Given today’s earlier post regarding the pending release of Baseball Stars Professional for PS3 and PSP, this seems like an appropriate time to announce a project that should appeal to the readership.

The project is called the NotGraphs Baseball Stars Challenge, and it presents an opportunity for NotGraphs readers to participate in two pastimes simultaneously — i.e. those of (a) gaming and (b) roster-construction nerdery.

“What’s the challenge?” perhaps you’re asking. Well, further down in this post, you’ll find, among other things, a link to a savestate I’ve created for the Baseball Stars NES ROM. Modifying said ROM slightly, I’ve been able to produce a team in which the user begins with $1 million to spend however he sees fit.

The team, called FANGRAPH NERD, is set up in a league against Baseball Stars stalwarts: the American Dreams, Ninja Blacksox, Brave Warriors, Japan Robins, and Lovely Ladies. To play games, just go to League Play and then Continue Play.

The goal is to play out a season — managing the team however you see fit, using the money whichever way you’d like, changing the lineup however you want — to achieve the best record possible.

In order to adjudge most accurately the roster-construction skills of each user — and to avoid rewarding those users who just happen to be awesome at video games — the savestate dictates that all FANGRAPH NERD games are simulated by the computer.

Here’s everything you’ll need to get started:

• The emulator I’ve used is the FCEUX version, available here. Load this onto your computer first. (It’s possible that this is only available for PC users. Any information on making this accessible to Mac users, too, is appreciated.)

• A .zip file of the ROM itself is available here. Once you’ve extracted the file, open it from within the emulator.

• The savestate for the Challenge is available here. Open this once you’ve started playing Baseball Stars in the emulator. (Note: As a couple users in the comment section suggest, you may receive the following error when attempting this: “Warning: found unknown save chunk of type 31.This may be caused by using a different or incompatible emulator.” However, it appears as though just pressing “Okay” will allow you to play the game like normal.)

Some additional notes:

• I played out one season without changing anything, and came out with a 32-93 record (.256 winning percentage). We’ll consider this a “replacement-level” season.

• One note on changing your team’s lineup. First, go to VS. Pick FANGRAPH NERD and Player 1 and any other team as a C player. Set the lineup how you want it. Play through at least one batter like this. Voila! The lineup’s now changed in season play!

• Feel free to report any technological difficulties. I can make no claims as to being able to fix all of them, but it’s likely that if one user has a problem, another user will have a similar one.

• The prize is yet to be determined, but it will likely involve very public praise.

• Please note, finally, that it’s unlawful and shameful to ever, ever, ever, ever, ever use a ROM or emulator without already owning the game. Neither FanGraphs nor NotGraphs endorses this sort of behavior.

I’m quoting myself when I say that an underrepresented concern in the field of baseballing analysis is the question of what exactly makes watching and following the sport pleasant.

To this charge, at least one voice will raise the point that “measuring” happiness and its attendant causes is difficult, that there are too many variables to consider.

To those voices, I say: “Shut your little faces.”

I also say: “Maybe that’s the case. But the fact remains that people, by and large, don’t know what makes them happy. As proof, I offer the fact that anyone, at all, lives in the city of Dallas.”

QED, amirite?

Read the rest of this entry »

…aaand a Blackberry in front of a fake treeee.

At the Orlando Winter Meetings, the lobby is a phenomenon. There’s a slightly uncomfortable air to the space which houses virtually no planned or formal events, and is yet a hubub of activity all week long. Major league ball players looking for jobs bump into recent college graduates looking for jobs while media men scan the room for executives to harangue. It’s excellent and squirm-inducing all at the same time.

To pass the time while waiting for a story to break so that we could all run to the media room and post our opinions, some of us started a little word association game to break down the different categories of lobby rats. One thing: this bit of snark is all in good fun. We made friends in every group listed and enjoyed talking to everybody that gave us time. And many of these looks were extremely classic.

But still, there was a bit of a dress code.

Ill-fitting suit: Job-seeker.
Mustard-stained dockers: Journalist.
Golf shirt with team logo: Scout.
Cowboy boots: Manager.
Untied laces: Dave Cameron.
Sweatshirt and sweatpants: Tito Francona.
Sweater vest: Front office, but not GM – unless you are Jack Zduriencik.
Expensive suit: GM.
Expensive suit with wires hanging out the back of the jacket: TV.
Expensive suit with white sneakers: Peter Gammons.
Entourage: Gary Sheffield.

Photo H/T: SNY / Metsblog

If I’ve learned one thing in this world, it’s that NYC tabloids are never wrong. So that’s why I believe the Daily News when it tells me Yanks outfielder Nick Swisher and actress Joanna Garcia are to be wed this weekend.

My own wife, who I assume was coconuts from pregnancy hormones at the time, went through a three-month or so phase of watching “Reba” on the CW every day. So I feel like I’ve watched Joanna grow up. Or not.

Anyway, Swish seems like a good egg, and I can guarantee you no professional athlete can claim this:

Reba McEntire, Jamie Lynn Sigler, and Lance Bass will serve as part of the bridal party, Us reports.

Next up for the future Mrs. Swisher? Doing Laura Posada’s laundry as part of her Yankee Wives Club pledge requirements.

Have you ever given any thought to what happens to a baseball bat after it breaks? After a Roy Halladay cut fastball in on the hands leaves what was once a pristine Louisville Slugger in two or three pieces?

Me neither, but good talk. I’ll see you on Tuesday.

In all seriousness, prepare to be wowed, as I was, because if you’re looking for the perfect Christmas gift for the sushi and baseball lover in your life, I’ve found it. You see, the Japanese, the fine, pioneering and resourceful people that they are, aren’t just tossing broken bats from the Nippon Professional Baseball league into the trash. Instead, Hyozaemon Corporation, Japan’s leading chopsticks producer, recycles the broken bats, turns them into miniature baseball bat chopsticks, adorns them with your favourite NPB logo, and sells them to you, the grateful consumer. Now that’s “green” I can get behind.

I don’t know about you, but after partaking in my very own baseball road trip of a lifetime this past summer, where I visited all 30 MLB stadiums in 55 days, my next baseball journey involves a flight across the world, and a visit to the Tokyo Dome. There’s nothing I want more than to sit back, watch the Yomiuri Giants, and eat some sushi using my very own “Kattobashi.”

That’s what the chopsticks are called; a play on “Kattobase!“, Japanese for “Get a big hit!”, and “Hashi,” good old chopsticks.

At the end of the day, I’m a hoarder. I own a ridiculous amount of Toronto Blue Jays memorabilia, most of which I have absolutely zero use for, but that I just can’t find in me to part with. Chopsticks that look like baseball bats? With my favourite team’s logo on them? For only $15.25 CAD, plus shipping? Oh yeah, I’d definitely buy that.

Because hoarders gonna hoard.

Washington University in St. Louis recently hosted “The Future of Sports,” a panel discussion featuring Bob Costas, Bill James, Joe Posnanski, Gerald Early, and Michael MacCambridge.

The first three of the names will very obviously be familiar to you. The latter two are professors at host Washington University. Early’s resume, in particular, is impressive, including a number of consultantships to Ken Burns on his various documentaries.

H/T: Tom to the Tango

This past weekend, I made a case for a way of discussing books in a manner conducive to NotGraphs. You can read those exact words, if you want. Alternatively, you can just believe me when I say that the basic idea is to share lightly annotated passages and ideas from interesting baseball-related books.

Text
Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

Notes
Readers of FanGraphs will very likely be acquainted with the statistical concept of the outlier — that is, the data point that resides unusually far from the cluster of other data points in a given set. In this book, Gladwell attempts to examine the conditions that surround people who become outliers in terms of success within their chosen fields.

In an early example, Gladwell looks at a Canadian junior hockey team. Seventeen of the team’s 25 players are born within the first four months of the year. Nor is this phenomenon isolated merely to the one hockey team; Gladwell provides a number of other cases in which team rosters are skewed bizarrely towards January, February, and March.

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I’ve no idea how long it’s been available, but ESPN has introduced to the public consciousness a game called Salary Crunch. To play Salary Crunch, one merely selects the visage of a highly paid athelete, enters his (i.e. this “one” we’re talking about) annual salary, and prepares to be amazed at how little he earns relative to said athlete.

The results are predictably absurd. Using $30,000 — or roughly the median American income — we find that Mariano Rivera makes this sum after .09 strikeouts. We find also that our median American would have to work 500 years to equal Mr. Rivera’s 2011 salary.

It’s not all bad news, though. Per a study recently released by Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School, income doesn’t have an appreciable effect on happiness after about the $75,000 threshold.

Obviously, the only question one can really ask is: “How much are these big contracts really Werth?”

H/T: The Nats Blog

While I am personally not a fan of Pete Rose and think he has as much business being in the Hall of Fame as does an unassuming cheese curd, there’s no denying his popularity among the Joe Fan types. An outgrowth of that popularity is a truly bizarre menu of photos and artistic renderings.

So come with me, won’t you, as we stroll through the Pete Rose Wing of the Museum of Questionable Aesthetic Decisions …

You’ve heard of “Christ Figures” in cinema? Above we have unassailable proof that Anton Chigurh was a “Pete Figure.”

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Billy Beane, grinchopotamus.

So apparently Hisashi Iwakuma won’t be joining the A’s after all.

From the start, many people were surprised that the A’s had put in such an aggressive bid. FanGraphs’ own Dave Cameron argued that maybe the A’s needed starting pitching. But $19M still seemed like a big posting fee for this player.

And things got really interesting when contract talks began. Read the rest of this entry »