Now Phil's "mule" nickname makes more sense.It seems like all we do these days is mock newspaper writers, but is it our fault when they keep putting stuff on the tee for us to whack at?

I don’t think so.

Last week, the Chicago Tribune announced layoffs that included one of our all-time favorites, John Mullin (while Dan Pompei somehow still draws a paycheck), and Missy Isaacson and Seinfeld favorite Bob Sakamoto.

Phil Rogers still works there.  I mean, come on, nobody is better at writing irrelevant pablum about inane national baseball matters than our buddy (and Bea Arthur doppleganger) Phildo.

But seriously, you do have to wonder how this guy keeps dodging the “buyout” plans at the Trib.

He’s not just often wrong, but he’s often hilariously wrong.  Today was no different.

At a little after two, an Intrepid Reader e-mailed me with a note about one of the most hilarious mis-statements in a paper in quite a while.

I quickly went to the site and took a screen grab of it, just in case the Tribune editors actually noticed it and fixed it.

First off, power rankings are dumb and pointless (and as someone who was paid to write them for a while, they suck to write, too), and Phil apparently volunteers to do these (he would).  Phil is up to the challenge of writing ones that suck, every week.

A couple of weeks ago he wrote glowingly about how Rockies outfielder Dexter Fowler turned down a basketball scholarship to Harvard (and we knew it was bullshit because Harvard, a member of the Ivy League, does not award athletic scholarships) and he insists on ranking things that aren’t teams, this week he ranked complete games and errors.  Most people suffering from this kind of dementia are heavily medicated.

But it will be hard for Phil to top the one he had today, and as of 5:30 p.m. on Sunday, it’s still there, big as life.

Here are his rankings for this week.

Look on page two, and read the entry for the San Francisco Giants.

24. Giants (30): Pablo Escobar is showing signs of getting turned around. But not first baseman Travis Ishikawa.

Another solid effort, Phil.

Pablo Escobar.

The highest paid baseball writer in Chicago (and the Midwest) just referred to Giants “third baseman” Pablo Sandoval as Pablo Escobar.

Pablo Escobar the Colombian drug lord, who made tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars selling cocaine, who was responsible for the death of dozens (if not hundreds of people).

Pablo Escobar, a man so powerful in Colombia that was nearly elected president, and who was allowed to build his own prison in which to serve out a hilariously short term for which he was finally sentenced.

Pablo Escobar, the chubby, soccer loving, super-criminal, the subject of one of the best non-fiction books of the past 20 years (Mark Bowden’s Killing Pablo).

If you’ve ever heard of the Medellin Drug Cartel, you’ve heard of Pablo Escobar.

Pablo Escobar, who was finally hunted down and killed by a task force led by members of the US Delta Force (possibly not including Chuck Norris), Navy SEALs and some Colombian Soliders.

Pablo was gunned down in the street, and the famous photo of the Colombian soldiers posing with Pablo’s corpse as if they were the World Cup champions gathered around their trophy is on the cover of Bowden’s book.

We're number one!

Apparently, this bloated corpse is now playing third base for the Giants.

Kind of makes you wonder how well the rest of the guys are playing for them to move up from 30th to 24th in Phil’s rankings?