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“I know what will make for a marginally-interesting post! I’ll check the Twitter feeds of Jewish baseball players and compile all of their Hanukkah-related tweets into one mega-post.”

Here are the results of my exhaustive search. Danny Valencia (who is indeed Jewish) re-tweeted the Orioles’ Happy Hanukkah tweet. This completes the results of my search. I thought it would end up more interesting than this, Sam Fuld. I hoped for so much more, Craig Breslow. Are you not on Twitter, Ian Kinsler? Oh well, not every idea leads to great success. Happy 5th night of Hanukkah.

Happy Hanukkah from the Baltimore Orioles! twitter.com/Orioles/status…

— Baltimore Orioles (@Orioles) December 8, 2012

Perhaps you missed this actual article a couple of weeks ago in Crain’s Chicago Business:

Groupon Inc. today announced a multiyear partnership with Major League Baseball to become the league’s official daily-deals site.

Using its GrouponLive events platform, the company will host deals from several ball clubs on tickets as well as special packages including access to batting practices, luxury box seats and clubhouse and ballpark tours. The deals will be offered on the league’s site, MLB.com.

Aside from Andrew Friedman’s recent use of the “Buy One Royals Prospect, Get Three Free” deal (limited quantities available), what else should we be expecting from this partnership? Your ideas in the comments, but a few of mine:

**Up to 40% off Alex Rodriguez’s 2013 season.

**$5 million for up to $20 million of pitching at R.A. Dickey’s team-friendly-2013-salary warehouse. (Terms of this deal are subject to change.)

**Buy one ticket to an A’s game, sit wherever the heck you want.

**Twenty-five Marlins for the price of… a quarter of Zach Greinke.

**Buy Josh Hamilton, get very worried.

In case you missed it in the Twitter explosion last night, Jay Mohr, actor and comedian (whose name is eerily similar to that of Kansas City Royals GM Dayton Moore), weighed in on the Royals-Rays trade that sent James Shields to KC.

The Kansas City Royals just pulled off a straight bank robbery. Shields and Davis for Myers is INCREDIBLE for #royals fans.

— Jay Mohr (@jaymohr37) December 10, 2012

He followed it up with several other tweets, all of which point to a non-idiotic (IMHO) opinion — but one that is very, very incomplete.

Consider this Tweet:

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Kevin Towers says Dbacks have lots of deals “marinating” but not “sautéing” becauae “sautéing is a little hotter. Where we are is cooler.”

— Jayson Stark (@jaysonst) December 6, 2012

“…or what I should say, if you want to get technical, is that we have a bunch of deals in the vacuum sealer, because we’re planning to sous vide them. If we suck all the air out of Trevor Bauer and Justin Upton, we’re hoping we can somehow make them more appealing to the Indians, and end up with a 6-team deal where we get a new shortstop. We’re also planning on roasting Daniel Hudson, to really bring out his deep, caramelized flavors and lower his ERA. Did you know Patrick Corbin is poisonous unless you boil him for at least twenty minutes?

“…that grassy, woodsy odor is probably Gerardo Parra. We’ve got him and some applewood in the smoker, and then we’re going to see if we can turn him into a third baseman. If we slice Wade Miley really thin, he’ll make a great #3 starter, but we’re just not sure that him and Jason Kubel on the same plate makes for a good combination. I guess you could say we have a bunch of deals in the ice cream maker, but it isn’t done spinning yet. Of course, Tyler Skaggs is stuck on the anti-griddle and we’re having a bunch of trouble scraping him off.

“…well, I actually shouldn’t have said ‘marinating’ at all. It’s really more of a brine. We thought about using a rub on Paul Goldschmidt but we were afraid it would just mask his natural flavors. We hear Asdrubal Cabrera is really tender and juicy. Of course, we’re worried he tastes too much like Stephen Drew.”

Jack Z: Don’t get your coffee without him.

Early this morning, Jim Bowden tweeted that perhaps the Mariners’ motivation for inserting themselves into the rumored multi-team Justin Upton trade scenarios was to ensure Texas was out of the running for Josh Hamilton.

Mariners involvement in 4 team blockbuster proposals is to utilize prospects to make sure TX gets Upton so they can actually sign Hamilton

— JIM BOWDEN (@JimBowdenESPNxm) December 6, 2012

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In my previous post, I made strong claims about the association between facial hair and the proud name Randall. These claims, intuitive though they may be, were unsupported by statistical analysis. Because we hold ourselves to higher standards here at Notgraphs, I could not leave this matter unresolved. Those of you who have already accepted my claims and moved on, feel free to skip this post.

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Steroid Abuser Jr.
Jeff Bagwinstrol
Creatine Baldness
Breasty Bonds
Jeff Cypionate
Raised Cholesterol
Regularly Cheating
Jeff Clenbuterol
Sustanon Finley
Julio Felon
Shawn Greenies
Roidberto Hernandianabol
Roiding Kidneydisease
Kenny Liar
Edgar Martestosterone
Doing Meth
Fred McGrowthhormone
Mark McGrossmisconduct
Jaundice Mesa
Jack Morepills
Deca-durabolin Murphy
Rafael Primobolan
Macne Pibacne
Tumors Raines
Reduced Spermcount
Caught Steroiding
Aanovar Selling
Liver Suffering
Steroid Swallower
More Steroids
All True
Liar Walker
Trembling Walker
David Winstrol
Rondell Waste
Badguy Williams
Woody Willcheated

The White Sox last week became the latest team to add an assistant hitting coach, hiring Harold Baines (who was the first-base coach last season) to assist Jeff Manto. This is a growing trend:

Mike Aldrete took the job with the Cardinals in 2008 and last year gave way to John Mabry, who recently was promoted to the top job when Mark McGwire left for the Dodgers. St. Louis is searching for Mabry’s replacement, while Los Angeles hired John Valentin to help McGwire after previously using Jeff Pentland and Dave Hansen in that role.

The Royals and Phillies each added a pair of hitting coaches this offseason, as Andre David will assist Jack Maloof in Kansas City and Wally Joyner will back up Steve Henderson in Philadelphia. The Padres made the move last offseason, hiring Alonzo Powell to work with Phil Plantier.

Both teams in this year’s World Series also had assistants, who now have official titles. The Giants moved Joe Lefebvre into the role during the 2011 season, and the Tigers did the same with Toby Harrah this year.

Besides the White Sox, the Cubs and Rangers have carried an assistant hitting coach at times in the past few years. And while the position hasn’t always stuck, its trend line clearly is headed upward…

The three clubs that added assistant hitting coaches before this past season — the Braves, Giants and Padres — all made significant gains over 2011 in runs scored and OPS, while jumping at least two spots in the National League rankings in both categories.

Am I silly not to be convinced by that rigorous analysis? Not that I want to make an argument that assistant hitting coaches are a bad idea, but surely the fact that three clubs that added assistant hitting coaches all made gains in two cherry-picked categories, with a sample size of one season, isn’t actual statistically-relevant evidence of anything, is it?

Also, the mere addition of an assistant hitting coach would seem to be far, far, far less important than the question of who it is, and how good they are at coaching hitting.

I don’t know who Dan Haren is, so I’m just going to go ahead and see which baseball players died on this date in history.

Even when morose, the author is hopelessly earnest.

Among the name-heavy, stat-light players are Walter “Footie” Ockey, and the indomitable Dick Luebke. But another great [unpronounceable] name stands out: Emil Yde.

Rookie sensation turned hipster.

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