New sports and culture site Grantland has a commercial on ESPN. A television commercial for a web site full of advanced analytics, popular culture criticism, and Bill Simmons screeds. This has to be some sort of milestone. Either it’s a high-water mark, that moment when the dorks of the web got so close to the mainstream that they appeared, for sixty seconds at a time, on a major cable sports network — or it’s the beginning of new possibilities for cross-platform advertising.

Either way, as the supreme navel gazers that we are here at FanGraphs, it’s time to turn inward. It’s time to storyboard the FanGraphs commercial.

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Dmitri Young is trying to make his way back into baseball. He’s lost weight and has his diabetes under control (at least, as much as one can do so with such a disease). He was seen at Monday’s Rays-Tigers game cheering on his brother and relatively new Tiger Delmon, and Da Meat Hook is looking pretty good:

Click to embiggen

An opposing fantasy team’s name once told me that Meat Falls From Dmitri. They were right.

And that’s one awesome Masters of the Universe shirt he’s rocking, too. Good for you, Dmitri. And maybe, just maybe, you can come back and improve your ranking as the 948th best hitter of all time. I’ll be rooting for you.

What follows is symptomatic of a healthy and confident gentleman:

I’m not going to go overboard and start comparing this nobleman and his velvety yet sturdy hands to Mitch “Charlemagne’s Poise” Davies, but I will say that this is the sort of plucky display that could, under the proper circumstances, lead to a night with Angie Dickinson.

As I’m sure the well-bred reader will concur, insolent behavior is not a thing to praised in and of itself. While, of course, there’s a time and a place for strong words and stronger deeds (after midnight and at a gentlemen’s club, respectively), it is generally best for the aristocrat to maintain a healthy respect for propriety.

Occasionally, however, the opportunity presents itself for a true and beautiful act of finely crafted insubordination. Man among men Grant Brisbee reminded the present author of just such an opportunity via a recent internet weblog post at Baseball Nation — namely, the occasion of Ichiro Suzuki’s first-ever ejection from a professional baseball game.

The footage you see here is from that same game, which took place in Toronto’s Rogers Centre back in September of 2009. After being called out looking by umpire Brian Runge, the always composed Ichiro! — rather than enter into any sort of verbal contretemps with Runge — opted instead for a bit of the Meaningful Gesture, noting with his bat the precise trajectory at which the ball traveled into the catcher’s mitt.

While Runge ejected Ichiro immediately, it’s clear who won both the battle and the war.

I make no secret of my soaring admiration for all things Jose Bautista, for whom my love is both boundless and without bound. As such I was pleased to learn that Joey Bats is as adept at Internetting as he is at smiting cowhide orbs over fencing.

If you follow Mr. Bautista on Twitter — and, oh, you should — then you’ll be familiar with his frequent use of the #beastmode hash tag. I don’t know what the mode of beasts is, but when Mr. Bautista proclaims he is in said mode, I take him at his word. However, an unfortunate lil’ buckaroo named Tyler Broderick would very much prefer that Mr. Bautista not enter beastmode ever again:

@JoeyBats19 stop using beastmode in every tweet. Only members of the SH goon squad are aloud to do so you faggot

I have no idea what the “SH goon squad” is, but my working assumption is that members in good standing can’t read Dropkick Murphys liner notes without moving their lips. Take it away, Joey Bats …

Douchemode, indeed. Back to you, Tyler!

@JoeyBats19 I didn’t spell anything wrong bro SH stands for South Hadley. My boy Ryan Horstman is gonna be striking your ass out in 4 years

At this point, the discerning observer will discerningly observe that young Tyler is being ridiculed for confusing “aloud” with “allowed,” and not for abbreviating the name of his facking hometown.

What’s next? Naturally, young Tyler, after calling Mr. Bautista an English bundle of sticks, will enter #mewlingbabykittenmode and meow about how Jose Bautista was mean to him.

At this point, I declare, in my finest Judge Lance Ito fashion, two things: One, Jose Bautista is much better at Internetting than Tyler Broderick is, and , two, Ryan Horstman will never, ever strike out Jose Bautista.

Also, despite declarations to the contrary, no, young Tyler, America does not have your back in this one.

I’ve never personally hit a home run in a major-league baseball game. However, were I to hit a home run in that type of baseball game, I’d probably make sure to do a weird, flamboyant helicopter motion thing with my left arm — like the one Dan Uggla performed, I mean, just after hitting a home run against Diamondback rookie Wade Miley on Saturday night.

The Tampa Bay Rays have not had a proper submission to the Mustache Watch archives since the days of Dale Thayer — which actually predates the Watch — so it is good to see them aim for a late-season push with quality submissions such as the above-featured John Jaso.

In the presented image, we Jaso’s mantastic face-stache displays some of its incredible flexibility, miming the governial concernedness of Nehemiah Green, Kansas’s most famous fourth governor:

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In the tradition of Dodger rookie Rubby de la Rosa, Philadelphia shortstop Jimmy Rollins left Sunday’s game with an unexpected — and slightly embarrassing — injury.

Watching him — Jacksonville Suns pitcher Graham Taylor — round third base, you knew we were in store for a grand finale. The bottom line: Safe. But yet another reminder for the National League to join us in the 21st century and embrace the designated hitter, so that the above nightmare never happens in the major leagues.

H/Ts: The Twitter feed of soon-to-be Toronto Blue Jay Logan Morrison, and ScoreBuzz.

Me too, Mr. Morrow. Me too.

The most excellent quote comes to us from Seattle’s The News Tribune, via the foul-mouthed, but always informative, Drunk Jays Fans. Here’s another:

Some of those [2011] numbers don’t look so hot, but if you look at the nerd stats, I’m having a pretty good year. I’m not always sure how they come to those conclusions, but I like them.

Again: Me too. Math is crazy. And I can’t help but wonder whether Morrow knows he scores a perfect 10 according to the most recent Pitcher NERD Leaderboards of Pleasure.

I can picture Morrow, though, almost vividly, in his downtown Toronto condo, on his laptop, perusing FanGraphs.com.

“Honey, guess whose FIP is now under 3.00, and good for sixth in the American League? Beast mode! And, whoa, my SIERA’s third in the AL, behind only Verlander and Sabathia. Double beast mode!”

Brandon Morrow is one of those guys with electric “stuff.” Now, I don’t know about you, but I love that the word “stuff,” so banal, is used to describe a pitcher who throws a baseball a remarkable number of which ways, who makes a baseball dance, who strikes out the most batters per nine innings in all of the game. But more than just his “stuff,” Morrow, as evidenced, is a highly educated man. He’s like me, like you, like us. He appreciates advanced baseball statistics. He’s a nerd. Brandon Morrow is the thinking man’s A.J. Burnett.

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