NEW ZOO REVUE

The Nationals lost. Finally! The start of their inevitable decline has begun.

Wolfie's hurt. Once again, it's the elbow that disabled him last year for the last month of the season. Robbie Tejeda will step in, but Wade had better get on the phone to move Ryan Howard for an arm, preferably one attached to a starting pitcher (you have to spell these things out for Ed). As with Oogie, even if it's not precisely the guy you want, you may prevent one of the other NL East teams from getting precisely who they want.

Let's talk Ichiro for a bit. I love to watch the guy, but the Wikipedia entry for overrated needs to have his photo. Maybe I'll do that later today, just to see how long it lasts. I love the Internet. Back to Ichiro. His VORP for the last three full seasons and so far in 2005 are listed below:

Year	VORP	Rank Among Right Fielders	Rank Overall
2002	44.6	8th	56th
2003	39.3	12th	70th
2004	80.9	4th	9th
2005	12.8	12th	90th

Compare that to Bobby Abreu:

Year	VORP	Rank Among Right Fielders	Rank Overall
2002	70.4	3rd	18th
2003	53.3	4th	34th
2004	83.8	2nd	7th
2005	39.9	1st	3rd

Now, who should really be getting a ZOOperstar? Bobby outperformed Ichiro in each year of this comparison, often by an embarrassing amount, and yet Ichiro gets to wear his first name on his jersey, gets followed around by a horde of press, and is celebrated wherever he goes. They're both foreign and can barely speak English. Neither one is particularly eloquent in their native language, as far as I can tell. Bobby even had a Miss Universe girlfriend before she cheated on him on Venezuelan reality TV. So what's the deal? Ok, Ichiro has a (insert gun cliche here) for an arm, and he's often spectacular in the field while Bobby sometimes looks slightly inebriated, but still, this comparison is almost laughable in terms of who helps his team win more. And as the PTI guys like to quote Herm Edwards, "We play to win the game."

The ZOOperstars would like to welcome Bobby Crab-reu!