Tag: sports

The DeVanzo Shift lives

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Brilliant: the Boston Red Sox employ a new defensive strategy that’s basically the shift, but still falls within the rules that were altered to attempt to kill the shift

When MLB banned the shift after the 2022 season, the baseball internet had all sorts of jokes about the players who were ripe and prime to breakout, with infielders being neutered to where they could position themselves to neutralize low-skill, pull-happy batters.

The one name that emerged the most was first baseman, Joey Gallo, who was about the most predictable hitter in history, seemingly completely incapable of hitting the ball to anywhere on the left half of the field.

Over the years, opposing teams have employed the most ridiculous shifts on Gallo, going so far as to having just one left fielder to be the sole safety blanket in case he had a bad pregame meal, and was all gassy and clenched and accidentally tapped something to left, while every other single player on the field shifted hard to the right.

This is a tactic called the DeVanzo Shift, named after the new defensive strategy employed by Manganelli’s slow pitch softball team in Artie Lance’s Beer League.

Joey Gallo is not a particularly smart fellow who doesn’t seem to realize that a bunt to right is an automatic double, or just not really that good at baseball, had been victimized for years by the shift, and his numbers and general employability have dwindled throughout the years.

And because there are lots of other guys like Gallo who can’t/won’t practice and learn to hit it the other way, they all collectively bitched and moaned to the MLB player’s union to where they managed to get the tactic outlawed.

The problem is, they were too granular with their explanation of the rules, and teams filled with smart guys like the Boston Red Sox have already figured out ways to exploit the loopholes in the rules, and just like that, when Joey Gallo walked into to spring training expecting to have a monster spring and not having to look at the teeth of the shift again, bam, is suddenly facing the shift again. 

Except it’s not the third baseman who’s wandering way the fuck out of position, it’s the left fielder who’s wandering even way more the fuck out of position, to help keep the DeVanzo Shift alive for at least one more season, to push oafs like Joey Gallo closer to madness and/or early retirement.  The rules state that infielders can’t go out of position or leave the infield dirt, but ain’t nobody said anything about the outfielders.

So owned, Joey Gallo, and long live the DeVanzo Shift!

I miss Dan Uggla

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I heard about this story about how the Braves ended a spring training game in a tie, because a player got the game-ending third strike on account of not being in the batter’s box in time, because 2023 marks the start of the pitch clock era, where every single pitch now has a timer attached to it in an effort to speed up the pace of games because society’s ever-growing ADD has declared that baseball games are too long and nobody likes them anymore as a result.

No sport gets fucked with structurally as much as baseball does.  Aside from some rule changes to discourage defense because offense is sexy, basketball is by and large the same game as it now as it was back in the 1950’s.  Football’s primarily changed in order to try and reduce concussions and protect quarterbacks, but pretty much everything else goes as it did in back in 1920. 

But baseball?  Any strategy that seems too effective is neutered or outright banned (the shift), pitching mounds are raised, lowered, the physical baseballs themselves are altered, bats are regulated and banned, and there are rule changes practically every year.  One of the lasting anecdotes about baseball was that it was the game with no clock, and as a result, every single pitcher-batter matchup was potentially important, and that there was no strategic milking of the clock, and that every out had to be recorded in order for a team to be declared a victor.

Now, there is an actual clock, which effectively puts the romanticism of baseball having no clock and that every out must be earned to rest, because now baseball has embarked on a path where games really can have a finite time limit now.  With rules in place that prevent managers from spamming pitching changes in order to play matchups, and rules in place that prohibit excessive checking base runners by pitchers, MLB has basically closed the walls around old school baseball strategy and effectively put a hard time limit on every game, flexible solely by the need for extra innings or managers milking pitching changes to the most of their limited new abilities.

The Pedro Astacios who took practically an entire minute in between every pitch, and the Bruce Chens who once trolled an entire stadium by checking a runner at first like 14 times will all be phased out and rendered extinct, regardless of how capable they are throwing a baseball, and future Moneyball will probably be cultivating pitching staffs with wildly different pitch preparation speeds, with the intention of throwing off batter timing throughout games.

With all these changes to the game, I just think about the times in the past where I think about having loved baseball the most and lately, the name that pops up the most as someone I really miss, is Dan Uggla.

He was kind of like the anti-stat geek player that the rise of the stat geeks baseball culture absolutely abhorred, but teams themselves still coveted because of his sheer ability to hit home runs when he actually made contact with the ball.  His defense was below-average, he wasn’t a threat to steal bases, and being a second baseman it’s not like he had much of an arm.  But again, the guy hit home runs, and that’s a talent that every team wants, whether they wanted him as a starter, or a designated pinch-hitter, or an actual designated hitter.

There was once a season where he hit .179 on the year which is abysmal, but he still clobbered 22 home runs, which is still noteworthy.  My friend and I made the joke that all he hit were home runs, and with just 80 total hits on the year, he really did hit home runs over 25% of the time.

I take it back about not having much of an arm though, the guy had more physical arms than just about anyone else in the history of Major League Baseball, because pound-for-pound, Dan Uggla had to have been the most jacked player in history.  The guy was 5’11 which isn’t that tall as far as professional athletes go, but the guy had massive, massive arms, with most people making the comparison that his arms looked like Popeye.

Additionally, Dan Uggla also wore the tightest, most form-fitting uniforms as he could, throughout his whole career.  I’m not sure if it were deliberate, or if across the board there were some sizing issues for a man of his stature combined with his musculature, but my friends and I declared that his uniform size was “smedium” and made the comparison for any time anyone was seen wearing a tight-fitting shirt in order to attempt to make their musculature look impressive deliberately.

All in all, Dan Uggla was kind of the perfect poster boy for ironic baseball player fandom.  He was hated by nerds, but still loved by teams, and basically always had a job as long as he kept hitting home runs, all while wearing his ridiculous smedium uniforms and looking like he had professional wrestling as a post-career option.  But more importantly, he was kind of like this totem of simpler times, where there weren’t so many oppressive rules, fans bitching about game duration weren’t heard, and players had to deal with the shift.  No matter his numbers, relievers and closers in his time, still had to face Dan Uggla with the game on the line and although the numbers may have favored them most of the time any mistake they let loose was probably going to end up in the seats.

Man, I miss Dan Uggla.  Even more now, with the game itself undergoing so many dramatic changes.  It’s going to be weird when I eventually actually watch a baseball game again, and seeing shit like pitching clocks on the HUD, and I imagine they’ll feel noticeably faster in speed, which in some cases might feel pretty convenient, but at the same time, very much not like the baseball that was what I grew to love and enjoy.

It’s all going to be Cody’s fault

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In professional sports, occasionally there are scenarios where a first-place team somehow manages to pull off a trade or pick up a free agent of a very talented player.  In most of these cases, the overarching management of these teams hardly ever take into consideration stuff like team chemistry, because most organizations believe in acquiring talent when it’s available, and let the chips fall where they may afterward.

Typically, it’s kind of a jump ball of happens afterward; sometimes the new player adds value immediately, and a good team becomes even better, but in some cases, the new player disrupts the team chemistry that made the team a first-place team, and then there is some stumbling and new struggles, as the squad tries to adjust to find its new groove.  Sometimes, they get their shit together and make magic happen, but at least in my personal viewing experiences, they still fall short.

This is what I’m feeling is kind of happening with the WWE and the fact that they’ve handcuffed themselves to the acquisition of Cody Rhodes.

For about a year, if there was anything at all that was going not just smoothly, but on a legendary pace, it was definitely the Bloodline storyline.  Roman Reigns was clearly ascending to the top of the mountain that he was always expected to reach, and he was firing on all cylinders; in the ring, cutting promos, and elevating everyone that entered his gravity.  Roman and the Bloodline were proving the power of a well-planned, executed storyline that was more importantly given all the time in the world to breathe and organically proceed.

But then Cody Rhodes’ contract with AEW expired, and suddenly the internet rumor mill basically exploded as it became apparent that he was not only not going to re-sign with the company he helped found, he was on his way back to the WWE; he was basically the surprisingly available talent that the WWE picked up solely because they could, but not necessarily because they needed him.

And much like how it happens in professional sport, every organization in the country always falls for the sunk cost fallacy, and because they paid a mint for new acquisition, they become determined to use them in a capacity relative to their salary, and not necessarily their talent or ability to fit into the puzzle.

Because Cody Rhodes cost the WWE a significant amount, he was immediately thrust into the upper echelon of the card, (re)debuting at Wrestlemania and fast tracked to a path to the World championship; regardless of the fact that there were all sorts of internal talents that were getting shafted by his return.  If not for the fact that he tore his pectoral and had to be put on the bench for almost an entire year, I probably wouldn’t have gotten to make this post because he probably would have already entangled with Roman Reigns at Summer Slam or Survivor Series and possibly have ended his legendary run and taken a championship off him.

And while he was down with injury, the Bloodline resumed their masterful storytelling, and amidst this, became planted the seed of Sami Zayn that grew into the phenomenon that’s captured the attention of wrestling fans all over with how it has played out so far.  Seriously, I didn’t think much of the whole idea of Sami Zayn wanting to be a part of the Bloodline, but it’s literally been the best storyline since the rise of Daniel Bryan or Kofi-Mania, and in fact better than those in terms of storytelling and how many people have risen their stock from just being a part of it.

But then Cody Rhodes had to go on and recover, and when it was announced that he was coming back at the Royal Rumble, it was basically a forgone conclusion that he was going to win the whole fucking thing, and obviously be fast tracked to Wrestlemania where he would fulfill his destiny (or his rumored contractual obligation to get a World championship run) and finally face Roman Reigns.

This is where I have this feeling like Cody Rhodes is going to ruin a beautiful storyline that’s been in the making over the last three years, solely because the WWE is insisting on utilizing him as World championship material based on the size of the contract he was given.

I’m not saying that Cody Rhodes won’t and can’t have a good match with Roman Reigns and possibly put up an instant classic, but it’s going to feel more forced than it is going to feel organic.  Which is a shame, because the beauty of the Bloodline saga has always been just how organic everything has felt because everything has been given time to sow seeds let things grow naturally over the last three years.

I feel like the smart play would be to have Cody lose to Roman Reigns, so that he could kind of start over and organically rise to his contention to the World championship(s), but if I’m a betting man, I don’t think that’s going to happen.  In reality, Roman and the Usos probably need some time off after carrying the company for the last three years, and even if the fans might not be sick of the Bloodline, the guys comprising of the Bloodline might be sick of the workload they’ve had and probably wouldn’t mind a little time off television to recharge.

All the same, I like to imagine a world where a lot of the WWE guys have a group text or something, where they bitch and complain about how Cody Rhodes’ return is fucking things up.  Obviously, such is likely not the case as Rhodes is often regarded as being well respected and liked by everyone in the business, but it doesn’t change the fact that his return to the WWE is causing some hierarchical restructuring to where someone is getting pushed down a rung.

It’s just kind of sad to me, because the Bloodline has easily been the best thing in professional wrestling in a long time, but Cody Rhodes of all people is the one who’s kind of fucking things up, solely because he had to become available and baited the WWE into picking him up and clearly had a lot of demands in the process.

If he were really as selfless as he likes to claim he is, he’d have let all existing storylines play themselves out and basically kind of stand aside and call next, and by next Wrestlemania in 2024, be ready to ascend to the top of the mountain then, and maybe all the fans will be on board the story he is destined to complete.

Re: the Super Bowl LVII ending

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Although I agree that the ending of Super Bowl LVII was less than thrilling, make no mistake, it was still one of the best Super Bowls there’ve been in recent years.  Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hurts put on one of the most exciting Super Bowl quarterback battles since like Peyton Manning versus Drew Brees in XLIV, with both of them putting up monster numbers and neither of them blinking until the ending of the game.

And as much as I loathe the Philadelphia Eagles and revel in the fact that they’re the third Philadelphia major sports team to lose a championship in the 2022 season, I personally like Jalen Hurts.  He’s an honorable, mature man in a sport full of overgrown man-babies, and even throughout college, he demonstrated honor, class, integrity and has always been respectable in my opinion.  And despite being on the losing end of the Super Bowl, he put up the superior numbers against Patrick Mahomes, soon to be forgotten solely because he didn’t win the game.

But getting back to the point of this post, it’s been really interesting to me to see in the aftermath of the Super Bowl, all of the butt-hurt filthy casuals and not-actually sports fans who are bitching and moaning about the anti-climactic ending to the game.  Yes, the Chiefs downing the ball at the 1-yard line and milking the clock and kicking a go-ahead field goal with just eight seconds left sucked all of the excitement of the Mahomes/Hurts duel, but it was one billion percent the absolutely correct strategy to employ for the objective of winning the goddamn game.

The Kansas City Chiefs give absolutely zero fucks about what anyone thinks about the finish, because they accomplished the only thing that mattered: winning the goddamn game.  If the Eagles had the ball and they were in the same scenario, there is a two billion percent chance that they employ the exact same strategy.  Milk the clock, take the lead, and give the opposition as little time as possible to have any chance at countering.

And to the filthy casuals and not-fans who ask why?  Because throughout history, the NFL sees this scenario happen on a fairly regular basis, it’s just not often that it occurs in the Super Bowl.  Sure, everyone loves touchdowns, but when a field goal is all that is necessary to win, it’s always the right call to chew up as much clock as possible and kicking the field goal, and in fact, it’s actually more detrimental to score the touchdown if it means salvaging some time for the other team in order to make a counter attack.

One prime example of the touchdown blowing up in a team’s face actually involved the Atlanta Flacons who obviously haven’t ever recovered from the fuckup of Super Bowl Lee, and there was a game a few years ago where the Flacons were playing the Detroit Lions, and they were down with a minute left, 14-16.  When it was evident that the Flacons were going to score, the Lions basically conceded the end zone, hoping to salvage some time and get the ball back as quick as possible.  Despite the fact that a field goal was all that was necessary for the Flacons to win, running back Todd Gurley had a brain fart when rushing into the end zone, and despite his best efforts to drop at the 1-yard line, he crossed the plane and accidentally scored a touchdown.  The Flacons took the lead, but they left a minute on the clock, to which any NFL fan knows is the equivalent of like 15 when considering timeouts, commercials and clock stoppage.  Naturally, the Lions would score their own touchdown as time expired to defeat the Flacons, validating the importance of the strategy that the Chiefs employed.

In fact, off the top of my head, the same tactic was almost employed in Super Bowl XLVI, where the Giants tried to kill the clock, but Ahmad Bradshaw too, fell into the end zone despite his efforts to stop short.  It just so happens that the Giants defense managed to neutralize Tom Brady, but New York fans were sweating those last 82 seconds of the game, knowing Brady’s reputation for late-game heroics.

The point is, the Chiefs made the right call, and everyone bitching about it is just some filthy casual scenester tourist into the world of sports fandom, and your opinions hold zero weight and do not matter.  It wasn’t exciting, it wasn’t fun, but it got the fucking job done, and anyone who knows the game of football knows that in every single similar situation, the outcome would be the same 100% of the time.

I kind of respect the brutal honesty

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s not personal, Brooklyn. I just hate this city, the fans, and everyone in this organization and want to watch them burn out of spite.

The best part of the whole quote is where he says “It’s not personal.”

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t pay that much attention to the NBA these days, but I know who Kyrie Irving is, and when I saw this come up in my news feed, I had to scrunch my brow and just go wow.  These are some bombs of words to be flinging out there, and in an age where people are reluctant to burn bridges because the internet has made the world small, everything is basically recorded forever, and people just don’t know when their words can come back to haunt them, Kyrie Irving still gave zero fucks and basically told not just the Brooklyn Nets, the team that he actively plays for and signs his paychecks, but the entire city of Brooklyn, New York, that he hates them and fuck you all.

Personally, I’m not a fan of Kyrie Irving; he’s this enigma of a human being that I feel was blessed with basketball talent, coasted through life, has enjoyed immense success professionally and made a tremendous amount of money, but is still somehow an insufferable asshole who seems to get off on being a contrarian.

However, personal feelings aside, like the title of this post says, I kind of respect the brutal honesty he had no hesitation in letting become a quote.  At some point in most peoples’ lives, who hasn’t been furious with an employer before?  Whether they cared to admit or not, felt the same kind of feelings towards those jobs, as he felt about the Brooklyn Nets?  And on top of the discontent with his employer, in the world of sports, fans are about the most insufferable people on the face of the planet, much less ones from Brooklyn, New York.

I don’t really like Kyrie Irving, but I can only imagine the amount of bullshit he heard from fans on a regular basis.  In spite of my personal feelings, I’m not going to deny for a second that the guy is talented as all hell, and is genuinely a generational-level talent; when he actually feels like putting in the effort.  He can score, he can pass, and he can take over games by himself; I imagine a lot of the shit he hears on the regular is why he hasn’t delivered a championship for as much money as he’s making, as if sports fans were completely convinced that one guy could actually accomplish victory entirely by themselves.

Michael Jordan couldn’t.  Kobe Bryant couldn’t.  LeBron James couldn’t.  They all had good teams surrounding them, and unfortunately for Kyrie Irving, he hasn’t had the right good team surrounding him since 2016, when he had LeBron James piloting the Cleveland Cavaliers team he was on.

So I kind of get and I do enjoy the unfiltered venom Kyrie Irving had to say about the Nets and the city of Brooklyn itself, and I applaud him for raising the bar for any discontented professional athlete that is demanding to be traded.

Continue reading “I kind of respect the brutal honesty” →

I mean is it really an upset anymore?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Although it would be great if this was a sign that the defending ACC Champions of Men’s basketball were waking up and priming themselves for a repeat of last year’s tournament march, I’m not going to hold my breath.  The win against Duke was definitely a highlight of the season, but notching a win against UVA is like a cherry on top.

But seriously, is it really an upset anymore to see the Hokies beat UVA anymore?  It’s kind of like Duke in the sense that historically UVA has eaten Tech’s lunch in men’s basketball, but over the span of the last decade, there have been quite a number of times in which Virginia Tech has basically, troll-beaten UVA, screwing up whatever rankings they have at the time in which they’ve played.  And make no mistake, much like Duke, UVA has almost always been a ranked squad over the last decade, while Virginia Tech sporadically gets hot for brief moments in time, often times against UVA, having beaten them as highly ranked as #2 in the nation.

Despite the lopsided historical record between the schools in favor of UVA, over the last three years, it’s been deadlocked at .500, with UVA now having lost three in a row in Blacksburg.  That being said I bring up the query on whether or not it should really be considered an upset anymore when schools like Duke and UVA come into town and lose, because whatever it is about the last decade or so, Blacksburg is becoming a place where there’s always a chance for Tech to beat even the bluest of bloods.

All the same, much like the aftermath of the Duke job, the fans stormed the court; and I’m looking at the footage of the jubilation, and sure it’s a fun event and all, but I’m just kind of like, this has literally happened for the third straight year; this is not really out of the ordinary and doesn’t really seem like it’s worth storming the court over at this point.  But whatever, all wins are good regardless of whom they’re against, but me personally, I’ve always found it the most satisfying whenever Tech topples North Carolina or Clemson.  Or Notre Dame, now that they’re basically an ACC school.

I love that Duke is Virginia Tech’s slumpbuster

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Through casual following through the ESPN app’s favorite team tracking, was I somewhat aware of how the season of the reigning ACC Champions was going.  I noticed that they had a very strong start to the season, at one point being 11-1, with some notable wins coming against Penn State and UNC.  I was perplexed to why they weren’t getting into the top-25, while teams with way worse records and not that much stronger schedules like UVA and Duke were.

But then I noticed that the L’s started happening, and next thing I know the Hokies lost seven in a row, with two coming against Clemson which annoys me to see that they’re leaning so hard into hoops like Tech did after their football program has been less than stellar.  Suddenly, the record bolstered by a hot start is looking pretty mediocre, and Tech is looking more like an NIT school than the defending ACC Champions.

So my brother being of North Carolina upbringing, bleeds Carolina blue, which automatically means that he like many, hates Duke.  Any time Duke loses, he’ll post to me, or one of our group chats of a website, succinctly URL’d diddukewin.com, to which the site literally only reports a YES or NO with an ensuing link to ESPN’s recaps.

I hadn’t been paying attention, but on the latest of Dook’s fuckups, I was pleasantly surprised to have seen come against, Virginia Tech.  Seven-game losing streak, over.

As the subject of this post says, I love that Duke has turned into Virginia Tech’s slumpbuster for the better part of the last decade.  It doesn’t matter how ranked or mostly unranked Virginia Tech has been, how highly ranked Dook has been or how many Zions or Graysons or Reddishes or whatever highly-touted prospects they’ve trotted out, when Dook has gone to Blacksburg, more often than not, they’ve lost.  Since 2013, Duke has gone 3-5 in Blacksburg, and 5-5 in head-to-head matchups over their last ten.  .500 doesn’t sound that impressive, but consider the fact that we’re talking about Duke and Virginia Tech, and not like Duke and UNC.

Regardless of the stats and numbers, I’m just arrogantly pleased to see that Dook has once again gone to Blacksburg, and left with another L.  I don’t care if there’s no more Coach K, and Jon Scheyerface is struggling to manage the team, I will always take pleasure in Virginia Tech > Dook.  It never gets old, and it will probably never not warrant a post in my brog whenever it happens.  Hopefully the frequency in which it does continues to maintain pace, or get even better.

Figures that of their abysmal 2-7 conference record, the wins have come against UNC and Dook.  Maybe they’ll draw that lucky #7 seed in the ACC tournament again and go gangbusters and repeat as champions, but baby luck is over, and this is more likely than not a pipedream.  But at least we’ve got another win against Dook to highlight the season.

I’m actually surprised that Tech stormed the court afterward.  Considering how often we beat Dook at home, it’s kind of becoming a given, and no more special than beating William & Mary or the Dayton Flyers.  I’m not mad about it, just a little disappointed.  We’ve been there many times now, act like it.