Archive for Discovery

St. Louis, MO – The entire roster of the Houston Astros was fined Thursday by the Commissioner’s Office of Major League Baseball for what are being described as “actions detrimental to the team.” Details of the fine, including the actual amount and how it would be dispersed, were not disclosed.

Warnings had already been passed down to the Astros this season, after the team was caught performing lewd acts on the baseball field in August, but this is the first time an actual fine was put in place. This is also the first reported case of an entire team being levied a fine by Major League Baseball.

“We need to send a message that behavior like this will not be tolerated,” said Commissioner Bud Selig during a conference call with reporters regarding the incident. “We need to be firm in our stance that such actions are unacceptable and reflect negatively on the club, the fans, and all of Major League Baseball.”

“This is obviously very disappointing,” said Astros General Manager Jeff Luhnow through a veil of tears. “While we disagree with the punishment, we want people to know that we meant no disrespect by our actions on the field.”

Luhnow continued on, but his words were not distinguishable, as he was speaking directly into the mouth of a bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey.

Interim Manager Tony DeFrancesco chose not to speak with reporters, opting instead to bellow a laugh/cry hybrid in his office behind a locked door.

Team sources say that the Astros will appeal the ruling. Failing that, they will request that they be allowed to pay the fine in Altuves.

While Max Scherzer’s shoulder is tired, his capacity for experiencing awe is constantly renewed.

Detroit Tigers right-hander and perpetual case study in human potential Max Scherzer was removed after two innings from his start on Tuesday due to “shoulder fatigue.” While an MRI revealed no structural damage, Scherzer and the organization will proceed with caution.

To address concerns about his health, the Tigers media relations staff has distributed the following statement, composed (it seems) entirely by Scherzer himself.

It’s almost impossible, in light of my recent medical concern, not to be reminded of that great record-keeper of the ephemeral, Tang Dynasty poet Tu Fu — his entire oeuvre, really (or, as much of it as is available to a commoner like me, whose Chinese has suffered from disuse in recent years), but, in particular, the second section of his poem “Meandering River”, which David Young translates as follows in his excellent collection from Oberlin’s Field Translation Series:

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Today’s installment of Great Moments in Hack Jokes Written About Baseball comes from comedian and current Branson, MO resident, Yakov Smirnoff.

The following two passages are from his seminal work, America on Six Rubles a Day.

I am still amazed every time I hear on the radio that a player has managed to catch several “fly balls.” How do they see those little things? (This explains why they all wear gloves.)

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Some of the most confusing phrases are in the rules of the game itself. For example, they say, “If you have four balls, you walk.” Of course you walk. How are you to run with four balls? You walk proud!

This has been Great Moments in Hack Jokes Written About Baseball.

(h/t to my friend Ryan, who discovered this book and promptly gifted it to me)

I had a great idea for a post, where I would assemble a baseball team using only members of the Wu-Tang Clan, and fictionalize a team meeting in the club house.

A great idea, no doubt. And so original! Surely, no one had considered transplanting hip-hop artists into a baseball team. What brilliance!

However, just to make sure, I did what any good writer in constant fear of being called a plagiarizer does. I Googled it.

Lo and behold, someone had thought of this premise before. Also, they executed it far better than I could have.

I have been a voyeur of  Flip Flop Fly Ball for some time, though this post slipped through my fingers.

This infographic, outlining a fictitious game between the aforementioned Clan and Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band,  is beyond terrific. Clicking the above hyperlink will bring you to the original post, complete with play-by-play. Take note that the umpires are the members of Led Zeppelin.

I love this so much, you guys. Bless you, baseball nerds.

A little over a week ago, talking with a friend who now lives in Washington, DC, that same friend dedicated no small portion of our conversation to celebrating his proximity (by virtue of living in the aforementioned American city) to minor-league baseball — in this case, to the Bowie Baysox of the Double-A Eastern League, the Frederick Keys and Potomac Nationals of the High-A Carolina League, the Hagerstown Suns of the Low-A Sally League, and even the Aberdeen IronBirds of the short-season New York-Penn League.

Mentioning that same conversation to FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron a couple days afterward, he (i.e. Cameron) replied by suggesting that his present hometown of Winston-Salem — which features no fewer than eight minor-league teams within a 90-minute drive (depending on traffic, of course) — is perhaps the best place to live in the country were one’s sole ambition in life to attend minor-league baseball games.

Because it’s among my ambitions in life to fact check Cameron’s most dubious-sounding claims — and also because I was curious — I spent too much of the weekend attempting to assess which towns and cities offered access to the greatest number of minor leagues.

As a sort of informal way of measuring this, I assigned to those same towns and cities three points for every ballpark within a 30-minute drive (according to Google Maps), two points for every ballpark within 60 minutes, and a single point for a ballpark within 90 minutes — while awarding points for only one team (the closest) per minor league.*

*Note: the scores aren’t recorded here, but the reader can reproduce them easily enough using MiLB.com and Google Maps.

So, for example, to Winston-Salem I assigned three points for the Winston-Salem Dash of the High-A Carolina League, two points for the Greensboro Grasshoppers of the Low-A Sally League (37 minutes away), one point for the Burlington Royals of the rookie-level Appalachian League (64 minutes), and another point for the Triple-A Durham Bulls (89 minutes!) — but not points for the Kannapolis Intimidators, for example, as, like Greensboro, they belong to the Sally League. Is it possible that the presence of an extra Sally League team in the general vicinity improves the experience of a baseball nerd living in Winston-Salem? Perhaps. But the marginal gains are small, I’d submit — and, more to the point, the prospect of measuring such a thing tested the will of the author.

In terms of criteria that were not considered in the creation of this list, “basically everything else” is the answer to that. So, for example, real estate prices: that’s not a criterion. Or unemployment rate: that’s not a criterion. Or weather. Or restaurants. Or schools.

With that said, here are the top-five metro areas for prospect nerds, as best I can tell. Note that all maps (which one can click for the purposes of embiggening) are from MiLB.com and presented on same scale, to avoid confusion. Drive times are courtesy Google Maps.

5. Southeast Suburbs, Cleveland

What an exercise like this one reveals is both that (a) it’s uncommon to find teams from two different minor leagues within an hour of each other and also that (b) it’s decidedly rare to find clubs from three different minor leagues all within the same general metro area. That’s why, even with just three teams, residents of the southeast Cleveland suburbs have considerably above-average access to minor-league baseball, with the Lake County Captains of the Class A Midwest League and Akron Aeros of the Double-A Eastern League both about a half hour’s away and the Mahoning Valley Scrappers of the short-season New York-Penn League about an hour’s drive.

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Alexei Ramirez and Chris Sale are (a) teammates on the Chicago White Sox and (b) almost impossibly slight. Here are their respective Body Mass Indices, according to the Mayo Clinic’s BMI Calculator.

Alexei Ramirez

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Few people have the capacity — the necessary on-the-moment machismo and swiftness of mind — to both brag about their 1% television set while also, quite simultaneously, laud their own physical attributes. Ladies and gentlemen, I present the hyper-licensed C.J. Wilson.

After about minute 1:07 in the following video, I began to lift Mr. Wilson to a new level of esteem. At first, I thought perhaps he is a modern-day Andy Kaufman, straight trolling the universe. But then I began to suspect that Wilson is in truth what the famed drinker of Dos Equis is in jest: The most interesting man in the world.

Which makes us ask: Would I actually hate hanging out with the most interesting man in the world, would I think of him as a living turd?

Also, Wilson reportedly has light switches to turn on and to turn off. Few things boil the pot of wealth jealousy than the ownership of light switches.

Many thanks to E. Moore for shoving this delightful video our way.

Ian Preuth, a writer for Cincinnati-based ABC affiliate WCPO, has fallen victim to the cacophony that is the ML B trade deadline, fair readers.

The MLB trade deadline rumor mill is a dark place. It is a cavern filled with lies, half-truths, and skullduggery. It is a stone crypt, its cold walls sweating with the acidic juices of misrepresentations and distortions. Ian Preuth has been voted resident dullard of this chasm.

You see, readers, Mr. Prueth was burdened with the simple task of reporting a fairly harmless trade between the Royals of Kansas City and the Reds of Cincinnati. Jonathan Broxton, the slapdash relief pitcher for the aforementioned Royals, was traded to the also-aforementioned Reds.

Mr. Prueth, he of likely poor breeding and undoubtedly a state-school education, was charged with the duty of composing a simple write-up about the transaction. He did an admirable job filling in the necessary details, but he felt something was missing. He wanted to dig deeper into this transaction, to scrape some frost of humanity from the chilling side of baseball we call business. Into the cavern he went.

In what appears to be an endeavor to get the player’s reaction, Mr. Prueth did a search for Mr. Broxton’s Twitter account. He did not find such an account. What he did find was an account for the handle @Brox4AllStarz, an account I know – for a fact, actually – is not Mr. Broxton’s Twitter account. It is a hoax, a ruse, a satirical attempt at humor. One would – and one has, in this case – assume that anyone with a third-grade education could discern that the ramblings in this account do not belong to an actual baseballer, regardless of the steamy inside knowledge possessed by yours truly. Mr. Ian Prueth, a man paid to report on baseball, has no time for such reasoning. Reason is for pussies.

Mr. Preuth, the dunce, chose two excerpts from this account to reference in his article. Behold (full screen-capture available here):

The quotes have since been removed on wcpo.com, presumably by an editor with a non-syphilitic brain.

(h/t to the smart and lovely Cee Angi)

Twins catcher Ryan Doumit can’t catch a break. He gets hit by a pitch, and on the way to take the base he earned through his discomfort, he almost gets uprooted by the batboy.

This was obviously some sort of attempt on Doumit’s life. Even the shortest of glances would reveal that this thug is no boy. FanGraphs lists Doumit at 6’1”, making this bat-adult at least 6’3”.  This “batboy” is clearly a trained assassin, and if it weren’t for some wet grass, he would’ve used what I can only assume to be poison-laced spikes to inject a neurotoxin into Doumit’s leg, causing sudden paralysis and cardiac arrest. If not for the incompetent grounds crew at U.S. Cellular Field, this Ty Cobb of hired killers would have collected his bounty and retired to a village in – let’s say – Argentina.

Doumit, seemingly aware of the bounty on his head, simply shrugs off this event. This isn’t the first time he’s had a brush with death, and it wouldn’t be the last. His old boss Johnny Three Eyes obviously wasn’t going to stop until one of them was dead. Doumit gives the guerilla an attaboy pat on the behind in recognition of his efforts. It can’t be that easy to infiltrate a major-league ballpark, after all.

Doumit finishes his stroll to first, his mind concocting his next move. Christ, he hadn’t had this much heat on him since he botched that numbers job in Monaco.

Von Hayes has a LinkedIn profile. I went ahead and made it a little more robust — he wasn’t taking full advantage of all the skills and languages he learned while in the game, it seemed.

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