the royals break out ZPG again.

god I hate this team.

in fact, here goes:


I hate you, MLB.

you are the absolute worst sport to follow. measure yourself up. pick anyone, I don't care.

let's go through a few laughable solutions:

NFL: these guys have shoved so many boots in your ass, it's just painful to watch. hey, the giants just gave eli manning (i.e. ASSHOLE) a $20 million signing bonus! and, sadly, that's another foot in your ass! because, see, if the giants spend way too much money on a pampered, spoiled brat that doesn't work out, well, that's money they didn't get to spend on other positions. if the yankees spend way too much money on a pampered, spoiled brat that doesn't work out...that's just lost money! but they can buy another for reserve. I mean, another four in reserve! there's absolutely zero penalty.

NBA: same deal. say someone like, oh, L.A. manages to luck out and score up a big name, high-priced free agent. we'll call him SHAQUILLE O'NEAL. well, they obviously can't compete with a huge market powerhouse team like miami, right? so they're *forced* to trade off their superstar SHAQUILLE O'NEAL (and his salary!) once a contract year hits...it's just a travesty. a small-market like L.A. just can't keep the people they develop. they're stuck with leftover scrubs like KOBE BRYANT and the like. wait, what's that? every team in the league can afford big-name free agents pretty much any season as long as they're not complete salary morons?!? what a concept!

do I even have to go on? MLB is the stupidest goddamn league ever in existence. I guess they think that just because their "product" is the "best", they don't have to worry about shit ever. keep things going on as however they go on, and it's, uh, great!

fuck it. I hate MLB, I already hated most of the teams, and I'm almost really starting to hate the royals. and, it's not even the royals so much as hating being a royals fan. there's no chance. and, what little chance there might have been, the "moneyball" "revolution" (and I use "revolution" in very RIDICULOUS quotes) have pretty much ruined any chance a "small-market" team had.

look at it like this: what the fuck is a small-market major league baseball franchise? as far as market size, kansas city is the smallest. do they lose $20 million a year? not a fuckin chance. but that's another argument.

do they bring in a LOT less money than a market like new york or boston? absolutely. is there ANY REASON WHATSOEVER why these teams shouldn't be able to spend the exact same amount of money? not at all. not a fuckin chance. there is absolutely ZERO reason WHATSOEVER that a team in the same league playing the same caliber of teams shouldn't have equal footing to make the same decisions and same mistakes than any team can make.

yet, MLB is fucked beyond belief and stupid as shit.

they say there's no problem with this. a team in a MASSIVELY bigger market bringing in MANY TIMES the revenue of other teams can spend, and spend, and spend at will, and, shit, why the fuck can't you beat them? oakland managed to win a little against slightly similar teams, and minnesota managed to squeak out victories against teams that spend like they do, and...ya know what, fuck it. moneyball fucked fans of teams like the royals in a lot of ways.

here's how it goes:

oakland wins because of three reasons:
1) mark mulder
2) tim hudson
3) barry zito

and, no, I don't even care that barry zito has said before that his favorite band is NOFX, who was my favorite band until I was like 18 or 19. while cool, he's fucked the royals over, so that's little consolation. I read before (and it seems impossible to find a link now, so you just have to trust me =) ) that the oakland A's were planning on choosing Kyle Snyder (RHP, Royals disabled list) in the 1999 draft, had the royals not taken him 2 spots before. I think it was perpetual bandwagon hoppers Rob & Rany that said it before most prominently, although their running archive is amazingly not available...crazy, huh?! anyway, say the a's had taken snyder...then the "big three" would have been the "big two", and no one would have even bothered to concoct that nickname, since the a's would have had two good pitchers and a bunch of shit, seeing as how snyder would have been perpetually injured in any organization (please don't blame HIM on the royals)...and, then, the a's would have proven the DIVISION-WINNING difference between having two dominant pitchers and three. landing zito after snyder spawned a whole generation of misguided baseball "minds" that will inevitable idolize guys that, while seemingly smart, can't compete with squads that can simply buy players that everyone knows is good, rather than try to scrape "unknown" guys that will contribute just as well. by letting in on any sort of "secrets" (if you really believe that), these so-called "moneyball" teams will find themselves consistently at the bottom of the pile, as teams that can actually spend money will now buy players who have supposedly been scientifically "proven" to excel. basically, hey, thanks guys for evaluating players based on more criteria for us, now we will buy them instead of you.

basically, here's how it works:

– the royals draft someone that turns out to be good

team: "we certainly hope they can help us compete in the near future.."
experts: "the royals farm system has turned up some quality players who are expected to fill in well at the big-league level. this farm system is STOCKED.."
the royals: "there is certainly a learning curve. we are in a rebuilding mode."

the royals don't win 75% of their games..

experts: "the royals system is COMPLETELY DEVOID OF TALENT."
royals: "we are bringing up so-and-so to replace so-and-so, to see if so-and-so is ready for the majors...if not, so-and-so will contribute next year."
other teams: "here's some bubble gum and a smack in the face. now give us your player that's proven he is actually good at this level."
royals: "we really expect the bubble gum to compete at the major league level within the next two years."
royals fans: "why the fuck can't we possibly keep one fuckin player who we already know is good?"
other royals fans: "we kept the one guy who was good. everyone sucks around him, but he STILL doesn't win. maybe we can get rid of his successful ass for a couple guys that we have no idea if they'll ever possibly contribute at the AA level, let alone the major leagues. they're cheaper anyway.."
royals: "we have traded the guy that represented any semblance of a chance we had as a winner, much like the guys before him that could have helped us compete, to some team that actually spends money and sent us crap and PLEASE STILL GO TO THE GAMES, because otherwise our super-rich multi-millionaire owner may have to claim he's losing money on a venture that's entirely money-making any way you look at it...ok, he will anyway. but he would like to see us win, you know? he's in now way willing to spend any money at all to buy a winner, but he would sure like it if he could spend almost ZERO and have the team win and have suckers fans come out and see the WINNING team. remember winning? do you? ownership would sure like to see these scrubs win something, for sure..
MLB: "look, some other team got lucky as they happened to scrape through horrible season after horrible season to bring up like 3 guys that can play decently at the same time, which means they magically made it to the playoffs, which makes MLB smile because we can claim that your sorry ass team that spends less than 1/5 of what other teams spend should be able to beat them regularly apparently...as long as you make good offseason moves, of course! no, don't pay attention to that massively high-priced guy going to one of the teams that spends 500% more than you. you want to be contracted?!"

god, I'm getting too tired and a little bit too tipsy to keep going. basically, the royals will supposedly never be able to afford SHIT. it'll have to be cheap-o rookie shit or nothing. baseball gets stupider and stupider, and the dumb mother fuckers that buy into everything baseballprospectus and all yer sabermetric worshippers/authors write are fucking this game even more. you know it's crap, right? you can create just about any "metric" to prove whatever you want. no, I don't agree with a dumbfuck like buster olney's "productive outs", but there is such a thing. yes, joe morgan is a GIGANTIC idiot in just about everything that ever comes out of his mouth, but there *is* some value in old-time baseball evaluation. sadly, people like simple answers and one solution from one source, so even if they think they're on the cutting edge of analysis, they're still swiping their analysis from people that don't exactly have it right. which is how billy beane can get judged a genius, even though all he really did was luck into three dominant starting pitchers. let's see the oakland a's minus one or two of those jerks, assuming the other teams in the division haven't completely dismantled. then billy beans probably won't look like wanking material to so many "sabermetric" guys.

anyway, forget about the royals the rest of this year. or next year. or the next year. we'll never been allowed to spend money or pick up people. good people. or keep good people. it's horrifically awful.

I hate MLB. more later.