Melky Cabrera and the oddest goodbye ever

Wait, that guy was on the team this year?

Melky Not Returning for Playoffs

There isn't a formal announcement yet. But there is an AP article on it. So, like the gentleman from Mitch and Murray says, I'm going anyway.

The Giants aren't going to have Melky Cabrera on their playoff roster, should they advance far enough to outlast his suspension. The speculation is over. No Melky.

The interesting part, though, might be that the decision -- at least publicly -- is supposedly a baseball decision. From Bruce Bochy, by way of Henry Schulman:

Bochy offered a huge hint of which way this will go during his weekly interview on SiriusXM's "Inside Pitch" program, suggesting Cabrera could not prepare adequately now that the minor-league season is done and the only pitchers he would face would be in instructional league.

If they said, "No, he's not going to be on the roster because he's a jerknose and we don't like him anymore," there would be a grievance filed by the union. So I guess it has to be about baseball reasons, if only on the surface. But Bochy seemed pretty earnest about it.

"It's not like he can play anywhere ... face some good competition on the rehab," Bochy said. "That's what you have to look at. When you bring back somebody who's been on the DL for an extended period it takes time to be ready. It's not that easy a game.

I'll mostly defer to Bochy's expertise on this. I certainly have no idea what it's like to spend 50 games away from live pitching, only to come back and face a staff that was good enough to make the playoffs. There's a time and place for smarmy blogger-knows-best opinions. This isn't one of them.

But I'll say this: If it were Buster Posey coming back from an injury, he'd be on the team. Maybe not starting. But he'd be there, even if he couldn't do anything in instructional league first. Same goes for Pablo Sandoval and Matt Cain. It's a sliding scale, and at some point, you have to decide whether a rusty player is better than the in-house options. And maybe "rusty" is too soft of a term -- I don't mean to minimize it. Supremely rusty Melky vs. the alternatives isn't an automatic choice.

The alternative, though, is Xavier Nady. Assume that Blanco is on the roster already. The choice is between Nady and Melky in the NLCS. Bochy says that Nady is swinging the bat well, as if the last 30 at-bats somehow means more than the lousy 625 he's had with three different teams over the last three seasons.

I take my chances with Melky. From a purely baseball-related perspective, I don't see a cogent argument for Nady.

If the concern is with clubhouse dynamics or public relations, whatever. It's a tricky situation. But if the Giants are really making this decision because of baseball reasons, I'm more than a little disappointed.

Melky Breaks Baseball Reference

This probably isn't something that I'd normally update a stream with, but I wanted to test-drive my fancy new toys. This is a StoryStream™. It's a way to update a story as it happens. I'm not sure what the best way is to utilize it just yet -- as in what justifies the stream treatment, or what justifies an update. I mean, I know on Baseball Nation. But it's different around here.

So we'll hold hands and figure it out together.

Anywho, when the story broke that Melky Cabrera did not want to win the batting title he was going to win, it seemed like a meaningless gesture. But it wasn't meaningless to people who have to figure this stuff out for a living! From Baseball Reference:

To handle this, we've decided to list ERA Leaders and BA leaders as they currently are in the leaderboard pages. These will be updated and change as new data becomes available and we will be apolitical as much as possible in how we draw these leaderboards. This is essentially the status quo.

In addition, though, we will add as awards the Batting Champion and Pitching Champion which will represent the player recognized at the end of the year as the top hitter and top pitcher. And we will strive to denote on each when the winners of the two do not match up.

Melky screwed poor Sean Forman up. He doesn't deserve that!

The worst part is that once you start thinking about how pointless this debate is, you start thinking about how pointless all stats are, which makes you think about how pointless sports are, which makes you think how pointless your life is. Thanks for that, Melky.

Since Melky's Been Gone ...

Since Melky Cabrera was suspended, the Giants have gotten better. We were all expecting this.

Melky Cabrera Asks Not to Win Batting Title He Will Win

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Silly, Frivolous Jokes About Melky Cabrera

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Big, Important Opinions on Melky Cabrera

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Melky Cabrera Suspended 50 Games for Testosterone