Unless you’re freshly murdered, you had a better go of things tonight than Vin Mazzaro did. Here is what Mr. Mazzaro and, one must assume, the vengeful Old-Testament God who has it in for him have wrought:
2.1 IP, 11 H, 14 R, 3 BB, 2 K
The list of people I’d wish that upon consists mostly of bloodthirsty dictators. What’s perhaps most harrowing is that Mazzaro had a better FIP on the night than did Kyle Davies, the Royals’ starter. Success!
This very reputable psychologist contributed to our report.
In a piece from yesterday’s Times, John Branch documents — and, one might accurately say, mourns — the disappearance of great nicknames from American sport.
On one level, Branch’s point stands so far as baseball is concerned: relative to generations past, fewer current players today possess colorful sobriquets. There’s Kung Fu Panda, obviously — along with Big Papi and Pronk and some others — but the data show that a lower percentage of players have nicknames.
Branch, however, fails to make a distinction, it seems. For while, yes, there are fewer well-known baseballing nicknames, it’s come to the attention of our Investigative Reporting Investigation Team that, instead of disappearing, the art of nicknaming has merely gone underground. In fact, it appears as though the practice is as robust as ever.
“It makes sense,” said a totally credentialed psychologist who preferred to remain nameless, “that, as media more completely documents and pervades the lives of players, that they would develop mechanisms for fostering a team spirit. The secret nickname is one such device.”
With that, we present here — for the first time ever — some secret nicknames from around the majors. In most cases, there are no explanations for the names — although many of them are self-explanatory.
Regard:
Casey Blake: Business Time
Ryan Doumit: Pizza Butt
J.D. Drew: Jimmy Smiles
Adam Dunn: Sexual Chocolate**
Adam Jones: Quinoa Jones
Jason Kendall: Uncle Stinky
Carlos Marmol: Prison Shank Marmol
Mike Stanton: Leopard Pants
Ryan Theriot: Merde Hands
* This is a bit embarrassing, actually: when Nationals GM Mike Rizzo acquired Todd Coffey, he actually thought it was Heath Bell he was getting.
** Dunn, apparently, just showed up at the Sox’ spring-training camp and demanded to be called “Sexual Chocoloate.”
Tip of the double-flapped batting helmet to my old, and now totally famous, friend David Modigliani.
Dodgers closer Jonathan Broxton, who is substantially larger than Liechtenstein, is injured and is in need of an MRI. And thus our adventure begins:
Mattingly said one of the immediate issues was to find an MRI tube large enough for Broxton to get his 300-pound frame into.
This is about the only drawback to not having an NFL team in your town that I can think of: no medical equipment suitable for ogre-whoppers. Just to clarify, Mr. Broxton is not an ogre-whopper — he is a gentle giant — but NFL players are all ogre-whoppers.
European double-kiss: Aaron
He’s Chip Caray, and he approves this message.
Though the consequences of it aren’t entirely agreed upon, it’s obvious enough that at least some kind of bias exists in the classification of batted-ball types that informs stats like UZR and xFIP. This is natural enough: in any case where a human element is introduced, things are bound to suffer. (Just ask FanGraphs’ Dave Allen!) Given the altitude of a press box or the angle at which said press box is situated behind home plate, the trajectory of a batted-ball might be difficult to adjudge. Also, owing to some curious hiring practices, the people who classify these things are frequently drunk or blind or both.
As in other areas of baseball-related research, FanGraphs is keenly interested in reducing the error bars on this particular type of information. Accordingly, we’re taking steps to deal with the present biases in classification — namely, by devising more (and more narrowly defined) batted-ball types. Given the relative paucity of our current classifications (just ground ball, liner, fly ball), there exist large swaths of grey area. Our hope is to reduce — if not entirely eradicate — this grey area.
Below is a working list of 10 classifications we’d like to introduce sooner than later.
• Can of Corn — A very catchable fly ball.
• Can of Organic Corn — A very catchable fly ball at San Francisco’s AT&T Park.
• Duck Snort — A batted-ball type that only occurs in Hawk Harrelson’s mind.
• Fist — Like a flare, but way more disgusting.
• Flare — A ball hit just past the infield, but neither a line drive nor a fly nor a fliner nor a flounder (i.e. what would happend if a fly and grounder had a baby).
• Frozen Rope — A very well-hit line drive.
• Klickitat — A sort of ground ball hit to the back part of the infield and which you might call a line drive if you were in a different mood. (This is in honor the Klickitat tribe — a Native American group of the Pacific Northwest who had, by some accounts, upwards of 28 different classifications for batted-balls.)
• Nubber — A weakly hit ground ball. Also, a good name for a dog.
• Partially Thawed Rope — Like a frozen rope, except less glorious.
• Squib — I think you know.
This is a video still of third-base umpire Angel Hernandez, from the 8th inning of last night’s Indians-Royals game.
As someone who watched this game in its entirety, I can assure you that, almost immediately after this particular moment, Hernandez killed — in evermore grotesque and harrowing ways — all the players and coaches of both teams involved.
For years now, the exact identity of former FanGraphs contributor (now of mortal enemy Baseball Prospectus) R.J. Anderson has been a subject of no little speculation.
Was he a 13-year-old boy, as some suspected? Was he a cyborg created by other FanGraphs writer Dave Allen? Was he both the father and son of Rays VP Andrew Friedman?
Thanks to DRaysBay and RotoGraphs contributor Erik Hahmann, however, the mystery of R.J. Anderson’s true self has been demystified. Hahmann recently attended a Rays game with Jonah Keri and some other stone-cold nerds — including Anderson himself.
It’s likely that readers of FanGraphs willn’t be surprised to learn that Ranger outfielder and 2010 AL MVP Josh Hamilton will be out injured for the next six-to-eight weeks. As SB Nation’s Jon Bois notes today, Hamilton has suffered frequent injuries since his 2007 debut.
However, as further and super-sleuthful research has revealed, Hamilton’s injury list is actually much lengthier than Bois — or anyone else, for that matter — knows.
Exclusive here, at NotGraphs, we’ve reproduced Hamilton’s complete injury history since 2007 — featuring some ailments you willn’t have seen reported on ESPN.
Regard:
5-19-07, 15-day DL, gasteroenteritis
7-8-07, 15-day DL, sprained wrist
8-23-07, day-to-day, cauliflower earring
9-17-07, day-to-day, hamstring soreness (listed again as “strain” on 9-13-07)
4-5-08, day-to-day, Mexican tooth
Read the rest of this entry »
To hear the old guard tell it, our devotion to the numbers is slavish, stultifying, boundless and without bound, injurious to the Republic. You know whom I’m talking about. I’m talking about stout-hearts like blogger Murray Chass, who enjoys using his blog to blog about how bloggers are large and unrelenting meanies and are also unlike him. And there’s Dan Shaughnessy, the valet to human misery who hates each thing in the world more than anyone else hates any one thing in the world. I speak of them and their ilk.
But I come not to condemn. No, it is with some regret that I must say this: I am here to validate their suspicions and antipathies. Yes, I am here to confirm that what follows, as they have long suspected, is precisely what plays out in the mind of a devoted stathead when he or she takes in a game of base and ball:
It is in the interest of peace — a Glasnost of the press box, if you will — that I disclose this dark secret. It is our affliction, and we must own it.
And, I should add, the scene you see above, contrary to appearances, does not take place on a proscenium stage …
No, in the gnarled penumbras of our minds, all things come together in primordial affray to form one large mother’s basement — a mother’s basement buttressed by argument and brag, forged and soldered by our magma-hot Cheetos breath.
It is there that this lederhosen’d numbers dance, which we think is baseball, unfurls before us.
Are we to be pitied? Forgiven? Banished?
I’m only stating the obvious, reader, when I state that NotGraphs, despite the relative brevity of its existence, has already become an industry leader. “In what ‘industry,’ exactly?” is maybe what you’re asking when you read that. Well, that’s a tough question with a number of really technical answers. Still, it’s a true and unavoidable fact.
One quality we here at NotGraphs have demonstrated over and again is our ability to know what people are thinking and doing at any given moment. Thanks to the efforts of our Investigative Reporting Investigation Team, we recently revealed the exact thoughts certain members of the 1978 Philadelphia Phillies were thinking at the exact moment said team’s photo was snapped.
In what follows, we provide — via the most rigorous and modern techniques available — the five things Red Sox catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia was most likely saying to pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka on Monday night, as the latter waited to be removed from the game by manager Terry Francona following a dismal performance against the Rays.
Regard, quotes:
• Buddy is going to the farm, Dice-K. It’s just not the type of farm you can visit.
• I think we’re alone now (alone now). / There doesn’t seem to be anyone a-rou-ound.
• Just rub some olive oil on it. That’s what we Saltalamacchias have always done.
• Why’d I put all this Wite-Out on my effing fingers if you were just gonna throw the same pitch every time, dude? Seriously, look at it from my perspective: this stuff’s, like, impossible to clean off.
• That’s not the only thing that ends in a vowel, if you know what I mean.
If this image looks familiar it’s either because (a) my colleague Eno Sarris submitted it for the readership’s consideration this morning or (b) you’ve recently time-traveled here from that epoch in our history known as “The Good Times.” In either case, please keep reading: this document is important to your life.
I’m informing the reader of nothing new when I suggest that internet culture is dedicated to speed. However, there are some texts — a term (i.e. text) that I use in its broadest sense — there are some texts that are worthy of further consideration.
I’ll suggest right here that this Phillies team photo is one such text.
To that end, I’ve done some research — with no little help from our in-house Investigative Reporting Investgation Team — and managed to isolate the precise thoughts that some of this photograph’s subjects were thinking on that spring day in 1978, the accounts and descriptions of which you can find below.
The numbers you see below correspond with numbers inserted into the image above. The thoughts are rendered as authentically as possible.
Regard, truth/beauty:
1. Do I drink Jack Daniels? F*ck you, kid. I am Jack Daniels.
