Admit it: you’d rather read this stuff than watch the Lions or the Cowboys today, right? I mean, they’re awful.
Anyway: that for which teams and their fans should give thanks on this most gluttonous of days:
Philadelphia Phillies: Finding the Blue Jays and the Astros when they were in a transition period. Really, if things didn’t break just right in those cases, the Phillies could be entering this winter with Cliff Lee leaving via free agency and a rotation full of Blantons and Kendricks and stuff. Ick.
Atlanta Braves: Jeff Loria’s seeming aversion to competitive baseball. If the Marlins cared, they could have done a few relatively minor things over the past couple of years to have put them in a better position to have finished ahead of the Braves. But they didn’t. If the Marlins cared, the Braves wouldn’t have their new manager or their new second baseman, each of whom they acquired basically painlessly. But they didn’t. Thanks Feesh!
Florida Marlins: This is a stretch, because really, there’s nothing great about being a Marlins fan at the moment, but let’s try this: thanks to Jeff Loria for bringing back Edwin Rodriguez to manage on a one year contract next year. Yes, it will almost certainly lead to an unceremonious and likely unfair firing of Rodriguez next winter, but it will likely be to bring in Loria man-crush Ozzie Guillen, who wants desperately to manage in Florida. I’m not sure that will make the baseball any better because Loria will still be a skinflint, but Guillen is great fun, ain’t he?
New York Mets: Alderson. Alderson. Alderson. Alderson. Alderson. There is finally an adult in charge.
Washington Nationals: The anticipation. Remember all that fun you had waiting for Stephen Strasburg to make the team? Now you can do it again with Bryce Harper! And once he’s up and established, you can wait for Strasburg to come back! And if Harper figures out a way to injure himself, the process can start all over again. Really, we’re one bad slip on a wet sidewalk away from the Nats being in the process of waiting for superstars until both superstars are old enough to be thinking about how to get the hell out of Washington.
