Mid-Week Musings

The Legend Of Roger LaFrancois

There is no shortage of ways in which Major League Baseball has radically changed over the years. One which is not discussed very frequently is roster construction. For most of the league’s history the prevailing theory was that when clubs would make the final set of cuts at the end of spring training that they would take the best 25 north, and that those 25 would ideally be the group that would last the entire season. That of course has not been the case for years, as service time shenanigans, liberal usage of the injured list, frequent shuffles back and forth from AAA, and active trade deadline maneuvers usually mean that as much as half of a team’s opening day roster is long gone by the time September rolls around.

In addition, the standard composition of a roster has changed drastically. Before the era of heavy bullpen usage, teams would only carry 9 or 10 pitchers. As a result, managers had many more options when it came to utilizing their benches. There could be platoons at multiple positions, a team could carry a full time pinch hitter, and many teams would have a third catcher on the club. Which leads to today’s featured player.

There have been tens of thousands of major league players throughout the game’s history, which makes it difficult for one to have a truly unique career. But there was only one Roger LaFrancois. If you stumble across his Baseball Reference page with knowing anything about him, nothing really stands out. A catcher, he spent one year in the big leagues, appearing in 8 games and accumulating 10 at bats in 1982. Nothing unusual there. From that info, it’s easy to draw a few conclusions. Maybe he was briefly promoted to temporarily replace one of the regular catchers recovering from an injury. Maybe he was a September call up as rosters expanded, getting his brief moment in The Show. Nope and nope. Not only did he make the Opening Day roster, but he remained on the active roster for the entire season! Think about that. He was ready and available for all 162 games, but his number was rarely called. Anybody who had him in their fantasy team must have been pissed. It’s unimaginable to think a crazy season like his could ever happen these days. No one would dare waste a roster spot anymore on someone who never gets in a game. Just think about how often we watch a game now in which managers have depleted their benches as early as the 8th inning.

I salute you, Roger LaFrancois, wherever you may be. His major league career ended with an OPS of .900. That’s better than plenty of Hall Of Famers can say.

Tatis

It’s not a huge stretch to say that there is no MLB player who has more to prove this season than Fernando Tatis Jr. Eighteen months ago he was at the forefront of any list of the sport’s future megastars. Now he is coming off a wasted year which included an injury from a motorcycle accident (or accidents, he was vague as to when exactly he hurt himself) that kept him off the field plus a PED suspension that carried over to the start of this season. With his suspension about to be completed, his return to a stacked San Diego lineup is imminent.

He’s got a lot of work to do to restore his reputation. He had already been developing a reputation for being immature, and nothing that happened since the end of the 2021 season lessened those fears. Because of the lockout he wasn’t able to communicate with the Padres organization, but even taking that into account he was very vague about when and how he hurt himself. As mentioned, he had more than one motorcycle accident, so at the very least he acted irresponsibly. If he got injured on the first one, it was irresponsible to get back on the bike. If he wasn’t he should have counted his lucky stars and not tempted fate by riding again. Either way he didn’t exactly cover himself in glory.

He has been absolutely racking in his minor league rehab assignment; if he continues to hit like that in San Diego it will be greatly assist his attempt to rehabilitate his image. He’s still only 24 years old. There is plenty of time to steer his narrative in a more positive direction. It might be an exaggeration to say that he can turn his annus horribillis into a mere footnote, but if he goes on to have a spectacular career with no further hint of scandal, who knows if people will ultimately memory hole his PED use?

It does seem odd to consider the legacy of a player still so young with so much career ahead of him, particularly since there’s no way of telling what the general attitude surrounding PEDs will be in five years, let alone in twenty. But if Tatis seeks inspiration to see how one can turn around public perception, he can find it in his own clubhouse. It wasn’t that long ago that Manny Machado was considered to be too much of a hothead. As he has matured, he has largely put that old reputation in the past and he is now not only considered to be one of the game’s top players but also somewhat of a team leader. The ball is in Tatis’s court, it will be up to him to win back the affections of San Diego fans.

MLB Gameday

I try not to complain too much about web or app redesigns. For example, try to remember the old days of Facebook. Every time there would be even the slightest change there would suddenly be an epidemic of FB groups called something like Go Back To The Old Facebook Or Else We’ll Leave Forever. After about two weeks everyone would get used to the new look and completely forget about the old one. I’m generally an easy customer. As long as the functionality and search capabilities remain strong, all is good.

But I have a huge complaint about this season’s version of MLB.com’s Gameday feature. I love using this as a second screen option; I can watch something else on TV while keeping Gameday open on the side to keep up with what’s going on in that day’s Mets game. And this year’s version does look a lot better than the ones from past seasons. There is one huge WTF change, however, that I can’t get behind. The box score that pops up upon game completion only lists each player’s batting average as opposed to the OPS which would appear in previous seasons. What is this, 1977? Batting average has its place, but simply listing a batting average by itself without any further context tells absolutely nothing about the kind of season that a player is having. Whoever signed off on this change made a major error.

We Report, We Ummm… Pay Off A Huge Settlement

Fox settled the Dominion lawsuit and will have to pony up $787.5 million. On one hand, I’m a little disappointed that it’s not going to trial. Even though cameras were not going to be allowed in the courtroom, just the thought of Tucker Carlson squirming on the stand was making me giddy. Just a guess, but his maniacal laugh would not have gone over well with the judge. But on the other hand, even though the final settlement is less than half the $1.6 billion was asking for, that is still significant money, and it is going to have to be paid out immediately rather than being tied up in appeal. It may not be large enough to hurt Fox that badly, but it’s clearly large enough to positively impact Dominion.

My chief disappointment comes from the fact that it seems that the terms do not require the hosts to admit their lies on air. I would have preferred some more concrete consequences, and who knows, maybe looking straight into the camera and admitting to their audience that they had been serving them unadulterated BS might have even changed a few minds. Lying to the public night after night has resulted in often tragic consequences, and my fear is that not even a payout this huge will put a brake on the constant dishonesty. The Smartmatic lawsuit is still out there. Let’s see what comes out of that one.

Ralph Yarl

The combo of gun proliferation, stand your ground laws, and a population that has been conditioned to believe that the crime situation is worse than it actually is continues to have deadly consequences. Two more horrific stories occurred this week; there will inevitably be more.

The Ralph Yarl and Kaylin Gillis shootings are particularly chilling because not only did neither of the victims do anything wrong, but all of us have found ourselves in similar situations more than once. Ringing the wrong doorbell? Mixing up addresses? Getting lost on a dark evening in an area with spotty cell service/limited GPS capabilities? We’ve all experienced at least one of these scenarios.

Few laws have been more damaging than stand your ground laws. They give people carte blanche to shoot first, ask questions later and then claim self defense in the aftermath. (It should be noted that Gillis was killed in New York, a state which does not have such laws.) With the aforementioned Fox whipping its viewers into a frenzy it’s little wonder that so many have itchy trigger fingers.

And as I woke up this morning I saw the news that 2 cheerleaders in Texas were shot after they accidentally got into the wrong car. This was as they were attempting to apologize to the owner for their mistake. We have created a society in which an honest error could endanger one’s safety. Utter madness.

R.I.P. Heardle

Several similarly themed daily games emerged in the wake of Wordle’s success. Some were also word based, some pop culture based, some sports based, some educationally based, but almost all them have been fun diversions that either make a nice way to ease into the day or to take a quick mental break for a few minutes.

Well, one of these will go away early next month. Heardle is a music-based game, as players have 6 attempts to guess the song of the day. First hint is the initial 2 seconds of the song, gradually increasing with each attempt until the final guess consists of the song’s initial 16 seconds. I enjoyed playing this one, although the difficulty of the game varies wildly day to day. There are many songs which are immediately recognizable from the first note, but the game has also taught me that I’m not as up to speed on current music as I would like to be.

Spotify purchased Heardle from its inventor several months ago in the hope that it would draw more traffic to its site. “Today’s answer is _____, visit Spotify to hear the entire song.” Apparently it didn’t inspire enough clicks, as the game will go dark in a few weeks. Oh well. It’s not a huge loss, but it was a fun little game to play.

And in a more noteworthy related note, Netflix announced that it will end its DVD rental service this September. Once again, not a shock as the market for physical media continues to diminish. But those once ubiquitous red envelopes were iconic, and it’s also worth noting that despite the vast number of streaming services there is still a vast amount of content unavailable on any service. There’s still value in actually having a physical copy of something.

Closing Credits

Just want to give a quick thank you to those who have been so supportive of Tending The Herd in the few months I’ve been doing this. I’ve got a couple of features that I’m planning, so it’s never too late to encourage others to join in on the fun. See you all again on Friday.