Tag: baseball

Nope.  Never saw it coming

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Four games.  That’s all it took for the 2020 Major League Baseball season to have its first cancellations on account of a coronavirus breakout, as the Miami Marlins are the first team to have an outbreak of COVID-19 cases, after 20+ team personnel test positive.  Effective immediately, numerous home games were cancelled for both themselves, as well as the Phillies, the last team they played prior to the announcement, and MLB will have a great time trying to figure out how to re-work all these cancelled games into their already abbreviated 60-game season.

Honestly, it’s about as surprising as finding out that dogs like to sniff butts that this happened so quickly.  Frankly, I’m surprised it didn’t take two games before the first cases started to happen, but then again considering MLB said that testing would only take place every other day, who’s to say it didn’t, but then there was a grace period of a day in between?

Anyway, this is just a microcosm of how fun the rest of this season is going to become, because as far as I can tell, from what I’ve heard is that there will be many more double-headers played this year to accommodate the crunch of games, and much like the Toronto Blue Jays will have to endure, since the entire country of Canada basically won’t let them back in, many of them will have re-jiggered to where the opposite team will be designated as the home teams, on the road.  I guess when there are no fans in the stands, it definitely makes the venues feel a little bit more neutral, but baseball players are neurotic weirdoes sometimes, so who knows how they’ll react to batting last in someone else’s ballparks.

Oh, and the double-header games will all be 7-inning games – just like in the minor leagues, which is an appropriate comp at this point, considering how bush league the season is becoming.

SO, this just opens up the door more for the possibility of some wonky seasons; I hope by the time we’re nearing the end of the 60-game season, the Seattle Mariners will clinch the AL West in Houston, where they’re the home team against the Astros at Minute Maid Park, and some guy from their taxi squad hits a walk-off homerun.  It would be the perfect beginning of their playoff run to their inevitable World Series date with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

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Still got it

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s funny.  As I’ve been combing through every single one of my old posts, I came across this one from back in 2011, where I had been applauding Julio Franco’s endless love of the game when he was signing with a semi-pro team in Japan at the age of 52.  I stated that I never wanted to see him ever stop playing the game of baseball back then.

Well it’s 2020 now, the world is at its knees, buckled by a global pandemic which has now been contained primarily in an America that had no clue or want to actually combat it, but out in presumably South Korea, video has surfaced of a now 61-year old Julio Franco, still taking cuts inside the batting cage.  And still with his trademark wonky batting stance, great bat speed and the ball coming off his bat with a satisfying crack.

To my understanding, he’s been a hitting coach for the KBO’s Lotte Giants, and has been since 2016, which means that he is still actively getting paid to contribute to the game of baseball.  God bless this guy and his passion for the game that can probably never be rivaled throughout the passage of time.

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Bobby Bonilla, Christian Yelich and baseball is fucking idiotic sometimes

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Most baseball fans know by now, that July 1st is known as Bobby Bonilla Day.  As in the day in which the New York Mets pay a guy that hasn’t played professional baseball since 2001 $1.19 million dollars, and will continue to do so every single July 1st until 2035.  It’s one of the numerous reasons people love to clown on the Mets, and one that literally has no expiration for 15 more years, and it’s ironically celebrated by all in baseball geek circles, because for some reason we’re fascinated by money that people who have no direct impact on our lives make.

And because all this shit is in concrete writing, in spite of the shortened 2020 season where all active players are going to be taking giant hits in their salaries due to prorated numbers, Bonilla will still receive his full $1.19M, and as I mentioned in a post not long ago, shitheads who didn’t officially retire like David Wright and Prince Fielder will still be making multi-millions from their teams, with the former, also being the Mets, because the Mets really love pissing away money.

Also I learned something new about Bobby Bonilla this year, which is how he somehow inexplicably has another deferred money deal with another team, being the Baltimore Orioles, where in addition to the $1.19M he gets from the Mets, he also receives a cool $500K from the O’s every single year between 2004 and 2029.

I sure hope Bonilla still sends Dennis Gilbert, his former agent, a nice gift basket every single year.

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Cancellation of Minor League Baseball kills my soul

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Primarily thanks to coronavirus, Minor League Baseball has officially cancelled the 2020 baseball season.  I say primarily, because the insinuation is that it was not the one and only factor in this decision; because prior to the world going into the shitter on account of a pandemic, MiLB was already at risk, because Major League Baseball is full of greedy cocksuckers, and they were trying to kill off associations with a large chunk of existing Minor League organizations.  Coronavirus just gives MLB a convenient scapegoat to push the whole thing under the rug for the time being, and possibly come back later to put the nails in the coffin at a later, easier time.

But commentary aside, the reality is that in 2020, there will be no Minor League Baseball, and that fact alone hurts my soul in a variety of ways.

Obviously, my love for the minor leagues throughout the years has easily made me prefer them over the MLB product, despite being but cogs in the grander machine, but there’s no denying the appeal of the more laid-back, relaxed culture of MiLB, where everything is not taken so seriously, and there’s vastly more accessibility and intimate closeness with the players and the teams, than their MLB parents.

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MLB 2020 the (Shit)Show

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Welp, after months of billionaires feuding with millionaires over millions of dollars to play a kids game, while millions of Americans are applying for unemployment in the midst of a fucking pandemic, Major League Baseball has gotten their shit together, and it looks like we’re going to have a 2020 season after all.

Honestly, I really was hoping that the entire season was going to be cancelled.  The aforementioned narrative is no stretch from reality, and it was disgusting to the core to see so many rich assholes balking over as much money was being argued over, while the entire country has been brought to their knees by coronavirus, and millions of Americans are in financial ruin.  The lack of a season and the financial hit that the owners and the players would all have taken would have been an appropriate slap in the collective dicks for all these greedy fucks for their money-grubbing ways and a reality check that there are things in the world way more important than fucking baseball and I love baseball.

Plus, the sheer decimation and mistreatment of minor league baseball is saddening and can be filed in part of the millions of Americans who are out of jobs and will be in the unemployment lines, and brings the Major Leagues a questionable step towards an uncertain future, but more likely they have a lucrative alternative to the minor leagues already in mind.

Regardless, so it looks like we’re going to have a season, as begrudging it may seem to me.  In the other hand, the last time the Braves won the World Series, it was also in a shortened season, when the 1995 season was reduced to 144 games down from 162, so here’s hoping that the Braves can capitalize on another shortened year, and maybe fulfill the joking theory I have that babies bring luck for baseball fans.*

*A friend who is a Cubs fan had a kid in 2016, another friend who is a Nationals fan had twins in 2019 and look what happened

I mean with only 60 games to be played, 2020 truly stands to be a genuine shit show of a season where literally anyone can win right now.  Teams will fall out of contention within three weeks, but those in contention can remain such all the way to the end.  Sports have proven that any team can get hot on a moment’s notice, and/or have a torrid stretch, and with so little baseball to actually be had, all it takes is one well-timed hot streak, and any team can ride it to the World Series.

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Baseball is great, but sometimes I fucking hate MLB

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was reading this article about how David Wright is still going to be making $12 million dollars in 2020, regardless of if any baseball happens or not, and it leaves me with a feeling of disgust for Major League Baseball for allowing shit like this to happen.

In this particular instance, I can’t blame David Wright for anything other than being a leech and not retiring four years ago, because the Mets and MLB allowed this contract to happen, and MLB doesn’t have the balls to reject the Players Association’s demand for guaranteed contracts, falling back on insurance policies to cover up for the sunk costs.  But the reality is that David Wright hasn’t played in a meaningful game since 2016, missed all of 2017, played in two symbolic games in 2018 to signal his retirement, but didn’t actually retire and continued to get paid throughout 2019, and will get paid in 2020, the final year of his contract, in spite of the very good likelihood that there will be no MLB at all this year.

Also mentioned in the article is Prince Fielder, whom like David Wright, called it quits in 2016, but by virtue of not actually retiring on paper, continued to cash in over the last four years by virtue of the remainder of his contract.  In fact, Prince Fielder stands to be the highest paid player in all of MLB in 2020, because unlike all the active players that are sitting home doing diddly squat on prorated per-diems, Fielder’s remaining $24M is 100% guaranteed, and I suppose there’s something in the literature that even protects it from complete work stoppage.

Let that sink in for a second; two guys that haven’t even played baseball in four years, will be making more money for not playing baseball, than guys like Mike Trout and Bryce Harper, who have the highest respective contracts in baseball currently, because even if some hackneyed season does come to fruition, it’s a safe bet that they’ll be on prorated salaries.

Speaking of prorated salaries, let’s talk about about Tampa Bay pitcher Blake Snell, who has boldly stated that he will outright refuse to play in 2020, unless he’s going to be receiving his full prorated pay, because the current proposal dictates that there be a 50/50 split between the owners and player salaries, meaning players would effectively be receiving 50% of their prorated salaries if a season were to occur.

So for example, if MLB gets their shit together and slaps together a season of 81 games, or half of a season, than Blake Snell should be contractually obligated to half of his $7.6M salary, which would be $3.8 million dollars.  But with the 50/50 split coming into play, then that $3.8M is reduced to $1.9M.

$1.9 million dollars.  To play baseball, ultimately a children’s game.

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The KBO should really just tell ESPN to fuck off

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s no shock that in the midst of a global pandemic, ESPN is getting starved out when it comes to having live content.  They can’t broadcast NBA, they can’t broadcast MLB.  They can’t even broadcast minor league variants of either.  No hockey, no spring football scrimmages, there’s not even any collegiate soccer, baseball or even fucking ultimate frisbee or Quiddich to show.

And with no sports to talk about, their excessive lineup of talking head shows have no real reason to air, although they’re still managing to squeeze out a regular schedule of circle-jerking/talking about the NFL, justifying my nickname for ESPN being NFL Network Ocho.

In fact, ESPN has gotten so desperate for content, that they’ve even resulted in broadcasting basically YouTube clips of things such as competitive Tetris, among other eSports, mixed in between a cavalcade of “classic” games, in an attempt to draw any sort of ratings. 

It goes without saying that no matter how much original content ESPN can produce, they’re still nothing without there being any actual sports to broadcast or at least talk about.  Once The Last Dance airs its last episode, there’s really going to be nothing left for anyone to have any reason to tune into ESPN afterward.

Luckily for them, there are actual great countries out there in the world, like Korea and Taiwan, who have withstood their own coronavirus onslaughts and are way more on the mend and road to recovery than America is.  And among the things returning to normalcy for them is live baseball, with the Korean Baseball Organization and the Chinese Professional Baseball League both announcing that they are going to be starting their baseball seasons in May; granted, they’re going to be empty stadiums at first, but it stands to believe that as things improve, fans will eventually be allowed in.  But it’s certainly more progress than suggesting all MLB personnel go into a bio-dome in Phoenix and play a condensed season in one city over four months.

So over the last few weeks, there’s been intermittent news about how ESPN has reached out to both the KBO and the CBPL, and testing the waters to see there was any interest in making arrangements to have Korean and/or Taiwanese baseball broadcast globally (really just America).  To no surprise, both are definitely interested, why wouldn’t they want to have their product draw interest overseas, and perhaps earn some respect that’s typically reserved for glorious Nippon-anything because America is full of filthy weeaboos.

However, a massive speed bump in negotiations has basically been the fact that ESPN doesn’t want to pay anything for the rights to internationally broadcast KBO, claiming that they should really just be grateful that they’re being given the opportunity to gain exposure outside of their native country.

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