“Great swing, power hitter, HIPPIE.” –scouting report H. Darr Beiser-USA TODAY Sports via USA TODAY Sports

What’s that?  It’s former Ryan Howard-in-waiting Jonathan Singleton?  Give me that.

**Snatches newspaper out of your hands, skips over article by BBWAA writer column entitled ‘”The Important Thing is We Won”**

Well, I hardly see how spending most of his career in our farm system would be a relate-able factor to a… 50 game suspension?!  For marijuana?

**Rustles newspaper irritably, hurls it at passing bus**

So now we get to wonder, on the day that deep thoughts are enough to keep people out of Cooperstown, whether or not Jonathan Singleton and his amazing career that he will have now that he’s been traded for Hunter Pence, an outfielder who also doesn’t play for us anymore, will get to go into the Hall of Fame because of performance enhancing drugs (the performance in this case being eating his body weight in cereal).

As usual, there were plenty of good points made on drug use, nonsensical policies, and forced rhymes to “Cooperstown.”

A professional baseball player just lost 1/3 of a season for smoking marijuana. If he played for the Mariners or Rockies, still suspended?

— Patrick Winters (@BaseNarcissist) January 10, 2013

This Jon Singleton talk reminds me of when Miguel Cabrera got suspended following his DUI arrest. Oh, wait.

— Dash Treyhorn (@DashTreyhorn) January 9, 2013

“Cooperstown, more like Pooperstown.” Reaction to the MLB HoF voting, from @tbohblog: is.gd/T5Rzxi (c/g @petzrawr)

— Matt Mullin (@matt_mullin) January 9, 2013

Since leaving the Phillies organization, Singleton has gone 3-for-4 in the 2012 All-Star Futures game and been ranked as the #2 Astros prospect by Keith Law and started hanging out with those tough-looking neighborhood kids who go to the public school.

Jimmy Rollins makes Charlie Manuel sad.

To all those defending Jimmy Rollins, shielding him from criticism and declaring his antics are no big deal, I have just one small request.

Please stop talking.

During Thursday’s 3-2 win over the Mets, Rollins’ failure once again to run out a pop up that was dropped by the Mets’ infield resulted in manager Charlie Manuel benching the one-time MVP for the second time in two weeks.

In baseball, there are a million things a player cannot control. He can’t control the quality of pitches being thrown by the pitcher. He largely can’t control where a ball is going to be hit once he makes contact. He can’t control the home plate umpire, he can’t control the weather and he can’t control luck.

The only thing a player can control is the level of preparation he devotes to the game and the amount of effort he exerts on the field, i.e., hustle.

And contrary to what the Jimmy Rollins apologists will tell you, that DOES affect winning.

Unfortunately, unless they can quantify something like Rollins’ lack of hustle with an algorithm that would confound Mark Zuckerberg, the sabermatricians who are defending Jimmy’s actions as no big deal simply cannot understand one immutable truth about sports, and adult life in general.

Sometimes what goes on between the ears is as important as what goes on inside the lines.

Did Jimmy Rollins’ failure to run out a pop-up in yesterday’s game cost the Phillies the win? No, it didn’t. The Phils still won.

Did his failure to run out a pop-up two weeks ago against the Brewers cost the Phillies a win? No, there were bigger factors that cost the Phils that game.

And did his failure to run out multiple pop-ups in 2008, resulting in another benching from Manuel, cost the Phillies? Nope, they won a world title that same year.

But the reason Rollins’ laziness is such a big deal this time is simple. It was a personal slap to the face of Charlie Manuel. And if you’re the boss, you cannot allow one of your employees to deliberately do that to you in front of your other employees.

If you’ve never been in charge of a staff, perhaps you can’t understand this concept. Manuel has to maintain control of the clubhouse and show the rest of the players that insubordination won’t be tolerated from anyone.

Look at the Red Sox, a team in total chaos. Last year’s fried chicken and beer controversy with Sox pitchers was apparently just the tip of the iceberg. This year, players of that team have met with team officials trying to run their manager out of town. The team is in disarray, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that their play on the field hasn’t been the same since.

But the fact that Manuel had this exact conversation with Rollins just two weeks ago makes Jimmy’s actions all the more intolerable.

If this was an isolated incident, I could understand cutting Rollins some slack. After all, as Todd Zolecki noted, the guy does lead the Majors in pop-ups, constituting 21% of the balls he puts in play. A person can understand that hitting an infield pop-up on a fastball right down the middle of the plate is frustrating. Even more so in the middle of a long season going nowhere.

But this is about more than that.

Jimmy Rollins is tagged out in a rundown shortly before being pulled from Thursday's game against New York.

One of the issues the Phillies front office has had with Rollins over the years is that he’s always been “on his own program,” meaning he comes and goes as he pleases. He’s been scratched from games in past years for showing up late to the stadium. Zolecki says Rollins’ lack of hustle and chronic lateness has irked teammates in the past and was one of the things the Phils considered when deciding whether to bring Jimmy back this offseason.

In the end, they decided Rollins’ play on the field and his past performance with the club was worth a three-year, $33 million contract.

They were wrong.

And let’s be honest about what Rollins is really worth. He’s still a plus-defender and provides decent pop for a shortstop. But his OPS of .714 is only 12th out of 24 qualifying shortstops in the Majors (stat courtesy of Zolecki), and his .304 on base percentage is horrific for a leadoff hitter.

Jimmy’s a fine player who ideally should be hitting 6th or 7th in a lineup. But he’s no star anymore. He’s not good enough to pull this crap and get away with it any longer.

And now, for the second time in two weeks, the one-time “straw that stirs the drink” has poked Charlie Manuel in the eye. Again. And Manuel cannot let it stand. Not if he wants to be taken seriously in the clubhouse by the other players.

So to all the Jimmy Rollins apologists who think this is no big deal, the simple truth is this.

If you were Charlie Manuel, and one of your players made you look like a fool, you wouldn’t be so quick to blow this off.

The Phillies are not a good enough team to have players slacking off during games. They’ve made enough mental mistakes this year to last three seasons. And as sure as I’m writing this, you can bet that a lazy attitude on the field leads to a lazy approach at the plate and a lazy approach to preparing for games, leading to those same mental mistakes as well as scores of poor at bats.

They’re all connected, and that DOES show up in the results on the field.

Even if you can’t figure out an algorithm to quantify it.

Worley's elbow ouchies have cancelled his September. Mandatory Credit: Eric Hartline-US PRESSWIRE

Here’s the deal, folks.

If a pitcher is pitching with a known injury and his performance is obviously suffering, you can assume he’s in pain.

If that same pitcher is then shut down for the season a few weeks later, after struggling tremendously for weeks, you can be really, really, really sure that he’s in a lot of pain.

Both Worley and Phillies officials have said for weeks that the loose bodies, or calcium deposits, floating around the lining of Worley’s right elbow weren’t causing him any pain when he threw.

Today, the Phillies announced they were shutting the begoggled one down and assigning Wednesday night’s starter Tyler Cloyd Worley’s spot in the rotation for the rest of the year.

I know what you’re all worried about. What are the Phillies going to do now when the playoffs get here? Who’s going to be there fourth starter come October? Will Cloyd be ready?

Tee hee hee. Just wanted to harken back to old blog habits. Ah, that was fun.

Now, I don’t consider myself a naive person, but I am a trusting person. So, I kinda figured that if both Worley and the Phils were saying that his elbow problems weren’t affecting his pitching, they weren’t feeding me a lot of bull.

I know, I’m cute, aren’t I?

You don’t shut a pitcher down for the season, even a meaningless final month like this, if there isn’t a problem. Clearly there was a problem, although Worley continues to swear that he wasn’t in any pain.

“It’s something I thought I could make it through,” Worley said. “We all kind of talked it over. We feel like this is the best thing to do right now, have the surgery now and prepare for next season. [I'll] get a couple extra weeks to work on making sure my arm’s good and conditioning myself.”

And if there is a problem, then it’s the right move. I just hope there aren’t any other phantom injuries on the Phillies that we need to be worried about.

I hope Ryan Howard isn’t actually playing on a broken leg. Let’s all pray that Roy Halladay’s isn’t secretly hiding a torn rotator cuff, or that Cole Hamels’ stomach bug isn’t really the Hanta virus.

Pitching coach Rich Dubee indicated that while Worley’s elbow issues weren’t causing him pain, it was affecting him on the field mentally.

“His demeanor was different,” Dubee said. “His personality was different. His mound presence was extremely changed. And those aren’t good things. Those aren’t things we want engrained in him for the rest of his career for sure. It was a good time to stop him and get him straightened up.”

So, Worley’s goggles will go on a shelf until spring training, where he is expected to be right on schedule with the rest of his rotation mates.

And Cloyd will gear up for October.

Crap, I did it again.