Sport

It's the most Monkey's Paw situation I've ever seen in real life sports. Browns Fans were like "I'm tired of the Browns sucking. I'm tired of crappy QBs who can't play. I *wish* the Browns had a good quarterback." But because Karma isn't real, which we know after watching Roethlisberger for the last 17 years, wouldn't surprise me if Watson is finally be the answer to their QB problem.

This made me sad. The Lightning look more like the Leafs than the Leafs do. The Leafs look more like the Lightning than the Lightning do. This is madness.

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/disgraced-montreal-sports-writer-jonah-keri-sentenced-to-21-months-for-domestic-abuse-charges-1.5831494 Jonah Keri got 21 months, which feels lenient.

Yeah from a football standpoint I'm not convinced that in the short term* or long term** that the Browns acquiring Watson is good news for Browns fans or bad news for the rest of the AFC Northerners. He was good with the Texans, no doubt, but he could be stopped just like anybody and they've committed a lot of resources to one guy, which doesn't have a great track record historically. * He's going to be suspended for a healthy chunk to start the season and then there's the rust factor. ** That's a lot of money and draft picks to use on one guy. Good luck building around that anchor.

I'll repeat my stance on uniform ads again - I get not caring about jersey ads because there's a lot of things in this world that people are very passionate about that I cannot muster the energy or desire to give a single goose's honk about - If you don't care about jersey ads, that's fine. But what I don't understand is arguing FOR jersey ads. The Blue Jackets jerseys look objectively worse with a Safelite autoglass ad than they do without. Last year when the ads went on the helmets people said "It's just a sticker, it's not like it's a jersey ad. Who cares?" Well now we have jersey ads in addition to helmet ads and people saying "it's just small patch. It's not like it's European hockey. Who cares?" One small ad on the helmet has turned into two small ads, and it really took no time at all. The solution to new cash streams isn't to generally show restraint or to turn them off. If you don't care that's fine, but you cannot deny there's growing visual pollution of our sports uniforms and the days of clean, unblemished uniforms are over. That is sad. It just is. To the "why would a company even do that nobody buys something because they saw a jersey ad" or "it's so small, you'll never see it so who cares???" crowd, you're dumb. You are dumb. You think advertising is a billions dollar industry because it doesn't work? LOL get out of here.

One of my least favorite vocal participants in Reds twitter was going on and on last night about how "you don't know that he was talking about the Reds. He could've been talking about 1/3 of the league after being in free agency and having his options limited." That's a very generous interpretation, but either he's speaking specifically about the Reds (I believe he was) or he's talking about at least a third of baseball, which would also include the Reds. Neither reading of his words is a good look for the team he just left who didn't put in a serious offer for him or put together a serious sales pitch by trading half of his former good teammates. Also knowing the way Castellanos answers questions, I have to assume he was talking about Bob Castellini. And that's one of the reasons I'll miss him.

Here's me just now learning about Schwarber signed with the Phillies. That's a big dumb meaty team they have there in Philly.

Oh right I love this thread. I've been doing digital paintings on my ipad at night while I listen to sports on TV. Here's a few of my favorites:

Even before this trade it was absolutely nuts that this many solid starting QBs were all in the same conference. What's one more? Why the hell not? We need somebody in that division to challenge the Titans anyways.

That last screenshot is fake. The power dynamics in the NFL are flipped so I knew Urban, a power-maniacal control freak, would hate the extra handcuffs of the NFL and not being able to boss around millionaires the same way he could push around his teenaged slave laborers, but I never anticipated how incredibly dumb he is. What a butthead. There's rumors all over Columbus for years that he is "neurodivergent" and nothing in the article dispels that idea. His brief time with the Jags provided several dozen examples of a man lacking all emotional intelligence, and successfully managing people is like half the job of an NFL head coach.

Yes. He was the NL's right field starter in the All-Star Game last year and the silver slugger winner. Not a great glove so I assume he's your new DH. Plays with an edge, won't hold back from what he thinks in interviews, one of the few guys in the league who's got some personality.

Bengals signed Alex Cappa from the Bucs, Ted Karras from the Patriots, and now La'el Collins from the Cowboys to protect Joe Burrow. Couldn't not do anything for the o-line for the third straight and hope the guys already in the room would just magically figure it out. Amazing that they almost won a dang ass Super Bowl with the worst o-line in football.

Sucks for many reasons. All I'll say right now is that's a lot of resources to commit to one extremely sketchy guy.

The Atlantic League is testing a rule again that I'm very excited about - you can advance to first base on a passed ball or any dropped pitch, even if it's not strike 3. There's never been any consequence to throwing a passed ball or wild pitch with nobody on base. Never made sense to me that the only time you could "steal" first was if the catcher dropped strike 3.

I've weirdly become less of a purist the older I've gotten. I was strongly anti-DH in the NL for 20 years until I lived in a city with an AL team and watched a lot more AL baseball. When I went back to watching mostly NL I found myself tired of the pitcher's spot killing rallies, watching the 7, 8, 1 hitters being managed around a hole in the lineup, and watching AL teams with a built-in roster building advantage over the NL teams. I like the AL game better and I welcome the DH in the NL with open arms. I'm open to way more ideas to improve modern baseball because a lot is not working right now, but I'll stop short of realigning the AL and NL into eastern and western conferences. That's where I draw the line. My thoughts on the shift have changed too. I didn't have a problem with it at first, in fact I kind of liked the extra strategies it brought, but now it's killing left handed hitters and it's encouraging more of the Three True Outcomes style of baseball. You wanna know why no-hitters are happening so much more frequently? It's because of the shift. And pitchers are just better too, but the shift helps. The number of pitchers who throw in the high 90's, if not over 100 right now compared to even twenty years ago is ridiculous and there's only more on the way. Pitching has evolved well past hitting and there needs to be something to SHIFT (LOL!) the balance back to a more level center.

Are the Blue Jackets teasing a jersey ad as if it's something we should be excited about?

Jesse Winker said "I’ve always wanted to be a part of an organization and a team that is really going after winning." Forget for a second that he's now on the Mariners who hold the longest active playoff drought in North American sports, it's a pretty strong statement on the Reds.

I like to think of it as a very weird dinner and improv theater. I love baseball, ballparks, hot dogs, and beer and it's why I will still probably go to 5 Reds games this year even though I'm mad at them. Baseball is the only one of the North American team sports where every team is not trying to win a championship. In the NFL, NHL, NBA, and MLS there's various levels of competency and some teams take a year or two off to tank, but every team feels like they're doing all they can to pursue this year's or a near future year's championship. Circle the 2025 World Series and ask how many teams right now have a plan to compete for that? It might be fewer than 20. That's really bad for the sport when a whole third of the league simply exists to fill a schedule and act as a shiny tax loophole for some rich dickhead.

Yes that's why this is so infuriating. I don't care if they're strapped because of COVID or any other reason. They put us through a 5ish year rebuild with some of the worst baseball this franchise has ever played. They turned me on the team I've loved since I was a little kid. I am now completely apathetic to the Reds. The worst part is the result of that rebuild was actually a solid core with some really cool young arms on the way, the Rookie of the Year, and they were a fun squad. They were a couple guys away from being a real threat, especially with an expanded playoff, and instead of spending to acquire those guys like a normal franchise they're going in the opposite direction. They closed their own window of opportunity and all we got out of it was two playoff losses (zero runs scored) in the sham COVID playoffs and an 83 win season where they fell apart in September. I'm struggling to think of another team who put together a promising looking roster and then blew it up for no reason. And I was just reminded that the Field of Dreams Game Part 2 is between the firesale Reds and firesale Cubs. LOL. Nobody's going to watch that sh**.

Big couple days for FC Cincinnati. They win on Saturday and today the crosstown Reds handed the summer to them. I'm calling that a winning streak. If they can put together more wins this season then that's the exact set of circumstances that resulted in them blowing up in USL in 2016, except the Bengals don't suck like they did back then, but they're less direct competition.

Okay so it's acceptable for a fan to criticize an athlete's career decisions if you don't like the way they went about it. Got it.

Here's why baseball sucks right now - the Reds are voluntarily choosing to close their own window of competitiveness early. When does that happen? We've seen teams rebuild and it doesn't work so they start over, we've seen teams rebuild and they win a little or a lot and then the players get old and they start over, but outside of baseball I can't recall a team actually putting together a decent core of players through a long rebuild and then, for only cheap bastard reasons, choosing not to spend a little more to pursue sustained success on the field. It's not good for the game. Google it. Sigh. Fine. Winker kills right handed pitching, not so great against lefties. He was having the best year of his career last year and was a starter in the All-Star game, but then got hurt in the second half and missed some key time when the Reds were in the playoff race. Always been a great guy who's a good interview and a fun character. I'm glad he's going to my second favorite team. Suarez is a natural third baseman, but the Reds made him play a lot of short last year for many of the same cheap ass reasons they're dealing with now. Couple down years, but he hit 49 home runs in 2019 and he's likely to pop 25-40 home runs for the Mariners. He hit 31 last year for the Reds. Also a fun character, also a good interview.

The players in this trade are almost immaterial here. I don't care who the trade is for or that we're losing a good-not-great, aging starter like Sonny Gray. It's the message it sends. We went through a 5 year rebuild that netted us two playoff losses and an 83 win season and everyone kept saying 2020 through 2023 would be our window. And it would be with ownership who wanted to win. Instead of pushing to make a good team into a Top 6 championship contender they're going back into rebuild cycle and they've effectively shut their own window. So I'm not sorry that I'm not excited about yet another prospect because A. by the time he's ready for the bigs our current hot prospects will be ready for extensions the team won’t give out and B. a fan can only stomach a rebuild if you are able trust that at the end of it is a plan for sustained winning and the only thing I trust these bozos and misers to do at the end of this next rebuild is to start over with another rebuild. edit: And they just traded Winker and Suarez to the Mariners for some dudes. this :censored:.

The Reds traded Sonny Gray to the Twins for some dudes, they haven't even spoken to Nick Castellanos' agents, and pre-lockout they said they're going to "align payroll with our resources". For real, they said that. That was their pitch to ticket-buyers and fans who might've had an interest in watching a team that won 83 games last year and was a couple guys away from being a division contender. We're going to align payroll with our resources is something you say internally, you don't come out and tell fans "hey our spending got out of control and we accidentally got too good over the last couple years so we're gonna go back to not trying to win. Sorry". Now a couple stud prospects from the last rebuild like Hunter Greene and Nick Lodolo seem ready to go so it'll be fun to finally see them pitch on a team that wins 77 games if we're lucky.

I don't like all the celebrating I'm seeing online from the rest of the AFC North. Mitchell Trubisky is what he is, but Steelers Devil Magic is real. They had the worst starting QB in the NFL last year and still made the playoffs. If Trubisky is even just bad that's an upgrade from the terrible that Roethlisberger was. Their record in one-score games doesn't indicate that they're going to get worse. Hope I'm wrong.