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It has not been a fun week.

Not that any of my weeks are particularly fun, but this time I had hope. Which is hard for me to have, but I did, I think. It was either hope or constipation. It’s hard to tell the difference sometimes. I mean, thought I came through my fantasy draft with a great team. Wasn’t sure if I could win every category in my modified 5×5* but I thought I’d at least be competitive. And the last time I was competitive in anything was my third grade girls’ dodgeball league. (My parents wanted a girl. Fooled everyone, including me, until about two years into puberty. I was Hopeless Jo back then.)

So… first round, Albert Pujols. Can’t go wrong. Second round, Josh Hamilton. Third round, David Price. Off to a great start, right? Brian Roberts, Pedro Alvarez, Ryan Howard, Jeff Keppinger filled out my infield. Rookie of the Year candidate Aaron Hicks as my third outfielder. Chris Carter in the utility spot. No catcher. My league doesn’t have catchers.

Carlos Marmol and Greg Holland would give me a lights-out bullpen. Tim Lincecum, Brett Myers, Mark Buehrle, Hiroki Kuroda. Jake McGee and Joba Chamberlain.

Of course, as prone to overreaction as I am, I’ve already traded my entire team for J.A. Happ, Travis Wood, Gerardo Parra, and Franklin Gutierrez. And a couple of football players. This year will be my year.

*Batting average, home runs, runs batted in, stolen bases, wins, saves, ERA, WHIP, drug suspensions, and felony convictions.

Eager to hear from Yu Darvish in the wake of his dalliance with one of the greatest feats in sports, I naturally turned to his official blog, Thoughts of Yu. I was rewarded with this entry, just posted this morning (and helpfully translated by Google):

Read the rest of this entry »

In this column, I will look on Twitter for baseball-related questions that no one is asking me to answer, and I will answer them.

@etling_25 Would’ve I have gotten a million fantasy points if Yu Darvish would’ve thrown a perfect game last night?

— Daniel Grote (@dangrote) April 3, 2013

Probably not, although I suppose it does depend on the points system in your league. If you get 25,000 points per out recorded by a pitcher, and an additional 25,000 points per strikeout, then you indeed would have earned 1,000,000 fantasy points from Darvish’s start last night– and that’s even though he missed the perfect game! If he had succeeded, you would have earned 1,025,000 points, or 1,050,000 if Marwin Gonzalez had struck out. In most leagues, however, you would not have earned a million fantasy points even if Darvish succeeded in throwing a perfect game. In a points league I am in, Darvish’s owner earned 79 points. Which is 999,921 points less than a million.

How funny is Yu Darvish’s 98% perfect game? #YuLose #YuSoClose

— Dustin Rich (@DRich_17) April 3, 2013

Actually, it was a 96% perfect game.

Did darvish throw a perfect game last night?? I fell asleep in the 8th.

— Lightning ⚡ (@U_Webby) April 3, 2013

Good question, Twitter user. I think the people who run Twitter should be pretty excited that their application is so relied upon that someone would sooner think to post such a question on Twitter than to type it into Google and instantly find out the answer from any of 50,000 websites that might be reporting on such news. For someone to think that the most efficient way to find out if Darvish threw a perfect game is to Tweet the question and hope than one of his followers will reply with an answer makes me think I do not appreciate the power of Twitter nearly enough.

Anyone know if Yu Darvish got that perfect game or not last night? That’s my team!

— Nick Milligan (@FyeBuckeye) April 3, 2013

Anyone? Anyone at all? My only friend fell asleep in the 8th and so he doesn’t know either!

Wtf why did they wrap up Darvish’s arm so much?

— Matt LaMartina ✌ (@MyNiggaMatt) April 3, 2013

Pitching is a stressful activity for the arm. By applying ice to the arm after pitching, swelling is minimized. The ice reduces pain and soreness. Also, they were trying to prevent it from falling off.

Money can be exchanged for goods and services, like beer and pretzels, but it can also be used, apparently, to honor Americana through the design and minting of commemorative coins. I don’t know why anyone would want to collect money, when they could spend said money to acquire baseball cards, but that’s neither here nor there. I will not criticize someone else for their hobbies, at least not publicly.*

*Note: for these purposes, Carson Cistulli’s drinking and slothful lethargy are considered an activity and a non-activity respectively, not actual hobbies. I, and you, remain free to criticize these at length. For we live in raucus, bacchanaliac democracy, where our movements are still not monitored and regulated by a benevolent, paternalistic monarch. Yay, America.

Anywho, the United States Mint and the Department of the Treasury would like our assistance with designing three coins “to recognize and celebrate the National Baseball Hall of Fame.” There are so many directions a coin designer could go to truly convey everything the Hall of Fame was, is, and will become in the future. There are baseball’s greats who embody the Hall itself, players like Babe Ruth, Christy Mathewson, Jackie Robinson, and Satchel Paige. There are images that one generally associates with the game itself, balls and bats and ballcaps and athletic cups and the like. There’s the building itself, a beautiful structure in a picturesque town that provides a stately home for baseball’s most exclusive club and the primary keeper of the game’s history.

None of these seem to get at the heart, though, of what the Hall of Fame has become. And thus, being of sound mind and body, possessing naturalized American citizenship, and having a passing interest in baseball, the United States, and what my money looks like, I thought I would offer the following options that I think more accurately reflect where the Hall is today: Read the rest of this entry »

I know that NotGraphs probably isn’t the right place for this, but BREAKING NEWS from Citi Field — Jonathan Niese is a last-minute scratch from his opening day start, and Johan Santana will be taking the mound after all. Buzz is that he sought a third opinion on his shoulder before undergoing surgery, and it turns out that there was a smudge on the previous x-ray that had gone unnoticed. His shoulder is actually in pristine condition, and the Mets rushed him to the clubhouse this morning. These are actual photos taken right now at Citi Field, as Johan takes his warmups.

Oh, wait, that last one — apparently Johan has just been traded back to the Twins. Like, just now. And he’s going to be taking Vance Worley’s place as their Opening Day starter, he just switched into the uniform in between warmup pitches and transported himself to Minnesota. Still waiting on word as far as why the Twins have decided to go with the gray road jerseys for the home opener. NotGraphs about to grab an exclusive with Chuck Knoblauch, who’s starting at second base this afternoon…. More to come.

#aprilfools
#noonefooled

My last post, on the oldest living Yankee, seems to have encouraged certain tasteless individuals to “have a little fun” at the expense of New York’s, shall we say, overmature roster. My opinion has always been that the best way to deal with these things is just to get them out of our system as quickly and fully as possible. So, let’s go ahead and do this now. Ladies and gentlemen, your 2013 Bronx Bombers:

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Other NotGraphs Bold Predictions:
Jeremy Blachman’s 10 Bold Predictions for 2013

1. On April 15th, Giancarlo Stanton will hit a line drive deep off the green walls of the Marlin’s godawful-green home park. Instead of reaching third on a gimme triple, he will stop at second base. With both feet on the cushy white bag, he will face the cameras. In full zoom, the cameras will catch him mouthing, “Oh! Life has a wretched banality and the clock’s rhythm is more steady than the heart’s. Even if I was on third base, ain’t no one but me could drive me home anyway.”

2. On April 5th, Pirates outfielder Andrew McCutchen will smash a line drive to left that pulverizes a dove mid-flight, about 15 feet above third base. Vin Scully will ejaculate: “HOLY BIRD-F**KS!!!” The phrase will later be engraved on both his Hall of Fame busts.

3. Ben Zobrist will do everything and then do it all again because he did everything the first time without making any outs. National writers will again suspect the Rays are trying to trade him for Howie Kendrick and that the Rays wish he would stop moving around the field, playing all those positions and so forth.

4. The Houston Astros will win the AL West after actual, cosmic asteroids utterly destroy American’s western seaboard. And after the Rangers underachieve expectations.
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From Yahoo! Sports:

[T]he Lehigh Valley IronPigs of the International League, the Philadelphia Phillies’ Triple-A club, have announced video games in their male urinals that are powered by pee…. Pee-gamers get a score each time they play and a code they can later punch into a website (wash your hands first, dudes) to track their progress. The top scorers even get displayed on the jumbotron during the game.

Link.

If I played, I think I’d probably use a pseudonym. (High scores on the Jumbotron? Really?) And, just to make this fun, ideas for pee-game pseudonyms in the comments?

Have you considered going to a Marlins game this year? Of course you haven’t. You are a person of taste and discernment. It’s why you frequent all the best websites and also NotGraphs. You know that attending Marlins games only serves to prop up the failing tyrannical regime of Jeffrey Loria, the very antithesis of the benevolent despot we generally prefer to the chaotic meanderings and whims of a government by and for the people. For while the tyranny of the majority is terrible, truly the tyranny of the art dealer turned sports mogul is even worse.

So no, you will not be attending any Marlins games this year. And neither, frankly, will anyone else worth his or her salt. For the Marlins are actually having to resort to a two-for-one Groupon ticket offering to get people to show up on Opening Day. Opening Day is amateur hour, when every Tom, Dick, and Harry who likes to claim they’re a baseball fan but who constantly complains that the games are too long and boring commute to the park to get drunk with like-minded rabble, and then slosh homeward for the rest of the season. The Marlins can’t even fill their ballpark with those dillweeds.

As far as I can tell, the Marlins didn’t even come up with a marketing slogan for 2013 (unless “Single game tickets on sale now!” counts. Sean Flynn (the Marlins’ vice president for marketing) promised we would have one over a month ago. Not that I want to encourage anyone to attend Marlins games going forward, but I do want Flynn to be able to keep his job (especially since he’s probably losing his pension). So he should totally feel free to use any of these to entice people to come out to the ballpark: Read the rest of this entry »

Virgil Trucks died on Saturday at 95, relinquishing his crowns as both the oldest living former Tiger and the oldest living former Yankee (he finished his career in the Bronx in 1958). So who has filled his shoes? Well, it seems the new oldest Yankee is a guy by the picturesque name of Rugger Ardizoia. I had never heard of him, so I looked him up.

Read the rest of this entry »