As you probably already know, FanGraphs+ is back for 2013 and better than ever, with more than a thousand player capsules, special articles written by smart people, and fantasy advice adjusted for both standard and Ottoneu leagues. What you may not know is that FanGraphs is also rolling out another new product: FanGraphs-.

Like ERA-, FIP-, and SIERA-, FanGraphs- is league adjusted. What this means is that the thoughtful analysis and baseball news you crave has been adjusted for your own fantasy league, one in which you are doomed to continue your lifelong streak of disappointment and failure. Player capsules will carry helpful advice; however, that advice, being designed for you personally, will be tinged with regret and will serve to make you doubt yourself in every choice that you make. Here are a couple of examples:
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If you thought the Yuniesky Betancourt news was huge…

While the pundits may have already handed the National League East crown to Washington or the newly double-Upton’d Atlanta club, the Philadelphia Phillies are not going to go quietly into the night. While Ruben Amaro may not have made the sort of suprise-Cliff-Lee signing splash so far this season, observers knew something was up when he first acquired Rangers Legend Michael Young to play third and Delmon Young, who was a top prospect as recently as some current college seniors were in high school. Seeing the rival club from Georgia taking advantage of brotherly love, well, that was just too much for Amaro to take. There was only one possible course of action. This leaked 2013 promo poster (exclusive to NotGraphs) tells the tale:

Phillies General Manager Ruben Amaro is quite confident:

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Frank Thomas has always maintained he never took steroids and for the most part, he’s been one of the few sluggers from the steroid era who is believed to be clean. Wednesday, in an interview on 670 The Score’s Boers & Bernstein Show, Thomas said he “had no idea” steroids were being used as much as they were. “I’ll be honest with you. It was a secret society,” Thomas said. “I had no idea.”
— CBS Chicago

and

US President George W. Bush discussed Iraq, the November elections and the war on terrorism in an interview broadcast Sunday [Feb. 8, 2004] but laughingly stonewalled a question about his university secret society. “It’s so secret, we can’t talk about it,” he told NBC television when asked about the fact that both he and the Democratic frontrunner, Senator John Kerry, are members of Yale University’s Skull and Bones.

Logical conclusion: George Bush and John Kerry used steroids.

I recently encountered a new means of writing poetry. The method is simple: Collect several disparate magazines; cut out some phrases. Don’t have a plan. Just cut.

Get different kinds of magazines too. The Economist, Sports Illustrated, Womanly Digest of Femmerica. Don’t try to remember what you’ve cut out and don’t try to look for certain words. Put the pieces together, scramble them, add a few words, add some S’s, and make a poem.

Well, I did a proxy of this method. A facsimile, perhaps. I used only the adds here on NotGraphs, FanGraphs, and RotoGraphs. Most of these ads tried to tell me I needed to buy something to finally great that Great New Plateau in life. So I went ahead and built a contrary poem. Hopefully it will convey what is true; that you, dear human reader, are beautiful, if you’ll accept that:

Even an important BBWAA-endorsed journalist like the present one doesn’t know precisely what Craig Kimbrel’s breaking ball is doing tonight. One assumes, however, that it’s doing something very similar to what it did on October 3rd, 2012, against Pittsburgh’s Jose Tabata — i.e. Kimbrel’s last actual pitch of the regular season.

John Paul II’s card from a 1988 Topps set released only in Europe.

The Topps Company has long made a practice of publishing notable facts about players on the reverse sides of their baseball cards. It’s by way of these brief, but revealing, sentences that collectors (ardent or otherwise) have been able to gain some insight into who their heroes are as men, and not merely as athletes — by learning, for example, how right-hander Jim Slaton spent most of his time (on a boat) and for whose construction firm, specifically, Rob Deer worked (his father’s).

With the revelation recently of long-forgotten video from 1987 of Pope John Paul II taking purposeful cuts at a California-area indoor batting cage, we are reminded that he was once among the Italian baseball league’s top players. As such, Topps issued cards for the Pope annually as part of Italian card sets aimed at European consumers.

The present author has located a number of such cards. Here are notable facts from five of them:

• John was influential in the production of Vatican II, the long-awaited sequel to the original Vatican.

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It appears as if Rolling Stone’s list of 50 Funniest People features a baseball icon, fair NotGraphs readers (click to embiggen):

People need systems. Maybe not all the time – true genius creates its own rules – but most of us need lines to color in, because otherwise our dogs would start to look like cows. The Omnibus has its own order, progressing through the National League in alphabetical order, heading to Washington, then to Baltimore and on through to Toronto. I’m telling you this because our next stop is the sunny climate of Miami, Florida, and it is beyond my capacity to alter this.

I don’t want to be here. Miami resists irony: it is all-inclusive, all-extreme, the opposite of itself. Even its uniform teeters on alternate edges of the color wheel. Miami trolls itself, and laughs at its own joke.

Like it or not, however, travel to Miami we must. So, as a refresher, the rules: the Ironic Jersey Omnibuc attempts to explore what it is to be a fan of a given team, and how best to express that fandom through the name and number on one’s garment. In previous editions, this exploration has taken the form of a tour of the ghosts of a team’s past, but as you’ll soon learn, the easy path is not an option for us at present.

The first decision: to don the teal or the orange? One of the cardinal rules of the ironic jersey is the rule of time: any jersey too fresh, no matter how keen its edge, will often be confused with the simplistic optimism of yesterday. Take the example of Jose Reyes: five years from now, he will become the perfect symbol for the Loria Marlins, a promsing star sold like so much cattle at the first downturn in the market. But today, Reyes is just a random purchase off the 2012 rack; a fortunate chance, but a chance nonetheless. No, we must travel further, and venture into the teal.

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This is a clip from the film City of Baseball — about Nettuno, Italy, and its status as sort of a capital city of baseball in the bel paese.

Beyond its obvious charms, the clip serves as a lesson to aspiring documentarians: regardless of the film you’re making, do as much work as possible with old, Italian men.

It is come to my attention that the Nationals will be adding a fifth mascot to their Race of Presidents*. While the Nationals fans may assume that the Naltionals will feature a former U.S. President, allow me to offer up the idea of using an international president, in an effort to not only bolster international relations, but also because they pretty much used up all the good options already. Observe:

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