Seriously, is there even a reason to play this kid anymore? While he's clearly got a certain amount of talent, he's far less talented than we believed when we recruited him. In addition, it's becoming more and more obvious that he's uncoachable. Despite Rick Barnes's pleas -- and in-game chewings out -- Hamilton continues to focus on himself at the expense of the team. I'm sure the subtleties of intelligent shot selection have been explained to him umpteen times, yet he continues to jack up horrible shot after horrible shot without remorse and without, apparently, any regard whatsoever for his teammates. And I won't even get into the way he plays defense.

The Jordan Hamilton experiment was worth trying, but it's been a colossal failure, and now is time to cut bait. This team has enough issues to overcome without having to deal with a spoiled freshman who thinks he's god's gift to basketball. Park his sorry ass at the end of the bench, give him maybe one or two garbage time minutes here and there, and after the season let him transfer to Houston or some other school where uncoachable freelancers go to thrive.

I'm not going to beat around the bush here: The case for Fernando Valenzuela as a key figure in history depends much more on mystique and nostalgia than it does on actual pitching.

Oh, Fernando was a heck of a pitcher. He was a Rookie of the Year winner (though perhaps he should have lost that to Tim Raines) and a Cy Young winner (though he clearly should have lost that to Nolan Ryan). He pitched a memorable no-hitter. He led the league with 21 wins in 1986, when he became probably the last MLB pitcher who will ever throw 20 complete games in one season. Even so, he was only the second-best pitcher in the league that year, deservedly losing the Cy Young to Houston's Mike Scott.

Those two years, 1981 and '86, are essentially the bookends of Fernando's career. Only during that brief six-year span was he a truly effective major league pitcher. He was 99-68 with a 119 ERA+ through '86, but only 42-48 with a 91 ERA+ over the rest of his Dodger career. Even during his good years, he wasn't quite as good as we all thought he was; pitching in Dodger Stadium made his numbers appear significantly better than they actually were. His career ERA+ was only 104; as a Dodger, it was 107. What made him a good pitcher wasn't really the quality of his pitching, but the quantity: He averaged 266 innings per year from '82 through '87, ranking in the NL top five each season.

So statistically, he wasn't the greatest. Even so, Fernando is absolutely a slam-dunk choice for first-ballot induction into Vin Scully's Lords of the Ravine. Follow the jump to read why.

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The Dodgers have signed Kyle Russell, ending his Longhorns career, L.A. Scouting Director Tim Hallgren reports in a chat at MLB.com. Terms weren't disclosed, but if he signed for slot money, as the 93rd overall pick he'd get in the neighborhood of $400,000, according to Baseball America's draft archive. Since Russell turned down $800,000 from the Cardinals last year, his decision to return to school for his junior season probably cost him about $400,000. On the other hand, he got to spend an extra year on the Forty Acres, which as we all know is priceless. And he got to set the Longhorns career home run record to boot.

Russell has been assigned to the Ogden Raptors of the Pioneer League, a short-season advanced Rookie league. Ogden played the first game of its season on Tuesday, but Russell did not play.