As noted in these pages last week, I recently purchased A Baseball Winter: The Off-Season Life of the Summer Game, a day-by-day account — edited by Terry Pluto and Jeffrey Neuman — of the 1984-85 offseason of five clubs: the New York Mets, the California Angels, the Atlanta Braves, the Philadelphia Phillies, and the Cleveland Indians.

As also noted, the book is written in a very compact, diary-like* format, which makes for an urgency, a feeling of being present, that’s very pleasant.

*Diary-esque? Diary-y? Is there an adjectival form of diary?

Here are some note on what I’ve read.

Contracts
Free agency was still a newish concept in 1984-85, and it’s clear from this text that a number of teams didn’t understand particularly well the level of risk associated with signing players — and particularly pitchers — to long-term contracts.

Consider some examples:

• Atlanta, led enthusiastically by owner Ted Turner, signed 32-year-old reliever Bruce Sutter to a six-year, $6.75 million deal — or, $1.125 million per year. A marginal win cost about $330 thousand in 1985, meaning $1 million ought to have bought ca. three wins above replacement. Sutter’s signing came after a precipitous drop in his strikeout rates, from the high-20% area in 1977-79 to about 16% in 1983-84. He would have had to produce roughly 20 wins to earn his contract. In fact, he produced 0.2 of them — wins, that is. His WPA over that same span was -3.79.

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Puffery, via ESPN, The Life:

The Life: We’re told you’re a pretty serious Atlanta Braves fan. Can you prove it? Do you know Chipper Jones‘ real name?

Harris: Larry. I thought I was being tested. This is a test?

The Life: You passed. You really are a baseball fan.

Apparel for a real fan of a real baseball fan.

Knowing Chipper Jones’s real first name makes one a real baseball fan.

For those of you who did not know that, you are not real fans, and you are really banished from FanGraphs.com and all its subsidiaries, henceforth. Because FanGraphs is for real baseball fans only.

If you were not on this fishing trip with Chipper, consider yourself not a real baseball fan.

But, so banished, if you happen to be a real fan of graphs, you can type the name of the man who invented graphs in the comment section, whereupon you will be dubbed a SuperNerd and not only be welcomed back to the FanGraphs community with open arms, but also have Filet-o-Fish sandwiches and Peanut M&Ms dangled into your mouth while being fanned with palm fronds by the HotNotGrapher of your choice. (The choice, of course, is a formality; anyone would pick a Gym-Shorted Carson Cistulli.)

At 1:07 AM Eastern Time, friend of the site Yirmiyahu emailed us with this urgent query:

So, who the hell is Willians Astudillo? He’s lead the minors in lowest K rate for 3 consecutive years (0.9%, 1.8%, 4.8%). How are those numbers possible? Does he bunt every single time? Another fun fact: he’s played multiple games at 7 different positions.

Unfortunately, the internet doesn’t seem to know anything at all about this guy except for his stats pages. Seriously, I’m fascinated. If your sources cannot reveal any information about this guy, it’s your duty to make some shit up.

A quick look at Astudillo’s Fangraphs page reveals that he is indeed very good at not striking out. In three seasons with the Phillies Venezuelan Summer League team, Astudillo has struck out 16 times over 648 plate appearances. Better yet, after striking out 10 times in 2009 VSL play, he struck out just 4 times in 2010, and then 2 times last year. So, if the pattern holds this year, he is due to strike out between 0 and 1 times. That is indeed pretty remarkable.

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Over the weekend, an anonymous — and very disgruntled — employee of the New York Metropolitans took part in New York Magazine’s feature, “A Workplace Confidential.” No punches were pulled. Witness:

It’s really sad to see what the Mets have become: A great franchise, on the biggest stage in sports, is now a laughingstock. Ownership is trying to turn the Mets, a big-market franchise, into a small-market franchise. That’s not just sad, it’s disgusting.

You know what I think when I read about the Mets nowadays? We’ve become the Oakland A’s. We’re the Pittsburgh Pirates. Our fans deserve better than that. You can’t possibly build a dynasty when you’re cutting costs left and right. The only way to turn it around is to sell the team.

Nobody wants to be compared to the A’s. Or the Pirates. Especially not the Pirates. I mean, at least the A’s have Moneyball, a 20-game win streak, the playoffs, and a feature film starring Brad Pitt. The Pirates have nothing save for PNC Park. And Andrew McCutchen. But back to the Mets. It gets worse. Prepare to say goodbye to David Wright:

Reyes and David Wright were the heart of that team. Those were the guys the Mets had to build around. But now that Reyes is in Miami, Wright will be traded by the All-Star break. If they’re going to run this like a small-market team, that’s the way it’s going to unfold. If I’m David Wright, I’d want to be gone.

That’s because it’s going to be a long summer–you’re talking about last place. It’s a tough division all of a sudden. Who do we have that’s going to beat Stephen Strasburg or Cliff Lee? Who’s going to match up against Tim Hudson or Tommy Hanson? We won’t even be able to beat Mark Buehrle. Everyone in the division has at least one big weapon that we don’t have.

And all of a sudden, I’m looking forward to watching Mark Buehrle face the Mets.

Anyway, after spending almost all of Monday morning, afternoon, and night on the phone, exhausting all our sources, the resolute NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has personally informed me that they’ve confirmed the identity of New York Magazine’s anonymous writer: Mr. Met.

When I reached Mr. Met for comment, he initially denied that he’d written the piece:

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Baseball, besides providing us with boundless joy and Things to Talk about with The Stern and Distant Fathers of America, also lays out before us the full complement of modern eyebrow styles. Let us now see to the essential business of identifying and naming those styles …

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“Nama biru” is Japanese for “draft beer.”

Go to Jingu Stadium in Tokyo for a game — it’ll cost you half as much as the Tokyo Dome, and you’ll get to see the same game.

You know what will stick with you? The little things. You see, they have baseball in Tokyo, but they don’t call it that. They call it basebaru. Same thing, but a little different. Maybe it’s the metric system, or maybe it’s just society.

The beer experience fits right in — baseball with a little dash of shoyu.

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This video footage of Phil Rizzuto maniacally sawing a live woman in half represents only one of roughly 800 video spots the late Yankee shortstop and broadcaster did for consumer financiers The Money Store in the late 1980s and early ’90s — i.e. at precisely the same time giants of rap N.W.A. very-not-coincidentally released their single “Gangsta Gangsta”.

Next week, we’ll look at Rizzuto’s spokeswork for noted clothier American Apparel.

We have long known that R.A. Dickey and The Marshall Tucker Band occupy an almost identical space in the public imagination, yet few — if any — attempts have been made to make their similarities clear.

Let NotGraphs handles this bidness.

1. They are both going to climb the highest mountain. (Or, at least, highest-ish.)

2. In both cases, women appear to be the impetus for the climbing of said mountain.

3. They both have their names emblazoned in gold thread on the ass pocket of their respective dungaree pants.

Fin.

Howdy, folks. It’s that time of year again, when the BWABBA entrusts me to be one of the proud voters for the Baseball Hall o’ Fame. The ballot instructions are clear: “Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.” Some voters like to assign numbers to each of those categories and do some sort of math thing. Even if I knew how to use a calculator, which I don’t, I don’t think you can decide the value of anything based on a number. That would be like going into a restaurant and choosing your meal based on the price. I don’t want to know what food costs. I just want to eat it. That, my friends, is a J.G. Taylor Spunk Award-winning analogy, which is why I know I’m in line to make it into that Hall one day for my writin’ ablilities. The Spunk Award will one day be mine. Where were we now? Oh, yes, the ballot. Here we go.

A lot of talk this year about BARRY LARKIN. I don’t really understand it. Did he bat .300? Nope. Career .295. I don’t want to dilute my hall with people who couldn’t get a hit at least 300 out of every… wait, how do we do the batting average again? 300 hits out of every 100 times at bat. Yeah, that sounds right. So, .295, which is like 500 fewer hits every season… I say no. Besides, he didn’t even come close to that magic number of 300 wins. He had, um, I think it’s zero. So, it’s a no. Although I will revisit next year if we find out he did drugs or something. That might explain the shortfall and give me a reason to vote for him.

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As you may have noticed, there is no baseball here. There is, however, baseball’s older, slightly more distinguished and certainly more long-winded cousin. So please go here and watch a video of a rather amazing cricket catch that defies both belief and efforts to embed. Is it a “catch,” or do they have some rather very cricketty word for it like “capture” or “glom” or “Bonnie Prince Ensnarement”?

In any event, if this cricket video sustains even a single base-and-ball fan through this pointless respite, then the entire breadth of British colonialism will have been worth it.

There is no baseball here, but there are things somewhat like baseball somewhere.