Known and worthy sabermetric Lewie Pollis recently conffessed to an .067 batting average and a .533 on-base percentage. His numbers reminded me so piercingly of my own .000/.380/.000 slash (15+ steals) from grad school and my adult amateur league that I began to wonder: What kind of slash would a team — a fast-pitch, adult amateur team — comprised solely of NotGraphs writers, readers, and trolls post?

So, in the form below, please do kindly post your best guess for your career baseball slash — preferably high school through college through adult amateur leagues. No softball, please. Even I can hit a softball.

By now, Jurickson Profar is a household name for serious baseball fans and prospect obsessives.

Due to an unshakeable feeling that “Jurickson Profar” is not really a name for a human being, the NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team is investigating (for the purposes of reporting on) just what the term actually refers to. Preliminary investigative reports from the Team have yielded the following as possibilities:

• A degenerative nerve disorder that causes “immodest jiggling” in those it afflicts.
• A battery of psychological tests used to detect sociopathy in teenagers.
• A military strategy that Helmuth von Moltke the Elder used to lead the Prussians to victory in the Franco-Prussian War.
• An international arms dealer/pharmaceutical company that employs/tests products on African children.
• A New England-sized asteroid set to collide with earth in 2030, effectively ending life as we know it.

We’ll keep you posted.

This post comes to you with great assistance from the fine mind of the CushBomb.

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — The NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has obtained a leaked photo taken today at Target Field that clearly shows the Minnesota Twins are in possession of some kind of shitty-weather deflection device, and have been employing it at their facility throughout the winter.

The photo — which shows green grass, clean dirt, and dry seats — is in stark contrast to ground seen in any other part of the Twin Cities of Minnesota. Minneapolis residents have dealt with blizzards, school closings, icy rain, snowy ice, rainy snow, icy highways, snowy highways, roads with a  layer of snow atop a layer of ice, and roads with a layer of ice atop a layer of snow all winter, yet Target Field seems to have proven unencumbered by these events.

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A List of Fan Stereotypes Provided by Google Correlate, Sorted by City

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As Mike Axisa pointed out yesterday, Johan Santana is not very happy with his situation right now. He’s coming back from injury, he wants to throw, and in fact is throwing in the bullpen against the wishes of Mets management, who haven’t allowed him to pitch in a Grapefruit League game yet.

But the real scoop is being, ah, scooped by the NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team, and that scoop is about Johan Santana’s Gatorade Towel, which the star pitcher recently jammed into a fence link and forgot about while he crossed his arms in selfishness.

Johan Santana’s Towel looks on as Johan Santana pouts.

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The image above, found in a pub in Markham, north of Toronto, comes to us from one of our many intrepid correspondents in the field. Look at those uniforms. Let no one ever say Lyle Overbay didn’t leave his mark on Canada’s finest metropolis. We remember 2006. It inspires us.

NotGraphs’ Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has uncovered that in 2009, The Lyle Overbays led Markham’s 4-Pitch Hardball League with a .566 on-base percentage, and .577 batting average. They finished first in hits, runs, home runs, and RBI, and second in doubles, all while striking out only 12 times in 1,203 plate appearances. The Overbays’ 2009 championship was the first of three in a row, and came following their stunning defeat at the hands of Deez Nuts in the 2008 final, after winning their first title in 2007. All The Lyle Overbays ever wanted was to make Lyle Overbay proud.

And they did. The Investigative Reporting Investigation Team reached Mr. Overbay for comment, via text message, about the dynastic success of the team named in his honor. Mr. Overbay, never a man of many words, responded:

“Flags fly forever.”

Indeed, Mr. Overbay. Indeed.

H/T: My cubicle mate, and the hardest-working man in Canadian public broadcasting, @DanielKitts.

Unless you are living under a rock, you have heard that another rock (probably bigger than the one under which you are living) crashed into the Earth somewhere in a place the scientific community calls “Russia.” An image is below:

No disrespect to CNN, but the NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has actually done their due diligence and (quite easily) uncovered the source of said meteor. ENHANCE!

ENHANCE!

ENHANCE!

I knew it. Just search for “meteor” in Baseball-Reference.

What can’t this phenom do?!

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that the woman we now know as Jane Austen was in fact a time-traveling criminal. After watching the movie Clueless in 1995, Ms. “Austen” created a temporal paradox by traveling back to the late eighteenth century, ingratiating herself in a middle-class home, and pre-inventing the romantic comedy. The historical Sandiego may have gotten away with her literary fraud, too, if she hadn’t made a critical error in the early pages of Northanger Abbey (1817):

“…and it was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had by nature nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, base ball, riding on horseback, and running about the country at the age of fourteen, to books…”

Ms. Austen, soon after the book was published, was assassinated via “typhus” by TimeCop Jean-Claude Van Damme. But for reasons that are whispered by time paradox conspiracy theory buffs and JCVD fans, Austen’s novels were allowed to remain in the timeline. This led to various American experts debunking the pre-invention of baseball by Austen and salvaging the more reasonable theory that one single man invented a game involving rudimentary objects and basic rules, thousands of years into mankind’s existence.

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NotGraphs’ Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has confirmed — through means most nefarious and, quite frankly, disturbing — that Mariano Rivera has but one move in the bedroom, and, much like his cutter, it is unmatched.

Remember: Safety first, kids. Unplanned pregnancies are the worst.

H/T: Mr. Nightengale.

Nearly three weeks ago, the Boston Red Sox supposedly struck a deal with free agent Mike Napoli. He still has not signed. There are reports that Napoli’s physical brought up some questions about his hips, stalling negotiations and leading the Red Sox to begin discussions with Adam LaRoche to take the vacant first base position.  So what exactly is wrong with Napoli’s hips? The NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has completely fabricated the following possibilities:

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