Patrick Dubuque

@euqubud

bbwaa // writer with a thrift store degree // managing editor @ baseball prospectus

573 Following7,139 Followers3,792 Posts

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Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· 11d

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· 11d

It'll stop being novel eventually but for now I'm warily enjoying scratch watch

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· 11d

Final score from T-Mobile last night: Twins 5, Mariners 3, Times Being Told To Get Loud 41.

Two scoreboards from last night's Twins-M's game

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· 14d

Like I said, weird one. I think it's worth reading, though.

$It’s not just the baseball itself, the endless parade of misplays, that seems to fracture the linearity of the flow of time. It’s Freeman himself, who seems with each play to be discovering his position for the first time, while jogging with the gait of a weary veteran. It’s like the opposite of Groundhog Day: instead of a single man forced to live infinite lives, we’re witness to a single timeline, and a million innocent Tyler Freemans, piped in from March of 2025, are doomed to live 15-second segments of it. Nothing else could quite explain the discomfort with which he approaches nearly every batted ball, how each route feels like the sky itself betrays him, how he manages to batter himself in vain against the wall half the time, and the other half dodge it like this:$

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· 15d

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· 26d

Two old friends have dinner together and talk about life and art

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· 26d

EDITOR: You got that sports radio ad ready? GRAPHIC DESIGNER: I guess, not that it matters, we’re all going to die anyway

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· 26d

I was already writing up the Reds before news of the Burns extension came in, and honestly, it didn't change things much. It's a fine move in a vacuum, but "vacuum" also describes half the roster. This is a baseball team desperately in need of an identity. www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article...

And it’s this, more than the budget constraints, more than the market, more than the injuries, that has done the Reds in, and will continue to do them in until something changes. Cincinnati, as a baseball franchise, doesn’t do anything better than anyone. They haven’t directed their energies into any aspect of development, or roster construction, or even marketing to overcome their disadvantages. They don’t file off the edges of every coin the way the Rays do. They don’t hunt for some invisible advantage through technology, some high-up, unpicked fruit. Even beyond the results, the Reds have never really evoked a compelling reason for caring about the Reds, beyond “we’re here and so are you.” Even that, as the years stretch on, takes on the tone of a threat. Boys in grade school are told to grow up watching Ke’Bryan Hayes, and wonder if they’ll actually have to.

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· 27d

It's schedule release day, and you know what that means: time to talk about how the 1985 Fleer set is the Platonic ideal of the baseball card

Look at this 1985 Fleer Eric Davis rookie card. It's gorgeous

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· 28d

Just want to note my appreciation for how faithfully they drew Omar Vizquel’s 1990 Topps card in this early Simpsons episode

A still from S3E23 of the Simpsons starring Omar Vizquel

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· Jul 7

Sending this back in time to myself in 1996 to explain the internet in 2026

An email from Fandango with the subject of "An Exciting Change is Coming" with a text of "Nothing about your account is changing"

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· Jul 2

starting to think there may just be too many movies

Eight different pickleball movies released since 2023

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· Jul 2

Don't get me wrong this is incredible, but I also sort of feel for all the 21-year-olds who just can't find stuff anymore because search engines have turned themselves into teenagers who heard their friend talk about stuff they saw on TikTok

"this has been talked about extensively you're just 21"

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· Jun 30

Today for @baseballprospectus.com I wrote about the state of baseball as it plunges merrily toward a lockout, propelled forward by every principle of economics and game theory. It's kind of bleak. www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article...

But there’s a bigger and more boring problem, as well. Salary caps are popular because to a fan, they represent an end state. If the money is split evenly, that’s the final midpoint; how could both sides continue to argue? We’d be free of the existential threats leveled twice a decade at the sport and the industry around it.

Except that this, too, is a fairy tale. Instead of arguing over the shape of the pie, the owners and players would be free to argue over what the pie actually is, and it’s an argument that’s even more fruitless than the technicalities of the current CBA. What, precisely, qualifies as baseball revenue? Would it have included the sale of MLB.tv, or BAMTech? What about the team shops outside the stadium? Or the restaurants next to the team shops that fans visit when they come to take in a game? The gambling partnerships? Without opening the books—MLB will not open its books—players are resting their welfare in the hands of creative accountancy. We saw this happen in 2007 with the Writers Guild of America strike, when a new revenue stream (DVD sales, 20 years is a long time) opened up that fell outside existing lines of negotiation. These revenues could have been distributed fairly through the spirit of the agreement, but they didn’t have to be, and weren’t. The salary cap doesn’t make these problems go away; it just moves the battlefield to a new location. There will always be one.

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· Jun 29

The common mistake people commit lies in thinking of the Los Angeles Angels as a baseball team. This is understandable, because it is what the Angels pretend to be. They put on baseball clothes and play in a real baseball stadium with fish tacos and helmet nachos and everything. The PA announcer tells everyone to clap their hands. They even draft players out of the same talent pool. What the Angels are, instead, is a corporation that sells Baseball Product, the way that “orange drink” contained a lot of orange, but not the fruit. And when you think of them that way, it’s hard to consider them anything but a success.

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· Jun 28

lol

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· Jun 23

This is what's actually making my kid interested in practicing his math and I don't know whether to laugh or cry

Adventures in Math (1983), published by IBM

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· Jun 19

Whenever I see a business start with AAA I always wish there were a Quad-A version. Where’s the Jeff Manto of portable toilet maintenance

AAA Septic, which is I’m sure a fine septic company

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· Jun 17

OK sorry one more. Do you think Tim Raines would like a do-over on this one

Patti LaBelle once spilled water on a baby, according to her wikipedia page, and settled out of court for $100,000

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· Jun 17

And finally, Cal Ripken learned long ago that the secret to being a star is not giving people anything to hate.

Do I like basketball? Yeah, I guess, kinda. But not too much

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· Jun 17

I do appreciate the guys who are just out there shooting their shot

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· Jun 17

Do you think Juan Guzman never saw 48 Hours, or do you think he just felt like Another 48 Hours took all the elements from the film he loved and turned the dial to 11

Juan Guzman, perhaps suffering from proximity bias

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· Jun 17

MULTIPLE BASEBALL PLAYERS DECLARED ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST AS THEIR FAVORITE MOVIE Now all I can think about is Robin and Terry on a Friday night, popping a tape in the VHS and cracking a beer, getting depressed by a metaphor for individuality getting destroyed by the machinery of society

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· Jun 17

Terry Mulholland must have been the oldest 29-year-old in baseball history. He probably would have liked my article from yesterday though

Baseball's biggest Steinbeck fan checking in

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· Jun 17

Danny Tartabull clearly hit free agency for the first time right before this card came out

This is a man who clearly practiced being rich in his head

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· Jun 17

Bill Swift's favorite movie is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which insinuates that Bill Swift watched that movie multiple times, for fun?

Bill Swift thinks One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest would have been better if Clint Eastwood was in it

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· Jun 17

Mickey Morandini's favorite actor is Neil Patrick Harris, because Doogie Howser MD apparently got four seasons?

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· Jun 17

OK, so because we spent the last week getting to know our baseball players far more than we would have liked to, let's cleanse the pallette by getting to know how ballplayers felt back in 1992. First up: Ron Gant's favorite book is Eat to Win: The Sports Nutrition Bible (3.5 stars on goodreads

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· Jun 15

I'm still writing uninformative headlines in 2026 for the love of the game

Patrick Dubuque@euqubud· Jun 8

That was my first instinct but the Js aren't sharp enough