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Thinking About the DH
Bernie Miklasz, on his Bern Baby Bern column for Scoops With Danny Mac, has a few smart thoughts about the DH coming to the National League
Pitching has become so specialized, MLB makes extensive use of designated pitchers — mostly relievers that have a specific duty for a specific situation and rarely work more than an inning at a time. They’re specialists. They aren’t asked to hit. They aren’t utilized for their fielding. They aren’t on the club to steal bases.
Maybe they’ll drop down a sac bunt now and then, but the sacrifice bunt is slowly fading. In 2009, MLB pitchers delivered 671 sac bunts. Last season, there were only 421 sac bunts.
Most of these highly specialized relievers hunt strikeouts and others entice ground balls. They aren’t nine-inning ballplayers who bring a complete set of skills to the job. And there’s nothing wrong with that. We just accept them for what they are — specialists. That’s what confuses me about the DH argument.
If you flat-out dismiss the DH as a one-dimensional specialist that violates the tradition of the nine-man game, then what’s up with the double standards in play as you accept dozens and dozens of one-dimensional specialist relievers?
There’s a hard line of separation in today’s game: teams invest small fortunes in pitching. They want good pitching. They need good pitching. They need a deep supply of pitching. None of the salaries being paid to pitchers contain one dollar invested with the pitcher’s hitting in mind.
So why do we continue to insist that pitchers hit?
It doesn’t help the team. It doesn’t help the pitcher, it doesn’t enhance offense. And we’ve seen pitchers hurt and miss considerable time — including Wainwright in 2015 — while swinging and/or running.
What, exactly is the benefit?
Yes, yes, yes. A thousand times yes.
Now, if the Cardinals want to bring Albert Pujols back… I’ll enjoy every minute of it as a fan. It really does not make sense from a baseball perspective, but maybe DeWitt is quietly freaking out about the possibility of lagging home attendance in 2022.
Maybe…
The Fourth Star Trek Movie is Coming Soon
JJ Abrams says a new Star Trek film “with the original cast” will start shooting by the end of the year.
— Jason Lynch 🇺🇦 (@jasonlynch) February 15, 2022
Matt Shakman, fresh from directing WandaVision and has done work on Game of Thrones, has been tapped to direct. It will be interesting to see if the powers that be are able to snag the “Kelvin Timeline” cast. Who knows if the script is any good?
I am not holding my breath on any of this.
Pulling Back the NIL Curtain
David Ubben, writing for The Athletic, published a fantastic story about what’s going on behind the scenes at Tennessee, where an in-house “college sports collective” is aiming to raise $25 million a year to fund athlete name, image, and likeness deals. Not a typo.
Things that have been included in Tennessee’s NIL deals so far:
Some deals have reached six figures overall for certain athletes. It is still surprising to me that this is all legal and “normal.” Of course, this is just a starting point for NIL deals across college sports.
The schools that are at the forefront of NIL are going to benefit the most. Five-star student-athletes are about to get paid serious cash.
Imagine what it’ll be like in five years.
Metamates
Mike Isaac and Sheera Frenkel, reporting for The New York Times, has the most important story of our time: What employees of Meta will now be called by their android/alien boss.
Google’s employees are called Googlers. Amazon’s workers are known as Amazonians. Yahoo’s employees were Yahoos.
So it was a conundrum for employees at Facebook, long known as Facebookers, when the company renamed itself Meta late last year.
The terminology is now no longer in question. At a meeting on Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and Meta’s chief executive, announced a new name for his company’s employees: Metamates.
I work for a company where we are called Horizonites and it is mildly eye-rolling inducing, but also a way to “brand” all employees. Metamates sounds like a fiber supplement.
Also, could you maybe worry about the existential crisis of misinformation and white supremacy Facebook has wrought upon society.
Will He Stay or Will He Go?
I don’t really care too much about Sean McVay or the Los Angeles Rams. However, the story about McVay considering retiring at age 36 is interesting. Dylan Hernandez, writing for the Los Angeles Times, has the story.
The Rams were only a handful of hours removed from a Super Bowl LVI celebration that extended into Monday morning when coach Sean McVay said two words with potentially alarming implications for their future: “We’ll see.”
That was McVay’s response to The Los Angeles Times when asked whether he would return to coach the Rams next season.
I find all of this fascinating. He’s been a coach for five years. He’s only 36. He has decades of coaching ahead of him. Why retire?
It seems like the most natural thing to do once you are set for life financially. Of course, I think I know the answer. To get to that level where you are in an incredibly high-paying job like professional athlete, you are obsessed with that sport. Change it to lawyer or doctor and the dynamic doesn’t change. Those individuals want to keep doing the thing they love.
If I were a betting man, I’d say McVay stays a head coach for at most five more years and then moves to something possible just as lucrative, but with far less pressure and stress like broadcasting.
Still, I’d love to see the number of people 40 years old or younger who become so financially wealthy at a relatively young age they can retire and do so.
Ivan Reitman Dies at 75
Ivan Reitman, director of comedies such as Animal House and Ghostbusters, is dead at 75.
Known for bawdy comedies that caught the spirit of their time, Reitman’s big break came with the raucous, college fraternity sendup “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” which he produced. He directed Bill Murray in his first starring role in the summer camp flick “Meatballs,” and then again in 1981′s “Stripes,” but his most significant success came with 1984′s “Ghostbusters.” Not only did the irreverent supernatural comedy starring Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis gross nearly $300 million worldwide, it earned two Oscar nominations, spawned a veritable franchise, including spinoffs, television shows and a new movie, “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” that opened this last year. His son, filmmaker Jason Reitman directed.
So many movies that were part of my life growing up. Rest in peace.
It’s the Sweet One
I was today years old when I learned Season 1 American Idol runner-up Justin Guarini plays and sings as Lil’ Sweet, the Dr. Pepper commercial mascot. My mind is sufficiently blown.
Can Rams-Bengals Give the NFL’s TV Ratings a Hollywood Ending?
It seems the Super Bowl has not been getting tremendous ratings these last few games. If you’ve been following along this year you might know the last six NFL playoff games have all come down to the final minute, with five of those games being won on the last play. Those games have jumped up in television ratings.
On the other hand, last year’s Super Bowl fell to a 14-year low dipping below 100 million viewers. Yikes.
Tim Baysinger, writing for The Wrap, outlines the teams and what it will boil down to regarding ratings.
It didn’t help that last year’s game, despite featuring Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes, was a snoozefest that was dominated by the Bucs defense. This year’s game pits the hometown Rams who get to play in their own stadium in Inglewood, Calif., against the Cincinnati Bengals and rising star quarterback Joe Burrow.
For the Bengals, it’s their first Super Bowl since 1989, while the Rams were in the Big Game just three years ago (they lost to the New England Patriots in the lowest-scoring Super Bowl ever).
As we’re seeing with this year’s playoff games, if it comes down to the final minute, the league and broadcaster NBC will get a Hollywood ending.
I could not care less about who wins or loses. Mostly, I’m just hoping for entertaining commercials.
Star Trek vs Star Wars in the New York Times Crossword Puzzle
Caitlin Lovinger, writing for The New York Times, has a breakdown of last Sunday’s New York Times crossword puzzle.
The constructor, Stephen McCarthy, embedded a wonderful trick centered on the Star Trek vs. Star Wars debate. For the clue “The better of two sci-fi franchises,” either answer works.
I am a fan of both “Star Wars” and “Star Trek,” so it’s nice to be able to highlight both (not to mention the friendly rivalry between the two fandoms) in one puzzle. I grew up with the second iterations of both franchises (Episodes 1-3/The Next Generation) and had a crush on both Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker and Wil Wheaton as Wesley Crusher when I was a teenager, so I couldn’t decide which franchise I liked better!
Ha!
The Ultimate Minimalist Phone
Greg Morris, writing at his site, thinks he’s figured out the ultimate minimalist phone.
SPOILER: it’s a cellular version of the Apple Watch.
Perhaps my perfect combination would be an iPad Mini and an Apple Watch. I can’t see a future where the smartphone won’t dominate our lives, but I am some way to freeing myself. The Apple Watch gives me a semi-smart device when required, and the accompanying phone gives me a phone if I really need one. Which isn’t frequently, it sits alone on my desk because I don’t use it much. Even less now.
I would like to try this except for the part where I don’t own a cellular Apple Watch…
My Personality Transplant
Olga Khazan, writing in The Atlantic, gave herself three months to change her personality.
I’ve never really liked my personality, and other people don’t like it either. In grad school, a partner and I were assigned to write fake obituaries for each other by interviewing our families and friends. The nicest thing my partner could shake out of my loved ones was that I ‘really enjoy grocery shopping.’ Recently, a friend named me maid of honor in her wedding; on the website for the event, she described me as ‘strongly opinionated and fiercely persistent.’ Not wrong, but not what I want on my tombstone. I’ve always been bad at parties because the topics I bring up are too depressing, such as everything that’s wrong with my life, and everything that’s wrong with the world, and the futility of doing anything about either … my editors wanted me to see if I could change my personality, and I’ll try anything once. Maybe I, too, could become a friendly extrovert who doesn’t carry around emergency Xanax.
She says the results were mixed. I think she came up with a killer sentence about the whole experiment.
The key may not be in swinging permanently to the other side of the personality scale, but in balancing between extremes, or in adjusting your personality depending on the situation.
Adjusting your personality to situations sounds hard, but ultimately the right course of action.
Obi-Wan Kenobi Release Date
The long-awaited Obi-Wan Kenobi series has finally set a release date, one Star Wars fans will recognize. Obi-Wan Kenobi, starring Ewan McGregor as the iconic Jedi Master, will release on May 25. That date, of course, is when the original Star Wars movie hit theaters.
A release from Disney shares more about what this series will entail:
The story begins 10 years after the dramatic events of “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith” where Obi-Wan Kenobi faced his greatest defeat—the downfall and corruption of his best friend and Jedi apprentice, Anakin Skywalker, who turned to the dark side as evil Sith Lord Darth Vader.
Ten years seems like a long time, but also just about right. I do hope we move quickly away from Tatooine as I’m quite tired of seeing the desert planet in every iteration of Star Wars on television.
Also, the teaser poster looks great.
Explaining Russia and Ukraine
Here’s what seems like a good “explainer” about what’s going on with Russia and Ukraine. Like you, I have no idea what’s going to happen there but someone — actually a lot of someones, plural — will be very unhappy.
Douglas Trumbull, Dead at 79
Douglas Trumbull, visual effects visionary, has died at 79. Legendary for his work on 2001: A Space Odyssey (including the Star Gate sequence), he also had a hand in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Blade Runner and The Tree of Life, and directed Silent Running and Brainstorm.
Why Denmark Is Done With COVID
Derek Thompson, writing for The Atlantic, explains Denmark’s decision to lift all COVID restrictions.
The author spoke with Michael Bang Petersen, a Danish researcher who led a global survey of COVID attitudes and advises the Danish government. It is interesting how the country handles the public perception of vaccinations and mandates.
In Denmark, people are in favor of vaccines, with more than 81 percent of adults doubly vaccinated, but also very opposed to vaccine mandates. There are no political parties in Parliament that are loudly advocating for vaccine mandates. When the legal framework for pandemic restrictions was formulated, there was a big discussion about vaccine mandates, but that provision was ultimately taken out. I think this is partly related to the fact that our vaccine coverage is so high, so people might feel less of a need to force people to be vaccinated. But also, research suggests that vaccine mandates might enhance what makes people anti-vaccine in the first place, like distrust of authorities and feeling like they’re being forced to do something that’s bad for them.
I hope this goes well for the country. Obviously, the kicker is the vaccination rate. If the United States had that number, we’d be opening everything up too (we already are, I know).
Nandi Bushell Playing Tom Sawyer
Nandi Bushell is a drum prodigy with the most incredible drum covers.
This one is for you Professor Peart. I wanted to try a @rush song that would really challenge me. I watched an interview were the Professor said Tom Sawyer ‘remains so difficult to play’. So I thought I would give it a try. It’s actually really fun to play. I really hope I have done the song justice, Professor Pearts’ playing is incredible. I hope I got the strength and smoothness balance right. I have a new found love for RUSH now too!
The best thing about watching Nandi play is not her otherworldly talent. It’s the sheer joy it looks like she’s having. So infectious.
The End of the Pandemic is Here
M. G. Siegler, writing on his site 500ish, outlines his feeling that we are on the other side of the pandemic. He makes a lot of good points and comes to this conclusion:
We are coming out of this. Not in the most graceful way, but in a human one. The virus will still remain. People will still get sick. But they’ll also get better nearly always at this point. And even quickly and seamlessly most of the time. We have learned to live with COVID even if we don’t want to fully admit it yet. The admission is coming because it has to… It’s time.
I think he’s probably right.
The Worst Day of Mark Zuckerberg’s Reign
Kevin T. Dugan, writing for New York Magazine Intelligencer, explains the slide of Facebook.
At times, an earnings report causes a stock’s price to fall precipitously only for it to moderate in the hour or so after, when the company’s executives calm down Wall Street by saying that all is not so bad. This time, it didn’t work that way. In fact, Facebook’s price continued to slide even lower. Zuckerberg, in his trademark nasal drawl, seemed to acknowledge that the tide was turning against the business he has been running for 18 years as of this week. “The balance of content that people see in feeds is shifted a little bit more towards stuff that isn’t coming from their friends, which they may discuss with their friends, but it’s kind of shifting towards more public content,” he said. The upshot here is that the voyeuristic behaviors that made social media as we know it so profitable — what are my friends talking about? Who did my high school ex marry? — were actually starting to fade.
It dropped from $900 million to something like $670 million. That’s what happens when individuals and companies start killing the ad tracking power of Facebook. People are finally quitting the app. I mean, these apps and companies aren’t going disappear. However, I can easily see Facebook and less so Instagram turning into Tumblr or worse Friendster.
No one under 20-25 uses Facebook. They might use Instagram, but not Facebook. The bottom line is Facebook can’t recruit new users for the same reason people don’t start smoking in their 30s. They’ve learned not to even start.
Social networks have a shelf life. Just ask what’s-his-name from MySpace.
Ignore Them
People sometimes ask me, “Hank, how do you stay hopeful when many people you deeply disagree with are powerful, whiny, and intolerably annoying?”
— Hank Green (@hankgreen) February 4, 2022
Wanna know my secret? I ignore them.
Good advice.