Jayson Stark Agrees on Weaver

(Photo Credit: Yardbarker.com)

In what will probably be a chorus of people rising up to sing the praises of Jered Weaver – and heap more criticism on Joe Girardi – Jayson Stark threw his own voice into the mix and agreed with what I said yesterday, though he used far more traditional stats to do it.

"2. Jered Weaver: Leads the league in strikeouts and strikeout ratio. Tied for the lead in quality starts. Fourth in WHIP. Seventh in ERA. The game is being played in his home park. How’d they leave him off? I don’t get it."

No one gets it either, Jayson. With Phil Hughes and C.C. Sabathia, two guys that made it from the Yankees despite the fact that Weaver’s been much better than both, all I can think is Weaver just doesn’t wear enough pinstripes to warrant being chosen.

It’s really unfortunate when there are such simple, basic, fundamental things like choosing the players performing the best or using instant replay to make sure a call is correctly made, and MLB just can’t get it done. This is not even mentioning the whole “this time it counts” ridiculousness. People love to debate the DH vs. no-DH thing, with both sides trying to claim they like the “pure baseball,” but at times like this it seems to me that we couldn’t get further away from “pure baseball.” I think voting that is so clearly influenced by the name of the player being voted on and rules that are designed to do nothing but increase ratings do more to move us away from “pure baseball” than a Designated Hitter ever could.