I wasn’t able to see the game in its entirety, but Padre broadcasters Tony Gwynn and Mark Neely noted during Sunday’s contest between Atlanta and San Diego that Tim Hudson was using his slider with some frequency against left-handed batters. Indeed, per the Pitch F/x data, 21 of the 104 pitches (20.2%) Hudson threw were sliders — slightly above his season average of 14.6%. Another eight pitches (7.7%) were classified as cutters — itself a significant figure because (a) sliders and cutters have similar movement/velocity and (b) only 3.0% of Hudson’s pitches this season have been classified as cutters.

Whether sliders, cutters, or their depraved issue, the slutter, the pitches that Hudson threw Padre rookie Anthony Rizzo at 1-1 and 3-2, respectively, during Rizzo’s sixth inning at-bat, were very clearly of the totally unfair variety.

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Very few Feast Days take place during the actual baseball season.  The reasons for this are obscure and hidden from the masses, but from the underground are sometimes heard mutterings of “logistics”.

Life: Mike Brumley was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to wear silly clothing and provide a backdrop for the greatness of others. Brumley contains multitudes: he is known for being the least valuable member of the rookie class of 1987, producing below replacement level in eight of his nine major league seasons. He played seven positions and was above-average at none of them. His career underscored the truth that there is virtue in the absence of strength, and that there is tenacity in existence.  Said existence marches onward as a first base coach for the Seattle Mariners, combining advice for young inattentive people with a propensity for squinting.

Spiritual Exercise: Consider the Taoist philosophy of uselessness, as evidenced in the words of the Chuang-tzu: “Mountain trees are their own enemies, and the leaping fire is the cause of its own quenching. Cinnamon is edible, therefore the cinnamon tree is cut down. Ch’i oil is useful, therefore the ch’i tree is gashed.” The gnarled oak, meanwhile, is good for nothing, and thus it survives. Was Brumley’s success in life, such as it is, the direct result of his own obscurity?  To carry the metaphor a step further: is Mike Brumley a political animal?

A Prayer For Mike Brumley

Mike Brumley!
You lent Ken Griffey, Sr. your bat
As Unferth lent his sword to Beowulf,
Rendering yourself a footnote
To a footnote in history.
You are the patron saint of beat writers.

In your spare time, you lend credence
To the hoary old adage
That those who can’t do, teach.
Many of those who witnessed your early work
Swore to each other that someday,
You would spend your evenings telling runners
How many outs there are.

There are two outs,
You whisper into the night air.
There are two outs.
Run on anything.

Here’s newly minted Nats skipper Davey Johnson!

The discerning discerner will observe that also in this photo is a white orb of cowhide, something known in industry parlance as a “baseball.” It seems there are but a finite number of possibilities to explain the presence of the baseball in this picture …

A) Mr. Johnson, blinded by the klieg lights, is unable to see the baseball hurtling toward his unsuspecting chompers. It goes without saying that Jim Riggleman, just off stage and concealed by a fake Cardinal Richelieu beard and his best Slovene brogue, is the author of these unfolding horrors.

B) Mr. Johnson, after an intense and character-shaping apprenticeship, is dancing not the Tango, but rather the Calcaterra.

C) The ball has descended from the firmament above and is now fluttering about Mr. Johnson. Much like the magical-realist butterflies of a certain Garcia Marquez novel, a flock of hovering baseballs will now and forever trail Mr. Johnson wherever he goes. It is at once a portent of the dugout miracles to come and a stinging rebuke of the electoral college.

D) That’s not a baseball. That’s the haunting, lingering spectral presence of Tony Plush.

E) Mr. Johnson has the Uri Geller-like power to levitate baseballs, outerwear made from fine Corinthian leather, and beautiful ladies.

What other explanations could there be for the sorcery before you?

(Righteous gratitude to Dangerous Don Hammack.)

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Edwin Encarnacion hit his third home run of the season, a solo shot, Saturday night in St. Louis, leaving him only 37 shy of the 40 long balls¹ the Toronto Blue Jays brass told us he had the potential to hit.

Octavio Dotel, as you can see, called the round-tripper. Why else would he, in a 6-2 game, be so super stoked about it?

The next time you catch a ball at the ballpark, home run or foul ball, whether you predicted it or not, I trust that you’ll channel your inner Octavio, and do the Dotel as if no one were watching.

1. A hunch: Edwin’s probably not going to get there.

Much love, respect and adulation to @James_In_TO for posting the GIF (pronounced: “Jif”) in a tweet.

The good Mr. Eno Sarris presented just this last week shocking revelations concerning everyone’s favorite journeyman backup’s backup catcher, Eliezer Alfonzo. Sarris revealed to NotGraphers that Mr. Alfonzo apparently possesses some manner of mysterious tincture in which a deceased snake resides.

Here is its representation in a certain scholarly journal to which I subscribe:

To be honest, though, I did not sate my interests with the information from Eno or the aforementioned journal article, so I felt inspired to dig a little deeper. Here is what happened:
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Given that Scott Baker is conceding only about 2.5 walks per nine innings and sits among the league’s top-10 in Zone%, you’d think that a batter like Corey Hart, having only walked in 6.8% of his career plate appearances, would be surprised to draw a base on balls from Baker.

Decidedly to the contrary, we have this footage from Friday night’s Twins-Brewers game. So unmoved is Hart by Baker’s second-inning walk that he (i.e. Hart) decides to utilize the ubercasual behind-the-back bat toss after the decisive fourth ball.

It’s hard to see, but you can actually see Hart utter the words “Ho” and “Hum” as he makes his way down to first.

As everyone knows, there are just five laws of the universe, which, of course, is the same number of people you meet in Heaven. Anyhow, one of those laws, handed down on ancient papyrus, is that, “Tailing fastballs, regardless of velocity and action, shall not — indeed, shan’t — saw off an aluminum bat.”

For eons, we as a stinking people have ordered our lives around this simple principle. Yesterday, however, our notions of the provably true and demonstrably false were beaten savagely about the head, neck, face, chest, and rascal basket. It turns out, given the proper confluence of absurd events, aluminum bats can, in point of fact, be obliterated by a hellbent two-seamer.

If that doesn’t send the physicists scurrying like a bunch of frightened Jason Tyners, then I don’t know what will.

(Tip of my newly vulnerable aluminum hat: Big League Stew)

A wise Jedi Master once said:

When you fall, apprentice, catch you I will.

I’m rooting for Josh Spence. You should be, too.

Nerd up: NotGraphs reader Buddy O. Indebted, we are.

He won’t be needing his old desktop computer anymore. Especially not that damn monitor.

Original image credit: Daily Dose of Imagery.