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Have you read this piece about the Mariners’ dysfunctional front office?

If not, you should, then come back and read this.

Because whatever’s going on in Seattle is nothing compared to the problems of my fantasy team, where the GM and the owner are constantly butting heads, and the manager is often asleep at the wheel. Like the week that he literally forgot to set a lineup. Who does that? It’s not like the deadline changes every week. It’s always the same day, and one week, he just forgot. And who did he blame it on? Me, the owner. As if I’m supposed to micromanage everything that I do and can’t trust my fingers to go to the website and click some buttons without my brain getting involved. Ridiculous.

And then there’s the trades. We have my brain going one way, my heart going the other, and who’s to know what the right answer should be? My general manager is insisting that we need to dump Mike Moustakas, but the owner says no, we need to show loyalty, we need to keep giving him a chance. Moustakas is one of our guys, he says, and the heartless executives in the GM suite up in my cerebrum can’t just argue the statistics every time they want to make a decision that they know will be unpopular with the rest of me. Clearly no one’s on the same page.

Fact is, my general manager completely misrepresented his skill set when he applied for the job. He said he had a foolproof projection system. He insisted that he knew who was going to thrive and who was going to fail, who the unexpected breakout candidates were going to be… and I believed him. I looked at his spreadsheets and listened to his conviction and I believed he knew what he was doing. Turns out he didn’t. He fooled me. He fooled myself. I fooled him. We fooled oneself. Other pronouns, all in one sentence. Yes, all of them. Turns out my GM is no better than anyone else’s, and I don’t know why I keep him around except that he is connected to the rest of me by nerves and tendons. But that’s not enough anymore.

And the budget’s been a mess. I was promised at least $50 to buy pointless magazines and other pre-season publications, and what happened? The owner said no, at the last minute. “We need groceries instead,” as if that’s an excuse. Why can’t someone else buy my groceries and I can go buy a FanGraphs+ subscription? Oy, what a joke. My team is never going to go anywhere as long as the folks in charge remain in their jobs. I need to replace them before next season if I want a fighting chance.

Guys, we did it! We have an episode of Back In the Game that is not actively entirely awful, which is kind of amazing for an episode whose title (Massive Election) is a dick joke. It’s still kind of awful, and it’s in no way even the smallest bit amusing, but I think we can all agree that an episode devoid of our usual fare of fat jokes, and casual racism and sexism masquerading as humor is a genuine step forward for this horrifying television program that has defied God and nature and remained on the air for almost three months already.

This week’s episode is about leadership, as Terry schemes to usurp Dick the misogynist league president as league president while Danny refuses to be the captain of the Angles. The Angles, you see, are having trouble getting everyone to practice, since their field times conflict with all the players’ other extra-curricular activities (including, as we learn in the episode’s one funny line, Dong’s job). Cannon thinks the kids need a leader to rally them and get them to attend, while Terry goes chasing after Dick’s golf cart to get their practice time changed.

Well, Dick can’t change the practice times without upsetting the other two teams on the schedule, and Terry’s follow-up attempt to get the schedule changed at the league meeting is also a bust until Dick tells her, if she were president, she could change the times herself. So Terry begins campaigning, quickly lining up four of the five votes she’ll need to take over the presidency by promising to end Dick’s various abuses of power. The final vote comes down to Stan, who abandons his high school buddy for use of the league’s golf cart, despite knowing that the league presidency is the only good thing Dick really has going in his life.

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As drear-nighted December sets in, that direful monster, with its sleety whistle; as clouds their storms discharge, upon the airy towers; as the nigh thatch smokes in the sun-thaw, and the burn roars frae bank to brae; ’tis now that the feeble baseball writer stalls and stammers, quailing before his mighty task. Luckily, yours truly is no such writer; he, like the thrifty squirrel, has stored away toothsome morsels of blog-fodder for the lean season; and at just this happy moment, he has recalled where one of them is located.

Namely, it is his oft-postponed duty of introducing a new colleague. Readers, you may struggle to recall a time before Zach Reynolds. Like Jim Leyland or venereal disease, he seems to have always shared our world. That is in part because he announced himself in such a meek and self-effacing manner, with such a lack of trumpetry, as is his wont. And it is in part because he has so penetrated you with his intellect, titillated you with his wit, and indeed, blinded you with his science.

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“Morning, dear.”

“Morning, Paul.”

“What a sunny day. Did you check the mail?”

“I did, honey. Nothing too interesting. Nuclear power bill, new brain chips for the kids, some kind of subscription solicitation from the Chicago No-More-Sun-Times, and, oh, something from the White Sox.”

“The White Sox? What do they want? If they’re asking again about taking over for Robin Ventura, tell them there’s no way I can replace a guy who’s led them to 7 straight Galactic Series victories.”

“No, it looks like a check.”

“A check?”

“Yeah, from that contract back in 2013….”

“Ha, yeah, I remember that….”

“A million dollars!”

“Oh, a million. That’s cute. Want to use it for dinner tonight?”

“Sure– can I take another couple million from your wallet to cover the rest?”

“Yeah, go for it.”

“Ah, inflation.”

“Ah, indeed.”

Reproduced below and definitely not edited is a newspaper clipping from the Palm Beach Post, July 1, 1973. Click to embiggen. Click to discover. Click to be (a/be)mused.

The Boston Globe has it right:

“Jacoby Ellsbury was never soft, but deal with Yankees proves he was a mercenary.”

It’s pretty crazy that Ellsbury has now become the first free agent to ever sign with a team that offered him a lot of money. A shock to the system given that Prince Fielder signed with the Tigers in 2012 for a bag of baseballs and a daily smile. Or knowing that Manny Ramirez signed with the Red Sox in 2001 for three hot dogs and a pair of shoes.

I am not a fan of Jacoby Ellsbury, for entirely I-made-a-fantasy-baseball-mistake-with-him reasons (I dropped him in a 13-keeper Scoresheet league, in favor of Austin Jackson, right before his 2011 breakout season, because I am bad at fantasy baseball), but that doesn’t mean I think it makes him a bad person to take the $153 million being offered to him and run, run, run into Adrian Beltre and Reid Brignac. The owners are certainly “mercenaries.” It’s a business. This is capitalism. He has every right to be celebrated for being a mercenary, not criticized for it.

Unless, of course, the Boston Globe means the other definition of mercenary, and Ellsbury has been hired for service in a foreign army… in which case, good luck to him! Though I expect, given his history, he may get injured in combat.

During his weekly appearance on Fangraphs Audio this Monday, Dave Cameron took a break from being frustrated with Carson Cistulli to express his frustration with how many transactions there have been thusfar, and how burned out he has been writing up reactions to them. This sounds like complaining to the layman, but is actually an early signal to the Dave Cameronologists of NotGraphs that we may need raise the Dave Cameron threat level:

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TROY — As another rosy-fingered dawn broke over the walled city on Tuesday, the Aegean League’s winter meetings suddenly ramped up the intrigue, with new rumors swirling over a potential “trade of the century” involving the league’s two biggest sluggers. Hector and Achilles are both coming off career years, with the former having rewritten the record books by personally slaughtering 31,000 Greek warriors, while his counterpart achieved the unprecedented feat of challenging and defeating the river-god Skamandros. The two men have spent the last four seasons trading off the league’s MVP award, and are widely expected to finish one-two in this year’s voting yet again.

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This kind of translation-fun-times thing has already been covered by Mississippi Matt Smith here and elsewhere excellently and sans flaw. But I really love automated translators, and am dabbling today because there is a mystery afoot, possibly a sexual mystery, possibly a mystery involving a stiff suit, and definitely a mystery involving Koji Uehara. Observe:

http://www.koji-uehara.net/2013/11/26/1640.html

What a handsome and tall man! Let me draw your attention to a specific phrase:

やっぱりスーツって、身体が硬くなるような…。ユニフォームの方が楽に動けるからいいね。

And then supply you with some possible translations:

Google:

After all I suit, body such that … hard. I hope those of uniform because move easily.

Bing:

It suits me body hardens like… Uniform who can move effortlessly from Nice.

Freetranslation.com:

I guess the body suit is a lot stronger. The uniform is easier to move to it’s good.

translate.reference.com

After all.that a body is tense a suit…Because a uniform can work easily, I am good.

What is Koji saying? Something involving his body hardening and uniforms, clearly unclearly. The Bing translation is by far the most intriguing, as it involves the southern French city of Nice for some reason. Also a body in the act of hardening. Now THAT is interesting. Or perverse. Or just French, I guess. Why, how, wherefore, whence, and whoontz Koji needed to discuss his hard body and Nice, France are still completely unknown. Because I am out of worthwhile brainwaves this Tuesday I will let the mystery remain without further analysis. Instead I’ll leave you with the translation party tool and a song my friend made about Odysseus.

Tigers fans seem upset about the Fister deal. But who can they blame? FanGraphs provides the answer, at least in this reader’s browser:

Truth is, that answer may not be so wrong. IF perhaps Dave Dombrowski had a cold… a fever… an illness clouding his judgment… maybe it is indeed the fault of mucus. And maybe Mucinex should be top of the list for general managers’ toolkit this offseason.

Then again, according to WebMD, Mucinex may cause nausea or vomiting. So maybe it’s not the answer.