David Lynch’s mid-career masterpiece Lost Highway tells the story of a few lost souls and found ghouls prowling the liminal spaces of Southern California. About half through the film (spoiler but the movie is more than a decade old, so the spoiler rule does not apply suckers), Bill Pullman’s character transforms into a completely different character played by Balthazar Getty with no explanation beyond Lynch later stating that the film exists in the same Nightmare Logic universe as Twin Peaks. Identities, egos, and even flesh are seen as nothing more than ooblek, tempermental, and seemingly impossible.
Such a film brings to mind one person: Bud Black. Before you shut your computer, unplug your monitor, roll up your phone, and/or stare at an eclipse, allow to me extrapolate:
Jordan Walker sent down to work on his swing after one of the longest hitting streaks to start a career.
Corbin Carroll rakes for in the third spot of the line up for a handful of games…only to be moved down to the sixth spot so that Evan Longoria and a cast of misfit boys can face a lefty.
Matt Mervis and Christopher Morel demolish Triple-A competition while the Cubs start Eric Hosmer and Nick Madrigal (he of the empty .300 batting average), and carry three catchers.
There is something in the air in the Majors, and it’s not Brandon Marsh‘s Nag Champa or the sewage back up at the Oakland Coliseum: Managers and GM’s are making decisions that would only make sense if guided by the steady hand of a baseball dotard, one whose random benchings and demotions only make sense when one sees the moves as attempts destroy the very baseball players he purports to support.
I don’t know much about Oli Marmol, but I know that Walker needs roughly three weeks in the minors to push back his first year of free agency to the 2029-2030. Most outlets are citing a rough patch of hitting for Walker after his streak ended. The sample size for that rough patch of hitting: 26 at bats. He’s also batting 8th, and has hit against both righties and lefties, so he creates a bit of problem for a team with 47 outfielders. Send him down, they say, and give us Taylor Motter, the guy we sent through waivers.
All of this kvetching to say that if the manager of your local team begins to erratically platoon players who don’t have platoon splits, judge a player on 25 at bats, and start mediocre vets and utility players over talented and exciting players, then he already went through Balthazar Getty’s transformation in Lost Highway. He is Bud Black. They are all Bud Black, forgetting the Golden Rule of Cigarette Lord Jim Leyland: A good manager doesn’t get in the way. But these aren’t good managers. These are Bud Black.
And yes, Robert Blake’s Mystery Man is Dick Monfort in this universe.
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
Friendly Reminder – when a blurb insists upon itself
Q and Q – when a site contradicts a player valuation on back-to-back blurbs
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 Syndrome – instances of updates that don’t update anything
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
Bobby Witt Jr. belted his fourth home run of the season on Sunday, but it wasn’t enough to power the Royals to victory over the Angels in Los Angeles.
The 22-year-old superstar belted his 392-foot (103.1 mph EV) solo shot off of Austin Warren in the seventh inning, cutting the Royals’ deficit to one run at 4-3. Unfortunately, that would be the extent of their offense. Witt Jr. finished the day 1-4 and is now hitting .256/.297/.465 with four homers, nine RBI and five stolen bases through his first 22 games of the season.
Source: Rotoworld
Call me a hater, and many would (others have called me many things, I was at least one whole foot taller than my classmates starting in 1st grade, and I grew into my nose and ears, absolutely a magnet for those looking to cast their anger out of their body and into someone else’s vulnerable psyche), but I don’t see Bobby Witt Jr. as a superstar yet. I think he’s a great player, and I would have loved to own him last season. That’s one rather petty gripe that I’m sure most people disagree with. Another petty gripe that I’m sure most people disagree with is
Now then, look at that triple slash with counting stats the article cited. Notice what’s lacking? The mention of the dreaded “slow start.” We have seen players over the years with similar profiles labeled as slow starters, and yet here we have one Bobby Witt Jr. evading such a tag. I’m happy about this development, but I also wonder why that is? If I’m owning Witt Jr. I’m looking at Jorge Mateo or Corbin Carroll and wondering why I paid a first round price tag for a guy who was not guaranteed to repeat or eclipse last year’s performance.
But I don’t own any Witt shares, so I’m able to talk about this coldly, with a surgical distance, like a Superintendent talking about district test scores, or the way Grey has begun to talk about Jake McCarthy.
Rocky Mountain Sigh
Brenton Doyle was recalled from Triple-A Albuquerque on Monday (source)
Doyle will give the Rockies another option in the outfield with Kris Bryant (lower body) banged up. The 24-year-old has batted .314/.429/.694 with eight homers and a stolen base over 21 games at Albuquerque the last two seasons. He might be interesting in deeper leagues with regular at-bats, but there’s no indication he’ll receive them or stick around long.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
Who knows, maybe Bud Black will
Insert an editor’s note about calling emergency services and commiting me for a psyche eval.
Q&Q
Mike Yastrzemski walloped his fifth home run of the season on Tuesday night as the Giants rallied late to beat the Cardinals in San Francisco.
Yaz crushed a go-ahead 396-foot (104.3 mph EV) solo shot on the first pitch that he saw from Jake Woodford in the fourth inning, giving the Giants a 2-1 edge. He also added an RBI double off of Ryan Helsley in the ninth and rode home on Blake Sabol’s walk-off blast. For the season, the 32-year-old outfielder is slashing a healthy .291/.315/.535 with five homers and 13 RBI on the season.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
A healthy five homers and 13 RBI on the season. Healthy. What was that slash-line that Marcus Semien was rocking before his recent offensive explosion that Rotoworld referred to as a “slow start?”
Healthy start: 5 HR/13 RBI in 22 games
Slow start: 2 HR/12 RBI in 15 games
What have we learned? The difference between a lacking and a fine season is three home runs and one run batted in. A disingenuous argument if there ever was one, but I will continue to compile examples of “slow starts” to see if you, the Razzball reader, can benefit from the loose terminology applied in blurbs.
Bullpen Cow Pie
Kevin Gausman fans 11 in gem against the Yankees
Seeing Alek Manoah and Gausman have vintage outings on back-to-back days seem like a great thing for the Yankees. Gausman improved to 2-2 with a 2.84 ERA. He’ll face the Mariners next weekend.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
If the “great thing for the Yankees” was a mistake, that’s funny. If it’s meant as snark, it’s nuance bordering on incoherence. As a producer of snark bordering on incoherence, I can only nod quietly from the corner of the smokey bar, right hand gently wrapped on a sweating glass of whiskey whose rock has vanished, left hand on the table, slowly rotating a ragged, tear-stained Jordan Walker baseball card between worn knuckles as the Duke Ellington/Charles Mingus/Max Roach “Fleurette Africaine” drifts into the night everlasting.
Shadow of the Colossus
Adolis Garcia had three homers, two doubles and eight RBI as the Rangers crushed the A’s 18-3 on Saturday.
Garcia was off to something of a slow start coming into this one, believe it or not. As is turns out, though, hitting three homers and doubling twice raised his OPS 235 points….
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
“Believe it or not.”
We’re back to slow starts, my friends. Here is the smoking gun, the fulcrum, the Big Bang, the Velvet Underground, the Lyrical Ballads, the Coke la Rock, the Reinhold Messner. Slow starts are a mirage. Let your team cook, let them stew or feast, or whatever food metaphor/simile describes the basic action/inaction of your fantasy baseball team. Give them 3-4 weeks before you declare anything, such as, “Gunnar Henderson’s Statcast profile makes me want to volunteer for Elmo Musk’s first manned rocket launch.”
In one admittedly colossal game, Adolis completely reshapes his 2023 season. Baseball has become a game of projections and percentages, but it remains a game of anomalies that would interrupt any great Jonathan Frakes supercut with a resounding, “That’s true?!?” This is why we cheer for guys like Jordan Walker, any given Rockies prospect, or Esteury Ruiz. Rooting for a guy who can’t legally drink alcohol or smoke a marijuana cigarette is fun and thrilling, and again, a single game in April can entirely shift the identity of a player’s season.
A few more games without a homer or a steal without this giant game from Adolis Garcia virtually guarantees he starts showing up in “Buy Low” or “Should I Be Worried” mailbags on all of your favorite internet FMLB content factories. Instead, Adolis steps off the Lost Guyway and remains solid, a man capable of baseball white nebulas, a sower of beautiful chaos in a world where we need bigger screens to make room for collapsing infographics on every pitch, swing, cup check, and check-in with the ump.
The rest of baseball – the Cardinals outfield, Corbin Carroll’s lineup spot, the entire Kansas City Royals baseball family – are at the whim of Robert Blake’s Mystery Man, one phone call away from life-changing accusations and recriminations. Unlike Al in Lost Highway, I believe there is such thing as a bad coincidence, and a lot of them are happening these days.
As always, thanks for the read, and we’ll see you next week when “Slow Start” warnings shift into “There Might Be Reason For Concern.”
