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

The Baseball Feelings Recent Baseball Fiction Review: W. P. Kinsella's Butterfly Winter and Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding

First on my postseason baseball reading list was W. P. Kinsella's Butterfly Winter. Perhaps you will recall Kinsella as the dude who wrote Shoeless Joe which then became Field of Dreams which seemed pretty amazing when you were twelve but then got kind of embarrassing for a couple decades but now seems pretty OK actually? Well he's back! This was the first thing he had published in forever and I was intrigued when he said in an interview that, "On a true baseball field the foul lines diverge forever, eventually taking in a good part of the universe," because frankly that seems like an excellent thing to say. And a couple of chapters in, I was really feeling this one; it was like, oh hey cool, it is another magic realist baseball novel from a dude who knows how to do this. Here we have a pitcher and a catcher from a made-up Caribbean nation who were not only born to play baseball but conceived to play baseball: they stared down shadowy ghostly batters in the womb. It is clear from infancy that this pitcher is uncommonly gifted, but he will only pitch to his brother, a philosophical but mediocre catcher who would be nowhere without his brother but his brother would be nowhere without him because he can't pitch to anyone else and so there you go.


Awesome, right? Well it is, for like a minute, but the novel is framed in this kind of shitty way by "The Gringo Journalist" who is trying to establish what is up with this mysterious figure known only as "The Wizard" who is a legit wizard apparently, and it gets awfully tiresome. Also it appears that W. P. Kinsella is not nuts about women. And things get all fantastical with such frequency that soon enough, you don't care that the butterflies cover bodies entwined in the act of sexing it and settle there for all a winter, or whatever. I finished it, because I am a scholar of the utmost seriousness and probably also renown, but Kinsella lost me for good when like a hundred and eighty pages in (or something), the obviously unreliable narrator says something like I am you see what is sometimes called an unreliable narrator and it is like oh dude come on unless I guess you really needed a topic for your second-year CanLit essay or whatever; in that one specific instance, you would be thrilled, and I should not diminish that. But yeah don't bother. 


In contrast to Kinsella's Butterfly Winter, which is bad and you shouldn't read, Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding is basically the best and if you don't read it you will be dumb. In the early going, one understandably assumes that the central text around which the awesome and totally real characters in this novel are going to orbit is the fictional and titular (lol) Art of Fielding by the equally fictional Aparicio Rodriguez, the greatest shortstop to ever live: we get a number of short excerpts from that non-existent text, which seems to be written in the style of Goethe's Maxims and Reflections except that it is mostly about grounders. But before long you realize that the central text here is in fact Moby Dick, and not just in a singular-obsession-white-whale kind of way, although that is definitely there, but in a broader "here is what friendship is like or can be" way, like a prolonged meditation on Queequeg and Ishmael tucked into bed just being bros or something. Also there is totally a statue of Melville looking out over the water that everybody in the novel visits and the college they are at is totally in thrall to a brief visit Melville made there for a like a second and the baseball team is called the Harpooners, so it is not like I am putting on a dazzling hermeneutic display when I suggest to you that Melville matters here. (An aside: "Why couldn't it have been 'Harpooneers,' that would have been so much cooler," I would ask Chad Harbach if I had the chance, and he would be like, "I got a six-hundred thousand dollar advance for my first novel; it's probably OK with the one 'e'" and I would be like "why do you have to be like that Chad Harbach I totally liked your book.")


In addition to showing that Harbach has read everything you have read plus like two other things, making the breadth of his literary knowledge seem limitless,The Art of Fielding also manages to be pretty much the best thing you will read in that kind-of-genre that is the university novel. We all have our favourites! There is of course Lucky Jim. I am or at least was really partial to Robertson Davies' The Rebel Angels but I have this thing where I won't reread any of the Davies stuff because I have a suspicion that I might not actually like it that much if I were to look at it again so I am going to content myself with the slightly vague memory that all of those books own. But the Art of Fielding manages even to exceed my probably incorrect recollection of how awesome The Rebel Angels was on the topic of just, like, what a university (or "college" if that is your way) is like, which is a subject I enjoy an awful lot. What, for instance, is the interior life of a college president named "Guert" really like? Find out! Spoiler alert: you will be moved. 


Still on the topic of spoilers, briefly: do not under any circumstances read the "advance praise" blurbs on the back of the hardcover, because one of them totally, completely, absolutely blows the ending. It's not like it's a biggest deal, but the last ten pages or so manage to establish a certain amount of narrative tension again after you think pretty much everything is over and settled and you're good, and if you have read one particular blurb from the back, you would be completely free of that tension, which would be unfortunate. I always ditch the dust jacket whilst reading because they are floppy so I was OK but when I grabbed it to reassemble the whole package for stately display on my bookshelf as evidence to my guests who do not exist that I had in fact read the novel that everybody is right to not shut up about right now I could not help but notice that son of a gun, there is advance praise that totally blows the ending, what is the deal. 


So yeah, real quick: Butterfly Winter can totally be ignored; you're fine. The Art of Fielding, though, is the best American novel since the last time you were like "this is the best American novel since . . ." which probably means the last time you really liked a Michael Chabon or something? But really, honestly, in the most serious of ways, you should read The Art of Fielding, because it will be among the best things you will read about baseball or college or fellowship or, like, the soul or any number of other things that are also important. 


KS 

OK So Moneyball Did Not Win The Million Oscars It Deserved But At Least Lady Gaga Really Liked It

Lady Gaga is the best

I am sure that you will agree that Moneyball was robbed last night of its rightful and deserved glory, but that is not the most notable or important thing to have happened to Moneyball of late, because Lady Gaga wrote about it in her V magazine column. And it is insane. An excerpt:


I lay down on the airplane back from Japan, tossing around some dashi, fondling my pearls. I watched the movieMoneyball for the first time. I began to laugh and smile as [Brad] Pitt talked romantically about the game. I suddenly imagined that my pearls were teeny-tiny baseballs. When a player hits a home run, the baseball is flung into an abyss of enigma and screams so great. It travels so far that only rarely is one caught in the bleachers. Where do these balls go? Where do all these wins get encased? Are they in a heavenly baseball land floating around for players who pass to acknowledge? Or do they disappear?

By the end of the film, we discover the truth about winning from our hero. It only matters if you’ve changed the game. Being kicked in the teeth is par for the course for this kind of win, a win that not only pisses off the team you’ve beat, but every other team, their coaches, owners, and even some of the greatest baseball players of all time. You’ve made your own set of rules and gone so far on your own talent, no one can possibly crack the truth behind your wins. You were either lucky or were cheating. Nobody likes the game that they’ve won over and over again to change.

Pitt expresses this as the central objective to his life, as we see a flashback to an old Oaks game. Batter hits and runs, doing what he does normally, running past first to take second, but trips, falls, and scurries back to first. He’s so focused on the game, so focused on the team winning, head so down into the dirt of the stadium, he doesn’t even realize he’s got a home run. The crowd roars, and he’s not sure why.

In this moment I looked down at my pearls, and I saw all the teeny-tiny home runs I’d hit over the past year. I knew some of them were more perfect than others, but I knew only an eye trained in pearls would notice. The thing about music is you’re not in competition with anyone else. You’re in competition with the psychology of the industry as a whole. You’re in competition with you. You must delve deeper and deeper into your creativity, history, and modernity to change not just this moment, but every moment that came before it. How can I hit a home run that will make every player question every run that was ever scored? How can I round third to home plate and bewilder some of the greatest players of all time? How can I change the game, until 30 years goes by and someone changes it again?

Sometimes my face is buried so deep in the work I forget to look up. Sometimes I don’t even realize I’ve won, because the stadium is either cheering or screaming so loud it doesn’t even matter. So this season, in the spirit of the Super Bowl and all things sporty, wear your pearls. Wild, cultured, real, or fake, wear them proud. And look up, or rather down, at all of your home runs. (Unless you’ve made them into a crown with a glue gun.) Then look up! In fashion and in life we all deserve more pearls, please. A moment of revelation to remember that we are timeless, we all matter, and every win like this is as important as the next. When you are changing the way people think, your life achievements are working toward the greatest accessory of all time: nerve. So collect your tiny baseballs, string your pearls, and remember that you are as timeless as the pearls on your neck. And if you forgot to be a lady and wear them, then shame on you.

The rest is here. You should probably read it.


KS

Presented Without Comment

““I didn’t think he’d be that dumb about cutting hamburgers apart. I guess he proved me wrong.””

- Madison Bumgarner on Jeremy Affeldt and “the stabbing”

A Quick Dash Around Mets Training Camp

Ah spring training.  A magical place where all championships seem attainable, every player is in the best shape of their lives and left-handed pitchers earning a skillion dollars despite not having thrown a pitch in like eight years are closely examined with every bullpen session.  

It's been a long, tough winter for Mets fans, what with Jose Reyes running away to join Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus, the biggest acquisitions being a bunch of bullpen guys, and Jeff and Fred doing their best to run this whole thing into the ground, but there are a number of stories emerging from Port St. Lucie that suggest that this whole situation isn't as dire as it looks and that the Mets could actually surprise this season.  Let's take a look!

Oh what in hell's name?  

Ok, so there's not a lot to suggest that this year will be much different from recent ones.  The prognosticators seem to be split into two factions, one spewing doom and gloom about the drastic payroll cutbacks, David Wright's looming option status for the 2013 season, Santana's glass elbow and Reyes' departure.  Others are saying that with a full year from Ike Davis, a boost to Wright and Jason Bay's production after management went from All Star to Pro for them, and R.A. Dickey being both emotionally and physically invigorated after climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, the Mets might be better than people think.  

I like the bullpen help, since Terry Collins seemed to sap his relief staff for a week during every Mike Pelfrey start, and getting top line starters on the open market are almost impossible, but I'm really hoping that Wheeler, Harvey and Mejia eventually live up to their expectations and come into their own as a dominant staff so we can stop worrying about whether or not Dillon Gee or Niese (Nose) are the answer.  

Speaking of Niese, is there no end to Carlos Beltran's benevolence?  First he is used to obtain Wheeler, and then he immediately ensures that no Mets fan will ever second guess the deal by reverting back to 2005 form.  Now he's going to pay for a nose job for some second-rate pitcher on a team he probably hated.  He is truly a scholar and a gentleman.  

One more note on Ike Davis.  There are a number of people giving him sleeper status, saying that this year could be one of those where he makes huge strides, all that kinds of stuff.  While that would be super STOP IT EVERYONE.  

The San Francisco Giants And Their Underwhelming Offseason

The above picture shows Brandon Crawford, the man who is likely (I don't want to use the word "destined" as that implies a level of expectation or import that would be woefully inappropriate to bestow on the poor lad) to become the starting and/or everyday shortstop for the 2012 San Francisco Giants. Although I like Brandon Crawford quite a bit in general and adore his glove in particular, this seemingly-inevitable roster solidification pretty much encapsulates what has been an underwhelming offseason for the Giants.

I don't know how much time I'll be able to devote to writing about the Giants for Baseball Feelings in the coming season, for all six of you who read this blog (seven for the non-staffer who stumbled upon this post while googling "rubber glove fetish." Sorry to trick you), so while I had a few spare minutes, I thought I would put up my baseball feelings regarding the Giants moves that I should have posted a few weeks ago, probably.

The Giants started the offseason by giving a million billion dollars to Jeremy Affeldt and Javier Lopez, who I like just fine (particularly Lopez), but not that just fine. Still, a bullpen is important and this ensures that nearly the entire pitching staff will be returning for this year. I say "nearly" because the Giants then traded Jonathan Sanchez (he of the, shall we say, "frustrating inconsistencies") in order to acquire Melky Cabrera, who had a career year last year with the Royals, but let us be frank, is still Melky Cabrera. The next move was to trade away Andres Torres (one of my favorite players) to the Mets in order to acquire Angel Pagan, who I actually like just fine and shows a lot of promise, but is basically Andres Torres minus the ADD, but plus some pooping issues.

The Giants did not sign Jose Reyes, Jimmy Rollins, or Carlos Beltran, as we feared they would not. In their defense, they also did not sign Orlando Cabrera, instead opting for Brandon Crawford, who is a human with functioning legs and the ability to manipulate his hand in such a way as to close a glove around a baseball. This is a big upgrade. Also welcome is the decision to release Jeff "I'm Running As Fast As I Can, You Guys!" Keppinger and instead retain Mike "No. 3 Hitter" Fontenot -- who is about as endearing a tiny baseball player this side of Jose Altuve -- as a backup infielder. The Giants also picked up Ryan Theriot as a utility infielder, who seems destined to be one of those patented acquisitions in the mold of the Steve Finley-esque "guy who always seems to have clutch hits against the Giants but then becomes a Giant and does largely nothing."

That's the extent of what the Giants picked up. As far as what else they lost, they opted to not extend offers to Beltran or Cody Ross, who will likely someday have a statue at AT&T park where he's high-kneeing while Roy Halladay stares at the left-field fence. (I truly would weep with joy were such a statue ever to be commissioned.)

So the starting rotation will be Lincecum, Cain, Bumgarner, Vogelsong and, for better or worse, Barry Zito. That is fine. That will be fine. The issue is not the pitching. The issue has never been the pitching. The issue is whether this team will score any runs. If statistics mean anything (and all my nerdy friends say that they do), it would be nearly impossible for the Giants to not score more runs than they did last season. So that is something.

Here are the storylines for 2012:

- Injuries. Posey is coming back from -- you know -- the incident and who knows how much he will be affected by all that business. You would think the Giants would split the difference between 2010's All-Healthy squad and 2011's "All-New, All-Injured" horror show, but in the first week of pitchers and catchers reporting, Vogelsong and Lincecum have already experienced back problems and Brian Wilson's elbow is still in question. That's not even mentioning the returning Freddy Sanchez. If Sanchez can't bounce back from both of his arms falling off, the backup options are Theriot, Fontenot and Emmannuel Burriss. We are all holding our breath over here, let me just tell you.

- Positional scuffles. Chris Stewart, Hector Sanchez and Eli Whiteside will be duking it out all spring (and likely, beyond) for rights to spell Posey every five days at catcher. I'm hoping either Stewart wins outright or Sanchez slugs a bazillion dingers and we laugh all the way to the bank (the bank in this case being "not one-run losses to Clayton Kershaw"). But the biggest positional kerfuffle of all involves, of course,

- Brandon Belt. This poor kid can't catch a single break. After his treatment last year, you'd think he'd be ready to be an everyday player this year, but no. The outfield looks like it's pretty set with Cabrera, Pagan and Schierholtz, and Bochy and Sabean are pretty adamant that the starting first baseman job is Aubrey Huff's to lose. Considering that Huff wasn't able to lose said job after batting .013 last year with 1,342 double-plays, that doesn't seem likely. You should also be aware that Bochy seemed to further sour on Belt when Bret Pill came up and hit an RBI. Those things win ball games, you know. So Belt is fighting four guys for one of two positions. Doesn't look good, but maybe the team will score so many runs that I won't notice Belt got optioned to the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks in May.

- Pablo Sandoval. Fat, thin, or Yokozuna-level super-fat, just please keep hitting, Panda. Please please please.

Assholes. 

EDIT - Now that I have a little more time than I did when I put the above together, (my wife and I lost the internet in the hotel room where we've been sequestered for the past two+ weeks for a 48-hour period which doesn't SEEM like that long a time until you figure out that we're basically living on the actual set of Coal Miner's Daughter where a "big night out" is driving our Kia across the four-lane "highway" that separates our hotel from the Walmart to get another plastic bag full of canned chili and premade salads) I can flesh out my thoughts about Gary Carter.  

Sadly, I can't write about a personal moment that I shared with him, as Bill so eloquently did, since I was only three years old when the top photo was taken, but every time I walked into Shea, (and now into Citi) the image, on an enormous banner, served as a reminder of happier times for this dumb, stupid franchise.  

Yeah, I'm angry, but it's only because most of the emotion that I felt from Carter's passing WAS anger at the way that management has, as usual, handled things in such a reactionary, tone deaf, completely clueless fashion.  

News about Carter's brain cancer broke during May of last season, and when it did, there was a large amount of debate as to whether or not the Mets should retire Carter's number immediately, so that he would have a chance to enjoy the experience.  Some people who disagreed argued that it could be seen as morbid, an insulting knee jerk reaction to the illness.  Personally, I thought it was more insulting that his number wasn't retired the second he went into the Hall of Fame, but what the hell do I know.  

Anyway, now the Mets are scrambling to find a way to honor Carter, and if his number IS retired, boy how dumb are they going to look, but we're used to that by now, aren't we.  This is a team that took OVER A YEAR to decide "Hey, we have this nice snazzy new park here, and a nifty TWO STORY ROOM in it dedicated to a team that now plays 3000 miles away, maybe we ought to paint the walls in the team colors and put some crap with our logo on it around." 

However, they still haven't gotten the hint that despite the fact that their team colors sport one of the most garish oranges in history - just the sort of color you might want to clothe people you wish to stand out in a crowd in - that maybe they shouldn't dress ushers, security personnel and other important team officials IN THE PRIMARY COLOR OF THEIR HATED RIVAL.  

"Durrrrr Ruben Tejada?  Is that that new Taco Bell Sandwich?"

I promise that at some point I will begin writing about the on-the-field exploits of the New York Mets, but I feel that with a more varied audience than typical pieces about the Mets garner, that I need to point out the fact that, yes, these rich idiots are so stupid and cherish your owners everyone and SEND HELP WE ARE BEING HELD CAPTIVE BY TERRIBLE PEOPLE.  

ZOMG

"And then I just let it go and it is like *fwooosh* smoke."

I thought nobody was going to show up until Tuesday! That's when Blue Jays pitchers -- and thus, understandably, catchers -- are supposed to "report" to Spring Training, "report" being the paramilitary verb that we have agreed to use to describe that act in which heavyset dudes with mustaches show up in Florida (or I guess Arizona for other, lesser organizations) and try to shake the shit off their arms before embarking on an arduous season of sitting with their feet up behind the left field fence drinking coffee and eating sunflower seeds and just generally fucking around out there. But a bunch of guys showed up early! So now baseball! And I love it. I could not possibly love it more than I do. It is maximally loved by me. Baseball is back. Eat shit, winter; you have been a dick. 


And you know what, this year could be pretty alright! As you will no doubt recall, the Blue Jays finished 81-81 last year, putting them very near the .500 mark on the season. The chief glory of the precisely .500 team is that you can totally you can totally you can totally remember ten games that they could easily have won last year, ten games that it is in fact completely ludicrous that they somehow managed to lose. It is therefore both perfectly obvious and obviously wrong to think that with even minimal improvement, a ninety-win season is just around the corner, and this is what I have chosen to believe. 


Hey, did you see or hear about the ESPN Insider thing that they called "Future Power Rankings" or something, where they had some guys rate every MLB team in a number of categories so as to say where they saw all of these teams in five years' time? The good news is that the Blue Jays were sixth in all of baseball; the bad news is that Tampa Bay, New York, and Boston were all ranked ahead of them. But whatever, man, whatever. I am less concerned with the 2017 season than the imminent 2012 "campaign" in which the Blue Jays are winning ninety. 


If I may however be somewhat sober for a moment: this is perhaps unfair of me, given that The Dear/Great Leader Alex Anthopolous actually managed to pull off the best trade of the offseason for the second consecutive year (more on that in a moment), but it's hard to say that this winter was anything but disappointing just because of the whole Yu Darvish thing. I mean, I have no real expectation that he's going to be the first Japanese starter to really be as awesome as he looks, nor do I think the Blue Jays really should have been willing to spend the kind of dollars it took Texas to seal the deal, but it would have been so cool and exciting, man, it would have been the best. Also even if Darvish only turns out to be kind of OK, that would still go an awful long way in this rotation, because who knows what we've got, exactly? There can be no question as to Ricky Romero's status as a boss (that being: he is one), but after that, things get iffy in a hurry: Brandon Morrow consistently underperforms like all of his peripherals to such an extent that one begins to doubt the reliability of certain modern nerd metrics; Brett Cecil might just be straight-up horrible; Henderson Alvarez impressed but one must be cautious; Dustin McGowan's arm is barely attached and so, again, caution; and Kyle Drabek is thus far a baffling ordeal of a guy. 


But how about that bullpen! The Sergio Santos trade was awesome, just awesome: AA gave up nothing of substance for a good, young reliever who has closed and not freaked out about it and who is "controllable" in the sense that he is not free to meaningfully negotiate the terms of his employment owing to the economic structure of professional baseball and also he has no access to the means of production so the ninth should be covered no problem. Darren Oliver is a smart pickup, and those few months without Jason Frasor were a dark era I never wish to see again, so it's cool that he's back. I am good with Carlos Villanueva and Casey Janssen and I am not about to start trouble about Jesse Litsch necessarily so what you've got here is a bullpen that has all of a sudden gone from being a hideous, untenable shit show to a strength! Bullpens are supposed to be easy to fix, but this looked really easy. Good job Alex Anthopolous!


An infield of Adam Lind (who can't possibly be that bad again, can he? I am going to assume "no") at first, Kelly Johnson at second (he is way better than you think relative to league average second base production, which sucks tremendously these days), Yunel Escobar at short (.369 OBP!), and Brett Lawrie (a douche, yes, but our douche) at third is going to be plenty interesting, especially since Brett Lawrie is probably going to be Mike Schmidt, basically. I am a strong proponent of E5 "Edwin" Encarnacion at DH, and if you look at last season, he was totally OK except for the part of the year where he was, according to the advanced metrics, maybe the worst player ever. 


And what about the outfield, you ask? That is reasonable of you. Well, I am not over the moon at the idea of Eric Thames being our everyday guy in left if that is what happens but maybe there's a trade out there or something. I have every expectation that Colby Rasmus is going to be fine, and in fact probably even better than fine. Also if it is cool with you I am going to just go ahead and pencil Jose Bautista in for another 1.000 OPS year of being the baddest motherfucker on the planet and project the haters to suck it. 


In short, I am surprised and delighted at just how surprised and delighted I am that there are Toronto Blue Jays grab-assing around Dunedin, Florida right now, several full days before I thought they were going to begin even the most preliminary grab-assing. Internet propers for this thrilling revelation go out to the Blue Jay Hunter Tumblr, which I totally would not know about were it not for the indispensable Drunk Jays Fans, finest of all team-specific blogs in my estimation. Oh yeah finally: Fangraphs Audio was really good today, as baseball writer and stay-at-home dad Dayn Perry (*strange background noise* "don't do that, bud" *further noise*) joined published poet and renowned hipster Carson Harrington Cistulli and together they established that irony began in the early nineties, which is not what my own calculations suggest, but which is worth considering. 


Hey why not close by posting other pictures from Spring Training BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT IS GOING ON IT IS SPRING TRAINING CAN YOU EVEN BELIEVE IT


KS 

Adam Lind (centre) is chubby.

Balk, imo.

Please don't suck Kyle Drabek come on man.

I like Ricky Romero even more than John Farrell does in this picture.

Brett Lawrie, who is probably a dick but who is awesome so you don't really mind, and Adam Lind, who is kind of awful but who seems nice so you don't really mind.

Rajai Davis, as seen through Scott Richmond's crotch.

Peace Out, Gary Carter

Thanks to Find the Swagger for the image.

Gary Carter is involved in one of my most vivid live baseball memories. I had just gotten into the whole "Beckett Baseball Card Monthly" thing and had learned about how players will sign autographs before games, during batting practice. We had tickets to a Mets vs. Giants game at Candlestick Park, so I rounded up some baseball cards of Mets and Giants players and a couple of baseballs. (It would take me a few years to realize that people generally went with brand-new baseballs for autographs, not ones that were well-played with, scuffed, and grass-stained.)

We got there during Mets batting practice and I scrambled down to the dugout. Gregg Jeffries was signing autographs, and he was the new hotness because he was a "Rated Rookie" and his card was worth serious bucks so everyone clamored around him. He signed a few autographs and departed, with many people (including me, I'm sure) looking disappointed. Who should step to the wall next but Gary Carter, wearing his signature flapless Mets helmet. The dude was a catcher, after all. The throng was less intense for him, but I knew he was a great catcher, one of the best in the majors (because my baseball cards said so). I didn't have a Carter card with me, so I handed out my scuffed ball and a ballpoint pen. He signed it and handed it back. I said thank you. I walked back to my dad, trying to play it off like it was no big D. But it was. It was my first autograph from a baseball player. I got one of those cheap plastic ball display cases for it, the one where the ball part always topples over if you nudge it. I put my ticket stub from the game in with the ball and it stayed on one of my shelves for a decade or so.

A few years after that autograph was signed, Carter actually came to the Giants and immediately became one of my favorite players. Because of our bond, you see. When he was elected to the Hall of Fame, I felt more pride than I probably should have. But how can you not love Gary Carter, even if you never had him sign your baseball before a Giants game?

I'm actually not sure whether I still have the baseball somewhere. I hope I do. Even though I sold a lot of that sort of stuff a few years ago, it's likely I held onto that. To this day, it remains the only autograph I've ever gotten at a baseball game. Everyone should be so lucky.

- Bill

I Worry the Mets Might be Sending Mixed Messages

Anyone heard these Mets are broke rumors, have you heard about this?

With spring training just nine days away and preseason expectations at their lowest point since that one year everyone thought the Mets were getting Juan Gonzalez and they didn't (lol), there has been a lot of talk in the Mets blogosphere about the reasons why this team could suck on ice.  Naturally, everything circles back to the fact that the Wilpons are a bunch of clowns who would probably be taken in by any scam artist with even the most half-baked of nefarious ideas.  

Ladies and gentlemen, the new part owners of the New York Mets!

I've never heard of GOOD NEWS coming in the form of "Hey guys, we might only owe $83 million dollars because we did business with a sketchy businessman and definitely knew about/were so stupid that we were taken in by his glorified pyramid scheme.  At least it's not like $800 million, right guys?"  Nevertheless, that's where the Mets stand as the court ruling that stated they owed less than $100 million was portrayed in the papers as a major victory for the franchise.   Never mind the fact that the team reported a $70 million+ loss last season, needed a $40 million bridge loan from Bank of America to keep the lights on, had the greatest payroll drop from one season to the next in MLB history and was basically begging for people to shell out $20 million apiece for part-ownership stakes.  

This week, a story got around the Mets blogosphere saying that Lo Hud Mets Blog editor Howard Megdal had been informed by Mets brass that his access to the Mets clubhouse was being revoked.  When asked why, the reason he received from the Mets PR department was that the club "didn't like his reporting."  The issues seemed to stem from the publication of Megdal's book "Wilpon's Folly" which detailed the financial and legal issues stemming from the Wilpons' association with Bernie Madoff.  

That's why Alderson's Twitter account (which he opened yesterday) really made me mad.  In the same week that a blogger was barred from the clubhouse for detailing a situation that has crippled the team for the foreseeable future, no less than THE TEAM'S GENERAL MANAGER shows up on Twitter writing late night talk show jokes about that very situation.  

Alderson's job; rebuilding a team that just lost its best player, restocking a oft overlooked farm system, and trying to energize a fan base that has suffered five-plus years of figurative nut punching is unenviable, and nobody ever said that he couldn't have any fun with it.  As always seems to happen with the Mets though, the timing is awful and it portrays a certain level of tone deafness.  I know that nobody hits my little brother but me, but taking him out and pushing him off a cliff is a bit too far.  

ALSO:  

lol no

The Whitening of A's Brand Baseball

"Honey? Great news. The A's are moving to San Jose! It's safe for us to watch baseball again!"

The Oakland Athletics have reportedly been granted permission to move to San Jose, and upper middle class white folks are all atwitter. Am I overstating the situation? Yep. Am I using race in an inappropriate manner? Most assuredly. Doesn't make what I'm saying any less true. Yes, A's fans are not strictly white. I know that. But the ones who would be willing to drive to and afford tickets to the San Jose A's would, by and large, be white. I know what you're saying, "Well, where are all the A's fans at right now? They have to move to survive!" I'm well aware of that. Here's the thing: I know that the A's playing in front of huge crowds in a city whose fans have deeper pockets is good for the franchise. I know that having a huge TV contract will enable them to keep their free agents, rather than selling them off to the highest bidder. I know playing in a nicer, potentially more hitter-friendly ballpark will make them a destination free agent sluggers will consider, rather than one they have their agents put into writing in their no-trade clauses. I will still go to 3-5 games a year, despite the extra hour of drive time each way. I'll still watch games on TV more often than not. I will still be an A's fan. But here's the thing: Just because a move to San Jose will be a game changer for my team that will enable them to drastically change the way the franchise operates, doesn't mean I can't hate it. Nowhere is it written that I can't bitch and whine about my team picking up and leaving behind the city where they won 4 World Series titles. I get that it is vital, I just don't like it, and likely never will. Why? Because now Lew Wolff has succeeded in accomplishing his one goal he's had since his first day of ownership: He's killed off the poor fan.

You see, the O.co is one of the last big league ballparks where you can walk up to the ticket window 5 minutes before the first pitch and get seats on the 3rd base line for less than $40. You and your kids can sit in the bleachers for less than $40. The downtown cookie cutter stadiums have taken over, and there's no turning back. Gone are the days of a family of 4 being able to go to a game for less than the average monthly car payment. How many working class stiffs will be able to afford a night out at the new, shiny, named after some corporate entity or another ballpark that the people of San Jose will end up building? Not many. No, instead of being the "blue collar" team in the Bay, the A's will have decided to do the right thing from a business perspective and chase the almighty dollar. They will become pale impersonators of the Giants, and be glad to sell suites and boxes to their sloppy seconds. The Coli stood firm as the last of the concrete, dilapidated shit heaps from the 60's; a remnant of simpler times. And now, her death warrant has all but been signed.

I have no doubt the A's will be successful in San Jose. I've always wondered what Billy Beane could do with a payroll, and now we're about to find out. And while I will be cheering them on, my heart will never be all the way into it, like it was at 7000 Coliseum Way.

Hey Guys, What's Going on in this Offseason

Hi everyone, and happy holidays!!  I apologize for the long absence, but life has dealt me a few curveballs in recent months, some great and some awful.  My wife and I are in the process of adopting a baby in late February that I will immediately attempt to brainwash into liking the Mets, at least until protective services takes them away from me for extreme abuse. 

Speaking of the Mets, when all of the news about their dire financial straits started coming out, it got me all worked up, but now that the first band-aids have been ripped off the scab (Reyes leaving, them SHUTTING DOWN ONE OF THEIR MINOR LEAGUE TEAMS LOL) I've actually bought in whole-heartedly into watching everything unfold to see how hilariously awful this can get.  

I'm running through scenarios in my head where Fred Wilpon mistakenly left $750 million in a newspaper that Ruben Amaro happened to pick up when they ran into each other at a local bank and then ransacking his office for two months before forlornly throwing himself off the Whitestone Bridge, but more likely either he'll just sell the team at some point (best case scenario) or find some suckers to buy into the minority ownership situations.  (Come on, you get MR. MET ACCESS HOW CAN YOU TURN THIS DOWN.)

In all seriousness, I've gone to great lengths about my appreciation for Reyes, and it will suck not having him around, but I still feel worse for Cardinals fans.  In New York you have comically inept ownership, a field that was built around your speed but hastily edited to give more power to the right-handed batters, (and take away some of the deep alleys that made so many Reyes triples possible) and no signs of competitiveness on the horizon.  In St. Louis, Pujols left a team that had just won the World Series, from all accounts some of the best fans in baseball, and a place where he was deified to go to LA to play for a bunch more money.  It didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but baseball is a strange and wonderful sport!

I hope you're all enjoying your offseasons!  Go Mets 2017!

Now This Is How You Tumbl

Sideburns sharper than the razor that sculpted them.

This is more a comment on the way that I enjoy baseball in the offseason than any kind of remark on the actual goings-on of the baseball winter meetings -- which were actually plenty eventful, what with Reyes and Buehrle to the Marlins, and Pujols and Wilson somehow to the Angels, among other things -- but the best thing I've seen in the last couple weeks is the Retro Jays Card tumblr (tip of the cap to Drunk Jays Fans, without which/whom I would be utterly lost, for the link). The tumblr's author describes the project thus:

I go to a bunch of Jays games. Each time, I empty my loose change to get random retro Blue Jay baseball cards from the vending machine. When I was a kid I remember these cards were some of my most prized possessions. Now they are 25 cents. 

This is, of course, exactly what needed to happen. I myself have bought old Blue Jays singles for a quarter from many a 500-level vending machine. Now, I buy old Topps team sets for no money on eBay, and can't believe my luck -- like seriously can't believe it -- when they even include cards from the Traded/Update series. 


So yeah, what I was saying is that Retro Jays Cards interests me right now much, much more than the fact that the Blue Jays just traded, Nestor Molina, a hot Double-A pitching prospect with an amazing name, for young, quite possibly legit, eminently affordable closer Sergio Santos, even though that is totally a move worth thinking about. But in the offseason, for whatever reason, I am not at all about the future; I am in fact all about the past. I could grope around trying to explain why that might be, or I could just quote Roger Angell and save us all a lot of trouble:

Baseball has one saving grace that distinguishes it -- for me, at any rate -- from every other sport.  Because of its pace, and thus the perfectly observed balance, both physical and psychological, between opposing forces, its clean lines can be restored in retrospect.  This inner game -- baseball in the mind -- has no season, but is best played in the winter, without the distraction of other baseball news.  At first, it is a game of recollections, recapturings, and visions. 

And that's just at first. For more like that, I totally typed up all of "The Interior Stadium" a while ago if you'd like to read it. I read it every winter and get overcome. It's kind of pathetic, but it totally happens every winter! Give it a try!


KS

2011 Payroll per Victory Nonsense

So the winter meetings have fired up, which will bring about the normal offseason nonsense parade of high-dollar contracts, non-sensical mathematical equations, and off-season dreams (and delusions). The trades and free agent promises will start to fly, and the whole nerd world of baseball will fire up with the wonderful offseason drama of "what if"s. But I had been keeping my yearly spreadsheet of MLB teams, with their payrolls divided by actual victories during the regular season, plus postseason victories as well, to calculate - in a completely non-scientific and means-absolutely-nothing sort of way - the rankings of teams according to payroll per victory that counted during the 2011 season. And after completely forgetting to update it after the World Series, I started reading baseball bullshit inside the vast interwebz this past week and was like, "Oh yeah, that thing..." So here is that thing:
#1: TAMPA BAY RAYS ($446,234.47 per victory) - The Rays snuck their way into a wild card spot in dramatic end-of-the-season fashion, but blew their psychic wad by that point and failed to advance beyond the advancement to postseason play. I would like to note that my friend and brother-in-chaos The Necro Butcher is a huge baseball fan and has adopted the Rays as his team ever since whenever he decided to do such a thing. He may be the only terribly scarred, balding man with pot leaf tattoos and a hillbilly beard who purposefully goes to St. Petersburg to see Tampa Rays games at least twice a year on earth. I hope not, but you know, law of averages says otherwise.
#2: KANSAS CITY ROYALS ($508,816.90 per victory) - A perennial bottom feeder who feeds top-shelf talent to other teams that apparently is on an upward swing due to a TON of PROSPECTS which won't mean a fucking thing in four years, other than they maybe flirt with .500 one season.
#3: ARIZONA DIAMONDBACKS ($558,748.26 per victory) - They won the NL West, and nothing else, and are probably my least favorite baseball team because I don't even believe they exist. At least I can hate the Yankees and know they are real. The "Arizona Diamondbacks" could be something completely made up for season 3 of East Bound & Down for all I know.
#4: CLEVELAND INDIANS ($614,882.08 per victory) - Never been any good since Wesley Snipes' tax problems. Oh man, a new Major League (I lost count of the bad ones) with Snipes and Charlie Sheen re-uniting to coach a minor league team of misfits to misfit glory would be awesome, wouldn't it? Probably not, but hey, I have to meander through some sort of thought here, don't I?
#5: PITTSBURGH PIRATES ($625,652.78 per victory) - Remember when the Pirates were having their best season ever in forever and it was such a wonderful tale? They finished 72-90. Go back to the Dave Parker yellow jerseys and weird striped hats with the stiff sides bros.
#6: SAN DIEGO PADRES ($646,044.23 per victory) - Being I only casually pay attention to MLB at large, and most of my uniform knowledge stopped not long after I stopped buying baseball cards at the Big Lots (mid-'90s I think), the Padres are one of those teams who when I see their uniforms, my mind has a string of nine exclamation points go off above it while I pretend to type "WTF WTF WTF" with my fingers against my leg. Because their uniforms are so stupid looking.
#7: TORONTO BLUE JAYS ($772,441.98 per victory) - The gentle soul of KS who is the sort of pitching coach of Baseball Feelings loves the Blue Jays, so I can say nothing snarky or negative about them. So I will move on.
#8: FLORIDA MARLINS ($790,888.89 per victory) - The Marlins have previously perennially been at the top of this list, for years, but have made the hugest splashes this offseason by getting a crazy manager, changing their name to something more stupid than what it already was, unveiling uniforms that looks like an EA Sports video game imagineered them, and then signing everybody possible to exorbitant contracts to eventually position themselves as a contracted team candidate in five years once the World's economy continues to plummet.
#9: WASHINGTON NATIONALS ($798,211.60 per victory) - I am so excited for this coming year. Only one game below .500 this past year, and perhaps Strasburg's arm will not fall off, and perhaps the 29 hot prospects we have now will start to enter my daily paper's box scores, and perhaps perhaps perhaps The Ultimate Harper will make his major league debut and be completely insane but hopefully not get addicted to crack like Josh Hamilton: The Early Years, which is a thing I legitimately fear when I see the cursive tattoos he keeps getting for his self.
#10: MILWAUKEE BREWERS ($846,508.25 per victory) - They do not get so highly on this list by signing Prince Fielder to a royal contract. Pretend it's ten years in the future: Did you know it's a little known fact that the Brewers actually made the NL Championship Series in 2011?
#11: TEXAS RANGERS ($870,747.77 per victory) - I am still very very sad that Ron Washington did not win the World Series and instead stupid fucking Tony LaRussa did, but at least LaRussa retired, hopefully forever, because fuck that guy. Also, Ron Washington is the greatest and I think the best thing any up-and-coming baseball team could do is let a foul-mouthed, drug-addled black dude who walks like the funky chicken through the dugout is a good thing to do be their manager. When we get to the point in baseball history that guys like Ron Washington are the GMs, then we will be in a glorious age.
#12: OAKLAND ATHLETICS ($899,141.89 per victory) - I like to type out "Athletics" because I fear eventually all MLB teams will have their nicknames down to three letters or less.
#13: CINCINNATI REDS ($961,356.13 per victory) - Remember when the Reds were briefly relevant last year too? Or was that the year before? Does Ken Griffey Jr. still play for them? Is there a Ken Griffey III yet?
#14: ATLANTA BRAVES ($977,558.34 per victory) - The Braves are - to me - the Yankees of the National League (which means a slightly less evil version of an ultimately evil thing) so when they did not get the NL wild card, it caused me great joy. My father was an alcoholic and smelled of Winston cigarettes and loved the Braves, and I have nothing terrible to say about my dad because all in all he helped shape me into what I am, but perhaps I hate the Braves because I cannot hate my father. But also perhaps fuck the Braves.
#15: ST. LOUIS CARDINALS (1,043,896.75 per victory) - Here are things that make baseball as painful as the most female of all complaining types could claim it to be: Bob Costas soliloquies, slate.com pieces of baseball, "sabremetrics", pitching changes for a single batter, "not on the first ballot", St. Louis Cardinals World Series champions.
#16: DETROIT TIGERS ($1,057,002.31 per victory) - Being Neil is the drunken soul of Baseball Feelings, and also my brother from another motherfucker, I would never speak negatively of the Tigers either. And I wouldn't tell him how when going to a Goochland High School football game I talked to people who suggested that the Verlander boy who had made good from that locality was a crazed steroid abuser who loved nothing more than engage in homosexual-ish behaviors with Russian men dressed as Bigfoot.
#17: COLORADO ROCKIES ($1,207,507.82 per victory) - Whatever.
#18: BALTIMORE ORIOLES ($1,236,290.41 per victory) - There is a girl who worked where I work and was under my tutelage and she was a sweet, simple girl with a great upward trajectory in life, and she was a baseball fan, specifically the Orioles, and growing up her and her father would watch the Home Run Contest and bet M&Ms on it, and she told me of this this past summer and how she was making her boyfriend bet M&Ms with her while watching the Home Run contest during All-Star festivities, and it made me love her like an uncle loves a niece.
#19: HOUSTON ASTROS ($1,262,392.86 per victory) - If you go look at what I wrote about the Padres, that applies here as well. J.R. Richard striped star jerseys til I die, fuck you if you disagree.
#20: LOS ANGELES DODGERS ($1,270,597.55 per victory) - The Dodgers almost comedically went bankrupt during the season to where they weren't gonna pay players. But baseball is better than ever. Personally I would like it if it were less regulated and pretty much any rich guy who wanted a team could have one, and then every year there'd be anywhere from 16 to 48 MLB teams. We as Americans (and our sort of American neighbors to the north) should learn to embrace chaos, not be afraid of it. Chaos is fun, especially when there are more than two naked women involved.
#21: SEATTLE MARINERS ($1,291,411.94 per victory) - I am on the other side of the country from this and it is raining here and plus cold and I wish it would go back over there to the other side of the country because I could not sit in my pigpen with my pigs and train them to lay at my side while I scratched their belly sort of like that japanese shit where they massage the beef except with pork and only I eat them.
#22: SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS ($1,374,399.22 per victory) - Tim Lincecum is a dude, there is no doubt about it.
#23: NEW YORK METS ($1,543,471.55 per victory) - The Mets seem to usually be the most second or third most disappointing team on this list every year. Like there's always some other interchangeable team that shows up to be the most disappointing, but the Mets are always near the top, and never disappear from it. They could easily be the worst team in the NL East for years to come, which is enjoyable to me on long truck rides at night because you can usually pick up 660 The Fan anywhere on the east coast and you can listen to weird dudes complain about them and be like, "Lololol, my life is better than this guy, that is for sure."
#24: LOS ANGELES ANGELS ($1,610,967.05 per victory) - Remember when they were officially the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim? Wasn't that just the stupidest thing ever?
#25: CHICAGO WHITE SOX ($1,617,582.28 per victory) - No Ozzie Guillen, no peace.
#26: PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES ($1,663,234.41 per victory) - The greatest thing about the Phillies winning 102 games but failing to make it past the divisional round of the playoffs is when you know people who are Philadelphia sports fans and they are your friend and they are always a generally miserable person anyways but that made them even more miserable in a highly comedic way for a few weeks and it's so much fun to be around so long as you do not get yourself drawn into their misery.
#27: CHICAGO CUBS ($1,761,229.99 per victory) - I feel like the Theo Epstein era of Chicago Cubs is like an elaborate trick the Universe is executing slowly to cause Cubs fans even more pain and suffering. Whereas one can enjoy the comedic misery of Phillies fans, watching a Cubs fan suffer is like watching a crippled kid die of leukemia. That is to say, you don't feel good about it, but if somebody slaps a funny lolcat type comment ("picture me rollin" for example on a picture of a crippled kid in his wheel chair), yeah, it's funny enough. Plus, if you go through that list of terrible things about baseball I wrote above under the Cardinals, that applies as well to the Cubs, which is why they are such hated rivals. They are battling to be the greatest Kingdom of Nerds.
#28: MINNESOTA TWINS ($1,789,476.19 per victory) - Wow, Joe Mauer's contract really screwed them, hunh? They used to always be low on this list, and made the playoffs. Now they are the opposite.
#29: BOSTON RED SOX ($1,797,360.83 per victory) - I can not think of a more perfect thing than a Bobby Valentine managing a Boston Red Sox. Drago being a Russian boxer was not more perfect than this. I can't wait for them to fail.
#30: NEW YORK YANKEES ($2,047,363.92 per victory) - When I started doing this years ago, the Rangers always were the worst team when Alex Rodriguez was on their team. And then he went to the Yankees and they have always been the worst for payroll per victory. If there is ever a time where we get to sit around together and reflect upon everything ever through out all of history, at some point while we are sitting there, we will get to baseball, and we will all agree, "You know that A-Rod, he never really was worth it, was he?"

So How Is Your Offseason Going?

Mine's going great! In the twenty days since the end of the World Series, I have effortlessly -- indeed, one might say, almost gracefully -- transitioned from my baseball season-specific baseball interests (chiefly baseball) to my baseball offseason-specific baseball interests (simming things on Mogul; extending Carlos Delgado's contract indefinitely in MLB: The Show so that I can continue to be with him; reading recent baseball fiction [more on that soon]; messing around with my baseball cards; yearning). It's been fun! I have of course been keeping abreast (lol) of all recent signings and happenings, although the biggest transaction of note so far is only that Jonathan Papelbon will occupy a significantly smaller portion of the part of my brain that minds things next season, which, while not nothing, isn't much. And there is the realignment and expansion of the playoffs/play-ins, which is more of a 2013 thing. But I am convinced that awesome things are going to start happening any day now.


An awesome thing that totally did happen today: new Blue Jays uniforms! I like them! I recognize that it would be too much to ask for the team to simply start wearing the exact same uniforms that they wore in 1993, and so I accept this new look for what it is: a bold step in the right direction, and totally better than anything I could have honestly hoped for given the abominations of recent years. Is the design-savvy and awesome Craig Robinson of Flip Flop Fly Ball right when he says, "While, of course, the new logo shits all over the one they were using, it is pretty badly executed"? He may very well be, sure. Robinson posts an image in which a design-type picks the new logo apart, and I can't argue with any of the particulars, honestly. However, on the whole, it is the "shits all over the one they were using" part that is really sticking with me today, so join me, won't you, in enjoying the heck out of these pictures I totally lifted from Drunk Jays Fans.

Joseph Bats

If Adam Lind is still our first baseman next year then I don't even know.

Ricky Romero: A Boss

The split numbering splits my heart

Pretty neat!


KS