A number of people in the sabermetric community have questioned the wisdom of the Braves’ decision last summer to send away a young and talented shortstop in Yunel Escobar for an old and less-talented shortstop in Alex “Sea Bass” Gonzalez.

Though we oughtn’t draw unnecessarily strong conclusions from one isolated incident, the footage you see thoroughly GIF’d and embedded above might, at the very least, point to some issues within the brain part of the Blue Jay shortstop.

Specifically what you’re seeing is an incident from last Thursday’s Pittsburgh-Toronto game in which Escobar mimicked a throw to first but then — kinda blatantly, really — opted to go ahead and punch former teammate Matt Diaz, instead.

As this YouTube footage shows, it’s likely that Escobar was exacting some sort of revenge for a takeout-type slide executed by Diaz the night before; however, there appears to be nothing particularly out of the ordinary about Diaz’s actions.

Friendly punch throw to Alex Remington for heads-up on this.

Peruse MLB.com’s pitching probables section, reader, and you’ll notice that each scheduled pitcher receives a brief, paragraph-long review (much like you see for Houston’s Bud Norris above) regarding his recent performance, season in context, etc.

Peruse MLB.com’s pitching probables for this Wednesday, however, and you’ll be confronted merely by blank space under Charlie Morton’s name.

“What gives?” you’re probably thinking — which, that happens to be the very same question NotGraphs asked of Major League Baseball itself.

“We’re just effing bored of him,” responded MLB’s Head of Public Relations Tom Jenkins via email. “Seriously, we’ve tried to give a crap for, like, his last four or five starts, but now it’s just to where we told our intern, ‘We know how sad it makes you to write those profiles for Morton every fifth day. Probably just get some other work done instead.'”

When asked which other pitchers might receive similar treatment as the season wears on, Jenkins responded immediately with Jon Garland, adding “I don’t really even understand how he’s still a major-league pitcher. As effed up as that organization is, the very presence of Garland might be the most effed up part about it.”

Legal Note: Many of the facts and names in this piece are total fabrications.

A Photographic Essay:

As both (a) science and (b) residents of the American South are able to confirm, there’s more than one way, reader, to skin a cat.

So it is, then, that, with this revelation, we discover yet another way in which skinning a cat and enjoying baseball are similar — for there are numerous ways of doing the latter, as well.

Some of those — like watching a game while enjoying one of America’s great public spaces or listening to a game while playing the crap out of one’s PlayStation 3 — have been documented in these very pages. But some is the operative word here, for the list of ways to enjoy Our Fair Sport is close to, if not entirely, inexhaustible.

Allow me, then, to submit for the reader’s consideration another way in which I’ve recently enjoyed baseball — namely, by watching MLB.TV while also listening to comedian Marc Maron’s WTF podcast.

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Tell me what your interests are, who you be with.

Search diligently the internet, your local library’s microfilm collection, et cetera, and you’ll invariably find a glaring omission in the annals of sportswriting, reader — namely, any conversation whatsoever of the All-Star game and how it might be improved.

I mean, it’s kinda weird, right? Because it seems like sportswriters — with a pressing need to provide copy and a dearth of noteworthy events at the All-Star break — it seems like the idea of how to improve this obviously flawed venture would’ve come up at least once. And yet, as I say, there is literally no trace of any relevant commentary on the subject.

So it is, reader, in a move unprecedented in the genre, I submit here for the readership’s consideration ten (10) ideas that would very likely make the All-Star game better.

Regard:

Vintage Jerseys
Players wear great uniforms from baseball history.

Vintage Mustaches
Players wear great mustaches from baseball history.

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If you’re at all like me, reader, you find yourself feeling underrepresented in many of the heated political debates this country is always seeming to have.

Health care? Bah! Immigration? Double-bah! The economy? Excuse me while I fall asleep!

It’s almost like baseball nerds don’t even have a voice anymore!

Well, thanks to a combination of Free Time™ and Paint.NET, now we do — as NotGraphs presents Co-Opted Political Slogans.

For our first (and, very likely, last) Co-Opted Political Slogan, we present “These Colors Don’t Run.” Featuring FanGraphs’ trademark beige and green, “These Colors Don’t Run” is a great way to have your voice heard without even opening your mouth!

Perfect for anything from large, rhetoric-filled rallies to totally chill backyard BBQs, “These Colors Don’t Run” lets everyone know that you’ve studied linear weights pretty effing closely, thank you, and you know the break-even point for stolen bases when you see it.

Made from 100% Great Idea, “These Colors Don’t Run” will never shrink, fade, or moan in a really inappropriate way.

So buy “These Colors Don’t Run” now — and let everyone know all your political beliefs instantly!

For reasons that I don’t really understand myself, last night found the author of this post wondering if it was, in fact, true of certain indigenous Americans that, after reaching a particular age, that they would wander off into the wilderness and die a noble (if, perhaps, somewhat grisly) death — instead, that is, of becoming burdensome to their tribespeople, who were surely dealing with harsh winters, food shortages, and Lord Jeffrey Amherst.

It was curiosity, then — known already for its hostility to felines — that led yours truly to very innocently submit to Google the combination of search terms you see in the image above.

Perhaps owing to the wide-eyed innocence of this gesture, it was rather jarring to be confronted by the results for same search — which, those’re probably best revealed via an Annotated Photo™.

Regard:

On the list of things I want to do right now “Have a conversation about why the word Indian is or isn’t actually offensive” is very close to the bottom. Let’s assume for the moment, please, that I’m an oversensitive, white liberal American who, if he learned one thing in elementary school, it was to use the word Native American and not the alternative — and how it was in this spirit that I approached my search. It’s obvious now that Google Search and I attended different elementary schools.

Perhaps if the Cleveland Baseball Club hadn’t attempted to market certain hat-type items this would’ve passed without notice by yours truly. But now it’s happened, and I have to go watch consecutive episodes of Rachel Maddow as liberal penance.

Not even Picasso during his very famous Blue Period was able to capture the sort of angst that the above-pictured Red Sox fan was caught emoting during the fourth inning of a game at Wrigley Field yesterday. That said fan is surrounded by rows of empty seats — very obviously a metaphor for Conditions, Human and Otherwise — only heightens the feeling of isolation.

There’s a strange thing about this scene, however — which, let’s see if an Annotated Photo brings to light what I mean.

Regard:

Indeed, our fraught subject appears to be at a game between two teams not his own — one of which (the Cubs) is superbad in the least Judd Apatow-y of ways, and the other of which (the Giants) won a World Series, like, 24 hours ago (using Venus hours, I mean, on account of that planet’s days are much, much longer than Earth’s).

Apropos the point you’re forming in your head this minute — the one that goes something like, “Cistulli, don’t you even know that it’s possible to become emotionally involved in a game not involving one’s own favorite team?” — allow me say, “N’doy.”

Apropos the second point you’re forming — the one that’s more like, “Cistulli, is it possible that you’re making a mountain out of a molehill?” — allow me say “Anything is possible” and also “Please excuse me. I have to return some videotapes.”

If anyone has ever said of Carson Cistulli “That guy’s impossible to push around,” then that anyone is wrong. No fewer than all/two of our faithful readers have demanded Hot GIF action of Cirque du Soleil’s Gabryel Nogueira da Silva throwing out the first pitch at PETCO Park before Monday’s Royals-Padres game — a.k.a. a critical mass (of readers, that is). The GIF you’ll find after the jump, then, comes to your computer screen courtesy of electronic bullying.

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I wasn’t able to see the game in its entirety, but Padre broadcasters Tony Gwynn and Mark Neely noted during Sunday’s contest between Atlanta and San Diego that Tim Hudson was using his slider with some frequency against left-handed batters. Indeed, per the Pitch F/x data, 21 of the 104 pitches (20.2%) Hudson threw were sliders — slightly above his season average of 14.6%. Another eight pitches (7.7%) were classified as cutters — itself a significant figure because (a) sliders and cutters have similar movement/velocity and (b) only 3.0% of Hudson’s pitches this season have been classified as cutters.

Whether sliders, cutters, or their depraved issue, the slutter, the pitches that Hudson threw Padre rookie Anthony Rizzo at 1-1 and 3-2, respectively, during Rizzo’s sixth inning at-bat, were very clearly of the totally unfair variety.

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