Divisional Recourse: Everything Old is Continuing to be Old

As you could tell by that last post, sometimes, you can get pretty abruptly burnt out writing about the Phillies all the time.  That’s when I’m grateful that there’s four other teams in this division, all scrambling hopelessly to overcome our might.

Scramble away

!

Mets

I want to point and laugh at the Mets as much as the next guy, and the other 10,000 guys standing next to him, but are they planning something?  Like a twitching corpse, they keep performing the occasional minute move as the off season sludges forward.  Will they come out of this with a perfectly balanced mega-team?  Will Citi Field open up on the first day of the season and release an X-Jet from beneath the diamond?

“This is what we’ve been doing all along!” Sandy Alderson will cackle into the public address system, his suit jacket and hair billowing in the torrid winds, his eyes now stained with the glow of madness.  “YOU ALL LAUGHED AT THE METS!  YOU ALL REFUSED TO ACKNOWLEDGE US!  AND NOW YOU WILL WATCH YOUR CITIES BURN!!”

Just not in 2011.  And only if K-Rod is involved.

Actually, that last part comes courtesy of K-Rod’s agent so his objectivity on the matter may be blurred a splotch.

Marlins

Sometimes, when a memorable baseball player retires, all of the teams he played for join hands and express their gratitude across the internets, even if nobody remembers or cares that he once wore a certain team’s colors.  Trevor Hoffman is out of the game now, and the Marlins, like a toddler kidnapping an adult, snagged him around their inception in 1993.

After that, he became the payment for Gary Sheffield, making Trevor Hoffman an indirect influence on the Marlins’ 1997 World Series title.

But who remembers the past?  Nobody.  Well, that guy I just linked you to; but other than him, the rest of the world is firmly facing forward.  And that forward contains more NL East-bitterness when it comes to Dan Uggla going to the Braves.

"“In the end, I have no problem with any of this.”–Michael Jong, “One Final Piece on Uggla, Marlins, and Braves“"

What I mean is, where there should be seeds of hostility and irrationality being sown, Michael is showing dignity and class.  It’s weird.

Actually, everybody seems pretty content with life in Miami right now.  Also weird.  How could you be happy somewhere without wind chill, or snow shovels, or Old Man Winter continuously slapping you across the face and laughing?  Huh?  Answer that.

Braves

“Ooooh, we’re the Braves and we have the fourth best minor league system of all the blah blah blah.”

“Ooooooooooh, we’re the Braves, and look how well Chipper Jones is doing with his batting cage and his classic swing and his health.”

“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOH, WE’RE THE BRAVES AND WE’RE GOING TO TRAVEL ACROSS THE COUNTRY HELPING PEOPLE.”

Nope, you can’t make any of it sound negative, even in a patronizing, mocky voice.

Nationals

So with that empirical, secret planning the Nats were doing at the beginning of the season, you’d think they were rolling in the dough, rubbing it on themselves and giggling.  But their money is actually smaller than it was before, which seems impossible, because remember they were the team that gave Jayson Werth $126 million–if you remember that–and the best part is, that’s going to permit them to spend, spend, spend in 2011.  Woo hoo!

Meanwhile, they snagged “2010 Braves Post Season Hero” Rick Ankiel and Adam LaRoche, who made it rain men all over Kelly Johnson this year; twice, according to reports.  LaRoche slips into Adam Dunn’s role so the Nats don’t have to piece together some sort of crazy plan for a first baseman, like a cardboard cut-out of Albert Pujols or whichever mascot wins the Running of the Presidents.

So… everybody’s fine; or at least, the same.  That’s good.  Great.  We’re fine too.  Our contentedness is just perfect.  I don’t need our rivals to be suffering to be happy.

I don’t.

… I do.