Hitting The Cutoff Man

So I finally got around to seeing Inception. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but since this isn't a movie blog, I'll leave an in-depth review to the professionals.

For anyone who doesn't know, the movie's title refers to the act (a critical plot point) of planting an idea deep within a person's subconscious, through dream manipulation. The goal is to have the person then produce that idea in a seemingly natural way, as if it is their own.

If I somehow came into possession of such an ability, like Leonardo DiCaprio's Dom Cobb, I probably would turn it on something closer to my heart than corporate espionage. If you haven't guessed already, that would be baseball. Let's face it -- there are some concepts in baseball that people within the game cannot seem to get through their skulls, no matter how logical. But what if, with your cliched heist team, you could invade the dreams of GMs, managers, writers, etc., and plant the seed that would make them realize (for example) that wins are a terrible way of evaluating pitcher performance? It wouldn't be as cool as, say, fighting a dude in an anti-gravity hotel hallway. But it would still be satisfying.

So everyone sit back, relax and make sure your totems are handy. Here is our dossier with a list of preliminary objectives:

Target: Producers at media outlets, such as MLB Network
Idea: Let's stop giving a pitcher's stats against a specific opposing team as if that's important information.
Background: I watch MLB Network a lot, and I love it. For one thing, there is 100 percent less John Kruk. On the other hand, there is 100 percent more Dan Plesac, but life is full of trade-offs. Anyway, in reference to a game the next day, you often the host say something like, "Freddy Garcia has owned the Tigers in his career, compiling an 18-6 mark against them." While true, this tells us almost nothing about what we can expect from Garcia in this start. This is not difficult to grasp. For one thing, Garcia in 2010 is a different pitcher than in any other year of his career. For another thing, rosters change so much these days that the Tigers as we know them now are wildly different from the Tigers even a few years ago. The Tigers of April 28, 1999, (Garcia's first career start against Detroit) featured no players still with the organization and only one (Brad Ausmus) who is still even an active MLB player. Even if the roster was the same, all of the Detroit players would be totally different than they were in 1999 anyways. So considering that game as part of a group of games through which to evaluate the White Sox' chances against the Tigers on Thursday is insane. And in most cases when people do this, the sample size of innings is small enough to be largely meaningless. Let's save our breath.

Target: Baseball fans
Idea: "The Wave" is dumb.
Background: There are many ways to be entertained, cheer and support your team at a baseball game. The Wave is one of the worst. It has no meaning and only serves to annoy when it comes around just as a pitch is being thrown, leaving you with the choice to either miss the action or take part in a ridiculous ritual just so you can see. Figure out some other way to achieve whatever it is The Wave does for you.

Target: Albert Pujols
Idea: I should remain with the St. Louis Cardinals for the rest of my career, in return for a fair salary that is affordable for the team without preventing its front office from acquiring other talented players.
Background: Pujols' contract expires after this season (St. Louis holds a 2011 team option for $16 million, which even a complete lunatic would exercise). If he does not sign a new deal with the Cards, a certain blogger who occasionally uses popular movies as a gimmick for posts might throw himself off a bridge. He undoubtedly wouldn't be the only one.

There are so many other potential targets for inception out there: Frank and Jamie McCourt, any number of mostly incompetent general managers, people in charge of the music and concessions at stadiums, members of the Baseball Writers Association of America who base their MVP voting largely on RBI totals, and announcers who use the term "fisted" to describe a weak hit off the handle of a bat. But an architect can design only so many realistic dreamscapes at a time, so we'll have to pace ourselves.

In the meantime, any other suggestions?

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