Did something kinda disgusting, actually — while you were probably sleeping — to a Shawn Kelley slidepiece.

To wit:

Matt Kemp — Chevalier Matt Kemp — wears what appears to be a double-windsor knot. He does this because he is a gentleman. He is festooned with a pocket square. On occasion, he uses it to wash his hands of the entire affair. He is not a frequenter of locally sourced whores. This is because he need not pay for the hubba-hubba.

Chevalier Matt Kemp is paid millions for being good at baseball. But even if he were not good at baseball, he would make the same amount of lucre from various wealthy patrons of the gorgeous and obliging.

Chevalier Matt Kemp is Business Handsome.

In the Admiral’s Clubs of America’s hub airports those who travel for the love of the transaction are seeing Chevalier Matt Kemp on the cover of this, the magazine of choice for the toads of American balance sheets and the pallid, doughy bodies in which they are encased.

Chevalier Matt Kemp is not of them, and Chevalier Matt Kemp is not among them. He dips his balls in their beggared habits.

Chevalier Matt Kemp is Business Handsome.

To celebrate “opening day that isn’t really opening day or is it?” over in Japan, a commemorative hand-drawn portrait of the player I will not be drawing for Every Hall of Famer who I think deserves it the most — Sadaharu Oh!

As per always, dear readers, click to embiggen:

Courtesy of Baseball Think Factory, it seems that film score composer John Williams (Star Wars, E.T., Schindler’s List, Home Alone) has composed a theme song for the Red Sox, called “Fanfare for Fenway.”

Contrast with the Mets’ new theme song. (Link not safe for, uh, anybody who has eaten recently. Sorry.)

(click for reasons related to embiggening)

It’s an epidemic. It’s also Brandon Inge and a screencap from last year. Minor League Guy, the prequel.

(h/t @suss2hyphens)

Table of Contents

Here’s what’s in today’s edition of (Not Quite) Daily Dotes:

1. People Who Jamie Moyer Is Older Than
2. Kevin Youkilis Wears Big League Chew Shirt
3. D’Backs “Unveil” Rotation

People Who Jamie Moyer Is Older Than

Thanks to this article, which was posted to the message board of one of my fantasy leagues by the league’s commissioner, I spent too much time this morning looking at celebrity birthdays to see who Jamie Moyer is older than now. For the purposes of creating a list that wouldn’t drive us all insane, I limited myself to people born in 1963 (Moyer was born 11/18/1962) and I mostly stuck to pro athletes who played in the United States, with a sprinkling others for context.

Jamie Moyer, probably to be played by Chris Cooper in MLB: The Movie.

It was fascinating to see how many baseball players especially that had fallen out of my ready frame of reference — i.e. that I consider relics of a previous era in MLB/pro sports — of whom Jamie Moyer was a contemporary. Here’s a short list of people who Moyer is older than:
Read the rest of this entry »

2012 Outlook: 20 (31st)

With holdovers from last year like Brian Roberts, Chase Utley, Magglio Ordonez, Michael Wuertz, Rickey Henderson, and Gaylord Perry, it’s bound to be a long season. Rookies like Melvin Mora’s quintuplets aren’t close to contributing. Besides, spotty recent Internet service means lineup changes may not happen regularly, and a commitment to focusing on things other than fantasy baseball means that significant trade activity is unlikely. For this season, there are very few teams with less hope.

2013+ Outlook: 20 (31st)

Next year, it’s not looking any better. Although the 34-year Gaylord Perry contract will finally (!) be off the books, the decision to extend Chipper Jones this spring means that even before the draft, the team will already be at a disadvantage. The minor league system is completely barren, mostly due to the lack of a minor league system in the league’s settings, but, still, the rules can’t take all of the blame. And for 2014 and beyond, there’s literally nobody on this team.

Financial Resources: 20 (31st)

My check bounced. It’s tough to admit it, but I wasn’t keeping good checkbook records, and I thought I had enough in my account to cover the yearly fee… but I didn’t. Which, combined with new austerity measures, limited budget for website subscriptions and pre-season annuals, and lack of ink in the toner cartridge, puts me at the bottom of the rankings in this category as well.

Baseball Operations: 20 (31st)

It’s a distracted front office, with many non-baseball demands, including the dishes in the sink and the laundry in the hamper, and, no, I don’t know why there’s that much dust under the bed. No recent investments in new technology, and the mass resignation of the fleet of unpaid interns who had expected more hands-on work have made the team office a shell of what it could be. It’s hard to imagine worse than setting lineups on a first-generation BlackBerry and using a generic spreadsheet program to prepare for the auction because we couldn’t spring for Excel.

Overall: 20 (31st)

For every positive about this team– and there are none– there are an undefined number of negatives. The current team has something like ten outfielders but no active pitchers. There’s a pile of old Baseball Prospectus annuals, but are any of them from the past six seasons? There’s plenty of charge in the BlackBerry, but there are no baseball-related applications on it. There might be light at the end of the tunnel, if I win the battle for a new stadium, er, home office, but that doesn’t seem likely. There’s really nowhere to go but up, but there’s no reason to think there will be any movement in that direction anytime soon. Another decade of last place finishes seems inevitable.

You think you know where you work. You think you know what FanGraphs is all about. And then you’re trolling google and this pops out of the old interweb machine.

FanGraphs: Purveyor of the Finest Coco Crisp News.

What about the Dark Overlord? Is he hiding something? How about the rest of our staff?

Read the rest of this entry »

Table of Contents

Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of (Not Quite) Daily Dotes, in which several situations are misdiagnosed, using the definition of “dote”:

3. A piece of folly. . . . Obs.

1. Diagnosed: Carlos Gomez
2. Diagnosed: Chipper Jones
3. Diagnosed: Ozzie Guillen

Diagnosed: Carlos Gomez

White stool was the first indication of larger problems for Gomez.
Kyle Terada-US PRESSWIRE

Read the rest of this entry »

I want to emphasize that this idea was very, very funny in my head.

Read the rest of this entry »