Steve Simmons is a smug cheapshot artist

Actually, to call the Sun Media hack an artist of any sort is to give him way more credit than he deserves. But we couldn't help but get enraged by his lazy swipe at A.J. Burnett's Friday night performance against the Rays.

In his Sunday column, Simmons spat out the following bile: "This is why A.J. Burnett makes people scream: He is pitching brilliantly. He has a one-run lead against a Tampa team that has lost seven straight. And he gives up a home run to a nobody ninth-place hitter to lose the game."

Well, Steve-O, here's the thing about "nobody ninth-place hitters": they still let them step up to the plate with a bat in hand, and they still let them swing away at pitches. Sometimes, those swings connect just right, and the results aren't always favorable to the defense, regardless of who the pitcher is.

And it might even be worth noting that Ben Zobrist, the nobody in question, has twice as many homers this season (4) as Aaron Hill did before he went down...in approximately one-third as many at bats.

Moreover, isn't is pretty weak to single out that one pitch to the "nobody" when A.J. had otherwise pitched well enough to win, but was once again betrayed by the sputtering Jays offense?

To pick up on a meme that the Drunks like to trot out: If Roy Halladay had tossed out that same pitching line as A.J., he's be regarded as a gutsy gamer who was failed by his team. But because it's A.J., he's a punk .500 pitcher with no heart. What bullshit.

And not to engage in the same cheapshot artistry that Simmons seems to prefer, but we wonder what is the appeal of the horsefaced, smug, crayon-eater's scribblings and rantings. The only significant contribution that Simmons makes to the Canadian media landscape is to remind us in his appearances on TSN that male pattern baldness and hair gel are a really tragically bad combination.

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