Tag: cashmoney

The Ford F-250 Super Chief sounds kind of racist

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was driving to work, stuck behind a parade of slow moving commuters as is the usual, but I couldn’t help but notice the behemoth Ford truck that began tailgating me, as if they felt that I was personally responsible for the logjam of cars on the single-lane road we were all headed down.  The third car that I use as my daily commuter is quite small, and the truck plastered on my asshole as if I could shit gold like a Lannister was rather massive and I obviously was not particularly pleased being tailgated so aggressively.

However, I know the capabilities of the car I’m driving, and I’m not at the point of my life where every single interaction on the road needs to result into a street race like Tokyo Midnight Racer, so when the road expanded to a second lane, I stayed put and let the douchebag with the tiny peepee whip around me as soon as they could and take off; it wasn’t worth allowing my blood pressure to elevate just because some fuckhead was riding my ass.

Naturally, the truck did just that, and I noticed the words “Super Chief” on the vehicle, and my brow did a little scrunch – was this the actual name of a level of trim, or was the driver of this car perhaps of indigenous heritage and really wanted the world around him to know that they were of American Indian lineage?  The back window also had a subtle black-on-black decal of an American Indian that kind of looked like the old Washington Redskins logo on it, and I’m thinking to myself that there’s no way this combination of shit came straight out of the factory.

At the next red light, I googled “Ford F150 super chief” and lo and behold, this is actually a legitimate thing, except that it’s an F-250 and not the pleeb-ey little brudder F-150 as I thought it was.  But yeah, the Ford F-250 Super Chief is an actual Ford product, and I can’t help but ponder that it sounds kind of racist, in the sense that we live in a world where the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians were taken to the shed and beaten into submission within the span of the last decade, because of their names, and yet here’s Ford, one of the largest auto manufacturers on the planet, naming one of their signature trucks “Super Chief.”

Yes, the word “chief” is not exclusive to Native American culture, but it is prevalent enough in it, to where people like me immediately pull indigenous culture to the forefront when hearing the word, and I can’t help but feel like there’s some racist-sounding undertones with Ford naming a big ass truck “super chief.”

Not just any old chief, but fucking super chief, like it’s the Kryptonian Superman of Native Americans.  Like in Native culture, there are chiefs, but then there’s a level above all the other chiefs, that is the super chief.

Digging a little further, I can’t seem to find any pictures of an F-250 Super Chief with any window stickers of the Washington Redskins chief on it.  So that part of the douchey small peepee truck driver that was riding my ass, had to have been custom to that driver.  I didn’t get a look at the driver themselves, but I sure hope that with brandishing a decal like that, that the driver was actually of Native American culture, and not like one of those white cocksuckers who claim 3/47th Cherokee or some bullshit so that they can try and get a slice of indigenous benefits.  Otherwise, then the Super Chief is being kind of racist, if it’s some white guy driving around in it with that big ass Native sticker on his window.

But either way, now that I know that this is an actual thing, my personal conclusion is that it does seem a little bit racist.  ‘Murica doesn’t seem at all that concerned about that kind of stuff anymore these days, so I guess that it shouldn’t be a surprise.

Every Braves fan can hear the gears grinding

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sauce: Dodgers release Jason Heyward, he is free to sign anywhere that will take him

Anyone who’s been paying attention to the Braves this year has probably noticed that the team is operating on its usual Barves-ey cheapskate bullshit, picking up inexpensive castaways, cuts and releases from all the other teams in the league and trying to pawn them off like they’re the answers to the team’s woes and shortcomings.

However, the Braves have been pretty flagrant this year by picking up, almost exclusively, former players, with the hopes that the fans are as dumb as they hope they are (but surprisingly, aren’t) and put happy memories and false optimism on the obvious facts that these guys were all available because they’re not playing as well as they once did in a previous time, like 2021.  Eddie Rosario, Jorge Soler and Luke Jackson are some of the guys re-acquired by the team, with Rosario not only having been cut by the Braves, but he’s also, at the time of me writing this, just freshly cut from the Mets, after already being cut by the Nationals earlier in the year.

Soler hasn’t been terrible, but he also hasn’t been the World Series monster MVP he was in 2021, and Luke Jackson has been what he’s always been – a mediocre reliever, that no longer has Will Smith and a healthy Tyler Matzek and a pre-sucking AJ Minter to hide behind in the bullpen and is getting exposed as of late.  In other words, the Braves picked up mediocre product before the deadline and shouldn’t be surprised by getting mediocre return in investment.

But with the news of Jason Heyward’s release by the Dodgers, I feel like there’s no way in hell that I’m the only Braves fan whose blood went cold upon hearing it, because I think we all collectively knew the second we saw it, what some extreme cheapskate bean counters at The Battery were thinking when they saw it – pick ‘em up!

Believe me, Jason Heyward’s regular season debut on the Opening Day of 2010 is still one of the most magical sports memory I’ll ever have.  The super-typed 20-year old rookie phenom blasting a three-run home run in his very first at-bat against the Chicago Cubs is still stuff of legend, and having a monster rookie season, en route to being one of the core players of the organization for the next few years, all fantastic memories.

Heyward himself was always a stand-up player, a great role model for kids, and a guy that any organization would be happy to have.  I have no ill-will towards the man whatsoever, and I like him personally, but when it comes to his place currently as an active baseball player, I would rather the Braves not Barves, and pick him up, and try to convince fans that they can fix him back to being an All-Star, and insist on trotting him out on the regular, when the team is still somehow, miraculously in the thick of things when it comes to playoff position.

There’s a reason why the Dodgers released him, in favor of Chris Taylor of all people, and any contender like the Braves should probably think twice before considering picking him up, unless they want absolutely nothing but a 9th inning defensive replacement for a corner outfielder.

But I have this sinking feeling that the Braves aren’t going to listen to any logical arguments against Jason Heyward’s return to the team, and are going to be looking at dollar signs, exposure, newspaper articles and editorials about the prodigal son’s return home to Atlanta, and pick him up anyway soon.  The loss of Ronald Acuña, and the tumultuous health of Michael Harris II, outfield depth is stretched thin as it is, but Heyward’s .208 batting average this year really isn’t going to help out.

And these are the things that separate the Braves from being among the league’s elite, in spite of their general, miraculous on-field winning record.  I guess I should be fortunate that the organization continues to field a playoff-caliber team, but at the same time, I kind of wish they’d blow it all up, in order to build a World Series championship-caliber team, but I digress.

As much as I like and admire Jason Heyward the person, as a baseball player, his best years are long beyond him, and the further he stays away from the Braves, the better off the team will ultimately be.

Damn, the new Chick Fil-A looks like Avengers HQ

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

CFA: Chick Fil-A opens brand new, state-of-the-art restaurant in Bumfuck, Georgia that is two stories, drive-thru only, featuring multiple lanes, including several app-only lanes

My first thought when I saw this brand-new Chick Fil-A was exactly what the title of this post is: damn, this place looks like a baby Avengers HQ.  And frankly, it might as well be, considering the company’s hard reliance on drive-thru service when it comes to their bottom line, it makes sense for them to have a location that’s entirely drive-thru only, featuring the feature that I love best, the app-only lanes for the evolved class of human being that understands how easy, efficient and optimal using Chick Fil-A’s app is when it comes to food service.

What doesn’t really make much sense are CFA locations that have scrapped drive-thru outright, and I think there’s one up in North Druid Hills that does that, and I can’t imagine that their business is nearly as fruitful as those CFA locations that have efficient and reliable drive-thru service, like the ones near my own home that my household tends to go to, at least 2-3 times a month, but that’s neither here nor there for the purpose of this specific post.

However, the one drawback to this Baby Avengers HQ of a Chick Fil-A is that it’s located way the fuck outside of Atlanta, and barely even deserves to be considered metro area in the first place.  McDonough is one of those areas that’s literally like an hour outside of city proper, but because there are enough psychopaths that commute to the city from there, they get to be considered Metro enough to get the occasional nod in morning traffic reports because there’s usually some apocalyptic traffic coming out of I-75 in their location.  Frankly, that’s the only reason why I even know the name of the street it’s on, Jodeco Road.

Needless to say, I can’t see myself making a trip just to experience this location, because they’re not Tim Horton’s, they’re not Buc-ee’s, nor are they Wawa.  Even though I would probably take joy in the expedient manner in which an app-only line could be, it would be the same food that I could get at any of the CFAs that are within 1-2 miles from my own home.

All the same, I hope this location does gangbusters, so that the company can start replacing all the other CFAs throughout the city, as well as all over the country, with these mini Avenger HQs that can show the rest of the fast food world up, on how to optimally run the fast food business.

This girl is living my dream and I’m so jelly

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

BI: Philadelphia fashion photographer capitalizes on constantly oversold route, extends Italian vacation several days and makes over $3K in flight vouchers while getting free hotels and food

Let me tell you how envious I was feeling when reading this story.  This girl managed to accomplish something that I’ve tried to do in the past to no success, and on a scale that I could only dream about.  Having the flexibility and lack of commitments enough to where she could just say fuck it and stay in Italy for as many days as American Airlines constantly kept overselling their Naples to Philadelphia route, and volunteering to take the bump; this is the stuff that my dreams used to be made of.

I’ve actually never been able to accomplish this even once before, even at the piddly domestic level.  Even if there’s been opportunities to volunteer my position for even a nominal, $300-400 flight credit, either I’ve been beaten to the punch or my flexibility wasn’t prohibitive enough for me to go for it, and I’ve always sat in terminals or on flights, fantasizing over the what-if, I could accomplish it, and get some large amounts of house money in which I could then parlay into bigger and better trips, or even some first-class accommodations instead.

One holiday a long time ago, I booked on Thanksgiving day itself, thinking that being a holiday, and before the all-important Thanksgiving Dinner time, I would be a shoe-in for a credit scenario; frankly, I didn’t want to make the trip in the first place, and I figured if there was ever a chance I would get to reach for the stars and take a shot at one of my travel fantasies, this would be the opportunity.

However, it’s apparent that the maniacal traveling is done the day before, or the Sunday before, and when it comes to Thanksgiving Day itself, fuck, I could’ve stood-by for the flight and made it on the flight, it was so desolate, but instead, I was the schmuck who paid for a full fare, thinking it would be oversold, I could forfeit my seat, get $500, and be absolved of having to travel up for a holiday.

All the times mythical wife and I have traveled internationally, we’ve always talked about what we’d do if the opportunity ever presented itself, but usually one or both of us were working too stringent of jobs to risk missing, especially since remote work never really existed for our lines of business until COVID, or we had to be cognizant of animal care, or some other reason, so we never really had a serious shot at cashing in on this ourselves.

And now that we have kids, this dream is basically non-existent anymore, unless the kids were already with other family, they weren’t burnt out yet, and were demanding that we tried for it, which I don’t imagine is going to be happening any time soon seeing as how we travel on airplanes maybe twice a year, if even that.

But yeah, I’m so jelly of this girl for what she was able to accomplish.  Not that I’m particularly a fan of American Airlines, but I would gladly take their money if they were offering it up in $1,200 increments to forfeit my seat, and feed and house me.  If I were in her situation, I would do the exact same thing, and be at the airport praying for another oversold notice, and be jumping up and down raising my hand to be the people to continuously volunteer to give up my seat.  I can only try to not be in denial of how much I’d like to live vicariously through her freedom and independence in these circumstances, and the amount of free travel she’ll be able to eke out of $3,550.

I see you, Balakey

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I can’t say that I’m particularly a fan of pitcher Blake Snell; I tend to not care for baseball players that act like out-of-touch man-babies when it comes to how much they’re paid for the privilege of playing professional baseball, and Snell is amongst the worst. 

He once suggested that players should’ve been paid their full salaries during the COVID season, and he’s one of those guys that it’s pretty clear that his full career objective is accumulating as much money as possible, which inherently there’s nothing wrong with, but it’s also the way that he’s trying to accomplish it with an inequitable amount of effort exerted to earn it that rubs me the wrong way.

This past off-season was a delight to see him flounder away during free agency, and basically becoming the cautionary poster boy for talented free agent to get absolutely pwned by the process.  He was looking for comparable money that the Dodgers had paid Japanese import Yoshinobu Yamamoto (12-year, $365M), and along the way had turned down an offer from the Yankees that was half that, thinking if he held out, he could get better, if not comparable.

He was wrong.  Delightfully.

Ultimately, he signed with the Giants on a two-year, $62M deal which is still an egregious annual value to a human being to throw a baseball over and over again, and seeing as how it had an opt-out clause in between, it was evident that Snell’s goal was going to be to pitch his ass off, opt-out, and try again for a Yamamoto deal, while also having the security cushion of a fat $31M second year with the Giants if things fell through.

The 2024 season couldn’t have started off any worse for someone playing the game Snell was trying to play; he would go 0-3, never getting out of the fifth inning, and have an ERA of 11.57.  His peripherals were shit, he was throwing too many pitches, walking too many guys, and downright sucked.  It was clear that he basically did no work or working out during the offseason, and didn’t prepare at all during the spring since he was technically unemployed almost until the start of the season, and it was showing on the field.

He was put on the DL for sucking, AKA bullshit injury to justify poor performance, and came back at the end of May, where he would proceed to string together three more shitty starts, where he still couldn’t get out of the fifth inning, and was pitching terribly, but was masked by the fact that the Giants still won two of those games in spite of him.

I relished in Snell’s poor performance, and despite my general disdain for Bay Area sports fans, even I didn’t think they deserved the turd that the Blake Snell contract was turning into.  Without question, he was going to opt-in to year two of his deal, and hamstring the Giants for another $31M that could’ve been utilized in so many better ways.

Once again he went on the DL for sucking, and he was back on July 9th and this is where the story really begins.  Snell would pitch five innings, giving up just a single hit and no runs, and the Giants would win.  The Giants would win two of his next three starts, with Snell pitching like the two-time Cy Young winner he was.

On August 2nd, Snell would get the first win of his season, after pitching a fucking no-hitter against the Cincinnati Reds, and he would follow that with another quality start and another win.

The overall picture of Blake Snell’s current 2024 isn’t notable – 2-3 W-L in 12 starts, a 4.31 ERA, with the Giants going 7-5.  But since July, he’s gone 2-0 in six starts, has an ERA of 1.15 and the team has gone 5-1.

It’s very apparent that he’s finally woken up, and that he’s beginning to pitch his ass off so that he can opt-out at the end of the season and make another try for a long-term Yamamoto-money deal.

Here’s the thing though, as many words as I’ve spoken to be critical about Blake Snell, I actually have never bothered to really take a deep dive into the numbers that paint the picture of Blake Snell; until now.  And the most interesting thing I’m discovering about ol’ Balakey is that save for the no-hitter, the season narrative described above is absolutely nothing out of the ordinary for him.

I’ve read numerous times about how Snell is “a slow starter” but figured it was typical media defending of the guy.  But looking at his career numbers and splits, slow starter doesn’t do the man justice.

I’m now convinced that Blake Snell is probably the smartest baseball player there is, at the way he has absolutely gamed the game of baseball in order to make as much money as he can, with the least amount of effort possible.  I mean, the guy streams video games in his downtime, gaming is nothing outside of his realm of interests, and it’s apparent that he’s brought that mentality into his career strategy.

Looking over his game logs over the last few seasons, which were coincidentally the most critical years in terms of showcasing himself in preparation for free agency, his Aprils have as many L’s as the 2024 Chicago White Sox, and he looks like shit; can’t get more than five innings, giving up lots of runs, mundane strikeout numbers.

But then July hits each year, Snell’s fairy godmother materializes out of nowhere and turns him into fucking Nolan Ryan.  He starts piling up strikeouts, the inning numbers start turning from 5.0 to 7.0, and the team starts piling up W’s like they’re the 1996 Chicago Bulls.

This isn’t hyperbole, there really is that drastic of a split between the first halves and second halves of his seasons, career-wide:

1st Halves: 28-39 W-L, 3.98 ERA, 1.339 WHIP, 10.9 K/9
2nd Halves: 41-17 W-L, 2.41 ERA, 1.097 WHIP, 11.4 K/9

Now I know all these numbers don’t mean a thing to anyone who doesn’t follow baseball, but what it really says is that Blake Snell is trash in the first half of most seasons, and turns into a fucking demi-god in the second half.  He walks fewer guys, strikes out more guys, and the team just flat out wins.

And the thing is, I don’t think this is coincidental, I don’t think this is fluky, I think it’s entirely by design and mostly deliberate by Blake Snell.  It’s no secret in the world of professional sports that athletes tend to metaphorically hit the NOS during their walk-years, and there’s mountains of evidence that exist these days to justify such a notion.  It’s also no secret that professional sport is influenced tremendously by recency bias, where the most recent version of an athlete is the one to consider when it comes time to negotiate dolla-dollas.

I may not be a fan of Blake Snell’s perceived-by-me money-grubbing ways, but I see you, Balakey.  I kind of respect the cerebral approach to optimizing his earning capabilities.  I’m not going to poo-poo on a guy’s effort to make as much money as he can, but at the same time, I’m not going to also not think that it does seem crappy to the teams, the fans of those teams, and those who root for him, to often be knowing that unless it’s July or later, he’s probably holding something back and not trying his hardest, because as he’s demonstrated for us all over the last few years, those April-May-June starts definitely don’t mean as much as the months July and on.

Good riddance, Pearl

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TIL: the Atlanta Braves will be moving their Double-A minor league affiliate from Pearl, Mississippi to Columbus, Georgia.  They will also be ditching the Braves moniker and will hopefully be something chintzy and marketable

Not that I pay attention to every iota of Braves coverage as I once did at a point in my life, but as a fan of minor league baseball, and for lack of a better term, a fan of the Atlanta Braves, news like this piques my interest, even if this were reported way the fuck back in January of this year.

I mean, I knew that the Braves had relinquished control over all of their minor league squads back in 2021 like selling their debts, and I didn’t hate the news at all quite the contrary, because I felt that it opened the door for Braves affiliates to spread their wings and try to be something more in the spirit of minor league baseball, instead of the boring, stuffy and sterile branding of “The Braves.”

Gwinnett (AAA) had already switched over to becoming the Strippers Stripers, and Rome (A+) as of this years ditched being the Braves and became The Emperors, as in Roman emperor, and better yet, adopted emperor penguins to be their team’s mascot.  Not that I’ve been paying any attention, but for whatever reason, the Mississippi Braves had remained as such over the last two-plus seasons, and despite their freedom to do so, they didn’t appear to be in any rush to make any changes to the organization.

Until this season apparently, as it was announced that the club will be moving out of Pearl, Mississippi and moving to Columbus, Georgia, as well as ditching the Braves moniker and will be adopting a new name for the start of the 2025 minor league season.

At first blush, my thought was, oh great here we go again with a brand new fucking ballpark to build, but it turns out that there’s apparently a historic ballpark in Columbus, Golden Park, that will actually be renovated and used to house the future Columbus Braves affiliate, instead of building something from scratch.  Granted, a renovation isn’t cheap either, and I’m sure it will probably be something of a $65M tax burden for the people of Columbus to absorb, but that sure beats the $126M it took to build the Braves’ Spring Training facility from scratch in Sarasota.

Regardless of the financial burden of accommodations, this is actually a change that I don’t immediately just want to shit on upon hearing about it.  Having been to Pearl, Mississippi, solely to watch a M-Braves game, I have to say that getting the fuck out of that shithole in the middle of goddamn nowhere is nothing but good news for the Braves and frankly, all of Minor League Baseball in that nobody again will ever have to step foot in Pearl/Jackson, Mississippi after the 2024 season.

It’s the only place I’ve ever been to where I genuinely felt like I was whisked back in time at the casual ignorant racism that got in just a singular afternoon in town, from the moment I left the airport, to getting to the ballpark, and while simply getting food.  The cabbie who picked me up from the airport thought that I had to have been an actual player since I was headed to the ballpark, and upon arriving at the ballpark, I caught some kids staring at me and thinking I was Hideki Matsui.

It’s clear that Asian people aren’t a common occurrence in this chunk of the country, but god damn.  During the game, I was puckish so I went up to a concession stand where there were unsurprisingly chicken tenders and fries, and when I handed over my debit card to pay, the lady at the register examined my card and put down her bifocals, and then said to me, “oh that’s an easy one.”

Obviously having no fucking clue to what she was talking about, I asked her what, and she responded that it was my name, that it was one of those names that wasn’t too hard to pronounce.  Okay then

So needless to say, it seems like a monumental win for any person or any business or in this case, any team, to get the fuck out of Pearl, Mississippi, and head closer to somewhere that’s closer to their parent organization.  Columbus isn’t a tremendous step up from Pearl as far as not feeling like you’re in the middle of nowhere, but at least it’s a military town where people have had some etiquette and discipline beaten into them, and it’s only like a 2-3 hour drive to the Metro Atlanta area if anyone wants to feel some actual civilization.

I’m excited to eventually find out what the team will lean towards as far as a new team name, branding and identity will be.  I don’t know much about Columbus other than it being a military town, so I can’t take any snarky takes or come up with any sarcastic names to anoint them as, but hopefully the yokels out there will have the wherewithal to steer clear of the low-hanging fruit of Christopher, whom we all with brains have heard wasn’t exactly the best guy in history.

But hey, there’s always the Columbus Barves, wouldn’t that be some shit, to take the popularized typo-meme-unofficial sarcasm name for whenever the team fucks up, and make it official?  A guy can dream.

Predictable, to those with knowledge

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Twas the night of the trade deadline, and the Braves were in the middle of the pack.  The Phillies have the division, and Atlanta’s grip on Wild Card #1 has been slippery as of late.  Max Fried is on the DL, joining Ozzie Albies and Michael Harris II, while Ronald Acuña, Jr. and Spencer Strider are done for the year.  Reynaldo Lopez has tightness in his forearm. 

Those not injured, are not performing, save for Marcell Ozuna and a resurgent Jarred Kelenic, but Matt Olson, Austin Riley, Adam Duvall and Orlando Arcia definitely are about as reliable as a Dodge Caliber this season.  Aside from Chris Sale, the pitching staff is in shambles due to the loss of Strider and Fried, as Father Time has clearly caught up to Charlie Morton, and the revolving door of Bryce Elder, Spencer Schwellenbach and whomever was scheduled to pitch in Double-A or Triple-A has been less than effective.

Weeks leading up to the trade deadline, there was all sorts of buzz about what the Atlanta Braves should do, to patch their weaknesses, reinforce their offense and build for the playoffs that they are no guarantee to even make.  Braves fans in Facebook communities, blogs and websites all throwing out ideas, mostly putrid, but occasional logical ones, about the things the teams should do in order to accomplish all of the above mentioned.

And whenever this time of the baseball season comes up, there are always these types of fans:

  • Trade everything for [Mike Trout] and [Shohei Ohtani] – fans who don’t really know much about baseball economics and think that in real sport, you can make trades like an EA game and trade Derek Harper for Penny Hardaway straight up
  • Trade absolutely nothing at all because there’s no chance the return on investment will be worth the cost of assets being given up – internet bean-counters who know way too much about baseball economics and have this intrinsic belief that absolutely every baseball transaction possible much be “a win,” that every trade partner must “lose” the trade, and if such conditions don’t seem likely, don’t make it, regardless of how many moving parts there are and the unpredictability of player performance
  • And then there are people like me, crabby old fucks who have been following sports for a very long time, have recognized patterns and tendencies for the teams they follow, are mostly cynical and nihilistic about the likely realities about to befall their preferred teams, and the degrees and willingness to opine their opinions may vary

I used to not engage with rando-communities, but probably a combination of boredom, and that The Algorithm is spoon-feeding me content that pops enough synapses in my brain to drop random comments on various accounts, most of them being Braves communities where I occasionally wish to voice my displeasure with AJ Minter, Bryce Elder, and how the team would be best suited to sign the still-available Trevor Bauer, if he didn’t have this freakishly obviously collusion to blacklist him from the entire league over his head.

I don’t pay much concern over the reactions my words get, and I definitely don’t interact with other users beyond a laughing emoji at the response that are actually decent, but it’s really nothing different from any online community anywhere on the internet: people making wild trade scenarios, trade everything fans bickering with trade nothing fans, and so forth.

More recently, I decided to chime in to a few Braves communities, and I opined that the Braves aren’t doing to make any moves at all beyond a fourth outfielder-type and a relief pitcher; I figured the remark were just enough snarky without me having to blather on about how The Braves Way™ is that of crippling risk-aversion and hand-cuffing cheapness, which it totally is by the way.

And when the trade deadline lapsed, and the evening crossed midnight, where transactions that begun before the deadline needed to be finalized by, and all the smoke of the day’s activities had cleared up, the Atlanta Braves had made only one transaction-trading injured relief pitcher Tyler Matzek and minor league infielder Sabin Ceballos for:

Jorge Soler, outfielder
Luke Jackson, relief pitcher

At this point, all I could really do is shrug like Michael Jordan in the 1992 NBA Finals, after he drowned the Portland Trailblazers in a barrage of three-pointers as if to say, that was easy.  I’ve been following the Braves for a pretty long time now, and I’ve seen this song and dance before.  Save for a few exceptions throughout the years, the majority of the years, the Braves always seem convinced that the only things they ever need at the trade deadline is another outfielder and another relief pitcher, and that all other needs can be filled internally (cheaply) – That’s The Braves Way™!

In this season’s case, they’re not wrong that they needed some help on both accounts, but the fact of the matter is that the starting rotation has two gaping holes in it, and the team has been incapable of scoring runs the vast majority of the season. 

All around the league were decent talents from teams who were out of playoff contention and thrown in the towel, trying to improve their futures at the price of said decent talents available for trade.  And as the days ticked down to the trade deadline, they would come off the board, one by one, with the Phillies picking up Carlos Estevez from the Angels, the Yankees getting Jazz Chisholm, Jr. from the Marlins, the Dodgers getting Jack Flaherty from the Tigers, to name a few examples of front-running contenders actively trying to get even better for the stretch run.

And once again, the Braves sit on their hands all trade season long, and do nothing but pick up a fourth outfielder and a relief pitcher.  I’ve seen this rerun, many, many times in my life now.

For those keeping score, in spite of all the Braves’ many needs, the only outside acquisitions they’ve really made this season, was picking up Soler and Jackson, as well as a few weeks ago, picking up Eddie Rosario from the Washington Nationals’ literal trash after they had designated him for assignment.  Obviously, all of these guys were notable contributors to the 2021 World Series winnings squad, and it’s evident that the Braves’ front office is trying to challenge the intelligence of fans and supporters of the team by bringing back these nostalgia acts, as if they’re miraculously going to turn the team’s fortune around, three years later, older and used.

It goes without saying that the Braves have thrown in the towel on the year themselves, by their sheer lack of willingness to invest and improve.  Of course they will never admit it, but it seems pretty evident that they’re phoning in the roster on account of all the injuries that have decimated the roster, and probably thinking, we’ll just try again next season;  regardless of the fact that Max Fried is probably gone, as probably is Marcell Ozuna who is playing his ass off in a walk year, two of the most competent players on the current roster.

They’ll assume Chris Sale will reward their investment into his bounceback, Spencer Strider will recover to 110%.  That this season was not a fluke for Reynaldo Lopez, and that between Elder, Schwellenbach and Hurston Waldrep,* they can go back to the glory days of Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz.

*could these names get any whiter?

They’ll also assume Acuña and Harris will recover fully, Albies will get back to his All-Star form and Olson and Riley will bounce back.  Arcia might be the only guy on the hot seat, but I’m under the impression that Braves Corporate is already envisioning a fresh start in 2025 with all of their current assets in place, and that 2024 is already a lost cause, and any success to come from it would be considered a bonus.

At this point, it’s actually a bad thing for the Braves front office if the team does well enough to have a little playoff run, and then get bounced in the NLDS again.  Because then there will be all sorts of hindsight fire, criticism and accusations that the organization didn’t do enough to improve the team to where they might have pushed across the finish line for more success, instead of sputtering to another early playoff exit.

But if and when it happens, it’s not like it’s something that most older Braves fans haven’t seen before.  Such is, the curse of having knowledge sometimes.