On Sunday, Nathan Eovaldi had a start against the Kansas City Royals. The Royals have been screwing over my fantasy pitching for years, friends. I forgot to bench him, and he gave up seven hits in four innings, including a homer to Whit Merrifield and some doubles to Adalberto Mondesi. I had a feeling that my curse would be continued though, and I checked replays. There they were: Run scoring bloop singles from the likes of Jarrod Dyson. One hit split the infield perfectly with the bases loaded. A blurb might tell this story, but in a way that’s not as painful.
I tell this story to illustrate the relationship we have with our fantasy teams and how it influences our behavior. Hittertron had Eovaldi’s start as a neutral one, but my curse acted as a hitting buff on the Royals like I got a bad roll with the RNG and baseball is a role playing game. I take this sequitur that firmly lives in the non world because sometimes you have to ignore fantasy advice. I keep waiting for my curse to be lifted. Not that day friends, and never again. Never will I start my pitcher against the Royals.
Or I’ll ignore my own advice, and do it anyway so I can write another introduction wherein I create a Russian nesting dolls of self-inflicted humiliation and regret. 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
- Double Take – when a site contradicts a player valuation on back-to-back blurbs
- Hex Enduction Power – where a blurb can make an injury much, much worse
- Bob Nightengale Syndrome – instances of updates that don’t update anything
- Stephen A. Smith IMG_4346.jpeg Award – Given to the player blurb that promises the most and delivers the least.
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
Smith goes six innings in no-decision
Smith gave up just one hit — a single to A.J. Pollock in the fourth inning — with four walks and five strikeouts. He induced just five swinging strikes, but was able to pick up 21 called strikes in his 91 pitches. Smith stumbled last time out against the Angels, but he’s allowed two earned runs or fewer in his other three starts this month. This might make him sound like an appealing matchup play against the Brewers next week, but the Diamondbacks will be on the road, so…yeah.
Source: Rotoedgeworld.com
This is an amazing piece of writing. Just provide the CSW numbers, say you don’t think he’s recommended against the Brewers, and move on. They write about his called strikes like they’re a detriment to his performance. Do you know what else is a negative? Owning a guitar over the age of 45 according to general society unless your name is Bruce or Mick. Dads are so awkward guys! Dad rock of the world gets a bad rap. Meanwhile, Rap Rock gets the Dads of the world badly. Thank you. I’ll be here for the rest of the paragraphs of this article.
Also, is the ending sentence a joke? Thing about a joke is that they’re usually based on a single fact, usually? Smith won’t be pitching away. The Diamondbacks are at home against the Brewers this week…so, yeah.
Q and Q
Rhys Hoskins went 3-for-6 on Saturday with two homers, a double, and six RBI as the Phillies defeated the Giants on Saturday.
The homers traveled a combined 842 feet and left with exit velocities of 107.6 and 110.7 miles per hour. Hoskins is batting just .240 this season, and .161 over the last 15 games, so maybe this will get the 28-year-old going.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
This struck me as odd but novel, and I hope it becomes a trend. Let’s use statcast to measure the distance of every single hit someone has every night and put them into a blurb. That way we can get something like:
Francisco Lindor goes hitless again, Mets lose.
Lindor continues to struggle, getting zero collective feet on his dearth of hits. Until the hits start dropping, we won’t have anything to report on distance-wise. It’s almost as if Lindor is doing this to us on purpose.
That being said, Exit Velocity is still one of my favorite topics to hear announcers blandly explain to their audience who either already have the knowledge, or hates everything about knowledge. “I know they hit the ball hard, it’s goldarned baseball! I don’t need a dang radar gun to tell me how to enjoy my national pastime! Also, past time has ‘past’ in it for a reason! Stop changing my game! We need more David Ecksteins and less Three True Outcomes! Let every player slobber on their balls! Allow rivers of amphetamines and steroids to flow into locker rooms! Let the Pittsburgh Pirates deal coke in the locker room again! I think anyone that Ty Cobb assaulted in the stands deserved it! Baseball was better any time that isn’t right now!” I can’t wait to slowly age into being this person, as my hypothetical grandchildren stare at the floor and ask their parents what happened to grandpa. My daughter will shake her head and say, “They decided to allow Coca Cola to put their advertising on the over-sized bases, and your grandpa hasn’t been the same since.” On the drive home, my hypothetical grandchildren will wonder what baseball is. I will cry a tear in my one room apartment, lost to time and addicted to complaining. Not too far away from today, actually. Well. Ahem.
Among the Top 30 home run hitters, Hoskins is second only to Brandon Crawford (9) with “Doubter” home runs at 8. That means he’s gotten rather lucky with his homer count thus far, which seems a tad more important than adding his home run distance together. Combining his homer total arbitrarily gives the impression that he was exploding baseballs in some kind of significant manner. He hit two +420 foot homers. Great. I have learned nothing from this experiment. Nor have you. I will not apologize. My hypothetical grandchildren don’t need any more disappointment in their lives.
Prospect Watch
Wander is up you absolute tree stumps. This message is provided by a season-long stasher of Vidal Brujan. :{[
Hex Enduction Power
Jacob Degrom (shoulder) received a second opinion on his MRI and was told there are no concerns.
Mets manager Luis Rojas told reporters that the team is not currently thinking of putting the right-hander on the injured list. The cautious route would be to rest the two-time Cy Young award winner for a brief period in order to keep him fresh for the long summer, but for now, it seems deGrom is day-to-day and will perform his usual routine for in-between starts. Rojas would not commit to whether or not the ace would be making his next start, but this is great news regardless of how the Mets proceed forward.
Source: Rotoedgeworldsports.com
I don’t know about you all, but I own deGrom in a Points League that heavily favors pitching stats. deGrom’s blurbs should have their own home on each fantasy site at this point. He is absolutely insane. I love him. Butte. I read about his injuries more than his performance. It has caused blurbs to read something like:
Jake deGrom pulled early with apparent injury.
He’s at it again. deGrom evidently felt something in his body part and the trainers were quick to pull him. We’ll have to wait and see after his body is put into and pulled out of several machines. Btw he struck out 19 batters in 3 innings yawn.
I will now call him Degrom out of spite. Dude doesn’t deserve to capitalize wherever he sees fit. I thought this was America, not americA. freeDom for everyoNe bEsides Degrom.
Bob Nightengale Award/Stephen A. Smith IMG_4346.jpeg Award
Francisco Lindor launched a pair of home runs and drove in five runs, leading the Mets to a 5-1 victory in the first game of Saturday’s doubleheader against the Nationals.
Lindor snapped the Mets’ 21-inning scoreless streak with a towering two-run homer off righty Joe Ross in the opening frame and also delivered another two-run blast in the fifth inning. He also added an RBI single in the third inning for good measure. It was his 12th career multi-homer performance and first five-RBI effort since July 2, 2018. The 27-year-old shortstop has gone deep four times in 17 games since June 1. As the Nationals social media team found out the hard way on Saturday afternoon, Lindor might be the best shortstop in the NL East.
Source: Rotoedgeworldsports.com
I have many Mets fan friends, and their agony is real. I get that everyone loves a good twitter beef, but the Nats posted this lame meme about Trea Turner being better than Lindor (not worth reposting), and RW felt it necessary to “CLAP BACK.” I had hoped to never type that phrase in my life, and yet Rotoworld has driven me to it. How poetic. Lindor is not the best shortstop in the National League. It isn’t close. He had a good day, and he’ll have more good days moving forward. But again, this blurb reads like a love letter that the blurbist hopes Lindor will read and respond to with a smiling video message. This isn’t just posturing, as the shortstop WAR leaderboards bear out. Tatis and Turner are ranked second and third overall in the majors. Lindor is ranked 15th overall. Below Freddy Galvis. And Jorge Polanco. And Josh Rojas. And Trevor Story. And J.P. Crawford. You get it, don’t you?
He might be the best shortstop in the National League. Sure, and I might be the best writer on Razzball.
On that self-defecatory note, I wish all of you fathers a very merry un-Father’s Day. I hope you all spent yesterday with your kids. By that, I mean staring at your line up of large adult digital sons and calling them “soft” on a Yahoo’s player discussion boards when they don’t single-handedly win your league in a single at bat. Happy blurbing!
