On Thursday night against the Chicago Americans, right-handed Clevelander Danny Salazar recorded 10 strikeouts against just 18 batters; produced a single-game xFIP of 0.51; and yet somehow conceded five runs, all earned, over 3.2 innings (box). A cosmic miscarriage of justice, one feels compelled to describe it as.
In his Discourses, noted Roman Stoic Epictetus proclaims that, to live a life free from anxiety, that each of us must become like a “spiritual athlete.” To that end, NotGraphs presents this exercise, with a view towards helping to tighten and tone the spirits of the readership.
That these bears are feasting on these children’s entrails oughtn’t be regarded as objectively unfortunate.
Notes
In his season debut this past Wednesday, Cleveland right-hander Corey Kluber — in celebration of whom an eponymous Society exists, not for nothing — was decidedly ineffective, producing the highest single-game FIP among his 40-plus major-league appearances. Said performance created a pall of melancholy over those who derive some pleasure in Kluber and his success.
It’s not probable, but certainly possible, that German filmmaker and ubermensch among just regular menschen Werner Herzog has written a guide to baseball.
It’s possible, if not necessarily probable, that what follows constitutes brief excerpts from that selfsame text.
It’s not unusual for men, the majority of whom proceed through life under the influence of meticulously cultivated delusions, to find themselves consumed by sick horror when compelled finally to confront the reality of the human predicament. The batter’s experience of a well-thrown changeup is a microcosm of this nauseous epiphany.
The graph presented above — which depicts all the pitches at which A.J. Pierzynski offered during yesterday’s (Wednesday’s) game at Baltimore — is unexceptional insofar as swinging at baseball pitches is, like, one of A.J. Pierzynski’s main responsibilities as a sporting professional. “The undersigned,” one imagines Pierzynski’s contract reading, “agrees, in exchange for $8.25 million, predominantly to swing at and also to catch baseball pitches.”
What is exceptional, however, is the graph above considered in context of the graph below — which graph depicts all of the pitches at which Pierzynski didn’t offer on Wednesday.
With Spring Training now upon us, and with lab-tested and science-approved psychic John Edward having predicted the imminent onset of predictions, many of our most luminous luminaries are gracing us with their MLB preseason picks. Over at ESPN, Buster Olney has picked the Tigers to win what he is calling the World Series. Over at The View, the ladies have predicted that David Wright will be dreamy. And in a less televised, more transcendental sphere, the Lord Buddha has surprised many Western prognosticators by picking the Houston Astros.
“Well, picked them for what?” the Westerner asks, somewhat predictably, and with a fistful of Freedom Fries jammed inelegantly in his mouth hole.
According to research conducted by the author this morning in his pajama pants — and reproduced below entirely in the form of two tweets by Tribune-Review beat writer Rob Biertempfel — the Pittsburgh Pirates appear to be the major-league baseball club which most wholly embraces the tenets of absurdism and also, probably, the only club which embraces even one tenet of absurdism.
The soul of every man, as seen through the eyes of Albert Camus.
If even one of his books is an indication, Algerian-born author and thinker Albert Camus was on something more than nodding terms with that insufferable condition known as Reality. This is the sort of person to whom one should be looking for wisdom and utterances which contain wisdom.
Andres Galarraga is definitely inside this box.
Inside of this box has recently been placed a flask of poison, a bit of radioactive material, a Geiger counter, and — largely against his will, it should be said — former Colorado and Montreal first baseman Andres Galarraga (known commonly during his career as The Big Cat). The equipment has been arranged such that, should the Geiger counter detect the decay of even one atom over the next hour, it will release a hammer and shatter the flask of poison, thus killing Andres Galarraga. The likelihood of such a contingency is about 50%.
Questions:
1. An hour from now, when the box is opened, will Andres Galarraga be alive or dead?
2. If Andres Galarraga is alive, how angry will he probably be?
The reader is young and clueless and in need of guidance — not unlike a toddler with a checking account. Peter Gammons, for his part, is like a man that is also a chalice that is presently running over with capital-W Wisdom.
What Peter Gammons says to do, today, is “Triple it, maybe” — advice which the reader will ignore definitely at his or her own terrible, deadly peril.
Merely a brief glance at the animated GIF embedded here might compel the reader to conclude that Texas right-hander Yu Darvish performed last (Thursday) night — in his start against Tampa Bay — rather a commonplace (if aborted) pick-off move towards second base against the Rays. In fact, further inspection reveals that the video footage is depicting Darvish, a fixture among baseball’s avant-garde always, literally pitching backwards.
