Breakfast and Dude both say you can't count Choo out, so I wanted something fun to say, but couldn't think of the words I wanted.
Google fills in the blanks when you don't know the answer, so I figured I'd use it to find an idiom to describe Choo for 2023.
I'm also quite interested in what "math teacher movie" I've missed and not given the respect it deserved.
Maybe I should have put more faith in math teachers, or maybe even a droid, so I could come up with a better system than the Slammer S-Scale.
We already know it's led to a woman scorned, so maybe it's time to revamp it to help the Sex Panthers finish a little higher than dead last. I never learn.
Naturally, my eyes focused on the funny answers there, but once they refocused, I was able to see that this search actually did work.
Never underestimate a man who overestimates himself.
That's Choo in a nutshell, right? The man went into the season with players that are now being sent to the minors. He thought Vaughn Grissom was the man to man 2B for him.
He overestimated himself.
He thought he could fill the team out with only a handful of picks in the first 9 rounds — he had four.
He overestimated himself.
He thought he could outsmart everyone by drafting Spencer Jones over a Kodai Senga or Masataka Yoshida.
He overestimated himself.
He thought all of this as the over-estimator he is, and we all jeered him as the under-estimators we are.
So really, what kind of season are we going to see from Big League Choo, a franchise with a .533 winning percentage (2,578-2,213-335), 10 winning seasons and eight playoff appearances?
"This year is a fun year," Mr. Choo said. "Last year was quite boring trotting out the same (awesome) lineup everyday, and after not winning (again), I just wanted to have fun. Play offensive matchups, stream pitchers. I’ll be surprised if I am not competitive for third place."
See that? A real quote from Choo dripping in over-confidence.
But maybe there's reason to be confident.
When you have Shohei Ohtani, the best fantasy player of all-time, you have to be a little bit cocky. Ohtani is coming off two amazing seasons and a World Baseball Classic to remember.
There's no reason to think that the 28-year-old isn't going to be the cornerstone of the new Choo direction.
Add in Ronald Acuna (hopefully healthy) and Alex Bregman, and that's a nice trio to build around. Acuna managed 124 hits, 15 homers, 50 RBIs, 53 walks and 29 stolen bases in 119 games last year. If he can put in the 150 games this year, Choo could finally have the duo that he gave up on — not once, but twice.
Bregman hasn't really been the same since 2019 when he batted .296 and hit 41 homers and 112 RBIs — hmm, I wonder what was different that year? — but he did manage 23 homers and 93 RBIs last year, so there's still promise for the Astros' third baseman.
But it's the Astros' shortstop that excites Choo.
"Jeremy Pena, I can’t believe Sam traded him to me, to be honest," Choo said. "I truly feel he explodes into a Top 5 shortstop."
Pena had hot streaks last year, including some important ones in the playoffs, and he finished with a .252 average, 22 homers, 63 RBIs and 11 stolen bases. His sophomore year should bring improvements in all of those numbers.
And Pena isn't the only player who Choo thinks will join the "trio" and be the building blocks to the next playoff run. His most favorite trade-bait player, Alejandro Kirk, who has been dangled to all 11 JLB teams more than once with a Jim Vaughn-like sales pitch, is a key player.
"Alejandro Kirk, he is Pudge 2.0 offensively and physically speaking," Choo said, while texting another owner about dealing Kirk. "Definitely not defensively, but [expletive] the [expletive]."
I told Choo not to swear in his answers.
I really thought he was going to make it through, but I guess I underestimated his ability to hold back.
On the pitching side, Ohtani leads the way, of course, and then there's a bunch of hopefuls. And that's not to say they're long shots. I really love Kyle Bradish, but he flashes ace-like stuff and dominates one game, and then looks like an absolute dud the next game.
Can he put it all together for the O's this year?
Pablo Lopez was great for the Marlins, but now he's with a new team in a different park, so it will be interesting to see how he adjusts. I like him to be strong there, too, but there's still the question mark.
Sean Manaea is now a Giant, where pitchers go for one year to be an ace and then sign a big contract with another team, so there's promise there for Choo.
Add in Lance Lynn and JT Brubaker, and there's a semblance of a manageable staff, but the true success will come with the way Choo streams his starters. I would bet a lot of money — if I was allowed to bet — that a third of the aforementioned pitchers will be replaced by streamed plays by mid-May.
Because Choo is never going to give up. He'll never give in. He'll never let some math teacher in a movie tell him that the projections add up to a fifth-place team. (Partly because he doesn't watch movies.)
He's making the playoffs. He's shushing the naysayers. He knows he has to win to keep us all at bay.
"I'll never shut anyone up until I win the whole thing," he said.
And that's his plan. No matter how much we analyze it with cocked heads, Choo has a plan; one that he has implemented in the past and won.
So really, what I was looking for, Google, was: Never underestimate a man with a plan.
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