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In the past, I've pointed out the fact that Morgan thought, for quite some time, that Billy Beane wrote Moneyball. I chronicled an incident in which Joe made a statement in a chat session, was questioned about it the very next day, and first denied making the statement and then criticized people for "putting words into his mouth." There are other things too. If you ever have a few hours to kill, do a search for "Joe Morgan" in my archives.

With all of that said, I think I have found the perfect example of what makes Joe Morgan Joe Morgan. In his weekly column on ESPN.com, Morgan writes:

OBP important, but RBI and runs trump OBP

Since the beginning of the 1990s -- early in my time as a broadcaster for ESPN's "Sunday Night Baseball" -- I've tried to make fans more aware of on-base percentage on our telecasts. To my knowledge, we were the first network to use OBP as a statistic.

On-base percentage has always been an important stat, but RBI and runs scored are the truest tests of what a player does to help his team win. Once runners get on base, someone needs to drive them in.

OBP by itself does not equal success. How often does a team get four walks in an inning to drive in a run? OBP is essential, but a good OBP alone does not guarantee a win or a successful season.

The perfect example of this is the defending World Series champion Florida Marlins. Florida finished 15th last year in OBP (.333) among 30 MLB teams. But when the Marlins got runners on base, they were good at forcing the issue -- using the hit-and-run, stealing bases and exhibiting aggressive baserunning ... all of which help produce runs.

In that short passage, you essentially have Joe Morgan's bread and butter "analysis."

First of all, everything is based on Joe's beliefs in "old school" stuff, like runs and RBIs being more important than on-base percentage.

Second, Joe attempts to "play both sides" and avoid taking a strong stance, by prefacing everything he says with talk of him valuing OBP and trying to show others the value of OBP before it was popular to do so. Anyone who has seen Joe's chats, when he is asked direct questions about which team is better or who will win a given matchup, can attest to the fact that he does a lot of prefacing and not much actual opinion stating.

Third, you have a bunch of nonsense being passed off as analysis. Joe says, "How often does a team get four walks in an inning to drive in a run?", as if on-base percentage does not account for hits.

And finally, you have Joe using a specific example, without any sort of factual backing, meant to prove Joe's thesis or general point. In this case, Joe even goes so far as to say that the example he is using is "the perfect example." And what exactly is this perfect example?

Well...

The perfect example of this is the defending World Series champion Florida Marlins. Florida finished 15th last year in OBP (.333) among 30 MLB teams. But when the Marlins got runners on base, they were good at forcing the issue -- using the hit-and-run, stealing bases and exhibiting aggressive baserunning ... all of which help produce runs.

The idea being, of course, that Joe's thoughts on this issue are correct, with Florida's winning the World Series being proof of that. Joe is saying that Florida's on-base percentage was just 15th in MLB, so you wouldn't expect them to do well, but that they were able to win a championship thanks to their ability to "force the issue" by "using the hit-and-run, stealing bases and exhibiting aggressive baserunning."

There is, as usual, just one slight problem. While the Marlins ranked 15th in MLB in on-base percentage last year, and while they did all of their issue forcing and running and stealing and such, they actually ranked 17th in MLB in runs scored.

Which is to say that Joe's entire point isn't really a point at all. In other words, this is a perfect Joe Morganism.

Today's picks:

Pittsburgh (Benson) +210 over Houston (Miller)

San Francisco (Schmidt) -105 over New York (Leiter)

Boston (Martinez) -150 over Cleveland (Sabathia)

Minnesota (Radke) +145 over Seattle (Garcia)

New York (Vazquez) -160 over Oakland (Harden)