The EFL Dominates Popular Culture – And Immediately Repents

Yes, my friends, we have finally made it.  Yesterday the EFL emerged as a major force in American popular culture.  I’ll explain how this happened later in this post.

Old Detroit: W 1, L 1; 8 – 7. .259 .364  .318; 24.7 ip, 11 er.  The Wolverines are suffering from jet lag compounded by heat wave exacerbated by thrift.  We arrived home last night about 3 am PDT (5 am CDT, which is what we started in).  It’s hot here in Oregon. And I still haven’t paid for a new air conditioner after our old one conked out a year ago.  (Ben and Sam call me Cheapie McTaco.  Not wanting to buy an air conditioner at prices that pencil out to about $50 per air-conditioned day for the life of the air conditioner, pre-paid, is one way I live up to this term of endearment.Maybe if they called me Mr. Generous instead…)  So we are groggy.  So groggy we didn’t realize Matt Moore was back in action until we saw his line (4.7 ip, 4 er, whoopee) on the BP page.

Haviland: W, 6 – 2.  .274  .338  .479;  26.7 ip, 8 er.   The Dragons must be a little groggy, too.  They have yet to seize the opportunities presented by the sluggish Wolverines. Most of those 8 earned runs came courtesy of Alex Colome. Colome is allocated at 0% this month. With such a brilliant front office, there must be a cunning plan afoot in this remarkable reptilian restraint.

Just an aside here:  I rather enjoyed the last manager’s meeting, not having to clerk it.  The Commissioner is ready to hand over clerking duties permanently if anyone is interested. It was fun, once at least, to sit back and watch you all perform on TV.  All except Mark W, who I never saw the entire time, although I did hear him.

Cottage: W 1, L 1; 5 – 8.  .203, .266, .254;  16.3 ip, 5 er.  You probably thought I’d forgotten all about the big popular culture news concerning the EFL.  I haven’t.  In fact, the rather lackluster performance of our three leading teams so far in July has me rather concerned precisely because we have suddenly taken such a central position in public attention.  We need to be ready for our debut! For the scrutiny our league will be getting in the wake of our breakthrough!  Shouldn’t our leading teams show dynamism, polish, drive, etc?  If we’re floundering and muddling along, why will they respect us or want to adopt any more of our brilliant memes?  I am not just talking to you, O Cheeses, because the Dragons and Woeverines are equally at fault here.  Let’s step it up, boys! Everything from sharp batting practice and lively infield warmup to how we hustle down the line and turn double plays and show the grit to come through in the clutch! More like Ben Zobrist (.500, .626, .667 in July so far) than Yunel Escobar (0 for 8 so far).

Peshastin: “L”, 5 – 2.  .304   .365   .393;  15.3 ip, 2 er.  The stat lines are great, Peshastin, so why couldn’t you make this into a win?  Matt Wisler debuted with 5+ shutout innings — that could have been a nice story line — but you have him in the minors!   Does your team need a nimbler front office? Does it need more grit on the diamond?  Well — I have an idea that could improve the Pears on both fronts at once: Willie Bloomquist is going to be available in the next draft.

Flint Hill: W 1, L 1; 12 – 10.  .360 .385, .507;  27. 3 ip,  16 er.  I always say the first couple days of the month are meaningless, until rotations rotate.  But the pattern so far has been clear: lackluster performances.  Now that we have the world’s attention, do you think we can keep it puttering around with alternating wins and losses?  I’ll give the Tornados credit: you have very nice offensive numbers there. And you did shut Harang down 50%  this month, so his 5 ip, 8 er won’t hurt you as much — and neither will his injury.

Pittsburgh: W 1, L 1; 7 – 15.  .268, .311, .429;  5 ip 3 er.  Sometimes in post-revolutionary eras, people are tempted to glorify the fallen regime and gloss over its faults.  Putin’s Russia is a current example with its Soviet nostalgia.  But I encourage you not to fall to this temptation in the EFL.  The Alleghenys trotted 5 pitchers to the mound over the last two days, and got 5 ip out of them with a 5.4o ERA.  Altuve (3 for 4 with a HBP) and Trout (a homer and a walk in 4 PA) did nice things, but will they stand out if the Alleghenys are fumbling around as a team?

Kaline: L, 2 – 8.   .179, .229, .269; 2 ip, 2 er.  Is Mitch Moreland’s blaze of glory already over? He has a July OPS of .222.  That’s better than four of his teammates.  But we should give the Drive some grace here.  They haven’t had a starter appear yet.

Canberra: W 1, L 1; 8 – 5.  .246  .313  .393;  15.3 ip, 11 er.  (Rick Porcello’s 2 ip, 7 er chulk killed the Kangaroo hopes for a bounce in the standings.)

Ok, let me explain about the popular culture thing. The other day the Captain Kangaroo sent me a link to an article about how clever baseball jargon has emerged in the last few years to add color and insight to our enjoyment of the game.  Rob Neyer featured six terms:  LOOGY (lefty one-out guy) , TOOTBLAN (thrown out on the bases like a nincompoop), Three True Outcomes (hr, so, walk), Maddux (complete game in less than 100 pitches), umpshow (when the ump makes the game about himself), and disaster start (allowing more runs than innings pitched while losing the game).  Then Neyer invited comments.

So I commented:

“In our fantasy league, we say a pitcher has “chulked” whenever he allow twice as many earned runs as innings pitched. The first chulk we noted was by Vinnie Chulk, as was the second one and possibly the third. If the pitcher allows three times as many earned runs as innings pitched you have a triple chulk. There are quadruple chulks, quintuple chulks, etc. Very rarely a pitcher will allow 10 times as many earned runs as innings pitched — Eovaldi did this on June 16 (2/3 of an inning, 8 earned runs) — which qualifies as a Royal Chulk (capitalization required). Infinite chulks occur, technically, when a pitcher allows an earned runs without getting an out, but they aren’t usually called Royal Chulks.”

And for a day or two nothing happened.  A couple of likes, but those are cheap. Meaningless. (Sorry if this pops anyone’s bubble out there who can get 100 likes for a picture of a sandwich.)

But then, while waiting in Phoenix for our connecting flight to Portland, I saw this:

• • 

    Ben Patzwald · Top Commenter

    Trevor May gave us all a nice 15x chulk last Friday.

Notice:  Ben Patzwald is a Top Commenter!  On a foxsports site!  And he used chulk properly in a sentence. Trevor May really did do a Super Chulk – a quintodecachulk, if you will: 5 er in 1/3 of an inning.  With major commentators like Patzwald adopting the term, by this time next year Dave Sims will be talking about chulks.

Portland: W, 5 – 5.  .301, .341, .590; 17.3 ip, 8 er.   But now comes along the Rosebuds, whose mission this year is to remind us of the plight of the downtrodden and oppressed.  Which makes me think of poor  Vinnie Chulk.  Who is actually a human being —

— and may be hurt if everyone starts using his name as a term of ridicule years after he’s retired.

So, thanks to the Rosebuds, I now regret posting to Just A Bit Outside. Suddenly I’d like nothing better than to see the term “chulk” disappear from public discourse and return to being our own private jargon.

So… muddle on, EFLers.  When the world comes to our door, convince them there’s nothing here to see.  Do it for poor old Vinnie Chulk, who does not deserve the fate I may have brought upon him.