Archive for February, 2012

Assorted Notes on MLB.TV for 2012


Gerald Laird not included.

I was surprised to find, this afternoon, that the $119.99 I’d been saving for really expensive drinks tonight at a really exclusive club had been removed from my PayPal account, courtesy MLB Advanced Media. This maneuver is one that (a) I find slightly irksome and (b) is probably, at some level, technically my fault, owing to how there’s undoubtedly a box I’ve left checked somewhere in my account that gives MLBAM the right not only to withdraw funds from my PayPal account, but also to perform all manner of experimental medical procedures on my person.

Some cursory research on the product having been conducted, here are some other statements about this year’s iteration of MLB.TV that are probably not not true:

• MLB.TV Premium is listed at $124.99 per annum (with the basic MLB.TV package costing $109.99).

• This year, a subscription to MLB.TV Premium includes the At Bat app for iPhone. (Said app cost $14.99 last year.) This ensures that you can watch baseball even as your — or somebody else’s, if you’re into that — wife lay sleeping beside you.

• The spring training schedule for MLB.TV — which starts March 3rd and is available here — seems considerably more robust this season. In fact, I don’t know that there were any spring training games available via MLB.TV last year.

• A subscription to MLB.TV is required to view games on connected devices (i.e. PS3, Xbox 360, Roku, etc.).

• There actually is some (literally) fine print regarding the autorenewal process, to this effect: “Your yearly subscription to MLB.TV or MLB.TV Premium will automatically renew annually on or about March 1 each year at the prior year’s regular full yearly price.”


My Ottoneu Mixtape

I participated in my first ottoneu fantasy draft this past Sunday and Tuesday with various other members of the Fangraphs Illuminati, including my inimitable Notgraphs compatriot Robert J. Baumann. You can look at the list of transactions from our draft here, and both our commissioner Chad Young and Steve Slowinski have written intelligently about the draft over at Rotographs. I would like to write about the draft as well, but since I am not really a fantasy baseball expert, no one would or should trust my opinions about the draft. Nor would any of you probably care to read about my feelings regarding how I thought I’d be able to nab my main man Jason Heyward for like fifteen dollars and instead he went for TWENTY SEVEN (they are, in short: F%#^#%^)IREGJKDFG.)

What I AM an expert on — and what, to my great surprise, people seem to still be willing to listen to me talk about — are elaborate metaphors related to baseball that are really about something else entirely. Or, is it the other way around? In any case, I have long been of the mind that building a fantasy roster is about much more than simply getting the best deals and assembling a winning team — a mindset which has probably at least partially contributed to my fantasy efforts being mostly not all that successful, wherein success is measured by “winning.”
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Nickname Seeks Player: Vote on “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons”

Blood has been spilled by the point of a rogue’s knife. Mead, gruel and pipeweed have been consumed. Elvish maidens have been consensually ravished. Orcs have filibustered. Owlbears have cut a murderous swath through the streets of America. And so the nomination process is complete. You may choose — carefully and at great personal hazard, of course — from the following 10 names. Who, villagers of Zargmoranathtauften, should be nicknamed “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons”?


Thank you for exercising the franchise.


Item: Free Newspaper Game Accounts, 1897-1912

The Society for American Baseball Research has announced today that, owing to the diligence of one Mr. Jonathan Frankel, anyone with a cursory knowledge of the internet can access all manner of scanned game accounts from the earliest days of base-and-ball.

Frankel has uploaded to Google Docs scans of newspapers from 1897 to 1912 from the following cities: Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Louisville, New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis.

As you might expect — and decidedly through no fault of Frankel’s own — the quality of the papers is sometimes compromised, nor does every article scale the heights of Prose Mountain (a mountain that doesn’t exist, but which I have just invented for the purposes of a shit metaphor).

As you might also expect, there are some excellent moments, such as this excerpt from what appears to be the August 12th, 1911, edition of the Cleveland Leader — a passage that it is literally impossible to read aloud except in a Mid-Atlantic accent and while drinking scotch in Bert Sugar’s den.

The real test of a pitcher is his work in pinches. Barney Pelty stood the test. Three times Cleveland batters had the chance to put the spectators in a happy frame of mind and three times these batters ignominiously whiffed.

Below is an image of the paper from which that excerpt is taken. (Note: if clicking doesn’t lead to ample embiggening, attempt to right-click for the purposes of opening in a new window.)

Finder’s fee owed to Mr. Larry Granillo.


Elijah Dukes, Alleged Nosher of Pot

Former base ball-ist Elijah Dukes, whom various style books insist we refer to as “embattled,” has perhaps done something wonderful:

Tampa police pulled over Dukes’ orange Chevy Camaro for a routine traffic stop at Nebraska and Sligh avenues at 1:08 a.m. today, according to an arrest report.

When officers approached him, they saw flakes of marijuana on Dukes’ shirt, the report said. Dukes, 27, who played for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 2007, was also trying to eat a small bag of pot, police said.

Oh my. When something contains such multitudes as this and these, we are of course duty-bound …


Ask NotGraphs (#5)

Dear NotGraphs,

I’m a father to an 11-year-old baseball fan. Ryan Braun is on my keeper league fantasy team. I want to make the point that breaking the rules isn’t okay. I also want to win my fantasy league. What should I do?

Thanks,
T-ryan to Set an Example

Dear T-ryan,

Hopefully you’re in one of my leagues, in which case my advice is to trade him to the first team that gives you a halfway-decent offer. Or not even a halfway-decent offer. Adam Dunn or something like that. That seems fair. You should do that. I’ll even throw in Chone Figgins.

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Nickname Seeks Player: “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons”

What we do is assign cool nicknames to players rather than perpetuate the tired, lamewad practice of assigning cool players nicknames. Last time out, Mark Hamburger, to the disappointment of many, claimed the nickname “Gomez’s Hamburger.” So Mr. Hamburger — and not Malcolm Clapsaddle, whom taste and horse-sense would seem to endorse — has been added to our Hall of Honouur, which is so stately, so regal, so much itself a celebration of the Norman Conquest, that an extra British-English unstressed “u” is required for proper spelling …

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Two Rays and Their Faces

Embedded belowly, courtesy of Big League Stew, is a noteworthy image of Rays GM Andrew Friedman, Rays manager Joe Maddon and their evocative faces. Regard:

Mr. Friedman’s facial bestowals in this daguerreotype are commonly referred to as “Peyton Manning Is Vaguely Dyspeptic Regarding Football Events,” while Mr. Maddon is mugging what face enthusiasts call the “Golly Amazing Fuck You.”


A Tweet By Trevor Plouffe, Illustrated

When Trevor Plouffe updated us on Joe Mauer circa 2012, I knew something had gone horribly wrong. Here’s my depiction of the sentiment therein.

Do y’all think vampirism is a PED?


True Facts: Five Rejected Baseball-Themed Cereals

The Detroit Free Press is reporting today that Cy Young and MVP-award winner Justin Verlander will adorn the box of his very own cereal. Proceeds of Verlander’s Fastball Flakes, manufactured by Pittsburgh-based PLB Sports, will benefit VA Hospitals in Detroit and Ann Arbor.

What other designs did PLB consider before giving the go-ahead to Verlander’s cereal? Our Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has acquired that information, and shares it now with you, in easy-to-read English™.

Here are five baseball-themed cereals that PLB won’t be making:

Name: Tony Plush’s Cereal Grains for Gentlemen
Rejected Because: Manufacturers were concerned about public reaction to suggestion that single-malt scotch is “part of a complete breakfast.”

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