During last night's Yankees-Red Sox telecast on ESPN, Joe Morgan once again made a number of foolish, unsubstantiated claims, as is his custom. Here were the highlights...
In the top of the first, Morgan and Jon Miller were discussing how the Yankees were the only team in the league that had yet to steal a base. Morgan, in all his ignorance, claimed that the Yankees are a stationary team and that with Jeter out of the lineup, Damon and Cano are the only stolen base threats. Clueless Joe was apparently unaware that (1) the Yankees ranked fourth in the AL in 2007 in stolen bases with 123, (2) they had three players steal over 20 bases (Damon, A-Rod, and Abreu) and five players (the aforementioned three plus Jeter and Melky) with double digit stolen base totals last season, and (3) the Yankees stole 27 bases in 22 spring training games.
Morgan was guilty of a sin widespread among members of the sports media: a loss of perspective. The sports media has an amazing proclivity to hype a fast or slow start at the expense of a player's or team's entire body of work. We saw another great example of that phenomenon earlier in the telecast when ESPN's resident Red Sox cheerleader, Peter Gammons, was gushing to the audience about how Matsuzaka has learned to stop overthrowing, how he's so improved from last season, how he's so much more comfortable, how he's so much more efficient with his pitches -- based on all of two starts! As if to mock Gammons' unwarranted enthusiasm, the Yankees worked 6 walks off Matsuzaka, touched him up for 4 runs, caused him to throw 120+ pitches, and knocked him out after five innings. Vintage Daisuke. The unremarkable proposition that two weeks worth of work are insufficient to negate an entire season's worth is unassailably sound and levelheaded.
As for Morgan's comment about Cano's asserted base stealing prowess, that was just another example of his stunning lack of preparation and familiarity with the teams appearing on Sunday Night Baseball. Cano has all of 10 stolen bases in 20 attempts during his three-plus-year career. Anyone who follows the Yankees even casually knows that Cano does not steal bases. Morgan would have known that he simply bothered to look at the stat sheet.
Morgan's buffoonery was not limited to his discussion on the Yankees' base stealing capabilities. Later in the game, Morgan claimed that many Yankee fans were still upset that Cashman refused to trade Phil Hughes for Johan Santana during the off-season. While there were some fans who wanted Cashman to make that deal last December, they were a small minority. The vast majority were unwilling to part with Hughes for the "privilege" of paying Santana $150 million because of the belief that Minnesota, with Boston's meddling assistance, was demanding an inordinately high price from the Yankees. The ire of the pro-Santana contingent stems not from Cashman's rejection of December's Hughes-for-Santana proposal, but from the rejection of Minnesota's revised February offer of Kennedy and Cabrera for Santana, which many considered a fair trade.
Morgan is not without virtues as an analyst. He's solid at dissecting what's actually going on between the lines and he brings the unique perspective of Hall of a Fame ballplayer to the broadcast booth. He also generally avoids the irritating habit of stating the obvious and attempting to pass it off as insight, unlike Tim McCarver. Yet his faults are great -- namely, his penchant for making ill-informed comments about the teams and players he's covering and his thinly-veiled anti-Yankee bias -- and that makes watching a Sunday night game on ESPN almost unbearable.