8/7: Open game thread

Hello there. I'm semiamateur baseball writer Patrick Dubuque, and I'm here to provide some content most people won't read that prefaces a game thread. Composing a game thread is hard! Compared to eating, or typing random letters on a keyboard. But today I'm going to give you a special treat and take you on an "inside" tour of how to write a game thread. What would be more appealing to a sample of an alienated, hyper-ironic postmodern population than writing about writing? Nothing, my own internal monologue forces me to respond! First step: pithy, carefree opening paragraph. Check.

SEO-optimized hyperbolic URL. Check.

Now for the content. If I were a real, self-respecting baseball expert, I would spend some time analyzing the Chicago White Sox. I'm not, but pretending to be one is essential to any semiamateur baseball writer's brand, so let's pull up FanGraphs. Tonight's starter for the White Sox is... Scott Carroll. Let's see. 29 years old, 12 starts and six relief appearances, 4.43 FIP, 4.67 K/9, 3.01 BB/9, 89mph fastball... well, well, well.

This, in the writing business, is what we call an opportunity. Let's forget about the whole statistical analysis thing, since Marc W is just going to outclass me anyway, and make jokes about how mediocre Scott Carroll is. Maybe photoshop a picture of him with a blank spot for a face. That's funny, right? God, who knows what's funny anymore. You have to be original to be funny, but then if no one understands your humor, you were never really funny at all. Now that I've written that out, it's actually kind of depressing. Okay, snap out of it. Let's go see if anyone has ever bothered to write anything about Scott Carroll.

Oh, hey! There's a FanGraphs article from three days ago. Let's read the comments and see if anyone has anything else to say about him.

And... okay, wow.

It turns out that Scott Carroll is pretty awesome.

Okay, changing tactics again. Let's spend the rest of the preview listing neat things about Scott Carroll. People love lists! Even if they hate themselves for loving lists. They'll read it anyway.

• Today is Scott Carroll's mom's birthday.
• Scott Carroll won his major league debut, giving up 1 run in 7.1 innings, and brought his mom to tears.
• Scott Carroll has edited four books and published countless academic papers on ecological subjects.
• Scott Carroll used the same conditioning program that helped revive Steve Delabar's career.
• Scott Carroll was a boom operator for the movie X Men 2.
• Seriously, he's a pretty well-rounded guy.
• Scott Carroll is annoyed with his Seattle hotel, because its lack of HDMI ports won't allow him to play FIFA. He's also annoyed with himself for not bringing his N64.
• Scott Carroll likes the Chicken Fat song. Which makes him flawed, and thus makes him human.

You know what? That's good enough. Everyone's watching backup football players play a meaningless football game and getting Super Serious about it anyway. Just paste in the lineups, and go grab a 5% malt beverage lemonade flavored drink you got for half-off in the discount rack at Safeway even though there didn't seem to be anything wrong with it. Then it's Bagel Bites and baseball. Check.