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This weekend is Daylight Savings Time when most clocks roll forward one hour Sunday morning. Not in Arizona, though. There, time will not roll forward. Compared to other states such as California, time will literally stand still. The rest of us are going to be showing up everywhere one hour early. That's just what happens with time. It keeps on slippin' into the future.
Low Humor: For the uninitiated, I am not below cheap humor. Even really cheap. So I get distracted when I see a headline such as "Free of virus, Albuquerque primed to deliver". Racing through my head are thoughts of some recent Hanta outbreak in New Mexico, and Virgin Galactic is now scheduling their first flights out of Spaceport. Then I get to the blurb of "Chikungunya no longer plagues hard-throwing Angels reliever" and, sorry, but I just have to come back with the suggestion that Albuquerque should stick with the Yebeg Alicha. Yemissiree, it's gonna be one long year of groans.............
See you all on Monday, one hour quicker than usual. And have some Cheap-Joke-Links:
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Everywhere In Baseball
Weaver: Weaver has been trying all sorts of stuff to stave off his falling velocity. Last year it was strength conditioning. This year it was stretching. Next year? Probably kinesiology. Meanwhile, velocity isn't even at the top of his list of things to worry about. That would be location, location, location. Weave would be fine throwing 60mph if he could hit a spot somewhere in the strike zone that an MLB batter could not reach. (No, really. 60mph. Read the article.) Or 40mph and someplace south of Orangewood Avenue if the batters would still swing at it.............
Heaney Power: On the other end of the experience spectrum is Andrew Heaney. Last year he didn't make it to the roster until very late in June. This year he opens his work in Spring with a rotation slot in his back pocket. And in his first start yesterday he made the most of it. Two innings in the tank with zero runs, 2 hits (none of which were home runs, by the way), and a clean getaway..........
Goose B Gone: Rich Gossage is a F---ing disgrace to the game of baseball. He went off his bitter-assed rocker yesterday in an interview with ESPN, attacking today's players, today's front office staffs, and today's rules. The best counterattack, and the classiest, came from Bill Baer over at Hardball Talk "If Gossage were playing Blackjack, he would hit on 17. When the players around him advised him to change his mind, he’d still insist on getting another card. Then, when he busts and loses all his money, he would blame his terrible luck. The other players, who follow “the book”, might have ever-increasing stacks of chips but they’re just “f—ing nerds” anyway. At least, in Gossage’s eyes, he played the game the right way." Really. Just google Gossage and see all the hash he made of the Internet. The guy is the asshole neighbor who gets angrier and angrier as the years roll by and ends up getting into fistfights over grass clippings. If only Gossage was still relevant enough for players such as Yoenis Cespedes to even know who he is...........Meanwhile, ESPN The Magazine has the pro player counter to Goose Gossage in the form of Bryce Harper, one of the young kids who could kick Gossage's shriveled gray ass. Essentially, Harper is telling the old-timers that the field is his now, and he wants to have fun, so get the f--k off his lawn.............And when we start blowing up all these unwritten rules, we can start with these three..........
QO Myth: The Qualifying Offer is going to get reviewed this year during the CBA negotiations and the owners are going to maintain their original position that the need of the QO is to protect the small-market teams who invest in ,and develop, quality players who are primed to leave and chase the Free Agent market. Well, FanGraphs looks at that goal and we can all call bullshit. "Just once has the situation worked out so that a small-market team received compensation for a player it developed." And that is just once out of 54 total opportunities through the history of the QO...........
Gastric Gall: Stadium Food is blazing whole new trails through the dense jungles of food porn. This year the Atlanta Braves kick off the frenzy with the announcement of their Choose Your Own Adventure menu. Among the fear-inducing experiments is a "...afoot-long hot dog layered with fries, chili, nacho chips, beer cheese and jalapeños, topped with popcorn, then drizzled with Coca-Cola infused BBQ sauce". Before the decade is out, we are going to need body armor just to approach the concession stands...........
Home Run History: Here is a very bitchin GIF graph showing the progression of power through the history of MLB. Watch as the Top 10 career Hr hitter values climb over the decades. Absolutely fascinating..........
Hoo?: Hooters Girls make for bad foul ball shaggers. That would come as a surprise to anyone who has eaten at a Hooters, realizing that Hooters girls should be seasoned professionals at throwing fowl things to customers...........
PEDs Penalties: And here is another victim of the PEDs era. Some random source can make an accusation, and the target of that accusation is presumed guilty until the investigators fail to prove them guilty. And so it now is for Ryan Howard...........
Lincecum, Lincego: Tim Lincecum is trying to salvage the back end of his career by getting himself back into top form in order to showcase his remaining skills to potential teams this Spring. So he is in Arizona working on things, and doing so at a Top Secret location. With Top men. Top. Men. Well, somehow the ever sleuthy KC Royals crew tracked him down and tried to get an early look. They were booted out. I can only assume that Team Lincecum is not ready enough even for sneak previews..........
Out of Pixie Dust: Maybe the best news in baseball yesterday was the possibility that the Royals have completely exhausted their supply of lucky charms. How else to explain them hitting into a triple play?..............
Baseball Biz: A couple of updates here. Some teams are direct streaming from Spring camp via Facebook. It's an experiment in Facebook Live. Not Arte, of course. Think Dodgers, Giants and Tigers. You might want to go exploring and get a glimpse of the future, because we will be living in it soon enough............ESPN might be figuring out that they are killing cable with their carrier bundling charges combined with their crappy content. So they are getting out ahead of the thought process and considering OOT streaming. In any other era, I might applaud the foresight. In this case, it's hard to imagine people cutting the cord to avoid being charged indirectly by the likes of ESPN just so they can enjoy paying their monthly Internet access fee in order to endure ESPN's crappy content. Yeah, I know. That's pretty cynical. If it wasn't ESPN we are talking about I might have had second thoughts and edited that all out. But it is ESPN we are talking about, so the cynicism stays.........
OT: Dos Equis is retiring The Most Interesting Man in the World in a series of special commercials tracing his final voyage. But fret not. Dos Equis is just retooling their campaign. Later this year we will see a return of The Most Interesting. It just won't be Most Interesting Man. It will be Most Interesting Entitled Millenial Brat Dude. I smell a Shia LaBeouf redux.............
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