Pow.

That was Wily Mo Pena’s second homer of the game, and it was a doozy. The stadium, at its deepest, is 400 feet. That homerball Apollo’d about 490 feet — or it would have if it didn’t first connect with what appears to be a sufficiently high light fixture (see 1:59).

What also makes me happy about this video: Not just seeing Wily Mo Pena alive and doing things, but seeing the twirly finger home run sign transcending all language barriers. You and I, English-speaking persons, can watch a Dominican (Spanish-speaking) hitter communicate with a Japanese-speaking umpire and all three parties (us, he, and them) can understand that scene. There’s something sparkling about it all.

Also, there’s something, I dunno, Thriller album cover about this:

Thanks to Yakyu Baka and Daily Sports on this.

Largely famous for his very celeritous fastball, Kansas City right-hander Yordano Ventura recorded six of his 10 strikeouts on Monday night against San Diego via his very sufficient curveball (box).

Read the rest of this entry »

House of Cosbys has and will always entertain me — but it also taught me a valuable lesson: The more you repeat something, the, um, less special it is. It is with this warning that I present to you “Tyler Chatwood in the Woods, Surrounded by Chats”.

“I went to the woods because I wished to chat deliberately…” –Henry David Thoreau

For better or for worse, this has been a NotGraphs post tagged as Men Surrounded by Things.

This has been Inserting Aaron Harang into Classic Silent Films. May it never be again.

[Photo is of the e-trade baby, not my actual baby.]

“Hi. I’m seven months old. And even though I can’t talk yet, I can still have thoughts. Fortunately, my daddy can read my mind, so when I was thinking that I would like to write this post, he agreed to transcribe it for me. Even though I don’t really know what baseball is yet, I do know something about fantasy baseball, because sometimes when my daddy thinks he has my head facing away from his computer screen, I’m actually looking out of the corner of my eye. I don’t really know why he and mommy are so obsessed with me not looking at their computer screen. They would rather I stare at the wall? Adults are so silly. It’s not even like they’re doing anything with crazy blinking graphics or other things that are going to screw up my attention span or give me nightmares. They’re reading the New York Times. Big deal. Scrolling text. Wow. Really dangerous. Ugh, adults. They don’t even let me check my e-mail, EVEN THOUGH MY DADDY GOT ME A GMAIL ACCOUNT THE WEEK I WAS BORN. Why be so crazy as to sign up for the e-mail account when you’re not even going to let me check it?

“Where was I? Sorry, it’s hard to stay focused when you’re seven months old. Very easily distracted. Anyway, what was I talking about? Socks, right? They’re so annoying, and yet I don’t quite have the hand-eye coordination yet to pull them off. Ugh. What’s wrong with exposed feet? I like to be able to see my toes to make sure they’re still attached.

“No, wait, I wasn’t talking about socks. I was talking about fantasy baseball, right? I know my daddy is kind of obsessed with fantasy baseball, because when he feeds me at 3AM, the first thing he does is check the ESPN app on his phone to look at box scores. (Why do I still insist on waking up at 3AM to be fed? Because I am evil.) He doesn’t even really try to burp me anymore. He just gives me a couple of perfunctory slaps on the back and then moves me so my eyes can’t see the screen and starts checking all the late games. That is crazy behavior from someone who claims to want to get right back to sleep. Even once I’ve fallen asleep, sometimes he still checks the last couple of games before he puts me down. Sometimes, just to trick him, I pretend I’m asleep, wait for him to get ready to put me down, and then I open my eyes and start kicking my legs so he has to start over again with the bouncing and the ssssshhhhhing. Why can I only fall asleep when someone is bouncing and ssssshhhhing me? I don’t know, I’m just a baby, why should I know?

“What else do I know about fantasy baseball? My daddy is very mad at someone named Carlos Santana, and he should have made that trade someone offered him yesterday but he was too scared to give up on the season so early in the year. Guess what? This isn’t his year. Chris Sale is out for another month, Josh Hamilton is not going to be the same once he comes back, and that hail mary Johan Santana pick at the end of the draft? Even a seven-month-old knows that is not going to be a difference-maker.

“I do need someone to explain WHIP to me, though. What does it stand for, and who made it up? Some things in this world are just super-confusing.”

These coeds also can’t believe the Mexican army’s unlikely victory over French forces in 1862.

The capital-R Record states that Cinco de Mayo is a holiday celebrated on May 5th and originally established in the Mexican state of Puebla so that young dipsomaniacal Americans might have a sanctioned pretense — between St. Patrick’s Day (in mid-March) and Memorial Day (in late-May) — upon which to make terrible life decisions.

The intent of the current post is to establish is that, upon examination of the aforementioned Record, that Cinco de Jonathan Mayo — presumably in honor of MLB.com prospect analyst Jonathan Mayo — does not appear to be a real holiday. This is not, of course, to discount the importance of Mayo’s work, but rather just to establish that said work has not (yet) been officially recognized by means of a widely celebrated holiday.

Epicurus was a capable philosopher despite appearing to possess no real eyes.

At the internet weblog which bears his name, Groton native and alumnus Peter Gammons today proposed some ideas to the end of quickening the pace of the average baseball game.

What follows are seven real and not fake suggestions on that same topic courtesy very important thinkers of yesterday and today.

For example:

EPICURUS
“It is the taste of the food, not the time required to eat it, by which one adjudges the quality of a meal. Likewise, it is the quality of a baseball game, not its length, by which one must evalute the merits of that game. In conclusion, I recommend contracting the Mets.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Santaspirt writes with a brand new statistic that we all need to jump on, right away:

I have created the advanced player evaluation stat to end all advanced player evaluation stats. I present to you, Worth Their Weight in Gold (WTWIG). Gold is hot right now. And what better way to evaluate baseball players than to put them on the Gold Standard. WAR, homeruns, wRC+? All they do is measure how well a guy played. WTWIG measures how much a guy weighs and then converts that into the value of gold.

His full post is here at Mattyball, where he figures out which players came closest to being worth their exact weight in gold in 2013, with value measured by WAR and by salary. By WAR, the closest was Victor Martinez. By salary, the closest was Denard Span.

(By actual gold, I think it’s David Ortiz. See the picture at the top.)

So I think we’ve got a new stat to track here at NotGraphs. I would put my money on Adam Dunn for 2014, except his infinite weight means he is worth infinity in gold, and that’s a lot of home runs he’s going to have to hit.

[Incidentally, if we measure who is worth their weight in silver ($19/ounce as opposed to $1,294/ounce for gold), the answer is the rest of us, who do not play baseball.]

Adrian Beltre crested the hill in front of Rucker. He scanned the tree-line for the white throat of the buck. That, or the eyes, was what you usually saw first. Nothing moved except the leaves, which seemed to rustle themselves. There was no wind. His next step was on a mossy stone which slid underfoot. He fell on his hip. He dropped his rifle and rolled on his back. “Goddammit,” he muttered.

“You OK, old man?” grinned Rucker as he clasped his forearm to pull him up. “Better let me blaze the trail.”

After Adrian Beltre got on his feet, Rucker barged ahead. Rucker swayed when he walked, as though slow-dancing at that club up on the highway. His broad hips never tapered. He had such a wide base that falling seemed impossible. His feet, in those trail boots, looked as heavy and sturdy as flagstones.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not clear right now to what amusing and/or important ends this animated GIF will be used of Denard Span saying “Come on, man” to Cliff Lee in the fifth inning of tonight’s Washington-Philadelphia game (box). That those ends likely exist, however, entirely justifies the publishing of this post and, within it, the aforementioned GIF.