The White Sox start a series against the Guardians tonight, and it will most likely be Joe Kelly’s last in the black and white. After yet another nasty performance last night in which the glovework of his teammates let him down (how can a man scoring when Joe Kelly struck him out constitute an earned run), the White Sox selloff began, and no prize is bigger on the trade deadline market than the flamethrowing right hander whose hair has been especially shaggy lately.
There are, by my count, 22 teams who could conceivably buy at this trade deadline. Casting a wide net. We’re going to rank them by preferred Joe Kelly destination, and we’re going to do categories at the same time. We’re getting audacious this Thursday night.
What If?
1. Anaheim
The biggest what-if in Angels history is what would have happened if they’d successfully rostered the best baseball player of this generation. They’ve come close a few times, but they came especially close in the 2009 draft, when they prepared to draft Joe Kelly but he was celebrating his 21st birthday and talked them out of it by saying he’d be too expensive.
You always pay the price for greatness, Anaheim. Now’s your second chance.
Play the Hits
2. Boston
3. Los Angeles
Apologies to Cardinals fans, but I think we both know which side of the deadline you’re on. The only places Joe Kelly can run it back are Boston and Los Angeles, and the latter of those two is currently the hottest rumor in the streets. Can you imagine Joe Kelly back in the blue? Me too. Very easy to imagine. That’s the point.
Convenient Location
4. Chicago (NL)
5. Arizona
6. San Diego
With Joe Kelly’s family currently used to life in Chicago (from the regular season) and Arizona (from spring training) and southern California (from the rest of their lives), I would imagine it would be smooth for all of them if he ended up with one of these three teams. And regarding the Cubs: A Cubs–Joe Kelly fan can dream, can’t he?
The Enemy of My Enemy
7. Texas
More on this below. It’d be sweet.
The Friend of My Friend
8. Philadelphia
9. Cincinnati
First, imagine Joe Kelly hanging out with Kyle Schwarber.
Now, imagine Joe Kelly hanging out with Elly De La Cruz.
Of Elly De La Cruz, one could interpret his ascent as God giving Joe Kelly’s book from this offseason a positive review. “You know what?” God asked, to no one in particular, “Joe Kelly is right. Baseball rocks. Let’s give that guy a fellow ballplayer whose body is composed of lightning.”
This Would Go Well
10. Atlanta
Joe Kelly could be the piece that makes Atlanta the best team in baseball. Atlanta could be the place that makes Joe Kelly a three-time World Series champion. I believe he’d be one of only two guys who could make that claim.
There Is Probably History There
11. San Francisco
12. Toronto
13. Tampa Bay
14. Baltimore
15. Cleveland
Joe Kelly has been in the same division as all of these teams, which leads me to believe there are minor quarrels around some of his relationships. I like that. It’s an edge, and we know what an edge does to our man Joe Kelly. Also, good content on the way in. Like when he and Hanley Ramírez made amends for that little broken rib way back when.
There Is Definitely History There
16. New York (AL)
17. Houston
These are funny to me because of how differently they’d go. The Yankees probably don’t remember that Tyler Austin played for the Yankees, and if they do, I’d imagine they’re on Joe Kelly’s side by now. The Astros are still managed by the sniveling monster who murdered Mark Prior and cussed out Joe Kelly from the bench well before Joe Kelly emasculated his shortstop.
Oh My God It’s Carlos Correa
18. Minnesota
This is funny to me because you’d imagine the Twins would just DFA Correa to make the roster space. 1 for 1 transaction.
These Seem Boring
19. Seattle
20. Milwaukee
21. Miami
These could theoretically happen.
Please No Not the Mets
22. New York (NL)
In the event the Mets somehow don’t sell, this would be terrifying for all who love the sport of baseball. Please do not let the Mets get their hands on our Joe Kelly.
The Enemy of My Enemy
What’s up with the Rangers? Well, last night Andrew Heaney hit Yordan Alvarez with a pitch which may or may not have been intentional. Intentional or not, someone on the Astros decided it warranted retribution, which was fine. That’s the Astros’ prerogative. Your best player gets hit, you get to take a shot. But. You have to own it. And what do we know about the Astros? They do not own the things that they do.
Framber Valdez was the one tasked with hitting Marcus Semien. You can tell that because he drilled Marcus Semien high up on the back very shortly after Alvarez got hit. Framber Valdez also did not want to hit Marcus Semien. You can tell that because as soon as he did it, he looked away towards center field like Dusty Baker had just made him kill a man (which, in a certain universe, could have happened, because Framber Valdez is a major league pitcher who can throw the baseball really, really hard). Marcus Semien was upset, which is fine, that’s Marcus Semien’s prerogative (a great part of baseball fights is everyone can be right), but because Valdez was avoiding eye contact, he and Semien couldn’t hash it out themselves, leading Semien to continue to hash it out the next inning when he took Valdez yard. (Valdez really fell apart after the HBP, which makes me love Valdez and think of him as the gentlest of giants. The poor guy didn’t want to hurt anybody! And he definitely didn’t want to make a dude as cool as Marcus Semien mad at him.) After Semien touched home plate, Martín Maldonado (who I actually love, long story but I do like Maldonado, or I did before he went Dusty Baker Mode™ and started crying about the consequences of his actions) went Dusty Baker Mode™ and started crying about the consequences of his actions, so Semien hit him with one of these, a quiet finger to the lips. Then, an inning later, the Rangers broke through, and when Adolis García sent a ball into orbit (not Orbit, just orbit), Semien did a little hop onto home plate and Maldonado, again following the lead of his trusted manager, began to sob about how everyone’s out to get the Astros. Benches cleared, Semien and Maldonado were sent to their rooms, the AL West has a new great rivalry heading into a stretch run and potential ALDS or ALCS showdown. It’s enough to make a grown man cry.
How’s the LA Zoo?
Poor Amed Rosario. The very day Mandy Bell published a joyful piece about how much fun he’d been having at the Cleveland Zoo, the Guardians traded him to the Dodgers. Why couldn’t it have been the Padres, Guardians? Can you imagine Amed Rosario at the San Diego Zoo?
Are Aaron Rodgers’s Teammates Not Good Enough?
Aaron Rodgers is taking a pay cut…so the Jets can sign more players? What the heck, Aaron? Are your current teammates not enough? Are they bad? Say it, Aaron. Say the Jets have bad players.
Shaking my disappointed head.
How Many Schrute Bucks Are in the Fleck Bank?
In the funniest scandal going on in the Big Ten right now (I would rank Harbaugh as 2nd and I would not rank Northwestern’s scandal because any funny parts have run their course and the unfunny parts have not), P.J. Fleck has been accused of employing a system at Minnesota where players could accumulate “coins” in the “Fleck Bank” which then let them get away with breaking team rules and testing positive on drug tests.
Before we talk about the coach’s sovereign wealth fund, there are two things you should know about P.J. Fleck.
The first is that he’s pretty dumb. He literally told me his ACT score one time, personally, and it was bad. It was a bad ACT score. This isn’t a problem, but it is a trait of P.J. Fleck’s that P.J. Fleck himself readily admits. Not the smartest guy by traditional measures of intelligence.
The second is that P.J. Fleck’s approach to college football is to build cults. These cults then win football games. It is a very successful approach to college football, one which has propelled Western Michigan to the Cotton Bowl and Minnesota to its first eleven-win season in more than one hundred years.
It’s this second one that’s noteworthy, because in the report, A.J. Perez of Front Office Sports writes:
Unprompted, the term “cult” was used by multiple former players and former staff members to describe Fleck’s “Row the Boat” culture spelled out in the so-called “Fleck Book” that players are given when they join the team. Fleck said he developed the “Row the Boat” philosophy — one he laid out in a 2021 book of the same name — that was an approach he also used at Western Michigan.
I have nothing against Perez, I think he did great reporting here, I would like to point out that he went to a lot more sources for this story than The Athletic has been finding as it spews Pac-12 propaganda and calls it journalism, but A.J., my man: Did you not realize this was a cult? Did the players not realize this was a cult heading in? I understand not knowing the first thing about P.J. Fleck. I was surprised by it too. But the second? We’ve known about the cult, A.J. We’ve known about the cult.
The Fleck Bank allegedly awarded coins for community service, studying, and prayer, in a novel approach to the criminal justice system that draws on Hammurabi’s Code but in a more distributed fashion. I wouldn’t personally employ it, but the thing has me curious. How many prayers for weed? How many visits to the children’s hospital until you’re allowed to smoke meth? Do you have to be studying effectively or just have the book in front of you if you want to stay out past curfew when the team goes to West Lafayette? Is it worth more coins to stay out in Columbus?
There are other allegations in the piece, and I’ll readily say I wouldn’t personally want to play a sport in the environment described. There are some things that, if the allegations are true, undeniably crossed lines into what is clearly unacceptable. There are other things, though, that feel more like a clash between what specific players wanted and what Fleck envisioned for the program’s culture:
After that first team meeting in 2017, players received a three-ring binder they were required to memorize and on which they were tested. FOS obtained several pages of the binder used by Fleck during his time at Minnesota.
The third player said that one acronym stood out: F.A.M.I.L.Y., short for “Forget About Me, I Love You.”
“He was making us say, forget about yourself as an individual,” the player said. “I was baffled because it’s not anything logical. If you forget about yourself, then who are you?”
Is it corny? Yes. Are there different tacks to take when navigating the natural conflict of individual vs. team? Of course, that’s a big part of leadership, finding which tack to take. But the concept of immersing yourself in a team and aligning your desires with those of the greater whole is kind of the point of team sports. It’s certainly not unusual.
Fleck might be a weirdo (he does make Minnesota oddly about himself for a guy who tells players to “Forget About Me”), but I’m curious how far outside the norm the actual wrongdoing alleged is. I hope it’s far! But I’m curious.
The Leafs Are Cheating
The Toronto Maple Leafs have put Matt Murray on Long Term Injured Reserve, and I’m not sure whether it’s because of the head injury or the hip injury or the ankle injury or because he’s not all that good and he costs a lot of money and the Leafs are happy with Ilya Samsonov.
Regardless, the Senators can’t stash any of the LTIR money like the Leafs can even though they’re paying a lot of it as part of the terms of the Matt Murray trade. Smells like a bad rule to me.
Can F1 Be Brave?
From Laurence Edmondson, F1 Editor at ESPN:
SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS, Belgium — Formula One drivers have called on the sport’s governing body, the FIA, to be brave enough to call off this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix if conditions become too dangerous.
Look, guys.
Much like with the Fleck thing and the Houston Astros, I am against anything that is obviously bad. Death? Abuse? The continued employment of Dusty Baker? All bad, I am against all of them.
But I don’t think this is a situation where you should be using the word “brave.”
For context: Someone died in a race at Spa-Francorchamps earlier this month. Really sad. He was driving in heavy rain, they shouldn’t have had the race going on. F1 can run in a little rain. It can’t run in a lot of rain.
For more context: F1 commentators love to use the word “brave” to describe gutsy attempts at passes. That’s fair, those attempts are brave but you can’t have it both ways! You can’t say the brave thing is to put your life on the line for competition and then pivot and call it brave to not put your life on the line for competition. I do not ask for much. I simply want F1 to stop being popular in America and I want its media to use a consistent rubric to evaluate courage.
