Random musings
I don’t have an overarching theme or topic to explore today. So today is just a few things that came to my mind yesterday.
- You guys will not get me to root against Tommy Edman. Cardinals fanbase at large is trying their hardest though. Are we just going to be annoying about any Cardinal that does well now? We don’t need to pretend Tommy Edman is a better player now guys. We really don’t.
Listen, I’m going to have to draw the line somewhere. If a Cardinal legitimately seems to improve when he leaves the Cardinals, go crazy. I may have a beef with it, but at least that’s operating under common sense. But a player who was good for the Cardinals who is doing good for another team should not be another round of “Cardinals do not know what they’re doing.”
Tommy Edman is the same player. Yesterday, he got two hits off lefties and three outs against righties. He had a 250 wRC+ against LHP in the regular season, 51 wRC+ against RHP. The difference is not that stark, but he’s the same guy. And he had a 97 wRC+ before yesterday’s game. He was not good in the division series. How good he does in the World Series likely depends on how many lefties he gets to face.
Same goes for Jack Flaherty, which to be fair, most of this fanbase does not seem to like Jack Flaherty and he’s been bad in the playoffs anyway. But I think the complaint factor should stop once a player reaches free agency (this applies to Adolis Garcia, who technically did not reach free agency, but was freely available for any team to get). Once free agent prices are required to retain players, I eliminate you from the people I will complain do better elsewhere. Just one of my unwritten rules. Although it is now written I guess.
2. If there’s a lesson from this playoffs, aside from maybe “spend lots of money,” it’s that starting pitchers no longer matter. Do not worry about not having a playoff rotation, nobody does anymore. Starters are rarely going even 5 innings. This applies to aces too. Gerrit Cole can be called a workhorse because he’s averaged 5.3 innings per start in the playoffs.
Dodgers have received absolutely awful starting pitching and have had to resort to three bullpen games. Two of those were shutouts! Offense has been the most important aspect of these playoff games.
3. I watched Arsenic and Old Lace last night. I know the Hays Code never really made sense, but this light-hearted screwball black comedy was no problem getting through the censors. Now, that is NOT a complaint, but if you’re going to have some morality police for movies…. how is that not a problem?
Never have I watched a movie that made me desire screwball movies more and also completely understand how this movie really wouldn’t work set in 2024. First off, it’s amazingly they can work as well as they do considering it’s hard to craft situations where there must be constant misunderstandings, concealing, and juggling.
Take Arsenic and Old Lace. This is kind of a spoiler and kind of not, because the following sentence probably won’t make sense if you haven’t seen the movie. But I thought Arsenic and Old Lace did a very good job maintaining a sort of realism up until the policeman discovered Cary Grant tied up and… I’m not sure really sure what the logic of the scene was supposed to be at this point. He didn’t know he was tied up? He didn’t notice that Cary Grant couldn’t talk? I’m genuinely confused as to why a policeman would possibly enter this situation and not recognize what was happening.
If you can ignore that, it’s about as tightly written a script as can be. But this movie would just not work in 2024 at all. And I really don’t know why exactly something that mostly works in 1944 just can’t work at all. Even ignoring the conclusion which kind of aged badly the same way you would expect a movie made in 1944 might age badly. But that’s not what I mean when I say you couldn’t make it today.
As an example of how I just don’t know how you could make it work today, I give you another old movie, past the heyday of screwball comedies, that I don’t think works at all, but to be completely fair, I am somewhat alone on this one. What’s Up Doc, made in 1972, feels so incredibly forced to me in a way the 1930 and 1940s ones escape, but boy do I not understand why. I really don’t. Most of the actions in the 30s and 40s seem like exaggerated versions of what people might do. Somehow. And later screwball comedies feel like the director thinks I’m stupid. How does this character not get it at this point? You know?
That’s all I got for you today. Enjoy your Monday.