LOS ANGELES — Dodgers pitcher Chad Billingsley will have decade-ending surgery this week to repair seventeen partially torn flexor tendons in his right elbow.

Billingsley, who had already been working his way back from Tommy John surgery on the same elbow, Tommy Hilfiger surgery on the opposite elbow, and John Quincy Adams surgery on six of his feet, is hopeful he can pitch again in 2020, or maybe 2025.

“I’ll have spent the majority of my adult life in rehab, but I’ve got to do it,” Billingsley said. “Or at least the terms of my contract say I have to do it. So I’ll do it. They tell me it should only be five or six years of rehab, so that’s good. I’ll catch up on a bunch of old New Yorker issues I’ve been saving. I hear there are some good George Saunders stories in a few of them. I love George Saunders.”

The surgery will be performed by a team of thirty-six doctors over the course of nine days, with provisions being flown in by the National Guard to keep the entire 108-member surgical team properly hydrated.

Billingsley began having surgeries when he appeared on the FOX reality show, “The Swan,” insisting that he wanted to look “more like a surgical patient” than he had been appearing until that point. His elbow initially began bothering him when he was a six-months-developed fetus, but he was hopeful he could avoid surgery until he finished his pitching career.

The Dodgers were initially hopeful Billingsley could disappear, so they could avoid paying his salary, especially after he had setbacks at each step of his rehab, including during each step he took to get to the rehab center. (He lost at least four tendons on the concrete path from the parking lot to the main entrance.)

The Dodgers signed Billingsley to a three-year, $35 million contract extension in March 2011. There is a dispute about whether the contract is valid, since Billingsley was unable to actually sign the physical document, due to elbow pain.

I’m in a 5×5 keeper league, languishing in last place (Fielder, Verlander, Holliday, etc). I’ve spent the past three weeks working day and night to dump some of my veterans for prospects who could potentially help me turn this around in the future, but obviously underperforming old guys are a pretty hard sell. Nevertheless, I took each team’s roster and spent hours entering projections and running simulations to demonstrate that my proposed deals were fair, and they should take the risk of, say, a Holliday turnaround in exchange for a risky bet like Noah Syndergaard. Hours on the phone, missed tons of family stuff, really dedicated my past few weeks to this and got a whole bunch of blue-chip prospects and risky wild cards (Danny Salazar, etc). My question: is my wife going to leave me?

Yes.

I’m in a crazy dynasty keeper league, we have three in-season drafts to pick up new guys, just had one after work last week to grab players from the draft. I ended up with Rodon and Pentecost and feel pretty good about that, but I feel pretty terrible about the fact that I missed my wife’s 12-week ultrasound to go to the draft, told her I had to work late but she found out I was lying. My question: is my wife going to leave me?

Yes.

After years of putting our league before our family, my husband somehow convinced me things would be better if I joined the league too and became fantasy-baseball-crazy like him. Turns out I actually love it, it’s been the best spring of our marriage, we’re both now totally into it, we spend more time together than ever before and don’t hate each other because of it. Problem is I’m demolishing him, am in first place by a whole bunch, basically stole Tanaka and Josh Donaldson from him in an early-season trade, and he’s in eighth place with no hope, mopes around the house all day, blames me for his sucky team. My question: is my husband going to leave me?

Yes.

I was about the pull the trigger on a great deal, had the e-mail written, just needed to push send, and I suddenly started vomiting blood. Went to the ER, the e-mail never got sent, and by the time I got back to my phone, the guy had pulled the offer. The blood is just the tip of the iceberg– everything that could be coming out of me is coming out of every orifice. Doctors say it’s a medical mystery. How do I get the guy to offer the trade again?

Sorry. You probably can’t. Good luck.

I think I accidentally traded my daughter for Carlos Gomez. Wife is furious. Well, sometimes. Depends on her mood. Was it a good deal?

Not sure.

Is it actually the middle of the season yet?

Not quite. Soon.

Okay, how did we miss this?

On May 24th, Coco Crisp tweeted to his followers, looking for a name for an app he’s developing where you catch baseballs in his hair:

I'm developing a new game where you catch baseballs in my hair. Any ideas for names? #namecocosgame pic.twitter.com/glv6tGWgY4

— Covelli Crisp (@Coco_Crisp) May 24, 2014

We’ve missed the deadline, and the name was chosen last week– and with a little Twitter research, you can find out what it was– but I thought I’d see if NotGraphs commenters can do better than what was chosen.

The floor is all yours.

Hey, Max. Yahoo Sports reports that you took out an insurance policy to cover lost earnings in case you don’t end up with a contract offer as big as the $144 million you turned down from the Tigers.

Here at Podunk Insurance, we were very excited to hear about it.

Because it sounds like you’re the kind of pragmatic, risk-averse individual who values quality insurance, to cover all of your potential calamities.

You may be covered for lost earnings… but are you covered in the case of a giant meteor attack?

Major League Baseball is going to have a tough time continuing if the Earth’s atmosphere is blackened with soot. Worried about the Tampa Bay Rays? I’d be more worried about the sun’s Rays, and how they’re not going to be able to get through, to warm your body and fuel the growth of the food you need to compete. And what’s the (David) Price of a policy to cover such a catastrophe? Well, let’s not talk about cost just yet…

Because you may be able to bundle the meteor insurance with another product we’re very excited about. You’ve heard of robots, right? They already have robotic arms that can throw baseballs. We’re not that far away from a robot taking your job, or possibly eating your family.

So you’ll need coverage for that, too.

And what if you decide to freeze your sperm, and the clinic loses it? We have sperm insurance. It’s very important. You never know when you’ll need it.

And how about a fan in the stands throwing ice cream at you? Ice cream insurance. I’ll add it to the list.

I assume you already have car insurance, but did you see the Transformers movie? What if your car turns into something else? Do you have insurance for that? Speaking of movies, you need Godzilla insurance too.

How are you going to pay for all of this insurance? Someone did offer you $144 million, didn’t they? I think they did. So you should probably take that deal, since insurance can be very expensive.

Good luck the rest of the way. Especially if the meteor hits.

Mets second baseman and sports’-only-parental-role-model Daniel Murphy was in the news in April when he missed the first two games of the season to be with his wife for the birth of their son (who was unfortunately born a Mets fan, a condition that will make it difficult for him to function normally).

This week, Murphy was a guest at the White House for a discussion about working dads.

Readers might recall that, at the time Murphy took his leave, Boomer Esiason suggested Murphy’s wife should have had a C-section before the season. Interestingly enough, Esiason scheduled his own lobotomy to occur right before he made that remark.

I have one and only one problem with baseball players taking paternity leave to be there for the births of their children:

Read the rest of this entry »

From ESPN:

MINNEAPOLIS — “Why not us?”

That was the response from Twins general manager Terry Ryan on Sunday when informed the decision to sign free-agent Kendrys Morales to a one-year, $7.6 million deal was, well, very un-Twins like.

“Why not us? We’re a baseball team. We have players. We sign contracts. We have people at every position, just like all of the other teams. And we’re trying to win games. Sort of. I mean, we’re putting players on the field, and I’m sure they’re doing their very best, and sometimes the laws of random chance come out on our side and, odds be damned, we win a game or two. We’ve had success before with players we’ve signed. Ricky Nolasco, for example. Okay, not a great example. But an example nonetheless. Jason Kubel. Okay, again, not a great example. Well, we have some really up-and-coming talent here. Aaron Hicks. Okay, I’m going to stop with the examples. We have superstar Joe Mauer, having a, uh, having a year. That’s what everyone on the team is doing. Having a year. And maybe our years will somehow turn out to be better than enough people’s years that we accidentally end up in the playoffs. That’s why Kendrys is a fit. Because if we sneak into the playoffs, maybe by then he will be in playing shape and can lead us in a big celebration at home plate if we manage to ever score a run, and he can break his foot again, and then we’ll have the flexibility to call up anyone we want to replace him on the roster. So you ask why us? Because. Because why not us, and why shouldn’t we have as much of a right to sign a player of questionable value and no true position who hasn’t played in months and was probably going to be of negligible value anyway, especially since we already have Josh Willingham. That’s why us. And if he can pitch, too, then that’s even better, because Ricky Nolasco is not terribly good, and is mostly goodly terrible.”

From Michael Wray at Jays Journal:

Thanks to a poor lifestyle decision when it was announced on Friday night that Marcus Stroman had been called up by the Toronto Blue Jays and would start on Saturday I was hugging my bathroom’s toilet bowl. By the time I came to my senses, Stroman was already into his fifth inning of work and I had missed what sounded like a spectacular start.

Because we don’t skimp on research here at NotGraphs, let’s figure out exactly how long Michael Wray was on the toilet. Shi Davidi from Sportsnet tweets about Stroman’s recall at 12:38 AM Saturday morning:

#BlueJays lose second in a row as they recall Marcus Stroman to join rotation: http://t.co/MWShQDEOAW

— Shi Davidi (@ShiDavidi) May 31, 2014

The Blue Jays gameday feed seems to indicate that the fifth inning ended at 2:25 PM:

Five Ks through innings of one-run ball for Stroman. He's at 58 pitches.

— Blue Jays Gameday (@TORGameday) May 31, 2014

Wray claims to have recovered sometime during that inning… so let’s approximate and say 2:15.

That puts him on the toilet for at least 13 hours and 37 minutes. I don’t know if it’s Guinness Book worthy… but, nice work, Michael Wray.

As a four-times-a-week NotGraphs writer, sometimes it is hard to find new things to write about. And sometimes posts so magical, so incredible, so absolutely must-post-able just fall into your lap when you’re barely even looking. Sure, I was browsing on Amazon, looking at the pages for some recently-released baseball books, wondering whether Jerry Reuss or Jason Grilli will sell more copies of their respective books… when I came across this review of Jason Kendall’s new book, “Throwback.”

I am just going to present this review, in its entirely, because this, fine readers, is the reason the Internet exists:

Yes, this review was helpful to me. Yes, yes, yes, fifty thousand times yes!

So, Jon Singleton just guaranteed himself $10 million over the next five seasons— and a call-up to the majors– in exchange for giving the Astros an extra year before he hits free agency, and locking him into a team-friendly contract in the event he becomes a decent major league player.

And there are people trying to make the case he shouldn’t have taken the deal?

At the Hopeless Joe quality-of-life level, $10 million buys you 400 years of rent and expenses. Okay, maybe 200 years after taxes. Maybe 100 years after inflation is taken into account (although if you buy bulk at Costco to the extent I do, inflation really isn’t an issue… I have enough mayonnaise for the rest of my life… and don’t tell me you buy into the whole expiration date scam, because you know they’re only there to make you buy more mayonnaise every four years when there’s really nothing wrong with mayonnaise until it turns green… and even then, if you just scrape that top layer off… or just mix that top layer into onion dip at your next party and no one will notice… it’s not like I even like the people who come to my parties… anyone who comes to a party I invite them to clearly has no friends and something wrong with them… so they deserve whatever mayonnaise they get).

So assuming you’re not going to live well into the triple-digits — and who would even want to, given global warming and what’s happening in Syria and the impending final season of Parks & Recreation — it seems like the risk of injury, accident, loss of talent, bird flu, or career-ending mayonnaise poisoning would make this kind of deal a no-brainer for any player with enough sense to evaluate the probabilities.

And if baseball players are known for anything, it’s their ability to evaluate probabilities. That’s why no one ever dives into first base, only the fastest players in the league bother trying to steal bases, and if a manager ever even thinks to suggest that someone sacrifice bunt in the vast majority of circumstances, the entire team bashes his head in with a baseball bat. Of which there are many in the dugout, because they are playing a game of baseball.

How often do we see reasonably-touted prospects never earn anywhere close to $10 million? I’m looking at you, Nick Franklin. But you are not looking back at me, because apparently your eyes don’t work anymore and that’s why you can’t hit the ball. Well, at least not in Seattle. Because your eyes seemed to work great in Tacoma. What is wrong with you, Nick Franklin? I traded for you. The day before you got called back up! I was a genius. No, no, Hopeless Joe can never be a genius. Anyone Hopeless Joe trades for becomes hopeless too. It’s a curse.

Okay, so back to Mr. Singleton and his $10 million. It’s not even like he won’t get a chance at free agency soon enough, if he’s a major league-quality player. He will. And he’ll rake in the big bucks so instead of living in the living room of a one-bedroom apartment owned by an elderly married couple who makes him clean their dentures every night (this is how I save on rent!), he can buy an actual house — with granite counter tops and crown molding and central air and double sinks and all of the things that everyone on House Hunters loves and wants and needs and has to have — and even upgrade his cable subscription to include some of the premium channels, like C-SPAN and QVC.

If this is the kind of contract admitted drug addicts can get, why isn’t anyone lining up to give me the same deal? I can’t go a day without Klonopin. I have three Ativan tablets in the pocket of every pair of pants I own. (Which is one. I own one pair of pants. But it’s a nice pair of pants! And since I never spend time with other people, no one even knows it’s my only pair of pants! That’s the secret, folks– you don’t need a lot of clothing if you never leave your apartment! That and so much more advice in my upcoming e-book, Hopeless Joe’s Guide To Living Hopelessly. Free Xanax with every purchase. I don’t take the Xanax anymore — side effects! — so I figure I’ll just give it away.)

Drug addicts getting $10 million makes me so… emotionally neutral, but I think that may be the Klonopin. I played first base once. And then I balked and so my little league coach sent me back to left field. I didn’t even know a first baseman could balk, but somehow I figured out a way. That was me as a kid, always finding new ways to fail. So, clearly, I should be on the Astros too. And I would sign a contract for a lot less than $10 million. Jeff Luhnow, you know where to find me. (In the living room of that one-bedroom apartment with the elderly couple — but you’ll have to knock loudly because it’s hard to hear over their television set.)

Jon Singleton, if you need Prozac– $1 million a pill, and it’s yours.

I just got this e-mail from the Mets about upcoming promotions. (Yes, I’m on the mailing list.)

I understand that it’s hard to increase ticket prices when your team is not so good, and that there are a lot of empty seats at the stadium, and no one wants to eat the food anymore now that Ryne Sandberg’s intestines exploded from a Shake Shack burger…

But to charge for a post-game concert???

Yes, I know it’s just half a dollar, but it’s the principle of it.

At least the shirts on Friday are free.

But what’s next?

A dollar to watch the manager when the Orioles are in town?