Was your team terrible in 2012?

Now that the regular season is over, it’s not too soon to start thinking about 2013, and finding even the thinnest of reasons to be optimistic.

Like this guy, plucked from Twitter:

So, the expansion #Mets seem to reach the WS every 13 years or so (’73-’86-’00) 2013 is David’s & “Cy Young” R.A.’s contract year… #amazin

— David Malantic (@dmalantic) September 28, 2012

“every 13 years or so!” Wow. 13, 14, what’s the difference? But, really, if the pattern holds, we should be thinking about 2015, not 2013. 13 years, 14 years, x. Everyone who has ever taken an IQ test on the Internet knows that x = 15 years in this case.

What we are doing is assigning cool nicknames to players rather than the opposite, which is a bloodless tradition that has been with us too much and too long.

So how does this running feature differ from the dear, departed exemplar of the genre? “Nickname Seeks Player” was devoted to active base-ball-ists, while “Nickname Seeks Former Player” is the province of those who no longer play this fine game because they are dead in spirit and perhaps also dead in the corporeal sense. Boileryard Clarke? Eligible! Sal Maglie? Eligible! Fred Lynn? Eligible! Dontrelle Willis? Eligible! Dave Parker? For the ladies!

You may surmise from this that almost the entire sprawl of baseball history lies before you, like a sexy patient etherized upon a table. So prepare yourself to plumb both depths and heights as we ponder fitting candidates for this week’s name to nicked: “I Denounce This Man”!

Before we proceed, though, let us remember those who have previously survived this crucible of sturdy ghosts. Last time out, John Kruk somehow confused everyone with a broth of flatulence and then somehow won the voting for “Actual, Literal Brick Shithouse.” That’s really fucking stupid and betrays an en-masse misunderstanding of the criteria, but I’ll let it stand, I suppose. Don’t ever let me down like this again. I suppose, though, the blame lies with me, since I green-lighted his coconuts nomination in the first place.

I denounce John Kruk.

So now let us — snifters in hand, cardigans beswaddling our mortal parts — gaze upon The Fireside Mantel of Reposed Fortune-Hunters:

“Museum of Questionable Medical Devices” – Ted Williams
“A Garbage Truck That Runs on Lightning” – Matt Stairs
“Colonel Sanders’s Drinking Buddy” – Charlie Manuel
“America’s Step-Dad” – John Olerud
“Man vs. Bible” – Carl Everett
“Actual, Literal Brick Shithouse” – John Kruk

And now … “I Denounce This Man”!

Implications and Intimations

Quite simply, this is a FORMER player you detest at a visceral level. It can be for reasons defensible and right-wise (“The man was a racist menace to all he surveyed!”), or it can be because of some trifling affront of which he is not even aware (“His stooopid lips are stooopid!”). It matters not. He can even be deceased, since the dead should absolutely be subjected to the contempt of the living.

You denounce this man because he is worthy of denunciation or because he is an awful match for your neuroses. Either is a damnable sort.

So who, citizens of sufficient origins, should be nicknamed “I Denounce This Man”?

For everyone’s reference — like, for those people who aren’t currently watching the Texas-Oakland game (live) — this is Oakland reliever Evan Scribner’s curveball.

I’ve been visiting my best friend Matt, who now lives in in Spokane, Washington, for the last few days. Yesterday, we drove through the Cascades and into Seattle. We ate at a cheap and delicious noodle place for lunch, then wandered around downtown, eventually making our way down First Avenue to the “famous” Triangle Pub. Before we got to the pub, we ran into my fellow NotGraphs-er Patrick Dubuque, and then, in the pub, the young and dapper Kyle Davis, whom some of you might know as one of FanGraphs most supportive readers, and whom you should know as baseball blogger if you do not already, was waiting for us in the sun-drenched triangle part of the Triangle, which we monopolized for the next two hours, drinking, alternately, local IPAs and cheap happy-hour Rainiers.

We talked about Seattle, how the city has changed since Patrick was a kid, neighborhoods to avoid (based on density of douchebags — not based on crime or anything like that), the shittiness of The Killing (one of the few television shows set in Seattle).

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As noted in our parent pages a while back, Red Sox infielder Pedro Ciriaco never met a pitch he didn’t like. But are his wild-swinging tendencies limited to just baseballs?

It’s time to play the game show sensation that’s sweeping the nation:

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The first in a new series:

What happens if you only read the first half of a headline?

In this case… poor Chase Utley.

Much-consolidated excerpt from actual article:

MIAMI – In the end, there was too much risk and too little time. [For] one month… the Phillies staved off formal elimination. [But] before the Phillies dropped a 2-1 decision to the Miami Marlins that ended their postseason chances, GM Ruben Amaro Jr. and manager Charlie Manuel informed Utley… [h]is work [on Earth]… was done.

“I don’t know if it’s a matter whether or not he can [recover],” Amaro said. “I think it’s more a matter of practicality and what’s really best for the team overall.”

Amaro, for one, said [Utley] was… “dead.” … [I]t appears the team is fully headed in another direction.

“It’s tough to put the guy in that position right now,” Amaro said.

The author will refrain from explaining under what circumstances, or in which context, the following occurred. What he (i.e. the author) will state is that the audio clip embedded here is from the very recently concluded recording of Dayn Perry’s weekly appearance on FanGraphs Audio.

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The writeup for the BOS/NYY should be done in Comic Sans #mlb #yankees #redsox

— dianagram (@dianagram) October 3, 2012

Resident of the internet @dianagram has requested — for reasons as beautiful as they are mysterious — has requested that the recap for Tuesday night’s Red Sox-Yankees game (box) be reproduced in what the students of Rundlett Junior High School named the Most Stirring Typeface of 1993, Comic Sans.

In his perpetual quest never to disappoint anyone, anywhere, the author has executed the aforementioned demands, from the Associated Press’s able recap of the game in question.

To wit:

NEW YORK (AP) — Raul Ibanez tied it with a pinch-hit homer in the ninth inning, then had an RBI single in the 12th, helping the Yankees remain a game up on Baltimore in the AL East with one game to go by beating the Boston Red Sox 4-3 on Tuesday night.

With a second comeback spurred by Ibanez in the last 10 days, the Yankees need a win or Orioles loss on the final day of the season to secure their 13th division title since 1996. The Orioles beat Tampa Bay 1-0 earlier.

If the teams end up even after Wednesday’s games, they’ll play a tiebreaker Thursday in Baltimore.

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All surfers of the internet receive three free GIFs from R.A. Dickey’s final start of the season tonight in Miami (box).

Below are the three knuckleballs Dickey threw tonight that both (a) moved the most (calculated Pythagoreanly, that is) and that (b) were also strikes.

3. Turner, Fifth Inning

This knuckleball to opposing pitcher Jacob Turner features 4.1 inches of gloveside run and 11.1 inches of “rise” (vertical movement that is, relative to a ball unaffected by air current or drag):

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Speedo edition.