This Week in (Dumb) Baseball: Mike Trout vs. Bo Jackson? LOL – CBSSports.com

It’s Monday, which means our regularly scheduled programming of This Week in (Dumb) Baseball is ready for consumption.

As regular readers already know, this feature has the title, sure, but it’s mostly for fun— a fact that eludes the masses but remains the case. For example, if you tell me to “quit whining,” you are missing the point. I’m mostly chuckling to myself as I write these things (with some exceptions, of course).

For all This Week in (Dumb) Baseball columns, click here.

1. Mike Trout-Bo Jackson comparisons

Last week in Cincinnati, Mike Trout did something only Bo Jackson had done before: Hit a leadoff home run at the All-Star Game (Jackson’s was bottom of the first, but he led off for his team). For the rest of the broadcast, we heard comparisons between the two players and eventually Adam Jones told CBS Sports that Trout is the white Bo Jackson.

And then, a bunch of people on the Internet went crazy about the race factor.

First of all, on the latter part: Shut it the hell down. Who cares?

As for the player comparisons, well, they don’t compare. Bo Jackson can’t hold Mike Trout’s jock as a baseball player and Mike Trout can’t hold Bo Jackson’s jock as a multi-sport star. It’s not even close on either front.

Trout is only 23. Through Bo Jackson’s age-23 season, he had played in just 25 career games. Through his career, he gathered 2,626 plate appearances. Trout headed into Monday with 2,581. Look at this:

Trout: .306/.396/.559, 129 2B, 27 3B 125 HR, 363 RBI, 442 R, 111 SB
Bo J.: .250/.309/.474, 86 2B, 14 3B, 141 HR, 415 RBI, 341 R, 82 SB

Trout walks a lot more than Bo, so trailing in home runs is mostly due to the gap in at-bats. Trout has homered once every 17.64 at-bats while Bo did so once every 16.97.

Further, Trout’s a far superior glove man and Bo had a better arm. Trout’s a better baserunner though Bo was faster. Basically, Trout is an all-around incredible baseball player while Jackson had some insane tools (arm, speed, power) while missing the hit tool and not having a great glove.

This isn’t even mentioning that, again, all of Jackson’s good years came after age 23 and Trout hasn’t even had those yet. He’s on a Hall of Fame path (his closest statistical similars at this point are Mickey Mantle, Frank Robinson and Hank Aaron for Pete’s sake). Even if Jackson was never injured, he’d have never even gotten close to this.

Where this “comparison” is most off-base, of course, is Jackson being one of the most talented running backs in the NFL, too. He had three runs of at least 88 yards in 38 career games! He averaged at least 5.5 yards per carry in three of his four seasons — all this while playing a different sport during training camp and the beginning of the season. He truly was a special athlete and has no one is near his class when it comes to sheer talent in two different sports.

But he’s still nothing compared to Trout as only a baseball player.

Quite simply, this was a ridiculous comparison. I’ll reiterate what I had in my introduction since many probably don’t read it: I’m not even remotely angry. I don’t care if people want to make the comparison, I’m only here to point out how foolish it is. I don’t blame Adam Jones for providing an excellent soundbite because that’s what he does — and I’m a big fan of his interviews — but anyone paid to give baseball analysis making the same comparison is failing at his or her job in a big way.

Let’s just love the memories Bo provided us (many of us as kids) and Trout is providing us now without having to have them collide in ill-advised fashion.

Also, thank our lucky stars Bo isn’t playing today. Instead of just calling him Bo, we’d have a segment of people calling him “B-Jax.” Awful. In fact, that might be a segment of a future Dumb, written by M-Snyd.

2. Did Pete Rose get reinstated?

If Major League Baseball had given Pete Rose partial reinstatement before the All-Star Game, I’d have had no issue with his inclusion on the field in pre-game festivities. Instead, I’m left wondering: Um, is he banned or not? That was national TV and he was the star of the pregame show for the freaking All-Star Game!

Again, I’m not angry or anything, but if he’s banned, he’s banned. I would’ve thought that means he can’t take part in an MLB-sanctioned event on the field and certainly not be the entire focus of the pre-game event. If that’s OK with MLB, just partially reinstate, say he’s not allowed to be hired to work for any teams and make a decision on Hall of Fame eligibility.

3. Maybe stop talking for a while, Champ

I don’t want Bryce Harper to change and I love that he’s the yin to Trout’s yang (as my brother put it a few weeks ago in a conversation with me) — meaning that Trout is like Derek Jeter in how he’ll never stir the pot. I liked Harper’s comment about 40,000 fans not paying to see the umpire and his comments about Zack Greinke were mostly nothing. But …

“I don’t think he was very tough.”

That’s unbecoming. With legions of haters lining up to call Harper a “punk” every single time he does something that’s not perceived as perfect, there’s little reason to provide ammo like this.

Greinke is leading the majors with a 1.30 ERA. He has 117 strikeouts to only 21 walks. He struck out Harper twice in two at-bats Sunday.

Just leave in the praise (he did say Greinke was having a great year) and umpire complaints and avoid it looking like you don’t think he’s that good. Greinke is that good right now. It’s OK to admit it. No one would think less of a player for saying Greg Maddux was awesome even if not overpowering.

And now, let us wash away the dumb with fun!

Baseball card of the week

Glenn Hubbard, you mad man!

(via multi-medium.net)

Teammate of the week

Glen Perkins bringing the smoked ribs skill.

.@glenperkins, All-Star closer and grill master. https://t.co/BkScqtbyHA

— Minnesota Twins (@Twins) July 16, 2015

Love it.

Windup of the week

It’s from about two weeks ago, but we had the All-Star theme last week, so I saved this one. Johnny Cueto with a little shimmy:

He’s got @AllStarGame kinda moves. What’s he call it? “La Mecedora”. What’s it mean? “The Rocking Chair” #VoteCueto pic.twitter.com/25CkMQWpJ0

— Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) July 8, 2015

Possibly dumb All-Star story

One of my favorite things to watch during All-Star Game batting practice is to see what players hang out together in the outfield. It’s a bit clique-y and by no means should any of this be taken seriously. For example, Madison Bumgarner and Clayton Kershaw never left each other’s sides. Buster Posey and Harper were in that mix for a while, too. Yasmani Grandal and A.J. Pollock seemed to be friends. I always seem to find a group of closers hanging out. You get the picture.

Anyway, in 2012, 2013 and 2014, Aroldis Chapman always stayed by himself for the duration of BP. It was fascinating in a non-serious way. Does he just not like anyone else here? Is he truly a loner? Does he just not wanna talk to anyone right now? I started a #LonelyAroldis hashtag on Twitter for it and was looking forward to keeping it going. Instead on Tuesday, he was with a group of NL players. Nooooo! And my LonelyAroldis hashtag suffered a heartbreaking death.

I look forward to someone taking this little bit of fun aside far too seriously and mentioning something about “journalism.”

On that note, it’s time to put a bow on this thing. Enjoy the first full week of post-All-Star break baseball.

Suggestions (dumb stuff, random videos, baseball cards, pop culture rankings topics, etc.) or hate mail? Feel free to hit me up: matt.snyder@cbs.com or you could always go to Twitter (@MattSnyderCBS).