Archive for Hopeless Joe

My best buy low candidate for 2014 is Ted Williams. He is likely to come very cheap in drafts, but as cryogenic technology continues to mature, each year Williams has a growing chance of returning to life, returning to the majors, and returning to the top of the leaderboards. Especially the OBP leaderboard (Overall Brain Percentage), because I think it’s only his head that was frozen, right?

If you want to take a chance on a player who might truly be a difference-maker, I think you have no choice but to draft Williams. His revival will not only make a difference to your fantasy team’s statistics, but also to the entirety of mankind. And only a small number of fantasy teams can ever aspire to make a lasting difference to the world. So why not dream?

It is of course sensible to be a little skeptical that Williams could ever emerge from cryogenic preservation to again become the hitter that he once was — after all, he was 83 years old when he died, and hadn’t played a major league game in over 40 years. To that I say that sometimes the psychological element of baseball is often ignored by the stats. Think about how scared a pitcher would be to throw the ball to an unfrozen Ted Williams. I think this anxiety, confusion, and puzzlement might overwhelm any small age-related decline that Williams might have experienced. I think pitchers would have significantly decreased control, and if Williams can walk, he will end up walking a lot. Contributing, of course, to his league-leading OBP (the regular kind).

I understand why people would want to be frozen, if money is no object and you would otherwise just toss $200K plus a monthly maintenance fee into the trash. Why not? What’s the worst that can happen, aside from your soul being in a permanent state of limbo and not being allowed to enter the afterlife?

So after striking out with my buy low candidates from 2011 (Cal Ripken, Jr.), 2012 (Cal Ripken, Sr.), and 2013 (Derek Jeter), I am confident that Ted Williams will make your 2014 teams much more… something.

Yesterday, aside from the usual losing the Mets have been doing, they also lost their radio station. The Yankees are set to sign a deal with WFAN, bumping the Mets– who have been with WFAN since it became a network in 1987– to a new station to be determined.

Hopeless Joe Radio would like to make its pitch. I’ll turn the rest of this post over to the Hopeless man himself:

Hey there, Mets. I know how you’re feeling. A 25+ year relationship up in smoke. Just like when my mother moved and didn’t tell me where she was going. (Which hurt, but not as much as when she un-friended me on Facebook.) Where is loyalty these days? You Mets have proven themselves in that department, like paying Bobby Bonilla for half a century, but how does WFAN repay you? By abandoning you for those clowns in the Bronx, with the winning records and other nonsense like that. Wins don’t count! Every smart fan knows it. The Mets have so many more pitcher hits than the Yankees, and everyone knows that’s the most important measure of a team.

But WFAN’s silly decision can ultimately be your gain, Mets, because you would fit just perfectly on Hopeless Joe Radio, and we would be honored to carry your schedule, at least until Syria takes over and bans us from broadcasting sports on the public airwaves. Afternoon games would be a terrific replacement for our usual 1:00-4:00 Dirge Music Jamboree. And our evening call-in show, “Suicide, or Not Today?” has been slowly slipping in the ratings, mostly because we lose our most loyal viewers on a nightly basis. Seriously, why didn’t our program director realize that a call-in show about suicide was destined to fail? I would fire him, but I fear he would do something drastic, especially since over the years he’s now heard thousands of people’s ideas of how to do it.

We would love to add a pre-game show to replace our long-running “Name Those Symptoms” game show, which has sadly run its course, having covered every disease in the medical school curriculum. And a nightly post-game report would save us from having to turn to plan B and offer Anthony Weiner his own nightly show once he recovers from his mayoral primary defeat. I mean, on the one hand, he would help us make some headway into social media– we haven’t really been able to build up much of a Twitter following, and we hear he’s an expert at that– but on the other hand, he would likely thrive in a more visual medium than radio.

Mets coverage can easily be incorporated into our morning show, “Ernest and Gertrude live from the Hospice,” and we’d love to do a weekend block of Mets-related programming for kids, integrated with our usual kids shows, “Life Will Only Get Worse,” “Your Parents are Dying,” and our annual seasonal offering, “Santa’s Not Real.”

Really, the Mets would fit right into our lineup, since you usually lose, no one likes you anymore, and being a Mets fan is almost literally like being a Bernie Madoff fan. And since we run nightly interviews with people who lost their money in Madoff’s investment accounts, it couldn’t possibly be a better match.

Mr. Met is already our mascot, except our version has blood dripping from his ears. Give us a call and I’m sure we can work out a deal. We’re around all day, except between 11 and 2, which is when the entire station will be live on the air for a group electroshock therapy session. Wish us luck.

Oh, Brian Cashman. It is a shame that your ex-mistress’s lawyer is partners with Alex Rodriguez’s lawyer, and that there’s now a conflict of interest requiring him to reveal that you told your mistress that you knew of steroid use on the Yankees and didn’t care. And about how you misled federal investigators during the Roger Clemens investigation.

It’s just like the time that I, Hopeless Joe, found out that my mistress’s lawyer was sleeping with my mistress, but really she wasn’t my mistress, just a woman I liked but who would never have noticed me, and her lawyer was indeed a lawyer but not really her lawyer, but rather her boyfriend. Because of course she had a boyfriend. And that’s just another reason she would never have noticed me. And then she was single, and still she didn’t notice me. And I passed her ex-boyfriend on the street once and he accidentally spilled coffee on my pants but I was too timid to say anything, and also he looked like he probably took steroids, but really I’m sure he just went to the gym a lot, and everyone looks like they take steroids compared to me, and also I’ve heard of Alex Rodriguez and Roger Clemens and that’s why my situation is very similar.

Or maybe it’s not.

Dear Hopeless Joe,

Cheers,
B. Todriguez

Mr. Todriguez,

Thanks for writing. It’s a lost art. Writing, I mean. Kind of amazing anyone does it anymore, with video games and the Internet and all of that. Also paper cuts. That’s a real disincentive. I hate paper cuts. But I should get to your question. Yes, watching baseball is an escape from everyday life, but even escapes from everyday life are sometimes similarly bleak. After all, they have to be believable. Maybe you need an escape from the escapes from your life. Have you tried the fire escape? I think it’s high enough off the ground that you have no chance of survival if you jump. Not that I’m telling you to jump. I watch baseball as an escape from my everyday life, too. Did I ever tell you where I escaped from? They’re still looking for me.

Cautiously,
Hopeless Joe

If you have a question for Hopeless Joe, he already knows it.

A meaningless competition to precede a meaningless competition. Oh boy, July doesn’t only mean that everything on TV is a rerun, but it also means that for three days, the only baseball we get to watch is even more meaningless than usual.

In this year’s Home Run Derby, I don’t see how you can root for anyone but Pedro Alvarez, especially since last year’s revelations of widespread abuse at his high school, Horace Mann.

Sorry about bringing that up. Way to be a bummer, Hopeless Joe. Let me try that again.

In this year’s Home Run Derby, I don’t see how you can root for anyone but Prince Fielder, given the well-publicized difficulties Fielder has had with his father, with Prince quoted as saying, “my father is dead to me.”

Oops. Got downbeat again. My apologies. Let me try once more.

In this year’s Home Run Derby, I don’t see how you can root for anyone but Yoenis Cespedes, given the struggles he went through last year when his family was arrested as illegal immigrants in the Turks and Caicos Islands while they were trying to join him in the U.S. They were finally released from a detention center this spring.

Wow, it’s hard to keep these things positive. Okay, putting a smile on my face. I’ll make this work.

In this year’s Home Run Derby, I don’t see how you can root for anyone but Robinson Cano, forced to deal with his name appearing on the initial Biogenesis documents, even though no evidence has emerged to link him with the clinic.

Shoot. Starting this over again.

In this year’s Home Run Derby, I don’t see how you can root for anyone but Chris Davis, demoted to minor leagues as recently as 2011, and for years failing to live up to his potential.

Okay, I can do this post happy. I can do it.

In this year’s Home Run Derby, I don’t see how you can root for anyone but David Wright, who for hours in 2007 feared that his brother was killed in the Virginia Tech shootings.

In this year’s Home Run Derby, I don’t see how you can root for anyone but Bryce Harper, who used to have poor vision until he got contact lenses.

In this year’s Home Run Derby, I don’t see how you can root for anyone but Michael Cuddyer, who likes to do charity work.

PREDICTION: Cuddyer and Davis are the final two, and Cuddyer pulls out a victory, donating his winnings to the Pedro Alvarez Prince Fielder Yoenis Cespedes Robinson Cano David Wright Bryce Harper Fund to prevent teachers from abusing students in the Turks and Caicos Islands, stealing their signing bonuses, canceling their eye exams, and making handwritten lists labeled “Steroid Users” with their names on them. Congratulations, Michael Cuddyer.

I’ve never been much of an American League fan. That’s why I chose my NL All-Stars first. Yep, the National League was doing just fine until the American League came along, just like I was doing just fine the first couple of years of my existence, until other people came along and I realized life is just one big competition and if you don’t fight for every scrap, you’ll be left on the fringes of the sandbox, bloody and crying.

That’s why I like the All-Star Game. Because of all the games ballplayers play all year, the results of this one basically don’t count, no one boos you if you lose, and, really, it’s all just one big joke. I sometimes wish the whole season was like that. That wins and losses didn’t matter, no one kept score, and the big trophy went to the team with the nicest smiles and most pleasant disposition. I think that’s the Indians, right? Any team with Nick Swisher has to be the winners in this category, don’t they? And Justin Masterson seems like a pleasant dude. Saw an interview with Lou Marson once where he seemed pretty friendly. Is he still on the team, or did Yan Gomes steal his roster spot? Poor Lou Marson.

Onto the ballot…

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I was initially afraid to fill out an All-Star Ballot, because anytime I vote for someone, for anything at all, he or she immediately dies. That’s why I only participate in Republican primary elections.

But once I realized that my All-Star votes are utterly meaningless, given that people can fairly easily stuff the ballot box with dozens of votes each, I was willing to take the risk. I was also eager for the online voting option, since I suffer from a terrible case of hanging-chad-ophobia, and so I am very uncomfortable attempting to punch the little circles out of the paper ballots. As a child, I had nightmares that I was the All-Star ballot and my parents were taking small pencils and poking holes through my most important internal organs. I don’t know how to interpret that dream.

Enough about me. Onto my selections. This week, the National League. Next week, the Americans. At first base, there really is no alternative to Casey Kotchman, who did so well in his brief time in the majors this season (0-for-20, with a walk — but, somehow, only one strikeout) that he has been exiled to Jupiter. Sometimes I wish I lived on Jupiter. Kotchman easily gets my vote.

At second base, Danny Espinosa, who just this week has shown supernatural talent in getting reporters to believe absolutely ridiculous statements, leading to the bizarre headline on this Washington Post article, “Danny Espinosa embracing returning to minors, rediscovering old swing.” Yes, because every major leaguer dreams of returning to the minors, going on long bus rides, and hanging out with people who make 2% of the salary you do, and hate you for it. Also, it seems unlikely that Espinosa’s old swing has been hanging out in the minor leagues, waiting for Danny to return, like a lazy sibling who can’t quite get it together enough to leave home.

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Hopeless Joe is, of course, a longtime Royals fan. How could he not be? Recently, he answered a series of questions about the Royals from other fans who are so hopeless that they don’t even exist. Here is a transcript of that chat.

Q. So, George Brett. Will he save this team from oblivion?

A. Well, despite the wise words of John Wathan (“There’s no doubt in my mind he’ll have an impact“), I am, as usual, skeptical. The last time a new hitting coach really changed anything was back in Little League, when my first hitting coach–our star second baseman’s father, who was trying to make up for a lack of steady employment by spending thirty hours a week working on “Little League-related matters”–was caught under the bleachers with our left fielder’s mother, “examining the grass down there.” His replacement, an accountant far ahead of his time statistically, advised us all to steer clear of the ball and wait for a walk, because the ball is dangerous, and we might get hurt. Our already-pitiful record got even worse. And that’s why I don’t think George Brett has much of chance to turn things around. I do expect an increase, however, in the number of Royals players who crap in their pants, even excluding any age-related incontinence that might be plaguing elderly third base placeholder Miguel Tejada.

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Carson recently directed Hopeless Joe to the Baseball Hall of Fame’s scouting reports site, where you can waste an afternoon reading the original scouting reports on all of your favorite scrubs and stars, mostly from the late 1960s through the late 1990s. Did you know that scouts recognized that Kevin McReynolds was past his peak in 1994? Now you do.

Inspired by this site, Hopeless Joe decided to dig back into his own archives for some scouting reports of his own. And, there, buried in a drawer, between the half-empty bottle of Listerine that he takes a swig from when he just needs to feel some kind of feeling, and the stack of rejection slips from agents who were not so enamored with his short story collection, “Hopeless Joe’s Hopeless Tales of Hopeless Children in Hopeless Situations,” he came across the report he filed this spring on B.J. Upton, just before the Braves kicked him out of Champion Stadium for sitting in the center field camera’s shot line and holding up signs telling television viewers that one-third of all baseball spectators will one day get some form of cancer, and they should really turn the game off and go see a doctor.

In any case, Hopeless Joe’s Scouting Report: B.J. Upton.

It has not been a fun week.

Not that any of my weeks are particularly fun, but this time I had hope. Which is hard for me to have, but I did, I think. It was either hope or constipation. It’s hard to tell the difference sometimes. I mean, thought I came through my fantasy draft with a great team. Wasn’t sure if I could win every category in my modified 5×5* but I thought I’d at least be competitive. And the last time I was competitive in anything was my third grade girls’ dodgeball league. (My parents wanted a girl. Fooled everyone, including me, until about two years into puberty. I was Hopeless Jo back then.)

So… first round, Albert Pujols. Can’t go wrong. Second round, Josh Hamilton. Third round, David Price. Off to a great start, right? Brian Roberts, Pedro Alvarez, Ryan Howard, Jeff Keppinger filled out my infield. Rookie of the Year candidate Aaron Hicks as my third outfielder. Chris Carter in the utility spot. No catcher. My league doesn’t have catchers.

Carlos Marmol and Greg Holland would give me a lights-out bullpen. Tim Lincecum, Brett Myers, Mark Buehrle, Hiroki Kuroda. Jake McGee and Joba Chamberlain.

Of course, as prone to overreaction as I am, I’ve already traded my entire team for J.A. Happ, Travis Wood, Gerardo Parra, and Franklin Gutierrez. And a couple of football players. This year will be my year.

*Batting average, home runs, runs batted in, stolen bases, wins, saves, ERA, WHIP, drug suspensions, and felony convictions.