The Countdown Continues
Newcomer #6 - Jose Reyes. There was a good long stretch in which the single most thrilling play in baseball would be a line drive off the bat of Jose Reyes into the gap. The outfielders would furiously rush to cut off the ball in the hope that they could hold Reyes to a double as Reyes would turn on the jets. He also produced such a fun atmosphere, from his heavily choreographed dugout handshakes to the “Jose, Jose, Jose” chants coming from the crowd.
Years before MLB amended some rules to encourage more action, Reyes was a superb example of exactly the type of play those rules were meant to encourage. He led the league in stolen bases three consecutive years, triples four times, and hits once, along with one batting title. He did all of this with an infectious personality. And for the unfair criticism he received at times for an alleged unwillingness to play while hurt, he played more than 150 games in four consecutive years before he suffered a torn hamstring which drastically cut a season short and ignited a reputation for being injury prone that he was subsequently unable to shake.
After departing the Mets as a free agent, he had a solid season with the Marlins, but that would prove to be the beginning of the end. Speed is a skill that generally ages poorly, and his value took a drastic downturn as he hit his thirties. By the time he returned to the Mets for the final 3 seasons of his career, he was a shell of his former self. Worse, this came on the heels of a suspension for domestic violence, so his return was decidedly not a feel good story. His peak period was not long enough to warrant HOF consideration, but I can’t help but wonder how he would have thrived under the current rules packages. His highest single season stolen base total was 78. Could he have approached 100 in the current atmosphere?
Holdover #6 - Jimmy Rollins. I swear I didn’t manipulate my rankings so that Rollins and Reyes would pop up on the same day, it’s just a happy accident that things turned out that way. There was a strong connection between the two, as both were leadoff hitting shortstops, and emotional leaders, for bitter divisional rivals. In that competition, Rollins comes out ahead. Unlike Reyes, Rollins won an MVP award, and more importantly, a World Series title.
Rollins is a guy who for some reason doesn’t look as good when you put his numbers under the advanced stats microscope, but frankly I’m puzzled why that’s so. The stat that I find most reliable is OPS+. It’s simple and easy to understand. Rollins only had 6 seasons with an OPS+ above 100. In other words the numbers state that he was a below average hitter for the majority of his career. In this instance I go with the eye test instead of what the numbers tell me. I saw enough of Rollins play to tell me that he was a much better hitter than that.
The traditional statistical profile paints a more accurate picture of his value. It’s true that he rarely reached base often enough for an ideal leadoff hitter, but he was an exceptional base runner & he provided outstanding power numbers for a middle infielder. He led the league in triples 3 times and could be consistently counted on for 30-40 doubles & 15-20 home runs per season. It will be interesting to see what type of effect the ballot debut of Chase Utley will have on his candidacy. Will that inspire large numbers of voters to connect the two & vote for each them as a tandem? In my eyes, he was better than the statistical profile indicates, but still a tad short of reaching HOF level.
What We’ve Lost - Ohtani Edition
It was my understanding that there would be no math.
The contract is signed, sealed, & delivered. Shohei Ohtani is now officially a Los Angeles Dodger and one of the internet’s most reliable jokes has become collateral damage. Pour one out for the memory of Tungsten Arm O’Doyle.
It’s funny because it’s true. I lost track of the number of times that either Ohtani or Mike Trout (or both) would put together an amazing performance in an Angels loss. Of course, 162 games is a long season. There are certainly going to be occasions in which Ohtani does something remarkable in a Dodgers game that they wind up losing, but those occurrences should be rare enough that the joke dies. Poor old Tungsten Arm will have to enter a rest home for fictitious ball players along with Sidd Finch & The Mighty Casey. On the other hand someone could easily come up with the NBA equivalent of the joke structure for Victor Wembanyama.
Now that the specific details of the contract have been revealed it may be time to put another perennial joke to bed. Ohtani will only receive $2 million per year throughout the course of the contract. An astonishing $68 million per year will be deferred until 2035. Complicated calculations mean that $46 million will count against the Competitive Balance Tax each year, but it does mean that the team will have more immediate cash available to improve the current roster. And so what if they’re kicking the can down the road? Who knows if there will even be a 2035? Or if money will still be a thing in a dystopian future?
But can we finally bury the Bonilla Day jokes? That’s a topic for which I have little sense of humor. Lord knows that there is a plethora of material for LOL Mets mockery. I make a lot of those jokes myself. But Bonilla Day is unfair; deferred payments are increasingly common on many of these mega contracts. Make fun of the Mets all you want, they often deserve it. But the annual payments that go to Bobby Bonilla look like couch cushion money when compared to the checks the Dodgers will need to cut in the future.
When The Feelings And The Data Don’t Match
I’ve long contended that the claims of massive retail theft were much exaggerated, and now it appears to have been the case.
I won’t harp on this too much, other than to say that the damage was done. We heard months of “crime, crime, crime” hysteria and that clearly had an effect at the ballot box. There’s also this. We are now forced to remove our shoes at airports until the end of time, but at least that was in response to a near tragedy. In this case, we are facing a perpetual future in which any trip to a CVS comes with having to ask for a clerk’s assistance to open locked cabinets. It’s exhausting and as I had mentioned earlier makes me want to go to a different store, one in which the process of simply purchasing an item is not so inconvenient.
Turning off customers for nebulous reasons is poor business. This reminds me of what happened to what was once one of my biggest go-to stores. I was a regular patron of Nobody Beats the Wiz for years until they gave me multiple reasons not to.
I’ll start this by noting that it’s quite possible that these poor policies were limited to my local Wiz franchise; it may not necessarily have been company wide. At its peak it was a perfect store for CD shopping. It had a huge inventory, reasonably priced. My local store had 2 levels; the ground level contained the electronics with which they made most of their profits; CD’s and other physical media were in the sub level.
One of the store’s features was that one wall displayed all of the top 100 albums on that week’s Billboard chart. One week I noticed that in the #1 slot, instead of the CD there was a card reading “ask at register.” That week the #1 was the Makaveli album, the first posthumous 2Pac release. The cover was controversial, it was a drawing of 2Pac on a crucifix. I thought nothing of it, assuming that the store did not want to offend anyone’s religious sensibility by displaying the album. As weeks went on, I saw that more and more CD’s, all of which were hip-hop releases, had that same “ask at register” card. Once again, I chose not to believe the worst. I just figured the store decided that they should move discs with Parental Advisory stickers behind the counter. It did not dawn on me at the time that no rock albums with objectionable lyrics were similarly moved.
I finally had the revelation that something was fishy when I saw that a Boyz II Men album was also placed behind the counter. That’s when I realized that the store had moved every album recorded by a black artist, apparently deciding that meant that people would be more likely to steal those items. That was so f***ed up, showing utter contempt for a large portion of their customer base.
It was an easy decision for me to stop shopping there. It no longer deserved my patronage, and trust me, I used to spend a LOT a of money there. It also didn’t help that around this same time they removed cash registers from the sub level, meaning that the lines on the main floor were twice as long. Those lines moved slowly as well; transactions involving high priced electronics are much more complex as the cashier tries to upsell customers into going for the extended warranty. Meanwhile, I’m impatiently standing in line wishing to quickly purchase some music. Do they not understand how valuable my time is? There were several reasons why the franchise eventually went out of business, but I have to feel that the fact it became so customer unfriendly was a big one.
Andre Braugher
This one was a stunner, and a real gut punch. Andre Braugher died yesterday at the age of 61. He was without a doubt one of the finest actors of his generation, and the man behind two of the most iconic characters in television history. The fact that the characters, and the shows that they came from, were so diametrically opposite from each other in tone was the clearest demonstration of how good he was.
When Homicide: Life On the Street premiered Braugher was best known for his role as the bookish soldier on Glory, which helped make his performance as Frank Pembleton so revelatory. In a show filled with outstanding actors portraying multidimensional characters, he was the standout. He was introduced as a brilliant homicide detective reluctantly assigned to a new partner. His true magic came in the interrogation room; he played his suspects like a fiddle.
Sadly, Homicide is currently one of the most prominent streaming orphans. It’s not even available on one of those cable stations found in the 1200’s on your cable box. It came out around the same time as NYPD Blue, and for my money it was the far superior show. I’m not saying this to be a contrarian. NYPD Blue was often great, but Homicide was truly special. People need to be able to see it. The show’s unavailability is a big reason why we are no longer a proper country, dammit.
It took Braugher quite a while to find a followup project worthy of his considerable talents. He had a solid run on the show Men Of a Certain Age in a role that demonstrated his versatility. Once he finally found an ideal character, he knocked it out of the park.
It seemed incongruous to find him in a wacky Andy Samberg vehicle, but he turned out to be the perfect foil as Raymond Holt in Brooklyn Nine-Nine. His deadpan demeanor was exactly what the show needed to make it work. Crucially, he rarely played the character as if he was appearing in a comedy. But because he was usually so straight laced, the few occasions where he really let loose stood out even more sharply.
The above montage only scratches the surface of Braugher’s brilliance as Capt. Holt. I could overdose on sharing Holt clips - Peralta explaining to Holt that he doesn’t need to sign his texts, Amy introducing street meat to Holt while on a stakeout, etc. I love this one: his line reading is perfect as always.
He won 2 Emmys, but in a just world, he would have been an EGOT. I can’t believe his film career never really took off, and with that commanding voice of his he could have easily won a spoken word Grammy. This is such a terrible loss.
Closing Laughs
If anyone in the Dodgers’ front office is reading this, please be aware that I too will gladly defer salary and play for only $2 million. Call me maybe. Thanks to all for continuing to support this newsletter, & we’ll talk again on Friday.