Hank Chinaski

Their collective ability to commit and intertwine all the known formal and informal logical/argumentative fallacies - which should be mutually exclusive, but somehow they’ve managed to combine them - really is astounding.

So it’s basically like how in Idiocracy, everyone thinks the Luke Wilson character is a homosexual because he “talks smart.” Yeah, that sounds about right.

Goddamnit, it presupposes that maybe they’re not morons. Hank is a moron.

It’s hilarious. To then, the entirety of the program (and the university) is based on the most recent 12 games and absolutely nothing else. The program’s history of success, the location, the school, the NIL opportunities, the exposure…they simply pretend that none of that exists. I always assume that they don’t really believe this stuff, but what that presupposes is…maybe they’re just morons?

My new favorite bit of idiocy is how they have all concluded that Texas is very obviously paying all these guys illegally, because it’s the only way that Texas could recruit such a class. Then they talk about how the Texas class is shaping up to be about as highly ranked as its last few classes have been.

I don’t know if they want more scoring per se - I think they want more hits, they don’t want every ground ball to be an out. I was watching the 1992 ALCS last night while trying to go to sleep (I know, I’m a degenerate) and the game was so different - grounders up the middle were hits, guys tried to steal bases a lot, etc. I think the thinking is that disallowing the shift would get us back to a little more of that. I don’t know if it’ll work or if we should try to make it work, but that seems to be the idea.

Haha come on…they can’t be this oblivious, nobody lacks self-awareness to this degree…this has to be one of us writing this, right? I mean, you couldn’t describe the entire history of their program better in a single sentence if you tried.

Have fun at the game. Oh, and do me a favor and remind all the imbeciles around you that Kyle Tucker was in the minors in 2017 as they’re all booing him.

I don’t think so; I’m just speculating that a team that has an interest in signing him to a megadeal may be more incentivized to trade for him, so that they get a 2-year head start in trying to negotiate the megadeal. For example, if you’re the Yankees, would you be willing to spend a little more in prospect capital to acquire him, knowing that if you don’t, the Mets might trade for him and then have exclusive ability to extend him for the next 2 years…in which case you may never get the opportunity to sign him. Maybe not, but it seems like that would have some value to them. But yeah, Washington shouldn’t care; they should obviously get as much as they can, whether that’s from the Mets or the Yankees or the Rays.

Ok, counterpoints: 1) Soto is 23. This isn’t anything like giving a 31 year old Albert Pujols a 10-year deal. Signing him now gets you what figures to be the entire prime of his career. 2) you have to consider just how good of a hitter the guy is. What he’s done at such a young age puts him in the most elite of elite company in the history of baseball. 3) Trout’s deal isn’t the reason that the Angels can’t get out of their own way. They paid a ton for Rendon despite his injury history…and lo and behold, he’s been injured for most of his time there. They took on Justin Upton’s contract. They paid geriatric Pujols $30 million for several years. The Trout deal is fine, it’s all the other dumb decisions they’ve made that have been the problem. The Rangers got lambasted for the A-Rod deal, but it turned out that that wasn’t a bad contract at all. $25 million at the end of that deal was not $25 million at the beginning, just as $40 million in 2022 won’t be $40 million in 2037. Signing Soto doesn’t guarantee a team will become a winner; any club will obviously have to have a good team around him. And I totally agree that there is a good argument to be made that tying up that much money in any player is too risky. But given the Tatis and Lindor contracts…why wouldn’t Soto ask for more? That’s just the market. If it were me, I’d probably not tie up that much money into one guy. But I don’t think it’s necessarily foolish to do so if you are, say, Cohen and the Mets. That’s a good team, and a guy like Soto in that lineup makes them a lot better. It takes some spotlight away from the Yankees. And it doesn’t necessarily cripple them from a payroll perspective- they may decide they’ll just pay the luxury tax for a while like the Dodgers have. Again, what I find more interesting is whether they’re willing to pay Soto, the luxury tax, and the prospects it would take to get him now and start negotiating. Now you’re talking about paying him way more than the $500 million.

It is going to be fascinating. If a team trades for him, they’ll have two years to try to sign him to an extension. So maybe the Yankees or the Mets or the Dodgers are willing to give him $500mm…but are they willing to give him that money AND the kind of prospects it’ll take to pull off a trade for him? That’s a fuckton of value. So what’s the value tied to being the only team who can negotiate with him for a while?

Davis, Strawberry and Bo. Straw should have hit 600 HR but couldn’t keep his shit together. Bo’s career(s) would have been fascinating to watch on many levels, as he was still developing as a baseball player. Those guys playing (full, healthy seasons) in the 90s offense era would have been great.

I have no idea how much of a douchebag this Tennessee kid is. I’ll say that at my age, most of them seem like douchebags. They’re kids. They’re dipshits. Most will grow out of it.

Sure, and it was still at least 3 years too long.

I guess it depends on how long we’re talking about. The A-Rod one was good. These 10+ year deals that guys are signing these days are generally in their early/mid 20s. Those could work. But the deals that long for guys in their 30s (Pujols, Cabrera) were dumb and I doubt we’ll see those again.

They have the best farm system per Fangraphs, so they have the prospect capital, and Soto won’t cost that much before free agency. They are already good and should be for a while.

Yeah. I’ll be surprised if he’s moved this season. But in the off-season I could see it. Cleveland, TB, NYY, LAD, NYM could be fits - good farm systems, teams who could win in next two years, and a few that have a shot at extending him. Could definitely see the Mets giving him a $500mm deal.

He turned down 15/$440. That’s…a little nuts. I think. I guess it’s possible he can string together some contracts that offer higher annual salaries…but holy hell. I said earlier that it would be almost impossible for Washington to get fair value for 2.5 years of Soto. That still may be true, but if he’s turning down $440 million…well maybe that changes the calculus a bit. It’ll still take a metric shit-ton of prospect value, probably a lot more than the Astros have. Sadly, teams like the Dodgers and Yankees have better farm systems right now. (And I love Soto; god I hope he doesn’t go to one of those teams.)

Also, nobody has enough depth to offset the concurrent absence of the best hitter and best second baseman in MLB (in addition to another good hitter in Brantley).

It’s not a free fall, it’s regression, and it was inevitable. Did you really think this was the best MLB team ever a few weeks ago when they were on a 120-win pace?

If Dusty sits Bregman or Tucker for a game in which Altuve, Alvarez and Brantley are unavailable…well I’ll be terribly annoyed by the stupidity of the whole thing, and also completely unsurprised.

I love how they’ve already concluded that Ewers is a headcase and won’t succeed, and that Manning is magnificently overrated on account of his family. Like, they’ve already accepted these as facts, and based all of their opinions on these assumptions, which are really just wishes. Also I’m old enough to remember them saying the exact same shit about VY and Colt. Those idiots legitimately thought that Reggie McNeal was a better QB than Vince Young. Hell, I bet you could still find some that would make that argument, despite one being in the CFB HoF and the other being completely anonymous and forgotten.

I’m aware it’s not possible because it doesn’t make financial sense. That doesn’t change the fact that a set of 162 games does a better job of identifying the best teams than a set of 7 games does.