Host of ESPN’s Around the Horn Tony Reali has — probably against his better judgment — made it known that he’s a reader of FanGraphs. In the following audio clip, sporting-type writers Michael Smith and Bomani Jones betray their own respective interests in the sort of advanced analysis provided by this site.

A person who doesn’t do that sort of thing is frequent Around the Horn guest, and columnist for The Denver Post, Woody Paige. Not only doesn’t Woody Paige read FanGraphs, he also doesn’t read our very secret sister site SandGraphs that’s totally secret.

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Regarding Epicurus’s claim that “real wealth is poverty adjusted to the law of Nature,” Seneca writes in Epistle 1.59 that such an idea “can never be repeated too often, since it can never be learned too well.”

Among the other things of this world in which one couldn’t reasonably immerse him- or herself too deeply, another of them is manifestly Kenley Jansen’s cut fastball — itself captured (once again) in GIF form here, doing to the Laws of Physics what the author only ever dreamed of doing to the girls on his high school’s volleyball team.

What follows isn’t the strangest thing you’ll ever see — especially if you ever see the avant-garde films of Maya Deren — but it’s likely to elicit a cartoonish double-take in even the most stoic of this site’s notably stoic readers.

Because exactly 360 people have retweeted this comedy missive from the Cleveland Indians official Twitter account, it’s very possible that the reader — who’s as savvy with the instruments of technology as he is with the procreative urge of the world — that the reader has already enjoyed this photo of three birthday cakes, representing the three birthdays lost to time by Cleveland right-hander Roberto Hernandez (né Fausto Carmona). Yet, I’ll repeat here what I’ve repeated many times before: if I can give just one person access to a comedy photo from the internet of three birthday cakes for the player formerly known as Fausto Carmona, my efforts willn’t have been in vain.

Most baseball fans will know that Homer Bailey is a right-handed pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds. Fewer — but still many — will know that Bailey was a seventh-overall draft pick out of a Texas high school in 2004 and appeared on Baseball America’s top-100 prospect list four times — including two appearances (in 2007 and -08) in the top 10.

What no one probably knows about, though — or, at least didn’t know before last night’s WTMJ radio broadcast of the Reds and Brewers in Cincinnati — is Bailey’s rich family history.

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Phillies right-hander Vance Worley currently possesses a swinging-strike rate of 5.5% — which swinging-strike rate would typically produce a strikeout rate of about 12%. Instead, at 20.6%, Worley has a considerably higher strikeout rate than that. That he features the lowest opponent Z-Swing% (that is swing rate against pitches within the zone) among qualified pitchers goes a long way towards explaining how Worley has been successful — namely, by inducing a great number of called strikes three.

But you needn’t take my — or even LeVar Burton’s — word for it. Indeed, here are five actually different audio clips from Worley’s Friday night start against San Francisco (box):

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When you talk about Carson Cistulli, what you’re talking about is a guy who knows how to first (a) watch a baseball game one night and then (b) make three GIFs from that game at some point during the following afternoon, with a view to justifying his existence on the company payroll.

In this case, what Carson Cistulli has done is to make three GIFs from Thursday night’s A’s-Yankees game (box), during which game Cuban emigre Yoenis Cespedes hit a home run that compelled veteran right-hander Freddy Garcia to discover physics again for the first time.

For the benefit of the reader, who is likely busy using large-bosomed women as barbells on the sandiest possible beaches of the Florida coastline, I have taken the liberty of organizing last night’s events in chronological order, clearly demarcating the order of those events with clarity.

Note: all GIFs are clickable, embiggenable.

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In his Discourses, noted Roman Stoic Epictetus proclaims that, to live a life free from anxiety, that each of us must become like a “spiritual athlete.” To that end, NotGraphs presents this exercise, with a view towards helping to tighten and tone the spirits of the readership.

Society is like she-bears; our spiritual health, like small children being eaten by she-bears.

Notes
Consider, this hypothetical scene.

A man announces — in his home, late this morning — a man announces that he’s anticipating, with mounting anticipation, the very enigmatic Max Scherzer’s start in Detroit at 1:05pm ET.

That man’s wife responds by suggesting that, perhaps — owing to how the man hadn’t been there in a couple of days and, due to the imminent arrival of a house guest, was unlikely to go there over the next couple — that perhaps the man in question should, indeed, go the gym with her at 1pm ET, when her yoga class happens to begin.

What should the man do in this entirely hypothetical scenario that didn’t just unfold in a certain, unnamed author’s house about an hour ago in Madison, Wisconsin?

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The purpose of this post is to convince the readers of this post to click this hyperlinked text and buy an ebook called The Hall of Nearly Great.

The Hall of Nearly Great — which can be purchased by clicking on this hyperlinked text for a price absurdly close to free — represents an attempt, in the words of editors Sky Kalkman and Marc Normandin

to celebrate the careers of those who are not celebrated. It’s not a book meant to reopen arguments about who does and does not deserve Hall of Fame enshrinement. Rather, it remembers those who, failing entrance into Cooperstown, may unfairly be lost to history.

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It is, generally speaking, the policy of this website not to use the misfortunes of others as a means to the end of our own personal and/or collective glory — and it’s for that reason which, generally speaking, the request for such a GIF as follows (of Colorado Rockies utility gentleman Eric Young stumbling elaborately) would be summarily denied.

In this particular case, however, an exception has been made, on account of the suppliant in question (a certain Dave, in this case) has submitted his request from an email address at Loughborough University in Leicestershire, UK.

Is Dave an actual student, or faculty member, of Loughborough University? “Doesn’t matter,” is the only possible response. That he has made the effort to create a foreign — and therefore pleasantly mysterious — email account is both halves of this particular battle.

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