In case you haven’t concluded yet that the Strasburg thing is dumb

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There are so many reasons why shutting down Strasburg is a mistake. Having made the decision to limit his innings before the season, the Nationals’ refusal to skip the occasional start early in the year so that Strasburg would be fresh for October is mind-boggling. (The only explanation is that they didn’t think they’d actually be in contention this year. In which case, may we suggest they read Grantland more often?)

The decision to limit Strasburg’s innings instead of his pitches suggests a team that has been suckered by the Verducci Effect, named for the Sports Illustrated writer Tom Verducci, who posited years ago that young pitchers who exceed their previous career high in innings by more than 30 are likely to get hurt. It’s a pretty theory, but it has been debunked by analysts many times over.

– Rany Jazayerli, Grantland.com.

A great and thorough tear-down of the Nats’ decision to shut down Stephen Strasburg. Run don’t walk.

So here’s something

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Stumbled onto this while working on something else today. I’m pretty sure this came up earlier this season but I didn’t realize it had borne out over time: The Mets seem to have faced an atypically high percentage of lefty pitchers this season, likely in part due to the atypically high percentage of lefty hitters in their lineup. Check this out:

The Mets’ only other marked deviation from league average here came in 2010 when, if you’ll recall, they spent portions of the season pretty heavily right-handed, during Peak Rod Barajas.

I suppose this shouldn’t be all that surprising, given what you’ve seen from the Mets this year. It also probably helps to explain why so many of the Mets having good years by their standards — David Wright, Ruben Tejada, Scott Hairston and Ronny Cedeno — hit right-handed and so many of the Mets having bad years by their standards — Ike Davis, Josh Thole and Lucas Duda — hit left-handed. That’s hardly a rule, of course, as Mike Baxter’s hitting better than anyone could have expected, and Jason Bay.

Anyway, the point I was setting out to make was that Baxter and Hairston could combine for a pretty damn good outfielder in the Mets’ 2013 plans. I don’t know if Hairston has priced himself out of the Mets’ plans with his mashing this season and Baxter’s big-league success has come in a reasonably small sample. But Hairston’s got a career .280/.330/.505 line against lefties and Baxter’s at .271/.363/.431 against righties. Plug that pair into an outfield corner and manage it effectively and you should be able to hope for better than league-average production from the spot, plus solid defense. Also, both can play center field in a pinch and both have proven useful in pinch-hitting situations, for whatever that’s worth.

The Mets will need to make the outfield their top offseason priority since they’ve got no one in their system now who appears apt to man an everyday spot next year. But since it seems unlikely they’ll be able to find three outfield regulars in free agency and via trade, a Hairston/Baxter platoon could more than adequately shore up one of the spots. Not exactly breaking news, I realize.

Maybe the city of Buffalo needed to do better by the Mets

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The most important point as far as I’m concerned is that Bisons attendance has been falling fairly steadily, since 1991. That’s over two decades of straight slipping. Some years, the declines are larger than others, but the declines are real and consistent.

You know what else has been declining in the last twenty one years? The Buffalo population, which is less than half of its 1950s peak. To be fair, the population of the other major Western New York cities like Syracuse and Rochester has been falling as well. Buffalo is a relatively poor city with a median household income of $30,043 as of the last census, well below the New York State median of $55,603. Perhaps more damning, 30% of Buffalo lived below the poverty level.

– Toby Hyde, MetsMinorLeagueBlog.com.

With the Mets’ Triple-A affiliation with Las Vegas looking — for better and worse — all but inevitable, Toby investigates and debunks claims that the Major League team is largely responsible for the Bisons’ declining attendance figures. It’s worth a read.

I don’t know enough about player-development contracts or the specific situation in Buffalo to say anything for certain, but this latest turn seems more like misfortune than mismanagement from the Mets’ end. Obviously the Blue Jays make a hell of a lot of sense for the Bisons and vice versa, and it looks like the Mets will wind up the last man standing when the music stops in Triple-A musical chairs — forcing them to skulk down into the chair that no one really wants to sit in because it’s such an awful chair for pitching from.

About that: The Mets have, for the first time in a long time, a bunch of young pitchers at the high levels of their system. If Dillon Gee and Johan Santana are healthy come April — far from a guarantee, mind you — then the group of Zack Wheeler, Collin McHugh, Jeurys Familia and Jenrry Mejia should all be targeting the Triple-A rotation out of Spring Training (barring a Major League bullpen assignment).

They should be targeting that, but if the Mets’ Triple-A home is in Las Vegas, they might not wind up there. Check this out: That environment is so unfavorable to pitchers that it seems teams often fill it up with Quad-A types and leave the prospects at Double-A. The Blue Jays’ two youngest starters this year, 22-year-old Henderson Alvarez and 21-year-old Drew Hutchison, both skipped over Triple-A en route to the pros. And since the Blue Jays started their affiliation with Las Vegas in 2009, they haven’t let many of their pitching prospects spend much time there — pretty much just Brett Cecil. Kyle Drabek spent half a year there, but his is hardly a success story.

Before the Blue Jays, the Dodgers’ Triple-A team was in Vegas. To find many success stories from Las Vegas’ pitching ranks, you have to go back to 2006, when Chad Billingsley, Joel Hanrahan and Hong-Chih Kuo all spent time in the 51s’ rotation. Clayton Kershaw skipped Triple-A when he jumped to the pros in 2008. Edwin Jackson also skipped a stop in Vegas before his big-league debut in 2003, but he started the 2004 season there, got torched, got torched there again in 2005 and then got traded before he 2006 season.

Of course, that’s hardly to say that time in Las Vegas precludes a pitcher from Major League success — the example of Billingsley suggests otherwise, plus pitching prospects succeed so infrequently that it’s impossible to expect anyone from the Triple-A ranks at any city to make an impact in the big leagues. It does appear, though, that the Blue Jays were careful about which pitchers they used in Las Vegas and when. That could just be the organization’s philosophy or a reflection of the timing of Alvarez’s and Hutchison’s Major League arrival, but there’s no doubt that Vegas’ combination of thin air and hard surface make for a brutal pitching environment that the Mets, should the affiliation happen as expected, will need to monitor.

It’s obviously not ideal. Unless, of course, you’re planning a road trip to see the Mets’ Triple-A team in 2013 and you love shiny things and home runs. Then you’re all set, buddy.

Buy the ticket, take the ride…and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well…maybe chalk it off to forced conscious expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.

From the Wikipedia: List of common misconceptions

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Straight-up: I Googled “Best Wikipedia page ever” and this came up. And it’s pretty great.

From the Wikipedia: List of common misconceptions

The Wikipedia’s list of common misconceptions will blow your f—ing mind. A lot of it is stuff you might have known or otherwise suspected — like how everyone pretty much knew the earth was round by the late 15th century when Columbus proposed sailing west to get east. But unless you’ve seen the page before, there’s a lot on there that’s going to be brand new to you. The whole thing’s worth a read, and since it’s presented in list form it’s already formatted for easy consumption, but here are some highlights:

– Vikings probably did not wear horns on their helmets. That comes from Wagner’s Ring cycle.

– Iron maidens did not exist as torture devices in the Middle Ages, meaning Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure is historically inaccurate. They were reconstructed from various artifacts to “create spectacular objects for commercial exhibition.”

– Pilgrims did not dress like Pilgrims.

– Marie Antoinette never said, “Let them eat cake.” Rousseau did, and it was, “Let them eat brioche” anyway.

– George Washington did not have wooden dentures. They were made of gold, hippopotamus ivory, lead, and a combination of real human and animal teeth. Turns out George Washington had a baller-ass grill.

– The U.S. Constitution is not written on hemp, Cheech.

– Napoleon Bonaparte was 5’7″, slightly taller than the average Frenchman of his time.

– John F. Kennedy’s German quote “Ich ben ein Berliner” does not actually translate to “I am a jelly donut” in Berlin, it means exactly what he meant it to mean: I am a Berliner. The pastry in question is called a Berliner Pfannkuchen elsewhere in Germany, but in Berlin they just call it a Pfannkuchen, naturally.

– Undercover cops do not actually have to tell you if they’re undercover cops. Sorry if I’m blowing up your spot, undercover cops.

– Thomas Crapper did not invent the flush toilet and the word “crap” does not derive from his name. Or perhaps both are true and the Crapper family are now vigilant Wikipedia editors.

– Old and Middle English speaking peoples did not actually pronounce “ye” instead of “the.” It just looks that way in print.

– The Great Wall of China is not visible from the moon, nor is any other specific human-made object.

– Per the Wikipedia, “the notion that goldfish have a memory span of just a few seconds is false.” I always struggled believing that one anyway. How in hell did anyone know?

– Despite what you may have seen on the Flintstones, humans and dinosaurs never co-existed. Only 59% of U.S. adults know that. 59 percent.

– Humans do not use only 10 percent of their brains. Another one of those goldfish ones. Who really purported to know that for sure?

– Lightning strikes the same place all the time. Work someplace where you can see the Empire State Building in a thunderstorm and you learn this real quick.

– Speaking of: A penny dropped from the top of the Empire State Building would not pick up enough speed to kill someone. Also, it’d hit a lower level on its way down.

– This is not a common misconception, but apparently Marilu Henner can remember every meal she has ever eaten.

– Al Gore never claimed to have invented the Internet. He said he “took the initiative in creating the Internet,” which is kind of true.

 

 

 

Discounted bacon possibly available for trade from some guy

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There is a fever for bacon in this country. How do we tap into that? If we don’t do something to put Oscar Mayer in its rightful place, then shame on us.

– Tom Bick, Oscar Mayer’s director for integrated marketing communications and advertising.

So what did Bick and his boys in integrated marketing communications and advertising come up with? Something called the Great American Bacon Barter, in which an LA-based actor and comedian has been charged with making his way across the country without cash or credit cards, using only his bartering skills and the 3,000 pounds of Butcher Thick Cut bacon furnished to him by Oscar Mayer.

Here’s the thing, though: The article says Butcher Thick Cut bacon runs $8.99 for a 22-ounce package, which means this guy’s armed with just short of 20 grand worth of bacon, at least in retail value. Seems like it just can’t be that hard to make it across the country on that — living pretty damn well, I might add.

Do you have access to the Internet? Because maybe you could just look up the buyers for various regional supermarkets, offer to undercut the local distributors, then barter your bacon for cash money and drive across the country living like a king. Even if you allow for nearly a 200-percent retail markup, you could pawn off 2,800 pounds of that delicious bacon and make almost $5,000 with which to travel, some $40 of which you could use to purchase a toaster oven to cook the 200 pounds of bacon you reserved for personal consumption.

Spirit of the game? Maybe not. But hey, you gave me all this bacon and I have a very particular set of skills, one of which is telling people about how great bacon is and trying to get them to give me money for it, another of which is eating bacon. So I’d like to take a crack at it.

Hat tip to Moses for the link.

Sims city

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New York Knickerbockers Executive Vice President, Basketball Operations and General Manager Glen Grunwald announced today that the team has signed free agent guard Oscar Bellfield, center Henry Sims and forwards John Shurna and Mychel Thompson to contracts. Per team policy, terms of the deals were not disclosed.

– New York Knicks.

OK, so this news comes right on the heels of even further evidence that James Dolan just absolutely cannot quit Isiah Thomas, which is almost unspeakably hilarious and enough to keep me from rooting for the Knicks in earnest anytime soon.

But Sims went from massive disappointment to fan favorite by rededicating himself to basketball during the summer before his senior year at Georgetown, and seemed to entertain the hell out of his teammates in the process. If he even makes the club, I’m not sure his presence enough will be able to hold my attention with the new-look Nets firing up across the East River, but he’ll almost certainly be better for the Knicks than Isiah Thomas will.

Olerud involved in the most civil suit

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“You guys saw the trees,” Olerud said at the board hearing. “They’re not attractive trees. I would say they’re the kind of tree that only an arborist would love. …

“I’m just making the point that if you’re willing to cut down your own trees to maintain your view and yet you aren’t willing to offer that to your neighbor, how is that being a good neighbor?

“The Bible says, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.’ That’s Jesus’ commandment.”

To which Baker replied, “I truly believe you’re trying to be a good neighbor. That’s what’s so puzzling about this, that you think it’s being a good neighbor to cut down a tree that’s important to me that’s over 50 years old, and just leave a hole there.”

Olerud said he would be willing to buy a replacement tree that wouldn’t block his view.

– Keith Ervin, Seattle Times.

That’s more than I usually like to excerpt, so please, click through and read the whole thing. You won’t be sorry. It’s perfect.

Lenny Dykstra is in jail for grand theft auto. Jose Canseco is blogging about steroids for Steroid.com. John Olerud is engaged in a very polite dispute (with vague existentialist overtones) over an unattractive neighborhood tree.