A Shitting Shitload of Shit
Ooh. Sorry for the potty language there. Lots of stuff that I haven't been bothering to touch on, so let's fucking do this already. . .
Alright, so the Jays are doing shit all right now, and while the economy and the value of the dollar are said to be the biggest reason, we all know it can't possibly be as simple as that. Can it?
Even in a shit economy, where teams would be expected to scale back, something's a little fishy about the way money is disappearing. I mean, Pat Burrell hits free agency after four straight years of 30 or so HRs and 125 OPS+ or thereabouts, and he winds up making only a million dollars more than Lyle Overbay? That's pretty seriously fucking fucked.
You hear whispers of collusion, but, as should be fresh in our memories from last year with Barry Bonds, it's damn near impossible to prove. Are MLB owners are acting in consort to keep salaries down or are all just similarly reacting to a market with a lot of supply and not much demand? (JC Bradbury does a nice job following that side of the sport at Sabernomics.)
Obviously, I have no fucking clue, but it wouldn't surprise me at all-- because Rogers are cunts-- if I learned that the Jays were just being good soldiers here, no longer only indebted for their past equalization payments, but now that the dollar is down, hoping for more.
There has also been talk (that mostly doesn't make sense) that Rogers are gearing up to sell the team, laying off employees, and trimming back all cost they can, to make it look more attractive to potential buyers. I'm less inclined to believe that, personally, but that won't stop me from (again) pleading Mr. Balsillie to take charge and not let the douche bags at MLSE get their hands on the team.
Wait-- that's the equation right? Rogers are cunts and MLSE are douche bags? Or is it the other way around? I can never remember.
Either way, Geoff Baker's column in today's blog post at the Seattle Times, which Parkes has already brought up, gives you a pretty good idea of exactly how fucking little ownership gives a shit about the fans. Sure, things appeared rosy when they were doling out big money extensions to their core players, and I think that gave a lot of people the perception that the owners were going to be freewheeling spenders who thought that winning was the best path to profitability, but now we see it's definitely not true, just like... well... a whole shitload of things you've been told since Rogers took over aren't true.
That, along with stuff like Rogers' mind-boggling third-quarter profits, is making what seems like a colossal scaling-back, with plenty of help available in the free agent market, pretty goddamn hard to swallow.
But that's not all that's preventing the Jays from making moves. (And no, it's not because JP is a slobbering fuckhead like a lot of fans want to believe. You can definitely pick apart a shit-ton of his moves over the years, but the lunatics who get up in arms when Boston signs John Smoltz or Cleveland signs Carl Pavano, and we don't, need to take a little bit of the effort out of their monumentally fucking misplaced indignation and put it into buying a Shylock Holmes hat and doing some detective work on why these things are happening. I mean, holy mother of fuck, just because you think JP is a bad GM doesn't mean that everything he does or doesn't do is bad. The world doesn't work like that, you seriously fucking clueless ape shit pieces of fuck. )
Uh... for example, ESPN's Buster Olney has noticed that Dick Griff man crush Orlando Cabrera would be a perfect fit for the Jays. Ahh, but there's a fucking draft pick in the way. "I like Cabrera, and think he could help us," one highly ranked Blue Jays executive who speaks a fuckload like JP Ricciardi told him. "But I cannot justify giving up a pick for a 34-year-old shortstop on a one- or two-year deal. It makes absolutely no sense for us. None."
That kind of fucking blows. I guess.
Now, do I have a point here that I'm driving at in all this? Hmmm. No, I guess not really. Except to say that shit is fucked for a variety of reasons, most of which we don't know, and that there appears to be a gi-friggin'-normous amount of wasted energy going on among Jays fans-- which, unfortunately gets stoked by king shits like Griffin, who at least has the excuse of a hidden agenda, and our pal Spenny, who simply doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about (and, of course, our wonderful anonymous commentards).
If you ask me-- or, quite often in the comments section, even if you don't-- I'd again say that all this hand-wringing energy would be far better spent more positively. You know, wrapping your mind around the many ways that things really don't seem so bad (which I've already discussed ad nauseam and then some), getting excited to see some younger players get their chance, and fuck... simply for getting shitfaced on a summer afternoon at the ballgame. But I guess everybody has about fifteen years worth of sand to dig out of their vaginas, and right now for a lot of folks its all coming in one gloriously foul wave. So... uh... y'know... fuck you all.
(OK, not everybody. Not even close to everybody, I guess. But I'm going to assume for the time being that you know what the fuck I mean.)
KLaw Chat Features No Jays Content, But Some BBRAA Rippage Is Almost As Good
"I made this argument on 890 AM here a few weeks ago - if we're just going to ignore the benefit a player got from his home park (since Rice was extremely ordinary on the road), let's give Dante Bichette his due and enshrine him in 2010."
"I really believe that Rice's improving vote totals are evidence of older voters raging against the dying of the light: Once, their opinions on baseball players were esteemed, but as the fan base has become more educated, that respect has faded. But they can still show us by voting for players the intelligent portion of the fan base doesn't consider HoFers ... even if those same players weren't respected by the writers when they were actually playing."
Quickly
Fangraphs figures Frank Thomas is "the biggest loser at the hands of an over-saturated designated hitter market."
From left to right in this picture are Mrs. Somebody, Mrs. Teixeira, Mrs. Barajas and Mrs. Showalter. Nicely done, Rod. Nicely done.
Our buddy Dierkes calls Aaron Hill a fantasy "sleeper" over at his gig for RotoAuthority, while JV All-Stars puts Travis Snider on his sleeper list, then projects him at .270-17-70... which I'll still take.
Speaking (again) of that Baker article, I'm pretty sure the Southpaw just absolutely fucking crushed it out of the park. A must read. Actually, well... it's probably too late for you now, but you should probably read theirs before delving into whatever those fucking ramblings I just slapped down up there were, and then skip my nonsense.
Yankees blog and bet not-follower-through-ers River Ave. Blues talk about ESPN Jim Callis saying that he'll have the Yankees system ranked 15th and the Red Sox 13th in the 2009 Prospect Handbook. (So... that's good news, right?)
The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, or for short, NAMBLA, will be presenting Cito Gaston with the Jackie Robinson Lifetime Achievement Award on Saturday night, because, I guess he was about a half-season short of winning it for the last ten years.
(Yes, I know the NAMBLA thing is a Jon Stewart gag. No, I don't give a fuck if you think it's stealing. Yes, you are being a bit of fucking pedant here. Yes, Colbert does absolutely fucking slay Stewart now.)
According to Sports Business International-- who, personally, I wouldn't believe for a second-- Baseball TV (think MLB Network programming plus CanCon) looks set to be launched in Canada if [sic] 2009 if negotiations between Rogers Media and Major League Baseball can be finalised."
Because I Love You
Oh, and before you get all pissy-faced in the comments, please give a thought to the 2007 2008 [motherfucker!-- Ed.] Minnesota Twins, who went into the year without Santana, Silva and Hunter, were waiting on Liriano to heal, and had moved Matt Garza for Delmon Young. They gave the rotation to their kids, put Carlos (79 OPS+) Gomez in centre, and weren't given much of a chance to compete because of how great the Indians had been the year before, and because of the huge splash the Tigers had made in the off-season.
They missed out on a playoff series by losing a one-game playoff to the White Sox. Thanks.
Posts
52 rational and reasonable comments:
What a worthless example
Fuck off, Parkes.
But yeah, I don't see any parallels at all. What possibly could he be driving at?
I think you're talking about the 2008 Twins, but yeah, good analogy. Here's hoping the Yankees are this year's version of last year's Tigers, too.
Has Beeston seriously been looking for a new Prez/CEO for the team for 2.5 months and hasn't found one yet?
Any deeper and you're going to have to ask Parkes if he's still ok
Fucking him up the ass?
No Stoeten, you're example
Join the Group...Balsillie Buy The Jays
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=53016833618
I am example what?
typo catch !
*your
If Balsillie buys the Jays, will they move to Hamilton or Kitchener or something?
I still don't know what Parkes has to do with it. But yeah, it's a stretch, I know. Better calibre of prospects in the rotation for the Twins, easier division, one less beast to contend with, still only had 89 wins, two legit year-in year-out MVP candidates, but it's not meant to say "this will happen", it's meant to say, these situations are similar enough to make it perfectly clear how unbelievable worthless all the certainty over this team being AWFUL is.
Houston over at the Globe also remarks on the looming possibility of an MLB TV channel with "Canadian content", on Rogers network.
Gotta love Justin Morneau for his part in the Twins success. .300 average, 129 RBI, A.L.MVP runner-up this year, CP Athlete of the Year.
Baseball America's Jim Callis also revealed in his BA Chat (where he revealed the Sox were 13th and the Yanks were 15th) that the Jays would have the 19th ranked system (last in the AL East).
You know, as much as I love Colbert, I think Stewart gets a bit of a bum rap these days. The show is a lot better now than it was a few years ago (like, 2 years ago, or so, when Colbert was nailing it and Stewart had lost all of his good correspondents [Colbert, Carell, Corddry] and the new ones hadn't carved a niche yet).
I don't know how Stewart was still winning Emmy's every year when even he was acknowledging that he didn't deserve them.
This was very hard to read.
I'm pretty sure that NAMBLA is a south park gag. Unless they stole it from Stewart also.
South Park had the real NAMBLA, and also their own National Association of Marlon Brando Look-Alikes. The Stewart gag was using NAMBLA as the abbreviation for any group name, regardless of what the group's initials actually were.
The bar is set so high for TDS, when they are only average for them it seems worse. While Colbert may provide more regular LOLS, when Jon Stewart comes he comes with the thunder.
God do I hate O-Cab. And the sandy vagina squad too.
sounds like TDS is the Jays, and TCR the Yankees.
Beeston is trying to collect as many paychecks before the Jays realize he hasnt done anything and fire him.
Uncle Griff and McCowan mentioned something the other day about how Beeston narrowed the list of candidates down to 40-something
The Jays don't have a position player anywhere near the quality of Mauer or Morneau.
In fact, Toronto's "franchise" hitter (VDub) put up numbers strikingly similar to one Jason Kubel.
Playoffs!
"It amazes me that Toronto is the 5th biggest city in north America and yet we spend like a small market, 100 mill is small market today. Rogers just uses the team to sell advertising and fill timeslots on its sportsnet stations. Its time they spend the money necessary to compete with the Yanks and Boston, the fans will support a winner just put one on the field first!"
wow, this guy was on griff's comment section. he is absolutely fucking correct.
stop bashing jp and look to the real problem, thr sick fucks at rogers who made a fucking killing with a par dollar in 08, never mind their huge overall profits in evry quarter of 08.
i'm switching to bell. cunts.
hahaha - I just found this crazy article on The Canadian's 'sports' page, featuring a brief history of the Blue Jays culminating in a strange tirade about how the team's ownership doesn't care about Canada or Canadians. (no maple leaf obviously equal to hatred of Canada)
It features gems of fact-checking sloppiness like the following...
"Stars in the re-branded 'Jays' have included Roy Halladay, Eric Hinske, Orlando, Ted Lilly, Alexis Rios, Vernon Wells and Carlos Delgado."
I love that Orlando dropped that lame ass last name and went all mono-moniker like a pimp. And that Alex Rios has a stripper sister named Alexis.....
Sorry - (I'm a little drunk) - forgot to post the link to that crazy article from The Canadian's page...
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Sports/2006/03/06/01159.html
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Sports/2006/
03/06/01159.html
His name is Alexis
You fucking idiot
Why do you get so angry when people rip JP's moves, Mr. Apologist?
"The Jays don't have a position player anywhere near the quality of Mauer or Morneau."
The Twins don't have a pitcher anywhere near the quality of Halladay. The comparison is worthless because the Jays play in the AL East - and even though the Jays looks like a team that should win a minimum of 85-88 games beginning in 2010 for a few years (if they keep Halladay that is), they will still play in the AL East - and trying to be optimistic by using the Twins as a comparable is as short-sighted as the morons who believed that the Twins/White Sox were better than the Jays last year (take a look at the H2H matchups between the Jays and the Central beasts if u need proof of this). The Jays won't be complete garbage, but barring a few moves they won't compete for a playoff spot until 2010 at the earliest.
Prediction: 2009 Jays win 85 games and finish 4th in the AL East, 7th in the AL - though after factoring schedule imbalance/division inequality, the Jays will actually be the 4th or 5th best team in the AL.
I still believe JP has something up his sleeve, even if he only has 5 mill or so to play with (15 mill if he trades the Beej, though). Hell, signing Sheets and Wiggington(maybe 2/20 with a chance to earn another 10 mill in incentives for Sheets; 2/7 with an option on Wiggington) and trading BJ to the Cardinals for a prospect would be a better way to spend $85 million than the way the roster is currently constructed. I still don't see why JP is so reluctant to make a trade - he seems more content to keep his prospects and let the next GM take advantage of them (and then brag about all the young talent he developed once he is unemployed) then make a trade to save his job. I do think it is entirely possible that he is waiting until he can get a couple of major bargains, but the inactivity is getting annoying...
"His name is Alexis
You fucking idiot"
No, sir just drunk.
(Weird that after all these years I've never heard him called that...
Quick Google search yields about 50-50 split of Alexis to Alex nomenclature.
Guess I need to check my facts, too)
Fuck off Parkes. There are no words to describe how much I hate you.
Jason Kubel can't play center field. The Jays look to me like a team that should win 92 games or more a year starting in 2009. I can paste my math from my comment on Tao if you like.
Using the Accardo for Hillenbrand/Chulk trade as a paradigm, I'd like to see the Jays do something like that with St Louis and target Chris Perez. So perhaps Ryan and Davis Romero (Cards need LHP and he is a longshot starter still) for Perez could work. The Jays get the young arm with closer potential, while the Cards get the proven commodity in the Beej and a young pitcher to replace Perez in D Romero. A win-win situation if there ever was one...
The Jays are clearly (and correctly) punting on 2009. Absolutely no chance of making the playoffs. Wait til the Yanks get a little older, the Rays to regress and then we can go back to trying for that wild card.
Spoilers!
www.drunkjaysapologists.com
www.drunkjayshomophobes.com
hey parkes, re- baker/southpaw... i don't see 'the southpaws' connection between buying the stadium and suggesting the team "did not WANT to be successful"... why does a losing team further the goal of buying the stadium?
Hey Stoeten here's something you can send to your journalism buddies in the print industry.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200901/new-york-times
trying to be optimistic by using the Twins as a comparable is as short-sighted as the morons who believed that the Twins/White Sox were better than the Jays last year
It kind of depends on how precise a comparison you're expecting it to be. There are still many parallels on a very general level.
Why do you get so angry when people rip JP's moves, Mr. Apologist?
Me? I get angry when people rip JP's moves without putting in the slightest effort to understand the bigger picture in which he's operating. JP has made some truly awful moves, and there are definitely ways to rip them apart, but most times people just vent and don't want to do anything more than vent, and don't want to hear any sort of rationalization for JP's decision that might make them have to stop venting. That does make me angry, because there's almost always a decent reason for the moves he makes, in some sense (i.e. self-preservation), and it's just fucking dumb to willingly ignore those complexities because somebody would rather have a black and white reason to be pissed off at him. Trust me, I'm not looking for ways to defend JP, I don't particularly want to defend JP, but if people want to talk about this stuff and to shit on moves, they goddamn well better make sense. I'm not going to be Griffin and try to argue my way to a predetermined conclusion.
This was very hard to read
The truth hurts sometimes, doesn't it?
Hey Stoeten here's something you can send to your journalism buddies in the print industry.
I'm a sucker for those types of articles, though I really don't know many journos.
www.drunkjaysapologists.com
www.drunkjayshomophobes.com
Hey, Parkes is the only one here raggin' on the homos-- and while he's not exactly one of the gayest guys I know, he's up there.
And you just read why the apologists thing is retarded. You want to make a good counter-argument to anything we write, bring it. If you don't have your head up your ass, I'd like to believe we'd acknowledge it. But the fact that you'd prefer to just write "apologists" and be done with it suggests that a) you wouldn't have a good counter and b) even if you did you'd probably be too lazy to write it out anyway.
Hey REAN, thanks for staying civil in the face of being called a fucking idiot. I wish I could lead by example like that in here more often.
Thanks, Stoeten,
Truth is, I was embarassed that I didn't know...
Also - after all this time I assumed that the 'anonymous commentards' were all buddies of yours, having laughs. Guess not...
Don't let 'em get you down, it doesn't slow down Wilner!
And good as far as good JP moves...
What about the aforementioned Hillenbrand dump?
You are wrong the National socialist Jays fan rags on degenerate gays and their ilk. Look The Twins are run by smarter people. Bill Smith(changed his name from Schmidt) learned from Tom Kelly! According to a caller on Jays Talk last year, JP used to get Billy Beane's coffee! Poor big -nosed Dummkopf JP, the cheap Anglo-Saxon Rogers don't wnat to open their pocket book. They stupidly looked at Tampa and said that we don't have to spend money either. well Sternberg(German name) and Friedman(another German name) are very smart, shrewd people who run their team with intelligence. Gottfrei(Godfrey's real name) and retardi ran this proud franchise into the ground. Let beeston pick a strong Strudel eating man who drinks 20 lagers a day! Thta is my GM.
The Jays are number 19th in the laegue, have you seen the garbage that the subhumans in the Bronx brought up? All these young Yankee kids are pure vermin and play like AAAA players except for that American Indian Wunderkind, JOba the Hut. That boy can drink any Aryan under the table!
A True Blue Jays Fan
PS Rean you are right about Accardo(even though he was injured last year) BUT even a blind squirrel(JP) finds an acorn every once and awhile........
If you're going to shit on some journalist for "gems of fact-checking sloppiness," and not check for yourself . . .
just sayin'
Anonymous said...
hey parkes, re- baker/southpaw... i don't see 'the southpaws' connection between buying the stadium and suggesting the team "did not WANT to be successful"... why does a losing team further the goal of buying the stadium?
The less people are in the stadium, the less people buy concessions, the less money the consortium from Chicago makes.
"If you're going to shit on some journalist for "gems of fact-checking sloppiness," and not check for yourself . . .
just sayin'"
I hear ya!
Foolish mistake.
Cito Dorito!!!!
Risky 2009 prediction:
Hitting returns to league average
Pitching returns to league average
Jays finish in 4th, 85 wins
The less people are in the stadium, the less people buy concessions, the less money the consortium from Chicago makes.
i don't disagree... however since '94 there seems to no correlation between the quality of the club and the attendance.
why would the ownership purposely put a pathetic club on the field when there was no indication that it would have a negative impact on the group in chicago (via attendance)?
there would seem to be lots of downside risk in tanking the club without any real upside...
Rean,
You stole my Cito Dorito, bit. I thought that me,Nazi boy, had that patented that phrase.! well, I still say get rid of Cito dorito AND bring back Dickie williams in a wheelchair. He eats tons of strudel and is a good ARyan man. anyway, the Jays will win 72 and Doc will want the team to be bought by Shecky FriedSternberg from Utah and the team will be renamed the Utah Morons Mormon Aryan Blue Bird Deutschlanders. I want to keep that tie to Toronto even though we are moving to whitemanLand Rubesville Utah!
Anon who said they win 85 games. Yes, they will but in the alternate universe that Hitler won the war in! What are you smoking, Junge(young man)? Tampa, Yankees and the Bloody Sox run by vermin will crush Cito Dorito, Lazy Wells, Mr Injury Rolen and Retardi. Verstehen Sie(understand)? We need stromg Swedish girls that will motivate the Stormtroopers called the Jays.
On a serious note, exile JP Retardi to Siberia or Massholia, please. Get rid of Cito ,King of all doritos to Northern Mexico AKA Texas and send Rolen away somewhere far far away.
A True Blue Jays Fan
PS Heil Kanada, God Damn amerika, and to hell with all the vermin in the Bronx, Tampa and Baltimore. Did think I forgot, Boston? I have a special fate for all those in Massholia....you shall see.
"why does a losing team further the goal of buying the stadium?"
First let me say that this seemed to be Baker's thesis and my comments are largely based on assuming for the sake of discussion he was right.
Second, even if there's no apparent connection between fan spending at the stadium and winning, the consortium could have reasonably been expecting that profits would rise with a team that became a contender - thus they were trying to endure through a lean situation to get to the "good times"
Third, it might simply have been not so much a plan to lose as the complete absence of a plan to win. In fact, probably so. I mean, it would be necessary to tell JP "you must let your good young pitcher go" - it's simply enough to be draconian about every dollar spent.
In that regard you could still say "JP was a fool for spending as much on Bautista and Hentgen as he could have spent on Escobar" and yet also acknowledge that he simply didn't have the money to sign Esco and fill the other slot with anything but a scrub.
That, of course, means you are asking him to know at the time that Hentgen was going to pitch like a scrub (at the least) but still, you could argue it.
Southpaw lost all credibility back on the 29th of December when he wrote that he still believed that AJ money actually did exist at some point
First let me say that this seemed to be Baker's thesis and my comments are largely based on assuming for the sake of discussion he was right.
uh, OK. let me say that i think Baker's analysis of the situation borders on idiotic.
you must see the dowmside risk in trying to lose or "absence of a plan to win" or however you want to put it. rogers had hundreds of millions of dollars in their initial investment in the club.
the whole analysis strikes me as revisionist and not well thought through.
Fuck off Parkes
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