Silly, Stupid Season

COVID-19 or no COVID-19, baseball’s silly season is here. Visit MLB.com, and writers are in a frenzy spending other people’s money while playing the always-fun game of General Manager. Then I look at The Athletic, which likes to play mean cop to MLB.com’s dumb cop. There was a story yesterday, “The Pressure Index 2.0: Ranking every MLB team’s chances to improve this winter,” by Marc Carig and Andy McCullpugh. It appears the Phillies really, really have to get a move-on. You see, they “spent stupid money to sign Bryce Harper,” but they missed the playoffs. If ownership and the front office doesn’t get its act together, “signing Harper won’t go down as just spending stupid money. It will go down as just plain stupid.” Ouch. But that’s how it is with sportswriters today. They always want somebody to do something, and then rip them when things don’t work out. Funny, but I couldn’t find anyone who thought signing Harper for megabucks in 2018 was stupid or questioned bringing in Joe Girardi this year to manage. Those were consensus great moves, except that the Phils finished 28-32 this season. They were actually better the year before under Gabe Kapler at 81-81. What’s stupid here is declaring someone a superstar when he isn’t and talking gibberish when his teams don’t perform. Like I said, it’s silly season.