For sixty years, from 1940 to 2000, the Diablos Rojos del México played at Parque Delta (called Parque del Seguro Social for most of its life, from 1955-2000). Since then, the Diablos have played at Foro Sol, and Parque Delta has been a mall. Last Thursday, Foro Sol hosted its last baseball game. Next year, Formula 1 is returning to Mexico City, and the racetrack that runs around the outside of Foro Sol needs renovating. I’m not entirely sure what is happening to Foro Sol, but I do know that the racetrack renovations mean that it won’t be baseball-sized, and won’t be the Diablos’ home anymore. Alfredo Harp Helú, the team owner (also part owner of the San Diego Padres), has said that there will be a new baseball-only stadium in 2016. This is excellent news. You will notice, though, that there’s a one-season gap between that last game at Foro Sol and the new stadium’s expected date. It was confirmed just a few days ago that the Diablos Rojos will be playing at a 3,000-capacity park just one subway station away called Estadio Fray Nano.
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In response to Monday’s post, Chris Davis’s amphetamines said “screw you, NotGraphs,” and helped Chris Davis lift a truck off a man all by himself.*

According to one guy also on the scene: “[Davis] was even better looking in person!”

See, amphetamines don’t only make you strong, they also make you handsome!

*Not all by himself, according to the article, but who cares about facts?

The Mariners have fired a scout who sent Jesus Montero a helmet of ice cream during a minor league game, when he thought Montero wasn’t hustling enough.

Heck, I’ll walk really slowly from my office to the bathroom if someone wants to send me free ice cream. I’ll type this post at a snail’s pace if someone’s looking to give me free food, absolutely. I don’t know why Montero had to interpret the incident as an insult instead of just taking the free ice cream and enjoying it. Stadium ice cream isn’t cheap! I usually don’t even treat myself to stadium ice cream because I can’t justify the expense. Especially since the tax deduction goes away once I’m not being paid to write NotGraphs posts anymore.

Gosh, it’s not enough that they get to play baseball professionally, or earn their huge salaries. They also get free ice cream. Some people have all the luck. No one offers writers free food while we’re working. I had to pay for this bowl of grapes I’m eating, and the macaroni and cheese I’m about to reheat for lunch. I bought that pasta (on sale), I bought that cheese (not on sale), and I put them together, taking time I could have spent looking for a better picture of ice cream in a helmet for the top of this post. If someone would just send me a jar of artisanal pickles, or some strawberry rhubarb jam, or even a fancy chocolate bar that’s too expensive to comfortably buy for myself without feeling wasteful, it would make it all worth it. Or at least it would make a tiny bit of it worth it. A couple of sentences. Maybe even a whole post, if it’s a short one.

But, no, instead Jesus Montero gets free ice cream and I get to hope that the beeping of the microwave with the leftover macaroni and cheese doesn’t wake my 11-month-old son from his nap.

Writing this post has just made me too hungry to continue working without taking a lunch break. I need to hit post now.

The amphetamines Chris Davis has been taking were suspended on Friday by the National Amphetamine Association. The drugs issued the following statement:

Well, shoot, we don’t really know what happened. Clearly .196 with 173 strikeouts was not the plan. We could point the finger at Chris for his workout regimen or being unable to lay off the high fastball but, at the end of the day, we have to absorb much of the blame. I don’t know if this was a bad batch, we’d expired, he wasn’t storing us properly… or maybe we just can’t do as much as like to think we can. Mostly we just want to apologize, because we know we’ve let so many people down. The fans, who want to see home runs. The Orioles, who want to win games. And of course Chris himself, who trusted us to improve his performance… and look at what we did. To Chris, we deeply apologize and hope you can forgive and give us one more chance. We will be waiting in your locker, hopeful, when you return.

San Francisco right-hander Yusmeiro Petit has been fantastic against the Los Angeles Nationals this afternoon, having recorded an 8:0 strikeout-to-walk ratio and single-game 1.17 xFIP through five innings (box). Nor is anyone more impressed by Petit’s performance thus far than San Francisco right-hander Yusmeiro Petit, seen here enthusiastically applauding Yusmeiro Petit after the latter’s most recent strikeout.

Editor’s note: Dodgers starter Zack Greinke, whom many consider a deeply analytical player, told the Los Angeles Times last week that unintelligent players enjoy a distinct advantage over their more intelligent counterparts.

What follows is one player’s response, delivered to the NotGraphs penthouse office (Waikiki Division) via carrier pigeon after earlier, emailed attempts failed, due to the fact that the player “could not find a public email booth.”

So I read Greinke’s thing about playing with stupid players or whatever. Well, OK, I didn’t read it myself. I had somebody read it to me. It’s not like I can read and watch TV at the same time. That’s like walking and buying gum at the same time. Which is impossible because, if you buy gum, you have to stop at the register so that the register person can count out the money and then hand you back the five quarters and the 20 dollar bill.
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The recently released “No No: A Dockumentary” uses Dock Ellis’s 1970 no-hitter against the Padres — twirled while the Pirates’ right-hander was soaring on LSD, true lore has it — as a fulcrum. However, the film, as you might expect, is about more than “just” that subversive instant of baseball culture. It’s about a flawed figure, Ellis, whose human weaknesses and neglected importance place him at once in and beyond his times.

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Carlos “Go-Go” Gomez is easily startled.

All it takes is a sneaky umpire, sidling up to the bag Go-Go’s on, and he’s like an elephant that sees a mouse (or a squirrel, or some other kind of smallish rodent).

Fortunately for Go-Go, all it takes to calm down after such a rise in blood pressure is a little coddling and chest scratching from third base coach Ed Sedar.

Maybe the next time you are feeling anxious or agitated, Ed Sedar can come to your home, workplace, or wherever else you might be feeling these uncomfortable feelings, maybe he can come there and just scratch your chest a little. Wouldn’t that be nice? Ed Sedar. In your home, workplace, or general personal space. Just scratching your chest a little.

Perhaps you’ve heard about the new discrimination lawsuit against the Mets by an employee who claims she was harassed and fired because she was unmarried and pregnant. (Craig Calcaterra’s take on it — click the link — is a must-read, btw.) Ah, the Mets. The suit makes it only natural to admit here, for the first time, that NotGraphs is leaving the FanGraphs family because it, too, is pregnant and unmarried.

See, when a website loves another website, sometimes formalities aren’t important. Who needs the security of an https when you trust each other? Who needs a broadband around your finger? Frankly, who should even care who the GoDaddy is at a time like this? It’s 2014, people. Families come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes two websites join together and make a third, sometimes one website splits apart into pieces, sometimes websites just stop updating and go to that Internet Wayback Machine in the sky.

The point, even though there definitely isn’t one, is that NotGraphs just wanted to have a child, but the price you pay is that sometimes you’re told that you’ve run your course and you have to be replaced by someone newer, someone fresher, maybe someone more tech-savvy — or maybe that’s just the temp coming in while you cut your hours in preparation for the birth.

It’s not as if no one’s ever loved NotGraphs, it’s just that no one ever wanted to take the next step. Maybe it was the mustaches. There are creams and stuff we could have used, I guess. I don’t know. But why should the lack of a wedding, with everyone dressed in purple, throwing banknotes in the air, stand in our way of reproducing? It’s discrimination, I tell you. As much as this post makes any sense at all, it’s discrimination.

The lesson here, even though there certainly isn’t one, is that it’s all Jeff Wilpon’s fault. He’s the reason for the end of summer, the end of David Wright’s season, and the end of NotGraphs. So, thanks, Jeff. Thanks a lot.

Jay opened one eye to see a different, smaller eye staring back at him.

“Dad! Guess what day it is?”

Jay slowly opened the other eye.

“Son, what time is it?”

“It’s two fourteen. Do you know what that means? It’s Derek Jeter Day.”

“That’s great, buddy. Happy Derek Jeter Day.”

“Can we open presents now?”

“Not yet, Danny. Daddy needs to sleep. The gift baskets will still be there in a few hours. Go back to bed.”

“I can’t sleep.”

“Well I can’t not sleep. When it’s time, I’ll get you from your room.”

“OK.”

Jay closed his eyes again. He felt the weight lift off the bed and heard Danny’s tiny footsteps moving away. He rolled to his right side, sighed, and drifted off again. Read the rest of this entry »