RIP José Fernández (1992–2016)

Marlins star pitcher José Fernández is gone way too soon: he died in a boating accident this morning.

I found this out through a Facebook post by Baseball-reference.com. As you can see from Fernández's stats, he was somebody with Hall-of-Fame potential. What I learned from the post (aside from the tragedy), was that among pitchers with at least 400 innings pitched, Fernández has the best FIP (fielding-independent pitching, which is a quantity like earned run average that is adjusted to incorporate the fielders behind pitchers) in the live-ball era at 2.43. Clayton Kershaw is next at 2.54, and he is followed by Sandy Koufax at 2.69. From another Facebook by Baseball-reference.com, I see that Fernández has the highest strikeout-per-inning rate of any Major League pitcher ever whose has pitched at least 400 innings (although strikeout rates are much higher than they were before, so take this with grains of salt). I was looking forward to following his career for many years.

Update: Jayson Stark has a nice article about "what might have been". Also take a look at Jerry Crasnick's article.

Update: Here is a post from FiveThirtyEight.com that discusses Fernández's pitching dominance and just how good he's been.

A New Way to Give People the Raspberry

Hopefully, nobody who goes to the market and notices the liquid-droplet remnants from the minor raspberry avalanche will think that those are drops of blood.

Only one person would dare give them the raspberry...

Watch the Signal. Obey the Signal. And Don't Careen into Me with Your Damn Bicycle.

Having a bike crash into me while it is going at full speed isn't fun. To quote Kramer, "My day was ruined!"

Although my left foot---the part of me that the bicycle wheel went over---does hurt, I have been walking on it without a problem and only a very slight limp, and I think the pain is mostly psychosomatic. The old lady who crashed into me fell off her bike in a heap, and she too seems to be fine. (I stayed to make sure she was ok, and several people came to help pick her and her bike up from the ground.) I must be as hard as a rock, because I'm pretty sure I never left my feet.

But here is a lesson to Oxford bikers everywhere: When the light for your direction has been red for a while and the traffic signal is a very clear green walk signal, please obey the bloody signals---especially when there is somebody walking across the street right in front of you (I was something like 10 full steps into the street) who clearly has no idea that you are going to continue careening at full speed while blatantly disregarding all of the traffic signals. This message was brought to you by the organization "Pedestrians who Think People on Bicycles Should Obey Traffic Signals". Thank you.