It’s almost at the half-way mark of the season, so it’s a good time to take a step back from your team, adjust your glasses, look at what you need – and then find the patsy in your league who still simply prorates stats or believes that the first half of the baseball season dictates how the rest will unfold. We who have lived longer than we would like to admit, yet are grateful for the wisdom and the greater community of humanity time has bestowed, recognize rubes like a man born on the bayou can tell an alligator from a soggy log.
While we have all slowly realized that industry saturation has reached a point of Everyone Know Everything All At Once, people still have lives to live. Jobs to work, meals to cook, beds to make, commutes to drive, babies to make, axes to grind, teeth to snap, mouses to trap, ladders to chute, zoots to suit – you know, that thing we all call living. These are the people who can’t check blurb sites or even box scores every day, but still love FMLB.
They are our friends, and we should treat them as such. They want us to manipulate them. We are Shelob to our rube friends’s Frodo. Do not allow any Sam Gamgee yelling about collusion to get in your way! This is your web, and we’re all just living in it!
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
Mickey Moniak is not in the Angels’ starting lineup for Monday’s series opener against the Rangers.
Even with a right-hander on the mound, the Angels will be rolling with Taylor Ward in center field as he seems to have gained back a stronger share of the platoon for the Halos. Even though Moniak has slumped lately, he’s still slashing a terrific .302/.333/.667 with five homers, 12 RBI and two stolen bases in his first 66 plate appearances with the big league club.
Source: Rotoworld
Here we are again. What is a slump? If one is charitable, perhaps a week is a slump. Let’s check back in our chart:
| Skid | 1-4 games | Law of averages |
| (Bit of a) rut | 5-7 games | Never understood this once I realized where the term “rut” comes from. Wouldn’t that mean you’re excited and things are looking up? WINK |
| Slump | 8-14 games | Standard, comes with color commentators talking about it all the time |
| Drought | 15-20 games | Standalone articles exist in service of explaining your current situation, and social media should be deleted |
| Laying face down in the shower | 20+ | Rotten luck matched passable skills, |
This is more of a skids
How has Moniak actually fared in the past week? Or the past two weeks?
Last 7 days: 1/1/5/.200 in 17 plate appearances (two doubles and a homer in there as well)
Last 14 days: 3/1/5/.240 in 27 plate appearances
Most notable between these samples: Only 10 more plate appearances for Moniak adding that extra week in. Look, I may be four babies stacked on top of each other wearing a large trenchcoat, fedora, sunglasses, and fake mustache, but I don’t think a player can truly slump if they’re riding the pine.
Is 27 at bats low for a two week sample? Mike Trout, usually hitting in the spot behind Moniak in the lineup, had 62 plate appearances. So you’re telling me a player who has essentially been given half the opportunities to produce statistically has struggled with consistency? Oh, and by the by, take a look at this sentence from Trout’s Rotoedgeworld blurb from 6/14:
“Trout has been mired in a mini-slump at the plate over the last few weeks, batting .132 (5-for-38) with one homer across 11 games since June 1”
A mini-slump for Mike Trout = 5 for 38 with one homer since June 1st with a +57 wRC
A slump for Mickey Moniak = 4 for 21 with one homer since June 1st with a +105 wRC
A mini-slump for me, but not for thee.
I don’t expect every blurb writer to pop open Fangraphs or Baseball-Reference for every last god forsaken blurb. That’s asking someone to put their face in a pan of burning oil. However, the sweeping generalizations are bothersome. One doesn’t have to invent a reason that a player isn’t getting playing time. The Angels want Taylor Ward to succeed. It’s as simple as that. If Ward produces, we’ll see a result similar to that experienced by angry conservative homophobes: we see less Mickey.
Flowery Diction
Giants recalled RHP Keaton Winn from Triple-A Sacramento
Winn will be available out of San Francisco’s bullpen for Monday’s series opener against the Cardinals and will be making his major league debut when he gets into a game. The 25-year-old righty has posted a respectable 4.35 ERA, 1.65 WHIP and 51/21 K/BB ratio across 41 1/3 innings (12 appearances, 9 starts) this season for Triple-A Sacramento.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
A “respectable” 4.35, 1.65 WHIP? Pitching is hard, and I am not a Competitor sinewing my arm into impossible meat-rending mechanics, while also throwing a ball with such speed and bend that I should be wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the phrase “PHYSICS PERVERT.” I’m not that guy. I was better suited to sports that celebrated constant obnoxious locomotion like European Football, American Peach Basket, and France’s Jeu De Palme (Game of the Palm). And if you think I made the last one up to get a little randy in the graph, look it up (also wanted the randy though).
The point I’m attempting to evade is that I’m not sure that descriptors serve any purpose in fantasy blurbs. They’re spot on when describing elite performance or trash can pantomiming, but for all other player performance it is an adjective bouillabaisse. I’m still working on my adjective database to see if there is any consistency in diction regarding any of these sites, but I also know that there’s darkness above us, and darkness below us, and that all matter dies, and one’s childhood has the lifespan of a fruitfly, while adulthood spools out, a macro version of the sleepy anxiety that the hours between 2:30 and 4:30pm bring to all those whittling their life down to a nub at a job that hates them. So who knows, maybe I’ll get a life instead!
Flowery Diction
Ryne Nelson tossed 5 2/3 scoreless innings on Saturday in a win over the Tigers.
Nelson was staked to an early lead and wound up cruising through five frames before putting a couple runners on-base in the sixth inning, which led to his exit. Fortunately, reliever Austin Adams came on to put out the fire. He finished with four strikeouts and also issued two walks. He’ll bring a serviceable 4.95 ERA, 1.46 WHIP and 41/24 K/BB ratio across 67 1/3 innings (13 starts) into a home matchup on Thursday against the Phillies.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
Last week the term “serviceable” was used to describe a minor league pitcher’s 5.50 ERA and 1.57 WHIP. Today we have a pitcher in the majors with a 4.95 ERA and 1.46 WHIP. We now have a good starting point for establishing what the term “serviceable” truly means for Rotoedgeworldnbc.
4.95 – 5.50 ERA with a 1.46-1.57 WHIP
This does not factor in possible inflation to the numbers due to the minor league nature of one data set, but maybe bookmark this in your head. If you’re throwing in a pitcher to make a trade work, do not use the term “serviceable.” Look at that statistical spectrum. Wallow in its muck. That is not serviceable in fantasy baseball, and borderline serviceable for a real baseball team.
Stephen A. Smith IMG_4346.jpeg Award
Matthew Boyd was shelled for five runs over five innings on Saturday in a loss to the Diamondbacks.
All of the damage against Boyd came courtesy of the long ball in this one as he served up a two-run shot to Nick Ahmed in the second inning and a three-run moonshot to Lourdes Gurriel Jr. a couple frames later. He notched only three strikeouts and issued two walks. He’ll carry an inflated 5.55 ERA, 1.37 WHIP and 56/24 K/BB ratio across 58 1/3 innings (12 starts) into a road matchup on Thursday against the Twins.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
Wait a minute.
5.55 ERA with a 1.37 WHIP is “inflated.”
We just finished establishing that a “serviceable” ERA can be up to 5.50! Does 0.05 truly separate those two numbers? Does it?
I guess it does. They make the rules. They are our Strunk and White. Our Rob Bobby Manfred (note editor, do not fix this. His name is now Rob Bobby Manfred until Nevada crushes John Fisher’s attempt to move the A’s). Our protestors at Dylan’s electric Newport set. Our guy who insisted that my introduction to hip hop (Dr. Octagon) canceled any attempt to casually state that I enjoyed hip hop, as if that was a sentence anyone but an undercover cop would speak out loud. Our people who calibrate the timing for traffic lights all over the world. They make the rules.
5.55 ERA? Inflated. 5.50 ERA? Serviceable.
Got it? Good.
Bob Nightengale Memorial Plaque
Royce Lewis goes 4-for-4 in losing cause
Lewis was struggling to make contact and get the ball in the air when he did make contact in his first week the Twins, but for one day, at least, he had it all working. He wound up with more hits tonight than the rest of the Twins combined, and he’s hitting .270/.270/.459 in nine games since coming off the IL.
Source: Rotoedgesportsworld.com
This blurb has disappeared from Lewis’s Rotoworld page, probably because Royce literally homered twice in his first week back with the Twins. If he had struggled to get the ball in the air, that would not have been the case.
Double Take
Jack Suwinski went 2-for-2 with two solo homers and two walks in an 11-3 loss to the Cubs on Tuesday.
He collected two hits, two homers, two runs scored, and walked twice on a Tuesday. You have to love symmetry. Suwinski has been good as a platoon power bat for the Pirates this season, and he raised his average to .253 with the two-hit night.
Suwinski has thus far had a season equal to that of Vlad Jr, Juan Soto, Austin Riley, Francisco Lindor, Alex Bregman, Trea Turner, Xander Bogaerts, Kyle Schwarber, Teoscar Hernandez, Jazz Chisholm, Manny Machado, Andres Gimenez, Bryce Harper I mean for blooming heck is this blurb the understatement of the season and this website is now self-aware and trolling me. Or providing content. Either or. Great album, to be honest.
Have fun, everyone, school’s out, and now I’m juggling a pre-middle schooler and a one-year-old. Outside of this website, my writing has only started to recover. Maybe Grey will get me a job writing for whatever hot piece of entertainment he is currently striking from, like “Young Malcolm,” a prequel to “Malcolm in the Middle” where Malcolm is just an egg in his mother, only you get to experience the entire show from the egg’s point of view, much like “The Butterfly and the Diving Bell” except it takes place in the ovaries. Muffled voices, utter darkness, sounds of a human’s organs shifting internally. It’s a Nielsen darling!
Till next week, blurb your enthusiasm!
