lol: Angels third baseman, Anthony Rendon, goes on the record, opining that the baseball season is too long and that it should be shortened
We got to shorten the season, man,” Rendon said. “There’s too many dang games–162 games in 185 days or whatever it is. Man. No. We gotta shorten this bad boy up. Let’s go.
Here’s why this quote from this particular player is amusing for all the wrong reasons: Anthony Rendon hasn’t played even 60 games a season, much less close to 162 games, in four straight years. Granted, 2020 was the COVID-shortened season, but between 2021-2023, he’s played in just a diminutive 30% of games that the Angels have had.
Furthermore, he’s halfway through a contract that’s paying him $245M over seven years and it’s safe to say that he’s basically already on the hall of fame of worst free agent contracts in baseball history. To say that he’s been a bust is an understatement, the guy has been ducking his job as if his job were to avoid playing in baseball games by any means necessary. He’s been mysteriously injured for the last four years with no real understanding to what’s been ailing him, and he even got himself suspended for a week, when he got involved with a heckler in Oakland.
As many internet comedians have pointed out, he shortens his own season anyway, so it seems redundant that he’d put himself in the line of fire like this in the first place. But I think my favorite observation was one that I had myself, that basically nobody seems to hate the game that has made him a gozillionaire, more than Anthony Rendon:
Love something as much as Anthony Rendon hates baseball
The man is truly unbelievable. I feel for the Angels, because between losing Ohtani, they’re stuck with an albatross like Rendon, who clearly has phoned in his career at this point, and will stick around nursing injuries and pretending like he can’t play for the remainder of his deal, and after banking $245M bones, I don’t even think he’s going to bother doing the thing where he starts trying to play hard again within the last two years of his deal, so that he could possibly try to position himself to getting another big contract. He’ll be 35 and 36 in the final years of his contract, and considering he already hates playing baseball right now, there’s absolutely no way he’s going to try and stick with a job he hates so much in 2-3 years.