We live in a post-sleeper world. Grey is more prescient than most, but he is onto something (and also petty as heck) when he urges certain players to continue tanking so their draft price is cheaper next season. I use the term tanking a bit freely, as I am a bird (Remember “Free As a Bird?” That John Lennon demo tape that the surviving Beatles overdubbed to make a “new” Beatles track that sounded exactly like a Tom Petty track, because you just realized George Harrison played on all the great Petty albums? And then McCartney added that cloying bridge? I know it’s hip to bash the Beatles, but I studied them for my extremely useful BA in Music. I’ll make sure to work my track-by-track dissection of the White Album into my weekly missives for the few remaining Beatles fans willing to weather criticism). Where was I? Aha. The post-sleeper world.
I brought up the White Album to link post-modernism to fantasy sports. When I first started playing me some fantasy sports, as a young lad sprightly of mind and falsely self-assured of wisdom I had yet to attain, the term “sleeper” had a heft to it. After ESPN, Yahoo, and CBS, one would trawl the internet for sleeper recommendations one’s league-mates had yet to ascertain. Reading a list of deep sleepers when one played in a 10-team, 3 OF, no UTIL league was downright dangerous. “No one else here is reading Fantasy Baseball Cafe, I will absolutely steal Peter Bourjos in the 20th round!” you mutter to yourself in your college library’s computer kiosk before you have to type in your ID and password again, because at that point The Internet was a subscription service, and we still didn’t have cars and my toaster was powered by steam. The toast was extremely soggy, but it was toast. Steampunk toast is the only toast.
The term sleeper doesn’t work for me anymore. If you play in competitive leagues, you’re drafting for or against the concept of statistical variance. One has to assume that everyone is either married to a projection system, or their approach is a meticulous marriage of multiple projection systems coupled with a Mel Gibson-in-Lethal-Weapon mentality on draft day. In that sense, there are no sleepers, only fellows over-or-under-performing our collective dreams and nightmares.
With that in mind, let us stay humble in these last few weeks of the regular season. Blurbs will begin hyping players for the next season. You will start to hoard two-week sample sizes in a corner of your mind best left empty, like the dining area of a Panera in an Ohio thruway rest stop. Owning a sliver of fantasy knowledge you believe to be unknowable to your league mates is a helium unto itself. Resist the lift and wait until February before you start huffing those pre-draft fumes.
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
- Shadow of the Colossus – when a blurb misremembers the greatness of a player
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
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. went 3-for-4 with an RBI on Sunday, leading the Blue Jays to a 5-3 victory over the Twins.
Guerrero Jr. continues to bolster his American League MVP candidacy with a late-season surge. He tallied three hits, including an RBI single off righty reliever Luke Farrell in the opening frame. The 22-year-old fantasy force owns an extraterrestrial .321/.411/.617 triple-slash line with 119 runs scored, 46 home runs, 105 RBI and four stolen bases across 642 plate appearances. We’ve run out of superlatives, folks. He’s special, folks.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
“We’ve run out of superlatives, folks.”
The world pauses. Cars stop and idle. Trains grind to a halt. Monday Night Football whistles the game dead, the collective unconscious takes a deep breath in. We do not know how to qualify any object in our world. There is no hierarchy, we simply exist. Man, woman, child, animal, vertebrate and invertebrate, the list goes on. The only trophies not being thrown into the slag heap simply note one’s participation. No one dares speak in fear of invoking a superlative. The tank is empty. The cupboard is bare. The belfry contains nary a bat.
“He’s special, folks.”
Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooookay.
Flowery Diction – MVP Edition
Shohei Ohtani pitched well in a no-decision against the Athletics on Sunday, racking up 10 strikeouts over eight innings of two-run ball.
The right-hander allowed just five hits and three walks on the afternoon. All of the damage done against him came via the long ball, with Yan Gomes slugging a solo homer in the third inning and Matt Chapman taking him deep in the fourth. Ohtani generated a whopping 26 swings and misses in this one — 17 of those on his splitter — while registering a CSW of 34 percent. The obvious favorite for the American League MVP Award, Ohtani now sports a 3.28 ERA, 1.11 WHIP and 146/43 K/BB ratio across 123 1/3 innings on the season to go along with his offensive prowess. He’ll likely take the ball again on Friday against the Mariners.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
My guy isn’t supposed to pitch, and obliterates the Athletics today. Goes eight innings. Gives up just two runs. Less than a Walk/Hit per inning. 10 K’s over 8 innings. The description of this performance:
“Shohei Ohtani pitched well…”
I don’t like to curse in print, because it’s lazy and played out, but that is horseshit. How can you describe Vlad Jr’s performance as transcendent, and then tell me Ohtani was okay? Shohei Ohtani is the one guy who breaks the concept of Blurbstomp. The man is doing what Ruth did, only against better competition, under the glare of modern media, and for a losing team. How can I put this…
How to show me you want Vlad Jr to win the MVP over Ohtani without writing that you want Vlad Jr to win the MVP over Ohtani.
I love Vlad Jr. and I would like him to win the Triple Crown. However, if Vlad Jr. wins the MVP, then any last vestige of respect I have for baseball writers is going to die on the vine. There are no grounds for Ohtani to lose the MVP, as he is producing at an All-Star level as two separate players in one body, for one team. He passes the eyeball test and the advanced stats gauntlet.
If Ohtani does not win the MVP, then I know we’re in a simulation, and that Keanu actually is Neo, and I better get some tight leather duds, and not call them “duds” in front of anyone, for fear of turning into Agent Smith. You can’t roll with the Matrix crew without some tight leather gear, friends.
Q&Q
Jarred Kelenic homered and doubled twice to lead the Mariners to a 7-1 victory over the Royals on Sunday.
He’s heating up. It’s just too bad there’s so little baseball left. Kelenic also drew a walk and clearly is beginning to figure things out after a horrific start to his MLB career. He certainly won’t be the first — nor the last — to have had a rough go of it and figure it out, and it’s obvious why he was considered one of the top prospects in baseball coming into the season. It’s the sixth homer of September for Kelenic, and it’s nice to see him ending things on a strong note.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
I dunno, might be worth it to point out that his homers have come off the Diamondbacks bottom three team-ERA pitching staff, while the rest have come off the Kansas City Royals “Pitching Staff is Hypey Triple-A Guys Who Are Being Pushed Too Early.” I’m not trying to dogpile on the guy, but this is absolutely a case of people trying to justify their insistence that Kelenic is ready for the bigs. Yes, even Trout struggled when he first entered the league, but I don’t see Kelenic as a generational talent. Instead, I see a guy who became this year’s shafted minor leaguer, both by fans and his team. He believed his own hype, fantasy sites wanted him to play well to prove their prescience, and those of us recognizing the absolute brutality of baseball’s treatment of minor league players needed him to play well to help create change in a system that banks on cheap production from arbitration-controlled players, who are later castigated for pursuing large contracts based on past performance in which they were criminally underpaid.
Anywho, I’m sure Grey is getting annoyed by Kelenic getting this blurb. I feel bad for Kelenic, and I hope he bounces back next year. He can’t be any worse than Bellinger.
Right?
The Blame Game
Brandon Lowe went 0-for-3 with a stolen base on Sunday in the Rays’ shutout loss at the hands of the Tigers.
Lowe reached on a fielder’s choice and swiped second base — his seventh theft of the season — in the third inning. It was a forgettable afternoon for the Rays’ offense, which managed just five hits in a shutout loss.
Source: Rotoedgeworldsports.com
If a tree falls in the woods, does anyone care? If a team produces no fantasy-relevant stats on offense, are the results blurbable? Why do we insist on creating a wealth of content where a dearth should…not exist? Brandon Lowe should not be blamed for the Rays being shut down by the lowly Tigers, just as I should not be blamed for Chicago’s delivery fee for restaurants. My friends all blame me though. I should charge them a complaint fee.
Shadow of the Colossus
Isiah Kiner-Falefa stole two bases while going 2-for-3 with with an RBI on Sunday in a loss to the White Sox.
The pair of steals give Kiner-Falefa 19 on the season. The RBI gives the 26-year-old 49 on the campaign, while the pair of hits raise his season average to .270. Kiner-Falefa having catcher eligibility made him fantasy relevant in 2021 — especially with the thefts. Losing that eligibility will make him an afterthought to begin 2022.
Source: Rotoedgeworldsports.com
“Fantasy relevant.” Relevant? According to our handy Player Rater, Kiner-Falefa is a top-5 catcher in a year that showed us what Salvy Perez can do with a bunch of rest and not having his leg gruesomely broken. Dude gave you a great batting average for a catcher, 19 steals for a catcher, and you’re still complaining. What does he have to do, shine your shoes? Wash your dishes? Could he wash my dishes? Actually, our washing machine broke. Could he buy us a new washing machine? I love you Isiah, what a godsend. Best blurb result yet!
Till next week, fair blurbees!
