Baseball, Other Things

Alex Rodriguez is off to a surprisingly great start. My only pre-season prediction for him happened to be one of futility, but he's actually on pace to fulfill it. I predicted a new high in strikeouts, and he currently has twenty of them through nineteen games. His career high is 139, off the top of my head, so even with his hot start, he's still missing the ball a lot. Moreover, if you look at the high mark of offensive futility -- the three-pitch strikeout -- he has eight of them. By comparison, strikeout king Adam Dunn (currently leading the majors with 28 total strikeouts) has zero. Just food for thought. It greatly helps Rodriguez put up his numbers that he's consistently pitched to -- he's seen fewer balls than Barry Bonds has seen strikes (in absolute terms, not even adjusting for the fact that Bonds has played fewer games and gets fewer plate appearances per game).

In the fantasy league I care about, I expected my pitching to dominate while my offense would be slightly above average. Instead, through last night's games, my offense is the best in the league and my pitching is third worst (having moved out of a tie for second-worst with a strikeout at the end of the night). Yahoo! ranks players based on their contributions thus far, and none of my pitchers rank in the top 50, only one in the top 250, and only four in the top 650 (not counting a guy who hasn't pitched this season but ranks in the top 500 anyway).

In YouTube news, John McCain changes Barbara Ann to Bomb Iran, and there's a nifty video on the Kaye effect. I also found an old MAD TV sketch of Terminator meeting Jesus.

Yale took quick, decisive action in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings -- they banned all stage weapons from plays. They softened this a bit and allowed weapons that were obviously fake to be used. When even the actors think your liberal agenda is ridiculous, maybe it's time to back down. Moreover, what would they substitute for a fist fight? Rock-'em Sock-'em Robots?