Goodbye trade deadline, hello your team’s post-deadline decline? Did you do the thing? Did you hold onto Kendall Graveman, Ian Kennedy, Richard Rodriguez, and Savesy McSavesperson, and now you have almost no source of precious saves? Well, in the words of Radiohead, “You do it to yourself, you do, and that’s what really hurts.” Of course, Thom Yorke then followed that up by looking at your middle infield options and muttering, “A pig, in a cage, on antibiotics.”
Now you must live with your decisions, and figure out what you have learned from the deadline. Remember when the Rockies trading of Trevor Story, Daniel Bard, Jon Gray, C.J. Cron, I dunno, the entire team was all but assured by Rotoworld and the Blurb Army in the months leading up to the deadline? That kind of stuff has a real-world impact…on your make-believe team. I hate to think how many people in NL-Only leagues shied away from those guys (in all honestly, bless those people, the Rockies not named Raimel and McMahon have been checking your inbox level of blah).
Don’t believe the hype during the trade deadline, unless it’s closer trading chatter, at which point you should have already owned the handcuffs. Tangentially, have you ever cross-referenced every fantasy site’s BULLPEN DEPTH CHART? It’s like reading 20 books on the behavioral development of children, only to realize they’re all saying basically the same thing and you should probably stop writing for fantasy sites and pay more attention to your children? What? No. That’s not right. I’ll keep aggregating bullpen pecking orders and reading books about kids until I truly have harnessed the darkest inky essences of the universe.
My guide to modern fatherhood would sell in the 1’s on Amazon, friends. Give me a shout (no murmurs please, unless you’re Bill Berry) in the comments if you would like me to include more child-rearing tips and less baseball-adjacent analysis. I’m sure that this is the hybrid FMLB article the internet was borne screaming into ether to deliver. Substack is drooling. 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
- Q and Q – when a site contradicts a player valuation on back-to-back blurbs
- Trade Blades
- 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
Cole Sulser (3-2) tossed a perfect third of an inning to earn the win over the Nationals on Sunday.
Sulser entered Sunday’s game with runners on first and second in the top of the ninth inning. The right-hander was able to record the final out of the inning to keep the deficit at one run, and he earned his third win of the year when the orioles came back in the bottom half of the frame. Sulser hasn’t allowed a run in 3.2 innings across his last five appearances, and he should continue to see high-leverage opportunities.
Source: Rotowire.com
If you come in to record one out, and you do so, is it perfect? I would hazard not even a guess, just a strong no from those Duke boys. I will never know what perfect actually means. However, I’m all about announcers calling a “perfect out” after every single out moving forward. You cannot argue with that logic. This cutting sarcasm is also perfect, as is the analysis of this analysis. This is a rare moment for Rotowire, whom I had considered almost perfect to this point. Alas, perfection is the dream of a caveman who pondered whether they would have to continue defecating where they eat. We can thank that caveman for the toilets we have now, specifically the ones built to flush 9 billiard balls in one go. Yeah. That’s perfection alright.
Q and Q
Brad Miller hit a walk-off grand slam in the eighth inning to give the Phillies an 8-7 win in game two of a doubleheader on Thursday over the Nationals.
With the Nationals leading 8-7 in the bottom of the eighth, Miller played hero with the walk-off grand slam off of Sam Clay to give Philadelphia the victory. The versatile infielder/outfielder also singled earlier in the contest. After a strong start, Miller has really slowed down with the bat outside of his three-homer game against the Cubs three weeks ago, but Thursday qualifies as a good day.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
I am still not a fan of pointing out every single act of a baseball game in a blurb. You could have said he had two hits, one of them being Grandpa’s Salami, which is what I call a grand slam. My wife makes a weird face when I say it out loud, but I know that she’s just processing new baseball jargon. It can be hard on the brain.
Brad Miller had a strong start? In the first two weeks, he was slashing .222/.300/.222 in 10 plate appearances. That ain’t a strong start. Sure, at the end of April he had 29 more plate appearances and had compiled a 6/2/5/.324 line, but that’s a stretch. Starters amassed 90 and 100 AB’s roughly. Brad Miller’s “hot start” was useless in fantasy unless you had a long bench, a lucky streak, and you just like the name “Brad” for unironic reasons.
Trade Blades
Trevor Story was scratched from the Rockies starting lineup on Friday.
No word has been given yet as to the reason for the late scratch. Perhaps it has something to do with the likely emotional roller coaster that Story was forced to ride the past few days before ultimately not getting moved at the trade deadline. Expect the Rockies to update his status shortly.
Source: Rotoedgeworldsports.com
There is something so uncanny about a blurb like this. Yeah, Story sat the game after the trade deadline. I don’t understand the blurbist postulating on the cause of Story’s absence. Why postulate when you can populate your blurb with some contextual statistics, and what we can expect moving forward? I don’t want to live in a world where blurbs are used to ponder life’s great mysteries. For instance:
Trevor Story sitting out Friday’s match-up.
Analysis: A day after the trade deadline, Story is getting a breather. No reason given for his absence, but it might have to do with Planet X finally emerging from behind the sun, bringing with it the end times mankind is hurtling towards regardless of celestial intervention. Story has under-performed this season, but the prospect of his physical self incorporating into a unified whole as the rogue planet expands its influence on the universe could help the hits to fall in.
Stephen A. Smith IMG_4346.jpeg Award
Rockie optioned INF Josh Fuentes to Triple-A Albuquerque.
It’s a little surprising to see Fuentes sent down considering he’s played 90 games for the Rockies. It’s less surprising to see him sent down when you see his .618 OPS. Fuentes will likely be back with the Rockies at some point this summer or before the end of the campaign.
Source: Rotoedgeworldsports.com
Okay. I don’t know how to be kind here, but I’ll choose to read this as purposefully cheeky and kind of mean in its own right. First of all, total games played don’t factor into a player being sent down, so no, not surprising at all. It’s also not surprising he was sent down based on his sub-.700 OPS. There were no alarms, no surprises, and we’re all paranoid androids reading this blurb and getting brain bends remembering any of Radiohead’s discography post-Kid A.
Second of all, “Fuentes will likely be back with the Rockies at some point this summer or before the end of the campaign.” I mean, summer officially ends on September 22nd, and the season ends on October 3rd. Just pick one or the other. End of the summer, end of the campaign, end of days. No more “ors.” I like my blurbs the way I like my stories: short, concise, and about men. JK on the last one for real tho. Blurbs do not need additive conjunctions. I don’t want to read about Aristedes Aquino hitting another bomb, only to see that the blurbist followed the Rule of Threes and the analysis gets padded. I write 1500+ words twice a week, and I spend half of that time editing my own extranea. No, not that extranea.
Seriously though, is there a paid-per-the-word system in blurb writing? What is the going rate? Is there a pay ladder? Have blurbists unionized? I would support that, only so absolute psychopaths such as myself can hold them to account without feeling quietly guilty. This article would not exist without the blurbists of the world. I am a mere Remora, cleaning off the large Tiger Shark that is blurb writing.
On that note, I’m off to feed off the delicious grit one can only find on a player description page. Happy blurbing!
