"LET'S GO, BLUE JAYS!"

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAAAHAHAHAHAHA:

If this video ran like five seconds longer, you would see the Flyers score their sixth goal of the night. Suck it, Maple Leafs. 


That's right: suck it. 


KS

Good Night, Sweet, Tiny Prince

There's that big-boy smile!

The San Francisco Giants made another befuddling move on Friday, as they released Mike "Number Three Hitter" Fontenot. The ginger Wolverine. The guy who saved their bacon for a week in 2011 when everyone caught the bubonic plague at once. The guy who opted not to catch a pop fly in the postseason. The guy who was the rootinest, tootinest, tiniest Giant in the past few years who came team and outperformed his salary.

The Giants decided to waive Fontenot as a "cost saving measure," opting instead to retain Fontenot's IRL BFF, Ryan Theriot. Theriot and Fontenot are the same person, except Theriot is two feet taller (six feet tall) and bats right-handed. Oh, and he had a lousy Spring Training. You know who didn't have a lousy Spring Training? Brandon Belt. But Belt will be starting the season in Fresno, barring some last-minute bout of senses-having by Bochy, Sabean, et al.

Fontenot leaving breaks my heart in a tiny way, because I really do love the guy and I think he's way better than most people want to give him credit for. I hope a team picks him up and gives him opportunities to succeed, and I will root my hardest for every one of his at-bats.

The Giants are in danger of entering a series of seasons that will be horrifying. There is a chance that Cain and Lincecum will soon be gone and San Francisco will fall to the middle of the pack pitching-wise, to go with their league-worst offense. Longing for the days of Zito, Huff, and Rowand coming off the books has turned into a cold-sweat-inducing fear that we'll wake up in one to two years and find a team fundamentally incapable of competing. But hey! They saved nearly a million dollars by releasing Mighty Mike Fontenot, so we're coming out way ahead here.

GAMBATTE ICHIROOOOOOOO

they are right to think he is cool

It is of course undeniable that Dustin Ackley and Felix Hernandez had a lot to do with the Mariners' 3-1, eleventh-inning win over the Athletics in Tokyo in the opening game of this probably glorious 2012 Major League season, but is it not awesome, I ask you, that Ichiro went 4-5 and knocked in a run? Is it not? Here, look at him busting out of the box on an infield single, the first hit of the year: 

ichiroooooooooooooooo

Also, and finally, I would like to propose that there always be a baseball game going on when I get up in the morning, because today I found this arrangement agreeable to the extreme.


KS

Snider to Triple A, Thames to Left Field: OK Then I Guess

That is the look Eric Thames gets when he is thinking about Beowulf

I have no problem with this, despite everybody else who cares thinking it is wrong and dumb. Travis Snider hasn't done anything with his time in Toronto, to hell with the projections and protestations of your precious Keith Law (who is also my precious Keith Law, so it's complicated). It's not like exactly like Eric Thames is a world beater, but whatever, man. 


In stranger news, the Blue Jays have extended Dustin McGowan, he of the barely existent right arm, so I guess they think everything is all better and we're good? Good. 


Also, I would be remiss if I did not direct your attention to like a five minute thing Chad Harbach, author of the brilliant Art of Fielding, did with The Economist, a fine publication to which I subscribe because I am almost unbelievably wealthy and powerful. 


Finally, BASEBALL TOTALLY STARTS TOMORROW MORNING LIVE FROM JAPAN ISN'T THAT AWESOME I LOVE BASEBALL LET'S PLAY TWO


KS

CASUAL WASHINGTON NATIONALS ROSTER PREVIEW

I am a casual baseball fan, at best, and adopted the Nationals as my own the day they moved to D.C. from Montreal, though technically it took them more than a day to move there, plus unpacking, and picking which lamp looked best in the family room, etc, etc. But I have contemplated even getting that “listen to MLB games on the interwebs” thing, though I probably won’t because let’s be honest here – am I gonna listen to old dudes describe baseball games or scour music blogs for obscure Iranian psych-funk from the early ‘70s? What is this – 2012 or 1943?
I thought though that it would be important, in this year of Nationals Hope that Something Great is Beginning, where even the possibility of playoffs has been bandied around like slop rags at a Tijuana donkey sex show, that I should go through the roster, and share my thoughts.

PROJECTED LINE-UP POSITION PLAYERS
SS IAN DESMOND – One of the dudes who is supposed to be awesome who has not gotten awesome yet. Baseball is full of guys like these. His name is Ian, which judging from the baseball card collection of my youth, is a promising name for a solid middle infielder.
2B DANNY ESPINOSA – He is the other guy who is just like Ian Desmond. I guess if one of them ends up awesome, this is great, and they are both still considered young and developing by baseball standards. But also the dudes who put together baseball teams will always be like, “Oh shit, that dude is a motherfuckin’ crystal cut diamond in the rough, you wait and see,” and you wait and wait and don’t ever see shit.
3B RYAN ZIMMERMAN – Just re-signed to a gazillion dollar contract, but is a solid dude, so I don’t mind. The kind of guy you can feel good being the veteran star of your team, although there is a certain Will Clark Bomb aspect to Zimmerman where we might find out in ten years he hates anybody who is not white and used to throw fried chicken at Dmitri Young in the locker room. Of course, perhaps out of stubborn militant pride, Dmitri Young gave up fried chicken, which is why he lost so much weight there that one magical stretch. Where is Dmitri Young? He should be our AA batting coach. I hope he was. I think a few four-hour bus rides sitting next to Dmitri Young going from Bumfuck, Pennsylvania, to Bumfuck, Virginia, probably would’ve been very good for Bryce Harper.
LF MICHAEL MORSE – Sort of came out of nowhere last year to be good. Unfortunately, contrary to what those dudes who put together baseball teams will tell you, in 2012 this is not always indicative of someone finding their stroke, but perhaps some weird experimental European PED. Still though, I have a friend from high school named Mike Morse who is a morning DJ in the Raleigh/Durham radio market, so because of that I support this other Mike Morse who instead plays baseball.
1B ADAM LAROCHE – I don’t know man, at 1B we had Dmitri Young, then Adam Dunn, both of whom are personable as fuck. Thus, Adam LaRoche is useless to me. Do we have some super dude coming up? Wasn’t there a reason they didn’t let Harper play 1B? I think as a casual fan instead of a super baseball dork, there’s something I’m missing here.
RF JAYSON WERTH – Lol, Shaggy Werth got a fat sack of Scooby snacks and all of a sudden wasn’t worth a shit. And now people are convincing themselves that he will start being good again. Whatever man. I can dig it. In order to go from being the Washington Nationals sucky team of eternity to Washington Nationals legitimate franchise, you have to show the world you are willing and able to blow money on useless shit, to show you are able to compete with the Yankees and Phillies and Tigers and Red Sox of the world. I would rather see them blow it on Werth and draft a bunch of dudes who are going to be good one day, just wait and see, than do what the Marlins did where they blow a ton of money at their new ballpark by hoping flashy names and a kitschy park will somehow make people care. At least the Nats are building something, and any long-term building project needs some overpaid stoner guy to be considered an elder and just kinda watch things come together and go, “Yeah, this shit is good.”
C WILSON RAMOS – While other people were dicking around in the offseason, Ramos got kidnapped and ransomed. At one point, motherfuckers were worried he was already dead. But then he was air rescued and now he’s back to catch baseballs. Fuck all other catchers.
CF RICK ANKIEL – Holding Harper’s spot for now, and is the rare occasion where when pitchers suddenly remember all sorts of repressed sexual abuse memories that happened at the hands (and penis) of a little league coach and can’t suddenly remember how to pitch a baseball anymore, he was able to turn it around. It took a of therapy and a complete positional change (remember, the dude was an MLB pitcher at one point), but he’s here, and he’s not queer. Or maybe he is. I don’t know. I’m good either way to be honest.

OTHER NOTABLE POSITION PLAYERS
OF BRYCE HARPER – He’s starting the year in AAA, for long-term contractual reasons, but make no fucking mistake bros, The Ultimate Harper is about to be unleashed upon the Universe, like a thousand Josh Hamiltons, blessed with the power of magma molecules from deep inside the dark mountains of Nevada/Arizona wastelands, not so much born as found under a joshua tree, surrounded by coyotes, standing on their hind legs, who gifted him to his parents, and thus gifted him to us all.
IF MARK DEROSA – I think I have a baseball card of this dude, which means he has to have been playing for at least 30 years. Wasn’t he and Manny Trillo boys or something?
IF STEVE LOMBARDOZZI – Rookie offspring of former wrestler The Brooklyn Brawler, whose cousin is fat bearded white rapper Action Bronson. I tell you this so you go watch some Action Bronson videos on youtube.

PROJECT PITCHING ROTATION
RH STEPHEN STRASBURG – I know he is supposed to be the greatest thing ever to have ever done anything, but I have to be honest with you – his goatee makes him suspicious in my mind. I do not have Excel spreadsheets and algebraic formulas to break all this down, as is the norm nowadays; I am old school, and I trust my gut, and something in my gut tells me this Strasburg kid is going to end ugly. Still though, I’ll take what we can out of him. Kerry Wood the motherfucker for all I care.
RH JORDAN ZIMMERMANN – The great thing about the possibility of Strasburg being the most awesome fucking thing ever is that Jordan Zimmermann also has some immense potential to be awesome as fuck, so in a game of hoping shit breaks well for you in terms of player development, our potential high watermark is really fucking high. As am I.
LH GIO GONZALEZ – The thing I love about the way the Nats continue to build their team is it is almost like somebody somewhere this off-season said, “You know, I know we have to let Livan Hernandez go, because he will most likely be murdered by Cuban drug lords at some point in the next two years, and we want to be removed from that. But there’s a lot of degenerate money-spending 30-something types who absolutely love Livan Hernandez. Perhaps we go throw a bunch of shit at the A’s and get this Gio Gonzelez kid, because he’s fairly insane, but he’s also young, and can eat up some innings, and might actually be pretty fucking good. But he’s crazy, so people will love him. And he most likely won’t get murdered by Cuban drug lords for at least another eight or nine years.” So they got him, and now we can all be dumbasses who go “NAT GIO” because it is a play on National Geographic and we are all retards nowadays, or at least slightly autistic as a whole, so simple stupid play on words like that make us giggle inside but we don’t call it giggling we call it lolol which feels weird to type an –ing after so I just left it like that. Man, shit is confusing nowadays.
RH EDWIN JACKSON – His name, to me at least, sounds like a gospel singer, and when I think of gospel singing, or more appropriately gospel sanging, I think of this song –

LH JOHN LANNAN – He is the fifth guy in our rotation. On the surface, that might not seem like a thing, but he has been as high as our #2 starter in the past, so trust me when I say it is a thing.

BULLPEN
RH DREW STOREN – With Joba Chamberlain’s bizarre ankle/blood-letting injury, Drew Storen now is the flattest hat in MLB, having picked that up from the Chief Chad Cordero, who is already retired apparently. Man, relievers have really become sports’ biggest bitch, haven’t they, used up and spit out like Russian whores in Prague. Storen is white as fuck. Like seriously, I bet that dude gets stoked to go to Applebees.
RH TYLER CLIPPARD – He is our set-up man, and he can go for multiple innings, which will be necessary as two of our five starters are using robot arms, one of them is old, and the other one is the crazy guy from Oakland. I know that’s only four, but fuck you. John Lannan is the other guy and I couldn’t think of how to disparage him. He’s just a hard-working second-tier starting pitcher who will help make 162 games disappear, and then hopefully sit in the bullpen during the playoffs.
RH CHIEN-MING WANG – He is already broke I think, which is a bad sign, as the key to our haphazard experimental surgery pitching rotation working was for nobody to break too badly. The fact our Wang is sore and we haven’t hit opening day is not a good sign.

So there you have it, friends. I could have also talked about Davey Johnson being a weird fucker as a manager, but weird fuckers as a manager are a dime a dozen nowadays. Davey Johnson is the perfect manager for this team at this point, to instill tradition in a tradition-less franchise, at least in this town. Maybe we get somebody else to managineer things in the future, but for now, there is nothing more perfect than Davey Johnson, who will say crazy things and take all the heat off of the young budding superstars as we wait and see, wait and see, wait and see.

If I Ever Consider Losing $160 Million to be an Advantageous Situation, Please Punch Me in the Face

Laughing all the way to the bank....to withdraw $160 million. 

So there it is.  And after all of the days gone, money spent, and excuses made, where do the Wilpons, the Mets, and their fans find themselves?  Pretty much exactly where they started. 

When the news broke that the Wilpons had agreed to settle the suit brought against them by Irving Picard, the trustee appointed to clawback money for the Madoff victims, I did a huge fist pump in the car that I was driving.  When the news broke that it was a $160 million settlement, I nearly drove off the road in delight.  However, as more details began to come out about the settlement, my hopes of a dream that ended with the pennyless Wilpons forced to sell the Mets to someone with actual business acumen were dashed.  

It's true that the $160 million number is a big one.  However, the Wilpons don't have to pay a penny of it until Picard is finished with his entire case, which is estimated to take another three to four years.  And in what I consider to be more of a sad referendum on the state of American business law than an outrage, the Wilpons are still attempting to recoup $172 million from Madoff.  

Yes, you read that correctly.  On pretty much the same day that they agreed to pay Picard, they immediately just walked to the other side of the table to become his clients as they sought restitution from Madoff.  They could actually MAKE money from this whole mess when all is said and done.  AMERICA.

Also, they sold some portions of their ownership for about $240 million and paid off their outstanding loans to Bank of America and Major League Baseball, so it looks like Jeffy gets to keep his fantasy baseball team for awhile.  Yayy.  

Anyway, enough about those dumb clowns, lets take a look at the on-field talent!

Johan Santana has been having a great spring, and in his last outing he made the World Series MVP look like a big dumb on several occasions.  I think that he will be a valuable piece of this treading water season, provided that his arm doesn't flat out fall off like in the Walking Dead or something.  

Almost as good has been R.A. Dickey who is just the man.  He wears Darth Vader crap around the clubhouse, told Mets ownership to stick it and climbed a giant mountain, and beats the Phillies so much.  They are both having good springs!  Have good seasons, guys!

Also encouraging has been seeing Zach Wheeler and Matt Harvey throwing like 98 miles per hour apiece.  Less encouraging was when Zach Wheeler twisted his ankle climbing the stairs.  Try not to climb so many stairs, Zach!  I look forward to 2013 when these guys are both coming up.  Just like Generation K.  Loved those guys.  

Ike Davis has polio or some shit, but I'm excited for him to have a big season.  Jason Bay can go straight to hell.  I know I wasn't Lucas Duda's biggest fan in the first half of last season, but he is gonna sock so many dingers.  Daniel Murphy is gonna hit .320 and die during a pickoff play at second base.  Bye Daniel!  Ruben Tejada seems nice!  I also like the Mets chances in any kind of brawl that gets started with guys like Rauch and Francisco in the bullpen.  Lets just beat up all the other teams and have a great season!  Lets make that the slogan.  We will straight up punch you . 

So Once Again, We Have Reached That Point

Travis Snider is at times surprisingly dainty

The point, that is, at which my elation at (and gratitude for) the mere fact of spring training baseball is replaced by my need to see real games that count, pretty much right away, thanks. This is especially true this year because the weather is really nice here, and when this happens, the season should be started early in my view. Pretty much everything the Blue Jays wanted to see out of pretty much everyone has materialized this spring, and the excitement surrounding this 2012 edition of the club has me poised for a summer of unusually bitter disappointment, and I'm ready to get that going, basically.


Also in case you were wondering just how mind-blowingly awful Adam Lind has been, you might enjoy this Drunk Jays Fans post: "The Mind-Blowing Awfulness of Adam Lind." I know I did!


KS

Guys, I'm a Little Worried...

So here I am, 3000 miles away from Philadelphia freaking out about a season that hasn't even begun yet. Chase "Fuckin'" Utley and the 125 Million Dollar Man are probably going to miss half the season. Placido Polanco and his giant head are going to miss a lot of time. Hunter Pence is probably going to come back down to Earth a little bit. Jimmy Rollins is 33. And I can't keep expecting Halladay and Lee and Hamels to be this consistent, can I? Not to mention that RAJ plans on throwing a combination of Wiggy and Thome at first base and keeps fucking around with my boy Dom Brown.

Last year I was nostalgic about the shitty Phils teams. This year's squad is roughly a million times better than the '96 squad, but the lowered expectations of the 90's didn't leave me with these pains in the pit of my stomach. I'm dreading how many 3-2 losses I'll be seeing this year, banging my forehead on the sticky bar of downtown Portland's Buffalo Wild Wings. Let's look at the projected lineup on April 5, provided the rest of the old ass Phillies don't have their knees disintegrate in the next 2 1/2 weeks.

1. Jimmy Rollins, SS (33) - Aging leadoff hitter. I'll be shouting "FUUUUCK" during every 1 pitch leadoff at bat that he'll have this year, of which there will be many.
2. Shane Victorino, CF (31) - He designs really terrible Ed Hardy ripoff tee's and is friends with the guy from Jon and Kate Plus 8, but I love him so damn much. But still, his numbers will probably decline and he'll do a million stupid things that I'll curse him for.
3. Hunter Pence, RF (28) - He won't be as great as he was last year, but still pretty good. A+++.
4. John Mayberry, LF(28) - Oh God damnit.
5. Jim Thome, 1B (41) - Jesus.
6. Ty Wiggington, 3B (34) - You've gotta be fucking kidding me.
7. Carlos Ruiz, C (33) - I love you Chooch, but not even you can save us.
8. Freddy Galvis, 2B (22) - ZIPS Projection: .262/.299/.359! Woooo!
9. Halladay/Lee/Hamels/Worley/Fat Joe - Help us, you beautiful bastards.

But hey guys, at least we got Papelbon!!!!!!!

Blue Jays (SS) 8, Twins 2; Blue Jays 7, Yankees 5; Blue Jays 6, Astros 3: So Here's The Thing

Score that an E5

Far be it from me to even come anywhere close to saying Spring Training standings mean anything at all. That the Blue Jays are 11-2 so far is better than being 2-11 (what's up, Atlanta?) but is, on the whole, not actually relevant to anything at all even a little, because absolutely nobody's priority is winning Grapefruit League baseball games. That much is indisputable. But Travis Snider is totally hitting! Kyle Drabek and Dustin McGowan both pitched three strong innings today! There are national media -- national American media -- stories about how the Blue Jays are on the cusp of being better than just pretty OK! And I'm listening to all these "away" radio feeds because I guess Rogers doesn't think anybody would want to listen to Blue Jays Grapefruit League baseball on a Thursday afternoon (they are wrong to think that by the way) and all the other broadcast teams are like "hey now, these Blue Jays, why not!" That is exactly how I feel about this right now. 


KS

Blue Jays (split squad) 9, Braves 5; Blue Jays 4, Orioles 1: But Never Mind That, There's A Sports Illustrated Thing About How Lenny Dykstra Is Going to Jail

If that is Big League Chew it is a flavour with which I am unfamiliar

Can you believe they still publish paper copies of Sports Illustrated in 2012? And that I get them? Well it's all true! And this week there is a story about Lenny Dykstra, who is going to jail for having broken most of the laws. Here is the summary of David Epstein's article that they put up on the page that tells you what you could be reading about if you paid them money to mail you a magazine: 

On Monday, former Mets and Phillies outfielder Lenny Dykstra was sentenced to 3 years in prison on charges of grand theft auto and filing a false financial statement. In a story based on interviews with law enforcement officials and personal and business associates of Dykstra as well as police and court records reviewed exclusively by SI, staff writer David Epstein traces the pattern of criminal behavior that ultimately landed Dykstra in jail (page 50).Among the previously unreported details uncovered by Epstein are:

• Dykstra used his connection to Charlie Sheen to entice some of his associates into fraudulent activity. He said that Sheen and he were working on a number of ideas including an energy drink and promised his associates pieces a company that never existed.

• Dykstra got a model and mother of 5 named Jessica Costa into his scheme, convincing her to lease a Porsche 911 under her name that he would make the payments on, with her credit application. No one knows where the Porsche is now.

• A common associate in many of Dykstra’s plans was Robert Hymers, a onetime accountant who became infatuated with Dykstra’s lifestyle, said in an interview with police that one night while working late with Dykstra at the Intercontinental hotel in L.A., he fell asleep and when he woke up, his laptop was gone. Dykstra told him that a prostitute had come in, threatened him with a taser and taken the laptop. That laptop contained personal information of a person that Dykstra attempted to use credit checks for at two car dealerships.

All of this is of course awesome. 


Hey is Lenny Dykstra the first baseball player about whom you remember thinking "OK now this guy right here is on something"? Because that is the role he filled for me. Like, Canseco was massive, but I was only ever aware of him as massive, whereas Lenny Dykstra was a massive Phillie who was revealed to have been like a downright teensy Met when you saw his old baseball card at the store. Also one time I wanted to get a Lenny Dykstra rookie card for my friend for his birthday and I thought I had dialed the number of the baseball card store but the guy on the other end of the line disagreed however he played along for a minute.


KS  

Phillies 7, Blue Jays 0; Blue Jays 3, Red Sox 3; Blue Jays 6, Yankees 1; Blue Jays 11, Astros 1; Blue Jays 5, Astros 2: Not Enough of These Were On the Radio

Joseph Batstista, pondering haters 

I get that not everybody is going to listen to every inning of every spring training game and it might not make sense to broadcast every last one of them, but at the same time, I mind this fact more than you might think. Like, this week, even my admittedly and perhaps enviably bohemian life did not allow me to listen to as much of one of the games that was in fact broadcast as I would have liked, but I caught some of it, and even that felt pretty good, you know? Even if I can't really settle in for more than an inning or two, that inning or two can be pretty transporting, if I may be so bold as to say that about this. And a bro of mine who just signed up for Gameday Audio on the strength of my recommendation found on the first night of his subscription nothing available but a Spanish broadcast of the Marlins game. Finding it unlikely he would learn the language in one evening, he tuned out (also it is complicated because he is a bitter Expos fan and still understandably has feelings in the direction of Jeffry Loria who is undeniably evil, an aspect of his character not sufficiently examined in the recent Miami Marlins cover story in Sports Ilustrated in my view).


Putting all of that aside, in a triumphant return to the airwaves this afternoon Jose Bautista hit two home runs and Travis Snider hit another and Dustin McGowan pitched or two innings without his shoulder erupting into flames so that is a win in the fullest sense. Go Jays.


KS

Tigers 4, Blue Jays 2; Phillies 7, Blue Jays 0; Blue Jays (split squad) 8, Pittsburgh 6; Blue Jays (split squad) 3, Red Sox 3: Spring Training Rolls On!

what's up, Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine's sunglasses

Almost unforgivably, there was no Toronto radio coverage of the Blue Jays game against the Tigers the other day, so I was reduced to following along on the actually totally good Detroit broadcast, which was kind of cool in that it gives one an outsider's view on what is happening with a team I am otherwise too close to see from the proper perspective, probably. Or so I thought, until it turned out the Detroit guys liked the Blue Jays' revamped bullpen, thought there was a lot to like in the lineup, and that with the extra wild card team this year they had a shot, but it's all going to hinge on what happens with this young rotation. Me too! That's totally what I think! Also they said that they liked the new uniforms because the old ones had numbers on the back that were way too italicized so it was hard to see who was warming up in the bullpen or whatever if you are not the kind of person who can just look and be like "fuck, it's Brian Tallet" by horrifying body type alone. Anyway, this was a good game, and Chris Woodward played, and I was like "oh hey Chris Woodward again." The next day they played the Phillies, and although they gave up seven runs, all seven runs came off pitchers who aren't coming north with the club anyway, so what do I care? Not at all! Then today there were a couple of split squad games. Whatever man everything is cool!


KS

Blue Jays 8, Pirates 5: Travis Snider Answers from the Mouth of His Cannon

still loving the new uniforms btw

Only a day after my most recent denunciation of Travis Snider, dude hit a couple of doubles, drove in a pair on a weird groundout, stole third, and threw a guy out from left. That is all awesome, however I would be remiss if I did not point out to you that he hit like .347 or something in spring training last year, so while you might be thinking this all might auger well I am here to say that we don't know how it augers. We just don't know. How. It augers.  Also, thinking about the Pirates for a minute, isn't it something how the Pirates traded for A. J. Burnett on the condition that they wouldn't actually have to pay him really any money but then in a bunting drill Burnett fouled one off his eye and that shit is broken and he's out for months? Oh, Pirates . . .


KS

Blue Jays 7, Pirates 2: A BASEBALL GAME

Yusssssssssss

I had known for some time that Grapefruit League action, such as it is, was scheduled to begin for these Toronto Blue Jays on this the third day of the third month in the year of our lord 2012, but somehow this managed to sneak up on me all the same. Fortunately, the thoughtful folks at MLB.com went ahead and signed me up for another year of GameDay Audio without me even having to ask! Can you believe it? So I am all set! As is my favourite douchebag in all the world Brett Lawrie, who hit two two-run doubles today, so he remains on pace to be literally the greatest hitter in the history of professional baseball (I will overlook today's error). Nine pitchers took the hill for the Blue Jays, which only ever happens in the first week of spring training games or I guess in the All-Star Game, too, sometimes, and the not-as-fat-as-previously Brett Cecil got the start but not the all-important win, which instead went to Kyle Drabek, who pitched a scoreless inning and struck a guy out so it's like :) SMOKE but also he walked a guy so it is also like :( and so on the whole is like :/ which is the probably the best case scenario for Kyle Drabek this season.


I would also like to call your attention to Eric Thames, who homered today, and who I fully support in the battle for the everyday spot in left field because he not only reads but totally gets Beowulf and also sketches out plans for his facial hair but most importantly he is not Travis Snider. If one is a fan of the Toronto Blue Jays one is supposed to be of the opinion that Snider has been jerked around between the majors and triple-A to such an extent that his confidence lies in ruins and he is a broken man and probably this is mostly Cito's fault, or something, but on the whole he is a dude who has looked less like a dude than a butt, if I may be frank, and I am sure we all agree that the proper place for butts is on the bench. Anyway, go Eric Thames: you are skilled, maybe, and I exhort you. 

moustaches for all imo

I'm listening to the replay of the radio broadcast right now man and Alan Ashby and Jerry Howarth are cold killin' it on day one like I mean killin' it and I just heard a couple of little girls singsong something about raffle tickets and I don't care that it is the grossest day ever outside as the wind howls around my creaky old house because baseball is here and not in the abstract way where there are dudes who sometimes play baseball jogging in uniforms and stretching somewhere but in the very real sense that games are being played and I am listening to them which at the end of the day is what this is all about is it not my friends? 


KS

Perhaps the Finest Fangraphs Audio Ever

Carson Cistulli, baseball bloggeur nonpareil

Yeah I'm pretty sure this is the best one they've ever done, and you can listen to it here. Dayn Perry joins Carson Cistulli, the baseball internet's great hipster ironist, to offer a reading of Ryan Bruan's recent speech as text in the cultural studies sense. At one point Perry mockingly derides cultural studies Ph.D. programmes as "the blast furnace of American ingenuity," which is totally the best part and I have just ruined it for you. Also, I have looked up Carson Cistulli on ratemyprofessors.com, and while on the whole he fares well, one evaluation reads only, "unfit to teach," which is tremendous. Let me add here that in my experience, professors of longstanding sometimes state with pride how completely they ignore student evaluations, often to the point of not even opening up the envelope, but I have never heard anyone claim to be above typing in their own name at ratemyprofessors.com. If you ever want to really hurt someone (or be nice), that is the place to do it. 


KS