Matt Kemp Is A Dolt?

Paul Oberjuerge seems to think so.

Wait! Bone-headed plays, mental lapses, poor decisions?

That reminds me of Matt Kemp!

Really? "Budding superstar", "elite center fielder", and "most valuable Dodger" are the phrases that remind me of Matt Kemp.

Matt Kemp gets lots of love, of late, for his raw talent. Well and good.

But imagine how good this guy would be if he weren’t an utter dolt.

I actually can't imagine, so care to paint a picture for me with evidence? Thanks.

Is there a dumber guy in baseball than Matt Kemp? Not talking real-world IQ (but maybe we could), but “dumb plays involving a guy who no longer is a kid.” Baseball IQ, that is.

And on that scale, is anyone dumber than Matt Kemp?

You're a professional writer? Really?

You just stated that Kemp is dumb three times in four sentences. Geez, excuse me while I contact the journalism department of redundancy department.

By the way, still zero evidence to be found, unless you consider first grade name calling as evidence.

Matt Kemp, that poopie head.

Search your mind, for a moment, and consider how many times you have seen Matt Kemp thrown out on the bases. Yeah. A lot.

Not really. Even T.J. Simers, who is practically a real life troll, acknowledged recently that Kemp has been much better at limiting silly mistakes.

Regardless, I assume you have more evidence than just stating "I believe to have seen this happen a lot, therefore it is true", right?

Somebody somewhere must have that stat, Matt Kemp outs-made on basepaths …. and I will bet you $5 that (subtracting caught-stealing) no one in baseball has been tagged out on the bases more often than Matt Kemp.

Nope, no evidence, just more unsupported claims. Okay, I guess evidence was asking for too much.

Please though, don't dig yourself an even deeper hole...

Matt Kemp tries to take extra bases all the time. And often doesn’t make it. He gets doubled off a base. He strays too far off the bag and gets picked off. He’s just a disaster out there. And this has to do with a really low baseball IQ.

Oops, too late.

Actually, i'm going to go on the other extreme of things and claim that Matt Kemp is very valuable on the bases. Except that when I go on to explain my opinion, and here's the kicker, i'm actually going to use this thing called objective evidence.

Even aside from stealing bases, Kemp has either been the best or second best baserunner on the team.

In fact, the one area where Kemp performs well below expected is advancing on pitches in the dirt, as he should probably be more aggressive than he is. Ironically though, not only is it pretty much the only thing Oberjuerge doesn't mention, but he wants Kemp to stop trying to take the extra base. How grand.

Some Matt Kemp gaffes (including one on defense) from just the past week:

–In Washington on Thursday, bottom of the sixth, lazy fly ball to left-center. Kemp is playing center. Manny Ramirez is playing left. Repeat: Manny Ramirez is playing left.

Yeah, I agree that this was Kemp's fault. Then again, what exactly does this prove? You're saying that even the best defenders don't screw up once in a while?

Oh that Ozzie Smith, everybody thinks he's so good, but I remember this one time he lost a ball in the sun. Boy, what a crappy defender he is.

At the end of the inning, Dodgers broadcast analyst/apologist Steve “Psycho” Lyons talked about how playing center field is a learning experience for Matt Kemp. This is the same Matt Kemp who is now 27 and has played 152 games in center field this year.

Wow. Actually, Kemp just made 25, genius. It's funny because that's the one objective piece of information you've included all article long and you still managed to screw it up. I haven't seen this much fail since I watched Jake Delhomme against the Arizona Cardinals in the 2008-2009 NFL playoffs.

Usually I don't bash on people for mistakes like this, but he wrote a five paragraph rant and attempted to summarize it with the point about Kemp's age, yet he can't take the time to check his bio page to make sure the point he's making is actually relevant?

It's like me going on a rant about how Clayton Kershaw still hasn't fully developed yet at 31 years old. It would kind of ruin that entire rant if I got that small little age problem wrong, wouldn't it? Exactly.

No, Psycho, there is no such thing as a learning experience for Matt Kemp. He is a gold fish in the fish bowl that is baseball; every trip around the same small world somehow is a brand-new experience for “Goldy” Kemp.

Now this sounds more like genuine hate than criticism. That explains a lot.

Top seven, same game, in Washington, no outs. Kemp hits a ball to deep left that Josh Willingham tracks to the wall … and doesn’t catch. The ball hits the top of the wall, falls to Willingham’s feet, and he can’t find it. He’s looking everywhere for it, and he’s almost standing on it. It’s almost comical.

Meanwhile, Matt Kemp is running … that Kemp is no longer running toward third … he is running toward a point somewhere 30-40 feet up the foul line. When Kemp finally looks around to see where he is … he is in short left field...Arguably, he could have scored if he hadn’t run 350 feet while getting to third base. Just another example of his brain-dead work on the basepaths. Oh, and he was stranded at third.

Am I the only one who didn't see it like this? Was it really Kemp's fault for not getting an inside of the park homer out of Josh Willingham losing a double by his feet? What Willingham had found the ball, picked it up, and gunned Kemp out trying to take the extra bag at home? By Oberjuerge's previous logic, Kemp should then be criticized for trying to take that extra bag. It's a Catch-22.

Besides, the whole rant is pointless, because he's criticizing Kemp for something that even he admits arguably could have led to a run. Way to point out those firm game changing mental errors.

–Today, in Pittsburgh. Top second, scoreless game. Matt Kemp leading off. He reaches second on the Pirates’ second error of the game. James Loney follows with a shallow pop to shortstop … which turns into a doubleplay when lookie-loo Matt Kemp decides to jog about halfway to third … and can’t get back to second in time to avoid being doubled up.

If he says alive, maybe he scores when the next batter, Mark Loretta, singles, and the Dodgers lead, and perhaps what finished as an 11-1 humiliation goes in some other direction entirely (Pittsburgh’s first five runs were unearned, by the way) and the Dodgers did the champagne in the clubhouse thing today — instead of lugging it all to San Diego for a game tomorrow.

So if Kemp doesn't get doubled off trying to score on a blooper, the Dodger staff wouldn't give up 11 runs? Cool assumption.

By the way, "maybe he scores" and "perhaps [the game] goes in some other direction"? Hahaha. Again, not exactly a solid game changing event he's whining about here.

I’ve been thinking about this for some time, while watching Matt Kemp play. And marveling at what a complete dope he is. He is a valuable player because he does so many things so easily … hit, hit for power, run. But he could do so much more if he brought, say, the brain of Torii Hunter to the game instead of the brain of Abby Normal. (”Young Frankenstein” reference there.)

The problem with this whole article is that it's one big exercise in confirmation bias and selective sampling. Worse yet, it's more about spewing ad hominem attacks about Matt Kemp than it is a true criticism of his play. Simply put, most of it is childish at best.

What Oberjuerge is basically doing is saying that Tom Brady might be useful because he has elite skills, but he would be so much better if he wasn't so dumb. Then Oberjuerge would list three marginal decisions Brady has made over the last month, that had nothing to do with the outcome of the games, and extrapolate those marginal decisions into Brady being the dumbest quarterback of all time.

Of course, the problem with his argument is that he has no real evidence to support the overriding theme he espouses. So instead of saying something relevant to the argument he's trying to support, he just continues to badger the reader with first grade insults about a perceived intelligence level.

Sound like a pathetic argument? It is, and that's exactly the point.