First, (obviously skewed and unrealistic) numbers.

If baseball were played once a week:

• Given the current months baseball is played, each team would play 26 games a season, for 780 games total.
• For Barry Bonds to hit a season-record 73 home runs, he would have to have averaged 2.8 home runs per game.
• For him to end his 22-season career with 762 home runs, he would have needed to average 1.33 dingers per every game played.
• If Barry Bonds wanted to maintain his career walk total of 2558 at his career rate of .86 BB/game, he would have had to play for 114 seasons. Read the rest of this entry »

A’s pitcher Sonny Gray was four years old when The Wu-Tang Clan released their debut album, so I’m not sure if Gray is privy to the philosophy of the 36 Chambers or not. Be that as it may, it certainly seems he’s channeling ODB (a.k.a. Dirty, a.k.a. Dirt McGirt, a.k.a. Big Baby Jesus) — may he rest in peace. Proof:

1. Gray himself does a fairly impressive shimmy off the mound to field the ball.
2. As Gray fields this ball barehanded, he hints at the notion that he “likes it raw.”

The results speak for themselves.  I will give Gray the mic so he can take it away.

Watch:

Listen:

This has been a GIF and a Tune.

Observe:

Harper finally admitted to Davey today his hip is "barking," so that prompted night off.

— Mark Zuckerman (@ZuckermanCSN) September 4, 2013

This struck me as odd, as I don’t remember seeing Bryce Harper’s hips barking. Did I miss something? Let’s roll our little computer mice over the following images to find out!
Read the rest of this entry »

SAN FRANCISCO — A joint research project conducted by the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) and Twitter, Inc. has concluded that there are no more original jokes to be made about Los Angeles Dodger Michael Young.

“Twitter is not only a fast, easy way to share ideas with one another,” said Lauren Fraser, a sports partnerships liaison for Twitter. “It’s a great tool for measuring and quantizing what certain communities are talking about. And the baseball community loves making jokes about Michael Young.”

The research project, which began in 2011, was put on hold for a spell during the 2013 season, a short time after Young was signed by the Philadelphia Phillies.

“After the Phillies signed Michael Young, jokes about him seemed to die down,” said SABR’s Executive Director, Marc Appleman. “We contemplated putting the project on the shelf, as it seemed we were going to fall short of witnessing every Michael Young joke being made. Then, he cleared waivers, and we saw an uptick. After that, he was traded to the Dodgers, and we started monitoring closely again.”

The tweet that completed the nearly-two year inquiry came from Twitter user @DodgerzGM, a parody account based loosely around Dodgers General Manager Ned Colletti. It stated “Yasiel Puig removed in the 6th inning so he can sit in the dugout next to Michael Young.”

“We had seen some Michael Young/Yasiel Puig jokes, but never one about them sitting together on the bench,” said Fraser. ” Young getting traded to the Dodgers made that happen. It’s a very exciting time for us.”

Fraser and Appleman said they plan to use this research in an upcoming presentation for the yearly SABR convention. They are looking to project a scroll of every Michael Young joke made on Twiiter, that will play the entire duration of the event. As a result, the next SABR convention will be extended to last four and half months. Details are still being negotiated.

With about a month left in the season, some things have already shaken out. The bad teams are bad, the good teams are good, Ron Gardenhire is still bloated. This we know. What we don’t know, fair reader, is exactly how the playoff race will shake out. These are the times when the men are separated from the boys. The winners from the posers. It’s closing time, and while you don’t have to go home, you can still stay here. That’s how the Internet works.

A page I’ve been visiting every morning for the past few days, and will most likely visit every morning until the season is over, is the MLB Postseason Probabilities page, where probabilities from Baseball Prospectus are presented in both a graphical and user-dynamic way. (Note to any FG employee that stumbles across this: I of course check the probabilities at the mother site as well.)

I was looking at the AL standings today, where nine teams are separated by as few as six games. The NL race has seven teams in contention for five spots. This should make for quite the ending to the summer. And what better way to end the summer than with the song of the summer? Presenting the AL and NL Postseason Probabilities set to the Robin Thicke (featuring T.I. and Pharrell)’s Blurred Lines.

Watch:

Listen:

[Setting – a generic office space]
Steve: “Dude. Did you get that email I sent you?”
You: “I don’t know. Lemme check. Oh yeah. What is this?”
“Just click on it.”
“What is it?”
“It’s an awesome video. Just click on it.”
[You click]
(In a whispered yet scolding tone) “What the fuck, Steve?”
[You close the window quickly]
“Awesome, right?”
“What the fuck is your problem?”
“I thought you’d like it.”
“I could get FIRED for looking at shit like this.”
“What? Nobody’s looking.”
“You know they log everything we look at, right?”
“What?”
“Yeah. They keep logs of every page we visit.”
“Really? … I gotta go.”
“Don’t send me shit like this again.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll talk to you later.”
[Steve exits scene]

(Original GIF from the Internet Elk’s Lodge that is Reddit.)

It is a sad day for baseball fans, dear NotGraphs readers. Let us all light our little candles in our little paper cups, crack a forty, and pour one out for our fallen compatriot. I have little words to offer at this point, so this hastily-compiled montage will have to do for now. Hug someone you love tonight.

Derek Jeter is very excited to rejoin the Yankees lineup today.

This has been Baseball Players Twerking.

Yasiel Puig has made a name for himself in baseball for a variety of reasons. In the GIF pit of the Internet, and certainly on these electronic pages, one certain trait of his has been highlighted — his bat flips. Puig, however, is not one to rest on his laurels. He gets the Hell of his laurels and ventures into the burgeoning  world of BALL flips.

Observe:

On August 21st, 2013, Ichiro Suzuki knocked his 4,000th professional hit. What happened after is best described by Grant Brisbee of SB Nation:

There is a mini-controversy about Ichiro’s 4,000th hit.

Clarification: There is a dumb mini-controversy about Ichiro’s 4,000th hit. On one side, there are the people who think it’s pretty neat that Ichiro has collected 4,000 hits between Japan and the majors.

On the other side, there are people who are upset that other people think it’s pretty neat. Because some of those hits weren’t in the majors, which nullifies the “neat” and makes the round number uninteresting, I guess? Look, I don’t know.

I feel like this sums it up pretty perfectly. Brisbee goes on to do some projections about what Ichiro might have done had he played his whole career in MLB, but I don’t want to even go that far.

To me, 4,000 is less of a landmark as it is a reminder. It’s a reminder that though this player may now be a bit of a shell of himself at 39, the whole of him, the complete Ichiro was and is a dynamic player that changed a lot about the game. I would link clips to some of his highlights, but that’s not needed right now. His great throws, his great catches, his tremendous base running plays are still in your heads. Even if you don’t remember the exact play, you can picture the type of play because you still know what type of player Ichiro was. There will be a slew of highlight reels when Ichiro finally retires. For now, I’ll just present this one:

I’m not that great at lip reading, but I’m pretty sure I picked out a few phrases:

• Oh my God
• He touched me
• Oh my God
• I have to call my mom
• He touched me
• Oh my God

Again, I’m not the best lip reader, but I’m pretty sure she didn’t say:

• If he ever reaches the 4,000 hit milestone, I’ll really have to contemplate how I value the hits he got in Japan due to various arguments around ballparks, skill of competition, and statistical translation between leagues. I look forward to these moments, and look forward to making my thoughts known when that time comes.

None of us deserve Ichiro, and he will soon be gone. To paraphrase a song: Dig him up and shake his hand. Appreciate the man.