Daily Dotes: The Great Smyly Debate

Table of Contents

Delectable and Debatable Dotes for April 12:

1. Is Drew “Smyly” False Advertising?
2. Groupon Offer: MLB Team Toasters
3. Mystery Shrouds Ottoneu Tweet

Is Drew “Smyly” False Advertising?

Southpaw Drew Smyly will make his MLB debut for the Tigers today against the Rays. He’s a bit of an under-the-radar prospect, but is gaining interest at sites such as this one. Carson Cistulli noted some notable scouting notes in his Daily Notes column today on the analytical portion of the site. However, the NotGraphs reader will no doubt be applying different type of scrutiny when looking upon Smyly’s premier as they try to answer the question, Just how smiley is Smyly?

An exhaustive (read: 45-second-long) Google image search yielded just these two non-action portraits of Mr. Smyly:

He seems amiable enough, sure. He has a comfortable smirk ready for the camera; its slight crookedness puts less handsome viewers (the author among them) at ease.

But surely there are visages far more deserving of such a moniker. Should fans tune in to the Tigers-Rays broadcast today expecting to see some pearly whites on perpetual display, they will probably be disappointed.

Groupon Offer: MLB Team Toasters

If you subscribe to Groupon, you may have noticed that one of today’s featured “Groupon Goods” was MLB Team Toasters.

This is delightfully ridiculous in at least a couple of ways. First, it brands the team logo onto your bread. Why would that ever be necessary? Does it even toast the rest of the surface?

Beyond that, the Groupon page includes a string of images for all thirty MLB teams, as if the viewer wouldn’t be satisfied if her/his team were not included in the ad. This sort of excess has made Groupon one of the most successful e-commerce ventures of the last few years. They leave no demographic untouched, no impulse unbated — even the impulse to “Prevent Child Abuse America On Location.”

Keep your eyes open, your ear to the ground for future deals on MLB products such as team logo Cattle Brands, Child Leashes, Food Processors (arranges food into shape of your favorite team’s stadium), Convection Ovens (wifi enabled, it bakes only at a temp equal to your favorite team’s current winning percentage, so that your bakery will only be as good as your team is mediocre), and other useless delights!

Hat-tip to NotGraphs reader “Well-Beered Englishman,” who would like to ask, Which team logo would look silliest on a bagel?

Mysterious Ottoneu Tweet

If you don’t have at least one Ottoneu team, you’re missing out on the best fantasy baseball apparatus the Interwebs have to offer.

This morning, the Ottoneu Twitter account posted something sort of remorseful, yet vaguely threatening.

Have been a little negligent lately, but you’ll see why soon enough.

— ottoneu (@ottoneu) April 12, 2012

Is Ottoneu programmer/designer Niv Shah hatching an evil scheme to milk the bank accounts of all Ottoneu users? (If most Ottoneu users are anything like yours truly, the joke will be on Mr. Shah.) Will Ottoneu become a fantasy league wherein users draft GIFs of adorable puppies and get points for how many hits said GIFs receive? Only time will tell — but I wouldn’t be surprised if Skynet goes live.