There's Always Options, Right?
I took a brief look at SOSH last night after the Jays victory, and it was pretty depressing.
It's beyond schadenfreude, people. So these people have become officially useless to me.
I would counter that the AL East crown should be celebrated by bathing in the blood of their vanquished foes. But yeah, the competition is totally equal across the league.
I love that this is their attitude after their team scored 18 runs the previous game versus the Jays. Like, things are bad, but things could still happen for them. Their team can still play.
I am guilty of becoming emotionally invested in my team and having the outcome of games effect my mood, but if my interest in my team was basically sucking my soul, I would find a new hobby. I mean, these guys are basically saying, "You get the rope, I'll get the cyanide."
Their forefathers suffered through 86 years of futility and these numpties have 2 championships in the last decade (not to mention the Celtics, Patriots and Bruins' success.) They are a disgrace to long suffering Massholes everywhere.
For the second time in a week, the Jays got to Daniel Bard. Bard is 0-3 with a 30.86 earned-run average in his last three appearances. “I've been through it before. ”Sometimes the effects are magnified by how big the games are."
It was certainly magnified for me for how awesome it was to see Adam Loewen hit a base clearing go ahead double.
It's great the see the kids play well, but I feel the season winding down. The air is cooler, the leaves are changing and I feel a little melancholy. The New York Times wrote a really good article about the Jays and Orioles, in the context of their series last weekend, being on the outside looking in the AL East, where the 2nd and 3rd place teams are battling to the death. It's interesting, other than being lumped in with the Orioles, because when I look at what Anthopoulos is crafting, the future looks a lot brighter for this team than a lot of other teams, the Orioles included.
I enjoyed this:
“Everything comes down to opportunity cost,” Anthopoulos says. “If you go this route, what’s the impact? There’s always options, right?”
Right.
One of the big stories of the season is what the hell is happening with Brandon Morrow? John Lott, who has become one of my favourite Jays writers this season, sat down with Bruce Walton to discuss. Walton and Farrell have suggested to Morrow to try to work in a cutter, but there are a lot of questions and seems to be more experimentation going on than with a sexually confused university student. It's an interesting discussion on pitching, even though it doesn't solve much.
To note:
"Obviously, we need to stay down a little bit better. That’s just more staying over the rubber a little bit longer; it’s not too technical. It’s more coming up with a game plan, that we can go out there year in and year out and make little adjustments as we go. The main thing is him working back and forth in the zone: trying to kill some ball speed with either a breaking ball or a changeup.”
Nowhere does it say "I know, let's move Brandon Morrow to the bullpen. That will solve all the problems." Take note of that. Make a t-shirt.
Keith Law got himself into some shit when he dissed the Moneyball movie on his personal blog, and got into it with Moneyball author Michael Lewis. Law discussed the situation on the Baseball Today podcast and Stoeten broke down the Blue Jay angle of it, which is wonderfully juicy in the gossip department. I want to wait and see the movie (though that really has nothing to do with the Law/Lewis showdown) before I make a judgement over what's going on.
At this point, I'm just going to assume that Law doesn't like the Moneyball movie because Brad Pitt played Billy Beane and not him.
Navin, awesome sports fan and writer, tweeted this tonight:
I would counter that the AL East crown should be celebrated by bathing in the blood of their vanquished foes. But yeah, the competition is totally equal across the league.