It was recently brought to the attention of the author that Blue Jays hitmaker Edwin Encarnacion might bear more than passing resemblance to a certain, presumably extinct, predatory theropod.

Upon brief inspection by the author himself of some extant video footage, said resemblance was rendered unavoidable — both for that same author and, it should be noted, for the entirety of the NotGraphs readership.

For the sort of reader who’s always looking for more on developing stories as they develop, I’ve embedded some video footage from this afternoon’s Tigers-Blue Jays game (box) — during which game the aforementioned Encarnacion hit a fourth-inning home run and during which he also, once again, affected the posture of what we can only presume are his earliest ancestors.

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Insofar as it took him 32 pitches to record three outs and he walked two batters in the process, Friday’s appearance will likely not be remembered as the best of Jonny Venters‘ career, nor — as of now, at least — would it really even be considered representative of his work to date.

That said, the very entertaining Venters did provide the home audience with the following sequence, against Kinda Obese Everyman and Philadelphia third baseman Ty Wigginton in the seventh inning of Friday’s Braves-Phillies game (box). What the attentive reader will notice (and what the not-very-observant-at-all reader will probably notice, too) is that (a) not only are the three sinkers which follows thrown to basically the same location at basically the same velocity, but that (b) Ty Wigginton reacts in basically the same way to all of them — which is to say, he offers at them, but mostly with a view to hastening his return to the dugout and thus forestalling any further embarrassment at the hands of this cruel mistress, baseball.

Here are the aforementioned pitches, with Wigginton’s aforementioned swings:

Pitch Two

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The Cubs have given something away. What they’ve actually given away is of little consequence to the present author and, I’m guessing, the present reader.

No, our concern is for what the Cubs could have — or should have — given away. Like a black-market kidney, perhaps. Or a baby prostitute, maybe. Or, as Dayn Perry will have suggested on his next podcast appearance (available later Friday, maybe, or Saturday), the withered remains of Colonel Sanders.

Lost in all the hoopla last night over a New York athlete doing something fairly well, the intrepid and occasionally clammy Jason Vargas tossed a proverbial gem last night. Facing the feared Royals of Kansas City, The Mariners’ #2 starter allowed a single hit through eight innings, striking out five. Loyal and fictionalized reader Thorwald Fenton called in a request this morning for an encapsulation of Vargas’ kinetic, relativity-inducing fastball. And because Carson was too busy sipping chamomile and grooming his collection of prize Shetland ponies for the Jubilee Morgan Regional Horse Show next month, I stepped in. Granted, my computer is hardly the technological marvel that his is, but I can’t imagine you’ll have any complaints.

Vargas faced Jeff Francoeur to lead off the top of the third:

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The nomination process, which was, at heart, a bacchanal of trash and thunderclaps, is complete. Now all that remains is the voting, which will be supervised by the Lidless Eye of Right-Wise Outcomes. You, ballotteer, are tasked with choosing among the chosen. Which of the 10 baseball-ists to follow should forevermore be known as “A Garbage Truck That Runs on Lightning”?

Vote carefully, citizens, for ward heelers are authorized to slaughter you on whim …

Thank you for exercising the franchise.

People who are in the business of selling things tell me a man can be judged by his appearance.

While yet another adage claims you should not judge a proverbial book by its just-as-proverbial cover, it is not out of the realm of possibility that you can tell a lot about a man via the way he presents himself. Clothing is something we choose to wear, an outward-facing representation of how we see ourselves and how we want others to see us.

Is it fair then to turn these representations into opinion? Can we really ascertain the true sense of a man simply by his choice and arrangement of garments on his being?

Does a gentleman’s wardrobe really reflect his place in this world?

It appears it does.

(Note: as of this writing, this journalist was unable to procure the brand of hair dye Mr. Millar uses to frost his tips.)

The author’s wife is about to finish making the most impossibly delicious pizza; however, quickly, here are Matt Harvey’s first two, I think, sliders from his major-league debut that started five minutes ago.

Here’s one of them, to strike out whomever the Diamondbacks leadoff hitter was:

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GIFs from the author’s old computer are dull and boring:

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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! Pete Rose? Asshole!

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: “A Garbage Truck That Runs on Lightning”!

Before we proceed, though, let us remember those who have previously survived this crucible of sturdy ghosts. You’ll recall that last time out, Ted Williams laid somewhat extralegal claim to the nickname “Museum of Questionable Medical Devices.” 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

And now … “A Garbage Truck That Runs on Lightning”!

Implications and Intimations

A few days ago, my four-year-old male spawn accompanied me to put petrol in our shitty van. We had an exchange that went something like this:

“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Did we just get gas?”
“Yes.”
“Do garbage trucks run on gas?”
“Yes, they do.”
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Can garbage trucks run on lightning?”
“Absolutely.”

And here we are. A garbage truck is something frowned upon by people who drink wine and talk about market corrections. But garbage trucks are, if you think about it, both bad-ass and necessary. A garbage truck that runs on harnessed lightning? Exquisite savior to the world.

So we’re thinking of a player disliked by awful people, awesome in secret, powered by vivid fulminations.

Who, citizens of sufficient origins, should be nicknamed “A Garbage Truck That Runs on Lightning”?