Dynasty
Nastiest GIFs
The List
Dynasty
Nastiest GIFs
The List

Baseball Superlatives: Week Seven

Tim Anderson Must Be Stopped.

Ben Ellenberg
We Love Baseball 9/6/2020

Hello! Welcome to Superlatives. A weekly roundup post where we hand out some superlatives and awards for the previous week in baseball. 

 

 

Spiciest Trash Talk: For Talking The Spiciest

Mike Trout Talks A Spicy Weather Report 

If there’s one complaint I have about Mike Trout, it’s that he seems to be the only person in baseball who doesn’t know he’s the greatest player in baseball. Often, this just means the Mike Trout experience is defined by a lack of flash. Sometimes, however, it leads to truly baffling moments. Things that happen where you have to assume that Mike Trout, believing himself to just be a utility player with a contract worth $430 million, just talks about stuff he figures nobody will listen to. 

So he gave a weather forecast. But you see, it was a bad one. 

Again, a man who could BUY THE WEATHER CHANNEL and still have more money than most Powerball winners is talking trash by giving someone the wrong weather forecast. Can someone please tell Mike Trout that he’s Mike Trout? 

 

 

The Weirdest Stuff: For The Weirdest Stuff
Tom Seaver Stays Winning

I have a passion for the weird stuff. Those moments that really make it clear that, regardless of what religion got right, baseball got it the most right. I’ve written about this before. On Thursday, we got another one of those moments. As you may have heard, Tom Seaver died on Monday. It’s no exaggeration to say he was the greatest Mets player of all time, and one of the greatest pitchers to every play the game. 

So then of course, when the Mets held a memorial for him on Thursday, some weird stuff happened. 

Namely, Pete Alonso hit his first ever walk off home run against the Yankees in a weird little one-off game between series against the Tampa Bay Rays and Baltimore Oiroles. Godspeed, Tom. It’s beautiful he could flip a bird to the Yankees one last time. 

 

 

Birdsiest Noise: For Something A Bird Team Did

Nobody Beats The Orioles 20 Times In A Row And Gets Away With It 

In the second game of a Friday double-header, the Baltimore Orioles made it clear to everyone paying attention: Nobody wins twenty straight games against us. 

With their 6-3 over the Yankees, the Baltimore Orioles snapped a 19-game losing streak against the New York Yankees and set the record straight once and for all. Yes, they’re the AL East punching bag. Yes, they’re basically a farm system for teams that aren’t based on where The Wire is set, and yes they’re not very good at the sport they are supposed to play. But, when the chips are down, they DON’T lose twenty straight games to the same team. And you can take that all the way to the bank, where you can then cash it for a more lucrative contract with another franchise like the Dodgers, or Padres, or Yankees. Who, again, couldn’t beat the Orioles twenty times in a row. 

 

 

Crankiest Greinke: For The Greinkiest Moments 

Cranky Greinke II: 70mph Boogaloo 

Imagine complimenting someone for not biting on your 87mph fastball, and then turning around and sending them back to the dugout on some 70mph curve made of absolute, unrepentant junk. 

I’m running out of ways to talk about the way that Zack Greinke has addressed this season of baseball. In short, he started the season on a team reviled for cheating, hated by everyone, in the midst of an unprecedented moment in American history. He will likely end the season by hitting a walkoff inside the park grandslam off a pitch he threw. And he won’t do this because he loves his team, because he loves the sport, or because he loves to win. He’ll do it because he’d just watched Looney Tunes and was wondering if you could do that. 

 

 

Saddest Tuba Noise: Womp Womp

The Rockies Get Scorigamied 

Congratulations to the Colorado Rockies on earning a score never before seen in the NFL, and special congratulations to the Social Media Manager who shot straight from the hip. 

 

 

Stankiest Bat Flip: For The Bat Flip With The Most Stank On It 

Tim Anderson Shames The MLB 

I’ll go ahead and say it. Tim Anderson is bad for baseball. It’s not because he’s boring. It’s not because he’s unmarketable, or old-school, or plays for a small market team, or is obsessed with the weather, or any of the other things Mike Trout is.  

He’s bad for baseball because nobody, and I mean nobody, could survive the shadow that Tim Anderson casts over the showboating game in Major League Baseball. 

He’s setting expectations too high. The average player, heck, not even an average player – a Fernando Tatís Jr. type, couldn’t put the entire stank of four Anderson .Paak albums onto one single bat flip and get away with it. Not even an exceptionally stanky player like Juan Soto could get away with the spin cycle that Anderson sends his bat through on an RBI walk. 

If Rob Manfred truly hates the game of baseball as much as he’s acted like he does, he needs to issue an immediate suspension to Tim Anderson, retroactive to when he did this:

 

 

Most Fun: For Whatever’s The Most Fun Thing

The Cubs Vibe Out 

You ever just vibe out with the boys? 

https://twitter.com/MLBastian/status/1302364990972866563?s=20

 

 

The Mariners World Series Report 

THEY CAN’T GUARD US 

 

Previous Odds: OOF%

Current Odds: 200% 

Percentage Change: A LOT 

Vegas Odds: 800/1 

The Mariners went 7-3 until the Oakland Athletics experienced a case of COVID-19, delaying a four game series that would have clearly put the scorching hot (or I guess 70% W/L) Mariners firmly in the passenger’s seat for the division. The parade is back on.

 

Ben Ellenberg

Ben lives in Los Angeles and is almost always thinking about Tony Gwynn stuff.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Account / Login