I know commenting on a Steve Rosenbloom post is a terrible idea. Actually reading the post is a torturous experience, and then you’re forced to link to the post so your readers know what you’re talking about, and in the end that’s playing exactly into his hands, since he’s deliberately posting to get a reaction and spur page views.

But I’m weak, and I can’t resist playing the game. Rosenbloom took on Carlos Zambrano today in a post titled “Z gets an F, but he’s not alone in this embarrassment.” Don’t click that link. Trust me when I say you’ll regret it.

Used to be, Carnage Zambrano had cramping problems because he was too dumb or stubborn to take a drink.

Now the Cubs’ pitcher with back problems apparently couldn’t be troubled to do sit-ups.

Congratulations on hitting 11 on the Stupid-O-Meter.

Zambrano said he doesn’t like to work out his core and admitted he’s lazy, so apparently $19 million a year can’t buy commitment.

“Carnage” Zambrano? Seriously? Alright, I guess. I’m not sure if he’s a bright red comic book villain or a death metal band, but actually that seems like a pretty intimidating nickname. I mean, if I was a professional pitcher in baseball and opposing hitters thought of me as “Carnage” I’d feel pretty awesome about myself. So this seems like a bad way to insult the guy, but what do I know?

The “lazy” part, though, of course, is not exactly what Zambrano said. What he said was: “My problem is I’ve been lazy. There are things in life you don’t like to do, but you have to do them. I don’t like abs, but I have to do them. I have to start doing them every day and be serious about it.”

He also said: “I’m a big guy and I work hard every day, [but] one of the things I don’t like to do is my abs, my core work. If I do abs every day and keep doing my job and be serious about my abs, I’ll be OK.”

Look, if he hasn’t been doing ab exercises that he was told to do, that’s dumb, and if that contributed to his DL stint, he hurt the team by being dumb. That’s great. But I’m pretty sure Z is not, in general, lazy. This is the guy who pulled his hamstring running out a bunt hit. The same one who kills the ball at BP. The guy who hurries over to cover first all the time. The power-hitting, switch-hitting pitcher.

But Rosenbloom isn’t done:

Can’t buy a 20-win season, either.

Or a sniff or professionalism.

WINS! Zambrano hasn’t had a 20-win season because he’s not a true ace. Not because he’s played on a lot of bad teams and hasn’t gotten a lot of run support.

And that second “or” wasn’t a change I made, by the way. Rosenbloom wrote a five-word sentence in which he criticized someone else’s professionalism, and that sentence has a typo in it. Presumably since he doesn’t make $19 million a year, that’s OK. Of course, Zambrano doesn’t really, either. Rosenbloom is adding Z’s yearly salary this year to a prorated share of his signing bonus, then rounding up. Which is fine, I guess, but Zambrano’s salary over the life of his contract is really $18 million and I thought journalists were supposed to pay scrupulous attention to the truth and to verifiable facts. But whatever, we’ve got more ground to cover.

I’ll leave off a bunch of stuff where Rosenbloom criticizes Zambrano for being dumb - I’m sure he’s spent a lot of time talking to him to come to that conclusion, and move on to this:

Moving right along, I can’t remember whether the Cubs fined Zambrano for socking Michael Barrett a couple years ago, but the only time I recall the team punishing the guy was forcing him to apologize to the fans for his gestures when he got booed off the mound during one of his typically bad August starts. But as far as cheating his team, his teammates and the fans, he gets more coddling than paddling.

I tried something that Rosenbloom apparently didn’t. I went to Google and typed “zambrano fined,” then hit enter. The first thing that came up was this article whose headline answers the question. (”Yes,” if you’re wondering.)

And then we get to the crescendo of Rosenbloom’s mock outrage:

It’s a joke that it got this far. It would be silly to give these guys the kind of respect they warranted before. A child doesn’t want to do the work or act like a professional, and the people in charge don’t take any steps to act like they’re in charge or even make sure their investment remains a valuable asset.  Maybe they don’t know how to do their jobs, maybe they don’t care, but they all seem to be blowing noses on the fans’ ticket money.

Rosenbloom concludes his screed, which contains factual and typographical errors, as well as some extraordinarily lazy work, with this line damning Zambrano’s bosses for enabling him to act like a child. I’m just left wondering what we’re supposed to think of Rosenbloom’s own bosses and editors.