FanHouse Bob Melvin

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While it's entirely possible the Blue Jays do hit a snag, isn't it about time columnists across the internet stopped doing Can the Blue Jays Really Keep This Up? pieces by now? I've seen at least 10 in the past three weeks. There are almost as many The Rangers Are For Real posts. The discrepancy in the media's faith in those two is likely due to the divisions in which the teams reside, but seven weeks isn't a small sample. At some point, you have to start giving credit where it's due.

Bob Melvin will not be manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks on Friday, according to a report in the Arizona Republic. Melvin has already been fired, a source who spoke on the condition of anonymity told the Associated Press.

A.J. Hinch, a catcher who played seven years in the majors, will replace Melvin, according to a report by SI.com.

Arizona is 12-17 after Thursday's 10-inning loss at San Diego and in fourth place in the NL West. The Diamondbacks' core of young talent has not progressed as some had expected after the team reached the 2007 NLCS under Melvin. He was NL Manager of the Year for that season.

For anybody who watched Brandon Webb get lit up by the Rockies on Opening Day it was pretty obvious that there was something not quite right about the Diamondbacks ace. His velocity was down and he was leaving his sinker up in the zone, allowing Rockies hitters to tee off pretty liberally.

Afterwards Webb and the Diamondbacks said it was just some shoulder stiffness and that it really wasn't anything to worry about, Brandon would be fine for his next start. Well guess what? Webb came to the park today and told the team his shoulder still didn't feel right and now he'll be missing his next start.

Jon was supposed to cover the Diamondbacks yesterday to close out our Spring preview of the NL West, but he got busy and I will be taking over today. I know you were expecting something wacky and facetious, but this is the Diamondbacks, and Arizona is a franchise deserving only the most reserved, tactful perspective. My original idea was to cover all of the new faces in the ballpark this year and the ramifications of agism and maturity in baseball, but then I remembered that D. Baxter the Bobcat was arrested for DUI and all I could type was "lol" with a bunch of o's in the middle. As a Cleveland resident, I eagerly await the story about Slider punching a woman in the face.

Today's Dugout is after the jump.

In the next few weeks, I'm sure we'll see a ton more quasi-injuries that will make the less knowledgeable fans freak out. We've already had Johan Santana, Milton Bradley, Grady Sizemore, Kerry Wood and Brad Hawpe report "injuries" that likely wouldn't sideline them if this was the regular season, and now we can add Brandon Webb to the list.

The Diamondbacks' ace was scratched from his scheduled Friday start due to stiffness in his throwing forearm. Apparently he was toying with some breaking stuff the other day in his bullpen session, and he just felt some tightness.

Isn't it laughable how everyone has an opinion now? For years, baseball people were hush about steroids, protecting their dirty little secret as if the masses were morons when, in fact, a lot of these men are the uneducated rockheads. One such creature is Ozzie Guillen, manager of Barack Obama's Chicago White Sox, who went mob boss on us in 2006 when pitcher Jason Grimsley served as a steroids informant in a federal investigation.

"Shoot the (bleep),'' said Guillen, who viewed Grimsley as a snitch. "The only thing I can say is that a former player should shut up and go. Shut up and move on. We don't need these guys. Baseball is better without him.''

Brewers GM Bob Melvin thought he had a shot at re-signing CC Sabathia with a five year $100 million deal ... only to find that the Yankees have seen that offer and raised the Brewers another season and another $40 million. Melvin, selfishly, and with a twinge of sour grapes, doesn't think that the Yankees need to go quite that high.

"It sounds like they're overbidding," Melvin told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "If the speculation is true that we've offered CC $100 million, why would you offer $140 million? Why wouldn't you offer $110 million?"

I'll tell you why. Because the Yankees decided they wanted Sabathia long before the Brewers unexpectedly decided to make a strong offer. They're not bidding against them, they're bidding against the previous standard for lefty starters (Johan Santana's Mets contract.) I mean, can you picture the Yankees sitting around their Tampa offices muttering to themselves, "Let's wait and see what the Brewers do"? It doesn't work that way in the Bronx.

Brandon Webb is still on pace for 23 wins, which is absolutely ridiculous, considering he's scuffled his way to losses in four of his last seven starts. Obviously he wasn't going to go 118-0, or whatever he started out heading towards, but he should still have a really good, Cy-Young-worthy season.

And it seems, based on what Webb is saying, that he could be due for a drastic improvement, now that negotiations for a contract extension have been called off. Because these negotiations, which have been going on since Spring Training, were clearly just killing him.

'It's off my mind now,' Webb said. 'It's not something I'm thinking about. I'm just going to go out there and pitch; we're still talking about 2 1/2 years here. Yeah, I was very disappointed that we didn't get it done, but I'm moving on from that. I've got a responsibility to pitch for these guys in here and for the fans.'

Yes. Yes, you do, Brandon. And you also have a responsibility to get my fantasy team off the schnide. I tend to side with Bob Melvin on this one when he points out that "it's not like he hasn't pitched in games with that out there" already this year.

I understand the point that continued discussion of the extension finally just wore on him, but come on. It seems like a pretty feeble excuse.

Fantasy Spin: Webb is actually a pretty good buy low right now. There has been discussion about his "dead arm" and his continued struggles over the past four starts might make his owner think injury. Now there's a possibility that there is an injury, but Webb has too much upside not to make him worth the risk.

As Mr. Watson told you yesterday, the Seattle Mariners finally went ahead and did what we'd all been waiting for them to do for a few weeks now: they fired general manager Bill Bavasi. In other words, Monday was probably the best day that Seattle sports fans have had in a while, and a cause for celebration.

With the pending move of the Sonics, and the Mariners struggles this season, there hasn't been much to cheer about in the Emerald City lately. Still, while there's some debate in New York about the Mets firing Willie Randolph (was it deserved? did they go about it the right way? etc.), I don't think there's much debate amongst Mariners fans about how they feel for this move. If they're upset about anything, it's probably that Bavasi was the only one to go and that the team can't fire Richie Sexson.

As Watson mentioned in his post yesterday, Bavasi's tenure in Seattle is not one littered with success. He gave questionable contracts to Sexson, Carlos Silva, and Adrian Beltre (though I think Beltre has been a good addition to the club), actually gave Jeff Weaver $8 million to suck for a season, and made trades like sending Carlos Guillen to Detroit for Ramon Santiago. Those are some devastating moves, and yet, that's only part of what Bavasi did to help bring this organization down.

Saber Bombs are MLB FanHouse's introduction to sabermetrics, those new and sometimes unwieldy metrics that are changing the way we think about baseball

If you're even a semi-ardent baseball fan, chances are good that you've seen MLB.com's new Gameday feature this year, which gives an incredible and detailed synopsis of the action on the field. The most interesting byproduct of the new Gameday is that Pitch FX data is now available to the general public for every pitch throw. If you're unfamiliar, Pitch FX measures the speed of each pitch in two places (at the release point and as it crosses the plate), as well as horizontal and vertical break. Many people see this wealth of information as the next frontier of sabermetrics, because it allows more detailed analysis than ever of each pitcher's start.

Earlier today, Brinson already told you about Nick Piecoro using Pitch FX to analyze Brandon Webb's "dead arm." Spurred on by that and Bob Melvin's claim of Randy Johnson's fastball being fine, despite radar gun reports, I decided to dig into Dan Brooks' Pitch FX tool to see if Melvin was right about the Unit. Follow along after the jump, and I'll show you how I answered the question.