Your spectrum of adequacy, from regrettable to decent. Baseball writers, enjoy:
Regrettable
Who?
Participatory
Just a guy
Tolerable
Unobjectionable
Adequate
Passable
Sufficient
Mediocre
Ordinary
Average
Meh
Fine
Scratch
Okay
Good enough
Respectable
Nice (little)
Nifty (little)
Dandy (little)
Decent
It’s true:
“I was just drying my head off in between innings,” he said. “It’s happened to me two times before. The towel just catches the back of my head and it pulls my neck forward. I just felt it a little bit in back of my neck and just wanted to be cautious with it. … It’s spasms, there’s a little pop and it just spasms up and gets a little tight.”
Dude loves to towel off. In other words, this is how David Price feels in between innings:
And at the end of the day?
One fine day I got a notion that reviewing baseball video games – in an effort to find the best ones of all time – might be a cool idea. After showing one to Mr. Cistulli, he agreed relented. Thus today I bring you another video game review, this time a more timely review, of MLB ‘12: The Show, which was released Tuesday — or midnight Monday if you were lucky like I was.
The FanGraphs crew is in beautiful, sunny, and warm Phoenix, Arizona. They’re watching spring training baseball, drinking brews, and doing what they do best: being unapologetic nerds.
Me, I’m stuck in freezing-ass-cold Toronto, chained to my frigging desk, and bitter about it. But I’ve been following the gang’s exploits on Twitter:
March is fantasy baseball season, and in it, most of our evenings and weekends will be filled with drafts and auctions or prepping for said. If you’re just beginning to incorporate a sabermetric bent to your fantasy preparations (i.e. if you haven’t moved on to Fantasy Fantasy Baseball), sorting through the copious stats that are now widely available can be frustrating. You want to know which stats are most predictive of future performance, and which are red herrings, but you don’t know your wOBAs from your U.N.I.T.Y.s.
Fortunately for the beginners out there, I’m here to give you a cheat sheet on which stats are overrated, and to explain, with great clarity and exactitude (not to be confused with “Natitude“) why they are overrated.
Batting Average (AVG)
I’ll just leave this first one to everyone’s sabermatrician, Joe Morgan:
A good hitter makes sure no men are on base when he makes an out — even if that means killing all baserunners before a plate appearance.
Yu Darvish took his first ride on the Range. He pitched well, and comfortably. Yu Darvish, I suspect, does everything well, and comfortably. Had his parents been disinclined toward greatness, they would not have named him for a pronoun and an adjective. Small matter that we mortal English speakers fail to recognize that adjective. Yu does not consult the dictionary. The dictionary consults Yu. He is at home among the Races of Middle-Earth, when he so chooses. (Gil-galad was a Darvish king. / Of him the harpers sadly sing.) He is at home amidst Victorian nonsense. (‘Twas brillig, and the darvish toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.) And he is at home on the proverbial street. (Ball so hard / This sh*t darvish.)
Dearest NotGraphs,
I play the overlapping fantasy sports of hockey and baseball. I have also recently acquired a girlfriend. I am happy with my girlfriend, but I am not happy when I forget to set my lineups in hockey and miss out on stats. I am also slow drafting in multiple leagues for baseball, and girlfriend time is heavily affecting my ability to participate effectively in these drafts. Once the baseball season actually starts, this girlfriend will be a monumental problem for my fantasy sports teams’ performance.
Have you any solutions, or even suggestions?
Thank you,
Guy with a Girlfriend
“Happiness is a sad song.” -Charles M. Schultz
Major League Baseball tried out “open mics” during yesterday’s Indians-Diamondbacks spring game, and with it, the beautiful and gentle beast that some call “Jason Kipnis” has unleashed his inner Adele. See, joy:
Today, Joe Carter was in our thoughts. And so, tonight, we resurrect, as we are prone to do, our celebrated feast-days series.
Life: Joe Carter was, for the most part, an average baseball player. He hit a lot of home runs. Year in and year out, he was good for 30 dingers, a hundred ribbies, and a hundred strikeouts — give or take a few. Once upon a time, he even stole bases. In my youth, had I known anything about on-base percentage, I would have likely hated Joe Carter. I would have gladly taken the home runs, and the RBIs, especially on those deeper Toronto Blue Jays clubs, but I wouldn’t have been too happy about it. Yet I remember Carter most fondly. Everyone in Toronto does. Because of one catch, one walk-off home run, and two jumps for joy.
Spiritual Exercise: Joe Carter ended back-to-back World Series a winner. Literally. Ask yourself: Would you rather have a Hall of Fame career, and never win a title? Or would you rather be slightly above average, with power, and hit a walk-off home run to win the World Series?
A Prayer for Joe Carter
Joe Carter!
You’re one of the
lucky ones.
So many are remembered by the
sum total of their numbers.
Not you.
Why?
Why the hell did Otis Nixon
bunt?
He gave away the final bloody out.
Internet!
Here is a comprehensive list of things I am terrified of:
• Meeting Internet People (i.e. FanGraphs writers) in person (i.e. this weekend in Phoenix).