As the reader may or may not know, the present author has thrown his hat — and other, sexier pieces of his outfit — into the metaphorical ring known as the Pitchers & Poets Reading Club (hosted, if one can believe it, by the gentlemen of Pitchers & Poets).

The first book is Chad Harbach’s very new novel, The Art of Fielding, and the protagonist of said novel is named Henry Skrimshander. Though he makes his way to an elite liberal arts college on the lake coast of Wisconsin, Skrimshander’s only real literary experience is with a book by legendary (and also fictional) shortstop Aparicio Rodriguez called The Art of Fielding.

Rodriguez is essentially the Platonic shortstop, but certain details — the fact that he played for the Cardinals, mostly, and is only recently retired — suggest that the character is based, at least in part, on Ozzie Smith.

Because his peak ended before I was really aware of him, I never got a chance to see Smith with any frequency. But his reputation is obviously excellent and, if one were so inclined to make a top-10 list of defensive players by the numbers — by adding together their defensive runs, that is, to their positional adjustments — then one would find something similar to this:

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Because Oriole Jim Johnson plays for the Orioles, there’s a strong chance that no one — perhaps besides his teammates and Buck Showalter and Buck Showalter’s grizzled and nameless manservant — knows who he is.

In fact, there appears to be at least one reason to know who Jim Johnson is — and it’s embedded above these electronic words.

The footage you see here is taken from the ninth inning of Baltimore’s victory over Boston last (Monday) night. With a 1-0 count against Adrian Gonzalez, Johnson threw this 97 mph offering with 6.2 inches of armside run and 5.8 inches of “rise” (relative to a spinless ball, that is).

While the pitch was classified by Pitch F/x as a four-seamer, the dramatic movement — combined with the fact that a number of Johnson’s pitches are classified as two-seamers, too — suggests Johnson’s pitch might be either.

Of the 14 fastballs he threw Monday night, Johnson got whiffs on four of them (28.6%) — about four or five times the league average for swing-and-misses on fastballs.

In a potentially related story, every woman in the Baltimore area woke up pregnant.

Brooks Baseball. Brooks Baseball. Brooks Baseball.

In the fourth inning of Sunday’s Seattle-Texas game, young Italian gentleman Alex Liddi hit the third home run of his young career off of Ranger lefty Derek Holland. Among the diverse reactions to Liddi’s homer, ROOT Sports’ cameras found this gentleman’s — whose behavior might be best described as “angry” and “shirtless.”

“But Carson,” perhaps you’re saying, “shirtless isn’t a sort of behavior.” To which I reply, “Sure, maybe I know that, but try explaining it to star of stage and screen Carroll O’Connor”:

Amen to the very shirtless and angry Michael Barr for drawing the author’s attention to the above.

While the tattoo is mostly commonplace in baseball, there seems to be (with the exception of journeyman reliever Justin Miller) a real dearth of knuckle tattoos — i.e. the classiest possible tattoo.

Perhaps, one thinks, the reason for so few knuckle tattoos is a lack of inspiration among their potential human canvases. It’s with said lack of inspiration in mind that the author submits here five proposals for specific and active major leaguers.

To wit:

For Brett Gardner, the Yankees’ underrated star:

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That’s gonna leave a mark.

Earlier in the week, Dave Cameron introduced — and, shortly thereafter, reconsidered — a series entitled “FanGraphs Official Position On…” In theory, the series would use award-voting season as an entree into discussing both the strengths and limitations of advanced stats — and WAR, in particular — in determining the leagues’ MVPs and Cy Youngs and other things.

In practice, the project was more complicated than that. As Cameron noted in a piece on Tuesday, “The titles of the post[s] — and the fact that [FanGraphs is] really a big conglomerate of individuals with their own take on things — probably created more confusion than anything else.”

As usual, Cameron’s remarks are the picture of reason.

While the taking of “official positions” involves painting with too large a brush where our analytical cousins are concerned, the reader should know that, at NotGraphs, we endorse painting with as large a brush as possible — so that one can finish painting more quickly, of course, before moving on to more pressing matters, like inappropriate touching.

It’s for this reason that NotGraphs absolutelydefinitely has some official positions. Though an exhaustive list would be too exhaustive to compose, the author has submitted some representative stances for the reader’s consideration.

Here, then, are NotGraphs’ totally official positions on:

English, Written or Otherwise
It’s rude to communicate in any language besides English — but equally coarse not to festoon one’s sentences with charming foreign expressions.

English, Written or Otherwise, Part II
Whenever possible, use the oldest extant word for a thing. Instead of photograph, for example, use daguerreotype. Instead of Christian, consider lion food.

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A lot of things in life aren’t fair. Like having to grow up in Florida, probably. Or how your parents bought Becky a car even though they never bought you a car and you got better grades than Becky and were involved in a lot of extracurricular activities.

Another thing that isn’t fair — to Yankee call-up Brandon Laird and to a lot of major leaguers in the future — is Matt Moore’s changeup.

The one you see here is from the second inning of Thursday night’s contest between the Rays and Yankees. It features 10.1 inches of armside run and 2.2 inches of “rise” — this, relative to league averages of 8.2 and 5.1, respectively, on the change. (A note: Pitch F/x actually appeared to classify some of his changeups as split-fingered fastballs, although it’s unlikely that he’s throwing the ball purposely different.)

In all, Moore threw 11 changeups against the Yankees and received swing-and-misses on four of them (36.4%) — this, for a pitch that receives whiffs on only about 12% of offerings league-wide.

Thanks to Brooks Baseball for Pitch F/x data.

As part of his ongoing efforts to bring world peace to the world, Peter Gammons submitted some important thoughts via Twitter late Wednesday night that have given the neterati much in the way of food for thought.

In an effort to fully digest said food, NotGraphs’ own Eric Augenbraun rendered Gammons’ cryptic message into the LOLGammo form that he’s made famouser than famous, as follows:

And because the internet only contains so many images of Peter Gammons, the present author has also attached Gammons’ message to the first three random images proffered by that most indispensable of websites, ROFL Bot.

To wit:

George Washington crossing the Delaware:

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With his home run last night, Chicago (AL) third baseman Brent Morel now has seven of those things (i.e. home runs) in the month of September, placing him third in that respect behind only Ian Kinsler (9) and Adrian Beltre (8) — i.e. players who’ve established a track record of doing such a thing.

The present author has already written a brief love letter to Morel’s recent performance at FanGraphs’ main page, but has left some things unsaid that can only really be understood by bearing witness — awe-filled, pants-offed witness.

To that end, I’ve embedded below — and attached the most hilarious commentary you can imagine to — all of Morel’s September home runs, beginning with this one:

9/3: Off Brad Penny. In which Tiger fans are not happy, having just realized — one assumes — that they live in Michigan.

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Are you this man’s homeboy?

If there are two things you should take from the post you’re currently reading, the first of those things is that the author, Carson Cistulli, has listened to at least one hip-hop song in his life and won’t hesitate to leverage that experience into the title of a blog post about baseball.

The second thing you should know is how Brandon Phillips has an understanding of the free market and won’t hesitate to leverage that understanding into awesome quotes that an author like myself can steal for his own blog and get bigpageviewsuccess!!!

Despite the fact that Reds GM Walt Jocketty has made it clear he’ll be picking up Phillips’ $12MM option for 2012, Phillips was in a mind Wednesday to consider time future. Regarding life after his present contract, Phillips said the following within earshot of MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon:

No bueno. This is my last contract. There is no homeboy hookup. I just want to be paid what I am worth.

Just so we’re all understanding here, allow me to provide a glossary for the blockquoted text.

Homeboy Hookup = Hometown Discount

Paid What I Am Worth = Market Value

No Bueno = No Effing Bueno

Were one to construct a sort of pantheon of modern religious thinkers, it would, of course, be difficult to neglect such personages as Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Rahner, and — if you’re the sort of person who considers “Protestantism” a thing — Paul Tillich.

Another name you’d be loathe to forget is the one belonging to White Sox field manager and mouthy Latin gentleman Ozzie Guillen, who yesterday blew the entire world’s mind via his comments (rendered lovingly into tweet form by the Sun-Times‘ Chris De Luca) regarding a sort of cryptic hybrid polytheism as yet unconceived in extant scholarship.

Specifically, Guillen speaks of (a) a personal god belonging to White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf and (b) what Guillen calls the “real” god. Though Guillen clearly differentiates between the two, he fails — or, perhaps, coyly neglects — to note whether any other gods exist in this compelling and rich half-mythology.

It’s for his simultaneous brilliance and stubborn opacity that Guillen has frequently been referred to as “Derrida in a ballcap” and, other times, as “an effing a-hole.”