U mad, bro?: Penguins fans fret about expansion strategy; Pirates fans still prickly about draft; Steelers’ forgotten past
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This week’s “U mad, bro?” is all over the map. Penguins hockey. College hockey. Baseball drafts. Steelers from the 1930s. And English lessons.
This is what they call the “dog days” of summer.
I don’t have a dog right now. But based on the emails I received this week, if I did, he’d probably be mad at me, too.
I got a lot of response to my great Steelers nicknames post, inspired by the Touchdown Wire list published last week. As I expected, I missed a few. And you were there to help. Especially this guy named James.
“You didn’t go back far enough. How about Eugene ‘Big Daddy’ Lipscomb, or ‘Bullet Bill’ Dudley? Maybe the best one of all — Johnny ‘Blood’ McNally.”
Guilty as charged, James. Those are all good ones I should’ve mentioned. A couple of other readers told me I missed Byron “Whizzer” White. They are right as well.
I suppose I should’ve highlighted Robert “Rocky” Bleier, too. But that would’ve required someone to — at least on occasion — refer to him as “Robert” out loud or in print.
I’m not so sure that ever happened, did it? I mean, he’s Rocky! Right? Are we sure it isn’t on his birth certificate?
The one I got emailed to me a bunch, that I won’t budge on, though, is Heath “Heeeeath” Miller. That’s not a nickname. It’s the man’s actual name. You are just drunkenly elongating it from section 502. That doesn’t count.
Now then, if you wanted to argue that Jesse James’ nickname was “Heeeeeath,” that I’d accept.
Some Penguins fans are upset at how the Penguins approached the Seattle Kraken expansion draft. In particular, Quincy didn’t like the fact that they protected Jeff Carter.
“Why the (expletive deleted) protect Carter when you know they’re not going to take him? Jeez the Pens are dumb.”
In a hockey sense, Quincy, I agree 100%. But I don’t think they were really approaching this expansion draft from a hockey point of view. They were approaching this from a salary-cap point of view. They wanted to lower their payroll.
They wanted the Kraken to take Brandon Tanev’s $3.5 million off the books, and they wanted to make sure Carter’s $2.6 million stayed on them. Or — in a better case scenario — Marcus Pettersson ($4.02 million) or Jason Zucker ($5.5 million) would go.
Now general manager Ron Hextall has a problem. How does he replace Tanev for a reasonable price, get the same production and save a significant enough amount against the cap to make a difference on the trade market or in free agency.
Hey, look at Teddy Blueger. The Penguins just gave him $2.2 million. What is a bigger, younger version of Tanev going to cost?
Some Pirates fans are still in my face about the column I wrote in response to their draft haul. Especially this guy named David.
It's not about being critical. Be critical, offer a real alternative, but saying this year's draft is meaningless because a group of prospects from 2002 didn't pan out has no relevance. It shows a lack of understanding of baseball today. Like I said, lazy and tired.
— David Stegon (@DavidStegon) July 15, 2021
No more lazy and tired than, “This year will be different! No, I mean it this time. You’ll see. You’ll see!”
By the way, I don’t think the draft is meaningless. I think minor league prospect rankings and MLB draft ratings are meaningless. There’s a difference.
But you were too busy to pay attention because you were feigning outrage over how your last-place baseball team was being unfairly treated.
Keep celebrating the mythical farm rating title. Sadly, it’s the closest the Pirates will come to a championship in either of our lifetimes.
These next two are a little long. So I saved them until the end. Mark makes some good points regarding Louisville catcher Henry Davis as the Pirates’ first-round pick. I like Davis, but I wanted them to take Vanderbilt pitcher Jack Leiter. Mark preferred one of the two high school shortstops, Jordan Lawlar or Marcelo Mayer.
“Mayer is the player I would have drafted. I know they have shortstop prospects already but guys don’t pan out, they can be moved to other positions, or traded for other needs. For me it wasn’t so much what Leiter did to lessen my view of him but what I thought Mayer could be.
I was curious and looked at the top ten college drafted players between 2011 and 2016. When you look at the pitchers there are two (Gerrit Cole and Trevor Bauer) that are legit front of the rotation guys. Then you have a few guys like Aaron Nola, Carlos Rodon and Andrew Heaney that are good and then not much. The college hitters though were more consistent performers in the majors but perhaps not quite at the superstar level. Alex Bregman is the best of the bunch but there are more quality hitters like Dansby Swanson, Andrew Benintendi, and Michael Conforto than quality pitchers. Do you want to shoot for the stars (Leiter) or the safer pick (Davis)?
All of this is to say these things are crapshoots and who knows how things will turn out until 4 or 5 years down the road. But Davis better turn into at least an above average catcher.”
Excellent email, Mark. Seriously. I really appreciate your approach. I’m not looking to refute your argument or your points. I’m just going to ask you a question.
Let’s say the Pirates had drafted Leiter, and the headline on the Trib was “Pirates select best college baseball pitcher atop MLB draft.”
Would you be upset?
Would you be emailing me with as much in-depth research and information trying to validate why Davis or Mayer was better and how they were wrong to pass on Leiter? Or would you have just been happy with the pick because it seemed to make pretty good sense?
See where I’m going with this?
Because my point is, it strikes me that you — and a lot of other Pirates fans — were just going to attempt to validate whoever they picked anyway. Regardless of who it was.
The only difference with the Leiter selection is that you wouldn’t have had to do it. And no one would ask you to try.
Hence, to no one’s surprise, the Texas Rangers decided to select him second.
I want you to seriously ask yourself if the Pirates took Leiter, and I was praising this pick, would you have sent me an email — as wonderfully detailed as yours may have been — telling me why Davis or Mayer would have been the better move?
Or would you have just been satisfied?
Finally, another guy named David wasn’t a fan of my recent column about Robert Morris hockey. See if you can follow along as well as I did.
“It (stinks) when things get cut. and with Title 9 its cut both teams or none so no 50-50 solution. Easy to say just keep spending money on losing programs. So next article what students programs should be cut to finance athletic programs? I assume you aren’t Independently wealthy? So yeah money has to come from somewhere. So you said keep them going. Find the money. Btw weird article is there $500,000 collected so far? That comment that more to come seems like it but English is my 1st language promises aren’t guaranteed how much is in the pocket and how much is needed to pay for this year? And are the donations based on keeping the program or just for the next season?
Btw love your column but this one wasn’t your best work as more like opinion than news.”
David, columns are usually written to express an opinion. Not necessarily news reporting. Sometimes they can be both.
As someone who boasted about English being your first language — not that I could tell from the structure of this email — you should know that.
I’m not independently wealthy, but a lot of donors are. Which is why the team is trying to collect from them. And, yes, if you read the article, it’s a $7 million goal to sustain the hockey programs over five years. So it is indeed an intent to make the clubs solvent beyond this year.
Your athletics versus academic strawman is irrelevant. This is about cutting something from the athletic budget and the potentially illegal manner in which it was done. If the teams were eliminated in a proper fashion, we wouldn’t be having the conversation.
And you, like many others, seem to have a hard time grasping how many small college sports — aside from big time football and hoops — work. It’s not about those sports “making money.” They are considered advertisements for the school. They are essentially promotional expenses for the universities, conduits to engage alumni fundraising, and fulcrums to enhance student-community atmosphere.
But since you so clearly majored in English, maybe the business side is lost on you.
I like your emails, David. But this wasn’t your best work.
(Note: David really is a regular emailer. We had an exchange similar to this one on our own, and we hashed things out. He admitted that email was sent after one too many cold ones at a cookout or something, Which is fine, as I’m about three beers deep writing this post right now myself.
Pfft! Don’t judge. Go ahead. You try reading my Twitter responses and emails sober. It ain’t pretty.)