Joc Pederson: lefty masher, Yankees anonobots, the Joey Votto show, the Phillies Phiasco, some righteous anger in defense of the mentally ill, and my perpetual disappointment with Democrats
Yes. Why didn’t THEY plan for something like this? Their lack of a proactive response should haunt them the rest of their days and see them indicted, quite frankly.
Actually it may well have been over-preparedness and Militarization that caused the delay. There was a SWAT team on the way, and those cops were probably told to wait until they got there.
This was my initial thought with the Parkland cop, and this could very well be how it went down. But I've since learned that the tactics in active shooter situations ought to be to charge the shooter, even one officer alone, and that this change in doctrine was developed after Columbine. So if that's what they were doing, they were still fucking things up.
The school police officers engaged in a gun fight with the shooter as he approached the school. He had body armor and was intent on killing -- clearly suicidal. He wasnt stopped for some reason.
The community is small. It's not like big cities with big budgets and large services.
Okay, the gunfire occurred after he entered the school:
"The Texas director of public safety, Steve McCraw, said during a press conference a school security district officer “encountered” 18-year-old Salvador Ramos after hearing reports of the crashed vehicle, and did not exchange gunfire, though the state later confirmed to NBC the officer was armed.
Ramos then entered the school, and the school officer followed him inside, where “rounds were exchanged,” McGraw said.
Ramos also fired shots from inside the school toward arriving Uvalde police officers outside of the school, causing injuries to some of the officers, according to Texas Department of Public Safety spokesperson Travis Considine."
I am also really worried for the safety of the people putting their names on record as having observed the cowardice of the police. I get that at least one of them was a parent whose child was murdered so I’m sure they’re probably operating from a place of raw emotion, but at absolute best I expect they’ll be harassed constantly by the police in that town from now on.
At worst…well, no one would really question it too hard if a grieving parent “took their own life,” right?
Evan Longoria has had one of the strangest careers of my lifetime as a “hardcore” baseball fan (so let’s call it 2007-now). Comes up in 2008 as a sure-fire, can’t miss prospect. All-Star team first three seasons and he felt like a legitimate MVP candidate in 2009-10. Always a tough out and a rising superstar.
Then, no All-Star nods or any honors outside of a 2017 Gold Glove from 2011-17. Ok, no problem. He’s still a tough out and it feels like he especially mashes the Yankees. Feels like he’s still in the conversation for best players at times but he’s gone from rising superstar to actually pretty underrated by no real fault of his ow.
Then, he goes to the Giants. He’s worth 6.2 WAR since the start of 2018 and has become totally irrelevant for a franchise that, for the most part, has remained relevant in that time.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t know if Longo was on a Hall of Fame path when the Giants acquired him. He had 1,700 hits through his age-31 season but getting to 3K was going to be extremely difficult especially in a league with no DH at the time. Just interesting to think about his career trajectory and how quickly he seemingly faded from the national spotlight despite being a consistently reliable player for the Rays.
TL;DR: I wanted to wax poetically about Evan Longoria before going to the dentist.
Counterpoint - act like you’re the richest team in baseball, pay the most popular player your franchise has had since Jeter and eat whatever back end of the deal there is.
His bouts with Plantar Faciitis made it so he wasn't full time for a lot of those years and was hobbled when his was playing. Plus playing in the trop with that kinda of injury has to suck.
Craig Biggio retired with a bWAR of 65.5, and Evan Longoria currently has a bWAR of 57.4. I wanted to see how they stack up directly in their age 32 seasons (2018 for Longo, 1998 for Biggio - they're 20 years and 2 months apart in age, just about) through the next three full* seasons of play, as Biggio notoriously had a reputation for sticking around and padding his stats, which one certainly could begin to accuse Evan Longoria of doing as well. Longo has 6.3 bWAR over the 2018-2021 stretch, and Biggio has 16.3 bWAR. Even if you give Evan a hypothetical boost for the lost games in 2020, it's not close. Up through his age 35 season, Craig Biggio had barely started to "compile," where Longoria's annual bWAR isn't anywhere near. Yet somehow, they have those somewhat comparable career WAR numbers. What gives? The answer: in the first 10 full seasons of his career, Craig Biggio has 50.8 bWAR, and Evan Longoria has 51.2. For all the knocks on Biggio hanging around for too long, maybe he wasn't so bad in the second half of his career as that narrative suggests! Over those first full 10 seasons, by the way, they have nearly identical park-adjusted OPS's; it's Evan's defense that puts him narrowly in the lead.
Fun with numbers! And what if Longoria tacks on 4 or 5 more WAR by sticking around a few more years? He may be struggling right now, but last year he slashed .261/.351/.482... not so bad.
*in the case of Longoria, though, one of them was COVID- and ownership-shortened
Biggio was basically a league average player for his last eight years. Average has value of course but it doesn’t speak to his brilliant peak that deserved the HOF. On the other hand I’m not sure if he does get votes absent that long period of average play which carried him over 3,000.
Another version of this, but at a higher level is Carl Yastrzemski. Yaz, from 67-70 was as good as anyone post integration. Then just kept going (and going and going and ...) as average (or modestly below) to fine but never again great.
What is it about the Nissan Z cars? When I was Carlo’s age (back in 19MYOB) I desperately wanted a 240z.
The car he should want (and you not want him to have) is the Subaru WRX, which is ridiculously overpowered with an incredibly lightweight body. A friend of mine had one, complete with the COEXIST sticker, and called it his “little pinko rocket.“
PS That was actually the first win by the Nats over the Dodgers since the 2019 league championship series. No, I am not kidding.
When I was 15, my cousin drove a Datsun 280ZX. Now there was an exciting ride! Of course since my parents had recently traded in the ‘77 Pinto wagon on Ford’s next sized up early ‘80s wagon ...
'69 Datsun 510 sedan, baby! Everything broke on it over time, after the ignition fritzed out, my brother rigged it so that we could start it with a switch, which eventually caused it to catch fire and burn up real good!
My dad had an old ‘65 Corvair convertible that just died one day… he was so heartbroken that I think he just went to the dealership and bought the first thing he saw - which was a bright orange Ford Pinto with golf pants plaid interior. That was the car I was allowed to drive… which certainly explains my hunger for *any* ride cooler than The Great Pumpkin.
Our Pinto was the extended wagon version. White exterior with the fake wood paneling. Brown vinyl seats. It had replaced a avocado green Vega that was totaled while parked. Yes, really.
The best car my dad ever had he took from my grandfather when he became unfit to drive - a 1979 Mk2 Ford Escort 1600 with a brown vinyl roof. It was immaculate and went like stink. I have still not quite forgiven him for selling it 3 weeks before I got my license in 1998. I saw it again about 5 years ago for sale at a car show, for the equivalent of about $50k, looking just as good as it was back in the day. Needless to say, it has aged better than Rich Hill has this season.
So what SHOULD the Democrats be doing? We cannot get any legislation about guns through Congress, period. So what is the point of introducing any more symbolic doomed legislation? I don't what we can do, but I don't feel for a second that we are the ones to blame for any of this. And until enough Americans stop voting for the GOP, nothing is going to change. And even that I am not sure you can fault the Democrats on, since I think that most people who vote Republican now are beyond any help or redemption. They want this country to be just like it is and are happy with it, and won't listen to us, or to reason, or to logic. I don't see how that is on the Democrats.
And yes, the best way to stop gun violence is to get rid of the guns. But we really also need to understand better why people do these things. What drives anyone to kill children? Why is gun violence up so much since the pandemic. The fact is, we are having a massive mental health crisis, and the anger and the violence are part of it. Not that Fox News actually cares about the collective PTSD of America and the world. But it should be as much of a priority as figuring out Long COVID and making a new vaccine.
The good news for the Mets is that Trevor Williams came in and stopped the Giants entirely. I think poor Szapucki won't be seeing the majors again for a while, but Williams looks to be tag-teaming with David Peterson in the rotation for now.
Keep putting up legislation that fails in the Senate 48-52, and then you have the verifiable case that delivering two more Dems senators would make a difference. But you can’t just do it once. Do it repeatedly. On everything.
Also firing this stuff off and making it go through the courts is how some things are allowed to sit and be kind of law sometimes. Like how Kim Reynolds in Iowa banned mask mandates and it still took a minute for the courts to put a stay on them, and the impact on those mandates was chilling before it was decided like a year-plus later that the order was unconstitutional anyway. It works!
But that would be un-gentlemenly. Remember these guys only hate each other on TV. After that, the all belong to the same clubs and help each other's kids get into Ivy League Schools.
MAYBE in the Senate, but that sure as Hell isn't the case in the House anymore. The lack of bipartisanship manifests itself in all sorts of personal animus now in the lower chamber thanks to the Tea Party/QAnon loons who have been sent to Washington by some very deplorable districts.
" The fact is, we are having a massive mental health crisis, and the anger and the violence are part of it."
There is no evidence that the shooter at Reed Elementary was mentally ill. Going automatically to "it's mental illness" is the first step towards. "so it's the mental illness, not the guns." I dont think you meant to do that, but that is exactly what Carlson and the gun nuts are doing all over.
That doesn't make any sense to me. But none of this does. It's irrational, and as a generally rational person, irrational acts are literally incomprehensible to me. (Personally, I think all acts of violence are irrational.)
All gun violence, and threats of it, is about power, whether it’s done by an angry spouse, a kid with a tribal grudge, a dress-up GI Joe in a statehouse or a Starbucks, or a scared/incompetent/racist cop. We rightly freak out over mass killings, but mostly people die one at a time, dispersed through the day, the weeks, the months, the years, a steady drip drip drip that never ends.
right. like the GOP symbolically voting against Obamacare EVERY time a new Congress was sworn in -- even tho those votes meant NOTHING. ah, the good old days.
It's interesting. Whenever somebody blames the Democrats for something that is 100% the fault of Republicans, I like to ask them, "What do you think the Democrats should be doing that they aren't already?" So far, I've gotten sputters, silence, or ineffective solutions like show votes. The fact remains that the Democrats hold 48 reliable votes in the Senate, where 51 or 60 are needed. Instead of blaming Dems for something they are currently powerless to solve, stop suppressing voter turnout and ensure Democrats win more seats in the Senate. With two more, whatever Sinema and Manchin do won't mean anything.
Saying "vote" might be essentially worthless in these situations, but the one thing that is definitely even more worthless is screaming "DO SOMETHING!" into the void.
Democrats in Washington are literally doing everything *useful* that they can. Give them 51 reliable Senate votes, and gun control happens immediately.
That's true. But until we can find a way to transition our election system into one that doesn't basically force two parties, you have to worry about the bigger threat before the lesser ones. And right now the bigger threat is the extremism continuing to take over the Republican Party. Crush that, and then worry about whether Chuck Schumer is a wuss.
I know you’re a sensitive and thoughtful person, but this kind of excuse making is why the Dems don’t get anything done.
Dems have inculcated their own learned helplessness into the minds of their voters (and also convinced everyone to think like a consultant instead of a citizen) and you’d think after 30 years of getting nothing positive done, we’d start demanding more.
When they tabled Obama's SCOTUS nominee I thought the Dems should have SHUT THE GOV'T down. No spending bills, no money to the welfare states, you know -- the kind of thing the GOP does when it doesn't get IT'S way. THAT was when they saw that even w a Dem president they could do what they want. Jaysus, just think of the BS t-Rump did with executive orders ...
also, the media "war." in NY we see super Pac ads for EVERYTHING all the time, including when there's NO upcoming election. but the Dems sit on their hands with abortion (rarely utter the word out of fear TBH) and everything else.
there's an old political cartoon that portrays a 98-lb weakling (dated, I know) being pummeled in a boxing ring by a guy who looks like Popeye after consuming spinach (timeless) and the crowd is roaring "FINISH HIM!"
alas, the behemoth turns to the crowd and says, "but ... what if I hurt my hand?"
In Atlanta news, Acuna missed the game with a right quad strain. This is less than a week after being out for several games due to a left groin strain. And of course the year started late following major knee surgery. This is starting to feel like the last half dozen years of Chipper: great when he’s on the field, often not on said field.
My math may be off - not enough coffee yet - but I think that William Contreras now has 8 extra base hits and 4 singles. That is the perfect 2022 batter.
Ages 37-40 was much the same albeit at "only" an all-star rather than HOF level. Just under 120 games per year with a 120 OPS+.
I guess it isn't that odd, but he went from blowing out his knee in 1994 spring training to being remarkably durable '95 to '03 then a long coda missing on average 40 games a year but per at bat being incredibly consistent. It seems to me that nearly all oft-injured players tend to have up and down performance too - just not Jones.
I haven't heard the name Jim Eisenreich in years. I did occasionally wonder what he could have become with better health care. An initial diagnosis of "stage fright" that caused him to wash out and eventually come back years later after being medicated for Tourrette's Syndrome. Fast centerfield who, in his brief time in the minors before medical issues cropped up did everything well. His eventual MLB time was fine but definitely a huge 'what if' career.
Chipper wasnt just a great all-around hitter -- he was a switch hitter who was good from both sides of the plate. I think this allowed him to age gracefully as a hitter into his 30s.
Not that this is anything but trivia ... however, I liked the tidbit that Chipper was the only switch hitter who batted. 300 for his career from both sides of the plate.
Police are damned if they do, damned if they dont.
People want police to be under control while under duress dealing with uncooperative and potentially belligerent citizens.
But they also want them to run into dangerous situations with guns drawn, ready to put down violent criminals to save lives.
I'd imagine police would rather just sit on the sidelines and not risk getting on the local news and investigated and prosecuted for trying to do their job.
Police aren't superheroes. They aren't paid to handle all kinds of dangerous situations. There are special officers like SWAT that deal with active shooter situations. They have people in charge of them that make decisions and when and how to deploy them.
Police generally dont stop crime in progress -- they respond to it. Their presence in a community is meant to deter and reduce crime. But homicidal maniacs aren't going to be deterred by law enforcement.
Cops are human and have families like everyone else. They dont want to get shot and killed by a rampaging, violent psychopath.
Their job is to maintain law and order. The Texas shooter was eventually put down like a rabid dog. The police did their job. They aren't superheroes. That's propaganda.
Their literal fucking job description is to serve and protect and last I checked, cowering outside, while knowing carnage was going on inside does not meet those requirements.
I don't want to get shot, either, but my job does not require me to be placed in such a situation; their's does and they completely failed. They did NOT do their job.
The school has its own police officers. They failed to stop the assailant. He was wearing body armor.
The Buffalo shooter killed a security guard, a former long-serving police officer, after the officer shot the assailant but failed to penetrate his armor.
Protect and serve does not mean jumping into every situation regardless of what the circumstances are. Police officers aren't cannon fodder.
Unfortunately they do protect and serve, they just protect and serve the state - the wealthy and influential that have power. It's why police have always seen as their job hunting down escaped slaves, breaking the heads of striking miners demanding better working conditions, or tear-gassing protestors asking for something (however politely and non-violently) that those in charge simply don't want to give them. Cops excel at controlling the disorderly civilians so the influential members of a community aren't inconvenienced or have their tidy lives disrupted in any way by the great unwashed.
It's why I'll never trust a cop, I've seen too many lie because they knew, even if it was transparently obvious, that they'd get away with it. Of course my attitude is colored by dealing with Baltimore cops when I lived in the area which aren't exactly the paragon of virtue that they would pretend to be.
They are special -- they serve an important role in the communities they serve. Someone has to do the job -- it's not optional. Law and order must be maintained otherwise society wouldn't function.
If you want them to be superheroes, then maybe you've watched too many Marvel films.
Using your weapons and training to stop an active mass-murder in progress isn't being a superhero. That's an absolutely ludicrous statement. That "important role in the communities they serve" is LITERALLY THIS.
That's why they get the special treatment they do.
That's why they get the funding they do.
That's why when anyone dares to even look briefly askance at where that funding goes people all across the political spectrum react like they are the Joker about to let all the supervillains out of Arkham.
If they aren't going to do their fucking jobs when children are being murdered in front of them, then they aren't maintaining law and order, they aren't serving their communities, and they need to go away.
There are SWAT teams that are specially trained and equipped to handle active shooter situations. The school officers engaged in a gun fight with the shooter and they failed to stop him. The shooter was not in open area -- he was clearly dug in inside the school building. The officers are supposed to wait for orders to do anything -- that's what they are trained to do.
You mean the SWAT team that the town pays 40% of their budget for, but couldn't get there within 40 minutes so the guy ended up being taken down by a Border Patrol officer?
Defund the police makes a whole lot more sense. Police aren't good at dealing with mental illness, drug problems, nor something as simple as a traffic violation nor does it appear they can handle violent criminals anymore. Policing is a very big ticket item in municipal taxation.
Reduce police funding for school guards and however many dozen officers standing around a crime in progress. Fund education, mental health and organisations trained to handle the root of these problems. Perhaps that money is better spent in gun buy back programs and lobby for stricter gun control. Limiting access and making guns more difficult to obtain works in pretty much every nation on Earth.
We don't need more inadequately trained people with guns.
I started to watch that Braves-Phillies game but the Atlanta announcers are such asshole homers I had to turn it off. They kept complaining that Charlie Morton was 'not getting the calls' on close pitches which were clearly outside or low and which were clearly shown by the K-box or whatever they call it to be outside or low.
"Well, apparently Charlie has to work overtime this inning because the ump's not giving him those calls" (which were all balls)
Their radio team is homeriffic as well. I kind of like when Bagwell or another former player fills in for a game or two and clearly roots for the Astros and refers to them as “we,” but I’d find that incredibly tedious every day.
Snakehead is very tasty. They've been an environmental catastrophe down thisaway but there are some areas, like the Loxahatchie Canal, which have become angler's paradise because snakeheads hit like Tyson, put up a vicious fight, and grill up yummy.
Ackcherley, lionfish - another environmental catastrophe - is also yummy; Whole Foods sells lionfish dumplings and fillets.
Interessin' factoid: both of these invasives started life as pet shop items. Maybe aquarium irresponsibility holds the key to feeding the masses. Maybe Biafra wouldn't have happened if it'd had more pet shops.
Thank you for the part of your newsletter about mental health. I have struggled with my mental health since I was a young child. I am on medication. I have a therapist and a psychiatrist. I have never, not once thought about harming someone else.
I am sick of being seen as part of the problem by people who don’t want to see or figure out the real causes. Punching down is easy. Leadership is not.
Is the Phillies pedal-to-the metal, high powered offense, defense be damned approach entertaining to watch or terrible to watch? Maybe it depends on whether you're a neutral observer of a Phillies fan.
Both? The way baseball games are structured, it seems pretty clear they would be really entertaining for half an inning and then really terrible to watch for half an inning
They played at the Baker Bowl in North Philly which had a 60 ft. RF fence. To my knowledge nobody called it a monster, it was covered with a huge ad that said "The Phillies use Lifebouy Soap" and the fans would always add "and they still stink"
In 1930 the league OPS at the Baker Bowl was around 90 points higher than the 2nd best hitters' park, Wrigley Field.
That's roughly the same degree to which the league OPS at 1993 Mile High Stadium was higher than at the 2nd best hitters' park. (Also Wrigley Field - cool!)
(And with the humidor, the Denver effect is really tamped down - last season the OPS at Coors was virtually identical as at GABP or Rogers Centre.)
I don't know. It may not meet the definition of mental illness, but in my opinion anyone who would kill a bunch of strangers, children or otherwise, has some sort of mental dysfunction. Mentally healthy people wouldn't do that.
I don't think it out of line to suggest both gun restrictions and increased mental health support might be parts of the solution. (Which isn't what Tucker Carlson et al are saying of course)
My first car was a late 70's Ford LTD. It got about 8 miles per gallon and leaked power steering fluid so bad that i had to replace it every other day. I bought it for $50 from my uncle. It was huge. It could seat 8. The front seat was basically a bench. I miss it every day. If you're going to learn to drive, learn to drive a difficult car as your first owned and then everything is easier after that.
Ha! In college I had a buddy who owned a baby shit yellow '84 (ish) LTD. He somehow acquired a set of bull horns for the hood a la Boss Hogg and loved driving it around campus for the looks he'd get from passersby.
He let me drive it once, and I swear the steering was so loose you had to turn the wheel damn near 60 degrees before the car would actually change direction.
My first car was my dad’s 1973 Ford Maverick. The rear end was bent inward from the time he backed into a pillar, the drivers side window would roll down but not back up, and the heat was intermittent.
I'm sure most of those cops vote R and support Texas's gun non-laws, too.
Just not enough to make any noise when their political allies are removing any and all restrictions on gun sales.
Yes. Why didn’t THEY plan for something like this? Their lack of a proactive response should haunt them the rest of their days and see them indicted, quite frankly.
Actually it may well have been over-preparedness and Militarization that caused the delay. There was a SWAT team on the way, and those cops were probably told to wait until they got there.
This was my initial thought with the Parkland cop, and this could very well be how it went down. But I've since learned that the tactics in active shooter situations ought to be to charge the shooter, even one officer alone, and that this change in doctrine was developed after Columbine. So if that's what they were doing, they were still fucking things up.
People want to call the police officers cowards. But they have a commanding officer who directs them.
The school police officers engaged in a gun fight with the shooter as he approached the school. He had body armor and was intent on killing -- clearly suicidal. He wasnt stopped for some reason.
The community is small. It's not like big cities with big budgets and large services.
Okay, the gunfire occurred after he entered the school:
"The Texas director of public safety, Steve McCraw, said during a press conference a school security district officer “encountered” 18-year-old Salvador Ramos after hearing reports of the crashed vehicle, and did not exchange gunfire, though the state later confirmed to NBC the officer was armed.
Ramos then entered the school, and the school officer followed him inside, where “rounds were exchanged,” McGraw said.
Ramos also fired shots from inside the school toward arriving Uvalde police officers outside of the school, causing injuries to some of the officers, according to Texas Department of Public Safety spokesperson Travis Considine."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/annakaplan/2022/05/26/uvalde-shooting-timeline-heres-what-we-know-about-what-happened/
They have a 13 person SWAT team for a town of 16,000. Don't make excuses that they couldn't afford to stop the shooter. They are all cowards.
FORTY PERCENT OF THAT TOWN'S BUDGET GOES TO "POLICE"
I am also really worried for the safety of the people putting their names on record as having observed the cowardice of the police. I get that at least one of them was a parent whose child was murdered so I’m sure they’re probably operating from a place of raw emotion, but at absolute best I expect they’ll be harassed constantly by the police in that town from now on.
At worst…well, no one would really question it too hard if a grieving parent “took their own life,” right?
This is a really good point.
Evan Longoria has had one of the strangest careers of my lifetime as a “hardcore” baseball fan (so let’s call it 2007-now). Comes up in 2008 as a sure-fire, can’t miss prospect. All-Star team first three seasons and he felt like a legitimate MVP candidate in 2009-10. Always a tough out and a rising superstar.
Then, no All-Star nods or any honors outside of a 2017 Gold Glove from 2011-17. Ok, no problem. He’s still a tough out and it feels like he especially mashes the Yankees. Feels like he’s still in the conversation for best players at times but he’s gone from rising superstar to actually pretty underrated by no real fault of his ow.
Then, he goes to the Giants. He’s worth 6.2 WAR since the start of 2018 and has become totally irrelevant for a franchise that, for the most part, has remained relevant in that time.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t know if Longo was on a Hall of Fame path when the Giants acquired him. He had 1,700 hits through his age-31 season but getting to 3K was going to be extremely difficult especially in a league with no DH at the time. Just interesting to think about his career trajectory and how quickly he seemingly faded from the national spotlight despite being a consistently reliable player for the Rays.
TL;DR: I wanted to wax poetically about Evan Longoria before going to the dentist.
Father Time is undefeated. The clock struck midnight (or he turned 30, same thing) and he turned into a pumpkin.
even more of a reason for the yanks to go easy on Judge and a huge contract offer until the end of the season. let's see if he makes it thru intact.
If the Yankees win the WS, I’m fine letting Judge walk. 🤷🏻♂️ He’s an incredible player now but let another team deal with 10 years and 400 million.
The Yankees can easily afford to outbid everyone for his services at full-fare. And they will, unless Judge just wants to go somewhere else.
Counterpoint - act like you’re the richest team in baseball, pay the most popular player your franchise has had since Jeter and eat whatever back end of the deal there is.
yes. AND go get Soto as well.
Giving Judge ten years would make the Pujols contract look sane.
Must be another Joc Pedersen, vs. Yankees .063/.118/.250
Post is about Evan Longoria
We could make the post about Eva Longoria ... but that would be pretty Desperate.
When he retires, his video highlight has to be that Game 162 walk-off in 2011, no?
https://www.theidentitytb.com/article/small-details-evan-longoria-home-run-game-162
His bouts with Plantar Faciitis made it so he wasn't full time for a lot of those years and was hobbled when his was playing. Plus playing in the trop with that kinda of injury has to suck.
Craig Biggio retired with a bWAR of 65.5, and Evan Longoria currently has a bWAR of 57.4. I wanted to see how they stack up directly in their age 32 seasons (2018 for Longo, 1998 for Biggio - they're 20 years and 2 months apart in age, just about) through the next three full* seasons of play, as Biggio notoriously had a reputation for sticking around and padding his stats, which one certainly could begin to accuse Evan Longoria of doing as well. Longo has 6.3 bWAR over the 2018-2021 stretch, and Biggio has 16.3 bWAR. Even if you give Evan a hypothetical boost for the lost games in 2020, it's not close. Up through his age 35 season, Craig Biggio had barely started to "compile," where Longoria's annual bWAR isn't anywhere near. Yet somehow, they have those somewhat comparable career WAR numbers. What gives? The answer: in the first 10 full seasons of his career, Craig Biggio has 50.8 bWAR, and Evan Longoria has 51.2. For all the knocks on Biggio hanging around for too long, maybe he wasn't so bad in the second half of his career as that narrative suggests! Over those first full 10 seasons, by the way, they have nearly identical park-adjusted OPS's; it's Evan's defense that puts him narrowly in the lead.
Fun with numbers! And what if Longoria tacks on 4 or 5 more WAR by sticking around a few more years? He may be struggling right now, but last year he slashed .261/.351/.482... not so bad.
*in the case of Longoria, though, one of them was COVID- and ownership-shortened
Biggio was basically a league average player for his last eight years. Average has value of course but it doesn’t speak to his brilliant peak that deserved the HOF. On the other hand I’m not sure if he does get votes absent that long period of average play which carried him over 3,000.
Another version of this, but at a higher level is Carl Yastrzemski. Yaz, from 67-70 was as good as anyone post integration. Then just kept going (and going and going and ...) as average (or modestly below) to fine but never again great.
What is it about the Nissan Z cars? When I was Carlo’s age (back in 19MYOB) I desperately wanted a 240z.
The car he should want (and you not want him to have) is the Subaru WRX, which is ridiculously overpowered with an incredibly lightweight body. A friend of mine had one, complete with the COEXIST sticker, and called it his “little pinko rocket.“
PS That was actually the first win by the Nats over the Dodgers since the 2019 league championship series. No, I am not kidding.
When I was 15, my cousin drove a Datsun 280ZX. Now there was an exciting ride! Of course since my parents had recently traded in the ‘77 Pinto wagon on Ford’s next sized up early ‘80s wagon ...
'69 Datsun 510 sedan, baby! Everything broke on it over time, after the ignition fritzed out, my brother rigged it so that we could start it with a switch, which eventually caused it to catch fire and burn up real good!
My dad had an old ‘65 Corvair convertible that just died one day… he was so heartbroken that I think he just went to the dealership and bought the first thing he saw - which was a bright orange Ford Pinto with golf pants plaid interior. That was the car I was allowed to drive… which certainly explains my hunger for *any* ride cooler than The Great Pumpkin.
Our Pinto was the extended wagon version. White exterior with the fake wood paneling. Brown vinyl seats. It had replaced a avocado green Vega that was totaled while parked. Yes, really.
My dad had the exact same car. I'll admit to finding that sleek straight-six engine to be pretty cool.
The best car my dad ever had he took from my grandfather when he became unfit to drive - a 1979 Mk2 Ford Escort 1600 with a brown vinyl roof. It was immaculate and went like stink. I have still not quite forgiven him for selling it 3 weeks before I got my license in 1998. I saw it again about 5 years ago for sale at a car show, for the equivalent of about $50k, looking just as good as it was back in the day. Needless to say, it has aged better than Rich Hill has this season.
So what SHOULD the Democrats be doing? We cannot get any legislation about guns through Congress, period. So what is the point of introducing any more symbolic doomed legislation? I don't what we can do, but I don't feel for a second that we are the ones to blame for any of this. And until enough Americans stop voting for the GOP, nothing is going to change. And even that I am not sure you can fault the Democrats on, since I think that most people who vote Republican now are beyond any help or redemption. They want this country to be just like it is and are happy with it, and won't listen to us, or to reason, or to logic. I don't see how that is on the Democrats.
And yes, the best way to stop gun violence is to get rid of the guns. But we really also need to understand better why people do these things. What drives anyone to kill children? Why is gun violence up so much since the pandemic. The fact is, we are having a massive mental health crisis, and the anger and the violence are part of it. Not that Fox News actually cares about the collective PTSD of America and the world. But it should be as much of a priority as figuring out Long COVID and making a new vaccine.
The good news for the Mets is that Trevor Williams came in and stopped the Giants entirely. I think poor Szapucki won't be seeing the majors again for a while, but Williams looks to be tag-teaming with David Peterson in the rotation for now.
Keep putting up legislation that fails in the Senate 48-52, and then you have the verifiable case that delivering two more Dems senators would make a difference. But you can’t just do it once. Do it repeatedly. On everything.
Agreed. You build popular support for overhauling a corrupt SCOTUS by forcing it to constantly delegitimize itself.
Also firing this stuff off and making it go through the courts is how some things are allowed to sit and be kind of law sometimes. Like how Kim Reynolds in Iowa banned mask mandates and it still took a minute for the courts to put a stay on them, and the impact on those mandates was chilling before it was decided like a year-plus later that the order was unconstitutional anyway. It works!
But that would be un-gentlemenly. Remember these guys only hate each other on TV. After that, the all belong to the same clubs and help each other's kids get into Ivy League Schools.
"It's a big club...and you ain't in it." - George Carlin
MAYBE in the Senate, but that sure as Hell isn't the case in the House anymore. The lack of bipartisanship manifests itself in all sorts of personal animus now in the lower chamber thanks to the Tea Party/QAnon loons who have been sent to Washington by some very deplorable districts.
I'm honestly surprised the GOP doesn't go along with some gun control knowing that the Supreme Court will strike it down.
Yup, and have candidates go on record that change will happen if you vote for them.
" The fact is, we are having a massive mental health crisis, and the anger and the violence are part of it."
There is no evidence that the shooter at Reed Elementary was mentally ill. Going automatically to "it's mental illness" is the first step towards. "so it's the mental illness, not the guns." I dont think you meant to do that, but that is exactly what Carlson and the gun nuts are doing all over.
I didn't say he was mentally ill. I said, in essence, we are ALL mentally ill.
RL Laing: Insanity is a rational response to an insane world. I paraphrase.
"It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane"
-Philip K. Dick
Cowardice is what drives anyone to kill children or anyone else who is defenseless and unarmed.
That doesn't make any sense to me. But none of this does. It's irrational, and as a generally rational person, irrational acts are literally incomprehensible to me. (Personally, I think all acts of violence are irrational.)
All gun violence, and threats of it, is about power, whether it’s done by an angry spouse, a kid with a tribal grudge, a dress-up GI Joe in a statehouse or a Starbucks, or a scared/incompetent/racist cop. We rightly freak out over mass killings, but mostly people die one at a time, dispersed through the day, the weeks, the months, the years, a steady drip drip drip that never ends.
Guns are empowering. Sociopaths are narcissistic and desire to have power and dominate others. They make a lovely marriage.
Yeah, death is a daily occurrence. But it's a part of life and it impacts individuals greatly.
I mean, the short answer is that you make them vote it down, and every time you start screaming about baby-murderers. Make sure they own all of it.
From a more political perspective (ugh) it also puts pressure on someone like Sinema to do something to try and avoid getting primaried.
(I mean, she's gonna get primaried right off the edge of the world anyway, but at least it might give her a chance to keep the job).
right. like the GOP symbolically voting against Obamacare EVERY time a new Congress was sworn in -- even tho those votes meant NOTHING. ah, the good old days.
*Looks around* Seems like it worked.
It's interesting. Whenever somebody blames the Democrats for something that is 100% the fault of Republicans, I like to ask them, "What do you think the Democrats should be doing that they aren't already?" So far, I've gotten sputters, silence, or ineffective solutions like show votes. The fact remains that the Democrats hold 48 reliable votes in the Senate, where 51 or 60 are needed. Instead of blaming Dems for something they are currently powerless to solve, stop suppressing voter turnout and ensure Democrats win more seats in the Senate. With two more, whatever Sinema and Manchin do won't mean anything.
Right.
Saying "vote" might be essentially worthless in these situations, but the one thing that is definitely even more worthless is screaming "DO SOMETHING!" into the void.
Democrats in Washington are literally doing everything *useful* that they can. Give them 51 reliable Senate votes, and gun control happens immediately.
This would be a remarkable break from the Democratic Party MO over literally my entire life.
I’m not sure that “we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas” is the savvy political position that Dems have convinced their voters it is.
That's true. But until we can find a way to transition our election system into one that doesn't basically force two parties, you have to worry about the bigger threat before the lesser ones. And right now the bigger threat is the extremism continuing to take over the Republican Party. Crush that, and then worry about whether Chuck Schumer is a wuss.
Well, they shouldn’t have been going to the mattresses for an anti-choice, pro-gun incumbent in a D+7 district.
I know you’re a sensitive and thoughtful person, but this kind of excuse making is why the Dems don’t get anything done.
Dems have inculcated their own learned helplessness into the minds of their voters (and also convinced everyone to think like a consultant instead of a citizen) and you’d think after 30 years of getting nothing positive done, we’d start demanding more.
When they tabled Obama's SCOTUS nominee I thought the Dems should have SHUT THE GOV'T down. No spending bills, no money to the welfare states, you know -- the kind of thing the GOP does when it doesn't get IT'S way. THAT was when they saw that even w a Dem president they could do what they want. Jaysus, just think of the BS t-Rump did with executive orders ...
also, the media "war." in NY we see super Pac ads for EVERYTHING all the time, including when there's NO upcoming election. but the Dems sit on their hands with abortion (rarely utter the word out of fear TBH) and everything else.
there's an old political cartoon that portrays a 98-lb weakling (dated, I know) being pummeled in a boxing ring by a guy who looks like Popeye after consuming spinach (timeless) and the crowd is roaring "FINISH HIM!"
alas, the behemoth turns to the crowd and says, "but ... what if I hurt my hand?"
that is forever the Dems.
In Atlanta news, Acuna missed the game with a right quad strain. This is less than a week after being out for several games due to a left groin strain. And of course the year started late following major knee surgery. This is starting to feel like the last half dozen years of Chipper: great when he’s on the field, often not on said field.
My math may be off - not enough coffee yet - but I think that William Contreras now has 8 extra base hits and 4 singles. That is the perfect 2022 batter.
Chipper in his age 33-36 seasons hit .332/.430/.585 (OPS+ 162). Just crazy stuff.
Unfortunately, as you mentioned, he only averaged 120G in those 4 seasons.
Ages 37-40 was much the same albeit at "only" an all-star rather than HOF level. Just under 120 games per year with a 120 OPS+.
I guess it isn't that odd, but he went from blowing out his knee in 1994 spring training to being remarkably durable '95 to '03 then a long coda missing on average 40 games a year but per at bat being incredibly consistent. It seems to me that nearly all oft-injured players tend to have up and down performance too - just not Jones.
Chipper hit .364 as a 36-year-old. Only 3 players have hit for a higher average at age 36+ post-integration:
Ted Williams hit .388 in 1957 (age 38)
Tony Gwynn hit .372 in 1997 (age 37)
Barry Bonds hit .370 in 2002 (age 37)
Not a bad list! (honorable mention to Jim Eisenreich, who hit .361 in 1996 as a 37-year-old)
I haven't heard the name Jim Eisenreich in years. I did occasionally wonder what he could have become with better health care. An initial diagnosis of "stage fright" that caused him to wash out and eventually come back years later after being medicated for Tourrette's Syndrome. Fast centerfield who, in his brief time in the minors before medical issues cropped up did everything well. His eventual MLB time was fine but definitely a huge 'what if' career.
Chipper wasnt just a great all-around hitter -- he was a switch hitter who was good from both sides of the plate. I think this allowed him to age gracefully as a hitter into his 30s.
Not that this is anything but trivia ... however, I liked the tidbit that Chipper was the only switch hitter who batted. 300 for his career from both sides of the plate.
Anthony Rendon's a 1.000 hitter as a lefty, but Chipper looks safe because Rendon as a righty is only at .286.
Thoroughly disgusting that the "first responders" stood idly by, while that person was inside, shooting children like fish in a barrel.
Citizen to police officer: What is your primary role?
Police officer: To protect and serve the community.
Citizen to police officer: Then why the fuck are you standing out here?
Police officer: We're not sure that it's safe to go in there.
Police are damned if they do, damned if they dont.
People want police to be under control while under duress dealing with uncooperative and potentially belligerent citizens.
But they also want them to run into dangerous situations with guns drawn, ready to put down violent criminals to save lives.
I'd imagine police would rather just sit on the sidelines and not risk getting on the local news and investigated and prosecuted for trying to do their job.
Police aren't superheroes. They aren't paid to handle all kinds of dangerous situations. There are special officers like SWAT that deal with active shooter situations. They have people in charge of them that make decisions and when and how to deploy them.
If only there was a Uvalde SWAT team. Oh wait....
Police generally dont stop crime in progress -- they respond to it. Their presence in a community is meant to deter and reduce crime. But homicidal maniacs aren't going to be deterred by law enforcement.
Cops are human and have families like everyone else. They dont want to get shot and killed by a rampaging, violent psychopath.
Their job is to maintain law and order. The Texas shooter was eventually put down like a rabid dog. The police did their job. They aren't superheroes. That's propaganda.
Their literal fucking job description is to serve and protect and last I checked, cowering outside, while knowing carnage was going on inside does not meet those requirements.
I don't want to get shot, either, but my job does not require me to be placed in such a situation; their's does and they completely failed. They did NOT do their job.
The school has its own police officers. They failed to stop the assailant. He was wearing body armor.
The Buffalo shooter killed a security guard, a former long-serving police officer, after the officer shot the assailant but failed to penetrate his armor.
Protect and serve does not mean jumping into every situation regardless of what the circumstances are. Police officers aren't cannon fodder.
Sure they are. They refer to the general public as "civilians". At that point, it's their fucking job to go in there, same as a Marine.
Unfortunately they do protect and serve, they just protect and serve the state - the wealthy and influential that have power. It's why police have always seen as their job hunting down escaped slaves, breaking the heads of striking miners demanding better working conditions, or tear-gassing protestors asking for something (however politely and non-violently) that those in charge simply don't want to give them. Cops excel at controlling the disorderly civilians so the influential members of a community aren't inconvenienced or have their tidy lives disrupted in any way by the great unwashed.
It's why I'll never trust a cop, I've seen too many lie because they knew, even if it was transparently obvious, that they'd get away with it. Of course my attitude is colored by dealing with Baltimore cops when I lived in the area which aren't exactly the paragon of virtue that they would pretend to be.
But they want to be treated special. You don't get to have it both ways.
They are special -- they serve an important role in the communities they serve. Someone has to do the job -- it's not optional. Law and order must be maintained otherwise society wouldn't function.
If you want them to be superheroes, then maybe you've watched too many Marvel films.
Using your weapons and training to stop an active mass-murder in progress isn't being a superhero. That's an absolutely ludicrous statement. That "important role in the communities they serve" is LITERALLY THIS.
That's why they get the special treatment they do.
That's why they get the funding they do.
That's why when anyone dares to even look briefly askance at where that funding goes people all across the political spectrum react like they are the Joker about to let all the supervillains out of Arkham.
If they aren't going to do their fucking jobs when children are being murdered in front of them, then they aren't maintaining law and order, they aren't serving their communities, and they need to go away.
There are SWAT teams that are specially trained and equipped to handle active shooter situations. The school officers engaged in a gun fight with the shooter and they failed to stop him. The shooter was not in open area -- he was clearly dug in inside the school building. The officers are supposed to wait for orders to do anything -- that's what they are trained to do.
You mean the SWAT team that the town pays 40% of their budget for, but couldn't get there within 40 minutes so the guy ended up being taken down by a Border Patrol officer?
Definitely helping your argument there.
This is the ultimate endgame to the "good guy with a gun" bullshit
Defund the police makes a whole lot more sense. Police aren't good at dealing with mental illness, drug problems, nor something as simple as a traffic violation nor does it appear they can handle violent criminals anymore. Policing is a very big ticket item in municipal taxation.
Reduce police funding for school guards and however many dozen officers standing around a crime in progress. Fund education, mental health and organisations trained to handle the root of these problems. Perhaps that money is better spent in gun buy back programs and lobby for stricter gun control. Limiting access and making guns more difficult to obtain works in pretty much every nation on Earth.
We don't need more inadequately trained people with guns.
Criminals and terrorists would love this.
I started to watch that Braves-Phillies game but the Atlanta announcers are such asshole homers I had to turn it off. They kept complaining that Charlie Morton was 'not getting the calls' on close pitches which were clearly outside or low and which were clearly shown by the K-box or whatever they call it to be outside or low.
"Well, apparently Charlie has to work overtime this inning because the ump's not giving him those calls" (which were all balls)
Their radio team is homeriffic as well. I kind of like when Bagwell or another former player fills in for a game or two and clearly roots for the Astros and refers to them as “we,” but I’d find that incredibly tedious every day.
Snakehead is very tasty. They've been an environmental catastrophe down thisaway but there are some areas, like the Loxahatchie Canal, which have become angler's paradise because snakeheads hit like Tyson, put up a vicious fight, and grill up yummy.
Ackcherley, lionfish - another environmental catastrophe - is also yummy; Whole Foods sells lionfish dumplings and fillets.
Interessin' factoid: both of these invasives started life as pet shop items. Maybe aquarium irresponsibility holds the key to feeding the masses. Maybe Biafra wouldn't have happened if it'd had more pet shops.
Other problems that more pet shops could help: posh London school girls who like to slum it a bit.
My dad saw snakehead on a menu not that long ago and said, "Guess they finally found some use for those things."
Thank you for the part of your newsletter about mental health. I have struggled with my mental health since I was a young child. I am on medication. I have a therapist and a psychiatrist. I have never, not once thought about harming someone else.
I am sick of being seen as part of the problem by people who don’t want to see or figure out the real causes. Punching down is easy. Leadership is not.
Is the Phillies pedal-to-the metal, high powered offense, defense be damned approach entertaining to watch or terrible to watch? Maybe it depends on whether you're a neutral observer of a Phillies fan.
Always fun to watch the Phillies Follies! Endless entertainment!
Both? The way baseball games are structured, it seems pretty clear they would be really entertaining for half an inning and then really terrible to watch for half an inning
2 Championships in 140 years of NL ball explains the Follies perfectly.
From 1918 through 1948, the Phillies had 1 (ONE!) season with a winning record.
The '32 Phillies went 78-76.
Of course, those 'winning' ways didn't stick - they then proceeded to fire off 13 seasons of finishing last or 2nd-to-last.
They played at the Baker Bowl in North Philly which had a 60 ft. RF fence. To my knowledge nobody called it a monster, it was covered with a huge ad that said "The Phillies use Lifebouy Soap" and the fans would always add "and they still stink"
In 1930 the league OPS at the Baker Bowl was around 90 points higher than the 2nd best hitters' park, Wrigley Field.
That's roughly the same degree to which the league OPS at 1993 Mile High Stadium was higher than at the 2nd best hitters' park. (Also Wrigley Field - cool!)
(And with the humidor, the Denver effect is really tamped down - last season the OPS at Coors was virtually identical as at GABP or Rogers Centre.)
Need a weekly 1980s anecdote about your old man as a palate cleanser for *waves arms around wildly* all this other shit.
I think Craig's dad is a subscriber. He should buy a mug and write a guest column. Maybe Craig could give him a mug for father's day...
This would be fantastic. :)
Does Craig’s dad really need to buy a mug to get a guest spot?
We live in a society. There are rules about these things.
I don't know. It may not meet the definition of mental illness, but in my opinion anyone who would kill a bunch of strangers, children or otherwise, has some sort of mental dysfunction. Mentally healthy people wouldn't do that.
I don't think it out of line to suggest both gun restrictions and increased mental health support might be parts of the solution. (Which isn't what Tucker Carlson et al are saying of course)
My first car was a late 70's Ford LTD. It got about 8 miles per gallon and leaked power steering fluid so bad that i had to replace it every other day. I bought it for $50 from my uncle. It was huge. It could seat 8. The front seat was basically a bench. I miss it every day. If you're going to learn to drive, learn to drive a difficult car as your first owned and then everything is easier after that.
I got a Ford LTD, it sits about 20 / So hurry up and bring your jukebox money!
Ha! In college I had a buddy who owned a baby shit yellow '84 (ish) LTD. He somehow acquired a set of bull horns for the hood a la Boss Hogg and loved driving it around campus for the looks he'd get from passersby.
He let me drive it once, and I swear the steering was so loose you had to turn the wheel damn near 60 degrees before the car would actually change direction.
These mother fuckers...
I couldn't be more proud of Craig than I am at this moment. Calling them what they are... These motherfuckers .
My first car was my dad’s 1973 Ford Maverick. The rear end was bent inward from the time he backed into a pillar, the drivers side window would roll down but not back up, and the heat was intermittent.
What a great car.