Rainy Days and White Sox Got Me Down

 

I looked up how many "mostly sunny" days I have experienced since Thanksgiving.  Five.  In the last 83 days I have seen sun on five (5) of them.  I had the misfortune of missing 4 sunny days in January when I went to Germany/Spain and somehow managed to walk around in the rain of Southern Spain.  They get six rainy days in January on average and I hit all of 'em.  I woke up today and looked out the window at the sleet falling into the icy brown puddles, doom scrolled the news, and thought "I've gotta get the fuck out of here.".   

I always have been dismissive of "snowbirds" that went to Florida for the winter.  I hate Florida.  I have a theory that Florida is the bottom of the orange juice carton that is the United States.  All the sludge that lives here eventually settles down there at the bottom, filtering down naturally to nestle into the Florida Keys to sell trinkets, crypto, doomed waterfront real estate and meth.  Yet, would I trade living in the embodiment of a Kafka novel here in NE Ohio to walk around with East Coast car dealers and plastic surgery disasters in Naples FL?  You're goddamn right I would.  I'm starting to think those snowbird rubes figured it out.

With my embracing a short term position over the next few months as a student/privatier, I really should rent out some sort of beachfront condo and argue with the Homeowner's Association about my basset hounds inappropriately shitting in the landscaping.  Yet, as we're halfway through February maybe I can just tough this thing out.  I don't know how much longer I can go.  On the extended forecast, the first day that reaches the incredibly low bar of "mostly cloudy" is February 27th.  That's two fucking weeks.  If the sun doesn't peek though the clouds for a few days, I'm threatening of heading over to the Southern Hemisphere for a jaunt.  Maybe Mendoza or Capetown.  Just completely overreact to the whole thing.  I'll get fueled up on overextracted boozy malbec and grilled meat.  It's got to be better than sitting here in the cold wet wondering where my NFL football went.  As of now I've been trying to fill the void left by not having football with doing deep dives on MLB win totals.  It's not much, but it's all I've got.   

Each year I have embraced a team that I think has been undervalued by the Vegas books.  Last year Krusty and I flew in the face of conventional wisdom and made bank by getting behind the Oakland A's and their meager 63 win total.  Winner.  And now I have two A's caps and an A's sweatshirt I picked up in an almost empty Oakland Coliseum as I watched the A's get pummeled by the almost equally shitty Washington Nationals.  It was a long summer watching the A's, but if I find a shitty team that I think is undervalued, I'm doing it again.  I'd hit the A's again, but with a win total of 70.5, it's a bit rich for my blood.

Immediately I looked at the worst team, the Chicago White Sox.  The People tend to overreact on teams at either end of the spectrum.  The Public thinks the Dodgers will never lose (they might not) and the White Sox will never win.  It's human nature of assuming past results guarantee future performance.  This is baseball.  It's a game that is built on failure.  Great hitters make an out on 70% of their at bats.  Great teams lose about 40% of the time.  So how about the White Sox OVER 52.5?

I took a long hard look at the White Sox.  Here's my analysis.  "Shiver me timbers".  The White Sox won 41 games last year, a stunning 25% winning percentage.  They lost 21 in a row.  At one point they'd lost 82 of their first 111 games.  I can go on, but you get the idea.  They were appallingly bad.  So with a total of 52.5, why are the going to win 12 more games this year?  Well... I don't know...  They traded away their only B grade or above player and only legit starter to the Red Sox for four prospects, three of which immediately became their top prospects in the organization.  Those guys are still a couple years away though.  Looking at the team, they've got nuthin'.

Let me take you around the horn...  There are two catchers that suck and are holding the place for the two minor league prospects that aren't ready yet.  Andrew Vaughn is at first, their best hitter with a .270 average and 17 HRs.  There's a 30 year old journeyman utility guy starting at second on his fourth team in five years, declining numbers over the last four years.  The shortstop is a kid they thought would take the position over, but looks overmatched.  They have no clue at third, right now it's a platoon.  The left fielder is Andrew Benintendi, a 30 year old dude that hit .225 with 20 HRs, a big time prospect at one time looking at his last shot as an everyday player.  Luis Robert is in center right now.  He sorta sucks and they're going to trade him if anyone bites.  Right field is what can be called "a gaping hole" unless you think 34 year old Mike Tauchman, a .241 career hitter with no power, is the answer there.  This isn't even a young roster with upside.  Maybe the kid at short comes around?  Maybe somebody emerges at third?  There's just not much there.  How do they get 12 more wins?  The baseball Gods let them regress to the mean?

The starting pitching is horrible.  Jonathon Cannon is your #1, a guy that would be a #4 almost anywhere else in baseball.  He's going to go 3-14 if he has to pitch against legit #1 starters all year.  33 year old Martin Perez is your #2.  This is his fourth team in four years.  I guess Davis Martin is the #3.  He's on his second year back from Tommy John.  He's 3-11 lifetime.  He might be the opening day starter.  Then you've got some bullshit battling to be the #4/5 starters.  It's not good.

So I've been reading all these baseball writers jumping on Chicago OVER 52.5 with the thought that shitty teams always hit rock bottom and improve.  It makes sense and there is some precedent with 6 of the last 8 teams that won less than 55 improving by a dozen games the next year.  OK... So what if last year wasn't rock bottom?  There was a quote I read from their GM that essentially said "I think we are going to win more games this year, but if we don't don't get mad at me.  We are ready to lose and lose big as we figure out who can play.".  I think these guys are committed to going 2012/2013 Astros on this thing and burn it to the ground.  I think that''s the model, not the 2021 Orioles.  The White Sox don't even have the prospects assembled at AAA to jump start the season with a flicker of hope.  I am going to sit here in the weeds and see if the degenerate gambling community talks themselves into the trend of awful teams improving YTY and can get that number to move up another couple clicks.  If so, I'm jumping on UNDER and rooting against this piece of shit organization backed by a large investment of snowbird dollars.  It's not time to buy yet, but let's keep an eye on it.  Let's get a place in Boca Raton.

     

Nurse the Hate: Super Bowl At The End Of Days

 

I was at a seminar in Germany a couple weeks ago, so I missed gambling on the divisional round and conference championship rounds of the NFL Playoffs.  They have these gross sports betting parlors over there with names like "SportBet" or "BetTek" that sort of look like those old New York OTB shit holes.  I will admit I was interested in having the experience of wandering into one to see if I could successfully find out if A) they had NFL lines available and then B) placing a bet on the Eagles to beat Washington with tangible language barriers in both directions.  My fear would be that I would have left with a Bielefeld -.5 goals over SV Sandhausen frantically trying to find a German streaming service for 3.Liga matches.  "Ich bin Hans Blinker und wir haben heute ein tolles Match für euch in der SchücoArena!" 

It's sort of a drag to be in Germany right now at a professional event.  When issues of trade come up, every person bristles when the United States is the subject and you can feel the eyes on you.  Granted, we have managed to flip the country in the last three weeks into a chaotic pay-to-play oligarchy run by bar napkin strategists that have provided no sense that they have an idea of where they are going or how to get there, so I am on board with the anti-Americanism.  At one point I told people I was Canadian because I didn't want the hassle or embarrassment of admitting I was American.  Pro tip, if you say you are Canadian, tell people you are from Hamilton.  NO ONE says they're from Hamilton so you'll never be fact checked.

I felt sheepish about being American when I traveled out of the country into the gear up for the clearly ginned up and idiotic war with Iraq, but it was more of a "anyone that is intelligent is on the same page, we don't like it either" thing.  American now is essentially an indefensibly stupid and dangerous country filled with people that don't really want to understand the world or embrace reality.  Living in the United States now is like when I lived in a crappy apartment building where I knew I wasn't on the same page as everyone else that lived there, so I just basically used it to watch TV, cook meals, and leave as often as I could.  It's not great when you have to brace yourself to peek at the headlines and see what new terrible thing the various idiots now in charge have done.  I think in the past with regimes I didn't agree with there was a sense that they thought they were fixing problems, whereas with this I see it as the richest people in the world deliberately fucking over poor people so they can somehow be even richer than "richest".  

I had read a book last year called "Travellers In The Third Reich" which is a collection of writing, diary entries and journals of people that visited Germany after the Nazis ascended into power until 1939 when you might have heard things took a turn that dampened tourism.  The similarities between the United States of today and Germany of 1934 are startling.  Spoiler alert, it didn't turn out well for Germany at the end of that run and I don't suspect it will here either.  The same people that jumped on board "the party" for personal gain in the 1930s look a lot like the corporate chameleons rushing in to pay tribute to The Mad King in 2025.  The great news is nobody reads or learns from the past, so we'll all go on this ride together.  Hey, the good news is there is still one more football game to offer a distraction (though the NFL has already removed the "End Racism" messaging in a nod to our apparent new official governmental embracement of pro-racism).  At least we don't have to pretend the players aren't exploited any longer, so there's that.

As I look at this game, I feel the way most fans seem to feel.  Eh.  I'm not sure why I feel that way.  The worm has turned on Kansas City as their continued success has led to an inevitable public backlash.  I got two guys on a text chain that wholeheartedly believe they NFL is manufacturing wins for KC with a coordinated plan using the officials.  When everything around you is a conspiracy theory, I guess it makes sense.  I think the bottom line is with Kansas City is that they have a really good defense, especially in the middle front, and a QB that has an uncanny ability to make plays late.  

I don't want to bet against Mahomes.  All that guy does is win.  But, let's look at things rationally for a second.  Two years ago the Eagles weren't as good as they are now.  They've got a better D line, better receivers and the best running back in football.  Kansas City is clearly not as good.  They have less explosive offensive skill players, less stalwart offensive line, and reduced statistical track record.  So if the line was Philadelphia -1.5 two years ago and now they're even better while KC is worse, why is Philadelphia +1.5 now?  Since week 6, Philadelphia has the #1 defense and #4 offense.  It's clearly the better team.  Am I concerned about Reid outcoaching Siriani?  Yes.  Am I concerned about The Witch?  Also, yes.  Still, I am going to float a small Philadelphia +1.5 bet out there.   

A couple prop bets I like are "shortest touchdown less than 1.5 yards -140".  You've got Tush Push on a run heavy team, so I like that scenario.  In 7 of the last 9 Super Bowls there has been a one yard TD.  Why not this one too?  It's pretty chalky, but with all the pass interference calls in the end zones these days, a first and goal from the one is almost assured.

I'm taking a look at "Saquan Barkley longest run less than 25.5 yards".  Kansas City has only given up six runs of over 25 yards this season.  Of those, three of them were by quarterbacks on broken plays.  The Public likes betting over on totals and props.  I am going to see if this nudges up to 27 or so and fire on it.

Mahomes doesn't run the ball like people perceive that he does, so his total rushing attempts under 6.5 is interesting, but the problem there is if he does a few kneel downs to end a game.  I am also thinking about doing an UNDER on the first half.  These teams tend to come out tight in Super Bowls, and people play conservatively until they feel the ship under their feet.  I'd go UNDER on the game, but the issue with that is if one team runs away with it they just keep their foot on the gas.  It feels like a defensive game, and the Eagles like to run, so that leans under.  I'll drop a little amendment into this column if I decide to go there.

Current Record:  40-29-1