Today we reflect on a form of blurb elusive to those not steely of eyes, or dan of mind. Jorge Luis Borges once contended that every story ever written is part of the 1,001 Nights, a beautiful idea that places the timeless prose of Faulkner or Wolff on the same pedestal as the Olive Garden advertising copy, “When you’re here, you’re family.” One might not believe a fantasy baseball blurb worthy of said pedestal, but if one looks carefully, stories of passion emerge from the morass. On Wednesday evening, the following blurb appeared on Rotoworld:
Starting for the first time in six games, Tyrone Taylor delivered a homer and a two-run double against the Giants on Wednesday.
We took issue with the Mets starting Joey Wendle over Taylor last night, and this kind of thing is why. Taylor is a little short of being a quality regular, but not by much. He’s hitting .327/.358/.510 in 54 plate appearances this season.
After getting over the use of the royal “we,” the reader notes that this blurb isn’t focusing on the present day production of Tyrone Taylor. Rather, the author decides to cash in with a healthy dose of “I told you so” in regards to Taylor’s playing time. If one searches for past blurbs regarding Tyrone Taylor, the cited editorial complaint re: Wendle getting the start over Taylor does not exist.
However, if one searches Joey Wendle’s blurbs on Rotoworld, one finds the following:
Joey Wendle went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts against the Giants on Tuesday.
It seems way off that Wendle has started three of the Mets’ last five games while Tyrone Taylor has been on the bench for all five. To be fair, Brett Baty was unavailable for two of those, making Wendle a reasonable option at third. However, the Mets put Wendle at second and Jeff McNeil in left field tonight, even though Taylor in left with McNeil at his usual position was almost surely the better option.
While this is Baseball Player Last Name Soup, the remarkable concept about the original blurb is that it contends that we are reading a piece that has a beginning, middle, and end. The injustice of Tyrone Taylor is spread across two different player’s blurbs on two separate days. Of course, one understands that the actual star of this injustice is the Fantasy Baseball Blurbist, whose calls to reason were ignored by nonsense-loving Coach Making Questionable Decisions.
Having enjoyed raging about Ron Washington hitting Mickey “Don’t Look At His Statcast Page You Might Die” Moniak ahead of both Renfigo and Adell, one understands the need to vent about the Bud Blacks of the world. However, if Taylor goes 0-4 with 2k’s, does he get a blurb with the same tone? One would hope not, friendos.
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!
Q & Q
Andy Pages went 3-for-5 with a solo homer on Wednesday, powering the Nationals to an 11-2 blowout victory over the Nationals.
Pages has started to find his footing in the big leagues with a pair of multi-homer performances, including a pair of homers, in his last three contests. The 23-year-old top prospect put together an impressive three-hit performance in this one, sparking Los Angeles to a lopsided win at Nationals Park. He took veteran reliever Tanner Rainey deep in the eighth inning with a no-doubter to left field for his second career homer. He boasts a robust .903 OPS through seven games in the majors and figures to continue playing regularly, at least until Jason Heyward is ready to return from the injured list in a couple weeks.
Source: Rotoworld
- Pages has a “pair of multi-homer performances, including a pair of homers, in his last three contests?”
I was going to do bullet points, but my word, the comma usage in the first clause derailed a sensible choice. The author meant that he’s now hit two home runs, but their fingers and brain conspired to create this cursed sentence. Maybe they truly don’t understand the usage of “multi-homer” performance, and they meant to convey any player with more than one home run this season is having a multi-homer experience. I enjoy this logic. It means the following are true:
- We have multi-fingered hands
- multi-hand bodies
- multi-player fantasy teams
- multi-lettered alphabet
- multi-watered ocean
- multi-douchebag Trevor Bauer
Last one is wrong, but fun to write and also true.
A Beautiful Mind Trophy
Landon Knack allowed two runs over six innings on Wednesday against the Nationals to collect his first career win.
Knack limited Washington’s offense to just three hits, including a second-inning solo shot by Nick Senzel, and got plenty of support from Los Angeles’ lineup to cruise to the first victory of his career. He finished with five strikeouts and only issued three walks. The 26-year-old top pitching prospect holds a strong 3.27 ERA, 1.00 WHIP and 9/4 K/BB ratio across 11 innings (two starts) so far. He’ll presumably take the ball on either Monday or Tuesday against the Diamondbacks in his next outing.
Source: Rotoworld
My reading of this blurb about a player named Landon Knack:
Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack.
Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack Landon Knack.
Leave it to our magical and mysterious brains to prioritize only the most important information.
Bob Nightengale Memorial Plaque
Mike Trout became the first major leaguer to reach 10 homers this season when he took the Orioles’ Dean Kremer deep on Wednesday.
Trout’s 10th homer came in his 25th game. He still has just 13 RBI, since he’s not hitting singles (.237 average) and he’s especially not hitting with men on base. Things don’t figure to get much better there if the Angels leave him in the leadoff spot.
Source: Rotoworld
One feels that Rotoworld is burying the lede here. As I joked on the writer’s chat a few weeks ago, Trout could realistically go 55/40/60/20/.280 this season if he stays healthy. That is an incredible milestone to watch, a modern day Sisyphus toiling towards a once-thought impossible statistical anomaly.
However, I do love the manner in which this blurb seems to blame Trout for his lack of counting stats. The reason they give for his lack of RBI? He’s not hitting enough singles. Also, they just throw in his batting average in there for reasons that are a mystery to me. Is that his batting average when the outcome is singles? Are they trying to spin the classic “sell out for power and the average will suffer?” Is he not hitting with men on base because there hasn’t been men on for him to drive in, or is he choking with men in scoring position?
Use this blurb, friends. I know I desperately need home runs in a few of my leagues, and I’ll be angling trade partners into reading this blurb to try and get a discount. It’s written in such a stridently confusing style that it radiates a knowledge of confidence the actual content betrays.
Flowery Diction
Francisco Lindor went 4-for-5 with two homers and four RBI as the Mets topped the Giants 8-2 on Wednesday.
The homers came off Sean Hjelle in the third and Mitch White in the ninth. The slumping Lindor raised his OPS from .538 to .652 today. At .206, it’s also the first time this season he’s boasted an average at or above the Mendoza Line.
Most projection systems had Lindor pegged for 25 homers with decent counting stats. His BABIP sits at .189, and although his statcast page is somewhat lacking, use this confirmation bias negativity reinforcement blurb to buy low (know fully well that just this morning Grey advised that such a buy low is folly. He also told us to draft [players conveniently selected to make Grey look bad]). As the blurb points out, it’s still early as heck for one game to shove a player’s OPS more than .100 in a single game.
Any blurb willing to drop “Mendoza Line” in the flavor text is a true helping hand when trying to buy low. Certain phrases have a chilling effect on any fantasy baseballer. Mendoza Line is a bit outdated, but still shocks the mind in its implicit awfulness. The word “oblique” is another that you never want to see in a player blurb. There has never been a positive mention of a healthy oblique in a blurb. The player has either just annihilated their oblique or is in the process of healing it.
It’s what I call the Sore Throat Effect. 99% of our lives we do not think of our throats. Then you randomly get a sore throat, and boy howdy does it hurt, while also reminding you that you take your healthy throat for granted. Obliques exist only as a term of dread, the baseball injury version of the word diarrhea. Nothing good comes of it until you’re no longer uttering the word.
“There has never been a positive mention of a healthy oblique in a blurb.” that’s why it acts out