Team of Rivals

Hotlanta

So, is John Smoltz the manager of the Braves? Does he draw up the lineup cards behind Bobby Cox's back? Is he the one behind those sharp new blue alternate unis the Bravos have been sporting? I ask only because reports surfaced Thursday that Smoltz is apparently going to return from his DL stint as a reliever, not a pitcher, and contrary to the wishes of his manager. Check out the story if you didn't see it; it's rather unusual.

The best part is that John-John broke the story by texting a reporter from the Atlanta newspaper. The 21st century highly approves, Smoltzy! Not to mention the Dirty South hip-hop community. Next time we need a strikeout, we know who to 2-way.

Smoltz says his shoulder hurts too much for him to go as a starter, and that he can go as a reliever only. This hasn't shown up in the numbers yet, what with his 2.00 ERA and 1.11 WHIP as a rotation member, but the guy's 40 years old, and knows his body -- if he says he can't do it, I suppose you have to believe him. The skipper might not be on board yet -- ("In order to win big, John needs to be in the rotation," Cox said.) -- but that's only because Smoltz hasn't had a chance to Gchat with him yet. Once he explains with a pix msg, we should be good. You've got to preserve the health of your best players.

Wait, I think that's Hank Steinbrenner in the far corner calling Smoltz an idiot. Yep, that's him. Just ignore it. From the Mets' perspective, though, anything that dents the Atlanta rotation is all gravy.

Two new Braves you might not know enough about:

• Jair Jurrjens, 22-year-old SP; came over from Detroit in the Edgar Renteria trade; 86th-best prospect in the game according to Baseball Prospectus before the season; throws a mid-90s fastball, a good curve and an okay change with decent command, though it has improved markedly this season; has always been thought of as a low-ceiling starter, but has looked excellent through his first six-pack of starts in the bigs (3.08 ERA, 1.04 WHIP, 28K in 38.1 IP); Keith Hernandez will mispronounce his name somewhere in the vicinity of 50 different ways before all is said and done; likely the Braves' best starter from here on out
  
• Brent Lillibridge, 25-year-old SS; they'll likely get rid of Yuni Escobar before this fella, so this is their starter of the future; horrendously elfin, makes Dustin Pedroia look like Morgan Freeman; profiles similarly to Pedroia as a very solid college hitter who dropped in the draft (to Round 4) due to his size and projectibility concerns, but will hit for more power than you'd think; real nice defensively; not the type of baseballer who wants to run into Nails in a back alley when our boy has had a few Miller Lites

Port of Miami

I don't understand HBO. Its economics, I mean. The budget has to be fairly fixed, right? X amount of subscribers paying $Y per month, with those numbers fairly steady, minus your overhead and the contracts with the movie studios that get you the majority of your content. Does everything else then go into the general entertainment budget? I guess what I'm asking is, does the head of HBO's entertainment division then just have a zillion-dollar budget that it can spend on whatever series it wants? If so, how sweet is that job?

At the same time, that can lead to weird decisions, like making a TV movie about the Florida recount in the 2000 presidential election. "Recount," directed by comedy hack Jay Roach and starring way more famous people than you'd think, premiers on May 25, and I can't for the life of me figure out why. I'll watch it; I follow politics closely, and I think it could be funny or interesting.

Here's the thing, though -- there can't be nearly enough people like me to justify, in any meaningful sense, the cost of making this movie. No way. I'm sure there's a lot of chatting in offices, and standing in rooms, and that doesn't make for the most expensive shoot in history, but I don't care what it was -- this is a screaming little vanity project guaranteed to get awful ratings. Even if you included the spillover effects from the media buzz, this thing is a revenue sinkhole. I sure hope these big-name actors and a generally expensive director worked for cheap. Bonus strangeness -- this movie was written by a part-time "Gilmore Girls" actor. Look it up.

Wait, the Marlins aren't in first place anymore? Shocking.

Dukes

We here at Y2K have jonesed ourself into a tizzy this week over a winning team sitting a whopping half-game out of first place. Awesome work. Not being a psychic, a mystic, a paranormal detective or possessing a neural net processor (a learning computer), Cheddar Ben is unable to determine whether or not the players are, in fact, the moral vampires of legend; until SNY comes up with a camera angle that allows us to look into the Mets' souls, we're just going to have to assume that they're not powered by demons or concentrated bitterness.

The booing is retarded, and should stop immediately. If you're a fan, booing isn't your first, second or third move; it's a last resort. It's a move you employ when things are bad, and they don't seem like they could get any worse. Now, maybe I haven't been sufficiently spoiled by a string of three solid seasons, but as far as I can tell, things aren't bad, and have the potential to get a lot better, should the players start playing up to their potential.

Some of the Mets' mistakes are mental, and even sloppy-seeming and those are frustrating. But a fan (i.e., someone who wants to see the team win) might ask him or herself, "Will my reaction hurt or help the team in some way?" There's no one answer to this question -- you might believe that players tune out everything going on in the stands, or that they're motivated by the energy of the crowd night in and night out, or any permutation of the two.

But even if you believed that fans' booing has the ability to shake players out of a rut, you'd still want to be judicious about using it as a tool, simply because booing is unquestionably an interaction that produces diminishing returns over time. Seriously. The first boo to escape a fan's lips is always the loudest, and heard the best; the first cavalcade of boos is jarring, and might actually cause a player or coach to pause in thought; constancy of boos might set a tone; after a certain point, everyone's tuned the shit out. It don't take long to go through these steps.

Which is why booing a winning team in the month of April, a winning team running Raul Casanova and Damion Easley and Endy Chavez on the regular, is fucking retarded, and something a real fan simply would not be doing. Which leads us back to Sip's point that many of the people populating the fans at Shea aren't real fans; they're worse than Yankee fans.

I hate to agree, but what else can you say?

Broad Street

Yeah, Chase Utley and Pat Burrell are hitting like Gehrig and Ruth. But. Ryan Howard is still ensconced in his Robby Cano-like early-season coma, Rollins isn't playing, and as bad as I think he is, I also don't think Pedro Feliz is going to be hitting .200 all year, or Shane Victorino .230 for that matter. This team will continue to score runs, and lots of them.

The bullpen, on the other hand, is a completely different kettle of cheese steaks. From top to bottom, the Philly relievers are playing way over their heads, and once they start to act their age and not their shoe size, their team is going to start losing a lot of games. Lots of them. (Setting aside, for a moment, the fact that none of their starting pitchers have missed a turn in the rotation yet. Nice.)

The following Philly relievers have yet to give up a home run -- Chad Durbin, J.C. Romero, Brad Lidge, Tom Gordon, Rudy Seanez. Zero HR allowed in 65 innings on the hill. Lidge and Romero (Romero!) haven't given up an earned run yet. And they're all walking guys, too -- none of the guys I mentioned has a BB/9 below 4.00.

It's smoke and mirrors in Philly at the moment, and that's not a formula for success going forward. (Note: the previous comment does not apply to stage magicians or laser light show operators.)

Beltway

I hear Nick Johnson took a called third strike the other night. What an asshole. His batting average is down to .217. An obvious choker. Yeah, his OBP still might be at .400, which is kind of the point of the entire enterprise, and he's leading the team in RBI, but according to this arbitrary standard of performance I've just determined in my head, he's got warts all over the place. I mean, who takes a called third strike in April? This obvious lack of fire is just killing the team.

Opening Night? Sure, I remember that! After missing the entire year with a broken leg, Johnson came out in his first game back and dumped a ball into the corner for an RBI double. They tried to hold him at first, but the guy steamed around the base and slid into second like a freight train, as if he hadn't just missed 18 months with a Herman Maier-type of injury. Then, in the very next at-bat, ol' Nick gets knocked in by Austin Kearns -- and he gleefully slid in to home as well, just to show he could do it. The crowd went bananas, and the clubhouse was loving it, even Dmitri Young, the guy whose job Johnson took.

But whatever. Sure, he might have loved baseball or played his heart out at some point in the past. Maybe even at most points. But at this precise instant, I've determined he no longer enjoys the game enough to win. I'm a real sensitive dude, and I can suss out subtle gradations in tone and body language and professional intent like that. No problem. It's a talent, and I've got it.

So suck on that, Johnson. I will ride your ass into the ground until you start doing exactly what I want you to do at all times. If I see even a hint of anything suspicious, it won't matter whether we're winning or not -- I've got to stay vigilant, and vigilance entails that I act like a dick to people I ostensibly want to see succeed. It's called being a fan -- and it's what I DO.