Enter the Cheddar (36 Yankee-bashing Chambers)

Back with more, it's the Y2K contributor so nice they had to shoo him away twice. Except, for some reason, all those snide remarks and thorough beatings didn't work, and he's shockingly come back to stay. That's a public school education for you.

Cheddar Ben checking in from Morningside Heights, seemingly destined to join this invaluable site as a regular contributor. Look for my stuff at least twice per calendar week, including some material on Sunday for you weekend Mets fans and Yankee haters. It is, as Danny Tartabull once drunkenly confessed to me, a whole new ballgame.

I should probably begin by pointedly ignoring the events of last night. Oh, man, let's do that. The internet zonked out in my place, RCN's bootleg cable operation was on the fritz, WFAN was coming in as a French-language station dedicated to Quebecois separatist manifestos .... take your pick.

How'd the Amazins' do, anyway? As an aside, while one of the other boys will probably hit on some game-related stuff later today, I should say that I was extrordinarily dismayed to see the early AP report indicated that Pedro "felt the strain while warming up before the game." (Philly's Dan Gelston on the call).

Now, I don't see why the Mets would say such a thing if it weren't true, and given that, it's something of an indictment of the managerial staff's judgement.

These things are notoriously difficult to judge from afar, and there's going to be some tricky ego-juggling involved.

All the same, and giving the benefit of the doubt wherever applicable, it is indisputable that making sure Pedro is healthy for Game 1 of the NLDS should be THE priority for Omar, Willie, Rick and the gang heading forward. I don't think that's a controversial statement.

In that case, I don't see how you send Petey out to the mound at anything less than 100 percent unless it's absolutely necessary. That's just the nature of pitching injuries.

If it gets to September, and the Mets are, say, not 25 games over .500 and don't have a 14-game lead on the hapless Phils, then we can talk.

But if it's me, and it's August 14, Pedro needs to be humming like a Maserati on a fresh quart of Penzoil before I pencil his name into the lineup. It's just good policy.

But enough about the game. Taking a glance at the big picture for a moment, it's come to our attention that half of Y2K's mandate may have been slipping through the cracks a bit.

You know what part we're talking about -- peep the masthead. The bad cop part. The "Posada is a little bitch" shirt-wearing part. The intense Yankee bashing, dummy.

And that's a shame, because this has been a summer for Yankee bashing like no other.

There are almost a limitless number of angles at which you can sneeringly come at the Bronx Bombers these days -- a smorgasbord of suck, if you will (and I will). I mean, these are the days when a piece investigating the A-Rod bashing phenomenon leads off ESPN.com.

Yes, campers, it's the Golden Age of Yankee Hatred, and even while mercifully keeping the reigning AL MVP and the traitorous Unfrozen Caveman Centerfielder on the bench, the team-up/crossover possibilities are limitless.

Do you pair up the "Bobby Abreu, one of the best players in baseball, was roundly despised by his own fans" card with the "Kyle Farnsworth may be the biggest lunk on the planet" tactic?

Do you go with the high comedy of "Jason Giambi, baserunner" and the "Hideki Matsui has disgraced himself and his ancestors" canard?

Where does Randy Johnson's unpaid child support and Gary Sheffield's shameless stab at getting his 2007 option picked up (first base, indeed... who does this guy think he's kidding? Shef hasn't been a good teammate since the Brewers were in the American League, and not even then) fit in?

Let's of course not forget about Chien-Ming Wang's laughable strikeout rate, Scott Proctor's upcoming arm explosion, Mo Rivera's crappy restaurant, Sal Fasano's missing mullet and the human welfare state that is Carl Pavano.

All these topics merit additional exploration, and will receive it. But the topic I want to start with, and hopefully nip in the bud, is the "Derek Jeter for AL MVP" trial balloon floated yesterday by Joe Sheehan of Baseball Prospectus.

A writer I admire quite a bit, Sheehan went off the rails with this one, and if a guy as sensible as he is going over the edge, you'd better believe more are going to follow him like lemmings following a pinstriped remote-controlled car over an embankment.

The argument, such as it is, requires one to consider Jeter's extremely strong offensive season to date (conceded), his positional value, his improved defense and those legendary intangibles. I have problems with each of the last three items, and I'll take them in order.

To start, if you're going to give Jeter points for value based on positional scarcity, you can't plausibly not give even more credit to Minnesota's young catching stud Joe Mauer, who suits up in a role where offensive standouts are even rarer.

And Mauer is having a far better offensive campaign than Jeter, bidding to become the first AL catcher to lead the league in batting since the Yanks' own Bill Dickey (another little bitch, as luck would have it) back in '62. The consistency isn't there.

With defense, Sheehan cites an improvement in Jeter's glovework that no other observer has seen. Baseball Prospectus' fielding stats are in the distinct minority here, showing Jetes as having improved tremendously since 2003, up to the point of being decent last year and above-average in 2006.

Problem is, no other metrics see it that way, as described in an article by Dodger Thoughts' Jon Weisman back in February.

Sheehan may have to go with his company's figures, but the rest of us have loads of plausible deniability and our own eyes to tell us that Jeter's laughable range makes him enough of a liability to trip up any MVP campaign. If Tim Marchman, Larry Bowa and Michael Kay feel otherwise, tough.

Finally, 2006 may be remembered as the summer that the "Derek Jeter, leader of men" banner gets tossed in the dumpster.

I don't care if the guy playing to your right is the least likable teammate since Jack Parkman -- if you're the captain of the New York Yankees, it's your job to make sure that A-Rod doesn't lose his mojo.

Build him up, get him some Buddhist shit to block out the boos, pick out some nice new fabrics to cheer him up, I don't care.

Instead, Jeter runs a clubhouse where A-Rod gets thrown under the bus with regularity. Where Mike Mussina feels free to rip his third baseman to the Toronto media. Where the most talented player in the game today is underachieving by an unacceptable margin.

If these are your award-winning intangibles, you can have 'em back. I'll take Smokin' Joe Mauer to go along with NL MVP Carlos Beltran, and a six-pack of Yankee bashing for the forseeable future.

Until next time, bring da ruckus...

- Cheddar Ben