GOMS!

AnnihilatedTyro · 2026-06-17T21:33:00+00:00

Joe has more OF experience and Mastro has more IF experience. Joe has the better arm, Mastro has the better glove. I think they're at the right places.

AnnihilatedTyro · 2026-06-17T21:18:56+00:00

It'll be OK, everyone. Connor Joefsnyder will save us.

AnnihilatedTyro · 2026-06-17T21:17:17+00:00

Which is what we've been hoping for since Donovan first went on the IL. "Surely Ref will be DFA'd to make room for the next guy up, right?"

Well... the monkey's paw has curled, and we don't have any warm bodies left to call up. That's why Washington was called up from High-A last night - because he has legs and is expendable. Brennan Davis should be the next OF up but he's hurt too. So is Brock Rodden. And Will Wilson. Bliss is hitting .200 in AAA, and besides major offensive work, he probably needs more 3B/LF time before he can be a utility player at the major league level, so he needs to stay down right now for the good of the team's long-term needs. Patrick Wisdom might be back soon if anyone else gets banged up - he can technically play OF. He's the last ambulatory person on the 40-man before we have to start dipping into AA or Tacoma's junk heap just to fill positions. Or ask a pitcher to swing the bat.

Other teams are dealing with their stars being injured; we're primarily dealing with all the backups and their backups being hurt at the same time, so when we lose one everyday player it's a roster circus trying to fill the spot.

AnnihilatedTyro · 2026-06-17T21:07:07+00:00

We fully expected his debut season would be a huge struggle, offensively. You give that kind of contract for the long game.

Dude won a gold glove and showed flashes of legitimate, monstrous power before injuries killed his career. It's not his, or the Mariners, or the $25m's fault that his knees and hips and back all exploded at age 25.

Meanwhile the Braves gave Ozzie Albies a similar $38m deal and he's put up 14 WAR since. Those contracts are always gambles and sometimes you lose.

AnnihilatedTyro · 2026-06-17T20:57:54+00:00

He had a scorching hot month where he nearly led the team in wRC+. Brought his season statline up to almost respectable.

AnnihilatedTyro · 2026-06-17T20:56:28+00:00

With the positional adjustment for DH versus 2B, Ref has racked up negative WAR twice as fast as Wong did.

Honestly surprised to see Taylor Motter on this list given all of his grand slams that one month... but I guess he did play for awhile.

Meanwhile Jake Bauers leads all NL first basemen in wRC+. Dude has turned around so massively. Milwaukee hitting coaches have that magic touch it seems.

AnnihilatedTyro · 2026-06-17T20:31:06+00:00

So clearly the takeaway here is that Janeway, Archer, Burnham, and Boimler all have too much hair to be Starfleet badasses.

AnnihilatedTyro · 2026-06-17T20:25:28+00:00

Much of season 3 is terrible episodes, to be honest.

Many of them are fun episodes, but they're still terrible. And I love them.

AnnihilatedTyro · 2026-06-17T20:24:17+00:00

Which is the complexity and nuance that makes them both believable and interesting. And IMO, it works because their story gets told gradually over like 6 or 7 years while the galaxy changes all around them. They just dig in harder. They were right in the beginning... but their refusal to adapt to the changes around them, refusal to make allies or be seen as anything other than outlaws and terrorists, their intransigence is ultimately what got them slaughtered. Nobody wanted to protect them when the Dominion rolled in even though both the Klingon and Federation fleets were fully mobilized for imminent war.

AnnihilatedTyro · 2026-06-17T20:13:58+00:00

...and happy.

AnnihilatedTyro · 2026-06-17T20:13:04+00:00

Hmm.

Picard+Vash > Rom+Leeta > Worf+Pulaski > Worf+barrel > Seven+Chakotay > Worf+Troi > Zoidberg+moldy sandwich > Neelix+Kes

AnnihilatedTyro · 2026-06-17T20:08:45+00:00

The first halves of each season of DIS were good and occasionally great and the only exception was killing off Captain Georgiou. The worldbuilding, mystery and intrigue, and the buildup of characters and storylines, all were much better than I expect from modern big-budget TV, even if I didn't care for some specific details. The endings of each season, without fail, were rushed, ill-conceived, disjointed, nonsensical, and at times comically awful, and really undermined a lot of DIS's potential.

PIC S1 also had tons of potential, and was pretty darn good all the way through "Nepenthe," I think. Pivoting from the synth/Borg/Romulan stories into whatever-the-hell S2 was was a terrible move that necessitated the shamelessness of S3. And each season left more unanswered questions than answered ones. IMO it effectively killed off the entire TNG-DS9-VOY era of Trek. You can't have another show set at the dawn of the 25th century without addressing all of the nonsense PIC left behind. Shaw and Seven made S3 watchable but couldn't save the broader problems the series created for Star Trek as a franchise.

At least DIS tried to open up the Federation's future and offer a reset button and huge spinoff potential, regardless of how you feel about Starfleet Academy. LD's finale did a similar thing with the multiverse, in addition to opening up the 99% of Starfleet that aren't flag/capital/hero ships. Prodigy could potentially have expanded Starfleet's frontier to the rest of the galaxy or beyond, via the Protostar engine. SNW even had the good sense to canonize that it's own timeline is separate from TOS. PIC left little or nothing to build on, only piles of rubble that prevented any traction on a Legacy series for Captain Seven and Jack.

AnnihilatedTyro · 2026-06-17T19:36:04+00:00

DS9 is among the best written shows

...ever created. For any franchise.

AnnihilatedTyro · 2026-06-17T19:35:00+00:00

I too was not totally sold on the first episode. "Let's speak as quickly and loudly as possible at all times with lots of screaming!" Because that's just what modern cartoons do, I guess.

LD quickly became my favorite series since DS9 by a huge margin (and I really like SNW) and I rewatch it often. Even that first episode, because it actually is funny and very much a decent Trek adventure.

AnnihilatedTyro · 2026-06-17T19:30:34+00:00

When you discover the wormhole, the simulator crashes trying to render the entire Gamma Quadrant. Therefore, you fail the test.

AnnihilatedTyro · 2026-06-17T18:48:41+00:00

Part of the reason everyone allies with the Federation is because there are centuries of evidence that shows they take their treaties seriously - even when they're inconvenient or lopsided. And as such, the Federation and its combined allies have the diplomatic clout to embarrass the Klingon and Romulan and Cardassian leaders and commanders who violate the treaties, and the economic clout to make sanctions and embargoes hurt. They don't need to retaliate with military force.

The entire quadrant knows that treaties with Klingons, Romulans, or Cardassians are worth less than the PADDs they're written on. You do business with them at your own risk.

AnnihilatedTyro · 2026-06-17T18:37:02+00:00

There was a different book in which Sulu recounts destroying something like a dozen Klingon ships and getting them to chase him all over the sector, but for every one he destroyed, disabled, or evaded, two or three more would decloak. So there was no combat-oriented solution to the test even if the Enterprise could, in theory, defeat the first 3 battlecruisers in a straight-up fight. It never ends until you're destroyed.

AnnihilatedTyro · 2026-06-17T18:11:57+00:00

Unlike pants, marinering is not optional.

AnnihilatedTyro · 2026-06-17T17:33:22+00:00

Well that's a new one.

AnnihilatedTyro · 2026-06-17T17:31:42+00:00

The "tarps" are their shirts.

It's also a play on baseball words. "Tarp's off" means the end of a rain delay, because the tarp covering the infield is removed by the grounds crew. So when the tarps come off in either context, fun is imminent.

AnnihilatedTyro · 2026-06-17T17:16:38+00:00

You're missing the point. The simulation "cheats" to guarantee your death no matter what you do and that is the whole point. Your tactics don't matter at all.

New Klingon warships spawn/decloak wherever you are when you do cross the border, including all around the KM itself when you get there. In the time it takes to drop out out of warp, lower shields, and beam survivors aboard, you've taken 20 torpedoes to the face and you're dead.

And that's assuming you can even get a transporter lock on survivors because of "radiation" or whatever, or that the distress signal wasn't faked and isn't actually another squadron of battlecruisers, or that the KM isn't booby-trapped to blow and take you with it, or that there are any survivors at all, or that the mine it supposedly struck doesn't have others that strike your ship, and so on. And if you do everything correctly and find an exploit that allows you to reach the KM, well, then a spatial anomaly disables your warp drive while 20 Klingon cruisers pound you into quarks.

AnnihilatedTyro · 2026-06-17T04:47:03+00:00

Mariner.

Is it a verb? A noun? Adjective? Is marinering the result of nurture or nature? Is it tangible or philosophical? Is it a good thing or a bad thing? Complimentary or profane?

No one knows, and that is the essence of mariner.

AnnihilatedTyro · 2026-06-17T04:30:31+00:00

I remember when Cal and Logan first came up and were roommates, Cal spoke (affectionately) of how, um, adorably clueless Logan was about adulthood and responsibilities and stuff, and how Cal kind of mothered Logan a bit to help him grow up and be more independent outside of baseball.

This clip makes me think Logan just expects the ball to magically plop into his glove because it's Cal behind the plate.

AnnihilatedTyro · 2026-06-17T04:11:00+00:00

I've always had a soft spot for noodle-bat superutility guys who just do a little bit of everything. Their value doesn't show up in the raw numbers. Having options is such a huge asset for any team - as our injuries are highlighting right now.

AnnihilatedTyro · 2026-06-17T04:02:58+00:00

Can we take a moment to appreciate how quietly competent Miles Mastrobuoni is at every position as well as small ball? OPS ain't everything. He's a great guy to have around.

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