It took him 18 games, but Giancarlo Stanton made up for lost time by clubbing his first home run of 2013 a long, long way. Only the glass beyond the left field wall in Marlins Park can protect the people and businesses of Little Havana from the power of Stanton.
How far was it? Well…
#Marlins Estimated distance of Giancarlo Stanton’s first home run: 472′
— Joe Frisaro (@JoeFrisaro) April 27, 2013
Your weekly dose of browser killing fancy pictures has arrived. We lead with this acid-tripping Yu Darvish five pitch brain melt .gif. A tip of the hat to the image’s creator, Drew Sheppard.
All the .gifs and more after the jump Read the rest of this entry »
Not exactly sure where this GIF came from but it popped up on twitter (via @MindofStan) and it is far, far too cool not to share. It is all (or five, who knows how many pitches he actually throws) of Yu Darvish‘s wild assortment of offerings played at once. The internet is truly a magical place.
I’m reminded of a Mark Teixeira quote about Roy Halladay‘s pitches, which I will paraphrase here – they all start at the same place but move in every odd direction. That’s what’s going on here but you can see it with your eyes, man. Crazy.
If Yu Darvish is throwing the lion’s share of these pitches for strikes: good luck! I suppose that’s pretty much what he’s doing right now, as his near 40% K rate and 1.20 FIP would demonstrate. Yikes.
Update: looks like it was created by redditor and twitter dude DShep. Which is awesome.
Update #2! New GIF with pitch annotations. Amazing.
Victor Martinez wants you to remind of something: it’s a long season. The season is long and the toll taken on your body is considerable. When you’re an older player, like Marinez, the time required for recovery is even longer. Every collision, every slide, every bruise takes a little more out of you.
Veteran players learns to cut corners as they gain experience. They learn ways to preserve their stength, their legs, their concentration to grind out a 162 game schedule. Sometimes you limit your cage swings, sometimes you coast to first on a hard hit ball to an infielder, sometimes you just don’t bother sliding when the ball beats you to the plate by 20 feet.
Sometimes, when you know you’re DOA and you know the opposing catcher is a guy his recent opponents call The Beast you reconsider trucking into the very large opponent because, really, what’s the point? Why try running him over when my own injury is all but assured? Why slide when I can tear up my knee?
Given all that information, Victor Martinez just opts to take the gentleman’s way out of this Jeff Francoeur outfield assist. You get to the plate, you tip your cap and you run back to the dugout. Jam done, nothing to see here. On to the next one, Victor. We salute you honesty and integrity.
You’ll have to forgive Matt Carpenter for his actions in the second inning this afternoon. You see, the Cardinals’ third baseman got a little overzealous with a hit he dropped over the heads of Jayson Werth and Denard Span of the Washington Nationals. Not willing to settle for a stand up double, Carpenter rounded second base and made a few strides for third, and then blew a wheel en route to providing us with some LOLs via a terrific TOOTBLAN.
Alfredo Aceves and the Boston Red Sox put on quite a performance of incompetence in the third inning of Tuesday’s 13-0 loss to the Oakland Athletics. Aceves, who walked three in the inning and was called for two balks, can’t be held responsible for all of the blame for the six runs against in the frame, but he sure did his part to make it easy on the A’s.
The right-hander piled up some excuses in speaking with the media following the seven inning contest, via the Boston Herald:
“It’s hard to explain to you guys,” Aceves said. “You guys just see the errors, the runs, the hits, whatever. It’s really hard to — how can I explain? — to get through that plate. For whatever reason, the strike zone got small. Obviously you guys don’t see it that way. You see the runs. As a pitcher, man, it’s not easy. Also, the weather, whatever weather it is, we should be able to play. Also it don’t matter what score it is. We’ve got to have our backs, not because it’s 10 or 13, I’m going to sit back and relax for the next game. No, there’s no second game. We’ve got to have our backs. Pretty much that.”
Oh, there’s more:
“Also, we got our hacks. Why don’t we hit?”
Yeah, that’s probably not going to go over so well in the clubhouse. Enjoy the above display of inadequate defense, as we may have seen the last of Alfredo Aceves on the mound for the Red Sox.
Here’a bevy of looping images in motion to end your work week and mutilate your browser. We lead with a glimpse at Jonathan Papelbon, clearly high on his own awesomeness.
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