Sports teams can name themselves whatever they want I guess. I was however happy that Cleveland changed their names, although Guardians did not really appeal to me, too close to their old name. It has local significance. Some names are old like Red Sox but did Chicago have to name themselves the White Sox? Seems not too much creativity, might as well name all teams by the color of their socks (what’s with sox by the way), blue, green, yellow…
If Montreal gets a MLB team again, which I now doubt will happen, lots of people say to name them the Expos. Let’s use another name, that one was because of the World Expo in 1967. We are far away from that event.
These two team names are a bit long, 3 and 4 sillables. I suspect the second team will be known more as the Genomes, maybe the first as the Clocks. I do like the slogan, clever.
It’s just a hedge. Phillips will likely be the high leverage reliever, used in tight spots at the end of games, and they ramp Graterol up to be a more traditional closer (but without the stress of the truly big moments). My guess is Graterol is the full time closer by ASB.
Even Eric “You know my strike zone” Gregg wasn’t disciplined for horrendously bad strike calls, though he was fined $3000 by MLB for being overweight.
*Gregg was one of the umps who resigned in 1999 as part of an ill-fated labor action, but wasn’t rehired. Whether that had anything to do with his inflated strike zone is a matter for debate.
Pitcher Trevor Bauer, who was released by the Dodgers earlier this year, after being suspended for a season and a half due to allegations of sexual assault, is signing with the Yokohama DeNA BayStars of Nippon Professional Baseball. He’d gotten no interest from any other MLB team after being released by Los Angeles, but several Japanese teams had expressed a desire to sign him.
I sure like “Guardians” a lot less than “Counter Clocks.”
Baseball teams in particular do well with odd names. Baseball is a relatively OLD sport, and weird old names like Dodgers and Red Sox do well, or names of birds that aren’t at all birds of prey, or odd regional names like “Padres.” “Guardians” is way too generic. The historically relevant “Spiders” was the correct choice, and they were incredibly stupid not to go with it. It cost them millions in lost revenue - I’m serious, it really did, I’m convinced. I attended a few Guardians games last year and saw almost no Guardians merch being worn, but a lot of “Indians” merch. Had they gone with Spiders, that new merchandise would have been everywhere.
As to a new Montreal team if there ever is one, “Expos” in my opinion is a charming and odd name, which makes it perfect for baseball. It also works in either French or English, a key consideration there.
It’s fine. You don’t NEED a “Closer.”
Where a team would be wise to give most of the “Closer” innings to is if they just happen to have one guy who is
A) Good, and
B) Comfortable doing it.
If you don’t, or you have two or more guys who meet this description, why not? Especially if they are different kinds of pitchers and so can be selectively used against a string of batters they are particularly suited to face.
In part, but also in part because it IS a better name.
It’s also just a much cleaner break. It’s unique, and allows for more in the way of marketing and merchandising originality.
“Guardians” is pretty clearly not very popular a new name in Cleveland. It’s a name-by-committee; it was obviously chosen for being the lowest risk choice, but it’s very much the lowest REWARD choice.
I think that that’s accurate. It’s a name that wasn’t likely to be found offensive by anyone*, and does have a tie to the city, which is probably at least modestly appealing to some locals. But, OTOH, it’s not particularly inspiring or interesting, either.
FWIW, I always think of the Marvel superhero from Canada when I see the name:
I love the name Spiders, but I also suspect that it would have been somewhat polarizing, if only because arachnophobia is among the most common phobias, and many people who have it can have a very visceral, negative reaction to anything having to do with spiders. My guess is that Indians/Guardians management decided that they didn’t want to have a team name or merchandise which creeped out a not-insignificant segment of the population.
*- The exception being fans who loved the Indians name, were angry about a “woke” decision to change away from it, and were going to hate any alternative.
I’m not so sure about that. I think no matter the new name, you would still see lots of the old merch. Seems many in Cleveland were against a new name, didn’t see a problem with it. I believe we’ll see it for years to come.
As for Expos, yes, it’s odd, cool in a way, charming, and it works in both languages, that’s a big reason why it was chosen. I like it and wear my Expos hat all the time. But a new team to me has to make a clean break. Not sure what would be a good new name, one that satisfies both languages equally. If it happens, I’m sure they’ll come up with something. Not that I would dismiss Expos.
Regrettably, the only other major historically relevant name is Royals, the city’s Dodgers AAA team. Jackie Robinson played for them.
We are a long ways off MLB expanding to anywhere (it’s overdue though - if they could find the owners, I’d suggest expansion of at least six teams) but if Montreal does get a new team I’d say it’s more than 50% likely they’ll be the Expos and will even use the old logo. But ya need a billionaire owner and a stadium first.
While “Cleveland Spiders” was easily my favorite choice, it may have suffered by association with the grievously bad 1899 Spiders, which went 20-134.
Apart from that one horrendous year (an artifact of the owner shipping the team’s best players to St Louis, another franchise he owned), the Spiders had a decent overall record in the 13 years of their existence, finishing as high as 2d in a 12-team league three times.
Mets closer Edwin Diaz suffered a knee injury yesterday, while celebrating a win with the rest of the Puerto Rican team in the WBC. Testing this morning revealed that he has a “full thickness tear” in the patellar tendon of his right knee – he’ll be having surgery on it this afternoon, and is expected to miss the entire 2023 season, as the typical recovery time for the surgery is eight months.
