Epicurus was a capable philosopher despite appearing to possess no real eyes.

At the internet weblog which bears his name, Groton native and alumnus Peter Gammons today proposed some ideas to the end of quickening the pace of the average baseball game.

What follows are seven real and not fake suggestions on that same topic courtesy very important thinkers of yesterday and today.

For example:

EPICURUS
“It is the taste of the food, not the time required to eat it, by which one adjudges the quality of a meal. Likewise, it is the quality of a baseball game, not its length, by which one must evalute the merits of that game. In conclusion, I recommend contracting the Mets.”

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Matt Santaspirt writes with a brand new statistic that we all need to jump on, right away:

I have created the advanced player evaluation stat to end all advanced player evaluation stats. I present to you, Worth Their Weight in Gold (WTWIG). Gold is hot right now. And what better way to evaluate baseball players than to put them on the Gold Standard. WAR, homeruns, wRC+? All they do is measure how well a guy played. WTWIG measures how much a guy weighs and then converts that into the value of gold.

His full post is here at Mattyball, where he figures out which players came closest to being worth their exact weight in gold in 2013, with value measured by WAR and by salary. By WAR, the closest was Victor Martinez. By salary, the closest was Denard Span.

(By actual gold, I think it’s David Ortiz. See the picture at the top.)

So I think we’ve got a new stat to track here at NotGraphs. I would put my money on Adam Dunn for 2014, except his infinite weight means he is worth infinity in gold, and that’s a lot of home runs he’s going to have to hit.

[Incidentally, if we measure who is worth their weight in silver ($19/ounce as opposed to $1,294/ounce for gold), the answer is the rest of us, who do not play baseball.]

Adrian Beltre crested the hill in front of Rucker. He scanned the tree-line for the white throat of the buck. That, or the eyes, was what you usually saw first. Nothing moved except the leaves, which seemed to rustle themselves. There was no wind. His next step was on a mossy stone which slid underfoot. He fell on his hip. He dropped his rifle and rolled on his back. “Goddammit,” he muttered.

“You OK, old man?” grinned Rucker as he clasped his forearm to pull him up. “Better let me blaze the trail.”

After Adrian Beltre got on his feet, Rucker barged ahead. Rucker swayed when he walked, as though slow-dancing at that club up on the highway. His broad hips never tapered. He had such a wide base that falling seemed impossible. His feet, in those trail boots, looked as heavy and sturdy as flagstones.

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It’s not clear right now to what amusing and/or important ends this animated GIF will be used of Denard Span saying “Come on, man” to Cliff Lee in the fifth inning of tonight’s Washington-Philadelphia game (box). That those ends likely exist, however, entirely justifies the publishing of this post and, within it, the aforementioned GIF.

Why are you so sad, Steve Bedrosian?

Is it because you saw the end of Kris Kristofferson’s remake of A Star Is Born?

Is it because Barry Gibb finally retired the name Bee Gees and disco died?

Is it because you are watching Bambi?

Is it because you stubbed your toe really hard?

Is it because it’s time to take off your beautiful jacket and come into the ball game?

Is it because you’re playing for the mid-80s Braves?

Is it because they made you a starting pitcher in 1985?

Is it because you know you didn’t deserve that Cy Young Award in 1987 and you feel like a fraud?

Is it because you’ve been hanging out with Hopeless Joe?

Is it because you realized time is fleeting, you’ve wasted so much of it, and you’ll never get it back?

Is it because it’s all so meaningless?

Cheer up, Steve Bedrosian.

Have some panda babies.

Starting at first base tonight for the Texas Rangers: a wheel of Parmesan cheese.

You might or mightn’t have noticed, as you might or mightn’t have spent the past few weeks in a crowded Peruvian jail, that the baseball squad known as the Texas Rangers has experienced something of a medical catastrophe this season, with precisely 32,000 of its ballplayers – to be fair, just 30,000 have been starters – landing on the disabled list, in the ICU and/or in a Tommie Copper commercial.

Earlier today, in response to this graphic demonstration of human frailty, Texas manager Ron Washington opened a pack of Camels and considered his options for tonight’s lineup against the Angels, all the while pondering the Buddhist precept that “life is suffering” even as he blew a series of distinct but ultimately ephemeral smoke rings. Upon snubbing the final ashy butt he decided on the following lineup, primarily for its ability to withstand the daily threats – pulled hammies, strained obliques, scarlet fever outbreaks, meteorite strikes and spontaneous combustions – that turn players into casualties of the human condition and proxies for the impermanence that turns us all, ultimately, into role players, pinch-hitters, DFA’s.

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There a number of ways in which Daren Willman’s Baseball Savant site could be utilized but isn’t being utilized by the present author — largely because the main constraint with regards to that site isn’t its lack of possibilities, but rather the author’s lack of imagination.

Spending the last hour-plus within the sexy confines of that site hasn’t changed matters that considerably; however, it has compelled the author to produce the three GIFs below.

For what follows, what I’ve done is to identify both the fastest and slowest secondary pitches from the past week (i.e. since last Friday) which induced swinging strikes — where “secondary pitch” is defined, for the purposes of this exercise, as any pitch not classified as a four-seam, two-seam, or cut fastball by PITCHf/x.

Here, first, is the slowest secondary pitch of the week, an 0-0 curveball thrown at 62.2 mph by Paul Maholm to Charlie Culberson last Saturday that was actually classified as an eephus:

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The place: a pine forest in Upstate New York

The time: the second hour of a day in spring

As gentle as an angel’s breath, or as placid as a cherub’s fart, a breeze comes to tease the hardwoods, tickling the needles and nudging the cones as it goes. The wind, it shushes, the hush cut through with a warbler’s trill and the trill cut through with what seems a louder fart. And yet the forest knows, as only old growth knows, that this is not an ethereal toot but, rather, the creaking of a tree – a creaking, alas, that mimics the sound of Don Zimmer’s knees the last time he came for a hike.

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I have no witty words, other than perhaps a mention that mispronunciation must run in the family. Otherwise, I have only blatant use of my son for all the page hits.

Yes, you got it right son. So right.

Manny Machado has just been activated from the disabled list. For this, he is a happy person. When people are happy, they express their feelings utilizing different channels. Some prefer smiling. Others, drinking. The most cavalier combine the two. Manny Machado chooses to please the Gods of his inner self with the help of the age-old, Kevin-Bacon-endorsed art of the dance. Behold.

This has been Baseball Players Twerking.