Joe Morgan, Fired

In a move that will surely destroy my Sunday Night Baseball drinking game, ESPN has decided to not renew the contracts of the announcing duo of Joe Morgan and Jon Miller. Miller may stay on with ESPN to continue his radio work but Morgan was told no thank you. Most of the baseball blogosphere is rejoicing tonight after hearing the news but I built an entire drinking game around Joe Morgan's nonsensical stories, stat bashing and referrals to his playing days. I'm going to miss being drunk by the third inning. Here's what the four letter told Richard Sandomir...

“We’ve decided to make a change and introduce new voices and new perspective,” said Norby Williamson, an executive vice president of ESPN. He added: “Twenty one years is an eternity in this business. And today is about acknowledging the contributions they made to the franchise.”

Ken Tremendous and the rest of the prophets at Fire Joe Morgan are no doubt popping the corks of their proverbial champagne. I reluctantly approve of this move because before my drinking game, I had to watch SNB on mute. I have nothing against Jon Miller but Joe Morgan's crusade against advanced metrics was aggravating. On base percentage is an actual thing, Joe, people understand it now.

Dan Shulman and Orel Hershiser look like the heir apparents and I think they will be a great team. I can begrudgingly give up the drinking game for some intelligent game calling.

The collateral damage here is no more of my Weekly Cup of Joe where I ripped a question and answer from an ESPN Joe Morgan chat. Obviously FJM did it better but it was fun while it lasted. I guess this will be one of the last times I get to use my Joe Morgan cup pic. *chugs the rest of the Icee, brain freeze*

I Looked at Rogers Hornsby's Stats for a While Today

This will probably become a regular feature. I read an early-1900s player's statistics and write about them for our OBP readers. Tonight we look at Rogers Hornsby.




In the name of Pickles Dillhoefer, where do we begin?: Oh, here's where we begin-1924. Hornsby hit .424, which is the sixth-highest single-season average and the best mark since Nap Lajoie hit .426 in 1901. I'm willing to bet no one will hit .424 in a season until Albert Pujols' great-grandson hits .519 in 2054. In '24, Hornsby also had a .507 on-base percentage (absurd) and a 222 OPS+ (also absurd).

I won the Triple Crown, then I won it again: Hornsby is one of only two players to win multiple triple crowns (Ted Williams is the other). In 1922, Hornsby had a .401/52/152 TC line, and in 1925 he pulled off a .403/39/143. Just imagine someone winning two triple crowns, four years apart, with those numbers. If the same thing happened in, say 2010 and 2013, people would be evacuating cities thinking they had just seen an alien.

Sorry, Joe Morgan: But Hornsby is the greatest second baseman of all time. People say Joe Morgan all the time, but I say Rogers Hornsby all the time. Rajah's career slash numbers are .358/.434/.577. Morgan: .271/.392/.427. Hornsby hit .380 or better seven times. Morgan hit a career high .327 in 1975. And I know all of the live ball era arguments-Hornsby played in a hitter's era, Babe Ruth ate a lot of hot dogs....but when Morgan played did they take out the cork and the pitchers just tossed the cowhide? Yes, Morgan played in a tough hitter's era. It was an era in which he didn't hit even close to as good as Hornsby did in his worst seasons.

Here's a fun game called "Let's see just how ridiculously good Rogers Hornsby was from 1920 to 1925": Here are Rajah's per-season averages during that six-year stretch:

BA - .397
OBP - .467
SLUG - .667
OPS - 1.134
OPS+ - 200

Seems like a good place to stop.