RDT's Blog About Brandon Hyde Deserving AL Manager Of The Year Over Terry Francona Is One Of The Most Ridiculously Garbage Homer Takes These Tired Eyes Have Ever Seen
Everyone has a morning routine. Mine is to wake up, take my son to school, come home, pour myself a delicious cup of Stella Blue Coffee, and then scroll the interwebs to see what nonsense I can shitpost about on Twitter today. So today, with coffee in hand, I started making the rounds through some of my favorite websites. I perused Daily Mail, ESPN, and The Athletic before I fired up Barstool Sports to see what my esteemed colleagues were opining about.
And there it was. The worst, most garbage take fueled by flagrant homerism these tired eyes have ever seen.
I want to start by saying I thoroughly enjoy RDT's writing. One of the guys who keeps the "sports" in Barstool Sports. A nice blend of humor and knowledge. Digestible enough for the every man but insightful enough to quench the thirst of an intellectual like myself.
Unfortunately, the title was not satire and it took all of four sentences for me to projectile vomit my delicious dark roast all over my MacBook. IT is not going to be happy about this one.
Two of the three finalists in the AL made it to the playoffs, with Francona leading the Guardians and Scott Servais leading the Mariners. But only one of these guys had a team that was projected to lose 100 games and brought them to an 83 win season. That man is Brandon Hyde.
This is a real paragraph someone who was trying to make a point (and I'm assuming not trying to sound like an asshole) typed out, proofread, and then posted for tens of thousands of people to read.
Sure, those other two guys took their teams to the postseason, which is the goal of every team in Major League Baseball not named the Pittsburgh Pirates. But MY guy outperformed the prognostications of esteemed baseball minds like Michael Kay. Surely, that deserves some kind of accolade, no?
No. Actually, fuck no.
And even if it did Terry Francona would probably STILL win AL Manager Of The Year. Let's take a look at some preseason predictions.
AL East
- Blue Jays (91-71)
- Rays (87-75)
- Red Sox (86-76)
- Yankees (86-76)
- Orioles (70-92)
AL Central
- White Sox (94-68)
- Tigers (81-81)
- Royals (81-81)
- Twins (77-85)
- Guardians (67-95)
So much for that argument. Might want to save the "nobody believed in us" pity party for a team that was projected to be above the basement by someone other than a guy who has amassed 7k Twitter followers in 12 years and cant figure out how to set his header picture.
Besides, prognostications don't matter in real life. Real life matters in real life and Terry Francona took a team that had 17 players make their MLB debut to 92 wins and the playoffs in real life. And you can probably find higher preseason projections for the Guardians elsewhere but the idea that they played up to some universally expected standard while the Orioles overcame undue disrespect from the public at large is laughable.
No offense to Francona but let's be real, the AL Central stinks. It's a bad division.
Sure. I and everyone else with eyeballs and a brain will concede that AL Central was dog shit. But it's not like the Guardians barely eeked it out. They won the damn thing by 11 games. Oh, and that division that stinks almost as bad as your Manager Of The Year take? Yeah, the Orioles has a losing record against it. Might not want to submit that genius piece of evidence to the court next time.
Last year they won 52 games! They had one of the lowest payrolls in baseball, lost their ace 5 days into the season, traded away Trey Mancini and their lone All Star in Jorge Lopez, yet they were in contention nearly the entire season.
Sorry brother but you don't get bonus points for sucking balls last season. If that was the case then my Cleveland Browns would start off with a three game lead in the division every single season. And you can't cry poor about payroll when the Orioles (30th ranked payroll) were only nominally worse than the Guardians (27th ranked payroll). That's like complaining how broke you are to a fellow homeless guy who has a slightly bigger box to live in.
Save that shit for the Dodgers.
Hyde wasn't robbed. If anything Tito was robbed of not winning this thing more handily. Absolutely no one thought the Guardians would win their division. And even if you don't think that was a remarkable achievement, then even fewer people thought they would go 4-3 against the AL East in the postseason and take the Yankees to the brink of elimination.
About the only thing RDT and I agree upon is that whoever voted for Aaron Boone needs their vote revoked. Disgusting.
So whether you like it or not that scooter riding, flip flip wearing, division winning son of a bitch is the AL Manger Of The Year. For the third time I might add. And your guy Hyde, well he took a team from booty to mid. And that's probably something to be proud of too.