On the face of it, this scene depicts Chone Figgins reacting to a pitch from Jose Quintana during last night’s contest. Only the power of ChoneVisionTM — which was once, quite presciently, described by the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley as “[stripping] the veil of familiarity from the world, and [laying] bare the naked and sleeping beauty which is the spirit of its forms” — reveals the truth.
So, Jon Singleton just guaranteed himself $10 million over the next five seasons— and a call-up to the majors– in exchange for giving the Astros an extra year before he hits free agency, and locking him into a team-friendly contract in the event he becomes a decent major league player.
And there are people trying to make the case he shouldn’t have taken the deal?
At the Hopeless Joe quality-of-life level, $10 million buys you 400 years of rent and expenses. Okay, maybe 200 years after taxes. Maybe 100 years after inflation is taken into account (although if you buy bulk at Costco to the extent I do, inflation really isn’t an issue… I have enough mayonnaise for the rest of my life… and don’t tell me you buy into the whole expiration date scam, because you know they’re only there to make you buy more mayonnaise every four years when there’s really nothing wrong with mayonnaise until it turns green… and even then, if you just scrape that top layer off… or just mix that top layer into onion dip at your next party and no one will notice… it’s not like I even like the people who come to my parties… anyone who comes to a party I invite them to clearly has no friends and something wrong with them… so they deserve whatever mayonnaise they get).
So assuming you’re not going to live well into the triple-digits — and who would even want to, given global warming and what’s happening in Syria and the impending final season of Parks & Recreation — it seems like the risk of injury, accident, loss of talent, bird flu, or career-ending mayonnaise poisoning would make this kind of deal a no-brainer for any player with enough sense to evaluate the probabilities.
And if baseball players are known for anything, it’s their ability to evaluate probabilities. That’s why no one ever dives into first base, only the fastest players in the league bother trying to steal bases, and if a manager ever even thinks to suggest that someone sacrifice bunt in the vast majority of circumstances, the entire team bashes his head in with a baseball bat. Of which there are many in the dugout, because they are playing a game of baseball.
How often do we see reasonably-touted prospects never earn anywhere close to $10 million? I’m looking at you, Nick Franklin. But you are not looking back at me, because apparently your eyes don’t work anymore and that’s why you can’t hit the ball. Well, at least not in Seattle. Because your eyes seemed to work great in Tacoma. What is wrong with you, Nick Franklin? I traded for you. The day before you got called back up! I was a genius. No, no, Hopeless Joe can never be a genius. Anyone Hopeless Joe trades for becomes hopeless too. It’s a curse.
Okay, so back to Mr. Singleton and his $10 million. It’s not even like he won’t get a chance at free agency soon enough, if he’s a major league-quality player. He will. And he’ll rake in the big bucks so instead of living in the living room of a one-bedroom apartment owned by an elderly married couple who makes him clean their dentures every night (this is how I save on rent!), he can buy an actual house — with granite counter tops and crown molding and central air and double sinks and all of the things that everyone on House Hunters loves and wants and needs and has to have — and even upgrade his cable subscription to include some of the premium channels, like C-SPAN and QVC.
If this is the kind of contract admitted drug addicts can get, why isn’t anyone lining up to give me the same deal? I can’t go a day without Klonopin. I have three Ativan tablets in the pocket of every pair of pants I own. (Which is one. I own one pair of pants. But it’s a nice pair of pants! And since I never spend time with other people, no one even knows it’s my only pair of pants! That’s the secret, folks– you don’t need a lot of clothing if you never leave your apartment! That and so much more advice in my upcoming e-book, Hopeless Joe’s Guide To Living Hopelessly. Free Xanax with every purchase. I don’t take the Xanax anymore — side effects! — so I figure I’ll just give it away.)
Drug addicts getting $10 million makes me so… emotionally neutral, but I think that may be the Klonopin. I played first base once. And then I balked and so my little league coach sent me back to left field. I didn’t even know a first baseman could balk, but somehow I figured out a way. That was me as a kid, always finding new ways to fail. So, clearly, I should be on the Astros too. And I would sign a contract for a lot less than $10 million. Jeff Luhnow, you know where to find me. (In the living room of that one-bedroom apartment with the elderly couple — but you’ll have to knock loudly because it’s hard to hear over their television set.)
Jon Singleton, if you need Prozac– $1 million a pill, and it’s yours.
HIGHLIGHTS:
According to this totally reputable source, Tornado Baseball (1976) was the third baseball video game released to the public. That makes it a key component to–
Apropos of nothing, the author wondered idly this morning how Cleveland right-hander and current pitching WAR leader Corey Kluber might appear to a typical canine, given the constraints on that particular animal’s faculty of vision.
Apropos of retaining his position as an employee of the present site, the author pursued that line of inquiry slightly further — far enough, at least, to have produced the following three images, each of which represents how Corey Kluber appears to a different kind of animal.
Here, for example, is how Corey Kluber appears to a horse — which animal possesses binocular vision:
I just got this e-mail from the Mets about upcoming promotions. (Yes, I’m on the mailing list.)
I understand that it’s hard to increase ticket prices when your team is not so good, and that there are a lot of empty seats at the stadium, and no one wants to eat the food anymore now that Ryne Sandberg’s intestines exploded from a Shake Shack burger…
But to charge for a post-game concert???
Yes, I know it’s just half a dollar, but it’s the principle of it.
At least the shirts on Friday are free.
But what’s next?
A dollar to watch the manager when the Orioles are in town?
There are a number of acts one will likely never witness Red Sox prospect Garin Cecchini performing during the course of his (i.e. Garin Cecchini’s) life. Like Garin Cecchini embracing his newborn child, for example. Or Garin Cecchini enjoying hazelnut gelato alongside the Aurelian wall on a perfect Roman evening.
Doubt in one’s own capacities is among the most very human of qualities. It represents zero of the traits, however, exhibited by Cardinals outfielder Oscar Taveras in the footage embedded here of that same player recording his first hit and home run simultaneously against the San Franciscans.
And yet … “a sanitorium in San Antonio.”
At least there is melody in that,
And in melody, there is sometimes mercy.
You could fit his desires in a pillbox —
Trinkets that shone and crude origami
Made from his paychecks.
That should makes these moments
Simpler and less freighted.
With the blood wrung from his lips,
And his lungs as fat as an archdiocese.
We take him to be wreathed in unknowing,
And for us, the living, the full of mind,
Nothing quakes us like a man
Who doesn’t grasp that he should be afraid.
Perhaps, though, the hushed features
Belie the knowing.
Maybe he is a beast who wanders off to find
A dark and final thicket. This is
What passes for a wish.
Or perhaps his only regret is that
He can’t rise from this bed and
Drop the ball once more,
Let it roll dumbly and elegiacally off the mound,
Swivel his head toward the road
And hurtle through the outfield and over the fence
After the passing fire engine,
His cap fluttering behind him like a wasp,
Which is the other thing he liked to chase.
His bones shall make a fine mill whistle.
Yesterday our own Bradley Woodrum posted an article at The Hardball Times titled “The Physical Obstacle for Women in Baseball.” If you haven’t read it, you should, if only because I get $5 for each referral, plus a Woodrum Tote Bag for every 10. But here’s the larger point: I hereby submit that Woodrum’s piece is totally sexist! Why? Because it completely ignores the physical obstacles we men have faced in our pursuit of baseball greatness.
What follows is a partial list:
Adam: You know what the gospel says, right? – that he visited the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? But what the apocrypha says that he also visited the Tree of Knowledge of the Strike Zone. (One Old Testament observer put it this way: “He really knoweth the strike zone.”) That knowledge was put to the test one day when Eve, though tiring, continued to fire the ol’ apple just off the edge of the plate. Pitch after pitch, Adam refused to swing. He’d heard the adage – that you can’t walk your way out of Eden – but still he wouldn’t take the bat off his shoulder. Eventually his hit tool atrophied, and he was ashamed. Later, his plan to become a defensive specialist ended when he took a one-hopper to the fig leaf.
Read the rest of this entry »
Recently, the author introduced a nearly reasonable methodology for identifying the most glorious baseball pitches over any given interval of games. What follows is that same methodology applied to every relevant pitch since last Friday. Click here for more information on the definition of break. Click here for previous editions of the same exercise.
Fastball
Pitcher: Justin Masterson, RHP, Cleveland (Profile)
Batter: Tyler Flowers Date: Tuesday, May 27th
Velocity: 92.9 mph Break: 9.6 in.
Footage:
