I’m sick and tired of people talking about how the Cubs have had a "renaissance" or a "golden age" this past decade. No they have not. They’ve mainly had a poop age. The Cubs were decent in 2003 and 2007, and awesome in 2008. They were crap every other year, including years of 95, 96, and 97 losses (2002, 2006, and 2000, in that order). Just because they were the best team in baseball in 2008 doesn’t mean they’ve been great the whole decade, kids.
But, hey, Mark Prior auditioned for scouts today! Maybe the Cubs can sign him back with some of the money they’ll be saving by totally not eating Kosuke’s contract!
June 30th, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball |
no comments
I am depressed. The Cubs are beyond awful, and the interwebs have pretty much completely given up on them. I’m seeing articles like this one all over the place that carry the same basic message: blow up the whole team and start over. That makes me sad, because, really, I don’t think the Cubs are that far out of contention, but I also don’t think there’s any other reasonable move. This is an old team by and large, and the players, they ain’t getting any better. Here, because everybody cares what I think, is what I think the Cubs should do.
• Don’t get rid of Aramis Ramirez. Ramirez is at his absolute low-value point right now. He’s not a free agent until after next season (because, come on, he’s going to pick up that $14M option), and he will not be worse last season than he’s been this season. In fact, it’s looking like he’s starting to pull back up — his OPS over the last 28 days is .790, which is a lot better than it’s been. Whatever it is, he’s getting over it. Somewhat.
• Don’t trade Derrek Lee unless somebody offers way too much. Derrek is also at a low-value point right now. What are you expecting to get for a .713 OPS 1B? You won’t get a goddamn thing is what. I’d hope he pulls up to class-A FA status (which is a random event based on fairy dust and rainbows and has nothing to do with anything), offer him arbitration, and see if I can’t turn him into draft picks. And if I can’t? Well, then I get one more slightly-cheaper season out of Derrek Lee as opposed to, what, Micah Hoffpauir? That’s still a win, really. And since he, like Ramirez, probably won’t be this bad next year also, he’s liable to bring more return.
• Trade pretty much anybody else you can, except for Randy Wells and Ryan Theriot. This is really the key here, I think. Randy looks bad this year, but his BABIP is astronomical, which probably indicates rotten luck on batted balls; his sophomore slump involves an ERA about a run and a half higher than his xFIP. Theriot always sucks, but he sucks more this year than he’s ever sucked in the past, and as before: quit selling low, schmucks.
Everybody else can bring you good value. If you’re really dead-set on blowing up and rebuilding — and after today, when the Cubs lost to the Pirates without actually allowing any earned runs, I can kind of understand why you would be — shift them all now before they slide down. Maybe you can package them all up and trade them to the Giants for their entire farm system and every draft pick they’ll get from now until 2016. Would anybody be surprised if Brian Sabean accepted that?
June 30th, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball, Bullshit |
no comments
Sure, this article is pretty much bullshit too — and rather badly written, at that. You notice how it professes to be a list of the "hardest" — explicitly the "hardest to defeat" — video game bosses of all time? And how it took them all the way to the second entry to shift the criteria away from "hardest" and toward "coolest?" And how the title definitely says "end" bosses and many of them are not? And how entry 11 is explicitly the Death from the NES Castlevania, accompanied by a wonderful screenshot from Symphony of the Night on the PSX? Yeah. Fuck that article.
That’s not what I came to talk to you about. I came to talk about the extreme contempt Square Enix has toward its players. Do you see this? Do you see this shit right there at the top, at number 1? This boss from Final Fantasy 11 that takes twenty-four hours to beat? And the interwebs suggest to me that it isn’t the only takes-an-entire-day boss in that idiotic game.
Now, I spent five years playing World of Warcraft, and I can tell you this: World of Warcraft has its share of awful encounters, but nothing even close to the sheer unstoppable tedium of a day-long fight. Only Square Enix could possibly think that was a good design decision. Remember, these are the same people who thought that shipping Final Fantasy 7 without finishing the graphics or actually making all the plot cutscenes was a good idea. And who thought that shipping Final Fantasy 8 without bothering to include a game anywhere on the four discs was a good idea.
I guess my point is: Dragon Quest 9 comes out in two weeks and better not have anything this goddamn lame in it, or there’ll be hell to pay.
June 30th, 2010
Posted by
Darien |
Bullshit, Games |
5 comments
