Short Relief

Short Relief: Starting Again

Love: Luis Arraez Style; What J.T. Realmuto can teach us about teaching.

Short Relief: Michigan Seems Like a Dream to Me Now

by Krystal Languell, Matt Sussman, and Beth Davies-Stofka 8/23

South Bend to Myrtle Beach Des Moines to Knoxville Knocked down to dragged out What the cat dragged in Unconventional rehab A personal matter Highways are busy lately. Player absence How he carries himself Moving around really well May contribute in September That sports figure who shares a name with a poet. Confidence game It...

Short Relief: Things Are Looking Up

by Kate Preusser, Nicholas Stillman, and Christina Cola 8/22

(There’s a baseball in here. Can you find it?) Yesterday in the Texas League, Jordan Cowan of the Arkansas Travelers popped up a fly ball that should have been an easy out for either of the two Corpus Christi Hooks positioned on the left side of the infield. Narrator: it was not an easy out....

Short Relief: Killer B’s

by Matt Ellis, Daniel R. Epstein, and Roger Cormier 8/21

Evaluator: Matthew Ellis Report Date: 08/21/2019 Dates Seen: 08/20/2019 OFP: 10 MLB ETA: 2024 Video: Senator Bernie Sanders plays baseball at Iowa's "Field of Dreams." pic.twitter.com/566f4lkPK6 — The Hill (@thehill) August 20, 2019 Mechanics: Quite fluid delivery, quick start/stop motion. Sets up strong with right leg, frontloads his upper body weight to increase velocity, could...

Short Relief: All Turned Around

by Mary Craig, Sara Sanchez, and Demetrius Bell 8/20

If the pilgrims had landed in Laguna Beach…things would be different. – Bill Walton, August 17th, 2019 The crowd of passengers gathered anxiously around the home port, murmuring amongst themselves. Their first attempted voyage roughly a month ago had failed to grant them passage farther than Cornwall, and hostility toward them had only grown since...

Short Relief: Why? Mercy? Where?

by Mike Bates, Nathan Bishop, and Davy Andrews 8/19

This weekend, I threatened to quit my job. Not my baseball-related job, mind you, but a different one. Without getting too specific, I had an experience with the owner of the company that was unsatisfactory and his behavior left me with a bad taste in my mouth. We have since talked and patched things up,...

Short Relief: Scoreboard Confessional

by David Firstman, Krystal Languell, and Matt Sussman 8/16

This past weekend was the ninth annual Saberseminar, held at Boston University. Touting itself as “Sabermetrics, Scouting and the Science of Baseball”, it is a gathering of roughly 350 nerdy baseball types from a variety of backgrounds: physicists, data wranglers, MLB front office guys (and gals) and tech-savvy fans of the game. The event is...

Short Relief: The Future Isn’t Pretty

by Kate Preusser and Nicholas Stillman 8/15

Copley’s mind was on his dinner as he watched the couple shepherd their two children down the tree-lined path away from his building. He’d been marinating a steak all day and was planning to grill it in the shared picnic area behind his apartment building, in the last of the good weather before the chill...

Short Relief: Love in the Time of Internet

by Beth Davies-Stofka, Matt Ellis, and Roger Cormier 8/14

A few years ago, I bought a book by Geoff Miller called Intangibles: Big-League Stories and Strategies for Winning the Mental Game—In Baseball and in Life. Miller is a mental skills coach in the MLB, working with such teams as the Braves, Nationals and Phillies, although that is only a small piece of his resume....

Short Relief: Out of Town, Out of Sight

by Demetrius Bell, Mary Craig, and Sara Sanchez 8/13

I’ve spent way too much time on the internet since around 2003. That’s more than enough time to learn about the dangers of going down a YouTube hole using a Wikipedia shovel. Sometimes it leads you into a dark part of the internet that you regretted visiting and you want desperately to scrub what you...

Short Relief: Independent Magic

by Holly M Wendt, Bill Thompson, and Mike Bates 8/12

Going to my local independent league games is a bit of an exercise in déjà vu. Both the York Revolution and the Lancaster Barnstormers play in the Atlantic League, and the eight teams in that league, ranging from New England to Sugarland, Texas, are filled with Guys You’re Sure You’ve Seen Somewhere Before. Usually, that’s...

Short Relief: All Out of Hair, Gum, and Equanimity

by Matt Sussman, Krystal Languell, and Roger Cormier 8/09

One of the unintended consequences of baseball being a sport of hats is that we can’t really tell if someone is losing their hair. Growing up, the first time this jarred me was seeing David Justice. I always saw him either hatted or helmeted, and the assumption in the back of my formative mind is,...

Short Relief: Off the Secret Menu

by Kate Preusser and Nicholas Stillman 8/08

Only about 4% of babies born in the U.S. are multiple births, and of that subset of multiple births, 95% are twins. So while twins are rare, among multiple births they are the majority. Triplets, though, are rare however you slice it. That analogues nicely to the game of baseball, where triples are the rarest...

Short Relief: Quintessentially Someone

by Matt Ellis, Daniel R. Epstein, and Beth Davies-Stofka 8/07

Joe Panik was DFAd by the San Francisco Giants yesterday. I can’t say that I really know much about Joe beyond any usual prospect-watch-young-star chronicle thing that could fit any other kid of his age (see: Brad Miller, Carlos Correa, Taijuan Walker, my hopes for a productive career by my early thirties, etc). But what...

Short Relief: You vs. the World

by Sara Sanchez, Mary Craig, and Demetrius Bell 8/06

I was seven years old sitting rapt and cross-legged in front of a TV so old you needed to stand up and turn the dial every time you wanted to change the channel. There was zero chance anyone in my family was going to change the station that day, though. We were watching my cousin...

Short Relief: The Young, the Old, and the Lovelady

by Davy Andrews, Nathan Bishop, and Mike Bates 8/05

Search for “Cody Bellinger” “batting stance” and you’ll find some quotes about offseason adjustments. His legs were too straight. He stood too tall. That sort of thing. And it’s true. He stood tall with his legs straight: feet even but torso rotated slightly toward the catcher, so he had to peek over his shoulder at...