Baby we are back, and if we’re not better than ever, we are every bit back as we better be! While our sentences remain gnarled and cumbersome, the mission also remains: Make my editor squint really hard to make sure I meant to make a grammar error, and more importantly: Find the fantasy baseball blurbs that provide the greatest of chuckles, so that you too may share in the wealth of this silliest of obsessions. Mostly we’re here to gingerly place two colons in one sentence to test whether this crime of punctuation will result in my body crushed under a tall bookshelf of moldy old grammar textbooks.
Below you will find a brief description of how Blurbstomp works. There are more categories than the four highlighted below, but we’re not here to read the footnotes of Infinite Jest. We are here to read what pours forth from my brain from 11pm to 2am on any given weekday, as I ignore the advice of my family, friends (kidding, don’t have those), and physician (who plays fmlb using an esoteric format that intrigues me to the extent that the first 5-10 minutes of an average doctor’s appointment involves shouting out baseball players with glee) and choose creativity over brain/body health. I do this for all of my dedicated readers, not at all for some kind of latent blogger martyr complex cocktail, mixed with a chaotic perfectionism that clouds every phrase blurted out upon the protesting keyboard of an overheating 3 year-old PC that should not be overheating based on what Task Manager tells this author.
I missed everyone. It’s good to be back.
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 – examining how words create meaning, and sometimes destroy meaning altogether
Q and Q – Quantitative and Qualitative Oddities in a given blurb
Stephen A. Smith IMG_4346.jpeg Award – Given to the player blurb that promises the most and delivers the least.
Bob Nightengale Memorial Plaque – blurbs don’t always need to make sense, friendo
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 in the comments section. Onward to Roto Wokeness!
Flowery Diction
José Abreu was dropped down to eighth in the Astros’ starting lineup for Wednesday’s matchup against the Royals.
The 37-year-old “slugger” is off to about as bad of a start as he possibly could be to begin the 2024 campaign — slashing a laughable .088/.162/.088 with zero home runs, zero extra-base hits, zero RBI and a 12/1 K/BB ratio, though he has at least been plunked by a couple of pitches. It’s no surprise that his lineup spot is in freefall, the only question now is when manager Joe Espada will finally pull the plug on him.
Source: Rotoworld
This is one of my favorite species of fantasy blurbs. The author is indignant to the point of visceral disgust as if Jose Abreu is laughing at our fantasy teams as he strikes out on purpose. This blurb has a little bit of everything I love to hate:
- The use of quotation marks to mock a player with “slugger.”
- Leveraging a player’s two-week sample size as any kind of true form of measurement
- Back-handed compliments
- A completely bizarre clause: “It’s no surprise his lineup spot is in freefall.”
- Hyphen misuse (matchup and freefall)
The freefall (sic) line is great because it contains an absence of meaning. Outside of this clause, the blurb contains previous sentences telling the reader how bad Abreu has been on paper using numbers and words. As a writer, even of frankly disposable text, one desires clarity in order to withstand even the slightest structural criticism. So let’s see how it goes.
“It’s no surprise his lineup spot is in freefall.” Of course Abreu’s line-up spot is in freefall, because he…well, he is the player occupying said line-up spot, and you’ve already told us he’s struggling. Ah, but wouldn’t it be funny if Abreu had actually been slotted in multiple line-up spots, rendering this superfluous clause semantically moot?
Of course it’s funny, because Abreu has hit in the 6th/7th/8th slots in the lineup. For this clause to make sense, we have to rewrite it as such: “It’s no surprise Abreu is in freefall(sic), and Joe Espada will have to start thinking of alternatives.” Not a terrible sentence, but you don’t jam in “It’s no surprise” unless you’re going to justify why it’s not a surprise. That the author leaves out Abreu’s BABIP (.150 below his career low, again, small sample drives the inanity of this very conversation) tells you all you need to know about author intent.
TLDR; There is a hateful rage that bubbles to the surface in blurbs that echoes a familiar refrain for any blockheaded sports fan: “This team should or shouldn’t play This Guy because it’s annoying to me personally, and it should annoy everyone else as well.”
And yes, I felt I had to one-up the sentence with two colons and go with a semicolon followed by a colon. In all honesty, I’m going for SEO heaven by repeating “colon” as many times as possible in a single baseball article. Take this as a shot across the bow, Grey! You’ll never insert colons into an article as much as this venerable author.
Stephen A. Smith IMG_4346.jpeg Award
The Mets are acquiring Adrian Houser and Tyrone Taylor from the Brewers for minor leaguer Coleman Crow, according to The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal and MLB.com’s Anthony DiComo.
A rather odd deal for the Brewers, as they could have simply plucked the rehabbing Crow in the Rule 5 draft if they were particularly high on him. Of course, he is more valuable to have this way, since he won’t have to debut in the majors and take up a spot on the 40-man. Houser had a 4.12 ERA in 21 starts and two relief appearances for Milwaukee last year, and he should slide in at the bottom of the Mets’ rotation. The 29-year-old Taylor is a helpful fourth outfielder against lefties, having hit .239/.294/.451 to date as a major leaguer. It makes sense for the Brewers to move on from Taylor, given all the youth in their outfield, but Houser projected as one of the team’s starters. Crow, meanwhile, is expected to miss most or all of the season after Tommy John.
This logic puzzle from the off-season is the water boarding of blurbs. To whit, let’s simplify the first two sentences and read them together:
Trading for Crow doesn’t make sense, because the Brewers could have gotten him in the Rule 5 draft. However, trading for Crow makes sense, because getting him in the Rule 5 draft means wasting a spot on the 40 man roster for an injured player.
In a world that supposedly values concision, creating an argument in order to disagree with yourself strikes your author as an ouroboros most foul. That being said, sometimes we need a hook to bring in readers, and people love a good argument.
See how annoying that is?
Bob Nightengale Memorial Plaque
Aaron Nola didn’t give up a run over 5 2/3 innings of work to pick up a win Friday against the Nationals.
Nola didn’t have his best control Friday, as he walked four and threw just 5-of-95 pitches for strikes. He was able to work around those free passes, however, and the veteran right-hander allowed just two hits throughout the contest. Nola was shellacked against Atlanta in his first start of the year, but lots of pitchers are going to struggle against that team. He’ll look for similar results — maybe with a smidgen less control issues — Wednesday against the Cardinals.
Source: Rotoworld
I wish we could all be 5% efficient in our places of work and still get pats on the back. I should know! Thanks Grey!
Next week will bring us quicker hits and cobweb undustings. Send me your favorite blurbs, and I promise I won’t lose them and will analyze them to the best of my colon’s abilities!
miss some good blurbstomp
Your stock was in freefall, so it’s good to see you back