I would like to take this opportunity to mention that both players are on my Strat team. Therefore, my answer to Trout vs. Cabrera is...yes. Also, I will manage to not even win my division because Mike Minor and Mark Buehrle are my best starting pitchers.
Every Mets fan I know needs to read this. Get over it, folks, Wilpon doesn't have the cash to commit $106 million to a guy who gets hurt for months at a time every season. Alderson will rebuild the club, just give him some time.
I really hate that this series is becoming a forum on the managing skills of Anthony La Russa, Jr. Esq. There are 50 guys playing baseball. Let's pay some attention to them, shall we?
The MLB.TV blackout rules are even dumber than you described. I live in San Antonio, and I cannot get Rangers or Astros games on MLB.TV even when Rangers and Astros games are not being broadcast locally. There are times when I have scoured the channels up and down to find an Astros telecast, and I haven't been able to find it, and yet MLB.TV blacks out the game. If even one cable/satellite/fiber provider anywhere in San Antonio is offering the game to even one customer, the game is blacked out on MLB.TV to everyone in San Antonio. Just plain stupid.
I'm just glad it's Conlin who is the first writer getting the Spink Award at a separate ceremony. What a self-important blowhard. He's always been a terrible HOF voter, so this snub is only fitting. Have fun on Saturday, Bill!
Agreed. The post is mainly trying to make the point that baseball sabermetrics arose from the study of discrete batter/pitcher interactions, and that football and basketball, which have almost no discrete interactions, are not as amenable to that kind of study. But then it veers off into the "love of the game" garbage that so often infects any criticism of sabermetrics. Of course, even the main point is useless, since those who engage in statistical analysis of basketball and football have developed completely different ways of making the numbers relevant than what baseball sabermetricians use. So, yes, Jonah, some people misuse statistics, but no, that doesn't mean that statistics aren't useful when analyzed properly, and no, they don't make you love the game any less.
It's a dude (I'm assuming) in a big foam celery stalk costume that runs out on the field to the strains of Blur's "Song 2" (the one with the woo-hoo! refrain) when a run is scored by the Blue Rocks. He does a little dance and often chest bumps somebody on the other side of the protective screen behind home plate. It's random and silly and wonderful all at the same time.
Frawley Stadium is simply the best place I've ever been to attend a ball game. I used to to go at least five Blue Rocks games per year when I lived in that area, and every one was a joy. You're right about the staff. The ownership there is amazingly smart, competent, and customer-focused, and everyone seems to love their job. I'm glad you got to enjoy it as much I have, and I hope you got to see Mr. Celery. Sorry about the Cyclones girl. You should have gone for it. I won't comment on T. Rex. I was never a glam rock guy.
How is Trout skipping a level? He played at Class A and Class A Advanced last year. He didn't get a full year at Rancho, but he did get over 200 PA there. I guess you are implying that he should be starting the year at Class A Advanced, but I think it is exaggerating to say he "skipped" that level.
Meanwhile, Jeter just got another Gold Glove. At the risk of sounding like Sarah Palin, way to go, Lamestream Media!
Thank you for being there, BP. You make life more sane.
No mention of that horrible bit of managing by Tremblay last night? He left Matusz in after three straight hits in the 8th inning! Matusz should never have even started the 8th this early in the season and this early in his career. But to let him give up three straight hits in the 8th, and then leave him in there so that he could give up a fourth was indefensible. And yes, I have Matusz in a keeper Strat league, and even I wouldn't be that dumb to let a bunch of computer bytes stay in the game that long, let alone a real pitcher.
The smell. That was nasty. You say burning hair, I say burning flesh.
Six years since my procedure, and things are still going fine. Pretty soon the presbyopia will set in, and it will all be for naught, but I've enjoyed the time I've had with 20/20 vision.
The Mets ought to finish up the season at Coca-Cola Field in Buffalo. It's objectively a better stadium than Citi, the current roster would feel more comfortable playing close to where most of them have homes, and no one in New York City would miss them.
I think gambling has a lot to do with both packages, but especially Sunday Ticket.
I used to have Sunday Ticket when I had DirecTV, and I strictly bought it to watch Patriots games (I was living in Houston at the time), but I may be the exception and not the rule.
I just wanted to second your statement on how MLBAM has the best of breed technology. I'd been subscribing to MLB.tv for a couple of years using a cheap old PC attached to my HDTV via the VGA connection. It sucked pretty hard, and I knew the PC was the culprit. For about $600, I bought a relatively modern dual-core desktop machine that has an HDMI output from the video card, and man, is MLB.tv sweet! It's nearly indistinguishable from an HD channel on cable. Now, if only the Mets weren't such a galloping disaster, I'd really be enjoying it.
I'm looking forward to the day (2014!!!) when the NFL gets off their keisters and delivers this kind of access and performance for all 16 Patriots games. Until then, I'm praying that Sirius doesn't go out of business. At least I still get the great Gil Santos on WBCN whenever I want him.
Re: SOMA Strat simulations. You can't simulate SOMA in Strat, anyway. A few starters are allowed to pitch every 4th day (the ones with asterisks - almost always the staff ace of some MLB team), the rest can go every 5th day, but none are allowed to pitch every 3rd day. If you start them any more frequently then they are allowed, they have hugely penalizing fatigue factors, regardless of how many innings they pitched in their last start.
I've been a Strat player for decades, and I've tried to consider a scenario where you pair up 8 starters into four pairs, one lefty and one righty, and alternate them starting every 4 days with the other guy relieving after 4 innings (alternating lefty and righty pitchers would help mitigate any platoons by the opposing manager, forcing him to replace players in the 5th inning if he wanted to take advantage of the new pitcher). Even then, they would all have to be asterisk starters, and to get 8 asterisk starters, you would have to trade every other decent player on your team.
I suppose you could try a pitching staff with 10 starters, 5 lefty and 5 righty, and then maybe throw in a closer and a LOOGY for a 12-man staff. The problem is getting 10 starters with decent numbers (almost impossible), and also the fact that starters in Strat are usually only allowed to relieve for one inning before their fatigue numbers start going kablooey. You would have to locate 10 starter/relievers with reasonable numbers - another near impossible task.
So, in Start anyway, SOMA is not workable. Players are assigned capabilities relative to what they ACTUALLY did last season, not relative to what they MIGHT be able to do.
Another aspect of the Missions poor attendance is the location of the stadium relative to the rest of the city. I hate to say it, but it's in a terrible neighborhood, far removed from the tourist areas of the Riverwalk and Fiesta Texas/Sea World (it's closer to Sea World than anything, but there isn't much overlap in those two crowds). It would have been much smarter to locate this stadium either near downtown (within walking distance of the Riverwalk, preferably), or on the north side, where most of the rich and middle class folks live.
I love minor league ball, but it's a real pain to drive from the northeast side where I live through the maze of freeways downtown to the west side where the park is, in a rundown area with no restaurants or much of anything else nearby.
Schlom, I think there is fed-up-ness factor at play here.
Maybe the stimulus and bailout are necessary to keep the economy from collapsing (or maybe not), but for crying out loud, rich idiots like Jeffrey Loria can take his stupid ball club that nobody ever bothers to leave South Beach to watch anyway and hold some other city hostage.
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