Tom Scocca

I hope the institutions I bank with discriminate against crypto! Also against Ponzi schemes and perpetual-motion-machine R&D funds.

Right, see, because we use “discrimination” as shorthand for “illegal and harmful discrimination,” the Trump movement is trying to outlaw the basic concept of distinguishing between one thing and another, like a bank seeing and acting on the difference between a real business and a crypto scam

*clears throat* en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_...

It is for the utility man! “This guy should be the ninth-most valuable hitter, not the sixth” isn’t an argument against him, it’s an argument against the guy who put the roster together!

Guys Who Cost Money Whether You Personally Think They Should or Not:
- utility infielder who produces on four or five days a week while moving around
- one-dimensional hitter whose dimension is doubles-power raking against lefties
- starter who goes 5 innings 30 times with a league-average ERA

Lol “twice a week,” Urias was sixth on the team in PA and sixth in WAR. A guy who provides credible hitting and good defense whenever any one of three infield regulars is resting or hurt is an incredibly useful piece of the roster and useful players cost money.

"Before he hits huge arbitration numbers" what the fuck is wrong with you??? Literally rooting for not spending money.

LOL oh no was the precious private equity titan owner going to be on the hook for paying market rate for a productive utility man?? Thank God they dumped him with a year and a half of team control left so they could replace his output with a guy who is never going to pitch an inning in the majors!

“Those who surround Elias in the organization still believe in him to get the team on track” is backed up by one (1) quote, given by the interim manager who needs Elias not to fire him

MLB’s in-house propaganda shop really struggling to spin Mike Elias panicking and relegating his own team to the minors www.mlb.com/news/mike-el...

He DOGEd the motherfucking roster

“Bateman is the highest ranked player of the bunch, coming in at 4th in the San Diego system according to MLB Pipeline. He's currently at low-single A Lake Elsinore and none of the players going to the Orioles have advanced beyond Double-A.” www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/p...

I can't even remember who's lefty and who's righty but I know that single-A pitchers are not major-league players and that they almost certainly won't be, so I know more about building a baseball team than the former Executive of the Year does

Mike Elias is legitimately the one guy in sports who could and would have been outperformed by any randomly selected fan from the stands. Seven years and he does not have a major-league roster to show for it.

Oh my bad I misread the "bats" column for "throws," this one's a SINGLE-A LEFTY

ANOTHER MOTHERFUCKING SINGLE-A RIGHTY ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME

I'm two hemispheres and six time zones away and I haven't even Googled what that dumb asshole gave up O'Hearn and Laureano for yet

Well three dogshit single-A pitchers weren't what I was hoping for either so does that make it a push?

What's better than getting one 20-year-old A-ball right-hander for a valuable utility man? Getting three more A-ball right-handers for your everyday center fielder!

I think that’s what the ritual does

See also: medical care!

It’s been a while

Installing a Fisher-Price Chatter Phone on Mike Elias’ desk so he can enact the ritual of trading a useful contributor for a guy who’ll never pitch in the majors without actually touching the roster

The anthropological literature says “cargo cults” didn’t work the way the popular imagination portrays them but bad major-league general managers really do just “make trades” at the trading deadline because they’ve heard about it being done

It might seem a little careless to give up a guy who hits decently and plays every infield position well for a 20-year-old right-handed pitching prospect in A ball but then you remember that Mike Elias absolutely stinks at evaluating, acquiring, and developing pitching prospects

Just, like, what is the value of showcasing the Authentic Voices of the American People when the people are authentically brain-poisoned and ignorant, as in the numbers here bsky.app/profile/bart...

Asking that question over and over again is the actual journalistic public service they could have performed with these focus groups, if they’d been interested in learning important things about American politics rather than staging a freakshow to scandalize and terrify their liberal readers

Love to use the word "may" twice in a single sentence, in the guise of newswriting

Screenshot of text: [Highlighting begins] But the shooting may put concerns over gun violence back on voters’ minds, and may lead some to further scrutinize Mr. Mamdani, [Highlighting ends] who has relatively limited experience in government and has not handled a high-profile crisis while in office.

One fascinating thing about the most self-serious newspaper in America with its staff of the winning journalistic meritocrats is that it routinely, institutionally publishes completely made-up bullshit speculation about pure abstractions, based on zero reporting, written as if it were plain facts

Setting aside the fact that you cannot effectively stop an armed person who moves quickly and does not care if he lives or dies, how on Earth is this the responsibility of a person who is not in office as opposed to the actual damn mayor who was a cop and who has given the cops everything they want?