JOSH HAMILTON IS THE BEST PLAYER IN THE MAJORS AND MAY BE BASEBALL'S BEST ALL-AROUND TALENT SINCE MICKEY MANTLE

http://i.cdn.turner.com/si/2010/writers/tom_verducci/08/17/josh.hamilton/josh-hamilton-tx1.jpg

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/tom_verducci/08/17/josh.hamilton/index.html?eref=sihp

It's a(nother) lousy night to be an atheist.

he is likely the AL MVP tho

almost no doubt

Yes, and "nothing more than a breathtaking comet for the moment."

kind of ironic who sober Cabrera got bested by.

I've been rootin for JH since those photos of the girls doing jello shots off his belly

Cabrera has twice as many walks /shasta

and fewer lame flame tattoos

iirc joe maddon walked him with the bases loaded back in '08

Kind of feel bad for Tampa. Why couldn't he have decided to not be a fuck up one year earlier?

what would jesus approve of?

Love love love Josh Ham

Saw him hit a homer from behind home plate this year -- shit was O_O

29, currently enjoying his second great year. I realize covers are supposed to be dramatic, but this is kind of silly. Not least of all in a year where Pujols is maybe closer than ever to a Triple Crown (if he can just get by the other guy chasing one simultaneously).

Is Hamilton really having that much better a year than Cabrera?

VOTTO ALL THA WAY

Hamilton is a much better defensive player than Cabrera.

I thought this was the year of the pitcher, guys.

I was so fixated on the first half of Verducci's provocation, I hadn't even begun to contemplate the second half. "All-around talent"'s kind of difficult to measure in the abstract, but if you get really boring and measure it in on-field accomplishment, let's see...He must mean since the Mantle of the mid-'50s, so start there. You've got Mays and Aaron through the '60s--they were pretty well-rounded. Joe Morgan in the mid-'70s. Dominant decades by Rickey Henderson and Mike Schmidt. Griffey, and pre-PED Bonds and A-Rod. Pujols for 10 years running. Those are the easy ones. I'm being far too literal, I know; it's a magazine cover. But again, this is monumentally silly.

hard to make a case for hamilton being the best player in mlb unless you can somehow support the claim that he's actually a .350 hitter now and not a .300 hitter having a spike year in batting average.

he's definitely the AL MVP at this point but don't go make him your #1 fantasy pick next year or anything

I think he meant Caucasian non-mustached all-around talent.

votto didn't grow a mustache did he?

Joey Votto is the best "All Around Talent" since Mickey Mantle doesn't have much of a ring to it.

well - it could be phrased a bit differently.

like "Votto rulez yr face" or some such.

"Joey Votto rulez face best since Mantle fucknerdz!"

Stealing from The Simpsons: "My name is Joey Votto, and I love to get blotto!"

"My name is Joey Vott-o and i love to hit tac-os!"

really would be a travesty if josh ham beat out miggy for the al mvp

rangers had vladdy hitting out of his mind for half the season, plus nelson cruz

if you replaced miggy with, like, billy butler, the tigers would be one of the five worst teams in the AL

you do realize the tigers have the fifth worst winning percentage in the AL

haha, i actually did not realize that

so make that one of the three worst teams in the AL

line up is honestly a war crime

i think miggy and hamilton and pretty much neck and neck, w/the exact same number of XBH and a higher BA from ham and more walks more miggy. there's really no one else even close. i figure they'll go 1-2, barring some injury or huge slump. joe mauer for #3, i assume, he's been playing out of his mind since the break.

cano, beltre(!), bautista might place kinda high too.

i bet cano gets #3

wonder if longo gets in there too if the rays win the division

in the nl it'll be pujols again, i think. triple crown watch: tied for the league lead in HR, on top (by 6) in rbi, 10 percentage points (.315) behind polanco (.325) for BA, trailing votto (.324), c gonzalez (.320), and prado (.318)

dropping beltre from fantasy league this year in early may was alltime dumbass move

fangraphs has hamilton with a runaway lead in WAR, bbref has a closer race with cano, longo, and cabrera ahead of hamilton

I think Votto will definitely win if the Reds stay ahead of St. Louis, and may even win if the Cardinals just edge them out--not that he should, but that he will. James wrote something a long time ago, having to do with the Ripken/Murray MVP race of '83, that writers are more inclined to go with a guy who exceeds expectations over a guy who does exactly what he's supposed to (another example that comes to mind: Kent over Bonds in whatever year that was). He then went on to argue that the writers have it backwards, that doing exactly what you're supposed to is more valuable to the team than the guy who surprises.

Obviously that all goes out the window if Pujols does win the Triple Crown.

http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/article/the_greatness_or_not_of_josh_hamilton/

Posnanski:

http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2010/08/18/getting-started-on-josh-hamilton/

Posnanski posted the same piece on CNNSI.com last week. Very good.

There's a Toronto writer, Steve Simmons, who Thinwall and NoTime may know. (Not sure if they're just Jays fans, or actually in Toronto.) When I read Verducci's original piece, I was immediately reminded of something Simmons wrote about Vernon Wells in one of his 2003 columns, right in the midst of Wells's career year. I remember Simmons' comment well because I sent the paper an e-mail in response. I still have it in my sent folder, so I'll just cut-and-paste the whole thing:

I generally like Steve Simmons fine, so it was surprising to see him so caught up in the Jays' recent success that he's ready to proclaim the imminent arrival of Vernon Wells as the "greatest player ever to work for the Blue Jays. And that includes Roberto Alomar." In December of this year, Wells (a centre fielder) will turn 25; he'll have two good seasons, about 400 hits and 60 home runs, and possibly one postseason appearance on his resume. At the same age, Alomar (a second baseman) had almost 1,000 hits, 40 home runs, two gold gloves, two All-Star games, two Top-10 MVP finishes, one ALCS MVP award, and one World Series win on his, and he was on the verge of winning a second. Sometime in the next three seasons Alomar will get his 3,000th hit, and somewhere down the road he'll be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Wells, if he stays around, will be what Lloyd Moseby was--a good career Jay, nothing more and nothing less. The comparison is absurd.

I was wrong about the 3,000 hits, and a little wrong about the first-ballot HOF prediction. But you didn't have to be especially perceptive to see how far ahead of himself Simmons was getting. Something that seems equally clear with regards to Verducci.