We get stacks and stacks of letters

On a morning where there is no last-night's-game to speak of, we decided to open the old mailbag and parse through the piles of questioneers seeking our wisdom.

(Hey man, if Griff, Bastian and Stoeten can have their mailbags, then we want ours too.)

Let's get it on...

Neil S. from metro New York writes: How about a little push for some Cy Young talk for Scott Downs. I know that's not logical but I feel so comfortable with him on the hill even when he gets in trouble.

I really enjoy your site.

Neil: We're glad you really enjoy our site. In fact, we barely even care about the Blue Jays success anymore. We just go through our daily visits and stats and sit back and ponder whether if we could make a living off of this. And while we're sure that acolytes like you would be more than willing to contribute vast sums of money through exorbitant subscription fees to keep us in the style of living to which we have become accustomed (those Burberry toilet paper cozies aren't free, yo), we know that the love from the people is enough to keep us going.

All this to say: Can we crash at your place when we visit metro New York?

Oh, and as far as Scott Downs is concerned: He was one of our main concerns coming into the season. We looked at his 2.17 ERA and 1.22 WHIP and figured that there was no way that he could match those numbers. Little did we know that he was about to shave almost a full run off of the ERA (1.19 to this point) and .15 off the WHIP.

We noted before that the one thing that will hold Scott Downs back from consideration as an elite pitcher is the lowish K rate (57 in 68 innings) and the highish walk rate (25 so far). Neither of those numbers are bad...but they are just not exceptional enough for Cy Young voters to take notice, especially since Downs is a middle reliever.

The argument from the idiot Cy voters might be that if Downs was so good, he'd be the closer, but then again, their argument a few years back seemed to be that Big Fat Bartolo Colon deserved the Cy because he got more wins than Johan Santana, even though Santana killed him in every other relevant category.

Hey Kids! Want to see your email cut and pasted into the Tao of Stieb? Want us to completely ignore your question? Would you rather have a real manly man answer your Blue Jays questions rather than the other pantywaisted nancyboys' mailbags? Do you want to flatter us and tell us how awesome we are? Have at it! Write us at taoofstieb at gmail dot com and you can become our best blog friend forever. If your letter is selected, we'll send you a Tao of Stieb t-shirt. Maybe.

Did we forget the Dick Bag?

No. We didn't.

It's just that when Dick starts the Mailbag feature by comparing J.P. Ricciardi to George W. Bush, it's hard to even start to make any fun. It's kinda depressing.

However, for those who live and die by our Mailbag summaries (Hi Mom!), we'll summarize this week's in one sentence: J.P. is a stupid poopy head, and lots of people love Dick and his column.

Thank God the season's almost done.

His name is Dick. This is his Bag.

We’re back after taking a week off from our traditional recap of the Dick Griffin Mailbag Bonanza, and we realize now just how much we missed it.

In retrospect, we’re kind of upset at ourselves for bailing on the week where Dick tied the steroid problem in baseball to “Moneyball”. (Dick assured us that “Moneyball is dead”, which I guess should settle it for us all.) Neate at OoLF noted that Fire Joe Morgan tore Dick a new one.
(Although all we have yet to read it, because we're just getting a "Error 400 - Bad Request" message whenever we try. Yo Neate! Send us the goods via email, or fax, or carrier pigeon!)

And with that, let’s get going on this week's edition.

Sycophancy Alert Level – Moderate: Only two ass kissers in this week’s Mailbag, although one credits Dick for his “insightful analysis of the Jays' situation and talents”. The other notes: “Love your columns, even if I don't always agree with them.” (To which we’d note that WE LOVE the mailbag, but only BECAUSE we don’t agree with them.)

Did you know that Dick used to work for the Expos? This week’s mailbag features two not-so-subtle reminders of his time with Les Glorieux, including a rather euphemistic description of how he spent his time on the road: "enjoy the nightlife", my arse.

Dick Hates, Hates, Hates, Hates, HATES J.P.: The depth of Dick’s loathing for J.P. is such that we get the sense that he was terrorized by a minor-league infielder from New England as a child. Dick pretty much reduces every single decision made by J.P. to a fundamental flaw in his character. Keeping Gibby? Pride. 2007 failures? Vanity. Five-Year Plans? Extravagence. By the end of the season, we half-expect to see Griff standing on the pitchers mound with Gwyneth Paltrow’s head in a box. (And since we’re on the whole cardinal sins tip: can we suppose that Griffin’s wrathful hate-on might stem from envy?)

Dick makes a good point. The Earth spins off its axis: In answering a dumb question about putting natural grass in the Rogers Centre, Dick notes that the Jays should go to a dirt infield, and not just the cutouts around the bases. Although we’d guess that if not for the Argos, the Jays would have made the change already.

You know you’re a Leafs fan if: If you send an email to a baseball mailbag asking why the Jays don’t trade Josh Towers for draft picks, you may be a Leafs fan.

We're sure there is more to come from the other members of the Dick Fan Club, so there'll be linkage to come.

Today, we steal no thunder

It's Wednesday. There's a Dick Griffin mailbag. It's on the Star's site. We refuse to link to it.

Suffice to say that you know that we think he's full of shit, and there are a multitude of others who'll confirm as much.

We're tired, busy, a little sick of the Jays this week, and we just couldn't be arsed to spend an hour taking down Dick, letter by letter.

We're sure that the posts will start piling up on the other sites shortly, and we'll link to them here.

Update, 10:00 pm: Here's your lone Dick Griffin recap for the day.

Dick in a Bag - Your Weekly Dick Griffin Takedown

You know, it's funny. We decided to put off looking at Dick Griffin's Fan-E-Mail Shenanigans ^(TM) for a while, and we felt so much better about the world.

Our heart rate evened out. Our blood pressure returned to somewhere vaguely close to normal. Things were good.

Of course, Dick's mailbag is something that we know have to face eventually, like taxes and changing our bedsheets. You can only put it off so long before the wrong people start to notice.

Anyways, on with the takedown.

Sycophancy rating
This week scores surprisingly low on the butt kissing. There is a rather dull joke about being a "long-time-reader-first-time-writer" from someone in Fredericton (the town the Wit forgot), and another writer invited Dick to imagine himself as the GM. On the whole, there isn't the usual collection of writers exclaiming "I love you Richie!" and "Kiss my taint, Griff!" Maybe there's a Star editor who managed to intervene?

Pompous Pontification
Even if the dittoheads were all busy getting soused on Lakeport, that wasn't going to stop Dicky G from stroking his greazy beard and letting fly with all sorts of self-aggrandizing nonsense.

On Gregg Zaun: Initially, Dick doesn't even answer Gregg Zaun question. (Which begs the question, why even bother with the questions, if this is really just another opportunity for Griffin-bore to wank off publicly?) Instead, he again invokes the signings of Ohka, Zambrano, and Thomson as some sort of stupendously monstrous mistake. This, in spite of the fact that the Jays did pretty much all they could to sign Gil Meche, and Lilly wasn't coming back here at any price. And morover, those signings didn't cripple the team's payroll, and were designed as low-risk, low reward moves.

OK, for real...about Gregg Zaun: When he comes around to it, Dick's whole point is that Zaun wasn't the Jays first choice, but then they screwed it up by not being nicer to Rod Barajas. His point that Zaun's skills might be diminishing is nothing particularly earth-shattering, but his assertion that the master plan for Curtis Thigpen was to turn him into the next Craig Biggio by switching to second is a vast overstatement of the facts. Sure, the Jays tried him out for a couple of games there, but then again, they had Reed Johnson take ground balls at second last year...you can't fault the organization for trying to assess all options.

Uncle Richard, tell us about "real" baseball: Griffin's assertion that the Angels are "cutting edge" for employing small ball gives the Anaheim brain trust way too much credit for what is likely a bit of a fluke. Last year, the Angels struggled to produce any runs, and they addressed this shortcoming by signing noted speedster Shea Hillenbrand. (Oh, and Sarge Junior, sure...because if you're going to enter the post-steroid era, you start with him.) But the truth is, no one foresaw the steep reduction in power that has occurred. A trending back to normal, maybe, but nothing like this.

Five year plans? Griff got no use for 'em. Which is interesting, because neither did J.P., no matter what some douche from Whitby who knows Paul Godfrey's son's college roommate's friend's dealer's ho's kid's kindgarten teacher has heard. It's a figment of your fixated imagination, Dick. Drop it, for the love of God.

The Dave Dombrowski Man-Crush? Do you suppose that Dick had this sort of wood for "Double-D" when he was losing 120+ games as Tigers GM? Dombrowski's Tigers, incidentally, are 2.5 games ahead of the Jays right now. Then again, Dombrowski used to work for the Expos...and hey, did you know that Tricky Dick worked for the Expos too?

Pitching from the stretch? You should probably know what that means if you're a baseball fan. Then again, if you're not a baseball fan, that probably explains why you read Richard Griffin.

"Proven Leader"? Sorry, wasn't this question intended for the Leafs mailbag? We love how the writer drops Dave Winfield's name as an example...I mean, if you're pulling names of great ballplayers out of your ass, why not Roberto Clemente, or Babe Fucking Ruth. Yeah...that's exactly what the Jays need!

Anyways, we're exhausted. Suffice to say, we slogged through, and we learned nothing. Another fine Wednesday, wasted away with the mailbag.

Wednesday! Mailbag!

In all the excitement of another week of drudgery fun!, we almost forgot that today was Wednesday - and time for Dick (Griffin) to empty his (mail)bag.

Dick shows some remarkable restraint this week by running just two sycophantic sloppy kisses to his greatness. This week's praise for Richard comes from Kevin Smith of Toronto, who says "I love your column" (don't we all), and Robert Hodges of Bangor, Maine, who says: "I love your columns and your mailbag". We've been to Bangor. Believe us when we tell you, they've got low standards.

Otherwise, here's your 60 Second Dick Griffin Mailbag Breakdown ^TM:

• Jays next manager? Cito Gaston!
• The solution to the Jays' SS problems? Mark Loretta! (Of course!)
• Scott Downs? A dick to the media!
• A.J. Burnett? A dick to everyone! But especially the media!
  
• Who (if not Dick) should be the GM? Dave Dombrowski!
• The Jays defense? Not the worst, but it sucks! Especially the pitchers! They're not Jim Kaat!
• Sam Pollock? Dead!

That pretty much covers it. Life is simple in the minds of simple men, isn't it?

Hacks and gasbags hack away at Jays

Now that the Jays' ever so slim playoff aspirations have gone up in a poof of green and gold smoke, thanks to Esteban Loaiza and his merry band of brigands, we fully expect the gang of hacks and gasbags in the Toronto/National media (is there a distinction?) to gleeful indulge in "I told you so" wankery for much of the next few weeks.

What fun.

We wouldn't mind, so much, if they were vaguely enlightening about the plight of the Jays season. For instance, Jeff Blair, in his triumphant return from the Barry Bonds beat, lays it out pretty effectively in today's column.

You're misguided if you think the Blue Jays postseason hopes are fading fast. They were extinguished long ago, when the club went 3-5 from July 12 to 19 in an eight-game road trip against the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees.

You see, that's harsh, but it is true.

But what kills us are the goofballs like Sun Media columnist and TSN sabbath gasbag Steve Simmons, who dropped this erroneous knowledge in his Sunday column: "Not hard to figure why the Blue Jays are so middle-of-the- road. The club is 14th in batting, 17th in runs scored, 22nd in earned run average".

We checked those numbers, especially since the ERA number seemed so completely out of whack. The Jays sit fourth in ERA (4.01 going into yesterday, and 3.99 coming out). In 22nd in ERA are the Marlins with a 4.69, so it's doubtful that the Jays managed in the space of about four days to shave almost three-quarters of a run off their mark.

Neither of the other numbers made much sense when we checked them either, so Simmons basically made this shit up.

Sycophancy Update - Back to the mailbag
We were slow off the mark in our analysis of yesterday's Dick Griffin Mailbag Madness yesterday, but the Drunk Jays Fans pretty much said what we thinking.

We'll just point out that yet again, the mailbag was full of unnecessarily laudatory greetings for a writer who is already way too full of himself.

Yesterday's mailbag featured such exquisite brown-nosery as "I love your column and candor during the season" from some limey, "I look forward to every Wednesday just to read your column" from someone in Oshawa, and "Hi Richard, Love your column" from some misguided American Jays fan.

We get it, Dick. People love you. Then again, people love a lot of ridiculous shit, like The King of Queens and head cheese.

Dick Griffin, and the voices in his head

(We use the photo above with all due deference to the inebriated scoundrels at Drunk Jays Fans, and their weekly Gibbers and Griffins Awards. Because really, there is no photo that could represent how we feel about Richard Griffin more than this one.)

Trudging our way through today's Dick Griffin Wednesday Mailbag Happy Time!, it occurs to us: just who are these sycophantic Griffin fans? How did they get out of their straight jackets long enough to scrawl crayon notes of effusive praise to Toronto's laziest and most self-aggrandizing baseball writer?

Today's reader mail featured classic nuggets like "Love your column" from Phil Rossel of Barrie, and "Love the Column, can't wait for Wednesdays" from Ricky B of Markham, or "I enjoy your column; especially memories of your days with Les Expos" from J. Reaves of Toronto.

(BTW, did you know that Richard Griffin used to work in the Expos' PR department? Because he only mentions it a couple of hundred times per season.)

We don't want to insinuate that these Griffin acolytes are maybe a figment of someone's imagination (or the product of someone needing to fill electronic column inches once a week.) We'd never suggest he's faking his mail bag entries...that's for two-bit punks like Marty York.

But we would say that if those letters came from actual living breathing Jays fans, then maybe Dick could see fit to edit out the flattering puffery, and get directly into the softball questions. Unless, of course, he feels a burning need to demonstrate to his employer that readers really really really like him.

Reading these complements is like having a friend foist their kid's report card on you, to prove how smart their little ankle-biter is, even though you can see that the kid over in the corner mining for nose nuggets and wiping them on the wall. (Hey, in a few years, maybe that kid will write for the Star him/herself!)