After hitting his 54th of the season yesterday — a feat celebrated both by the present author and also Jeff Sullivan — former Cincinnati and Seattle outfielder Wladimir Balentien hit his 55th home run today for Japanese club Yakult, tying the Curaçao native with Sadaharu Oh (in 1964), Tuffy Rhodes (in 2001), and Alex Cabrera (2002) for the NPB’s single-season home-run record.

Here are some notable reviews of Balentien’s most recent and record-tying effort:

“Playing by its own rules every step of the way, Wladimir Balentien’s 55th home run is clearly the sort that needs to be hit more often.”

– Matt Brunson, Creative Loafing

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Former Cincinnati and Seattle outfielder Wladimir Balentien is currently very much on pace to break the single-season home-run record of 55 set originally by Sadaharu Oh in 1964 and then tied by Tuffy Rhodes and Alex Cabrera in 2001 and 2002, respectively.

As of 10 days ago, Balentien had a month essentially to hit three home runs and tie the record. Presently, he’s hit two of those three — including one on Tuesday itself.

Here’s actual game footage of Balentien’s 54th homer:

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Major League Baseball announced today its regular season schedule for 2014, which begins at the end of March.

Below are some notable aspects of same.

• Season begins with 2014 Opening Series in Australia between whatever members of D-backs and Dodgers have not been maimed and injured by that country’s menacing wildlife.

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In the past, the author of this post has facilitated what’s known as the Player Profile Game, in which readers are given a player profile — generally one having been written for FanGraphs Plus — and tasked with providing the identity of the player in question.

What we have on our hands presently, however, is not the past, but rather the present. As per usual, the present has issued its own set of unique circumstances and constraints. In particular, what the present has provided today is a copy of Baseball America’s Prospect Handbook from 2006 into the hands of the author.

Below are three profiles from said Handbook, in likely order of difficulty. For each player, the author has included the prospect’s parent club and Baseball America ranking within same as of the 2006 preseason.

Note that the author regards this exercise not at all as a commentary on the editors of Baseball America, nor their capacity to rank prospects. If certain young players’ future talent has been assessed incorrectly, this is almost entirely due to the difficulties inherent to that sort of exercise.

Prospect No. 1 (Player Page)
Club: Cincinnati
Ranking: Ninth

Profile:

The Reds tried to cut costs in the 2002 draft with disastrous results, as Denorfia and [BLANK] are the lone bright spots from that crop. After establishing himself as the system’s best power prospect, [BLANK] had a disappointing 2005 and continued to struggle in the Arizona Fall League. [BLANK] can launch balls out of sight in batting practice. He drew 90 walks in 2004, showing a disciplined, mature approach. For a big man and former catcher, [BLANK] runs the bases well, and he has grown into a solid defensive first baseman with an above-average arm for the position. [BLANK] lacks plus bat speed and his swing lengthened in 2005. Perhaps too passive in the past, he seemed to start guessing, finding himself behind fastballs and ahead of offspeed offerings. He especially struggled against lefties, hitting .193 with a .315 slugging percentage. [BLANK]’s prospect stock has taken a hit, though he’s still the top first-base prospect in the system. He heeds to rediscover his short stroke and trust his natural hitting instincts in Double-A in 2006.

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The present author is an expert on almost zero topics. The production of embarrassing odors, perhaps. The concealment of those same embarrassing odors, probably also.

Two other disciplines, however, in which the author possesses something not very different than expertise — and both of which are decidedly relevant to the present weblog post — are Cleveland right-hander Corey Kluber and also capital-S Splendor.

Much like a Spice Girls song in which two become one, Corey Kluber and Splendor became one in the second inning of Kluber’s start last (Saturday) night — in particular on a 1-2 count to Mets first baseman Lucas Duda, on which count Kluber threw a two-seam fastball that started somewhere in the vicinity of Duda’s front hip and then migrated across the strike zone, like how the author’s Italian ancestors migrated across the Atlantic Ocean, if the Atlantic Ocean were a strike zone.

Like here, for example, in regular motion:

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Yesterday in these electronic pages, Dayn Perry, that foe of the human race, submitted to the readership notable returns from decidedly juvenile Baseball-Reference player-name searches.

With a view towards accounting for the full width and breadth and maybe even depth of that same readership, the present author submits here a complement to Perry’s post from yesterday — namely, of results from B-Ref player-name searches featuring words and phrases most relevant to the experience of this nation’s seniors.

Tommy Glaucoma:

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Click to embiggen.

Since its inception in 1973 in a small alpine laboratory built by ice-cold power broker/mindfulness-studies instructor David Appelman, NotGraphs has been a byword for rock-hard science; its various contributors, all of them, each respectively bywords for rock-hard scientists. For granted, is how the reader takes this.

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If there’s one thing for which NotGraphs is known, it’s producing content designed specifically to court hot internet clicks. If there’s a second thing for which it’s known, however — besides that first thing involving hot internet clicks — it’s appealing to readers with the big, broad outlook. “There’s an entire world out there,” the editor of this site has often pronounced at company meetings, gesturing with his arms to the nearest window, so as to emphasize the point. “What our readers demand is that we cover it.”

It’s in fulfillment of that editorial mandate, then, that the author presents the animated GIF embedded here (from a longer video) of Doosan outfielder Byung-Hun Min both homering and then, with what the French may or may not call le grand geste, releasing his bat.

Credit to Dan of My KBO for bringing this footage to the public’s attention.

At no point during his life is the present author more content than when divesting a local pub of its principal commodity and slapping briskly the backs of bosom friends* deep into the night. As the sort of person who has tended rather towards the itinerant side of things, however — and one who also works from home — the author finds himself reveling arm-in-arm with likeminded companions less often than he would prefer.

*A different enterprise altogether, this, than slapping the bosoms of one’s back friends. That sort of thing is looked upon dimly, it would seem.

All is not darkness and brooding, however. By means of the present weblog, that same author is often able to facilitate impromptu celebrations of human potential, which everyone agrees is the best sort of celebration going these days not including the words bunga or bunga.

Of late, concerned reader Michael Spitznagel has suggested that perhaps it would be good and very good were the author to consider the virtues, once again, of Oakland right-hander A.J. Griffin’s curveball.

By way of slow-motion footage from Griffin’s most recent start against Tampa Bay (box) — of a curveball to strike out Matt Joyce — the author has consented. As an added service to the Public, that same author has placed the rather large animated GIF file of Griffin’s curve below the fold.

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While it’s fair to say that almost all of Danny Salazar’s pitches from his start today (Sunday) touched the author either on, or at least near, his heart, it’s also the case that — just as a flamboyant and bloodthirsty tyrant loves one pair of tasseled epaulettes more than all his others, and just how a parent always loves one particular child more than the rest of his or her other children — that the author wasn’t immune from making note of the relative charms of Salazar’s assorted offerings today.

Distinguished primarily for its radiance and majesty is the split-change embedded here and thrown by Salazar to strike out Detroit’s Don Kelly to end the fourth inning. Meditating upon it, one is overcome by the sensation that there’s food in the pantry, a fire in the stove, and all is right with the world. One is also unsurprised to learn that Salazar presently has one of the ten-best xFIPs among starters with 20-plus innings in that role.