Here are Yu Darvish’s three slowest curves that were also strikes from Friday night’s wild-card play-in game (box).
Here’s a 68.0-mph curve from Darvish to Chris Davis in the third:
Posed as a question, but of course, the answer can only be “yes.”
Tweeted by Matt Ufford.
Buck Showalter = every one of us.
Mark Reynolds = every pretty girl or boy that ever walked right past you, every song we never quite mastered on the guitar, every day that you accidentally wasted, every cake that never rose, every cat that never let you pet it, every needle that missed a vein, every beer you didn’t finish before last call, every movie you forgot to see in the theater, every ending that got spoiled before you were done, every party you heard about later, and every baseball game you didn’t watch that turned out to be history. You go, Mark. Good job.
For everyone’s reference — like, for those people who aren’t currently watching the Texas-Oakland game (live) — this is Oakland reliever Evan Scribner’s curveball.
As noted in our parent pages a while back, Red Sox infielder Pedro Ciriaco never met a pitch he didn’t like. But are his wild-swinging tendencies limited to just baseballs?
It’s time to play the game show sensation that’s sweeping the nation:
All surfers of the internet receive three free GIFs from R.A. Dickey’s final start of the season tonight in Miami (box).
Below are the three knuckleballs Dickey threw tonight that both (a) moved the most (calculated Pythagoreanly, that is) and that (b) were also strikes.
This knuckleball to opposing pitcher Jacob Turner features 4.1 inches of gloveside run and 11.1 inches of “rise” (vertical movement that is, relative to a ball unaffected by air current or drag):
I don’t know what you just did, reader — like, wear white after Labor Day, maybe, or make a comment in defense of that inveterate plagiarist Jonah Lehrer. What’s obvious, though, from the footage embedded here is that Glen Perkins does not care for it. Not even a little, really.
GIF courtesy @BlueJayHunter via Greg Wisniewski.
Here is a video of the Phantom Grand Slam, and here is the Phantom Grand Slam enGIF’d:
If this is the first you are seeing of this grand salami, then I envy you. If that is not enough to sate you intellectual desires, watch the full clip (above linked) and that should both explain this oddity and remove a thin sheening of fun and mystery from the GIF.
After the jump, enjoy a fast-motion, more accurate rendering of the Phantom Grand Slam:
Read the rest of this entry »
Because the jerks at MLB Advanced Media don’t want us to have any fun, and pulled the video of Snider’s catch set to R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly.”
And because this catch needs to be watched, over and over and over again.
All praise be upon bonus baseball! for the GIFs.
For everyone’s reference — and also for their moral improvement — here are two animated GIFs from tonight of Texas reliever Yoshinori Tateyama throwing his screwball (a pitch that Mike Fast, formerly of Baseball Prospectus and currently of the Houston Astros, documented with some precision last June) against a pair of Oaklanders.
Here, for a called strike, against the largely menacing Yoenis Cespedes:
Ode to Terrible Cubs Fans
You will give me a look
when I say I am a Cubs fan
not a fan of Cubs fans
give me a look
think me spiraling away
in a high-horse spreadsheet
=sum(Jacques Jones, Milton Bradley, Cap Anson)
=stdev(this Google search:Steve Bartman)
The answer is not undefined
but curiously enough
spread out the collective goodwill
to the bleacher bums —
the Cubs fan heroes —
and get
#DIV/0.
Maybe the problem isn’t the Friendly Confines
but the duo Old Style and man combined.
If I don’t like the brick behind the ivy,
if I don’t toast the party,
if I don’t mind the wave,
I might be the Terrible Cubs Fan,
but I will enjoy it my own way
and when I catch a homer,
be quick to give it away.
