What I'm trying to do is hold hosts to egregious errors.  Remember, this medium is increasingly becoming the choice of media for sports fans.  The personalities have the opportunity to shape public opinion.  Today's discussion on WFAN has been utterly ridiculous.  I don't want to lambaste the callers, of whom I expect idiocy.  But when the normally solid Chris Carlin lends credence to these crackbrain theories, I have to assign him some bandwith.

A-Rod is being toasted today.  Yesterday was an off day.  Lord help him if he flies out tonight.  I'm going to go ahead and paraphrase the typical caller.  "We need to cut him lose.  I hope he opts out.  We can save money.  That's the problem with the Yankees, no role players.  Where's the Scott Brosius on this team?"  That's typical caller speak, but the host, when speaking of A-Rod, should NEVER suggest that perhaps "...they pickup Joe Crede or soemone like that" as a good fit.  I can quote many statistics, some of which are called esoteric by old guard writers.  None of said stats includes a trying really hard index.  None of said stats is called PRORP (Plays role over replacement player).  Let's reference some REAL numbers here.  The typical year of A-Rod vs some "real ballplayers"

A-Rod: OPS .965, EqA .311, Avg WARP3 10.96, Avg FRAR 22 (Includes three seasons out of position), 2007 VORP 54.5 (76.5 total runs above replacement), Runs/27 8.1

Scott Brosius: OPS .745 (5 percent below adjusted all time), EqA .253, Avg WARP3 5.02, Avg FRAR 18, Avg VORP 7.52 (25.5 total runs above replacement), Runs/27 4.66

Joe Crede: OPS .751 (8 percent below adjusted all time), EqA .247, Avg WARP3 3.86 (repeating of course - Leeroyyyyy Jenkins!), Avg FRAR 14.5, 2007 VORP -9.8, Runs/27 4.64

Let me understand this, Yankee fans want to win.  In order to win, the Yankees should 1) Rid themselves of A-Rod 2)Hire a role player like Joe Crede.  To express their argument numerically, the Yankees should dump 76.5 runs per year and 7 wins per year.  After all the Yankees are 10 games up and winning all their games by 4+ runs, so losing this production (and the payroll) is beneficial, correct?  Oh the Yankees are 10 games back in the standings.  So scoring fewer runs and winning fewer games helps how?

I can't believe I have to write this.  Alex Rodriguez is the best player in baseball.  Get it through your heads.  I know it's en vogue, the cause celbre, the insert fancy French phrase here, to suggest any other name as the best player.  After all, if we say it, and said person gets hot for ten games, we can jump up and down saying "Told ya!"  If we're wrong, we just move on to the next crazy prediction.