Gotta Know When to Snap ‘Em

Did you know that country star Kenny Rogers is a photographer? Well, he is. A pretty damn good one, too.

Here are a couple of other phenomenal photographers whom you should know:

Kirsty Mitchell (Thanks for the link, BigHank53!!)

Brooke Shaden

If anyone’s got a couple thousand pounds lying around, I’d love a Kirsty Mitchell print. Hey, Christmas is coming up, just sayin’…

The Hot Stove League: A Story of Moving Parts

Let’s start this earlier in the week:

• On the signing of Jacoby Ellsbury, Neyer wrote that “[i]f you’re a fan of any other American League East team, you should be exceptionally happy.”  While I’m not a fan of another AL East team I am an honorary one as a Yankee hater, and…I dunno.  The way I’d look at is that the Yankees were 1)outscored by 21 runs last year and weren’t even that good, and 2)gave regular playing time to one position player who will be under 30 this year, and that was Eduardo Nunez, who isn’t a major league hitter and isn’t even a AAA shortstop.   Even accounting for their injuries this is, in other words, an old and not-very-impressive team almost entirely bereft of young talent.  If the current structure of the game in which most under-30 elite players don’t hit the free agent market continues, it’s very likely that by 2017 the possibility of overpaying Ellsbury will be the least of the Yankee’s problems.  Unless they start showing an ability to identify and develop young talent they haven’t shown in a long time, they’re probably looking at Stump Merrill II: Electric Boogaloo later in the decade anyway.  So the way I see it is the only question is whether the crash is preceded by mediocrity or whether the Yankees can patch together some postseason teams before things fall apart.
• In terms of the Ellsbury contract, it’s not terrible given what should be the short-term goals of the franchise.  He’s hard to evaluate because of his injury issues and his performance swings.  Leaving aside the partial seasons, he’s had one great season (2011), one very good one  (last year), and two OK ones (2008/9).  He is, in other words, a high-upside, high-risk gamble: if he can stay healthy and his performs at a level between 2011 and 2013, the contract will work for the period when the Yankees need it to work.  But that’s not a given, and I’d like the move more if the Yankees didn’t already have a plus centerfielder.
• So I saw it the was that NoMaas sees it: given that the Yankees are putting off rebuilding, they need to make an all-out push for 2014 and 2015.  Ellsbury is certainly a much better gamble than Granderson, but if they lost Cano they’d really just be treading water.
• Of course, they were then blown out of the water by Seattle on Cano.  Although the contract would make more sense for the Yankees than it did for Seattle — we’ll get back to that — I can’t blame the Yankees for not matching the offer in isolation.  But, nonetheless, Cano is a better player than Ellsbury, and even if we assume that McCann (a huge upgrade over the nothing the Yankees got out of the position last year) and a full year from Teixeira make up for that gap plus the losses of Pettite and Rivera, that still really just leaves them as another .500ish team trying to get lucky, with a team age that makes counting on luck pretty dicey.
• Cashman immediately reacted by signing Beltran.  How much does this help the Yankees? It’s unclear to me.  I love Beltran, as most readers know, and since I’m rooting for him to go to Cooperstown I like what going to the bandbox in the Bronx will do for his raw stats.  He makes the team better. But it doesn’t really address the loss of Cano since it adds to a pileup at the left end of the defensive spectrum, giving the Yankees now two old guys who still have life in their bats (Beltran much more so than Soriano, of course) but can’t actually play the outfield.  I’m not sure what the Yankees will do about this.  One alternative would be to move Gardner to left and flip Beltran and Soriano between RF and DH, properly making Ichiro! a 5th outfielder and properly releasing the absolutely useless Wells.  That’s not a bad situation, although it does choke off the DH position that the Yankees could use to give one of their other fading old guys a day or three quasi-off.   Alternatively, they could move Garnder (one of their few players with any trade value) to try  to patch up the gaping wound in the middle infield and live with gruesome defense in both OF corners most nights.  It’s therefore hard to evaluate the singing until we see what happens, but it strikes me now as not unreasonable but sort of beside the point.
• And the same goes for the decision to sign Ellsbury rather than Cano, I suppose. If they get Tanaka, if they sign Infante to play second and he has a good year, if they can stay relatively healthy despite being an old team…they could be a playoff team.  But it seems to me that a lot has to go right, and if they don’t get Tanaka it seems unlikely that they will have done enough.
• Let’s turn to the Mariners.  As I said yesterday, it’s not a good contract.  Cano is a truly great player — an excellent hitter and a good defender at a talent-scarce position, he’s been one of the best 3 players in the league two years running, he’s unusually durable and consistent, and he’s still in the suburbs of his prime.  He’s already accomplished more than several Hall of Fame second basemen by age 30.  Players that good don’t the free agent market that much anymore.  And in the right context I can live with the “overpaying” involved in dead years at the end of the contract — baseball doesn’t have a hard cap and flags fly forever.   The problem for the Mariners, though, is that they aren’t the right context.  Cano is a major addition, but the team is still a complete mess.  The outfield remains dubious offensively and a train wreck defensively, and Seager is the only other decent infielder although Smoak did take a step forward last year and could be at least decent.  King Felix and Iwakuma make an outstanding front-end but there’s very little behind it.  The Mariners were 100 runs from .500 last year — even if some of the young “talent” finally steps forward and they continue to push by trading for Price and find some major league outfielders — it’s very hard to see this turning around while Cano is still a top-quality second baseman.  There are situations where I could live with “overpaying” for Cano, but this isn’t one of them.  His contract will almost certainly be an albatross before the Mariners can contend.

Conservatives And Apartheid

Whether at home or abroad, American conservatives (starting with reasonable, moderate, thinking man’s reactionary William Buckley) are only capable of opposing apartheid in retrospect. At which point the process of turning the people who they so viciously opposed into empty teddy bears begins.

…this Tim Burke post is indeed great.

My America

So Noon wants to know which America I want back? The same one he wants back. This one.

This Is Rape Culture

Perhaps the judgment that there was insufficient evidence to charge Jameis Winston was correct. But like the lengthy delay in pursing the case (although obviously not as importantly), I can’t say this gives me much confidence in the prosecutor’s judgment.

The Joke with Two Punchlines

It was with this endearing treatise on names I hate that I dethroned Sandra Bullock to become the new, better, sweeter, more American America’s Sweetheart. You all remember the entry. I know you do. I really, erm, let loose. And got what some people might call a bit of pushback.

If you don’t remember, here’s a quick refresher: I said I hated the name “Madison.” Guess what–I still hate it. I think it’s really stupid non-name that people started giving their daughters after watching “Splash.” I know some of you disagree with me and think I’m a big old meanie for saying so. Fine. I don’t really care. But here’s the thing: joke’s on me.

See, my son has recently started playing with some of the young kids who live on our street. Usually it’s a group of 3 to five kids, ranging in age from 2 to 6. Two of those kids are named “Madison.” Yes, there are not one, but two Madisons living on my cul de sac. Life is trolling me.

But, wait, there’s more. Here’s a funny story about a cute little tween who just wants to bootstrap her way to getting braces by selling mistletoe. The tale’s told by someone even sweeter than I am, and by that I mean by someone who is even more short-tempered and foul-mouthed than I am. But let me tell you the best part of the story right now. The name of our scrappy young heroine is…Madison.

“Nostalgia admits no other remedy than a return to the homeland”

The ignorant hayseeds at White American History Month — currently working their way through a bout of masturbatory frenzy over Nelson Mandela’s death — spent some time yesterday celebrating the work of the noted non-white supremacist Norman Rockwell. Since I have a tangential family connection to Rockwell, and since nostalgia is a suitable affliction for racists, I decided to have a bit of a piss at their expense.

I’m wondering which other artists’ fabricated versions of the national past have been systematically wrecked by Democrats and the progressive left. Which America do you want back?