Tuesday, February 22, 2011

An introduction to Cynicism, by "The Golden Sombrero"

I've recently taken a new job, which is taking up a lot of my time right now. So, in order to fill some space, and keep giving people a reason to check-in, I've recruited a friend to write guest posts, and to offer a different perspective.

I've been forced to listen to some of what passes for prime-time radio, and I have a theory forming that I wanted to test: The less-informed, and more-cynical an analysis is, the better the ratings. Our new contributor has promised that he will never research his posts, and never put a positive spin on anything.

Ladies and gentlemen, without further adue: "The Golden Sombrero"

Hello plebian readers.

It's far overdue for me to have been given a forum to share my wonderful thoughts with the world. Since my intelligence regarding baseball has previously confined only to my friendship group, I thought it would be best for me to start by reviewing my thoughts on the Blue Jays offseason moves, and on my theories about baseball in general:

First of all, who let this punk-kid run a baseball franchise? He hardly looks old enough to be in the workforce, and some too-rich owner gave him the keys-to-the-vault. It takes years of watching players develop, watching teams come together, and evaluating of individual talent before someone can realistically hope to run a baseball team. The ownership group clearly was not willing to pay for a big-name talent as GM, and got this kid on the cheap.

And what has he been doing? Trading away any of the remaining talent on this team for a bunch of nobodies. NOBODIES!
-A quick word on prospects: They are worthless. Trading major league players for minor leaguers is wasteful. Nobody who is not already in the major leagues can ever hope to make the Majors, or be a significant contributor at any level. Ever.
-Also, trading for veterans is a terrible practice. Clearly, other GMs know that these players are due to decline, and will fleece you in a deal. The lesson here: Never trade anyone.
-Also, Also: Never sign free agents. GMs pay too much money to these spoiled children, and will jeopardize the future of the franchise by bringing them in.
-My basic theory, as educated by the mass media is: Never make any changes, but expect better results. If all else fails, fire a coach.

Now that you know my general feelings on the runnings of a team, here is my analysis on the specifics:

-John Farrel wasn't good enough to coach the Red Sox. They couldn't even make the playoffs last season. So it looks like the Jays cheaped out again.

-Shawn Marcum was our Ace! He started on opening day! Two years in a row the Jays have traded away their ace for nothing. They can't hope to compete with a bunch of minor-league players.

-Worse still, they traded away our best Centre Fielder! Vernon Wells was a beast! Was nobody paying attention to his Home Runs? His RBIs? and we got back some garbage bench-players from yet another team that couldn't make the playoffs. All for a salary dump. So CHEAP!

-Still worse: the team signed (According to reports from Damien Cox) the biggest steroid user in history, to a 5 year extension! I'm starting a countdown till he gets suspended.

-The team now wants to play Rajai Davis in Centre? BRUTAL! He won't even hit 10 Home Runs. I bet he doesn't even get 50 RBI. He better have a wicked batting average, or this team is gonna suck.

-Travis Snider is officially a bust. He's been around for three seasons now. Enough said. Time to move on.

-Edwin Encarnacion is a terrible defender. Anything more than a minor league contract is a waste of money. With such cheap owners, this team can't afford to waste that money on him.

-How come we couldn't sign Cliff Lee? Or Jayson Werth? If this silly child-GM wants to waste money on the aforementioned Edwin, Why not waste it on players that are actually good?

All told, I expect this team to lose at least 100 games. The beauty of my cynicism is that I can always be glad if they outperform my expectations. Remember this kiddies: Set your expectations super low, that way you never have to be disappointed. I'll let you know how I feel once the roster is formed, but this team looks destined for a 1st overall pick.

8 comments:

  1. What a waste of time.

    Not even funny.......

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  2. And yet you managed to not only read the whole post, but to take additional time to comment on it.

    Get used to it, The Golden Sombrero is going to be a regular contributor.

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  3. I understand the idea of trying to fish for comments here... But I think this theory may backfire for a blog, where your audience is normally looking for smarter analysis. Keep at it, because your blog has been very smart. I might avoid having anybody write about RBI's and Jose-steroids... Make sure you keep showing people why YOU have a blog, as opposed to those who call in to talk to Wilner.

    Thanks

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  4. I agree with the poster above. Scrap the "Golden Sombrero"

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  5. Agree with the other posters. I appreciated most of the posts on here, and don't mind if there are periods where there isn't much for posts b.c your busy. Would rather that than the "Golden Sombrero"

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  6. I like it, it's funny. If you don't like it, skip it.

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  7. A few things here:
    -I am not "The Golden Sombrero." I have asked a personal friend to offer an opposing view to mine so that the blog is more balanced. He wishes to remain anonymous, so he will be e-mailing me his thoughts, and I will be posting them.
    -I don't want to put off anyone, and I appreciate the traffic. I will ask that his next post be not so over-the-top. The point is to generate more discussion. (Good catch on the fishing-for-comments also)

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  8. Well, it seems the consensus is that the Golden Sombrero struck out. I enjoyed it, personally, though I admit that it would get tiresome pretty quickly if that's all he did. However, he did a nice takedown of the less knowledgeable factions of the Toronto sports media

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