It was depressing to learn that the talented writers at Fire Joe Morgan are calling it quits after years of providing entertaining criticism of the mainstream sports media. From the Joe chats to food metaphors, Ken Tremendous, Junior and dak used humor to spread the word about sabermetrics. During college, visiting the site was one of the first things that I would do every morning. Now, college is over and FJM is not more. The way I see it, things can only go up from here.

Deadspin posted an entertaining, though sad, exit interview with the guys, each Hollywood writers. It is a great read.

Michael Schur, who writes under the pseudonym Ken Tremendous, has been a lead writer on The Office and played Dwight Schrute's cousin, Mose, in a few guest cameos. It is going to be hard to watch the show in the future without thinking about David Eckstein or Darin Erstad.

*Jeff Passan, a survivor, offered an excellent tribute to the blog at Yahoo! Sports.

*Peter Gammons has a new post up on his blog at ESPN.com. Gammons offers some interesting insights. He wonders why Hanley Ramirez finished 11th in the voting. I completely agree with him on that front.

Ramirez is not a great defensive shortstop, but, considering his position, he is a stud offensive player. He batted .301/.400/.540, with a 146 OPS+ and 33 home runs as the anchor of the Marlins' power-hitting infield. He also scored 125 runs.

*Albert Pujols clearly deserved to win the award, but the voters erred in a lot of their other secondary votes. It was surprising that Lance Berkman did not garner more serious consideration as well; he finished fifth.

Within the piece, Gammons also says that the Atlanta Braves are still in the running in the Jake Peavy sweepstakes. Frank Wren, according to the blog post, is intent on getting a deal done. There is also word that the Yankees are not in the running. In my opinion, it would be unwise for Peavy, the ace of the San Diego Padres, to accept a deal to the American League, where his numbers would surely suffer.

*According to Jon Heyman, Pedro Martinez is planning to pitch in 2009. Ben Reiter of SI.com ranked Martinez 44 in his Top 50 available free agents. He is an injury risk, of course, but his agent told Heyman that he is fully healthy for the first time in a while. After missing the first four months of the season with a hamstring injury, he posted a 75 ERA+ in 20 starts for the New York Mets. I had Martinez ranked higher in my Top 50, which I will be releasing later this week.

*Jeremy Affeldt signed with the San Fransisco Giants on Monday. Affeldt was one of the premier relief pitchers available in this free agent class, so credit the Giants for locking him for only two years, at a relatively cheap price of $8-million. As Dave Cameron writes, the left-hander is seriously underrated, and is coming off an excellent performance with the Cincinnati Reds. He posted a 3.33 ERA in 74 appearances, striking out 80 in 78.0 innings pitched. His 9.19 K/9 rate was the best of his career as his average fastball velocity jumped from 92.4 to 94.6, according to FanGraphs.

Brian Sabean deserves some praise for locking up one of the under-the-radar prizes in this class. Sabean has had some blunders, from the infamous trade with the the Minnesota Twins to the Barry Zito fiasco, but he pulled off a steal here. It looks like that Eckerd College degree has done him some good after all.

*Pujols won his second M.V.P. on Monday, and Joe Posnanski writes that it is time to give him due credit for his out-of-this-world-abilities as a baseball player. I have received some emails arguing why Ryan Howard deserved to win the award.

Although I touched on this in an earlier post, let us look at the data one last time from a comment I left on the other article.

Pujols' monthly performance:

April-.365/.523/.594/1.117
May-.373/.454/.706/.1.160
June-.302/.444/.558/.1.002
July-.347/.413/.564/.977
August-.398/.491/.745/1.236
September-.321/.427/.702/.1.129


Howard's monthly performance:

April-.168/.298/.347/.645
May-.238/.344/.590/.934
June-.234/.287/.439/.726
July-.311/.366/.612/.978
August-.213/.328/.463/.791
September-.352/.422/.852/.1.274


Howard was better in one month, September, but not by much. Take that away and he would be hovering around near league average slash stat numbers at the position. He was brutal in August, and a non-factor for half of the year. Do those games not count?

Counting stats are misleading, context-driven. In the stats that count, Pujols had better numbers. He had more hits, doubles, walks, stolen bases, runs extra-base hits, and a higher BA, OBP, slugging, OPS. In the advanced metrics, he ranked first in the league-and considerably higher than Howard-in adjusted OPS+, runs created, adjusted batting runs, batting wins and offensive winning percentage (essentially, a team of nine Pujols in the lineup would have had the highest winning percentage of any other player).

Pujols also had a 98.7 VORP-value over replacement player-compared to Howard's 36.6. That does not account for defense, but is great at distinguishing real offensive value. Nearly two-thirds higher.

Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins each finished with higher totals in VORP on the Philadelphia Phillies, as did pitchers Cole Hamels and Jamie Moyer. The stat is not perfect, but is pretty solid at determining actual value, not perceived value-like if we took him away, and so forth.

The Phillies still would have been dangerous even with an average offensive 1B-Mike Jacobs, for instance-instead of Howard, who was not the M.V.P. of his own team let alone the entire league.

Pujols also grades out as a better defender in every metric.

Your honor, the defense rests.

*It was shocking that Utley, who hit 32 home runs and played exceptional defense at the keystone, finished 15th in the voting. Cameron agrees.

*And, on a sad note, former Rice star Wade Townsend underwent surgery on his right shoulder this week. Towsend, the Tampa Bay Rays' first-round pick back in 2005, has battled injuries since signing, and is now likely to miss the 2009 season. His days in the organization may be over as a result. The 25-year-old right-hander made three starts in the Arizona Fall League before sustaining the injury.