Tag: sports

Revisiting a massive biff of an old post: Chris Sale to the Braves

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As daily as I can, I like to look at the posts I’ve blathered over the years, utilizing the On This Day WordPress extensions.  It feeds into what narcissism I do have, I like to see if there have been any noteworthy changes in my opinions over the years, and in cases like this, it’s interesting to see when I’ve made some clairvoyant predictions or in this case, colossal biffs.

A year ago, I was none too pleased to see that the Braves’ solution for their lack of pitching depth was trading for Chris Sale, when there were many acceptable pitchers available, such as Sonny Gray, Tyler Glasnow, Dylan Cease, and as pipe dream as it would’ve been, Shohei Ohtani.  Some were more preferable than others, but any one of them would have been an obvious upgrade to what was a typical Braves-ey pitching rotation.

All of the ships sailed, and then the Braves traded away noteworthy infield prospect Vaughn Grissom to the Boston Red Sox for Chris Sale, which had me scratching my head and immediately pondering just how bad of a deal this was sounding like; even more so when the Braves immediately extended Chris Sale for two more years at actual money, something that the Braves are basically allergic to doing, locking themselves in for two more years at $38M.

Sale used to be one of the best pitchers in the game, but he was two years removed from Tommy John Surgery, a maligned season where his numbers fell off a cliff, and looked like he was busted goods at this point.  At the time, it seemed like the Braves were trading away a valuable chip for a broken pitcher, and I thought that this was going to be a colossal L for the Braves, punishment for being the usual Braves-ey cheap, bargain basement hunters.

Fast forward back to present time, and Chris Sale is the National League Cy Young winner, after pitching the triple crown of leading the NL in Wins, Strikeouts and ERA.  I’m not entirely sure how he didn’t get a unanimous vote, but the BBWAA is a bunch of spiteful blowhards who don’t really vote with any objectivity in the first place, so I guess it’s no surprise, but the point is, I doubted the effectiveness of acquiring Chris Sale, and was completely wrong, and I’m big enough to admit it.

Chris Sale was the epitome of the ace pitcher he used to be for the White Sox and the Red Sox, and he truly turned the clock back and pitched lights out baseball all year long.  Especially when Spencer Strider went down, it was Sale who was the bastion of stability and acted like the stopper, when Max Fried buckled under the weight of the walk year, Charlie Morton really started to show is age, and whenever the squad kept trotting Bryce Elder out there and expected fans to accept him as a viable starting pitcher.

And to further reflect on the trade itself, Vaughn Grissom put up a clunker season for Boston, hitting mediocrely for their Triple-A squad and even worse when he was called up.  He’s still pretty young and playing ahead of his age expectations, but if the last three years have been any indication of what kind of path he’s headed, then it looks like the Braves are going to continue to win this trade, as long as Sale continues to pitch well and Grisson continues to slide.

Although I admit the biff I had had with my opinion of this trade, the worst part of it all is that this does buy the Braves front office a little equity with the opinion that they might know what they’re doing.  It brings some validation to their decisions to shop the bargain bins and for a little while, it gives them a little grace whenever they pull this act again in the near future, that their next (few) low-risk/high-reward decisions could always end up being the next Chris Sale.

As pleased I was with Chris Sale in 2024, Chris Sale was most definitely the exception and not the rule, and I’ll be ready to pounce on scathing the Braves for being the Barves when they make their next shitty Braves-ey cheapskate move, without much concern that I’d have to revisit it in the future if I’m wrong.

Pretty sure the Dodgers are banking on the world ending

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There’s not a lot to like about the Dodgers winning the World Series; it’s precisely what MLB had wanted when they wrote their script for the 2024 season, with golden boy Shohei Ohtani having one of the greatest seasons in baseball history and then capping it off with a world championship.  It validated the importance of spending money, because the Dodgers spent money like they had the infinite money code in Sim City, and there was no plucky Cinderella squad to dethrone them and give hearty lols to baseball fans outside the greater Los Angeles area.

But personally, I think worst of all is that it opened the door for Dodgers fans, most of whom are fairweather front-running troglodytes whom it’s clear to see how short of a time they’ve been Dodger or baseball fans, based on how loud they are on the internet about their sudden unyielding fandom of the team.  I haven’t seen such fervent sore winning from any fanbase, including Philadelphia; those cocksuckers flip a few cars, set fire to them, have a parade, and then it’s back to normal the following week.

The thing is, now that the Dodgers have won an actual championship, as opposed to the Mickey Mouse COVID World Series from 2020, all these slimes claiming to be Dodgers fans are all over the fucking place now, celebrating everything the team does, which also happens to be MLB’s favorite squad, much like all the memes that exist about how the NFL so flagrantly favors the Kansas City Chiefs.

And when there’s such blatant favoritism, then the rich tend to get richer, and the Dodgers have made a lot of news during the offseason, not just with Ohtani winning the National League MVP that was a formality, but the fact that despite the fact that they committed over a billion dollars to free agents last winter, they’ve invented some more currency and have gone ahead and committed even more money to signing Balakey Snell (5 years, $182M) and extending Tommy Edman (5 years, $74M).

Naturally, this raises a lot of questions on how the Dodgers are funding their roster full of All-Stars, MVPs and Cy Young winners, at top-dollar contracts, and the answer is really quite simple: the Dodgers are spamming the ever-living fuck out of deferring money, and are completely comfortable at accruing colossal amounts of debt that will be due to be paid way down the line.

What a lot the people who are crying foul on the internet don’t really understand is that what the Dodgers are doing is 100% completely legal and allowed, it’s just the fact that there’s no team in history that has been this flagrant and so quick and willing to basically sign almost every one of their big-name free agents to deferred money deals.  Most teams are owned and operated by businesses and many businesses tend to err on the side of risk-averse, and being risk-averse usually means an aversion to accruing debts, especially those of which are measured in literal hundreds of millions of dollars.

Continue reading “Pretty sure the Dodgers are banking on the world ending” →

Fuzzy the Clingstone: as if it were going to be anything remotely interesting

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WSB: Braves’ AA-affiliate Columbus Clingstones announce the name of their mascot – Fuzzy

Naturally, I didn’t expect much when I found out that the Columbus Clingstones were seeking out a name for their anamorphic peach mascot.  Not that they’re being forced by the Braves like they once used to, but being a Braves affiliate still means they’re not going to do anything remotely interesting or willing to rock the boat.  I didn’t know, nor did I really care to look into what the other options were,* but considering “Fuzzy” won out, I can’t imagine that they were possibly anything competitively intriguing.

*Fuzzy, Pit, Stoney and Cobbler; yep, nothing exciting

Fuzzy is the name that a three-year old toddler names their favorite stuffed bear.  Or any sort of stuffed thing that comes into their possession that they declare in two seconds that they want to have forever and is already their best friend.  I love my kids, but they’re still too young to be coming up with some seriously clever and/or meta thinking names for the things they want to name yet, but they’re also four and three years old, and I have a hard time believing that of the alleged 675 fan suggestions, they were all toddlers.

Unsurprising though, considering the lukewarm response to naming themselves the Clingstones, a term that most people outside of the southeast have never even heard of, that they would go with an absolute snoozefest of a name like Fuzzy.

I was hoping that the Clingstones would’ve carried on a trope started by the AAA-affiliate of the Braves, when they were crowdsourcing for a new name; they came up with four finalists, had a voting period, and when the vote was over, they announced a name that wasn’t even one of the options to begin with, the Stripers.  In all fairness, the Stripers was way better than all of the available options so it wasn’t all for the worst, and considering what options the people of Columbus had to pick from, it would’ve been both hilarious and productive if the same kind of thing happened here as well.

Frankly, as much as I like the actual mascot of Fuzzy (what can I say, I’m a sucker for anamorphic food mascots), I hate the name.  It would’ve been great if they had their silly little voting period, and then in the end, went ahead and declared that the name of the mascot be Clinger, the Clingstone.

And with a name like that, it can create all sorts of room for interpretation, but most prevalently the fact that a clinger is an allegory for a little turd that is stuck to a creature’s butt, which seems appropriate for the absolute flop of a naming rebrand the Columbus baseball organization did.

It’s like, I really like the colors, the mascot, the general aesthetic of the team; but the names Clingstones and Fuzzy the mascot are just colossal whiffs.  It’s like I wish the team could borrow the Time Stone from Dr. Strange or Thanos, rewind just far back enough to where they got to the point where the brand kid was complete but didn’t have a name, and just re-did reality to where they might have gone with other names before the Clingstones and subsequently, Fuzzy.

But at least it served as impetus to create an image of Fuzzy the Clingstone being the clinger that the names of the team are in my opinion, and poop jokes sell, in my little slice of the internet.

How does this manage to continue to happen?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

SI: New York Jets WR Malachi Corley drops ball before crossing into the end zone, negating touchdown into turnover

I don’t care enough to verify the details, but I’m fairly positive that between the NFL and CFB, this exact scenario has happened at least once every single year for like, the last decade or more, where a player with a guaranteed touchdown, boneheadedly drops the ball before crossing the plane of the endzone, negating six points and instead turning the ball over.

It never fails to astound, or fire me up whenever I hear about these instances, because I guess it pushes past my already extremely low standards as far as the intelligence of people are concerned, and I just can’t believe that there are people this dumb, that repeatedly keep squandering their privilege to be playing kids games at the highest levels and getting paid egregious amounts of money to do so.

It’s never not mindblowing to me, because throughout the history of the sport, all offensive skill players have always been like, GIMME THE BALL, but all of these clowns who have dropped the ball at the one-yard line couldn’t be in any more rush to get rid of the ball in their hands, to the point where they’re making these dumbass drops.

I just think about how in Forrest Gump, when Forrest was returning kicks for Alabama, his first TD return, he just kept running past the end zone, smashing into the band en route into the locker room tunnel.  A little overkill, but a definite example of protecting the ball and securing the score. 

Whenever a highlight of dropping the ball at the 1 occurs, I always wonder why players insist on being closer to DeSean Jackson instead of being closer to Forrest Gump.

There’s really not much more to add to this, aside from the continued disbelief that this somehow manages to happen at the frequency in which it does.  And while writing about it, YouTube delivers, as there’s actually a pretty interesting video that has chronicled this baffling phenomenon, and there’s a frighteningly more number of instances that have occurred than I was aware of, which doesn’t help the narrative of how bullshit stupid it is.

Suck it, MLweeB

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m not too thrilled with the fact that the Dodgers completed their season of destiny and won the World Series, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be happy for Freddie Freeman, who was obviously named the World Series MVP after batting .300 with an OPS of 1.364, four home runs, 12 RBI and the legendary walk-off grand slam in game 1 that basically set the entire tone of the series afterward.

Even though he plays for the Dodgers, the team he left Atlanta for, there’s not a bone in my body that holds any resentment or ill-will for the man, as he’s a first-class outstanding human being, embodies everything that’s good about baseball, and is someone whom requires a genuine effort to not like.  I am stoked that he has now won his second championship, played his butt off to win the WS MVP he easily deserved, and is getting the mainstream accolades and recognition that he deserves.

I just don’t care for the fact that the Dodgers organization are the world champions, because they kind of validated the importance of spending money, as they committed over a billion dollars ($1.185B to be exact)  to just four players, on top of their existing $230M payroll, and being a Braves fan, it’s aggravating to see teams that spend money that succeed, knowing the team I follow will never, ever spend in the same manner, and instead feed us all sorts of bullshit rhetoric and make excuses on why they won’t, despite all the evidence that exists that shows the economic benefit of a championship team.

Plus, the swarms of insufferable bandwagon Dodger fans scuttling out of the cracks and gutters like the cockroaches they are getting to be happy is annoying to me, and makes me make the face of the Friends watching meme whenever I see or hear all the front-running celebratory garbage that comes from them in the news or on social media.  It’s bad when I would rather put up with the devil I know in Yankees fans getting to be happy over Dodgers fans, even in spite of the shenanigans of the two outfield goombas who grabbed and tried pry the ball out of Mookie Betts’ glove among other typical bad Yankee fan behavior.

But most of all, the Dodgers winning the World Series is precisely what MLB wanted to be the outcome, because they’ve gone full weeb-mode this season, what with pushing Ohtanimania down everyone’s throats, and seemingly every popular team there is making a mad dash to acquire Japanese talent, none more than the Dodgers with not just Ohtani, but also Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and they’re all treated like these mystical Mr. Miyagis demonstrating karate for the first time in history based on how every little thing they do is made such a big deal about.

Make no mistake, the season Shohei Ohtani had was other-worldly, but for every game where he had a homer and two steals, Yamamoto goes five innings with three earned runs, and it’s applauded like he just pitched a Maddux.  Shota Imanaga has a low ERA in the first half of the season and people act like he knew how to throw a disappearing pitch, meanwhile the Braves’ Reynaldo Lopez led the league in ERA up until like August, but nobody cared about him because he wasn’t Japanese.

I think my favorite part of the World Series was that in spite of the monumental rocket ship the Ohtani hype train had strapped to it, fans and viewers were treated to a series of futility as he went a pitiful 2 for 19 (.105) in the series, an OPS of .385 and no home runs.  Aaron Judge was absolutely dragged by the media and fans for being ineffective, in comparison to Ohtani, he went 4 for 18 (.222) with an OPS of .836 and one home run.  It’s just that the Yankees as a team stunk it up throughout the series and used Judge as a scapegoat, while Ohtani could easily hide underneath Freddie Freeman’s Superman cape while the team kept on winning.

Which brings us back to Freddie Freeman, whom is the only thing I like about the Dodgers winning the World Series, because a I genuinely like, enjoy and admire, gets to be the focal point and superstar, everyone in Atlanta already knew of, everyone in Los Angeles is probably well aware of now, and probably every baseball fan in the world is aware of now too.

When the lights were the brightest, the stakes were the highest, Ohtani absolutely crumpled under the pressure.  Yamamoto, to his credit did pitch a great game in his one start, but when all was said and done, the World Series was the Freddie Freeman show, and even if it means that the Dodgers are World champions, I am okay with it.

This is Freddie Freeman’s world, and everyone; Ohtani, Yamamoto, the country of Japan, the rest of MLB, are just living in it.

Who knew Dwyane Wade was an old Asian guy

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The Atlantic: The Worst Statue in the History of Sports

Usually when I link to a source, I write my own snarky little snippet, but in this particular case, I think The Atlantic’s verbatim headline, although a little heavy-handed, sums up the general sentiment and sets the tone for my own observations about Dwyane Wade’s freshly unveiled statue, outside of the BBC whatever name of the venue in which the Miami Heat play in.

But yes, the Dwyane Wade statue is pretty horrendous for a litany of reasons, and not just the fact that it looks absolutely fucking nothing like him.  Personally, I think he looks like an old Asian man, like Mr. Fuji from the WWF, but I’ve seen comparisons to Morpheus from The Matrix, as well as a laundry list of other NBA players past and present.

I can’t say that I was as big of a hoops fan to understand the significance of him pointing down, but the 14-year old in me automatically assumes that he’s pointing to his testicles, adding to the list of reasons why this statue is so historically bad.

Without (much) argument, Wade is probably the best player to be drafted and succeed with the Miami Heat, having won a championship with him being the 1A guy in like 2006.  If there were any time in his career in which his status should have been inspired by, I would’ve guessed the 2006 Finals, but I don’t really remember much about his performance other than the absolutely bonkers rate in which Wade went to the free throw line, and attempted over 90 free throws during the series against the Mavericks, en route to scoring like 200 points and winning the Finals MVP, so I guess having a statue of him shooting free throws wouldn’t have been that legendary.

Otherwise, as revered as he is in Miami, all I remember him for is being the guy that voluntarily gave up the driver’s seat of the team to LeBron James, which did in fact, net him two more championship rings, but basically tarnished the rest of his career as he basically became Robin for the remainder of it, to the point where he was one of the first really hilariously notable victims to a sports contract opt-out clause, where he opted out of his deal with the Heat, thinking he could negotiate more money, but was very wrong, and ended up having to crawl back to the Heat for the same money, but more years to earn it.

He would then bounce around between Chicago and Cleveland and eventually come back to the Heat where he could at least go out on relatively his own terms, ending where it all began, and actually have a farewell tour in the process.

I have no issue with Dwyane Wade, but in my opinion there’s no mistaking that he’s a guy that got owned quite a few times in his career, and I can’t help but find humor in those scenarios.  The fact that in what should’ve been one of his last few greatest career moments in his career, also ended up being a bomb as well, on account of a hilariously terrible statue that looks absolutely nothing like him seems fitting, as the guy basically finished up the second half of his career getting owned repeatedly; so really what really is the harm in one more instance of getting owned for D-Wade?

I don’t see it anywhere, but let’s just hope that the statue itself at least spelled “Dwyane” correctly; not that it should be surprising if they didn’t considering the asinine phonetically incorrect way he actually legally spells it, but it would be funny if it weren’t.

Every baseball kid’s dream ending, starring Freddie Freeman

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Bottom of the ninth tenth, down a run, bases loaded, two outs; in the World Series.

The only thing more that there could’ve been was a full-count, but Freddie Freeman had to go ahead and remove that extra drama by instead blasting the first pitch he saw deep into the outfield stands of Dodger Stadium, and just like that, the Dodgers and their $241M payroll burst from the jaws of defeat against the Yankees and their $309M payroll to take the critical first game of the 2024 World Series.

If this game had ended in a similar fashion at the bat of anyone other than Freddie Freeman, this post doesn’t exist.  Especially Shohei Ohtani, and especially Max Muncy whom I think is the living embodiment of the meme of the guy that is part of the group project that gets an A but doesn’t actually do anything but gets to talk about the A like he did.  If Ohtani delivered the game-winning hit, I don’t post.  If it were Muncy, I don’t post.  Even if it were half-Korean Tommy Edman, I still have a literal list of topics that I’d rather spend my time writing about.

But Freddie Freeman is a guy whom it is impossible for a person like me to feel even the slightest amount of malice or disdain for, even if his actions result in outcomes that I did not want, like the Dodgers getting any sort of wins over the Yankees in the World Series.  Dare I say, when he clobbered that first pitch and in that split second where he and only he knew it was gone, and he begun holding his bat up triumphantly like an Olympic torch, only for nanoseconds later the rest of the his teammates and all the fans in Dodger Stadium realized it was headed out and began their approving roaring, I felt happy for him and only him alone, because that’s what Freddie Freeman means to me.

I mean, this is the dream outcome of the dream scenario that every baseball kid dreams about in their backyard, at some points in their lives, and Freddie Freeman just fulfilled it better than anyone could have possibly done.  In a sport that tracks absolutely every single play, instance and scenario, this was literally the only time in the history of the game, where a World Series game had ended in a walk-off grand slam.

Sure, I’m sure there will be lots of challenges and rebuttals that the only thing that tops this is a walk-off grand slam to outright win the World Series or comparing it to Joe Carter’s Series-ending walk-off three-run blast in 1993, but if we could just kick the nerds out of the room for just a second, and simply marvel at the magical moment we just witnessed.

Back to reality though, nothing changes with the fact that I still want the Yankees to win it, for the sake of my wife and her family, and the put a damper on Ohtanimania, and this heartbreaking L belongs to nobody but Yankee skipper Aaron Boone.  Why he trotted out a cold and rusty Nestor Cortes to face three-straight MVPs in extra innings is a decision that I already question, and imagine armchair baseball strategists and Yankee fans all around also question.

Aside from the fact that Cortes was colder than a pint of Häagen-Dazs buried at the bottom of a chest freezer in the garage, having not pitched since September, he’s a junk ball starting pitcher that relies on deception and trickery over having sheer, stuff, to get batters out, much less three straight MVPs in Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freeman. 

Personally, I have this belief that starting pitchers are not ideal candidates to come out in relief, especially in extra innings, because pitchers are often neurotic creatures optimally comfortable in defined roles, and a guy like Cortes has been a starter for most of his Yankee career, and starting pitchers are mentally okay with an occasional hit and an occasional run, because as starters, they have the cushion of knowing they’ve got several innings behind and beyond them for the team to battle on their behalf.  All that cushion vanishes in late and extra innings, and more often than not, starting pitchers don’t fare well in those scenarios.

In all fairness, Cortes did manage to get demi-god Ohtani out, thanks to the gutsy selfless crashing into the stands catch by Alex Verdugo, but when I heard that Mookie was getting the intentional walk so that they could go lefty-vs-lefty with Freeman, my face literally made the wince emoji .

Now Aaron Boone has been applauded before in understanding modern baseball strategy, but going Cortes vs. Freeman will be one that I’m sure many will be questioning for a long time, especially if the Dodgers outright win the World Series.  Freddie Freeman is a career .273 hitter against lefties with an .804 OPS which is nerd speak for he hits left-handed pitching very well.  Conversely, Mookie Betts has never recorded a hit off of Nestor Cortes; granted, both sample sizes are extremely small, limited to a single game earlier in the season, but when it comes down to it, I would rather have taken my chances on Betts than Freeman, but I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.

It’s a shame too, because a lot of standout Yankee performances are wiped out in this loss; Gerrit Cole’s six innings because apparently 5-6 innings is applause worthy in today’s baseball, the aforementioned Alex Verdugo catch into the stands, Giancarlo Stanton continuing his torrid postseason run with another home run, and for me, Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s bonkers baserunning in the tenth that gave the Yankees their one-run lead going into the final frame is a shame to have wiped by Boone’s questionable management.

Make no mistake though; in order for this moment to be preserved in immortality, the Dodgers must win outright.  Much like Chisholm Jr.’s baserunning will be forgotten in the loss, Freddie Freeman’s walk-off grand slam will be reduced to a statistical anomaly if the Dodgers don’t win the whole thing.  And as much as I have genuine love in my heart for the man, I’m still pulling for the Yankees, and hope that this one magic moment is the extent of Freeman’s contributions to the Dodgers’ cause.