Tag: baseball

SPORTS SPORTS SPORTS

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As much of a sports fan as I am, it’s not often a topic that I really feel that compelled to write about that often these days.  I’m pretty far removed from following anything beyond a casual level, so it really take some pretty interesting things to pique my interest for me to want to write about it.

However, in the span of a weekend, three things happened and I was just kind of like oh shit, that’s something that’s interesting.  And of course they all happened within basically the same weekend, and I was out of town, so it’s not like they were anything I could take note of and/or write about right away, as if I would’ve had any free time to begin with.  But regardless, I figured I’d just make one big dick swinging sports post and knock all three birds with a single stone.

Mavs 123, Suns 90 – keep in mind that this was a game 7 of an NBA Playoff game.  I feel like I make a post about this topic every year, because it seems like every single year there’s at least one tragically embarrassing blowout game in the playoffs, which often makes me beg the question that how are NBA playoff-caliber teams getting eviscerated so badly?

To my understanding, the Mavs were up by over 40 points at one point in the game, and all I could really think that this is mostly the same Phoenix Suns team that went to the finals last year, but here they are getting trounced in the semis, in a game 7 no less, the epitome of the clutch, pivotal, where you make your money pressure cooker game. 

But instead of being a nail-biter, double overtime thriller where two talented teams refuse to budge, we have this embarrassing display of defeatism and the embodiment of giving up, which is a fair metaphor for today’s NBA itself, and the Mavs move on, while the perpetually overrated Suns begin the golf season at around the time they’re used to.

Throwing a no-hitter but still losing – this year’s Cincinnati Reds is an interesting squad.  The franchise commenced to have a fire sale and trade off just about everyone on the squad who would make over the league minimum save for first baseman Joey Votto (who respectfully became an American citizen but probably regrets it if his occupation requires him to stay on the Cincinnati Reds), and they’ve been absolutely dreadful throughout the first month of the year.

I think at one point there were like 4-17, and all I could think about was how two of those paltry four wins, came against the Braves, who aren’t exactly doing a particularly good job of defending their World Series championship in life after Freddie which I’m not still salty about not.

But then they suffer one of the harshest ways to lose a game, in which their starting pitcher literally throws a no-hitter, and they still somehow manage to lose the game.  It’s funny because I remembered the last time this happened, which was a game between the Dodgers and Angels, where the Angels no-hit the Dodgers but still lost the game.  It’s a rare occurrence and the very embodiment of failure, and I don’t think there’s going to be a more futile moment in the season for the Reds than this particular game.

Albert Pujols… pitching – Speaking of the Angels, when they released Albert Pujols in 2021, to me it was a foregone conclusion that he was headed back to the Cardinals.  Sure, it didn’t happen as immediately as I figured it would, but with the DH becoming the norm in 2022, there was absolutely no reason why the Cardinals and Pujols couldn’t reunite for the sad but melancholy but feel-good story of legend returning to where it started to finish out the career, but in the case of Pujols, not on a one-day contract, but as an actual active player.

But as is the case with lots of guys at the twilights of their careers, Pujols is definitely in it to have fun above all else.  And what better way to unwind and have some fun in a game where the Cardinals were already up by nearly 20 runs, than to take the mound himself and let everyone enjoy the fun of position player pitching?

And of course, it was as entertaining as the joy of position player pitching typically is.  Pujols was all smiles and laughter, and even the San Francisco Giants became tolerable as they took enjoyment of the situation.  The funny thing is that if this were 10-14 years earlier, I would’ve expected Pujols to pitch like Pedro because why wouldn’t the greatest player of a generation know how to pitch as well?  But instead, we have old Pujols, lobbing 55 mph lollipops, and just trying to get hitters to get themselves out; and naturally he gives up four runs in the process, but at this point who really cares?

The once demi-god was clearly having a great time, humbly getting knocked around, and the Cardinals still won the game, so no skin off anyone’s backs there.  And for a single half-inning, I think everyone could agree that baseball was never more fun than watching Albert Pujols pitching.

In praise of Miguel Cabrera’s quietly good career

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Hearing about Miguel Cabrera’s closing in on 3,000 hits, my mind at first was a little surprised that he was at that stage of his career, seeing as how I still feel like it was yesterday that this spry thin third baseman for the then-Florida Marlins was showing off impressive power for his age.  But when I actually put more than five minutes of thought behind it, I realize that it’s really of no surprise at all that he’s at this stage of his career, because basically there’s never been any season where Miguel Cabrera has played where he has been an ineffective hitter.

Even way back, I always had pegged Miggy as a guy that would probably be an MVP-caliber guy, seeing as how he broke into the majors at like 20 years old.  But the thing is, he showed up at a time where guys like Albert Pujols and Alex Rodriguez were the marquee hitters of MLB, and sluggers like Barry Bonds, Vladimir Guerrero and Frank Thomas were still around.  It was easy for a guy like Miguel Cabrera to kind of get lost in the shuffle.

But nearly 20 years later, most of those guys are gone, be it through retirement, collusion, age, degradation of skills or any combination of the above.  Albert Pujols is the only guy still active, and he’s at the twilight of his career where he’s doing his farewell tour for the team that brought him into the world, after a pretty unimpressive contract with the Angels.

And Miguel Cabrera is still around; although age is catching up to him, taking some power away, he’s still hitting the ball for a decent average in a period of the game where batting averages are bordering on historically bad.  Honestly, my knee-jerk thoughts were wondering on where Cabrera stood on possibly being the greatest of all-time, or just the best player for a generation, but clearly I’ve been not paying enough attention to the numbers or the game in general, and upon a closer examination, the last few years haven’t been as kind to him as I thought they might have been.

All the same, I felt like writing some words in appreciation of Miguel Cabrera.  Father Time might have grabbed him by the scruff five years ago, but up to that point, the guy was probably on track to be as good as Hank Aaron from a consistently great standpoint.  And I think it’s still safe to put Miggy on the pedestal of possibly being the greatest player of his generation, because when you look at his personal accomplishments throughout his career, there’s only some really snug and exclusive company in numerous categories: Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Albert Pujols.

But when you factor in the fact that Miguel Cabrera has hit for the triple-crown (traditional and the geeky sabermetric) on top of everything else, that literally puts him in a category of his own; Triple-crown winner, MVP, 3,000 hits and 500 home runs. 

Statisticians tend to poorly favor those who decline quickly, like Cabrera has been over the last five years, which will likely take him out of the GOAT debates, but there’s no mistaking that with his body of work and all his achievements throughout his career, Miggy’s name definitely deserves to be mentioned frequently as one of the GOATs.  It’s just hard to imagine that in a game rich with history and numbers, that my generation would be one to have been able to witness and watch one of them rise, thrive and produce throughout his career.

Figures

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Figures Freddie’s Freeman’s first Dodger home run comes against his former frugal fiscally fixated failure of a franchise that he was the face of.

No knock on Matt Olson; I’m sure he’s an okay dude, who is doing his job of starting off positively with the Braves, but I can’t help but feel it’s poetic looking at this picture of Freddie Freeman home run trotting past his replacement after hitting his first homer for the Dodgers.

Yes, I will be salty about this for a little while.

The Braves didn’t deserve Freddie Freeman, anyway

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In short: Braves’ Dodgers’ Freddie Freeman takes a second out of a game to share a moment of compassion and empathy for an opposing player with a hug and comforting words upon finding out that his dad had recently passed away

If people outside of Braves Country® were not that familiar with the kind of human being Freddie Freeman was, playing in big fuck you market Los Angeles will definitely help spread the word, of just how loveable and more or less perfect of a human being that he is.  It took all of what, 5-6 games into the season for Freddie Freeman to already get noticed for, being the Freddie Freeman who was the heart and face of the Atlanta Braves over the last decade?

Just like that, Freddie Freeman reminds everyone that baseball is still just a kid’s game, and that it’s okay to have fun, but also the importance of sportsmanship, humanity and just being a good person.

I haven’t followed baseball enough over the last few years, but I do know who Jose Iglesias is, primarily an elite glove guy, which at a premium position like shortstop is usually adequate to always have a job in the big leagues, but already my heart goes out to him, for hearing of the news of his father’s passing.

Freeman is no stranger to being everyone’s best friend, regardless of if they’re a teammate or not, and upon finding out about Iglesias’s dad, and his general reaction, he wasted no time in Freddie being Freddie, and offering up a hug and comfort, regardless of if it were an opponent.

This right here, is what Freddie Freeman brings to the table, regardless of his batting average, slash stats, WAR and other tangible evidence of baseball talent.  Aside from being a legitimate MVP-caliber player, he’s just a guy that gets the game of life, and that there are always things that are bigger than just baseball.

As for the Braves, they just didn’t deserve him.  Yes, I’ve read a lot of the scuttlebutt about how the whole thing transpired, and all the of the actual salt and fabricated sugar at the end of the journey.  But the reality is that the Braves really could’ve tried harder prior to free agency, but they didn’t, because they’re the Braves and everything the team does has to be fiscal this and shareholders that and it always boils down to money, in spite of the fact that baseball is a ridiculously lucrative venture that has revenues in the legitimate billions on a yearly basis.

No disrespect to Matt Olson, who is doing his job and starting his career with the Braves as the successor to Freddie Freeman pretty hot, but there’s not a single part of me that still wouldn’t wish to have Freddie Freeman on the team instead.  But the Braves couldn’t get over all the numbers swirling around Freddie, as far his age versus Olson’s age, the dollars, and the years asked for, and this is where we are as a result.  Short of winning a Roberto Clemente Award for exemplary citizenship, I can’t imagine there’s much Olson can do to replace all the intangible and little things that Freeman brought to the Braves for all his years.

I know it happens to every sports fan at some point(s) in their lives when they have to watch a beloved player go elsewhere, and sure the Braves are primed for potential success all the same, but losing Freeman, a guy I legitimately watched grow up with the team, all the way in the minor leagues, all the way to a World Series championship, that’s one that the sting is going to linger a long time.

lol baseball: paying for luck

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few days, I saw some highlights from a Rays game where an outfielder was pitching, which meant that the score was already way out of hand, and the team just wanted to save the bullpen as well as have a little bit of fun.  I’m not sure if the guy was deliberately trying to make a mockery of pitching, but it was still interesting to watch his goofy forward leg kick push off the mound while he lobbed 46 mph lollipops.

And just a day later, the Braves were blowing out the Nationals so badly that the Nats sent Dee Gordon whom I had no idea was even on the Nationals now, to pitch.  And in one of the already iconic moments of the year, he accidentally plunked Travis d’Arnaud with a 52 mph soft pitch who flopped like a World Cup-level futbol player, bringing laughter, joy and entertainment to everyone who had seen it.

We’re not even 4-5 games into the season, and teams are already getting blown out to the point where position players are coming in to save the games, as in give us something to be entertained about, other than an embarrassingly lopsided score. 

lol baseball indeed.

The thing is, despite the fact that these position players are hurling these slow-ass meatballs, they are still accomplishing the job of keeping the game moving forward, and generating outs.  To some high-level logic, you’d think that Major League Baseball players, the supposed crème of the crop when it comes to baseball talent in the world, should have a field day with all these garbage pitches, and sometimes they do, but still, a lot of the time, the guys are still running into outs via groundballs or some hard-hit flyballs.

Like, I’m fairly confident that if I myself, took the mound at Busch Stadium in St. Louis and faced a prime Albert Pujols ten times, sure he’d probably knock six home runs off of me, but I’d probably still manage to get him to smash some hard hit grounders or flyballs and make four outs.  On the greatest player of a generation.

What I’m getting at is the reality that baseball is still a tremendously difficult sport, and no matter the level of skill an MVP-caliber player has, they’re still failing 70% of the time to not make an out, and when you see major leaguers going up against a hapless position player on the mound, this is where it’s more prevalent than ever just how much luck is still involved in playing baseball.

Launch angle, squaring up, weather, wind conditions, temperature, the stadium; there are so many variables involved when a batter swings the bat, that have nothing to do with playing baseball except they have everything to do with playing baseball, because they still have influence over the outcome of a ball in play.

Yet, the vast majority of Major League organizations pay out the nose for guys who might defy luck just a little bit more than their counterparts might.  I haven’t said much about the resolution to the strike, primarily because of time, but naturally I hit the nail on the head when it came to the obvious fact that it was all about rich assholes trying to make more money, in all parties involved.

Guys are paid for luck basically, which seems pretty sill in the grand spectrum of things.  Even the league minimum was raised to an absurd $700,000, so that means the last guy on the bench, who’s usually the worst hitter on a 25-28 man roster, is clearing more than half a million dollars to succumb to luck more than everyone else.  Bless this country for having so much wealth distribution to where shitty ballplayers can make more than medical heroes and world class educators.

But that’s baseball, and well, professional sports in general.  A bunch of guys living the dream, of being marginally better at not failing than other people, to where they can make gobs and gobs of money to play children’s games.

lol baseball indeed.

I can’t say I’m surprised, but still: fuck the Braves

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s just business: Atlanta Braves trade four prospects for Oakland A’s first baseman, Matt Olson; and then promptly sign him to an 8-year, $168M extension, metaphorically throwing in the towel at the possibility of re-signing franchise icon, Freddie Freeman

To me, the most disappointing thing about this whole turn of events is the perception that the Braves didn’t even really try and re-sign Freddie Freeman.  Sure, the lockout was a great big elephant in the room that got in the way of business, but it’s not like the Braves didn’t have an entire year, or even the nearly two months after Freeman helped bring a fucking World Series title to the franchise, to do something to secure Freeman in Atlanta.

But then again, that’s now how the Braves work, because the in spite of the perception that the team isn’t as data-savvy as teams like the Oakland A’s, Tampa Bay Rays and other Moneyball internet nerds love franchises, the Braves are basically MIT bean counting wizards in the accounting department.  Anything to keep profits up, shareholder value high, and revenues flowing, and absolutely anything, anything at all that threatens some old white guy getting $2.9 million dollars instead of $3 million dollars, is problematic and needs to be eliminated, no matter the perception, optics or disappointing the less-important stakeholders AKA those asshole fans.

Sure, I’m sure there’s all sorts of actual truth about how the Braves tried, truly tried, behind closed doors and in private, and/or perhaps I’ve just had my ear so far away from the ground that I missed it all, but still, the general perception that I get is that the Braves hardly even tried to retain Freddie Freeman, and by acquiring a guy like Matt Olson, and immediately giving him a massive extension, just kind of reads like the franchise just held a big middle finger up to the guy that not only was the undeniable face of the entire baseball team, but also just helped bring a fucking World Series trophy to the goddamn city.

Continue reading “I can’t say I’m surprised, but still: fuck the Braves” →

No Ian, we won’t

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Long story short: Major League Baseball is still in lockout; Cubs’ outfielder Ian Happ “hopes the fans understand what they’re fighting for”

Here’s the actual quote:

The players are so heavily committed to getting this thing back on track and we hope that the fans understand what we’re fighting for.

As the subject of this post says, no Ian, we won’t.  We will never understand what baseball players are fighting for, because we all know it’s just money.  It’s always money, it’s never anything other than money, and anything else that is ever mentioned is just another roundabout way of saying money.

So no Ian, we the fans will never understand why baseball players whose league minimum salary for the even shittiest player on the 25-man roster is practically $500,000, are trying to get even more money.  Especially considering every team’s MLB Players Association rep is usually a veteran player who probably makes anywhere from $4-32 million dollars a year, and is somehow trying to bilk even richer assholes who run the league and the teams out of more money, while prices for parking, food, apparel and tickets continue to rise and rise for the fans that actually fund all this entire racket in the first place.

Up to this point, I didn’t really care that baseball was still in a strike.  Over the last few years, it seems like every major sports league seems to go into some sort of strike, be it players or referees, leading to all sorts of shitshow bullshit, and then the conflicts are settled, and things go back to normal, to the point where it’s no real surprises anymore when some other sport league goes into a strike anymore.

I figured that eventually this MLB strike would end, players strong arm the league and the owners out of more money, who will then turn their losses onto the fans; millionaire players and billionaire owners end up making more money than ever, while the fan experience gets more expensive and the sun rises in the morning. 

We then have a chaotic season where there ambitious players who workout privately and/or go apeshit on performance enhancing drugs while testing is off the table are ready for the work stoppage to end and put up ridiculous numbers and highlights through the season, while on the other side of the coin there are lots of lazy players who take their job for granted get out of shape, and get shelled through a season but manage to keep their jobs because baseball teams are suckers for sunk cost fallacy. 

And there are lots of injuries because people are out of shape, or their bodies are in turmoil from going apeshit on performance enhancing drugs while testing is off the table.

But I didn’t really care that the strike was going on.  I’ve got enough on my plate to where baseball is unfortunately an afterthought, as much as I do love the game, in spite of how critical I can get towards it, but it’s because I care, damn it.

But then seeing Ian Happ’s remarks about hoping fans understand why they’re going on strike just set me off, because it’s just a perfect example of how tone deaf baseball players themselves can be when they stop realizing how privileged they are to be making money at all for playing a kid’s game at an incredible level.

Take Happ himself for example.  The guy is set to make $8 million dollars in 2022 that will undoubtedly be less than that because the stoppage.  The guy has already made about $8 million dollars in baseball salary alone at this point, and if he has any bit of IQ outside of baseball, could probably very easily live out the rest of his life very comfortably at the age of 27.

And he wants more money.  All of his MLBPA compatriots want more money.  And the funny thing is that Ian Happ is a pleeb, in comparison to some of the other guys on the MLBPA that is “fighting for,” more money. 

Like Max Scherzer – this guy is legitimately contractually obligated to be paid $43 fucking million dollars in 2022 alone, for throwing a baseball over and over again.  His current career earnings from baseball alone have already exceeded $139 million dollars.  If he stopped playing at the end of his current contract, he will clear $300 million dollars.  And because baseball is full of laughably stupid, idiotic contracts, even if he were to retire in 2024, he would still make $60 million dollars over the following four years because of deferred payment from the Nationals and Dodgers.

This guy wants more money too.

Make no mistake, the end goal of this strike benefits nobody but these greedy fucks who think baseball is absolutely indispensable in the grand spectrum of the world’s needs.  I love the game, and I’ll always love the game at this point, but I’d love to see the owners and commissioner’s office hold their ground, and the season grinds to a full halt. Laughably it would only apply to the MLB season, and as 2020 showed, when ‘Murica needed baseball to watch, they simply outsourced that need to Korea, and ESPN started broadcasting KBO in the states.

Furthermore, Minor League Baseball wouldn’t be affected by this, and if you don’t think television rights to broadcast the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs, the Rocket City Trash Pandas, Montgomery Biscuits, Toledo Mud Hens, Modesto Nuts and all the other gaudy but still competitive minor league baseball wouldn’t suddenly be hot tickets, the Major Leagues would become a fast afterthought.  Casual fans and lovers of the game will find their salvation in the minor leagues, and MLB can go choke on a bag of dicks.

It wouldn’t happen, because at some point, one party is going to blink, but it’s fun to imagine the global baseball power shift if MLB comes off the table at their own greedy volition.