The maiden voyage.
It begins tomorrow for the U.S.S. Stantonian.
"I’m definitely excited to get the season going," said Josh, the PR director for the Kohler Brothers, "but I have no idea how some of these random categories will make me randomly hate certain players. I think we built a strong team, but do they fit well into the confines of a 1,000 rule / 2,000 category league? Time will tell..."
Whoa. A thousand rules? Two thousand categories? These sailors have some mighty tall tales. Clearly they're the kind of sea captains who come back with stories of 100-foot waves and sea monsters.
Maybe after this season, they'll boast about how they slayed the mighty Cheese Steaks in the NLCS and destroyed the Breakfast in the World Series.
The people they tell this legend to will just think they got extremely drunk and went to an IHOP at 3 a.m.
"I think we’re probably going to win," Josh said. "I admit I hate that we don’t play each team in equal amounts (even the slow and traditional MLB is fixing their scheduling issue) and that playoffs are based on arbitrary divisions."
Man, the Stantonians are firing all cannons.
You beat your division mates, you get in. That's why you play each team in your division three times. Who doesn't like an American League and National League?
Yes, last year's fourth-place team (Topton) in the AL had a 12-game edge on the third place team (Nutz) in the NL, but Topton went 160-164-36 against his AL mates; Nutz went 170-146-44 against the NL.
I would say Nutz earned more of a right to be there than Topton.
But hey, to each their own.
You may have your own big ship with Stanton's cartoon face on the side, but you're in the JLB Ocean. This is Slammernational waters. Are you seaworthy?
Based off your offseason and draft, I'd say yes. Plenty of superstars here led by the man, Mike Trout. Carlos Correa, Giancarlo Stanton and Tim Anderson are key cogs, of course, but the difference will be the outliers, and I do like what the Stantonians did here.
Jeff McNeil, CJ Cron, Max Kepler, Avisail Garcia and AJ Pollock all have had great seasons, and they easily could put up great numbers again. Not all of them will, but when throwing darts, you only need one bull's eye to brag.
And Cron, who hit 28 bombs with 92 RBIs in Colorado last year, may be that bull's eye.
"CJ Cron is going to mash," Josh said. "He reminds me of a poor man’s Mark Trumbo turned rich man’s Mark Trumbo. He’s the kind of guy that reminds me of my Adam Dunn and Mark Reynolds obsession back in the day. Pollock, when healthy, is going to be sneaky good on a strong White Sox lineup.
Pitching could be a bit dicey with injuries and suspensions raising red flags, but they did a great job adding Marcus Stroman with the first overall pick. And then, with subsequent picks, they drafted Brady Singer, Chris Paddack and Nestor Cortes. I really like Cortes with the Yankees, his stats were unbelievable last year in a smaller sample, and Paddack could be on the move to Minnesota.
"Have you seen Nestor Cortes statcast? Dude is a stud," Josh said. "Our pitching is better, but I think it’s mostly from trading for Yu, Kershaw, Bauer and Snell. The pitchers in the draft are meh and generally pitchers don’t pan out. What pitcher has been consistently great for more than 10 years? Kershaw sure, but he’s now fading, deGrom can’t stay healthy. Scherzer maybe, but Queens is going to sap him of all his greatness per the usual. In general, I think pitchers stink and aren’t worth valuing. With the shift dying next year, I think they’ll also get worse."
Well, that wasn't the response I was expecting. This is the most anti-Parker answer ever. Parker would have sugar-coated every pick and declared co-Cy Young winners.
I guess it's good they at least drafted Stroman, right?
"It wasn’t fun to take Stroman, especially with Josh Donaldson out there," Josh said. "We pride ourselves on having a fun team. Stroman peaked and there’s no way he gets better from here or ends up being a keeper. The Cubs suck and should be ashamed. They had Baez, Rizzo, Bryant, Contreras, Russell, Schwarber, Soler, Torres and only needed to sign a few of these guys and focus on pitching and they could have been a dynasty."
Man, I'd hate to be their server.
"How do you like your Cheese Steak and Breakfast sampler?" I ask.
Josh gazes up and instantly I know: I asked the wrong question.
"It wasn't the steak I wanted and the onions were clearly old, and this isn't Wiz. And what is this? Scrambled eggs? Could have been much better if you made an omelette, with a side of bacon, sausage and hash browns. This could have been an epic plate. And why is my place-setting uneven. You have three utensils on the right side and only one on the left?! This was all ruined from the start. The menu had way too many options. What kind of IHOP is this?!"
"Sir, this is a Wendy's."
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