Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Billy Mays Hocks ESPN360

Happy Festivus, everyone!

Sorry we've been so busy lately. Content is coming in the new year, I "promise."


Meanwhile, it must be the holidays, since I'm about to compliment ESPN for the second straight post. Why? Because I just saw one of these commercials on ESPN and had to share them. They are absolute genius.






Well, hope you enjoyed. I'm off to the Airing of the Grievances. Hopefully I won't be selected for the Feats of Strenght this year. My mother is way too tough to pin.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

The New Standard for Geekdom

Wilbon's descent into curmugdeon-ness continues:

- On Kornheiser arguing for Phillip Rivers deserving a spot on the Pro Bowl roster given Rivers's TD-INT ratio: "You're beginning to sound like one of those stat geeks!"

- During "Role Play", Kornheiser played interim Oklahoma City Thunder head coach Scott Brooks. After talking about Durant as having had more double-doubles under Brooks than he did under Carlesimo, Wilbon responded that he should stop with the "gobbledygook".

Touchdown to interception ratio
Double-doubles

Geeky stats.

God help us all.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

There's Light at the End of the Tunnel

Sorry I've been gone lately, guys. I don't want to speak for everyone, but I probably do when I say things have been pretty busy lately. Holidays and such.

And my mom wants me to clean her basement, and that takes a long time.

I have a backlog of things I want to post, but for today I come in to report good news.

Slowly but surely, the Baseball Writers Association of America is becoming more inclusive. The organization just held a meeting here at Bellagio and, for the second straight year, humbly voted to add a few Internet writers to their newspaper-dominated ranks. Joining the inaugural crop from last year will be Will Carroll and Christina Kahrl of Baseball Prospectus and Rob Neyer and Keith Law of ESPN.com.


These four people have one awesome thing in common: sabermetricians.

It is truly great to see the BBWAA (and I will now officially refer to them as such, rather than the BBRAA) opening their doors up finally to progressive baseball thinkers who don't meet their traditional standards of the grizzled beat writer but rather cover and WRITE about baseball from other sources but are none-the-less credible.

Good job, Baseball Writers!

Friday, December 5, 2008

Remember Matt Grevers?

Maybe Mariotti should write about him again.

This weekend is Short Course Nationals in Atlanta. Our favorite backstroker-sprinter is swimming and he won the 50yd freestyle with a time of 18.95 seconds.

For you laymen out there: that's smokin' fast. Nineteen seconds is a plane which is rarely broken.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Tips On How To Manufacture A Shitty Ballot

Sorry we've been slacking lately. Most of us have probably been busy and/or haven't come across anything worth noting. Fortunately, I'm all caught up on my DVR'd recordings of House and Boston Legal, so I've got some time to kill. Let's talk Hall of Fame!

Bad Wax.

Here is my take, if you took steroids or were linked to steroids in any way shape or form, no way you get in.

Okay, that's fine. I understand a lot of people feel this way, and I can see the sentiment in wanting to keep "cheaters" out of the Hall of Fame. I disagree with this sentiment because I believe the vast majority of MLB players did (or were "linked" to) steroids and it's unfair to just simply reward the players who didn't get caught. But again, I can understand this view and won't fault anyone for having it.

So far, so good.

You need at least 7 years of domination, where you were by far and away (sic) one of the 20 best players in the game.

Ehh.. This is pretty sketchy. I'm not sure that being in the top 20 for seven years is quite up to Hall of Fame standards. I feel like there's quite a few mediocre players out there who can claim this accomplishment.

That's not too bad, though, what else you got?

Automatics are 3000 hits, 500 home runs, 800 stolen bases, 300 wins, 300 saves, or 3000 strikeouts.

-If Billy Buckner averaged 13 more hits a season over his 22-year career, he would have finished with 3,000 hits.

-Seven home runs are separating Fred McGriff from the Hall of Fame.

-Vince Coleman would be in were it not for four more stolen bases a year, despite his .324 OBP and 83 Career Adjusted OPS.

-Tommy John, Jim Kaat, Tony Mullane... so close.

-Congratulations John Franco, Jeff Reardon, Troy Percival, Randy Myers, John Wetteland, Roberto Hernandez(!), Jose Mesa(!!), Todd Jones(!!!), Rick Aguilera, Robb Nen, Tom Henke, Jeff Montgomery, and Doug Jones, you are all deserving of an induction into the Hall of Fame! Also, congratulations to every slightly above average closer in the future.

-Mickey Lolich is pissed he didn't get those extra eleven strikeouts a year.

Ask yourself, would these players really have deserved to be in the Hall just because they reached a subjective, public-induced "milestone"? No. The majority of these players aren't even close. There should be no "automatics" when considering a player for induction. You should never look at any single statistic when evaluating a player's production, because there is no single perfect stat. Bert Blyleven should not be penalized because he failed to accumulate thirteen more wins, nor should Tommy John be rewarded had he collected twelve more. This seems to be a simple concept. I would hope that the BBWAA's apparent recent improvement would transfer over into Hall of Fame standards, although I think that's still probably wishful thinking at this point.

My ballot, were I to submit one, would look like this:

Bert Blyelven
Rickey Henderson
Mark McGwire
Tim Raines
Alan Trammel

Rickey Henderson will obviously make it easily, I don't see it happening for any of those others this year, though. Unfortunately, I believe Henderson now being on the ballot will cause people to look more dimly upon Raines' case, so he'll probably still have quite a ways to go before he gets any serious consideration. Blyeleven seems to have the best shot out of the other four.

I love this time of year. I can't wait for more and more columns to come out attempting to justify the cases for Matt Williams and Mark Grace because they were true "gamers" and "played the game the right way." I can't wait to hear the reasoning behind a single writer's vote for Jesse Orosco as I sit bewildered at the surprisingly strong support for Mo Vaughn.

Don't worry everyone, the Winter Meetings are coming soon!