The animated GIF embedded here depicts a changeup thrown by Stephen Strasburg to Mitch Moreland from a whole week ago – so, unlike many other media files which will have appeared on the internet today, it lacks timeliness.

Fortunately, what it lacks in timeliness, it makes up for with timelessness — insofar, that is, as Moreland plays the part here of anyone dumb enough to have been born and Strasburg’s changeup plays the part of that which one might desire and Moreland’s errant swing represents the futility of human endeavor, obviously.

It is on rare and happy occasions, perhaps akin to a white buffalo riding Halley’s Comet into a quiet Christopher Russo, or a loud Christopher Russo accepting his fate as the victim of the same cometary bovine, that that we hear analysts speak of players who “do things the right way.” This way of doing things correctly, or at least not incorrectly, is an achievement so exceptional, so absolutely white-buffalo-riding-Halley’s-Comet-into-a-blissful-dream uncommon, that fans might go years or even decades without hearing an expert place it squarely atop the scale of things as they have now been done. Yes? But have you ever stopped to consider – I mean really stopped, like at a crosswalk – how things are best done the wrong way?

Right way: Pitcher pitches ball, follows through, assumes defensive position.

Wrong way: Pitcher pitches ball, follows through, stimulates parieto-occipital junction to achieve lucid dreaming, in which state he becomes – and is aware that he becomes – a rabid hyena in the wilds of the Serengeti, whereupon he eats the shortstop before snarling at a group of hungry umps whose runt he quickly devours.

Right way: Batter hits ball, drops bat, runs toward first base.
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The year was 1991, and Americans needed more sports cards. They’d ripped open all the Upper Deck foil they could find, pressed down on the translucent plastic of the Score packaging to read the faint name of the bottom card of each pack. They filled three-ring binders with Jeff George’s mustache and Dikembe Mutombo’s teeth, and even attempted to figure out what a Pavel Bure was.

Still, it wasn’t enough. Impatient to sell the next big rookie card, companies followed the concept to its natural limit and invented the pre-rookie. They released thousand-card sets full of players no one had ever heard of. The process had been distilled to the point where a collector need only buy a pack of unrecognizable players, put them in the closet, and wait. It’s no small irony that an increasingly cynical hobby turned to youth for its speculation.

In truth, there have always been minor league cards. These were generally confined to the merchandise booths of the local team stadium or the local gas station, a stack of grainy photographs sold as team sets. They were little more than a glorified program that kids could play with after they got sick of the game four innings in. It was one such set I found a while back, in an old familiar thrift store baggy, memorializing the nearby 1991 Everett Giants.

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The Houston Astros’ first pick in the 2014 draft, and the first overall pick of said draft, was left-handed pitcher Brady Aiken. This is a picture of Brady Aiken.

Since Brady Aiken is 17 years old, and since this is a picture of Brady Aiken, it stands to reason that this is a picture of a 17-year-old. For reasons of comparison, here is an approximation of what this author looked like at 17:

His “golf club salesman at Dick’s Sporting Goods” look aside, Aiken is indeed a child. But 17 is just a number. Perhaps we should use the measuring stick of popular culture to help us reason with just how young 17 is.

Brady Aiken was born in August of 1996, meaning he was conceived toward the end of 1995. Leveraging this information along with information gleaned about popular music in 1995, here are songs that Brady Aiken’s parents MIGHT have been listening to whilst making — unbeknownst to them — a future millionaire. I have ranked these in order of likelihood — least to most — in the attempt to make this even more creepy.

Possibility 1:

Possibility 2:

Possibility 3:

Possibility 4:

Possibility 5:

The 2014 amateur draft begins tonight at 6pm ET tonight — and, while there’s some uncertainty regarding the specific order in which they’ll be selected, there’s less mystery about which pitchers are the draft’s best.

To better acquaint the reader with those pitchers, below are images of their respective arms, accompanied by analysis of same.

Brady Aiken, LHP, Cathedral Catholic HS (Calif.)
This arm is positioned a little bit behind the pitcher’s body.

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Just as a refresher on the rules, in the annual NotDraft — now in its 1st consecutive year — amateur players are selected not on the basis of their talent, but on the basis of their nickname potential.

1. J.B. “Buck-Buck” Bukauskas | Stone Bridge HS (Va.), Senior | RHP

2. Taylor “Top 40” Sparks | UC Irvine, Junior | 3B

3. Cy “Sneedclone” Sneed | Dallas Baptist, Junior | RHP

4. Braxton “Law Firm” Davidson | T.C. Roberson HS (N.C.), Senior | OF

5. Bryce “Mountains of Geese” Montes de Oca | Lawrence HS (Kan.), Senior | RHP

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The author of this post is currently the sort of person scheduled to pass the next week in the Puglia region of Italy. He’s also the sort of person who has purchased a small Italian phrasebook, on account of that language (i.e. Italian) is utilized pretty extensively throughout the country.

A section of said phrasebook that’ll most likely serve no use for this particular Roman vacation is the one which contains a collection of colloquial expressions — many of them both (a) involving the interlocutor’s mother and also (b) best uttered in anger.

“What if, though,” the author has wondered, “what if I continued my nearly five-year streak being not fired from FanGraphs by parlaying this collection of Italian insults into a post at that same site’s absurd cousin — perhaps by attaching them (i.e. the insults) to baseball’s best player whose surname is also recognizably a product of that bel paese and thus creating a meme almost in full?”

What follows is the result of that long-winded personal query.

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From Michael Wray at Jays Journal:

Thanks to a poor lifestyle decision when it was announced on Friday night that Marcus Stroman had been called up by the Toronto Blue Jays and would start on Saturday I was hugging my bathroom’s toilet bowl. By the time I came to my senses, Stroman was already into his fifth inning of work and I had missed what sounded like a spectacular start.

Because we don’t skimp on research here at NotGraphs, let’s figure out exactly how long Michael Wray was on the toilet. Shi Davidi from Sportsnet tweets about Stroman’s recall at 12:38 AM Saturday morning:

#BlueJays lose second in a row as they recall Marcus Stroman to join rotation: http://t.co/MWShQDEOAW

— Shi Davidi (@ShiDavidi) May 31, 2014

The Blue Jays gameday feed seems to indicate that the fifth inning ended at 2:25 PM:

Five Ks through innings of one-run ball for Stroman. He's at 58 pitches.

— Blue Jays Gameday (@TORGameday) May 31, 2014

Wray claims to have recovered sometime during that inning… so let’s approximate and say 2:15.

That puts him on the toilet for at least 13 hours and 37 minutes. I don’t know if it’s Guinness Book worthy… but, nice work, Michael Wray.

As a loyal reader of NotGraphs – and by the way, thank you for that; turns out, the answer to the question as to how many boats a man can ski behind is six! – you might’ve noticed a peculiar penchant among NotGraphs writers, at least when we aren’t slaloming behind our sextet of Super Air Nautiques.

Namely, we like to name things.

We have named stadiums, teams, even men.

We have matched nicknames to players, and players to nicknames.

Now it’s time to name, or rename, the game’s most basic component: positions.

Traditional name: catcher
Duty: catching.
Other duties: squatting; wearing cup; checking cup; rechecking cup; re-rechecking cup; being interchangeable; “calling a good game;” blocking balls in dirt; being a “field general;” sweating; hitting .226; throwing out “would-be base stealers;” getting designated for assignment; “getting called up;” not blocking plate; acting solicitous toward umpire, i.e., complimenting him on his strike zone and his mouthwash; placing mask under armpit after victory and walking toward center field while saying things to pitcher that television viewers attempt to lip-read
New name: Squatmaster, Lord of the Groin
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Here’s drawings of some of the vendors at Foro Sol, the home of Diablos Rojos del México, my local team.

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