What a hitter
I need some help here, because I pray the Braves are not going to waste the unlimited potential of the best young player this franchise has produced since some skinny kid with quick wrists named Henry was moved from second base to the outfield.
Yes, Ronald Acuña is better than a young Andruw Jones. Yes, he's better than young Tom Glavine. Yes, he's better than, pick a name that was a Braves farmhand before becoming a Braves legend.
In fact there are only two that come close. There's the above reference to all-timer Hank Aaron. The other was former No. 1 overall pick Chipper Jones.
Let's compare the starts to those seasons with this caveat: Acuña is in his fourth season as a pro, but has played 346 games because of a late start as a rookie and last year's COVID-shortened slate, which equates to being a month into his third season.
We'll try to get as close in terms of games played because we can't go back and match exact numbers.
Aaron made his MLB debut at 20 and in his first three seasons and played 428 games and hit 66 homers with 267 RBIs, 266 runs scored, with seven steals and hit .310 (520-for-1,679). He made two all-star teams and finished in the top 12 MVP voting twice in those three years and fourth in Rookie of the Year.
Chipper made his MLB debut at 21 and in his first three years that included eight games in 1993 and a vacated 1994 because of a knee injury and played 305 games and hit 53 homers with 196 RBIs, 203 runs scored with 22 steals and hit .290 (326-for-1,125). He made one all-star team, finished top 12 in the MVP voting once and was Rookie of the Year runner-up. (He was jobbed by Nomo.)
Acuña made his debut at 20 and in these 346 games to date, he has hit 92 homers - including a rocket shot last night - with 217 RBIs, 283 runs scored and 67 steals and hit .283 (380-for-1,341). He has made one all-star team (and this year is a dunk) and been a top-12 MVP finisher three times and won Rookie of the Year.
Yeah, he's special.
And he also is especially affordable considering he's on an all-time trajectory at a price that is borderline obscene.
OK, Fernando Tatis is a great player and the Padres just paid him like a great player. Earlier this year, San Diego gave Tatis a 14-year, $340 million contract. Acuña's deal with the Braves - with the two-year club option that the team will 1000% exercise - is 10 years, $124 million.
So Acuña is getting an average of $12.4 million from now through 2028. By comparison, here are some salary numbers:
> The top-paid player in the game is justifiably Mike Trout, who makes three times what Ronald does ($37.1 million to Acuña's $12.4 million average over the lifetime of the deal);
> Bryce Harper is the highest paid right fielder in the game at $27.54 million. Acuña's average salary is somewhere between Nick Castellanos' $14 million and Michael Conforto's $12.25 million. Seriously.
> Because the deal actually escalates through the life of the contract, Acuña is making $5 million this year, which means he's tied with Robbie Grossman as the 48th highest-paid outfielder in the majors this year and the third highest-paid outfielder on his own team this year. Think about that.
And the Braves have every look of a franchise that is going to waste his talents and cash in on his greatness.
We're back to the bullpen being a room full of hot garbage.
The questions about the rotation are not going to be answered with spots starts by Bryce Wilson.
Tell me they're going to get my man some help. Please. Heck lie to me if you need to.
Hardly surprising
It was noted Tuesday that I wrote in January that the Republican Party could not move forward by kowtowing to the wishes, wants and wails of Donald Trump.
I meant it then. It remains clear today.
He's the political Titanic that has attracted the barnacles of the insecure and moves forward with a push from the waves of the wishy-washy politicians like Chuck Fleischmann, who were elected without a platform or a presence because of the demographics of their district, or Marjorie Greene, who were elected because of a hatred that Trump has fanned at every turn.
Side note: Full disclosure, I voted for Trump in 2016. Most of you know this. The hindsight 20/20 thing brings up a lot of questions. It also brings up that if you think Trump was the worst president ever (I don't think that; I think he is the worst post-president ever - he's Jimmy Carter inverted in a lot of ways) then you can make a rational argument that Hillary Clinton was the single worst presidential candidate ever. That rings especially true because of the simple fact that Trump did not win because of who Trump was or what Trump said. He won because he was not Clinton.
It's amazing how the perspective and vernacular has changed, because there has always been the charge that a certain faction of the GOP was not Republican enough, as if there were some sort of Eagle Scout scale of check marks and merit badges of conservatism. It's how the name RINO (Republican in name only) caught on, and it was originally meant as someone who was not enough of a conservative for the base.
Now, it's being used to point a misdirected finger at the part of the Republican party that - GASP - is trying to find ways to win elections and avoid the growing threat of a wave of socialistic notions and policies in an ever-borrowing, forever-spending Democratic controlled federal government rather than kissing up to the social media accounts of the former president.
Yeah, this is normally the domain Chas occupies, and for the most part I have ignored Trump since his unforgivable role in the Jan. 6 nightmare.
But one thing is 100% certain in this conversation, and it's undeniably true and truly undeniable.
If the GOP splits - as these 100 or so folks are claiming as they rally around Liz Chaney in the pro-Trump attempts to oust the Wyoming Congresswoman from her position of leadership within the party - simple math tells all of us that the Republican will not win a Federal election of meaning for years if not decades.
That presents the rank and file conservatives like me and Vader and Intern Scott and Spy and so many other regulars around these parts who may or may not want to be identified in this space or on this list with nothing but lose-lose scenarios.
Because faced with an either/or, the numbers simply don not compute and the GOP or the RINOs or whatever the factions may be called will not be able to compete.
Modern day
Speaking of Trump, how about a Twitter beef and everyone loses? Say it ain't so.
Well, here's an exchange between a Pittsburgh sports radio shock jock and former Pirates third baseman Todd Frazier that turned ugly from the opening salvo from Madden, who called Frazier a scrub and celebrated his being designated for assignment. (In the first Tweet I got the abbreviation DFA'd but it ended with GFY. That's not Good For You, is it?)
Frazier responded by making fun of Madden's weight and telling him to grab another hot dog.
The back-and-forths are immaterial and kind of predictable.
But the conversation that interests me is the seed of the future in covering sports.
First Madden is 'that' guy in the Pittsburgh market, voicing the perspective of the angry fan who thinks athletes are overpaid, under-trying and generally spoiled. Heck, he took shots at TJ Watt after the Steelers end-of-the-season meltdown earlier this year, and while the Steelers had issues down the stretch, Watt was certainly not one of them.
And Frazier was low-hanging fruit since he was 3-for-40 after signing as - for the Pirates - a relatively expensive free agent.
But in a day and age when access is being forever limited - at the bequest of teams and players and against the protest of real, day-to-day media folks - these kinds of pot shots are a) damaging to the overall cause of the media and b) going to be more and more commonplace.
The first part of that conclusion is clear. Now the teams can say, "Well we don't want an incident or altercation" as a veiled BS line about limiting locker room access. In truth, that's the tail wagging the dog because, like Frazier said, there's no way Madden would have said that to Frazier's face. he may have asked him about being released, but the rest? No way.
As for the frequency, well, sadly, folks are willing to sell their decency and their credibility for 15 minutes of fame or 15 pounds of gold. Example 1: Have we ever discussed Mark Madden before? Yeah, didn't think so. And why are we discussing him? Because he acted like a shock jock/eighth grader for the whole world to see on Twitter.
Example 2: Clay Travis has made a mint in the vacuum of sports media voices on the right. He has embraced being the Fox News to ESPN's CNN. And you want to know his big break in sports? Asking Tim Tebow at SEC Media Days if he was a virgin. His big break across the entire media landscape? Saying on CNN that he only 100% believes in two things: "The First Amendment and boobs."
Still, at least Travis was there in person to face the fallout in person rather than through social media, which makes head-turning and eye-catching outlandish statements even easier because there's no in-person backlash.
Somewhere Jim Murray is sick to his stomach.
This and that
- You know the rules. Here's Paschall on the Vols first game of the not-so-hyped Heupel era moving to a Thursday night on the SEC Network. Assuming the Orange Onslaught handles its BID-ness against Bowling Green, it's hard not to approve of this move. On a much-anticipated return to GameDay Saturdays - and with the assumption that the cash-starved (compared to normal) SEC programs are going to open the gates in full - the alphabet bowl of UT-BGSU that first Saturday of the season would get shuttled to an SEC alternate channel somewhere high on your cable dial. This gives Heupel the best chance for the isolated exposure in a game in which he won't be a double-digit underdog.
- Weeds started on college basketball, so you know we're in. But his college today was aces. Hey, it's Weeds. Here's TFP ace sports columnist Mark Wiedmer on Hartford's decision to drop down from Division I to D-III because of financial shortfalls because of COVID. I don't think COVID is the dividing line for the Hartfords and even the UTCs from being D-I or dropping. And I certainly do not think dropping football is the answer in any regard. No, the big cliff for the UTCs of the world is what happens when/if the Power 5 has had enough of carrying the freight for the entirety of D-I. That's the line of demarcation, in my opinion.
- So Blake Shelton thinks "The Voice" has found its first superstar after 20 seasons. OK, but that's more on the judges than the contests, because Morgan Wallen was once on that show and was not voted through. And while Wallen may be a pariah in terms of his vocabulary, dude was(is) a superstar. Side question: When do you think Wallen's exile ends? I ask because he was country music's top nominated artist in the Billboard Awards despite not being on country radio for the last four-plus months after being caught on camera using a racial slur earlier this year. The Billboard Awards will be May 23, and Wallen has six nominations, including two in top country song - Chasin' You and More than My Hometown - and top song sales artist. (And truth be told, if that last one is by numbers and not emotion, Wallen would have to be considered the favorite since, despite his isolation from everyone, his most recent album Dangerous spent 10 weeks atop the Billboard charts. Not country charts, across all genres.)
Today's questions
Which way Wednesday starts this way:
Which baseball player/manager-media member altercation was the best?
> Lee Elia against the media covering the Cubs, and the Cubs fans too; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S0CDtEz_Bo (NSFW - big time)
> Bobby Bonilla in the Mets locker room; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuBVPIr5RzE
> Jim Gray-Pete Rose; https://www.nbcsports.com/video/nbc-history-jim-gray-revisits-controversial-pete-rose-interview
> Deion Sanders-Tim McCarver. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO9jo8XkOfA
In the after match of Kenny Mayne, which ESPN personality who has recently parted ways with the mothership do you/will you miss the most?
Which is the appropriate guess for the number of World Series the Braves will win before Acuña's contract runs out in 2028?
> 0
> 1
> 2 or more.
As for today, May 12, well, let's take a look.
Pulp Fiction premiered today in 1994. Great soundtrack.
Homer Simpson is 65 today. Wow.
Rushmore of cartoon characters and their catch phrases, because I believe Homer and 'D'oh' has to be in the running.