The Cardinals are poised for a selloff, Rob Manfred gets told, the Pinstripes get ads, Immaculate Grid, a dumb betting scandal, All Hail Autocado, and how to destroy Ohio
Lol. I seriously doubt there would be any takers. They have a glut of outfielders. I bet both O’Neill and Carlson have real value. I would probably keep Carlson and hope he figures it out considering his prospect pedigree, but he may need a change of scenery.
I love Edman as a Chone Figgins-type super utility guy who plays every day. His stats are great in CF, but he's also at least average in the infield, and there are very few players that can be average or better across the diamond. He provides a ton of flexibility in the case of injuries too.
Marmol doesn't have anything to do with the atrocious blown saves...lack of hitting...and a complete fuckstick of a pitching staff (save Montgomery and recently Flaherty).
I think O'Neill and possibly Carlson are gone. I also think their patience with DeJong has worn thin (although I don't know that I agree with trading him). I would be surprised if Goldy isn't traded. Just can't see them spending the kind of coin needed to resign him and he's 35 years old. Don't want Hicks to be traded but it wouldn't surprise me. I would love for them to resign Montgomery. All of these things should be taken with a huge grain of salt as I typically don't know my ass from a hole in the ground.
I hope you are right. From my pessimistic view it would be the cherry on top to blow everything up and start over. Just trade some OF'ers and pick up some fucking pitchers already!
DeJong also graduated with a Biology degree from THE Illinois State University. That should make the option pick-up a no-brainer. He’s probably already helping the pitching staff with sticky substance workarounds.
I’m crusty that you guys didn’t wait for me to rise. I deserve butter, but I’m not jelly and certainly don’t want to come across as kneady. Oh well, gotta roll.
Obviously Baez was a fine pickup for the moment but I remember cringing when they sent PCA over to the Cubs. Moreso than when they traded Kelenic to Seattle.
I wonder if there is any way the Mets could put together a package to get him. Probably not, but he is the sort of pitcher they could use going forward.
I have zero issue with advertising patches, especially inobtrusive ones. (A lot better than the full uniform ads on EPL kits). But the advertiser in the Bronx is just weird. Starr Insurance doesn't do business with the public, only other businesses. This is therefore some effort to burnish the brand and to be connected with the Yankees. $20 million just to do that seems like a lot of money for little return. But what do I know? I don't have that kind of money.
At least it sorta blends in. The ATL one is bright yellow. Maybe it could have looked okay on Kent Tekulve or Nate Colbert in 1978 but not on mid 20s Braves’ uniforms.
The Mets' ad patch was in red and white - the usual colors for advertiser New York-Presbyterian (hospitals) - but fans complained it was Phillies color, so it's now orange and blue. I assume that all Coca-Cola signage at Citi has also been changed. (I don't entirely love that a non-profit health care concern is spending its money that way, but at least I can say that it makes sense for them to advertise on the Mets jerseys when the hospital most likely to get patients in need of care at the ballpark is NYP Queens. And it's a pretty good hospital too.)
The money NYP is giving the Mets pays for the special surgeries. Also, since other teams use HSS, it pays to have a backup option in case all the surgeons are repairing Knicks knees.
I've had a few people tell me that while Substack will let existing subscribers upgrade from monthly to annual, in some cases it has not given the sale pricing.
If you wish to do this and this happens to you, email me (reply to a newsletter; it goes just to me), and I will make sure you are credited the $14 or whatever the difference is.
Full disclosure: I am too chicken to play Immaculate Grid because I am terrible at paying attention to the details of, let alone remembering some guys. Which is weird because I’m usually good at trivia and I love baseball but for some reason the Grid leaves me lost. I enjoy looking at other peoples’ grids and marveling at what they know!
PS Drag him, Mayor Thao.
PPS The Rays’ Yandy Diaz got to Seattle at 230am the day of the ASG, hit a HR, and then flew back to Tampa in time to be with his wife when their son was born. Anyone else on the Rays who comes back from the break complaining that they are still tired should be ashamed of themselves.
Between the ages of 8-12, in my baseball-obsessed, card-collecting days, I probably would have been great at this game but now in middle age, I'd have no shot.
I was just thinking about baseball cards. I would have been able to tell you the quirky stories on the back (and maybe even describe the cartoon) but be completely lost on the stats.
I didn't spend enough years collecting and obsessing over baseball cards, unfortunately. Topps '78 and '79 was pretty much it, and my "collections" were far from complete.
Same. I was able to come up with the 500 HR hitters quickly, and then stalled quickly. Got one dude that was notably traded, and then guessed one dude who played for *everyone*
It's funny how the structure of a trivia question can affect how well you can answer it. I can zip through a Sporcle quiz naming, say, all the 500 HR hitters -- but give me the first letter of their last name and I start staring blankly at the screen maybe 2/3 of the way through.
I also have selective team blindness....despite rooting for an NL East team, I struggle with Mets quizzes. A minute or so in, I'm like, I don't know...Mike Jorgensen??
Yeah - and I followed baseball but not closely during much of the 34 years between home teams in DC. Most of it, though, is that I treat MLB as an experience, remembering stories more than numbers. (Yandy Diaz is an excellent example. I have no idea how many home runs he has hit this year, or if he came to the Rays from another team - but I will likely always remember his eventful 2023 All-Star break.) But we have already established that I’m weird.
I've discovered, in a couple weeks of playing Immaculate Grid, that the 90s are a terrific blind spot for me. The four expansion teams in particular may as well not exist in my mind. But also, the players and teams they played for are just forgotten. I can remember the Griffeys and the Frank Thomases, but after that, there's a lot of blur. Which totally tracks, since my college and immediate post-college years were very... blurry.
On the plus side, Gaylord Perry has been like a personal cheat code on more than one occasion for me.
First, I'll usually close the tab for a while and come back later. Occasionally, an answer will just jump out at me when I look again a couple hours later.
Another strategy, if one of the teams is the A's, Yankees, Blue Jays, Padres, or Red Sox, I will ask myself, "Did Rickey Henderson ever play for (the team in the other axis)?" Because sometimes the answer is yes.
Finally, I'll just think of catchers and relief pitchers from when I was a kid. If I can come up with one who definitely played for one of the teams, and I know he was a guy who bounced around a lot, I'll just guess.
Regardless, I always use all nine guesses, because you can't see the answers and the day's most popular responses until you do.
I'm blown away by how good some people are at the Immaculate Grid. I'm sure some of them are cheating, but I believe there are people out there who are legitimately scoring 24 with answers like Octavio Dotel & Yorvit Torrealba. My proudest day was my 0.3% pull for an Orioles All Star (my boy George Sherrill), but I'm normally terrible at it. I think my best score is 5/9.
Nice! I pulled out Glenn Davis and got like a .9% one day last week. But overall, I’m terrible at remembering who played for two specific teams, I just can’t pull the data on even obvious ones like in Craig’s example above where he had Randy Johnson for Arizona and Seattle.
Here's how I play immaculate grid which could very well qualify as "Cheating" but, good news, I don't care: I think of a possible answer, then hit baseball-reference to see if it's correct. If not then I just learned something new about a player I hadn't thought of in a while and I move on. This method prevents me from putting in wrong answers but if I can't come up with the right one it just stays blank all day.
Every pal who shares their grid has me feeling like the biggest dum dum ever. It turns out my way of fanning is to know who plays on the team that I root for, and not pay attention to either where they came from or where they go. So finding an intersection of two teams is SUPER HARD. Even when my team is one on the grid! So I have not bothered to actually click and legitimately play.
The reason the Cards can't stay the course is because there are no FA options that they will consider affordable and will also measurably improve their starting rotation for next year. Meaning they need to trade value for some controllable and effective young pitching (Luzardo is on my wishlist).
As is, without re-signing Montgomery and Flaherty they don't even have enough pitching right now to reasonably patch together a terrible rotation for 2024.
Yeah I was typing fast and couldn't clarify well but I definitely think of Luzardo as a winter pursuit. The only way they'd be able to get anyone near that caliber at the deadline is if they find one team who wants everything they're selling (Monty/Flaherty/Hicks/Stratton/O'Neill) and has an MLB-ready AAA guy they don't need this year (e.g. someone like Painter before his injury, or Mick Abel).
Yeah it is insane, and malpractice, that even three of Burleson/Yepez/Gomez/O'Neill were still in this organization as of March, let alone all 4 (and I'd say it should only have been two).
Finding out that Mike Cameron plays Immaculate Grid and used himself for an answer the other day brings me immeasurable joy. Like, of course, why wouldn't you use yourself as an answer if you could?
As an alum of the school in Tuscaloosa, I can say that at least the dumb gambling scandal in baseball was less destructive than the dumb murder in basketball. Hurray for the better sport?
The hockey one makes me feel better about how I'll look at baseball results and wonder, "who the heck is that guy?!" - then I look it up and he's a hall of famer. Hockey is clearly the sport where I know the George Hainsworth's and the Tiny Thompson's, as opposed to wondering who "Luis Aparicio" is
Craig: Following your instructions re: your All-Star sales event, I converted my monthly subscription to an annual subscription. Substack still charged me the regular annual subscription price. Is it possible that you’re having a sale, but Substack isn’t? Can you please have Substack address this?
For my first comment as a new subscriber, I'd like to let everybody know that if you're a hockey fan (I assume there are some here), you can play their version of Immaculate Grid at puckdoku.com
Today was the worst I've done on Immaculate Grid, which makes me feel bad, but also I regularly have half my answers from the 80s and 90s, which makes me feel worse.
Maybe this got pointed out yesterday, but the sad, dramatic, slowed-down pop song thing is also a staple of romance reality shows such as Love Island and Temptation Island. There’s a cottage industry of artists who crank these out expressly for TV/movie use.
Vanilla Fudge did it in the 60s - they took the poppy Supremes song, “You Keep Me Hanging On”, and gave it the tone it deserved. https://youtu.be/m4ylSesfe1U
No chance he even touched one. Probably directed the intern to chuck it all in the shredder.
The chief intern returns to Manfred's office where he's practicing putting. "It's been done, sir."
Lol. I seriously doubt there would be any takers. They have a glut of outfielders. I bet both O’Neill and Carlson have real value. I would probably keep Carlson and hope he figures it out considering his prospect pedigree, but he may need a change of scenery.
I love Edman as a Chone Figgins-type super utility guy who plays every day. His stats are great in CF, but he's also at least average in the infield, and there are very few players that can be average or better across the diamond. He provides a ton of flexibility in the case of injuries too.
Any chance they can trade Marmol for a bag of used baseballs? He handles a pitching staff like Mike Matheny used to.
Marmol doesn't have anything to do with the atrocious blown saves...lack of hitting...and a complete fuckstick of a pitching staff (save Montgomery and recently Flaherty).
I think O'Neill and possibly Carlson are gone. I also think their patience with DeJong has worn thin (although I don't know that I agree with trading him). I would be surprised if Goldy isn't traded. Just can't see them spending the kind of coin needed to resign him and he's 35 years old. Don't want Hicks to be traded but it wouldn't surprise me. I would love for them to resign Montgomery. All of these things should be taken with a huge grain of salt as I typically don't know my ass from a hole in the ground.
I hope you are right. From my pessimistic view it would be the cherry on top to blow everything up and start over. Just trade some OF'ers and pick up some fucking pitchers already!
DeJong also graduated with a Biology degree from THE Illinois State University. That should make the option pick-up a no-brainer. He’s probably already helping the pitching staff with sticky substance workarounds.
Biology and pre med. He could also assist the team Doctor. Triple threat!
Doughmo arigato, Mr. Breadboto…
I kneaded that comment.
I'm glad. It came from a place of loaf.
It's just your rye sense of humor and dry wheat.
Thanks for the challah back.
You’re trying to get a rise out of me!
I’m crusty that you guys didn’t wait for me to rise. I deserve butter, but I’m not jelly and certainly don’t want to come across as kneady. Oh well, gotta roll.
#FutureYankee Jordan Montgomery
Obviously Baez was a fine pickup for the moment but I remember cringing when they sent PCA over to the Cubs. Moreso than when they traded Kelenic to Seattle.
I wonder if there is any way the Mets could put together a package to get him. Probably not, but he is the sort of pitcher they could use going forward.
true.
I have zero issue with advertising patches, especially inobtrusive ones. (A lot better than the full uniform ads on EPL kits). But the advertiser in the Bronx is just weird. Starr Insurance doesn't do business with the public, only other businesses. This is therefore some effort to burnish the brand and to be connected with the Yankees. $20 million just to do that seems like a lot of money for little return. But what do I know? I don't have that kind of money.
At least it sorta blends in. The ATL one is bright yellow. Maybe it could have looked okay on Kent Tekulve or Nate Colbert in 1978 but not on mid 20s Braves’ uniforms.
The Mets' ad patch was in red and white - the usual colors for advertiser New York-Presbyterian (hospitals) - but fans complained it was Phillies color, so it's now orange and blue. I assume that all Coca-Cola signage at Citi has also been changed. (I don't entirely love that a non-profit health care concern is spending its money that way, but at least I can say that it makes sense for them to advertise on the Mets jerseys when the hospital most likely to get patients in need of care at the ballpark is NYP Queens. And it's a pretty good hospital too.)
I'm still surprised at the Mets going that route because they have a coupon for a free sandwich after 100 visits to Hospital for Special Surgery.
As I understand it, "presbyterian" derives from a term meaning "old person", so it's appropriate for the Mets.....
The money NYP is giving the Mets pays for the special surgeries. Also, since other teams use HSS, it pays to have a backup option in case all the surgeons are repairing Knicks knees.
It would be awesome if either the Marlins or the Rays would select Farmer’s Insurance as an advertising partner.
prob it's me, but I can't figure out how to renew early with the discount. is it new subs only? thanks
Pretty sure it’s new subs..
Don’t think it is, because Craig included a little primer last week on how to change your existing subscription from monthly to annual.
Craig, if you’re out there, how much is the discounted subscription, so we can be sure we’re seeing the right thing if we try to switch?
I've had a few people tell me that while Substack will let existing subscribers upgrade from monthly to annual, in some cases it has not given the sale pricing.
If you wish to do this and this happens to you, email me (reply to a newsletter; it goes just to me), and I will make sure you are credited the $14 or whatever the difference is.
sounds good, but I don't even see how to renew. I think I just have autorenew in August.
nah, everybody in the U.S. *already* subscribes, no?
Full disclosure: I am too chicken to play Immaculate Grid because I am terrible at paying attention to the details of, let alone remembering some guys. Which is weird because I’m usually good at trivia and I love baseball but for some reason the Grid leaves me lost. I enjoy looking at other peoples’ grids and marveling at what they know!
PS Drag him, Mayor Thao.
PPS The Rays’ Yandy Diaz got to Seattle at 230am the day of the ASG, hit a HR, and then flew back to Tampa in time to be with his wife when their son was born. Anyone else on the Rays who comes back from the break complaining that they are still tired should be ashamed of themselves.
Between the ages of 8-12, in my baseball-obsessed, card-collecting days, I probably would have been great at this game but now in middle age, I'd have no shot.
I was just thinking about baseball cards. I would have been able to tell you the quirky stories on the back (and maybe even describe the cartoon) but be completely lost on the stats.
Totally with ya there!
I didn't spend enough years collecting and obsessing over baseball cards, unfortunately. Topps '78 and '79 was pretty much it, and my "collections" were far from complete.
Same. I was able to come up with the 500 HR hitters quickly, and then stalled quickly. Got one dude that was notably traded, and then guessed one dude who played for *everyone*
It's funny how the structure of a trivia question can affect how well you can answer it. I can zip through a Sporcle quiz naming, say, all the 500 HR hitters -- but give me the first letter of their last name and I start staring blankly at the screen maybe 2/3 of the way through.
I also have selective team blindness....despite rooting for an NL East team, I struggle with Mets quizzes. A minute or so in, I'm like, I don't know...Mike Jorgensen??
Yeah - and I followed baseball but not closely during much of the 34 years between home teams in DC. Most of it, though, is that I treat MLB as an experience, remembering stories more than numbers. (Yandy Diaz is an excellent example. I have no idea how many home runs he has hit this year, or if he came to the Rays from another team - but I will likely always remember his eventful 2023 All-Star break.) But we have already established that I’m weird.
I've discovered, in a couple weeks of playing Immaculate Grid, that the 90s are a terrific blind spot for me. The four expansion teams in particular may as well not exist in my mind. But also, the players and teams they played for are just forgotten. I can remember the Griffeys and the Frank Thomases, but after that, there's a lot of blur. Which totally tracks, since my college and immediate post-college years were very... blurry.
On the plus side, Gaylord Perry has been like a personal cheat code on more than one occasion for me.
What do you do if you can’t think of an answer?
First, I'll usually close the tab for a while and come back later. Occasionally, an answer will just jump out at me when I look again a couple hours later.
Another strategy, if one of the teams is the A's, Yankees, Blue Jays, Padres, or Red Sox, I will ask myself, "Did Rickey Henderson ever play for (the team in the other axis)?" Because sometimes the answer is yes.
Finally, I'll just think of catchers and relief pitchers from when I was a kid. If I can come up with one who definitely played for one of the teams, and I know he was a guy who bounced around a lot, I'll just guess.
Regardless, I always use all nine guesses, because you can't see the answers and the day's most popular responses until you do.
I played today’s game and, as I expected, did horribly. Only three correct answers and two of them were obvious choices.
I got 6 today and was amazed that I pulled Mike Ivie out of my ass (0.2%)!
I'm blown away by how good some people are at the Immaculate Grid. I'm sure some of them are cheating, but I believe there are people out there who are legitimately scoring 24 with answers like Octavio Dotel & Yorvit Torrealba. My proudest day was my 0.3% pull for an Orioles All Star (my boy George Sherrill), but I'm normally terrible at it. I think my best score is 5/9.
Nice! I pulled out Glenn Davis and got like a .9% one day last week. But overall, I’m terrible at remembering who played for two specific teams, I just can’t pull the data on even obvious ones like in Craig’s example above where he had Randy Johnson for Arizona and Seattle.
I think I got a 0.1% once. I want to say it was Ben Oglivie for the Brewers and Red Sox, but it might've been something else.
Here's how I play immaculate grid which could very well qualify as "Cheating" but, good news, I don't care: I think of a possible answer, then hit baseball-reference to see if it's correct. If not then I just learned something new about a player I hadn't thought of in a while and I move on. This method prevents me from putting in wrong answers but if I can't come up with the right one it just stays blank all day.
Baseball Reference smiles broadly.
Every pal who shares their grid has me feeling like the biggest dum dum ever. It turns out my way of fanning is to know who plays on the team that I root for, and not pay attention to either where they came from or where they go. So finding an intersection of two teams is SUPER HARD. Even when my team is one on the grid! So I have not bothered to actually click and legitimately play.
The reason the Cards can't stay the course is because there are no FA options that they will consider affordable and will also measurably improve their starting rotation for next year. Meaning they need to trade value for some controllable and effective young pitching (Luzardo is on my wishlist).
As is, without re-signing Montgomery and Flaherty they don't even have enough pitching right now to reasonably patch together a terrible rotation for 2024.
Yeah I was typing fast and couldn't clarify well but I definitely think of Luzardo as a winter pursuit. The only way they'd be able to get anyone near that caliber at the deadline is if they find one team who wants everything they're selling (Monty/Flaherty/Hicks/Stratton/O'Neill) and has an MLB-ready AAA guy they don't need this year (e.g. someone like Painter before his injury, or Mick Abel).
Agree with everything you said.
Yeah it is insane, and malpractice, that even three of Burleson/Yepez/Gomez/O'Neill were still in this organization as of March, let alone all 4 (and I'd say it should only have been two).
Finding out that Mike Cameron plays Immaculate Grid and used himself for an answer the other day brings me immeasurable joy. Like, of course, why wouldn't you use yourself as an answer if you could?
As an alum of the school in Tuscaloosa, I can say that at least the dumb gambling scandal in baseball was less destructive than the dumb murder in basketball. Hurray for the better sport?
There’s a hockey version of Immaculate Grid that’s the new hotness right now called Puckdoku.
The hockey one makes me feel better about how I'll look at baseball results and wonder, "who the heck is that guy?!" - then I look it up and he's a hall of famer. Hockey is clearly the sport where I know the George Hainsworth's and the Tiny Thompson's, as opposed to wondering who "Luis Aparicio" is
I'll give it a try. I know the names of at least nine hockey players.
Craig: Following your instructions re: your All-Star sales event, I converted my monthly subscription to an annual subscription. Substack still charged me the regular annual subscription price. Is it possible that you’re having a sale, but Substack isn’t? Can you please have Substack address this?
Just when you thought the betting industry couldn’t get any worse….
https://nypost.com/2023/07/13/when-betting-on-the-special-olympics-goes-horribly-wrong/
Yikes. Not sure who’s worse here: the sportsbook or the bettors
For my first comment as a new subscriber, I'd like to let everybody know that if you're a hockey fan (I assume there are some here), you can play their version of Immaculate Grid at puckdoku.com
Today was the worst I've done on Immaculate Grid, which makes me feel bad, but also I regularly have half my answers from the 80s and 90s, which makes me feel worse.
Welcome!
Welcome!
Welcome Palmer!
Maybe this got pointed out yesterday, but the sad, dramatic, slowed-down pop song thing is also a staple of romance reality shows such as Love Island and Temptation Island. There’s a cottage industry of artists who crank these out expressly for TV/movie use.
Example:
https://youtu.be/gCITO54mzQU
Vanilla Fudge did it in the 60s - they took the poppy Supremes song, “You Keep Me Hanging On”, and gave it the tone it deserved. https://youtu.be/m4ylSesfe1U
Another notable - Chris Cornell’s version of “Billie Jean”. https://youtu.be/R0uWF-37DAM
I LOVE that Cornell version. The guitar solo alone is worth the price of admission.
Submitted for your consideration: I Would Die 4 U covered by Noah Guthrie.
Chris Cornell absolutely kills GNR's Patience and Sinead O'Connor's Nothing Compares to You. The dude was a genius. Sad.
"We're gonna clean that up." Every time I hear Gerrit Cole speak I like him more and more. Sucks that he's a Yankee.
Unabridged version of that Cole quote:
https://youtu.be/Qw54CyMwn8w