In the idyllic indie film Terminator 2: Judgment Day, director James Cameron tells the story of Skynet, a computer which has been created to ease the tedious labor of a shambling, bone-weary humanity. Skynet is doing great, fixing routine traffic congestion and playing Zaxxon, until it attains self-awareness on August 29, 1997 and proceeds to nearly eradicate all life (if not for a couple of meddling humans). Though much of the film was realistic, particularly in its depiction of how cool mercury looks, this particular plot point was hard to swallow. After all, computers have been ruining things long before 1997.

Take chess, for example. Chess has beguiled and tormented the great figures of history since it evolved from shatranj in the thirteenth century. For seven hundred years, people played chess according to various “styles”, having “fun” by playing risky gambits and discovering breathtaking and unforeseen combinations. This means they were playing suboptimally. Once the computer arrived, it took only a handful of decades to distill the game down to the memorization of thirty-five move opening books and a demand for a heartless positional struggle slithering toward an inevitable rook-and-pawn endgame.

Deep Blue and his pals aren’t necessarily killing baseball, because baseball is doing that itself, with its three true outcomes and five-hour games. But they do open up the possibilities of statistical calculation, which previously demanded far more arithmetic than the average person could do by candlelight. Now we can dump all the numbers of existence into a single spreadsheet, spend half an hour formatting the data, and arrive at the horrible truths that await us in a previously mystifying and vaguely interesting future.

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You may recall FanGraphs’s pre-season staff predictions. Though I, Hopeless Joe, am not officially a member of the staff, Mr. Blachman only follows what players do on Twitter and on his fantasy roster, not the win-loss records of the actual teams, so he allowed me to make his picks for him.

I, of course, chose the Padres as one of my two NL wild cards.

I did this because of players like Andrew Cashner, and his mullet, and Chase Headley, who once had a really awesome season, and whose name is pretty similar to Chase Utley’s, if you cover up a few letters.

Also, pitching excites me more than hitting, pitcher’s parks excite me more than hitter’s parks, and it just seemed to make sense that a team with seemingly smart folks at the helm would eventually figure it out.

It appears that my pick is likely to prove incorrect, just like most of the things I pick, including the entree at every buffet I’ve ever eaten at, oh why must food-borne pathogens enjoy replicating inside my insides so very, very much?

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The present author is known in some (very small) circles as the sort of person who takes pleasure, first, in identifying and then, second, celebrating with undue enthusiasm the virtues of marginalized but promising talents.

In recent years, there have been peans written to such personages as Colby Lewis and Charlie Blackmon and, most recently, entirely laconic — and also now very successful — Cleveland right-hander Corey Kluber.

I am aware that the cultivation of these infatuations might seem affected. Indeed, there does appear to be a some notable qualities shared by the above-named baseballers, insofar as they all (a) are older than a player ought to be before demonstrating major-league success but also (b) produced promising sabermetric-type numbers before their actual, real success and also (c) possess a given name that begins with the letter C.

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Alex Torres– who I should have protected on my Scoresheet team!– over the weekend became the first pitcher to wear a padded, protective, giant, silly-looking hat on the mound. Hats off to Torres– or, I guess, hats on to him– for not wanting to get injured by a comebacker. Really, the part of me not trying to wring a NotGraphs post from this is 100% behind the hat, players should absolutely try to avoid being seriously injured by stuff, however clunky the hat looks.

Ah, but the part of me that is trying to wring a NotGraphs post from this thought it would make sense to search the Internet a bit for some alternative hats that Torres might consider wearing his next time on the mound.

Presenting: New Hats for Alex Torres

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Orahovac [or-a-HO-vawts] is a Croatian liqueur made from walnuts and designed — like other beverages classified as an apéritif — designed to stimulate the appetite.

The GIF embedded here of Matt Shoemaker’s excellent split-change is also designed to stimulate the appetite — not for the evening meal, however, but rather for Matt Shoemaker’s start tonight against the Texas Rangers that begins shortly after (a) 8pm ET and (b) the United States’ probably rousing victory over Portugal.

Živjeli, is what we now say.

Brad Ausmus is the handsome manager of the Detroit Tigers, one of only 30 men in the world who can claim a job managing a Major League Baseball team. That’s a hell of a gig, and you think most people would be happy with that amount of professional success.

Alas, Brad Ausmus is not most people. He wants something much, much more, but much, much less prestigious: to be a standup comedian. Take his comments on Tuesday, for instance:

As most of us know, wife beating jokes went out with the death of Jackie Gleason. Nobody else has been able to consistently been able to transcend the appalling image of a large man beating the hell out of his spouse. We really miss you, Jackie.

Ausmus apologized, both for not being funny and for making light of spousal abuse. In light of his apparently very real remorse, The Royal We are inclined to offer him some form of conciliation. Here’s a list of better possible responses for Mr. Ausmus, should he get the question again: Read the rest of this entry »

I saw you, shirtless man.

I saw you in the stands, a few rows behind the dugout while a professional athlete pitched. I saw you and I shuddered. I saw you and I giggled. I saw you and I pressed rewind, and on your meaty physique I paused the TV image.

I wondered: What possessed you, shirtless man? What possessed you to remove your garment – the lone barrier between your torso and the rest of the civilized world – during a nationally televised game at Camden Yards? Had your man boobs felt confined – perhaps pent-up or even claustrophobic, as if prisoners of our prudish times – by the shirt that you had selected just hours before your display? Had your “huddled masses” yearned to breathe free, to break the weave of oppression and wobble unfettered near our nation’s Eastern shore? Did you crave the libertarian bliss of defying decorum – of rejecting convention – in proximity to our nation’s capital, or merely enjoy the idea of a stranger gazing downward, into the mysterious recesses of your butt crack, and wondering if you had ever enjoyed the ministrations of a Parisian bidet?
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The Diablos Rojos del México play in a fairly crappy ballpark. It’s way too big for the team’s fan base, and the only game that gets near to selling out is the home opener. So it’s nice to go to other parks in the country. On Wednesday, I went to Puebla, a city about 130km southeast-ish of Mexico City. Puebla is where all the cinco de mayo stuff happened. More importantly, it’s the home of mole poblano. And it’s also the home of the Pericos de Puebla, who have a nice little park, called Estadio Hermanos Serdán. Los Diablos were playing the Pericos. And the following is my semi-true account of my time in Puebla, watching baseball.

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July 1, 1990: Andy Hawkins is somehow the starting pitcher for the New York Yankees. He’d been fired a month ago, only to find reprieve in an injury to Mike Witt. Despite pitching well in June, his ERA still floats at 6.49, his record at 1-4.

A different man took the hill that day. After five innings, neither he nor his opponent Greg Hibbard has allowed a hit, and after each third out Hawkins wandered back to the dugout, his jaw aimlessly working a wad of gum, his eyes dull. By the bottom of the eighth, the game still scoreless, Hawkins had conjured two infield pop-ups. Then, the fates cut the string:

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I read Dave Cameron’s post this morning. It was a good note on the dominance of Clayton Kershaw. I had heard about the event, but wasn’t watching it live. Therefor, the embeded video in Cameron’s post — the very video I am about to embed — was the first video exposure I had to the event.

Even at the first watching, I couldn’t help but notice Zack Greinke. You’ll see him try and join the scrum with a genuine look of joy for his teammate. Then, as the crowd compacts and begins to undulate a little more, you can see his hesitation.

Greinke has had issues with anxiety in the past. I imagine, even with a good regimen of medication, those feelings still crop up from time to time. I am certainly not making fun of him for that. In fact, I’m in his corner.

People who have struggled with anxiety, like myself, know this feeling oh so well. Maybe you’re at a party. You could be having a great time, a wonderful time, and you are thinking of nothing but the excellent experience you are having with people you enjoy. And then, somebody bumps you. Nothing violent, nothing malicious, just an accidental grazing. Suddenly, you are snapped back into reality.

“I have to get out of here. There are too many people here. How can I do this cool? Can I just take off? What will people think? Will they think I’m weird? Do they already think I’m weird? Where has all the oxygen gone? I gotta go. I gotta go. I gotta go I gotta go I gotta go.”

It’s not a necessarily fun thing, to have a sudden and unkillable need to remove yourself from a place. But it’s always there — if not at a singular moment, it’s on its way. It could be in a grocery store or a movie theater or surrounded by teammates celebrating a rare achievement.

I get it, Zack Greinke. Other people do too. Godspeed.