Jason

Noooooo Canada

After weeks of waiting, it’s finally here… Matt Canada Firing Day!

For those who don’t follow football, Matt Canada was, until today, the offensive coordinator for the Pittsburgh Steelers. His passing offense — if you can even call it that — has been one of the least imaginative, most conservative in the league. There are almost zero deep passes, and even most of the short passes are to the sidelines; it’s almost like he’s allergic to the middle of the field. If that’s not easy enough to gameplan against, he also runs a bunch of slow-developing plays — bubble screens, jet sweeps — that get broken up behind the line of scrimmage for a loss. To be fair, the bread-and-butter running game has been fairly competent, but in today’s NFL, if ALL you do is run the football, you don’t go very far. We’re light-years removed from the “three yards and a cloud of dust” game of years past.

If you want to put some stats to it: the Steelers were 28th in both points and total yards during Canada’s tenure, and NEVER had a 400-yard offensive performance. In 2023 in particular, they’ve been outgained offensively in EVERY game they played. (Yet, they’re somehow still 6-4… which is a bit of a minor miracle, honestly.)

In short, Canada has widely been viewed amongst Steeler Nation as sucking at his job, pretty much since the day he was hired. But he had thus far managed to escape much in the way of accountability. In 2021, it was “Ben Roethlisberger no longer has the arm to throw deep, so they have to manage the playbook to what he’s capable of”. In 2022, it was “Kenny Pickett is a rookie, they’re easing him into things”. But now, in 2023, there’s no more built-in excuses and the offense looks as bad as ever… maybe even worse. And so today, the axe finally fell.

Now, I’m not going to pretend Matt Canada was the ONLY problem with this team. Kenny Pickett, the aforementioned quarterback, has been maddeningly inconsistent since being handed the starting job. Enough so that there are doubts creeping in over whether he can really be the franchise QB they hoped they were drafting. Maybe it’s not a fair comparison, but C.J. Stroud managed to hit the ground running this year, and it’s not clear the Texans’ personnel at the other 10 offensive positions are any better than the Steelers’. Sometimes QB’s have the “it” factor; sometimes they don’t.

Speaking of those other positions, they’re not immune from criticism either. The offensive line has had its ups and downs as well: they had a lot of turnover of personnel over the last few years and the charitable explanation is they’re still meshing; the less-charitable explanation is they signed the wrong guys. They’ve also struggled to find good wide receivers ever since Antonio Brown’s departure. Diontae Johnson puts up superficially good numbers and is certainly a success for a 3rd-rounder, but seems to disappear in big moments; George Pickens is a physical freak, but has a tendency to sulk and check out if his number’s not getting called. Calvin Austin has intriguing speed and elusiveness in the slot, but he also lost his entire rookie year to injury, so he’s still in learning mode. Allen Robinson… exists. So some of this is a personnel issue as much as a coaching one.

(The sole bright spot has been the emergence of running back Jaylen Warren. He’s a 5’8″ undrafted free agent, his physical tools don’t really leap out, but when he gets running north-south, he’s like a cannonball out there. And his stiff-arms are becoming the stuff of legend.)

But it starts with an offense gameplan that has been both predictable and unimaginative. Every. Single. Week. You can’t run an NFL offense when the opposing team knows your entire offense runs within 5 yards of the line of scrimmage. When a fairly team-first guy like Najee Harris admits to a locker room full of reporters that opposing teams pretty much know what’s coming… a new coordinator is probably the first and easiest thing you can do to try and fix it.

Among other things, they had to do it for the sake of the defense. The Steelers’ defense is actually pretty good this year, and T.J. Watt is a generational talent that they just signed to a huge contract. Since a 30-7 loss to the Texans back in Week 4, they haven’t allowed more than 19 points to an opponent. That should be enough to win football games in today’s NFL… if you can couple them to an offense that doesn’t three-and-out almost every possession. The Steel Curtain Steelers of the 70s would’ve struggled if their offense could never get them off the field for a breather.

As tenuous as their position in the standings is, they also had to do it for the standings. They’re still at 6-4, and there’s a few traditionally good teams having down years — Buffalo just fired THEIR offensive coordinator; Cincinnati just lost quarterback Joe Burrow for the year. The playoffs aren’t unrealistic if they can get the offense to play slightly better. Super Bowl? OK, probably not. But you gotta try, right? “Any given Sunday?”

Lastly, I’d argue they had to do it to force an honest reckoning regarding Pickett. Right now there’s this debate over how much of the offensive struggles were Canada’s offense, and how much were just that Pickett isn’t that good. In fact, I think a lot of the fanbase WANTS it to be Canada’s fault so they don’t have to reckon with the possibility we have to go back to the drawing board at quarterback. Admittedly, that’s probably a deeper dive than I wanted to do here, but it’s a question that needs to be resolved. And next year is going to be a deep draft for quarterbacks, so there’s a bit of a feeling that if Pickett ISN’T the guy, 2024 would be a good time to draft some competition at the position. If pushing Canada out the airlock is what creates the conditions for really scrutinizing Pickett’s strengths and weaknesses, that’s probably a net positive as well.

The only problem with all of this is that it’s pretty hard to make sweeping changes mid-season, especially when you’re mostly doing it with the same personnel that are already in place. Maybe they can go get a splashy outside hire in the offseason, but for now the Steelers already announced that running backs coach Eddie Faulkner will be the interim OC with QB coach Mike Sullivan as the play-caller. So maybe those two are sitting on a treasure-trove of plays they’re just dying to call (in my head-canon, I’ve already decided it’s a vintage Trapper Keeper labeled PLAYS MATT CANADA WOULDN’T LET ME RUN), but chances are it will look more like incremental tweaks to what already exists.

But all of that is for down the road. Today, the fans got what they wanted. Even if there’s a little undercurrent of “be careful what you wish for, you just might get it”.

The Next Great Japanese Import

Even if you’re not much of a baseball fan, you’ve probably heard of Shohei Ohtani — one of the best batters in baseball, one of the best pitchers in baseball (though he’s recovering from an injury), and the ONLY guy who’s been doing both at a high level. And six years into his MLB career, probably the best baseball player ever to come over from Japan.

Well, tomorrow, the bidding war begins for the next big thing from Japan. Get ready to hear a lot of talk about Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

To be fair, he’s not the “next Ohtani” because he’s “just” a pitcher; as far as we know, he’s nothing special with a bat. But calling Yamamoto “just a pitcher” is like saying Beethoven “wrote a few tunes”.

In fact, Yamamoto has been far and away the best starting pitcher in Japanese baseball the past three years running. Consider these numbers that look like something out of a videogame:

2021 – 18-5, 1.39 ERA. 193.2 innings, 124 hits, 40 walks, 206 strikeouts.
2022 – 15-5, 1.68 ERA. 193 innings, 137 hits, 42 walks, 205 strikeouts.
2023 – 17-6, 1.13 ERA, 171 innings, 119 hits, 28 walks, 176 strikeouts.

Each of those seasons won Yamamoto both the Triple Crown (leading the league in ERA, wins, and strikeouts) and the Sawamura Award (the equivalent of the Cy Young Award). He’s also had 5 All-Star appearances, 2 MVP awards, 2 Gold Gloves, and he’s also thrown two no-hitters. And if you want a little extra, he held his own at the World Baseball Classic earlier this year as well, against some of the world’s best players.

And the best part… Yamamoto only just turned 25 in August, so theoretically he’s still got some of his best baseball ahead of him.

But that means we need to talk about “the posting system”. In order to keep the peace between MLB and Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB — the Japanese major leagues) and keep MLB from using their deep pockets to sign players at will, there’s a formal system for allowing players to come over. If an NPB player who hasn’t reached free agency yet wants to come to MLB, he has to seek his team’s permission to leave, and if the team agrees they “post” his rights for MLB teams to bid on. There’s a negotiation period of 45 days, after which the player signs with an MLB team, and the Japanese team that owned the player’s rights (in this case, the Orix Buffaloes) would get a one-time payment for releasing him. If no one signs the player (obviously not a concern for Yamamoto, but has happened for some lesser players), they can return to their NPB team with no harm done.

(A little bit of history, Until 2018, it used to be the rights auction would come first — the MLB teams would submit bids to the Japanese team for the right to negotiate with the player, and ONLY the team that won that auction would be eligible to sign the player. So the player didn’t really have full free agency; they basically got told which MLB team they would be allowed to play for. One side effect was this gave the MLB team all the leverage when negotiating a contract because the player’s only Plan B was staying in Japan for another year. As of 2018 they changed the system to give the players more negotiating power — the player can now negotiate freely with any/all MLB teams, and the posting fee is merely a percentage of the contract he actually signs for.)

So let’s put some estimated numbers to it. To keep the math simple, let’s say Yamamoto signs for $200M total (it’s the total value of the whole contract, so if he signs a 6 or 7 year deal, that’s easily possible). The posting fee is 20% of the first 25M ($5M), 17.5% of the second 25M ($3.75M), and 15% of everything over $50M ($22M in this case). So on a $200M contract… over 5+ years, that could happen… the posting fee to Orix would be $31.875M. So you can see why even though Orix would probably love to keep Yamamoto, they probably wouldn’t mind $30M+ in their bank account either. Especially not when he’s a seven-year veteran and would be eligible to leave as a free agent in a few years anyway.

So what’s team get for that money? Yamamoto’s fastball sits pretty comfortably around 95mph, but he can pump a few extra clicks when he has to. He also has a curve and a split-finger fastball. He throws all three with better-than-average control. He technically has a slider as well which he hasn’t used much, but some people suggest he might start leaning on it a little more in the majors. The fastball-curve-splitter combo mostly offers vertical movement; a slider might be a way to mix in some side-to-side action. He’s also been fairly durable — he pitches deep into games, and I haven’t really been able to find any injury information worth mentioning. Beyond the inherent risk that comes with any pitcher (it’s an unnatural body movement), there’s nothing that pegs Yamamoto as a health risk.

So who’s going to get him? Line up the usual suspects. The New York and LA teams seem like they’d have to be in the mix. Philadelphia is firmly in win-now mode, so they might take a look. Chicago and Boston generally have deep enough pockets, but I’m not sure they’re ready to contend yet. I could see a few of the smaller-market West Coast teams like Seattle and San Francisco try to make a splash because they have some interest in actively courting a Japanese audience. (Seattle in particular tends to keep a few Japanese players on the roster because they’ve cultivated a bit of a Japanese fan base over the years.)

It’s hard to read the tea leaves when Yamamoto just posted today and the bidding doesn’t even open until tomorrow, but it feels like the Mets might have a bit of an edge. Two reasons. First, their owner Steve Cohen is obscenely wealthy and not afraid to spend it, so much so that one of last year’s subplots was other owners complaining that Cohen’s free spending was making them look bad. But there’s also the fact that they signed another Japanese pitcher, Kodai Senga, last year, and Senga has been openly courting Yamamoto to come to New York. (Or as openly as one can do without risking tampering charges.) And there’s also a little culture shock for players coming over, so Yamamoto might appreciate having a fellow countryman already on the roster. If you put a gun to my head today, I’d say the Mets, but there’s a long 45 days ahead of us.

Prime And Punishment

It’s been a busy week in the world of Coach Prime, though if we’re being honest, a) when has it not? and b) isn’t that somewhat by design anyway?

This week’s excitement came in the aftermath of Colorado’s 28-16 loss to UCLA, a game where QB Shedeur Sanders (yes, his son, if you haven’t been following this closely) was sacked 7 times and hit enough other times he had to get an injection of painkillers at halftime. Asked about the state of the offensive line in the post-game press conference, and what he would do to address it, Sanders pere‘s typically colorful response was:

“The big picture, you go get new linemen. That’s the picture, and I’m gonna paint it perfectly.“

This has set off the latest round of “Coach Prime Is Telling It Like It Is And Holding People Accountable” vs. “Coach Prime Is A Disgrace To College Football” on social media. Everyone’s staking out their positions, but there’s an awful lot of posturing and fairly little clarity.

So let’s start with the facts.

First, the line play was bad. “Defense will stipulate”, as the cop shows say. In fact, it’s been bad for most of the season. One of my first-draft points was “how can he run down his line publicly without looking at the game tape first?” but this isn’t the first time this has been an issue, only the most dramatic example. So we’ll let that one slide on by.

There has been some confusion on how many of the players were new transfers vs. how many were holdovers from the previous 1-11 2022 team. I’ve seen detractors dunking on Sanders’ inability to recruit linemen AND supporters claiming that the entire line were holdovers from the previous regime, and the truth is in the middle. Just for factual clarity, it appears there are two returning starters — center Van Wells and left tackle Gerad Christian-Lichtenhan — and the other three starters are part of Deion’s “luggage”. (As are almost all of the reserves.)

So with the facts somewhat established, let’s wander into the forbidden forest of hot takes and opinions. As with a lot of what Sanders has done in his Colorado tenure, I think it’s not so much the message being conveyed as much as it is how he chose to convey it.

First, it’s simply a question of internal vs. external… keep that shit in-house. If you want to tell your players they should be looking for new gigs next year, save it for practice when the cameras are gone. I guarantee Sanders won’t be the first or last coach to have threatened a kid’s spot on the team; but he’s the first I can remember to threaten about 10 of them to a room full of reporters. When you’re sitting in front of a room full of hot mics, a leader protects his people. YES, you can say the line didn’t play well — no sense denying an apparent truth — but you don’t offer up the kids on the o-line as red meat to protect your bruised ego. Feed ’em some platitudes about looking at the film and seeing where we can improve, and get onto the next question.

And OK, I feel like the perception of nepotism has to chafe a little, when mere sentences before, he praised his son Shedeur as “the best quarterback in the country”. And when there was no talk of getting new defensive backs in regard to his other son Shilo getting ejected for targeting after putting his helmet into the chin of a UCLA receiver. At some point it’s gotta get old being told you’re one of 73 Ringos backing up John and Paul.

(OK… maybe Shedeur and Travis Hunter are Lennon-McCartney and Shilo is George Harrison in this analogy. We’ll keep workshopping it.)

But there’s a bigger and arguably more more worrisome issue underlying his comments. It feels like on some level Sanders is abdicating the responsibility to actually COACH the players under his charge. The man has created this image of “Coach Prime”, but apparently, if you don’t protect his kid and make him look good, he’ll just get rid of you and go out and get a new batch of mercenaries to take your place. Which… lest we forget… was the same message he delivered to the players already in the program when he took over, so it’s not like this is a departure for him. Meanwhile, the line’s been bad for weeks; what has Coach Prime done about it other than threaten to kick them out of the program? Maybe he should rebrand as “GM Prime”: he recruits and assembles the roster, and then someone else does the actual work of making his players better.

And this gets into the larger question that goes well beyond Deion Sanders… it’s NIL, it’s the portal, it’s conference realignment…. Where is the ever-shifting balance between “this has become an ‘amateur’ league in name only, and results are all that matter” and “this is still ultimately a developmental league where helping the players improve their skills is still part of what’s being offered”. If this is just NFL Lite, then OK, bring in a new class of free agents and try again, but at that point let’s stop pretending that the NCAA offers anything a professional minor league couldn’t offer equally well if funded adequately. If we’re going to keep propping up the cause of student athletics as the NCAA’s raison d’etre, than I think coaches should have an obligation to stick with the guys they bring in and try to make them better, rather than better-deal them the second adversity — or the UCLA front seven — hits.

Sid Gets An Early Birthday Present, Dubas Gets His Man

It took a month of haggling, but Pens’ Grand Poobah (GM/Director Of Hockey Operations… yeah, I ain’t saying all of that) Kyle Dubas managed to get Sidney Crosby the perfect birthday present… defenseman Erik Karlsson. The deal that’s been rumored since… well, forever… finally came together with Montreal serving as the mystery third team that greased the wheels for a move.

The particulars are:

San Jose also retains $1.5M of Karlsson’s $11.5M contract, but the Pens retain a similar amount of Jeff Petry’s, so from the Pens’ standpoint it evens out.

Pittsburgh’s motivations here are obvious. They’re pretty obviously trying to squeeze one last Stanley Cup out of the Crosby-Malkin-Letang core, and to some extent they don’t care what happens after that because it’s going to involve a major retool. Sid’s retirement will do to this team what the meteor did to the dinosaurs, and we just have to be OK with that. But for those remaining 2-4 years, they add one of the best offensive defensemen in the game, even if he’s at a pretty expensive price tag and doesn’t play a lick of defense. Between this and standing pat with Tristan Jarry in net, they’re going to be leaning into winning a lot of 6-4 games. But still… it does make the Pens a more dynamic offensive team in the short term, and specifically should help the power play, which struggled mightily last year.

And OK, they got rid of almost ALL of Ron Hextall’s bad contracts in the process. For $6M, Petry needed to be a Norris candidate, not a second-pair talent; Granlund was a disastrous trade-deadline acquisition at $5M a year. Rutta ($2.5M) and DeSmith ($1.8M) weren’t horrific overpays, but they’re luxuries when you’re already bumping your head against the cap, as the Pens are. So trading $14M-ish worth of “meh” for one $10M guy who’s likely to be very good… that makes a certain demented amount of sense.

As for the other guys, Hamaliuk has some decent size (6’3″) but hasn’t produced much in the minors, Pitlick could find himself in the mix for the bottom six, but I don’t think either moves the needle much.

The only thing I don’t like a lot is that they only got San Jose to retain $1.5M. When they were talking about retaining $3-4M and making Karlsson a $7.5-8.5M acquisition, that seemed like a more comfortable landing spot. But again, it comes down to “you don’t care what happens after the meteor strikes”. If the wheels come off and Crosby retires at the end of his contract in 2 years… you can probably still ship Karlsson back out. And if you can’t, you blow the whole thing up and he’s the one salary you keep around to get over the minimum salary.

For San Jose, it’s all about paying off the credit card early. Salary-wise, Hoffman and Granlund end up being about the same price as Karlsson today, but Hoffman is done after this year and Granlund after next, whereas Karlsson had four years left. So two years from now, the Sharks will have a mostly clean ledger while the Pens will still be paying Karlsson $10M. And the Sharks get an extra first-round pick. The fact that it’s top-10 protected isn’t that critical; with Karlsson the Pens are a decent bet to make the playoffs anyway. (And I’d add that Hoffman has enough rep as a goal scorer that they might be able to flip him at the deadline and get another pick or two if he has a good first half.)

Montreal is the third team, which mostly represents Jeff Petry having a no-trade clause and not wanting to go to the Sharks. (Two reasons: 1) at age 35 going on 36, he doesn’t want to wait on a rebuild and 2) he’s expressed that he wants to stay closer to his family in… Michigan, I think?). So basically, the Pens traded Petry (plus parts) to Montreal for Hoffman, and then sent Hoffman — who couldn’t refuse the trade — along to San Jose. It’s a little hard to see why Montreal wants Petry, and it wouldn’t even surprise me if they turn around and ship him back out, but Legare (still young enough to have some prospect buzz), DeSmith (in the ballpark of what you pay for a backup goalie), and a decent draft pick in what’s supposed to be a deep 2024 draft make for an OK package to swap one overpriced veteran for another.

My prediction on Petry’s ultimate destination: Detroit. They’re a young team on the rise, they’ve got a young-but-talented defense corps that could use a veteran mentor, and if Montreal retains a little more salary, that could be a good fit. But I’m not some insider… just a gut feeling.

So there it is… after a month of will they or won’t they, the Pens finally get their man, get their salary cap situation under control, and mostly hit reset on the Ron Hextall era. (Don’t mind me, muttering things under my breath in the general direction of Jeff Carter.) Does it make them Cup condtenders? They’re probably at least in the conversation now, but hardly the favorites. Does it make them a better team? Absolutely.

Happy Birthday, Sid!

I Choose You… Who?

Sunday night is the MLB Amateur Draft, and as some of you may have heard, the Pittsburgh Pirates hold the top overall pick. Now, the MLB draft isn’t QUITE the event the NFL Draft is because baseball players aren’t generally the same level of finished product football players are. Realistically, the guys they’re drafting tomorrow will make their first appearance in the big leagues in 2-4 years. So it’s not quite the same level of immediate help, but it’s still important for a team to get the decision right.

Generally, the two best players in this year’s draft are a pair of college players: outfielder Dylan Crews and pitcher Paul Skenes. They’re teammates at LSU, they just won the College World Series, and were the best hitter and pitcher in the country, respectively. (Crews, in particular, won the Golden Spikes Award, which is college baseball’s equivalent of the MVP.) And they’re both viewed as guys with star potential. Position players are generally a safer bet than pitchers because of the risk of arm injuries, but the Pirates need pitching talent more urgently. So, you’d think this would be a straightforward choice between these two guys, right?

Not necessarily.

The problem is that historically, the Pirates tend to be cheap. Though to be fair, it’s evolved from Just Plain Cheap to Strategically Cheap. In the old days, minor leaguers could ask for whatever sort of money they wanted, so the Pirates would pick a guy who wasn’t going to ask for a lot of money over the guy who was more talented. Bryan Bullington, Daniel Moskos, John Van Benschoten… the list is long and somewhat painful. Since 2012, baseball has introduced a “bonus pool” system that’s not a firm salary cap per player, but caps the TOTAL amount of money teams can spend on their minor leaguers. So there’s SOME degree of cost control because the players and their agents know there isn’t an unlimited bucket of money, but the best guys are still going to try and get every penny they can within that range.

And here’s where the “Strategically Cheap” part comes in. The current system assigns every pick a dollar value, and the total dollar values of a team’s picks represents their total pool of money. But that doesn’t mean the team has to spend it that way. So a team can go “over slot” and pay a guy more than the value his draft position was worth, or can go “under slot” and sign a guy cheaper. And in particular, if you sign a guy under slot, that frees up whatever “extra” money was left over to use on other players.

So the Pirates’ recent strategy has been to go under slot on their first-round pick to save money at the top, and then use that on their picks in later rounds. (What that usually means is using that extra money to convince guys who can still go back to college to give up college eligibility and turn pro now.) They still end up spending all their money, so you can’t really accuse them of cheapness in the same way they used to be, but they do tend to be reluctant to pony up for the star player and prefer to spread their money around.

The 2021 draft was a textbook example of this. Henry Davis, a college catcher from Louisville, was not particularly viewed as the best player in the draft. But they were able to get him for about $2M less than his slot, which let them throw extra money at a college lefty (Anthony Solometo) and two high schoolers who had first-round talent but were considering college football scholarships (OF Lonnie White and pitcher Bubba Chandler). Chandler is struggling at A-ball, but the other two guys are doing OK.

To be fair, in 2022 when they picked 4th overall, they actually went about $200k over slot on their first-round pick Termarr Johnson. So it’s not like they’ve NEVER gone over slot. But they do seem to like to spread the risk around.

So that brings us back to Crews and Skenes. The Pirates have about $16M total in their bonus pool, and pick 1-1 is valued at $9.7M. According to the rumor mill, Crews is almost definitely going to ask for above slot (among other things, he’s repped by agent Scott Boras, who tends to negotiate aggressively). Skenes may have to take a discount for the risk associated with pitchers, but nobody sees him signing for much less than slot.

So that’s where Wyatt Langford and Max Clark come into the picture.

Langford, who played left field for the University of Florida, is viewed as the next-best college player, and in a different year might be the frontrunner for the top pick. And you can find a minority of people who think he’s even better than Crews. He actually hit for more power than Crews (28 doubles, 21 homers vs. 16 and 18 for Crews, and that’s with 10 fewer games); Crews just did everything else better — faster, better defense at a tougher position, better overall contact and plate discipline.

Clark is a high school outfielder. Now, high schoolers inherently represent a bigger risk because you’re talking about taking a 17/18-year-old kid and guessing how he’s gonna play when he’s done growing, whereas college guys are closer to finished products physically and just need to improve on the craft of the game. But some people think Max Clark’s physical tools are good enough that he could be better than either Crews OR Langford. IF he pans out, which is admittedly a huge if.

So it’s really a question of Crews at a price over $10M, Skenes probably somewhere around 9 or 9.5, or maybe see if you can sneak Langford or Clark in at $7-8M and hope the LSU guys don’t make you look stupid for doing so.

So where do I think this all lands?

I’ll start by eliminating Clark. There’s been some scuttlebutt that the Pirates are seriously considering him, but even if you want position player over pitcher, I just don’t see it being worth the risk when you have two more refined college bats on the table. (Though if one wants to briefly make the case, it’s that you could get Corbin Carroll-type speed even if his power never develops, and if his power DOES develop, you’ve got a true five-tool guy.)

A month ago, I would’ve thought the Pirates would try to work the angles and gone with Langford. Play up the fact that he hit for more power than Crews and an almost identical OPS, drop some reminders in friendly press ears that Crews’ 2022 season wasn’t nearly as remarkable… it’s a defensible pick and maybe you save an extra million or two for other guys.

But the Pirates’ pitching woes since their hot start in April now have me thinking they’re going to open up the wallet for Skenes. They already lost J.T. Brubaker for the year in spring training. Luis Ortiz and Roansy Contreras have both slid backwards; Contreras is trying to sort himself out in the pen and Ortiz just got sent to AAA. Quinn Priester, the current top pitching prospect in the organization, is in AAA, but is holding his own more than knocking down the door (though to be fair, you can make a case he’s young for the level). Right now, it’s basically Mitch Keller, 43-year-old Rich Hill, and the power of prayer. (And as a cascading effect, the bullpen has been a hot mess, so they could use some starters who can work some quality innings and take pressure off the bullpen.)

To be clear, I don’t think any of these guys represent a horrible misstep. Not even Clark, though I feel like that might be too big a roll of the dice. But I keep coming back to this: if Langford and Crews are 1 and 1A, there’s NO pitcher in this draft… or even the last few drafts… who compares to Skenes. He throws triple-digits without exceptional effort and decent control, and his secondary offerings look pretty close to major-league ready. There’s legit staff ace potential here.

But that’s just the opinion of one fan. Check back in 36 hours or so to see what the guys who actually make the decision think, because that’s the opinion that matters.

Trying Out Some New Threads (Hour 36)

Like a lot of people, I’ve been frustrated with Elon Musk’s stewardship of Twitter since buying it. That’s probably its own post, but in summary: the guy has been leaning into selling conflict as the product. Elon’s version of the “town square” seems to be Thunderdome, and he seems to view his role as Shitposter-In-Chief rather than CEO or owner. That, and the degree to which he’s leaned into the idea that someone paying him 8 bucks a month makes their content worthwhile is, frankly, a fucking joke.

So I’ve been watching the rise and fall of the various Twitter clones with some interest, kinda hoping that a viable alternative would emerge. But I’ve also been skeptical that any of the options so far can really deliver the goods. I kicked the tires on both Mastadon and Post, but didn’t last more than about 15 minutes on either one. (And a third one that left such little impression I can’t even remember the name.) Mastadon was just too clunky with its distributed server model — trying to find people was more trouble than it was worth — and there was something about Post’s fixation on long-form posts that was too stuffy and academic. Brevity has its place in the universe. I’ll also admit I’m sort of interested in Bluesky, since their ethos seems to be “let’s just roll back everything Elon did and do that” with some changes on the back-end tech. But Bluesky is still invite-only and I’m not one of the Anointed Few.

So now we have Threads, Mark Zuckerberg’s direct assault on Elon’s fiefdom. Threads launched (at this writing) less than 48 hours ago, and it’s rumored to have already hit 50M users. And that’s the first advantage right there — where other Twitter clones had to build a following from zero, Threads is coming into the game with Meta’s userbase already in place. They just need to sell the idea of a new app to people who are already using the other ones.

Now, I suppose I should digress here. I have a longtime friend who works the financial side of the tech world, and he’s been adamant that this move doesn’t make a lick of sense from a business perspective. In summary, his two main points were a) it’s gonna be almost impossible to peel enough business away from Twitter to turn a profit, and b) the big success stories come from true innovation, not just copying off someone else’s paper.

Now, he’s probably right on both those points. “Defense will stipulate”, as the cop shows say. But that’s not really the lens I’m looking at here. I’m mostly just looking at this as a user of the product. Will people use this product instead of Twitter? And the answer is… a provisional “maybe?”.

The positives are that the vibe is pretty welcoming and carefree at the moment, but then again, some of that is confirmation bias because a lot of the early adopters are also people who want to get the fuck away from Elon Musk. The white supremacists (and ads) haven’t shown up to ruin things yet, so everyone’s in a good mood. The flip side of that coin is that it’s also really superficial. It’s almost like people are avoiding saying anything of substance because they don’t want to be the one to set off any conversational landmines. So it’s almost all “pineapple on pizza?” and people trying to get the intern who runs Dunkin Donuts’ account to reply to them.

It’s also generally chaotic at the moment. Nobody knows what this is supposed to be, so they’re just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. I think that problem is exacerbated for people who weren’t already on Instagram. Since this thing is built on Instagram’s DNA, if you weren’t an IG user, it just fills your feed with whatever was generically popular on IG. Unfortunately, that translates to a dump truck of brand accounts, vapid clout chasers, and thirst traps. And LOTS of Taylor Swift fans.

For the moment, I’m willing to see that as a “me” problem; I need to curate my feed better. But… if it DOESN’T improve, that could be a problem. The one thing Twitter has traditionally done best is real-time current events. I live in Pittsburgh, and when we had that bridge collapse about a year ago, I learned more from Twitter than I learned from any conventional news source. Based on what I’ve seen so far, I’m still a little concerned about Threads’ ability to deliver that. I feel like Russia could drop a nuke on Ukraine and Threads will STILL be stuck on the pineapple-pizza question.

And bragging about follower counts. I’ve already reached my fill on people posting their follower counts, like anyone other than them should give a shit. I guess it’s preferable to crypto scams and white supremacy, but still… give it a rest.

There’s also the whole “how can you support Mark Zuckerberg?” angle. And I get that. I’m not sure it’s a net positive to put MORE power in Meta’s hands. I suppose my answer there is two-fold. First, I’ve been using Facebook for over a decade. If Zuck can pull some new nugget of data from my Threads presence he hasn’t already gotten from Facebook… my hat’s off to him. Second, it’s simply the lesser of two evils for me. Zuck might be an emotionless robot who doesn’t get human interaction, but there’s an element of active malice to Elon Musk’s plans for social media. He WANTS Twitter to be Louder Dumber 8Chan.

So that’s me gathering my first impressions in one place. It’s a place that has some potential, but it still has some kinks to iron out (including a web interface… I do sometimes prefer browsing from the desktop rather than my phone). Perhaps I’ll circle back in a few days or weeks or whatnot, but for now I’ve gotta get back to check whether Slim Jim has acknowledged my Meat Ambassadorship yet. See you in the Threads!

Who Am I? What Is This? (aka The “About The Blog” Post)

Who Am I?

Definitely not prisoner 24601, though I am resisting the urge to break into song as I’m writing this.

I’m Jason McDonald. Early 50s, native of Pittsburgh, PA. Single dad, dog owner… by day, I’m an IT guy who works for a local university: I fix the computers of the people who are going to change the world. By night? Not so much a “failed” writer because that would imply I ever made a serious effort at making a career of it. More of well-intentioned amateur, looking for a place to let my words run free and burn some mental energy off.

If you’re looking for formal credentials… well, I’ve never had a paid gig as a writer, unless you count the beer-money check I got for being an editor at my college newspaper. I have been fairly prolific answering questions on the Q&A site Quora, and back when they still ran a Top Writer program, I won several years in a row. I also spent a few years writing weekly episode recaps and occasional product reviews for a gaming podcast (Roll For Combat) I’m part of, though I stopped doing that when it started to feel like I was writing the same thing every week.

I’ve tried to start a blog two or three times now, but never quite reached critical mass with it. Life just kinda intruded. But with Quora in particular going downhill (worth its own post at some point), I feel like I should stop generating content for someone else and get back to doing my own thing.

What’s the blog about?

Still figuring it out, testing the waters. It’s going to start out as just “slice of life” with a possibility of it developing a more specific direction as we go. Though I can at least lay down some guard rails what you’ll see on here.

A lot of it is just going to be the reindeer games of daily living. Sports (with a somewhat larger emphasis on the local Pittsburgh teams), movies and TV, gaming (computer and tabletop), music… whatever happens to enter my mental gravity well on any given day.

I may hit on politics from time to time, but the last thing I want is to become A Politics Guy(tm). It’s one of these things where the things that are going on in the world do matter, and I can’t really keep quiet about it ENTIRELY but I also don’t really want to let it consume me either. Also there’s people that simply do it better than I do. (Among others: Jim Wright, aka Stonekettle, who has real and relevant experience from his days in the military, whereas I’m fully aware I’m Just Some Guy With Opinions On The Internet.) But just to put a stake in the ground, I lean left on a lot of issues, so… hope that won’t be a problem, but also don’t especially care if it is.

(One idea I had was just to pre-write a bunch of “soapbox” posts where I write out my thoughts on various issues, and then just point back to those if people care to hear what I think. We’ll see if that happens.)

I do have kids, but I’m going to be careful how much I talk much about them, just because they’re people with their own lives and I want to tread very lightly vis-a-vis turning them into content. They’re also both adults, so there’s not as much “parenting” to discuss at this point. So they may come up from time to time, but they won’t be a constant feature. My DOGS on the other hand…

I also won’t talk about work a lot, but mostly because this is supposed to be what I’m doing for fun. If something of general interest happens at work, I might mention it, but I’m sure as shit not going to spend my free time talking about the latest Windows security patches.

Lastly, I promise to never spoil the day’s Wordle.

What else?

Well, if you’ve read this far, you probably noticed that I write in an informal, almost conversational style. Pauses, changes of direction mid-stream, abuse of the ellipses… I do that more than I should. I hope it’s not distracting, and it’s likely to induce a stroke in your fifth-grade English teacher, but it’s also not likely to change any time soon. You’ve probably also noticed I have an open-door policy on profanity. I try not to be gratuitous with it, and am a firm believer of expressing yourself well, but sometimes the naughty word IS the right one to express the thought.

I’ll try to write something daily, as much to build good habits as to give The People something to read, but for now this is just something I’m doing in my free time, so that’s not some sort of ironclad commitment.

With all that said… LET THE WILD RUMPUS BEGIN.