I've just read the worst baseball column ever...

Want to know why the MSM gets mocked, reamed, and laughed at on a regular basis? Because of lazy, under researched, knee-jerk, and outright idiotic columns such as today's Kevin Hench Fox Sports column.

In an article titled "These players choked down the stretch," Hench's number 1 and 2 were Gary Sheffield and Jeremy Bonderman. I'm warning you now, you''ll feel your IQ dropping precipitously just reading this piece of bandwidth wasting tripe...

Gary Sheffield, Tigers

For the first four months of the season Sheffield was making the Yankees regret trading him. In August and September he's made the decision look pretty shrewd. On Aug.10 he was hitting .291 with 24 home runs and had the Tigers in the thick of the pennant chase. Since then he's sandwiched two punchless stretches around a trip to the DL. In his last 88 at bats, he's hitting only .159 with one home run as Detroit has faded badly. His slugging percentage over that six-week stench, er, stretch is a meager .205. That's an awfully big chasm to have in the 3-hole in a pennant race.

Jeremy Bonderman, Tigers

He wasn't around for the final twitches of the death rattle, having succumbed to a sore elbow. But perhaps no Tiger — even Sheffield — is as much to blame for the almost incomprehensible stretch fade of the defending AL champs as Bonderman. Following a July 19 no-decision, he was 10-1 with a 3.54 ERA. After that — Tiger fans avert your eyes or grab a bucket — he was 1-8 with an 8.23 ERA

Has Hench even looked into why Sheffield and Bonderman had awful second halves? It's would have taken him a 30 second Google search to find out why. I guess the use of facts to back up your opinion is lost on this "Columnist." (Term used only because Fox calls him as such)

If Hench had done that 30 second Google search, he would have learned that Sheffield is playing through a shoulder injury severe enough that it will require either surgery, or months of rehab? That Bonderman had been trying to pitch through an elbow injury, an injury that he didn't tell anyone on the Tigers about because he knew it was severe enough to have him removed from the rotation?

In what world does "Injury = Choking?" Only in the short bus riding world of Kevin Hench.

I'm guessing that Hench knows that Sheffield and Bonderman are hurt. I have a good idea as to why Hench didn't mention the injuries. Because it wouldn't have allowed him to use them as part of his column's flawed premise.

So what do you do if facts don't allow you to make your argument credible? You "Rob Parker" your column. "

To "Parker" a column is to do the following: "Stats or factual events won't back up your POV? Then either ignore them, or use small sample sizes, problem solved."

This was a textbook example of "Parkering." Hench did Parker proud with this utter waste of a column.

I can't say enough what an outright piece of tripe Hench wrote. Hackery at it's lowest...