Will's Corner

The corner Will Carroll's painted himself into keeps getting smaller. Ever since he first "discovered" the gyroball (i.e., looked at the pictures in a book he couldn't read), he's had to walk back expectations of it as qualified, scrupulous experts have horned in on his turf.

The most direct, embarrassing setback came when Daisuke Matsuzaka himself denied throwing the thing, and things have only gotten worse since then. The problem is that Matsuzaka signed with Boston, and the Red Sox are always on national TV. Thus we -- not to mention Orel Hershiser, Joe Morgan, and all the other professionals in ESPN's employ -- can judge for ourselves. Hell, with all the technology we've got on the internet tubes nowadays, it's be easy!

NOT SO FAST, YOU COPYRIGHT INFRINGERS! Will would love to break it down for you, show you in slow motion that Daisuke's a liar and Will was right along, but . . .

See those pretty pictures on the front page? They cost money. Video? Way more. If we doubled subscription prices and ad rates, we’d have almost enough.

Will cares about nothing more than his credibility, but he's not about to post or even link to something on Youtube that's copyrighted, even if it would prove him right. Will wants you to see it, but a law's a law, which you'd probably understand if you weren't staring slack-jawed at "pretty pictures."

Here I am setting myself for a lecture from Will and doing his job for him. Here's a gyroball video that's helpfully translated so Will doesn't have to beg someone to figure out what it says for him. There's got to be gyroball somewhere in here, right? I mean, there would be if Matsuzaka actually threw it. And here's a video that's, like, nothing but science. I'm sure a fully qualified expert like Will could glean some gyriffic info from that.

Finally, here's what looks like Bob Wickman awkwardly talking into a webcam. Looks can be deceiving, though, because it's actually Will Carroll talking awkwardly into a webcam.

Note where he mentions that Daisuke's "every game last year was available on the web." I know it would take a lot fact-checking and actual reporting to get through them all, not to mention cutting into time allotted to posting the wildly popular Baseball Prospectus Video Unfiltered programs that have been burning up Youtube, but the world needs to know what the world's foremost expert on imaginary pitches has to say about this one.

I will say, though, that Will and I have something in common: disdain for his fans and correspondents. See at the end of the post how a friendly inquiry on a subject Will's staked out as his specialty gets you not only a condescending crack about pretty pictures, but also some simultaneously pious and smart-assed demands for increased awareness of universally ignored law. Will respects his fans just as much as I respect Will's fans.

Will Carroll Has the Goalpost Movers on Speed Dial

From a Baseball Prospectus chat:

bmcginni (Indy): Speaking of the mystical gyro ball...why is it that scouts can't tell if Dice-K is even throwing the gyro? I read that in Matsuzaka's first start the scounts couldn't tell if he was throwing it, the hitters thought he was, and Matsuzaka wouldn't say. What would make it effective if nobody even knows for sure whether it exists because you can't tell if it's being thrown?

Will Carroll: First, does it matter? All I want to know is that the ball ends up in the catcher's glove, not the cheap seats. If you want to call it a slurve, a sinker, a shuuto, a backup, or Pee Wee Herman, it doesn't matter. If the ball comes at the hitter's waist, then drops, is it a hammer curve, a splitter, or a gyro? If it tails in, is that a riding fastball, a sinker, or a cutter? We're too focused on the description when we should be focused on the process.

Totally. We don't want to get caught up in labels here, people. Especially if, say, we completely misinterpreted a book about a new pitch because we couldn't read it and didn't bother to have it translated. And then, say, we just looked at the pictures until thought we had it figured out. And we've been contradicted so many times by people who know so much more about this than we do that we are -- here, in this chat -- taking the first step to claiming that whatever the hell we're teaching high school kids in Indiana isn't a gyroball at all, but actually something even newer and better and -- best of all -- something we can name after ourselves. The Carroll Ball? The Slick Willy? The Juiceball? The Buzz Machine? The Powerful Paralyzing Perfect Pachydermous Percussion Pitch?