Archive for Uncategorized

TEMPE, Ariz. — As a three-time All-Star, and former .300 hitter and middle-of-the-order threat, Joe Veteran has no need to listen to critics, especially those ripping on his huge contract.

He would of course love to be able to silence them, but, in his heart, he knows they’re right.

Veteran, who is trying to bounce back from the two worst seasons of his career, said he thinks he’s likely to be even worse this year, the unavoidable march of time taking its toll on his bat speed and other underlying physical skills. And while he avoids reading stories about himself– mostly because he spent so much time as a child developing his baseball skills that he never learned to read– he is forced to admit that what he hears on sports talk radio is almost certainly accurate, and he will never reach his previous heights again.

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There aren’t nearly enough stadium features named after players. And the ones that do exist are named after players who don’t even play anymore. Wouldn’t it be more fun for teams to commemorate current players? First in what will either be an ongoing series or not…

CITI FIELD, PROPOSED (click to embiggen)

The horrifyingly unregulated NotGraphs Genetics Lab has done it again, for the first time. You, the reader, asked (maybe) for someone as frightening as Clark the Crack Cub, as prolific as Jeff Sullivan, as tyrannical as Dayn Perry, and as handsome as Cistulli isn’t.

You pleaded: “Engineer us a leader, oh NGGL! May he strike terror in our hearts! May he give courage to our loins! May he sport the wisps of countless ghostly hairs! And can his name be a pun?! OMG CAN HIS NAME BE A PUN!?!?!”
We answered: “Quiet, rabble. It is done.”

HOMER UN

(And his genetic antecedents, Homer and Kim Jong Un):

Here are the results of the first round of this weekend’s Mock Mock Draft:

1.1 “Haha, I thought fantasy baseball was stupid as it is, but now you’re having a even faker practice draft for your fake draft?”

1.2 “Oooh, you got Trout? Too bad this isn’t a REAL DRAFT, sucker.”

1.3 “Maybe you should draft Garrett MOCK in your MOCK draft! Oh, he hasn’t played since 2010? EVEN BETTER.”

1.4 “Your fake team is even worse than your actual team. Which isn’t an actual team, of course.”

1.5 “I bet your spreadsheet isn’t even working right.”

1.6 “Maybe I’ll make you a mock dinner for you to eat after your draft, you terrible, neglectful husband.”

1.7 “You’re lucky this is a mock draft, because if it wasn’t, you would be in for a very long season.”

1.8 “Even Hopeless Joe had a better mock draft than you, and he left after three rounds to hang himself.”

1.9 “Ever hear of shortstops? Doesn’t seem like it.”

1.10 “Are you CRYING because someone took Byron Buxton before you? There’s no crying in mock drafting, crybaby. Save it for the actual auction, where crying is actually pretty common.”

1.11 “You’re not even pretending to respect the budget limitations you’re going to be faced with in the real draft. Oy.”

1.12 “Mock? More like a mockery. Who picks Justin Upton in the first round anymore?”

1.13 “There are more teams in your mock draft than number of years of education yo momma completed.”

1.14 “Uh… Mariano Rivera retired last season, moron.”

1.15 “Are holds actually a category in your league? That is so 1997.”

1.16 “I bet you don’t even know the strategic differences between drafting in the middle of the round in a snake draft versus one of the ends.”

Braun

versus

Brains

versus

Beauty (McGowan)

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Kitchenware and baseball players. They’re the same! The same exact thing. This morning I fried bacon on Brian McCann’s hot head (get it? because he did that angry thing!)! I’m just joshing, you guys. *snort* They’re not the exact same, but because humans are capable of abstracting the properties of objects and object-groups we can write silly internet stuff about how “this is like that” and “this other thing is like that other thing!” How fun is it to make those connections? HOW FUN IS IT. *throat noise* 

Ovens=Pitchers
Ovens are like Pitchers! You need your oven to both “handle the heat” and “bring the heat.” Just like a human baseball pitcher person! Plus you’re always entrusting your oven with the most important stuff, like cake. And if they suck you can always just give up on the first one and use your microwave oven. (That’s a relief pitcher!) Not that anyone microwaves cake. Whatever!

Catchers are Frying Pans!
Because they take a beating! They’re getting flamed from below and sizzled from above. You need them for every meal, even if it’s just to melt some butter to pour over noodles that you’ll eat alone while watching House of Cards. And just like the Teflon surface of your pans, catchers tend to break down sooner than other appliances/players/parallels!

1st Basemen are like Strainers
The job of a 1st baseman is to catch stuff, primarily. But because they’re Prince Fielder sometimes, it means they definitely don’t catch everything. WHICH IS JUST LIKE A STRAINER!

2nd Base is a French Press
I think of second base as the low-capacity, slightly fancier, but less reliable version of a shortstop (or do I? am I lying to you about my opinions so I can write a thing? yesmaybe!). Since you’ll soon see that I think of shortstops as drip coffee makers, this should make sense later, sort of. Here’s a picture of my stupid broken french press that I taped up so I could keep using it to appease my addiction:

SS (SURPRISE!*) is a Drip Coffee Maker
They’re the energy of the defense, always coming through in the biggest way, making the biggest plays and creating large, brown stains. POW! They’re an American staple, and even though some people have a Mr. Coffee (Asdrubal Cabrera) and others have something fancier (Andrelton Simmons) we all rely on our daily dose of shortstop. Or coffee. Or whatever.

*not a surpise

I’m equating thirdbasemen with blenders in this one
Because they come in a wide range. One version is horrible and breaks and spills your smoothie all over your counter and the other is a nice food processer. Like one is Miguel Cabrera and one is Adrian Beltre in his prime. get it ok good.

LF and RF are Spatulas
RF is the flippy turny spatula that grabs food and skillfully manipulates it with their powerful throwing arms and LF is the spatula that scrapes up crap from the side of bowls because they didn’t have the range to catch the cake dough before it bounced into the corner and the runner scored from first.

CF is a Fridge
The fridge is the keystone of the defense. It tracks down leftovers and perishables and covers the field that spatulas cannot. You might see a fridge make a spectacular diving play to make the final out, or it might simply hold your milk til you drink it. Sometimes a potential home run hit by, say, a strainer, will be caught at the wall by a fridge, and thrown back to the oven. My ability to separate kitchenware from baseball players is completely eroded.

FLORIDA — Here I am, at spring training with my favorite team, after an arduous journey that involved my car breaking down, no one wanting to help me as I tried to wave down passing motorists (I guess I shouldn’t have worn my old worn-out Michael Jackson “Smooth Criminal” t-shirt, where the first word is barely even visible after so many washings with the discount store-brand detergent), and then a brief case of norovirus I picked up in the gas station bathroom after I pushed my car along the highway’s shoulder — dislocating my own shoulder in the process.

Anyway, looks to me like everyone is in the worst shape of their lives. Unless I’m just projecting. Hey, I used to have decent metabolism. I could eat a whole pizza — but now I can only eat half a pizza, since that’s all I can afford, and still I balloon up like a Bartolo. Anyway, after a rough 2013, I can only imagine everyone’s in for a rougher 2014, or at least a rougher start to the year after I had all the starters sign a team ball and inadvertently gave them all my norovirus in the process. My bad.

And of course there’s the battle for the fifth starter slot, which probably won’t be won by anyone after I took the contenders out for lunch to a beachfront restaurant, for a group interview I thought would make an amazing piece I could sell somewhere and finally make some money from my freelance writing… and they all got washed away to sea and drowned. Don’t ask — I should have read the Yelp reviews more carefully. Who knew you needed a license to operate a restaurant on a boat, and that you also needed the boat to be airtight. A titanic mistake on my part, unfortunately.

So I talked to one of the top prospects too, and he was doing great until I reminded him that the stock market is volatile and his signing bonus may not actually be as safe as he imagined. He said that put a little pressure on him, that I really made it sink in that he has to do whatever it takes to end up with a major league career. So, that plus the random drug test a few hours later and it looks like he’ll be back in the second half of the season. Oh well.

The ace reliever has a new pitch. Well, he did until I accidentally bumped into him while I was doing the grounds crew a favor and trimming the hedges.

The third baseman didn’t really understand my practical joke about the hot corner and now he has third-degree burns over 90% of his body.

And the star outfielder is gone. Missing, I mean. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned my connection to the team when I was talking to my bookie. Joke’s on them, though — I can’t even come close to affording the ransom!

Looks to be another losing season. Why wouldn’t it be? I only root for the best.

Bleacher Report offers these two links side by side:

Which of course can only mean one thing….

[CUE THEME MUSIC] In a world… where stealing bases is unappreciated, and massively underperforming after signing a huge free agent contract is also unappreciated… two Hamiltons try to move up in the world and help their teams win a World Series. It’s… HAMILTON vs. HAMILTON, coming soon to Netflix. Josh, a former addict hoping he isn’t also a former good player. Billy, a speedy top prospect hoping to be more than just a pinch runner. And, hey, let’s throw in Alexander, a Founding Father who was killed in a duel. Together, they outrun criminals, fight drug abuse, and design federal banking systems.

Do you want to know why people make fun of the Mets? Here’s why people make fun of the Mets:

In a nutshell:

1)  Mookie Wilson is not a pitcher.

2) Pitchers do not pitch like that, Mookie Wilson.

3) Keith Hernandez is not a catcher. He’s Keith Hernandez.

4) Neither of them bothers to explain to The Count that he only is allowed three strikes.

5) They also neglect to tell him that the point of swinging the bat is to hit the baseball, and that in service of this goal, he could count the number of times he hits it, which would satisfy both his obsessive need to count things and his team’s need to be better than the Mets

6) Fear of bats.

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One of the most important skills a person can cultivate towards the end of becoming (and, of course, also remaining) an internet baseball writer is his or her capacity for recycling media that’s almost 20 years old in a manner that seems nearly relevant to the contemporary reader.

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