League trade deadlines are approaching. If you are in a league with move limits, this may be your last opportunity to turn your bland, generic Karin Carpenter into a unique, under-appreciated, criminally amazing and overproducing Judee Sill. No knock on Karin’s drumming though. No joke here. Are you dead yet? Are you angry I called Karen Carpenter bland even though I caveated with the drumming line? Sounds like a “you” problem. Make your trades now, nothing is immovable if you do the math and a category needs juicing.
This week we will get swiftly to the blurbs, as I am now stomping on blurbs in the NFL section of Razzball. Check it out if you want to watch a full grown adult search for mentions of “Free Agent Right Tackle” turned into the acronym FA RT. It’s going to be a hoot.
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 and Q – when a site contradicts a player valuation on back-to-back blurbs
- Flip Flop – blurb site immediately contradicts the previous advice given
- Faustian Tragedy – only the devil can you hear you scream after this betrayal
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
Austin Riley blasted a two-run homer on Thursday, powering the Braves to a three-game sweept of the Cardinals with an 8-4 victory in the series finale at Busch Stadium.
Riley ripped a game-tying two-run homer to left field — his 23rd round-tripper of the season — off righty reliever Giovanny Gallegos in the eighth inning. The has been 24-year-old third baseman has been sizzling-hot at the dish since the All-Star break, hitting .360 (27-for-75) with nine homers and 23 RBI across 20 games since the Midsummer Classic.
Source: Rotosportsedgeworldbettors.com
The “has been.” Tell us how you really feel, rotoworld. I promised not to mock writers for simple errors of grammar, but this is too good to be true. Riley has been streaky as they come, but I’m not unhappy after drafting Story, Bellinger, and Eloy as my first three picks. And then I dropped Eloy because I didn’t have any room, and I based his return timetable on the level of effort he puts into fielding baseballs. My anger at his recovery on someone else’s team is unparalleled, in that it’s specifically annoying, in a manner that has no bearing on my overall mental wellness. Riley is real treasure though, a “have is” rather than a “has been.”
Now you know why I don’t go full grammar on these breakdowns. Ahem.
Flip Flop/Prospect/Q&Q
Luis Gil recorded eight strikeouts over five scoreless innings on Sunday in a no-decision against the Mariners.
Woah. Gil turned heads with a stellar major-league debut, striking out six batters over six shutout frames against the Orioles earlier this week, and followed it up with an even more impressive encore. He scattered four base runners over five flawless frames, while also inducing an eye-popping 17 swinging strikes, and finishing with a 34 percent CSW (called strikes plus whiffs). The hard-throwing 23-year-old righty is likely headed back to Triple-A Scranton-Wilkes-Barre, but he’s the proverbial next man up if the Yankees need to summon an extra starter over the final seven weeks of the regular season. He’s worthy of a speculative roster spot in all fantasy formats.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
Just a week earlier we got this blurb:
Luis Gil shut out the Orioles for six innings to prevail in his major league debut as the Yankees won 13-1 on Tuesday.
Gil allowed just four hits, walked one and struck out six in a surprisingly easy outing. The 23-year-old has a strong arm, but he typically has troubles with walks, having issued 160 in 268 innings as a minor leaguer (36 in 61 IP this season). He had completed six innings in just two of 15 minor league starts this year. The performance should keep him in the rotation for now, but while he is very interesting, he still doesn’t seem like a mixed-league pickup.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
The breathless hyperbole here is wonderful to behold. The first blurb’s description is usually reserved for people describing what it was like to watch the moon landing live on television, or the feeling you had when your teacher interrupted 6th grade science class so they could wheel in a television and we all could watch the final verdict of the O.J. Simpson trial. I remain baffled as to why this was a thing that happened in my life, while we didn’t get to watch any of the Rodney King trial or verdict. Irregardless (remember Josh Hawley?), do not buy the hype. He could be a solid end of rotation starter, or maybe even Mr. Four and Two-Thirds of an Inning Himself Tanner Houck. Not sure if MFTTIHTH will be a good nickname for Tanner, but then again, his first name makes him sound like the boyfriend of your crush in every 1980’s high school movie. I dropped him on principle.
Luis Gil has a WHIP I’d rather not say out loud in the minors. His “head-turning” performance came against the Orioles, a team fielding a lineup with six hitters holding a sub-.700 OPS. Fine, here’s his ERA and WHIP because no one else wants to say it out loud: 5.64/1.48. Yuck and no thank you. However, if you write a bunch of blurbs only casually mentioning him walking too many guys, the blind spot emerges. Rotoworld has drunk the Kool-Aid while also ignoring the flat room temperature Club Soda they were shotgunning after Gil’s first start. The only baseball Gil I have room for ends with Meche. I used Gil Meche’s full name for many a Mesopotamian-legend-based fantasy team names, mostly GILgaMECHE (Sean Enkidulittle notwithstanding), and while Luis does offer some good pun option team names (Gilsboury Doughboy, Faster Pussycat Gil Gil Gil, One Tree Gil, Giladelphia Gillies, Gilmatic, License to Gil, Sufjan Stevens presents: Giliniose), it’s almost too easy.
I know Gray is buying, but for every Manoah and Gilbert…hmm…well, they’ve been pretty good, so I won’t do the cheeky comparison thing. However, both of those pitchers were known to have their control under, ahem, control. All teams have to do is look at his two starts, check out his minor league numbers, and wait for the correction to occur. Do you really want your fantasy playoffs rocked by a guy who makes me think of fish anatomy? At least Logan Gilbert makes me think of Wolverine working as one of half of the musical theater duo Gilbert & Sullivan, where Sullivan is Sully, the guy who drove his plane into some geese, and then was rewarded when he landed it in the Hudson. Seriously though, Wolverine & Sully’s Pirates of Penzance has me excited!
Faustian Tragedy
Yordan Alvarez scratched Tuesday with stiff neck
Yordan Alvarez was scratched from the Astros’ lineup Tuesday due to neck stiffness.
Source: Rotoedgeworldsports.com
This one was doozy. For firsties, it was completely wrong. Alvarez had no neck stiffness, and thus he stayed in the lineup. However, a ton of Alvarez owners read that blurb and benched him. I read that blurb, double-checked some other sites, and kept him in because I’m an adult who lives not by the caprices of a blurb site. I live by the code of the actual lineup card. I prefer other people to dictate when and where I do things. Not saying I’m a sub, unless that’s what you want. Is it what you want? If so, just pencil me in and I’m there. I won’t complain, unless…that’s what you want? JUST TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT!
When thinking about this blunder, I am reminded of German philosopher Johann Fichte, who stated, “You could not remove a single grain of sand from its place without thereby … changing something throughout all parts of the immeasurable whole.” In regards to this Yordan blurb, I could not agree more. Apparently this blurb was meant for Aledmys Diaz. As gross as the concept is, this mistake has real-world repercussions. People in the Yahoo Fantasy player discussion page spent most of Tuesday and Wednesday night urging each other to tweet at Yahoo, as the blurb had cost them money in either daily leagues, or potentially at the end of the week in head to head formats.
Amidst the reminders that Yahoo blurbs are literally not written by Yahoo, I find a sad truth: My work is far from done. Many people continue to base their fantasy sports decision-making on content farms that are more factory farm than free-range organic. We want our blurbs to be like our ideal chickens: Let them graze in vast meadows, eventually gaining self-awareness, learning farming and irrigation from their human masters, recognizing the importance of both modern sewage systems and military might. We expand outward as the Midwest becomes the Mesopotamia of the chicken culture. They offer an olive branch to humanity and hide the factory guillotines they are building in their coops for their masters. We humans are once again betrayed by our hubris, and our steroid-laced collective corpulence can be found housed in lightless abattoirs, not even capable of asking why or how we arrive here.
I’m not sure why or how I arrived at that last paragraph, but Rotoworld erased that Yordan Alvarez blurb with nary a peep. The worst part about all of this is that nothing will change. Most people misunderstand the very nature of the Butterfly Effect. I used to think it was about Ashton Kutcher turning into a butterfly in a movie whose previews made it look like the cinematographer fell asleep on the gray/blue filter setting.
There is a slight chance that some trust was lost, that fewer managers will take a blurb site’s word as bond. The only bond blurb sites have at this point is with VEGAS, YEAH BABY, GROOVY. Yes, a reference to the first Austin Powers movie is the best I can do when thinking about fantasy sports’ relationship with sports gambling. Unfortunately, I think people will always depend on the kindness of strangers, with a rube’s pre-Flannery O’Connor worldview that the grifter who calls himself Crazy Odds Joey shouting on regional sports radio shows knows more about prognostication than you. Most people will never realize these sites and talking heads have exclusivity contracts to only mention the odds the house prefers. There is no inside information, there is no vast conspiracy, only the usual gap between the powerful/wealthy and the rest of us.
We’re all sitting at the same table, friends. We have a ton of data. No one can predict anything that much better than anyone else, even in an industry based on predictions. I’ve used tons of different sites over the years, and I keep coming back to Razzball for Gray’s projections and Rudy’s tools. Is this a grift for them? Meh. That’s for you to decide.
Much like the plot of “The Butterfly Effect,” you have to decide whether you want to be Ashton Kutcher or the beautiful butterfly. Keep reading those blurbs, and decide whether you’re ready to spread your wings and fly away with me.
