http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ6Kuyi9Omg

Tea & Crackers – Rolling Stone article about the absurdity of the Tea Party. Not that you weren’t already aware.

This is a news website article about  a scientific paper – This is pretty damn old, but I appreciate well-done satire, especially when it comes from somewhere other then The Onion. Some of the comments are amusing as well.

Does Your Language Shape How You Think? – Some languages don’t have have words for left, right, front, and behind. Yeah, that would definitely affect how one thinks.

‘Science as the Enemy’: The Traveling Salesman of Climate Skepticism – An old man who sees himself as the last bastion against socialism or communism or something does his best to spread doubt about climate change, pretending there’s not a 97 percent consensus about the science. Apparently, he’s succeeding.

A Not-So-Brief History of Pitching Injuries, Starring Nolan Ryan and the Texas Rangers – The magical solution to fixing arm problems? Long toss. I seriously cannot believe that most teams don’t have their pitchers throw past 120 feet. I really can’t. I’m so shocked that I feel like emailing Jonah Keri about it. EVERYONE does that in high school and college.

Halladay and Lincecum – Joe Posnanski being Joe Posnanski. My Halladay post seems so pointless after reading this. Is there any sportswriter that comes close? Please let me know if there is.

It’s amazing what one season out of the AL East ghetto can do for a pitcher’s reputation. In 2010, Halladay pitched like he has for years now, only in the weaker NL and for the winningest team in baseball. His nine complete games and four shutouts equaled his output in 2009, and his ERA was just a bit lower, to go along with the best K/BB ratio of his career. He’s going to win the second Cy Young of his career, becoming the fifth player to win the award in both leagues. And of course, he threw the 18th perfect game in modern baseball history.

But all that was only a precursor. I knew the Phillies were going to make it back to the postseason and I wondered how Halladay could possibly outdo Cliff Lee’s performance for the Phillies last postseason. Halladay responded by throwing a no-hitter in his first postseason game, managing to completely overshadow a 10 K, 0 BB performance by Lee earlier in the day. He effortlessly disposed of a juggernaut Reds offense, with Jay Bruce being the only player to reach base on a walk. There were maybe two hard hit balls. Halladay was seemingly able to throw all four of his pitches in any count in any location. Much like his perfect game earlier this year, he made the improbable look routine and inevitable.

Halladay is the first pitcher since Nolan Ryan in 1973 to throw two no-hitters in the same season. He’s only the second pitcher to throw a postseason no-hitter — joining Don Larsen, who threw a perfect game in the 1956 World Series. The only way Halladay could top that is to throw one in the seventh game of the World Series against Lee.

So is there any doubt in anyone’s mind that Halladay is going to dominate the rest of the postseason? It’s not rational, but I don’t think I can envision a team scoring more than two runs off of him. Sure, it’s amazing what one season can do, but it’s even more incredible what one game can do.

Why does he have to pitch for the Phillies? Goddamn it.

I really started off with basic stats that everyone knows, but I eventually relented and started using the most hardcore baseball stats out there, because I figure the people who actually pay attention to these tweets probably know them. And if not, let me know.

Hit the jump if you want to see a fairly annoyingly formatted post. Sorry.

4/28

Prince Fielder: 14 SB, 9 CS. Robinson Cano: 19 SB, 23 CS.

This is obviously just to point out the fact that Cano should not even be trying to steal bases. He fucking sucks at it. According to who you talk to, the break even point for stolen base percentage ranges from 67% to 75%. Either way, Cano isn’t close.

4/29

Jered Weaver: 34 K, 6 BB. Felix Hernandez: 31 K, 12 BB. @waxinthaksin #alwest

This was just for the benefit of the Angels fan @’d in the tweet. This won’t last.

4/30

Jim Rice: 382 HR, .854 OPS. Jim Edmonds: 383 HR, .905 OPS.

And I didn’t even bother to bring in fielding statistics. Although I guess fear statistics would cancel them out.

5/1

Roy Halladay: 5 W. Roy Halladay: 4 BB. (Thanks for the idea, @310tojoba)

Unfortunately, Halladay now has more walks than wins. I don’t think the dream is dead yet. And by that, I mean him magically turning to shit.

5/2

David Eckstein: 35 HR, 95 wRC+. Vinny Castilla: 320 HR, 93 wRC+. (LOL 90s Coors Field)

This is just fucking hilarious. Vinny Castilla had five straight 30-HR seasons, with three straight 40-HR seasons in the middle of those. Yet the massive park factors and mediocre OBP makes wRC+ calculate David Eckstein as the more valuable hitter. I’m sure someone would look at this as an example of why sabermetrics are retarded.

5/3

Don Mattingly: 128 wRC+, 15 TZ. Keith Hernandez: 131 wRC+, 113 TZ.

Basically this post condensed to a tweet.

5/4

Pete Rose: 198 SB, 149 CS. Jackie Robinson: 197 SB, 30 CS.

Rose might have hustled, but it didn’t make him a good base-stealer. Still better than Cano — a guy who does not live up the player he was named after. Look at that efficiency!

5/5 (ok, 5/6 TECHNICALLY)

Mike Cameron: 1806 K, 265 HR. Ken Griffey Jr.: 1775 K, 630 HR.

I just found this really amusing. Cameron has exactly HALF the home runs of Griffey, yet a few dozen more Ks. And they are both center fielders. Seemed like a fun comparison to make.

5/6

Chase Utley: 2.3 fWAR, $15.3 mil. Ryan Howard: 0.1 fWAR, $19 mil. (fWAR excl. today’s game)

fWAR = Fangraphs WAR. I got the notation from Beyond the Box Score. And it says Utley has been absolutely insane so far this year. We all already knew he was better than Howard, but one month samples make it more fun to point it out.

I got invited into a league at the eleventh hour, and once I heard that there were seven Yankee fans among the twelve managers, I knew I had to fuck with them. Having the first nomination of the draft fall into my lap provided the perfect opportunity to kick off the festivities perfectly. But before I go into a short narrative of the draft, I guess I’ll do some explaining.

For the uninitiated, a normal fantasy draft takes the 12 (or 14 or whatever) managers and plops them in a random order, and flips the drafting order each round, e.g., whoever picks second in the 1st round picks second to LAST in the 2nd round. This goes for however many rounds as there are player slots designated for each team. But I’m sure anyone bothering to read this post already knew this.

Now, the auction draft — like all other fantasy drafts I’ve taken part in — was on Yahoo!, so I don’t know if the exact rules apply, but I’m sure that even within Yahoo! (yes, I’m totally gonna keep adding the exclamation point) there are plenty of options to fiddle around with, so not every fantasy draft is the same anyhow. But for my draft, each team was provided with $260 monopoly dollars to fill 21 slots (C,1B,2B,SS,3B,OF,OF,OF,Util,SP,SP,RP,RP,P,P,P,BN,BN,BN,BN,BN). Feel free to ask if you’re clueless and actually interested in knowing what those stand for. From there, the managers are put in a random order just like a normal draft, but in this case, each manager nominates a player instead of drafting him. This means that the manager effectively bids $1 for this player and from then on anyone can bid up to whatever they want, short of bankrupting themselves from filling all their slots — meaning $1 is left for each empty slot no matter what, limiting the maximum bid by a few dollars. For every player nominated, the projected and average draft values are displayed, so there is at least some sort of benchmark to which even the most clueless manager can refer.

Yet when I nominated Phil Hughes — whose average draft value couldn’t have been more than two — the Yankee fans fell over themselves and hilariously bid him up to $7. By comparison, Roy Oswalt and Lance Berkman also went for $7 later in the draft. Sadly, I think that obscene bidding war might have been the high point of the draft. But the sprawling length of the draft did provide for many other moments, like when the lone Braves fan bid $20 for Mariano Rivera, assuming at least one of the Yankee fans would bite. They didn’t. I guess they had learned their lesson with Hughes. Or when the same Braves fan kept bidding up the price for Santana just to annoy me –even after joking for weeks about how his elbow is going to explode — and I finally conceded, much to his dismay. Or when one of the Yankee fans tried to bait me in particular by nominating John Maine. He ended up spending his first dollar and roster spot on John Maine. Awesome.

The high point of my draft personally had to be snatching Roy Halladay for $35. Not a huge bargain, but considering Tim Lincecum went for $47, and C.C. Sabathia and Zack Greinke for $39, I think I made out alright. He will totally decimate the NL, especially when you consider that he won’t be facing the best offense in the league. Oh, and somehow Chris Carpenter went for $37 AFTER I picked up Halladay, but that was someone who missed the draft having the computer draft for them. And that’s why you always make auction drafts.

So if you’re ever a manager of a fantasy league, make sure everyone can make the draft, and then set up an auction draft. It’s the American way.