Tag: geeks

The 2025 MLB All-Dead Money Team, starring Stephen Strasburg

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I was putting together my annual Bobby Bonilla Day post, I noticed just how much retained/dead money salaries existed in the MLB ecosystem.  At first, I was going to add it onto the Bobby Bonilla Day post, but as I was typing away, I realized that it had some legs to stand on its own, so I decided to ultimately break it off and let it fly and artificially inflate my post count that doesn’t matter to anyone else on the planet but me.

So as kind of an addendum to the Bobby Bonilla Day post, the topic this post is retained salaries, which I like to simply consider, dead money.

While combing through salary information, I noticed almost as frequent amounts of cases of retained/dead money on most teams, and this is different from deferred money because these payment obligations are not predetermined and agreed upon so much as they’re salaries that teams agree to be responsible for in exchange for these talents to be cut and free up the roster space.

That being said, there were 24 players spanning 18 teams who are getting paid despite in most cases, not being on a Major League roster, or even actively playing at all.  Combing through the names and cases, there are typically two primary camps of retained/dead money: young prospects who clearly have savvy agents who managed to get them guaranteed salary numbers, but they proved to not be ready for the Major Leagues yet, got demoted or cut, but the team was still on the hook.  Or, there are veterans with substantial money, that in most cases, fell off a cliff, got injured, and the team preferred to cut them and eat the salary just to free up the roster spot.

Naturally, 24 players is almost a roster, so here we go again – the 2024 All-Retained, All-Dead Money Starting Lineup that actually has a catcher:

Pos. Name Salary Team Retired?
C Matt Thaiss † $100K CHW/LAA Active
1B Eric Hosmer † $17.9K BOS/SDP 2023
2B Isiah Kiner-Falefa $1.2 PIT Active
3B Nolan Arenado † $5.0M COL Active
SS Wander Franco $16.5 TBR 2023
OF Mitch Haniger $14.5M SEA Active
OF Cody Bellinger $2.5M CHC Active
OF Aaron Hicks $10.7M NYY 2024
DH Jose Abreu † $19.5M HOU 2024
SP Stephen Strasburg $35.0M WAS 2022
SP Nestor Cortes $2.0M NYY Active
RP Ryan Pressley $5.5M HOU Active
RP Taylor Rogers $6.0M SFG Active
Reserves
INF Andres Giminez $1.0M TOR Active
OF Jorge Soler $1.9M SFG Active

†denotes player receiving multiple paychecks

So as you might be able to see, there’s an absurd roster to be constructed from the dead money alone, and further illustrates the egregious amounts of financial waste that exists in the constructs of Major League Baseball, as well as professional sports itself.  Sure, nobody should be obligated to work for free, and I too believe in the idea of past services rendered pay, when players are generally paupers on their minors to majors journey, if they even make it, but there are some dudes who simply don’t need the money and should probably feel ashamed to be accepting it.

Of course, I’m mostly referring to pitcher Stephen Strasburg, who is going to be making $35M from the Washington Nationals (bringing their total sunk cost amount to $60M).  Yes, the man carried the team to a World Series in 2019, and at that point, had already cleared $80M in career earnings.  Since then, he has suffered constant injuries and can no longer play baseball, but somehow the Nats are still on the hook for his retained salary until 2027, in which he will start making deferred payments from them instead.  At this time he has tripled his career earnings, and by the time the Nationals are done being handcuffed to him, he will nearly have quadrupled.

Wander Franco is a unique case, because his salary is probably going to be refunded to the Rays on account of his sexual deviancy scandal which has him out of baseball outright currently, but he still shows up on their books for the time being.

Matt Thaiss is a guy I’ve never heard of in my life, which added to my surprise at seeing him appear twice in retained lists, for both the Angels and the White Sox.  He’s a journeyman catcher who really isn’t good, but as documented, catching is the thankless position, so he seems to have always managed to have a job.  But his agent clearly seemed to be clever enough to ensure that he still got a paycheck, and although both teams are only on the hook for $50K a piece, which is pennies to a Major League squad, $100K to play baseball is still the dream, and why Thaiss makes a roster at all.

As far as dead money goes, there’s about $146,789,000 of it on the books of these 18 teams.  That would rank 16th in MLB payrolls, higher than 14 other teams.

Which brings me to one final observation before I begin to wrap all this up: six teams managed to have absolutely no deferred money obligations, nor did they have any dead money retained salaries.  The A’s, the Detroit Tigers, the Kansas City Royals, the Miami Marlins, the Texas Rangers, and of course, the Atlanta Braves.

People accuse me of being pessimistic and curmudgeon about the Braves and their perception that they don’t spend money, but it all comes from actual evidence.  The team is so risk-averse and absolutely unwilling to compete when it comes to any transaction that requires them to open their wallets.  There’s zero creativity when it comes to paying people, and as a result they lose out on every free agent that could possibly help them, and it’s laugh-worthy whenever the Braves’ name is mentioned an interested party in any available free agent.

As much as baseball nerds love to debate and typically applaud teams for smart spending, as it’s demonstrating more and more these days, sometimes you have to spend some money in order to get results.  Everyone may hate the Dodgers for committing a billion dollars to their roster, but there’s little reason to believe that they’re not going to cruise to the playoffs this year, and every foreseeable year afterward.  And when their payments start to come due in the 2030’s, they’re no guarantee to turn into the 2010s Phillies, because they have smart, creative people in their free agent that aren’t afraid to find alternative ways in order to remain competitive.

The six teams that have no debts whatsoever, I don’t really see that as much of a good thing as much as I see six franchises that are cowards when it comes to spending money, and more interested in finding the perfect balance of maintaining a baseball club while padding the pockets of investors.  The challenge as fans is to able to sift through the context, and find out how much teams feed us bullshit, versus how much they’re actually willing to invest.

Anyway, much like Bobby Bonilla Day, when it comes to retained salaries, there’s a tremendous amount of waste here as well.  I don’t know if I will do this one on an annual basis, because I found that writing about this topic dregs up more angst and venom towards the Braves than any Braves fan really should have towards the team they’re actually fans of.

Perhaps if they haven’t been underperforming as much as their roster’s potential could be great, I wouldn’t feel this way, but we’ll see where we land this time next season.

#TRYHARDSZN2024: I wonder what question he got wrong on his SATs?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Four countries: Vietnamese student has been admitted to numerous schools spanning four different countries, including “several in the U.S.”

Instead of flexing a large number of acceptances like American #TRYHARDs do, this Vietnamese #TRYHARD has gotten into the habit of flexing the number of countries in which he’s gotten acceptances from; I have to say that that’s kind of the level of overachieving that can only be done by an Asian person.

The article cites that he’s gotten acceptances from schools in the U.S., Canada, England, as well as his residence in Singapore; off the top of my head, I’m inclined to think that this cream of his crop is probably the acceptance into Cambridge, because the article doesn’t mention that he got into any of the Ivy Leagues, which is typically the dream goal of any Asian #TRYHARD.

In fact, the only American school that was mentioned in this particular article was none other than Georgia Tech, to which I know I clown on because of ACC sport rivalry, is still a great school in general, but especially for computer science, which this particular #TRYHARD seems to have an endless hard-on for.

But the thing is, if Georgia Tech is the only American school that was mentioned here, I’m inclined to believe that the rest of the “several” U.S. schools in which he gained admittance into probably aren’t going to be any higher tier than GT.

I get that computer science appears to be his jam, passion and at the core of whatever he does with his career, but when it comes to college, perception is still reality, and when he finishes school and gets out into the real world, I feel like recruiters and employers are going to be more likely to stop and hesitate to take a glance at a candidate with Cambridge on his resume over a fairly niche school like Georgia Tech.

Either way, I have to say that I was quite tickled at the fact that this one kid got a 1590/1600 on his SATs; which means he missed one question on the entire exam, that prevented him from getting that perfect score that would definitely have gotten him noticed by pretty much every school he applied to.  His dad probably is full of disappointment, and at this point, he probably feels like it’s worse to get 1590 and fall just short of perfection, than to have gotten like a 1310 like I did, and just be slightly above average in terms of scoring.

To think, it’s probably that one question that separated his one kid from the Ivy Leagues and Georgia Tech.

The work trip, fin

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment
I also want to point out that I used AI regenerative fill to AI the people in the background the fuck out of this selfie

So I’m on the red-eye flight back to Atlanta now, and I’m telling myself to write something, before I go into zombie mode and watch Castlevania or the Mandalorian on my iPad, because once I start, I’ll probably until we touch down.

So Adobe MAX is now in the past, and I can say that it was a pretty good trip, overall. Adobe really put on a flashy and fairly informative conference, and from what I could hear from those who have been to prior years, it was run smoother and had fixed a lot of issues. 

Traveling with some work colleagues was enjoyable and I feel like we’ve gotten a little bit of opportunity to get to know each other a little bit better.  The hotel was nice, and I was the tryhard who brought some gym gear and managed to get in two maintenance workouts while out there.

Best of all, it was all covered by work, so all of my food and the airport transport are expensed, and they naturally picked up the tab on the show admission and the hotel.

Despite being there for some work purposes, I still made a point of carving out some me-time, in the form of wandering around the city and eating some abominations of Mexican food that the internet has been teasing me of their existence for the last year.  Of course, they fell into the parameters of my daily food per diem amount, which only sweetened the pot that I could expense things that I would’ve gladly paid for out of pocket to begin with.

First, I tracked down the quesarito-burrito that I first saw on some rando-Instagram reel that was fed to me for some reason despite being all the fuck away in DTLA.  The best part was going in there and explaining that I wanted something that wasn’t on the menu and that it was something I saw on the internet; and I had to show them their own reel to jog their memory, but it was good enough for them to get me the burrito I had been covering for months.

And it was basically everything I hoped it would be, a California-style burrito, but wrapped in a quesarito instead of an ordinary tortilla.  I could’ve finished it, but in doing so, I could’ve really derailed a large part of my trip, plus I was getting the meat sweats something fierce from just how rich it was, or maybe it was the Reaper sauce that added to it or maybe both, so I tapped when I was like 75% finished.

Next, came the trash can nachos that I had heard about, and became enamored with.  Ordinarily, I’d have tried to go there for dinner, but upon learning that being in DTLA, they operated at downtown hours, so I kind of had to pivot and hit them up for lunch instead.

They were located in what google called the fashion district, but seemed like a giant shopping district for quinceñeras or something.  Regardless, it took a little bit of walking around but I found the place in this quirky small food court loaded with nothing but Mexican and Asian foods.  Again, I had to ask for the trash can nachos as they’re not on the menu, and once again I felt like some secret agent or something asking for some illicit.

Ten minutes later, it was brought out to me in what looked like a coffee can.  Just like I had seen on the internet, the can was pulled up, and pouring out onto the plate was a mountain of chips, guacamole, beans, jalapeños, sauces, more chips, more cheese, and carne asada.  Naturally, it was as good as it looked, and much like with the quesarito-burrito, I opted to throw in the towel instead of forcing myself to finish it.

Between the two internet-found foods, I’m hard pressed to decide on what was better.  The quesarito-burrito is a true novelty item, but the nachos had some insane presentation value.  Frankly, nachos really should only be made and served trashcan style, and if I had to really pick one of the two, I think I’m going with the nachos.

But I suppose I should say something about the conference seeing as how it was what brought me out to the left coast in the first place; again, it was a fun show in the sense of production value, and shine and presentation that went into it.

Continue reading “The work trip, fin” →

The Galactic Starcruiser experience shutting down pleases me

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Surprise, surprise: there aren’t as many people willing to plunk down nearly $5,000 for two days, to live out Star Wars fantasies, as Disney decides to shutter the Galactic Starcruiser experience in September

I like to think that this was some convoluted experiment by Disney, in seeing just how far they could push a price tag before it actually proves to be insurmountable by even the richest of the privileged class.  And it appears that they’ve found their answer with the Galactic Starcruiser, and that roughly $1,200 per person per night for a two-night experience seems to have found that breaking point where they just can’t swindle enough people in order to remain open.

Now I like Star Wars, even though my fandom has been put through the ringer throughout the passage of time and the growth of the internet.  Sure, my fandom has been disrespected, invalidated and questioned by the smarmy segments of fans that feel the requirement to test the level of interest, and the internet has more than opened my eyes to just how shitty and insufferable the base majority of Star Wars fans are, but there’s no level of dedication to the property I could achieve to where I would think it was a good idea to drop nearly $5k in order for mythical wife and I to have a two day LARP in the world of Star Wars.

All through the journey of speculation, development and execution of the whole Galactic Starcruiser idea, it was pretty early revealed that this was something that really only those with the deepest of pockets would be able to partake in.  And when stuff like this is priced out of oblivion for the rest of the, well world, I begin to feel resentment towards it, so it makes me feel smug satisfaction to hear that Disney is pulling the plug on it, in such short order.

At the same time, I feel more disdain for the Mouse at not just, lowering prices, and making the whole thing a little more attainable for the rest of us pleebs, because if it weren’t more than my property taxes, I’d probably be interested.  The idea of shuttering it versus lowering the prices is an egregious act of arrogance of the biggest asshole variety that really could only come from the money printer known as Disney.

But when it really comes down to it, good riddance to an experience that really was catering to the 1%, and it’s very amusing that even the 1% reached their limits with this whole idea, to where even a company that’s so adept at glorifying their wins and hiding their weaknesses like Disney, to have such a public and monumental L on display.

Because as an annual passholder, I can say all this shit, because nobody hates Disney more than their annual passholders.

I love that this is happening to the Giants

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TL;DR: Edge complains about how much the San Francisco Giants suck this year, and how much it sucks that their ballpark is getting overrun by Dodgers fans

Okay obviously it’s not actually wrestling superstar Edge, but it’s some other schmuck out in San Francisco who’s name also happens to be Adam Copeland, but that’s all I needed to get started with making this post.

I’ll be honest though, the guy does make some valid points, and it’s not just some fairweather baseball fan who has abandoned ship because the team isn’t the championship juggernaut it was throughout the 2010 decade where won three World Series.  It is frustrating to watch your team not only lose frequently, but lose in manners in which winning conditions could have been attained, but failed.

Bonus points for the reference to the minor league no-hitter that I posted about a week ago, where a team didn’t notch a hit but still scratched together seven runs and won their game. 

From the points that Edge this guy brings up, he does have reason to be frustrated and aggravated with his team.  But we’re not here to talk about that nonsense, what I really wanted to zero in on was the underlying message that Giants fans have begun doing what I’ve always pegged them as: being fickle, fairweather bandwagon fans who only liked the team when they were championship contenders, and now that they suck, are nowhere to be seen; allowing for the scenario that Edge this guy was also unhappy about, where Dodger fans basically took over AT&T Oracle Park.

Granted, most fans of all teams of all sports are generally such types of fans, but Giants fans love, love to arrogantly pride themselves on being intelligent, statistic-savvy, analytical as well as hip and down with whatever climates of the internet are in circulation.  As much as Yankees, Phillies, Red Sox and Cubs fans are so often seen as fratty, degenerate and some of the most oppressive fanbases in baseball, Giants fans are easily the most arrogant, douchey, hipster fanbase in the league.

But when it really comes down to it, they’re still no different than any other fanbase in any sport, and when the team starts to suck and the wins don’t seem as given as they once might have been, they’re nowhere to be seen. 

And it sucks having your team’s home park invaded and overrun by visiting fans; I’ve been to my share of games against the Cubs and Yankees, whose fans travel among the best out there, and I’ve seen my share of purposefully organized invasions of Philadelphia fans to sports arenas in Maryland and Washington DC.  It sucks seeing all these outside tourists, emboldened by the presence of their fandom brethren, and triple worse if they are on the winning side.

I have no sympathy for the Giants or their spoiled and smarmy, arrogant, douchey, hipster fans.  Any of them so unhappy with the team doesn’t even have to look back a decade to see when the good times were present, multiple times, and if they can’t analyze and understand that it’s simply impossible for any team to dominate like the Celtics or Yankees once did in today’s sport environments, they not as smart of fans as they might think they are.

Motherfuckers can sit on their fists and pump pump pump pump pump pump pump, and then jump jump jump jump jump jump jump, which is still one of the most embarrassing in-between inning segments of entertainment I’ve ever witnessed at a ballpark during my ballpark travels.

I’ve never been more unafraid of an armed individual in my life

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the weekend, we sent the kids to grandma’s house so that we could get some major organization done at home.  Frankly even with the help of our au pair, there would’ve been a lot of going in and out of the girls’ rooms well into the evenings that made it optimal to just have them not be present in order to maximize productivity.  That being said, it also afforded all of us in the house, to be adults for two days, and on the second evening, we collectively decided to get out of the house.

At one point, we went into a 2nd and Charles to kill a little bit of time; at one point in my life, this place would’ve been my heaven, since I like comic books, video games, books and all sorts of the nerdy crap that they sell and buy there, but at this point in my life, I just want to look and don’t want to actually bring any more shit into my house that I feel is already full of a lot of unneeded crap.

While we were there though, I was looking through comic trade hardcovers, and not far to my left, I could hear some guy doing some serious mansplaining about the differences between the Infinity War in comics versus the MCU.  A smirk emerged on my face at hearing him blather on, because he was perpetuating all sorts of stereotypes of comic book geeks inside the bookstore.

As I passed by him, I couldn’t help but notice that beneath his vest that I have to imagine was put on completely non-ironically, was a holster equipped with what I’m pretty sure was a Glock of minimal size, I’m no expert on the granular details, especially when I could only see the handle.  The point is, the guy was carrying openly, which is completely legal in the state of Georgia.

But as the title of this post states, I don’t think I’ve ever been more unafraid of an armed individual in my life until I saw this guy.  Think about it, the guy is carrying a firearm, presumably loaded, completely in public, at a place of business that probably had upwards of 80-100 people inside of it at the time I saw him.  We live in the age where mass shootings happen at almost a weekly basis in similar conditions, and not only did I feel zero concern for my life, all I could feel were jokes formulating in my brain instead.

Like, this guy got dressed with the express intention of leaving the house, and going to 2nd and Charles of all the places in the Metro Atlanta area, and as he’s mentally inventorying all the things he needs prior to walking out the door, and oh yeah my gun is one of the things on his checklist.

“Honey, we have to get to 2nd and Charles before they close at 8, have you seen my gun?”
“Yeah baby, it’s right next to my Loungefly”

On action television and in film, there are occasionally montages of heroes getting ready to go into battle, and they’re equipping themselves with a gun before they go into the fights of their lives.  And then we have Firearm Fred over here consciously strapping on his holster to go into the nerd store, as if he might have to flex it on someone trying to get the last pack of Yu-Gi-Oh booster packs ahead of him.

Seriously, I was giggling to myself for the rest of the night at the thought of Sidepiece Samuel actually feeling like he had to be carrying a firearm inside of a fucking 2nd and Charles.  I’ve never felt so opposite of concerned or intimidated by another human being’s presence in my entire life.  I felt like even if he were a mass shooter ready to pounce, I could probably take him without there being any loss of life; I know it’s not really a laughing matter, but that’s how seriously felt looking at this guy.

Regardless, my au pair got a kick out of seeing such a sight with her own eyes.  And after we took her to a Hooters for dinner, I told her that she basically had the most American night of her life, having seen an armed individual out in public, followed by the aforementioned Hooters for dinner.  Welcome to America!

Dad Brog (#098): Goodbye office, hello au pair

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The blets are all down and in storage, my personal effects are all gone, and the only things left are my giant Jinx wall mural, and the hanging bar full of running medals, because they’re out of the way enough to where I don’t feel bad leaving them up.  But for all intents and purposes my office is no longer my office, and is back to being a bedroom, ready for a new resident to my household who will be arriving in short order. 

Mythical wife and I are long past the point of exasperation when it comes to childcare, and we’ve decided to embark down the route of getting an au pair, which is a fancy way of saying we’re bringing in a person from another country to come live in my home, and be a live-in nanny to my children. 

The hopes are that with a nanny as a resident, it will bring a semblance of stability to my house; reliable, consistent care, and with them living with us, the hope is it will greatly reduce the possibility of fake sick days, COVID exposures, and the litany of other bullshit that seemed to plague my home through the parade of temps and babysitters we’ve relied on throughout the rest of this year.

I genuinely can’t express in words the sheer exasperation I’ve had with all the babysitters I’ve had to endure over the last year.  All the bullshit sick days called in where I’m the one who has to eat the sick day from my own job.  All the regular tardiness from them where they were always 3-10 minutes late every single fucking day, where those small amounts of time are the difference between being prepared for an early meeting, or needing to log into a meeting with a crying baby in tow, praying that I’m not called upon to unmute my mic.  All the clock-watching when it came to the end of the days, to where they’d leave on the dot, and I’m on double duty while on the clock at work until mythical wife gets home.

I’m sick of feeling like a liability at work, and questioning my job security, and really hoping that nobody’s taking notes or building a dossier on my occasional work flakiness on account of putting my kids first.  I’m sick of feeling like I’m wasting money when I have to pay shitty babysitters who grew complacent and fell into routines and lazy habits.  I’m just sick of unreliable help.

Of course, mythical wife and I are more than prepared to welcome our au pair with open arms and hope to embrace them as a legitimate member of our household, and we’re really hoping that by giving a shit about them will make them want to give a shit about us, more importantly the kids, and that we’ll have a mutually beneficial year of reliable childcare while they get to explore a slice of life in America, as polarizing of a place we are these days.

But this also means that I’ve had to forfeit my office, as all the other bedrooms in the house are occupied by the kids, and that was honestly one of the things that gave me pause about heading in this direction in the first place.  I loved my office, I loved my wall of blets, and I loved having a personal space for all of my shit that I geek out and obsess over, even if nobody else gives two shits about wrestling, running or any of the rando pieces of art and figures I had on my walls.

However, I love my kids more, and frankly it goes without saying that a large part of parenting is sacrificing things for the sake of our kids.  So add my office to the list with hobbies, disposable income, freedom to bullshit and just time in general, and I’m hoping the au pair experience will go so well that I’ll have zero chance to have any regrets about it.

It’s funny, because while I was on the fence about going the route of an au pair, when my last full-time nanny’s personal drama bomb went off, and she used it as reason why she couldn’t come in to work, I remember my wife showing me her phone with the wall of text, and two seconds after reading it, I was just like, fuck this, let’s get an au pair.  I don’t need my office so much as I just need some fucking reliable childcare, and it just doesn’t seem like we’re going to find any viable options in our area, much less this country full of lazy and entitled people who have some babysitting experience, looking to cash in on a hard caregiver’s market.

But all the same; vaya con dios to my office, as it’s going to be a long time before you will be mine once again, and I will have my blet wall back, and a place to put my nerdy framed artwork and League figures up on the shelves, and have a place in the house that is solely my own.  But the kids come first, always, and one day I will have my office back definitively.