Buried at the bottom of a Kansas City Star article mostly about Mike Moustakas and how he actually wasn’t temporarily kidnapped by aliens who replaced him with someone who looks similar but does not know how to play baseball is this tidbit of news:
April’s over, so it’s time to take a look at the longest-name-of-the-year standings and see who’s shaping up to be a top contender. As of April 30:
1. Jarrod Saltalamacchia | 14
2T. Al Alburquerque | 12
2T. Will Middlebrooks | 12
4T. Chad Billingsley | 11
4T. Joba Chamberlain | 11
4T. Edwin Encarnacion | 11
4T. Paul Goldschmidt | 11
4T. Adeiny Hechavarria | 11
4T. Bobby LaFramboise | 11
4T. Steve Lombardozzi | 11
4T. Darin Mastroianni | 11
4T. Kirk Nieuwenhuis | 11
4T. Brett Oberholtzer | 11
4T. Tyler Pastornicky | 11
4T. Marc Rzepczynski | 11
4T. Nate Schierholtz | 11
Quite a race, as you can see. Saltalamacchia once again seems to be in the lead, although given that it’s only the end of April, we do have to watch out for small sample size. Billingsley’s injury probably takes him out of contention for the rest of the year — it seems unlikely he’ll be able to get back in time to make up two whole letters, even if the rehab goes well.
Bobby LaFramboise is a surprise contender — his name just doesn’t look that long until you start counting the letters! That’s a hidden skill that his team will hopefully take advantage of. Once again, Jeff Samardzija shows promise, but misses out on the leaderboard when you really start adding up those characters. Like we always say here at long-name-central headquarters, it’s not about how hard it is to pronounce, it’s about the actual count. So no extra points for Rzepczynski or Nieuwenhuis. Their letters count just the same as the ones in Goldschmidt.
Smart money is on Saltalamacchia holding off the contenders, especially with this early-season lead. Always have to watch for someone like Hechavarria adding some consonants in the midseason heat, or someone getting married and deciding to hyphenate, but for right now, these are the standings. We’ll check back in a couple of months and see if anything’s changed.
I first saw this photo at Deadspin. Maybe you did, too.
Young Troy Tulowitzki wants candy. He wants a skateboard with orange not purple wheels and he wants, oh, a huge dragon decal on the underside of the skateboard and then he wants a soda. He promises to brush his teeth very a lot. Soda.
The expression “business up front; party in the back” means very little to Young Troy Tulowitzki — not because he is too young to know what that means, but because he is in the business of partying. He parties with the Ninja Turtles of his mind. Sometimes he calls them “Inja Turtles” and he doesn’t know why but he laughs every time he says it. He likes Splinter the best; even though Splinter isn’t a turtle he is an inja [heehehe] and he is their father. Cowabunga, dudes!
Young Troy Tulowitzki also likes classmates’ birthday parties because ice cream cake.
Young Troy Tulowitzki has figured out that if he puts one hand on his forehead when his mom hairsprays his spikes then his forehead won’t be shiny and sticky from the hairspray and then Galinda Jefferson won’t laugh at him at recess. Galinda Jefferson is not his girlfriend, shut up! She isn’t! Shut up!
Yes, Young Troy Tulowitzki picked out this tie. It doubles as an Inja Turtle mask.
What does Young Troy Tulowitzki want to be when he grows up? A ninja guy at night, and a baseball guy during the day. Or if he has to play baseball really late one night, he will be a day ninja that day. His best friend will be Vanilla Ice.
Young Troy Tulowitzki, for all his worldly fashion, possesses the kind of happiness that one possesses when one is insulated from all manner of worry. The insulation that is, for Young Tulo, provided by the proverbial coiffures of youth and darlingness, will give way to the insulation of focused greatness for Adolescent and Adult Troy Tulowitzki.
Although it is generally accepted that werewolves make up a certain percentage of major league baseball rosters, the stigma attached to the condition has made data collection difficult, and the anecdotal evidence has thus far been unsupported by empirical study. Here we take a first step towards a new, quantitative understanding of the prevalence of lycanthropy in baseball. Taking as our study population all MLB players above the qualifying threshold for playing time during the 2012 season, we measured their performance during full moon periods (FMP), i.e. periods from three days before to three days after a full moon. Metrics used were weighted on-base average (wOBA) for hitters, and fielding-independent pitching (FIP) for pitchers. A large number of players met our preliminary standards for lycanthropy, with statistically significant positive deviations in performance during full moon periods. Below are listed the five strongest candidates among both hitters and pitchers:
No, get your mind out of the gutter. This is a post about baseball bat-shaped things available for sale on the Internet.
Bat Pen
DENVER — Following a successful appendectomy on Monday, a biopsy confirmed the contents of outfielder Jason Heyward’s appendix, leaving Braves fans with renewed enthusiasm over the budding superstar’s future.
“Tell you what, I knew he hadn’t been himself this year,” said Atlanta manager Fredi Gonzalez on Tuesday. “I’ll be darned if all the stuff that was holding him back wasn’t stuck in that one little organ. Organ? It’s an organ, right? Hey, I’m no doctor. Anyway, now that we’ve got that taken care of, hopefully he can get back here quick and help us win some baseball games.”
Okay, over the next few weeks, we’re going to write a play together. I’ve given you the title. Throw into the comments some character ideas, scenes, plot elements, stories, lines of dialogue, whatever you can come up with. I’ll take from what’s there– not everything, but whatever I can– and start building. I’ll post a scene next week, then open it up to you to tell me what should happen next. And so forth. An experiment. We’ll see what happens. If it’s terrible, hey, then it’s terrible. If it’s not, then, uh, I don’t know– FanGraphs Masterpiece Theater Video Podcast?
More than any sport, perhaps, baseball is a game of constant, brief exhilarations for its fans. The delivery of each pitch is preceded by a moment of anticipation and followed quickly upon by a flash of excitement or disappointment — the crack of a line drive, the thud of an infield pop-up, the swing of a bat followed by the snap of the catcher’s mitt around the ball followed by the pumping of the umpire’s hand/arm…
The “whiff” is the perfect example of baseball’s many tiny catharses, equally balanced with the pitcher’s mastery (of stuff or command or both) and the batter’s ineptitude. The fact that said balance could shift completely with the very next pitch might add to the exciting complexity of the game as a whole, but, in isolation, few occurrences in baseball match the whiff’s combination of the triumphant and the ephemeral. No single whiff — nor even a seasonal body of whiffs — indicates the effectiveness the associated hitter or pitcher, but it adds to our net enjoyment while watching a game, and to our understanding of they kind of player the hitter or pitcher is.
In honor of this minuscule yet orgasmic aspect of the game, please enjoy these so-called Leaderboards of Windiness.
The Windiest Hitters
Presently sorted by total number of Whiffs (qualified hitters only).
Baseball Think Factory links to an article about Manny Ramirez hitting a third home run in extra innings to propel the Rhinos to victory over in Taiwan. Apparently he’s batting .322/.365/.525 and shattering attendance records. Or, you can just let Google translate the linked article from Chinese:
Though I certainly did not assemble it with this in mind, I cannot help but admire the collective comeliness and pilosity of this group of gentlemen.
C Carlos Santana, Mexican-American rock guitarist
1B Frederick Freeman, founder of Theta Chi fraternity, and first superintendent of the Pennsylvania Coal Company
