The hopes of this year’s Toronto Blue Jays rest largely on the performance of the team’s mid-rotation starters. One of those expected to play a major role is 21-year old right-hander Henderson Alvarez. Let’s take a look at the path he’s taken to Toronto and what we can likely expect from him this year and beyond.

PROFILE

Henderson Alvarez was signed by the Toronto Blue Jays as a free agent from Venezuela in 2006. He made his debut in 2007 in the Dominican Summer League as a 17-year old, going 1-2, 5.61 with a 20/8 SO/BB ratio in 25.2 IP. He was obviously raw and also very hittable posting a 12.6 H/9 but showed a decent strikeout rate and overall command.

The Jays moved him to their rookie-level Gulf Coast affiliate in 2008 where he made 11 starts and had a line of 1-4, 5.63 with a 34/6 SO/BB rate in 46.1 IP. His hit rate was again high (12.2H/9) but defense in the lower minors is often unrefined and since  Alvarez’s best pitch was a power sinker, there was hope the hits would diminish in front of better fielders. Again note the impressive command. His above-average velocity also attracted notice but some questioned whether Alvarez could develop the rest of his repertoire enough to keep hitters from keying on the fastball.

He broke through in 2009 at low-A Lansing, starting 23 games for a 9-6, 3.47 line, with a 92/19 SO/BB ratio in 124.1 IP. He continued to show excellent downward movement on his fastball, resulting in a good ground-ball rate of 51.4%. He allowed only home run. Over his first three seasons (196.1 IP) opposing hitters had only taken him deep 4 times. Lansing plays as a pitcher’s park but the numbers were still impressive and Alvarez was still a teenager. Reports also showed very good development of the changeup. These strides and his ability to translate them across the increased workload boosted optimism about his overall ceiling and potential to stay a starter long-term.

Toronto advanced him to High-A Dunedin in 2010 and he held his own going 8-7, 4.33 with a 78/27 SO/BB in 112.1 IP earning a selection to the Futures Game. His control slipped slightly but many attributed it to a greater focus on the development of a curveball. The pitch was unreliable at this point and many wondered if he could pass the AA test without a more effective breaking ball. He faded badly down the stretch with an ERA of 6.00 after the All-Star Break. Further concerns about his slight build and a delivery that some labeled high-effort led some to project him as a future reliever at this point. But the organization insisted he  would keep starting until he proved he couldn’t.

The Jays’ confidence paid off in 2011. After beginning the year with a stint on the disabled list and a couple of subsequent rehab starts in Dunedin, Alvarez advanced to AA New Hampshire and delivered an 8-4, 2.86 line with a 66/17 SO/IP rate in 88 IP and again appeared in the Futures Game. New Hampshire clocked Alvarez’s velocity at a new height – sitting close to 96 MPH and even touching 101 at times. His strikeout rate slipped but the control remained excellent. By now he was also throwing a curve and slider – though both were still seen as fringy. Even as mere ‘show-me’ pitches, the breaking balls were able to induce weaker contact off the sinker. The Blue Jays called him up in August and he made 10 starts, going 1-3, 3.53 with a 40/8 SO/BB in 63.2 IP, at one point reeling off 14 straight shutout innings. He showed impressive athleticism and fields his position well. This as one of the youngest players in the league. He lost his rookie eligibility and enters 2012 as the Blue Jays likely 4^th starter.

OUTLOOK

It’s important to remember that Alvarez will still only be 21 on Opening Day. With his raw ability and deep reluctance to give up walks there is a lot to be excited about here and the debate about his upside continues. Alvarez showed last year that his fastball-changeup combination is strong enough to position him as a starter moving forward. Whether he is a third (or fourth) man or something more depends on further refinements to his breaking pitches. In 2012, 71% of Alvarez’s pitches were fastballs. That’s incredibly hard to sustain multiple times through a major league order. Without adjustments, experienced lineups will exploit his lack of another out pitch in his second tour of the league. This will be the key to his season. Alvarez will also have to throw more quality strikes this year to keep his hit rate manageable and the prevent the ball from leaving the yard. This will likely come with experience and all reports on his willingness to work with the coaching staff are exemplary.

Toronto will give Alvarez every opportunity to seize a starter’s spot and run with it so that he can develop at the major league level. I take an optimistic view on Alvarez. While I expect he will battle inconsistency at times I also think he’ll contribute 25+ starts and establish himself as a capable third man behind Ricky Romero and Brandon Morrow. That would make him either a future cornerstone of the Jays rotation – or a very valuable trade chip.

STAT SHEET

Henderson Alvarez, SP
04/18/90            Bats: R             Throws: R       HT: 6-1          WT: 195
Valencia, Venezuela
Signed: By Toronto as an amateur free agent October 17, 2006.
Contract Status: Eligible for arbitration in 2016.
Salary: $482,900
Service Time: 0.051

I stumbled upon a starred email sitting in my inbox, sent from a colleague last summer.

Plans to visit kept shifting, until Tuesday night when 8 of us finally sat down for some Roman pizza.

A few things Italian I learned that night:

• The SPQR initials, within the laurel wreath in their logo, allude to the ancient Roman senate. SPQR in Latin is Senātus Populusque Rōmānus, the Senate and People of Rome. Today, the symbol is the official emblem of the city of Rome. At Falasca SPQR, the initials have been modified to stand for Specialità Pizza Quadrata Rotonda, referring to the shop’s square and round pizzas.
• The pasta dishes take about 15-20mins to be served, because the pasta is handmade once ordered.
• Take-out pizzas are measured by weight.
• The Supli al Telefono (Tomato, Rice Ball with Mozzarella) was a staple for Craig when he spent 4 months in Rome. We ordered some. They was good.
• Fior di Latte refers to mozzarella made from fresh cows milk.
• Scarmoza, similar to mozzarella, is a matured cheese.
• Pinterest isn’t for everybody.

Recommended: every pizza.

Capricciosa: Tomato, Fior di Latte, Mushrooms, Italian Prosciutto, Olives, Artichoke, Hard Boiled Egg

Today is a great day.

One of renewal. Opportunity. Endless possibility and all that.

Today is the first day of spring training. For the Toronto Blue Jays, anyway.

Most other teams rolled into their grapefruit and cactus homes earlier this week. But, much as we are great fans of the great game and all it encompasses, there is always something special about the first day for your team. For me, that’s the Blue Jays. They won two championships when I was kid. Consecutively. Yes, those Blue Jays. I grew up closer to Detroit than Toronto and learned the game under the wing of my father, a dedicated Tigers fan. There was no Canadian team to support when he was a kid and when they arrived in 1977 I’m sure they were no less a novelty to him than the various forms of Diamondback, Marlin or Devil Ray were to me. He was a Tigers man. Always would be. He once told me how, exactly a month after the Tigers won their World Series in 1984, I was born. Exactly one month early myself. I’m sure I wanted to see that last out.

I appreciate we’re now leaning to the whimsical. But there’s a bit of magic in baseball. It’s captured the imagination of Hemingway, Coover, Kinsella, King, Affleck, Angell, Gammons and Neyer. It’s sparked a love deep in me, too. We’ll be writing a lot in this space about baseball and the Blue Jays this summer. I hope you’re looking forward to it as much as we are.

Today, let’s enjoy the potential of tomorrow.
And savour the great truth that in baseball, as in life, anything can happen.

I’d like to show you some ink blots now to find out what certain shapes and colors remind you of.

You can save yourself the trouble, Doctor. Everything reminds me of sex.

Does it? Now we’re really getting somewhere! Do you ever have any good sex dreams?

My fish dream is a sex dream.

No, I mean real sex dreams – the kind where you grab some naked bitch by the neck and pinch her and punch her in the face until she’s all bloody and then throw yourself down to ravish her and burst into tears because you love her and hate her so much you don’t know what to do. That’s the kind of sex dreams I like to talk about. Don’t you ever have sex dreams like that?

That’s a fish dream.

Yes, of course.

Iris van Herpen again.
This time at the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture in Paris on January 23.
Her latest collection, MICRO, is a seductive polarization of form and fabric.
A radical fusion of craftsmanship, innovation and extremity. An enchanting assault, really.
Especially the Fang shoes. Van Herpen’s collaboration with United Nude produced these complex beauties of fiberglass and carbon fiber.
Marry me, Iris van Herpen!

View her entire collection on her website.

Bang! is a desk lamp designed by the team at bitplay. Shoot at it to turn it on/off. Sweet memories of Duck Hunt, the NES Zapper, and a time when I could play video games sans motion sickness.

The Thin Red Line

I have never seen a war film like “The Thin Red Line.” Or any film quite like it.
I have a difficult time imagining there ever will be.

Terrence Malick’s return to film after a twenty-year absence is one of the most beautiful and thoughtful works collected on film. That it comes in the form of an endlessly philosophical and imaginative scroll of war poetry that questions the elusive boundaries of man, nature and the endless battles waged between them further confirms its maker’s standing as one of the world’s great living auteurs.

The film opens with an image of a crocodile descending beneath the surface of a lush bog in the islands of the south Pacific. In voiceover, a device rarely deployed with this ambition or magnificence, comes the first of many questions that frame Malick’s themes:

What’s this war in the heart of nature?
Why does nature vie with itself?

We do not know the speaker. We do not know, specifically, his circumstances. “The Thin Red Line” is not a war movie concerned deeply by those engagements. Certainly it captures combat on Guadalcanal in the Pacific Theater of World War II in 1942. We meet Charlie Company – a battalion of American soldiers brought to the island as reinforcements. We come to know its men. Their fears. Their motives for staying alive. Indeed, Malick does not shy away from the horrors of war. But his fascination lies within the larger truths the act of war suggests and the personal consequences that result. He sees Charlie Company as one man, its disparate parts contained in one form. We experience true collective terrors. Of death. Nature’s awesome power. Their fear of abandonment, their own violent potential, the shame their failures cause. Each is painfully real. Each a part of all men.

Malick holds his gaze as this war inflicts the promised tortures of battle. Men kill and are killed indiscriminately. That terror informs every breath. It is made more awful juxtaposed against the impossible beauty of the landscapes, the poetry it unearths in the men and the haunting clarity with which they express it.

Why should I be afraid to die?
I belong to you.
If I go first, I’ll wait for you there
On the other side of the dark waters.
Be with me now.

There are many accounts of how this hugely ambitious, equally evocative screenplay came together. None, certainly, supplied by Malick himself. But the rumblings that he spent more than a decade working on it do not seem a stretch. The Criterion Collection’s edition of “The Thin Red Line” offers a glimpse into Malick’s method of shaping his script. Actors share their memories of the director spontaneously rewriting scenes on the spot during filming. They recall that the version of the script they received at the beginning of shooting featured Fife (Adrien Brody), a skittish, untested corporal, as the film’s central character. Ultimately, he receives little screen time at all.

We meet a great deal of men, all of them authentic. We relate to them.
We see traces of ourselves in even their darkest deeds.

The principal, if there is only one here, is Witt (Jim Caviezel). A private. When we first met him he’s gone AWOL – idly enjoying the warm Pacific sand, immersed in the simple pleasures of life among the indigenous Melanesians. Gentle and spiritual, he is not compelled to fight by duty or patriotism. He answers to something that resonates deeper. The men he fights alongside see it. Many will fight to protect it even when they do not understand it. Only that type of brotherhood makes Witt capable of war.

Welsh (Sean Penn) is the company’s First sergeant; he is cynical but noble and focused, too. Staros (Elias Koteas) is an empathetic captain. He does not lack grit. But when he will not order his men to besiege a crucial checkpoint some question whether his compassion masks a cowardice. Lieutenant Colonel Tall (Nick Nolte) is approaching the end of a long, peaceful career. His first taste of action may be his only chance to earn a hero’s decorations. Captain Gaff (John Cusack) is precise and smart – qualities that aren’t assets in every battle. Sergeant Keck (Woody Harrelson) is savvy and strong but, he too, is capable of a fatal error. Private Bell (Ben Chaplin) dreams of reuniting with his love in America. Every action is driven by the promise of home. Chaplin plays him perfectly; smart, motivated and exposed. Private First Class Doll (Dash Mihok) begins upbeat because he’s oblivious. But he will remember what happens here. Famously, John Travolta and George Clooney also lend their names to small roles as commanding officers. Both are necessary. But no more than any of the privates; some of whom we ultimately study closely while countless others we learn about. In war, every man plays the part of a man in war.

Each of these men wages a private battle against something in themselves.
Some see the lines. They all feel them.

Casting director Nancy Crittenden says the film features 126 speaking parts. Criterion offers us a glimpse of the audition tapes. The actors must blend together naturally. John Savage, Tim Blake Nelson and Nick Stahl each do. We see how Philip Seymour Hoffman, Josh Hartnett, Stephen Dorff, Johnny Galecki and Neil Patrick Harris do not. Viggo Mortensen appears to earn a part but ends up on the cutting room floor. Mickey Rourke is shown performing an emotional deleted scene with Caviezel on Guadalcanal. It’s impressive work. But quietly echoes a moment in the film featuring Thomas Jane. There are so many exemplary actors and roles and supporting extras that the film achieves the virtual anonymity of real warfare.

One of the most incredible insights Criterion lends to “The Thin Red Line” shows Malick’s penchant for re-shooting his scenes without dialogue. Actors initially perform the scenes as written, sticking exactly to script. Then Malick has them replay the same moments in silence. The result is a wealth of non-verbal acting that allows Malick incredible freedom to add layers of voiceover which he uses to share the characters’ inner narratives. It distinguishes “The Thin Red Line” from all other war films. Further stretching the voiceovers across his breathtaking nature scenes is yet another masterstroke. Poetry set to living art.

We learn Malick would break from daily shooting schedules to capture other scenes in daylight and darkness. This allowed him to re-order the scenes during editing without disrupting the film’s continuity. To wit: Sean Penn claims he had no idea what he was watching the first time he saw “The Thin Red Line.”

It is truly an extraordinary feat that the film came together on time and budget. It had to be distilled from more than a million feet of film. The first cut was five hours long. Editor Billy Weber says he doesn’t think Malick ever watched the final film from beginning to end. Composer Hans Zimmer manages to create music to suits the myriad moods of this epic piece. His insistent percussion counts the fate of Charlie Company. It is his greatest work.

Malick spent two decades removed from Hollywood before embarking on “The Thin Red Line.” How he carried out this achievement of timeless beauty and collective spirit is one of modern cinema’s great mysteries. It is assured and complete. Yet we sense the presence of chance endlessly. We accept nature but stand paralyzed before its awesome power. The pain it generates and the respites it offers. The way living a life shapes the life of every man.

There’s only one thing that a man can do
Find something that’s his and make an island for himself
If I never meet you in this life, let me feel the lack
A glance from your eyes
And my life will be yours.

We learn the fates of some of the men. Hear questions go unanswered. The voices we hear throughout are never clearly identified. There is no need. They are together the voice of Charlie Company, Malick and, ultimately, all men.

What is this great evil?
How did it steal into the world?
From what seed, what root did it spring?
Who’s doing this? Who’s killing us?
Robbing us of light and life.
Mocking us with the sight of what we might have known.

Few great films possess the visual poetry to dress the majesty of their words. “The Thin Red Line” is the exception. It concludes in one of the great closing shots of our time. A budding tropical stalk emerging from a mound of earth on the ocean’s edge. Waving in the gentle breeze as the tide reaches out, touching its soil lip so softly.

****

Jim Caviezel – Pvt. Witt
Sean Penn – 1st Sgt. Welsh
Nick Nolte – Lt. Col. Tall
Elias Koteas – Capt. Staros
Ben Chaplin – Pvt. Bell
John Cusack – Capt. Gaff
Woody Harrelson – Sgt. Keck
Dash Mihok – Pfc. Doll
Adrien Brody – Cpl. Fife
John Savage – Sgt. McCron

Written and Directed by Terrence Malick
From the novel by James Jones
Running Time: 171 Minutes.

If the bicycle helmet was conveniently foldable, would more people wear it?
Partrick Jouffret of Agence 360 thinks so and is looking to take his design, the overade, to production this year.
What do you think?

(This and more photos on designboom)

Cut a tree down. Make a coffin. Use it for less than a week.
Or save a tree. And grow another. Green Burial.

The Italian couple behind Capsula Mundi propose a unique design to the alternative burial method.
Place the body in a fetal position within an egg-shaped container (100% biodegradable) and plant a tree over it (choose from a variety of trees native to the area).
No more tombstones. Instead, a sacred forest.

The circle of life.

Capsula Mundi designers, Anna Citelli and Raoul Bretzel

- Allana D’Souza, Grade 2 teacher