The Aaron Harang Theory

Often in fantasy sports one hears the phrase “he is who he is.” This comes about when a player has performed for 5 (I’m just making up a number here, but 5 sounds about right) at or about the same skill level, with similar production (think Brandon Phillips 18 homers every year for the last 5 years) that hasn’t been limited disproportionately by injury or missed time. That’s when we get enough of a sample size on a player to know that that player “is who he is.” Aaron Harang is a perfect example of a major league player who “is who he is.” He is a serviceable pitcher who eats inning for a major league club, possibly 200, with a bearable ERA and WHIP (4.00 ERA, 1.30 WHIP) and limited strikeout potential and manageable number of walks. He is the Panda Express of lunch options. You’re not gonna get excited about it, but it’s cheap and it’s there, and it gets the job done. So when Harang got off to a sub-1.00 ERA and sub-1.00 WHIP and 3-0 start (with a 7 IP no-hitter throw in there), the fantasy community responded with a yawn, because “he is who he is.” Aaron Harang did not add a crazy screwball over the offseason, he did not add 5 MPH to his fastball, and he did not procure a special genie lamp that allows him to summon a genie that grants him 3 wishes. Harang promptly got lit up in his next start to the tune of 9ER, and the fantasy community realized “he is who he is.” This does not apply to fast starters Dee Gordon, Charlie Blackmon, Jesse Chavez, Jose Abreu, etc., to name a few. We do not know who these players are, and they very well may have added a much skill over the offseason, so their fast starts are not to be trusted, but they’re not to be distrusted neither: hence the beauty of owning a player like that: the sexiness, the hype, the excitement when they do well, the disappointment when they flounder in the dust.

There are other players who probably have slowly but surely fit into the Aaron Harang theory that some owners are just in denial about: We know who Jay Bruce is. He is a former top prospect who got massive appeal from the fantasy masses in his “breakout” 30 HR campaign leaving fantasy community yearning for more. 4 years later, though, he is not getting any better. One more year of upper-mediocre production but not elite levels and we’ll have to accept that we know who Justin Upton is and that he’s not going to be the fantasy superstar everyone thought he would be.

Taking it to a TV level, Unfortunately Game of Thrones is what it is. It’s not really a knock on GoT, really any show in its 4^th season of 7 is going to be like this. (except once-in-a-lifetime shows like Breaking Bad that kept taking it to another level over the course of the series) At this point, the fourth season (seventh season) you know what Game of Thrones is. Unlike other shows, it won’t suffer a sharp decline caused by writers leaving or decreasing popularity; the show  is probably the most popular of all TV shows right now and will thrive until its 7^th season. But it also won’t get any better. There’s no “next gear” that it’s going to get to, there’s no more evolving. For the next 3 seasons we will get a barrage of skipping around, flipping back, and general joggling of various story lines that it’ll make one’s Iphone apps look limited. There’s always the supposed payoff in the future, the gold at the end of the rainbow, when the “Ice” and “Fire” of the Song of Ice and Fire unite and we get the final battle that culminates the series and brings it all together, but until then we know where it’s headed. The show could actually be a lot more if would just encorporate more magic, more excitement, more battle scenes, more action instead of the monotonous tea party dialogue it hits slowly. It will have the breathtaking (pun intended) moments like earlier in the season leaving everyone gasping for air, but it’ll leave plenty of time (3 episodes since where it seems like nothing has happened) for everyone to catch their breath. It’ll describe more battles being played out and strategies taking fruit than it will actually show them, and it will forever tease us with things that might come in the future, like a certain epic ABC drama a few years ago teasing the ending which would explain everything, that never came. (GoT’s version of that is an aging writer who hasn’t finished the series and is getting stalled repeatedly in finishing the books). I, for one, have seen this movie before. We know what Game of Thrones is. It’s not Aaron Harang (of the TV series world, that would be like “The Bachelor 26” or “Everybody Loves Raymond” reruns), but it sure seems like Jay Bruce.

 

Fantasize on,

 

Robert Yan