Why 2017 Topps Update Has Royally Pissed Me Off

I don't get a ton of opportunities to write about the industry anymore, because, to be honest, I haven't had reason to. How's everything card-wise been this year? Fine. Flagship's fine, Stadium Club's amazing as usual, Heritage is fine, etc. Nothing has really warranted an angry ranting post from me.

Until now, that is.

I'd heard a few complaints this week about the 2017 Update Series checklist, mainly people like Chris Taylor that had missed the cut, which is already pretty ballsy. So today, I checked to see which Yankees had made the cut, after Todd Frazier's fantastic night last night.

No Todd Frazier.

No Sonny Gray. No Jaime Garcia. Hell, Jaime Garcia is listed with the Braves, which is three teams ago for him at this point.

I looked around. None of the players dealt at the trade deadline had any cards in Topps Update. Not even as short-prints or anything. Only Jose Quintana, who was traded a few weeks before the deadline, had Update Series presence. No one else. The rest of the checklist was made up of new uniforms for people that had been in the FLAGSHIP set, as well as a ton of rookies (like Kyle Higashioka and Lewis Brinson) that did nothing this year.

Now...back in the day, you could account for January and Offseason moves, you know, IN the flagship set. I understand how printing dates work, I understand when checklists need to be finalized, but if you're working on photos and backs for a player that has already been traded to a new team, why can't you do anything to grab a Spring Training photo or make an airbrushing (which are more impressive now)? It's not like the graphic designers are powerless.

Look, in 2009, Topps Series 2 had a TON of spring training photos of established players in new uniforms, guys that had been traded in the offseason. Trevor Hoffman, Nick Swisher, Willy Taveras, Jeff Suppan. Plus, when Stadium Club hits shelves, it has all the new uniforms, all the Spring Training shots. Stadium Club comes out a month after Series 2- there can't be a transfer of divisions or photos in that time?

What I'm trying to say is that all of this could have been avoided. We could have had half of the cards of January guys in new uniforms that are in Update Series...in SERIES 2. If somebody in Series 1 has been traded, and you don't have a new photo of them...save their card for Series 2! Move somebody from S2 up, somebody that won't be traded! This isn't rocket science!

Which brings me to the second dilemma- the whole point of Update Series, from the BEGINNING, has been to showcase the results of trade deadline deals, so kids and collectors can see their recently-traded heroes as the playoffs are going on. If Todd Frazier is still in the playoffs, kids want to see him on a Topps card! This year, they friggin' can't! And it's mainly because the print date/checklist finalization date was WAY too early. There's no excuse. The trade deadline was later last year and they still got all the traded players in Update. Now, with an earlier trade deadline, and a WAY EARLIER finalization date...we have next to nothing.

Because of deadlines and product-rushing, we have a product that essentially means nothing.

I say this because ten years ago, my first year as a collector, I rushed to the shelves to pick up Update, and saw players I had no idea were traded, like Mark Teixeira as a Brave, or Sammy Sosa as a Ranger, or Kenny Lofton as an Indian again. It was fun to keep track of, especially as Lofton and a few others were in the playoffs. Plus, as trade-deadline deals got more important, the Update series got more stuffed and more filled with traded stars.

Now...we don't have any of that at all. The sole reason I had to collect the product 10 years ago is gone, because they wanted to make an EFFICIENT product, not a TIMELY one. I'm gonna have to wait until 2018 Topps to see most of these players in new uniforms, and half of them by THAT point will have already been traded, starting the entire cycle anew again.

The bottom line here is that there is definitely a problem, and Topps either doesn't know how to solve it, or KNOWS how to solve it and doesn't want to do the work necessary to.

The last few years I've gotten a hobby box of Update. Not doing that this year. Might get a blaster or something.

The Complete and Total Collapse in San Diego

When the Padres made their swarm of acquisitions last year, I kind of knew it wasn't going to work, mainly because contract-gobbling roster expanders like these rarely work, at least not immediately. You need to have a steady backbone of a team before you start adding people, and you can't just use these to rehaul the entire team, or else the established veterans are going to suffer hard.

Well, what happened to the Padres was worse than what I, or anyone really, could have imagined.

The base of veterans that the Padres kept in 2015, that was supposed to be buttressed by the onslaught of new players, did not survive. Some players, like Will Venable and Abraham Almonte, were traded midseason. Some players were dealt before the 2016 season, like Yonder Alonso and Jedd Gyorko. The guys the Padres have kept haven't been playing as regulars, and if they are, they're currently serving DL stints like Alexi Amarista and Yangervis Solarte.

So, the new wave of Padres has completely destroyed the old wave of Padres, save for the pitchers who were there like Tyson Ross and Andrew Cashner. The pre-established roster is gone, and now the Padres are hastily utilizing bench players and dropouts from other rosters, in an effort to at least win some games.

But what's even more alarming is that some of the guys the Padres brought in to help last season haven't stayed very long at all. Justin Upton, who was supposed to be the steady outfielder for years, is now playing for the Tigers. Craig Kimbrel is now closing games in Boston. Will Middlebrooks was DFA'd prior to the beginning of the season. Matt Kemp, Wil Myers, Derek Norris and James Shields are the sole survivors, and I'm highly doubting all four will still be here in September, especially Shields.

This was a move that was supposed to bring the Padres into the forefront- instead it set them back another 5 years. Blows me away how horribly this worked out for them.

Coming Tomorrow- The man who will likely go down as the only Baseball Hall of Famer to be portrayed as a recurring character on Saturday Night Live.

It's Impolite to say 'Bunt': Why Topps Bunt is the Wrong Future of Collecting

I pulled this in one of my packs of 2016 Topps yesterday. It appalled me for a few reasons.

1. If people are saying the photoshop jobs are obvious in the 16T flagship, then they should get a load of these, especially the Correa insert. No effort to dial it back.
2. This brings forward an especially horrifying notion, one I'm going to talk about in this post.

2016 Topps has been criticized by literally everyone on the blogosphere, and for good reason. One of the most frequent criticisms is that the base design looks WAY too simple. Like, smog notwithstanding, it's just an MLB crawl and some shiny. There's not a ton to it.

And, as some people have pointed out, there's a reason toward this. Topps has realized that their business is coming less from people buying actual, physical packs of their products (you know, the way it should be), and is coming more from people using their digital app, Topps Bunt. So, in order to remedy this new direction of sales, Topps has made their base design simple enough that it can be reproduced for Bunt. Matter of fact, 2016 Topps is the first Topps Baseball Card set designed for the sole purpose...of NOT being collected as baseball cards.

It's painstakingly obvious. The lack of foil. The lack of originality. The zooming in of all of the photos. The even-more-boring inserts. The indistinguishable parallels. Topps has mass-produced and collated this set merely as an afterthought, knowing that they're only doing it for the older generation. Topps, who were so focused on attracting the younger demographic five years ago, through physical cards, have given up entirely, and have gone to just winning over that demographic by becoming something they very clearly are not.

Oh, sure. I talk so much shit about Topps Bunt, how it's detrimental to old-school collectors, and how it's ruining how Topps produces its cards. But I haven't even talked about how the app is from the inside, how it works, what it does. So I'm certainly one to talk.

(Clears Throat)

I was an avid user of Topps Bunt for approximately one month. I joined around January 2015, and deleted the app sometime around the middle of February 2015. I wanted to see what the fuss was about, so to speak.

Topps Bunt nearly derailed my savings account and damn near ended my blogging career. So yes, I am one to talk. And talk I will. Until my lungs freaking burst.



Like I said, I joined in January 2015, during the offseason. I had no choice but to start accumulating as many packs as I could, but there was no easy way about it. In-app credit was generated on a day-to-day basis, with a special bonus every Wednesday, and that was no way keep nabbing packs regularly. So, more in-app credit could be purchased with actual money. Now, Topps got this from other apps, I assume, as Temple Run or Angry Birds would sell things like hints, or more saves, or little extra items, for a couple actual dollars. But they weren't things that were invaluable to the game, like...all of the cards you were supposed to collect.

If Topps wanted people to actually collect the set without breaking the bank, they would go for the 1970's route, and put 20 or 30 cards into a 99 cent pack, or put 12 cards into a 3 dollar pack with parallels in it. But the Topps people, obviously, are not fools. They know that kids aren't buying physical packs, and they want money. So what they do here, which is genius and infuriating, is they stock packs at 5,000 coins, or 10,000 coins, or even 15 or 25,000, which is the equivalent of 25 bucks, so that the only way that kids can keep collecting the ultra-rare inserts is if they constantly have to borrow from their mom or dad's debit card, and keep feeding money into the cash cow that is Topps Bunt.

Now, replace mom and dad's account with a newly bolstered debit account, that I was saving for textbooks, and replace a 10-12 year old kid with a 19 year old kid who hadn't realized anything was wrong yet, and you have the makings of a disaster.

I didn't realize it at the time, but I had developed a small-scale gambling addiction. I would feed money into my Bunt account, at the promise of being 'with the times' and ripping digital packs just to have the latest insert sets completed, and then keep trading the rarer ones away for newer stuff, while keeping the autographs I would pull (on occasion) ultra-safe and locked. This process kept going on. I'd stomach the younger (or even older) kids who would ridicule me for "not knowing how to trade", even when I was trading my unwanted goods for their unwanted goods, which was, by Webster's definition, exactly what a trade means. I just kept going, kept getting more cards, and keeping in the bubble.

The problem was I didn't have time for many other things around that time. My blogging around that February slipped (just as bad as this February, only this February my excuses are "there was nothing worth blogging about" and "class fatigue"), because I had no real interest in writing, or picking myself out of BuntWorld. I collected some physical Topps, and I loved the 2015 set, but part of me was secretly wondering what it would look like in the Bunt app.

I honestly forget what caused me to delete the app, but I imagine it was a sudden realization of what it had done to me (and, more importantly, my bank account). I had allowed Bunt to scrounge itself into my brain and stay lodged their until I had no choice but to claw it out from the inside.



The main problem with Topps Bunt is that there's no moderation. There's no limit. A person can feed a lot of money into the app every day, and get more cards for themselves everyday, because there is nothing stopping them. There are packs available to buy everyday, with new and exciting bonus packs appearing at some times, and special, more expensive packs showing up randomly.

In real, physical life, there is a limit to how much Topps cards you can buy, because getting Topps cards involves going to a card shop, or a Target, and getting some cards, in moderation, and paying for them at the register. Topps Bunt didn't have that. There wasn't a register to pay for everything at once. You just pay whenever you want something, and there was nothing to stop you from wanting to buy the packs, because there was no geographical difficulty to getting more packs every day.

If I went to Target every day and bought $50 dollars worth of baseball cards, not only would it render me bankrupt very quickly, but there would be a social stigma about it. Because eventually someone would see me going to Target every day, and getting a lot of cards, and comment about it. In some semi-concerned-but-mostly-observant way, someone would say 'this isn't the first time I've seen you here', or 'welcome back', or 'that's a lot of baseball cards for one week'.

There's no social stigma in Topps Bunt because there are not other people around you when you buy packs. Nobody else in Topps Bunt can see how much you spend, how many coins you have. No one is there to stigmatize you for what you are doing except, eventually, you. And you don't realize it until you have to pull yourself away from the picture for a second, examine everything, and realize how wrong this is. Which is what I did.

Part of the problem is that I've never gambled, or had anything like this, so I didn't know going in that I needed to control what I put in. But, if I remember correctly, there is no disclaimer ANYWHERE in Topps Bunt that says 'remember to spend responsibly', or 'you should probably control how much money you put in.' Because anything that would end in Topps getting less money is bad for Topps.

So, in a way, Topps is promoting gambling, for their own personal gain, without a real care for what happens to people who put too much money into the app, especially if they're young kids spending their parents' money. They do not put thought into this, which is a horrible thing to grasp.

That somebody could go 'Yes, people are losing money, yes, kids are being conditioned to gamble at a young age, but on the plus side, we're finally winning the child demographic, so what's there to worry about?' This breaks my heart.



All of this in mind, Topps is restructuring their organization so that it's more geared toward things like Topps Bunt, and less towards actual, physical packs of Topps, which uses moderation, and is a lot safer for younger kids to get into than Topps Bunt. And yet Topps doesn't understand that it's got the exact wrong priorities, and that putting more emphasis on Topps Bunt is a mistake unless Bunt is restructured to be less of a cash cow and more of a direct simulation of actually buying packs of cards.

Topps Bunt cannot be 'the future of collecting', as Topps is leading us to believe, because if so, the next generations of card collectors are going to learn the lesson I learned eventually, and not want to collect cards at all, be it digital or physical. If this process, the one that I succumbed to, keeps going on unaddressed, Topps is going to lose a ton of prospective collectors, future and current, physical and digital.

They damn near lost me as a customer, and it took some overwhelming response from a grand majority of their products last year to keep me buying. But Topps needs to seriously rethink its priorities, or at least do something about this problem as soon as possible. I know it took me a year to report on this, but I wanted to wait until it would be relevant. It's relevant now, because Topps wants you to believe that Topps Bunt is the future.

Well, if that's the future, I think I'd be better off living in the past.

As if the All Star Ballot Announcements Couldn't Get Any Worse...

As I've explained multiple times on the blog, I'm not especially happy with what the All Star Game has become this year. For a game that doesn't especially count for anything (except home field advantage in the World Series), there sure is a lot of nonsense swirling about, what with the roster-pumping that the Royals fans have been doing, and the new complicating formula for the Home Run Derby. You guys are forgetting how this is supposed to be fun for the fans, not infuriating.

Last year, I made several 'shame on you's at MLB and ESPN for turning the Roster Announcements, which used to just be both managers posting the rosters online on a Sunday without too much pomp, into a one-hour television spectacle, where Kurkjian and co flaunted their prior knowledge of the rosters to the audience, teasing snippets like 'this is the first of six Athletics on the list. You'll find out the other five later'. As if to say, 'oh, you'll get there soon, audience. It's not like you're the whole reason this event exists or anything.'

And so I defiantly watched that special last year, and dissected every one of its flaws, and there were many, including wasting blocks of time interviewing managers and players when they should simply be GIVING THE DAMNED ROSTERS. It was annoying, and pathetic.

This year, I spent a couple days looking for a date when the rosters would be announced, because it's usually end of June. And I couldn't find one. Better yet, I didn't find a telecast date for the bullshit results show. So I was content. I thought, maybe they learned their lesson, and are going back to just posting them online.

Oh, how naive was I. How stupid. Because today, with the final voting update, MLB.com announced that the results would be revealed on NOT ONE...BUT TWO NIGHTS OF ESPN PROGRAMMING.

That's right. On Sunday the 5th, about a week later than the results are usually announced, ESPN will dedicate THIRTY MINUTES to a special announcing the starting rosters for the NL and AL teams. Just the starting rosters. Padded out by thirty minutes of stalling, interviews with clearly uninterested players, and Tim Kurkjian twirling his eyebrows, going "NANANANANA, I KNOW THE ROSTERS AND YOU DON'T!"

But on Sunday the 6th, ESPN will give an HOUR block to unveiling the rest of the rosters, including pitchers, reserve members, and the candidates for the final man vote. Which means that one and a half hours, over the course of two days, WITH COMMERCIALS...will be used to announce information that could have just been put online.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but MLB has thought of something worse than what they did last year. This means that all the excited baseball fans who want to see the rosters...have to wait through 22 minutes of Esurance ads, and commercials pushing a new taco made entirely from a cow's spleen, just to see the sportscasters run through the rosters in one breath and then ending the telecast before you have time to process it. Or, as Ryan Seacrest calls it, the daily source of his income.

This is not okay. None of this is remotely okay. Now, you could argue that the easiest way to get these rosters is to just...wait until the broadcast is over, and wait for everybody to post the stuff online, so that you don't have to wait for Tim Kurkjian, who I swear is becoming worse than Joe Buck at this point, to shut the hell up. I could do that, but I feel like torturing myself this year.

So I'll watch the damn programs, because obviously that's what MLB wants me to do, and I'll riff the specials, and I'll comment on the rosters. But there is no way in hell that I'll be happy about it. And there is no way in hell I'm gonna be pleased if they decide to go this route again next year, only with a different sponsor, and an even more disgusting Pizza Hut dish to flaunt.

Fronkensteen and Igor discuss Topps Archives

(In the offices at Topps, Duryea, PA.)

Frederick: Now...that setlist you gave me. The one for Topps Archives.
Igor: Yes, doctor?
Frederick: Did it...by any chance...have any short prints on it?
Igor (pausing for emphasis): ...yes.
Frederick: Ah, good. Now...would you mind telling me...what the odds are of someone *pulling* one of those short prints is?
Igor: And you won't be angry?
Frederick: I WILL NOT....BE ANGRY.
Igor (choosing his words carefully): one in...seven...
Frederick: One in *SEVEN*?
Igor: One in...seventy...
Frederick: One...in seventy.
Igor: I'm almost...certain, that was it, doctor.
Frederick: Are you telling me...that we put a product on the shelves...WITH short prints...after we specifically said there wouldn't be any...and there's less of a chance of pulling one...THAN BEING STRUCK BY LIGHTNING!
(Frederick starts strangling Igor)
Frederick: IS! THAT! WHAT! YOU'RE! TELLING! ME?!?
Igor (motioning to Inga, in the corner): QUICK! GIVE HIM THE-
Inga: Uhh...THREE SYLLABLES! FIRST SYLLABLE-

Fin

And now my thoughts on the move for Archives.

I...honestly...have no idea what Topps is trying to accomplish by adding thirty cards to a base set that they had said SEVERAL TIMES would be short-print-less...and then making them IMPOSSIBLE to pull. I do not see the point of this...mainly because there is none. It makes sense when they're 1:4, and you can sort of, eventually get them all. But now they're 1:70. And NOW there's a slim-to-nothing chance of getting ONE, let alone all 30. It's pointless.

I think the only thing set-collectors SHOULD do...is just ignore the short prints. To me, the set ends at card #300. If I pull one, I'll figure out some way to get rid of it. It won't count in my eyes. Because it's BS to me.

Hopefully there won't be any other random BS announcements for Archives. I so badly want to like this set. And Topps keeps giving me reasons not to.

And now, an episode of THIS TRADE MAKES NO SENSE!

Bet he was pretty surprised to be headed to Seattle.

Ah, nothing like a shitty trade to get the creative blogging juices flowing.

Ah, yes. The trade at hand. Today, for no apparent reason, the Mariners said 'you know what, we need more hitting. Nelson Cruz, Logan Morrison, Kyle Seager and Brad Miller are great hitters, but I can't take that kind of security. We need a crap one to balance out the good ones.' So, out of the goddamned blue, they politely asked Arizona to hand over Mark Trumbo, whose last great numbers came in Week One of the 2014 season, in exchange for Welington Castillo and a couple prospects.

There are several things wrong with this trade. I'm gonna go over all of them.

1. Yes, I understand that Trumbo is no longer the high ticket item he was, but if Arizona wanted to get rid of him, they could have just DFA'd him, instead of jumpstarting the trade season inexplicably in the beginning of June. This was just an incredibly random, and public way, of getting rid of the guy that could have been done a bit more discretely.

2. The main guy that Arizona is getting is Welington Castillo, who, just last season, was the premier catcher for the Cubs. So, the deal was that Arizona was giving up a big hitter and getting a catcher. Now, you would think that the D-Backs would need a catcher. However, that is not the case. The D-Backs, so far this season, have had FOUR people play catcher. FOUR OF THEM. Two are on the DL, and those two are Tuffy Goseswisch and Gerald Laird. The other two are Jordan Pacheco, who's their starter right now, and Jarrod Saltalamacchia, who is their backup.

It's worth noting that they just signed Saltalamacchia literally mid-last month. And he's played three games in their system. So now, the D-Backs have Castillo, who can definitely play catcher, Pacheco, who can definitely play catcher, and Salty, who, as we're being led to believe at this point, can definitely play catcher.

Okay, Count von Count. How many healthy, perfectly fine catchers does that leave us?

THREE! THREE CATCHERS! AH-AH-AH!

And how many will that make once Tuffy Gosewisch comes back?

FOUR! FOUR CATCHERS! AH-AH-AH!

(Thanks, Count.)

Okay, anyway, back to the list.

3. Also, you would think that, if the Mariners are so eager to give Castillo to a team that already has two healthy catchers, and one other catcher that could eventually come back and start, then they're perfectly fine as far as catchers are concerned. NOPE. NOT AT ALL. Their starting catcher, Mike Zunino, while not doing too badly in terms of hitting homers, is batting below the Mendoza line. And he's started almost all of the Mariners' games. This is because the M's don't have many other options behind the plate.

They have Jesus Sucre floating around on their roster, but they demoted him a little while ago, assumedly when they got Castillo, and when they do bring him back up, he's still not gonna be too spectacular, as before his demotion, he was batting terribly, only getting one hit in six games, and striking out four times.

So, let's examine the facts here. A team with an unreliable starter and a slightly-more reliable backup catcher trades said backup to a team that already has three reliable catchers, two of which are healthy. So, now one team has one catcher that they can't really deal with, and the other team has three catchers, FOUR when Gosewisch returns from the DL, that are definitely overcrowding the playing field. Keep in mind, Welington Castillo was in Chicago earlier this year, with Miguel Montero and David Ross. He is now very familiar with overcrowding.

4. There is no heir apparent in the Mariners' system, other than Jesus Sucre. The only catchers floating around in that system are A.) In the deep recesses of the minors, and B.) Not hitting for jack shit. So it's not like there's another catcher coming in on the horizon. It's not like they're clearing things for a big trade.

5. The D-Backs threw Vidal Nuno into this trade as well. Nuno hasn't had decent numbers since he was with the Yankees. The Mariners are just gonna be getting Hector Noesi again, and LORD KNOWS how well he turned out.

6. The Mariners now have an outfielder/DH type, and nowhere to put him. All three outfielders are hitting well enough to keep their spots, and Seth Smith is a good enough DH that he's definitely sticking around. And they're sure as hell not gonna move him back to the infield. So...now they're screwed, because they have a guy who can hit, but doesn't always, and can't put him anywhere defensively, and then they have to mull over whether they wanna swap out Seth Smith with Trumbo every once and a while.

So there. Six reasons why this trade is nonsensical. And they're six good reasons, too. I mean, maybe this trade is gonna end up doing something for those prospects that Seattle threw in, but...as for Trumbo and Castillo, they really don't need to be on these new teams. It's maddening.

Good news is it makes for good blog material.

Custom Card of the Day: Phillips Edition

I'm going to use this really nice Brandon Phillips custom to make a statement about something I really, really don't like about the All Star Game.

No, not that one.

Or any of these.

No, this one's a new one. One that that is making its debut this year, at least in the world of baseball.

You see, this year the All Star rosters will be announced not by a press release, or the managers simply posting them online, but on a 30-minute-long special on ESPN (or MLB Network, one of the two).

Let me give you a few reasons why this pisses me off.

1. You do not need thirty minutes to give two sets of rosters for an All Star Game, MLB or no. You can just as well say 'LOOK. LISTS. HERE THEY ARE', instead of just padding out thirty minutes for something that could be resolved in two.
2. Because this is a thirty minute block, this means that there will be approximately five minutes of actually giving the fricking rosters, and therefore there will be SEVENTEEN EXTRA MINUTES of just people f--king talking about them. We do not NEED seventeen minutes of sportswriters talking about this shit. That is what we have our own opinions for.
3. If somebody we really like that really deserves it doesn't make the cut, we go 'oh, that really sucks'. Meanwhile, the sportswriters will spend two minutes talking about why, how, and all the above about this one player that didn't make it. WE CAME FOR ROSTERS. TWO SETS OF ROSTERS. NOT OPINIONS ON EVERY PLAYER NOT ON SAID SETS OF ROSTERS.
4. The sportswriters know as well as we do that they will be gasping to fill time in between the announcements of the rosters, so it will turn out like a condensed version of one of those Results Shows for one of your favorite reality shows. You get a lot of filler, padding, things we really don't need to see, a shitload of commercials to placate you more, and then we get what you actually came to see, only 51 minutes later than it should have been. It's television's equivalent of supermarkets strategically placing a bunch of crap in front of the milk, eggs and bread, AKA the only shit you actually came to see. Yeah, it's exhausting, but when there's so much else to exploit, what's the point of just, you know, GIVING THE PEOPLE EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANTED AND NOTHING ELSE?

(takes asprin)

So really, the sportswriters will be struggling to find anything to talk about that's actually important. Don't be surprised if somebody brings up LeBron James just to feel refreshed again.
5. The NBA did this tactic first, but the NBA already has a lot of flair, pomp, circumstance, etc. Plus, they actually get the players there as they announce that they'll be on the team, which makes it kind of cool, and showy and drawn out FOR A REASON. NFL started doing it this year because...hey, Deion Sanders isn't on TV enough already! No, but NFL's version was a lazy, 30 minute 'picking teams' ceremony that could have been handled in a press release. So the MLB is taking the advice from the wrong role model here, in simply standing on TV, talking about crap, and THEN giving the rosters.

But wouldn't it be really cool if they did what the NBA does? If they had people like Giancarlo Stanton, Yasiel Puig, Albert Pujols and Derek Jeter showing up onstage when there name's called, to a sea of adoring fans and stuff like that? Wouldn't that be awesome? Why can't the MLB do THAT?

There. Rant over. Tomorrow night, you'll have your rosters, and I'll react to them in full. But if they botch this somehow, then you'll have another rant on your hands.

Coming Tomorrow- A Braves outfielder that I always make customs of early on.

Oh, no. What's this?

I ridicule the Yankees from time to time for having a problem with signing players over the age of thirty and expecting them to perform like they did in their youth. And I like to kid them about that, because it's a little funny how far Cashman takes it.

What isn't funny is the moment somebody else takes the gag further.

Ruben Amaro, who I had some amount of respect for before this, thought it would be a good idea to sign Bobby Abreu, who is currently 39, to a minor league deal. This would reunite Bobby with Marlon Byrd, who were youthful, terrific outfielders...back in 2003, that is. All we need is Jim Thome, Kevin Millwood and Dan Plesac to come back, and we'll have a nice, strong team.

No, in all seriousness, this is awful. 5 years ago, when I just knew players by star power, I would have thought this was a good idea because it would bring a Philadelphia superstar back to Philly. Right now that's the only part of this that makes sense, and it doesn't even make that much sense.

You're hiring a 39-year-old ballplayer, one who never really excelled at anything other than having a good time, and you're expecting him to hit for you off the bench, or even in the outfield. Hell, he hasn't played since 2012. To put it into perspective, Bobby Abreu hasn't played baseball since Mitt Romney was still campaigning.

Quite honestly, there are so many things wrong with this deal that I'm probably going to leave most of them out. Like, there's a whole list of shit that I could write if I had more time, but I'm not going to. It just proves how dumb this is, and I already established that with the whole Dan Plesac thing.

I think this just ruins the integrity of the Phillies' ballclub, because if they sign Bobby Abreu and think he's gonna be like Jim Thome and make miracles happen off the bench, then they're stupid. Like, I can't take them seriously anymore. They're just a joke now. And it's sad.

So I'm done ranting. And I'm just waiting for them to sign Pat Burrell.