=== Kanekoa Texeira ===

Pro Ball NW's comprehensive 40-man series has freshness for yer on Texeira.  Jon found that Texeira -- a sinker/slider guy -- not only has a worm-burnin' groundball rate, but that he also, um, strikes out tons of left hand hitters.

I will cheerfully admit that I don't remember seeing this kind of platypus before.  Apparently neither had the M's, who spent a Rule 5 on him and, by definition, gave Texeira a real good shot to be a Seattle Mariner in 2010.

Here is a Yankee-fan's report on the dude.  Jon's site has one pitch of Texeira warming up, which contradicts Tex's reputation of being a near-sidearmer; the one pitch on the video shows Tex short-arming the ball, not sidearming it.  Sidearmers don't get that many groundballs unless, in Kent Tekulve fashion, they throw it shin-high every pitch.

Tex looks to me very much like a RH analogue to George Sherrill, but Jon notes that Tex's results are not that of a ROOGY.

But people assumed Sherrill was a LOOGY, right?  Half the M's org was chuckling into its sleeve about Baltimore thinking Sherrill could close.

Indeed, this video confirms that Tex is a short-armer, with all the Sherill-iffic deception that implies.

Color me intrigued.  ... so far in ST, Tex has pitched in 5 games, with a 1.80 ERA but a reverse 3 BB, 1 K control ratio.

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=== Dead Cat's Bounce ===

If you haven't been getting enough basketball penetration to suit you, we can assure you there's at least one place you can.  We learn that Arkansas Pine Bluff faces the daunting odds of 1,055,521.6 to 1 that it won't make the final four.  I was really thinking they'd have at least a 1,055,521.3 shot at it.

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=== Compass Rosy ===

With a nice catch as to the fact that Texeira is one more plebe who just luva-luvs the M's frat house, and would rather be a Mariner than a Yankee.

Of course, if he's an M he's a big leaguer, but you can remember when you didn't hear this kinda thing.

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=== Hot Stone League ===

Gives some wallpaper as to how serious (or not) and common (or not) the Lee brushback incident has been.

I used to think that some of this baseball stuff was pretty intense, but that was before I started watching DragonBall Z, where Kakarrot and Vegeta lay waste entire planets in the collateral ... whoops, talking to the wrong people in the room here for a second.  ... That was before I started watching Euro soccer, where Stoke City and Arsenal burn down stadiums in the collateral when not busting each others' legs in half.

The sheer malice you see on a daily basis, the elbows-to-eyebrows, the wild kicks if-it-kneecaps-you-so-sorry, the tears, the threats, the punishments and suspensions, it all defies belief... and that's just in the stands.

Watch a couple of dozen Premiership games, and the quotes afterward on a game-in game-out basis, and the baseball pushing matches seem like coed tennis.  Which is all for the better, I guess.

Americans think their sports are hardcore, and true there are a lot of injuries in the NFL.  But we're actually quite genteel compared to the rest of the world.  (Hockey is Canadian.)

............

In baseball what matters is whether the batters will step in and challenge a pitcher who is willing to throw inside, and the Mariners didn't used to have that.  Between Lou and 2009, the M's were wussies.

I wish there were a way to correlate "wussiness" against Pythag.

BABVA,

Jemanji