In the interest of getting this done before Opening Day, here's another lightning round of MLB transactions. I'm going to try to pick up the pace on this so I can use it in my 2014 prediction series.
12/18: Marlins sign IF Casey McGehee. The third baseman put up big numbers in NPB (Japanese pro ball) last year, and does have a couple of quality seasons with Milwaukee on his resume. He's not going to win any MVP awards and he may not even win the starting 3B job, but there's nothing wrong with a cheap depth signing.
12/18: Indians trade OF Drew Stubbs to Rockies for RP Josh Outman. It's addition by subtraction in Cleveland. Stubbs would only take AB's away from David Murphy or Michael Bourne, and Colorado always needs spare outfielders for when Carlos Gonzalez gets hurt. Slight edge to Cleveland for getting a usable lefty reliever in Outman and saving a couple million bucks.
12/18: Royals trade OF David Lough to Orioles for IF Danny Valencia. Lough's defensive numbers were eye-popping, off-the-charts, nobody-is-really-this-good in 2013. He's likely to regress and it might be a stretch to expect him to be an everyday player. Valencia showed some power in limited action last year and seems like a good fit as Mike Moustakas's backup/platoon partner in KC. Assuming Valencia is used properly, this should be a win for the Royals.
12/19: Yankees sign OF Carlos Beltran, 3 years, $45M. The Yankees kind of played the "sign everybody" game this winter, and as a result of the additions of Ellsbury and Beltran, Ichiro is going to be an expensive bench player most of the time. They're paying for Beltran's late 30s and the wheels could come off at any moment, but these are the kinds of risks Brian Cashman has to take since he's failed to build a farm system. Beltran's offense hasn't aged yet, so I'm an optimist, at least for this year. He'd be a lot more useful if he could throw 200 innings of 3.50 ERA ball, though.
12/20: Diamonbacks re-sign IF Eric Chavez, 1 year, $3.5M. Who knew Eric Chavez would still be a useful Major Leaguer in 2013? He doesn't walk or hit homers as much as he used to, but he puts the ball in play more and amazingly put up OPS+'s in 2012-13 that rival his peak years. For all the blunders I think Kevin Towers has made this winter, this signing is better than sneaky-good. It's covertly awesome. I really don't understand how the Yankees didn't step in and snag him; he's a perfect player for their needs.
12/24: Dodgers sign RP Chris Perez, 1 year, $2.3M. I'd really like to be in the Dodgers' bullpen this year, just to see what kind of conversations Perez would have with Brian Wilson. They're either going to attempt to murder each other or become BFFs and invent a secret twin language, and that's before you factor in California's marijuana availability advantage over Cleveland (That is a stat on which Baseball-Reference needs to get busy immediately.) The signing is low-risk and high-reward, but there's no way to read anything into Perez's numbers thus far in his career. He could have a 1 ERA or he could throw batting practice.
12/25: Dodgers sign IF Juan Uribe, 2 years, $15M. Uribe's first two seasons in LA were worse than worthless at the plate, but he had arguably his best year at age 33 in 2013. While he might be barely worth this contract, he might be unplayable instead. An all-in team like the Dodgers should probably aim a little higher than this.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
I'm Finding it Harder to be a Gentleman
I guess I've established to myself and the internet that I give at least one shit about the treatment of LGBTQ's. That's cool; it was bound to happen eventually. It just means I have to write about Michael Sam now, even though it feels like an obligation instead of an opportunity for self-improvement.
I had the misfortune of reading the comment thread on ESPN.com's story about Michael Sam's coming out. This was a mistake. The scariest thing is that you need a Facebook account to comment there, and there were many people who didn't see a problem with being vocally homophobic UNDER THEIR OWN NAME. This falls under the same "common sense" category as Christina Kahrl's column from the Dr. V. uproar, but some people just don't get it. And what I say won't convince them. But I still have some thoughts, gained through no authority other than trying to be a decent human being.
-Part of this is publicity-based. Michael Sam knows exactly what he's doing and name recognition is a part of that. My own opinion is that the positives of fame and trailblazing were probably very difficult for him to see, and to him, it was a choice between several bad options. He chose the immediate pain of being a minority of one over the gradual suffering of a closeted life. Given the same opportunity, I would probably make the same choice. Soon he'll be used to his status as a public figure, and there's a chance his appearances will change public perception of homosexuals. That would be a good thing. If his fame bothers you, then be one of the people who shrugs and says "Whatever. I'ma go play Battletoads." whenever someone comes out. If your response is "I don't care, but grrrr I'm still pissed he's getting publicity out of this", you're doing it wrong. Of course the first openly gay NFL player is going to be a big deal. People care. Let's all of us- you, me, Michael Sam, Skip Bayless, Glenn Beck, Jesus over there- rip this band-aid off already. I'm grateful it's happening now, so next time it happens we can all shrug and go play Battletoads.
-I wonder if the inherent homophobia in the NFL community is overstated. I know most of the players are black, and the black community is not as accepting of homosexuality as American society as a whole. Niners CB Chris Culliver made headlines before last year's Super Bowl by saying "Can't be with that sweet stuff, man... Can't be in the locker room, man, nah." But these guys are all gen-X or later, and the world they grew up in made it a point to accept people as they are. I hope the majority of NFL players would react more like baseball's Tom Glavine and Preston Wilson. When asked if they would ever play with a gay teammate, both answered "I probably already have". Veteran reliever Mike Timlin said he had done so knowingly, and it wasn't a problem. Maybe NFLers will transcend the narcissistic "Ewww, he's gonna be checkin' out my junk in the shower" attitude. Maybe not. We'll find out soon enough.
-This is something I'm amazed I have to say, but apparently I do: If your opinion is based in ignorance rather than understanding and you take pride in said ignorance, nobody owes your opinion any respect. You get no cookies for being protective of your lack of understanding. It is not valid as an appeal to emotion nor as a rational argument. Take it somewhere else, preferably off my goddamn internet. If you were worthy of my attention, you would sicken me. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and free speech even covers most instances of what would objectively be called "hate speech". However, it has its limits. You are not protected from the reactions of others when you say something particularly offensive or ignorant. People's impression of you is conditional on what you say. If you are vocally ignorant, being told as much should be par for the course and is not persecution.
-The following is considered middle ground in some circles, but it's as insidious as outright bigotry: "I don't have a problem with people being gay. I just think it's wrong." If you say something like that, you're a liar. You do have a problem with people being gay. Let's try it with a couple words changed and see how it sounds. "I don't have a problem with black people. I just think their existence is wrong." "I don't have a problem with women. I just think it's wrong to be a woman." Seriously, it reeks of "Homosexuality is a choice". Nobody chose their orientation any more than I chose to be born with a penis or Trayvon Martin chose to be born black. And if you say you remember the day you "chose" to be straight- as some luminaries of the ESPN thread did- you intentionally misunderstand the word "choose" and your argument is a false equivalency. I do believe people can have "awakenings", but that is not exactly a choice. It is living life one way, in the darkness of ignorance, because it's what you think you're supposed to do. Then one day you change and start living your life another way because you realize it feels fucking phenomenal and takes you to places your old life never could. It doesn't mean you chose to be the new way. It means you never fully knew or accepted yourself, and once you did, there was no turning back. I believe we can choose what we do, and we can choose how we express our feelings, but there's no controlling what we feel. The best we can do is act on our emotions in a way that helps, heals, and does no harm.
-This goes back to what I said about Dr. V. Being born with your appropriate physiology and a socially acceptable set of sexual preferences to grow into is a privilege, probably the easiest of all privileges to take for granted. I try to empathize with people who can't fathom homosexual feelings, but they make it very difficult by refusing to accept that some people don't have heterosexual feelings. Homosexuality and gender dysphoria don't come from childhood abuse or inappropriate exposure to sex as a child. They aren't diseases or defects or repercussions of trauma. They're things that just exist. I'm a believer in the genetics argument myself, and the science is pretty clear that nurture cannot undo what nature has done. But shit, if science swayed these people, this wouldn't be a discussion we'd need to have, because then Leviticus would just be a bad story instead of a central tenet of American Christianity. Besides, the focus on that one verse is really unique to American Evangelicalism (I think). There's all sorts of batshit rules and regulations in the Old Testament, but as is their wont, thumpers pick the one that doesn't affect them personally and enforce the crap out of it like Jihadists. Maybe it's just my status as an outsider of the church, but the whole thing seems completely out of step with stuff like "love thy neighbor" and all the other awesome stuff Jesus said. Maybe that's the point.
tl;dr: Mizzou DE projected to be drafted in the 3rd or 4th round.
I had the misfortune of reading the comment thread on ESPN.com's story about Michael Sam's coming out. This was a mistake. The scariest thing is that you need a Facebook account to comment there, and there were many people who didn't see a problem with being vocally homophobic UNDER THEIR OWN NAME. This falls under the same "common sense" category as Christina Kahrl's column from the Dr. V. uproar, but some people just don't get it. And what I say won't convince them. But I still have some thoughts, gained through no authority other than trying to be a decent human being.
-Part of this is publicity-based. Michael Sam knows exactly what he's doing and name recognition is a part of that. My own opinion is that the positives of fame and trailblazing were probably very difficult for him to see, and to him, it was a choice between several bad options. He chose the immediate pain of being a minority of one over the gradual suffering of a closeted life. Given the same opportunity, I would probably make the same choice. Soon he'll be used to his status as a public figure, and there's a chance his appearances will change public perception of homosexuals. That would be a good thing. If his fame bothers you, then be one of the people who shrugs and says "Whatever. I'ma go play Battletoads." whenever someone comes out. If your response is "I don't care, but grrrr I'm still pissed he's getting publicity out of this", you're doing it wrong. Of course the first openly gay NFL player is going to be a big deal. People care. Let's all of us- you, me, Michael Sam, Skip Bayless, Glenn Beck, Jesus over there- rip this band-aid off already. I'm grateful it's happening now, so next time it happens we can all shrug and go play Battletoads.
-I wonder if the inherent homophobia in the NFL community is overstated. I know most of the players are black, and the black community is not as accepting of homosexuality as American society as a whole. Niners CB Chris Culliver made headlines before last year's Super Bowl by saying "Can't be with that sweet stuff, man... Can't be in the locker room, man, nah." But these guys are all gen-X or later, and the world they grew up in made it a point to accept people as they are. I hope the majority of NFL players would react more like baseball's Tom Glavine and Preston Wilson. When asked if they would ever play with a gay teammate, both answered "I probably already have". Veteran reliever Mike Timlin said he had done so knowingly, and it wasn't a problem. Maybe NFLers will transcend the narcissistic "Ewww, he's gonna be checkin' out my junk in the shower" attitude. Maybe not. We'll find out soon enough.
-This is something I'm amazed I have to say, but apparently I do: If your opinion is based in ignorance rather than understanding and you take pride in said ignorance, nobody owes your opinion any respect. You get no cookies for being protective of your lack of understanding. It is not valid as an appeal to emotion nor as a rational argument. Take it somewhere else, preferably off my goddamn internet. If you were worthy of my attention, you would sicken me. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and free speech even covers most instances of what would objectively be called "hate speech". However, it has its limits. You are not protected from the reactions of others when you say something particularly offensive or ignorant. People's impression of you is conditional on what you say. If you are vocally ignorant, being told as much should be par for the course and is not persecution.
-The following is considered middle ground in some circles, but it's as insidious as outright bigotry: "I don't have a problem with people being gay. I just think it's wrong." If you say something like that, you're a liar. You do have a problem with people being gay. Let's try it with a couple words changed and see how it sounds. "I don't have a problem with black people. I just think their existence is wrong." "I don't have a problem with women. I just think it's wrong to be a woman." Seriously, it reeks of "Homosexuality is a choice". Nobody chose their orientation any more than I chose to be born with a penis or Trayvon Martin chose to be born black. And if you say you remember the day you "chose" to be straight- as some luminaries of the ESPN thread did- you intentionally misunderstand the word "choose" and your argument is a false equivalency. I do believe people can have "awakenings", but that is not exactly a choice. It is living life one way, in the darkness of ignorance, because it's what you think you're supposed to do. Then one day you change and start living your life another way because you realize it feels fucking phenomenal and takes you to places your old life never could. It doesn't mean you chose to be the new way. It means you never fully knew or accepted yourself, and once you did, there was no turning back. I believe we can choose what we do, and we can choose how we express our feelings, but there's no controlling what we feel. The best we can do is act on our emotions in a way that helps, heals, and does no harm.
-This goes back to what I said about Dr. V. Being born with your appropriate physiology and a socially acceptable set of sexual preferences to grow into is a privilege, probably the easiest of all privileges to take for granted. I try to empathize with people who can't fathom homosexual feelings, but they make it very difficult by refusing to accept that some people don't have heterosexual feelings. Homosexuality and gender dysphoria don't come from childhood abuse or inappropriate exposure to sex as a child. They aren't diseases or defects or repercussions of trauma. They're things that just exist. I'm a believer in the genetics argument myself, and the science is pretty clear that nurture cannot undo what nature has done. But shit, if science swayed these people, this wouldn't be a discussion we'd need to have, because then Leviticus would just be a bad story instead of a central tenet of American Christianity. Besides, the focus on that one verse is really unique to American Evangelicalism (I think). There's all sorts of batshit rules and regulations in the Old Testament, but as is their wont, thumpers pick the one that doesn't affect them personally and enforce the crap out of it like Jihadists. Maybe it's just my status as an outsider of the church, but the whole thing seems completely out of step with stuff like "love thy neighbor" and all the other awesome stuff Jesus said. Maybe that's the point.
tl;dr: Mizzou DE projected to be drafted in the 3rd or 4th round.
Friday, February 7, 2014
I'm Too White to Have the Blues
I miss the 3 years I spent in a Seroquel-induced emotional flatline. Caring sucks. It really does. I mean, I can still drink my face off and while away the hours with cartoons and card games, but I'm not used to doing so while dealing with emotions and other such nonsense. I'm used to being laconic, impassive, occasionally happy-go-lucky. I was of the opinion that the worst had already happened so having hopes, fears, or feelings was pretty much a waste of energy. This too shall pass, all things are fleeting, etc. I was all set to enjoy being alive until the day I died, and I was largely indifferent as to when that day should come. But now I have a new imaginary friend: righteous indignation. It's like a demon that chews on the back of my head all day reminding me that for all the setbacks I've had, most people have it worse. I'm angry and I get to thinking it's for no good reason, but then I remember that there are thousands of good reasons.
Here's one of them. Please do click, read, and watch. And this is up to you and your own viewing preferences, but I would prefer it if you didn't watch the Olympics. I'll admit I'm also angry that they preempt Community and Saturday Night Live, but my lacking in entertainment options is pretty far down the outrage list from a nation that shares my dad's views on LGBTQs getting all the money from hosting an Olympics. My entertainment options are usually pretty close to the top of my priorities list, so I guess this is a big fucking deal to me. Since the big hand slapped me "White Male American", I know I tend to overestimate my own problems and it's easy to forget that my life is pretty damn good compared to people in some other places. Like, being L, G, or B in Russia is horrific. Being T is probably worse, because you know, that's something they can choose and they're all just choosing wrong (If you failed to recognize that as sarcasm, you just lost the Rehabbing the Hoodie home edition. Time to eat the stick).
Maybe I have some big primal-scream type post coming up on this subject. It might be a week, a month, or ten years from now. Something's brewing and I have no idea what it is. I've been feeling the need to write, to stand on my roof and rant at 3 AM, to start fights, ever since the Dr. V. story broke. I have been waiting eagerly- if I were the praying type, I would be praying- for someone to use a gay or effeminate slur in my presence so I could let it all out through violence (I'm not a big guy, but I'm crazy and that's the equivalent of an extra 20 pounds of muscle in a fight. Also, most people aren't prepared for the suckerpunch). But when I sit down to express it I have nothing to say. I'm just pissed. If you are too, good. Let's hang out sometime. And that's all I got for now. Time to go to sleep and have another unnecessarily long and painful stress dream*.
*Last night's was fun. I got to taste the world's best frozen custard, but since I didn't have the $1200 to pay for my serving, I had to work off my debt by helping to make it. The only ingredient was human suffering. That's a lot of suffering when you're working it off at minimum wage. Come to find out, nobody who worked in the factory got paid. Everyone was working off a debt.
Here's one of them. Please do click, read, and watch. And this is up to you and your own viewing preferences, but I would prefer it if you didn't watch the Olympics. I'll admit I'm also angry that they preempt Community and Saturday Night Live, but my lacking in entertainment options is pretty far down the outrage list from a nation that shares my dad's views on LGBTQs getting all the money from hosting an Olympics. My entertainment options are usually pretty close to the top of my priorities list, so I guess this is a big fucking deal to me. Since the big hand slapped me "White Male American", I know I tend to overestimate my own problems and it's easy to forget that my life is pretty damn good compared to people in some other places. Like, being L, G, or B in Russia is horrific. Being T is probably worse, because you know, that's something they can choose and they're all just choosing wrong (If you failed to recognize that as sarcasm, you just lost the Rehabbing the Hoodie home edition. Time to eat the stick).
Maybe I have some big primal-scream type post coming up on this subject. It might be a week, a month, or ten years from now. Something's brewing and I have no idea what it is. I've been feeling the need to write, to stand on my roof and rant at 3 AM, to start fights, ever since the Dr. V. story broke. I have been waiting eagerly- if I were the praying type, I would be praying- for someone to use a gay or effeminate slur in my presence so I could let it all out through violence (I'm not a big guy, but I'm crazy and that's the equivalent of an extra 20 pounds of muscle in a fight. Also, most people aren't prepared for the suckerpunch). But when I sit down to express it I have nothing to say. I'm just pissed. If you are too, good. Let's hang out sometime. And that's all I got for now. Time to go to sleep and have another unnecessarily long and painful stress dream*.
*Last night's was fun. I got to taste the world's best frozen custard, but since I didn't have the $1200 to pay for my serving, I had to work off my debt by helping to make it. The only ingredient was human suffering. That's a lot of suffering when you're working it off at minimum wage. Come to find out, nobody who worked in the factory got paid. Everyone was working off a debt.
Sunday, February 2, 2014
I Came Here Lookin' For a Fight
Whenever I walk into a room full of Magic players, I can usually pick out two or three people who are just better at the game than I am. I didn't feel that way today. Mostly because it was a sealed-deck prerelease, and I got to watch the guy I feared the most build his deck. After assuring myself that it was not good, I looked at my own card pool and- somehow- managed not to have paroxysms of glee. I didn't have to be a good Magic player to do well with the card pool I opened at the Born of the Gods prerelease, but being good probably didn't hurt. A little-known (and certainly not Standard-dominant) pairing of Gray Merchant of Asphodel and Whip of Erebos came up a few times. Doubling up on my seed-pack rare was pretty cool. I had enough removal that I left a Pharika's Cure and other kill spells on the bench and didn't regret it once. The worst cards in my deck were the Fellhide Minotaurs I played to have something resembling a curve, and those are fine too once you pants 'em up with Cavern Lampad or Eerebos's Emissary and get Whippy. I ended up taking 2nd out of 42 people, walking away with 16 packs and the playmat I've wanted to win for months. And as always, my victory song was playing as we drove away...
2/3 is my birthday, but 2/2 was the day for The Everlasting Dave.
My BNG prerelease Sealed Deck, in full (I'm only putting this on here to show what can happen if you get all the luck when you open your packs. Also, I will be coming back to look at this list before every limited event I play, to see what "doing it right" looks like.):
2 Arbiter of the Ideal
1 Deepwater Hypnotist
1 Flitterstep Eidolon
1 Omenspeaker
1 Siren of the Fanged Coast
1 Vaporkin
1 Divination
1 Griptide
1 Ordeal of Thassa
1 Cavern Lampad
1 Erebos's Emissary
2 Fellhide Minotaur
1 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
1 Mogis's Marauder
1 Tormented Hero
2 Asphyxiate
1 Bile Blight
1 Read the Bones
1 Whip of Erebos
1 Siren of the Silent Song
1 Temple of Mystery
9 Swamp
7 Island
I'm aware that this post will mean nothing to most people. Don't care. I'm happy and it's my blog, so it's going up. If it bothers you, learn to play Magic.
....Super Bowl? What's that?
2/3 is my birthday, but 2/2 was the day for The Everlasting Dave.
My BNG prerelease Sealed Deck, in full (I'm only putting this on here to show what can happen if you get all the luck when you open your packs. Also, I will be coming back to look at this list before every limited event I play, to see what "doing it right" looks like.):
2 Arbiter of the Ideal
1 Deepwater Hypnotist
1 Flitterstep Eidolon
1 Omenspeaker
1 Siren of the Fanged Coast
1 Vaporkin
1 Divination
1 Griptide
1 Ordeal of Thassa
1 Cavern Lampad
1 Erebos's Emissary
2 Fellhide Minotaur
1 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
1 Mogis's Marauder
1 Tormented Hero
2 Asphyxiate
1 Bile Blight
1 Read the Bones
1 Whip of Erebos
1 Siren of the Silent Song
1 Temple of Mystery
9 Swamp
7 Island
I'm aware that this post will mean nothing to most people. Don't care. I'm happy and it's my blog, so it's going up. If it bothers you, learn to play Magic.
....Super Bowl? What's that?
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