The reader will likely have heard by now that free agent Delmon Young pleaded guilty Wednesday to aggravated harassment stemming from an April incident which included the former Tiger and Twin and Ray yelling anti-Semitic remarks outside a New York City hotel (which, if you’re going to do it, is pretty much the place to go around yelling anti-Semitic remarks).

What readers might not know, however, is that Young utilized his court appearance on Wednesday to clear his conscience on some other matters, too — transgressions less of the legal, and more of the moral, variety.

On His O-Swing%: “People always said think outside the box — which, it’s recently come to my attention that box and strike zone aren’t synonymous in this case. That’s on me. That’s Delmon Young’s bad.”

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With the rousing success of his projection methodology in a second straight presidential election, proprietor of the internet’s Five Thirty Eight and former baseball-projection savant Nate Silver has captured the attention of Americans everywhere. The NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has learned just this morning, however, that Silver will turn his attention away from politics for the moment and attempt to use his skills to reflect upon some other, perhaps more obscure, questions and concerns.

Questions and concerns such as these five:

Who’s Coming to Dinner
Stanley Kramer’s 1967 drama asked the question. Over 40 years later, Silver will endeavor to answer it.

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FanGraphs welcomes comments and suggestions, or complaints about errors that warrant correction.

Here are the corrections and clarifications from last week:

• Despite Jeff Sullivan’s claims to the contrary, there is no silent -z- in Babe Ruth’s name.

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If there’s a weakness among the otherwise entirely useful body of work produced by the baseball community regarding prospects, it’s a preoccupation with “facts” — as opposed, that is, to estimates regarding what pleasures this or that prospect might be capable of eliciting in the mind, say, of a bespectacled and extravagantly educated 32-year-old sitting in his apartment in Madison, Wisconsin.

With a view towards filling this vacuum in the literature, NotGraphs utilizes what German filmmaker and relentless ubermensch Werner Herzog has called “ecstatic truth” — a term which defies easy explanation, but which Herzog has described as “a searching for truth beyond the facts and much deeper than facts.”

What follows is an ecstatic-truth prospect report on San Francisco Giants middle-infield prospect Joe Panik.

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It is possible that we, the Baseballing Public, will one day tire of seeing the practitioners of our favorite sport — will tire of seeing them engaged in various states of cosplay.

Today, right now, is likely not that moment in our collective lives.

Pictured here, courtesy his own Twitter feed, is diminutive Braves right-hander Kris Medlen dressed for All Hallows’ Evening as the diminutive Po — “the smallest and youngest of the Teletubbies,” according to popular e-resource Wikipedia.

You have challenged the Internet not to bore you, reader. The Internet has responded!

Brought to the author’s attention by other popular e-resource, Steve Simonsen.

Braden has made good progress in coming back from shoulder surgery, believes he will find a job: “I’m left-handed and have a heartbeat.”

— Susan Slusser (@susanslusser) October 30, 2012

True fact: over half of the active writers at NotGraphs were hired on the strength of this exact pitch.

For the right-thinking baseball enthusiast — as opposed to the dour and glum, Patrick Dubuque kind — the great charm of the game is in what the author has called The Art of the Possible. While the past and present confine us to the mundanity of fact, the future allows us to contemplate the possibility of what-might-be — hyphenated just like that, as if it were translated directly from an important European philosopher. “Facci sognare!” (“Make us dream!”) the fans of certain Italian football clubs demand. “Facci sognare” perhaps certain readers, also, ask (more quietly than Italian people) of the game of baseball.

One great medium for the contemplation of the possible is prospect analysis. Prospect analysis is, essentially, an attempt to sketch roughly the landscape of Baseball Future. That the MVPs of the 2032 season have been born is quite likely. That their precise identities (i.e. the ones of those future MVP winners) are currently known, however, is distinctly unlikely. One objective of prospect analysis is to hold a developing player up to the light of experience and reason and ask, “Is this the future MVP?” And: “Is this him, maybe?”

If there’s a weakness among the otherwise entirely useful body of work produced by the baseball community regarding minor-league players, etc., it’s a preoccupation with “facts” — as opposed, that is, to estimates regarding what pleasures this or that prospect might be capable of eliciting in the mind, say, of a bespectacled and extravagantly educated 32-year-old sitting in his apartment in Madison, Wisconsin.

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It is often said of the players whose teams fail to make the postseason — or have otherwise been eliminated from the playoffs — it’s often said of such players that they “are golfing now” or “are golfing in October” or something along those lines. Having said that, I will also submit that not every member of the recently eliminated Detroit Tigers necessarily fits the precise demographic profile of Big Time Golf Enthusiast. How are they supposed to pass the next couple of months?

With a view to answering that question, I present the following — a record of three upcoming Detroit-area activities that might entertain and fulfill Miguel Cabrera, Justin Verlander, and other of this year’s American League champions.

All event details courtesy Detroit arts weekly Metro Times.

Living The Sweet Life: An Evening with Terry McMillan

Authoress Terry McMillan documented, via a novel of a very similar name, how Stella got her groove back. Perhaps she can help all the Detroiters get their respective grooves back, too.

When: November 1, 6 p.m.
Venue: MGM Grand Detroit
Address: 1777 Third St.
Phone: (248) 398-3400
Price: $35

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To Major League Baseball:

We the undersigned, having no specific (or even general) knowledge of the requirements so far as skilled personnel or technology or other manner of infrastructure are concerned, nevertheless request (and, in certain spirited moments, even demand) for Arizona Fall League games to be broadcast via streaming video on our computers and maybe other connected devices.

We the undersigned would almost certainly be willing to pay a reasonable fee in exchange for such a service. (Like, I don’t know, twenty dollars? Thirty? Is thirty reasonable? We the undersigned aren’t positive about what the market is saying about this.) Otherwise, if these Arizona Fall League games aren’t broadcast, then we the undersigned will be forced either to confront the dark solitude of our respective lives or, alternatively, to adopt other leisure activities that help us forget such darkness. But as the first option is so dark and the latter requires intimate knowledge of who Chandler Parsons is, then we’d like just to get this AFL broadcast thing going, if that’s alright.

Sincerely,
The Undersigned