It wasn’t the most active trade deadline ever for the Seattle Mariners, but all wasn’t completely quiet on the western front. The Mariners picked up some prospects in dealing away Erik Bedard, and in far more important news, they signed Wily Mo Pena to a minor league contract. Pena is hitting .667/.800/1.667 with the Tacoma Raniers so far. But I digress.
Naturally this coverage can be difficult on those in the media, but John Hickey of sportspressnw.com was all over it, not only on the site but at his twitter account too:
Click to embiggen
All too often, we see analysis constrained by what people have done in the past; too simplistic, too bland, too dry. Not here. I think we can all applaud Mr. Hickey’s excellent outside-the-box coverage.
After the injury to Brian McCann, the Braves found themselves searching for depth at catcher. The Brewers were only too happy to oblige, sending Triple-A catcher Wil Nieves to Atlanta. The return? One dollar. That’s right.
Come on, Doug Melvin. You couldn’t even wrangle a washing machine out of the Braves? Frank Wren would make Jackie Moon proud — the same Jackie Moon who acquired key point guard Ed Monix for a mere washing machine:
Announcer: Welcome back to Tropics Weekly. The ABA has announced that the top four teams will merge with the NBA after this season. Seizing the opportunity owner/player/coach Jackie Moon has already made the first move acquiring Ed Monix from the Kentucky Colonels.
Moon: Yeah! I’m a pretty aggressive owner. Uh when I heard Kentucky needed a washing machine I looked at ours even though we need ours. Uh I said “I gotta pull the trigger on this.”
Anybody who is still up at this hour is definitely familiar with the play that ended the Pirates-Braves game that began on July 26th. Just in case you’ve forgotten, here’s a video.
Pretty wild stuff. As the Pirates announcer said, “The throw beat him by a mile!!” But wait, Mike McKenry actually had to tag Julio Lugo. The consensus seems to be it was an obvious call. Obviously, says everyone, or most everyone at least, McKenry tagged him!
Just watch the video again, and try to find the tag on the replays.
“The throw beat him by a mile!” “And he’s saying that he wasn’t tagged?!”
Here is the picture most generally accepted (by myself included) to be proof of the tag, originally posted by @TravHaney.
Maybe I’m just insane. Maybe I’m just looking for something that isn’t there (or maybe I’m trying not to find something that is there). But that is, at best, a tangent-point tag. Can we definitively say, even from that picture, where glove ends and where shadow begins? It’s not like blowing the picture up really helps any, does it? Maybe I need my eyes checked.
Julio Lugo was probably out at home, but because the ball beat him by so much, we seem convinced that the tag was there. Is this fair? Actually, possibly it is. It doesn’t matter by the rules, but I’m damn sure, despite the fact that McKenry’s tag would be just as questionable if Lugo was called out, there wouldn’t be this kind of investigation going on and I would be asleep.
This is just a bunch of rambling, but the point is that watching it in real time, from multiple angles, and even in slow motion, it’s very, very, very difficult for me to point out where the tag actually occurred. This isn’t the Joyce-Galarraga play, where the video and pictorial evidence was so obvious. This is a case where, in my opinion, the confirmation bias of seeing baseball beat runner by so much — “The throw beat him by a mile!!” — manifested itself in a similar reaction.
I’m just not so sure it’s as obvious as everybody says it is.
It is safe to say there is no question who would occupy the first spot on a hypothetical NotGraphs Mount Rushmore: the venerable Country Joe West, in all his glory. After Sir West, there is room for some debate, between a variety of figures:
Dick Allen – A big item among the, uh, less young members of the staff. Great hair, which would be profoundly difficult to properly recreate in stone.
Charlie Blackmon – A tremendous source of joy to one and all. But mostly Carson. Would surely increase handsomeness factor of monument, drastically needed after the necessary inclusion of West.
Delmon Young – Even if he’s not originally added, his history fiend ways will see him on our monument in the end.
Mark Reynolds When asked about his potential inclusion on a NotGraphs Mount Rushmore, Reynolds was quite apathetic.
Eliezer Alfonzo The initial protagonist of the thrilling “Secrets of Snake Juice” series, Alfonzo has earned his spot as a dark horse candidate.
The choices are plentiful, even with the probably untrue assumption I didn’t forget any deserving persons. I leave it to you, NotGraphs: who deserves to be on the NotGraphs Mount Rushmore?
OK, so technically those are stirrups. Specifically, those are Evan Longoria’s stirrups, and I don’t feel I’m going on a limb declaring these the best aspects of the Tampa Bay Rays uniforms.
More importantly, I would buy a pair of these things in a New York Tampa Bay minute, but I can’t seem to find them for sale anyway. I’m not insane for wanting a pair of these. Right? Right?
Although baseball is certainly nowhere near leaving the public eye in the recent future, it can be interesting to think about what will happen to the sport in the distant future. Can a sport like baseball actually survive in the fast-moving world of tomorrow?
Gene Roddenberry and the writers of Star Trek didn’t seem to think so. Baseball comes up relatively often in the series — more often than any current sport, although less often than the awesome-sounding Parrises Squares. In the Star Trek universe, baseball’s popularity declined rather swiftly in the 21st situation, such that the last World Series was played in 2042. The sport lived on in the minds of humans, but was no longer recognized as a major professional sport.
Dr. Paul Stubbs, portrayed by Ken Jenkins (the actor behind Scrubs’s Dr. Bob Kelso) remained a baseball fan despite the sport’s status as a relic. In explaining to young Ensign Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) how broken, how downtrodden Stubbs would be should he miss his one chance to perform his experiment on a stellar phenomenon which only occurs once every 196 years, he refers to his love of baseball, in a way that I think many of us who put our noses to the spreadsheets can understand:
STUBBS: I could live with failure… Well, maybe not. But nevereven to try. To miss your one chance at bat. Do you know baseball?
WESLEY: My dad taught it to me when I was little.
STUBBS: Once, centuries ago, it was the beloved national pastime of the Americas, Wesley. Abandoned by a society that prized fast food and faster games. Lost to impatience. But I have seen the great players make the great plays.
STUBBS: No, in here… (his mind)… With the knowledge of statistics… runs, hits and errors… times at bat… box scores. Men like us do not need Holodecks, Wesley. I have played seasons in my mind. It was my reward to myself. For patience. Knowing my turn would come. Call your shot. Point to a star. One great blast and the crowd rises. A brand new era in astro-physics. Postponed one hundred and ninety-six years on account of rain.
It’s a bit simplistic, but I think Stubbs’s speech gives a pretty good account of how people like “us” — those fans who take a great joy in the statistical side of the game — use those statistics to give us a greater understand of the game. Seeing Jose Bautista’s 216 wRC+ at the top of the leaderboards doesn’t end with the number. We can see the dominance play out in our heads as well, just like Future Bob Kelso suggests.
If you haven’t seen the Coen Brothers’ remade version of True Grit, do yourself a favor and watch it. It’s especially great if you like Westerns and/or Jeff Bridges, but I think it’s a movie most people should appreciate.
Which brings me to the above picture. If there’s one baseball player in all of the majors with True Grit, it’s Jason Giambi. Just look at that beard! Seriously, I can’t tell the difference between that and this:
Just look at those two pictures. Take it in. I, for one, will be referring to Giambi as “Rooster Giambi” for the rest of the season.
Paul Lukas of the ever-excellent Uni Watch has a new column over on ESPN about a new trend in MLB clubhouses. Specifically, as you can see from the picture, the column is about bat knob stickers styled in the same way as the team’s jersey numbers.
This is minutia even to people who deal in minutia, as Lukas says, but I still think it’s really, really cool. Way cooler than the old way of just writing the numbers on the bat in sharpie. Personally, I think I’d buy a sheet of these Brewers-styled ones if they were to ever be made available. Check out the article for more on what teams use these and how many more could in the near future.
Fans of that excellent film Anchorman may recall an appearance by erstwhile Athletics, Padres, Cardinals, and Pirates catcher/first baseman Gene Tenace. You’re forgiven, of course, if you missed it, as it’s really snuck in there. From the opening scene as the news team introduces themselves to the audience:
CHAMP KIND: Champ here! I’m all about havin’ fun. You know, get a couple cocktails in me, start a fire in someone’s kitchen, maybe go to Sea World, take my pants off. Anyway, I’ve become kinda famous for my signature catch phrase, “WHAMMY!” As in: Gene Tenace at the plate… and… WHAMMY! WHAMMY! [laughter]
Little known fact: Gene Tenace’s real first name is actually Fury. Don’t believe me? Sounds too ridiculous to be true, right? WRONG. Baseball-Reference is about to slap some sense into you.
Fury Gene Tenace. Got damn, I wish that were my name. And judging by his given name, Fiore Gino Tennaci, I wouldn’t be too surprised if he were some sort of distant relative to Carson Cistulli, no?
Observe the following Stadium Club card of former Yankees and Padres outfielder Oscar Azocar:
Click to embiggen, of course.
Azocar is seen here having what appears to be an intimate moment with his baseball bat. And that’s just fine. I’m sure Azocar and his bat have been through some very emotional times together… the good, the bad, you name it. But, it’s important to remember that bats are not truly able to consent. And we’ve seen what can happen when these relationships go too far.
Yes, I’m looking at you, Gloria Allred:
Remember, loving your bat is OK. Loving your bat physically is not.
