The Skolney Blog

The Twins are better than Cleveland. The Indians starting staff will need to carry an anemic offense. The Twins have the much better lineup, and they may have their best starting staff in nearly a decade. Willians Astudillo should be the #1 catcher. Good things happen when he is in games. Byron Buxton is going to have an excellent season. Getting off to a good start was more important for him than probably any other Twin. Blake Parker stinks and will be gone by June. His outright refusal to throw a ball near the plate on Saturday is the reason the Twins didn't sweep. The Twins are better off without Miguel Sano. Gonzalez is a better third baseman. Nelson Cruz is a much better DH.

Twins: 86-76 I kind of like how this team seems so hard to really predict. New manager, lot of new coaches, new players, no Mauer or Dozier. It's a new era for sure. I thought this was a wild card team last year, but everything went wrong basically from the start. Nearly everything they were counting on flopped. BUT...they still won a respectable 78 games. This team should score a lot of runs. Add Cruz, Gonzalez, Cron and Schoop, all of whom should be offensive upgrades over what we had in 2018 at the same positions. Rosario and Polanco are the 2 most established returning guys. Then you have Kepler and Buxton, of whom hopefully at least 1 has a breakout season. I'm not sure how much Sano will even be missed. I'm not totally convinced the pitching will hold up. Berrios and Gibson both seemed to run out of gas late in the season last year, but both are pitching to get paid this year. Hopefully Odorizzi gives them a lot more than last year. Then you have Pineda and Perez ...

On one hand I feel bad for my fellow liberals who really did believe that this Mueller investigation was going to be THE thing that finally took down Trump once and for all. But on the other hand, those people were dreadfully naive. The investigation was worth it to nail Manafort and Cohen and some of these other Trump cronies. Nobody can pretend Trump had no connection to their crimes, unless they are paid to(and many are). That stink won't go away. But the fantasy some had about the report coming out and Trump being led out of the White House in handcuffs was foolish. I can have a fantasy about a threeway with Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz, but I am not stupid enough to expect it to happen. Trump was never going to face any sort of criminal prosecution as a result of the Mueller probe. Mueller himself doesn't think a sitting president can be indicted in the first place. Once we knew that, we knew this was not going to end with Trump facing justice while he is still president...

The only other Gaspar Noe film I ever saw was Irreversible way back in 2003. I didn't like it, and never wanted to see it again, but it had some grim moments that stuck with me. And I suspect that will be what happens with his new film Climax. It's not an easy sit, and it's often pretentious as hell, and I have no interest in ever watching it again. But it has some amazing stuff in it. It's actually listed as a horror film, but it takes a long time to become one. Simple story has a French dance company doing rehearsals. Afterwards, they party, although somebody has spiked their bowl of sangria with LSD. This leads to basically the mother of all bad trips. I had no plans to ever take LSD but after the back half of this movie I feel like I have still had the experience. On purpose the film becomes incredibly disorienting. There's really no story, and we don't learn much about any of the people(despite the film's worst sequence, a nearly interminable sequence...

In the Trump era, it should be no surprise to see large groups of people completely deny reality in order to keep pushing their own insane agenda. But I'm not here to talk about the MAGAts. This time the subject is the army of ardent Captain Marvel haters, these moronic, insecure nitwits who have made their last weeks and even months all about attacking this movie, and Brie Larson. They tried their damndest to stir up enough hatred of Brie and this movie in order to stop it from becoming a smash hit, short of physically going to theaters and keep people from entering. Of course, such action would require venturing outside of their basements. Can't have that. The movie of course did have a massive opening, breaking any number of records, emphatically kicking off yet another franchise within the MCU. You would hope that such a thorough ass kicking by the masses would cause the trolls to retreat back into their sewer, to take their well deserved L and shut up. But no....these ...

New, presumably last, Endgame trailer is out. This one is a real work of art. The voiceover work in it really got to me. It's an emotional trailer, and very much centered on the original core Avengers. But we do get some bits of other characters, like Ant Man I think showing up sometime in the future to learn about the snap. We see everybody in their special quantum realm suits. And we get a cool tag at the end between Thor and Carol. Marvel has stuck to their guns. They are not showing us anything from deep into the film. I'm all for it. It's almost unheard of these days for a big movie like this to hold secrets for so long.

Barr pulled a Bill Belichick, and his Jets career lasted about the same amount of time as Belichick's Jets HC career. I certainly was surprised by the switcheroo. Barr leaving felt like a given since last summer, when he was the one of the 4 young guys due for an extension to not get one. There was really no indication that him coming back was even possible, so I just shrugged when I heard he was signing with the Jets. But he changed his mind, and he gets a sizable contract from us after all. This definitely changes some things. This move all but guarantees that Everson Griffen is either cut or takes a pay cut. It makes a possible Trae Waynes trade at least a smidge more likely. I still think something involving Kyle Rudolph is possible. Fans are pissed because they wanted a high priced offensive lineman, but that was likely.never going to happen with or without Barr. That will be a draft thing, plus I'm sure they'll look for a free agent bargain.

Fans are already freaking out about the Vikings not making a bunch of splashy signings. Where are the.moves, they ask. You wanna know where the big moves are? Big contract for Kirk Cousins. Pricey extensions over the last couple years for Diggs, Hunter, Kendricks, Rhodes, Joseph, and Griffen. Looming extensions for Thielen, and possibly Waynes and/or Alexander. Or even Weatherly. You can't simply go out and make massive signings year after year after year. They did make some moves on the 1st big day of the offseason. Sendejo and Remmers were cap cuts. Both good moves. Sendejo is replaceable. Remmers was just not that good at all. Vikes also keep Anthony Harris, who is likely Sendejo's permanent replacement, and also keep Rashod Hill for depth(although he could easily be a camp cut). And they did bring back Shamar Stephen for depth, or maybe as Sheldon Richardson's replacement. More cuts may come. I'm really going to be surprised if they don't at least restruc...

Amongst the many things the angry fanboys are PMS-ing about with Captain Marvel is this belief that she is being set up to be basically the sole thing that takes down Thanos in Endgame. That she has been made TOO powerful. Have these people paid attention at all? Did they not see Infinity War? As of the start of that movie probably the 3 most indestructible characters were Thor, Hulk and Vision. And before the first 5 minutes of that movie has passed, Thanos had already kicked the shit out of Thor and Hulk, and that was with only one infinity stone in possession. I'm sure the Russos were quite deliberate in having Thanos best them right off the bat, so there was no doubt how imposing Thanos was. Then at the end of the film Thanos doesn't even have to break a sweat to kill an admittedly already weakened Vision. Even if Carol is more powerful than those 3, she has a lot of ground to make up to be Thanos's match. And besides, the Russos are not going to have it be that sim...

I'm not sure anything at the movies this year will make me happier than Captain Marvel not just being good, but being REALLY good, even better than expected. My expectations were certainly not at Infinity War levels here. I knew it would be good, cause at this point Marvel Studios is just a machine. Their weakest efforts are better than most franchises best. This is probably the first movie ever to get me teary eyed before it even begins. The Stan Lee logo intro. Perfect. And then later we get one of his very best cameos, as he's practicing his Mallrats scene. Can't wait to hear Kevin Smith's reaction to this. The first 20 minutes or so are the weakest part of the movie. They kind of just throw you into this Kree v Skrull thing and it can be a little confusing. But once Dan"Vers" crash lands into the Blockbuster the move clicks the whole rest of the way. It's a really good mix of breezy 90's action movie, mystery, buddy comedy and fantasy. Brie La...

Miguel Sano, injured during, of all things, a winter league title celebration. He gets a lacerated heel somehow. He begins spring training in a walking boot. Twins medical staff still insists he will only miss a week or two, and easily be ready to roll by opening day. So much for that. Today the team announces Sano will not only not be ready by opening day, he won't be ready until May. How the hell are they THAT wrong on an injury timetable?  How do you go from early March to May? And btw, that's also assuming Sano even plays by May. Last year these fools for some reason had Ervin Santana not have surgery until February, then insisted he would only miss a few April starts. He didn't pitch until late July, and even then he wasn't actually ready. Last week I read a story about Brian Dozier, where he said he had a pretty bad knee injury last season yet played through it. Now  I may have normally chalked that up to a guy making excuses for his poor performance, but may...