Inspired by @firejerrymanuel: only teams not to make playoffs since 2006: Jays, Royals, #6org, Mets, Marlins, Pirates, Astros. #teamsuicide

— Joelsph (@CajoleJuiceEsq) October 3, 2012

Turns out I forgot the Padres in that tweet, but it’s not like that helps. That’s a depressing list.

Toronto Blue Jays – This is easily the best team out of the list, with the unfortunate status of playing in the AL East. I still can’t see the Orioles repeating what they did this year, but the Red Sox aren’t going to be a doormat for long. The only hope for this team is waiting for the Rays to run out of their top draft picks. But maybe they’ll move by then and make more money and sorry Jays fans. Douse yourself with inflammable maple syrup and light yourself on fire.

Kansas City Royals – The team of the future had two of its two big hitting prospects, Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas, have way below-average hitting seasons. They are still waiting for their pitching. It probably will not live up to the hype. Just end it all now.

Seattle Mariners a.k.a. #6org – I made the mistake of actually thinking they were a decent lock to finish 3rd in the AL West. Turns out Billy Beane is still ten times better than Jack “Savior” Z. “I am a false prophet; UZR is a superstition.” I guess fans can wait until King Felix gets hurt to finally drink bleach.

New York Mets – A team headed by broke owners who have no desire to sell the team. Sure, some might say they’ll be able to spend after 2013 due to the contracts of Jason Bay and Johan Santana ending, but almost every time someone writes about the Mets finances it’s bad news, despite a Madoff victims settlement I thought boded well for the Wilpons. Maybe they’ll just let the contracts come off the books and spend the money on shitty bullpen help again. Much like with #6org and King Felix, I’ll wait until David Wright is gone before putting a gun in my mouth.

Florida Marlins – No one fucking cares. Edit: Notice I said Florida Marlins. God, they suck.

Pittsburgh Pirates – This franchise’s streak of 20 straight losing seasons is the new 56-game hitting streak. It’s more impressive than whatever record Drew Brees just broke last night. Teams just fall into winning seasons every once in a while, like the Marlins, or the Orioles this year — even the Royals have had them in 10-year intervals the past 20 years (they are due for one in 2013!). This is an organization that signed a couple of Indian dudes because I don’t know, Slumdog Millionaire. But hey, your city identity is wrapped up in much more successful teams, so maybe just bang your head against a wall repeatedly until you are Sidney Crosby.

Houston Astros – A team totally and completely screwed by having to move to the AL. I hope to one day — like one of their recent hires who live-tweeted an eviction like a douchebag — to live-tweet them getting relegated to AAA. I just subblogged. Go swim in the ocean during a hurricane.

San Diego Padres – I like how this team ended up with neither Adrian Gonzalez nor Anthony Rizzo. Yet much like the Marlins, I can’t imagine anyone gives a shit. Your perfect weather has made you sports-dead inside.

HONORABLE MENTIONS (COLLAPSES EDITION):

Texas Rangers -5 games up with 9 to go. And then you get swept by the A’s to finish the season, losing the division and being relegated to a one-game playoff against the Orioles, facing Joe Saunders, and you lose that game too. Time to die of a drug overdose. With 9 games to go, even the 2007 Mets were only 1.5 games up on the Phillies, the 2011 Red Sox were only 2 games up on the Rays, and that brings us to…

Atlanta Braves – With 9 games to go, the 2011 Braves were 3.5 games up on the Cardinals. If the current two wild-card format were in place last year, the Braves would have still had a one-game playoff against them. Unfortunately that was not the case, and then this year they finished 6 games in front for the first wild-card, but managed to be victimized by St. Louis again, with the help of umpires. Impale yourself on a tomahawk?

A Bad 9 Holes of Golf
I don’t even need to play a full round of terrible golf before I want to drive my golf cart into the Great South Bay. Multiple three-putts combined with sand traps equipped with golf ball tractor beams is a recipe for me snapping a club in half and cursing out any human being who dares open his mouth.

When An Answer To A Sporcle Quiz Is Kyrgyzstan
You really expect me to spell that correctly? I hate you and your stupid face, person who came up with that quiz.

Mets Fans Who Don’t Like David Wright
What the fuck is wrong with these people? Is this a Wire situation where its 5th season was maligned due to being obviously inferior to its predecessors, even though it was still better than 95% of television? David Wright from 2005-08 — while not quite as valuable as Albert Pujols or Chase Utley — was arguably the first player you would pick to build a team around; Bill James even said so himself on 60 Minutes before the 2008 season. And even though Wright’s taken a frustrating step back the past two seasons, he’s still been worth ~4 wins each year. He’s the only guy that’s been on a field consistently the past four disastrous seasons. But you want him off the team because he has been striking out more than you’d like. Ok, I’ll admit the throwing errors are frustrating. You still don’t deserve David Wright.

The Fact That American Idol Is Still The Highest Rated Show On TV
Do any of its viewers actually listen to the performers? This includes my parents, as they are the sole reason I am forced to acknowledge the show’s existence. Any time I overhear someone signing, it confirms my suspicions that the talent pool has been diluted to the level of a high school audition. I cannot wrap my head around the ratings this terrible competition receives.

Oh Wait, Jersey Shore Is Ten Times Worse
You are the reason The Situation makes more money than you. You enabled Snooki to “write” a book. If this is ever aired in the Middle East, al-Qaeda’s recruiters will have a watermark year.

Thinking One Of My Tweets Is Awesome Only To See It Not Get RT’d
Fuck all you people for not recognizing my momentary genius! Twitter is dumb anyway! *cries*

An Extended Death Streak in CoD/CS/DoD/Quake/Unreal/Halo/Any FPS
Is there anything that makes you want to throw your controller anymore than getting repeatedly murdered in the digital realm? If I’m going to die, I want to bring at least one virtual guy down with me. Re-spawning under airstrikes, getting killed by camping snipers, dying to a random grenade, or just being legitimately terrible are all grounds for rage-quitting while yelling “FUCK THIS”.

When A Favorite Streaming Porn Video Disappears
A part of my penis dies whenever this happens. And it’s not like I have an ample amount to spare.

Whenever I Think Of How Much (Spam) Traffic I Lost By Moving To Self-Hosting
“Hey, it’d probably be a cool idea to get some storage space on the internet for all those GIFs. You could self-host your blog, too. Maybe even try adding one of those Google ads just for curiosity’s sake. Nevermind that you got linked by Deadspin and Fark on the old URL. Ignore the fact that over a year later, you’ll still have a fraction of the traffic and comments you had before you changed that URL and moved away from WordPress.com. And you won’t ever bother with that whole ad idea because it was pointless in the first place.” I suck at the internet sometimes.

These Two Tweets
How is it possible for someone to believe this? Has anyone ever been more wrong in the history of mankind?

Myself
What a waste of a human being. I need to write a script about a guy who goes back in time to stop himself from being born, based on myself. The Abortinator. Can you imagine the paradoxes?

Now all that has turned to fucking shit. David Wright is back to being totally fucking cold. Jason Bay is getting WORSE. Carlos Beltran is clearly not 100%, yet he’s put in CF even while he’s wearing a goddamn knee brace. There’s a guy named Angel Pagan who played CF the entire first half and was one of the best fucking CF in the National League, but because Beltran has a massive ego and expects to play CF, he can’t be moved to RF to accommodate the player who’s NOT WEARING A FUCKING KNEE BRACE. Angel Pagan has EASILY been the second-best player on the team, and probably the most consistent. At least Jeff Francoeur isn’t playing.

But maybe that’s why Jason Bay feels the need to stand in for him? To generate the lost suckage? Holy fucking shit. 0-6 with 4 Ks. Remember last year when we all wondered where David Wright’s power went? His SLG at the end of the season was .447. Jason Bay’s is currently .403. Brett Gardner’s SLG is .399. BRETT GARDNER. This is NOT a guy renowned for his power stroke. This Bay contract is turning out to be a bigger disaster than I expected. Sure, he can bounce back in the next two months, but he’s not going to get any better over the length of the contract. This is BAD.

Oh, and I got to watch Oliver Perez pitch tonight out the bullpen. I want him to pull a Carlos Zambrano and just get himself kicked off the team. Somehow he didn’t blow the game, but he came pretty close, with only the D-Backs total ineptitude saving his worthless ass. Less than worthless. Please Ollie, be gangsta and stab someone else shitty on the team, preferably Alex Cora. You’ll be suspended indefinitely, and hopefully Cora will never play baseball again.

Can I even manage to spew any bile Jerry Manuel’s way? He did double-switch Ike Davis out of the game so he could move Alex Cora to 1B and Luis Castillo to 2B. That was totally awesome. And he keeps starting Barajas, who has a OBP of .265. Sure, he hit a home run. WHOOP-DE-FREAKING-DO. Maybe if he didn’t, I would have been able to go to sleep two pointless hours ago instead of watching 14 pathetic innings of baseball.

I hate this team.

I’m sure I don’t care because I’m not that big a football fan. I already forgot who the Jets picked with whatever pick they even had, and I’m supposedly a Jets fan. How am I supposed to care about college football players when the baseball season isn’t even a month old? Why would I even watch the NFL Draft over the Stanley Cup Playoffs? One is fifteen minutes of waiting broken up with half-minute spurts of cheering; the other is high-speed, high-contact sport at its highest level. Maybe I shouldn’t say highest, considering the Winter Olympics were only a few months ago and those U.S. – Canada contests were fucking awesome.

Arguments about level of play aside, the NFL Draft would be very low on my list of things to watch. I understand following it to know who was drafted, but holy shit, listening to hours of commentary by blowhards about 22-year-olds who are good at football? I rather subject myself to hours of insane babbling from Lost fanatics. But that’s possibly because I built up an immunity at my former job. It’s nice not to have to watch Lost the day it airs anymore; it reveals just how little I care about the show at this point and how I’m going through the motions of watching until it mercifully ends in a month. Of course, due to my love-hate relationship, I’ll stupidly allow myself to get excited for the finale, only to be massively disappointed. Fortunately, I’ve also already built up an immunity to horrible finales due to Battlestar Galactica.

How did I get talking about ensemble science-fiction television shows? Oh yeah, they’re more interesting than the NFL Draft. The NFL Draft fits very nicely in the reality show mold, and I’ve never watched any of those either — even Jersey Shore. Or maybe it’s more like a primetime game show, in the sense that it takes forever for someone to answer a question or decide with suitcase to open, and that once they answer it, the host teases the next question before the show cuts to a commercial. Fuck, I hate that shit. I can’t believe I watched Are You Smarter Than A Fifth-Grader? that one time. But that was only a half-hour, not multiple hours like the NFL Draft. And not just multiple hours, but multiple DAYS. How could anyone stand watching that much idle television? Is it truly suspenseful waiting for the next pick to be made?

Perhaps people really do get into the drama, as I saw at least one person get pissed at the NFL Network for “spoiling” picks. One of the more bizarre tweets I have ever seen. And this guy is usually cool! The NFL Draft clearly makes sane people lose their minds. I guess I’d argue they lost their minds once they decided to watch, but everyone makes mistakes. I would like someone to explain to me the reason for getting pissed at that, though. Is it equivalent to saying Brett Favre is going to get picked two seconds before it happens? Is that what the NFL Draft is now, the same as a real athletic competition? Perhaps I should have asked this tweeter, but I was too busy watching Johan Santana pitch the Mets to victory. He’s still no Roy Halladay, though.

I just don’t see what watching the draft adds over, say, having a massive pop-up on your computer each time someone is drafted. Sure, watching Jets fans boo their pick is entertaining, but is it worth the time sink? Maybe I should ask myself the same question about watching this hopeless Mets season, but actual baseball > football transactions. Watching the NFL Draft is worse than watching C-SPAN.

The Mets had about as easy an opening week a team could hope for: three games against the Marlins, and three games against the Nationals. Both of these series were at home. Yet the Mets are currently 2-4 and in the cellar in the National League East. The good thing is that this only constitutes 1/27th of a full season. The other good thing is that I expected the Mets to do fuckall this season. They’re already 3.5 games behind the Phillies — a distance which will only increase as the summer rolls by. I just don’t enjoy watching the Mets lose a game where they are pitting Johan Santana against Livan Hernandez, a man whose age is listed at 35, but who is actually closer to 50 due to being from Cuba. The Mets couldn’t score a run off of him in seven innings. I’m glad I thought twice about purchasing tickets for what seemed to be a perfect Sunday game. I sat in my room staring at the TV mouth agape inning after pathetic inning. Superstitiously, I knew the game was over once Johan gave up a grand slam in the first inning, but some allegedly logical voice in my head told me the Mets should be able to score off a man who throws 85 mph fastballs. Logic did not prevail.

I just read a book called “The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives”; I guess Sunday’s debacle was just a perfect example of all the coins landing on heads for the Nationals. But the book also says how our minds don’t exactly process randomness and probabilities and statistics correctly. My anger over this particular loss perfectly demonstrates this fact. Every fifth game, I expect a win, or at least a close game — not a 5-0 game for practically the entire game, until the Mets added a couple of trademark meaningless runs when it was already too late.

Of course, it isn’t just Sunday’s game. Mike Jacobs has sucked so bad that I find myself longing for Daniel Murphy. John Maine and Oliver Perez have showed no evidence of turning back the clock to 2007. David Wright still can’t make routine throws across the diamond. Gary Matthews Jr. has been up to the plate 18 times already; Alex Cora, 21 times.

Luckily, Matthews and Cora won’t continue getting those at-bats. Jose Reyes is back; Carlos Beltran will be back SOMETIME. With those two back, along with Murphy being an upgrade at 1B if he repeats his second-half performance last year, the offense will actually be formidable. Unfortunately, I don’t expect Jeff Francoeur to continue walking at record pace or slamming extra base hits. Somehow Francoeur has been walking so much while swinging at MORE pitches out of the strike zone; something’s got to give, and it’s going to be his OBP. But he gained a metric shitload of goodwill with me by launching a 275-foot laser to throw out lazy fucktard Adam Dunn tagging up from 3rd base. That was fucking awesome. With Jason Bay and Carlos Beltran manning the other two outfield spots, maybe — a big maybe — I can withstand Frenchy in RF.

The bright spots have been the starts of Mike Pelfrey and Jon Niese, but it’s hard to get excited from one start. It’s much easier to get pissed off at players that everyone knows suck…sucking. God, Mike Jacobs fucking SUCKS. At least Alex Cora made some nice plays that would have made Luis Castillo’s knees explode when he filled in for him. And Gary Matthews Jr. should NOT be playing over Angel Pagan. Fuck you Jerry Manuel.

Tonight, I get to watch John Maine pitch in Coors Field. I predict three home runs. I also get to watch Angel Pagan bat 8th because “Pagan at No. 8 is [Manuel's] way of testing him 2 spots in front of Reyes.” Are you fucking kidding me? Yes, because having the pitcher in between them is basically the same as one leading off while the other hits 3rd. Kill me. Or blow up the team from the top.

I really expected to be more drunk tonight after the shots of Jose Cuervo with Tabasco sauce I downed tonight. Perhaps the latter combats the effect of the former, who knows. I nonetheless did have a fun Mardi Gras celebration, complete with aforementioned shots and Jumbalaya. And now I will complete it by adding a post to my blog in which I explore the feelings and thoughts I have regarding the relatively massive collection of entertainment I have in my room.

I have a lot of DVDs. Somewhere near 150. Actually, it’s closer to 350, since a lot of the DVDs I have are actually TV sets. I’m just going by my DVD Aficionado account with these numbers. It’s a lot. There are certainly people out there with many times more, but for a not-filthy-rich 23-year-old, it’s a pretty big collection, I think. My Blu-ray collection is lifting off the ground too, starting the whole cycle again.

And movies and TV shows on physical media aren’t the only form of entertainment I like to spend too much money on; I like my video games as well. Buying games on Steam is probably the worst, since I can’t resell them. Even books — do I need a library of books that I will probably never read again?

All this shit, all these movies and games and books — I like buying them because I like sharing them with people. I like having the ability to pull these things off my shelf and give them to someone who’s interested. I want to be able to pull Curb Your Enthusiasm out and expose a person to its greatness for the first time. I want to be able to lend A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again to someone unacquainted with David Foster Wallace. I want to watch The Godfather with the one person I know who hasn’t seen it.

These opportunities just seem to be drying up. Perhaps because I still live at home and I do not wish to have anyone spend their time in my bedroom smack dab in the middle of my parents’ house. Maybe because most of my friends have seen a lot of the stuff I’ve seen. Maybe because no one fucking cares, including myself. I find myself with a collection of shit that I truly have no need for. I want to sell most of it.

I think this all might be tainted by the lost hope of wanting to share all of it with someone, or maybe just the happiness that person brought. I would have liked to watch everything with this person, but at the same time I would have been happy just being with the person without any of the shit around me. Either way, without that person, I hate the pile of shit around me. I hate all of it and would trade all of it for her. But that won’t change anything — except my bank account. But maybe that’s enough?

I have the insatiable urge to know as much as possible about everything fucking thing. I want to be knowledgeable about movies. I want to play as many games as possible so I can say I’ve played them. I want to read voraciously both for my own knowledge and also for conversational purposes. So I don’t go back to stuff I’ve already experienced often. I am all about new experiences (apparently not when it comes to weekend hangouts, though). So why should I own all these things if I’m not sharing them? I have no goddamn idea.

Why do I care at all? I already knew the Mets weren’t going anywhere this year. Oh, you signed Jason Bay? Congrats, you made up for the black fucking hole in right field. At least the pitching market seems totally stagnant. Maybe the Mets won’t have to give Joel Pineiro more than 2/15. We’ll see.

But still, I can’t remember what I write on this blog or in IM or on forums, so I’ll just say it’s amazing how far this organization has fallen since 2006. Holy shit. Even after that devastating Game 7, there were at least five reasons to be excited about the next few years. And look what the fuck has happened. Jose Reyes never reached that imaginary MVP potential so many people were hoping and now he may have permanently lost a step. Beltran, who the fuck knows. David Wright had a power outage of historical proportions. Oliver Perez is a headcase. John Maine can’t stay healthy. Sigh.

I can’t believe this freakish-looking piece of skinny garbage. He just choked in the fantasy equivalent of Game 7 of the World Series (not to mention the real-life implications). I WAS WINNING ALL WEEK AND YOU BLEW IT. Since the Mets didn’t provide me with a last-day collapse for the third straight year, I guess my fantasy team had to fill in.

I went into the day leading 5-4 in my Head-to-Head league in the matchup for the championship. With extremely modest leads in R, HR, and RBI, I figured I couldn’t count on winning those categories, so I needed to start Scott Baker, even if he hurt my ERA lead. I figured he would give me some strikeouts and possibly a win — the category that was tied going into the day. I wasn’t even concerned about Lincecum. I figured he would give me a bunch of Ks, help my ERA, and also possibly give me a win. The only starter going for my opponent? Ubaldo Jimenez. A decent pitcher, actually, but I didn’t think he’d end up with as many Ks as Baker and Lincecum combined. Or end up with a win while neither of my starters did. HOW THE FUCK DID THAT HAPPEN?!?!

Why did you have to destroy my fantasy life, Timmy? After Baker put up a shitty performance, I still wasn’t worried, since I figured you’d at the very least give me the win for Ks. But no, you had to pitch 4 innings, let up 5 ER, and only notch THREE measly fucking strikeouts. Baker had five! And I didn’t even end up losing the ERA battle by much — 3.69 to 3.81. IF ONLY YOU SUCKED MARGINALLY LESS I HAD THE CHAMPIONSHIP LOCKED UP!! Fuck this shit, give the Cy Young to Adam Wainwright or Chris Carpenter. Just drop it in the Cardinals’ clubhouse and let them have a ping-pong tournament for it or something. Wainwright just had 10 Ks tonight. That’s a Cy Young award winner, asshole. I can’t believe I voted for you in my poll.

And anyone who wants to criticize me for starting Baker: Fuck you. I explained my reasoning, and besides — if I left him on the bench and he had an awesome start, and I had lost one or two of those aforementioned offensive categories resulting in an overall loss, I would’ve been kicking myself right now. It’s much more fun ripping apart Lincecum for the stupidest reason ever. What a fucking loser. HAVE FUN MAKING COMMERCIALS DURING THE PLAYOFFS, DICKWAD.

I know I declared this Mets season dead two weeks ago, so I shouldn’t torture myself by turning into SNY nightly, but I can’t help myself. I want to see if Francoeur can continue to fool people into thinking he’s valuable. I want to see if David Wright can learn how to hit home runs again, or at least get his K rate back down to his normal level. I want to watch Oliver Perez walk guys around the bases first-hand, so I can gloat about how right I was with regards to his contract. I want Daniel Murphy to show some semblance of power, if only to raise his trade value. And of course, I want to witness Johan Santana attempt to carry the team on his back, and subsequently lose his shit when the rest of his team totally sucks.

Each night I am greeted with new examples of futility. Mike Pelfrey may have thrown seven innings of three-run ball, but unfortunately, his team only supplied him with one run and four hits. And one of those runs given up by Pelfrey was a result of Francoeur ducking from a fly ball caught in the lights. There was nothing else tonight particularly egregious, it was just total listlessness.

This organization is a fucking disaster from top to bottom. The owners get pulled in by Ponzi schemes; the GM doesn’t seem to have any sort of plan for when exactly he wants to win with this team; and the VP of Player Development is taking his shirt off, calling AA players pussies, and challenging them to fights. Holy shit.