Had he not been serious, it would have made superb satire. But he was serious in a new-age baseball way, silly-speak that helps explain the corrosive state of MLB in the hands of analytics-stricken deep thinkers.
The words were spoken by Red Sox general manager Chaim Bloom, who said he’s excited to have recently signed Japanese outfielder Masataka Yoshida, 29, to a five-year deal that will cost Boston $105 million.
Bloom: “There’s a very unique combination of contact skills and strike-zone discipline and the ability to impact the baseball that we feel has a chance to really impact the game at the major league level.”
Yeah, but can he hit?
Strike-zone discipline and contact skills in order to impact the baseball!
I grew up loving baseball. But not this kind. So every year, about this time, I try to adjust to what’s going on — only to grow further from The Game.
This has become the time of year when the wealthiest teams — up to 10 of them, often from the largest population centers — spin big wheels with different dollar signs assigned each slot — to radically reform their rosters from the season just past.
And the local media respond with gushers of joy, as teams “upgrade” positions. They’re all champs in January, before the injuries, .212 batting averages and home-run-or-strikeout swings kill the buzz.
Japanese outfielder Masataka Yoshida puts on a team cap at an introductory press conference with the Red Sox. Kyodo
Teams such as the Mets, Yankees and Padres now flip their casts before departed players’ bobbleheads can arrive from China. And then the expensive purchases, now often paid as if players will sustain their stardom or inflated value deep into their 30s, will be pulled off the mound after five solid innings or a pitch-count nearing — goodness gracious! — 85.
Does it make much difference who strikes out swinging for a home run every at-bat? Does it matter which $100 million starter has been removed, the game again placed in the hands of a transient reliever or a team’s “Closer of the Week”?
The Padres, the past six seasons, have thrown piles of dough at anyone with a decent résumé. What has it done for them except make them, at most, unfulfilled threats?
As the salaries quadruple and extend over eight years instead of two, the minimal fundamental act of running to first base has become a matter of mood, attitude and injury prevention.
“Another tight quad! See ya next month!”
What do we expect from radically changed lineups if the game doesn’t change to make team-winning sense, a back to the future application of logic as opposed to failed, prescripted formulas? Aaron Boone will still be Aaron Boone.
The Padres introduce Xander Bogaerts. AP
Anyway, it’s Christmas morning and somewhere under a tree sits a wrapped gift for Junior. A Mets fan, Junior had been asking for it since September: a Mets Seth Lugo jersey!
NFL Thursday nighter abuses audience
Every December, as the weather grows more forbidding, Roger “It’s All About Our Fans” Goodell makes fools of NFL patrons or challenges them to endure being regarded as taken-for-granted, paying suckers.
Two Saturdays ago, the NFL scheduled three games. For the good and welfare of “our fans” and “our players,” Goodell could have insisted that the first game, at 1 p.m. and likely in sunlight, be Dolphins-Bills in dangerously frigid Buffalo. But Goodell allowed it to become the 8:15 p.m. start to best suit prime-time TV. Let them eat ice cream cake.
For that matter, a commissioner with foresight and active concern for customers and players would have insisted the Dolphins and Bills play in Buffalo on Sept. 25 and in Miami this past Saturday, rather than the opposite.
Jets fourth-string QB Chris Streveler saw some action on Thursday night. USA TODAY Sports
How would you have liked to be among Jets PSL purchase victims — “good investment” investors according to Goodell’s public, bogus sell — as the Jaguars-Jets game Thursday night was one of their rewards for serving as got-ya-by-the-wallet fans?
On a work/school night, it began as scheduled: 8:15. Goodell threw in the rotten weather and rotten game, as a holiday gift, no extra charge.
So two weeks later, what public censure — forget a suspension or firing — has ESPN football analyst Robert Griffin III, a black man, suffered for his “Monday Night Football” use of a slur for blacks? None. Zip. Carry on.
White ESPN tennis analyst Doug Adler, falsely, recklessly accused of calling Venus Williams a racial slur — and ESPN knows he didn’t — six years later remains fired by ESPN, his career and life destroyed, his reputation shot, his volunteer work to teach poor black kids tennis terminated. ESPN didn’t known or care about that — all due to a social media-delivered lie.
And I challenge every ESPN and Disney exec to replay in a public forum what Adler said. He clearly complimented Williams for her “guerrilla” tactics; he did not call her a “gorilla.” Yet, ESPN declared that Adler’s firing and incumbent demonization was justified.
But ESPN does not have the courage of Adler’s conviction for a crime he did not commit.
Literally worse than lateral?
Sign of the Times Plays of the Week: In-game circumstances now seem lost on too many, not just the Patriots’ last-play lateral-tosser Jacobi Meyers.
During the Tennessee-Stanford women’s hoops last Sunday on ABC/ESPN, Stanford, with the lead and six minutes left, went on a 4-on-1 break. A layup was eschewed in favor of a pass deep into the right corner for a missed 3-pointer. Crazy.
During Giants-Commanders on NBC Sunday, Giants WR Richie James, on second-and-15, caught a 6-yard pass, then, looking from his knees at a sideline marker, made with one of those tired look-what-I-did first-down gestures — even if it was now third-and-9.
Giants receiver Richie James celebrates during a game against the Commanders. AP
James apparently mistook the first of the two 10-yard first-down upright markers for the second.
Some still get it! The coach of N.J.’s Montclair Immaculate girl’s basketball team has been suspended four games by his school for “unsportsmanlike conduct” following a season-opening, 104-30 win.
Now that Rob Manfred’s eagerness to buy into a racial hoax that Georgia’s new voting legislation was the return of Jim Crow laws to prevent blacks from voting has been proven a lie — Georgia had a record number of black and white voters — where is Manfred’s apology for yanking last year’s All-Star Game out of 50 percent black Atlanta?
Count how many times today third-down-and-significant is preceded by useless, habit-formed crowd shots. Last Sunday, the Bengals, down 17-8 to the Buccaneers, had third-and-8 when CBS ignored both teams’ formations and personnel to cut to three consecutive crowd shots.
After Argentina’s World Cup-winning goalie Emiliano Martinez proudly used his trophy as a classless vulgar prop, Roger Goodell has inquired about Martinez’s availability for the Super Bowl halftime show.