Nick Punto inexplicably dives headfirst into first base on a routine groundout to the shortstop
— Mark Saxon (@markasaxon) August 31, 2012
“You can’t reason with grit,” Nick Punto told NotGraphs’ Investigative Reporting Investigation Team. And who are we to argue with Nick Punto?
The Baltimore Orioles are 71-57. The Toronto Blue Jays are 57-71. I suspected this was the case after last night’s action; I felt a disturbance in the proverbial force. The Orioles have a -39 run differential, the Blue Jays -37. Life remains unfair. Baltimore starters have a 4.60 ERA. Toronto starters: 4.80. The Orioles’ bullpen has been money: a 3.03 ERA in 424.2 innings. The Blue Jays’ bullpen has been a nightmare: a 4.20 ERA, worst in the American League, in 405.1 innings. Bullpens matter. Baltimore is – somehow – 24-6 in one-run games, and 12-2 in extra innings. The Blue Jays are 9-20 in one-run games, and 6-6 in extra innings. The bottom line: the Orioles will play meaningful baseball in September, and the Blue Jays will not. Showalter Magic is real. I believe. In the AL East’s battle of the birds, the Orioles have won.
This troubles me, of course. Over the past few years, I’ve taken my fair share of shots at the Orioles. Seriously, I’ve talked a lot of shit. They were low-hanging fruit. It was so easy. Too easy. But the time for jokes has passed. And now, it’s time to look back, and reflect. Were the jokes – the #OriLOLes hashtag was a personal favorite – worth it?
I’ve thought long and hard about this. About calling Baltimore’s visits to the Rogers Centre “Guaranteed Win Night,” about the Orioles’ fiasco in South Korea, and Dan Duquette’s comments about the cut fastball. I’ve had a lot of good times at the Orioles’ expense. And, yet, here we are: the Blue Jays are now the butt of jokes; the Blue Jays are in last place.
I’m sorry, Baltimore, I apologize, but, after much introspection, yes, it was all worth it, goddamnit. Especially the #OriLOLes hashtag. No regrets. The Orioles’ struggles made me feel alive. And fortunate. But good luck the rest of the way.
Image credit: Noisy Decent Graphics.
Renowned hitmaker Edwin Encarnacion, born in the Dominican Republic, fluent in Spanish, spoke to Japan’s Yu Darvish Friday night without saying a word. Encarnacion’s bat flip — after a mighty home run, a “no-doubter,” as the kids say — did all the talking. Nothing else needed to be said.
In eight at-bats against Darvish, Encarnacion has five hits, two of them home runs. It’s obvious to me, and anyone who visits FanGraphs: Encarnacion irrefutably has Darvish’s number.
When winter is upon us up here in Toronto next month, and I look back on the Blue Jays’ 2012 season, one in which they will likely finish behind the Baltimore Orioles in the standings, I’ll remember Encarnacion’s T-Rexing ways, and his bat flips, as bright lights amid the darkness.
Gracias, Señor Encarnacion.
All praise be upon my friend Ian, @BlueJayHunter, for the GIF. Check out the latest on his Tumblr account — The Evolution of Edwin Encarnacion’s Bat Flip — and visit his website, The Blue Jay Hunter.
Since his most recent emancipation from the minor leagues, Travis Snider has been freely roaming left field, making — as you can see, above — highlight reel, and remarkably GIFable, defensive plays. I’ll be honest: I didn’t think he was going to get to that ball. I shouted a celebratory obscenity when he did.
More importantly, the reader will note, Snider, still only 24, is hitting home runs against left-handed pitchers. He’s hit three of them, actually, in nine games, since being recalled. In Snider’s previous four stints with the Blue Jays, the journey having begun all the way back in 2008, long before the patch of grey in my beard appeared, in 232 games, he’d hit — you guessed it — three home runs against left-handed pitchers.
Snider’s obviously figured it all out. And that’s a good thing, because I don’t remember ever being as emotionally invested in a prospect as I am in Snider. I need this to work. I need Snider to become a star. With nobody but the Blue Jays. Or I might never trust another prospect again.
GIF credit: My favorite website, Blue Jays gifs.
I’ve been a married gentleman longer than I care to remember. My ankles were ensnared long ago by my metaphorical ball and chain, to whom I am destined and legally obligated to love.
But this in no way means that I do not remember the life of a gallivanting bachelor. Vivid are my recollections of “cruising for chicks,” if you will. These were, indeed, dark times. It is within our human nature to find a companion, someone with which to share our greatest accomplishments and most demoralizing defeats. We yearn for a person of substance, a person with whom we can connect on a higher plane of consciousness. This proves to be a difficult task. I speak not only of the prototypical shut-ins and nonentities. There are people out there of a presumably-normal intelligence and hygiene level that need to make this connection. Some of them are baseball fans.
I took to the Missed Connections section of Craigslist in search of stories from such people. I searched in every city that hosts a major-league stadium, and have hand-picked the most heart-wrenching stories of love found and subsequently lost. I submit them to you, fair NotGraphs reader. I give you permission to weep.
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.
The baseball cleared the right field fence at U.S. Cellular Field on the South Side of Chicago, past the outstretched glove of Alex Rios, and landed in the Toronto Blue Jays bullpen for a two-run home run. Colby Rasmus did what he always does: Not smile. He had business to take care of, a couple of bases to round. This is about as close as Rasmus got, even after a career night: a five-for-five performance, one that saw his wOBA rise from .304 to .326, and his wRC+ rise from 89 to 104, on the season.
Rasmus is stoic. The polar opposite of his fellow high-ceilinged teammate Brett Lawrie. And it’s been a study in contrast to watch the two of them play baseball on a day-to-day basis.
It’s a thing, apparently, to take the field at Toronto’s Rogers Centre in your unmentionables, with a message painted across your chest, when the Boston Red Sox are in town. I don’t know; kids are stupid.
I preferred the YOLO fellow. He was saying, “I’m going to streak because I must streak.” This guy’s saying “I’m going to streak so I can get caught, arrested, have my picture taken by a professional photographer, go to jail for a bit, maybe, and then have a stupendously handsome writer document my experience on the Internet.”
Warning: this entire post is about my fantasy team. I’ve been told that, like hearing about someone’s dreams, this is something that no one cares about. However, I personally am actually fascinated by reading about other people’s fantasy teams, so I’m going for it anyway:
My “home” fantasy league is a very deep fourteen team 6×6 (normal categories + OPS + holds) roto league with a snake draft and eight keepers with contracts. The league has been going for for nine years but this is only my fourth year after inheriting a terrible, terrible team — my best keeper when I got the team was Bobby Abreu. I didn’t really realize how long it would take me to get to a point where the team felt like it was completely mine, but it turns out that the answer was “three full seasons.” Going into this year’s draft, I knew that I had a collection of keepers that could win the league, and I just had to draft around them correctly. My keepers were, in no particular order
