Keith Law, rejecting a column by Phil Sheridan of the Inquirer which argued that the Phils should purposely throw the Howard arbitration case:
I have news for Mr. Sheridan: What fans think doesn't matter. A GM who gives a shit what his fans think about a player's salary is going to be out of work in fairly short order. What matters is winning. If the team wins, the fans don't care how it came about. And paying a player more than you are required to pay him pushes you further from winning, not closer. So if you want to make the fans happy, beat Ryan Howard in arbitration and take the $3 million saved and try to put it towards the pitching problem.Sheridan's my favorite newspaper columnist in Philly by a wide margin, but even he doesn't get it right all the time. Law, meanwhile, gets extra points for the "Bad Idea Jeans" reference in the headline.