iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 4h

I haven't covered an NLCS live in a couple years so I'd forgotten that it comes at the cost of not knowing a fuckin thing about what's happening in the ALCS now what in the Pinellas County hell is this

Win probability graph for Guardians 7, Rays 3

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 5h

Well I guess I'm coming back here no matter what. Recap will be up before too long

American Family Field from the street at night

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Inspired by @mckinneykelsey.bsky.social I kept score tonight for the first time since I was a kid. This is not an easy game if you have a progressive hand tremor

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Tarik Skubal, seen here last night reacting to the question: "Have you ever had Spotted Cow?" will start Game 1 of the NLCS for the Dodgers in about an hour and a half

Tarik Skubal with a big ol' smile on his face as he's folding his arms to rest them on the table

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Ok let's see what this playoff baseball shit is all about

American Family Field with the roof open, from the press box. A bunch of Brewers are stretching in right field

American Family Field viewed from the parking lot

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Parker Messick running after that Colson Montgomery dribbler had extreme Mr. Game & Watch energy

@cdgoldstein
Dustin May running after a foul ball has extreme waluigi energy

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Can't remember ever seeing a Fibonacci line score before

Yankees-Rays line score showing the Yankees scoring one run, with three hits and four errors

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Forced into conservative sartorial choices by the lack of options for manager outfits in EAFC27

Me and my wife in a courtyard in front of a bush

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Thanks, Jeff. You've always had my back

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I had time to think about my lede last night. blogs.fangraphs.com/these-braves...

On April 12, 1862, a group of 24 Union spies — most of them volunteer soldiers, led by civilian James Andrews — commandeered a locomotive in Big Shanty, Georgia, and headed north. Their goal was to rendezvous with Union forces in Chattanooga, destroying rail and telegraph lines as they went. Andrews and his men ran out of fuel less than 18 miles from their destination; all of the raiders were captured and eight, including Andrews, were executed.

Some 164 years later and 15 miles southeast, another group of 20-odd belligerents from up north attempted a heist of their own. The Phillies had just stolen Game 2 of the Wild Card Series against the Braves, and a repeat performance would win them the series.

They fared little better than the Andrews Raiders.

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Turned on my TV and there was a Canadian guy wearing polka dots on polka dots

Joey Votto in a polka dot suit with a polka dot tie, looming over Bob Costas like an ent

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I'm chatting during Game 1 of Phillies-Braves alongside @benclemens.bsky.social and @dszymborski.fangraphs.com, come join us! www.fangraphs.com/chat/fangrap...

Michael Baumann

2:07 PM
They say baseball is the American pastime, but ball games have been played in the Americas for more than 3,500 years. Today, like the mythical Maya heroes Hunahpu and Xbalanque, we stand on the precipice of Xibalba, the Underworld, the Place of Fright, and present ourselves for divine judgment.
The victors will receive immortality. The defeated will envy the dead.
Hi, I’m Matt Vasgersian for NBC Sports, alongside C.J. Nitkowski, John Kruk and Joey Votto, and it is our pleasure to welcome you to the concrete Xibalba of unincorporated Cobb County, Georgia, for the National League Wild Card Series.

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Brandon McNulty: world road race champion

Zoidberg: "I'm swelling with patriotic mucus"

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

They said I couldn't get from Ford Frick to predicting a nuclear exchange in two moves blogs.fangraphs.com/fangraphs-we...

The thing is, we’ve been playing organized baseball for 150 years now, and in that time a lot of very smart, very cunning people have spent lots of time poring over the rules looking for weaknesses. If you think you’ve found a loophole, odds are that someone — not always John McGraw, Jackie Robinson, or Don Hoak, but it’s usually literally one of those guys — has tried it already.

If the loophole did actually work, Ford Frick or Happy Chandler would come into the office the next morning and scrawl “KNOCK THAT BUSH LEAGUE NONSENSE OFF” in the rulebook, thus ruining the fun of future ballplayers and mailbag letter-writers alike.

This is a pretty common phenomenon in society at large, actually. We have a problem, we make a rule to fix the problem, the rule fixes the problem, we forget the problem ever existed, we get rid of the rule, the problem comes back. Except nowadays it’s with stuff like labor regulations, white-collar crime, and food safety, in addition to the governance of fly balls.

It’s why I’m convinced that there will be a nuclear weapon detonated in anger, somewhere in the world, by the year 2100. As soon as the Cold War is out of living memory, the atomic taboo is going to fade, and some world leader is going to think, “What was the big deal about Hiroshima anyhow?”

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Why does every official Israeli organization talk like this? You wouldn't tolerate a teenager using this tone. (IFA is Israel, FAI is Ireland.)

“We are not playing with genocide,” Heimir Hallgrimsson said. “We are playing against genocide. We are playing against Israel; we are not playing with Israel.”

In response, the IFA said on Monday night: “We have contributed to the world and humanity in countless fields, earning an impressive number of Nobel Prizes along the way.

“Unfortunately, we have not yet found a cure for stupidity, ignorance and hypocrisy displayed by the @IrelandFootball team coach. We’re not playing with ignorance, hypocrisy and stupidity, we’re playing against the coach who embodies them.”

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I did not know about this particular hyphenated factoid. It answers so many questions I had about Allied strategic bombing in WWII

Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Travers Harris, 1st Baronet, GCB, OBE, AFC (13 April 1892 – 5 April 1984), commonly known as "Bomber" Harris by the press and often within the RAF as "Butcher" or "Butch" Harris, was a British-Rhodesian Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief (AOC-in-C) RAF Bomber Command during the height of the Anglo-American strategic bombing campaign against Nazi Germany in the Second World War.[a]

"British-Rhodesian" is highlighted

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

A propos of nothing, the inside of an Iowa-class gun battery is where I found the hardest illustration I've ever seen

Painted on a white steel wall: The grim reaper smiling and holding his scythe, with the caption "Those who oppose will meet me...DEMOCRACY AT ANY COST"

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Look at this fuckin dumbass sitting in a box. I was learning to drive when I was his age

A big white and gray cat in a cardboard box

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

An advertisement for the state lottery or a threat?

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Guys The Offspring is unbelievable live

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Are you having Dishonorable Discharge?

The Social Disease Treatment Room sign on the USS New Jersey
"VD Can be cured: But there's no medicine for regret"

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Literally just sent this to the group chat

Does Francisco Alvarez have untreated astigmatism

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Uh oh I watched too many Dan Snow videos about the Battle of Hastings and now my YouTube algo has gone political

AI generated beardo in a helmet with a spear, under the headline DO YOU HAVE ANGLO-SAXON BLOOD

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I ended up landing on a pretty wild conclusion: In 2022, Alcantara won the Cy Young as the hardest-throwing starter on the league. In just four years since then, he's fallen to the back of the top 10, not because old guys passed him but because a new generation of flamethrowers has just...emerged

Which makes for an amusing contrast with Alcantara. When he won his Cy Young, the book on him was that he threw harder than any starting pitcher in the league. This year, Alcantara is ninth in average four-seamer velocity among starting pitchers with 100 or more innings pitched.

I’ll list the eight guys ahead of Alcantara, because they’ve got something in common: Jacob Misiorowski, Bubba Chandler, Eury Pérez, Schlittler, Roki Sasaki, Walbert Ureña, Chase Burns, and Williams. The common thread: All of them made their major league debuts after Alcantara won his Cy Young. So did José Soriano and Paul Skenes, who were second and third in fastball velocity last year, behind Hunter Greene. Greene, who looks like Methuselah by comparison, reached the majors for the first time all the way back in 2022.

The wild thing is: 2022 wasn’t that long ago! Still, a whole new generation of fireballers has filtered into big league rotations en masse since then. Dozens of them at a time. Alcantara still throws harder than anyone he competed against in his prime, but the kids who came through in the past few years make him look like a knuckleballer, in more ways than one.

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Who's got two thumbs and six legs and is about to go on Jays Talk Plus with @blakemurphy.bsky.social? That's right it's Olly and me!

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

My wife showed me this. Apparently they say exactly what this old guy is doing right at the top of the video but I think it's better if you don't speak Russian and have it dawn on you gradually, which is what I did

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I'm sure it happens more than you'd think with the ghost runner but three blown saves by three different pitchers in three innings is quite an achievement

Box score showing three straight Phillies pitchers with blown saves

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

TFW a 50/50 decision about going to Melbourne ends up making a much bigger difference than you anticipated

Will Riker and Commander Shelby on the bridge of the Enterprise at the end of Best of Both Worlds Part I

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

What a disgrace that man is made to labor on this perfect day for an outdoor hammock nap

View of the field at Citizens Bank Park from the first base concourse

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I like that this comes up again and again because after moving cross-country every two years my accent has always been in flux. Apparently I've been back home long enough the Chicago bits are gone and the Southern bits are being routed

Dialect map of the US showing white in the south, blue in the northwest and red in the Mid-Atlantic

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

When an owner with other sports holdings come in, I like to see what lessons there are to learn from his other teams. For Stan Kroenke: The Angels might win a title, but they'll have to sell Mike Trout to pay for the manager's hair gel

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

F1 kneecapped the teams that tried to win in order to chum the water for private equity to invest in the also-rans and oh no I'm hearing it only set the existing competitive order in stone and tightened top teams' hold on top athletes www.the-race.com/formula-1/wh...

What you might call the ‘social mobility’ of F1 teams - the potential for their competitiveness to rise and fall - has slowed significantly. Drivers have to be more long-term strategic. Remember Norris being linked with a Red Bull move in Red Bull and Verstappen’s heyday, while McLaren was still yet to resume winning? Norris could’ve jumped ship just as McLaren usurped Red Bull at the top.

Even pre-cost cap there were very few potential or proven championship-winning teams. Now the baked-in facilities advantages of the teams that could spend heavily before the cost cap and the way the cap limits the potential for big development leaps from season to season make it much harder - and slower - for ‘upwardly mobile’ teams to actually progress.

It’s therefore a much bigger leap of faith for a driver to pick an ambitious midfielder such as an Audi, Alpine or even Aston Martin, than it would’ve been just a few years ago. If you’ve got a seat in an established top team secured, you want to keep hold of it. Drivers are no longer chasing the elusive great team to leap into next.

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Hey look it's Quinn Simmons, Derek Gee-West, Sergio Henao and a bunch of other guys

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Lost track of what lap it was so while I technically saw the end of the race I didn't realize what I was watching

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Kinley Rasmus getting famous has ruined the curve for those of us who are trying to be fun uncles to the kids in our lives

Colby Rasmus celebrating the Astros' playoff berth in 2015, shirtless and wearing goggles that make him look like an alien sex insect

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

This week's Wheelysports is about Tadej Pogačar dominating the Vuelta a España to an extent never before seen in a modern grand tour, and the unbeatable-but-obscure record he might threaten over the next two weeks. medium.com/@wheelysport...

This race is over. Unless there’s a calamity, Pogačar is going to win the Vuelta and complete his set of grand tour titles, leaving him one Paris-Roubaix short of matching Eddy Merckx as the only rider to win all the grand tours, all the monuments, and the world road race championship.

Not only that, he’s going to become the first man in 36 years to lead a grand tour wire-to-wire. And if that’s not enough, I’ll put another name in front of you: Freddy Maertens.

In 1977, Maertens won the GC at the Vuelta, leading from wire-to-wire, along with 13 stages along the way. That’s the record for most stage wins in a single grand tour. With the lack of sprint stages and no unbeatable-even-for-Pogačar time trialist (read: Remco Evenepoel or Filippo Ganna) in this field, I’m not going to discount the possibility of Pogačar troubling that record until it’s a mathematical impossibility.

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Today I put in a long day at the baseball stats factory, writing an article that included the initialism "BLTR". Cracked open my mailbox, saw the paper of record had come, and was scandalized to find the following

Onion article headlined "Baseball Analysts Call for New Stat Called B.L.E.P.H" that quotes a fictional FanGraphs contributor named Derek Gardner

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Great news! Elephant puppet guy made it to Italy!

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

RIP Tim Curry, who had the range to star in the two greatest movies about a mutiny in the middle of a transatlantic sea voyage, and also the crew occasionally breaks into song

Tim Curry as Dr. Petrov in The Hunt for Red October

Tim Curry as Long John silver in Muppet Treasure Island, and also Sweetums

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

See this is why I rushed out my column about the Phillies' winning streak this afternoon blogs.fangraphs.com/the-baseball...

Supernatural forces are famously fickle. The Phillies are about to send Wheeler out against a Mariners team that has the vibes of foundering garbage scow, and yet, I know better than to take anything for granted when writing about a winning streak.

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

I had to go back to X, the banking app and font of all human knowledge, to find the Phillies' post about Megan Keller swapping jerseys with Bryce Harper. If you post like this when your team is on an eight-game winning streak the government should send a social worker to your home

How you fuckin losers go from scoring 12 to scoring 0 through 7 innings vs Cardinals?

Yo @kschwarb12 you wanna remember how to hit home runs again

Phillies always lose the game in the first inning better luck in 7 years this is not a world series franchise

She's returning this shit because the Phillies are ASS

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

I'm having a hard time keeping up with the teams that got promoted to the Premier League this season. I'm from South Jersey--we don't say Hull City, we call it

The municipal building of Ship Bottom, New Jersey. "Borough of Ship Bottom" is posted on the facade

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

It got me thinking about how last month a driver hit a rider *on purpose at the Tour de France*. Even as someone who drives but doesn't bike, I'm appalled by the inhumanity that comes over some people when they get behind the wheel, and I don't know how to fix it. medium.com/@wheelysport...

I don’t know how to fix this. I can’t speak for drivers in Portugal or France or Italy, but here in the United States I am routinely overwhelmed by the overpowering blithe selfishness of my fellow citizens. The lionization of individual freedoms and self-reliance has turned us into a nation of ungoverned id. There is no context or social obligation that can beat back the allure of what I want right this instant, regardless of which unseen others get hurt in the process.

I’m not as judgmental about the indelible American selfishness as that last paragraph would lead you to believe. It’s nihilism, simply put, and on some level it’s the only rational response to a society that’s hell-bent on extracting every last drop of blood from its citizens for no higher purpose than the continued exponential enrichment of the few. The greater good? What greater good? The concept has been rendered meaningless by the richest and most powerful among us, who have ascended to untouchable status through behaviors and principles that would get them tarred, feathered, and gibbeted in a more advanced culture.

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Michael Baumann @baumann.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Well guess who has not only heard of Bingo Long, but also named it as one of his favorite baseball movies. I think we may be in business...

Bryce Harper stumping for Bingo Long on Ben Verlander's Instagram

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