NowLoop

"I’ve been trying to avoid writing about Vargas in this space," Baseball Prospectus fantasy baseball writer Michael Waterloo wrote last week. "He’s 34 years old, and the vast majority of fantasy players have never heard of him before the last two weeks. We have a nearly 1,400 plate appearance sample over his career to scream that what he is doing is not sustainable, nor who he truly is, and I fully believe that." These are all decent enough reasons for Waterloo not to write about Ildemaro Vargas, and there are others. The next paragraph started with the word "But." Waterloo was writing about Vargas in the context of players who were likely to be available on fantasy waiver wires but could deliver some short-term help; among the good reasons to avoid such a topic that Waterloo did not mention re: not wanting to write about Ildemaro Vargas is that the last few weeks have marked the only time in parts of 10 MLB seasons when Vargas could conceivably not have been on fantasy waiver wires. Vargas, whose 27-game hitting streak ended in the first O-fer of his season on Saturday, dropping his average down to a MLB-best .388, has won his decade in the bigs on versatility, vibes, and the reliable delivery of something like the Great Value Brand version of Luis Arraez's offensive loadout—very few walks and even fewer strikeouts, a ton of al dente contact on pitches in but frequently outside the strike zone. This sort of player is very valuable to actual MLB teams—Vargas is in his third stint with the Diamondbacks—but not really in a way that provides meaningful professional stability. Vargas was signed by Arizona out of an independent league in 2015; before he became teammates with Sean Burroughs and Prentice Redman on the Bridgeport Bluefish, Vargas had done a six-year hitch in the Cardinals' system that topped out with eight games at Double-A. When the Diamondbacks signed him, he was 23 and had an OPS that started with a 6 in the Atlantic League. He was in the Majors by 2017. That Vargas has played in parts of every season since undersells how precarious his big-league life has been. The Diamondbacks traded him for cash in 2020 and reacquired him for cash in 2021; he played for the Twins, Cubs, and Pirates in the interim. Vargas's numbers generally looked better the more he played, but he never played that much, and with the exception of a 2022 season split between the Cubs (again) and Nationals, he was never within shouting distance of league average. There is probably some correlation, there.

We have shared with you the ongoing travails of such baseball meh factories as the Mets, Phillies, Angels, Red Sox, and Nationals, but as in the new-style NBA, where if you're not winning, you can at least convince yourselves that you're winning backwards, there's a lot more suck out there than the average pair of lungs can be expected to navigate. Which brings us to those imps of inertia, those superstars of shutout losses, those exemplars of Hey, We're Not Even The Rockies: the San Francisco Giants. At the time of this writing—the middle of the night, after the crying has stopped and the desperate regrets of yesterday have faded into the scheduled emotional mudslides of tomorrow—the Giants sit at 13-20, tied for second-worst in the National League with Team McKinney, two games ahead of Team Roth, and barely a half-game ahead of Team Kalaf. This tells us that Defector's staff really know how to pick 'em, mostly. But there is more to learn in this squalid corner of the standings, none of it good. The Giants are particularly special because they not only lose their game each day, but they reliably do so in a hurry. Their average game comes in at 2:36, which is both shorter than One Battle After Another and the fastest such running time in baseball. The Giants manage these ultra-efficient game times in the most time-honored of ways—by not cluttering up the passage of one inning into the next with extraneous offense. Or, really, any offense. They have scored eight fewer runs (barely three per game) than any team in the sport, have hit only six more homers as a team than Chicago's Munetaka Murakami has managed on his lonesome, and rank barely ahead of the Mets and Phillies and no one else in most of your more sophisticated offensive metrics. Their two least productive everyday hitters, Willy Adames and Rafael Devers, are also their most expensive. Their manager Tony Vitello runs his bullpen like he's coaching a three-game series against Auburn, which he was just last year in his previous gig managing the University of Tennessee. They have been shut out seven times already, scored one run in four more instances, and two runs in four others. That's 15 of their 20 losses right there. In short, you know what you're getting at a Giants game—one trip to the concessions stand, one trip to the bathroom, and a slow walk to the Ferry Building in the top of the seventh.

Here's what happened in hockey on Saturday night: Much ass was kicked, all of it by the same foot. But for those of you who prefer 10 minutes of video to eight words of exposition, there's this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNQbYTCYDQc

We can presume by now that every Philadelphia 76er and Flyer who wants to do so has mouthed the empty sports platitude, "Nobody believed in us." It's just what you say, and more to the point it's what you say when you've given no indication that anybody should believe in you, including you. But this time, that omnibus nobody package also includes the team's owners, landlords, and whoever decided to book Bruce Springsteen at Xfinity Mobile Arena next Friday. After finishing off the Celtics in Game 7 on Saturday, the Sixers will play New York on that very same floor in Game 3 of their Eastern Conference semifinal series that night; bumping the concert up or back a night won't work, either, because the Flyers are set to play Carolina in Games 3 and 4 of their Eastern Conference semi Thursday and Saturday. The Sixers then have their own Game 4 on Sunday. Thus, it would behoove Kyle Lowry, Garnet Hathaway, and all other involved employees of both teams to make this addendum to their finger-wagging: "Nobody believed in us, including us, and The Boss, too. Maybe Little Steven, but that's all." We mention Lowry and Hathaway because, as their respective teams' oldest players, they are the ones likeliest to remember Springsteen, or the way he once held sway over the American musical landscape. That seems unlikely because Springsteen's heyday happened well before Hathaway was born, and at a moment when Lowry was just barely in kindergarten, and nobody expects either one to have the Boss on their Spotify lists. He is an oldies act now, as we must all become.

"If we were in Serbia, we'd all get fired," Nikola Jokic said Thursday night, shortly after his Denver Nuggets lost their first-round playoff series in six games to the Minnesota Timberwolves, who were missing their best player, another starter, and also a third guy who had filled in to capably replace the second guy. The Nuggets were down two key players as well, but you cannot construct any excuse for them to have lost this series at all, let alone to have lost it as comprehensively as they did. They won the title three years ago and continue to employ, in the least charitable estimate, the third-best player in the NBA. For the second time since winning that title, the Nuggets have been booted from the playoffs by a physical Wolves team that exposed their lack of athleticism and supporting talent. This time, Minnesota didn't even need Anthony Edwards, Donte DiVincenzo, or Ayo Dosunmu to finish the job. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb6exsh8ik8

Obviously, going to print with piddly retail squabbles is the stuff of hacks. But I'm hacky enough, and still stunned enough by the upselling tactics, that I just gotta share. I’ve previously noted that some power people here at Defector have occasionally suggested I try to write regularly about food, because they think I’m a weirdo about eating, and most mundane things. I’ve always begged off, mostly because a column is work, but also because I’m the most easily pleased eater of all time. I’d have to call my column "Portions" because I would rate every eatery based on how much food was piled on my plate. (This post could also be Exhibit A of why putting me on the food desk is a dumbass idea.) But I’m also the cheapest mofo who ever lived, so were there such a column, a Portions ethos would be: “It ain’t the deal you get, it’s the deal you think you get.” And making you feel like you got your money’s worth is not a science, it’s an art. My lunch last week was artless as hell. And relentless. Death by a thousand gouges.

One walk-off win can cure you of any emotional or intellectual ailment. The smack of the bat, the moment of anticipation as you wait to see if all you've wished for could come true, and the immediate, deafening roar of the crowd all inject you with a hope and belief that buoys you forward against all odds. To dream of two walk-off wins in one day is impossible. It is irresponsible. It is too good to imagine. On Thursday, I attended my fourth Phillies game of the still-young season. Before then, I had been to three games where the Phillies had ostensibly played baseball, but mainly stood around on the field while the other team beat them. They didn't just lose; they were absolutely clobbered. A 13-2 loss against the Nationals. A 10-4 loss to the Cubs. A 9-0 loss against Atlanta. This team is so bad that when they attended the Flyers game on Wednesday night, the crowd booed them. I am embarrassed to admit that, as I made the long walk from my home to the stadium, I wished in my heart for a win. I know better than to bank any emotional wellbeing on a sports team, much less the Philadelphia Phillies, but sometimes, on some weeks, in the middle of some years, you need a win—any win!—so badly it feels like hunger in your stomach. The Phillies themselves needed wins, too. Entering yesterday's game, they were 10-19: bad enough that the manager they all seemed to like had been fired as a consequence. Despite the whole season of evidence, I entered the stadium with hope in my heart. I had planned to take the day off weeks in advance to attend the afternoon game, and I felt optimistic. There are few better feelings than skipping work to go to the baseball stadium.

Welcome back to Make It Nice, Defector's best interior design advice column. Today, we have two home office cleanup situations and a delightful bird-related request. Selene asks: I work from home at a computer job and am a hobbyist musician. My partner, who lives with me, has done a phenomenal job making the rest of our 2-bedroom look very cute, cozy, and personal. My office, however, still looks like the apartments I lived in before I met him. While he has excellent taste in furniture, neither of us are quite sure how to best utilize this space in a productive way to be able to access the dozens of cables and cords and keyboards and amplifiers, etc. I'm looking for ways to make this a space that doesn't feel like a cell for the 40 hours a week I spend in here for work and ideally could feel comfortable spending time in AFTER work, to actually do music and such. I have so much crap on the floor or in boxes or bags. I would like it if I had a way to access music gear and other accoutrements without them being in a big bag or simply sitting on the desk.  We rent so I'm very hesitant to paint, and changing the flooring itself is not an option. I'd roughly estimate it's about a 12' × 15' rectangle.  I'm sorry I didn't clean up more for the photo but I felt like it was important to show the truth of it as it existed.  Thanks for your sage wisdom! 

Fourteen years. My wife and I were proud minivan owners for 14 years until this month. Once you have three children, practicality takes immediate priority over self-image, so I was never fundamentally against owning a minivan. I was never like, “Oh my God, they’ll take away my man card now!” I was too busy changing diapers and cleaning up barf for that kind of shit to matter. As my old friend and fellow dad Steve Czaban once told me, a minivan is the right tool for the job. It’s affordable, it’s spacious, and you won’t freak out if its paint job gets a scratch. A minivan is built for its owner to treat it like shit. And folks, my family and I did just that. We left metric tons of Goldfish crumbs in between the seat cushions. We got sunscreen stains on the plastic interior that wouldn’t come out. And we tossed all manner of dirty items—wet towels, pungent soccer cleats, sand-covered beach chairs, the dog—into the back. We used every part of the animal when we owned our minivan. This spring, the van suddenly wasn’t the right tool for the job. Our youngest son, now 14, had grown so large that he audibly complained about not having enough legroom on our last road trip. And he was barely ever riding in the van by that point. We have one kid already in college, and another not far off. With a partially empty nest, we now had fewer bodies to transport regularly, with less baggage accompanying them. My wife often drove the van all by her lonesome, which made no practical sense. She and I always knew that we’d outgrow minivans eventually, both physically and aesthetically. We’d always talked about what we’d buy in the post-minivan phase of our marriage. It was a fun little daydream: “Maybe we’ll get a convertible hahahaha.” So the second she openly mused about trading in our Honda Odyssey for something new, the die was cast. Once my wife has an idea, it will become a reality. I learned to accept this fact well before we’d even gotten hitched. As such, the Odyssey’s days were now numbered. It was time to downsize, and perhaps upgrade. We were both cautiously excited.

Earlier this week, the Defector staff was chatting about Joel Embiid. Watching him give the business to the Boston Celtics in Game 5 of that series, with a vintage 33 points in a 113-97 road win for the 76ers, had been fun and surprisingly ... stirring? Not just because it came against the hated Celtics, but because the former MVP pretty plainly doesn't have much left. One of the things he no longer has, to cite an example, is "jumping." Another is "running." This got me thinking about what an utter mutant Shaquille O'Neal was. This is Embiid's age-31 season. In his NBA career, regular season and playoffs combined, Embiid has played 551 games, and he wears them like Jacob Marley's chains and money boxes. He has not played in over half of any regular season since 2022–23, and over his career he has missed 30 or more games in more seasons than not. O'Neal—taller and heavier than Embiid, but also playing a more rugged style in a more violent era, having played more than three times as much college basketball as Embiid, infamously never doing anything to stay in shape between seasons—played his 551st NBA game somewhere in the middle of his age-27 season. He won the MVP award that year. He played in 79 games that regular season (plus 23 playoff games on the way to his first championship and Finals MVP award) and averaged 40 minutes per game.