Billy Kulpa

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Flip Flop Fly Ball infographics collectionI want to give praise to Flip Flop Fly Ball, one of my all-time favorite websites. The site’s creator, Craig Robinson, combines baseball and informational graphics in a really fun and interesting way.

From Robinson:

A love of baseball plus a love of visual representations equals Flip Flop Fly Ball.

Essentially, this site is what I’d have been doing when I was 12 years old had the Internet and Photoshop been available to me in the eighties. And had I grown up in the States. As it was, I grew up in England. And I came to baseball in my thirties whilst on a business trip to New York. I went to see the Yankees play the Twins. And that was it, really.

My name is Craig Robinson. Not the guy in Hot Tub Time Machine. Not President Obama’s brother-in-law. And not the short stop who played for the Braves, Giants, and Phillies in the 1970s, either. I am a bearded, myopic, Englishman who (for the time being, at least) lives in Mexico City.

I’ve never met the man, but he seems like a helluva guy. And way, way more ambitious and motivated than the rest of us.

For instance: See that image to the right?

It’s a screen grab of every infographic Robinson has made for Flip Flop Fly Ball. I can’t say that I’ve looked at each and every one, but some of my favorites include “Welcome to Bradenia” and “The Age of the Yankees Roster.”

Robinson also has a lot of other kooky baseball- and graphics-related projects.

I highly recommend checking out his work if you have two or three days to kill next week.

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The Texas Rangers have won the bidding for Japanese pitcher Yu Darvish.

ESPN is reporting that the posting fee – a fee MLB teams agree to pay a departing Japanese player’s former team just for the right to negotiate with that player – is a record high $51.7 million.

Worth noting: They did throw an “about” before the figure, just in case. Here’s a look at Darvish’s career in Japan:

Year Age Team W L ERA G IP SO
2005 18 Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters 5 5 3.53 14 94.1 52
2006 19 Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters 12 5 2.89 25 149.2 115
2007 20 Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters 15 5 1.82 26 207.2 210
2008 21 Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters 16 4 1.88 25 200.2 208
2009 22 Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters 15 5 1.73 23 182.0 167
2010 23 Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters 12 8 1.78 26 202.0 222
2011 24 Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters 18 6 1.44 28 232.0 276


Texas now has 30 days to come to a contractual agreement with Darvish. If the two sides can’t agree, Texas owes the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters, Darvish’s Japanese club, nothing and he returns to Japan.

It likely will cost Texas another $50 million to reach that agreement, bringing the total cost of Darvish well over $100 million.

Considering what Miami and Pittsburgh ($10 million for Clint Barmes? Really?) pulled earlier this year, it’s safe to say the entire league has lost its mind, right?

I know the numbers look impressive. But how can the right to negotiate with a 25-year-old rookie – a guy who’s going to have to adjust to an entirely different culture – be worth more than the total payroll of five different MLB franchises?



Related:

At least one spurned Toronto ballplayer agrees with me.

And USA Today takes the prize for worst headline: “A Texas Yu-step.”

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