A New Begining

My blog is back. This time, I promise I'll actually be here for awhile.

The unofficial start of spring announced itself as pitchers and catchers reported last week, and I find myself once again energized with the promise of another year of baseball.

Instead of going with a full rundown of predictions and projections (which might still come at a later date), I'll use this post to vent against a particular subject.

I awoke this morning to find that Adam Wainwright is likely lost for the season. While I feel for Wainwright and the loss of an entire season in the prime of his career, I can't help but feel that the baseball gods are serving justice on a man who is long overdue for some humbling.

That's right. I'm looking at you, Tony LaRussa.

While I appreciate the newfound science/religion of sabermetrics, I have never found myself so enraged at someone who has taken so much credit for so little actual production as the "by-the-book" ways of Mr. LaRussa.

For the better part of three decades, LaRussa has done a masterful job of marketing himself as one of the great minds of the game, yet what does he have to show for it?

Yes, he has two World Series championships. That is a very admirable thing, and I respect it, but the man is simply overrated when it comes to actual managing.

When you boil it all down, LaRussa's career can be defined mostly by two title winners (one with a pair of noted steroid users, and another that notched the worst winning percentage of any champion) and 10 other division winners that never lived up to their potential.

While many prospective world champions have fallen short due to bad luck, bad timing or just running into a hot team, no manager of any shortcoming team draws as much obvious and direct blame as LaRussa for the eventual downfall of his squad.

Despite having a decided advantage in talent (as noted by many analysts) in the N.L. Central over the last four years, LaRussa and his Cardinals have managed just one division title. You can attribute any number of factors to the team's failure to produce, but I put the blame on LaRussa.

No manager consistently wears out a bullpen or tinkers with a lineup that needs no tinkering more than LaRussa.

No manager tries out more quirks for the sake of quirkiness than LaRussa.

Most importantly, no manager hides behind the sacred "book" more than LaRussa.

Some guy hits a walk-off off of a rookie lefty?... "He was a left-hander that can't handle off-speed from lefties", says LaRussa.

It doesn't matter that it was a big game or that you had two or three seasoned veteran relievers in the bullpen.

Batting your pitcher eighth in the batting order?... "It sets up the offense for Pujols every time the lineup turns over," says LaRussa.

I guess we can forget about the fact that every conceivable pinch-hit/relief pitching situation that can make or break a game is now moved up by one batter for the sake of LaRussa trying to predict the endgame of a contest before the lineup cards are exchanged.

The trick with LaRussa is that he'll tell you about his genious idea as he impliments it and before it ever pays dividends. By doing this, the shortcomings of his strategies are brought up before they occur, and are thus quickly forgetten when they happen since they can easily be dismissed.

Conversely, the fact that many of his ideas differ from the norm give plenty of room for praise and adulation on the chance that they do actually work.

By the paterns of human nature, LaRussa can get away with more than a few stupid ideas, so long as one of them actually works. Even then, he can parlay the fact that he was the first to implement such an idea or strategy into further proof of his genius regardless of any other failures.

I realize that none of this really pertains to the injury to Wainwright, but since I'm a spiteful person, I'll go ahead and translate Wainwright's bad break as the doling out of due justice from the all-powerful baseball gods.

Those gods have had enough of your crap, LaRussa. They watched you submarine a roster that was capable of multiple division - if not league - championships, yet still come out looking like the managerial genius that was somehow failed by his players.

Now, you're going to suffer the indignity of being pummeled by the Reds and Brewers all season, and you'll actually have to demonstrate some managerial skill to stay ahead of a bipolar Cubs squad and a rebuilding Astros franchise.

I harbor no ill will towards any player on the Cardinals, but this is the season that LaRussa gets exposed as a fraud of a baseball manager and I'll be the one laughing from April until September.