Its ability to hire analysts that weren't good at the job/sport they were good at. Take baseball analyst Steve Phillips, for example.
Phillips guest hosts Baseball Tonight and sucks at breaking down in-game updates. So ESPN moves him to in-game coverage, where he sucks at that. The one thing he possibly could have been good at, mock press conferences to address team needs and offseason moves, he sucks at.
Mostly because he sucked at it when he was the New York Mets general manager.
To his credit, he did acquire the following players: Roberto Alomar, Pedro Astacio, Jeromy Burnitz, Ricky Henderson, Pedro Martinez, Kenny Rogers and Mo Vaughn.
And he traded Scott Kazmir for Victor Zambrano. Not Carlos, Victor.
I can't emphasize that move enough. Chuck LaMar deserved Executive of the Year for pulling that off.
Unfortunately, for Phillips, all of those players were monumental past-their-prime failures.
Fortunately, for me, I can mock his failures in the blogosphere.
So that brings us to today's news of Phillips having the audacity to call out Chicago Cubs manager Lou Piniella for his handling of Kosuke Fukudome.
"My view is Lou doesn't have a great deal of patience for assimilation into culture, assimilation into the team," Phillips said. "He is just not the most patient guy around, and he tends to verbalize his frustrations in an angry way. I think that may have affected Fukudome a little bit."
In more news according to the world of Phillips: Piniella doesn't care about black people, kicks puppies and has a 22-year-old strippe hog tied in his basement.
And Sweet Uncle Lou does not think kindly of Phillips' criticism.
"I don't have much respect for Steve Phillips," Piniella said after hearing the comment Monday. "Let him be around a little more and see what transpires before he makes assumptions. I've lost total respect for this guy. If he had something to say, let him say it to me."
The last person who should be calling anyone out on talent evaluations is Phillips. And the fact that Piniella had respect for this guy in the first place is disheartening. I've put together more competitive teams in Triple Play Baseball for PlayStation than Phillips could ever dream about.
And yet he's a million-dollar analyst and I'm living paycheck-to-paycheck at a college newspaper.
I guess now would be a good time to ask you fine folks to click the ads and help us get paid.
Lou Piniella outraged by ESPN analyst's comments [Chicago Tribune]
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