7.25.2007
Barry's Homestand, Day Two
Took a cab to make this one on time. Twenty bucks from our crosstown office but worth every penny for the diatribe of the cabdriver, who passionately declared his intention to someday visit Bonds' house and volunteer to wash his dishes, do his laundry, clean his house, anything he could to express his gratitude for Bonds' years of service to the Giants. He savaged every other player on the roster and did so by name save, inexplicably, for Pedro Feliz.
Anyway, here were the Braves (click on image for magnified version):
And as for the home nine:
Notes:
-Old Man Franco has started every game at first for the Braves since his reacquisition a week ago. I'm still happy to have Father Time back I swear, but this is not what we discussed! Jarrod Saltalamacchia was just beginning to settle in at his newly won first-base job, and now we have to sit through feeble performances like this on a regular basis instead? The boys at Start Salty cannot be amused by this.
-The Giants did not show so much as a pulse until the bottom of the ninth, which Tim Hudson kicked off by issuing his first two walks of the night. He had been sailing along until then -- check out all the 6-3's -- so Bobby Cox gave him an extra batter or two of slack before going to Wickman, and that cost the Braves. Although Bengie Molina's game-tying single was more exciting, the Feliz double was the big hit and could have been caught by Willie Harris had he not gotten spooked at the last moment by a charging Andruw Jones. Braves fans (still abundant in the crowd tonight) were stunned to lose a commanding 4-0 lead so quickly, and from all the cursing I could detect careening through the pavilion they were putting the blame squarely on Wickman, thus continuing the long and storied tradition of drunken fans always being mad at the last thing they saw.
-Because we here at MLBeat are all about full disclosure, I left after the tenth and scored the last three innings from the comfort of my apartment. What can I say, sometimes you have to weigh the noble virtue of being That Fan With the Scorebook Who Will Under No Circumstances Leave Early, versus the comparably noble virtue of not putting your company through more misery than they've declared themselves capable of handling. And misery it was, beyond a doubt: a freezing July night at the ol' ballpark, wind whipping around with constant abandon from start to finish. You never saw two crankier concession workers than the crochety old ladies who sold me a tenth-inning hot chocolate. Ninth inning, down four, two outs... their bags had been packed.
-Nothing to say about Bonds, except a) he turned 43 years young today and b) he played for the duration which is particularly rare these days even in nine-inning games. Surely he is feeling the pressure; if he doesn't reach 756 this week then he'll have to wait another week before the Giants come back home. And yes, he does have to break the record at home. Not just because of potentially belligerent away fans, but because the chance to see 756 is the only way to placate the home fans. Screw a $9 beer, even that wouldn't alienate a season ticketholder more than if he had to suffer a team so dismal all season long and then watch Bonds hit 756 on the road. In my uninformed estimation Giants fans are suffering their cellar-dwelling team with relatively good humor this year because they know they still have tickets to the big sideshow.
Anyway, here were the Braves (click on image for magnified version):
And as for the home nine:
Notes:
-Old Man Franco has started every game at first for the Braves since his reacquisition a week ago. I'm still happy to have Father Time back I swear, but this is not what we discussed! Jarrod Saltalamacchia was just beginning to settle in at his newly won first-base job, and now we have to sit through feeble performances like this on a regular basis instead? The boys at Start Salty cannot be amused by this.
-The Giants did not show so much as a pulse until the bottom of the ninth, which Tim Hudson kicked off by issuing his first two walks of the night. He had been sailing along until then -- check out all the 6-3's -- so Bobby Cox gave him an extra batter or two of slack before going to Wickman, and that cost the Braves. Although Bengie Molina's game-tying single was more exciting, the Feliz double was the big hit and could have been caught by Willie Harris had he not gotten spooked at the last moment by a charging Andruw Jones. Braves fans (still abundant in the crowd tonight) were stunned to lose a commanding 4-0 lead so quickly, and from all the cursing I could detect careening through the pavilion they were putting the blame squarely on Wickman, thus continuing the long and storied tradition of drunken fans always being mad at the last thing they saw.
-Because we here at MLBeat are all about full disclosure, I left after the tenth and scored the last three innings from the comfort of my apartment. What can I say, sometimes you have to weigh the noble virtue of being That Fan With the Scorebook Who Will Under No Circumstances Leave Early, versus the comparably noble virtue of not putting your company through more misery than they've declared themselves capable of handling. And misery it was, beyond a doubt: a freezing July night at the ol' ballpark, wind whipping around with constant abandon from start to finish. You never saw two crankier concession workers than the crochety old ladies who sold me a tenth-inning hot chocolate. Ninth inning, down four, two outs... their bags had been packed.
-Nothing to say about Bonds, except a) he turned 43 years young today and b) he played for the duration which is particularly rare these days even in nine-inning games. Surely he is feeling the pressure; if he doesn't reach 756 this week then he'll have to wait another week before the Giants come back home. And yes, he does have to break the record at home. Not just because of potentially belligerent away fans, but because the chance to see 756 is the only way to placate the home fans. Screw a $9 beer, even that wouldn't alienate a season ticketholder more than if he had to suffer a team so dismal all season long and then watch Bonds hit 756 on the road. In my uninformed estimation Giants fans are suffering their cellar-dwelling team with relatively good humor this year because they know they still have tickets to the big sideshow.
Labels: atlanta braves, barry bonds, game reports, san francisco giants
7.24.2007
Barry's Homestand, Day 1
There is little to add to the maelstrom of commentary around what the Braves announcers have been derisively calling "Bondsapalooza," unless you want to see what someone actually thought of, you know, the games themselves. Let's not forget, folks: I lived in St. Louis during the madness of another certain steroid-tainted homer chase, and I know how the baseball experience can be cheapened. Not by the specter of PEDs mind you, but by fans who came to see one thing and one thing only. I remember that scene well, I'm as put off by it today as I was then, and I won't fall victim to the same level of madness.
Fair warning, I tend to have a bare-bones style of score-keeping as you may see, but I like to think the important thing is that I tend to have any style at all. This is a lost art, I tell you.
And for the home side:
(Click on the images for magnified versions.) Some notes:
-Julio did not score a run in the fourth inning; as a potentially tipsy scorekeeper I am allowed one egregious typo per game.
-Speaking of tipsy, a Blue Moon at the North Beach stand used to set you back $8.50. Pretty pricey right? Well, they raised the price to an even $9.00 for All-Star Weekend... and didn't bring it back down once the regular season resumed! Anybody else notice this? Sneaky Giants trying to extract every penny they can from their joke of a season....
-The stars denote great defensive plays. Renteria made a sharp grounder up the middle look easy with a pirouette to throw out Molina in the sixth, and Vizquel ended the top of the sixth with a diving stop and ensuing throw to second for the force out - a play so acrobatic that Vizquel was rewarded for the effort although the runner probably was safe. But the best of all came in the bottom 3rd, when Old Man Franco speared a high-bouncing grounder to start an inning-ending 3-6-3 DP and save Smoltz from a two on, one out, Bonds at bat situation. Play of the game probably, not mentioned anywhere in the official recap.
-Ton of Braves fans in attendance, particularly in our section (134). Not the sort of TBS-transplant California natives you might expect either, but real Southerners. At one point I started to make fun of Chipper Jones for sporting the same silly goatee that every player is apparently required to wear, only to realize that virtually every male Brave fan in my section sported the exact same look. As a TBS transplant from Alabama myself, I can say that these are my people... sort of.
-Matt Cain falls to 3-12 despite being the second-best pitcher on the Giants this season after Lincecum. His talent and determination are evident but it seems he gets screwed in a different way each time out. This time he had to labor hard in the first -- going to full counts on the first four batters -- but had a chance at damage control when Brian McCann lifted a medium-hard liner to left with one out. It can only be scored as a three-run double, but let's just say the urgency with which Bonds ran down that ball fell somewhere between "my alarm clock just went off" and "the paramedic is here to check my vital signs."
-But that's what you're signing up for when it comes to Bondsapalooza 2007. What you get in return are three or four flashbulb-poppy plate appearances where everyone in the stadium actually is paying attention at the same time. Also, when Bonds merely singled in the eighth inning the crowd began streaming out of there like it was the fall of Saigon. Never mind that the single had brought the tying run to the plate in a 4-2 game. Have I mentioned my hatred of the entire human race already in this space?
Fair warning, I tend to have a bare-bones style of score-keeping as you may see, but I like to think the important thing is that I tend to have any style at all. This is a lost art, I tell you.
And for the home side:
(Click on the images for magnified versions.) Some notes:
-Julio did not score a run in the fourth inning; as a potentially tipsy scorekeeper I am allowed one egregious typo per game.
-Speaking of tipsy, a Blue Moon at the North Beach stand used to set you back $8.50. Pretty pricey right? Well, they raised the price to an even $9.00 for All-Star Weekend... and didn't bring it back down once the regular season resumed! Anybody else notice this? Sneaky Giants trying to extract every penny they can from their joke of a season....
-The stars denote great defensive plays. Renteria made a sharp grounder up the middle look easy with a pirouette to throw out Molina in the sixth, and Vizquel ended the top of the sixth with a diving stop and ensuing throw to second for the force out - a play so acrobatic that Vizquel was rewarded for the effort although the runner probably was safe. But the best of all came in the bottom 3rd, when Old Man Franco speared a high-bouncing grounder to start an inning-ending 3-6-3 DP and save Smoltz from a two on, one out, Bonds at bat situation. Play of the game probably, not mentioned anywhere in the official recap.
-Ton of Braves fans in attendance, particularly in our section (134). Not the sort of TBS-transplant California natives you might expect either, but real Southerners. At one point I started to make fun of Chipper Jones for sporting the same silly goatee that every player is apparently required to wear, only to realize that virtually every male Brave fan in my section sported the exact same look. As a TBS transplant from Alabama myself, I can say that these are my people... sort of.
-Matt Cain falls to 3-12 despite being the second-best pitcher on the Giants this season after Lincecum. His talent and determination are evident but it seems he gets screwed in a different way each time out. This time he had to labor hard in the first -- going to full counts on the first four batters -- but had a chance at damage control when Brian McCann lifted a medium-hard liner to left with one out. It can only be scored as a three-run double, but let's just say the urgency with which Bonds ran down that ball fell somewhere between "my alarm clock just went off" and "the paramedic is here to check my vital signs."
-But that's what you're signing up for when it comes to Bondsapalooza 2007. What you get in return are three or four flashbulb-poppy plate appearances where everyone in the stadium actually is paying attention at the same time. Also, when Bonds merely singled in the eighth inning the crowd began streaming out of there like it was the fall of Saigon. Never mind that the single had brought the tying run to the plate in a 4-2 game. Have I mentioned my hatred of the entire human race already in this space?
Labels: atlanta braves, barry bonds, game reports, san francisco giants
7.19.2007
"The Clockless Game"
Sometimes -- too rarely -- you get so happy about a story that you want to sing its praises to the world. Preferably this would express your own delight in some way that was unique yet still capable of identifying with like minds around the globe.
And then you discover someone else who has already said it better than you ever could, and there is nothing to do but tip your cap and wish you'd done more hard drugs as a schoolboy.
Welcome back, Julio.
And then you discover someone else who has already said it better than you ever could, and there is nothing to do but tip your cap and wish you'd done more hard drugs as a schoolboy.
Welcome back, Julio.
7.16.2007
For You Head-to-Headers in the Audience
Even though I was fortunate enough to attend last week, there's just not as much to say about the Home Run Derby as I'd hoped. The derby itself is fun to watch naturally, if you can stomach the pre-packaged Product Placementalooza that tends to accompany hype-driven events like this. (Even more grating than product advertisements, which we expect and understand by now, are what I'll call the Personality Placements. At one point between rounds there was an interview of Cal Ripken given by Jon Miller and broadcast over the PA system; Ripken has no connection to San Francisco or to the Home Run Derby, Miller had no real questions to ask that would hint at why Ripken needed to be interviewed, and Ripken had nothing interesting to say whatsoever. Naturally this elicited one of the biggest ovations of the night, and I honestly cannot say why. I actually felt myself stifling a gag reflex.)
In the end this year's edition will be more remembered for a weak final round (Alex Rios only mustered two pokes in his last go, leaving Vlad the Impaler with not much chance for dramatics), a complete lack of balls hit into McCovey Cove (never has a bigger fuss been made over the possibility of hitting a ball into a body of water), and the fact that Barry Bonds could have given us the best Derby storyline of all time by joining in the festivities...but chose not to. All of which is to say, this Derby isn't going to be remembered at all.
So in lieu of that, allow me to veer into the minutiae of fantasy baseball for a moment. Despite my ongoing and even deepening fantasy baseball love affair I've shied away from discussion of it in any forms. It's a conversation-killer, a business to be conducted privately through email and the written word rather than over lunch as three of your female coworkers roll their eyes in boredom.
That said, fantasy baseball rules my life regardless and thus the All-Star Break is an unwelcome interruption to my daily fix of box scores. This was the case last year too, when I got to fiddling around with Yahoo's Head-to-Head Stats page and bemoaned the fate of my underachieving team, The Oddibe McDowells. Anyone familiar with head-to-head fantasy baseball knows the pain of putting up a solid week of production, only to be overwhelmed by a team having the best week of its life and limp out with a 10-2 defeat. In this case, I realized that if our league had been of the roto variety I would have been leading the league in OPS, but instead I had gone only 6-8-0 in that category head-to-head.
Seemed pretty unfair, right? Well, it turns out I am the type who will go the extra mile when it comes to making excuses for lackluster performance, so within a couple hours I had devised the Lucky Bastard Factor and calculated it for each team in each of my three head-to-head Yahoo leagues. The LBF is not a remotely rigorous stat to be held up against the likes of VORP or WXRL, but it can be a fun little toy to kill some time during the All-Star Break doldrums.
Here's how it works: The Oddibe McDowells were #1 in overall OPS but only went 6-8-0 in that category, the seventh best such record in the league. (1) - (7) = -6, or an unlucky bastard in OPS. Conversely, a team that manages the fifth-best record in stolen bases despite putting up the tenth-highest SB total will be (10) - (5) = 5, or a lucky bastard in stolen bases. Add all the categories of your league together and you have the team's total LBF. In the case of ties always round up, so if four teams tied for fifth at 7-5-2 than they all get credit for fifth. This will make the numbers skew positive a bit in what would otherwise probably be a zero-sum game. Exact totals and ranges will vary according to the specific type of league (# of teams, # of categories), but usually the fickle nature of a head-to-head schedule will leave you with a pretty decent snapshot of some luck and unlucky teams.
Your team's LBF says less about the performance of your team per se than it does the variance in the competition you've faced. If you've played right to your expected spot in the standings based on your theoretical rotisserie score, your LBF will be zero. If your LBF is in the negatives, then you can expect your head-to-head record to improve in the second half without making any changes (assuming constant production from your players, naturally a big if). But should your LBF be particularly high -- and this doesn't always correlate with the teams in the top half of the W-L standings either -- then you've been overachieving and should probably make some moves or at least conjure up some improvement from somewhere, lest you risk dropping off.
As it happened, the Oddibes had the lowest LBF in the league at the break: -14 in a twelve-team, twelve-category league. And aside from landing Brett Myers in a fortunate steal of a trade, there were no wholesale changes or panic moves required to lift the Oddibes from tenth place to a lofty third by season's end. I'm just sayin'....
In the end this year's edition will be more remembered for a weak final round (Alex Rios only mustered two pokes in his last go, leaving Vlad the Impaler with not much chance for dramatics), a complete lack of balls hit into McCovey Cove (never has a bigger fuss been made over the possibility of hitting a ball into a body of water), and the fact that Barry Bonds could have given us the best Derby storyline of all time by joining in the festivities...but chose not to. All of which is to say, this Derby isn't going to be remembered at all.
So in lieu of that, allow me to veer into the minutiae of fantasy baseball for a moment. Despite my ongoing and even deepening fantasy baseball love affair I've shied away from discussion of it in any forms. It's a conversation-killer, a business to be conducted privately through email and the written word rather than over lunch as three of your female coworkers roll their eyes in boredom.
That said, fantasy baseball rules my life regardless and thus the All-Star Break is an unwelcome interruption to my daily fix of box scores. This was the case last year too, when I got to fiddling around with Yahoo's Head-to-Head Stats page and bemoaned the fate of my underachieving team, The Oddibe McDowells. Anyone familiar with head-to-head fantasy baseball knows the pain of putting up a solid week of production, only to be overwhelmed by a team having the best week of its life and limp out with a 10-2 defeat. In this case, I realized that if our league had been of the roto variety I would have been leading the league in OPS, but instead I had gone only 6-8-0 in that category head-to-head.
Seemed pretty unfair, right? Well, it turns out I am the type who will go the extra mile when it comes to making excuses for lackluster performance, so within a couple hours I had devised the Lucky Bastard Factor and calculated it for each team in each of my three head-to-head Yahoo leagues. The LBF is not a remotely rigorous stat to be held up against the likes of VORP or WXRL, but it can be a fun little toy to kill some time during the All-Star Break doldrums.
Here's how it works: The Oddibe McDowells were #1 in overall OPS but only went 6-8-0 in that category, the seventh best such record in the league. (1) - (7) = -6, or an unlucky bastard in OPS. Conversely, a team that manages the fifth-best record in stolen bases despite putting up the tenth-highest SB total will be (10) - (5) = 5, or a lucky bastard in stolen bases. Add all the categories of your league together and you have the team's total LBF. In the case of ties always round up, so if four teams tied for fifth at 7-5-2 than they all get credit for fifth. This will make the numbers skew positive a bit in what would otherwise probably be a zero-sum game. Exact totals and ranges will vary according to the specific type of league (# of teams, # of categories), but usually the fickle nature of a head-to-head schedule will leave you with a pretty decent snapshot of some luck and unlucky teams.
Your team's LBF says less about the performance of your team per se than it does the variance in the competition you've faced. If you've played right to your expected spot in the standings based on your theoretical rotisserie score, your LBF will be zero. If your LBF is in the negatives, then you can expect your head-to-head record to improve in the second half without making any changes (assuming constant production from your players, naturally a big if). But should your LBF be particularly high -- and this doesn't always correlate with the teams in the top half of the W-L standings either -- then you've been overachieving and should probably make some moves or at least conjure up some improvement from somewhere, lest you risk dropping off.
As it happened, the Oddibes had the lowest LBF in the league at the break: -14 in a twelve-team, twelve-category league. And aside from landing Brett Myers in a fortunate steal of a trade, there were no wholesale changes or panic moves required to lift the Oddibes from tenth place to a lofty third by season's end. I'm just sayin'....
Labels: fantasy baseball, stats
7.03.2007
Your Real 2007 All-Stars
A buddy and I sat down and crunched numbers and picked the REAL All-Star team. Here are the rules. Instead of 32 players, we limited our team to 30 per league. We kept the notion of one player from each team, which made things hard in the AL but not in the NL. And we remained loyal to the Fans' popular vote, meaning that we were picking only back-ups and pitchers. Here is our team, followed by some notes concerning particular selections.
NL
C Russell Martin, Bengie Molina
1B Prince Fielder, Dmitri Young, Albert Pujols, Ryan Howard
2B Chase Utley, Dan Uggla
SS Jose Reyes, Hanley Ramirez, Edgar Renteria
3B David Wright, Miguel Cabrera, Chipper Jones
OF Barry Bonds, Matt Holliday
OF Carlos Beltran, Carlos Lee
OF Ken Griffey Jr., Eric Byrnes, Adam Dunn
SP Jake Peavy
P Chris Young, Brad Penny, Ian Snell, John Maine
RP Jose Valverde, Takashi Saito, Francisco Cordero, Billy Wagner
AL
C Pudge Rodriguez, Victor Martinez, John Buck
1B David Ortiz, Carlos Peña, Justin Morneau
2B Placido Polanco, David Roberts
SS Derek Jeter, Carlos Guillen, Jhonny Peralta
3B Alex Rodriguez, Mike Lowell
OF Ichiro Suzuki, Grady Sizemore
OF Gary Sheffield, Torii Hunter
OF Magglio Ordoñez, Alex Rios, Curtis Granderson
SP Dan Haren
P J. Guthrie, J. Santana, C.C. Sabathia, J. Verlander, E. Bedard
RP J.J. Putz, Eric Gagne, Pat Neshek
Notes
That's it. Easy enough, even with a 30-man roster instead of the 32 currently employed. Really the only wrangling arose in the AL when we had to put a Royal, a Blue Jay, and a Ranger on the roster. Buck became the Royal because Meche did not stand up to the host of other AL starters. We called on Gagne because Michael Young has been just OK this year and despite Sosa's 63 RBI he is not deserving as an AL outfielder. Carlos Peña was our Devil Ray, Rios our Blue Jay. The AL pen is odd-looking but the numbers of Putz, Gagne, and Neshek are very good. It was hard leaving Youkilis and O. Cabrera off of the roster. Simply put, Youkilis is a 1B/3B hybrid who loses out at both positions. Orlando has great numbers but does not beat out Guillen or Peralta. Our roster manages to get Byrnes and Young and H. Ramirez and Bedard and Guthrie into the lineup. They are all deserving but did not find spots on the MLB roster.
The Bonds conspiracy and Young/Byrnes/Bedard/H. Ramirez snubs merited about one day on sports talk radio before the conversation settled once again on offseason NFL and NBA talk. Our roster strives to show that the All-Star selection process is "whack" and that 30 roster spots is plenty.
