Tag: sports

There are poor teams, teams that spend, and The Braves Way™

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was thinking one morning before I started making breakfast for the kids, about how the Braves had lost yet another game to the lowly Nationals, while the Phillies had won another game, adding one more game in the standings over Atlanta.  There’s no shortage of shady remarks I could spout, that only come from the type of fan who loves a team to where they have absolutely nothing but snarky vitriol for them, but instead, I actually had what I thought was a great visual representation of how I felt the Braves operated in the MLB landscape.

There’s a scene in the Game of Thrones television show, where Littlefinger smugly tries to educate Cersei Lannister that knowledge is power, only for her to immediately command her guards to grab him and slit his throat, before calling them off, and retorting that power is power.  Littlefinger is an arrogant smarmy fuck throughout the series, and it’s always a treat to see someone put him in his place, because it unfortunately does not happen that often.

The Braves are Littlefinger.  They operate in this insulated bubble where they think they’re smarter than all the other teams in Major League Baseball, and are quick to congratulate themselves on irrelevant accolades such as profit, revenue and all things that pertain to how much money they make from all the schmucks who throw money at them.  The unspoken part is concurrently how little they re-invest back into the team itself, that ultimately is the product that is meant to generate all that currency in some shape or form.

They are always convinced that the organization has all the parts they need in order to contend for a World Series, despite the fact that they only have the one from 2021 that was the mother of hot streak luck but then again what World Series winning squad isn’t the same?

The Braves are tremendously risk-averse to the point where they basically take no risks at all, mainly in the arena of paying a free agent or trading some prospects for a sure-thing good player, and year after year, their biggest weakness is exposed, and they get bounced from the playoffs in the NLDS.

Meanwhile, all the other contenders in baseball are Cersei and her guards, who represent teams that have their own intelligence in their own rights, but are either less risk averse, or are willing to open up their copiously overflowing wallets because baseball is a massively fucking profitable business venture, or worse off for the Braves, both.

Non-fans of teams like the Dodgers, Yankees and Phillies are quick to criticize how much money that these teams are spending on free agents and contract extensions, but the proof is in the pudding; all of them are at the top of the standings currently, and are leaps and bounds in the best positions to reach the World Series.

Sometimes you have to just stop trying to outsmart everyone, because when everyone is playing chess at the same time, you just have to brute force and fuck everyone else with some money and demonstrate that power is power.

As much as I criticize the Braves, the truth of the matter is that they are a great organization.  General manager Alex Anthopolous is a sharp guy who has lucked into some really fruitful moves that didn’t really sound impressive on paper, but paid out in dividends when they worked out, but it’s obvious that even he’s working with his hands partially tied behind his back, from the stingy purse strings closing the wallet that he’s denied access to.

With the knowledge that the team does have, they’re competent at fielding a team that’s routinely good enough to make the playoffs, especially now that there are two wild cards, but they constantly run out of gas and/or have their weaknesses exposed, and crash out at their routinely low ceiling.

But imagine just how great the Braves could routinely become if they just stopped being so fucking Braves-ey and sobered up from the bullshit The Braves Way™ Koolaid they remain so drunk on.  As soon as Spencer Strider went down for the year, pick up Trevor Bauer for the peanuts he’s asking for just for a chance to pitch in MLB.  As soon as Ronald Acuña went down for the year, pick up the fucking phone and start making some calls, and not assume that an outfield of Jarred Kelenic and Adam Duvall at the corners could cut it.  If the team had Bauer, then Schwellenbach or Waldrep could become a valuable trade chip to get someone useful now.

Fire someone; on any other team in any other sport, a slump like the one the Braves are going through usually results in someone getting fired, regardless of the obvious fact that it’s out of their control that the players aren’t playing well.  If the team doesn’t want to axe Brian Snitker, then fire Kevin Seltzer, the hitting coach.  Strong arm Chipper Jones to be the interim hitting coach that fans have wanted to see the hitting savant become since the second he retired from the game.

Stop being so afraid of fucking rentals.  Stop being so fucking cheap.  Stop believing The Braves Way™ is the only way, because rest assured, it is not.  No matter how much I’d prefer power to be power over knowledge, at the very end of the day, baseball, much less any sport, is a crapshoot, once playoffs begin.  But if I’m a betting man, the teams that employ more power, tend to be the ones primed to be standing once the postseason begins, and with the way things are now, the Braves and all their Littlefinger knowledge sure as fuck don’t seem primed for anything other than an even earlier postseason exit, in the wild card series; if they even make it at all.

It’s fun watching all the non-sport fan normies get up in arms over Caitlin Clark

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s safe to say that I’ve been watching sports for a pretty long time.  My fandoms ebb and flow, and at various times it’s safe to say that it fluctuates on what sport I am favoriting the most, but when it comes down to it, I have spent an inordinate amount of time in my life watching sports.  Baseball, basketball, football and even a little bit of soccer and hockey, I’ve watched enough sports in my life to generally know what I’m talking about, as well as to have seen some things, that only other sports fans of an extended duration really know what I’m talking about.

If there’s one thing that’s been pretty consistent throughout the history of sports, is that whenever a hotshot player arrives at a new level of competition, there’s usually a degree of testing that they go through and endure, be it from their opponents, peers, rivals and even their own teammates, since peers, rivals and teammates aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.

When Michael Jordan, Peyton Manning and Derek Jeter were drafted and reported to duty in their early years, all of them went through a period of time where they were physically and mentally tested by everyone.  In practices, scrimmages or spring trainings, their presence was a threat to veterans on their own teams, and ain’t nobody want to lose their job to any young guns whose ears are still wet from the showers.

Against opponents, they were bullied, fouled, tackled, cheap shot and went to verbal warfare from their opponents, who wanted to see if they could exert some power of intimidation or get inside their heads and throw them off their games.

And they would go through these types of rituals and experiences numerous times throughout their early years, until they earned the general respect of those around them, to which the behaviors would taper off mostly, unless they were weak-willed and demonstrated that they could be rattled.

In other words, everything that Caitlin Clark has been going through since the start of the WNBA season, with the hard fouls, the shit talking, the snipes from opponents in the media; this is not racism, this is not jealousy, this is not any form of discrimination.  This is normal, this is ordinary, this is nothing that professional athletes in any sport of any gender have not had to endure themselves at early parts of their careers.

But let’s not tell that to the legions of media and overnight women’s basketball fans who have never been sports fans in their lives until Caitlin Clark had ignited their imaginations, and are up in arms over the supposed rough treatment that she’s getting in the WNBA.  It’s partially their fault that they’re so blind to it, because it really hasn’t been since Caitlin Clark that this many people have been interested in the WNBA at all, and for everyone who is now claiming to be fans of women’s hoops, where they fuck were they when Lisa Leslie and Rebecca Lobo were launching the entire league, and when Britney Griner and Sabrina Ionescu were leading the quiet charge of the current generation?

Caitlin Clark is undoubtedly the most important player the league has come across in a long time, and this generalization is not lost on all the other girls in the league who have had to deal with the ridicule and general disrespect people have had for the WNBA in all the years prior to the arrival of Clark.  It’s natural for them to want to welcome the rookie with some tough love, and size up the nuclear hot shot who’s being unofficially hailed as the flagbearer for the entire gender’s sport, because if she demonstrates any weaknesses, then perhaps she’s not the right person for the job.

The hard fouls and the criticism have nothing to do with racism, and nothing to do with any general discrimination.  There may be some jealousy involved, but I can’t blame anyone for being jealous at least a little bit, considering the league has been around for over 20 years, and it wasn’t until Caitlin Clark that people have been taking notice.

And if Caitlin Clark endures the season with a modicum of grace, respect, and an attitude of shut up and play ball, she’s going to be just fine, and the rest of the league will take their foot off the gas at trying to break her for the sake of breaking her, and entrust her with the hope that she can help bring growth and positive change to the league and sport as a whole.

And as for all the normies, welcome to sports.  This is nothing out of the ordinary.

The world no longer has the greatest living center alive

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

RIP: Bill Walton passes away at the age of 71

I don’t even remember who preceded Bill Walton on the NBA on NBC broadcasts throughout the 90s, but when I had really gotten into basketball, my memories of watching hoops always had the voice of Marv Albert and someone else in it.  Maybe it was Paul Westphal or Doug Collins, I don’t remember, but what I do remember is when Bill Walton joined Marv Albert behind the desk, and the two of them commentated on some of the greatest games of basketball I’ve ever watched.

I didn’t know really anything about Bill Walton when he took over the broadcasting duties, except for the fact that he was a former NBA player from yesteryear.  I didn’t know that he was some beatnik hippie player who played for the Portland Trailblazers and the Boston Celtics, and I frankly didn’t know anything about his career, playstyle or any remote idea of his general numbers.  The internet didn’t really exist then, much less have an online database where I can satiate any curiosity of any player of any time in history these days.

Honestly, at first, I found Walton to be kind of obnoxious, from his nasal-ey voice, tendency to go off on tangents about things that weren’t basketball, and inject a little too much opinion and editorial into his commentating style.  I didn’t need to hear about the famines in Sri Lanka, while I’m sitting at the edge of my seat watching Patrick Ewing trying to come out victorious over the Indiana Pacers.  I didn’t need to hear about how he was happier being the greatest sixth man ever for the Celtics instead of being the star in Portland when I was amped up watching Anfernee Hardaway prepare for some last second heroics against the Hakeem Olajuwon and the Houston Rockets.

But as the years passed, the sound of Bill Walton grew into a familiar comfort, and as I grew older and my general brain began to expand, the things he would drone on and on about during the span of a basketball game became entertaining.  Especially when while he was doing it, Marv Albert was being the studious straight man calling the action to the book, along with his iconic YESSSS calls whenever Michael Jordan drilled a fadeaway in John Starks’ face.

One of my favorite Bill Walton cliches, before the phrase meme even came into existence, were all the times throughout the decade where Walton would make remarks or insinuations that he was a better center than Shaquille O’Neal.  Which was laughable, considering Walton was a lanky white guy who excelled at set play team basketball while Shaq was probably the single greatest dominating physical force in the history of the game, but it never stopped old Bill Walton from trying to hint that he was always a better player than him, mostly because of his superior free throw percentage and ability to pass the ball.

My friends and I would often do bad impressions of Bill Walton whenever we talked hoops, and it always boiled down to a caricature quote of him saying:

I know a better center than Shaq.  Me.

Oh and how we ended up loving Bill Walton in the end.  Eventually, NBC would foolishly lose the license to the NBA, and it would be quite some time before Bill Walton would be back in the booth with any regularity, and by then, I had already long phased out of my love for hoops, the NBA and having time in general to watch basketball.

But I have memories as recent as just a few years ago, of where Bill Walton was doing some guest commentary during a college basketball game, and in true classic Bill Walton, the man would just not shut the fuck up about topics that had to do with anything other than basketball, like some of the turmoil going on in Syria or some other third world country.  The guy doing the play-by-play was probably getting annoyed, but I definitely was enjoying it the whole time, because despite the fact that time had aged and eroded Bill Walton physically, he was still the same beatnik underneath it all, and his past basketball accolades always got him in the door to be on television to talk about absolutely anything but basketball; during basketball games.

At 71 years of age, the man had lived a fairly full life, close to general life expectancy.  Probably a lot of the psychedelic drugs he did as a devout Dead Head probably shaved a few years off, but it’s probably hard to argue that he didn’t live his life to the fullest.  It does make me sad to learn that the greatest living center is no longer among us, and he clearly impacted my life to the point where his passing warrants a post in the brog.

Happy trails, Bill Walton – you certainly were a better center than Shaq was, at quite a few things.

MLB’s Japanese Player Fetish

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This has been a topic that I’ve had on my list of things that I wanted to write about, that I just haven’t really been able to bring to fruition.  Either I burn myself out on writing about high school tryhards applying to every school under the sun, or I just don’t feel like I have sufficient time to write about it, but it’s definitely a topic that I feel like I could go off about, but for whatever reason, I just haven’t had the chance to do so until now.

But it’s been something that’s been brewing over the last few years, and this year it’s definitely come to a boiling point about just how cringey MLB has become when it comes to their obvious opinion and feelings when it comes to Japanese players.

Sure, Shohei Ohtani is an incredible specimen of a baseball player, and I do think there is legitimate argument that we might be able to call him the best player of all time (for this generation), and that he’s more impressive than Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Albert Pujols, combined.  Statistically he does bring a lot to the table, but one thing that he does not bring to the table that MLB insists that he does, is the fact that he is, Japanese.

His ethnicity has nothing to add to any argument over his place in baseball history, but MLB is so rapid quick when it comes to injecting it into the narrative, and it’s not like those who follow baseball aren’t already aware that Japan is the de facto #1 country in the world when it comes to baseball talent, seeing as how they’ve won the vast majority of Olympic golds and World Baseball Classics when it comes to international competition over the last 20 years.

But MLB does it anyway, because for whatever reason, over the last 20 years, they’ve become an organization that is definitely going through a serious weeaboo phase in their history where Japan = #1, and everything, including their own assets are inferior in comparison.  Ohtani is definitely a worthy blue pill to cause this phenomenon within the organization, but the ensuing trickle-down effect when it comes to the yearly migration of a handful of Japanese players and the hype and fanfare they get when they come to America is downright cringey.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto making more money than Roger Clemens and Nolan Ryan ever made in their careers, combined is an egregious overpay and fellating sign of kowtowing to their Japanese overlords. 

Everytime Shota Imanaga throws another scoreless inning, bean counters for Elias and MLB blow their loads at being able to throw out another tweet about how low his ERA is, seemingly completely ignorant to how the league will adjust on him harder than the stock market once the scouting report on him is complete. 

Seiya Suzuki is by-and-large a perfectly good, above average player, but the way MLB expounds his occasional positive contributions is like they’re talking about the second-coming of Ichiro.

The season is barely a quarter of the way through, and there’s already talks about the next Japanese overlord, some guy named Munetaka Murakami.  But few outside of the diehard fans of their respective teams are bothering to get excited over any prospects on their own farms.

The point of all this is that it’s extremely clear that MLB has a pretty raging boner fetish on Japanese players right now.  I can practically hear the gong and racist Asian theme in my head every time I see an MLB channel or MLB beat writer lose their shit over something a Japanese player does, as if their mythical powers from the magic Orient were why Yamamoto had a 5.2 inning outing where he gave up no runs, while Max Fried throws a complete game shutout in the middle of an era where complete games are becoming as scarce as no-hitters.

Much has been made of Ohtani’s 2024, and how because he doesn’t have to worry about doing any pitching at all, he can focus on being the demigod of hitting he’s believed to be.  Every single home run he hits, is answered by some god-awful MLB tweet fellating him for doing what he’s going be paid $700 million dollars to do; meanwhile, Marcell Ozuna of the Braves is leading the majors in home runs currently, when just a year ago, fans were clamoring for him to be cut from the team and eat the salary hit, and MLB barely takes notice when he maintains his home run lead.

It’s just funny how an entire organization like Major League Baseball becomes no different than myself and lots of my nerdier friends in my life have been at certain points of their lives, when it comes to going through a Japan #1 phase.  I look back at that time of my life with rolled eyes and a little bit of embarrassment, but the difference is that I’m not a publicly known, forward facing, billions of dollars organization, looking like a collective cringey weeb in front of the rest of the world, and I look forward to the day when MLB grows out of it, because it’s really fucking embarrassing watching them spooge all over themselves over Japanese players.

Oh the sweet irony

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

lol’d heartily: Joel Embiid expresses disappointment at Knicks fans taking over the Sixers’ Wells Fargo Center during the Knicks’ playoff win

Fewer things in sports are as awe-inspiring as a stadium takeover.  It’s nigh impossible to get sports fans to ever come together and be in complete solidarity at home, much less take the act on the road, but there have been instances throughout the history of sport where the planets align, the stars are in the right position and people manage to get on the same page, and embark on taking over stadiums, be it their own, and even more rarely, someone else’s.

Once there was a year where the Braves were not good and the visiting Chicago Cubs were having a strong season.  I remember watching the game on television, and noticing that the crowd was particularly hot that night, where the usually apathetic Atlanta fans were cheering for every single and strikeout, and there was a lot of booing whenever the Cubs did anything good for themselves.  But reality came catching up and eventually the Cubs took the lead and cruised to a relatively easy victory, but not before chasing off Braves fans, basically taking over Turner Field, and I remember seeing one shot of a large group of fans in the nosebleeds unfurling a banner that said “Wrigley South.”

It was fucking embarrassing.

There was a stretch where the Pittsburgh Penguins systematically eliminated the Washington Capitals from the NHL playoffs for 800 years in a row.  The greatest player in the history of the game since Gretzky, Alexander Ovechkin for whatever reason, couldn’t lead a DC team over the Penguins, and there was one specific year where Penguins fans trekked down to DC and really rub it into the face of Caps fans, and although they didn’t take over the USAir MCI Verizon Whatever the fuck they call it Arena now, they definitely didn’t make haste in getting out of town after the Penguins eliminated the Caps yet again.

Partying in the streets, congregating all over DC’s numerous landmarks in Penguins gear, basically marking their territory all over the city; it was fucking embarrassing.

The poor Baltimore Orioles, there was a stretch where they were woefully bad year in and year out, and eventually word got out to just about every team off of I-95, and Camden Yards was invaded countless times.  The Phillies, Yankees and Red Sox have taken over their stadium a bunch of times, and even the Nationals down the street have gathered en masse in their lovely ballpark.  They’ve been proclaimed to be Yankee Stadium South and Fenway South more times than they should’ve been. 

I’ve actually been there for a Nationals take over and a Yankee takeover.  One man I spoke with explained to me that it was cheaper to drive his family of four down to Baltimore from New York, the cost of tickets, food and lodging, than it would’ve been for decent seats at Yankee Stadium.  That fact, as well as getting taken over as repeatedly as they have been: fucking embarrassing.

But circling back to the Phillies, there was one year in particular that stands out, where Phillies fans absolutely took the fuck over at Nationals Park for the season opener.  I remember reading about it in the aftermath, how a really popular Philly sports website arranged the whole thing, and exploited a ticketing snafu that gave large groups priority when purchasing tickets, and the result was a Nationals home game that was easily 65%+ Phillies fans, where all the home players were booed out of the building, and Roy Halladay absolutely shut them down.

I knew several friends who were at the game, and unsurprisingly, it was one of the worst game experiences they’d ever had.  All the same, it was, fucking embarrassing.

And as far as I’m concerned, Philly kind of reinvented the idea of stadium takeovers.  After Occupy Nationals Park, it became almost like something that Philly sports fans would do anywhere else they could get away with it.  As mentioned, they weren’t shy about pulling the same act on the Orioles, but they’ve also attempted it on the Baltimore Ravens in the seasons in which the Eagles had them on the road.

The New York and Pittsburgh sport scenes are a little more prideful to allow such to happen, but as the pattern seems to be, just like everyone in Westeros, everyone marches south.

Which brings us back to the original topic, it’s sweet irony at its finest that not only did a Philadelphia sports team get invaded, the players definitely noticed, as Joel Embiid took the time to “I love them but” and basically throw them under the bus for not showing up to support the team, in the playoffs no less, and allowing for all the Knicks fans to take over their home court.

After the NLDS choke against the Phillies last year, I basically threw in the towel and resigned that Philly definitely is a sports town worthy of respect, for the innovative culture and brand they’ve built where players want to throw themselves into moving traffic for the fans, but then they have to and act like shitty fairweather fans who clearly have taken the 76ers for granted, the Process for granted and have collectively prioritized Eagles football and Phillies baseball over their basketball franchise.

And getting the stuffing beat out of them by the Knicks, of all the teams in the league.  The Knicks haven’t been relevant since Patrick Ewing was still on team, and I don’t say that just to be snarky, in the footage I’d seen of the takeover, the #1 jersey still seen being worn by most of these fans, is #33 Ewing.

The Knicks suck, but the Sixers and the city of Philadelphia are allowing them and their fans to have a genuine W, before they’ll inevitably choke and make this whole playoff run feel all for naught.

How fucking embarrassing.

How to fix the wage gap

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Among one of my group chats, the topic of wage inequality came up again, starting with the embarrassingly low salaries of WNBA players.  Basically despite being the female equivalent of Steph Curry, the #1 draft pick of the WNBA draft, Caitlin Clark, she who led Iowa into prominence and caught the imagination of hoops fans across the country, will basically be making a paltry $75,000, or something close to that, in her first season in the WNBA. 

It’s not often that I can say it, but I make more money than the WNBA salary, and I am not a professional athlete.

To put it in perspective, I’ve been doing a lot of daily research on history, in an attempt to simply enlighten myself with useless knowledge, but one of the things that I like to do is when I come across financial figures from various points in time, I like to punch in the numbers to compare to how the dollar amounts translate with today’s inflation.

Like for example, Alaska was purchased for $7.2 million dollars in 1867, and $7.2 million in today’s dollars would be like $155M or somewhere close.  And then off the top of my head, I could rattle off several baseball players who are on contracts for double that amount or more, putting into further perspective just how overpaid professional athletes not in the WNBA are.

Ford lit the world on fire in the 1914 when they instituted a $5 daily wage; I’m not sure how accurate internet inflation calendars really are, but basically that breaks down to a $19 an hour minimum wage, yet somehow across the country, less than half of that is still considered the federal minimum.

For about a minute, we pondered on what the world would be like if even the most menial jobs making minimum wage, were still paying $19-21 an hour.  People would be grossing $3K+ a month if they could notch full-time hours, and that’s definitely closer to being able to survive in the world than where we are now.

Then came the rhetorical pondering of how fucked up it is that there’s such an inequity in wages in the world; leading me to snarkily blurt out that with wages like these, American employers might as well reinstitute indentured servitude, because if you’re going to treat people like slaves, might as well give them a roof over their heads and three square meals a day for the exploitation.

And then it dawned on me that if rich white people were forced to shelter and feed and give rudimentary human consideration to people, they would ultimately favor paying them more to keep the poors away from them, and right here, we’ve just fixed the wage gap.

I would absolutely want to tune in and watch, some politician in a suit, march into Congress or the Senate or the House or whichever place in Washington DC where white people argue over the state of the country, and with a completely straight face, propose reinstituting indentured servitude.  Obviously, don’t tell them why it’s being suggested, but I would wager that the intended result would undoubtedly happen, because as much as rich white people love turning the screws to poor people, the hate being around poor people.

If they were put into a position to where they not only had to be near them, but actually had to cohabitate with them, then there’s no telling just how fast they would agree to up wages across the board just to prevent such a ludicrous idea from even come remotely close to becoming reality.

And just like that, I’ve figured out how to close the wage gap up, real fast.  As the ancient Egyptians once paraphrased, slavery – it gets shit done.  But in this case, it’s indentured servitude, but it really is close enough to where the point remains.

Sure would be nice if the Braves had Trevor Bauer

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

So the Braves’ best pitcher, Spencer Strider is probably toast for the year, and some of next year; UCL damage is usually the precursor to Tommy John surgery, and even if there’s no actual tear that all but necessitates it, it’s almost worse to be on the lookout, because in so many cases, they burn time trying to rest and rehab it, and then when they try and pitch with it months later and then get the tear, prompting the TJS, they’ve burned an extra few months in which the surgery and rehab process might already have begun.

Furthermore, the Braves’ second-best pitcher, Max Fried has started the season acting like he’s not in his contract year, with his piddly five innings pitched in two starts, allowing 11 runs and with an ERA of 18.00.  Surely it will have to get better as the season wears on, but his start isn’t inspiring confidence at the moment, and if not for the two “old guys” in Charlie Morton and Chris Sale, as well as their potent offense, the Braves most definitely wouldn’t be over .500 at this early juncture in the season.

That being said, I’m writing this a day removed from the Braves having gotten absolutely nuked by the Mets, 16-4.  In the absence of Spencer Strider, the Braves have already dipped into the minor leagues, calling up Allan Winans to start, and he did not perform very well, allowing six of the Mets’ aforementioned 16 runs, and was promptly sent back down to the minor leagues afterward.

And that’s just what the Braves do, and will continue to do throughout the season; rely on young, mostly untested talent, like Allan Winans and AJ Smith-Shawver or guys who benefited greatly from the Braves’ offensive output to mask their general mediocrity like Bryce Elder, none of whom I will feel at all at ease when watching at this state of their respective careers.

All, while Trevor Bauer still is hanging out somewhere in Arizona striking out Eric Sim 58 times a day for YouTube content, or jet-setting down to Mexico to pitch for the Locos Diablos Rojos Tacos or whatever the fuck they’re called, because MLB is colluding to blacklist him from the league because of alleged crimes that multiple active players in the game right now have had an actual history with themselves.

Yes, this is a hill that I’m willing to die on, because I firmly believe that there is no team in league that Trevor Bauer doesn’t make better immediately, and as much as it guaranteed will not happen, I really fucking wish it could be the Braves, who very obviously actually need him, yesterday.

Bauer’s arsenal actually comps very closely to Spencer Strider’s, starting with a big fastball that can hit the upper-90’s, a reliable slider, but also a curveball as well as a cutter.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful that as soon as Strider went down, quite literally pick up a wandering free agent who has almost the exact same arsenal and have him start in his place?  Yeah, that’s what I think too, but Braves gonna Barves, and stay behind the picket lines with their MLB brethren, thinking they’re too high and mighty for Trevor Bauer.

I see arguments on almost a daily basis about Bauer, and I understand there are a lot of fans who are concerned about the rumored other allegations that Bauer has yet to beat, and that they will rear their heads throughout the season, but to those concerns, I say so what?

Bauer has stated that aside from being willing to play for the league minimum, he would accept being cut without argument.  Let him join your roster, win 5-6 games, and if a court date or legal matter emerges in June, then cut him.  Then, dip into the minor leagues or B-squad and cross the bridge when you get there, but let Trevor Bauer be the bridge to get you to that point and let him win baseball games for you.

I don’t understand why this is such a difficult concept for MLB squads to accept, but collusion is collusion because everyone is on board with the idea of blacklisting a currently innocent man, no matter the value and talent he’s capable of providing.  I like to imagine that behind the picket lines, there are numerous general managers sweating over wanting to pick up Trevor Bauer for their squads, but out of fear of breaking solidarity with the collusion, their hands are tied.

I retract what I said about how I believe someone will definitively pick him up, because it really is looking like Colin Kaepernick out there in baseball land, and no matter how clearly needed guys like Kaepernick and Bauer would be needed by many professional sporting clubs, the collusion is for real, and teams would rather suffer and take losses than risk crossing the pickets.