Facelift is the first song on just-as-good-as-Pink Floyd Soft Machine Third, their final record with the outrageously talented and sublimely cheeky drummer Robert Wyatt. I’ve always loved transitional records, where a band either adds or subtracts band members, and this is one for the ages. All of Soft Machine’s first three records count as such. Their first was recorded after their original guitarist Daevid Allen left to form Gong in France. Their second record was recorded after their bassist/guitarist Kevin Ayers left the group. Perhaps Facelift was meant to express excitement at the changes the band was undergoing, but it had no lyrics, pointing to their “more jazz less prog” future.
The thing is that most people remember Wyatt’s final track with the band, the mostly self-recorded “Moon in June,” which pointed back to the band’s roots. This is what happens when any well-trafficked website decides to overhaul their user experience. There are a few early adopters, but most visitors to the website will be livid about such a facelift. This brings us to the main inspiration of this column, Rotoworlds/NBC Sportsedge.
Mankind has always read from top to bottom, a true flip of the coin evolutionarily. Yes, we read horizontally, like we are currently as you read what I type, but when we run out of room on this line of text, our eyes come to the end and dart to the next line of text. Pi is maybe the only exception to this rule. However, various thinkers who find themselves calling the shots at popular websites have dug in their heels for more than a decade. They want slideshows. They want you to stop scrolling down and click on a little button to move a windows of information left or right. It does not matter what the information is, as long as the click is logged to track user behavior.
NBCsportsedge/Rotoworld is a User Experience nightmare. Information is stacked in a that pushes features (mostly gambling tbh) and video. Once you start snooping for player news, you find it halfway down the page. It scrolls sideways like a living slideshow. You panic. You click on a player blurb because there’s so little room in the text box that you don’t even get half the blurb. Upon clicking the player’s name, you are transported to the “player’s page.” Said page is not actually that player’s page. It seems to contain all the blurb headlines from said player’s team, a big video feature in the middle of the page that has little to do with the player, and on the right column of the page, an incredible stinger: A list of feature articles (half of them are gambling related), that also included a bit of football news. I am never allowed to escape football.
Once you’re done being confused, one finds a tab towards the top right of the page labeled “Player News.” Clicking this takes one to a chronological list of blurbs for that player. What used to exist as a mindless bookmark is now filling out your taxes. It betrays the three rules of a website overhaul. The website overhaul must:
- Make the site easier to use.
- Make the site easier to use.
- Make the site easier to use.
One extra click has been added to the user’s experience, two if you’re looking for a particular player’s blurbs. If you don’t click on the blurb box and avoid the player’s name, you’re taken to the classic chronological verticality that lured us to Rotoworld in the first place. This is not easier. This is harder. So why did they make it harder to use the site?
Videos. They autoplay on full volume, invading the full screen of your phone or a corner of your computer monitor, what do they tell us? Gambling odds. Waiver profile for 1-2 players. You know, content that exists in written form all over the internet (and also on 4 hour long podcasts). Autoplay video is Trickle Down economics, in that each idea’s strengths have been proven categorically as falsehoods, yet both systems remain in place, a perversity of nature.
I’ve clicked on an article to read said article, and while my decision may be rooted in boredom or procrastination, I would like to read the words on the page and scroll, otherwise dead to the world. If you’re going to smack me in the face with the cold dead fish of an autoplay video, then you better be ready for an expert parry. I came to this fish-smacking party with a swordfish, and if your hands, brains, or eyes have had anything to do with creating autoplay video, be prepared to lose those precious body items.
The fact that we now have gas station television advertising which autoplays while we just try to pour dead dinosaurs into our hungry evil vehicles tells us that no one cares about anyone anymore. We have the absolute worst people making decisions they know are both repugnant and hated, and they’re making these decisions out of hubristic spite. One remembers Chief Herb Bob Spanfeller thinking that the writing staff of Deadspin was expendable, which time and website valuations have proven to be one of the stupidest possible ideas in internet publishing since Facebook’s fake pivot to video. And yet if you asked Herb Spanfeller, he was would probably chuckle and say it was a calculated risk, and the staff mass-quitting proved that the website was untenable.
You could call him a child, but I prefer to think of the Spanfellers of the world as serial killers. They look like factory-reject business creature automatons, with grim practiced smiles and quips, and dead eyeballs that hide stupidity and chemically castrated id. These people fail up because they are craven and value change over substance. They are formless and slithering, a modern “The Thing” whose chief form of terror lies in calling for two all-hands meetings a week. Anyway.
Once you get past the weird kind-of-blurbs-but-not in the kind-of-a-slide-show-but-not format, you scroll to find a section dedicated to…videos. There’s a playlist and everything. Neat! At least there’s another section with…
More videos. There’s another featured video, and next to that another video playlist. To sum up the UI experience, upon clicking on Rotoworld, you see:
Fragments of blurbs you have to scroll horizontally
Features videos with a playlist of videos
Features videos with a playlist of even more videos!
A vertical list of Associated Press baseball articles
This used to be a fantasy baseball website. We had something beautiful. Why is there a second playlist of videos!?! Why would you do that???
Video content sucks. I should know. I made some.
And if you would like me to make more, tell Grey and then you all pay me to do it. Then we can make sure it autoplays on the site, and I’ll implode like a tin can descending to the Titanic wreckage.
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
Stephen A. Smith IMG_4346.jpeg Award – Given to the player blurb that promises the most and delivers the least.
Bob Nightengale Memorial Plaque – instances of updates that don’t update anything
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
Christopher Morel tallies three hits Saturday
Morel entered the first game of the weekend series in London hitless in his last 13 at-bats, but he snapped out of the mini slump in a big way. The 24-year-old has been solid all year for the Cubs, as he now has a .971 OPS with 13 home runs and 30 RBI in 35 games. His strong play has made him a lineup fixture after starting the year with Triple-A Iowa.
Source: Rotowire
13 at bats without a hit is now a mini slump? And now the hyphen is gone in “mini slump?” Thank you for adjusting your elements of style, but going hit-less in 13 at bats is not an aberration worth noting. I’m starting to get the feeling that whomever is writing blurbs for Rotowire is a daily league player, with limited knowledge of sample size and variance.
You know who else has gone hitless in 14 at bats this season? Luis “HAVE YOU NOTICED HE’S HITTING .400” Arraez. That’s right. The best pure hitter in the league at this moment has twice gone hitless in 14 consecutive at bats. And I’m not going to count the amount of times he’s gone 1-for-5 in consecutive games. According to the narrative applied to Morel, that would mean he was struggling and needed to make a change.
“Oh CA, you’re being a clever clogs. Every hitter has their 0-fers.” That’s you yelling outside my living room window. You’re standing in the strangely empty hot tub appended to the back of one of those stretch humvees, and when you’re done yelling, the stretch hummer blasts out the first song from that U2 album that was forced onto everyone’s Apple devices more than a decade ago.
For the record, I’m not being a clever clogs. As I’ve said for the past few weeks with both Morel and Jordan Walker, every player of baseball has games where they don’t record a counting stat. It’s not a slump, it’s not a dry spell, it’s mathematical hardened cement. It is proven, no anomalies to report. If only Rotowire was the only site hyping Morel’s perceived streakiness…
Flowery Diction
Christopher Morel went 3-for-4 with an RBI on Saturday in the Cubs’ win over the Cardinals at London Stadium.
Morel is rapidly taking up the mantle of streakiest hitter in baseball this season. The versatile 24-year-old celebrated his 24th birthday with a three-hit performance at London Stadium as the Cubs rolled to a win over the Cardinals. He’s back up to .283/.333/.638 with 13 homers and 30 RBI across 138 plate appearances this season.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
Sometimes you have to hand it to the Baseball Press Narrative Gods, because when they witness a player do something for any amount of time, by god they’re hunted until the narrative fits.
Bob Nightengale Memorial Plaque
Jordan Hicks worked a scoreless ninth for his third save in three days Monday against the Nationals.
Dominic Smith pulled a potential leadoff homer just foul before grounding out. The Nationals did get a single with two outs, but Lane Thomas struck out afterwards to end it. We’re not sure the Cardinals should be letting Hicks pitch three straight days. We’re also not sure he should be closing over Giovanny Gallegos. Still, the Cardinals aren’t about to go away from anything that’s working in a year in which so little has. They will have to give Hicks the day off on Tuesday, which could lead to an opportunity for Gallegos.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
They’re “not sure” Hicks should be closing over Giovanny Gallegos. The same Giovanny Gallegos whose previous blurb noted his strike outs were down and he’s given up almost as many homers as he did all of last season already. Outside of owning Gallegos in multiple leagues, this blurb species is undefeated in the battle to flummox my delicate sensibilities. It also makes me want to punch a wall.
Let’s see what they said two nights later…
Bob Nightengale Memorial Plaque
Giovanny Gallegos gave up two homers and five runs while getting just two outs in the eighth to take a blown save and a loss Wednesday against the Astros.
The Cardinals keep finding new ways to lose. They were up 7-5 in the eighth tonight before Gallegos surrendered five runs for the first time in his career. The ugly showing took his ERA up to 4.83. He hasn’t been as bad as that suggests, as 12 of the 17 earned runs he’s allowed have come in three appearances. Still, all three of those blowups resulted in losses. Gallegos was already taking a backseat to Jordan Hicks in the closer mix, and that’s sure to continue after this.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
Sweet sweet Not Sure. It tastes absolutely wonderful.
I could stop there, but holy lords this blurb also includes a real barn-stormer of a “He Hasn’t Been That Bad.” When he’s been scored upon in big situations, he’s been absolutely obliterated is not a flex. Pitchers have it much harder than hitters (for the most part) when it comes to manager’s accepting the variance that comes with performing against elite competition. All it takes is a few blown saves and it’s a committee.
Regardless, earned runs are earned runs. That’s not a sentence I should have to type out. I’m currently abstaining from carbs for the forseeable future, so if I somehow eat those Trader Joe’s Macaroni and Cheese deep fried balls, I’m not going to say I’m carb free except for those deep fried balls. I’ll say I had a lapse, and then I’ll feel sorry for myself and backslide into a crime-life of vanilla wafers, grocery store donuts, and pastries with my coffee. And yes, sometimes all three with my coffee. I love Wilford Brimley saying the word “diabetes,” but I don’t want my doctor sniffing around that word in my vicinity. Can’t wait to have my sugar-less home-made whipped cream on top of a pile of blueberries that I hate. Quick list of berries from best to worst:
- Raspberries (they have to be eaten day of purchase)
- Strawberries
- Blackberries (these would be tied for one if the seeds weren’t a curse sent from the dentist to ensure flossing)
- Dave Barry
- Blueberries (mushy when they’re supposed to be “creamy,” it all sounds gross to me)
And you dear readers, are my super food. Have a good weekend and blurb on!
