It’s hard to defend Howard’s emotional outbursts in a critical game that cost the Phillies their top RBI man and first baseman and thrust pitcher Roy Oswalt into left field, the clean-up spot in the lineup, and Phillies’ history but then again, it’s hard to see how anything Howard did warranted an ejection in the 2nd inning, let alone the 14th inning of a tie game where both teams’ benches were depleted.

But Scott Barry thought otherwise. Like a skilled hunter, Barry baited his prey early in the at-bat. After Howard put his hands on his hips — frustrated by an accurate Barry call on a check swing — the umpire mocked Howard by placing his hands on his hips and staring down the Phillies’ first baseman. The stare down continued as the at-bat continued. Four pitches later, Howard checked his swing again (this time not going around) and Barry rung him up. In disgust, Howard threw his bat down the line and began walking to first. From roughly 120 feet away, Barry sent the Phillies’ slugger to the showers with an uncalled-for ejection.

The facts of the events — preserved at MLB.com — will surely get blown out of proportion. Some will have Howard throwing his bat and helmet (the helmet launched after the ejection). Others will have the first baseman furiously charging Barry who fled toward the left field foul pole (again, it happened… but after the ejection). During the incident, the Houston Astros radio announcers described how Howard pushed umpire Sam Holbrook as he tried to make his way to Barry (actually, it was Holbrook who pushed Howard as the first baseman was restrained by Placido Polanco and Sam Perlozzo as Holbrook jumped in front of Ryan and decided it was his place to put his hands on a player even though such an action by a player would be a slam dunk suspension and fine).

The ejection launched Tuesday’s Astros-Phillies game into surreal status as Roy Oswalt was sent in to play left field and Barry, an umpire, was sent to the top of Philadelphia’s Twitter Trending list. The Phillies went on to lose. Coincidentally, Oswalt — in Howard’s spot in the lineup — made the final out representing the winning run.

Sadly, the story is an umpire. And not even a Major League one (Barry is a AAA call-up).

Even more unnerving is the fact that Barry has thrust himself into the spotlight before. Last week, Barry ejected Nationals’ third baseman Ryan Zimmerman for throwing his bat after striking out during the 8th inning of yet another 2-2 game with playoff implications (the Braves were the opponents and eventual winners of the game).

Barry’s Zimmerman ejection — the first of Ryan’s life — was even less defensible. Sent to the showers without a word or negative action toward the umpire, Barry decided to put the spotlight on himself rather than the game with a substantially unnecessary ejection of the team’s best player in a game that could have an impact on who plays in the postseason and who doesn’t.

In both cases, the games were likely to end the same way — with the Braves winning in the 9th over the lowly Nationals and the Astros finally scoring a run to break the extra-inning stalemate with the offensively dormant Phillies — but now there’s the “what if” that looms. In either case, the odds that anyone of the 45,000-plus that showed up in Philadelphia or 18,000-plus on hand in Atlanta paid to watch Scott Barry throw out a guy named Ryan are slim to none.

Unfortunately, for those who paid to watch a baseball game with the best Major League talent both sides had to offer, a minor league umpire stole the spotlight for a minute with his unnecessary impact on the game.

Cameron’s entry instantly brought back memories of the BDD Dream Draft conducted before the 2009 season and the team I selected, mainly because I was pretty sure I had selected the man Cammy identified as his build around player — Ryan Zimmerman — although I knew he wasn’t my first pick (that was Joe Mauer… how’d I do?).

At the time, Zimmerman wasn’t even my secondary or tertiary (those selections were CC Sabathia and Brandon Phillips) but he was coming off of injury and whenever participating in any kind of draft, I always wait a round or two longer to select a guy with any sort of question mark surrounding him because I assume how I value him will not be how others do. In the case of Zimmerman, it worked out.

Here’s what I said about the selection at the time:

The 24-year-old 3B had a decent year despite injury and should only get better if most of the major projections are to be believed. In addition to his solid bat, Zimmerman is definitely no slouch in the field and should be moving into his prime over the next few years. As young as Zimmerman is, I’m not going to sweat last year’s injury and solidify one of my two corner infield needs.

Having later filled my other corner infield slot with Adrian Gonzalez (in the 10th round!!!), things have been looking up for Brian Joseph’s Dream Team. Considering the caliber of baseball minds brought in to participate in the draft (the faux GMs can be reviewed here) and how my team has fared through 1-3/4 seasons of play (here’s a recap of the first year where this writer’s team had accumulated 43.6 WAR — nearly 8 wins more than the next closest GM), the satisfaction level with the BJDT (everything has to have an acronym, right?) has been pretty high.

With the exception of one player.

When I took Travis Snider in the 5th round, I was a little unsure of the pick at the time. So, his struggles over the past 2 seasons have not been surprising. Taking his current age of 22 into consideration and he’s still part of the BJDT for 4 more seasons (the idea was to construct the team focusing on the next 6 years), he’s not the one player that has left me totally dissatisfied.

That player is Nate McLouth. Taken one round after Snider, I remember wanting to add a center fielder. With Grady Sizemore (1st round to Eric Seidman), Josh Hamilton (2nd round to Joe Hamrahi), B.J Upton (2nd round to Cory Schwartz), Cameron Maybin (4th round to Melissa Lockard), Matt Kemp (4th round to Bill Baer), Curtis Granderson (4th round to Michael Street), and Carlos Beltran (5th round to Eric San Inocencio) all gone, center field was no longer just a John Fogerty song playing in my head because baseball season was growing near. It came down to two players and with the 53rd selection in the BDD Dream Draft, Brian Joseph selects:

Nate McLouth, CF, Pittsburgh Pirates

Let me continue to fill up my outfield and lock up CF with this selection. This came down to two players and I may end up selecting the other at some point so I won’t mention him but I settled on Nate McLouth of the Pittsburgh Pirates. McLouth’s speed, power ability to lead off and play center and his age — 27 this year — all made him an attractive choice. McLouth did struggle at times last year but was also fantastic more than he struggled. I know many were critical of the Gold Glove he received and I agree that McLouth didn’t really deserve the award but his defense was at least average and at times better than average.

At the time, McLouth was the “safe” pick in my mind compared to the other player I alluded to in my write-up of my 6th round selection. With McLouth, I thought I was getting a bat with an undervalued glove statistically (his -12.3 fielding runs during his Gold Glove year looked like a fluke). And during the 2009 season, it looked like I was right. While his hitting fell off, McLouth’s glove became respectable in the eyes of UZR although his average performance wasn’t enough to stop the Gold Glove jokes.

This year, on the other hand, has been a disaster. Through yesterday, McLouth is hitting .168/.279/.265 and there isn’t a defensive metric (or pair of eye balls) that considers him even adequate in the field in 2010. His performance earned him a demotion to Gwinnett where he continues to struggle and he left last night’s minor league clash with a shin injury.

Needless to say, from McLouth, to quote the Rolling Stones, I can’t get no satisfaction!

What’s especially troubling is the “other player” I alluded to who was never revealed and never selected in the draft — Michael Bourn.

Looking back over the past 1-3/4 year, Bourn easily ranks among the best center fielders in the game but at the time of this draft, he was coming off of a .229/.288/.300 season and a visually dazzling but statistically average defensive first full season with the Astros. He was the butt of Ed Wade jokes who gave away baseball’s perfect closer for a really fast outfielder who hit like a pitcher.

At the time, there was a part of me looking to save face and making a guy like Bourn one of the top 60 players selected in a Dream Draft would have been enough to make at least a few people snicker. Heck, I was questioning my sanity when I looked down at my short list of center fielders.

Compounding the issue for the BJDT was a rumor of the Dream Draft being extended to 15, 25 or 40 rounds, even. Knowing how highly I valued Bourn at the time and no one in their right mind valued him as much as I did — except for Wade, maybe, and he wasn’t one of the GMs involved in our little thought exercise — I fully expected the draft to continue beyond 10 rounds, for Bourn to be sitting there as a backup plan to McLouth and Snider (with McLouth moving to right or left field, of course) and for me to scoop him up.

The draft never continued. I never selected Bourn. The BJDT while still very good (the club has accumulated another 25.5 WAR in 2010 so far) could have been so much better if I had some guts.

Alas, no guts, no glory. Or worse yet — Nate McLouth!

While a few thousand words could be spent picking apart Cistulli’s dumbassery disguised as intelligent commentary, let’s avoid the bait and cut to the baseball information. Although let’s at least mention that ripping what the New York Times dot com readers enjoy reading for being garbage and reason to lose all faith in humanity then following it with a 7-paragraph love fest toward a man being held up as a hero for berating a human being, cursing in public, and stealing beer (The beer is noteworthy because of he grabbed a couple of Diet Pepsis no one would find it cool) is selective in what is approved and not approved behavior.

Back to the baseball portion of the post:

According to Cistulli, job security is awful for a Major League Baseball manager. His proof? Six managers have lost their job this year! SIX!!! (Actually, it’s been 5 and 1 interim manager but who’s counting?) What jumps out to Cistulli is the 20% turnover rate for the Major League manager!

What jumps out first from this list is that a full six of those men weren’t managers at the beginning of the season. That means, right off the bat, that 20% of the employees from this particular group were fired just this year. Consider, by way of comparison, if Morrison & Foerster (the New York-based law firm known affectionately as MoFo) were to fire 20% of its associates. People would, in the parlance of today’s youth, freak the eff out.

I’m going to assume that said “freak(ing) the eff out” only applies to 2010 since, in 2009, “MOFO” laid off 201 employees. With a staff of roughly 1,000-1,500 employees, the turnover rate is similar to that of the highest ranking managerial position in professional baseball. Such a decision by MOFO likely met with “What do you call 53 attorneys at the bottom of a lake?” jokes amongst the “people” unless one of those lawyers acted like a fool toward their ex-employers and stole some complimentary chocolates.

Then, Cistulli breaks down the tenure of a Major League manager to 4.5 years then by using the median, claims the length of employment is closer to 3 years. This, of course, ignores years spent as a manager with other teams, although Cistulli alludes to (and dismisses) such a phenomenon in the next paragraph.

After providing the evidence of how volatile and insecure the job of a Major League manager is, Cistulli poses this thought experiment (A “thought experiment” is what people who are highly educated and obsessed with shoving down your throat the fact that they are able to use words with more than 2 syllables call a question):

Let’s try a thought experiment. Say I’m a dude who can offer you a job. And say this job is pretty hot. But here’s the thing about it: you’re probably gonna be fired in 2013.

Would you take it?

If for some reason, you’re on the fence here, let’s dig a little deeper into the shelf life of a Major League manager. From 2005-2009, 31 Major League managers lost their jobs. At an average of 6.2 managers per season, 2010, so far, is looking fairly typical and supports Cistulli’s claim that being a manager isn’t as secure as the jobs of his circle of friends. (Note: Cistulli’s circle of friends includes 3 lawyers, 3 writers, a librarian, a writing instructor, and a computer programmer. It does not include anyone from the hospitality or retail industries which historically have turnover rates in the 30-40% range.) While life is good for Carson’s dinner party guests, the turnover rate for a Major League manager is perfectly in line with studies done on the turnover rate for the general workforce. A study done by Culpepper and Associates showed that turnover for 191 participating organizations in various industry sectors was 17% in 2009 (down from 22% in 2007). Other information about turnover (easily found through a Google search or a conversation with your local big box retail manager) reveals that 20% is fairly consistent (if not slightly conservative) with what happens in the “real world.”

The one thing drastically different about the shelf life of a Major League manager and the shelf life of Joe Employee is the actual job security that comes with being a Major League manager. Even if it isn’t as a Major League manager, a long career in baseball can be expected. Here’s a breakdown of the 31 managers who lost their jobs from 2005 to 2009:

• Current Major League Managers: 10
  Lou Piniella (Cubs), Ken Macha (Brewers), Bruce Bochy (Giants), Joe Girardi (Yankees), Dusty Baker (Reds), Buck Showalter (Orioles), Joe Torre (Dodgers), Jim Tracy (Rockies), Ned Yost (Royals), Manny Acta (Indians)
  
• Current Major League Bench Coaches: 5
  Alan Trammell (Cubs), Tony Pena (Yankees), Willie Randolph (Brewers), John Gibbons (Royals), John McLaren (Nationals)
  
• Current Major League Hitting Coaches: 2
  Lloyd McClendon (Tigers), Clint Hurdle (Rangers)
  
• Other Baseball Jobs: 7
  Art Howe (Top Coach at MLB European Academy)
  Felipe Alou (Semi-retired/Manager of Dominican Republic team at WBC)
  Frank Robinson (Works in Commissioner’s Office)
  Buddy Bell (Director of Minor League Operations for Chicago White Sox)
  Sam Perlozzo (3rd Base Coach for Philadelphia Phillies)
  Bob Melvin (Scout for New York Mets)
  Dave Miley (Manager of Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, Yankees AAA Team)
  
• Retired: 1
  Jack McKeon

That leaves 6 who are without jobs in baseball, although Eric Wedge took the year off to give himself a mental/physical break and Mike Hargrove, who walked away in 2007, cited “burn out” as the reason he wasn’t currently working in a recent newspaper interview. Of the other 4, Cecil Cooper and Phil Garner are actively seeking employment, Jerry Narron is on the public speaking circuit, and Grady Little is alive.

Wedge, Hargrove, and Garner continue to be on the short list of clubs seeking managers and Wedge stated he was offered jobs from 6 or 7 organizations following his dismissal in Cleveland. Cooper wants to work again in baseball but he’s also one of the most recent of the “unemployed” on the above list.

That leaves 2: Jerry Narron, a 5-year managerial veteran with a lifetime 291-341 (.460) record with 2 clubs, and Grady Little, a relatively successful manager in his 4 years in the Majors (358-290, .552) but more known for his decision to leave Pedro Martinez in too long during a playoff meltdown against the Yankees that continued the “Curse of the Bambino.”

Cistulli concludes:

Whatever the case may be, the principal draw of baseball’s managerial positions certainly isn’t job security.

It isn’t?