I think it would help here to know what you mean by “pedagogy”. For me, it means (as my colleague John Golden also commented here) the choices you make when you teach and the ways you support (or don’t support) what students do as a consequence of those choices. So, when you say

But, even the best pedagogy should know when to take its foot off the pedal, or at the very least, stop trying to come up with a name, idea, or label for everything that is being done in a math problem. Staying in the gaming world, look at the world of Minecraft. There are no instructions. Kids just get to play. Just plain ol’ play for the sake of play.

…my response is, Even the choice to just let kids play and not engage in what you are calling “pedagogy”, is a form of pedagogy. (And a very powerful one, as Maria Montessori would attest.)

Also, mathematical pedagogy is most definitely not a subset of mathematics as the article says. It’s much closer to being a subset of cognitive psychology.

I do agree that sriracha has jumped the shark, however.