Happy Post-Trade Deadline week, where we all come down harder than Aaron Rogers after a heavy weekend in New Mexico with another bowl of ayahuasca and trying to commune with a plateau. Indeed, the fever dream of the past week is the Ross and Rachel of fantasy sports, a classic Will They or Won’t They premise. Will the Pirates finally trade their closer? Won’t the Rockies be folded into the minor leagues just so Dick Monfort’s investment in the team tanks?
To commemorate this grand letdown, I’ll give you my experience of the trade deadline, from 5am to 6pm Central time in bulleted form. Maybe we can all huff on the exhaust pipe of instant craven nostalgia to reclaim yesterday’s glorious buzz:
- 5 am – woke out of slumber to do my newborn’s diaper in the dark. I wonder why I didn’t try and pick up a better setup man like Effros, because Givens is going to be dealt.
- 7:20 am – I again wake to a diaper and the sleepy squeals of a hungry little critter bibby. I check my phone to see if Juan Soto is dealt. Not yet. But I see that a lot of people are now hedging and saying that Soto probably won’t be dealt, and how could anyone even think this is possible? This makes me think that Soto’s definitely getting traded.
- 8:00 am – Attempt to wake my slightly older child for day camp while I make the world’s most boring lunch for them. Half a peanut butter sandwich with some honey? A fruit cup that will go uneaten? “Original” flavored Sunchips? Two water bottles? I wonder why I try, knowing one of her little buddies will probably buy her an ice cream sandwich from the vending machine in the field house. Man. I feel like we didn’t have ice cream vending machines back in the day. Am I off-base here?
- 10:00 am – Older kid is at camp, and I’m off to see my primary care physician. The subject goes to my writing, and I once again find myself trying to describe what this article is. I fail, but find out that he plays in one of those meta-meta-meta leagues where one looks to field the worst possible team, with a strict moves limit. I am straight-up riveted. Then we talk about colonoscopies.
- 11:45 am – I am now at the urologist’s office doing my very best for society by preventing more of me procreating. I get a pamphlet about vasectomies with three different photos of different couples smiling and laughing about vasectomies. It’s a tri-fold pamphlet on good paper, so these were some handsome couples able to show off a wide spectrum of vasectomy-inspired mirth. It’s wonderful. The doctor draws me a diagram of their nefarious plans for my vas deferens, which ends up looking like a cartoon smiley face with a bad combover.
- 1:00 pm – I finally check my phone and see that Effross, not Givens, was traded. I grit my teeth and pray. Other dudes are traded at this point, I think. Maybe. Probably Hader? This means I get to fantasize about Esteury Ruiz perhaps playing every day for a different team in a better ballpark for hitters (I tell myself without looking any of it up because the dream is far better than any reality I can concoct)
- 2:45 pm – I have to go pick up my kid. Nothing more exciting. It should be worrying that I don’t remember anything else here. Missing time means I have to be in an alien abduction history channel show.
- 4:00 pm – I’m pretty sure the deadline is now, so I’m disappointed that it’s not.
- 5:00 pm – Thought I might have read it wrong, but I didn’t. The deadline is 6 pm.
- 6:00 pm – Oh yeah, I don’t live in New York anymore, the deadline passed and the Cubs did trade Givens, and the Tigers didn’t trade Gregory Soto but did trade Fulmer, Juan Soto and everyone else got traded, and I forgot to put a bid in on Tepera in my home league last night.
There it is folks—riveting coverage of the deadline. I hope you remember it as well as I did. On to the blurbs!
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
- Bullpen Cow Pie – a blurb that botches the arm barn pecking order
- Q and Q – Quantitatively and Qualitatively incorrect
- The Blame Game – a player takes on the fault of the team as a whole
- Stephen A. Smith IMG_4346.jpeg Award – Given to the player blurb that promises the most and delivers the least.
- Bob Nightengale Memorial Plaque – being wrong can be celebrated!
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
Aledmys Diaz drove in a run while going 2-for-4 Monday against the Red Sox.
Diaz doubled in a run in the third off an otherwise effective Nathan Eovaldi to give Houston a 2-1 lead. It’d be the last run scored for Houston in a 3-2 loss. Diaz has been so-so in his time with the Astros in 2022 as seen in a .255/.309/.426 slash over 216 at-bats.
Source: Rotoworld
Every week I bring up a player that Rotoworld or Fantasypros decides to prop up using an arbitrary number of innings or games. Something like:
Jeremy-Ben Luis Garcia had two bunt singles but was thrown out stealing three times in the Rockies humiliating loss to the kids from The Sandlot 2
Luis Garcia has been on fire in his last 6 ½ games, going 3-for-13 with three steals and not much else. But it sure beats nothing!
Aledmys Diaz actually has non-arbitrary rankings on Yahoo that would be useful to note! He’s ranked as the 32nd best player for the past month! He’s ranked 66th for past two weeks? Finally, he’s ranked 24th overall for the past week. Here are his numbers for those samples:
| Last 30 games | 15/6/12/1/.329 in 79 AB’s |
| Last 14 games | 7/3/5/0/.350 in 40 AB’s |
| Last 7 games | 3/3/5/0/.429 in 21 AB’s |
Again, in the last 30 days he’s ranked 32nd! He should be getting shouted out in waiver articles to guarantee an above 50% owned status, thereby triggering a brutal regression that makes me feel better about not owning him.
His bat has come alive in July and August and the Astros will try to squeeze him into the lineup as long as that continues. There. I fixed it.
Bob Nightengale Memorial Plaque
Brewers acquired OF Esteury Ruiz, LHP Taylor Rogers, RHP Dinelson Lamet and LHP Robert Gasser from the Brewers for LHP Josh Hader.
Ruiz is certainly one of the more intriguing prospects in the game, and has appeared in 14 games this season in the majors. The 23-year-old rookie outfielder has jumped from Double-A to the big-leagues this year, hitting .333/.467/.560 with 13 homers and 60 stolen bases across 77 games in the upper levels of the Padres’ system. Yes, that’s 60 stolen bases, folks. He’s certainly worth monitoring closely in Milwaukee, especially if he’s able to carve out semi-regular playing time in the future. He’ll report to Triple-A Nashville this week.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
This is one of those simple and understandable mistakes that I nonetheless love the same way anyone who ever sat in front of me in an airplane loved to immediately lean their seat back into my already cramped knees before we started taxiing. It did make me wonder if a team could technically make an inter-organizational trade, to which I said, “Don’t be stupid,” after which I immediately thought of the Colorado Rockies. The team whose sole deadline move was extending their 9,000 year old closer and then brag about being the only team who extended anyone in the last week, who then had to realize that two other teams had extended much better players (Musgrove for the Padres, Riley for the Braves), would probably propose and then reject a trade they proposed to themselves.
The sadder truth is that Bud Black and Dick Manfort’s son sat in a room full of people with baseball knowledge and maybe even wondered why they don’t have any players that teams want in a trade. Could you imagine what they could have gotten for Cron? Heck, maybe even Brendan Rodgers? The Rockies are the guy in your league who posts on the boards that he wants to trade for a closer, gets a ton of offers and then never responds to any of them.
Q&Q
Jurickson Profar finished 5-for-6 with two RBI and a run scored as the Padres earned a 13-5 rout over the Rockies in the first half of Tuesday’s doubleheader.
Profar is on a roll offensively right now and should get a significant boost in projectable teammate-dependent counting stats with the Padres adding Juan Soto, Josh Bell, and Brandon Drury to their lineup mix ahead of the 6 p.m. ET trade deadline on Tuesday. Profar has been a mainstay at leadoff for San Diego since late May.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
I do not dig the notion that a player will get a huge lift in stats based on the team trading for better guys. There are so many caveats that could alter such a prognostication:
- You’re counting on the other players hitting the ground running
- Why are you thinking about baseball players hitting the ground? Where are they falling from?
- You’re counting on Profar continuing his exact pace
- You’re counting on Profar getting the same amount of at bats
The last one is the real kicker. The Padres are a team that continue to start Trent Grisham, he of the sub .200 batting average, sub .700 OPS, and whose expected stats actually back up the poor performance. Grisham has been terrible and it hasn’t been luck, and guess what? If you thought defense was the reason he was playing every day, then you’re about to find out that this is not in fact the reason why! I set it up with the “Guess what?” bit, and then I’m going to pay it off. Pretty classic Ross & Rachel Will They Won’t They stuff over here in Blurbstomp. So yeah, his defensive WAR is -1.2, and his UZR/150 is -5.2 and his routes to the ball are some Billy trying to get back to his bedroom Family Circus-level hijinks.
If you can’t tell I’m writing this at midnight knowing I have a night full of diapers awaiting me, then you can’t tell I’m writing this at midnight knowing I have a night full of diapers awaiting me. Fact!
Bullpen Cow Pie
Dany Jiménez (shoulder) tossed a scoreless inning on Sunday in a minor league rehab appearance for Triple-A Las Vegas.
Jiménez has looked extremely sharp in a pair of minor league rehab appearances as he works his way back from a right shoulder strain. The Athletics’ primary closer will likely be activated at some point later this week, if not much sooner.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
“The Athletics’ primary closer.” You don’t want to put that in a post about Dany Jimenez. He’s great, and I hope he does get a shot (but not really because I have a ton of AJ Puk shares), but Puk and Zach Jackson are both sitting there, and when this was written Lou Trivino was still closing for the A’s. What happened a few days later? Glad you asked:
Athletics activated RHP Dany Jiménez from the 15-day injured list.
Jiménez is all set to return to Oakland’s bullpen on Tuesday night against the Angels after missing more than a month due to a right shoulder strain. He had tallied 11 saves before the injury but will likely have to prove his way back into a share of the A’s closer role.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
We go from the rhetorically strong diction of “primary closer” to the vaguely downbeat “prove his way back into a share of the A’s closer role.” That’s a great way way to convince readers that Jimenez should be picked up for saves, especially after Trivino was shipped off to throw pitches to his White Lodge double Jose Trevino.
Stephen A. Smith IMG_4346.jpeg Award
Ryan Pressly blew a save and took a loss while allowing two runs Saturday against the Mariners.
Pressly did strike out two, but gave up three hits; the last being a two-run single by Abraham Toro that gave the Mariners a 5-4 lead, Pressly his fourth blown save and ultimately a loss for the Astros. Pressly should remain the closer and continue to mostly be effective, but this wasn’t one of his finest efforts. Obvious point is obvious.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
I’ve made it pretty clear with the injury hex blurbs that I do not want my blurbs to reassure me. I may need a great deal of personal assurance that I’m good at what I do to gain confidence in doing something as menial as putting away a box of cereal, but I don’t need a box of text in multiple fonts telling me a blown save wasn’t a pitcher’s best effort. To then tack on the fourth wall-walloping “obvious point is obvious” reminds me of video games that make you click a dialogue box with the words, “But you already knew that, didn’t you?” I don’t want to click that extra action to read those words! I have so many more important things to do in my life. There are diapers to do! Lunches to fail!
The final line also makes me think that someone from Rotoworld is reading my articles. The following is my open letter to them:
To Whom it May Concern,
I appreciate all the work you do and hope that my ribbing has come off as abjectly silly absurdism rather than acid-tongued dunk-a-thons. I am aware that my column does not exist without you, the humble blurbist. In fact, there’s not a chance you read any of this, because I have the self-confidence of a stool at a Chair Convention, and second-guess every single depression of a letter key on my keyboard as I’m typing. Who would even care why I do anything? You have a life to live! No one’s going to water your lawn for you! In fact, good night.
Love,
C.A.
I can write a personal letter to all who believe they deserve an apology from me. I can’t promise that there will be drawings of cars and horses included, but I can threaten they will. And boy, I’ve been drawing weird balloon animal cars in the margins of my notebooks for years, so you just know what you’re getting. You really do. There will be drawings of cars and horses. Not really a threat either, more of a fact. A boring one, at that.
A final note: I’m having deja vu over this final paragraph. Have I written this before? Will someone check for me, please? I’m a hopeless tall white male whose 10 wife tells him he’s an 8 even though I feel like a 5! I need all the help I can get!
