I didn’t ask him about being the white whale for New York-area bloggers and talk-radio callers. I kind of wanted to, but I figured that would have been awkward, plus I couldn’t come up with a good way to phrase it. “How does it feel to know that like 50% of the Mets’ fanbase has desperately wanted you back since the day you left?”
According to the Daily News today, British ass-kicking machine and TedQuarters hero Jason Statham took Kristin Cavallari of The Hills on a golf-cart joyride through Palm Springs, Calif. at 4 a.m. on Saturday morning.
This is notable for several reasons: First off, what must a Jason Statham-fueled golf-cart joyride be like? I hope Kristin Cavallari at least saw The Transporter before she got on board, or else, whoa nelly, she must have been pretty surprised the first time he took that thing for a mid-air barrel roll.
Second, and maybe even more importantly, the last time I mentioned Cavallari here it was because she was leaving a Super Bowl party with TedQuarters hero Mark Sanchez.
So good for Kristin Cavallari of The Hills for having impeccable taste in dudes, at least based on the very small sample of her lovelife I’m familiar with.
The only obvious possible concern here is the potential for a Statham/Sanchez beef, which would be terrible for the Jets and terribly conflicting for me. And I recognize that Sanchez, thanks to his offensive line, has a whole lot of muscle behind him. But there’s just no way you want an angry Jason Statham on your hands, no matter how many 300-pounders you’ve got in your corner. Statham’s shown that, time and again.
I have always, always said that timpanis don’t get enough play in popular music, especially in live settings. I suppose that’s at least partly because they’re really expensive and a pain to transport, so you kind of have to be Mos Def or someone to pull it off.
One fun note about timpanis for those of you who haven’t spent way too many hours futzing around school band rooms: They are equipped with pedals on the bottom that adjust the tension of the drum head, changing the pitch. So if you do a roll on the timpani while slowly moving the pedal down with your foot, the pitch glides up like a glissando on the trombone.
I’m pretty sure a few modern composers actually call for the technique, but it’s strictly forbidden by angry band directors everywhere, especially when you’re not a percussionist and shouldn’t be anywhere near the expensive timpanis to begin with.
In a related story, New Orleans-based funk drummer Stanton Moore attaches a rubber hose to a tom-tom and blows air into it to create the same pitch-bending effect in drum solos. It’s awesome.
I’m going to go ahead and guess “no.”
Big Pelf’s been awesome this season, no doubt, and it’s entirely likely that there are real reasons for his success beyond a still very small sample in isolation.
Pelfrey is striking out more batters, something that’s been attributed in part to his increased confidence in his secondary stuff and a new splitter that dives out of the strike zone. He’s hardly whiffing batters at Tim Lincecum-like rates, but his K/9 has ticked up from 5.22 last season to 6.86 this year.
And Pelfrey has likely benefited from better defense behind him, as well. He’s still yielding a high rate of ground balls — 47.3% according to Fangraphs, a bit below his career mark — but he’s yet to pitch in front of the Alex Cora/Luis Castillo middle infield he suffered from all too frequently last season. Indeed, Pelfrey’s 2009 FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) was well below his ERA — indicating either bad luck or bad defense — and his 2010 FIP is well above.
Pelfrey’s 2.63 FIP is well below his career rates in part because he hasn’t allowed a home run yet, something that’s not likely to continue. When Pelfrey’s going well he’s not at all prone to the gopherball, but it’s obviously silly to expect that he’ll never allow any, just as it’s silly to expect he’ll continue to allow so few hits.
Since even with the increased strikeout totals, Pelfrey still lets batters put the ball in play a good deal, at some point soon someone will knock one over the fence and a few more balls will sneak through the infield. Though it’s reasonable to hope Pelfrey’s enhanced arsenal will help him continue to induce weak contact, it’s not reasonable to expect a guy who has yielded a lifetime .312 batting average on balls in play to suddenly maintain a .231 mark.
And it’s important to remember the whims of the sample size. Though it probably does mean something that this stretch is coming at the beginning of the season, when we know Pelfrey has made an adjustment, this is not really even the best three-start stretch of Pelfrey’s career. That came back in July of 2008, when he struck out 16 batters while walking only two and allowed just one earned run over 22 innings.
Of course, this is all pointless, because I can’t imagine any reasonable human expects Mike Pelfrey to maintain a 0.86 ERA over the course of a full season.
The important thing is that what Pelfrey has done so far is fantastic, and there are some decent indicators that he’s made real improvements beyond just pitching in front of a better defense.
It’s baseball, though, and things have a way of evening out. It will be interesting to see how Pelfrey fares once opposing teams are better prepared for his new offerings, if he maintains confidence in his secondary stuff when he hits rough stretches, and if it takes any toll on his arm over the course of a long season.
From the Daily News:
From left, that’s the lunch-meat Ndamukong Suh, the real Ndamukong Suh, the real C.J. Spiller, and the lunch-meat C.J. Spiller.
Mike Fast at The Hardball Times reacts to a comment from Rob Neyer about pitchers losing velocity when throwing from the stretch and concludes that it’s not really true.
Fast’s analysis is worth a read, but the most entertaining thing in the post is the graph plotting average fastball velocities of Major League pitchers.
That red dot all the way on the bottom left? That’s Jamie Moyer.
Moyer, according to Fangraphs, has not averaged more than 82 miles per hour with his fastball since 2002 (when he was only 39).
Obviously I knew Moyer doesn’t throw hard, but it’s pretty amazing to see it plotted out like that, and to see just how not-hard he throws in comparison to the rest of the league.
And it makes me wonder whether Moyer is some massive outlier who manages to get Major League hitters out with guile and an 81-mph fastball in a way no other pitcher knows how, or if there’s a huge selection bias at play here, and pitchers with 81-mph fastballs simply don’t stick around professional baseball long enough to make the Major Leagues (and learn whatever they need to learn to get guys out without heat) even if they can be effective.
A little from column A, a little from column B, I’d bet.
Bacon also resides within the lugubrious center, though not much bacon (no doubt trying to keep the sandwich at a trim 540 calories, of which 520 are from fat, I’m sure). There’s also a “secret sauce” which seems to consist of mustard, mayo, Elmer’s Glue, and death. The remoulade of the damned, essentially.
– Dan Szymborski, Perpetual Post (some language NSFW).
Dan and I wrote a joint review of the Double Down for Perpetual Post this week. My half is pretty similar to the one I posted here a couple weeks ago (except with saltier language) because, admittedly, I have not eaten another Double Down since. I mostly just wanted to title a post “the remoulade of the damned.”
There’s little enough right now for us humble fans to look forward on a day-to-day basis that we can appreciate watching a guy like Davis develop on the big league stage. For all the front office fumbling, bringing this kid up despite his need for a little more development in the minor leagues will at least energize the fanbase.
– NeverSeenThemWinOne, comments section this morning.
With increasing frequency, I’m finding that the reactions to posts here don’t seem to follow my original intentions when making said posts. Obviously, this reflects poorly on me and my ability to communicate whatever the hell it is I’m trying to say, but I think I’ve identified the problem. I’m adjusting to the (awesome) rigors of my schedule during the baseball season while trying to maintain some consistent flow of content here, and I think too often I’m crapping out half-formed thoughts and assuming readers can somehow divine what I’m getting at.
But whatever. You probably don’t care much about that stuff, so here’s this stuff:
To be clear, like NeverSeenThemWinOne, I am extremely excited to see Ike Davis playing for the Major League Mets every day. Though I have reservations over whether he’s actually ready to hit lefthanders and lay off breaking pitches, I want very much to see him try.
And I recognize he is a massive upgrade over Mike Jacobs, both in actual on-field value and in asses-in-seats production. Watching Mike Jacobs’ approach at the plate was starting to make me not want to watch baseball at all, or at least change the channel while he was hitting or something, and that’s terrible.
And Fernando Tatis, nice and versatile player though he may be, is just not exciting to watch play for a 5-8 team. I know exactly what I’m going to see out of Fernando Tatis, and though it’s decent, and probably better than a lot of people realize, it’s still not exceptional.
I don’t know exactly what I’m going to see out of Ike Davis, and that’s what makes it fun. I know how infrequently prospects actually pan out, and I realize, from a rational perspective, that we will be lucky if Davis turns out to be a deserving but unspectacular Major League regular like Paul Konerko or someone.
But I can cling to the small hope that Ike Davis is a Hall of Famer because he hasn’t done anything yet to show me otherwise.
Mike Jacobs? Not a Hall of Famer. Fernando Tatis? Not a Hall of Famer.
On a team like this one, I’ll root for uncertainty over the certainly bad or the certainly not-so-good anytime, especially when the uncertainty comes in the form of a young, highly touted homegrown player.
It’s a thrilling thing, and the Mets-fan side of me is absolutely thrilled. I don’t think he’ll hit .500 all season and I don’t think he’ll provide enough to make the team a great one, but I know he’ll make me more excited to tune in every night, and that means something too.
The post last night just aimed to point out that with this franchise, the way things are going these days, even something indisputably invigorating like the top hitting prospect ascending to the big leagues comes somehow mired in confusion and doubt. That part sucks. But the rest of it is awesome, no doubt.
It was everything Ike on Monday at Citi Field. You’ll read way more in the papers, I’m sure. Here’s about 1/100th of the things said by and about Ike Davis:
“It was evident that we needed left-handed power. We expected to get that from Mike Jacobs. And maybe the inconsistency of play there, or him just not getting off going right, made that a glaring weakness for us. And when you hear that a guy down there [in Triple-A] is hitting tape-measure shots, you kind of put a hint in and say, ‘Hey, man. What do you think, bro? I need a little help here.'” – Jerry Manuel.
“We’ve been looking forward to seeing him here.” – Angel Pagan.
“This is awesome.” – Ike Davis.
Tedquarters 