Red Reposter: "You're sellouts" - Johnny Cueto

"Appreciating Johnny Cueto", or, "How does one not appreciate Johnny Cueto?" CTR has a neat little writeup on how historical Cueto's season has been (and, with one start left, will continue to be). It's a lot of fun watching the same guy throw 8 innings every night and have tons of poor suckers swing over his changeup. Also, I didn't realize how great Jose Rijo was. Also, is Mario Soto overrated? Lots of fun stuff in this little writeup of Trent's.

And now, something very bad. BtBS's Neil Weinberg finds a strawman and takes dead aim, absolutely eviscerating a position nobody is taking by telling those who think Cueto's having a better season than Kershaw to shut up. It's a real dumb article that seems to have Around the Horn aspirations. It's worth reading if you hate syntax and love advanced stats, but Mr. Weinberg (also the name of our varsity football coach in high school (we had a bad football team)) kind of loses the plot by finding it impossible to admit that maybe Cueto is having a historic season that's not quite as historic as Kershaw's. There. That wasn't so tough, was it?

Also, the 1995 parallels to Pete Schourek's season is fascinating.

Todd Radom's blog is fun if you like logo things. He looks a the color green last week, and notes that the Reds wore green jerseys in spring training mostly to piss off George Steinbrenner. There's other stuff in there about the NY Jets or whatever, but it's kinda neat to read old press clippings.

American sports franchises devastate the cities they purport to lift up, and The Guardian is on it.

And for more, if less sporty, Guarticles: the trials and tribulations and basically constant sex of working on a superyacht.

This one may just be for me and BK, but the NYTimes story on a Jamaican cricketer-in-exile is loads of fun to read. Could you imagine Toe Nash in your softball league? Or Sidd Finch?

I'm a sucker for German soccer stories, and Vice Sports is doing good work. I like this bit on how Red Bull is taking over a team and how the community around Leipzig feels about it. Great takeaway line is that, since Germany doesn't allow brands in team names, Red Bull said that the "RB" in "RB Leipzig" stands for "RasenBallsport." Which means "the ballgame you play on grass" or in-article "how a 5-year-old would try to explain tennis."

Steven Soderbergh remixed Raiders of the Lost Ark into black-and-white and gave it an electronic score. Not necessarily my thing, but maybe your thing.

My thing? Which Turkic leader are you? I got Yildiz Khan, which literally means "STARLORD" so yeah I got an A on that quiz.

Bummercle: Yen Ha's "A Shared Life"