It’s in the 40’s today in Chicago, which isn’t that surprising unless you’ve run out of conversation topics, at which point you get to put on your Actor’s Studio cap and conjure the last remaining bits of charisma left in your pandemic-addled psyche. Can Polar Vortices be mild? Can I have my climate change like most children enjoy their salsa? Hitters mostly suck in the cold weather, people. They suck. With all of the issues surrounding new balls with those high seams, and the Grim Reaper of baseball injuries touching players more than Oasis sang the word “Maybe,” everyone’s batting average is garbage juice. We’re talking a full .011 under league average. I’ve read some analysis that by the end of the year, we’ll be pretty close to the league average that usually sits around .250. I agree with this assessment.
This means you need to find some players who have depressed batting averages, dig into the numbers, and find guys who have been unlucky, check out their projections across several systems….or you can use Razzball’s Buysellatops tool and have more time to spend with your two large adult sons, perhaps having a catch in the backyard. Maybe you could have your family out on the back patio for a grill, where you hover over your Egg, while your large adult sons stare at their phones, and your partner frowns at the garden, muttering about idle hands.
My point, which is sometimes elusive, is that a lot of blurbs are going to mention that Player A is not doing well, or they’re terrible, etc. We are close to one and a half months into the baseball season. Sample sizes are developing into fully formed toddlers. They’re learning to walk, gently, with mother’s prodding. Don’t believe the anti-hype, as most player’s performances are depressed this season. Adjust your expectations and take advantage of your league mates not adjusting their own.
Quick note: All of these blurbs are sourced from Rotoworld.com. I’m looking at other sites, I promise. My internal bias does pull me to Rotoworld due to Yahoo algorithms and years of habit. Sad.
A Blurbstomp Reminder
We will analyze player blurbs from a given evening, knowing that 1-2 writers are usually responsible for all the player write ups posted within an hour of the game results. We will look at:
- Flowery Diction – how sites juice up descriptions of player performance
- Q/Q – Combined with Flowery Diction this week
- Hex Enduction Power – where a blurb can make an injury much, much worse
- Bob Nightengale Syndrome – instances of updates that don’t update anything
- Stephen A. Smith IMG_4346.jpeg Award – Given to the player blurb that promises the most and delivers the least.
The hope is that by season’s end, we’ll all feel more confident about our player evaluations when it comes to the waiver wire. We will read blurbs and not be swayed by excessive superlatives, faulty injury reporting, and micro-hype. I will know that I have done my job when Grey posts, and there isn’t a single question about catchers that he did not address in his post. Onward to Roto Wokeness!
Flowery Diction
Trey Mancini popped a three-run homer to aid John Means’ no-hitter on Wednesday in Seattle.
The Orioles were already up 3-0 going into the eighth inning, but Mancini provided more breathing room in taking reliever Aaron Fletcher deep to left field. He also drew a walk in the game. The long ball was Mancini’s sixth on the season, and he’s now batting .333 with three dingers and 15 RBI over his last 16 contests.
I don’t understand the choice in the final line. I believe in weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly sample sizes. They are neat and tidy, and best of all, you can contextualize them against other players to establish mean/median/mode, and then start souping up those sweet, sweet standard deviations. Any time a writer/blurbist cherry picks stats to create aesthetically pleasing slashlines, an angel loses their wings. Science agrees with me. It’s a cheap hit of dopamine, although I guess you could leverage a blurb like this to try and sell high on Mancini if you think he’s at his peak.
My second nit involves general readability. It’s confusing to read a blurb that says, “it was his sixth [homer] of the season, and he now….” One assumes that the next value we’ll receive is the total number of home runs.. Instead, it ends with his counting stats from the last sixteen games. If this seems like a nitpick, welcome to the series. Pulling stats from the last 16 games is such a strange choice. How did they even do that (reads the one comment saying this is really easy to do in Baseball Savant, sighs in the future, perhaps I should remind my future self that I need to hydrate more, and lay off the vanilla wafers)? Mancini didn’t even have that bad of an April in general. This blurb has me more flustered than my parents when my grandmother gave me a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition for my 13th birthday.
If I was psychotic, I would actually pull those stats to make sure the blurbist didn’t just make up everything beyond the homerun number. Here’s the thing: I am psychotic, but chaotic lazy, so according to the DSM-V, I’m diagnosed with Angry Laziness. Someone else has this condition, but I’m not going to look it up, you bastards.
Q and Q
Huascar Ynoa did it all Tuesday versus the Nationals, allowing just one unearned run over seven innings and hitting a grand slam in the Braves’ 6-1 win.
Ynoa tossed five shutout innings in his first start of the season last month against the Nationals. He was better in this one, both on the mound and at the plate. On the mound, Ynoa permitted only four singles and two walks while recording four strikeouts. At the plate, Ynoa came up with the bases loaded and two out in the sixth and hammered a Tanner Rainey fastball 427 feet and 107.4 mph over the center field wall. It’s the pitcher’s second home run already this season, and he’s now 5-for-13 with six RBI. But back to Ynoa’s pitching. Aside from a slip-up at Wrigley Field last month, the young righty has been excellent, giving up just three earned runs over five starts. We’ll see how long Ynoa can survive with only two pitches, but obviously he needs to be in lineups right now. He takes on the Phillies at home this weekend.
Here is an example of true Quantity/Quality editorial in action. Above you’ll see what was initially posted on Tuesday night after Huascar’s rolicking good start. Much like Dirk Diggler, the most striking thing about this blurb is its length. It’s a dang novel! We don’t need the MLB At Bat Gameday feed. Before I move on, let’s address the final three sentences in a vacuum.
“But back to Ynoa’s pitching.”
This dependent clause makes me want to unlearn writing.
“Aside from a slip-up at Wrigley Field last month, the young righty has been excellent, giving up just three earned runs over five starts.”
No. Don’t do this. You can’t take away bad starts. They happen, and they’re extremely important. He’s the 16th ranked pitcher according to Razzball’s player rater, so don’t discount the blow up! Emphasize the blow up to show just how good he’s been. I hate when fantasy sites do this, as I usually own the players and started them on the “slip-ups” they mention. The general message is fine, but if you’re going to write Moby Dick, why not throw in some advanced metrics to investigate whether this white whale is for real? His xFIP is 2.86, his SIERA is at 3.16, and otherwise his supporting stats are solid.
Butt.
He’s a rookie, and he could break your heart like you were a drummer for the Fall, being left at an airport because Mark E. Smith hated the way you held your sticks at the last gig.
Hex Enduction Power
Byron Buxton is day-to-day with a hip strain.
Buxton made an early exit from Thursday’s extra-inning loss to the Rangers after being forced to pull up while running out a ground ball in the ninth inning. The 27-year-old outfielder has dealt with numerous minor injuries throughout the opening five weeks of the 2021 campaign, but has managed to stay in the Twins’ lineup throughout. He’s evolved into a true five-category fantasy superstar, hitting .370/.408/.772 with 19 runs scored, nine homers, 17 RBI and five stolen bases across 98 plate appearances. It seems like he’s avoided serious injury, but it’s unclear whether he’ll be ready to go on Friday when the Twins open up a three-game series against the rebuilding Tigers. Stay tuned.
Speaking of heart-breaking, this blurb has a direct link to Buxton being placed on the IR. Buxton’s entire game is predicated on his athletic frame. Do you know what’s to that core? His dang hips. Getting to first base has never been more dangerous. Recent victims: Cody Bellinger, Josh Donaldson, Tim Anderson, Alejandro Kirk, Luis Robert, Donny Trump, and our man Buxton.
The penultimate line is the dang Undertaker, taking lives both real and fantasy. It’s always sad when the act of running injures one of your players, but it’s especially galling when the accompanying blurb drops in this actual curse: “It seems like he’s avoided serious injury.” Buxton hit the IL the next day. Thanks, Obama.
A quick note: I read an article about Giancarlo Stanton “reworking his stride” to strengthen his lower half and avoid injury. I’ve heard a lot of amazing things whilst exploring these internets, but reading about a major athlete re-learning how to walk and run without having experienced any kind of major cognitive event is next level. Jerry Garcia speedball’ed his way to a coma so severe he had to relearn how to play guitar. Giancarlo decided to skip the speedball, which is good decision-making in general.
Bob Nightengale Award
Kyle Lewis went 2-for-3 with two walks on Saturday in a loss to the Rangers.
Lewis also scored twice. The outfielder got off to a terrible start to begin the season after missing the first few weeks with a knee injury, but has been much better as of late, and is slashing .304/.333/.478 in May. That’ll work.
I love me some Kyle Lewis, so forgive me my obvious bias and notice how the blurbist deems Kyle Lewis’s start to the season as “terrible.” He is not talking about the knee injury he suffered during spring training. He’s talking about his production “as of late.” Kyle Lewis came back from his knee injury on 4/20, smoke if you got ‘em, am I right boys, oh gee, Hitler’s birthday, and Columbine, never mind…Kyle Lewis. Yeah. Him. He’d played 14 games at this point. Let’s assume that the blurbist meant in the past week, because “as of late” doesn’t really mean anything, and we’ll split his production.
4/20-4/30: 5-29 (2/2/2/0/.172) in eight games
5/1 – 5/8 : 9-26 (3/1/3/0/.346) in six games
In a vacuum, where it’s dirty and you’d probably die because either you’re in space with no training, or Rick Moranis shrunk you down and vacuumed you up for accusing him of storming the capital, the first eight games do indeed seem dire. However, he was injured. His rehab was short, and because the Mariners are holding down Kellenic like they are Matt Damon’s Mr. Ripley and Kellenic is the cherubic Jude Law, struggling to breathe under the suffocating pillow of service time manipulation, as the Mariners sob real tears for the first time screaming out, “No! He needs to work on his defense,” they threw him into the outfield and let the outcomes be damned. I was just happy he was on the field, and have been trying to buy shares of him everywhere.
Anywho, the long and the short of it, you can use a blurb like this to help you buy low. I’m not saying you send them a link. I’m saying you read blurbs to find the moment where one of your leaguemates is most likely to read that blurb. Bias-pushing is real. Do it.
Stephen A. Smith IMG_4346.jpeg Award
Mitch Haniger went 2-for-5 with one RBI against the Rangers on Sunday.
Haniger was not in the leadoff spot for the first time this season as he’s gone through a bit of a slump, hitting just .171 over the last two weeks coming into Sunday’s action. The 30-year-old outfielder put the Mariners on the board with a base hit off of Dane Dunning in the fifth inning. Haniger added a base hit in the ninth to finish the day with a .258 batting average, eight home runs, and 25 RBI over 145 plate appearances.
Looked like this was going to be a positive write up of our old friend Mitchell! Way to go, still going strong despite going through “a little bit of slump.” Hmm. Do you know who I would argue was in a little bit of a slump at the beginning of this season of our fantasy baseball lord, 2021? Why, our friend up there Kyle Lewis. So, let’s compare Kyle Lewis “starting off terrible” with ole Mitchell.
Mitchell! 4/26-5/8: 4/2/7/0/.162 (7-43!) in two weeks
Kyle Lewis 4/20-4/30:5-29 (2/2/2/0/.172) in eight games
I do think words matter here. For some reason, two players on the same team, with blurbs from the same evening were described quite differently. Kyle Lewis, coming back from an injury, had his first 29ish at bats described as terrible. Mitch Hanniger has batted worse for a longer stretch with more at bats, and yet the blurbist describes it as “a bit of a slump.” I would argue that the opposite is true. Mitchell had a terrible stretch, and Kyle had a bit of a slump when his season started on 4/20. I figure this is the result of some fast blurbing, and hoping not to sound redundant while providing context. It’s worth pointing out because blurbs should always be a guide for you to check under the hood yourself.
Do not ever stop at a blurb and consider the player “analyzed.” You will lose your league, your family, your friend, and even your wallet if you’re not careful. You will be the guy in Bicycle Thief, not the thief himself, but the theifee. A person screaming at the world to listen, to please help, and the world will listen, give you back that back, only to steal that one too. Actually, the Bicycle Thief is really the story of George Springer. You lost him, got him back for a brief day in the sunshine, and then back to the underworld of the IR for a few more weeks.
I love you all. Leverage those blurbs this week this week! Push those biases! Be Roger Stone, no one ever won a league without being convicted by serious federal crimes.
