“Carhartt and '47. Two family-run companies, celebrating the
unbreakable bond that exists between workers and their hometowns across the
nation. Find your MLB team, in your style, wherever you're from.”
It’s amazing how everyone is looking to exploit the income
of middle America. Just this week, ABC gave us the return of Roseanne to the
highest ratings of any show since 2014, with the central character as much of a
loudmouth Trump supporter as the…ahem…actress who portrays her. You remember Roseanne Barr, great American patriot and respectful singer of the National Anthem:
Now Major League Baseball is jumping on this "true America" bandwagon, allowing merchandise licensing to those two great American companies who are hawking
caps starting at $30 a pop. What a deal for the segment of our great nation whose
average household income hovers near $55,000. Because another cap is what every
red-blooded American worker needs.
This blatant product pandering sits right up there with
Budweiser’s rebranding their beer cans “America” in the summer of 2016. And
that actually led to a 5%
DECREASE in sales. Of course, that so-called beer is crap, which might have
a little something to do with that.
As my colleague Neal Pollack pointed out to me this afternoon, targeting marketing at a middle to lower class segment of the American population is nothing new for pro sports. Both the MLB and NBA have Hispanic and Latino themed promotions. The Padres and Diamondbacks have military themed days. The entire league will honor Mother's Day and Father's Day and Jackie Robinson Day and Independence Day. The common link across each of these promotions is that each has its own gear for fans to buy, furthering the souvenir sales for these pauper ballclub owners.
But these hats Carhartt/'47 hats are something different.
Have you been to an MLB team shop lately? The Arizona Diamondbacks have at least two
full walls and multiple kiosks dedicated to headwear. Authentic team issue,
special editions, blinged, camo, minor league affiliates, cartoons, whathaveyou.
Hell, their
online store alone has 207 different hat options. But hey, thanks to this
great new American partnership targeting the heartland of America, you now have
three more.
The thing that's so wrong with these specific caps is that, like the Budweiser debacle, you now have a product trading on the nationalistic fervor that's already blasting this country apart. "celebrating the
unbreakable bond that exists between workers and their hometowns across the
nation"??? You can't get more overt than that. But hey, at least we know Carhartt and '47 along with MLB are trying to sell you a product. It's not like the Department of Defense secretly using $53million in taxpayer funds to pay 50 teams from across six pro sports leagues to wear camo gear, play patriotic songs and honor the military. That's not manipulative at all.
Look, whatever. America is a nation of consumers and
consumerism. If a company wants to make hats and sell them and that public
shows there’s a demand and wants to buy them, great. That’s the American way.
But does baseball need to blatantly appeal to a political sensibility that is already ripping their fans apart?
The Padres opened their 2018 season against the Milwaukee Brewers. Nowadays, Milwaukee having a team called "the Brewers" is as fitting as Utah having a team called "the Jazz". Is there jazz music in Salt Lake City? I'm sure you can find a couple of places where it is produced, and it likely sounds exactly what you think jazz played by nice young white men in short-sleeved white shirts and black polyester pants sounds like.
Is there beer in Milwaukee? If you consider this beer, sure, I guess.
Anyway, yesterday's opener went into extra innings, and the Padres lost. Freddy Galvis did his job - went 2 for 4 at the plate made the game a 1-1 tie in the ninth with an RBI single. Clayton Richard did his job - seven innings, gave up one run. On the defensive side, the Padres looked fine - good, even. Richard is known as a ground ball pitcher, and racked up 10 ground ball outs. Freddy Galvis helped out a bit there as well.
Clearly Freddy Galvis does more than just wear the hell out of an awesome pair of socks. Brad Hand came in to close out the 9th. He did his job. The Padres' bats did not. Hand came back for the 10th. The Padres' bats rested peacefully, sleeping the blissful sleep of the utterly goddamn useless. Brad Hand did not come back for the 11th. I think you all know what's coming next.
Yes, it's Australia's Lash, with their hit single "Aloha, Mr. Hand"! Adam Cimber eventually took the mound for the Padres in the 12th and did this...
What is he doing with his front foot?! I love everything about Adam Cimber’s delibery pic.twitter.com/bPXjtsKX0h
...but soon after that he gave up the winning run. But be of good cheer, Padres Faithful. It was a lovely day, extra-inning games are always fun, television has proven that everyone in Milwaukee looks like this...
I used to think there was a great Altman-esque movie that could be done about Major League Baseball’s Opening Day. Some sophisticated intersection of stories of the various humans engaging the national pastime’s most hallowed day: the aging former star facing his final season, the cocky eager rookie ready to unleash his fury and become a star, the bitter groundskeeper and his crew, the downtrodden beer vendor, the Asperger-afflicted statistician, the suicidal security officer and the freshly divorced father bringing his young son to his first ever ballgame. Each of these characters, wrapped in their self-centered world, collide on their way to the season’s first cry of “Play ball!”
Baseball, perhaps more than any other sport, pulls in and requires the attention of a lot of individuals. Sure, football may actually involve more people, but they are largely anonymous masses. Baseball is, to borrow a phrase from Saavik in The Wrath of Khan, “so…human.”
So, imagine my dismay when I arrive home from a long day at work, plop down on the couch, and turn on the Arizona Diamondbacks game in the middle of the 6th to see some superimposed strike zone floating over home plate.
What the fuck is this?!? I now need some graphic to show me balls and strikes? Oh, and we get the bonus of where exactly the ball crosses the plate with the pitch’s velocity? Baseball was the last sport that needed the real thing turned into a damned video game.
Sigh.
At least I got to join the game play just as The Beard, Archie Bradley, was able to hitch a ride on the brand spankin’ new bullpen cart to blaze a couple 96+ mph pitches (I know this because the TV told me so) before inducing an inning-ending double play. At this point, the Snakes are now up 6-2.
Knowing the Dodgers got blanked by the Giants, causing Neal Pollack all sorts of conniptions and aneurysms, this was becoming a dandy of an Opening Day, stupid graphics notwithstanding.
One of the underappreciated aspects of baseball is that the announcers, all of whom either aspire to be or think they are Vin Scully, try to wax about the annoyances of having to change a scorecard or what the optimum seed is to grow the ideal field (the D-Backs have opted for the highly
regarded shade-resistant Platinum TE seashore paspalum
over the previously used Bermuda). Christ, we’re already on this content and it’s just Opening Day?!
And now to lead off the 8th, Bob Brenly is highlighting that we have Statcast, the amazing technology that Deadspin once thought would
“Break
Sabermetrics” and can tell us things such as Nick Ahmed was able to get off his toss to start the aforementioned double play in .2 seconds.
As for the game, Jake Lamb had a day with a single, double and four RBI’s, bringing his opening day tally over two seasons to a franchise-leading nine. Jerrod Dyson and David Peralta also were able to kick off the season with multi-hit games. Pat Corbin went 5 2/3 with eight strikeouts while Bradley locked down the seventh and eighth innings. Goldschmidt barely saw a pitch to hit and strolled to first on balls three times.
For the Rockies, nobody really impressed but stud third baseman Nolan Arenado did get a couple of benign hits and former D-Back Chris Ianetta knocked three into fair play.
Final tally: Arizona Diamondbacks 8, Colorado Rockies 2.
Going into today's Dodgers-Giants opener, the dominant narrative, perpetuated by hacks like me, was that the Dodgers wouldn't miss a beat after losing their best hitter, Justin Turner, to a broken wrist. Meanwhile, the Giants, having lost their best pitcher, Madison "Dirty Harry" Bumgarner, to a broken finger, would be completely devastated and probably go on to be the worst regular season team in the history of baseball.
Guess how that played out?
Clayton Kershaw pitched six innings and gave up a bunch of hits, including a stupid solo home run to dumb Joe Panik, but he was still pretty good. That's not why the Dodgers lost.
Facing Bumgarner's replacement, a corn-fed hulk named Ty Blach, the Dodgers turned in a AAA offensive performance. It became very clear that Turner and his 12-pitch at-bats were the key to the Dodgers wearing down the opposition. Corey Seager looked horrible, and Cody Bellinger looked worse. Chris Taylor had a monstrous strikeout on a pitch down the middle in a key situation, causing his bat to float in the air and impale him in the stomach.
Against all my warnings, texts, and phone calls, Dave Roberts batted Kiké Hernandez in the cleanup spot. I love Kiké Hernandez, he is my favorite banana, but he is not a cleanup hitter. However, he did walk twice, which would have been great if he were batting 7th or 8th. Instead, he cleaned up about as well as the Dodgers' grounds crew got rid of the liquid shit spill the other night. It was a real gusher on Opening Day, and I'm glad it's over.
On the plus side, Yasiel Puig and Chase Utley stole bases, Yasmani Grandal had two hits (plus a key strikeout in the 9th inning), the team made no errors, and the bullpen looked really good. You've got to lose some 1-0 games during the year, and at least they got this one out of the way. I hope.
But I can't complete this post without discussing Alex Rodriguez's terrible debut as an ESPN broadcaster. Let's face it, the game was a dud from a Dodgers perspective, so let's all pig-pile on A-Rod.
Despite having no in-game experience, A-Rod gets to sit in the big booth. Clearly, he's used to the spotlight, because the camera spent more time on him than it did on the actual field. That only made sense when Jennifer Lopez, looking fine as hell, stopped by with the kids for a visit. The rest of the game was interminable, and A-Rod revealed himself to be a class one dope.
We had to spend an entire half-inning listening to A-Rod talk about how Andy Pettite taught him how to be a champion (Answer: Be on a team with Andy Pettite). Then, in the 9th inning, with a runner on first and no one out, A-Rod said that this would be a good time for the Dodgers to bunt, even though their catcher was at the plate, they were entering the back third of their order, and if they bunted then there would be one out instead of no outs. Then he complained--twice--that Giants right fielder Andrew McCutchen was playing too shallow, even though he was playing a totally normal right field.
"Why do you think he's playing too shallow?" asked Jessica Mendoza, who, unlike A-Rod, actually knows something about baseball. A-Rod answered something like "you don't want to give up a double," but, again, McCutcheon wasn't playing too shallow.
A-Rod will be in the booth again for Sunday night's Dodgers-Giants game for more "analysis" and memories of what it was like to "carpool" to work with Andy Pettite. Also, Mendoza will be there to overanalyze pitching mechanics to the point of audience boredom, joined by grumpy Matt Vasgersian, who will once again criticize Puig for showboating.
Time to bring on the local announcers, I say. After tonight's debacle, these lovable losers and World Series runners-up could use some home cooking.
In this day and age, it's nearly impossible to buy something without knowing what exactly it is you're purchasing. This is in no small part due to the miracle of The Internet, which gives us things like Yelp and Amazon Reviews, allowing us to see what is we are getting before we actually get it. These reviews can be helpful as well as informative.
The savvy Internet User also knows that one can simply go to a brand's website and get a pretty good idea of what that brand is all about. Sometimes, you don't even need to read a product review to know that what you may being buying is a worthless piece of shit, and the person trying to sell you that worthless piece of shit is also a worthless piece of shit.
The website for San Diego talk radio station 97.3 The Machine does a fairly good job at showing you what that station is all about. For instance, these guys are prominently displayed:
This is the 'The Mens Room' (sic). Here's how the site describes them:
So, it's Ira Glass4. (Math Humor! George Will is a reader, I understand.)
This is 97.3 talk show host Dan Sileo:
He seems nice. The Padres organization apparently thought so too.
My point, and I do have one, is that if a sports franchise were looking for a new radio station to carry its game broadcasts, a station that would appeal to as many potential listeners as possible, 97.3 The Machine might not be the best choice - and it would be relatively easy to make that determination based on about 10 minutes' worth of basic Internet research (which I just did to compile the above material). Having to be reassured by a station's management team that one of their headliners will be kept far, far away from your team's pre- or post-game shows?
So the Padres move to the station; at the same time, station ownership group Entercom announces that there will be a format change. Now, the Padres agreeing to a contract with Entercom without first having a deep understanding of what the new format would be seems a bit unwise. It'd be like signing a lease on a furnished apartment, after having your landlord say "oh, by the way, I know you like all of this furniture and these appliances but I'm going to go ahead and put in a bunch of different stuff and let you know what all that new stuff will be on the day before you move in. TRUST ME IT'LL BE FINE."
Enter Kevin Klein. No, not this guy (might want to put on the headphones for this):
That is Kevin Kline. He's a funny and talented Academy Award-winning actor. I'm referring to this Kevin Klein, recently added to the 97.3 The Machine's on-air staff.
Whoa! That's a dark introduction! What could all the hub-bub be about, you're probably wondering. Well, Klein announced his new San Diego gig - on 97.3 The Machine - via a series of tweets, one of which contained this:
Get it? Jump? It's a reference to the sad fact that San Diego's Coronado Bay Bridge has seen its fair share of suicide jumpers. Needless to say, this didn't go over well with the Padres.
Statement from Padres Executive Chairman Ron Fowler and General Partner Peter Seidler: pic.twitter.com/KQMRhi09aH
As of this morning, the Padres are "considering all options" with the station and Entercom. Whether or not you think Klein is funny, the thing that haunts me is how we got here, an MLB team dealing with radio broadcast problems before the season's even started. It seems crazy, but then again, being saddled with talentless hacks because someone in upper management didn't bother to do their homework...well, that's a very Padres thing to do.
This morning, I settled in to watch the MLB.tv "condensed" version of last night's Dodgers-Angels final preseason game, the ideal setup for an exhibition that ran late. Eleven minutes of baseball highlights, and I could go back to bed. So I was very surprised when, with two minutes to go in the roundup, there were still six innings to go in the game.
Then I saw crazy footage of water bubbling up in the outfield, followed by a brief shot of the grounds crew pushing an enormous broom through a massive puddle of water on the warning track, followed by a shot of disgusted-looking fans trudging upward toward the exit. In the fifth inning.
Well, as the L.A. Times put it this morning, a "smelly liquid" flooded the field last night. Apparently, in this age where the President pays hush money to a porn star, the L.A. Times is a family newspaper that can't use the term "liquid shit."
Dodgers outfielder Andrew Toles skirted around the issue in the article:
"I smelled it," he said. "It was nasty. I'm not going to tell you what it really was, that's kind of messed up. But, yeah, it was nasty, man. It was a tragic thing."
Ha ha, this is a funny story, but it also points out some serious problems with the Dodgers organization. They put out a great product on the field, but they're also essentially a gigantic hedge-fund in batting helmets, designed to squeeze as much revenue out of their fans as possible while giving them as little possible in return. From the air, Dodger Stadium is a magnificent representation of mid-century architecture. But on the ground, it is, literally, a shithole.
I attended a World Series game there last year, and it was dank. Admittedly, that was on an 100-degree day, but regardless, once you get past the Club Level boxes, the Dodger Stadium experience gets pretty skanky, pretty fast. To the hoi polloi, the Dodgers offer terrible beer and even more terrible food--beyond the boiled monkey dicks they call "Dodger Dogs," just look at this hideous "pretzel chicken croissant."
The Stadium is old, dingy, and now, a literal sewer. Given that the majority of Dodger fans can't even watch the team on TV because of some sort of screwed-up rights deal now entering its umpteenth year, seeing them live is often the only option. Dodgers President Stan Kasten (pictured below), said they were deciding whether or not to offer ticket holders their money back for the privilege of inhaling toxic sewer gases.
This team's generosity knows no bounds.
In 24 hours, Clayton Kershaw will throw the season's first pitch. Hope springs eternal. But if you happen to be in the stands, and you make the mistake of eating the Stadium food and find yourself hustling toward the John in the 4th inning, you might want to think twice about flushing. You never know, in a nearly 60-year-old structure that's been a real-estate scam since the moment ground was broken, where that waste might emerge.
When Justin Turner got hit on the hand by a baseball thrown by a man named Kendall, breaking his wrist and knocking him out of action for at least six weeks, Dodger Nation said, "well, that's unfortunate."
The next thought was, "which of five totally acceptable candidates will bat third while he heals?" But when Madison Bumgarner done got his finger broke a few days later, Giants Nation went into a totally justified panic.
Oh ho ho. The Giants were already teetering on the brink of irrelevancy, daring to run out a lineup of past-prime All-Stars that they hoped would sneak them into the Wild Card so they could go on one of their bullshit miracle playoff runs. They were going to be The Expendables of the MLB.
But they forgot to add Expendable pitchers, because Bartolo Colon and R.A. Dickey weren't available. So when Bumgarner (and also Jeff Samardzija, a Randy Johnson lookalike though not pitch-alike) went down, they were forced to announced Ty Blach as their Opening Day starter.
And so the cry went up among the cognoscenti: The season is ruined.
“Bumgarner’s injury is a body blow for the Giants and for baseball.” @Kurkjian_ESPN says to @Buster_ESPN on today’s #BBTN podcast.
Are you kidding? Losing Madison Bumgarner is a body blow to baseball? More like a blow job. Look, I know that Bumgarner pitched 17 consecutive innings in the World Series on negative two days rest or something like that, and he can hit home runs sometimes. But the guy is also a straight-up xenophobic dirt-biker who reserves most of his "intensity" on the mound for taunting Latino players. When the 2010 Giants featured Tim Lincecum and Young Posey and Brian Wilson and the Panda, OK, they were a cute and worthy champion. But when they reformed around Mad Bum, Ted Nugent in a cap, they became a lot less sympathetic.
Vin Scully's description of the Puig-Bumgarner dust-up was more entertaining than the actual dust-up. pic.twitter.com/tU5LgiNc9I
So here is my season preview for the Giants: The Giants are going to SUUUUUCK. They are going to suck suck suck so bad. They will finish behind the Padres. They will finish behind the Rockies. They may finish ahead of the Diamondbacks, who will also suck. They will certainly finish behind the Dodgers. And thank Jeebus for that.
The not long-ago years of 2010-2014 were a terrible time to be a Dodger fan. We had to endure being owned by the Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos of baseball, watching Don Mattingly call for bunts when no bunts were called for, and, most of all, watching the Giants win three World Series and turn into a dynasty. Well, that dynasty is over now.
It may be a bodyblow to Tim Kurkjian and to all the tech employees who love sitting in the company seats for free at the ballpark on the Bay, but for the rest of baseball, the Bumgarner injury is a glorious thing. I'm very much looking forward to beating the Giants 7-1 on Opening Day, and on every subsequent day for the rest of time. Farewell, Madbum, you grumpy redass. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
by Jason Franz- Cambridge Analytica notwithstanding, thank god for social media, because without it we would have no idea how much longer we all have until the perpetually hallowed Opening Day.
Of course, the bigger news for the Arizona Diamondbacks has been how they have crumbled even further into their Team Uncertainty persona. The past days have handed the fans of the Snakes the following:
Pat Corbin named as the Opening Day starter because Zack Greinke pulled his groin (which is always better than pulling someone else’s groin I suppose),
JD Martinez replacement Steven Souza essentially detached his pectoral muscle doing the one thing JD Martinez did not – play defense,
Yasmany Tomas, the second highest paid Diamondback and planned fourth outfielder, was sent down to start the season in AAA ball despite Souza’s injury,
I mean, at least they did close out sprint training with a couple solid outings by Zack Godley and Greinke to finish the preseason right around .500. As Nuke Laloosh said, “Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.” Of course, he also said, “Women do get woolly because of all the stress…yes.”
Original Diamondbacks skipper Buck Showalter used to claim that the best spring training record was .500 because the spring was the time for shaking stuff out. I wish I knew this was going to translate to something good for Arizona, but with this team, who the hell knows?
We do have Roger Clyne singing the Anthem on Opening day with some neat airplanes, so there’s that.
Twitter is mostly horrible, but (sadly) it's a bit indispensable for those of us rooting around for Padres news. Looking for something Padres-related to write about, I came across this:
These fancy leggings are made by Stance, a socks/underwear company that's headquartered just a few miles up the road from my house. If you have tween/teen kids who are into surfing and skateboarding, they'll tell you all about Stance socks and why they NEED to have them. "These are $24 socks," I said to my 14 year-old son when he said that he needed them. "Why do you need them? You don't even play baseball." "Because," he replied, "they are LIT." LIT means "awesome", or "rad" if you are of my generation. My son is, I think, a Thought Leader on things that are LIT - he recently bestowed LIT status upon actor Henry Cavill's mustache, and clearly he is correct. It is - or rather was - LIT.
I was all set to declare the Padres' socks the Best in Baseball, but a quick search revealed that the D-Backs and the Giants also have great Stance socks. Here's one of two on-field variants worn by the Giants. The Golden Gate Bridge motif is, dare I say, LIT:
Here are the D-backs' Away socks. They manage to take Arizona's wretched uni colors and make them somewhat cool:
Finally, the Dodgers' socks give a shout-out to the oft-maligned stirrups, which most players stopped wearing years ago.
The Rockies do not have LIT Stance socks. Why wouldn't the Rockies wear these edgy yet tasteful socks? People from Colorado think that Coors is actually beer and not beer-flavored mineral water, which is as good an explanation as any. So, ranked in order:
4. D-backs. Those colors. Who knew Ken Kendrick was a fan of 80's pop artist Nagel?
3. Dodgers. On the one hand, the stirrup look is a bit retro-cool. On the other, they're about as imaginative as those tuxedo-print t-shirts.
2. Giants. The bridge element is cool. But they could have taken it a step further and added the sweaty, permed/mulleted faces of San Francisco soft-rock legends Journey.
1. Padres. With the exception of their glorious brown throwbacks (which we may see returned to their former regular rotation glory), the Padres have the worst uniforms in baseball. They're bland, unoriginal, and everyone in San Diego hates them because The Management had a whole goddamn rainbow to choose from and they went with BLUE AND WHITE. DODGER COLORS. Those socks, though! They pop without being obnoxious, and they give us Padres fans something to buoy our spirits. Because if stuff like this is any indication of what Fate has in store for this team, we need all the good things we can get.
So this happened. I mean...how on earth?? Rob Refsnyder rule book double through the hole in the wall. pic.twitter.com/oc5CQPposD
Let's start with this: If the Dodgers had traded for Justin Verlander last July and the Astros had ended up with Yu Darvish, then the Dodgers would be the defending World Champions and I'd still be hungover. But that's not what happened, as we all know. Instead, Darvish put on the Blue and gave up something like 16 runs in two World Series innings. Despite having a racist first baseman and a star player named George, the Astros won it all. Dodgerland demands a rematch.
I was fully prepared to pre-anoint the Dodgers as National League champions, asking the commissioner's office for special dispensation to skip the season and just wait until the first round of the playoffs so we could sweep the Nationals. But then, on a recent weekday morning, I sat down in front of the TV with a cup of coffee and a bowl of disgusting granola to watch a couple of innings of the previous night's preseason game against the barely Major League A's. Three batters into the home half of the first I witnessed this horror.
Hit on the left wrist by a crummy pitch from the A's terrible #1 starter Kendall Graveman (whose name is displayed below as a rebus), Turner writhed around on the ground for a while, kicking his legs like an overturned tortoise. I uttered the following sentence: "Oh shit, we are fucked."
But it's a testament to the depth and power of the Dodgers that they can lose their starting 3rd baseman and best overall hitter for at least the first month of the season, and probably more, and the overall reaction from the organization and fans is "well, that sucks, but it's really no big deal." Maybe now the Dodgers will only win 101 games instead of 103. Even that might not be the case, because what's probably going to happen is that Logan Forsythe will play most of the innings at 3rd base, and Kiké Hernandez, who hit three home runs to send the Dodgers into the World Series, will share 2nd base with future Hall Of Famer Chase Utley. Only Kiké, however, has the potential to dress as a rally banana.
When it comes to the Dodgers, a Moneyball team with infinite resources, the sum is not greater than the whole of the parts, whatever the hell that means. They return essentially the same team that came one game away from the title. Joc Pederson hit three homers in the World Series, and he's probably going to open the season in AAA. They are good. Let's break it down section by section, as the inferior baseball blogs always do:
Starting Pitching
The Dodgers are blessed with the continued presence, at least through the end of this season, of Clayton Kershaw, one of the 10 greatest pitchers of all time. He will not decline this year.
Mercifully, Darvish has flow the coop to Chicago, where he will break the heart of a very sensitive Cubs Nation. The Dodgers have returned to a pre-Yu configuration behind Kershaw. Alex Wood has looked excellent this spring, as have Kenta Maeda (now returning to the rotation after a dominating postseason in relief), and Rich Hill. Hyun-Jin Ryu looks fatter than ever and will definitely have an ERA north of four, but most teams would kill to have a fifth guy as good as Ryu. When Ryu falters back to the bullpen or strains a rib at the buffet, the Dodgers have an adequate long man in Ross Stripling. Their "big" offseason signing, Tom "The Faucet" Koehler, is already out for the season with an injury, so emergency starts will have to come from the minors. Fortunately, 23-year-old Walker Buehler appears ready, despite endless distractions from his depressed best friend Cameron.
Check out this filthy Walker Buehler action:
Good luck, Padres hitters!
Infield
The Dodgers' infield is anchored at first base by Cody Bellinger, who may be 22 at the moment but appears to have put on 15 pounds of solid muscle. He will hit 40 home runs and make the All-Star Team. Corey Seager spent most of Spring Training as the designated hitter rather than at shortstop where he belongs, causing Dodgers broadcasters to blather endlessly about how spring doesn't matter, even though it should probably be a cause of concern that your star shortstop can't play shortstop because of a bad elbow.
Still, until Seager doesn't hit at least .290 with 25 home runs, we should just assume that everything is OK. The rest of the infield will be comprised of some combination of Utley, Forsythe, Hernandez, and, when he returns, Ginger Jesus himself, Justin Turner. It will be excellent.
The catchers are Yasmani Grandal and Austin Barnes, both well above average. Both also play at least one infield position. Kyle Farmer, who is both a catcher and a 3rd baseman, awaits. He hit the hide off the ball this spring. The Dodgers are stacked.
Outfield
In its only major offseason move, the Dodgers traded several pitching corpses and a cute infielder named Charlie Culberson to Atlanta for former Dodger and Rhianna squire Matt Kemp. Everyone assumed that the Dodgers would unload Kemp's bloated contract onto some unsuspecting American League team. But shockingly, Kemp reported to camp 40 pounds lighter and three times handsomer, and has raked so hard this spring that he's probably going to open the season as the #3 or cleanup hitter. He'll platoon at the position with Andrew Toles, who appears to have fully recovered from knee surgery and is now fast again. Toles looks short at first glance, but is actually probably a normal-sized man.
Right field will be handled by the amazing Yasiel Puig, the man who launched a thousand racist tweets about how baseball should be played the "right way."
Center field belongs to the excellent Chris Taylor, who, because he is white, Madison Bumgarner doesn't hate.
Bullpen
The Dodgers' bullpen is anchored by the incredible Kenley Jansen, this generation's Mariano Rivera. Brandon Morrow and Tony Watson are gone, allowing other teams the chance to pay them untold millions for pitching maybe 60 innings. The rest of the pen looks at least adequate, and is probably better than average, though it does still contain the distressingly inconsistent stylings of Pedro Baez.
Look, the Dodgers are going to win this division for the sixth year in a row. The Giants will be better than last season. If all goes best, their Andrew McCutchen and Evan Longoria acquisitions will limp them into a Wild Card spot. But they're still not going to pass the Blue. The Padres cannot possibly have a winning record. The Rockies are going to be the usual mess of 13-12 games. And I hope to heaven the Diamondbacks fall into a hole. Off all the teams in the division, they are the only one that has gotten appreciably worse.
So I say to expect at least 100 wins, and quite likely a second straight NL pennant, for the Dodgers. After that, who knows? The Astros appear to be on the verge of dynastic. And the Yankees, the goddamn Yankees. But we could win the World Series, though, we definitely could. And Tommy Lasorda, against most odds, is still alive.
For Arizona
Diamondbacks fans, last year was not supposed to happen. They were going to be
pretty good, maybe knock on the back door of the wild card, perhaps give America’s
First Baseman Paul Goldschmidt a travel buddy to the All Star game – that was
really it. Then the season started and that team just didn’t want to lose. Of
course, neither did the Dodgers or Rockies, but still they were looking good. I
remember checking the be-all-end-all of weekly team justification, the ESPN
Power Rankings, and seeing that even when the D-Backs held the best record in
the league one month in they couldn’t crack the top 8. It was make believe. It
had to be.
AP Photo
Despite the fact that the Diamondbacks came out on top of that Wild Card
game (which was quite possibly the
greatest game of the year), I’m still not really sure how to approach this
season with this team. And I’m not alone. CBS
Sports says they “should be competitive again” and Fansided’s
Call to the Bullpen says this season “has a chance to be special.” Such confidence
in a team that made the playoffs, had the manager of the year and a finalist
for MVP.
MLB
It's not like the Diamondbacks are the Dodgers who enter the season with just a smidge less confidence than last season (which was enough to choke a white rhino - too soon?) or the Giants who always think they're better than they actually are. Ever since Randy Johnson and Luis Gonzalez were traded away into the sunset, this has been team uncertainty. So where does one
start a preview for such an ambiguous team? We’ve already touched on their bringing back the bullpen cart and some zesty new culinary options. How about this week’s
announcement
of Holiday uniforms? I’m generally unimpressed with the various hats and
jerseys but those socks!
Any season for the
Diamondbacks begins and ends with Paul Goldschmidt. As consistently dominant as
Clayton Kershaw has been on the mound for the Dodgers, Goldschmidt has been his
equal as an everyday position player. He may not have the panache of a Bryce Harper
or Giancarlo Stanton – let’s face it, he comes off bland as hell, just
ask SI – but dude is the Lou Gehrig of today, just minus the disease named
for him. If Goldy can stay healthy and the Diamondbacks brass can pull their
heads out of their butts and remove the distraction of a contract extension
sooner rather than later, he should stand as the cornerstone and come in 3rd
place in MVP voting once again.
The Sporting News
But the real fan
favorite of the Diamondbacks is, of course, Archie Bradley. Up until the Wild
Card game it was mainly because he had a beard. But then he unleashed the very
first post-season triple by a relief pitcher EVER! He even pitched mostly well enough
in the next round against the Dodgers that he has earned a chance at closer. Now
he’s posing for pictures with the likes of Michael Phelps and Devin Booker. Whether
he gets the closer gig or not doesn’t really matter because there will still be
more fans at Chase Field wearing fake beards than Goldschmidt jerseys.
Another lynchpin
for Arizona is Zack Greinke and his humongous contract. Greinke’s already had a
rough spring, apparently throwing
more innings of slow pitch softball in simulated games than actual pitches
to actual players on actual opposing teams.
He’s been ruled out as the Opening Day starter, which really doesn’t matter
that much, but if he misses a chunk of time or spends most of the season at
less than optimum health, the starters are probably sunk as there will not be a
stud to hide behind.
There’s a bunch of
other players wearing D-Backs uniforms, too. We lost a JD Martinez but got a
Steven Souza and a Jarrod Dyson. Jake Lamb could take another step forward to
join Goldy as a bland unknown superstud. Lots of experts will be looking at the
rest of the starters including Robbie Ray, Taijuan Walker and Pat Corbin to see
if they can match past all-star form. And they seem to have a lot of infielders
who do a lot of different things well but not a lot of them together.
Essentially, the
Arizona Diamondbacks have a solid baseball club. They could be pretty darned
good. Or maybe not, I really don’t know. But unless they start about as hot as
they did last year, it could be a long summer testing the swimming pool chlorine and bragging
about how we’re ahead of the Giants and Padres. In the meantime, I want to gift
Torey Lovullo and the Arizona Diamondbacks with this epic tome as special gift
to help them along their path to somewhere.
This blatant product pandering sits right up there with
Budweiser’s rebranding their beer cans “America” in the summer of 2016. And
that actually led to a 5%
DECREASE in sales. Of course, that so-called beer is crap, which might have
a little something to do with that.
