Hello NotGraphs. I realize this is a break from your regularly scheduled dose of me. Please try not panic. I come to you today with an urgent purpose. And that is for you to see a video.

But before that happens, let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a 13 year-old boy on the cusp of manhood who loved three things: Prodigy Communications Corporation, Baseball, and The Mickey Mouse Club. That young man wrote a letter (a proto-email) to one of the comely young lasses who graced said Mouse Club, virtually daring her to find him. And find him she did, in the most wonderful and awkward fashion possible.

That young man was and is lawyer, baseball writer, my dear friend, and hetero-sexual life partner, Bill Parker, of The Platoon Advantage and SBNation, amongst other fine places. And this, dear friends, is the video that I promised would remain unpublicized until the day he was ready to face that dark chapter of his life publicly. But with Bill finally baring his soul before God and his almost (but not quite) 3000 followers, today is, finally, the best day of my life. Also, of note, he wears a Cubs hat, so this is totally baseball-related.

Please, enjoy this as much as I have:

Read the rest of this entry »

The excellent and prolific Jeff Sullivan is responsible for the idea of “Little League Pitch Framing as NotGraphs Post,” though none of the shortcomings of what follows should be blamed on him. Many thanks to Jeff for the suggestion.

Baseball is a kids’ game, they say.

As a baseball geek who has no children, lives in a Major League city, and obsesses over his fantasy teams, I consume my baseball mostly from the Major Leagues. When it’s not MLB, it’s probably the high minor leagues or something like the college world series. Essentially, I’m watching baseball at the highest levels, the top 3000 or so players, guys who have been playing for decades. It’s easy for me to take for granted a basic level of coordination and awareness — which is why watching Raul Ibañez or Delmon Young in the outfield is so amusing.

Watching the Little League World Series, even though I’m watching the best twelve-year-olds in the world, I’m still watching twelve-year-olds, kids who have only been playing maybe six or seven years instead of 15-30 years, whose bodies are in the midst of rapid and significant changes, who haven’t learned to completely control their emotions.

So, it amazes me, while watching the Little League World Series, that twelve-year-old pitchers can even throw strikes on a consistent basis, or throw out a runner from the outfield, let alone have the mental wherewithal and bodily control to think about framing pitches. And just as some of these twelve-year-olds will sometimes be unable to throw strikes, some of the twelve-year-old catchers don’t have advanced receiving skills, either.

But: Watching those skills in development, that’s the cool thing for me. Noticing when a kid is trying to mimic what he sees in the big leagues, or when he masters his own body and remains perfectly still as he accepts the pitch, that’s cool. Also, noticing when the raw, nervous energy of adolescence and pre-adolescence make it near impossible to be composed, that reminds me getting better at something takes time and effort. It’s really great to see.

The excellent and prolific Jeff Sullivan suggested that someone at NotGraphs take a look at pitch framing in the Little League World Series. I volunteered, though I’m not sure if Jeff was hoping for something more humorous here. Originally, I intended to make this post more humorous, but as I made and then watched these GIFs over and over, I felt unexpectedly inspired. I developed favorites. I created narratives in my head. So, now that I’m making this post, now that I’ve made my plebeian observations, I’ve decided to present these moving images with minimal additional commentary.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s impossible not to love a fantasy baseball draft. I can even get my non-sports-watching wife to understand why the draft is exciting. Each year, I prepare too much. That’s not a good thing. It’s a waste of time. The plan goes out the window after ten minutes anyway — the guy you’re convinced you love more than anyone else could possibly love him gets taken early, and you’re left to rejigger your entire plan. And you spend the rest of the draft three picks behind, just trying to catch up, and get back on top of things. But that’s the fun of it. The adrenaline. The back and forth — whose ups and downs do you want to live with for the next six months, who do you want to be rooting for, who do you truly believe in, beyond what the numbers say you should?

Read the rest of this entry »

“I want to sit in right field because that’s where Dioner Navarro is going to hit a home run.”

That was me, your humble author. I made this pronouncement on August 19, 2013, around 6:48 p.m. Then, at approximately 8:23 p.m. that same evening, Dioner Navarro did this:

Do you doubt my powers?

Read the rest of this entry »

From Puig’s three-pitch, fifth-inning strikeout against Fernandez.

It has recently come to the present author’s attention that, literally every single day in this country, either hundreds or maybe even slightly more hundreds than that of office workers leave their respective places of business without having been mildly amused by the internet. With a view towards addressing this state of affairs sans delay, the author has elected to revisit here a series begun earlier in the year in which mildly amusing* constellations are constructed from certain of Angels outfielder Josh Hamilton’s single-game swing charts.

*But no more than that.

One finds, in this case, an entry from Hamilton’s August 14th game against the Yankees (box). In said contest, Hamilton appears to have offered at six pitches during the course of the game, precisely none of which was in the strike zone. The constellation which results bears more than a passing resemblance to a mangled finger or mangled other-sort-of-thing. In either case, reason dictates that the injured party should consult a physician, stat.

Credit to Texas Leaguers for the strikezone plot.

The Omnibus takes its wagons eastward to New York City to consider the Amazin’ Mets. Since this feature seems to grow increasingly intermittent, a reminder of its purpose: to examine the culture of a baseball team, distill the essence of its fandom, and then to establish which jerseys, as worn by a fan, make the most self-aware and challenging statements to his or her comrades.

The Mets are not an easy team to evaluate. I’m actually more familiar with the brand of Mets that existed before I was born, thanks to Roger Angell’s sublime book The Summer Game, than I am with the franchise’s modern incarnations. I do not know what a Quintanilla is or how many of them equal a gallon.

I discussed the matter with FanGraphs’ own Eno Sarris. Mets’ fans are continually disappointed and long-suffering, but this probably describes the fanbase of all but a handful of baseball cities. And while many franchises can be divided into distinct eras, the history of the post-86 Mets is a nebulous thing. All teams have their ups and downs, but rarely do they seem to have them at the same time. The following, then, are one person’s attempt to greet the Mets.

Read the rest of this entry »

Okay, I know the fashionable stance to take on Derek Jeter’s defense is that it’s bad. But surely it’s not this bad.

From MLB.com, your official home for ballboy news.*

I thought I was kidding, but a search for “ballboy” really does bring up far more articles than I expected. We’ve got “Ballboy catches Davis off-guard on foul fly,” “Bullpen catcher owes this Rays ballboy a steak dinner,” “To the relief of everyone sitting behind him, ballboy nails leaping catch,” and this weird four-line article about Livan Hernandez throwing sunflower seeds at a ballboy that seems to be missing a much-needed video.

Clearly ballboys need their own 24-hour sports channel.

I encountered the following video-film while trying to figure out who exactly Ron Kittle is. Kittle made his debut in 1981, six years before my humble birth.

VIDEO GREATNESS CHECKLIST:
* Mention of Dick Allen? ✓
* Harold Baines with a magnificent afro? ✓
* Bill Veeck complaining? ✓
* Plattitudes and “happy talk”? ✓
* Current Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf asking “What are we doing here?” ✓
* Superb White Sox uniforms that look homemade? ✓
* Prison puns? ✓
* Rudyard Kipling allusions? ✓
* Disney-esque closing music? ✓

If you will, please regard the following post that was emblazoned upon to the Facebook page of CBSSports.com’s Eye On Baseball — the home for all baseball fans …

Pete Rise! The accidental genius of auto-correct or inspired creation? It matters not. For Pete Rise now walks among us.

Read the rest of this entry »