lol, suck it LA

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TL;DR: Atlanta Braves pitcher Chris Sale pitches complete game shutout to finish sweep of the Dodgers, winning 1-0

These days it’s not often where a baseball game is so good it inspires me to want to write about it, but here we are.

Despite being the worst baseball fan in the world, I know I still care enough about the Braves to where I try not to be on too much social media during games, because I don’t want to be spoiled by the scores of any games in progress.  Long gone are the days where the fate of my mood depends on the wins and losses of the team, but it still brings me ten seconds of disappointment whenever they lose, especially to teams that they probably shouldn’t be losing to, especially when it’s a period of struggle and the offense is not producing, costing Chris Sale a near countless amount of wins despite his prolonged pitching excellence.

I knew enough to know that this current stretch of games that they were in was going to be the gauntlet that would make or break the season, seeing as how their opponents would the first-place Brewers and the first-place Dodgers, with a make-up game also in there against the White Sox who were also in first place at the time of their game. 

Naturally, the Braves would start their last road trip, getting swept by the underwhelming Twins, before going into the stretch of 7 games against first place squads, where they somehow won an ugly affair against the White Sox, before dropping two to the Brewers, salvaging a win in neutral ground Williamsport for the Little League Classic, and it was back home for three straight against the defending champion Dodgers.

Obviously, not much needs to be said about the importance of competing against the big bad evil spending Dodgers, and considering how much the Braves had squandered their division lead, there was a mathematical chance that the Braves could have completely lost the lead outright with a poor performance against Los Angeles.

But because baseball is a mysterious game, not only did the Braves go toe-to-toe with the Dodgers, they fucking swept them, taking all three games, in competitive fashion.  Game 1 was led by the oft-criticized and polarizing Bryce Elder, who turned in his 15th quality start of the season, keeping the Dodgers mostly neutralized for six innings, en route to winning the series opener.

Game 2 was also tighter than a Korean person’s wallet, as the game went into the 9th inning deadlocked at 5-5.  And of all the guys in the world to hit a walk-off winner, it would be the much maligned Kim Ha-Seong, who smacked the critical base hit that would win the game for the Braves, and I’d like to take credit for this happening, because I just recently wrote about his season’s woes, wrote him off as someone who’s MLB career is pretty much over, and the Braves would have been better off eating his salary and cutting him loose in order to preserve his roster spot.

Yeah, this guy just had to be the one to hit a game winner against the big bad Dodgers, that effectively took the series, and put the most hated team in the game on the brink of getting swept.

And then Chris Sale in game 3, pitches an ultimate statement game, going all nine innings in an era where people give standing ovations for starters who can muddle through five.  But Sale goes truly old school, notching the progressively harder to get and rarer CGSHO stat with his truly marvelous 11 strikeout performance, completely dominating the Dodgers.

Sale had been on somewhat of a streak of terrible luck, where he’d been pitching lights out baseball over his last few starts, but because the offense has continuously gone completely inept during those starts, he’s still been tagged with losses on his record.  And as incredible and boner-popping his performance was tonight, the fact of the matter still remains one-run of support is still pitiful, and a guy like Sale absolutely deserves better than the support he’s been getting.

But back to the game, it really was a marvel of a game, because the game effectively ended in the first inning.  After Sale got out of the first with no damage, Drake Baldwin swings at the very first pitch thrown by Yoshinobu Yamamoto, crushes a home run that makes the game 1-0, and then it was pretty much nothing but pitching for the whole rest of the night.

I love 1-0 games like this, because the opponent has all night long thinking, ok all we need is one and it’s a brand new game, but then as the innings progressively advance, there’s less and less time, and suddenly that 1-0 score ends up becoming an mountain that can no longer be surmounted.  But the fact that Baldwin homered on the very first pitch of the game, off of a guy as talented as Yamamoto, this is the shit that I absolutely live for.

When the dust settled, the Braves have completed arguably their most challenging stretch of the season, winning 5/7 games against first-place squads.  It figures that stretching the parameters back further, things look worse, because for whatever reason, the Braves get swept by the fucking Twins, and lose 2/3 to the Diamondbacks, but that’s baseball in a nutshell, and why the games are still played.  The division lead remains intact, and with seven remaining against the chasing Phillies, it’s going to be an interesting race to October.

Regardless, this night stands out, and I can safely say that this is probably going to be the regular season game of the year for Braves Country.  Chris Sale throwing a complete game shutout against the hated Dodgers, statistical anomaly of first pitch homer being the only scoring of the game, and even Kim Ha-Seong got another hit tonight.  As the old saying goes, how can you not be romantic about baseball?

I don’t know why the term ‘human kibble’ triggers me so much

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The skinny: Man of mass efficiency meal preps in large quantity, Vice opines whether ‘human kibble’ is viable or is just another internet trend

I’m having a hard time gathering my thoughts and trying to articulate my words, but the bottom line is that I’m triggered by the phrase ‘human kibble’ and it bothers me enough to where it is manifesting in this brog post.

So what we have here is a guy who clearly values efficiency, not wasting a lot of time thinking about what to eat, and understanding the benefits to prepping food en masse.  What he basically makes is a gargantuan amount of fried rice, loaded with tons of veggies, tofu, chicken, rice and beans, and presumably, this is all he ever eats for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and has done so for several years now.

From the looks of the guy, whom based on his names is more than likely Korean, he’s in great shape, doesn’t look at all overweight, and is more than likely tremendously healthier than the troglodytes of the internet judging his culinary decision making who are mostly eating takeout sludge and closer to My 600 Lb. Life The 6,000 Lb. Diaries participants than they are to him. 

As mortifying as the thought of eating the same thing over and over again might seem to many people, it clearly works as far as this guy is concerned.  You’re not dieting for the taste… 

Frankly, I feel a bit of a kindred spirit in this guy, because I too also have the innate ability to eat the same thing over and over again without really getting tired of it.  A long time ago, I used to eat Willy’s pretty much 4-5 times a week for lunch.  Currently, I basically eat the same lunch every day.  Honestly, if I were still single and without kids and didn’t have to ever worry about anyone else, I’d probably have gone the same route as this guy, and been as happy as a clam in doing it.  

Add another idea to embark on if I were ever to discover a time machine and could go back in time to get ahead of the curve.

But where my ire begins is towards the people who have coined it as ‘human kibble,’ because I know that it’s typical dorks on the internet trying to get themselves over as inventors of clever quips, but at least to me, it comes off as demeaning, and even if it’s not its intent, slightly kind of racist.

Kibble is what was designed to the default food for all sorts of animals, and by denigrating this dude’s fried rice by calling it kibble is indirectly equating him to as being an animal.  Especially since the contents of his mass produced stir fry is all clean, fresh food, and again, probably way healthier than the people cracking jokes are eating, there’s something ironic about equating what he’s making and eating to something that is so default, for aniamls.

It doesn’t help that the man in question is Asian, seemingly Korean that doesn’t deter the racist narrative, because obviously there’s a low-hanging fruit of Koreans who have been known to eat dogs historically, and comparing what an Asian man eats to what dogs eat, dregs up this sour negative connotation that feels like it’s stemming from racism, regardless of how innocuous the origins of human kibble may have originated from.

Maybe this says more about me than it does about the masses, but the whole idea of people labeling mass-produced meal prep as ‘kibble’ rubs me the wrong way, and like I said, I’m having a hard time articulating everything the way I want to.  I don’t recall when there was a dude way back who invented a meal replacement shake and called it ‘Soylent,’ people at all denigrating it in any way, and instead applauding the idea and the massive savings in time they could enjoy by replacing all their meals with Soylent.

Mass-batch making fried rice is basically the same concept, except the end result is a hearty bowl of fried rice and not a viscous liquid.  The only differences are the skin color and nationalities of the creators.  It is nowhere near being the equivalent of kibble for humans, and the people who tried to get this to become the thing it already is, can all go fuck themselves.

Y’all thought it was just a joke

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Fox5ATL: man found stabbed at 725 Ponce de Leon Avenue, later died from injuries; suspect in custody

For those unaware, 725 Ponce de Leon Avenue in Midtown Atlanta is a Kroger grocery store located right off of the famed Atlanta Beltline, which I like to call the Jesus Sidewalk because it’s basically a gigantic fucking sidewalk that runs a big ass circle within the city limits of Metro Atlanta, unintentionally creating another hoop of segregation for snobs to flex just how Atlanta they are based on where they live in proximity or within it.

However, it’s not just any Kroger grocery store, but it’s the address of what was once infamously known as Murder Kroger, whereas the name sake implies, several deaths had occurred.  As the Beltline project grew, everyone knew that the OG Murder Kroger was going to get torn down and redeveloped, but the popular joke was that the building could be torn down and massive image rehabilitation could be undertaken, but the general fact that this address would forever be known as Murder Kroger was never going to change.

Longtime Atlantans would always know 725 Ponce as Murder Kroger, and no amount of Jesus sidewalk adjacency or fancy mixed-use buildings being erected on that spot was ever going to change that.

A few months ago, I made a tongue-in-cheek observation after multiple incidents tied to Kroger stores in the Metro Atlanta area where death has unfortunately occurred, that the spirit of Murder Kroger was a lot like the concept of The Grudge, where even leaving the accursed house in Japan didn’t save victims from being cursed by it, and that it was capable of traveling.  725 Ponce might have been rechristened and redeveloped, but the grudge of Murder Kroger was never going to go anywhere, and it had apparently traveled to other Kroger locations in the area, spreading its curse of death towards Decatur and east.

But lest the Grim Reaper of Atlanta forget where their base of operations lie, it didn’t take long before yet another auspicious incident happened at 725 Ponce, where a serial criminal with allegedly over 30 arrests, stabbed a guy on the Jesus Sidwalk, close enough to Murder Kroger to where the infamous 725 Ponce address was what was reported as the scene of the crime.

How a man with as many arrests on his record was somehow allowed to be on the streets in the first place is beyond me, but from what I could tell, he was white and I guess that says everything we already need to know.  But he still took it upon himself to play Judge Judy and executioner and took a life, and the question really is, did the location of the incident make this happen, or was the haunts of past visit to Murder Kroger compelling him to drop another human being?

And seeing as how the victim unfortunately succumbed to their wounds, all joking aside, it’s safe to say that Murder Kroger has claimed yet another life.  Like I said, you can tear the building down, build it back up as something fancy and modern, slather some shiny new paint on it, and attach it to the Jesus Sidewalk.  But Murder Kroger is never going to go away, and nothing short of a Shinto exorcism is probably going to have a snowflake’s chance in hell at getting rid of this curse.

When there’s an app for the commonplace

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

KRON4: SF-based dating site poorly hiding their objective of pairing white guys with Asian females in market where abnormally high WMAF pairings already exist draws massive online criticism

There’s a metaphor I like to use often, about a scenario where a hungry lion leaps into a herd of gazelle, but they’re so blinded by hunger that they can’t seem to focus on a single target, run around frenzied, and eventually all the gazelle get away.

That’s how I feel when I read this article, and I can’t help but wonder if the state of news these days aren’t really so much reports of actual topics as much as they’re reporting on the reception of actual topics.  Like I kind of get it, if I saw an article that was all like ‘there is a new dating app in SF that specializes in hooking white dudes up with Asian gold diggers women’ I’d just be kind of like lol eww fuckin white guys, but give me an article with the hook of ‘internet tears into new dating app in SF that specializes in hooking white dudes up with Asian women’ and now I’m kind of like rage?  What kind of rage?  And then I’m clicking the article and here we are.

But yeah, there’s so much to digest with a story like this that I can’t seem to focus and figure out where to start writing about first, because there’s just so many damn angles to approach this from.

Like how San Francisco is already a place where because there are so many nerdy white dude tech millionaire/billionaires in the area, there’s already a noticeably disproportionate amount of Asian women who land there pretending they’re not digging for gold, and the pairing of WMAFs organically happens, solely based on just fuckin’ nature.

Or how SF is such a smarmy arrogant place so reliant on tech, that they need to make apps and dating services and sites in order for people to function in daily life.  Like, white guys wanting Asian women in a city like SF should be as accessible as walking out the door and breathing fresh air, but these dorks needing apps to curate and do some of the lifting for them seems to be about as the most SF thing in the world.

Or just how gross white guys are, that they continue to fetishize Asian women as much as ever, to the point where fucking apps and services are developed in order for them to expedite their searches, instead of them waiting until they’re in their 50s and relocating to Thailand or the Philippines like legions of white guys before them.

Oh, and Asian women aren’t without criticism either, they’re not helping break the stereotype of Asian gold diggers who are looking for rich white wimps/simps/nerds to seduce and claim for their assets, and then entrap them either.  They’re as palpable to the problem as the white guys they’re seeking.

But like I said, so many angles, so difficult to approach.  San Francisco seems like such a weird place, and I frankly still have to say it’s up there on my top cities in America that I wasn’t impressed with and didn’t care much for.

Maybe they should focus on making an app to help rehabilitate the image of their shitty town, that focuses on identifying savvy PR people to try and take on such a lofty task.

Batman: Caped Crusader – tf did Alfred do to deserve all this disrespect?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When it comes to mediums outside of comic books, it’s no secret that DC Comics has struggled bringing to life most of their property, regardless of how iconic, how much potential and how much of a layup it really should seem.  Fortunately, James Gunn and John Cena seem to be on what I think is a positive direction with a potentially entertaining DC Cinematic Universe akin to what Marvel has accomplished, and I love the idea that Peacemaker, that John fucking Cena seems to be the lynch pin that could be the basis for it all, much like Robert Downey, Jr. did as Iron Man for the MCU.

Animation, has clearly been the strong suit for DC, and they’ve done a pretty good job of bringing stories to life in animated form throughout the years.  The whole saga starting with the Flashpoint Paradox was pretty enjoyable, and of course, a lifelong top-10 possibly top-5 show for me was and always will be, Batman the Animated Series.

It seems kind of surprising that it took nearly two decades for a proper spiritual successor to Batman TAS to come out, but then again, TAS holds up so well that it really didn’t need any successor, but all the same, Batman: Caped Crusader on Amazon Prime has been doing an adequate job of spiritually succeeding TAS, as far as I’m concerned.  It doesn’t hurt that Bruce Timm is back in the driver’s seat, along with JJ Abrams, one of the lord of the nerds who has a knack for breathing love into projects that many might think would be too lofty of endeavors.

I don’t know if I would go so far as to say that it’s remotely close to bettering TAS, but it has still been a refreshing watch, and at the time I’m writing this, I’m over halfway through S2, but felt a compulsion to write about it now and often times I have to strike when the iron is hot, but it’s been good.  I don’t think S2 has been as good as the first season was, but I imagine it will conclude with a massive upshot, considering what the show has obviously been doing throughout the season.

But it has done a good job of partially recapturing the magic of TAS, no doubt due to the completely lifted character design and complete auditory homage to the original, but they gain a little distance by going a little further back in the Batman timeline, as well as taking a much more adult theme, clearly intending this show to be nowhere near the after-school FOX Kids lineup or anything like it.

Batman is undoubtedly nerfed, seeing as how he’s earlier in his crime-fighting career, and definitely takes his share of getting damaged, but most of the differences are very heavy handed throughout this universe, primarily with the mass re-imagination of just about everyone from the series, in various ways.

Jim and Barbara Gordon are now black, Harleen Quinzel appears to be possibly Asian in appearance, Selina Kyle is now raven-haired, the Riddler has been made to be more of a bruising gunman, and the Mad Hatter is now a woman.  Renee Montoya is getting a ton more screen time now, but she’s also been made to be kind of fridge build Latina.  Harley’s also been thicc’ened up, deviating from her lithe petite pixie stature of TAS.

I can imagine that there’s a lot of discriminative takes on the massive wave of changes in CC from those who were passionate about TAS, or just traditional source material.  I notice all the differences, but when the day is over, I really couldn’t care about a lot of the characteristic swaps made throughout the cast, except for one: Alfred Pennyworth.

For some reason, Caped Crusader has decided to make Alfred fat, and look more like “Mean Gene” Okerlund than most traditional variations of Alfred, who is usually of a medium-to-lean, unsuspecting build, which is perfect considering the history of the character was that he was basically an MI5 espionage spy in his younger, active days.

Why CC decided to make him fat is completely beyond me, and one of the few things about the show that I really can’t stand by, and get triggered every time I see him. 

To make matters worse, the show has made the younger Bruce Wayne more of an asshole, pretending way too hard to be a pretentious womanizing socialite billionaire playboy when he’s in his alter ego, but the behavior doesn’t seem to end when he’s back under the mask.  Primarily the fact that he only refers to Alfred as “Pennyworth” like he were the senior jock quarterback of the school while Alfred were some sniveling maggot freshman, lucky enough to be in the stratosphere of Bruce Wayne.

The severe disrespect for Alfred Pennyworth throughout the series is the only true serious beef I have with Caped Crusader.  It’s otherwise a very good show, and an adequate successor to TAS, but it annoys the piss out of me whenever Alfred is disrespected so flagrantly.  Seeing as how I haven’t finished S2 yet, I hope this course corrects at some point, and we get back to an Alfred getting a modicum of the respect that he is deserving of.

Vaya con dios, [redacted location]

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Not that I’m a person of any importance in the world, but all the same, I’m generally intentionally vague when it comes to giving out too many specific details of my life.  I’m sure the internet is ripe with all sorts of information about me, my family, and people I associate with if anyone were so inclined to want to dig, but all the same I prefer to not give too much intel away willy-nilly.

That being said, my family just recently sold my dad’s place up in Virginia, which was a property that I lived in for about seven years, which makes me double take writing that out that I lived there for so short, in the grand spectrum of my life.  But I lived in that town, that county, for 13, which again seems short when I write that out, but I guess what I’m trying to say is that I spent my formative years up in Virginia, so for better or worse, the place will always hold somewhat of importance to me, regardless of how much I actually don’t really like it up there anymore, save for the fact that much of my family still resides there.

My sister made me realize however, that with my dad’s place sold, my family now no longer owns any property up there, as my mom’s gone the route of mercifully ditching homeownership, and opting to live out her remaining years renting in a home of convenience, which suits my sister and I fine, knowing she’ll be closer to family and living in a place that will take care of things for her instead of relying on her children to make a shit ton of calls and handle everything for her instead.

But the bottom line is that as far as one of our primary childhood towns are concerned, we now no longer have any reason at all to go there ever again.  I didn’t think of it, but it is still a tiny bit jarring to realize that, mostly from the standpoint that neither of us will really have a free place to stay whenever we visit in the future anymore, since my mom’s apartment is adequate for two people, tops, much less my entire family or my sister’s.  Maybe some cousins can harbor us, but the reality is that hotels may need to be leveraged in future visits.

Back to the point though, my sister was right, there’s absolutely no reason for us to ever really visit [redacted] again.  None of my family lives there anymore, my closest friends have all moved away from there, and short of my high school, and any former addresses that would show up if I were ever to need federal clearance again, there’s basically nothing left that ties me to [redacted] anymore.

As nostalgic as I may seem like I’m coming off, when the day is over, it doesn’t really matter much at all.  It’s just the tiniest of swan songs for a place that I haven’t lived in for more than half my life now, and melancholy me just wanting to get some words out about the topic before the recency bias of current events evaporates into the aether.  [Redacted] isn’t even my true hometown, just the place where I probably did the most growing up, and truth be it, I haven’t even really liked the last few times I’ve been up there.  The sprawl has gotten out of control, the infrastructure of the whole area has failed to keep up with the demand of population growth, and I often found myself growing frustrated with the lack of shit, terrible traffic, and the fact that it was one gigantic endless vanilla suburb.

And I hit a fucking deer, in a place where deer probably wouldn’t have been expected, but because of the sprawl and destrucity of nearby nature, the poor deer have little elsewhere to go, so now that I think about it [redacted] can go fuck itself, and good riddance to the place.

Without really even realizing it, I kind of had my swan song up there, the last time I was there, cleaning out all of my dad’s shit.  I drove around, ran around the old lake I used to run on, drove around some more, ate at a newer restaurant that had come into existence, visited my old 7-Eleven.  [Redacted] has changed tremendously from when I used to live there, and will continue to change and fill in all available space long after any traces of my family and I are gone, leaving nothing but memories.

Man, that wasn’t the direction I thought this post would go in when I thought about writing about it, but seems legit enough for me.  With my friends all gone, my family ties now being completely severed, there really is nothing left for me there except nostalgia.

Good riddance, [redacted], who knows when I’ll ever step foot there again.  I’m not much into the idea of high school reunions, and I have enough family and friends in the surrounding area to occupy me in the event I’m ever up adjacent to the area, and maybe when I’m much older and somehow more nostalgic, I’ll take my kids when they’re also older, to maybe take a walk or something around the old lake.

But of course, the Barves

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

BaseballWRLD: Braves’ shortstop Kim Ha-Seong is statistically basically having the worst baseball season in history

I really hate that it’s a Korean player, on the Atlanta Braves, that is having this unfortunate distinction, but the proof is in the pudding and the numbers don’t lie.  I know that all over the internet, there are couch statisticians and homers who are going to cry that ~85 plate appearances is too small a sample to make this kind of judgment, but those individuals probably aren’t really seeing the bigger picture, nor have they actually watched any Braves games in which Kim has actually been in this season.

Man has been the very definition of a free agent flop, and one more thing that sucks about this whole thing is that this is the kind of free agent signing example that will further make the Atlanta Braves corporation even more gun-shy and risk-averse skittish about free agent signings in the future, than they already are.  One-year pacts are pretty low-risk as they come, albeit at high price tags, but considering the return on investment Kim has provided, or didn’t, the $20M he is making in the 2026 season has been particularly brutal.

Like with most Korean players in MLB, I supported Kim and have been such, even when he signed with San Diego and was playing out there.  I was proud of the guy when he was putting up 5+ bWAR seasons for the Padres, with him being so good in 2023 he was even notching some low-end MVP votes and a Gold Glove. 

Injuries derailed his time in San Diego, and he was shipped off to Tampa Bay where he couldn’t ever get back on track, and I was really excited when the Rays made him available and the Braves being the Braves did the Braves-iest thing and managed to buy low on him, picking him up at the waiver-deadline last year, which is the second trade deadline, the one nobody ever talks about, because that’s the one that’s like C-rated CDOs and there’s rarely any notable talent ever exchanged.

And that initial gamble paid off, and fed into my hypothesis of how much playing environment matters, with Kim’s numbers improving noticeably going from Tampa to Atlanta.  It’s like going from sleepy Tampa with white trash and no Korean community to Atlanta, that sure, still has its share of white trash, but has a robust Korean community mattered, and across the board his counting stats all improved in roughly the same amount of plate appearances.

The union proved to be mutually beneficial enough to where the Braves actually spent money and spent money on a Scott Boras client, two things that the organization normally hasn’t done a lot of historically, but it was a good opportunity for the Braves to get a reliable shortstop, and a good opportunity for Kim to possibly flex a season of being healthy and playing in a good environment, which he could then hope to parlay into a larger, more lucrative deal, likely away from Atlanta afterward.

But then he just had to go to Korea in the offseason, where the winters can be brutal, he slipped on some ice and fell and fucked up his hand, and before even reporting to Spring Training, the Kim deal had already begun to go tits up.  He missed all of Spring Training, and it’s evident that the lack of preparation put him in a miserable place to play catchup with, and when he returned to the Major League squad, he was joining the team that was contending and facing real pressure, and Kim just couldn’t get going.  He was a black hole in the lineup, and it went from it’s too early to tell to okay, maybe he does suck now.

A setback that put him on the disabled list was kind of a convenient excuse to remove him from the roster and start getting some production from other players, and fans began to bemoan his inevitable return, because the Braves being the Braves always demand ROI, and they would undoubtedly be determined to recoup anything at all from the $20M they were paying him.

He hit well in his rehab assignment, which the team was milking to the absolute maximum to keep him out of the Majors, but when push came to shove and they were forced to bring him back up, they did the predictable thing and brought him back up, while releasing one of the guys who was filling in for him, and doing it better than he was.

But the fact that Kim can’t hit Major League pitching goes to show that this is probably where he realistically is now, as a player.  Capable of doing well against Triple-A talent, but unable to be competent in the Majors.  As much as I support Kim personally, the reality is that his MLB career is more than likely done after this season, and he’ll probably go back to Korea to where he can hopefully salvage a lucrative career out in the KBO.

Regardless, we’re back to square one, where Kim is still sucking, and sucking to the magnitude of being on track to having the literal worst offensive season in MLB history, no hyperbole.  bWAR is kind of a catch-all statistic, loosely used to measure player worth, and Kim is currently sitting on -1.0 bWAR, which doesn’t sound like that much considering there are guys with worse, but it’s the fact that he’s gotten there in much shorter time that shows just how bad and detrimental he has been. 

Google estimates the cost of one bWAR in 2026 is roughly $11M, so the fact that Kim is sitting on -1.0 bWAR, and is getting paid $20M to get there, his financial impact to the organization is -$31M dollars.  That’s nearly two not-retired Prince Fielder seasons, but the difference is that Fielder wasn’t in the dugout adversely affecting a batting lineup, or on the field being fat, immobile and hurting the team defensively.

Most anyone with a brain knows that at some point, the roster spot is more valuable than a bad asset, and the smart play would have been cut Kim, eat the $20M, and to have kept Jorge Mateo, who at the time I’m writing this, had contributed +0.7 bWAR to the Braves before he was ungratefully released.  But like I said, the Braves are so corporate and so predictable, that everyone unfortunately knew that they were going to keep Kim and demand to get any modicum of ROI.

Again, I hate that this is happening to Kim, because this will undoubtedly make the baseball public continue to question Korean baseball players while still fetishizing Japanese ones, and I hate that it’s happening to the Braves. This will further cloud their willingness to use the free agent market, and I’m not going to hold my breath that I’ll ever see a day where there’s a standout Korean player on the Braves.

When the inevitable day comes where the Braves are bounced from the playoffs, many are going to be pointing their fingers at Kim, who sure, isn’t undeserving of it, but the team is also culpable for keeping him, when more optimally strategic options were available the whole time, due to their obsession with ROI and getting their money’s worth clouding optimal strategy.  That part, wouldn’t be on Kim.