Tag: baseball

Columbus Clingstones: what, you were expecting something better from a Braves affiliate?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

MiLB: Atlanta Braves’ AA-affiliates formerly known as the Mississippi Braves, formally change their name to the Columbus Clingstones, with their move to Columbus, Georgia

Originally, I was excited at the notion that along with the move out of racist-ass bumfuck Pearl, Mississippi, the Double-A Braves would be getting a brand-new team name and identity, steering them away from the homogenized and stuffy Also-Braves of Mississippi.  The AA Braves could have the opportunity to be an actual, fun, minor league team instead of being a minor league squad beholden to the stuffy and constricting brand standards of the Atlanta Braves Corporation, as they had been over the last, well since the existence of Braves Minor League Baseball.

But at the same time, I knew that I had to temper my expectations, because baseball in general doesn’t like to rock the boat too much, and for every Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs, Rocket City Trash Pandas, Hub City Spartanburgers or any chintzy and creative minor league squad that appears out of nowhere, there are four other boring teams out there, like the Salem Red Sox, St. Lucie Mets, Fredericksburg Nats, and other squads that put the bare minimum of effort into their existences, and hope that by solely being present and loosely affiliated with their parent clubs, they will draw attendance.  And if I had to wager what side of the spectrum that an Atlanta Braves affiliate was going to lean towards, it definitely wasn’t going to be on the side where “fun” was, because fun doesn’t always necessarily equate to cashmoney.

So I was about as surprised as learning that global warming isn’t fake news when the news finally broke, of what the new Columbus Baseball Club was going to call themselves, and it was the Columbus Clingstones.

As I imagine most people’s reactions probably were, mine was first and foremost, what the fuck is a clingstone?

According to Google AIoverlord:

A clingstone is a type of stone fruit with flesh that sticks firmly to the pit, making it more difficult to remove than other fruits. Clingstone peaches are a common example of this type of fruit. 

And my first reaction was, oh, so there’s a difference between the peaches I like, where the pit falls right off, and the peaches that I always regret buying, where the flesh sticks to the pit and I always feel like I’m wasting delectable peach flesh when I have to cut around it to enjoy my fucking fruit, and it turns out that I’m not a fan of actual clingstones, and I’m most definitely not a fan of the name, Columbus Clingstones.

So, it figures that the Braves dropped the ball when it came to having a minor league affiliate with a name that is of below-average excitement.  Don’t get me wrong, I like the Emperors of Rome, and I like the clusterfuck that ended up with the Gwinnett Stripers, but the team had an opportunity to rise into the upper echelon of memorable and noteworthy minor league squads, but to no surprise, much like the organization’s entire modus operandi, stick to something vanilla, safe, boring and mostly forgettable in the vast pool of minor league baseball teams.

I will say though, as not mad just disappointed I am in the lame as name of Clingstones, I do have to give credit to the merch team, for running with the lameduck ball they were handed.  Although I’m not a fan of actual clingstone peaches, I still love peaches the fruit, and they are easily in my top-3 favorite fruits.  And I have a soft spot for mascots that are basically just inanimate objects given eyes and limbs, so that being said, I do appreciate the branding that the Clingstones have done, even if I think the name is booty.

That being said, I do want a shirt of the peach mascot, and I would consider getting a 59fifty cap if there’s a variant where it’s just the peach mascot, but I wouldn’t want anything that actually said Clingstones on it, because that’s how much I loathe the name.

So overall, the name is trash, but the execution of the branding has been done pretty well.  Unfortunately, the name is still set in stone at this point, and there’s no part of me that doesn’t connote the prefix “cling” as a negative, from clingy people to turds that cling to the tips of your dog’s fur after they take a crap that they end up wiping on your floor, so the general consensus to the whole unveiling of the Braves’ AA affiliate is a net-negative.  But then again, expecting anything dynamic and exciting out of the Atlanta Braves organization, even if they’re not officially owned by them anymore, is still like expecting to win a lottery, and this all frankly comes as no surprise.

Every Braves fan can hear the gears grinding

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sauce: Dodgers release Jason Heyward, he is free to sign anywhere that will take him

Anyone who’s been paying attention to the Braves this year has probably noticed that the team is operating on its usual Barves-ey cheapskate bullshit, picking up inexpensive castaways, cuts and releases from all the other teams in the league and trying to pawn them off like they’re the answers to the team’s woes and shortcomings.

However, the Braves have been pretty flagrant this year by picking up, almost exclusively, former players, with the hopes that the fans are as dumb as they hope they are (but surprisingly, aren’t) and put happy memories and false optimism on the obvious facts that these guys were all available because they’re not playing as well as they once did in a previous time, like 2021.  Eddie Rosario, Jorge Soler and Luke Jackson are some of the guys re-acquired by the team, with Rosario not only having been cut by the Braves, but he’s also, at the time of me writing this, just freshly cut from the Mets, after already being cut by the Nationals earlier in the year.

Soler hasn’t been terrible, but he also hasn’t been the World Series monster MVP he was in 2021, and Luke Jackson has been what he’s always been – a mediocre reliever, that no longer has Will Smith and a healthy Tyler Matzek and a pre-sucking AJ Minter to hide behind in the bullpen and is getting exposed as of late.  In other words, the Braves picked up mediocre product before the deadline and shouldn’t be surprised by getting mediocre return in investment.

But with the news of Jason Heyward’s release by the Dodgers, I feel like there’s no way in hell that I’m the only Braves fan whose blood went cold upon hearing it, because I think we all collectively knew the second we saw it, what some extreme cheapskate bean counters at The Battery were thinking when they saw it – pick ‘em up!

Believe me, Jason Heyward’s regular season debut on the Opening Day of 2010 is still one of the most magical sports memory I’ll ever have.  The super-typed 20-year old rookie phenom blasting a three-run home run in his very first at-bat against the Chicago Cubs is still stuff of legend, and having a monster rookie season, en route to being one of the core players of the organization for the next few years, all fantastic memories.

Heyward himself was always a stand-up player, a great role model for kids, and a guy that any organization would be happy to have.  I have no ill-will towards the man whatsoever, and I like him personally, but when it comes to his place currently as an active baseball player, I would rather the Braves not Barves, and pick him up, and try to convince fans that they can fix him back to being an All-Star, and insist on trotting him out on the regular, when the team is still somehow, miraculously in the thick of things when it comes to playoff position.

There’s a reason why the Dodgers released him, in favor of Chris Taylor of all people, and any contender like the Braves should probably think twice before considering picking him up, unless they want absolutely nothing but a 9th inning defensive replacement for a corner outfielder.

But I have this sinking feeling that the Braves aren’t going to listen to any logical arguments against Jason Heyward’s return to the team, and are going to be looking at dollar signs, exposure, newspaper articles and editorials about the prodigal son’s return home to Atlanta, and pick him up anyway soon.  The loss of Ronald Acuña, and the tumultuous health of Michael Harris II, outfield depth is stretched thin as it is, but Heyward’s .208 batting average this year really isn’t going to help out.

And these are the things that separate the Braves from being among the league’s elite, in spite of their general, miraculous on-field winning record.  I guess I should be fortunate that the organization continues to field a playoff-caliber team, but at the same time, I kind of wish they’d blow it all up, in order to build a World Series championship-caliber team, but I digress.

As much as I like and admire Jason Heyward the person, as a baseball player, his best years are long beyond him, and the further he stays away from the Braves, the better off the team will ultimately be.

I see you, Balakey

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I can’t say that I’m particularly a fan of pitcher Blake Snell; I tend to not care for baseball players that act like out-of-touch man-babies when it comes to how much they’re paid for the privilege of playing professional baseball, and Snell is amongst the worst. 

He once suggested that players should’ve been paid their full salaries during the COVID season, and he’s one of those guys that it’s pretty clear that his full career objective is accumulating as much money as possible, which inherently there’s nothing wrong with, but it’s also the way that he’s trying to accomplish it with an inequitable amount of effort exerted to earn it that rubs me the wrong way.

This past off-season was a delight to see him flounder away during free agency, and basically becoming the cautionary poster boy for talented free agent to get absolutely pwned by the process.  He was looking for comparable money that the Dodgers had paid Japanese import Yoshinobu Yamamoto (12-year, $365M), and along the way had turned down an offer from the Yankees that was half that, thinking if he held out, he could get better, if not comparable.

He was wrong.  Delightfully.

Ultimately, he signed with the Giants on a two-year, $62M deal which is still an egregious annual value to a human being to throw a baseball over and over again, and seeing as how it had an opt-out clause in between, it was evident that Snell’s goal was going to be to pitch his ass off, opt-out, and try again for a Yamamoto deal, while also having the security cushion of a fat $31M second year with the Giants if things fell through.

The 2024 season couldn’t have started off any worse for someone playing the game Snell was trying to play; he would go 0-3, never getting out of the fifth inning, and have an ERA of 11.57.  His peripherals were shit, he was throwing too many pitches, walking too many guys, and downright sucked.  It was clear that he basically did no work or working out during the offseason, and didn’t prepare at all during the spring since he was technically unemployed almost until the start of the season, and it was showing on the field.

He was put on the DL for sucking, AKA bullshit injury to justify poor performance, and came back at the end of May, where he would proceed to string together three more shitty starts, where he still couldn’t get out of the fifth inning, and was pitching terribly, but was masked by the fact that the Giants still won two of those games in spite of him.

I relished in Snell’s poor performance, and despite my general disdain for Bay Area sports fans, even I didn’t think they deserved the turd that the Blake Snell contract was turning into.  Without question, he was going to opt-in to year two of his deal, and hamstring the Giants for another $31M that could’ve been utilized in so many better ways.

Once again he went on the DL for sucking, and he was back on July 9th and this is where the story really begins.  Snell would pitch five innings, giving up just a single hit and no runs, and the Giants would win.  The Giants would win two of his next three starts, with Snell pitching like the two-time Cy Young winner he was.

On August 2nd, Snell would get the first win of his season, after pitching a fucking no-hitter against the Cincinnati Reds, and he would follow that with another quality start and another win.

The overall picture of Blake Snell’s current 2024 isn’t notable – 2-3 W-L in 12 starts, a 4.31 ERA, with the Giants going 7-5.  But since July, he’s gone 2-0 in six starts, has an ERA of 1.15 and the team has gone 5-1.

It’s very apparent that he’s finally woken up, and that he’s beginning to pitch his ass off so that he can opt-out at the end of the season and make another try for a long-term Yamamoto-money deal.

Here’s the thing though, as many words as I’ve spoken to be critical about Blake Snell, I actually have never bothered to really take a deep dive into the numbers that paint the picture of Blake Snell; until now.  And the most interesting thing I’m discovering about ol’ Balakey is that save for the no-hitter, the season narrative described above is absolutely nothing out of the ordinary for him.

I’ve read numerous times about how Snell is “a slow starter” but figured it was typical media defending of the guy.  But looking at his career numbers and splits, slow starter doesn’t do the man justice.

I’m now convinced that Blake Snell is probably the smartest baseball player there is, at the way he has absolutely gamed the game of baseball in order to make as much money as he can, with the least amount of effort possible.  I mean, the guy streams video games in his downtime, gaming is nothing outside of his realm of interests, and it’s apparent that he’s brought that mentality into his career strategy.

Looking over his game logs over the last few seasons, which were coincidentally the most critical years in terms of showcasing himself in preparation for free agency, his Aprils have as many L’s as the 2024 Chicago White Sox, and he looks like shit; can’t get more than five innings, giving up lots of runs, mundane strikeout numbers.

But then July hits each year, Snell’s fairy godmother materializes out of nowhere and turns him into fucking Nolan Ryan.  He starts piling up strikeouts, the inning numbers start turning from 5.0 to 7.0, and the team starts piling up W’s like they’re the 1996 Chicago Bulls.

This isn’t hyperbole, there really is that drastic of a split between the first halves and second halves of his seasons, career-wide:

1st Halves: 28-39 W-L, 3.98 ERA, 1.339 WHIP, 10.9 K/9
2nd Halves: 41-17 W-L, 2.41 ERA, 1.097 WHIP, 11.4 K/9

Now I know all these numbers don’t mean a thing to anyone who doesn’t follow baseball, but what it really says is that Blake Snell is trash in the first half of most seasons, and turns into a fucking demi-god in the second half.  He walks fewer guys, strikes out more guys, and the team just flat out wins.

And the thing is, I don’t think this is coincidental, I don’t think this is fluky, I think it’s entirely by design and mostly deliberate by Blake Snell.  It’s no secret in the world of professional sports that athletes tend to metaphorically hit the NOS during their walk-years, and there’s mountains of evidence that exist these days to justify such a notion.  It’s also no secret that professional sport is influenced tremendously by recency bias, where the most recent version of an athlete is the one to consider when it comes time to negotiate dolla-dollas.

I may not be a fan of Blake Snell’s perceived-by-me money-grubbing ways, but I see you, Balakey.  I kind of respect the cerebral approach to optimizing his earning capabilities.  I’m not going to poo-poo on a guy’s effort to make as much money as he can, but at the same time, I’m not going to also not think that it does seem crappy to the teams, the fans of those teams, and those who root for him, to often be knowing that unless it’s July or later, he’s probably holding something back and not trying his hardest, because as he’s demonstrated for us all over the last few years, those April-May-June starts definitely don’t mean as much as the months July and on.

Someone put Miguel Vargas on (career) suicide watch

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

No matter how much the Braves stink it up sometimes, and even if they miss the playoffs due to Bryce Elder, their feast or famine inept offense, and their complete lack of willingness to improve at the trade deadline or by signing Trevor Bauer, fewer things will be sadder than this image of now-White Sox infielder, Miguel Vargas, staring off into the abyss after the White Sox had lost their 20th consecutive baseball game.

A little over a week ago, Vargas was suiting up for the first in the NL West Dodgers, probably living his best life.  As being part of a Major League roster, his paychecks were probably getting nice and thick, and the team is so loaded with talent, that he was mostly a backup player anyway, living the American dream of sitting on a bench for the vast majority of every game, and at the most, getting a pinch-hit or pinch-run opportunity, or a Sunday start.  Life in LaLa-Land was beautiful and sunny, and even if his minor league performance hadn’t yet caught up to the bigs, he had made it.

But then Vargas was traded to the Chicago White Sox; not just the worst team in the AL Central, they’re the worst team in all of baseball, and they were riding a lengthy losing streak, that had no light at the end of the tunnel of stopping.  Aside from the trade that brough him to Chicago, anyone who had any inkling of a chance at stopping the bleeding were also getting shipped out, and the White Sox were undoubtedly raising the white flag on the season, and the organization’s only objective was to be able to field a team for the remainder of the games of the season, all while attempting to restore their farm system with assets and prospects from other teams via trade.

Originally, my knee-jerk reaction was that Vargas should suck it up and take solace in the fact that he’s still a major league player on a big league roster.  He’s still getting paid major league money to play a kids game, and being moved to a team like the White Sox, should alleviate pretty much all pressure there could be to succeed, because the team has no pressure to actually win games; and it’s in these conditions where a guy like Miguel Vargas could flourish and raise his stock, and either get paid, or possibly get traded again, after the season, and escape from the Southside.

However, apparently Miguel Vargas is at a precariously early stage of his career that he kind of has a reason to be depressed and mopey over his situation.  Being a pre-arbitration player, he’s making league minimum, which is still a ridiculous $775K to play baseball, it’s low enough to where he becomes a negligible risk of getting cut like a rounding error.  And if his performance doesn’t show some improvement soon, the two prospects sent to Chicago with him also play the same positions he do, and they could very well leapfrog over him in the organizational hierarchy.

Above all else, he goes from sunny beautiful Los Angeles to the south side of Chicago.  I don’t even know what their park is called nowadays, but I can’t imagine it’s improved at all from when it was The Cell™ AKA the worst ballpark in all of MLB in my own experiences.  Sure, I’d wager that he’s not actually living on the south end of the city, but he still has to commute there for all his home games, and the Southside really is as shitty as it’s made to look in Shameless. 

I’d be on the precipice of a breakdown if I were Miguel Vargas too, but at least there’s one possible silver lining to everything he’s going through – if the Dodgers actually do manage to not fuck up in the playoffs and miraculously win the World Series, then he is due a World Series ring too, because baseball is funny like that and even the slimmest of contributors get a share in the credit of a championship.

Either way, when I had the idea to write about Miguel Vargas, I originally thought along the lines of suck it up, buttercup, but then diving deeper into his financials and his performance statistics, I began to realize that he really did have a reason to be this sad, and that in itself is really sad, because professional athletes shouldn’t ever be sad, unless they’re losing critical championship-implication games, not some random August regular season scrap against another pitiful franchise like the A’s.

Good riddance, Pearl

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TIL: the Atlanta Braves will be moving their Double-A minor league affiliate from Pearl, Mississippi to Columbus, Georgia.  They will also be ditching the Braves moniker and will hopefully be something chintzy and marketable

Not that I pay attention to every iota of Braves coverage as I once did at a point in my life, but as a fan of minor league baseball, and for lack of a better term, a fan of the Atlanta Braves, news like this piques my interest, even if this were reported way the fuck back in January of this year.

I mean, I knew that the Braves had relinquished control over all of their minor league squads back in 2021 like selling their debts, and I didn’t hate the news at all quite the contrary, because I felt that it opened the door for Braves affiliates to spread their wings and try to be something more in the spirit of minor league baseball, instead of the boring, stuffy and sterile branding of “The Braves.”

Gwinnett (AAA) had already switched over to becoming the Strippers Stripers, and Rome (A+) as of this years ditched being the Braves and became The Emperors, as in Roman emperor, and better yet, adopted emperor penguins to be their team’s mascot.  Not that I’ve been paying any attention, but for whatever reason, the Mississippi Braves had remained as such over the last two-plus seasons, and despite their freedom to do so, they didn’t appear to be in any rush to make any changes to the organization.

Until this season apparently, as it was announced that the club will be moving out of Pearl, Mississippi and moving to Columbus, Georgia, as well as ditching the Braves moniker and will be adopting a new name for the start of the 2025 minor league season.

At first blush, my thought was, oh great here we go again with a brand new fucking ballpark to build, but it turns out that there’s apparently a historic ballpark in Columbus, Golden Park, that will actually be renovated and used to house the future Columbus Braves affiliate, instead of building something from scratch.  Granted, a renovation isn’t cheap either, and I’m sure it will probably be something of a $65M tax burden for the people of Columbus to absorb, but that sure beats the $126M it took to build the Braves’ Spring Training facility from scratch in Sarasota.

Regardless of the financial burden of accommodations, this is actually a change that I don’t immediately just want to shit on upon hearing about it.  Having been to Pearl, Mississippi, solely to watch a M-Braves game, I have to say that getting the fuck out of that shithole in the middle of goddamn nowhere is nothing but good news for the Braves and frankly, all of Minor League Baseball in that nobody again will ever have to step foot in Pearl/Jackson, Mississippi after the 2024 season.

It’s the only place I’ve ever been to where I genuinely felt like I was whisked back in time at the casual ignorant racism that got in just a singular afternoon in town, from the moment I left the airport, to getting to the ballpark, and while simply getting food.  The cabbie who picked me up from the airport thought that I had to have been an actual player since I was headed to the ballpark, and upon arriving at the ballpark, I caught some kids staring at me and thinking I was Hideki Matsui.

It’s clear that Asian people aren’t a common occurrence in this chunk of the country, but god damn.  During the game, I was puckish so I went up to a concession stand where there were unsurprisingly chicken tenders and fries, and when I handed over my debit card to pay, the lady at the register examined my card and put down her bifocals, and then said to me, “oh that’s an easy one.”

Obviously having no fucking clue to what she was talking about, I asked her what, and she responded that it was my name, that it was one of those names that wasn’t too hard to pronounce.  Okay then

So needless to say, it seems like a monumental win for any person or any business or in this case, any team, to get the fuck out of Pearl, Mississippi, and head closer to somewhere that’s closer to their parent organization.  Columbus isn’t a tremendous step up from Pearl as far as not feeling like you’re in the middle of nowhere, but at least it’s a military town where people have had some etiquette and discipline beaten into them, and it’s only like a 2-3 hour drive to the Metro Atlanta area if anyone wants to feel some actual civilization.

I’m excited to eventually find out what the team will lean towards as far as a new team name, branding and identity will be.  I don’t know much about Columbus other than it being a military town, so I can’t take any snarky takes or come up with any sarcastic names to anoint them as, but hopefully the yokels out there will have the wherewithal to steer clear of the low-hanging fruit of Christopher, whom we all with brains have heard wasn’t exactly the best guy in history.

But hey, there’s always the Columbus Barves, wouldn’t that be some shit, to take the popularized typo-meme-unofficial sarcasm name for whenever the team fucks up, and make it official?  A guy can dream.

Predictable, to those with knowledge

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Twas the night of the trade deadline, and the Braves were in the middle of the pack.  The Phillies have the division, and Atlanta’s grip on Wild Card #1 has been slippery as of late.  Max Fried is on the DL, joining Ozzie Albies and Michael Harris II, while Ronald Acuña, Jr. and Spencer Strider are done for the year.  Reynaldo Lopez has tightness in his forearm. 

Those not injured, are not performing, save for Marcell Ozuna and a resurgent Jarred Kelenic, but Matt Olson, Austin Riley, Adam Duvall and Orlando Arcia definitely are about as reliable as a Dodge Caliber this season.  Aside from Chris Sale, the pitching staff is in shambles due to the loss of Strider and Fried, as Father Time has clearly caught up to Charlie Morton, and the revolving door of Bryce Elder, Spencer Schwellenbach and whomever was scheduled to pitch in Double-A or Triple-A has been less than effective.

Weeks leading up to the trade deadline, there was all sorts of buzz about what the Atlanta Braves should do, to patch their weaknesses, reinforce their offense and build for the playoffs that they are no guarantee to even make.  Braves fans in Facebook communities, blogs and websites all throwing out ideas, mostly putrid, but occasional logical ones, about the things the teams should do in order to accomplish all of the above mentioned.

And whenever this time of the baseball season comes up, there are always these types of fans:

  • Trade everything for [Mike Trout] and [Shohei Ohtani] – fans who don’t really know much about baseball economics and think that in real sport, you can make trades like an EA game and trade Derek Harper for Penny Hardaway straight up
  • Trade absolutely nothing at all because there’s no chance the return on investment will be worth the cost of assets being given up – internet bean-counters who know way too much about baseball economics and have this intrinsic belief that absolutely every baseball transaction possible much be “a win,” that every trade partner must “lose” the trade, and if such conditions don’t seem likely, don’t make it, regardless of how many moving parts there are and the unpredictability of player performance
  • And then there are people like me, crabby old fucks who have been following sports for a very long time, have recognized patterns and tendencies for the teams they follow, are mostly cynical and nihilistic about the likely realities about to befall their preferred teams, and the degrees and willingness to opine their opinions may vary

I used to not engage with rando-communities, but probably a combination of boredom, and that The Algorithm is spoon-feeding me content that pops enough synapses in my brain to drop random comments on various accounts, most of them being Braves communities where I occasionally wish to voice my displeasure with AJ Minter, Bryce Elder, and how the team would be best suited to sign the still-available Trevor Bauer, if he didn’t have this freakishly obviously collusion to blacklist him from the entire league over his head.

I don’t pay much concern over the reactions my words get, and I definitely don’t interact with other users beyond a laughing emoji at the response that are actually decent, but it’s really nothing different from any online community anywhere on the internet: people making wild trade scenarios, trade everything fans bickering with trade nothing fans, and so forth.

More recently, I decided to chime in to a few Braves communities, and I opined that the Braves aren’t doing to make any moves at all beyond a fourth outfielder-type and a relief pitcher; I figured the remark were just enough snarky without me having to blather on about how The Braves Way™ is that of crippling risk-aversion and hand-cuffing cheapness, which it totally is by the way.

And when the trade deadline lapsed, and the evening crossed midnight, where transactions that begun before the deadline needed to be finalized by, and all the smoke of the day’s activities had cleared up, the Atlanta Braves had made only one transaction-trading injured relief pitcher Tyler Matzek and minor league infielder Sabin Ceballos for:

Jorge Soler, outfielder
Luke Jackson, relief pitcher

At this point, all I could really do is shrug like Michael Jordan in the 1992 NBA Finals, after he drowned the Portland Trailblazers in a barrage of three-pointers as if to say, that was easy.  I’ve been following the Braves for a pretty long time now, and I’ve seen this song and dance before.  Save for a few exceptions throughout the years, the majority of the years, the Braves always seem convinced that the only things they ever need at the trade deadline is another outfielder and another relief pitcher, and that all other needs can be filled internally (cheaply) – That’s The Braves Way™!

In this season’s case, they’re not wrong that they needed some help on both accounts, but the fact of the matter is that the starting rotation has two gaping holes in it, and the team has been incapable of scoring runs the vast majority of the season. 

All around the league were decent talents from teams who were out of playoff contention and thrown in the towel, trying to improve their futures at the price of said decent talents available for trade.  And as the days ticked down to the trade deadline, they would come off the board, one by one, with the Phillies picking up Carlos Estevez from the Angels, the Yankees getting Jazz Chisholm, Jr. from the Marlins, the Dodgers getting Jack Flaherty from the Tigers, to name a few examples of front-running contenders actively trying to get even better for the stretch run.

And once again, the Braves sit on their hands all trade season long, and do nothing but pick up a fourth outfielder and a relief pitcher.  I’ve seen this rerun, many, many times in my life now.

For those keeping score, in spite of all the Braves’ many needs, the only outside acquisitions they’ve really made this season, was picking up Soler and Jackson, as well as a few weeks ago, picking up Eddie Rosario from the Washington Nationals’ literal trash after they had designated him for assignment.  Obviously, all of these guys were notable contributors to the 2021 World Series winnings squad, and it’s evident that the Braves’ front office is trying to challenge the intelligence of fans and supporters of the team by bringing back these nostalgia acts, as if they’re miraculously going to turn the team’s fortune around, three years later, older and used.

It goes without saying that the Braves have thrown in the towel on the year themselves, by their sheer lack of willingness to invest and improve.  Of course they will never admit it, but it seems pretty evident that they’re phoning in the roster on account of all the injuries that have decimated the roster, and probably thinking, we’ll just try again next season;  regardless of the fact that Max Fried is probably gone, as probably is Marcell Ozuna who is playing his ass off in a walk year, two of the most competent players on the current roster.

They’ll assume Chris Sale will reward their investment into his bounceback, Spencer Strider will recover to 110%.  That this season was not a fluke for Reynaldo Lopez, and that between Elder, Schwellenbach and Hurston Waldrep,* they can go back to the glory days of Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz.

*could these names get any whiter?

They’ll also assume Acuña and Harris will recover fully, Albies will get back to his All-Star form and Olson and Riley will bounce back.  Arcia might be the only guy on the hot seat, but I’m under the impression that Braves Corporate is already envisioning a fresh start in 2025 with all of their current assets in place, and that 2024 is already a lost cause, and any success to come from it would be considered a bonus.

At this point, it’s actually a bad thing for the Braves front office if the team does well enough to have a little playoff run, and then get bounced in the NLDS again.  Because then there will be all sorts of hindsight fire, criticism and accusations that the organization didn’t do enough to improve the team to where they might have pushed across the finish line for more success, instead of sputtering to another early playoff exit.

But if and when it happens, it’s not like it’s something that most older Braves fans haven’t seen before.  Such is, the curse of having knowledge sometimes.

Bobby Bonilla Day presents the MLB All-Deferred Money Team 2024

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s that time of the year again, where Bobby Bonilla collects a paycheck of $1,193,248 from the New York Mets (as well as a cool $500K from the Baltimore Orioles), despite the fact that he hasn’t played a game of Major League Baseball since 2001. 

As easy as it would be to simply clown on the Mets for locking themselves up into such a legendarily bad arrangement (among other things), the game has changed, and deferring money has become a pretty commonplace strategy employed by all sorts of teams who utilize it to circumvent salary constraints, avoiding the luxury tax threshold, or simply to offer up more money than should be necessary to greedy free agents.

After all, fewer things exemplify the white man’s business world than promising money so far down the line that it’s realistically possible that the people writing up the offers could actually have died of old age when it comes time for the terms of payment to come into play.

That being said, in the 2024 MLB season, there are 25 players making deferred money according to Spotrac records, from 15 different teams.  This is three more players and three more teams employing the buy now-pay later method than the year before.  Which also is a convenient number, because that’s basically a 25-man roster without a 26th injured reserve player.

Cumulatively, they are making $78.3M, which is a higher than the Oakland A’s (shocker) total payroll of $63.3M.  The Pittsburgh Pirates and Baltimore Orioles upped their payroll this year, so they wouldn’t be outspent by squad of non-players for a second year in a row.  But as far as cumulative 26-man roster values, $78.3M is high enough to eclipse literally a third of Major League Baseball, costing more than what the White Sox, Marlins, Nationals, Reds, Pirates, Rays, Indians Guardians, Rockies, Brewers and A’s are spending on their daily rosters.

The Washington Nationals once again take the crown for highest amount of deferred money at $18.5M.  This is heavily weighted by the annual $15M chunks they owe SP Max Scherzer between now until 2028, so it doesn’t look like the Nats are going to be relinquishing this crown, at least until the Dodgers begin making their annual payments for Shohei Ohtani’s deferred salary.

By the way, $18.5M is more than what NL MVP Ronald Acuña, Jr. is making this year, but the Nats will be getting zero home runs and zero stolen bases for their spend.

The Nationals may be one of the most frequent users of deferred money, but they’re no longer alone in this tactic of gaming the payroll system.  The Orioles, Cardinals and Brewers each had three players making deferred monies this season, and there are teams like the Phillies, Dodgers and Padres are waiting in the wings that will have their own Bonillas in the future as well.

Continue reading “Bobby Bonilla Day presents the MLB All-Deferred Money Team 2024” →