Life looked bleak around these parts in February. Life looked bleak as recently as two weeks ago. But lo, the players and owners have agreed that baseball shall be bestowed upon us, and so the blurbs have come tumbling down. For the uninitiated, this is a weekly column that chronicles the creamiest of player blurb crops, discusses ways in which these daily breakdowns influence how we evaluate players, and also whatever else Grey and Truss let me get away with.
Truss Here: C.A. might get away with a lot, but I’m going to steal a spot in his article to plug the RCLs! Make sure to check out our Razzball Commenter Leagues and sign up for one, two, three, or more! They are free to play and the overall winner gets a Razzball gift basket. Play against your fellow commenters, lurkers, and Razzball writers! We have this $20 league drafting at 10 PM ET TOMORROW NIGHT where you can play against me! <- Just click and you’re in!
I will pull from relevant sites, such as Rotoworld (NBCSportsedge), Rotowire, ESPN, Fantasypros, CBS FMLB. I will cast my net wider than last year, where my recency bias had me reading Rotoworld blurbs before other blurbs. Now, why would I spend my time parsing the language of a player blurb?
I do not seek to denigrate the fine work of those asked to churn out player updates. It is a thankless task, especially when one is either forced or compelled to add instant analysis to a player’s performance on one night in a given baseball season. Sometimes blurbs will contain rhetorical slips too silly to avoid. Sometimes blurbs will fall victim to the Hot Take Culture that is long past its infancy. Blurbs will even completely contradict the previous blurb, going from “Scoop him up where he’s available,” to, “You can leave him on waivers for now.” Like insider trading, blurbs have a direct line to Average Joe Plumber Fantasy Baseball Owners’ behavior. A single blurb can cause thousands to drop a pitcher after a bad start, or pick up a scrappy middle infielder because a beat writer quoted the manager on Twitter saying, “If he gets on base, he’s getting the green light to steal.”
Ultimately, Avoiding the Blurbstomp is about becoming an independent thinker in a time when most people who enjoy the playing of fantasy sports quietly defer most of their roster decisions to outside sources. Again, this is not meant to denigrate the askers and/or the answerers. There are websites dedicated to which pitchers you should start, and each day, the author dutifully gives their two cents. However, you scroll down to the comments, much like you do here at Razzball, and the first question is, “Do I start this guy?” after the author has written an article stating that you should. I have been there friends, a strange fear clutching at my weird fleshy heart, truly afraid that said author may now disbelieve what they wrote 6 hours earlier.
We all value the community that comes with fantasy baseball, but it’s worth evaluating how the community functions. Would you like to be the sheep that follows the sheepdog to the shears, or the sheepdog eating a giant steak in the front yard because it convinced the farmer to sell the sheep? I don’t know you. Maybe it is nicer being the sheep. Some decisions feel too simple to matter, and the crushing insistence of simply being in this world is enough to push a man to simply sheep out. It’s why we print out cheat sheets and tiers from websites 10 minutes before the draft (ahem, use Rudy’s Draft Rooms, he is the king of sheepdogs), it’s why we don’t preset our own rankings and frown when we see Tatis near the top of the list.
If you want to be a sheep, you don’t need my permission. I’m ordering you to be a sheep. That’s what you want, right? The safe word is “Varsho,” and I’m keeping your phone in this ziplock bag by the front door for safekeeping.
A Blurbstomp Reminder
We will analyze player blurbs from a given week, knowing that 1-2 writers are usually responsible for all the player write-ups posted within an hour of the game results on each website. Here are some lenses we will employ to better analyze blurbs:
- Flowery Diction – how sites juice up descriptions of player performance
- Q and Q – Qualitative and quantitative look at how a site’s editorial vision colors the blurb “analysis”
- Bob Nightengale Syndrome – when blurb creates a terrible outcome by stating it would be impossible
- Double Takes – 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
- Hex Enduction Power – where a blurb can make an injury much, much worse
- 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
Andrew Vaughn went 2-for-3 with a solo homer on Thursday against the Cubs in a split-squad Cactus League contest.
Vaughn struggled during his rookie campaign last year, but appears poised for a bounce-back sophomore season. The 23-year-old outfielder clobbered a no-doubter to left field in the opening frame and also singled in the second inning to notch a multi-hit effort. He projects as a semi-regular for the White Sox this upcoming season, and could easily eclipse 20 homers, despite rotating between first base and the corner outfield spots.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
This pizza has a lot of toppings, so let’s lift up the cheese and get to the sauce (I will absolutely turn this into a catch phrase). The term “bounce-back” would portend that Big Friendly Andrew had a good year, followed by a bad year in 2021. He would then “bounce-back” to previous levels of success in the majors in 2022. This, however, is not the case. As the blurb concedes, last year was his rookie season. This is a nit, but the term “bounce-back” has rhetorical momentum, a word steeped in the physics of potential energy. Andrew Vaughn could bounce his way to a good season as your 5th OF. I like that more than I should. May all of your players bounce their way to a fine season!
Most projections systems have him around 20 homers, so the blurb is bullish on Vaughn – “despite rotating between first base and the corner outfield spots.” Will he be struggling for at-bats? I do not understand the despite in this clause. Is there a correlation between a multi-position player’s offensive production and him switching positions all the time? Maybe I shouldn’t be drafting multi-position players? It makes me that much happier that I wasn’t allowed to draft Tatis in TGFBI. I assumed he got into that motorcycle accident to make me feel better for missing a top-3 pick in a fantasy draft for the last decade.
Bob Nightengale Syndrome
Connor Joe collects hit Thursday
Rockies first baseman Connor Joe collected one hit in two at-bats while also scoring one run Thursday in the Rockies’ 5-3 win over the Diamondbacks.
Fantasy Impact: Joe will be a key reserve for the Rockies this upcoming season at first base and in the outfield when called upon by manager Bud Black.
Source: Fantasypros.com
This blurb is Bud Black bait. This analysis is wrong in that it seeks to make sense of the Rockies’ personnel decisions. I know for not a fact that Bud has an assistant ctrl+f his name all over Google, and makes his roster decision to clown his haters. This is a team that was dedicated to giving at-bats to Ian Desmond and Chris Owings. They just signed Kris Bryant to a contract that made Steve Cohen’s dead formaldehyde shark art blush. Bud Black will find a way to give Connor Joe regular at-bats. If he has to break Charlie Blackmon’s beard to do it, he will.
On a side note, I love the melancholy of this blurb’s header: “Connor Joe collects hit Thursday.” Despite its machine-like concision, traces of pride, sadness, and boredom lace this eight-syllable sentence. In fact, let us employ this header into a haiku:
Bud Black squints and smiles
Connor Joe collects hit Thursday
Bud benches Bryant
Ah. Nature is whole once more.
Stephen A. Smith IMG_4346.jpeg Award
Athletics Sheldon Neuse: Good chance to win spot
Neuse will have a chance to compete for playing time at the corner infield spots this spring, Martin Gallegos of MLB.com reports. “He looks great,” manager Mark Kotsay said. “Last year, he had time with the Dodgers and on that roster, I think he was utilized in the way that we probably would like to have that opportunity for him. But he’s got to earn that spot.”
Neuse appeared in 33 games in Los Angeles, and although his .169/.182/.323 slash line left plenty to be desired, he did display some welcome defensive versatility by logging time at second base, third base, left field and right field. The 27-year-old, who also has five games of minor-league experience at first base, will have no shortage of opportunity to earn playing time at first and third base, which are wide open with the trade departures of Matt Olson and Matt Chapman, respectively. Neuse also has offered some encouraging early signs with his bat, as he hit well to all fields during Thursday’s batting practice session and launched one ball over the left-field scoreboard and completely out of Hohokam Stadium.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
There’s Spring Training helium, and then there is this blurb. Bless anyone trying to make roto news out of the Oakland Pathetics, but my god, citing one day’s worth of batting practice as a sign of anything more than one day’s worth of batting practice? That’s like saying I have a shot at reforming the Beatles because I set up my drum kit in the living room. Sheldon Neuse is fine and will be good in a pinch as a bench waiver bat if there’s an injury and all caution has been thrown to the winds of fate, your team crashing into a glacier, slowly sinking, and you’re strong enough to not let go of Leo. I mean, Kate Winslet did not need to let Leo die at the end of Titanic. Just pull him on up, spoon for a good long while, and then they’re safe. I mean, Leo had a lot of good years left in him! He was a great actor, and Kate just let him drown! He had so many good years left, so many yachts to invite supermodels onto, so many hands to wash, so many Wall Streets to Wolf, so many Gilberts to Grape. It’s a dang shame.
So yeah, if you need to add Old Sheldon to your team, you’re Billy Zane in this scenario, and I’m sorry for your losses. You’re beautiful though, and I would love to kiss your gleamingly bald head.
This was an easy pick for the Stephen A. Smith award this week. If you see any blurbs that you’d like to nominate, send them to [email protected]. Welcome back to baseball, baby, and screw everything if they bring back the ghost runner!
