Tag: baseball

I love that free agents are getting owned

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

QQ moar: Chicago Cubs’ Kris Bryant publicly whines about how free agents are not getting signed as Spring Training gets closer and closer

First off, shut the fuck up, Kris Bryant.  You’re not even a free agent yet.  I understand why he’s complaining now, because he’s going to be a free agent in a year or two, I don’t care enough to check to see how many years of arbitration he has left, and he wants to make sure that when he hits the market, things won’t be like they are today, where free agents are absolutely getting taken to the toolshed for the second year in a row, and are not getting the absurd and ridiculous multi-million dollar contracts that nerds on the internet once said that they were all entitled to getting for their past performances.

But the thing is, Bryant is airing out his grievances under the guise of pretending like he cares about his fellow baseball players, namely the notable free agents whom are pretty much all still unsigned and have no definitive future currently, despite the fact that they’re absolutely going to get signed by someone, because their talents are inevitably going to be coveted by someone out there.  They might not get the $400 million people think some of them are worth in a contract, but I’m fairly confident nobody is going to shed any tears for them when they’re still going to sign for like $250 million.

Dollars.  Hundreds of millions of dollars.  That’s what some of these baseball players are going to sign for, all for being really good at playing a children’s game.  You’ll have to excuse me, and anyone else with a brain for not feeling sorry for baseball players who aren’t going to get $300 million, but are still going to make $175 million dollars for being good at swinging a bat or throwing a baseball.

As I always say, I love baseball, more than any other sport, but it doesn’t take a genius to understand that the salaries in baseball, as well as any other professional sport, are pretty out of hand these days, and I refuse to feel sorry or have any empathy for any professional athlete for not getting many-many millions of dollars, but are still getting many millions of dollars.

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Plopicana Field

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TL;DR: The home of the Tampa Bay Rays, Tropicana Field, decides to close off the upper decks due to paltry attendance

As an expert on baseball parks,* this story interested me, or at least made me think that I could barf out some words about the topic and call it a brog post.

*someone who has been to every MLB city

To cut to the chase, the Plop (a derivative of the actual nickname “the Trop”) is kind of a shitty place.  It’s an old and dated structure in a city full of old and dated people, the architecture of the place makes very little sense, the ceiling isn’t actually high enough to where it doesn’t occasionally come into play, and it’s overall a really lousy place to watch baseball.

It’s kind of ironic too, because the Tampa Bay Rays are one of those teams that I kind of lean towards favoring, because they’re a franchise that has relied on outsmarting the competition because they certainly can’t compete with the payrolls of everyone else in MLB, and has actually succeeded a lot more than they’ve failed over the last few years, yielding somewhat respectable win-loss records since the magic switch was flipped in 2008 where they decided to stop sucking, and made it all the way to the World Series.

They’re a team that I think is kind of cool in the sense that they’re never really a threat to my lukewarm Braves fandom, and I always have respect for teams that rely on smarts and analysis over just haphazardly signing free agents and hoping for instant results.  And it’s a shame that they play for such a disinterested fanbase, inside of a ballpark that’s amongst the worst in the Majors.

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The prodigal Heap has returned

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Brave Old World: Brian McCann returns to the Atlanta Braves after leaving the team five years ago

This news, brought a smile to my face.  Now I don’t expect ol’ Heap (a very insider hipster nickname for McCann stemming from the minor leagues) to inexplicably return to the form of the 22-year old All-Star that hit .333 and 24 homers all because he’s back in a Braves uniform, especially since he’s now 35 and very much on the declining phase of his career.  But it still makes me happy to know that Heap is coming home, because maybe it’s just the fanboy in me, but it just never seemed right to see a guy like Brian McCann suiting up for anyone other than the Braves.

Don’t get me wrong, I always rooted for him after he left, even when he was on the Yankees, and especially when he was on the Team of Destiny™ Astros, and I was very happy to see McCann, along with other Braves expats like Evan Gattis and Charlie Morton win a World Series.  But it often makes me happy when a guy who was a once popular member of the team, like a Jeff Francoeur, Jonny Venters or a Brian McCann, comes back to the fold.

It doesn’t really matter that when the day is over, he’s probably not going to be an All-Star again, much less even be reliably starting on a regular basis.  The traditionalist in me sees his value in that he’s a steady veteran leader that brings a lot of familiarity with the organization, and a now championship pedigree to a locker room that might be able to benefit from his experience.

But most importantly, he’s a local guy that was always beloved by the city of Atlanta, and him coming home, to try and help nurture and contribute this young and talented roster into more legitimate contenders, can only be welcome.  Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that Josh Donaldson also signed with the team too.

Now if only the Braves could upgrade their pitching, 2019 could actually be a very interesting season.

The comeback is complete

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Vindication: Jonny Venters wins National League Comeback Player of the Year

In the grand scheme of baseball seasons are World Series championships, home runs soaring, Triple Crowns, batting title chases, and all sorts of accolades, records and honors (and sometimes dishonors) being pursued.

As far as the 2018 was concerned, there really was only one specific thing that I’ve remotely paid any attention to: the return of Jonny Venters.  By now, I’ve written tons of words about how happy and proud I was to see the story of a ballplayer absolutely refusing to give up, even after three and a half debilitating injuries and the surgeries that ensued.  And after year after year of heartbreaking setbacks, 2018 was the year where Venters gingerly approached the glass ceiling, before Shoryuken-ning through it and getting back to the Major Leagues, and sticking once back.

Frankly, given the fact that he started the season and made his comeback officially with the Tampa Bay Rays, before getting traded back home to the Braves, I’d say there should be some argument that maybe he should’ve won both the AL and NL Comeback Player of the Year awards, especially since a scrub like David Price ended up winning it, obviously on his playoff performance, contrary to the claims that awards are decided before they even begin. 

But such a wish is a pipedream for a player to win simultaneous awards in both leagues.  I just want Jonny Venters to get all the accolades, because frankly as far as comebacks are defined, nobody deserved the award more than him.

Either way, I couldn’t be anymore happy and proud to see Jonny Venters formally recognized for his strength and perseverance.  Guys have won this award for less hardships, like bouncing back from sucking like Price did, or “just” a single Tommy John surgery.  But to come back from three (and a half) Tommy Johns??  Nobody’s done that shit before, in the history of the game.  Frankly, Comeback Player of the Year doesn’t really define what Jonny Venters accomplished in 2018, and I agree with these guys:

Who, more than Jonny Venters, deserves to win this award in 2018? He should win it for both leagues. The award, quite frankly, should be henceforth known as the “Jonny Venters Award.”

I’ll try to re-evaluate this in future seasons, to determine whether future winners are merely comeback players, or actual Jonny Venters.  I’d wager that much like the actual Jonny Venters, there probably won’t be another, any time soon.  But that seems to be pretty appropriate.

Different Braves, same shit

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Honestly, I’m just glad that the Braves won a game.  I’d have been very not mad, just disappointed had the Braves gone into the playoffs and gotten swept and embarrassed like the Rockies or Indians did, and at least they can hang a single laurel that they put up a modicum of a fight before the inevitable Atlanta tradition of getting bounced from the playoffs came to fruition.

I haven’t really written much, if anything about the Braves (baseball team, not ownership) this season, because really there wasn’t really that much to talk about.  Sure, the team of the future arrived a little bit earlier than schedule, and jump started life into the franchise, powering them to a surprise division title and an actual playoff berth.  But there was one part disbelief that the team would actually achieve success and that between the Nationals or Phillies, they’d have gotten upended in September and miss the playoffs, and there was another part that simply didn’t want to tempt the laws of fate and risk jinxing anything, when the team was going so well.

But either way, when the race for all the divisions were settled, and it was apparent that the Braves were in, I can’t say that I was really at all that excited, and this just might be the sentiment of all fans of sports that live in the Atlanta area.  I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but I can’t help but feel that the curse of Atlanta sports is just too strong, and as exciting as the 2018 Braves were, were just too young, and really achieved as much success as they did, heavily on the notion that their divisional rivals were all just that bad.  I didn’t just predict that the Braves were going to get bounced in the first round, I’d have put actual money on it, because that’s simply what the Braves do.

Seriously, the Braves haven’t made it out of the first round of the playoffs since 2001, and they’ve made the playoffs eight times since then.  That’s eight times getting bounced in the first round, and almost always, by a team that was seeded lower than they were.  And that’s just the Braves; as far as other Atlanta and Georgia sports are concerned, most of us here remember the epic historic Super Bowl 28-3 collapse of the Falcons.  The Georgia Bulldogs proceeded to lose the National Championship in similar fashion months later.  The Atlanta United soccer team made it to the playoffs in their first year, only to get bounced in the first round by the lower seed, and even the Atlanta Dream WNBA team made it to the WNBA Finals, only to get swept.

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The unintentional greatness of opt-out clauses

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When the day is over, I’m not really a fan of opt-out clauses in sports contract.  They’re like slimy, sleazy trap doors out of contracts that professionals can claim they’re really going to commit to a team for seven years, but dude-bail after two years or five years, or whenever they’ve negotiated to have an opt-out available to them.  It’s like being in a fucked-up relationship where the dude is allowed to leave after the second year scot-free, but if they pass up on that escape window, then they’re locked in for the long haul.

More often than not, we’ve seen classic examples of guys who sign 7-10 year deals, with opt-out clauses after like three years; where the fans think they’ll have a guy for 7-10 years, they’re all stoked to see him play out of his mind in year three, put up career best numbers, lead their teams deep into playoffs… and then opt the fuck out of their contracts, and then put a gun to their teams’ heads and stick them up for another lucrative long-term contract, lest they become free agents and jump to whomever else would be willing to instead. 

Off the top of my head, Alex Rodriguez and CC Sabathia are prime examples of guys who have successfully parlayed the opt-out clause to perfection and bilked the New York Yankees out of more money than their original Yankee contracts were originally worth.  LeBron James is a perfect recent example of a guy who has not only opted out this year, but has done it twice now, opting out of the contract he had with the Miami Heat to escape back to Cleveland, and then now opting out of his deal with the Cavaliers to go to Los Angeles.

On the flip side, there’s the hilarious example of Dwyane Wade, who opted out of a guaranteed $16 million for one year with the Miami Heat, only to discover that nobody wanted him, and then came crawling back to the Heat, where he had to sign for two more years in order to get than $16 million back.

And that’s where we get a glimpse of the unintentional greatness of the opt-out clause, because every now and then it provides the opportunity for overpaid babies we know as professional athletes to get owned.  And there are fewer things I take a sadistic pleasure out of seeing than professional athletes getting owned financially.

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Man, fuck the Braves*

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment
Looking for a good picture to use with this post, nothing says failure like a (likely CG’d) photograph of the Braves’ bar/venue/restaurant packed to the gills with St. Louis Cardinals fans going bonkers watching the Cardinals play against the Reds.

Long story short: despite the fact that Cobb County has already paid a gozillion dollars to fund the corrupt and immoral White Flight ScumTrust Park and Battery Atlanta, the Braves are balking over another $5 million dollars, having the audacity to claim that they are owed, for some infrastructure fees

One again, man, fuck the Braves.*

*management, I have to constantly remind myself that I’m still a fan of the baseball product, but I absolutely abhor and loathe the shitheads that actually own the team

A bunch of greedy motherfuckers who already bilked a county out of $400 million+, resulting in tax increases and the dismal possibility of closures and removal of simple community amenities like parks and libraries, is complaining over another $5 million dollars?  Sure, most of the time the rich are rich, because they’re staunch about money like this capacity, but god damn, fuck them and fuck anyone else who is so completely self-important and self-absorbed to not see the absurdity in their demands.

The Braves have already, for lack of a better term, raped the county for ungodly amounts of tax dollars, so they could have a brand-new stadium and glorified shopping center around their stadium, that was away from a scary black community.  Seriously, there’s no way the talking heads behind all this have contributed nearly as much money as the county was forced to pony up, mostly against their will.  And now they’re complaining because they want the county to go ahead and pay for the plumbing for the entire fucking stadium grounds?  Get the fuck out of here.

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