in the division.
In July, he started 5 games. He lost all 5. 0-5.
He pitched 25.2 innings. Hey, that's just over 5 innings per start! 5 innings per fail is more like it.
He gave up 48 hits and 11 walks. He only struck out 15.
His ERA was a mind-blowing 12.97.
Opponents hit .414 off him. Think about that for a moment. For a month, everyone who stepped in the box against The Next Big Cuban Thing was Ted Williams. Even if their name was Jason Tyner on other days.
And so, Jose Contreras, congratulations on winning the inaugural Jose Contreras Award. I'll be picking a winner at the end of each month, so if you see someone truly worthy of mention, drop me a line.
And finally, in closing, a picture of Casey Fossum. You can feel the fail dripping off of this face like unused shaving cream:
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