The Mockingbird

The Jay Land (With apologies to T.S. Eliot) APRIL is the cruellest month, losing Games out on the cold land, freezing Ligaments and desire, whiffing Dead bats causing spring pain. Winter kept us warm, covering T.O. in forgetful snow, feeding Too much hope with press releases. The offseason surprised us, coming towards the ‘dome With [...] ...

Apr 28, 2013, 7:50 pm EDT via bjays.wordpress.com

A quick post-mortem (literally) on Dickey’s start last night…remember from last post how sitting consistently around 79 mph was one of the keys to his Cy? Here’s a graph of his velocity (all types of pitches) from one of his stellar starts – a 12K one-hitter against the Rays as an example of how he’s [...] ...

Apr 8, 2013, 1:44 pm EDT via bjays.wordpress.com

To make a long story short, as soon as R.A. Dickey was acquired this offseason I set off to write the definitive work on why he was so great last year and what to expect in this one, and completely and utterly failed. It turns out quantifying and/or predicting the evolution of that damn pitch [...] ...

Apr 7, 2013, 12:03 pm EDT via bjays.wordpress.com

Seeing that I don’t even have the time to wrap up the rather interesting stuff that I’ve been working on for months, I think this blog is just going to become a depository for completely ridiculous statistical statements this season, as was its original intention. So here weeee goooooo! Arash Madani, are you freaking kidding [...] ...

Mar 9, 2013, 2:22 am EST via bjays.wordpress.com

At first I was excited to learn that Romero is using pitch f/x information to diagnose his 2012 woes, but that passed quickly to outrage at the fact that it was provided in the form of printouts from Brooksbaseball by Brandon freaking Morrow. It continues to flabbergast me that teams show basically no interest in [...] ...

Feb 27, 2013, 3:55 pm EST via bjays.wordpress.com

I probably would have done more of this if I wasn’t completely statistically gassed by the time the fact that Josh Johnson even HAD a curveball rolled around. But as pointed out in the comment, any excitement over a new pitch has to be tempered by the fact that it won’t be a novelty for [...]

Dec 5, 2012, 5:23 pm EST via bjays.wordpress.com

May as well start this monster of a post off with a bang and slag a Hall-of-Fame baseball writer: has anyone else noticed that Bob Elliott constantly spices up his articles with highly-controversial statements from ‘veteran evaluators’ who sound a lot more like they’re coming from an old Blue Jays fan, or maybe, you know, [...] ...

Dec 2, 2012, 6:52 pm EST via bjays.wordpress.com

Here’s some Stieb trivia on an ancient post from this blog, as well as an old Bob Elliott article that touches on his compulsive ‘jock-adjusting’ and team-blaming. ...

Dec 1, 2012, 6:29 am EST via bjays.wordpress.com

It’s a real shame the Jays lost Brian Butterfield along with John Farrell; his ability to turn above-average infielders into elite ones will certainly be missed. Would he have made a good manager, though, and was it worth it to give him the reins to keep his infield coaching skills around? I was never as [...] ...

Nov 24, 2012, 1:23 pm EST via bjays.wordpress.com

At first it seemed odd that notorious dickhead and abrasive personality Shea Hillenbrand would be so gracious and contrite when asked to comment on the re-signing of John Gibbons as the Blue Jays manager, but after some cutting-edge journalistic work we at the Mockingbird have managed to uncover both sides of the AP interview quoted [...] ...

Nov 23, 2012, 3:46 am EST via bjays.wordpress.com