It’s Thanksgiving Day here in Americaworld, a day to pause, reflect, and listen to people complain about the football game everyone else is enjoying. Here in Seattle, being thankful is a particularly simple task, considering that Mariners GM Jack Zduriencek gave the city the gift of Figginslessness this year. Yesterday, the sun even broke through the clouds for the first time in weeks, proving that nature herself can be a little heavy-handed at times.

It would be all to easy to heap additional scorn onto our diminutive disappointment. Instead, I’m going to do the opposite. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I want to thank Chone Figgins.

I want to thank his bleary, myopic, failure-soaked eyes, eyes that looked past us and saw only the visualization of future success.

I want to thank his crumbling, bloodstained contract. He earned and will continue to earn nine million dollars per year, the equivalent of two or two and a half wins. He fell somewhat short of these benchmarks, to put it charitably. His ineptitude became the symbol for a franchise that seemed to do almost everything right and have it come out wrong.

The Mariners have not been three wins a season from contending. The issues have been manifold: Ichiro’s inevitable decline, the bloated corpse of Ken Griffey, Jr., Franklin Gutierrez’s extended episode of House. It was a bleakness that was different than the usual Mariners bleakness, because there was never any real target for blame: it wasn’t a spendthrift owner or a helplessly unqualified general manager to point fingers at. The moves looked good on paper. But we always had Chone Figgins.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Hollywood, CA — News has begun to surface regarding a new film based on the 1975 Cincinnati Reds. Sources confirm that Warner Bros has reached a deal with Joe Posnanski to option his book The Big Red Machine into a feature film.

The film will be a joint effort, as Warner plans to parlay a deal with the Hasbro board game company into this film by including influences of the game Mouse Trap. It appears as if Warner is looking to cash in on the recent successes of both the Moneyball film and the board-game-to-film adaptation of Battleship. Hasbro has also recently optioned the rights to its game Hungry Hungry Hippos for film.

The Big Red Machine will focus on the eight non-pitchers that powered the Reds’ famous offense of 1975. Each player will be depicted by a different component of the Rube Goldberg-like contraption used in Mouse Trap. The cast will include:

Joe Morgan – The Crank

Dave Concepcion – The Boot

George Foster – The Marble

Tony Perez – The Ball

Johhny Bench – The Tub

Pete Rose – The Man

Ken Griffey – The Pan

Cesar Geronimo – The Net

The NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has acquired – through means not illegal, but not really legal, if you know what I mean – a rough copy of the trailer for The Big Red Machine featuring original footage from the board game’s classic commercial from the 1980s.

Mr. Posnanski was not available for comment, as I was too embarrassed to contact him.

With the advent of the offseason, FanGraphs writers Dave Cameron and Bill Petti have resumed their roles as guests on MLB Network’s Clubhouse Confidential, hosted by the vigorously coiffed Brian Kenny.

Dave Cameron’s lack of blinking has been covered with considerable enthusiasm in these electronic pages — most recently last week, in a Nerd Showdown between Cameron and noted Giant of the Internet Rob Neyer.

Monday saw Petti’s return to the sexy Clubhouse. Below is the data concerning his blinking patterns.

Read the rest of this entry »

“Baseball Joe” was the star of a series of novels written by “Lester Chadwick.” “Lester Chadwick” wasn’t his real name, but when he wasn’t writing “Baseball Joe” books he was writing “Bobbsey Twins” books, so a little differentiation was needed. Then again, the “Baseball Joe” writer and the “Bobbsey Twins” writer might not have been one and the same, and for that matter the purported “Baseball Joe” writer might not have written “Baseball Joe” at all, so I’m not sure where that leaves us, except with a dawning appreciation of the fluid nature of authorship, and perhaps personhood, in early twentieth century popular culture.

Read the rest of this entry »

In order to more fully understand the Commissioner’s reasoning, I have used Google’s powerful language tools to translate his statement from English into Japanese, then Czech, then Hebrew, then Vietnamese, then Afrikaans, then Russian, then Arabic, then Welsh, then back to English:

Since Tuesday, I have an agreement between the Miami Marlins and Toronto Blue Jay to be considered carefully. Welfare Division I baseball and our agreements for such transactions. I also have a contribution to participate in the transaction in the past, and consult with an experienced baseball operations.

Not after careful analysis of this information, including the prospects and young players and high reputation, and established the National Society, and the project agreement Baseball Club Baseball League 2 is consistent with the reliability current rules restrict what deductive, and is designed to improve the energy performance of all teams finish in time to avoid the same, of course, all transactions should be connected now or in the future in order to improve the ability of competitive and reasonable, but if any fans

“I understand, to hear from baseball on Tuesday, and I completely and organizations in the field of corporate social responsibility and social importance, and are sensitive to the interests of the masses of Bmarlins Miami this agreement, the club, and event value of our efforts to account Marlins Marlins rather than the information in the future together we beautiful part of the Miami community, to look forward to, to feel the force will continue to assess the situation under control, to fulfill the promise of ownership Marlins, they share this belief, it is committed to creating long-term team can be proud of its fans altogether.

Ah, now I get it.

I have taken the necessary and gravely belated step of petitioning the federal government to imprison Carson Cistulli for treason. To make this happen, we need your voice …

I have no doubt that deep-cover communists with work to undermine the will of people, so please do sign the petition while you still can.

RotoGraphs editor Eno Sarris has demonstrated — during any number of appearances on FanGraphs Audio and/or VIP-type meetings among the site’s VIP-type managers — has demonstrated a singular ability to mispronounce every name there is, mostly.

With the existence of said ability having been established, NotGraphs presents here an excerpt from Sarris’s Entirely Unhelpful Guide to the Pronunciation of Certain Baseballers’ Names — with audio clips of Sarris himself abusing the spoken language much like one might a disobedient horse.

While we make no effort here to say what the right pronunciations are of the following prospects’ names, we will say that all of Sarris’s attempts are very likely wrong.

Read the rest of this entry »

Cap Anson is factually a Hall of Famer, but in a day when everyone was a racist, Anson still managed to distinguish himself on this front. He did so by refusing to take the field against any but the most porcelain-skinned of competitors. He was also, according to contemporary reportage, a huge asshole in other regards.

So today I, in Lance Ito fashion, sit in solemn judgment of Mr. Anson. Mr. Anson, you are a baseball rogue and a stain upon this game’s great history. What follows is your punishment …

Mr. Anson, not only were you a rank bigot who stood athwart progress and equality, but you were also, according to the testimony of the above coffee mug, the World’s Worst Grandpa.

Get the hell out of my courtroom, Cap Anson.

Something happened to me today.

First I woke up and went into my kitchen. My kitchen, usually it is a happy place for me. Yes, haha, you are thinking, “Miggy likes to eat! Sometimes his jeans make him look so pudgy! Of course he loves the kitchen.”

Well, yes, I love to eat, but my kitchen has only good things for me to eat now. To play third base for the Detroit Tigers I need to be fit and so I eat good things. Lean meats, raw vegetables or steamed ones, mango smoothies, many fruit smoothies — sometimes one cookie at night if I hit a homerun. A cookie per homerun, Miguel, I tell myself. Uncle Burgos says that is why I hit so many homeruns this year.

It was very sad to me when I decided to not eat arepas, which are delicious fried pouches of fatty meats and cheese. My jeans do not like them, but I like them, but I like playing for the Tigers, third base, very much, and so I chose to stop arepas. At first I thought, Maybe I will just cook them to smell them; surely, that will satisfy me and then I can eat plants. I told myself I would cook the arepas, smell them, then feed them to Fuffenduke (he is my dog).

Read the rest of this entry »