This post contains no analysis.

I just traded Lincecum off my fantasy team.

It’s hard to know if I won the trade or lost it, because my fantasy league has keeper rules that are too complicated for me to understand. We’re allowed 4 one-year and 2 two-year contracts per year, at a 10% premium per year to auction price (so a $30 player is $33 in year n+1 and $36 in year n+2). For a while, we’ve been allowed to trade contracts, assigned or unassigned, and also up to $25 of next year’s auction money (out of $305). Starting this year– in an attempt to curb some of the extreme dumping that has taken place in recent years (close to the trade deadline, the teams out of contention would unload their superstars to the highest bidder, and the $25 might end up buying a bunch of real difference-makers– making it very difficult for even an excellent team to win without making major sacrifices to the following year’s chances)– there’s now a salary cap of sorts, where a team can’t deviate by more than $75 from auction day values (so you can only dump net $75 worth of superstars, basically), the auction money trade limit has been lowered to $15, players can’t be sold solely for cash anymore (players must be exchanged on both sides), and unassigned contracts can’t be traded on their own.

(If you’re following this, maybe you want to take over my team?)

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The tip came in Monday afternoon:

The evidence, courtesy of Mark Duncan at The Associated Press (go on, embiggen):

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There are days when the internet doesn’t provide much joy and I start to think maybe I’m spending too much time in front of a computer screen — that I need to learn more about the different species of birds in my area or maybe finally learn to do a cartwheel or something. Then days like today happen, and I know that I was wrong about the internet. She loves us, she provides for us, and she brings us what we demand:

1. How Many Altuves? is a website designed to measure things in Altuves, which is how I will be measuring everything in my life from now on. For the record, a blue whale is 14.76 Altuves, my couch is 1.66 Altuves, and a trip around the bases is 66.46 Altuves. My heart is an infinite number of Altuves, running like hamsters on a wheel and keeping the blood running through my veins.
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In belated honor of Memorial Day (sorry Canadians!) . . .
 
Chad Harbach wrote a “Great American Novel” about America’s pastime. Or, at least he wrote “a big American novel of the old school” that has been very well-received. Now, The Art of Fielding is going to be made into an HBO series.

That fact, to me, begs the question: Who will play the parts of the main characters?

While a couple of my previous posts have addressed which actors would play which players in the not-yet-for-real MLB: The Movie, I thought it might be more interesting this time around to consider which players are best suited to play the characters in the novel.

 
Mike Schwartz: Schwartzy is a bulky catcher who grows a beard. He’s intensely motivational, more the coach of the Westish Harpooners than the actual coach. He’s not the best player, but he pulls his weight, and he makes other players on the team reach their potential, and keeps them motivated. He’s also addicted to painkillers.

Because I cannot go a day without googling Mike Napoli, he’s the first one that sprung to mind here. But while Nap-Dogg is a good body comp for Schwartzy (bulky, bearded catcher), he doesn’t match up with the character’s character: that of a motivational manager-in-waiting. Then, after googling “most selfless player baseball,” I kicked myself, because the first player to pop up (after an ironic reference to Alex Rodriguez) was Jason Varitek (also a bearded catcher), of whom Curt Schilling said, “In my 23 years of professional baseball I never played with or against a more selfless and prepared player….” That’s Schwartzy in a nutshell.
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What follows is a table containing all 26 major-league teams from 1991 and their corresponding broadcast networks — both the over-the-air (OTA) and cable varieties.

Why anyone would compile such a list* is likely a bit mysterious to the reader. In point of fact, it’s mysterious to the author, as well.

*Via the individual 1991 team pages at Wikipedia, it should be mentioned.

The reason I began compiling it — this past Sunday, on my couch, sweating in ways that shouldn’t be swat in — is because I had some intention of finding visual artifacts like the one at the top of this post. What such videos lack in aesthetic virtue, they make up for by reminding us that sideburns of any description were, at one point, illegal in this country.

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Jonathan Lucroy was placed on the DL this weekend after a suitcase fell on his hand.

Lucroy told Adam McCalvy of MLB.com that he was “reaching under his hotel bed Sunday night for a lost sock when his wife shifted a suitcase, which fell on Lucroy’s hand.”

According to Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, X-rays revealed Lucroy had suffered a broken hand and will miss four to six weeks.

His injury, of course, brings to mind a number of suitcase injuries of the past:

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We caught up with robot expert, rapper and part-time chicken enthusiast Kool Keith and picked his brain about the robot umpires that are surely on their way to baseball. What follows is a summary of his expertise on the subject, with commentary.

• Voicemail, pagers / These are the things that robots carry

Anything as arcane as pagers is possible in the backwaters of Major League Baseball, although why they would need to carry voicemail is an open question.

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I threw this into a draft post three weeks ago when it happened, and never posted it. As Tejada prepares to return from the DL, I thought it might still be appropriate to share. I could try and find a way to relate this to Memorial Day, or I could just post it. So here it is. Ouch.

Courtesy of Michael Baron’s Twitter feed.

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Or perhaps you’d prefer the GIF, courtesy of soccerkevin11.

Ouch.

Last June, NotGraphs released exclusive footage of the Phillie Phanatic having his way with a young human woman at Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park.

Indications are that the incident in question was not, as previously suspected, an isolated one. Today, in fact, NotGraphs has uncovered video believed to be from 1986 that, while grainy, clearly depicts the Phanatic abducting a Philadelphia-area woman, from her home, via the television.

A call to the Philadelphia Phillies was not returned. More on this story as it develops.

I scarcely need to remind you of this unfading chestnut — one applicable not only to baseball but also to a gentleman’s efforts in office-gym-bedroom — but it’s something else entirely for Jose Mota, he of august counsel and lapels laid flat like a willing czarina, to deliver it to us:

And since Sales Professionals Who Hit Their Numbers prefer wisdom in the medium of inspiring office posters …

(HT: My man)