New device in the house. Now it has to learn all my words again. But! Now I get to see what all these player names turn into in the hands of Auto-Correct.
Can you guess who I was trying to write about? I bet you’ll figure them all out, but I’ll try to do them from easiest to toughest. Maybe I’ll send the winner something if someone gets em all.
The unwritten rules of baseball extend into the crowd. For example, there’s a decorum that governs when spectators should boo. Sometimes gentleman, sometimes bartender Jon Rauch helps us out:
Very disappointed with the fans who booed Jason Bay as he came off the field. This is a serious injury that affects his livelihood (cont)
— Jon Rauch (@jrauch60) June 16, 2012
Well, okay, that one was obvious. Jason Bay ran full tilt into the outfield wall trying to catch a ball and suffered a concussion for it. Maybe that wasn’t the best time to boo him.
FanGraphs: the Game is real. I have proof.
First, how else can you explain my Giants first baseman? He’s ‘hitting’ .235/.314/.350… and Giants’ first basemen are hitting .207/.312/.336. My dude has a better ISO, the Aubrey Huff / Brett Pill / Brandon Belt monstrosity has a better walk rate. Both are right around replacement. Somehow I have my pick of the entire league, and the Giants have their pick of those three dudes, and we ended up in the same place.
On the other side of the coin, cwhitman is doing a heckuva job. His Nationals starter is performing like… a Nationals starter. His starter has an 8.76 K/9, 2.87 BB/9, and 0.83 HR/9 — the staff in our nation’s capital has an 8.48 K/9, 3.04 BB/9, 0.71 HR/9. Again, they had no choice beyond what was on their roster or in their system, cwhitman had plenty of choice, and they ended up in the same place.
Can I brag about this one fantasy team that I’ve got? It’s a keeper, twelve teams, head-to-head. Think I lost in the championships last year. Traded David Wright and Cole Hamels for Dustin Pedroia before keepers were due, which was kind of a loss maybe, but this team was too good to care and it made my six keepers going into the season Carlos Santana, Joey Votto, Dustin Pedroia, Brett Lawrie, Jose Reyes, and Carlos Gonzalez. Felt pretty good going into the draft.
We caught up with robot expert, rapper and part-time chicken enthusiast Kool Keith and picked his brain about the robot umpires that are surely on their way to baseball. What follows is a summary of his expertise on the subject, with commentary.
• Voicemail, pagers / These are the things that robots carry
Anything as arcane as pagers is possible in the backwaters of Major League Baseball, although why they would need to carry voicemail is an open question.
Felix Hernandez: Why didn’t you call me? I called you. I called you like eight times. Why didn’t you call me?
Adrian Beltre: I called you. Oh come on. I called you. Check your messages. I called.
Hernandez: No you didn’t call me. No no no.
Beltre: Man, check your phone. Must be broken.
Hernandez: No way.
There are two gladiators here, fierce and prepped for battle. They read from inspirational poetry of their times before heading into combat.
“Eat lettuce and soft apples eat:
For you, Phoebus, have the harsh face of a defecating man.”
— Roman poet Martial, circa 100 AD
They clang steal, they shout epithets. They practice fierceness and they ready their minds for the conflict that stands in front of them.
And yet their identity remains unknown.
Perhaps one is…
Alex Rodriguez’s cousin? Or the centaur?
Sam Fuld?
Andrew Friedman.
MF Doom?
Caligula come to dine upon the innards of the competition?
Drew Sutton? Or the guy he was replacing? Or was Sutton the guy who got injured and needed replacing.
The missing (titular) devil?
Chris Carter — either one?
Brandon Allen?
Brawlin’ Bartender.
Dayn Perry did a all-drinkers team, and I’ve done an all-ugly team, but there’s one team in between the two that deserves mention. It’s the cast of characters on the beer-league baseball team that make up the Best Bar in Baseball.
Walk in the front door, and the first person you’ll notice is Jon Rauch. That’s because he’s both the bartender at this mythical bar, as well as the tallest, meanest-looking tatted biker type you might find in baseball. He’s the tallest person in the major leagues, but he’ll more likely be proud of a lesser-known stat: he’s the tallest person to hit a major league home run and it came off of Roger Clemens. He’s not a man of a ton of words, though, so you’ll order your Lagavulin neat or your Old Rasputin Nitro (of course this bar has good whiskey and craft beers, why wouldn’t it) and look for a seat at the bar.
Steve Edlefsen technically had 14.2 Major League innings before last night. None of them probably prepared him for this.
What Vin Scully said:
“He was picked by the Red Sox as an infielder.”
“Looks like he should be a sidearmer.”
“Comebacker to the mound… took his glove right off!”
“Nice try by Edlefsen.”
What assorted people in my living room said:
“Did he throw his glove at that? Little league.”
“Who is this jerk.”
“Stupid Mota and his stupid steroids.”
“Way to screw that up three different ways, meat.”
