Cuckoo for Nick Canepa: Assumptions and false narratives

This morning MLB owners approved the Padres sale from John Moores to the O'Malley/Fowler/Mickelson group. Last evening Nick Canepa wrote a column called, Padres appear headed in right direction. It made me say, "Cuckoo." . . .

For the most part the column wasn't bad. Canepa advocated retaining CEO and President, Tom Garfinkel, with which I wholeheartedly agree (I'll say something about the Garfinkel Situation later). Canepa also said other stuff. I hate to nitpick but I come undone when I read confounding ideas, and all it takes is one. To wit:

Byrnes reminds me a bit of former GM Kevin Towers. After former boss Jeff Moorad fired Towers, I wrote Moorad’s first major decision would be the worst he would make as an owner. I wasn’t wrong. Moores, who still had controlling interest in the team, shouldn’t have allowed it to happen.

Oh yes Nick, I remember. I believe it was October of 2011 when you last referenced this sentiment and I skewered your column for it.

But there wasn't just one confounding idea. There were at least two! Canepa would go on to write his next puzzling tidbit in the subsequent paragraph:

But that’s baseball. Towers is doing fine in Arizona. And, after making the decision to replace KT with Jed Hoyer — another mistake, not because Hoyer was ill-equipped, just a bad fit here — Moorad made it right in naming Byrnes GM after Hoyer bailed to take on the unenviable (but more lucrative) task of trying to put the Cubs back together again.  

Cuckoo. I'm going to try and work this one out. Here it goes . . .

Jed Hoyer was not ill-equipped to take a job as GM of the Padres. This means that he was equipped to take a job as GM of the Padres. Yet another way to say it would be to write that he was qualified, prepared or ready.

So if Jed Hoyer was qualified for the job of general manager then why on earth was he a bad fit in San Diego?

I'm relying on a thesaurus now.

If you are fit then one could say that you are competent. Or, qualified. Or, prepared. Or even, ready.

But if you are a bad fit then you are the opposite of fit, which means you are incapable. At least that's what the thesaurus says: Incapable is the antonym for fit. And since Jed Hoyer was a bad fit in San Diego I am left to assume that Nick Canepa believes that Jed was simultaneously incapable and qualified. 'Tis a conundrum we have here.

The reader is left to assume what Nick Canepa is talking about. Since I am someone who is dialed in to the local baseball scene I am going to make an assumption which may be totally off-base.

I think Canepa is trying to convey that while Jed Hoyer was qualified and ready to become a GM in major league baseball he was not suited for the job in San Diego. Jed came from large market Boston where the pockets were deep and perhaps Canepa feels that he didn't have the proper mindset to operate on a shoestring budget in small market San Diego. Does that sound reasonable?

It doesn't sound reasonable when you consider that Jed Hoyer focused heavily on the draft (a place where small market teams can exploit available talent at relatively modest cost) and also emphasized building a club that could use PETCO Park to its advantage. Using PETCO to its advantage means building a strong rotation and bullpen along with defense and speed which are all relatively inexpensive attributes when juxtaposed with free-agent power hitters. It kind of sounds like Jed Hoyer understood what it meant to build a club in small market San Diego and maybe he was . . . a good fit?

This isn't a defense of Jed Hoyer. He's gone. Whatever.

I wrote this because Nick Canepa makes no sense. When I write things I always re-read them to see if it makes sense. Sometimes my ideas are not coherent. So I go back and fix what I wrote. Sometimes it still doesn't make sense and I say, "Too bad, you're reading this for free!"

I tried to figure out what Nick said. I offered an idea. And then I debunked myself and quite possibly Nick. I'm pretty sure it's what Nick Canepa meant and all I can think is: He sure displays an amazing commitment to a false narrative.

Where art thou, Tim Sullivan?

Cuckoo for Nick Canepa: Subjective payroll analysis

Nick Canepa wrote a column about Phil Mickelson's role in the new Padres ownership group. And if you can imagine, I took umbrage with a small part:

Many San Diegans who voted for the building of Petco Park feel they were victims of a bait-and-switch by Padres ownership, believing Moores and management had not delivered on their promise of a solid, contending franchise. The Padres never said they were going to spend like the Yankees, but player payroll has been among the lowest in baseball for some time and the results haven’t always been pleasant.

In many ways I agree with the first part of this excerpt. Proposition 98 passed after the Padres' World Series appearance against the Yankees and then Moores packed it in until 2004. This (in)action was horribly unfair to Padres fans.

My issue is with Canepa's last sentence. It feels lazy. Canepa writes:

 ...player payroll has been among the lowest in baseball for some time...

When Canepa writes this I feel it's lazy because it is written in a way that says, "I don't really care to do any research."


Payroll has been the lowest for "sometime"? It's such a subjective frame of reference, what does that even mean? And what defines "lowest"? This is also subjective. Are we talking bottom half, third, or quarter of the league in payroll? With 30 teams in MLB, one could say that team number 15 is part of the lowest.

What do Padres fans know right now? We know that payroll has been brutally low since John Moores decided to put a mistress on the books. His subsequent divorce diminished the product on the field from 2009-2012. But the Moores divorce is not the entire story of payroll history in the East Village. PETCO Park existed from 2004-2008 and if my memory serves correctly I don't think that payroll was among the lowest in MLB at that time.

Let's define "lowest" payroll. It's completely subjective but I'm going to say that it is defined by being in the bottom 3rd of the league. So:

Teams 1-10 are the top third -- Well-to-do types.
Teams 11-20 are middle third -- Floating along, accidental like on the wind.
Teams 21-30 are the bottom third -- Living off revenue sharing.

I have yet to research this so I run the risk of making Nick Canepa look like he was correct but I think the exercise is valid regardless.

Let's take a  look at opening day payroll and where the Padres ranked amongst their competitors. (Here is a second source, and probably a more reliable one, which shows nearly identical dollar amounts).

2004 -- 18th place -- Middle Third -- $54, 639, 503
2005 -- 17th place -- Middle Third -- $62, 888, 192
2006 -- 17th place -- Middle Third -- $69, 896, 141
2007 -- 24th place -- Bottom Third -- $58, 110, 567
2008 -- 19th place -- Middle Third -- $73, 677, 616
2009 -- 29th place -- Bottom Third -- $42, 796, 700
2010 -- 29th place -- Bottom Third -- $37, 799, 300
2011 -- 28th place -- Bottom Third -- $45, 869, 140
2012 -- 30th place -- Bottom Third -- $55, 244, 700

So what does this information tell us?

During the PETCO Park era, payroll has fluctuated between the bottom middle third of MLB teams and the absolute bottom of the bottom third.

The first 5 years in PETCO Park (almost first 5 years . . . damn you 2007 for ruining my narrative!) the Padres were in the middle third of payroll. I believe this is where payroll should be*.

*A run of sustained success where attendance is thriving and people in San Diego actually care could allow the Padres to push the upper threshold of the middle third in payroll. Merely an opinion, thinking out loud.

We see that the dramatic shift in payroll occurs in 2009 at the time when John Moores began going through a divorce and sold the team on layaway to the Jeffrey Moorad group.

This all comes down to the use of subjective reasoning to shape narratives. Padres fans have the right to be perturbed at the team and for their thrifty ways in a new ball park but a newspaper's job is to provide adequate information to illuminate its readership.

I think Canepa fails here by using what I've termed "lazy" language. The type of language that says, "I don't care to do any research because it takes too long and god damn it, I have a narrative that I'm sticking too and for cripes sake this whole article is about Phil Mickelson, who is not Mike Schmidt, anyways! Geez! Don't you people have a sense of humor?"

Cuckoo for Nick Canepa: A telephone call to discuss how Chase Headley is still not Mike Schmidt

Following Kevin Acee's lead, Nick Canepa used Thursday morning's edition of the U-T to finally throw his two cents into the mix regarding Josh Byrnes' deadline non-moves and extensions.

I called out both columnists last week for not writing anything about the Quentin extension and it kind of pissed Canepa off. What can I say . . . I'm cuckoo.

Nick Canepa's Thursday column was pretty well written. I found myself nodding my head in agreement. And then the whole column unraveled.

As Canepa praised Josh Byrnes and my head nodded, a familiar jewel emerged:

What a professional July for Byrnes. He extended the contracts of left fielder Carlos Quentin and closer Huston Street and refused to give away Headley, who isn’t Mike Schmidt but may be his most reliable position player.

 Wut the wut? Didn't Nick use this same Mike Schmidt reference a couple of weeks ago?

I could not let this comparison stand! I decided to call Nick Canepa and record the call for your enjoyment . . .


[Pleasantries exchanged. Loathing confirmed.]

AJM: Who is Mike Schmidt?

CANEPA: Seriously? He was a third baseman for the Phillies.

AJM: Did he have a mustache?

CANEPA: Yes. What's your point?

AJM: I'm trying to figure something out, be patient. Was he a switch hitter?

CANEPA: That's the problem with young people. Asking if Michael Jack Schmidt was a switch hitter? You're an idiot.

AJM: I meant sexually.

CANEPA: What?

AJM: Never mind. Did he win MVP awards?

CANEPA: Three, Senor Internet writer. Avenging Jack Murphy. What a bunch of crap.

AJM: Be patient. Did he win gold gloves?

CANEPA: He was the best. How old are you?

AJM: My age is not relevant to this discussion.

CANEPA: Your brain is not germane to this discussion.

AJM: German? I'm not German. What does that have to . . .

CANEPA: What is the point of all of this?

AJM: Sorry. If Chase Headley shaved his beard but kept his mustache would he kind of be like Mike Schmidt?

CANEPA: Have you even seen Schmidt's mustache? His mustache was the Johnny Weismuller of mustaches.

AJM: Who?

CANEPA: Its an Olympics reference. That's the problem with people today, they don't appreciate yesterday. You've probably never even seen a Bogart film.

AJM: I forgot what, oh wait. Bogart?

CANEPA: Bogart! Do you even read my columns before you lampoon them?

AJM: Let's move this along, sir. I know you're busy. Has anyone ever really suggested that Chase Headley is Mike Schmidt? I'm pretty sure everyone is aware that he's good, and could have value to many teams, but that he's no Hall of Famer. Certainly no Mike Schmidt.

CANEPA: I'm trying to make a point by using the Schmidt reference ad nauseum.

AJM: Well, I don't get it.

CANEPA: Good god, don't you people have a sense of humor? Would it have worked better if I had written that Chase Headley is no Joe Randa?

AJM: [... smiles...]

AJM: [...squeals like school girl...]

AJM: [... quickly hangs up phone...]

AJM; [... goes and writes in diary...]

*I didn't actually call Nick Canepa. This is merely an imagined phone-call Q&A with Nick Canepa.

Cuckoo For Nick Canepa: People Chase Headley is not

In Monday's U-T Nick Canepa went on about how the 2012 Dream Team could beat the original Dream Team while simultaneously acknowledging the following:

• Michael Jordan was in his prime.
• Charles Barkley was phenomenal in 1992.
• People "who know the game" say that the best basketball ever played was during the 1992 Dream Team closed session practices.
• The 2012 edition of the Dream Team will get beat this year if it's not careful.

It was brilliant stuff. Let's move on to where he discusses Chase Headley in his hodge-podge-Sez-Me type column in which he never actually says "Sez Me" but certainly means it . . .


Nick Canepa would have us believe the following:

• Chase Headley will be traded.
• The Padres have depth at third base in the minors.
• Fred McGriff was given away in trade back in 1993.
• The columnist hates inter-division trades.
• Chase Headley is not Mike Schmidt.
• If a trade is executed between the rivals then the Padres should receive Magic Johnson.

Let's just see how Canepa wrote it:

Chase Headley is going to be traded. Let's just hope the Padres, who have some minor-league depth at third base, don't give him away (ala Fred McGriff). I hate inter-division trades. If the Dodgers want Headley, who is not Mike Schmidt, they should have to surrender Magic Johnson ...

I don't get Canepa.

Chase Headley, who is not Brooks Robinson, is a good ball player, a solid ball player.

Most fans would be loathe to watch Chase Headley, who is not Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah's couch professing his love for Katie Holmes, don Dodger blue but Canepa is ignoring a very important point.

If you want value for Chase Headley, who is not Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft, then you have to be willing to deal with every club in each league.

This is not the distant past. There will be no fire-sale, the likes of which fans endured in 1993. The current owners need to keep some value on this club so they're not just going to dump Chase Headley, who is not Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney.

Is there depth in the Padres minor league system? Sure. There's James Darnell, who is not Jed Gyorko. And there's Jed Gyorko, who is not Chase Headley (who incidentally is not The Savior or the Anti-Christ).

I just hope that if the Padres do trade Chase Headley, who is not Mercury 7 astronaut Wally Schirra, they get a windfall for him. Alas, I don't know if Chase Headley, who is not Jessica Alba in her prime, is a player who could command some sort of franchise altering wealth of talent to move to San Diego.

But if Chase Headley, who is not George Brett, was Jessica Alba in her prime then we'd be looking at an entirely different reality.

But Chase Headley, who is not Wade Boggs, is Chase Headley. So I guess we'll have to wait until July 31st to find out what becomes of Chase Headley, who is none of the above listed names.

Editor's Note:
No superstar team led by Michael Jordan would lose to the 2012 Dream Team.

Cuckoo for Nick Canepa: Analogy predictions

Enough of the serious fate-of-print-media-in-a-digital-world posts. Alright? Let's get Cuckoo for Nick Canepa . . .


Yesterday Nick Canepa wrote a column about Padres pitching and the scarcity of health within the entire staff. A commentary on the wrath of Tommy John and the hold the miserable ex-Dodger has over our youthful arms, so to speak.

The column was good. It was fair. It was inquisitive. Wait . . . let me read it again. No, it was good. Aside from the allusion to farts in Spring Training it did well to mention the rash of arm injuries but also to ask why such arm injuries are occurring. After all, these sorts of things didn't happen in Nick Canepa's day. Pitchers were tougher. Nick Canepa didn't say that. I DID!

Jump inside of my head and play a game I've developed called:

Guess the Nick Canepa Analogy NOW, You Present Day Sissy!

If you've read the column then just go along with my premise. Now the column is about arm injuries suffered by Padres pitchers and carries a title of Armed and Endangered. With so many arms injured and unavailable I read in anticipation of a specific analogy that Canepa would surely make. Something about guns and sharks, maybe!

What do you think?

To my astonished Sunday morning eyes, Nick Canepa passed up a sure fire Cuban Missile Crisis/ Cold War/ Arms Race reference. With both Yonder Alonso and Yasmani Grandal (Cuban exiles) taking the field each day, the wealth of arms drafted in the June Amateur draft, and the failing arms at the big league level an Arms Race analogy seemed like a given.

But I was wrong. Nick Canepa surprised me. Congrats, Nick.

Cuckoo for Canepa Analogy:

Call it the Padres Pitching Pandemic. Historic Injury figures aren't readily available, but it's hard to fathom a major league pitching staff that has suffered such a barrage of various arm maladies, some serious enough to require surgery. Instead of the arms of Krupp, this baseball club has been the arms of Venus de Milo.

A freaking Venus de Milo reference! No arms! Ha ha. Didn't even see that coming.

And what of the reference to "the arms of Krupp"?

It could be argued that the Krupp family (German weapons manufacturer) of the Arms of Krupp was the forefather of the Cold War arms race between Russia and the United States. As such, I shall award myself 4 points.

If you saw the Venus de Milo reference coming then you get the maximum allotted points of 7.5*. Congratulations!

*Don't be dim. 7.5 is the number of columns one can read under the U-T's new pay-wall policy.

Thanks for playing today's edition of Cuckoo for Canepa!

Cuckoo For Nick Canepa: Hoyt Wilhelm and Knuckleballs

After my initial Cuckoo For Nick Canepa post, written yesterday, the UT promptly released news that the company would begin charging customers for their on-line content produced each day. I don't know that the UT is worth a dime of my money so we'll see how this series progresses.

A couple of weeks ago Nick Canepa wrote an article about the horrible television contract with Fox and the complete lack of progress being made with Time Warner Cable to distribute Padres games to a large segment of San Diego. Definitely a topic worthy of coverage by Nick Canepa.

While the column was timely, I did take umbrage (and I was not the only one) with the following analogy by Canepa:

And things are moving along about as swiftly as a Hoyt Wilhelm knuckle ball, but with very little movement.

There is nothing swift about the speed of a knuckleball in its path to homeplate. It be slow, indeed. Nick Canepa is trying to let his readers know that the contract negotiations are moving slow and he uses something a baseball fan can relate to: The slow moving knuckleball. I get it.

Since when, though, is there a scenario where a knuckleball has "very little movement"? 

Knuckleballs move ALL over the place. They move so much that catchers can't even catch them. They move SO much that the otherwise completely useless Doug Mirabelli found gainful employment because he was the only one who could catch a Tim Wakefield knuckler. Do you even comprehend what I just said? Doug "FREAKING" Mirabelli!

Doug Mirabelli was horrible at the game of baseball but he possessed perhaps one of the rarest skill-sets in Major League Baseball: He could catch the knuckleball. Truth be told I'm pretty sure he sucked at it too, only he sucked less than every other catcher holding down a job in the league. So even the best knuckleball catcher in MLB sucked. Why? Because the knuckleball MOVES!

Let's say you don't believe me about the movement of the knuckleball. Would you believe Hall of Famer, Willie Stargell? And I quoth:

”Throwing a knuckleball for a strike is like throwing a butterfly with hiccups across the street into your neighbor’s mailbox.”

Poetic, no? Why would Pops describe the ability to throw a knuckleball for a strike in such a way? Because it moves. It moves a lot. Knuckleballs move. It is, quite simply, what they do.

We've established that a knuckleball has movement, and as such, using it to describe something that is not moving at all (TV contract discussions) demonstrates an exercise in poor judgement by the writer. But what of the reference to Hoyt Wilhelm?

Hoyt Wilhelm was a knuckleballer during the 1950s. And 60s. And early 1970s. He pitched forever and he did it so well he made it into baseball's Hall of Fame. Its what knuckleballers do. They throw FOREVER.

Wilhelm was special though. He won games starting AND closing*. He was kind of like an early Dennis Eckersley except he didn't throw sidearm and his hair wasn't perfectly feathered. He threw a knuckleball. Which moved a lot. If you call yourself a baseball fan, you should know the name and exploits of Hoyt Wilhelm. I have a 1958 Topps baseball card of Hoyt Wilhelm. I KNOW ABOUT HOYT WILHELM.

How about a more contemporary example of a knuckleballer, though? I get that Wilhelm is the hallmark for those who throw the pitch but maybe an R.A. Dickey analogy might resonate with readers.

At the time Canepa's column was written Dickey was coming off a complete game 1-hitter in which he struck out 12 batters. Using Dickey would have made Nick Canepa look like a genius. You know why? Dickey followed that performance-up with another 1-hitter and struck out 13 batters in that one!

R.A. Dickey is also old. He's 11-1. And old. He's 37. But he's 11-1!

R.A. Dickey also just had a biography released earlier this year. He's kind of had an interesting life. R.A. Dickey also climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro during the off-season. If Nick had used Dickey instead of Wilhelm he could have wrote:

 "Things are moving as swiftly as an R.A. Dickey knuckleball dancing at altitude in equatorial Africa, but with little movement."

Canepa could have even mixed in an allusion to Ernest Hemingway had he used Dickey! Ah hell, what do I know**.

*He also didn't do any of that "1 inning" save crap that is so prevalent today. Hoyt Wilhelm worked.
** I know that I wrote this pretty swiftly on account of it being old news and me having to rush Mrs. AJM to the airport. Sorry if it reads like something Nick Canepa mailed-in.

[EDITED 8:43 am in an attempt to give the appearance that I did not completely "mail it in".]

Cuckoo For Nick Canepa

When I was a kid I would sit down at the table for breakfast with the San Diego Union Tribune in front of me and a bowl of Cocoa Puffs. I would read the sports page cover to cover. The Sports section of the UT was thicker during that time of my life, more to read.

With no CNBC in the old days, adults often read the business section of the daily paper to see how the NYSE performed, feverishly charting their personal portfolios. Baseball box scores were my stock index. As a baseball card collector this was my form of investment tracking. I was going to be rich one day courtesy of my little cardboard gods. Rich from cardboard, huh? I'm moving in two weeks and those cards are moving with me. What a burden those boxes have become.

In addition to the box scores, I also read all of the sports columnists. San Diego Union columnist and editor, Jack Murphy, had passed away years before I moved to San Diego but I read all of the columnists who worked in the path he had blazed. This included Nick Canepa who, incidentally, has been around forever. Nick Canepa is a goddamn institution in this town.

As a kid, I didn't really have opinions of Nick Canepa or the other columnists as writers. I just read and continued to eat the Cocoa Puffs, gradually carving deeper and deeper into the box.

By the time my brother would come down for breakfast the box of Cocoa Puffs or Fruity Pebbles, or whatever other cereal graced our cupboard would be nearly gone. And the brother would be pissed. But I was bigger than him so I paid little mind to his plaintiff wails. With the sports section finished, I started my day.

Older now, I use coffee for breakfast.

I drink coffee, sifting through San Diego's poor excuse for a sports section, and I develop my own opinions on those columnists who proffer their opinions. I don't like Nick Canepa's writing. There's a lot about it I don't like. Sometimes Canepa writes an entire column that is so bad it warrants a complete dissection. Fortunately he doesn't always do this because I simply don't have the time in my schedule to be the UT's watchdog.

For the uninitiated, there is always one guarantee with a Nick Canepa column: It will include at least one pop culture reference that nobody below the age of 40 will understand or a reference that could have been updated to reflect some sort of continuous improvement as a writer. 

I appreciate history as much as anybody but there's something to be said for a writer who can stay up to date with both pop and sports culture. Not everything has to be about how, "Things were better in my day!"

Evolve, that's all I ask.

Nick Canepa doesn't believe in evolution. As is the case, I will regularly take Nick Canepa to task for his crappy writing in a series called . . . Cuckoo for Nick Canepa*!

* Points of clarification: I was Cuckoo, or enthusiastic, for Cocoa Puffs. So I ate the whole box. Nick Canepa's writing drives me cuckoo, or insane. Therefore I will write about the insanity. Just so we're clear about the whole Cocoa Puffs analogy.