Come over here. Quietly. In the corner of the room, away from the rest of the party. Ignore JKJ and Coolwhip’s invitation to play Pin the Crown on the Jo Adell. Yes, Keelin just broke the knee of another party-goer so she can breathlessly describe the extent of the injury to a captive and frightened audience, and also finally live out her iTonya fantasy. Don’t mind Bdon, he’s 12 White Claw’s deep and ranting at a potted plant regarding his Bo Bichette vindication tour. Please give no attention to Grey, he is once again Golden Godding on the rooftop, enjoying the pyrrhic victory that is every Oneil Cruz home run. And the rest of the crew? They’re out getting whippets and vapes because they’re one in the same, right?
Sit over here. There we are. Listen, are we alone? Good. I need someone to know that I started writing this article at 9am central time trapped in a room with my 2 year old. I procrastinated, and now everyone is suffering. You. The readers. My child. Truss. Wait. Where’s Truss?
My companion rips off their mask to reveal…
TRUSS NO! As my editor you’re the last person I’d like to admit this to!
Editor’s Note that is not the editor’s note, as it was written by your author who is attempting to create a situation where an editor’s note is placed within an editor’s note: I am actually the first person the writing staff comes to re: procrastination. It’s totally chill as long as you get your content out on time and piping hot. If not, sure, I’ll send you a chain letter text that instructs you to forward this text message to 30 of your closest friends. If you fail to hit that round 30, you’ll find yourself stranded on an unnamed tundra, armed with only your wits and the frozen arm of the last Razzball writer who crossed me. I’m Truss, and I’m here to offer support, and proffer my last resort.
It seems I don’t have anything to worry about. All I need you to do, dear reader, is give me your phone number so I can send this text to you. Do you have 29 close friends? I have a wife whose friendship is borne through duty (pity), and none other. Leave your phone number in the comments, there is no other contingency plan.
And if you’re not going to finish that White Claw, find Bdon. And try and remind Grey that there’s no water in that pool and he is not Billy Crudup. Yet.
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
Max Scherzer Crown of Leaking Insane Rage – blurbs so angry at a player it’s uncomfortable
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
“[Jake] Bauers is having a nice season, despite a 35.9% strikeout rate. He has four home runs and is hitting .244/.326/.476 for a 127 wRC+.
Source: MLBTraderumors
This is plucked out of an article, so while not a blurb, I think it’s worth mentioning. A metric that is cited in almost every player profiled is their strikeout rate, a phenomenon that is not new but is becoming so prevalent that it has started to lose meaning. 30% is the absolute threshold, a concept which generally holds water if you ignore the many outliers who have succeeded in the league despite being in the 30%.
Players like Javier Baez and Adam Dunn spent most of their careers having every single article or blurb reminding fans that their free-swinging ways were both doom-laden and embarrassing. Elly De La Cruz and Parker Meadows are a great combo example, two young players fantasy players were warned about coming into the 2024 season. EDLC has defied prognostication and been successful with a high K rate. Parker Meadows decided to close his eyes and swing so hard he became one of those Looney Tunes baseball players who swings three times at a single pitch with no contact to be found. EDLC has a power profile that made his success more assured, so he has thrived (while beginning to regress to the mean).
All this to say that Jake Bauers has been hitting clean up for the Brewers, which is not what you want for your actual baseball team, let alone your fantasy team that employs other Brewers one hopes are driven in by a classic number four hitter.
Drink not the Actual Baseball Article Kool-Aid, as such an article may convince you to pick up Bauers in a non- OBP league. The dude shouldn’t be sniffing the top half of a line up, unless it’s the Angels, the A’s, the Marlins, or the half dozen teams that would be relegated if this were the Premier League.
Also, if you want to giggle about the infancy of sports content mills circa 2011, read this guffaw-producing slide show from Bleacher Report that insists career strike outs is not a fair metric to criticize players, and then does so for half of the named players. It’s written in a style somewhere between “Bad AI” and “unpaid high school intern.”
Max Scherzer Crown of Leaking Insane Rage
Santiago Espinal went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts versus the Padres on Tuesday.
Remember when Espinal made the AL All-Star team a couple of years ago? It turns out that he’s really not that good. It’s something people knew at the time, but Jose Altuve bailed because he didn’t want to be booed and, thanks to MLB and the players’ vote, the first man in was the guy who had 2 1/2 months of decent stats instead of the actual quality middle infielders. Espinal is batting .185/.240/.246 this season, and he might find himself in the minors if the Reds get Noelvi Marte and Matt McLain back in the second half.
Source: Rotoworld
Lord almighty, this may be an all-timer. Here we have a blurb about Santiago Espinal that should mention his recent performance, how he probably won’t come close to replicating the players he is replacing, with a maybe a NL-only recommendation.
Instead, we get absolute bile. Let’s see, instead of a blurb, we get:
- A criticism of the All Star process
- A definitive statement that Santiago Espinal is “not good.”
- Hating on Jose Altuve
- Somehow noting that Espinal had a decent first half in 2013
- Compares 2013 first half Espinal to unnamed “actual quality middle infielders.”
- A reminder that if Espinal struggles, he’ll be replaced by one player who will be back mid-June, and another who may not make it back this season.
Absolutely deranged rage about a guy who had a 25/5/31/3/.298 line in 237 at bats with a 129 wRC+ in those cited 2022 two and a half months. Now my response:
- Any All Star process is inherently flawed, why even waste your breath
- Seems like he was good during the first half of 2022, what kind of dirt weed are you gravity bonging?
- If I was selected to an event that’s supposed to honor my achievements, but then find out everyone there is probably going to humiliate me, why in the name of heck would I attend? People have bad dreams about this kind of scenario! Unless you’re a masochist and believe your moral indignation should be shared by the general population, I guess.
- “actual quality middle infielders…” Every season some rando comes out of the woodwork and produces the best 2-3 months of their career. That’s what makes following baseball fun!
- Completely unnecessary.
Bob Nightengale Memorial Plaque
Adolis García went 2-for-4 with a two-run homer to lift the Rangers to a 4-0 win over the Guardians.
García knocked a base hit in the fourth inning, then took Nick Sandlin deep for a two-run homer in the sixth to extend the Rangers lead. The 31-year-old slugger has multiple hits in back-to-back games amid a cold stretch. He hadn’t had two hits in a game since April 21. García is up to 10 homers while slashing .259/.306/.494 with 34 RBI and four steals across 183 plate appearances.
Source: Rotoworld
I get that we live in a world of Gambling, led by the Dark King Gamblor, and everyone is looking for an edge, but when did we start hyper-focusing on “amount of multi-hit games” as an indicator of hitter health? On average a baseball player has 4-5 at bats per game. If they get at least two hits, they hit .400 for the day. I thought we agreed that hitting .300 was already super difficult. Why are we doing this?
Adolis is one of the best power hitters in the game. His skill set never necessitated him to hit .300 to be successful in the majors. Dude is going to hit 40/20/.260, can’t we be happy with sheer excellence? The answer to that question is no, and the reasoning is that we’re all greedy little piggies, lounging next to our pools of doubloons, wearing sunglasses that cost as much as one year of college tuition, taking baths wearing our raw denim jorts, buying entire volcanoes and herding all the world’s clown into their bubbling cauldrons because we, the 1%, have finally decided to rid the world of a scourge once thought impossible to stomp out.
And stomp we shall, friends. Until next week!
