Baek to Padres for Jared Wells
Ah, I remember the good old days, when we saw Baek designated for assignment even though they didn’t need the roster spot, the bullpen wasn’t that tired, and even while getting shelled he was a better rotation option than 3/5ths of the guys taking the mound regularly.
Now he’s gone, traded to the Padres for Jared Wells.
Yup. I guess the Tigers didn’t want to let Ramon Santiago go for a second time, or something.
Game 53, Red Sox at Mariners
7:10. Matsuzaka v Batista.
In WPA, Matsuzaka is 3rd in all of baseball at 1.84. Ratios:
K/9 7.95
BB/9 5.7
HR/9 .6
Batista is -.97
K/9 6.47
BB/9 5.7
HR/9 .74
1.5K/game separates the two pitchers right now, and in their starts so far, the results have been a difference of nearly three games in value.
CAIRO AT FIREST! His outstanding work charging a bunt yesterday is rewarded with a start!
!1!!!oneone!!!
CF-L Ichiro!
2B-R Lopez
DH-B Vidro
LF-L Ibanez
3B-R Beltre
C-R Johjima
RF-R Balentien
1B-0 Cairo
SS-R Betancourt
Boston:
CF-B Crisp
2B-R Pedroia
DH-L Ortiz
LF-R Ramirez
3B-R Lowell
RF-L Drew
C-B Varitek
1B-L Casey
SS-R Lugo
VIDRO OPTION WATCH:
Only 250-300 plate appearances to go until his 2009 option vests!
Pitcher fastballs peak at 29, decline quickly
The greatest thing for me as a fan the last few years is the explosion of great data researchers can use, from play-by-play information that helped build better defensive measures to the amazing stuff you can get out of MLB’s Pitch f/x system.
Like this, “Preliminary aging curve for fastball speed” by Josh Kalk. It’s early, yes, and Kalk discusses some potential limitations of the data, but go look at that. That’s the kind of data people — any of us — can use to figure stuff out.
It appears that until pitchers reach 28 or 29, they increase the speed on their fastball by about 1.5 mph. After 29, there is a rather sharp decline in fastball speed.
During the next five years, pitchers lose just over four mph.
No one ever knew this before this article. You had to run a team and be willing to devote ridiculous resources to get this, or be an outsider willing to invest several times more than that.
Be excited.
Thanks to Alex, whose email bumped this up the reading queue
Billy Beane interview, first of two
Athletics Nation has a long two-part interview with Billy Beane. The first part is up.
I’m not going to quote great bits and point out the contrast between him and our front office, or anything like that. If you’ve been around, you know where we stand on the relative merits of the two management teams, and I don’t think it’d be productive.
It’s good reading, though, and worth checking out.
Game 52, Red Sox at Mariners
Colon v Hernandez.
Sold out — or at least, that’s what Ticketmaster told me this afternoon — for the first time since the start of the season.
Funny joke of the day: the M’s are advertising “4-game flex packs” as
Guarantee yourself 4 great games and enjoy a discount this season with a 4-Game Flex Pack! Discounted packs start as low as $72.
I don’t see how they can guarantee that, much less how I, unable to fix the game outcomes, could guarantee it. Unless the M’s implement a “bad game guarantee” where if you see the team get stomped (say, losing by more than six runs or never behind by less than three after the third)(or second) you can trade your stub back in for credit towards another game. They get you back to bilk you for concessions revenue, you don’t have to pay until the team coughs up a decent performance.
Papua New Guinea beer update: Ichiro’s devious plan
The efforts of USSM fans to locatePapua New Guinea beer has so far been for nothing: no local beer seller has any of their beers in stock, it does seem that there is no North American distributor for them.
When I made my run around to the places I signed up to check, I felt increasingly like I do about the season: here’s this cool thing we can all do, it’s kind of silly but what the heck, it involves Ichiro and it’s funny, and in a way it pokes fun at our status as stalwart Ichiro defenders here. And it turned into something futile: there’s no way any of us here can get any of those beers, and we’ll have to live with the disappointment.
But no. That’s not it at all.
Ichiro knew.
He’s smart. He didn’t pick Papua New Guinea out of thin air, no. He’s spent enough time in Seattle, he knows there’s no SP Lager here. No, Ichiro wanted us to run up against this obstacle, to stare at it and think “well, I guess we give up.”
Because we have two choices now: we give up, or we find another way. Right now, we’re powerless, defeated, and there doesn’t seem to be much we can do. But there is. This isn’t trying to get to the moon in two days. These beers exist in locations and only need to be moved to somewhere we can affect a purchase. Ichiro doesn’t know how we’ll pull this off, but he knows it will happen, and he dropped this hint for an equally important reason.
Ichiro can’t come out and call for the fans to rise up and oust this inept franchise, to somehow make a change from the people who represent ownership on down. He may even have no idea how it could happen. He doesn’t know how a huge, angry, resentful fan base might pull this off.
But Ichiro has faith in us, in our ability to unite together to acquire crazy obscure beers where there are no local sources to be found, and from that, to go on and affect the larger, even more difficult changes we all know must happen here.
And in each of these victories, cracking open a bottle of potentially delicious beer or watching the franchise build a winning team around our favorite players, will be all the sweeter for having seemed impossible from where we stand now.
First things first: how do we import these beers, or get someone local with suitable licenses to import these beers for us?
On blame skipping two levels
How do you blame the players if you’re a GM? They’re your players, each of them the product of a long series of decisions that resulted in them being on the roster over a hundred other possibilities. No matter what the cause, either you’re responsible or the manager’s responsible.
I gave the manager the wrong players: my fault
I gave the manager the right players and they’re not doing well: manager’s fault
I gave the manager the wrong players and created a losing atmosphere where they underachieve: my fault
I gave the manager the right players to put together a winning, yay-chemsitry team, but they act like losers and lose: manager’s fault
If the players suck and the manager’s doing a great job, then the players sucking is the GM’s fault. If the players all looked like they’d do great but it turns out they’re all head cases who can’t work together, the GM didn’t do a good evaluating them (and the manager didn’t do a good job coping). There’s no way that an entire roster of 25 players came together spontaneously without intervention of the front office and decided to play horribly without management noticing or having some chance to influence the outcome.
And even if the GM put together a perfect team and the manager screwed it all up, the GM hired the manager.
More McLaren firing rumor mongering
According to someone who speaks regularly with Mariners people, McLaren possibly could soon be removed in coming days, perhaps as early as next week.
Um, that’s pretty thin. That’s deli “so thin I can see through it” thin.
If it is soon it’d likely be after the Angels series, before the next road trip.
Continuing ill-advised privatization of government threatens M’s fans
If you’re one of the many, many people who use the highly-successful Metro shuttles to or from M’s games, you should be aware that your federal government is about to screw you.
People who normally use Metro Transit’s special service to get to ball games, community festivals, and other special events should be aware that new Federal Transit Administration (FTA) rules could significantly restrict Metro’s ability to provide this service.
The rule change does not affect regular Metro bus service. The intent of the new federal regulations is to open up special event service to private charter companies.
Okay, well, theoretically, that doesn’t sound so bad. How would it work?
If Metro service for an event falls under the new definition of charter service, the agency must first contact private charter firms registered with the FTA to see if any are interested in providing the service. If any firms indicate they are interested, Metro will be precluded from providing the service and the private operators will be given the opportunity to negotiate with the event sponsor for the transportation service.
Holy crap that’s awful. So if you somehow manage to get registered with the FTA (and you know that’s going to be rigorous) all you have to do is say “yeah, I’m interested” and Metro’s shuttles are sunk. It’s you, your school bus purchased at auction, and the M’s.
Heckuva job there, James Simpson, though I’m sure you’ve been assigned some kind of denigrating nickname.
What can you do? More than you can about the team’s fortunes, probably:
Get after a national elected representative
Write your Respresentative
Write your senator
Or try our state legislature.
Game 51, Mariners at Yankees
Washburn the Sucktastic Jerk and his Personal Catcher against Wang. 10:05.
Look, I’m not going to lie to you — there’s almost a 100% certainty that this is going to be another ugly shelling, with Washburn testing his 85-87mph batting practice-quality fastball against a Yankee lineup that’s tasted blood twice in two games. Our only hope is that they’re exhausted after scoring 25 runs in two games.
25 runs in two games. Yeah.
Why not take a minute, walk over to the nearest well-stocked beer vendor in your neck of the woods, and help out in the quest to locate some fine SP Brewery beverages, official beer companion to your booing since Ichiro mentioned it?