So pleased was I two days prior when I beheld the glorious (and complex) visage of Rudy Pemberton on this webbed page, submitted for your approval by one Dayn Perry. Pemberton has been a favorite player of mine for the last two seasons based on his absolutely ridiculous 1996 season.

What happened in 1996 to Rudy Pemberton? you ask, predictably. I am glad that you, as I had anticipated, asked. First, he got released by the Tigers after hitting .315/.360/.580 at AAA and .300/.344/.467 in the Majors as a 25 year old in 1995. Then, he signed with Texas. The Rangers promptly traded him to Boston, who stashed him at Pawtucket (where he hit .326/.375/.616) until September.

On September 1, Pemberton was recalled from Pawtucket with Nomar Garciaparra. He played the next day and went 0-for-2, but Pemberton would finish the month at .512/.556/.780 with 21 hits in 41 at bats, 2 walks, 2 hit by pitch, 3 stolen bases, 8 doubles, 1 homer, 11 runs, and 10 RBI.  Garciaparra hit .241/.272/.471, the pansy.

What follows is a non-exhaustive and only partially untrue list of facts regarding Rudy Pemberton’s incredible September, which should give you great joy: Read the rest of this entry »

Benjamin Disraeli said that “Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.”  Golly, he makes being conservative seem like absolutely no fun.  Wouldn’t you rather greet the future with optimism and wild-eyed hope, the better to be prepared for the non-stop techno dance party that your life is destined to become?

Take this intrepid soul, who has chosen to prepare for the inevitable rise of the Astros:

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I regret to be the one to inform you, but baseball as we know it was murdered in 2008. What you’ve been watching in the ensuing three years has been simply the death throes of a game we all love, gasping for air and seizing as it goes into shock…or something (I’m not a doctor; that’s a thing, right?)

“What felled mighty baseball?” you ask, in expectation that in the next paragraph I will tell you. “Surely no one human person is capable of destroying something so fine and beautiful.”

You would be correct. While some might argue that Ryan Braun is killing the game we love so much, baseball was not murdered at the hands of man. No. Baseball was ruined, as most things eventually are, by vampires. Observe:

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Forgive me, but this post is (largely) not very funny. Some of you might argue that my posts are never funny. Those people are wrong. Wrongity, wrongity, wrong. To quote the great Lt. Steven Hauk:

Anyway, there are a couple agitators in the comments section around here who are distraught…in every post…that Tim McCarver has won the Ford C. Frick Award. On the one hand, it’s a little understandable. Tim McCarver has been off the top of his game for quite some time now. He still has a strong handle on what a pitcher and catcher are thinking at a given moment, and especially about catcher technique, but it’s entirely reasonable for someone to conclude, based on his recent body of work, that McCarver’s selection is ridiculous.
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Beloved, as you’ve undoubtedly already read, given that you are savvy denizens of the World Wide Web of Internets, the Baseball Writers Association of America (its induction ceremony pictured to the right) came to its senses yesterday and added FanGraphs to its list of BBWAA approved producers of baseball content.  Along with this designation, FanGraphs will undoubtedly receive a vote in upcoming award balloting for the AL and NL MVP, Cy Young, Rookie of the Year and Manager of the Year elections.  And in ten years, God-willing and the crik don’t run dry, a Hall of Fame vote (just in time to vote one last time for Tim Raines before he’s shuffled off the ballot…nice timing).

What has not been made clear is who will be doing the voting for FanGraphs.  Being that we value mob rule more than silly concepts like logic or fairness, it’s important that you make your voices heard above the din of the lot of us arguing that we deserve the vote more than Dave Cameron because we want it more (also known as the Charlie Bucket defense).

Anyway, please tell us who you would like to cast the important BBWAA votes for Fangraphs.  Make sure you read through all your options, and choose carefully.  In the interest of fairness, I’ve excluded myself as one of the choices, given how I’d win. For you have come to love me, but I don’t think I’ve been here long enough to deserve it.  Better to honor these men who built this city on rock and roll. It’s good that I’m humble enough to realize that.

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Dear readers of poetic inclination, as you’re undoubtedly aware, Robert Frost teaches that “Style is that which inidcates how the writers takes himself and what he is saying.”  If indeed that’s the case, then what must beleaguered and unappreciated former Twins reliever Ron Davis think of himself, and what is he saying?

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That cheering you heard yesterday afternoon was my enthusiastic endorsement of the offer that was bringing one James Tiberius Patrick Quirk from Houston to become the bench coach for the Chicago Cubs.  What follows is a non-exhaustive and only partially untrue list of facts regarding Jamie Quirk, which should give you great joy:

1) Jamie Quirk was drafted in the first round of the 1972 draft by the Kansas City Royals, a full 35 spots before Gary Carter.  Then again, Jamie Quirk was drafted as a shortstop.

2) Jamie Quirk once high-fived Steve Balboni and the resulting explosion killed 4/5 of Kansas City’s population, turning it into a small market city.

3) Jamie Quirk is 6’4″ tall, and is tied for the 5th tallest player to catch more than 500 games.

4) Jamie Quirk never caught a game as a professional baseball player until he was 24 years old, and had already been in the Major Leagues for four seasons.  He ended up playing roughly five times as many games there as any other position.

5) Jamie Quirk is his own wingman.

6) Jamie Quirk played for eighteen seasons, and was worth more than one win above replacement in exactly two of them.

7) Jamie Quirk sired many beautiful babies all across this great land, but mostly during a five-game series in Montreal in 1983. That the Expos moved to Washington in 2003 is the only reason he’s agreed to return to coach in the National League.

8) Until Carlos Quentin came along, Jamie Quirk was the all time leader in home runs by a person whose name started with the letter Q.  Do with that information what you will.

9) Jamie Quirk ate chicken and drank beer in the clubhouse all the time, and no one cared. It’s not like they were going to put him in the game.

10) Jamie Quirk was allowed exactly one at bat with the Cleveland Indians franchise. In that at bat, he hit a walk-off homerun off of the bespectacled and mustachioed Ron Davis.  Afraid that Quirk might prove to be too great a competitive advantage, the Indians released him after the season.

11) Jamie Quirk was traded to the Brewers after 1976 with two other players for Darrell Porter, who lasted four years with the Royals and fetched a compensation pick for the club when he left as a free agent after 1980.  The Royals used that pick on Mark Gubicza, who was eventually traded for one year of Chili Davis.  The Royals got 65.6 WAR out of that deal over the next twenty-one seasons AND re-signed Jamie Quirk to his second of three stints as a Royal when he became a Free Agent after the season.

12) Jamie Quirk played from when he was 20 years old to when he was 37. Eighteen seasons.  In which he played in an average of less than 54 games played per season.  I wish I was a backup catcher.  God bless you, Jamie Quirk.  You’re living the dream for all of us.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Here at NotGraphs, we’re taking it relatively easy today.  We have a ritual.  We gather together at the home of our beloved leader, Carson Cistulli, where we feast on the greatest creature that God has ever bestowed on the Earth, the Ken Turzimmoon:

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Reader, take a trip with me.  Back to the mid-1980s.  Ronald Reagan is running for reelection in between naps.  Prince is complicating heterosexuality by being at once sexually virile and a little pixy of a man.  Pastel is the new black.  And John Hughes rules the world with an iron fist.

Into this landscape saunters Steve Balboni, who blesses you with his divine image below:

Click, if thou wouldst dare embiggen Him.

Steve Balboni is more than a man. He is a legend. A muscle-bound, mustachioed misanthrope who raged against American League pitching in the mid-’80s, but who was ultimately doomed by his refusal to do anything but swing really really hard and hope he made contact, but not before hitting 181 home runs and inspiring the greatest opening line of any AP article ever: “If Steve Balboni knows Steve Balboni, American League pitchers had better take cover for a while.” Read the rest of this entry »

Some marriages are built on passion and excitement. Some are built on a deep sense of trust and friendship.  Some are built on one spouse completely ignoring the feelings of the other.

For instance, perhaps Hall of Fame Manager Bucky Harris should have run his plan for the wedding cake past his blushing bride, Miss Elisabeth Sullivan, some time before their Autumn 1926 wedding attended by President Calvin Coolidge and The Big Train, Walter Johnson:

Then the newly minted Mrs. Harris would not have to try (and fail) to hide her complete and total disgust with her husband in front of the President and The Greatest Pitcher Who Ever Lived.  If there is one comfort to be taken from this picture, it is that Silent Cal appreciated a good glare, and offered to make her Secretary of the Navy.

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