Newsletter Extra: Breakdown

Reader Travis Leleu did an analysis of the newsletter's content…I'll let him explain:

I visited each of your newsletter articles (453) available on your website and looked how frequently you mentioned teams and players. Each team/player only counted once per article, i.e., an article mentioning the Yankees twice only counted once.

To the results: you wrote about the Yankees and Rangers a lot, nearly three times as frequently as the Astros, Blue Jays, Marlins, and a few other teams.  Your most commonly mentioned player was Cliff Lee (makes sense; he's been a big trade deadline / free agent / superstar pitcher over the sample period).

This analysis was done last fall, so it's slightly out of date. (That's on me, not Travis, as I've been sitting on this for a while.) But it's fun to share, and I hope you'll get a kick out of it. Thanks to Travis for doing the work.

Cliff Lee: 70 (15%)
Albert Pujols: 49 (10%)
Ron Washington: 44 (9%)
Derek Jeter: 42 (9%)
Buster Posey: 35 (7%)
Josh Hamilton: 33 (7%)
Ryan Howard: 33 (7%)
Mariano Rivera: 31 (6%)
Alex Rodriguez: 31 (6%)
Mike Napoli: 30 (6%)
Tim Lincecum: 29 (6%)
Adrian Gonzalez: 29 (6%)
Tony La Russa: 29 (6%)
Neftali Feliz: 29 (6%)
Carl Crawford: 29 (6%)
Ryan Braun: 28 (6%)
Chase Utley: 28 (6%)
David Price: 28 (6%)
Evan Longoria: 28 (6%)
Lance Berkman: 27 (5%)
Ian Kinsler: 27 (5%)
Michael Young: 27 (5%)
Mark Teixeira: 27 (5%)
Felix Hernandez: 27 (5%)
Jayson Werth: 27 (5%)
Jonathan Papelbon: 26 (5%)
Justin Verlander: 25 (5%)
Miguel Cabrera: 25 (5%)
Edwin Jackson: 25 (5%)
Stephen Strasburg: 24 (5%)
Aubrey Huff: 24 (5%)
Roy Oswalt: 24 (5%)
Bruce Bochy: 23 (5%)
Hunter Pence: 23 (5%)
Clayton Kershaw: 23 (5%)
Matt Kemp: 23 (5%)
Adrian Beltre: 23 (5%)
Jose Bautista: 23 (5%)
Jason Heyward: 22 (4%)
Joe Mauer: 22 (4%)
David Ortiz: 21 (4%)
Shane Victorino: 21 (4%)
Jorge Posada: 21 (4%)
Adam Dunn: 21 (4%)
Zack Greinke: 20 (4%)
Elvis Andrus: 20 (4%)
Kevin Youkilis: 20 (4%)
Charlie Manuel: 20 (4%)
Cole Hamels: 20 (4%)

Newsletter Extra: There Is No "Clean"

Lance Armstrong, it turns out, was a walking biology experiment.

This doesn't bother me as much as it does others. The things we call "medicine" today would have been called "witchcraft" 50 years ago, and the things we call "cheating" today will be "medicine" 50 years from now. Where the lines are drawn are more about politics than anything else, and I don't have faith in politicians to get politics right, much less science or anything else of actual import.

The thing is, Armstrong denied any bad behavior right up to the point he couldn't any longer. The reason he couldn't continue to deny it was that -- despite his saying it was about his son defending him -- there was a mountain of evidence against him, the product of tens of millions of dollars spent investigating his use of sports drugs and the practice of blood doping. Armstrong is one of the people who, due to their success and their high profile, have been targeted by individuals, such as journalists, and organizations, such as the US Anti-Doping Agency. There has been more time, money and effort put into researching the history of what Lance Armstrong put into his body than there has for your average biker.

Similarly, in baseball, we have Barry Bonds. Bonds was the subject of a best-selling book, Game of Shadows, that attempted to answer the questions of whether and when he used sports drugs. On the heels of that, Bonds was the target of an investigation by various government agencies as to whether he used sports drugs and subsequently lied about it to a grand jury. As with Armstrong, we have some idea of what Bonds used and when because of the staggering sums that were poured into finding out the information.

In baseball, we also have the Mitchell Report, a prosecutorial brief that cost $30 million and was built largely on publicly-available information and the testimony of a couple of drug dealers looking for leniency. It produced names that were helpful in feeding the media beast, but little else of import. At that, most of the names have been forgotten.

Think about these processes. In Armstrong's case, a man operated a bike-race-winning drug ring for years, became a folk hero and only confessed at the end of a decade-long effort by multiple organizations the cost of which may have topped out at $100 million. With Bonds, you had a book by two respected investigative journalists and a witch hunt by a federal government operating almost with impunity, producing, in the end, only a very shaky conviction on a count of felony dissembling. The Mitchell Report? You could have lit three million hundred-dollar bills on fire in Times Square for all the useful, reliable, consistent, actionable information it produced.

So if that's what you get when you put hundreds of millions of dollars and enormous amounts of manpower into investigations of sports-drug use, then how can we ever say that anyone is clean?

We just went through a Hall of Fame voting cycle that indicted a number of players' careers on a variety of shaky evidence, from a failed drug test in a final season to a confession of use to "just look at him". Next year, however, a number of players will hit the ballot who come into the conversation with a presumption of cleanliness, such as Greg Maddux and Frank Thomas. That presumption, which is granted based largely on whether your stats were "good, but not too good" and whether you had an acceptable relationship with the media, is utterly ridiculous. We've seen what time and money produces, which isn't very much. If you cloned Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams an infinite number of times and set them loose on every single player who played from 1985 to today, what would they find? If you told Jeff Novitzky that the MLBPA had issued a press release saying his mother wears army boots, what would we learn about everyone?

The biggest lie of the so-called "steroid era" -- and the intellectually bankrupt way in which the media has convicted the approved villains of that era -- is that we know who didn't use. We do not and we never will. Assumptions that Thomas or Maddux or Jim Thome or Ken Griffey Jr. or Derek Jeter are "clean" are as meaningless as assumptions that Jeff Bagwell or Mike Piazza or Sammy Sosa are not. We don't know. We don't know because no one ever looked so deeply into those players as they did into Bonds, as they did into Armstrong. You can't read sports-drug use by looking at a person's body, and you can't read it by looking at a stat line, and you damned sure can't read it based on who's answering questions in front of his locker after a tough loss. Too often, though, that's how those decisions have been made.

We don't know. We'll never know. To grant the presumption of innocence to some and not to all, though, is to ignore just how hard and how expensive it has been to gain the minimal knowledge we have about the people who have been the primary targets of investigation. It's time to stop designating some players as "clean", because the gap between "clean" and "dirty" is really just about who pissed off the wrong people.

Newsletter Extra: Landing Spots for Bourn

The best free agent remaining on the market, Michael Bourn, has a flawed profile, as discussed in Thursday's newsletter. Bourn was expected to pace the center-field market when the offseason began, but B.J. Upton, Shane Victorino and Angel Pagan all signed fairly quickly, and teams like the Nationals and Reds filled center field through trades. Despite this, there are a number of teams who could use him, even teams not specifically in the market for a center fielder. Here are the teams that are the best fits to sign Bourn at this late date.

Rangers: The Rangers got neither Zack Greinke nor Josh Hamilton, and they signed A.J. Pierzynski to a bargain-basement deal. Even eating money for Michael Young and some raises due to players under contract, the Rangers have money to spend. With Hamilton gone, they're missing an outfielder, with Leonys Martin now slated to have a starting job -- something he's yet to prove he's ready to keep. With Nelson Cruz a free agent after 2013, the Rangers are going to need an outfielder in 2014 as well. They could sign Bourn, get a big defensive upgrade in 2013 and fill the leadoff spot, allowing Ian Kinsler to bat lower in the order, better fitting his skill set. Bourn/Kinsler, with Elvis Andrus ninth, is better than Kinsler/Andrus, with Martin ninth. Signing Bourn a short-term solution that would make the team better, and he'd even be a serviceable fourth outfielder on the back end of a three- or four-year deal.

Orioles: The Orioles don't have a leadoff hitter, though they did get good work from Nick Markakis in that role last last year. They've re-signed Nate McLouth, but McLouth makes a better extra man than starting left fielder. (They also hope for a healthy Nolan Reimold in 2013.) Signing Bourn is also unlikely given Adam Jones' defensive reputation and salary, even though he's not a plus center fielder. File this under moves that make more sense to the statheads than the front offices.

White Sox: Alejandro de Aza was an incredibly important player for this team last year, and he sets up as one again next year. The White Sox project to get poor OBP from as many as six lineup slots, and there's no guarantee de Aza repeats rather than adds to that number. The Sox, down Kevin Youkilis and A.J. Pierzynski, need Bourn's OBP, even taking the downside risk into account. A de Aza/Viciedo platoon in left field is much more attractive than Viciedo as an everyday player as well.

Rays: Desmond Jennings moves over to center field, but he's 26 years old and has a career .327 OBP in the majors. That number was .314 last year. Sam Fuld is listed as a starter for this team, so clearly Bourn would be an asset. In an AL East where the Yankees and Red Sox are down, the Rays could pick this year to spend some money. Bourn also fits their defense-centric approach.

Yankees: This is unlikely, because the Yankees are determined to reset their payroll below the luxury-tax threshold. Doing so could save them $50 million over a period of years, so it makes sense to do so. Signing Ichiro Suzuki -- who has been a replacement-level player for two years -- blocks Bourn, as well.

Reds: The Reds don't have a center fielder, and signing Bourn would crowd both their payroll and their outfield. Were they to sign Bourn, though, the impact on their defense, their depth, their team as a whole might be enough to make them the best team in the NL. Given that the Reds have remained below average in attendance despite two division titles in three years, it may be difficult to argue that they should blow open the vault doors for a luxury item.

Choose

[Explicit, graphic language follows. If this will bother you, CLOSE YOUR BROWSER AND DO NOT KEEP READING. If you go forward, don't e-mail me to tell me I shouldn't have written that, that you're offended, that I'm vulgar. You're a sentient being capable of operating a computer and you have been warned.]

--

I was wrong about the Jerry Sandusky serial-child-rape case.

Last year, on Twitter, I criticized the focus on everyone but Sandusky, the rapist who had committed horrific crimes against children. It seemed to me that the story had quickly moved past him and on to, if you'll forgive the word, "sexier" names, names like Paterno and McQueary and Spanier. I couldn't understand why there was so much rage against these men who hadn't hurt children, and so little, in proportion, for the man who had. It struck me as cynical of the media to look for a better story, seek out more boldface type, rather than investigate the crimes that did happen.

I was wrong. Sandusky committed evil acts for which he has been tried in this world and, per his own stated faith, will be tried in the next one. He had more help than I realized, however, and in trying to focus my own rage, I did not properly hold accountable the men representing the institution, men who might have come to the rescue of children, but instead did everything but buy Sandusky lube and towels.

On Friday, CNN's Susan Candiotti reported on a series of e-mails among Penn State President Graham Spanier, VP Gary Schultz and Athletic Director Tim Curley in which the "men" discuss the case in pronoun-laden e-mails, taking care to be as vague as possible. These elite representatives of Pennsylvania State University show their deepest concern not for the broken boys strewn about the community, but for their rapist friend and the potential liability created by even having this discussion. The e-mails represent a calculation so craven as to be bewildering, barely human, a desperate attempt to avoid a responsibility that should be built into our DNA: to protect the weakest among us.

As reported by CNN, the e-mails begin 16 days after graduate assistant Tim Mike McQueary told Coach Joe Paterno about finding Sandusky naked and apparently engaged in sexual activity with a boy in an on-campus shower. The language in the e-mails is so stilted that it has to be an intentional attempt to muddy the waters, to make it unclear what exactly is being discussed. What is clear, though, is that the priority of some of the most respected men in Happy Valley wasn't justice, wasn't decency, wasn't even a base desire for revenge. Their priority was to protect a child rapist and to limit the exposure of the university. Despite this being the second specific situation in which Sandusky was suspected of child rape (the first in 1998, and referenced obliquely in the e-mails), these three bureaucrats addressed the issue as if dealing with an employee caught sneaking twenties out of petty cash.

Curley, after a plan had been laid out to alert Sandusky, Second Mile (Sandusky's charity/personal harem) and the child-welfare authorities: "I am having trouble with going to everyone, but the person involved."

After an alternate plan in which only Sandusky would be notified was agreed upon, Spanier said, "I am supportive." He added, in perhaps the worst sentence I have ever read, "The only downside for us is if the message isn't 'heard' and acted upon, and we then become vulnerable for not having reported it."

No, Graham. The downside for you, as you see it, is bad publicity. The true downside is children being raped when you might have prevented it. You think you're vulnerable, Graham? You're not vulnerable. You're a coward. Vulnerable is an 11-year-old boy who doesn't understand why his mentor has his dick in his mouth, but is too fucking scared to run away.

Spanier, praising the plan to protect the child rapist: "Humane and a reasonable way to proceed."

Schultz: "This is a more humane and upfront way to handle it."

Humane. Upfront. Reasonable.

At least four children -- that we know of -- would become Sandusky's victims after this exchange of e-mails.

Humane. Upfront. Reasonable.

Presented with two instances of apparent child rape, and given a choice to protect the rapist of children or the children being raped, these three chose to protect the rapist. They didn't report their suspicions to authorities, didn't try to find the children to check on their welfare, didn't even take Sandusky into a small room and ensure than he never raped again.

They Are. Penn State.

There is nothing that can be done for the victims of Sandusky and Spanier and Curley and Schultz and all the other men who knew something and, each for their own reasons, didn't do enough. Now it's about what can be done from this point forward to send the strongest message possible that we, as human beings, side not with the rapist and enablers, but against them.

So here's one idea: Don't wear white and take a moment in between cheers and beers, face painted, head bowed, thinking in whitewashed terms about victims and the bad man who touched them. Don't pretend that a gesture is an action. Go further. Don't spend money. Don't go to the game. Don't buy a sweatshirt. Don't write a check. Don't read a magazine or engage in a discussion. At least four children were raped in part because the highest individuals on the Penn State organizational chart put, however implicitly, the good name of their school and their football program ahead of the welfare of the children in their community. The only way to counter that is to turn that statement around in a way that ensures that the world gets the message loud and clear.

You want to make sure this never happens again? I don't want to hear donations to the university are down 10%, 20%. I want to hear that no one gave money, not a dime, to this diseased institution. You want to send a message that football doesn't matter? I want to see games played with no one in the stands, because no one has the heart to cheer a program that would allow these atrocities to occur, no one even wants to be in the same building as it. You want to align yourself against this kind of behavior, ABC and ESPN and BTN? Don't send cameras to any game involving Penn State, and when someone sues you, you stand behind a podium and you say three words.

Humane. Upfront. Reasonable.

You're an alum? Don't light a candle and choke out a tear…and then write a check and put on your gameday gear and walk to the stadium. That stadium? It's a standing 24/7/365 tribute to what Graham Spanier valued, to the choices he made, to the evil of putting a child rapist ahead of children. These things are hard? Please. You know what is hard? Being a ten-year-old boy and having a middle-aged man shove his cock up your ass. Not watching football? Not sending your money to a school? Not televising a football game? These things are six days on a beach in Maui compared to what these children were put through.

Hard to read? Not nearly as hard as it was to live. That's what happened. We use so many euphemisms so that we can discuss these things in public, but we don't do it for the sake of discourse. We do it for ourselves, so that we don't have to think about what really happened here. These words -- "abuse", "touching", "inappropriate behavior" -- only serve to mask the horror of what occurred: a grown man, a trusted member of the community, having sex with young boys under the guise of bringing them from difficult situations into manhood. Charles Pierce said it first and said it best: this is about the rape of children. The victims who came after February 26, 2001 needed the people who could have saved them to tap into the rage generated by a true accounting of what happened. Perhaps had Spanier and Curley and Schultz said, out loud, what they were dealing with, they would have found their humanity.

If we're to wipe these images away, the ones we replace them with have to be just as indelible. They have to be powerful. They have to say that protecting children is more important than watching football. They have to give strength to the victims of Sandusky, and put fear into the hearts of anyone who would, as Graham Spanier did, enable the next beast. Still photos, perhaps Webcam shots, of 22 players outlined against a green field, under a blue sky, surrounded by row upon row of seats unclaimed by a community rejecting Spanier's vision for State College, Pa., will do quite nicely.

The lasting image has to be a football game, an entire football season, played in front of no one but the heavens above. No fans. No cheerleaders. No cameras. No media. Reject the program that let a predator roam free. Let an empty stadium, an impoverished athletic department and an ignored football season be the ultimate judgment upon Penn State University.

You Are. Penn State.

Show us what that means. Show those boys what that means.

Stephen Strasburg

The Joe Sheehan Newsletter
Vol. IV, No. 32
June 1, 2012

Tonight in Washington, Stephen Strasburg will make his 11th start of the season, and move past 60 innings pitched in the third frame. By Flag Day, he'll have set MLB career highs in both those categories, and some time in July he'll surpass his professional peak of 123 1/3 innings pitched, set in his first pro season of 2010. You may remember that season: it ended on August 21, in the middle of the fifth inning against the Phillies when Strasburg, to that point one of the best stories in baseball, tore the ulnar collateral ligament in his right arm.

That injury, the Tommy John surgery that fixed it and the rehabilitation that followed have left Strasburg pretty much exactly where he was on that steamy August night on the Citizens Bank Park mound: as one of the most exciting, watchable, devastating starting pitchers in the game. He's not the best pitcher in the NL this year, but his 2.64 ERA, 29.9% strikeout rate and 70/17 K/BB are all fantastic numbers that put him in position to claim that crown by season's end. (As it stands, Strasburg isn't the best Cy Young candidate in his own rotation right now -- Gio Gonzalez has been the best pitcher in the league so far.)

As they did a year ago with Jordan Zimmermann, who was coming off his own Tommy John surgery in 2009, the Nationals would like to hold down Strasburg's workload in his first full season in the majors after the injury. Zimmermann, two years older than Strasburg last season, threw 161 1/3 innings last year over 26 starts and was shut down before September. GM Mike Rizzo has indicated that the team wants to limit Strasburg, although he wouldn't commit to a number or a date. When asked in April if that plan had changed, Rizzo said that it hadn't.

Of course, that was when his team was 20 games into a season and had that sheen of April fluke. We're about at the one-third mark now, and the Nationals have moved from cute story to June division leader, with the second-best record in the circuit even after a three-game sweep in Miami at the hands of the Marlins. It's hard to call them a favorite in the division -- all five teams are over .500 and separated by just three games -- but the deeper we get into the year, the more they have to be taken, and have to take themselves, seriously as contenders. The Phillies have looked their age, unable to get their best team on the field at any point in the season. The loss of Roy Halladay for six to eight weeks drops their expectation by a game or two. The Braves have located an above-average offense (third in the league in runs with a huge lead on #4) just in time to see their run prevention tank. Save for Brandon Beachy, every Braves pitcher is performing worse than they did a year ago. The Marlins were among the best teams in baseball in May, as Giancarlo Stanton continued his march to stardom; Stanton is one of the only Marlins contributing at the plate, and the loss of Emilio Bonifacio robs the team of needed OBP. The Nationals, frankly, can look at the competition and be very happy about their chance to win this division.

Limiting Strasburg isn't an arbitrary decision based on the guesswork we all do when it comes to young pitchers. No, the surgery two years ago, rather than his age and experience, is what's driving the thought process. It's common to expect less from pitchers the year after Tommy John surgery, whether that takes the form of lessened in-game endurance, a shortened season, or both. In the case of Strasburg, Davey Johnson has clearly been trying to save his starter some pitches: a season high of 108 and just three of 10 outings reaching over 100. Strasburg has yet to face any hitter a fourth time this season. These measures are noble, but even at that Strasburg is on pace for 31 starts and 180 or so innings -- in the regular season. That would exceed Zimmerman's totals by a fair amount, and at that it assumes Johnson continues to exert significant in-game control over Strasburg's workload, and it leaves open the question of what to do in the Division Series.

Take it back a step, though. Why does a team limit the innings of any pitcher? It's not a humanitarian cause, it's an attempt to get the maximum value for the investment in talent. The Nationals are trying to make sure that Strasburg can make 32 starts and go 220 innings in as many seasons as possible while they have him at a below-market cost, so they can leverage that in the pursuit of championships. They're not trying to save Strasburg's 2020 season, when he'll be full-priced and possibly working elsewhere. They're trying to save his 2013; it's enlightened self-interest, not altruism. If the point is to win a championship, though, and we agree that those chances are neither distributed evenly nor predictably, then does it make any sense to pump the brakes on a player who is one of the difference-makers for this team? We can say that the Nationals' window is 2013-15, when they'll have Strasburg and Zimmerman fronting a rotation for a fraction of market value, with Bryce Harper batting in the mlddle of the lineup and their exciting middle infield coming into its own. Well, put on a sweater, because the window is already open. Those two guys are in the rotation. The middle infield has been frustrating (I've been notably wrong about Danny Espinosa), but is certainly not the problem. Harper? He's the best player on the team.

Contention is what happens when you're busy making other plans. If the Nationals elect to hold back Strasburg because they want him to be the ace of a championship team, they may keep him from being the ace of a championship team.

The reason I can advocate for aggression, relatively speaking, is that pitcher abuse doesn't exist any longer in the major leagues. (It's epidemic in the college game and at lower levels, to the point where you root for lawsuits to end the practice.) Greater awareness of the risks involved, of the development curve of young arms, the trial-and-error of figuring out what the upper bounds of workload should be, bullpen specialization that has routinely turned even good starts into incomplete games…all have led to an MLB in which "pitcher abuse" is a term much like "doubleheader" or "polyester" or "color line," a relic of days long gone by. Just to pick a year, in 1991, the first year in which I started arguing baseball online, there were 153 starts in which a pitcher went at least 130 pitches. There were 25 in which a pitcher went 140, and five of at least 150.

In the entire 21st century, there have been 141 starts of at least 130 pitches, 12 of at least 140 and just one of 150 (Livan Hernandez threw exactly 150 pitches on June 3, 2005). Since 2009 inclusive, just two pitchers have cracked 135 pitches, and in both cases they were chasing no-hitters (Edwin Jackson and Brandon Morrow, both in 2010). The practical upper bound is now 130 pitches. Andy Benes was 23 years old on April 16, 1991, when the Padres let him throw 154 pitches in a 1-0 loss to the Reds. A manager who did that in 2012 would be fired mid-inning.

Strasburg isn't in danger of being abused because no professional pitcher, and especially no young pitcher, is in danger of being abused. If he's merely treated like any 23-year-old starting pitcher, he will be well within the safe guidelines for pitcher usage. The special circumstance of "coming off Tommy John surgery" has to be balanced against the special circumstance of "flags fly forever".

In arguing for 32 starts, 195-205 innings and whatever postseason work is necessary, I'm not planting my flag alongside Dallas Green and Dusty Baker. I'm planting it exactly where any team should: at the intersection of team and player needs. Strasburg starts tonight, and if he's thrown 95 pitches through six innings with the Nationals up 2-1 and the top of the Braves' order coming up in the seventh, he should be out there to face them.

From 345 to 68, Epilogue

My reaction to the release of the 2011 NCAA tournament field was surprise.

My reaction to the reaction to the release was disgust.

With the lowered bar for entry -- 37 at-large teams, the most ever -- and the absolutely brutal set of performance characteristics for the 20 or so teams in line for the last spots in the field, there is simply no defending a team that didn't get in. I missed on two teams, and whereas in past years I have felt that I was right and the committee was wrong, there's no such reaction this time. The committee swapped my last team in (Colorado) and first team out (Southern California), and they chose the regular-season champion of a good conference (Alabama-Birmingham) over the fourth-place team in a somewhat better one (Virginia Tech). I had UAB as my sixth team out, largely because I didn't think the committee would value the conference championship highly enough relative to the lack of top-50 wins and the tournament quarterfinal bad loss. UAB was on my board all week and

My only question about the UAB pick is the contrast to the USC one. The two are dissonant, and serve only to further cloud the issue of what exactly the committee is looking for. UAB had a good record and a high RPI, a dearth of great wins but a lot of good ones, and performed well in its conference. USC had a mediocre record and a low RPI, a lot of great wins and a lot of terrible losses, and was T-4, with a 10-8 (11-9) record in its conference. I can understand putting either in, but to put both in is baby-splitting -- UAB paired with Harvard or Missouri State would have been consistent, as would USC and Colorado.

Committee Chairman Gene Smith wasn't helpful in explaining this oddity, and in fact, came off as delusional in post-game interviews, saying to ESPN: "This year there are a lot of good teams out there, moreso than in previous years for me."

The treatment of Virginia Commonwealth was shameful, with the collected experts in Bristol showing a complete ignorance of their resume. Despite Jay Blias' assertions, VCU was in the discussion. I had them in. Jerry Palm had them in. Andy Glockner had them as one of his last few out. Joe Lunardi had them as one of his top eight out, and I believe they were higher earlier in the week. From my last piece yesterday:

"The thing is, I'm not sure VPI is the best Virginia school in the discussion. Virginia Commonwealth has a better tournament resume, based on all the criteria listed by the committee than the four ACC teams in toto. They have a higher RPI (49) than all; they reached their conference final; they were just fourth in their conference, and the #3 team is not under consideration -- that hurts. VCU was 8-6 in true road games (the non-FSU ACC teams only played 10 road games each and none was above .500) and 12-8 in R/N. VCU had as many top-25 wins (2-3) as the four ACC bubble teams combined, and nearly as many top-50 wins (3-6) as the group (four). Echoes of William and Mary. VCU also had an 8-8 mark against the RPI top 100, which matches VPI and trails only Clemson (9-8).

"Unless the argument comes down to 'was Duke forced to play a game in your building,' I don't see how VCU ranks below any of these teams save perhaps Florida State, and then only if you give them full credit for a healthy Chris Singleton. This isn't a William and Mary argument, which relied on some key pieces of data -- ALL the data has VCU ahead of this group of teams.

"I don't know what the committee will do. I just know what the data says. I might be able to get one or two of the ACC bubble teams in ahead of VCU, but I can't see three or four."

It wasn't just that the panel thought VCU didn't belong, which is a case you can make with the last 12 teams in and the first 12 out. It's that they seemed to have no idea that they were part of the discussion. That's not a difference of opinion. That's being ignorant of what is nominally your area of expertise. How hard could it possibly be to look at a Nitty Gritty report and notice that VCU has all kinds of markers in its favor, especially relative to the ACC teams in the discussion? VCU did things they did not do. Disagreeing with their inclusion is fine; from the tone of the conversation, I just figured they were all getting VCU and VMI mixed up.

VCU was in the discussion. UAB was in the discussion. I don't think it's at all a coincidence that the two teams ESPN's staff was most offended by were from conferences that their networks rarely, if ever, televise. Nor do I think it's a coincidence that the two teams they defended most aggressively -- Virginia Tech and Colorado -- are from conferences they have deep ties to. No memos are out there, no policies are in place, but the people employed by the network are part of the established power structure, the same one that thinks it's OK to never play road games against good teams out of conference.

The call for more basketball people on the committee…I have no idea what this means other than more code, like the use of the "eye test," for "we need something that elevates that with which we are familiar with over that which we are not." I don't need more people to tell me that the BCS leagues have better athletes, maybe even better basketball players, than the rest of Division I. I need more people familiar with what the committee is trying to do and the standards they're attempting to apply in doing so. I need people who can look at Virginia Commonwealth and Virginia Tech and craft an actual argument, rather than act offended that their friends are going to the NIT.

None of the above was the real problem with the reaction. No, the most counterfactual, offensive, damaging assertion was that UAB and VCU were able to get into the tournament by gaming the system. The idea is that their high RPIs -- and this is a UAB thing more than a VCU thing -- are somehow not legitimate, achieved by playing easy-to-win games that nevertheless pump up the numbers.

First, Digger Phelps launched into a point that implicitly accused the committee of counting mid-majors that concluded, "I think it really hurts the power conferences."

Then Hubert Davis got involved: "I haven't looked at their their numbers. I haven't looked at their RPI numbers, strength of schedule numbers. I hope that's not the reason that they got into the NCAA tournament."

How can you be involved in this discussion and not know what a team's numbers are? You want to weight them differently, fine, but I'm astounded that you can go on the air, for money, and advertise that you don't know critical information.

More Davis: "I'm not saying UAB and VCU did this, but there are a number of programs, a number of teams that know this system, and they will schedule, make their schedule out to make their numbers look good."

The idea that the current system favors the mid-majors, that it's being exploited for their gain, is not only laughable, it's demonstrably untrue. Maybe the biggest problem in college basketball is that teams in the mid-tier conferences can't get games against the ones in the top six, and they absolutely can't get home games. Mid-majors have been screaming at the top of their lungs for years about wanting to play up, and the better those teams have gotten, the less access to games they've been able to get. Teams in the BCS leagues refuse, out-and-out refuse to play road games at teams in the #7-#18 conferences.

In fact, the RPI gimmickry cited by Phelps and Davis is actually the purview of the power leagues, who have taken to playing road games against bottom-100 teams in an effort to gain "road win" points in the new version of the RPI. (They understand that there's a concept in play, but don't quite grok the details.) The ACC played as many road games at Elon (2) and UNC-Greensboro (4) as they did against mid-major schools in the top 200 (6), and one of the latter games was in an exempt event hosted by one. Miami played at Florida Gulf Coast. Florida State played at FIU. Wake played at UNC Wilmington. You think Conference USA is trying to game the system? Really?

Florida State, Georgia, Penn State and Illinois are in the tournament because they got to play home games against highly-rated teams. I submit that without that opportunity -- the league forcing good teams to play at their place -- none would be in the tournament. All their cases rested on one big win at home in conference. Alabama, Virginia Tech and Colorado were similarly situated, with a single home conference win buoying the entire profile. You think UAB or Harvard or Missouri State wouldn't like to be able to play home games against Duke and Kentucky? You think they have scheduling advantages relative to the teams that choose to play a lot of bad games and never go on the road against the #7 to #16 conferences in the country? The entire ACC played six road games against mid-majors!

RPI gimmickry isn't playing better-quality competition, it's going on the road against terrible competition. If you can't tell the difference between teams 150-200 and teams 250-300 on the RPI, just looked at the damned performance of both. There's a significant gap. One set of teams is much, much better than the other. Playing the former instead of the latter is the choice teams make because teams 1-100 on the RPI -- 73 of them in particular -- won't play them, and they damned sure won't come to their place to play them.

And then their friends at ESPN go on TV and make it sound like they're getting screwed over it.

You want to be ignorant about why the selection committee would pick a team that won a top-10 conference outright, went 10-7 against the RPI top 100 and posted the highest RPI of any bubble team, fine. You want to ignore road record and top-100 wins and schedules within a conference, fine. But if you go on the air in front of millions of people and lie -- just flat-out lie -- about who has the advantages and disadvantages in scheduling in college basketball, you should be ashamed of yourself. What Hubert Davis and Digger Phelps did last night was no less embarrassing to themselves and their network than what Billy Packer did five years ago when he showed such incredulity over the selection of George Mason, a perfectly-qualified Colonial team, to the field.

You'd think everyone would have learned.

I could probably write 15,000 words on the "Bracketology" show. There were more erroneous, easily-disproven assertions crammed into two hours than I can every remember seeing on live television. There were more bad ideas about what a tournament resume than I could hope to summarize -- Digger Phelps was particularly productive on this score. I've pretty much stopped watching baseball studio shows because I couldn't take the "analysis"; this show made "Baseball Tonight" look like Yalta.