What was that you were saying again.

Walk up the first base side of the 100 level at ATT Park and you spot the premium brew stands every once in a while. Sierra Nevada. Heineken. Anchor Steam. Blue Moon. Meh. Better than the alternatives but nothing to really pen the proverbial letter home (or beer review) about.

Turn the corner towards the outfield and your appraisal of the park shifts more positive immediately. For one, you’re looking out at the bay, down at McCovey Cove. And then you scan left and you get a view like the cameraphone snapshot above. Does it really matter what beer you have in your hand when appreciating that view?

Read the rest of this entry »

Jeff Francoeur’s crazy eyes have charmed, mesmerized, and terrified the masses for years. In (belated) recognition of Jeff Francoeur’s memorable 1000th hit, here is their NotGraphs debut:

This picture, courtesy of Minda Haas, was taken at the Royals’ off-season Fan Fest. It is perhaps the most chilling photo of Frenchy’s soul-windows yet. What could possibly be going through his mind?

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I wrote a series of fairly meaningless words about a largely forgotten group of men who, at one point or another in their lives, had baseball cards made of them. In my original draft, one of these players was Chris Brown, former all-star third baseman of the San Francisco Giants. He’d led the league in being hit by pitches in 1986, and I thought, hey, free Chris Brown joke, sort of. Once I discovered that Brown the Athlete had actually passed away several years ago in an unfortunate incident, I scrapped the joke and replaced him at the last minute with the least record-setting name I could think of, one who happened to be involved in a trade for the very same Chris Brown. That name was Craig Lindsay Lefferts.

It seemed a safe choice: he played the most obscure position in baseball, left-handed reliever, and he wielded (past tense, sadly) a healthy if ubiquitous eighties mustache. He also spent most of his career playing for the Padres and Giants, two west-coast teams with occasional success and similar orange logos. To be perfectly honest, if you’d asked me two weeks ago who Craig Lefferts was, I would have told you he was Tom Niedenfuer.

But as I learned, Craig Lefferts is not the Platonic form of the left-handed reliever I assumed he was. Craig Lefferts is instead the Platonic form of all Craig Leffertses: the perfect example of what it is to be a Craig Lefferts, and the one by which all others are reflected as mere shadows. To generalize him is an injustice; he, like each of us, is so much more.

Given these things, I’d like to share a few Entirely True Facts about the aforementioned:

Read the rest of this entry »

Jobs, not to be confused with: Job, the Book of.

Presently, 1 out of every 10 Americans is looking for full-time employment; and, presumably, 5 out of every 10 NotGrapher is looking for full-time employment to prove to mom that, yes, I can indeed pay you the damn rent some way other than selling my Pokemon card collection one precious Charizard at a time.

Well, recent reports indicate one can actually make money from the sport of baseball without twirling balls or swinging sticks. To test this theory, we suggest any and all seeking-full-time-employment NotGraphers to consider the following job openings across the MLB:

Baltimore Orioles — Corporate Sales and Sponsorship Intern
Live in the Baltimore area? Tired of getting pushed around by Omar Little? Well, the Orioles have an internship that may just offer you a chance to rise up out of the gritty, realistic mire that is Baltimore Life.

From what we can glean from the internship description, the prospective intern will need to be a present student of not-unintelligent quality (3.0 GPA or higher) and available for full-time hours from February through May. Prior experience with a double-action Police-issued revolver not required.
Read the rest of this entry »

Back in July, Navin alerted NotGraphs readers to an exciting new baseball meme that was sweeping the web.

This image of Orioles third baseman Mark Reynolds snacking on sunflower seeds as David Ortiz rounded the bases after hitting a home run spawned numerous quite funny photoshops over at the Orioles Hangout message board.

Well, last night we got our first evidence that the “Complacent Reynolds” is beginning to take hold among other Major League third basemen.

Behold:

That is Astros third baseman Jimmy Paredes striking the pose as Brewers catcher George Kottaras — who, by the way, became the first player to hit for the cycle this season — trots home after his solo shot.

In the coming weeks we shall see if this is simply a coincidence, or if the “Complacent Reynolds” is, in fact, on its way to becoming the baseball version of “planking.”

NotGraphs calls on readers to be on the lookout for other players taking part in this fad and to address any photographic evidence to our hot hotline — not+tips (at) fangraphs (dot) com.

Click to Gordon your Beckham.

Since the last time we visited the NL Central through the prism of the animal kingdom, things have changed without actually changing all that much. By that I mean, the Cardinals enjoyed a spirits-buoying sweep in Milwaukee, but their odds of making all of this worth anyone’s while continue to hover around the stupid-face 1% mark. In other words, the Brewers are still going to win the NL Central despite this week’s happenings and at great hazard to the Republic.

With that said, those Brewers, presumptive and future NL Central champs, may have felt a little something recently. Clicky-click!

You shall win this thing that we both covet, Brewers, but you shall carry the wounds of war with you always.

(Playful bite: IHC)

Tonight, as I was watching my beloved Phillies take on the Marlins at Sun Life Stadium I noticed something awry with MLB.com’s normally excellent Gameday application.

I call the attention of the NotGraphs jury to the below screencap:

Read the rest of this entry »

For those of us who prefer altered states of consciousness, in which awesome things are even more awesome and awful things are not half-bad at the moment, to soulless arbitraging, today is a good day …

It’s the best rivalry in media softball: the notorious potsmokers vs. the financial power brokers. High Times swept the season series with Wall St. Journal Thursday, eking out victory in the 11th inning and making themselves favorites in the upcoming NYMSL playoffs.

The resin at the bottom of the bowl — now that’s my kind of derivative! Amiright?!

Jung Bong!

In my last post, I gave you my early picks in each league for the extremely uncoveted Least Valuable Player award. Today we take a look at my Top 4 picks in each league for the equally uncoveted Sigh Young Award, honoring those courageous men who put their elbows, shoulders, and faces on the line every day for your entertainment.

Let’s jump right in.

AL Sigh Young:

1. Brad Penny 

While Brad Penny’s inability to get strikeouts (3.74 K/9) doesn’t do him any favors against Major League hitters, it has apparently been a blessing in his dealings with members of the opposite sex. If she is in showbusiness and she is attractive, Brad Penny has probably been with her at some point.

I don’t understand it. He’s Brad freakin’ Penny. Which is to say: they can’t be with him because of his pitching abilities and they can’t be with him because of his looks (unless he has cornered to market on women who are into guys that look like ogres). There must be some piece of this puzzle that is missing. Fangraphs has a stat called E-F, which measures the difference between a pitcher’s ERA and FIP — a shorthand way of determining whether a pitcher has been lucky or unlucky. I would like to propose a new stat: E-D, or, ERA minus desirability of the pitcher’s significant other (on a 1-10 scale with 1 being most desirable and 10 being least desirable). Brad Penny currently has a 4.07 E-D. Brad Penny is getting extremely lucky. This run is almost certainly unsustainable.

Read the rest of this entry »