Crazy Like A Not Crazy Person

I caught the Sunday Night Baseball game on the Lemur last night, as the Cubs completed their sweep of the White Sox at Wrigley in the battle of first place Chicago baseball teams. (Which is, really, a post in itself, given that the series had absolutely no out-of-market hype before it happened, and a similar first place matchup between the Mets and Yankees, or even perhaps the Angels and Dodgers, would have gotten a lot more run. It's funny, isn't it, how pennant races and championships in + Media Markets mean more, doesn't it? Our readers in San Antonio are now nodding their heads so vigorously, it's working as air conditioning.)

Anyhoo... given that the Cubs were proceeding to complete their sweep and Ozzie Guillen wasn't foaming at the mouth, the Lemurcast went and dredged up the early June "meltdown" from the Wizard when he threw all of his hitters under the bus. The team, for all of you who aren't paying game to game attention to the ChiSox, then went on an offensive tear for a week or two, and remain atop the AL Central, mostly because the Tribe and Tigers have been a lot worse than anyone has expected so far this year. I suspect they are still just holding the seat warm for whichever club gets hot, or would be an easy out in the ALDS, but hey, that's why they play the games.

Joe Morgan then performed his self-appointed role of stating the obvious in a way that anyone with a functioning cerebellum would disavow; namely, that Guillen was crazy like a fox! You see, he motivates his team that way, and his team knows how to handle such things, and veterans like Jim Thome, AJ Pyrzinski and Jermaine Dye just took such things to heart and moved on. (Side note: does Morgan even listen to Morgan anymore?)

Which made me wonder... if the team are veterans and know to disregard it when Ozzie is pretending to be off his meds, why pretend in the first place?

The answer, of course, is that Guillen's got too much of an ego (not surprising, given that he's an ex-player who had a long career and even flirted with some All-Star teams in a time before highly regarded on base sabermetrics) to just sit there and lose, without thinking that he can bully his players into doing better.

It may even be true that he can get short-term results out of his players this way, much like a jockey with a whip in the homestretch. And while it's easy for a Dye or Thome to roll up his eyes, maybe it gets some rookie reliever all hot and bothered.

But if that's the case, why do this in June, when you have a big lead in the division? Wouldn't it make more sense to save that kind of negative fuel for August and September?

In this as in many things, Occam's Razor -- the ancient philosophical practice of believing the simplest and most likely explanation, rather than a self-serving conspiracy -- helps. Guillen orchestrates occasional meltdowns because they make him feel important and necessary, and they get him attention in a media market that the Cubs dominate, regardless of the on-field performance of both franchises.

He doesn't have a master plan to motivate his team, and he isn't crazy for the sake of crazy. He just is what he is: a media whore with a lower sense of shame than most.

Also, and this is the interesting part... he's the manager of a team that, as of this Monday morning, isn't pitching, fielding, or hitting very well, and just got its asses swept by their biggest rival. Anyone want to start the pool for his next blowup?