The more I hear/read him, the less I think of him. He’s always the first person to criticize anyone involved in sports who has done something wrong. His constant preachiness annoys me to no end. (Although his book “Summer of ‘98 is now a great read because of its constant, hilarious assertions that McGwire and Sosa restored the integrity, excitement, and positive examples in baseball.)

Mr. Lupica, like so many other sportswriters, still talks about batting average and RBIs as though they are important statistics. Sure, Beltran’s power is down this year. He’s slugging .454 in 2008 compared to .525 last season. That said, his OBP is up, and he’s doing a great job taking pitches this year. Already Beltran has 65 walks compared to 69 last year. In 2007 Beltran struck out 111 times compared to only 69 times this season. So he’s taken his K:BB ratio from 1.6 to around 1.1. That’s good, but did it come at expense of his power? In 2006, Beltran had 95 walks and 99 Ks. He slugged .594 with 41 homers.

In short, the only thing disappointing about Beltran this season is a slight decline in slugging percentage. His approach at the plate remains as solid as ever.

I don’t think Beltran’s decline in SLG is “slight”, it’s pretty significant. That said, he hasn’t been nearly as “disappointing” (sportswriters love using subjective words like that because they can’t be wrong) as Jeter.

I wasn’t sold on him earlier on, but at this point I’m really not sure why Pascucci hasn’t gotten a call-up. What more does the guy have to do?