Jason Giambi, famous for his seven years with the New York Yankees, an AL MVP award with Oakland in 2000, and an older Dugout buddy icon that made him look like a goomba from Super Mario Bros., has agreed to a deal with the Colorado Rockies, according to multiple sources. Giambi is fresh from a release in Oakland, where he shocked statisticians by somehow getting his batting average into negative numbers.
The addition of Giambi to the playoff-hopeful Rockies gives them a powerful bat and %8000 more worthless fat in their lineup. Will this help them get to the promised land? Today's Dugout is after the jump.
"Spring training is very important. It gives all the Dominican players time to learn how to say 'renegotiate' in English!" "lol /thrusts hips"
Hopefully our only look at the AL West this year continues with the Oakland Athletics, a team so perplexing that they are simultaneously predicted to win the division and be removed from baseball completely. Their mascot is an elephant! What's the deal with that!
According to said projections, the Oakland Athletics will win the AL West with an 82-80 record and go into the record books as the losingest team to win a division in the history of the American League. The Texas Rangers, Seattle Mariners, and West Coast Alphabets don't stand a chance.
Jason Giambi will be back with the Oakland Athletics next season, and for whatever reason MLB.com decided to pay somebody to report that the A's pitching staff will benefit from his wealth of knowledge about... pitching? "Giambi is nice man, friendships will help the ballclub!" "A's have many shirts in XL to spare, Giambi arrives fully clothed with no additional orders necessary!"
Regardless, with the addition of Giambi to the lineup comes a refocus on the Athletics for The Dugout. We haven't really had anything to say about the A's other than "Frank Thomas is old/dying," so a nice New York sized helping of cost-rationalization and homophobic slurs are in order. The A's should hire David Wells and any other fat sack of crap they can locate and be the "ironic team."
Just when Jason Giambi was becoming one of the more likeable Yankees, he goes and does something stupid like not live up to the forty billion dollar club option left on his contract. Tisk tisk.
He did steroids, admitted it (kinda), and still got to doff his cap in the final game at Yankee Stadium. That rules. I guess that's all I really saw in the guy.
Mr. Giambi and Carl Pavano both had their contracts extinguished by the Yankees yesterday, as the club options left on each of them were pricey to say the least. Giambi would have been given $22 million and Pavano $13 million, both far beyond what either can expect to make testing the waters of free agency. The front office in New York said that it shouldn't surprise anyone, but come on. When have nickels and dimes stopped the Yankees from doing anything? I'm surpised if only to make the front office wrong.
So, good luck guys. I doubt either of you will ever matter again.
This is the best and the worst time of year for Dugouts. The trade deadline looms and we'll get a chance to cover a lot of teams we don't normally cover. At the same time, the newsmakers of baseball start making news, and most of the time that involves a steady stream of unbelievable stories from the Yankees and the Red Sox. I want to do more Pirates Dugouts, but nobody in Pittsburgh just had their marriage broken up by a random assemblance of pop musicians. Nobody from the Pirates ran up a wall and high-fived a guy.
We've been sitting on this for a few days, waiting for the logical "oh THIS is what really happened" to come along. It just... isn't coming along. So today we attempt to handle this from an educated, even-handed perspective.
Today's Dugout, which should've just been about the Royals again, is after the jump.
1) Reliant K Kyle Farnsworth has obviously not been on vacation all week. However, the Dugout version of Farnsworth has been on vacation (and yes, he's the religion he says he is in real life too) and if you can't disassociate the two and need a kayfabed explanation, the one who has been pitching in Yankees games this week wasn't Kyle at all but his evil pseudo-brother Jeff.
2) The subject who appears at the end of this strip was brought up and requested in tonight's Baseball is Boring: Mariners-Red Sox live blog. We really do listen to you guys. We wouldn't be doing these (and getting paid to do these) for Fanhouse if it wasn't for our audience, so we always want to know what you want and hear what you have to say. If you haven't been reading BiB you've been missing out and should remedy that. Especially now, before it gets popular and gets its own Fanhouse tag.
I'm happy that A-Rod is sticking with the Yankees. Yeah, I don't like the Yankees. Yeah, I don't like Alex Rodriguez as a player. However, Nick, Jon, and I would've never started doing the Dugout if he hadn't shown up in New York with Derek Jeter and inserted himself into a series of wacky life situtations. If he didn't show up in the news with strippers or release statements about how sad he is that he doesn't get to have sleepovers with Jeet anymore, we wouldn't have so much fun doing these.
When he was going to end up on another team I kept my fingers crossed that it would be as funny. He could play for the Cubs. We could play the hyperbolic injury angle. If he played for the White Sox we could have him pal with Thome. If he played for the Dodgers he could spend 40 Dugouts watching reruns of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
But things are good in baseball land, and we move on, our heads held high. Apologies to Phil Jackson.
Dusty Baker gets a press pass for the World Series because he's the manager of the Cincinnati Reds, and if the Reds finish in last place with 161 losses in 2008, Dusty will be fired and become the new head coach of the Devil Rays. Or the new head coach of the Phillies. Or the new head coach of some amalgamation of the Cubs and Giants. He'll coach the "Gubs."
Now is the season for managerial changes and the more things change, the more things stay the same. We know what a coach does. It makes sense. We've read books telling us that coaches do nothing. But as do-gooders or do-nothings, why are they always the same guys? Is Jim Tracy seriously in the top 30 baseball coaches in the world?
Today, the Dugout deals with intolerance. It has little to do with how much Dusty Baker looks like Ving Rhames in that get-up.
Jason Giambi, famous for his seven years with the New York Yankees, an AL MVP award with Oakland in 2000, and an older Dugout buddy icon that made him look like a goomba from Super Mario Bros., has agreed to a deal with the Colorado Rockies, according to multiple sources. Giambi is fresh from a release in Oakland, where he shocked statisticians by somehow getting his batting average into negative numbers. 
"Spring training is very important. It gives all the Dominican players time to learn how to say 'renegotiate' in English!" "lol /thrusts hips"
Just when Jason Giambi was becoming one of the more likeable Yankees, he goes and does something stupid like not live up to the forty billion dollar club option left on his contract. Tisk tisk.
This is the best and the worst time of year for Dugouts. The trade deadline looms and we'll get a chance to cover a lot of teams we don't normally cover. At the same time, the newsmakers of baseball start making news, and most of the time that involves a steady stream of unbelievable stories from the Yankees and the Red Sox. I want to do more Pirates Dugouts, but nobody in Pittsburgh just had their marriage broken up by a random assemblance of pop musicians. Nobody from the Pirates ran up a wall and high-fived a guy.
Two notes before tonight's Dugout:
I'm happy that A-Rod is sticking with the Yankees. Yeah, I don't like the Yankees. Yeah, I don't like Alex Rodriguez as a player. However, Nick, Jon, and I would've never started doing the Dugout if he hadn't shown up in New York with Derek Jeter and inserted himself into a series of wacky life situtations. If he didn't show up in the news with strippers or release statements about how sad he is that he doesn't get to have sleepovers with Jeet anymore, we wouldn't have so much fun doing these. 
Dusty Baker gets a press pass for the World Series because he's the manager of the Cincinnati Reds, and if the Reds finish in last place with 161 losses in 2008, Dusty will be fired and become the new head coach of the Devil Rays. Or the new head coach of the Phillies. Or the new head coach of some amalgamation of the Cubs and Giants. He'll coach the "Gubs."
