Dear NotGraphs,

Thanks,
T-ryan to Set an Example

Dear T-ryan,

Hopefully you’re in one of my leagues, in which case my advice is to trade him to the first team that gives you a halfway-decent offer. Or not even a halfway-decent offer. Adam Dunn or something like that. That seems fair. You should do that. I’ll even throw in Chone Figgins.

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In honor of President’s Day:

C: Gary Carter

1B: Ike Davis
2B/MGR: Davey Johnson
SS: Elliot Johnson
3B: Charlie Hayes

OF: Shoeless Joe Jackson
OF: Reggie Jackson
OF: Joe Carter

DH: Reggie Jefferson

SP: Walter Johnson
SP: Whitey Ford
SP: Randy Johnson
SP: Madison Bumgarner
SP: Billy Pierce

CL: Brian Wilson
RP: Mike Jackson
RP: Mike Adams
RP: Tyler Clippard
RP: Grant Balfour
RP: Arthur Rhodes

There were almost a dozen other outfielders I could have included, half a dozen starting pitchers, a couple of catchers, and, for whatever reason, pretty much no shortstops. Adam Kennedy at utility infield. Herb Washington as pinch runner. Ron Washington is the backup manager if it’s too much for Davey to manage and also play second base. This team has a killer bullpen.

Dear NotGraphs,

Any subscriptions you choose to make must be cost-calculated for 4 years and subtracted from the cash. Furnish, equip, stock, & subscribe as you see fit.

Dear Lonely Reader With Disposable Cash,

You and last week’s letter writer should hang out. He wants someone to watch the game with, and you seem to have a pretty sweet setup, along with $1500 in your pocket, which you guys can use for some pretty fancy take-out. I guess my first recommendation would be MLB.TV Premium ($124.99), set up to watch the feed on your television. Maybe a mini-fridge ($70) and some snacks and beverages. Although, assuming there’s a kitchen upstairs, I don’t know if the mini-fridge even adds all that much value, since baseball games come with sufficient commercial breaks. Maybe there are readers who know about some technological breakthrough that I’m not yet aware of, or someone wants to explain in the comments why you should buy a Slingbox or a Vook or something else I’ve never used and barely heard of, but otherwise, I think you’re good. And I think I’ve just illustrated that I have no idea what people do with disposable income.

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Presenting FanGraphs- 2012. Unless you pay us $4.99, here’s what happens:

Player Stat Mixups- A random swapping of numbers on your screen every time you move your mouse. Jeff Francoeur hit -1.3 home runs? Yovani Gallardo’s ERA was 53.6%? Maybe. Maybe not. With FanGraphs-, you’ll never know.

Articles- 11 superficial pieces to help you lose your fantasy league:

-Players who would be keepers if they existed
-BEERf/x and other numbers to help you analyze your favorite team’s concession offerings
-Keeper Conundrum: Nick Punto or Kelly Shoppach?
-Improve your draft strategy by stabbing yourself in the eye with a letter opener
-The difficulty in predicting intentional walks
-Unlabeled graphs that don’t mean anything
-Labeled graphs that mean even less
-Strategies for league formats that don’t exist
-Prospects for high school math teams in suburban Boston
-The 1st Annual NotGraphs Mustache Draft
-Looking for Philadelphia A’s who aren’t dead yet

Very Quick Opinions- Over 1100 one-word judgments about every player who played in the majors last season, mostly in Arabic.

FanGraphs- Complete Internet Takeover- All of your favorite websites, replaced with random posts from the FanGraphs archives, as well as images of Randy Johnson replacing all actors and actresses on any adult websites you happen to accidentally visit.

(Moral of this post: check out Fangraphs+)

Dear NotGraphs,

Miffed in Minnesota

Dear Miffed,

Gotta say, your girlfriend being willing to sit on the couch next to you, even playing Angry Birds, doesn’t sound so bad. I posed your question to my wife, who gets up from the couch when I turn on a baseball game– and if our apartment had more rooms than it does, she would definitely go to another one of those rooms. Her first question was whether you watch with the announcers on. News to me that the announcers were part of the problem for her, but she said– and this is a direct quote, because I wrote it down– “I think I would definitely be more interested in watching if instead of announcers, the game was set to music.”

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The Braves have a new weekend home uniform. See if you can follow this:

The initial plan is to wear it for Saturday and Sunday home games.

The Braves’ red jerseys worn for Sunday home games in recent years will be switched to Friday home games…. Traditional white home uniforms will be worn Monday through Thursday.

For road games, grey uniforms will continue to be the Braves’ primary garb, and the team will wear its navy blue alternate road jerseys when the starting pitcher chooses.

Unlike with the navy and red jerseys, the new uniform has matching pants the same color as the jersey. The Braves will wear their regular red-billed cap with the new uniforms.

“As is the case in a lot of clubhouses, if a starting pitcher really strongly feels like he wants to wear those [new uniforms for a non-weekend game], then we’ll have that discussion and if it makes sense, we will,” [Exec VP of sales and marketing] Schiller said. “But the plan is, we’ll definitely be wearing them Saturdays and Sundays.”

I’m finding it hard to imagine what that discussion might look like, and what factors might go into it making or not making sense to wear the new creme-colored uniform instead of, say, the white one.

JAIR JURRJENS: “I know it’s Wednesday, but I’d really like to wear the new creme-colored uniform today. It highlights the color of my eyes.”

DEREK SCHILLER, EXEC VP: “Jair, you know David Ross is catching today, and that new uniform reminds him of a deep childhood trauma involving egg nog.”

JURRJENS: “Oh, yeah, that new color does look like egg nog. I don’t care. David’s tough. He’ll get over it. I feel strongly. I’m trying to impress a new lady friend.”

SCHILLER: “I understand, but former President Jimmy Carter has a ticket for tonight’s game, and he specifically told me he’d be wearing his white jersey shirt. Do you want to make the former President look like he didn’t properly coordinate with the team’s uniform?”

JURRJENS: “I don’t think he’d care.”

SCHILLER: “We need to wear the white uniforms to celebrate National Glue Day.”

JURRJENS: “That’s not really a holiday, Derek.”

SCHILLER: “We forgot to do the laundry.”

JURRJENS: “Oh. Okay.”

Dear NotGraphs,

Sincerely,
Concerned in Colorado

Dear Concerned,

Fortunately, you’ve touched on my two areas of fake expertise, fantasy baseball and the law. Let’s start with your keepers. First, I have to assume that Ryan Braun is off the table, given that you work for law enforcement. What kind of example would it set if prosecutors could own steroid scofflaws on their fantasy teams? I was afraid to even bid on Barry Bonds in fantasy auctions when I was in law school. Also, I’m almost certain I read recently that anyone who’s ever owned Ugueth Urbina is under house arrest until 2024. Okay, until they officially decide on Braun’s appeal, I guess he’s presumed innocent, but you know better than I do that no one who’s accused of anything is ever actually innocent. So he’s out.

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Adam Dunn was at SoxFest over the weekend, talking about his disaster of a 2011 season:

“I thought I’d be able to go back home [in the offseason] and blow it off and forget about it.”

Source: ESPN

Now, he admits he couldn’t quite forget about it, and he’s been hitting in an indoor cage, and ESPN reports “he may have dropped a few pounds, but nothing too significant.”

Is this a little less anguish than someone who hit .159 should be experiencing? He went 6-for-94 against lefties. That’s only 6 more hits than I could have in 94 at-bats against lefties. If I was Adam Dunn, maybe I would have spent my offseason trying to figure out how my year went so terribly wrong– do some research, watch some video, see some doctors, talk to a therapist, I don’t know. And maybe he did all of that, but, “I thought I’d be able to go back home and blow it off and forget about it” ??? That struck me as a slightly bizarre comment. Crap, I just had a season that may well indicate the end of my time as a productive baseball player, with really no indication in the statistical line that this was a fluke. But, eh, I thought I’d just try and forget about it.

Inside Adam Dunn’s head sounds like a very peaceful place to be.

Dear NotGraphs,

(note: this is an actual e-mail from an actual reader, swear on my fantasy team.)

Dear Reader,

I hate to start off attacking the premise of the question, but, dude, she knows. I know you don’t think she knows, but she does. Women are skilled like that. My wife comes home and she immediately knows everything I’ve eaten, touched, looked at, anything. “You watched 30 Rock already? I thought we were going to watch it together!” “What? How do you know I watched 30 Rock?” “There’s a crumb of cereal on the floor near the couch, that I can somehow see from fifteen feet away. So I know you were eating cereal on the couch, and so I know you must have been watching something on TV while you were eating it, and since there was nothing else on the DVR, I know you watched 30 Rock without me.” It’s like “The Mentalist.” Which I also watched on the DVR without her.

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Dear Arbitrators:

As you know, there are six criteria that may be considered during a salary arbitration hearing:

1. The contribution of the player during the previous season
2. The length and consistency of the player’s career
3. The record of the player’s previous compensation
4. The performance of the player’s club during the previous season
5. Any physical or mental defects the player may have
6. Comparable baseball salaries

Source: The Sports Economist Blog

In this hearing, we would like to focus specifically on element #5. The player in question has the following mental and physical defects that we believe indicate he should be awarded our submitted figure of $480,000, and not the player’s submitted figure of $11,000,002. Apologies for the length of our list.

1. Player’s right arm is three millimeters shorter than his left.
2. Severe seasonal allergies.
3. Lactose intolerance. Read the rest of this entry »