There is a sense of inevitability about a baseball card that features a player attempting to call a timeout at the plate. The inevitability is that this player can be no one other than Adrian Beltre …
For this and countless other reasons, Mr. Adrian Beltre shall be known, from this moment until we return to ash and primordial soup, as “Interrobang.”
New Cubs manager Dale Sveum claims that his nickname, Nuts, has “nothing to do with [his] lower half” — from which information the only obvious conclusion is that Sveum’s anatomy is constructed differently than the typical male of the species’.
In this photo, my cat Irwin is wearing my Houston Astros ice cream helmet. I got this helmet at a game on my 27th birthday, and it once contained Blue Bell Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream (the best ice cream in the world, made in Brenham, Texas). Irwin doesn’t want to wear the helmet, and it took me awhile to get it on, but I make him wear it anyway because he’s my cat and I can make him do things like wear hats. I could have worn the hat instead, but I know I can just have Irwin do it. In exchange for his pride, I give him food, clean up his poop, and scratch his cheeks. I like to think he puts up with it because he loves me, but it might be because he doesn’t have a choice — he knows he can’t beat me up or else he wouldn’t have an owner at all.
In the metaphor I’m constructing, the part of Irwin is played by the Houston Astros and the part of me is played by Bud Selig and the part of the ice cream helmet is played by the American League.
David Wright offers both products and services.
To the saberist’s eye, Alden Gonzalez’s claim (at the Mets official site) that “David Wright offers the Mets more than mere statistics” might sound like the sort of anecdotal analysis to which baseball fans are routinely subject.
However, after some serious investigative reporting, our Investigative Reporting Investigation Team has learned today that the third baseman actually really does provide more than baseball production.
Here are some of the services we’ve verified that Wright offers:
• A thorough visual inspection.
• An expansive network.
• An integrated approach to meet your individual needs.
• Counseling and/or assistance in creating a plan.
• Customized, sophisticated analytics that help clients gain hindsight, insight, and foresight.
If you tuned in to this writer’s most recent appearance on FanGraphs Audio — and you surely did not — then you’ll know that when it comes to new Cardinals manager Mike Matheny, I could just eat him up. Mike Matheny — Handsome Mike Matheny — stirs up such feelings in me that I must put those feelings to American images and French song …
I don’t normally wear a tight-fitting bodice, but if I did it would’ve just ripped on its own. All thanks to you, Handsome Mike Matheny.
There’s power in your pine tar.
The newest bombshell in social science is actually the oldest story in any book: dude made up his results. It turns out we don’t know any more about the relationship of power to infidelity, or the link between chaos and prejudice, than we did last year. It turns out that Diederik Stapel made up all his results.
A more serious corollary to the baseball world might take note from the social scientists on the matter — we might start talking about the danger of massaging data in general. We could talk about the pressure to find salacious results, and how that changes the way we look at our numbers. We could talk about all the biases that get ignored, and so on.
But that’s no fun.
Let’s instead open up that drawer in my desk where I hastily stuffed all my research as soon as this scandal broke. As you can see, Mr. Stapel has scared me straight.
More Pine Tar Means More Power: A study of the relationship of pine tar levels on batting helmets to isolated slugging percentage.
Green Means Go: Do team colors impact team statistics?
Strippers For Losers: A look at the impact of the availability of professional women of the night on the local team’s winning percentage.
High Socks Rock: Do sock heights alter four-component speed scores?
Mustaches a Must-Have for Closers: A correlation between facial hair and saves totals in major league baseball.
Ritalin or Greenies: A subjective study of baseball uppers new and old and their effect on hand-eye coordination.
There is a chance I will have to tussle my own hair.
Your heart felt good:
it was drippin’ pitch and made of wood.
–“3rd Planet”, Modest Mouse
It is not half bad to swim
half naked with seniors
when you win the MVP.
Would I do it all over again? Read the rest of this entry »
Apropos of nothing, here are three team names that are still unused at any level of baseball, accompanied by some suitable hometowns and likely mascots.
Team Name: Badly Wounded Stab Victim Hawks
Possible Locations: Cities with Crime and Hospitals
Mascot: A Supine, Blood-Soaked, and Half-Conscious Stab Victim
Team Name: Devastated Local Economy Bats
Possible Locations: Merced, CA; Cape Coral, FL; Michigan, The Whole Thing
Mascot: An Overzealous Loan Officer
Team Name: Scary Alcoholic Uncle Hounds
Possible Locations: Northern New Jersey, Middle New Jersey, Southern New Jersey
Mascot: Mickey Rourke
Ol’ Chuckles Hatcher would like nothing more than for you to think he was the first to brandish a giant glove, but the great Al Schacht would like a word with you …
That’s how it’s done, you whipperbuckaroosnappers.
Moreover, given the derivative nature of Mickey Hatcher’s prop-comedy routines and his tacit refusal to honor the pioneering models of the past, it’s fair to ask whether the scoundrel Mickey Hatcher is, at this very moment, committing high treason. Signs point to yes.