Why the Democrats are wrong and other meanderings

Resuming the Blog for an Exercise in Futility

2009-10-06T12:14:00.003-07:00

I figured I should publish my playoff predictions once again, just to show how bad they are.

For the play-in today, I have Twins over Tigers.

For the division series:
Yankees over Twins
Angels over Red Sox
Cardinals over Dodgers
Phillies over Rockies

For the World Series:
Yankees over Cardinals

UPDATE: At least three of four is better than I've done the last few years. Dodgers over Phillies for the oppurtunity to lose to the Yankees.

2009 Baseball Season Predictions

2009-04-08T16:50:00.001-07:00

Once again, I'm late getting to my predictions, and the season is already underway.

My predicted standings for the year:

NL East
Mets
Phillies
Braves
Marlins
Nationals

NL Central
Cubs
Brewers
Cardinals
Reds
Astros
Pirates

NL West
Dodgers
Giants
Diamondbacks
Rockies
Padres

AL East
Yankees
Rays
Red Sox
Blue Jays
Orioles

AL Central
Indians
Twins
Tigers
Royals
White Sox

AL West
Angels
Athletics
Mariners
Rangers

Out of all those teams, the Athletics strike me as the team with the greatest variance in probable outcome; I could easily see them finishing first or last or anywhere in between. They might have at least a 20% shot at each position.

My annual prediction of how many players will pass Babe Ruth on the all-time strikeout list is six: Jason Giambi, Ivan Rodriguez, Pat Burrell, Derrek Lee, Troy Glaus, and Adam Dunn. Troy Glaus is the only one of those I have much hesitation about, due to his frequent health issues, but he's only 61 short of Ruth at the moment. The Babe enters the season as number 88 on the alltime striekout list. Falling out of the top 100 is starting to come into view.

Also on the strikeout front, I see Ryan Howard, Mark Reynolds, and Jack Cust all making a run at 200 again. I think Adam Dunn might be done with his days of doing so, but he should have over 160. If he can stay healthy and avoid a big downturn in production, he should be reaching the 2000 mark for his career in 2013. Jim Thome should be passing Sammy Sosa for the second spot alltime, and Carlos Delgado should enter the top ten. Manny Ramirez and Mike Cameron will enter the top 15, barring injury, with Alex Rodriguez to enter if one of them comes up short.

As for overrated players enterring the year, Alex Rodriguez was around the top of my list until his hip injury hit. Some people talk about him being the best player in baseball, but he's not even the best third baseman in his city. I was thinking David Wright was probably even a better fantasy option than Rodriguez. Other overrated players include Ryan Howard (declined each of the last two seasons; people remember his 2006 MVP campaign, though he's not going to be replicating that, ever), Manny Ramirez (remember he only hit 20 homers in 133 games in 2007, and he's not getting any younger), and David Ortiz (many are expecting a full bounce-back, but he's 33 and not the kind of player who ages well).

Vindication

2009-02-07T14:13:00.003-07:00

Many people, especially media types, have been saying that "nobody" suspects Alex Rodriguez of steroid use. I've disagreed, and even referred to him as "Steroids, Jr." on this blog. Well, whaddya know, it turns out that he's previously tested positive for steroids.

The media previously threw Raphael Palmeiro under the bus when, after his positive test, he said something about the "B-12" shots he got from Miguel Tejada. "Tejada is a clean player," the media declared. "How dare Palmeiro try to tarnish the image of this great athlete." Well, the Mitchell Report came out, and it turned out that Miguel Tejada had been using steroids under the guise of B-12 shots. The media was shocked. Shocked! How could a clean player like Miguel Tejada be caught up in this mess?

The media has once again demonstrated its biases and, well, general incompetence.

Why Rice Does Not Belong in the Hall and Other Hall of Fame Thoughts

2009-01-09T11:46:00.004-07:00

Unfortunately, it looks like Jim Rice will be voted into the Hall of Fame this year. On the plus side, whether or not he makes it, this is his last year on the ballot, so we should receive a reprieve from all of this "most feared" nonsense.

When considering Rice, there are a couple of strikes against him that all but his most hardcore and irrational supporters would concede. First, he was a subpar defender at a position that isn't known for requiring great fielding skills to begin with. So, he needs to be a better hitter than an above-average fielder at the same position to be an equally valuable player. Second, the Hall of Fame requires a combination of high peak performance and longevity -- a player with a shorter career needs a better peak for enshrinement (to throw out semi-random numbers, an OPS+ of 120 over 15 seasons may not be as valuable as an OPS+ of 115 over 20 seasons).

Was Rice the "most feared" hitter in baseball? I doubt it, and he certainly wasn't the best. In the twelve year stretch that all his supporters cite, he led his team in OPS+ only twice (something I brought up in the Jerry Crasnick chat on Rice at espn.com today). Here are the Red Sox leaders from 1975-1986, courtesy of baseball-reference.com (which I think includes only qualifiers for the batting title):

1975: Fred Lynn 161, Rice 127

1976: Lynn 132, (tie) Carl Yastrzemski and Rice 120

1977: Rice 147, Fisk 138

1978: Rice 157, Lynn 133

1979: Lynn 176, Rice 154

1980: Lynn 130, Dwight Evans 124, Rice 122

1981: Evans 162, Carney Lansford 132, Rice 116

1982: Evans 148, Rice 130

1983: Wade Boggs 150, Rice 141

1984: Evans 147, Mike Easler 140, Boggs 125, Tony Armas 121, Rich Gedman 118, Rice 112

1985: Boggs 151, Gedman 126, Evans 124, Rice 123

1986: Boggs 156, Rice 136

Now, there's no shame in being beaten by Wade Boggs, but Fred Lynn and Dwight Evans both routinely beat Rice, and neither has sniffed much Hall support, despite being better players. When I brought this up in the chat, Crasnick first granted that the "most feared" thing was pretty meaningless, and then when called out on my OPS+ point by another chatter, he tried to combat it by saying that Rice had a career OPS+ of 128, while Rickey Henderson's was 127, and Rickey is considered a sure thing. This despite the fact that Rickey played in 3081 games over 25 seasons, while Rice played in 2089 games over 16 seasons. One of those is a better hitter, and it ain't Jim Rice. Plus, Rickey could play defense, and there was a slight difference in their baserunning ability ....

Another chatter said that pointing out that Rice only led his team twice in OPS+ is "ludicris" since he played with two guys who were elected to the Hall their first time on the ballot (Boggs and Yaz) and compared it to saying that Lou Gehrig only led the Yankees in homers twice. Crasnick said, "I'm sure that Lynn, Yaz and Evans had something to do with the stat." I'm sure Boggs was an oversite, but Boggs didn't play a full season until 1983, and Yaz was in decline by the time Rice started playing, with his last great season in 1974 and only reaching 120 OPS+ twice afterwards, so there were eight years of Yaz not leading the team in OPS+ before Boggs came along which should have been open season for Rice. However, he was bested by Lynn and Evans, two players who received very little Hall support (Lynn was named on 5.5% of the ballots his first year before falling off after getting 4.7% his second year, while Evans received 5.9%, 10.4%, and 3.6% in his three years on the ballot). As for the Gehrig comparison, neither Boggs nor Yaz were Babe Ruth, nor were they even Lou Gehrig. Plus, Gehrig led the Yankees in homers four times and OPS+ five times, but now I'm just being a stickler.

Another point in my chat post that went unanswered: If Rice really had those extra-statistical intangibles that made him so "feared" wouldn't the voters in 1995 have had a better read on that than the voters in 2009? In 1995, his first year on the ballot, he received less than 30% of the vote.

Back to Evans and Lynn. Both were better fielders, and both received very little Hall support. How were they as hitters compared to Rice?

Rice 2089 games 128 OPS+

Lynn 1969 games 129 OPS+

Evans 2606 games 127 OPS+

Lynn and Evans were, at worst, roughly equal to Rice in the batter's box. So, if they were equal at the plate, and better in the field, that would seem to make them better players. If they receive so little Hall support, why should Rice receive so much?

I went to the library in the middle of typing this blog post to obtain The New Bill James Historical Abstract to further make my case. For Rice, Lynn, and Evans, I'll give their career win share totals, their top three season totals, the combined total of their top five consecutive seasons, and their 162 game average (because that's what Bill James is giving me):

Rice 282 36,28,28 127 21.86

Lynn 280 34,33,27 131 23.03

Evans 347 31,29,26 122 21.57

Rice did have a higher peak than Evans, and a better average per 162 games, but, as I mentioned earlier, longevity has meaning, and Evans had a career that was about 25% longer, which effectively erases Rice's advantage. Rice's career was longer than Lynn's, but not by nearly as much, and not by enough to erase Lynn's advantage.

Rice supporters also say that his detractors are penalizing him for playing his home games at Fenway. Uh, no. His detractors are pointing out that Fenway is a great hitter's ballpark and it inflates offensive statistics. It was easily the most favorable ballpark for hitters from Rice's day until the Rockies came into existence. What his detractors are doing is adjusting his stats to a ballpark-neutral mark. Are these people going to take numbers from Coors Field at face value? Now that they have the humidifier, Coors Field inflates offense to roughly the same degree that Fenway did in Rice's day.

Hopefully, I'm done with Rice now.

In other Hall news, Repoz is tallying published ballots over at Baseball Think Factory. Keith Law elected not to do the similar tally he's done in the past, which included some unpublished ballots as well. Chris Jaffe has a method for forecasting votes which he published at The Hardball Times. Blyleven just fell below the 75% in Repoz's tracking, which is doubly unfortunate as it seems that Blyleven supporters are more likely to publish their votes (same with Raines and Trammell, two others who receive support from the stat guys). Both methods show Rickey and Rice going in this year.

Corky Simpson left Rickey off his ballot for some reason. He does vote for Raines, which I like, but while Raines might be the seocnd best leadoff hitter of all time, Rickey was the best, so it makes no sense. He also doesn't vote for Mark McGwire because of the steroids issue, but he does vote for Matt Williams, a lesser player also implicated in the steroids mess. Keith Law has exchanged e-mails with him and passes along that Simpson is not opposed to having Henderson in the Hall, and simly thought that Rickey didn't need his vote. However, according to his article, he only voted for eight players, and voters can vote for up to ten, so I see no reason for leaving Rickey off. UPDATE: Turns out he didn't vote for Rickey because he's old and confused. Nine caps!

ESPN has up the ballot results from its writers. Probably the oddest thing in there is Pedro Gomez, formerly an Arizona Republic reporter who followed the Diamondbacks, voting for Jay Bell. So between Gomez and Simpson, we have one vote each for Matt Williams and Jay Bell (neither of whom I think will reach even 1% of the total vote), but no votes for the best former Diamondback on the ballot, Mark Grace.

My hypothetical ballot would include Rickey Henderson, Bert Blyleven, Tim Raines, Alan Trammell, and Tommy John. Beyond Henderson, this year's rookie class is weak enough that I'm not sure any of them will be back on the ballot next year. That's disappointing in the case of David Cone and Mark Grace; I don't think either is worthy of the Hall, but it would be nice to see them hang around for a bit. Harold Baines might also drop off the ballot. If he does, and no new player besides Rickey gets 5%, only ten players would return on next year's ballot.

For Blyleven and John, many people bring up that if they just had 13 and 12 more wins, respectively, they'd have 300 and be automatic Hall votes. However, and I'm digressing here substantially from supporting these guys, 300 has not been wholly "automatic". It took Don Sutton and Phil Niekro five years on the ballot each before they were elected. Early Wynn was on it for four years (though he was a guy who hung around to get 300 wins (exactly), not quite the same level as some of the other 300-game winners). Now, 300 wins would certainly help a candidate (I'd say Blyleven would definitely be in if he had 300 wins, and there's a good chance John would be in), but it's not quite as automatic as it's made out to be.

As always, I found it interesting to read which players were newly eligible but were not included on the ballot (available at the wikipedia article). The most recognizable name this year is Joe Girardi, with the best players probably being Mike Bordick (1500 hits) and John Burkett (166 wins). I was a bit surprised to see Dan Plesac on the ballot but no John Burkett.

Stuff

2008-11-20T06:35:00.002-07:00

More shenanigans are being undertaken by global warming alarmists. Are we really sure that science is on the side of those who fake data to make it match their preconceptions?

Karl Rove has some thoughts on what the Republicans should do to start working their way back to power.

The People's Temple mass suicide was 30 years ago. Dan Flynn tries to correct the historical revisionism that paints it as a religious movement (which implicitly would make it a movement of the right to many).

More problems in Russia.

This seems like an apt view of the new Star Trek movie: Star Trek 90210.

Michael Crichton, RIP

2008-11-05T16:04:00.002-07:00

Michael Crichton has "died unexpectedly" (sorry for the ET link, but it's the one I was given). I've been enjoying his work since junior high, and I've read all of his novels (but none of his non-fiction, which I've heard isn't exactly thrilling). Also, I've never watched an episode of ER, strangely enough. He's the only author whose novels I really looked forward to. I even ended up with three copies of one of them (bought my own copy, my dad got me one for Christmas, and there was a book club selection I had neglected to say no to).

The Morning After

2008-11-05T06:38:00.003-07:00

Wow, the night ended much sooner than I was expecting. I am a bit curious as to why the networks were so quick to call Ohio for Obama but slow to call Georgia, South Carolina, and Arizona for McCain ...

There are still several races not called, but let's go with what we have. It looks like my predictions at the presidential level were off in Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, and Indiana. The first four of those were easily the four I was least certain of giving to McCain, so I wasn't too terribly shocked, but with Indiana I had never really believed all the talk about it going Obama, it was too Republican, it just didn't make any sense. And it still doesn't. I'm thinking the Chicago political machine snuck across the border.

The Senate race still has three races not called. Well, CNN still hasn't called Georgia, either (what's up with that?). Going on what the CNN website has, Coleman (R) has a 762 vote lead in Minnesota with 99% reporting, Smith (R) has a 48-46 lead in Oregon with 75% reporting, and Stevens (R) has a 48-47 lead in Alaska with 99% reporting. If the Republicans hold on to all of these, they'll do two seats better than my projection, which would make me extremely happy. The Stevens part really surprises me, as he was recently convicted, but if I was an Alaskan, that might make me more likely to vote for him -- he'll get tossed in the clink, and Palin can appoint a replacement. The Oregon one is a bit maddening because, once again, Oregon is taking its sweet time counting its ballots. It really shouldn't take this long, as they mail out ballots to all voters before the election, and should be able to get the vast majority counted and the results ready for release at poll closing time.

Also on the bright side, the Republicans were able to take a few seats away from the Dems in the House after not being able to take a single one from them in 2006. Unfortunately, it was still a net loss of seats (exact total still to be determined).

Final (Pre-Election) McCain vs. Obama Thoughts

2008-11-03T15:55:00.009-07:00

I think this race will be considerably closer than most people seem to think.

Before RCP switched Ohio and Virginia from "lean Obama" to toss-up, I was saying that I liked McCain's chances to win all the states that they had as toss-ups. To clarify, I wasn't saying I liked his chances to win in each state; I was saying that I liked his chances to sweep the table and win all the toss-ups.

The problem McCain runs into is that even winning all of them (this time including Ohio and Virginia, but not any that might be added Monday night or Tuesday morning), he's still short of the 270 Electoral Votes necessary to win the election.

Working off of RCP's map linked above, I'm giving all the "solid Obama" to Obama and all the "solid McCain" and "leaning McCain" to McCain. I'll predict the others individually (I might not catch any that switch from one of those categories Monday night or Tuesday morning).

Before we get to those predictions, there are a few considerations. First, many polls are predicting a huge advantage for the Democrats in party ID, which I don't think will hold. I think they'll have the advantage, but not the 10-point one we're seeing in some of these polls (that's nationally, state results may differ). Second, it's interesting to compare early voting turnout this year to 2004. Obama seems to have little advantage over Kerry. Third, while it's just one state, Steve Nathan surveyed a massive number of Nevadan early voters (16,749), and while the 6.12% lead for Obama looks good for him at first glance, the early voting turnout is disproportionately Democrat. Unfortunately, Steve did not ask responders for their party ID, so it's not clear how representative the poll is. Assuming it is representative, this does not look like good news for Obama, as his lead is less than half that of Democrats who have voted. While I'm not sure offhand what the turnout numbers in the state were in previous elections, I know Bush won in 2000 and 2004, and there don't seem to be an inordinant number of Bush-supporting Democrats like you'd find in southern states, so I'd expect turnout much closer to even, probably a few points to the Dems advantage. But if Obama's running 7 points behind the dem advantage ...

Another couple of things to keep in mind, but more in watching election returns than in predicting the outcomes: many states tabulate the early/absentee voting and release those results soon after the polls close as part of their tally; with the Democrats having the advantage there, those early returns will skew in Obama's favor (also the favor of their candidates for Senate, House, and whatever else). Secondly, Obama supporters appear to be much more willing to participate in exit polling, so the exit polls will be skewed in Obama's direction (also useful info to know should those numbers leak early, as they have a habit of doing); part of a survey commission by Fox News showed Obama supporters with about a 12- or 13-point edge (something like 77-64 likely to participate and 34-22 not likely to participate, with Obama supporters leading the former and McCain supporters the latter).

One odd note: If McCain sweeps his solids, leaners, and the toss-ups, plus wins Colorado, we will have a 269-269 tie.

And now, on to the states:

Allocating them as I already did yields a 228-132 Obama electoral edge.

McCain will win his home state (228-142). I don't think this is necessarily the one state not previously covered that he's most likely to win, but if he loses here, I can almost guarantee a blowout.

North Dakota will go to: McCain (228-145)

Montana will go to: McCain (228-148)

Indiana will go to: McCain (228-159)

Georgia will go to: McCain (228-174)

Missouri will go to: McCain (228-185)

Minnesota will go to: Obama (238-185)

North Carolina will go to: McCain (238-200)

Florida will go to: McCain (238-227)

New Mexico will go to: Obama (243-227)

Pennsylvania will go to: Obama (264-227)

Ohio will go to: McCain (264-247)

Virginia will go to: McCain (264-260)

Colorado will go to: Obama (273-260)

Nevada will go to: Obama (278-260)

So, to sum it up, I think Obama will win, but it will be close, and there's a greater chance of a McCain victory than many seem to think.

The Coming Bloodbath

2008-11-03T14:54:00.002-07:00

No, not the presidential race -- I'm talking about the Senate.

The Democrats are trying for a filibuster-proof 60 seats. If you had told me this at the beginning of the year, I would have laughed at you. In fact, I did laugh at such claims early this year. Unfortunately, it has become less funny.

Currently, the Dems have 51 seats (counting Lieberman and Sanders). A pickup of nine seats is ... highly unusual. The field is shaping up that way, however.

Republican open seats in Virginia, Colorado, and New Mexico can be kissed goodbye. The corrupt Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska has been found guilty, and now trails badly in the polls. I will be glad to be rid of him, but I will not be glad to have his seat in Democrats' hands for six years. John Sunnunu in New Hampshire seems nearly a lock to be defeated as well. Gordon Smith (Oregon) and Elizabeth Dole (North Carolina) both trail in the polls. Saxby Chambliss (Georgia) and Norm Coleman (Minnesota) both have leads that are a little too close for comfort. Mitch McConnell (Kentucky), the top Republican in the Senate, hasn't put away his opponent. There's also talk of the election in Mississippi, where appointee Wicker is trying to win election in his own right to finish the rest of Trent Lott's term, but Dem hopes there seem misplaced. Coming into this election cycle, Republicans only really had hopes of taking one seat from the Dems (mary Landrieu's seat in Louisiana, which she won by narrow margins in 1996 and 2002), but those hopes have been dashed.

Basically, the toss-ups of the race come down to Oregon, North Carolina, Minnesota, and Georgia. A sweep of these will give the Democrats 60 seats. I'm currently predicting a split, with the former two being lost. It does worry me that toss-ups tend to break one way or the other across the nation, though (not always unanimously, but it does tend to be lop-sided).

Some pundits have noted that 60-40 isn't everything, that some senators will break with their party. This is true, but I don't for a minute believe that it will be remotely equal. Republicans have several senators that might break with their party against a filibuster. The Democrats, however, are lacking in candidates who will break with their party to support a filibuster, with the possible exception of Lieberman for War on Terror issues. There's an expanded field of Democrats who might not support their party on this issue or that, but I doubt that they'll support a filibuster against it.

One side note: whoever wins the White House, we're going to have at least one vacant Senate seat. McCain's seat will be vacated if he wins, and Obama's and Biden's if they win. While I haven't verified the laws, the former two states have Democrats as governors, so it seems likely that they will appoint like to the Senate. Delaware currently has a Dem governor, but the seat is up for election, with another Dem the prohibitive favorite, which is all a roundabout way of saying that the appointment here would also be a Dem.

Looking ahead to the 2010 elections, the Republicans have little hope to take back the chamber. Possible targets for pickup include Colorado, Nevada, Arkansas, North Dakota, and Indiana, but as you move across the list, a retirement becomes more necessary to Republican chances. Unless 2010 is a horrible year for Democrats, Republicans don't hold a glimmer of hope until 2012, and, right now, I don't think the Republicans will take back the chamber until the 2014 elections at the earliest.

World Series

2008-10-22T11:47:00.003-07:00

How's this for an off-the-wall series prediction: Brad Lidge has gone all season and the first two rounds of the playoffs without a blown save; he keeps that intact until game 7, when he blows a lead and the series in the bottom of the ninth.

As far as more straightforward predictions go, Rays in 6 or 7.

Update: I checked out the write-up of the Diamond Mind simulation on ESPN, and noticed something odd. While the Rays had a fairly predictable distribution of results (a six-game win most likely, followed by seven and five, with four bringing up the rear), the Phillies' was ... odd. It had a sweep as their most likely method of series victory, followed by five games, then six, and then a big dropoff to seven. Rounding to the nearest whole percent, those odds were 11, 9, 7, and 2 percent, respectively. If you reverse that, it would make sense, with a seven-game victry being the most probable, and a sweep being quite unlikely. It makes me wonder if they messed up the graphic.

Only a Partial Re-Pick This Year

2008-10-09T03:24:00.003-07:00

Since I know you're all waiting for my pick before placing your bet (the other way), I'm going with Phillies over Dodgers in the NLCS. As the Rays were my pick to represent the AL in the World Series, I'm sticking with them.

Yeah, the Dodgers are the trendy pick, but I think the Phillies are the better one.

I may only have picked one division series correctly, but that's one more than I picked correctly the previous two postseasons combined. I did get three right in 2005, so I have that going for me.

Playoff Predictions

2008-10-01T06:48:00.003-07:00

Guaranteed to be no worse than last year's ...

Division Series winners: Cubs, Brewers, Angels, Rays

World Series: Cubs over Rays

Bonus prediction: if Beckett makes more than one start, expect at least one poor outing (yeah, I'm hedging my prediction a little in case the small sample size of one start allows him to pitch well)

Prediction made so that I can say that one of my predictions was right: Ozzie Guillen will say something stupid.

*****

On a somewhat related note, I tuned into KTAR 620 AM, as they're the local ESPN Radio affiliate, to hear the broadcast of game 163, and what do I hear? Inane football chatter. Bah. If you're going to be the ESPN affiliate, carry the freakin' games! It did switch over to the game later, as I was able to listen to it at work, but, really, what football chat was there to be had that couldn't be done the day before or the day after -- or that wasn't done the day before or day after. We all know that football players are giant pansies who can only be troubled to play once a week, so let's make room to actually listen to the games of those man enough to play on a more regular basis.

New Strikeout Record

2008-09-25T13:42:00.002-07:00

For the second consecutive year, and third time in the last five years, we have a new single-season strikeout record. Mark Reynolds struck out for the 200th time this season earlier today, and is up to 201 with the game still in progress. Ryan Howard has slowed down his pace considerably and, with 196, there's still a chance he'll miss the 200 mark, just as I predicted he'd miss it before the season started. Who would have thought that he'd miss it when he was on pace for 230ish in mid-summer? Jack Cust still has an outside shot to reach the mark, as he's at 192. If he fails to reach it, lack of playing time will play a major role, as he's sat out 13 games, and only had one plate appearance in 6 more, based on a quick look over his game log. He managed to go half a month without a multi-strikeout game, which also hurt his chances a bit. After standing as the record for 34 years, Bobby Bonds's 189 strikeouts have been surpassed six times in five years.

Kudos to Bob Melvin for not benching Reynolds out of fears that breaking the record would hurt his feelings, as was done with Jose Hernandez before Adam Dunn broke the record. Of course, that would have meant benching him for the last five games of the season, unlike the one (or maybe two) that Hernandez sat out.

In other Diamondbacks strikeout news, Dunn struck out for the 160th time on Wednesday, making it the fifth straight year he's reached that total. No other player has done it more than four times in their career.

Palin

2008-08-29T08:14:00.004-07:00

As the McCain campaign has apparently confirmed his VP selection with the major media outlets, it seems safe to run with this now.

I don't recall what I've posted about Sarah Palin before, but I like her. She's a strong conservative, pro-life, pro-gun, pro-all the good things in life. I've seen a few complaints about her signing tax increases as governor, but they were modest and were aimed at fiscal responsibility for the state, not as sock-it to the rich or expand the welfare state moves.

I didn't think it was likely to be her, as she was only elected governor in 2006, and she also just recently gave birth to a son with Down's Syndrome. Neither are disqualifying by any means, but I thought (and, I admit, kinda hoped) for someone with more experience (though she's definitely a better choice than several of the more experienced names I'd heard tossed about), and it seemed like she might want to stay closer to home with the baby (yeah, she'll bring him to Washington, but VP involves a lot of travel, etc., etc.).

Her eldest son is scheduled for deployment to Iraq, but that might be postponed or something. I used to believe it would be great for more sons of politicians to serve combat duty (when there's an active combat to serve in), but I've come to realize that they can do a lot more harm than good. If he was the son of a relative-nobody congressman, then big deal. However, as the son of a major party vice presidential nominee, that puts a big target on his back. If terrorist factions discover where he's at, it makes him a major target, and, as such, exponentially increases the danger to those around him. Of course, if his deployment is deferred (cancelled, whatever), you'll have groups from the left who don't understand this (or do, but like cheap political points) whining about privilege and the like.

I've heard of reports that someone on CNN has been talking about her "inexperience" -- are they doing the same for Obama?

There's talk of a recent "scandal" for Palin back in Alaska; the allegation is that she fired the public safety commissioner because of his refusal to fire a state trooper. The trooper in question is her former brother-in-law, was apparently abusive towards her sister, drank beer in his patrol car, and is alleged to have fired a taser at his stepson and threatened to kill Palin's father. At any rate, she never asked him to do so, but several family members and close friends had talked to him about the trooper (it's unclear if even they made explicit calls for his firing), and there was talk about the possible security risk he posed to the governor. Mostly, however, this seems like the kind of legislative investigation launched when a majority of the legislature doesn't like the executive rather than something with substance.

Politically speaking, I'd say picking a woman was a great move. This should win over at least a few disaffected Hillary supporters, though I would not expect any sort of massive movement. I had briefly worried yesterday after someone had mentioned Kay Bailey Hutchinson, a "moderate" senator from Texas (among other things, she supports Roe v. Wade), and had even mentioned to a friend who asked for my thoughts on McCain's possible VP choice that if he was to go for a woman, I'd prefer Sarah Palin, but was worried that Hutchinson would suit his style. Pawlenty also had a bunch of buzz last night; I'd been touting him as a possible McCain VP choice from the time he endorsed last year (though I didn't think McCain would win the nomination at that time). Mostly, I'm just glad it wasn't Ridge (who has been mentioned a lot recently for some reason; he would have made some sense when he was touted in 2000, but not really any now after his forgettable stint as Secretary of Homeland Security), Hutchinson, Crist, or a few others. I never bought the Lieberman hype -- yeah, McCain personally likes Lieberman, and is grateful for his endorsment, but, even if Lieberman was willing to accept, McCain isn't crazy enough to pick him.

I was starting to think that McCain had slightly-better than even shot at winning in November earlier this month, and, now that the VP choices have been made, I'd give him an even better shot.

Also, Sarah Barracuda is an awesome nickname.

Bill James and Steve Phillips

2008-08-08T09:35:00.004-07:00

I recently picked up a copy of The New Bill James Historical Abstract from the library, and read through most of it. I enjoyed the decade-by-decade tidbits. James was entirely too much in love with the win shares stat he created, but, hey, it's his book. The player rankings were interesting. My biggest quibble, or, at least, the only one I'm going to take a major issue with here, is one sentence in his summary of ranking Bonds third all time among left fielders, where he writes "Biggio passed Bonds as the best player in baseball in 1997." I'm not taking issue with the Bonds part; he was the best player of the 1990's, which many people were blinded to, at least partially due to their adoration for overrated media-darling Ken Griffey, Jr. The Biggio part, however, is, er, questionable. Let's start by comparing him with Bonds for 1997-1999 using James's own win shares. Biggio comes out ahead each year, but only by small amounts in 1997 (38-36) and 1998 (35-34), and while 1999 had a larger margin (31-20), Bonds missed significant playing time due to injury (off the top of my head, he played in 102 games, and this was back when he rarely took a day off), so the difference in their win shares per game is negligible. Yes, I'm aware that playing every game at that level is more valuable than playing only 2/3 of the season, but one such season like that is hardly big enough for any pronouncements about who is the better player. Moreover, as James points out in his small update section, Biggio had his own injury problems in 2000 (the book was written in 2000 and James only used stats through 1999 in writing it). Now many people are familiar with the man-crush that Bill James has for Craig Biggio, and could forgive him for declaring Biggio better than Bonds based on three seasons of negligible difference, but Biggio was not leading the majors in win shares during that period. Frank Thomas edged him out in 1997 (39-38), McGwire beat by a solid margin in 1998 (41-35), and he was solidly bested by his own teammate, Jeff Bagwell in 1999 (37-31, plus it looks like Bagwell was bested by Jeter, though I can't find Jeter's total). He wasn't second all of those years, either (I don't have a complete listing, otherwise I'd give his rank each year). While he may have the best combined total for 1997-1999, if you add 1996, he doesn't have the best total on his own team (Bagwell bests him by 1). Bonds, meanwhile, had the best total in the majors in 1991, 1992, 1993, and 1995, plus the second-best total in 1990 and 1996 (losing out to Rickey Henderson and Bagwell, respectively), for a much better established period of domination. The period of 1997-1999 (you could throw in 2000 as well, I guess) is more of a period where no one player dominated before Bonds returned to domination in 2001-2004. Bonds played well enough in those intervening years that you could say he dominated the majors for 15 years (1990-2004), though, of course, James had no way to know about his second run of dominance when writing the book.

One other tidbit from the book; for each decade it mentions someone as "a better man than a ballplayer" and lists Doug Drabek for the 1990's. I find this quite pleasing, as Drabek was my favorite pitcher, while my favorite player when I started following baseball was Darrell Strawberry (okay, I admit, it had something to do with his last name), who I dropped when I discovered his drug problems, in favor of Barry Bonds (who, while his nastiness is overrated, is certainly not in line for such a distinction). Drabek is somewhat forgotten now (I did see him in an interview or two with his son, who I believe was drafted last year), but he won the Cy Young in 1990 (before I started paying attention), and pitched well for the Pirates in the postseason in 1990 and 1991 (taking a tough-luck complete-game loss in each series, for a combined 2-2 record despite an ERA of 1.15 those years), pitching less well in the 1992 NLCS, but not as poorly as his 0-3 record might indicate (overall, he was 2-5 in the postseason, with a 2.05 ERA). He had only one good year after leaving the Pirates (the strike year, though despite his 9-18 record in 1993, his ERA was above league average, adjusted for ballpark), and his post-strike years are best left unmentioned.

Steve Phillips has a poor write-up of the Rangers' playoff chances. He says that if you consider the Yankees to have a chance at the postseason, you have to say the Rangers do as well. Well, yeah, they do have a non-zero chance, but what's this business of comparing them to the Yankees? The Yankees are three games back of the wild card, and 5.5 back in the division, while the Rangers are 6.5 back in the wild card and 12 back in the division. Moreover, we're far enough into the season that run differential matters, and the Rangers are -30 while the Yankees are +54. The Rangers do have a more favorable home-road split remaining, but he doesn't use this to make his point. It seems that we're supposed to believe him primarily on the evidence that he said so, with secondary evidence that they have a high waiver priority than the Yankees. A higher waiver priority is not nothing, but it's unlikely to be enough for the Rangers to make up the 3.5 games they're behind the Yankees, let alone the 6.5 for the wild card.

One other thing I think I neglected to mention: Barry Zito nearly made it through July without a loss. After losing 12 games in the first three months, his only July loss came in his last start of the month, and he's 3-1 since June, with a not terribly impressive 3.77 ERA (coming in three games in San Francisco, one at Shea, and one at San Diego -- pitchers' parks, all, with only one opponent with a good offense (Mets)).

Trade Deadline Thoughts

2008-08-01T08:40:00.002-07:00

I seem to recall a Jayson Stark column from about a month ago stating that the trade deadline is overrated, that big deals rarely get done. I agree -- those big names rarely move, at least in any sort of quantity. This year was one of those rare years.

Stretching back to early July, we've seen CC Sabathia, Rich Harden, Mark Teixeira, Ken Griffey, Jr., Manny Ramirez, and Ivan Rodriguez all change teams, along with lesser names like Jason Bay, Xavier Nady, Damaso Marte, and Jon Rauch. The first four players of the former group, along with the four players of the latter group, all had a fairly high level of trade buzz, so it's not surprising that any of them got traded, though it's surprising that all of them did. Ramirez wasn't really on anyone's trade radar until this week, and there was a mixed level of trade expectation right through the deadline (and mixed reports coming out right past the deadline, as well, since it wasn't formally announced until an hour later ... I heard someone saying that the Dodgers got Bay, along with the then-rumors of the Dodgers getting Ramirez, which, combined, seemed ... unlikely). Ivan Rodriguez to the Yankees seemed to take everyone by surprise; there were some rumors about the Marlins trying to acquire him, though.

I believe the biggest trade winner has to come down to the Cubs, Brewers, or Yankees. The Cubs and Brewers each added a frontline starter, which can be huge for the playoffs (the Brewers also added Ray Durham, who could be useful, but is unlikely to make a major impact). The Yankees shored up their outfield and catching with Nady and Rodriguez, and subtracted Farnsworth from their bullpen while adding Marte. While Rodriguez's reputation outstrips his ability now, he's still an upgrade over whichever Molina brother the Yankees are trotting out there (Jose, I think), and while Farnsworth isn't the horrible pitcher that fans and the media often portray him as (3.65 ERA in the American League, with a home pallpark that favors hitters, and nary a blown save this season), the Yankees were eager to acquire a quality lefty reliever (Marte had a 3.47 ERA with the Pirates, so I wouldn't say he's better than Farnsworth, just lefty). The Yankees filled every hole they have except starting pitching, and they do have Hughes and Kennedy rehabbing in the minors, who should each pitch better than their early-season-(injured-)selves, plus there's the possibility of an August deal for Washburn (who's certainly not close to the Sabathia/Harden caliber, but I'd trust him more than Sidney Ponson).

The biggest deadline oddity, aside form the Astros' seeming belief that they were a Randy Wolf and a LaTroy Hawkins away from playoff contention, is probably the lack of moves from the Mariners. They moved Rhodes, sure, but big deal (or, perhaps I should say, small deal). Obviously, it's hard to move an injured player (Bedard), but they should have moved Ibanez or someone. Perhaps the lack of action is due to uncertainty in the ownership (they're selling, I believe), and a GM with the word interim hung around his neck.

The Teixeira trade provides much of the offensive upgrade the Angels needed. The Griffey trade ... well, that one was just odd. I'm rather surprised that anyone took Griffey.

In non-trade news, the Cubs had a four-game sweep of the Brewers, in Milwaukee. This was very important for the Cubs, as the Brewers had pulled into a tie for first before the series (though they were one game out when the series started, as the Cubs had won and the Brewers lost on Sunday).

Updating a previous item, I mentioned that three players had previously surpassed the former strikeout record in a single season before; I guessed early 1950's, but should have remembered it was the early 1960's. With the expansion to 162 games a season, the strikeout record fell in 1961, 1962, and 1963, with the last year containing what were the three highest strikeout seasons of all time. The records of 1961 and 1962, plus one of the 1963 marks (off the top of my head, 141, 142, and 144), were below the per-game level of the previous record of 138 which had been held by Vince Dimaggio. In a ten-year stretch, the strikeout mark went from 138 to the 189 of Bobby Bonds in 1970.

A Mid-Season Baseball Report

2008-07-26T09:35:00.002-07:00

I meant to do a half-season update around the all-star break, but, well, didn't.

Speaking of the all-star break, Uggla's performance was really something. His three errors, three strikeouts, and a GIDP were not only unprecedented in All-Star history, but, according to Elias, has never happened in a regular-season or post-season game, either.

Back on the game, I wasn't able to watch it as I was working that night, but I do have a radio at work and was able to listen to part of it. I listened starting in the bottom of the second, heard several innings, stopping shortly before the American League scored their first run. fter attending to other matters, I turned it back on in the bottom of the eleventh and listened through to the end. It was quite an amazing game; I only wish it had gone on a bit longer, as another inning or two would have brought position players in to pitch. On the radio, the announcers had started to mention the possibility of another tie, which, while very unpleasant, at least would have been more defensible than the 12-inning one from a few years ago. In some post-game write-up, I read that Bud Selig was basically ordering them not to let it end in a tie, but as that was not widely reported, and not sourced in the article, it might have been merely conjecture.

On the ever-exciting strikeout front, Ryan Howard has slowed down his pace, but should still pass 200, with a current projection of 212. However, he might not even lead the majors with that figure, as Jack Cust has picked up his pace, and is currently projected to wiff 206 times. They might not even be the only players joining a newly-minted 200-strikeout club, as Mark Reynolds is on pace for 197. Three players passing the single-season strikeout record would be pretty amazing, but it actually would not be unprecedented. My notes on the matter are currently at work, but there was one season, I think in the early 1950's, which saw three or four players surpass the previous record. The strikeout record also seems to be broken in spurts, with several consecutive or near-consecutive seasons seeing it broken followed by the record laying dormant for a decade or three. Again, my notes on the matter are at work. Perhaps I shall retrieve them and make a post on the history of the strikeout record. The Diamondbacks were on pace to become the first team with three players to each strikeout 160 times or more, but the injury to Justin Upton will hurt their chances, unless he's activated very soon (Chris Young has also fallen a rounding error behind the pace).

My beloved Cubs still have the best record in the National League, though not the majors anymore. However, they're only one game ahead of the Brewers in the division, with the Cardinals not far behind. As they've played better at home than on the road, I'm hoping they can pull it out and win the division, though, failing that, I'm confident they can hold off the Cardinals (and other also-rans) for the wild card.

The Diamondbacks have unsurprisingly fallen back to Earth. That entire division is an unbelievable mess, especially considering that it was considered one of the strongest in baseball entering the year. The Dodgers would have an easier time winning if they dumped Andruw Jones. They need to sign a new center fielder this offseason -- third time's the charm. One of the biggest surprises in the division is that Greg Maddux only has three wins. He's nowhere near his old self, true, but he hasn't pitched that poorly this year, he's just received poor run support.

In the NL East, the race between the Mets and Phillies has been good; I think the Marlins aren't really legitimate contenders, and the Braves have been very unlucky. Johan Santana has not rebounded from what was, for him, a subpar year last year, but he's still been very good; unfortunately, too many people look at won-loss to determine how good he's been, without realizing that he's received atrocious run support.

In the AL East, we've gone through the annual ritual of all the pundits, and many fans, considering the Yankees out of the race by Memorial Day. Currently, however, they're three games back of the Rays for the division, and two games behind the Red Sox for the wild card. They've had more than their share of injury problems (Matsui, Posada, and Hughes being the most notable long-term injuries, plus a slew of shorter ones), and players giving subpar performances (most notably their double-play combination of Jeter and Cano, and their two rookie starting pitchers in their opening day rotation, Hughes and Kennedy), but they're quite in it, and just picked up Nady and Marte from the Pirates, which should be a boost. The bird teams aren't really worth talking about, except perhaps to note that Halladay has been awesome, with seven first-half complete games, which ties his second-best single-season performance, and gives him a good chance at his first 10 CG season.

The AL Central has been one of the screwiest divisions (along with the NL West; I can't quite decide which is screwier). The White Sox have played well above their level, and the Indians well below theirs (though bad luck has factored in the latter team's performance). The Tigers have fallen short of the expectations of even those who knew their pitching wasn't good enough to match the pre-season hype surrounding the team. The Twins have played better than most people predicted, but they seem to have a habit of doing that.

The AL West is the only division with four teams that are off their run-differential expected won-loss records by at least four games -- a fact made more impressive by it being the only division with only four teams. The Angels exceed theirs by eight games, the Rangers by five, while the Athletics fall short by five games and the Mariners by four. While the Mariners, like the Tigers, were overhyped entering the year, they, like the Tigers, have greatly underperformed even the more level-headed predictions of their performance. It looks like Thigpen's save record is finally falling, as Francisco Rodriguez already has 43 saves and is on pace for 68, which would shatter the current mark of 57. I've always been amazed that the record hasn't fallen sooner. Thigpen was always sort of an odd holder for that record, too, as his career save total (off the top of my head) was only 201. Actually, I decided to go look him up; I was right on his career saves total, but as for single-season totals, he only had three other 25-save seasons, which came in at 34, 34, and 30. The fifty save mrk has been reached nine other times (including twice each of Mariano Rivera and Eric Gagne), and the closest anyone has come is 55 (Gagne in 2003 and Smoltz in 2002). For all practical purposes, save records began in 1990, and that's when Thigpen set the record (shattering the previous record of 46). A quick glance over the leaderboard shows only Jeff Reardon, Dave Righetti, Dennis Eckersley, Dan Quissenberry, Bruce Sutter, Steve Bedrosian, and Mark Davis (who wins the "one of these things doesn't belong" prize, as he had less than 10 career saves) reaching the 40-save mark before 1990, with twice each for Quisenberry and Reardon, for a total of nine. The years 1990-2007 saw 101 40-save seasons, plus nine players are on pace for 40 saves this season alone (including Rodriguez).

In other news, I've heard that a sticking point in trade talks to acquire Brian Roberts is the Cubs don't want to give up Jason Marquis; if true, I only have this to say: "Give him away! Give him away now!" Marquis is ... not good. Roberts, on the other hand, is good. The only problem I really see in acquiring Roberts would be where to put all the players, but I see the most likely solution being keeping Theriot at short, Soriano in left, moving Fukudome to center, and DeRosa to right, with Lee, Roberts, Ramirez, and Soto occupying first, second, third, and catcher, respectively and obviously.

The Diamondbacks seemed to get Rauch pretty cheaply from the Nationals, and the Yankees did likewise with Nady and Marte from the Pirates. While the return was low, at least the teams seemed smart enough to trade them for something. The Nationals have been hanging onto their players at the deadline recently, and signing some to unwise contract extensions (the trend has continued this year with Christian Guzman). The Pirates ... well, they're just a mess in every which way.

The Astros are delusional and decided to add Randy Wolf.

The Phillies got Joe Blanton, who is terribly overrated. An improvement over Adam Eaton, sure, but that's really all the team can say it did: improve their fifth starter.

The Brewers acquired Ray Durham while they were playing the Giants. I'd like to see a repeat of an event that's previously happened -- though I can't recall when, what teams, or what players -- with two teams trading players between games of a doubleheader against each other.

Dress Up As a Cow and Other Links

2008-07-11T04:53:00.002-07:00

Dress up as a cow today, and Chik-Fil-A will give you a free meal. I'm sure you've all been looking for an excuse to bring your cow costume out of storage.

A court in the United Kingdom has ruled that Pringles are not potato chips. Potato chips are subject to a steep tax there (17.5%), so Proctor & Gamble is happy with this ruling. In other news across the pond, toddlers who dislike ethnic food are racist. If you know a toddler that complains about such food, turn him over to the thought police immediately. The United Kingdom's top judge says that Sharia law should be used there. Also, the moon was mistaken for a UFO. It was not flying, it was orbiting, so I guess that made it, for a time, a UOO.

The definitive ruling is out: toilet paper should be hung in the overhand fashion.

Some Germans plan to give the vote to babies. Given how seriously they seem to be taking the vote, babies could not take it any less seriously.

We have yet another example of the incompetence of state-run health care, this time from Canada.

The New Yorker has a story on itching. What interested me most was not the story so much as the last paragraph of the first section (right before the second oversized I): a woman scratched through her skull and into her brain.

For those of you tired of nudist squirrels, Archie McPhee sells squirrel underpants. They sell some interesting things there. I must admit, on a past visit to their site, I was very intrigued by the idea of purchasing a set from the Cubes collection and setting it up in my cubicle at work.

A woman was found in her home in Croatia recently -- 42 years after she died.

The Virginian-Pilot will publish a list of "dumb laws" one year from now (check the copyright date at the top). However, some of the laws strike me as reasonable. There's a law against driving your car on sidewalks, for example. There's apparently a law in Tallahassee allowing sex with porcupines (though I wonder if that was a typo); personally, I think anyone who does is likely to get what they deserve.

If any pro-abortion person tries to argue that nobody uses abortion as birth control, show them this table from the Centers for Disease Control showing that 8% of abortions are performed on women who have had at least three previous ones. More surprising are other tables showing that nearly a fifth of abortions are performed on married women (for those whose race was listed as "other", this rises to over one third), over 12% are performed on women who have had at least three kids (from live births), and over 10,000 were performed after some level of viability had been attained.

Chess boxing has become popular. Well, okay, not popular, but some people are doing it.

One link I've had sitting around for quite awhile: The Omaha Royals are threatening to move if the city builds a new stadium. Yes, that's right -- if they do build a new stadium.

Cubs Acquire Harden

2008-07-10T08:28:00.002-07:00

I have some mixed feelings about the Harden acquisition. On the one hand, he can be quite dominant. On the other, he's often injured. As a Cubs fan, I've seen this a lot recently with Kerry Wood and Mark Prior. After both being reasonably healthy in 2003 (healthy enough to only narrowly avoid a trip to the World Series), the last four years have seen plenty of injuries to those two, and Prior hasn't thrown a pitch this year, and won't -- but he's not our problem anymore.

I like Matt Murton, and because of that, I was actually glad to see him go. I know that sounds odd, but the Cubs have misused him and he deserves a shot to play regularly, which I think he'll get in Oakland.

Sean Gallagher is the one player I have some regrets about giving up. He's pitched fine in ten starts this year (not great -- don't misunderstand me), and he's only 22. In fact, compare the season he's had so far with Harden's season when he was 22: 58 2/3 innings with 58 hits, 6 homers, 22 walks, and 49 strikeouts to 189 2/3 innings with 171 hits, 16 homers, 81 walks, and 167 strikeouts. Also, Oakland's park is pitcher-friendly, while Wrigley Field is hitter-friendly. Gallagher has a much smaller sample size, of course, but his rates compare pretty well with Harden's from the same age. I'd also like to point out that Harden's age-22 season was his only, as yet, "full" season, when he made 31 starts (he has yet to make 20 in any other season). I've seen the Mulder trade mentioned, in which Oakland traded the big-name pitcher and got Dan Haren back (who has since made his own name big). Gallagher is the one player who could make the Cubs regret this trade. The Cubs should have tried some sleight of hand to get Billy Beane to take Jason Marquis instead.

Eric Patterson had only very limited major league playing time with the Cubs. He didn't hit particularly well (.239 AVG, .348 SLG in 46AB over the last two years) but did draw five walks this year, which makes him better qualified to bat leadoff than Alfonso Soriano.

I don't have much to say about Josh Donaldson, the minor-league catcher the Cubs gave up; I heard that he wasn't performing up to expectations, but he was only drafted last year (I think), so we'll see.

As for Chad Gaudin, the reliever the Cubs also acquired in the deal, he doesn't seem particularly special. He's not a bad reliever, certainly, but not someone who has me particularly excited, either. He was used as a starter earlier in the year, and had four quality starts (three of which were good) and two starts in which he fared ... less well. He wasn't severely pounded in either of those two starts, though.

As a side note, I noticed that ESPN has already changed their picture for Harden to reflect his new team, but has not done so for any of the other players.

Lots of Links

2008-07-04T06:47:00.003-07:00

I haven't posted in awhile, so here are some of the various links that I've collected since last time.

Researchers have discovered George Washington's boyhood home. It turns out that it was on the farm he had lived on.

A man saved a bear from drowning. That headline might go beyond "man bites dog" territory.

Fred Thompson has an excellent take on the lousiness of the recent Boumediene v. Bush Supreme Court ruling (the recent Gitmo case). Are we sure that it's too late to make him our presidential nominee?

Will Smith believes that Barack Obama has made it good to be an American again. For those of us that remember some of the inane racial commentary from a few episodes of his tv show, this is hardly surprising.

Peder Zane documents the joys of biking to work, in video form.

It turns out that wind power is unreliable, pricier, and emits more carbon dioxide than promoters would have you believe. It's less surprising to those of us who have been following the matter. Money quote: "Windfarm output is never zero. Sometimes it's less."

A UK muslim man is outraged that his wife's driving instructor was a man undergoing a sex change instead of a woman. In other UK sex change news, the procedure was approved for a 12-year-old girl. I would say that the girl should see a psychiatrist instead, but their profession actually supports such procedures. Honestly, how many more obvious indicators of psychological problems are there than not being able to cope with your own gender?

Leftist wacko -- err, Democrat Congresswoman Maxine Waters threatened to nationalize America's oil industry.

The search for the Titanic was actually a cover-up for the search for sunken nuclear submarines.

Christians are not welcome in certain areas of Britain. Police there would rather roll over and die than do their job.

For those who have a National Journal subscription, or, much more likely, access to computers that do (e.g., ASU's computing commons), you can see that the much-hyped claims that one quarter of teenage girls have an STD are false.

The music video that's taking the world by storm: I Will Derive (to the tune of I Will Survive).

A Frenchman spent fifteen years creating a miniature version of Paris in his backyard.

Cracked takes a look at five strange holidays.

A video showing how to balance seventeen dominos on a single domino, for all those times in your life when you need that skill.

Scientists are hard at work trying to harness the energy of breast motion. At least, that's what they claim they're doing.

A car that runs on water.

Human ovulation caught on film, and tests for new moon rovers, in this video from New Scientist.

Someone built a LEGO Kennedy Space Center with 750,000 bricks. It includes a space shuttle that's over six feet long, and the entire complex is over 1,500 sqare feet. Lower on the page is a 1,300,000-brick soccer stadium, complete with 30,000 mini-figs. A group of British LEGO employees assembled a group of 35,310 Star Wars Clone Troopers that somehow raised money to benefit the National Autistic Society. Also in the UK, a record for tallest LEGO tower was set, at approximately 100ft. Back stateside, a LEGO boulder was produced, a la Indiana Jones, and rolled down a hill in San Francisco ... into a car.

The results of all mythbusters episodes in one handy location. It's not quite as fun as watching the show.

High-tech Japanese toilets consume 4% of household energy there, and other neat facts.

You can use a 9-volt battery to up your brain power. I can't wait for the first person who realizes that it doesn't up their brain power enough, with tragedy ensuing.

A city council has decided to dye dog poo pink in an effort to shame the owners into cleaning up after their dogs. This does not strike me as a successful policy, but it does strike me as an amusing one.

A video knife safety guide. The fourth video really does make me want a knife.

A bar graph of tooth loss by state. Unsurprisingly, southern and border states lead the way. The most tooth loss outside that region is in Kansas. Most-toothed state is Connecticut, followed by Utah.

Italian soldiers are being beaten up by a 77-year-old Japanese woman. I'm not sure if it says more about the soldiers or the woman.

Photographs showing change in New York City skyline c.1883 and 1930.

An overview of New Jersey Governor Corzine's efforts to use fiscal pressure to get small towns in his state to merge, under the rationale that small towns are fiscally inefficient. He wants to see minimum populations of 10,000, but the cost per capita only goes up for much smaller towns (under 2,000 population), and the lowest cost per capita is in towns of 6,000-15,000. Perhaps he should force larger towns to break up as well, while he's at it.

An old story about an attorney who accidentally sued himself.

The out-of-control parent trend has hit Japan, where one school play had 25 Snow Whites because selecting only one girl for the title role would be "unfair".

German nursing homes are using fake bus stops to stop Alzheimer's patients from wondering off.

I Love the Cubs, but, Man, They Do Some Dumb Things

2008-05-15T13:54:00.004-07:00

Like sign Jim Edmonds. San Diego's desperate for hitting; if they thought he could provide it, they would have kept him. Plus, his play in the outfield has been ... not good. Among those doing a better job in the field is ... Felix Pie, whaddya know! I fear that the Cubs are on their way to screwing up Pie's development as much as they have Matt Murton's (well, not so much development as screwing around with his playing time -- after posting an OPS+ of 104 in 144 games as a 24-year-old, with average fielding, he only received 235 at-bats last year, and just 14 so far this year). Pie currently leads Edmonds in AVG/OBP/SLG, and, lest you think Edmonds playing in Petco had anything to do with it, Pie also leads him in OPS+. Admittedly, Pie's OPS+ stinks, but if you're willing to dismiss Edmond's due to small sample size (and the possibility that an injury was hampering him), shouldn't you be willing to give Pie more of a chance? In his time in the minors last year, he hit .362/.410/.563, so it doesn't seem like he has a lot to work on down there, he just needs to get used to major league pitching. Plus, the Cubs are 25-16, which is the second-best record in the majors behind the Diamondbacks (who are 25-15 heading into their game tonight). It's not like Pie is holding them back. Now, I agree that teams should always be looking for ways to improve, but it's unclear to me that dropping a developing 23-year-old from the roster in favor of a guy who turns 38 next month, whose career is in a downward spiral, and who was already a below-average player last season, is any improvement.

On to other baseball stuff ...

Random fact: in the Cubs' first twelve games, they had four different pitchers record at least one save.

Carlos Delgado's agent is insane. Or possibly in elementary school. And certainly illiterate.

The Reds batted out of order the other day -- and this isn't the first time this has happened to a Dusty Baker team. I'm really amazed that it happens at all in the majors. I mean, Little League, yeah, you expect an occasional screw-up, but the majors? C'mon.

I was surprised to see that Gagne and Isringhausen both pretty much asked to be removed from the closer role. They've both been bad, but when do you see anyone do that? After pitching a poor eighth inning today, Isringhausen's ERA is an even 8. He also has five losses, which leads the majors among relievers (Chad Qualls of the Diamondbacks has four, along with Joe Thatcher of the Padres), and is tied for second overall in the National League (there's one guy who likes Zito's performance). Gagne, on the other hand, turned around a couple days later and asked for the position back. He got it, and it worked out fine for the first game, but I don't see that lasting. I would've loved seeing Riske (pronounced like risky) as the closer, as it strikes me as a great closer name, right up there with Putz. Gagne and Isringhausen are tied for the major-league lead with five blown saves apiece (technically, Isringhausen was credited with a sixth today, but if there's no intent to let you stick around to get credit for a save, you shouldn't get credit for a blown save, either).

I picked up Brian Wilson in most of my fantasy leagues, not because he's the best closer (by any means), but because, given his team's offense, he should get plenty of save opportunities. I've been exaggerating a bit and saying that he'll get fifty saves, but, at the quarter-season mark, he's on pace for 48, so 50 is certainly possible. I have thought, in non-exaggerating terms, that as long as he stays healthy and keeps his position, he'll get 40 saves with a good shot at 45.

Joe Sheehan shares my thoughts on Bonds. Not just that some team should, from a baseball standpoint, sign him, but that he's not the defensive liability he's made out to be, nor the pr problem, nor clubhouse problem, nor whatever. Don't get me wrong, he is a defensive liability, but he wouldn't be the worst left fielder in either league. As for the clubhouse presence, most of the Bonds naysayers just assume that his entourage will come into the clubhouse with him, without noting that the Giants kept out the entourage last season, and any signing team can do the same. All the Bonds coverage irritates me for two reasons: I hate bad analysis with a burning passion; and, Bonds is being made out as the steroids scapegoat -- or if not the, then at least the primary one. Scapegoating is bad.

Jose Lopez has a higher batting average than on-base percentage (.315/.313). Hard to do. Mariano Duncan was able to do it over the Phillies portion of his 1995 season (.286/.285 in 201 PA (no walks, one HBP, one SH, three SF)) before walking five times in just 29 games with the Reds. Still, that's the only entry of 200 or more plate appearances that I know of where the batting average exceeds the on-base percentage. Lopez currently has 180 PA, and I'll be sure to (at least somewhat) keep an eye on this.

My prediction that Ryan Howard would fall short of 200 strikeouts is in desperate need of some DL time for him. Jack Cust doesn't look like he'll play enough to reach 200. Adam Dunn, while struggling at the plate, is striking out surprisingly little (for him), and is on pace for a career low for a full season. Diamondback players are striking out a lot, with Mark Reynolds second in the majors with 55 (striking out at a higher rate (albeit slightly) than Ryan Howard), Chris Young is fourth with 47, and Justin Upton is tied for tenth with 40 (all totals prior to Thursday night's game).

Unlike Ryan Howard, Alex Rodriguez has gone on the DL, which makes my prediction of him missing the ESPN fantasy predicted stats all the more likely. However, he was on pace to miss even before then, and I say that his 162-game pace will still fall short at season's end.

Zambrano and Owings each have one homer so far, on pace for the minimum of four I predicted for each. Both are behind Matt Cain, however, who has two (which is now half his career total). Perhaps Cain is coming into his own as a major league batter (in terms of being a pitcher, at least). He always struck me as a pitcher likely to put up a few homers.

I'm disappointed to see that there's no longer local broadcast coverage of Diamondbacks games. The only broadcast games are the FOX game of the week. Looks like another reason I should get satellite.

Heathen Ministers, a Robotic Squirrel, and a Redneck Mansion

2008-05-08T15:05:00.004-07:00

A minister of the United Church of Canada believes that the church needs to get past the whole Jesus thing. She describes Jesus as a "Middle Eastern peasant with a few charismatic gifts and a great posthumous marketing team." While she believes the church should rid itself of the Bible, the Cross, and the whole of its identity, it's not very clear what she would replace it with. She appears to be a proponent of a One World Religion, which would believe everything, and, therefore, nothing. At that point, why not just bring back the Greek gods, or some such? True, she wouldn't believe in any of them, but she doesn't believe in what is supposedly her own religion now. Under the Greek system, you'd have harvest gods for your farmers, vegetartians, and all; fertility gods for couples, or, as we shouldn't judge, any group of one or more persons, or even for those who want to get it on with temple prostitutes (somehow, temple prostitution seems right up this woman's alley (note: I'm in no way saying that she'd be one, just that she'd be sympathetic with such a thing)); sea gods for seafaring folk; and all the rest. At least then, she'd be honest about her heathen ways. Or, perhaps she could strike up a friendship with the ordained Episcopalian minister who is also a Muslim.

Speaking of Christians that are also Muslim, Daniel Pipes has a roundup of some quotes from those who say Barack Obama was a Muslim as a youth in Indonesia. These aren't namesless individuals whispering it behind the scenes, nor political hacks trying to destroy his chances at being President, but actual people who knew him back then, who have been quoted on the record. Given his age at the time (this was at age four through ten, or six through ten, or some such), I wouldn't hold that he was ever a full-fledged follower of Islam. However, it's dishonest for him to deny the past as he's done, assuming the statements from those quoted are correct. Given the number of statements, I'm inclined to believe there's something to them.

Researchers at Hampshire College are trying to get Rocky the robotic squirrel to interact with real squirrels. I appreciate the references to Caddyshack and Rocky and Bullwinkle in the comments section. Incidentally, I finally saw Caddyshack for the first time earlier this year.

Michael Franc has an article that's a must-read for anyone who thinks that the Democrats are the party of the little man and the Republicans are the party of big, bad business men.

We can improve the real estate market if we make mortgages out of corn.

Orson Scott Card has a few things to say about J.K. Rowling suing the publisher of a companion book to her series.

Someone created a video of an Americentric history of war since World War II (inclusive), with the various nations represented by foodstuffs associated with them.

Ohio's Attorney General Marc Dann is corrupt, and has refused to resign (he's a democrat, naturally). It's unclear if he intends to stand by that refusal or is only delaying a resignation until such date as Ohio's governor (another dem) can appoint a successor for the remainder of his term, rather than merely until this fall's election, which will have an election for the post if the position is vacated soon enough. The Cleveland Free Times has some of the seeider details of the rampant sexual harassment in his office. The story has the state chair for the Dems defending Dann, but he has since called on him to resign, with the call also coming from the governor, four other statewide elected officials, and the Dem leadership in the state legislature.

The Top 10 Things environmentalists need to learn. I'd probably add something about an overreliance on, er, questionable science, but it's not a bad list.

There's a website devoted to truckspills.

Dwarf crime is a growing problem. Yeah, I'm a sucker for the headline.

I've always loved sand sculptures. My own abilities, however, are limited to making sculptures of piles of sand.

Propaganda posters are interesting. Here's a collection of World War I propaganda posters from several countries.

A photo of a "redneck mansion." Given the lack of cars on the lawn, I'm inclined to believe it's a set-up.

Some guy has a massive collection of Star Wars toys.

Scientists caught a seal sexually assaulting a penguin. I really don't have anything to say to that.

The Germans have made a smell-phone. As useless tech gadgets go, this is one of them.

Democrats have been using the argument that it would take ten years to get oil from ANWR in order to argue against drilling for over ten years now. Jay Leno has caught on. I've seen several estimates of less than ten years, but that doesn't change the fact that they've been using the argument for longer than the time period it would take to start retrieving oil.

Stephen King has decided to malign the armed services. Jerk.

The New York Times published an article about all those poor rich people facing foreclosure. It turns out that nearly all of them have avoided being foreclosed on, but still -- those poor, poor people.

Cindy Crawford is pontificating on the environment. They claim that Americans use 50 billion plastic water bottles each year, which produced this money quote from Crawford: “Fifty billion in America and only 50 percent are recycled. So that’s like 38 billion that aren’t recycled.” What a spokesmodel.

Chemistry's Great Failing

2008-05-05T06:28:00.003-07:00

A discussion of Avogadro's number (or Avogadro's constant, as some fashion it) yesterday led me to look up what it was, exactly, as I was only able to recall 6.022 x 10²³. Well, I discovered that me not knowing it wasn't a big deal, as even scientists don't know it. Scientists' best expression of it seems to be:

(6.022 141 79 ± 0.000 000 30) x 10²³

When your "constant" involves a plus-or-minus sign, you have a few issues. I hereby declare this to be the great failing of chemistry. I could blame the physicists, or split blame between the groups, but I'll stick with the chemists.

Now, part of the reason they don't have an exact measurement, is because there is no stable measurement for a gram, which is something I already knew if I'd bothered to think about it. A "standardized" kilogram exists in France, which is supposed to be the basis for all metric weights worldwide, but its weight in reality fluctuates, as cleanings remove weight and contamination increases it. Still, you would think that science would be able to do better than merely getting within 30 quadrillion of the true value (a spread of 60 quadrillion).

I'll give chemists three months to get this worked out or disband their discipline.

Links to Assorted Odds and Ends

2008-05-01T22:03:00.002-07:00

I'm surprised at how long it took the national media to latch onto the story of the Republican candidate who spoke at a birthday party for Hitler. Tony Zirkle is, well, an idiot. Thankfully, he's only a primary candidate, and reason should prevail and keep him off the November ballot. He's a candidate for the seat formerly held by Chris Chocola, who was my favorite-named member of Congress prior to his 2006 electoral defeat.

Alan Keyes will not be the Constitution Party nominee for president. Instead, the nomination falls to Chuck Baldwin. No information is given on any relationship to more famous Baldwins.

Another CBS newsman demonstrates that he's an asinine moron. He said he was glad to be kidnapped in Iraq rather than taken into custody by Americans in Afghanistan. He mentions the al-Jazeera cameraman in American custody without any apparent comprehension that the man is in American custody because he was working with one of the terror groups (I can't recall which and am too lazy to look it up), not because American troops enjoy throwing random journalists into prison (if that were the case, there would be a few more examples, don't you think?). He also said he's glad he's not being "mortarboarded" at Guantanamo Bay. No unfashionable headgear for him, just a sack over his head.

Child Protective Servies can be, well, stupid. In a move worthy of a Simpsons episode (note to any Simpsons writers reading this: you already did it, look for some other idea), CPS took custody of a boy whose father had accidentally given him a hard lemonade at Comerica Park. The father had never heard of alcoholic lemonade. A security guard noticed the boy with the bottle in his hand, had the boy sent to the ballpark physician, who had an ambulance transport him to the hospital. There, blood tests showed no alcohol. That was not enough for CPS, however, which did not return the boy to his parents for two days, nor did it release him to the custody of his aunts (one of whom is a social worker and licensed foster parent). Along the way, each person said that it was probably an overreaction, but they were just doing their jobs. Bureaucracy in action.

Shoes are bad for you.

A nice writeup of Operation Pastorius -- the Nazis' mini-invasion of Long Island in 1942.

Some researchers claim that humans were on the verge of extinction 70,000 years ago. This dovetails nicely with other researchers claiming that the human species started to split 150,000 years ago, but folded back into itself.

Here's a list of seven abandoned wonders of the former Soviet Union.

I think I linked previously to a story about untapped oil in North Dakota and Montana. Well, here's a report from the U.S. Geological Survey.

A man tunnelling under his house in London gets in trouble with the government -- to the tune of nearly 300,000 pounds.

Some people decided to study the circulation patterns of a chain e-mail.

Another study says that China has passed the U.S. as a "carbon polluter" -- so be sure to tell all those whiny people who say that the U.S. tops the field.

I gotta admit, this is a pretty awesome Spiderman tattoo.

One internet company has apparently made e-cards for notifying people that you have an STD.

A man who was bicycling because he lost his driver's license due to too many drunk-driving arrests was killed by a drunk driver. Not quite sure what to say to that.

Scientists are somewhat baffled by an all-female fish species.

This shouldn't really surprise anyone, but Jeremiah Wright inaccurately quoted the Bible the other day. It was not a matter of saying something that wasn't there, but taking it out of context to drastically skew its meaning.

Reposting a Tax Day Post

2008-04-15T06:48:00.002-07:00

April 15 reminds me of this classic bit from the Simpsons:

[the Simpson family is in front of the tv as a news report of people standing in line to pay their taxes is playing]

Homer: "Would you look at those morons, I paid my taxes over a year ago!"

Lisa: "Dad ..."

Homer: "What is it, sweety? Did you see a scary picture in your picture book?"

Lisa: "That was last year's taxes, you have to pay again this year."

Homer: "No, because you see, I went ahead and ... year-wise, I was counting forward from the last previous ... D'oh!"

Marge: "I put the tax forms on top of your to-do pile a month ago!"

Homer: "I have a to-do pile?" [camera pans to show huge stack of papers with a Duff beer can on top] "Marge, how many kids do we have? Oooooh, no time to count, I'll have to estimate -- nine."

Marge: "Homer, you know we don't have --"

Homer: "Shut up, shut up -- if I don't hear you, it's not illegal. Okay, I need some deductions, deductions, deductions -- ah, business gifts!" [takes down painting from behind couch and hands it to Marge] "Here you go, keep using nuclear power."

Marge: "Homer, I painted that for you."

Homer: "Okay, Marge, if anybody asks, you require 24-hour nursing care, Lisa is a clergyman, Maggie is seven people, and Bart was wounded in Vietnam."

From there, it gets complicated to describe, and is one of the better episodes.

Quotes from Simpsons episode 5F14, "The Trouble with Trillions" Season 9, Episode 20, Original airdate: April 5, 1998; Written by Ian Maxtone-Graham, Directed by Swinton Scott. ©1998 Fox Broadcasting, a division of News Corp., primarily owned by Rupert Murdoch, billionaire tyrant. Copyright subsequently renewed. Please don't sue me.

If I Posted More Often My Posts Would Be Shorter

2008-04-10T05:30:00.003-07:00

Those who even slightly follow congressional committee hearings know that they're a forum for political speeches and the display of ignorance on the part of the congressmen more than they are a forum for substantive inquiry. I believe that C-SPAN and C-SPAN II have contributed greatly to this. However, this stupidity was even on display during the Titanic hearings in 1912, when Senator William Smith (D-MI) asked whether the watertight chambers were intended to be used as refuge for passengers. Members of Congress should do their homework before a hearing. I also noticed that the New York Times write-up did not mention that Smith was a Democrat -- was it in the business of covering up Democrats' stupidity even then? (I kid, I kid.)

Monday marked the 75th anniversary of the end of Prohibition.

CBS ran a story on the earmarks of corrupt high-ranking Democrat Rep. John Murtha (D-PA). They do, of course, fail to mention that he's a Dem. My favorite part of the video is the part with Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) asking whether one of the centers receiving earmarks even exists, and the congressman (D_IN, I forget which)defending Murtha (who was not present at the time) replies "I do not know if that center exists."

In the realm of stories with internal contradictions, we hear that marriage means seven extra hours of housework for women. Early in the story, it states that marriage saves men one hour of housework, but towards the end (when readership has surely declined), it notes that married men do more housework than single men. In this write-up of the study, we find that the study did not include home repair, auto work, or "gardening" (it's unclear form the story if this means yardwork in general, or merely the gardening aspect of it) as housework, which, on average, works against men rather than women. The study does not appear to control for child care or house vs. apartment living, which would probably explain why married people do more housework than single people, or at least go a long way towards that end.

The mis-named Committee on Ethics of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued an opinion that could lead to ob-gyns losing their license if they refuse to refer their patient for an abortion, or -- in some cases -- if they do not perform an abortion themselves. In the name of not having the pro-lifer' beliefs foisted on others, the beliefs of those who believe in abortion permissiveness are being foisted upon pro-lifers. Disgusting, but predictable.

Slate has a piece on how those "promoting" health by forcing government regulations upon us, are distorting the cost of obesity. In short, while obese people cost more to treat in the near-term, their life expectancy is shorter, which saves from expensive care for diseases associated with the elderly (and also provides government savings on, e.g., the Social Security front). Similar arguments, and similar refutations, have been applied to tobacco as well. I'm certainly not encouraging obesity (or smoking), I'm just pointing out that this argument doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

Sonny Graham received a heart transplant, married the donor's widow, and then killed himself in the same manner as the donor. Weird.

Absolut put out an ad that La Raza and their fellow-travelers would enjoy. Unfortunately for the company, some other people noticed it. After trying to ignore the complaints, the Swedish company has now apologized (twice).

Ted Turner is at it again:

If steps aren't taken to stem global warming, "We'll be eight degrees hotter in 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow," Turner said during a wide-ranging, hour-long interview with PBS's Charlie Rose that aired Tuesday.
"Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals," said Turner, 69. "Civilization will have broken down. The few people left will be living in a failed state — like Somalia or Sudan — and living conditions will be intolerable."
[...]
Admitting that he's "always suffered from foot-in-the-mouth disease," Turner added, "I've gotten a lot better, though. It's been a long time since anybody caught me saying something stupid."

Wow, what can you say. All you can do is laugh that the last bit I quoted was included in the same interview.

Amazingly, Bill Cope doesn't even need to read a book to review it! I have an author-inscribed copy of the book in question -- Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg -- but I haven't gotten around to reading it just yet. I'll probably start next week. I know enough about the book, however, to know that Mr. Cope has taken a few things out of context and dishonestly distorted them (or, perhaps more accurately, since he hasn't read the book himself, he's copied from people who have done so). In short, lefties don't like it when people point out that fascism was a socialist movement.

Another instance fo blog headlines I love: Michelle [Obama] Will Steal Your Pie.

I've never been very good at the whole balancing a spoon on the end of your nose bit, so I am thoroughly shamed that a British nine-year-old has set a world record by balancing sixteen spoons on his face.

The world's fastest internet connection was used to dry laundry.

Game theory applied to drugs in sports. It's actually sort of a "well, duh" report, and much of it has been deduced by people who have never heard of game theory, but, still, it's game theory and the sports page, all rolled into one.

New Kids on the Block has gotten back together and will release a new album. No word on whether the band will take the new name Old Kids on the Block, Mid-Life Crisis on the Stage, or [insert your joke here].

You don't need college to be a billionaire. I love how Bill Gates claims he wishes he wasn't the world's richest man. There's no law making him hold onto all that money.

John Derbyshire has a nice little piece on Leonhard Euler, including the correct pronounciation of his last name, the fact that he assigned π and i their symbols, and more.

Appealing to the numismatist in me, the United Kingdom has released its new coin designs. It's an interesting concept, and, at first glance, appeals to me, but I'd like to think about it more before declaring that I like the design.

Someone took the time to create a list of seven superheroes that you won't find on the silver screen anytime soon. A few look familiar from similar lists, and were one-off characters put in a single issue rather than characters with their own comic book.

Some college students are playing quidditch -- minus the flying, of course. For those who don't know what that is, it's a sport from the world of Harry Potter, and there's really not much more I can tell you, as I have only a mild acquaintance with the movies and none with the books.

Since I need a LEGO link in each of these, here's a biochemistry lecture given by minifigs.

The Office of Spectrum Management has a nifty chart showing the allocation of various bands fo the radio spectrum in the United States.

The next time you hear a democrat complaining about how the economy is so much worse under Bush than under Clinton, send them this comparison of 1996 to 2008 (spoiler alert: the economy is better in 2008).

Links to Fill Your Weekend

2008-04-03T23:35:00.002-07:00

A fan has recreated Futurama in LEGO form, including the Planet Express building and ship, plus minifigs for all the major characters.

From child prodigy to prostitute: the sad tale of one British girl.

Google, jumping on the trendy liberal bandwagon as usual, used a black-screened page for its search engine during "Earth hour" (when people were supposed to turn off their lights for an hour as part of a further effort to "raise awareness" about global warming and all that claptrap). However, the black screen actual consumes more power.

Lots of talk about former New York governor Spitzer was in the news recently. In more recent news, the husband of Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich) demonstrates that he could get it for cheaper, and the president of Formula One shows how it can be an even bigger scandal.

The European Union has instituted some downright asinine regulations for bus drivers.

A radioactive movie set may be responsible for John Wayne's cancer. What's more, the whole thing involves Howard Hughes.

Sometimes headlines and articles don't match up very well. Recently, one headline talked about scientists finding that an asteroid had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, but the article only talks about one that hit the Austrian Alps. Unless it was one of those bouncing meteors, I don't think it destroyed Sodom or Gomorrah. Another headline declared that experts said it was okay to skip the mouth-to-mouth portion of CPR, but, when reading the article, you find that this is talking about an adult cardiac arrest, rather than all CPR (although it does say "something is better than nothing").

The news is nearly a year old, but Canada has produced a 100kg gold coin. As Americans, we should strive to top this.

The Lord of the Rings meets legal geekdom: property law as applied to LotR.

Yahoo made a list of the 10 most historically inaccurate movies. However, I wouldn't label them the most inaccurate, and it includes 2001, which is hardly fair. There also seems to be some debate over whether or not the battle depicted in The Patriot is the one the article claims; if it's a different battle (the name has slipped my mind), the depiction would be more accurate.

Famous photographs in LEGO form.

April Fools' Pranks for nerds. I like. There's also a list of pranks for your co-workers.

It's nice to see people decorating their ceiling.

A photojournal from a trip with Russian nuclear icebreakers.

As part of this blog's quest to appeal to pure lowest common denominator: giant squid sex is apparently either violent or gay. More on this as it develops.

I need one of these for each of my condiments.

Cracked has a list of five famous inventors who stole their big idea, but they seem to stretch a bit. While I'm less familiar with some of them, I've known for years (and it's widely available knowledge, even if not widely known) that Edison did not invent the lightbulb -- he merely made a longer lasting, more practical one. Moreover, the claims of Heinrich Göbel are ... iffy, as can be summarized in his wikipedia entry. I'm guessing that at least some of the other claims are similarly iffy.

A fifth grader managed to point out a mistake at the Smithsonian that had apparently gone unnoticed for 27 years.

Maine has yet to do much to stop illegal immigrants from getting driver's licenses, and some people are taking advantage (or trying to).

I link here more for the already perfect headline, than for any newsiness: Toys "R" Us Carries Lower Back Tattoo Stickers Perfect For Your Trampy Kid.

Obama bowled a 37. My bowling isn't good enough to make fun of many people, but apparently Obama is one of those people. Also note that the reporter says that Obama "laced up" his shoes, despite the fact that they were velcro.

I get rather tired of much of the "recession" talk going on. Recently example:
some guy: "You don't think we're in a recession?"
me: "I know we're not in a recession."
him, confused and flustered: "How can you say that?"
me: "Because I know what the definition of a recession is."
Is the economy spectacular? No, but it is still growing, which is the opposite of a recession. John Lott has a good piece on the media-inspired recession myth.

A Few Baseball Links

2008-04-03T01:26:00.002-07:00

John Mayer has to be one of the most entertaining baseball announcers ever.

Someone has taken the time to reconstruct baseball stadiums in LEGO form.

The Giants and Dodgers each decided to hold back their scheduled starters and bring them in in relief Wednesday night. It was ... odd.

Moises Alou now says that he wouldn't have caught the Bartman ball. Anyone who saw the game knows that wasn't what he thought at the time, and I think this is just a kind attempt to deflect blame from Bartman.

Some Yahoo writers released their predictions for 2008 standings and awards. A couple of them don't seem to know what a "dark horse" is, though.

My Annual Baseball Predictions

2008-04-01T17:06:00.002-07:00

I meant to get this posted yesterday morning, before the season really got underway (those first three games were just a sideshow), but, well, didn't.

For the predictions of others, you can see ESPN's experts' picks for playoff teams and awards, or the composite predicted standings from those experts. The Cubs are near unanimous picks for making their first back-to-back playoff appearances since they made three straight from 1906-1908. A few oddball predictions for awards, too (Manny Ramirez, MVP? I don't think so.). I also saw the predictions for some mathematician, so here they are.

My predictions for the coming season, starting with projected standings:

NL East
Mets
Phillies
Braves
Nationals
Marlins

NL Central
Cubs
Brewers
Reds
Astros
Cardinals
Pirates

NL West
Dodgers
Rockies
Padres
Diamondbacks
Giants

AL East
Yankees
Red Sox
Rays
Blue Jays
Orioles

AL Central
Indians
Tigers
Twins
Royals
White Sox

AL West
Angels
Mariners
Athletics
Rangers

As for my annual prediction of how many players will pass Babe Ruth on the career strikeout list (the hitting one, not the pitching one), it looks like a thin crop this year, despite five “active” players having between 1290 and 1300 strikeouts (Ruth’s career total was 1330). Derek Jeter and Bobby Abreu figure to pass him, but the other three are Steve Finley (still looking for a job, and he really shouldn’t be getting one), Bret Boone (trying to make a comeback after not playing in a regular season game since July 2005, and currently assigned to the Nationals’ AAA affiliate), and Jose Valentin (battling injuries and in extended spring training for the Mets, and reduced to a backup role even when healthy). Likewise, Juan Gonzalez is at 1273, but is battling injuries in his comeback attempt (a shocker!). Richie Sexson is 103 short, which he should get assuming the Mariners don’t bench him for poor play and he stays healthy. Adam Dunn is only 238 short, which might be too much even for Dunn. In short, I’d say Ruth drops three places on the alltime strikeout list this season.

Along that strikeout front, I predict that Dunn reaches the 200 mark if healthy, and Ryan Howard, while striking out often, falls short of that mark. If Jack Cust is used fulltime, I see him reaching the 200 mark, too, but the fact that he sat out the second Japan game against Boston leaves me to doubt that he’ll see enough playing time (he did pinch-hit in that game, though, and drew a walk). I’d say that he needs about 620 plate appearances to do it. He should definitely reach 180, though, and, assuming Howard and Dunn do likewise, that would make this the first season with three 180+ strikeout batters.

Peter Gammons and Peter Pascarelli predict Manny Ramirez will win the AL MVP award. I predict he will not.
Dontrelle Willis will have an ERA of 5 or higher.

Alex Rodriguez will reach none of the totals that ESPN fantasy projected for him (137 runs, 55 homers, 158 RBI, 27 steals, .316 AVG), which had him improving in four categories from his 2007 totals (143, 54, 156, 24, .314).

Having had many problems trying to predict the performance of Barry Bonds in recent years, I will refrain from making predictions on if/when/where he’ll sign with a team. I would, however, like to note that I previously pointed out that his legal issues would not be an impediment to him playing, and that seems to be going as I predicted, as the trial shouldn’t start until after the season ends. Perhaps that’s why he’s not signed yet -- too many club executives are listening to erporters who know nothing about the legal system. Moreover, they don’t know the contracts for the sport they cover very well -- standard boilerplate would (at least essentially) get the team out of the deal if Bonds were to go to jail during the season (which won’t be happening, but, hey, I’m making a point).

It looks like the White Sox might repeat as most overhyped team. I already knew the management thought last season was a fluke based on their offseason moves, but now I’m seeing various commentators also saying that it was. It wasn’t. For those who scoff at my projected rankings putting them in last place, I’d like to point out that they tied for the worst Pythagorean record in the majors last season (with Tampa Bay), and were only kept out of the cellar in their division by outplaying their Pythagorean by five games, and the Royals underplaying theirs by the same amount. The White Sox are bad.

In other overhyped offseason pitcher acquisition news, Dan Haren will not be the amazing pitcher he’s portrayed as. He will be more like the Dan Haren post-2007 all star break than the Dan Haren pre-2007 all star break. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying he’ll be a bust like Willis, I’m just saying those saying that he’s a Cy Young contender are going way too far.

Carlos Zambrano and Micah Owings will each hit at least four homers. Yes, that’s a small number, but they’re pitchers.

The Dodgers will find someone to take Juan Pierre in a trade, but they’ll have to eat most of the contract themselves.

Lots of Random Links

2008-03-27T11:23:00.003-07:00

Across the pond, there's news that Muslims will outnumber traditional churchgoers. Nothing new, really, just further evidence.

Also, "England" has become a bad word ... in England.

Fire extinguishers were ruled a fire hazard.

Thankfully, Don Young (RINO-Alaska) has a strong primary challenger for his seat in the House.

In a move that's a bad idea on multiple levels, Maryland is considering granting free college tuition to juvenile offenders.

Some rejected Star Wars merchandise (it's below the blah blah blah of the post and above the comments)

A proposed law in Florida would mandate that restaurant bathrooms have enough toilet paper. Sounds like one of the legislators had an unpleasant experience.

These people should have been much more injured than they were.

Episodes from the original Star Trek series now online.

Historical sites in LEGO form.

A portable room you can hang outside your window.

A man fatally stabbed himself while cooking.

Some research has shown shorter women live longer lives. I'm still waiting to hear about shorter men.

The 10 best sci-fi films that never existed. (language warning)

Various Google stuff.

An 81-year-old man built a robot to fire a gun at him as part of an elaborate suicide plan.

Comcast's exploration of putting camera in its cable box that would recognize the user has really put the tinfoil hat brigade into action. This goes on despite the fact that the images would not be transmitted back to Comcast. Plus, all the nonsensical talk of a police state and 1984 ignores that its a private company doing it, not the government. But, never fear -- nothing stops the tinfoil hat brigade!

How many things have to go wrong before a 13-year-old girl is pimping her peers?

The inventor of the Egg McMuffin has died. He was 89.

2008 Baseball Season -- Underway

2008-03-25T06:50:00.002-07:00

Currently, it's the bottom of the tenth, according to ESPN's website.

I've got to say, I don't care much for the scheduling, as has become an annual spring complaint, though it's slightly different this year. Having two games this week (on Tuesday and Wednesday), then having these teams return to America, play exhibition series, and then have the regular season resume on Sunday (Monday for most teams) makes little sense. Having the vast majority of teams (26, I think) begin play on the same day is a good move, but they still leave some with an off day in the middle of the opening series, and I despise off days in the middle of series. Also, it seems odd to have the Braves and Nationals play Sunday night, and then leave town to play other teams the next day. The Nationals probably won't even have 12 hours between leaving the stadium and reporting to the one in Philadelphia, due to the unusually late start time Sunday (8pm EDT), and an early game on Monday (1pm) (I figure they need to get to the stadium a couple hours before gametime).

I see that Boston has now won. Huston Street blew the save in the ninth, and then gave up a couple more runs in the tenth, and Papelbon tried to blow the save in the tenth, and seems only to have been saved by poor baserunning (Athletics making baserunning blunders ... that sounds strangely familiar ...). Glad I don't own either in fantasy play, based on their performance today. I did pick up Okajima in a league yesterday, though, which worked out quite well, as he got the win.

Jack Cust was his normal amazing self, and struck out four times. He's my early favorite for this season's strikeout king. I've seen people talking about the possibility of Ryan Howard reaching the 200 strikeout mark, based especially on his performance last year, and there's always some Adam Dunn talk, but my money's on Cust, who last season became the first player to strikeout 150 times or more in less than 400 at bats (164 in 395, in 124 games). While Howard did manage to strikeout 199 times in 144 games, his strikeout rate was much higher than normal, and I'd expect it to swing back in the direction of the previous two seasons (once every 3.12 AB in 2005, 3.21 in 2006, compared to 2.66 in 2007). Cust, on the other hand, is a Rob Deer quality strikeout machine, averaging one every 2.41 AB in 2007 after a rate of once every 2.09 AB in his career prior to 2007. The only problem with betting on Cust is that he's the only one of these big three likely to get a serious benching if he goes on a prolonged slump.

In fantasy news, I did my annual plugging of ESPN projected stats into the projected team lineups in the league I care about, and it had me winning the twelve-team league by half a point. My hitting was third-worst (though not really far below average), but my pitching was awesome. The exercise had only two players within fifteen points of my combined pitching total, and they were the two players below me in hitting. In a result I don't expect to play out in real life, the good doctor finished last, mostly due to pitching that was as bad as mine was good. The exercise did not factor in any injuries or post-draft roster moves, and was really just a simple plugging of ESPN's projected stats for the players I projected to be in each teams starting lineup, and for the pitchers, I took each teams relievers and added their top starters until I ran up against the league's innings limit. I freely admit that it's a flawed system, but it does make a decent starting point for evaluating things.

This, That, and the Other

2008-03-13T01:48:00.003-07:00

Saturday Night Live had an excellent take on Hillary's 3am phone call ad.

The LA Times reported that a California court of appeals ruled that parents could not homeschool their children if they lacked teaching credentials. Fortunately, according to Ace of Spades, that is not true, that home-schooling parents can classify themselves as a private school. I'm no expert on the matter, but I think I trust AoS over LAT. Still, it might not be a bad idea for the state legislature to clear the matter up.

A Norwegian museum director has claimed to find drawings of Disney characters by Adolf Hitler.

Deep water creatures interest me. Some new ones have been found near Antarctica.

A case of the headline saying more than the results of the actual study, people act like sheep. It says large crowds walking will follow a small minority, but the participants in the study were instructed to remain within arm's length of another person at all times. Remove that requirement, and I imagine the results would collapse.

The story of Jasper Maskelyn, a stage magician who was instrumental in aiding the British in Africa in World War II.

Lincoln portrait made from pennies.

A sixteen-year-old girl from Argentina has given birth to her second set of female triplets. The first came when she was fifteen, and she had a son at fourteen. Having seven kids before turning seventeen is pretty impressive, I must say. It appears that she is not married.

There's talk about moving stars to form shapes -- and not just so that Fry can express his love for Leela.

I've seen four-way chess and 3-D chess, but this was my first look at three-way chess.

LEGO has released a catalogue of every set they've ever produced.

A woman was pried off a toilet seat she'd sat on for two years. One of those things that make you ask why.

A Colorado school district has dropped the grade system -- both in terms of letter grades and grade levels. While I've long maintained that there have been problems in both areas, this does not strike me as a good idea, at least insofar as I doubt it will be well implemented. I could see it working in theory, with students who are motivated.

Local Election Results -- March 11

2008-03-13T01:13:00.002-07:00

Local elections were held in Maricopa County on Tuesday, with mixed results.

The Mesa mayoral race will advance to a runoff between Scott Smith and Rex Griswold. I voted for Griswold, but had no strong preference for him over Smith. I'm just glad Claudia Walters was defeated.

For the District 3 Mesa City Council race, Dennis Kavanaugh defeated Mark Yarbrough, unfortunately. Kavanaugh is a proponent of speed humps, light rail, and "public art" in addition to being an underhanded politician -- when Mesa went to a district-based city council instead of the at-large system that serves most of the valley, he tried to argue that his term from an at-large election should not count against term limits and sought reelection illegally. A court stopped him that time, but he was able to run this time after sitting out the last term.

The new zoning next to the airport was approved, as it should have been, and the budget override was approved, as it not so much should have been. It's not so much that I'm against letting the city set its own budget as I was outraged by the deceptive campaign waged by proponents of the override. I took the novel approach of actually reading the state constitution and found that many of their assertions were not true. They said that federal or state funds, along with the money from voter-approved initiatives would not allowed to be spent if the measure failed -- not so, as all three are explicit exceptions mentioned in the state constitution. In short, Mesa wanted to spend $1 billion, the budget formula would have limited them to $500 million, but there were also $400 million in exceptions, so the end result would have been approximately a 10% reduction in the city budget, which I don't think would have been a bad thing.

I was worried when I saw the results of the Tempe City Council race -- not only did Mark Mitchell (son of former mayor and current U.S. congressman Harry Mitchell) win re-election, but the county recorder's website lead me to believe that Hut Hutson had lost re-election to the at-large city council by a mere 37 votes, finishing in fourth place with 5864 votes in the race for three seats on the council. However, Mitchell was the only candidate who received enough votes to avoid a runoff, a Hutson will be one of four candidates in the runoff for the two remaining seats. Here's hoping he does better.

There were also a bunch of other races that I paid little attention to, as I have little need to pay attention to the composition of Buckeye's city council and other such matters.

Other March 4 News

2008-03-05T16:28:00.003-07:00

Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich both survived primary challenges to their House seats on Tuesday. Paul won easily, about 70-30 over his challenger, while Kucinich had under 52% at last check, but his opposition was split, so his margin was still nearly twenty points.

I don't recall if I mentioned it last month, but in Maryland's primaries, two incumbents lost (one from each party). This is exceedingly rare in a year that did not involve redistricting. I think three lost in 2006, but I'd have to double-check, and there were extenuating circumstances then (scandal, nutbag Cynthia McKinney). The Republican that lost is a RINO, but he's won enough times before that it's still surprising that he lost (in true RINO fashion, he's considering endorsing the dem in the general).

Speaking of RINO's, and going off on a tangent, the reason I refuse to donate money to the NRSC, Lincoln Chafee, is not only no longer a Republican, but he's endorsed Obama for president. Not only did the Republicans throw boatloads of money behind him in 2006, including against a more loyal primary challenger, after he refused to vote for George W. Bush in 2004 (he claims he wrote in George H. W. Bush), but he stayed a Republican for less than a year following the election, and won't endorse the "great maverick" John McCain for president. If you want to know why the national party is such a mess, it's because the grassroots don't trust it after it does damn fool things like that (not to mention several of the scandal-plagued incumbents it also spent millions defending in 2006).

March 4 Primaries

2008-03-05T15:59:00.004-07:00

Caucus results from Texas are not in yet, but we can draw a few conclusions already.

The first, and most important, is that Clinton survives and this thing is almost certainly going to the convention (which will make it an unconventional convention).

Good news for Obama is that Hillary did not win very big. She won Ohio by about ten points, and, based on the numbers I ran last night, looks to pick up 77 of the 141 delegates that were at stake there, for a net gain of 13 (UPDATE: it looks like I had initially reversed the results of one congressional district and Obama made barely enough late gains in another (12 and 19, respectively, I believe) that Hillary only received 75 out of 141 for a net gain of 9). Earlier in the night, people were talking about a gain in the 22-24 range. Hillary won the Texas primary, but not by a huge margin, and the delegate breakdown appears to be 65-61. It looks like Obama will win the caucus, and there's a good chance that his delegate margin will cancel out Hillary's margin from the primary (and possibly the net benefit for Hillary that came from her winning Rhode Island and Obama winning Vermont). So, final breakdown, Hillary gains about those 13 from Ohio, which is not much of a gain at all.

All the news sources will report that Obama still leads the delegate count, and especially the pledged delegate count. However, they neglect to mention that this is only if Michigan and Florida are not counted. When they are counted, Hillary leads in delegates, and she still leads in delegates when all the "uncommitted" delegates from Michigan are added to Obama's column (and it does not strike me as unlikely that at least a few of those will go Hillary's way). True, the current rules bar the entire delegations of Florida and Michigan from the convention, but that would be, shall we say, messy.

The way I see it, the nomination hinges on what happens with Florida and Michigan. If they are seated in full with the results of their respective January primaries, Hillary wins. If they're barred, Obama wins, and wins ugly (and to think of all the talk about Hillary winning ugly). A revote is something of a wild card. I could see Florida shaking out similarly to how it did, but Michigan seems likely to swing Obama's way, or at least move a bit in his direction, unless voters there are disgruntled about him removing his name from the ballot. Moreover, in Michigan, crossover voting is allowed, so a revote could allow people to vote in both the Republican primary (in January) and the Democrat one whenever the do-over is held. I heard about a DNC offer to pay for a new primary or caucus in Florida (I forget which), but the money offered would only cover a fraction of the normal number of precincts.

Once again, the democrats got themselves into this mess by crafting a stupid rule to bar delegations from states that selected delegates before Super Tuesday, except for a few privileged states that were not penalized at all (New Hampshire and South Carolina; I forget if Iowa and Nevada were granted exceptions or if the caucus system allowed them an end-run around the rule). Republicans had a more sensible policy of penalizing every state that selected delegates before Super Tuesday (except that it allowed that caucus loophole) by cutting the size of its delegation in half. Under the Republican rule, states were not denied representation, and were penalized equally (except for that dumb caucus loophole). Under the Democrats' rule, well, to be Orwellian about it, all states are equal, but some are more equal than others. It's part of the rank hypocrisy of the party -- they purport to stand for equality, but they're really the party of privilege.

Starvation is Bad for the Body

2008-03-02T13:34:00.003-07:00

After not eating for over 300 hours (~306.6), I decided to finally eat. I went out to Arby's with people from church and was unable to finish two regular roast beef sandwiches before feeling ill from eating too much. Luckily, no puking, which I'm sure the two girls sitting closest to me appreciated, or would if they knew how close I'd felt to it.

On the plus side, I lost some weight and saved money from not buying food. So I've got that going for me.

In the interest of full disclosure, I did take communion twice during that stretch. For those who don't attend my churhc, it is home to the world's smallest communion crackers (smaller than a Tic Tac). I don't count that as eating, but if you want to, I only went about 168 hours without eating.

RIP William F. Buckley, Jr.

2008-02-29T12:44:00.002-07:00

The leading man behind the resurgence of conservatism in the post-WWII era died on Wednesday. He was 82. In addition to praise from Republicans and conservatives, I've seen it from Joe Lieberman (who Buckley actually helped get his Senate seat), Mario Cuomo, and Chris Matthews, along with various media outlets. Too much to link to, really, but if you don't know anything about the man, look something up.

Romney Drops Out

2008-02-07T16:45:00.000-07:00

Boy, that sure was ironic (see the end of my last post for context on the complete misuse of ironic).

Various Links and Stuff

2008-02-07T15:02:00.000-07:00

It looks like 24 has lurched to the left. It was never the most well-written show, but what sold it was the so-called "rightwing" stuff in it. I'd have to agree with the article that I linked to that it's problems last season were due to poor writing and not a need to veer to the left politically (although I didn't see any of last season after the first four episodes, which weren't particularly well-written, I did hear complaints about the writing). I've heard that Lost is also suffering from bad writing, and ever more ridiculus plot twists, so it looks like the two big serialized suspense shows are approaching their end.

Here's the Great British Venn Diagram, handy for those unsure how to differentiaite between England, Britain, the British Isles, and all the rest. It's stuff I already knew, but, let's face it, Venn diagrams are cool.

Little-known histories of seven famous toys. Worth a gander.

A few Futurama cast members in LEGO form. It's the best of both worlds. Although, like many small-scale LEGO creations, don't get your hopes too high for how they look. I don't believe I have any LEGO in several of those colors (most notably Fry's hair).

It's been around for awhile, but there's also the Bible in LEGO form. They've added a number of stories in the few years since I last looked at it. It even has ratings guidelines -- NSLV, so be sure to have your parent's permission.

A brief write-up on post-micturation convulsion syndrome (AKA pee shivers).

One of the last two remaining known U.S. World War I vets has died. He was 108. The last known survivor is currently 107; the last known Canadian survivor is likewise 107 and living in the U.S. The last known German survivor died on New Year's Day at 107, and another U.S. veteran died in December at 109. Harry Richard Landis, the one who just died, never actually served overseas, but is still counted as a WWI vet by the Army. He signed up for service in WWII but was rejected as too old.

The Phoenix Suns aqcuired Shaquille O'Neal from the Miami Heat for some reason. If I was a Suns fan, I'd be pretty ticked off. Since I'm not, I'm rather amused. You know, I recall a hard (flagrant, actually) foul the Suns committed againt Steve Kerr back in 1994, I believe it was. He was in the same spot, with about the same game situation, as Jim Paxson was when he hit the three to seal the win in game 6 of the 1993 NBA Finals. Perhaps Kerr was just stewing all the years, waiting for the moment he could take his revenge. This also complicates things for a replay the Heat and Hawks need to play. Through 49 games, the Suns are outscoring their opponents 109.8-103.9ppg. Let's see where that stands at the end of the season.

Color video of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse. I'm used to seeing it in black and white, so color was interesting. Oh, and that dog it mentions the professor trying to rescue, died in the collapse, because he bit the man trying to rescue him. The collapsed portion of the bridge was found, and declared a historical landmark, but the car was never found. Trvia about the dog available here. While nobody died in the collapse of the bridge, there was one fatality during construction, three days before completion, when a worker fell twelve feet. Another worker fell 190 feet into the narrows below, but survived with minor injuries. A painter died while painting the bridge about midway through its short service life when a paint can fell on his head.

A math pun love song. I love it. Though, once again, the danger of reading the youtube comments section is demonstrated with this beauty:

Every line in this song is a math pun. You have to know math to understand it. Ironically, my math teacher was the first to mention this video. I'm not that smart, and I still thought it was funny.

That's the worst usage of "ironically" I've seen in some time. I see plenty of people confuse irony with coincidence, but this was a case of calling something ironic that was the exact opposite of irony.

Super Tuesday

2008-02-06T06:56:00.000-07:00

The media still isn't reporting exactly how many delegates each candidate won on the day, which seems like a mix between uncertainty over some of the outcomes and just not being on the ball. With that in mind, I'm unable to from a full picture of what went on, but I'll go ahead with what seem like reasonable projections of how that will all shake out.

First, my own experience -- I showed up at my polling place around 2:30pm, in the midst of something of a rush (several cars pulled in right before me and another immediately following). It was the longest wait I've ever had to vote, but not all that bad. Just over 300 ballots had been turned in before mine, though I can't speak as to the breakdown between Republicans and Democrats (though based on unopened packages of ballots I saw, along with the stack of ballots they were handing out, I'd guess it wasn't a large split, maybe 160-140). The lady started to hand me a ballot for the Dems before I said I was a Republican. At least three people seemed to have problems voting in just the time I was there. One person had her old address on her driver's license, and was asked to show two items with the new address; she only had one and said she had to leave for work, and left without voting (I believe she could have cast a provisional ballot, but the poll workers were more interested in getting something else with her current address before she left). Another woman wasn't on the rolls, but said that it had always been her polling place and was directed to another woman for assistance (not sure what happened there, but I'm guessing a provisional ballot, unless they discovered that her polling place had changed). I didn't catch what happened with another woman, but it seemed like she was a Democrat who had wanted to vote in the Republican primary. It was my first time voting at this new location, which is a Baptist church on the same street as the Baptist church that was my last polling place. Oh, and, yes, I did vote for Fred Thompson.

As to the results, I said the other day that Romney would perform "surprisingly well" in Arizona, and the buzz was certainly about that early in the evening, but that was partially because of bad exit polling that showed him tied with McCain. Last I checked, with over 90% of the vote counted, McCain led him 47% to 34%. McCain trounced Romney in delegates, as expected, but the biggest surprise was Huckabee, who spent a good portion of the night leading Romney in projected delegates. While Romney supporters are free to rejoice that McCain did not do as well as he might have, it really doesn't help them that the beneficiary was Huckabee.

As for the Democrats, Obama won more states, which will probably generate more headlines, but Clinton won the more important ones. I don't have the numbers in front of me at the moment, but I ran them earlier, and with about 1680 delegates at stake, the states Clinton won had just over 1000, while the ones Obama won had just over 640, with New Mexico too close to call. With just under of third of those delegates not yet projected to either candidate, Clinton has only a slight lead in delegates won, but I expect that to grow some (though not to a 1000-640 advanatage). As I said would be the case, it looks like Clinton has won the day, but by such a narrow margin that this race could drag out for some time. Oh, and don't fall the "analysis" that came out before Tuesday, saying that, given delegate projections based on polls, Clinton would have to win 70% of the delegates after Super Tuesday to clinch the nomination; it ignores the "super delegates" (Dem officeholders and assorted others) in counting her delegates, but not in counting the number of delegates she'd need for a majority.

Various Stuff -- UPDATED

2008-02-01T08:21:00.000-07:00

The new 2008 Topps baseball set includes a 12-card series honoring presidential candidates (six each for Republicans and Democrats). It's been awhile since I've added to my baseball card collection; I might have to do that. Cards are considerably more expensive than when I started collecting in 1991.

According to The Onion, Mitt Romney is so depressed, he's running attack ads against himself.

For those of you looking for a tattoo, I have the perfect one for you -- the Hello Kitty Darth Vader tattoo.

Someone took the time to create Minas Tirith in LEGO.

I love old computer ads. It was more expensive to get a worse product even before taking inflation into account.

A video of Tom Cruise talking Scientology. Scary.

UPDATE: more links

Cheeseburger in a can. I must agree with the poster that it's both the best and worst thing I've ever seen.

Wine for dogs and cats. Because you have nothing better to spend your money on.

Scientists explore just why water is so weird.

Disney's view of the highway of the future, circa 1958.

News from Arizona's Congressional Delegation

2008-01-31T09:41:00.000-07:00

As pointed out in my last post, one member is poised to be a major-party presidential nominee, but I thought I'd point out what else is going on with members of Congress.

In a case of giving credit where credit is due, I'll applaud my congressman (Harry Mitchell-D) for co-sponsoring (with Ron Paul) legilsation that would block Congressional pay raises.

Sen. Jon Kyl (aka our good senator) is voting against the ridiculous "stimulus" bill in Congress. While I will like the extra money (lousy government, taking too much of my money), it requires economic illiteracy to believe that this is an effective stimulant for the economy. It would be much better to cut tax rates.

My former congressman, Jeff Flake (R- AZ6), tried for a seat on the Appropriations Committee. He wouldn't fit in with many members of that committee, as he's strongly anti-pork and pro-small government.

Congressman Rick Renzi (R-AZ1) is retiring. His district is one of the more competitive in the state; he's never received 60% of the vote, and failed to even win 50% in his first election (which he won with the vote cplit about 49-46-5 R-D-L). Interesting side note: the twelve children he has with his wife Roberta are the most for any current member of congress, and their names all begin with R. On the plus side, in theory, with John McCain as the Republican presidential nominee, Republicans should have an easier time holding onto this seat and possible recapturing seats in districts 5 and 8. Of course, this is dependent on such things as actually recruiting candidates to run for those seats

And the Nominees Are ...

2008-01-31T08:39:00.000-07:00

While it's hardly formal yet, we seem to be looking at a McCain-Clinton election. Barring something major, McCain has the Republican nomination wrapped up; there's simply no way Romney (or Huckabee, or Ron Paul) manage to recover and secure the nomination, barring events that would be bizarre even by the standards of this election cycle.

It's less clear that Clinton will be the nominee, but signs are certainly pointing in that direction. Edwards dropping out before Super Tuesday (which surprised me) does not help her, but seems unlikely to stop her. Florida seems like the most instructive state when looking ahead to Feb 5, and it saw Clinton pulling about 50% of the vote with Edwards still on the ticket. Yes, there was very little "campaigning" done by Democrats there, but I'm inclined to believe that campaigning tends to be overrated in such races (except when it comes to a (perceived) lack of campaigning when other candidates are campaigning), plus, with all the states voting next Tuesday, there's very little time for campaigning in any of them, let alone all of them. Hillary's other problem comes in the form of the party rule that assigns delegates from each state on a proportional basis. While McCain, on the back of several winner-take-all primaries on Tuesday, will deliver a knockout blow to Romney, Hillary is poised to win more delegates, but hardly in knockout fashion. It will turn into more a matter of how long Obama wants to drag things out. Assuming he doesn't drop out after Tuesday (which I don't currently think he will, but, well, I didn't think Edwards or Giuliani were going to be dropping out one day after Florida), the February 12 states look very favorable to him (Virginia, Maryland, and, it's not a state, but the District of Columbia votes as well), which likely translates into dragging this whole thing into March (at least March 4, when the big prizes of Ohio and Texas vote, along with the smaller prizes of Vermont and Rhode Island).

Obama could try to drag the whole thing to the convention. While I think Hillary will achieve a majority of all delegates by that point, I'll downplay that assumption and go along with this scenario. I do not see it going well for the Democrats. Michigan and Florida will try to seat their delegates, and, if they don't, it will be bad press for the party. The Republicans are on firmer ground here, as they penalized every state that selected delegates before February 5 (although this still allowed for the sham of Iowa, and, to a lesser extent, Nevada, holding caucuses but not being penalized because they didn't officially select any delegates). The Democrats, on the other hand, picked and choosed which states they would sanction and which they would not (they allowed the states that claim a traditional spot in the process to vote early, no matter how tenuous the tradition). Moreover, Republicans penalized states by halving their delegations, while Democrats did so by barring the entire delegation. Once again, bad news for the democrats. If they let the delegates in, it benefits Hillary enormously as she gains 192 delegates and Obama only gains 80 (there are also 55 "uncommitted" delegates, which I think will break in Obama's favor but are likely to be split). If they let in the delgates, Obama's people will complain, and if they don't, the Clintons will complain some, but mostly leave it to the press to make their case for them. As much as I like rules and order, the Clintons have the better case here, due to the boneheaded way the DNC handled the situation. Playing favorites with the states and an outright ban on seating the delegates for those states that were punished were both bad ideas. Howard Dean, if he has any sense (I said if), must be hoping for Clinton to put this thing away and he doesn't have to worry about this nightmare situation where he's stuck with two bad choices.

As for me, I'll be sitting out the 2008 Presidential election. Oh, sure, I might decide to write-in Fred Thompson or something, but I'm not voting for McCain and I'm certainly not voting for Hillary (or, should he actually get the nomination, Obama). I'll still be voting down-ballot; with any luck, we'll get Mitchell out, and there are always a slew of propositions, judicial retentions, state Congress, and other such races. One note on the judicial retentions -- please do not vote straight yes like some people do. Some of these guys actually deserve to be thrown out, but nobody ever is because of all the people who vote straight yes.

On Tuesday, I'll probably vote for Fred Thompson in the Republican primary. His name is almost certainly still on the ballot, and McCain's going to win in a landslide, so it doesn't matter much. Do look for Romney to have a "surprisingly strong" finish in Arizona; there's a large Mormon population here, and McCain has ticked off his share of Arizona Republicans.

Meanderings

2008-01-12T09:21:00.000-07:00

In Britain, a marriage was annulled after the partners discovered they were twins seperated at birth. That would have to rate among the all-time most uncomfortable discoveries.

I'm a tad late to the story, but one woman in Mexico delivered her own baby -- by caesarian. There's only one word to describe that: wow.

Newsbusters has a write-up on a favorite "Republican" of the New York Times. He's managed to get an average of four letters a year published over the last five years by claiming to be a life-long Republican and then proceeding to bash Bush or make some other typical liberal point.

The Supreme Court will be ruling on the death penalty for child rape. It ruled that the death penalty was "cruel and unusual" for rape of an adult in 1977. The current court only has one member remaining from that time (Stevens). Given the current makeup of the Court, I don't think the death penalty will stand in this case. I mean, it looks like they're seriously considering whether lethal injection is "cruel and unusual" so it seems likely that, if the death penalty stands, they'll only allow a narrow group to be subject to it.

Star Trek geeks may remember Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine on the Voyager series. Well, she also played a role in the rise of Barack Obama. Now, I certainly won't hold this against her, given the details involved, and she wasn't the one who brought them into the 2004 campaign (as I recall from news broadcasts then, she played them down somewhat, and, if she wasn't supportive of her ex-husband's campaign, at least was not hostile to it). Still, it's just one of those interesting little things.

A voter being used as a poster-old-woman by opponents of the voter ID law in Indiana is registered in two states. She makes the point of the law's supporters for them.

Kucinich is asking for a recount in New Hampshire because he's apparently worried about the electoral integrity there. Someone has been drinking a bit too much of the Koolaid over the last eight years.

Algebraic surfaces.

One Last Note on Goose

2008-01-11T19:04:00.000-07:00

Before the whole thing fades away, there's just one last thing I'd like to say about Goose Gossage, or, rather, the support for him -- okay, the words of at least one of his supporters. Jayson Stark has repeatedly said that Gossage "was routinely being asked to pitch 100 to 141 innings (yep, 141) a year" (emphasis in the original). This is misleading at best and dishonest at worst. Look at his career numbers, and 100-inning seasons were more the exception than the norm. Take 1976 out of the equation, when he was a starter, and you have a cluster of seasons of over 130 IP in '75, '77, and '78. In the entire rest of his career (which stretched form 1972 to 1994), he had only one other season of 100 IP, a 102.3 effort for the Padres in 1984, after which he never even pitched 80 innings in a season. If he was "routinely" being asked to pitch 100 or more innings a season, then he was "routinely" coming up short.

Thoughts on Hall of Fame Results

2008-01-11T02:18:00.000-07:00

The Hall of Fame voting results were announced Tuesday. As expected, Goose Gossage got in, but nobody else did. Also as expected, Tim Raines was the only newly eligible player to meet the 5% threshold required to be on next year's ballot.

Jim Rice will probably make it into the Hall next year, which will be his last on the ballot either way, as it’s his fifteenth year. I researched the performance of players in their fifteenth year on the ballot going back to the 1991 election (who says bloggers never research?) and found that they tend to receive a boost of 3.2% on average, which increases to 4.3% for those who had received over 20% of the vote in the year before. It’s not a large sample size, only 19 in the 18 elections I surveyed, and I relied mostly on wikipedia to tell me which players were in their fifteenth election each year, which lacked Tony Oliva (I have since corrected the appropriate entry), so I may have missed one or two. Steve Garvey was the highest vote-getter in his fourteenth year to see his share of the vote drop in his final year on the ballot, dropping from 26% to 21.1%. On the other hand, there are candidates who have gotten closer to the 75% threshold without being elected by the BBWAA -- Jim Bunning received 74.2% in his twelfth year on the ballot, 1988, which seemed to be an abnormally good year for these players, as half of the sixteen who were on the ballot that year had their best performance. Five of the players had their best year in their last appearance on the ballot.

Prospects look considerably worse for Tommy John, who also will be in his fifteenth year on the ballot. He’s never received so much as 30% of the vote, though there’s only one year that saw him fail to get 20% of the vote. I get the impression the trend will continue next year.

Back to Rice, however; I can’t say that I’m sorry to see him disappear from the ballot. The “debate” over him has been … unproductive. There are plenty of people who are impressed by homerun and RBI totals without paying attention to things like park effects or lineup quality. I don’t mind paying attention to counting stats as long as other things are taken into effect. Instead, there seems to be a willful ignorance. Surfing the internet -- that bastion of high-minded dialogue between differing parties -- I come across comments stating that perhaps the reason behind Rice’s home-road splits are that he was just more comfortable at home, and that Fenway doesn’t magically make him better. Well, there’s nothing “magical” about it, really, but Fenway is a park that helps batters’ numbers. You might think that after more than a decade of baseball in Denver, people would start to realize that different ballparks have different effects on players’ stats.

Moreover, there’s a reaction to statistics like adjusted OPS+ that’s the equivalent of covering their ears and saying “nah nah nah I am not listening.” The “adjusted” portion means that it was ballpark adjusted, so equal batters will have equal numbers whether they’re batting in Coors or Petco. It even allows for better comparison between ages as OPS+ (as I’ll hereafter refer to it) is normalized each year, with the average hitter being 100, better hitters being higher, and worse hitters being less (ERA+ works the same way, should it later come up). Now, I realize that it has not been mainstreamed, and most people don’t immediately understand it, but you would think that, after it’s been explained, they would be able to accept it. Instead, it’s the ear covering business. They say it’s a different era, so we can’t compare Rice to modern players, but won’t listen to repeated statements that OPS+ compares players to their contemporaries and, as such, is comparable across eras (perhaps it’s not perfect, but it’s better than anything else). What modern players does Rice compare to? Well, his career 128 OPS+ is equal to those of Moises Alou and Ryan Klesko. If you’re looking for players more contemporary to Rice, there’s Keith Hernandez and Kent Hrbek. Joe Torre also had the same OPS+ from his playing days. Some people make cases for Hernandez and Torre (less for the others), but they don’t receive nearly the support that Rice does.

Rice is described as the most feared hitter during his career. At least one of my readers should remember George Brett, who was better for longer. But let’s just stick to the Red Sox. Dwight Evans (career OPS+ 127) shared most of those same Red Sox teams. Fred Lynn (129) spent the first half of his career there. The beginning of Rice’s career overlapped the end of Carl Yastrzemski’s (129). Plus, a fellow by the name of Wade Boggs (130) came along midway through Rice’s career. In short, Rice was rarely the best hitter on his team during a given season. In fact, there are only two in which he led his team in OPS+ -- 1977 and 1978 (he led the AL in the latter case). The doesn’t really jive with the “most feared” talk. I realize that advanced metrics weren’t around at the time, but I have a hard time believing that opposing teams were still utterly incapable of realizing who was getting on base, getting extra-base hits, and so forth.

Then there’s the argument that Rice led the league in certain categories over some arbitrary time frame. Well, sure, that proves he wasn’t horrible, but says a lot more about his peak seasons not coinciding with those of his contemporaries. From 1984 to 1995, a twelve year span, Joe Carter led all the major leagues in homers and RBI’s. What has that gotten him? One year on the ballot with 3.8% of the vote.

Moving away from Rice's qualifications (or lack thereof), I'm rather surprised at the jump in vote share that Gossage got, along with, to a lesser degree, those of Rice, Dawson, and Blyleven. Their vote share increased by 14.6, 8.7, 9.2, and 14.2, respectively. While the increase was similar between Gossage and Blyleven, I find Gossage's more impressive as it tends to be harder to find an extra 14% support when you already have 71% than when you have 48%. Anyway, I believe that someone is a Hall of Famer or they're not, whatever your standard may be, and the variablity in the voting makes no sense to me. I realize that the people voting changes from year to year, but not by that much. There are some legitimate reasons to vote for a player after not doing so previously. If a voter voted for the maximum of ten players, but thought an eleventh was also worthy, then it would be fine to name the eleventh the following year, when, presumably, at least one of the ten would no longer be on the ballot. I'll even, somewhat grudgingly, accept some voters' arguments about "first ballot Hall of Famers" because, rightly or wrongly, it's viewed as an extra distinction to be elected in the first year of eligiblity. Finally, of course, there are legitimate changes of opinion as to whether or not a player is qualified. When you look at these players, though, the "first ballot" argument has stopped applying, and the limit of ten players is not much of a factor, as nearly all the ballots I've seen could add Gwynn, Ripken, and Steve Garvey from last year without surpassing ten players (plus, I don't think any of the eight-player ballots I saw this year lacked Raines); even the two nine-player ballots I saw, which both included Raines, really only would have left one of the four off, at most, last year, so the player limit is not really an issue. This basically leaves the entire change in vote share to voters changing their mind, and I can't believe, that after each player has had at least six previous years on the ballot, you have this many voters legitimately changing their mind. There seems to be a fear about not electing anyone (which last occurred in 1996), and votes start flying every which direction when there's no obvious first-ballot inductee (compare the 2006 balloting).

For next year's election, Rickey Henderson should get in (and what a memorable acceptance speech that will be), and I imagine at least one other new player will break the 5% threshold.

Early Thoughts on Iowa Results

2008-01-04T01:15:00.000-07:00

For the Democrats, I was surprised how far ahead Obama pulled as the results came in. An eight-point win was much larger than pretty much anyone was expecting. Edwards finished barely ahead of Hillary, though the number of delegates to the national convention should come out even, and it might be spun as a tie for second. Worth remembering is that for the Democrats in Iowa, raw vote totals are not reported, only the total number of county convention delegates selected, so results that close say very little about whether more voters supported Clinton or Edwards. Given the ability of supporters of minor candidates to switch their votes, it seems likely that Clinton had more supporters in the first round than Edwards. Also, contrary to what I posted previously, it seems the second choice for more of these minor candidate supporters ended up being Obama. I just pass along what I hear. I watched part of the results on FNC, and saw Bill Kristol say that Obama has a better than even shot at the nomination, though Clinton still has a shot, and Edwards has almost none. This seems like a sound verdict to me, especially given the margin he won by. Less sound were statements along the lines of "two-thirds of caucus-goers voted against Hillary"; saying that the same cold be said of Obama or Edwards is overly simplistic, as there was something to the "anti-Hillary" vote talk, but there are still supporters of Obama and Edwards for whom Hillary is their second choice.

On the Republican side, Huckabee blew out Romney, no question about it. This damages Romney in New Hampshire, where McCain is likely to win now. Essentially, I think Romney's campaign is going to sink like the Titanic, with Iowa as the iceberg. Many Ron Paul supporters said their support would show through in Iowa, and, well, it didn't. They did manage to win one county (Jefferson), though, the only candidate besides Romney and Huckabee to do so. The soft third-place finish for Thompson is not good. It's certainly better than the fourth place he could have fallen to (and some pre-caucus polls showed him in), but, still, not good. On the other hand, if you consider the good press McCain has been getting, and the lousy press Thompson has been getting (rarely substantive, mostly criticizing his campaigning, or late reports that he would drop out after Iowa, which tend to depress support and which his campaign vigorously denied). Looking at what has become a longshot campaign for Thompson, I have to think a knockout of Romney is better for him than a knockout of Huckabee, because while it's believed that the evangelicals that make up Huckabee's base are more likely to support Fred than any other candidate, Mitt has been trying to claim the conservative mantel in this race, and has built his support on being the "electable conservative" and Thompson is really the only other candidate who can claim to be a conservative (a more solid claim that Romney, based on track record), leaving the whole "electablity" issue, which I think he could conquer if he'd start reaching 20% finishes rather than low-teens. McCain is helped because Romney is hurt. Giuliani is hurt on the one hand because he's an afterthought of the newscycle, but helped on the other because Iowa and New Hampshire will almost certainly be split (and, although nobody's really paid attention to it, Wyoming could go to a third candidate (Romney is the only major candidate with real campaign organization in the state, and Fred Thompson is the only other major candidate to visit, although I haven't seen any recent polls, and results could be screwy as Duncan Hunter has been active there and Ron Paul supporters are running wild (though, once again, lacking in polls, I'm inclined to believe that they're louder than their numbers would indicate, as they are everywhere else))). Huckabee is obviously helped by winning the state, and winning it convincingly. So, there you go. A nifty map of Iowa GOP results by county is available here. The biggest news on the GOP side has to be the damage to the Romney campaign.

In other news, Chris Dodd has decided to drop out. Or, as Chevy Chase used to say on SNL, "In other news, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead."

Thoughts on the Democrats' Primary

2008-01-03T01:41:00.000-07:00

Due to party rules, every state in the Dem primary process (both primary and caucus states) assign delegates proportionally. I'm working off memory here, but this is done both on the congressional district and statewide level, with a 15% threshold. The party also has about twice as many delegates to their national convention (which is rather necessary for the proportional allocation system to work). In Iowa, there's another wrinkle of difference from the Republicans; they hold an initial vote and then allow the supporters of candidates who do not receive 15% support to switch their support to another candidate. This looks to benefit Edwards, as he's the overwhelming second choice of minor-candidate supporters according to a recent poll (between him, Obama, and Hillary, the breakdown was on the order of Edwards 60%, Hillary and Obama 20% each).

What each candidate needs to win the nomination:

Clinton: A win in Iowa would practically guarantee her the nomination. She's not out if she doesn't win, though. I think a third-place finish might actually benefit her more than a second-place finish, as it would keep two candidates viable as the "anti-Hillary" for later contests. If she does finish second, I think an Edwards win would benefit her more (or, hurt her less). She currently has sizable leads in Nevada and Florida, but early struggles could change that.

Obama: A win in Iowa is very important for him. He's running close to Hillary in New Hampshire (three of the four polls in the RCP average have him trailing by four points, while the fourth bizarrely has him trailing by 17), and a win in Iowa could give him the momentum to win in New Hampshire. Having these two wins under his belt would likely steer the nomination his way.

Edwards: Once again, a win in Iowa is very important. However, Edwards seems the least likely to turn an Iowa win into a nomination. He's not really competitive in New Hampshire, which will be a momentum killer. He's even polled poorly in South Carolina, which is supposed to be his home turf (it was certainly played up that way in 2004, when he won it), where Clinton and Obama each attract about a third of the electorate, while Edwards hovers around the threshold level. I have an easier time seeing any of the five major Republican candidates getting their party's nomination than Edwards getting his. That's fine, though, as Edwards's campaign does more to damage the country than any other. It's like having the negatives from all the candidates rolled into one.

Thoughts on the Republican Primary

2008-01-02T17:04:00.000-07:00

I intend to get this, along with a similar post for the Democrats, up before the Iowa caucus. I also intend to put up a post on the primary process in general, but that might not be until after Iowa.

This primary is odd in that you could make a case for any of the five major candidates winning the nomination. I realize that the Dems had six "major" candidates in 2004 (working off the top of my head, Dean, Gephardt, Kerry, Edwards, Clark, and Lieberman), but it was hard to make the case for all of them at the start of the new year (Lieberman because the party had turned strongly anti-war, and Gephardt because he was entirely invested in Iowa with no support anywhere else, other than his home state of Missouri (less well positioned for the domino effect than Kerry)). There were even some similarities as far as candidates putting their emphasis on Iowa or New Hampshire. However, I'll leave any further comparisons for another day.

Before going on to the candidates, I should add a few notes on how the delegates are selected. While the Democrats allocate delegates based on the proportion of the vote each candidate receives (more on how that's done in the post focusing on them), the Republicans have a few different methods of selecting delegates (and, if memory serves, do not use the proportional allocation anywhere). The first is the winner-take-all state primary/caucus; as the name implies, the statewide winner of this contest wins all the delegates for that state. The other popular method (which, if I recall correctly, is used in more states, but I'd have to look it up) is basically a winner-take-all election at the congressional district level; whoever wins in a congressional district gets all three delegates for that district (I believe the statewide winner gets three delegates as well). In this form of election, the final vote count isn't as important as where the votes come from. California, for instance, uses this system, and with 53 congressional districts, the results could be interesting. Some have noted that this could be Ron Paul's best chance for some delegates, as he could win the district with very few Republicans, like that of Nancy Pelosi. Also, under party rules, all the states selecting candidates in January forfeit half their delegates to the party convention. There's a possibility that the rule will be reversed and all the delegates admitted, and there's also the possibility that this could affect who wins the nomination (though the latter is unlikely).

First up, Romney: Actually, one further comparison to 2004 on the other side -- Romney is the candidate most likely to get a domino effect that turns a seemingly competitive primary into a runaway, like Kerry, and even comes from the same home state. Romney is the candidate most heavily invested in the "traditional" method of acquiring the nomination, competing hard in both Iowa and New Hampshire and then riding the strength of his early victories to the nomination. However, an early loss could derail his whole campaign. If he's any worse than a close second in Iowa, he's likely to lose New Hampshire, and with it, the nomination. It's not so much a matter of delegate count, as only three small states will have voted or caucused by then (Wyoming has a caucus on January 5 that has received very little attention; last I saw, Romney looked good in the polling, but will anyone care if he wins?). Romney needs the momentum from these early contests, and while other candidates can "win" without winning them, anything less than a win will definitely be a loss for Romney.

Second up, Huckabee: I'll make this simple: Huckabee needs to win Iowa. A close second might help him, but it's more likely to leave him as a hanger-on with no hope of winning the primary. Huck is not going to win New Hampshire, plain and simple, and essentially needs to build on an Iowa win to then win South Carolina, and hope that the momentum there carries the day in Florida and helps him on "Super-Duper Tuesday" on February 5, when nearly half of the Republican delegates are up for grabs. As far as New Hampshire goes for Huck, third place would probably constitute a "win" for him. I have a hard time seeing Huckabee win the nomination, as he seems more interested in talking to Iran than in talking to half the Republican base. He could garner enough support to result in a fun convention, though.

Giuliani: His campaign has been the antithesis of Romney's: forget the early states. Giuliani basically plans to bide his time until Florida and Feb 5, go for the big prizes, and ride them to the nomination. His campaign points out the good poll numbers he has in those states. However, I -- and I'm far from alone on this -- doubt that his support will hold in those states through the early contests. Giuliani is high partially on name recognition, which becomes less of a factor in each state as its primary nears. Moreover, all the buzz and momentum will be going to other candidates. While pretty much everyone concedes that he'll win New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut on February 5 (which are all statewide winner-take-all primaries), it's less certain how well he'll do in the other states where he currently leads (and even if he receives the most votes in California, he won't necessarily win the most delegates). Iowa is pretty much a non-factor for his campaign, though beating McCain would be a small plus, and finishing third would be an even bigger one (though I wouldn't bet on that). Editted to add: I've noticed that a few recent polls show him in sixth in Iowa; that's an embarassment that he'll want to avoid.

McCain: Iowa is also a non-factor for McCain, barring a surprise third-place finish. New Hampshire, however, is huge, and he pretty much needs to win there to have any hope of winning the nomination. Beyond New Hampshire, he hopes to do well in Michigan, carry the momentum into Florida, and emerge as a consensus candidate.

Thompson: Thompson's path to the nomination is a bit of a strange one. The earliest state he has any chance of winning is South Carolina. He pretty much needs a second, or possibly even a strong third, in Iowa, and then to pick up supporters of other candidates as they drop out (either officially or are just seen as no longer viable). Last I saw, Thompson is the second choice for the largest number of Republican primary voters. He really needs either Romney or Huckabee to receive a knockout blow in Iowa. While I haven't seen any breakdown as far as who supporters of each candidate rank as their number two, it seems likely that Romney and Huckabee voters are more likely to have Thompson as their number two than McCain or Giuliani supporters (Giuliani and Huckabee are pretty well polar opposites, so only a very small number of supporters for one would have the other as their second choice; Romney and Huckabee supporters in general seem to be less likely to support McCain or Giuliani, plus some bad blood seems to be brewing between the two campaigns, leaving Thompson as the beneficiary; McCain and Giuliani supporters seem more likely to support the other, but hardly seem likely to reject Thompson altogether). Essentially, Thompson would be the compromise candidate, the one backers of all the others could agree upon.

There remains a small chance that no candidate would receive the majority of delegates needed to win the nomination outright. Assuming that no candidate has, say, 49% of the delegates either, then a brokered convention is entirely possible. I think Thompson is most likely to emerge the winner in such a scenario, because, as stated above, he's the one candidate that everyone else can agree upon. Romney would be the second-most likely to win in this scenario. Of course, should Romney have 40% of the delegates going into the convention, the math changes, and he becomes most likely to emerge as the candidate.

Currently, it's much easier to make a case for why each candidate will not win the nomination than why they will. Iowa will clear things up a bit, and New Hampshire will clarify them more. After Feb 5, I should be able to make a more confident prediction of who the nominee will be.

Editted to add: Rich Lowry throws out some numbers on what would be good finishes for each of the major candidates in Iowa.

2008 Hall of Fame Voting

2007-12-27T17:55:00.000-07:00

Ballots from the BBWAA must be postmarked by December 31, and results will be announced January 8.

The players I'm marking on my imaginary ballot:
Bert Blyleven
Tommy John
Tim Raines

Others are close, but no cigar, doing to some factor or other. Morris has his 3.90 ERA; while adjusting it for ballpark helps, his ERA+ is still only 105, meaning five percent better than league average, which really isn't quite enough to make it into the hall. Rice benefitted from having his home games at Fenway. Dawson had a career OBP of .323 while the league average for that period was .332. Gossage was a reliever, and I believe I've talked about the inferiority of relievers relative to starters elsewhere (though he certainly merits more consideration than any other eligible reliever). Lee Smith used to be the career saves leader -- whoop-de-doo, he managed to be on the leading edge of accumulating a meaningless stat. McGwire I'm leaving off due to the steroids mess -- would he be Hall-worthy sans steroids? Dropping 1998-2000 from his stat totals (in 2000, he missed significant time due to injury, but his rate stats pointed towards another 60+ homer year had he been healthy; taking out these three seasons still leaves his 52-homer 1996 and his 58-homer 1997) would result in his career OPS dropping 53 points (36 from slugging, 17 from OBP). Dropping the other two previously mentioned seasons would drop it another 44 points (32 from slugging, 12 from OBP).

Keith Law's non-ESPN blog appears to be keeping track of the balloting results that have been reported so far here. Currently, there are 62 ballots reporting, and the 545 ballots cast last year were a record, so I figure it's safe to call that 11 percent of the total. He has Gossage at 90%, Blyleven at 71%, Dawson and Rice at 68%, and nobody else reaching 50%. I figure those numbers are more likely to go down than up (and I especially figure that Gossage will nto get 90% of the vote). I believe Gossage will get in this year, but I think he'll come in a tad under 80%. I also think that, despite being more deserving, Blyleven's total will be below Dawson and Rice. I don't have any solid evidence to support this, but I have a gut feeling that Blyleven's supporters are considerably more likely to publish their votes. I suppose it's tied to a belief that those who believe in sabermetrics are more likely to publish their votes (and sabermetricians are considerably more likely to support Blyleven and not support Dawson or Rice). I believe that Gossage, Rice, Dawson, and Blyleven will each improve on their vote totals from last year, when they received 71.2, 63.5, 56.7, and 47.7 percent of the vote, respectively. I think Mark McGwire will improve on his 23.5%, as I think that for several voters it was a one-time protest thing (heck, a couple of them even said so). I also believe that Lee Smith will see a decline; he's no longer the record holder for saves, which probably played a large role in his drop from 45% to 39.8% last year, even after the media hoopla surrounding the transition of the record from Smith to Hoffman served to talk up Smith's "worthiness" for the Hall. I'm less certain about that last one, due to the weakness of this year's candidate class, compared to last year's with Gwynn and Ripken, but I do think he'll come in closer to 36-37 percent of the vote.

It's interesting to look at all the players eligible who didn't make it on the ballot as well. I've been paying attention to baseball long enough that I actually recognize a good many of the names, and remember a few of them (eight of them were even all-stars at some point in their career). Notable among them are Andy Benes, Dennis Cook, Delino DeShields, Mike Morgan (who pretty much everyone had to hear about at some point, as he played on twelve different teams in his career, including my beloved Cubs and my hometown Diamondbacks), Greg Swindell, John Valentin (who converted an unassisted triple play), and Mark Wohlers (best known for appearing on eight Braves' playoff teams). I'm not saying those were the best of those left off the ballot, as I didn't bother to take an in-depth look, but I imagine there's a large degree of overlap.

I think this year's Veteran's Committee vote was entirely too lenient. Also, too many people thinking it would only be a successful rules change if people got voted in. I think the number of people let in shows how unsuccessful the rules change was. Many people have pointed to the union rep whose name I can't remember and ask why he didn't get in, and, I have to admit, they have a point. If those others got in, why not union rep man? I'm not saying that he does belong there; I'm merely saying that if the standards were such that all the others got in, then he probably should have as well.

Lights, Please

2007-12-24T21:26:00.000-07:00

"And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not, for behold, I bring unto you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you this day is born in the City of Bethlehem, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; you shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel, a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, good will toward men.'"

That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

Merry Christmas.

Free Agents and Other Baseball Musings

2007-11-14T07:25:00.000-07:00

I find the way the whole Alex Rodriguez thing has played out to be quite amusing. I was going to laugh if he ended up taking a paycut, but that now seems unlikely, as he has crawled back to the Yankees. There was lots of talk of a $300 million contract being a "conservative estimate" but I was more than a little skeptical -- who, besides the Yankees, was going to pay $30 million a year? And the Yankees seemed more likely to go for a seven-year extension worth $210 million (not as their initial offer, but as something they could be negotiated into). Scott Boras blew this one, big time. Maybe he was trying to over compensate after the Red Sox got the better of him in the Daisuke Matsuzaka negotiations.

On to the other free agents ...

It has always been my belief that Posada, Rivera, and Pettite would be back with the Yankees. Posada's agreed to come back (I don't think everything's been quite finalized), Pettite says that if he plays, it will be for the Yankees (and he has said that he felt better physically at the end of the season than he has in some time), and Rivera still seems most likely to come back as a Yankee. So the talk of the Yankees splintering was, big surprise, overblown. As to the talk of Rivera to the Dodgers, I believe that he'd have some genuine interest in playing for Torre there, but that's he's sing it more as a negotiation ploy with the Yankees. Though if Rivera is looking to pad his stats, the NL West would be much nicer to his ERA and so forth than the AL East, and the Dodgers' offense lacks the potency to deliver as many blowouts as the Yankees, which should result in more save opportunities (yes, the save is vastly overrated, but people still pay attention to it).

Keith Law was asked during a chat today which 2007 free agent signings will be the worst, along with the worst trade, and he replied "Romero, Rowand, Hunter, Linebrink, Glavine, and the worst trade will be whatever trade the Dodgers make that includes one or more of Kemp/Kershaw/Billingsley." Rowand and Hunter both seem good possibilities to me, somewhat analogous to Matthews and Pierre last offseason. Offensively, Torii Hunter nearly equaled the best season of his career, and given the emphasis placed on RBI's and, to a lesser extent, runs, most would consider it the best season of his career. His defense, while good, is overrated. The same offensive and defensive analysis can be applied to Aaron Rowand. Career year on offense and overrated defense equals bigger than deserved payday. Hunter is 32 and Rowand is 30, so these guys are unlikely to improve and likely to decline by the end of their contract. Linebrink is likely to get a deal based on his reputation from 2004-2005 rather than the way he's played the last couple of seasons. Romero already got a deal from the Phillies based on his performance with the this half-season. Glavine's WHIP was over 1.4, his ERA was nearly 4.50, his strikeouts were down, and all this while pitching in a pitcher's park (which doesn't really affect the strikeouts, but the first two it's relevant for). He still has a reputation, though, and is likely to squeeze more money out of the Braves than they should give.

I'm interested to see what happens with Andruw Jones. Prior to the season, Jayson Stark named him the most overrated player in baseball in his book, and I was inclined to agree (or at least put him in the top, say, three). His poor offensive year, and continued decline on defense, makes me wonder what will happen. He would have been looking for the second-biggest payday this offseason (behind Rodriguez), but now will be much lower, both in terms of financial compensation per year and number of years. He might gamble with a one-year contract to boost his value, or he might sucker some team into ignoring this last season and immediately thrust himself into the discussion of worst offseason signings.

Sammy Sosa wants a $7 million contract. Good luck on that.

I'd heard rumors about the Yankees pursuing Torii Hunter, and then trading Melky Cabrera. This strikes me as a bad idea. Even the Yankees have a budget, and they can save over $40 million over the next four years by staying with Cabrera, who's Hunter's equal on defense, and put up a similar batting average and on-base percentage, though the slugging showed a marked difference. Cabrera is young enough that he figures to improve on offense (especially power), while Hunter is likely to decline, both due to age and this being something of a career year for him. By 2009, Hunter will be no better, and considerably more expensive.

While I was typing this, word came that Barry Bonds was indicted. Well, at least there won't be any more of that "will he be indicted?" talk. However, as to his baseball status, I'm going to say the same thing I've been saying, that nobody seems to listen to: he won't be in jail based on an indictment (he'll post bail), and it's likely to be a year before the trial starts, or, at least, ends (though the timing of the indictment does not allow for much leeway on this front, especially if his new team expects to play October baseball). Sure, it's likely to affect the kinds of offers he'll get, but as far as affecting his ability to play goes, it's not likely to do much. Besides, perjury and obstruction of justice? All he has to do is get semantic about what the meaning of "is" is, and he'll be free. More seriously, if the trial is in San Francisco, I see a good chance of him not being acquitted or a hung jury, the latter leading to a new trial or the government giving up. I'm also curious about the indictment happening now. What evidence do they have that they didn't have before? Prior to this news, I was considering an indictment unlikely under the premise of "If they were going to do it, they would have done it by now." We'll see what happens.

For those who somehow thought that getting rid of Bonds would solve all the Giants' age issues, they're re-signing Omar Vizquel, and are saying positive things about doing the same with Pedro Feliz (who isn't that old, but is old enough that he's not getting any better). Their age issues seem to be more a problem of Brian Sabean (their GM) than Bonds.

Also, when searching for some contract information, I discovered Cot's Baseball Contracts, which is a very good site for that information. Many places will tell you how much a player is making this year, and news articles will tell you how much they're going to make from a new contract, but that site has a player's complete salary history along with future salary information. I highly recommend it.

My Picks for 2007 MLB Awards

2007-11-08T15:55:00.000-07:00

I decided to make this a different post in an effort to keep post length somewhat under control.

NL MVP: A tough race here, very competitive. None of the guys blow you away, but it is better than last year's NL Cy Young, where none of the candidates really seemed to deserve the award. Matt Holliday, Jimmy Rollins, Prince Fielder, and David Wright are the names tossed around the most, with some mentions of Albert Pujols and Chipper Jones, and few mentions of anyone beyond that (a few Bonds mentions, but as he wasn't 2001-2004 amazing, and the Giants were, let's say, lackluster, it was more of a courtesy mention indicating he wasn't having a bad year than and serious consideration for naming him MVP; he'll probably pick up a couple down-ballot votes). I think the award will probably go to Rollins, with Holliday finishing second (though it could go the other way). Chipper Jones put up some surprisingly great numbers this year, and if he'd played in more than 134 games, he'd have my hypothetical vote. Instead, I think I'll go with David Wright; he put up good numbers in a pitcher's park, played good defense at one of the tougher positions, and ran the bases pretty well.

NL Cy Young: Unlike last year, someone does deserve it. Jake Peavy won the pitching triple crown, which makes him the easy choice. There's a case to be made for Brandon Webb, and maybe a few others, but the voters will obviously choose Peavy (possibly unanimously), and even the best argument a Webb fan could reasonably make would make the pitchers out to be about equal, rather than giving Webb some kind of upper hand. So, I'm going with Peavy.

NL Rookie of the Year: A two-man race between Ryan Braun and Troy Tulowitzki. Braun was certainly a force with the bat, but was horrible with the glove at third base, repeatedly making errors. Tulowitzki wasn't exactly a slouch with the bat, and led all rookies with enough plate appearances to qualify in slugging and OPS (though this was aided by playing in Denver, and see my note in the previous post on Bonds winning the on-base title and Braun (I think) the slugging). Tulowitzki's biggest value, though, is his defense at short, where he should have won the gold glove (but, really, how often do gold gloves go to who they're supposed to?). I think his stellar defense at that tough position will carry the day, plus the fact that he played the whole season.

AL MVP: It's Alex Rodriguez. I hate to admit it, but it is. I stand by my repeated statements that his season has been overrated, but he's still the MVP.

AL Cy Young: An interesting race where Beckett and Sabathia get most of the attention, but Carmona and Lackey can each make a case, and Bedard, Haren, and Santana might all have had a shot if their win totals were greater. I think wins are overrated, but I'm not a voter. I say Sabathia eeks this one out, owing in large part to the extra 40 innings he pitched compared to Beckett.

AL Rookie of the Year: Three Red Sox players were in the running for this award, but the Japanese imports suffered a downturn in August. Guthrie and Bannister turned in good rookie years on the mound, and Willits had a good season as well, but the ROY will probably go to former Sun Devil Dustin Pedroia. As far as whether he deserves it goes, well, that depends on how much weight you put on position players compared to pitchers. I think I'd give the edge to Guthrie (with Bannister close behind), but those who actually have votes tend more towards hitters. If Daisuke Matsuzaka had performed better, he would have overcome that prejudice, as he was the hype candidate, but, well, he didn't.

Recap of the 2007 Baseball Season

2007-11-08T14:30:00.000-07:00

First off, a review of my early predictions, found here and here.

Final Standings, with my predicted finish for each team:

AL East:
Red Sox 3
Yankees 1
Blue Jays 2
Orioles 4
Devil Rays 5

AL Central
Indians 2
Tigers 3
Twins 1
White Sox 4
Royals 5

AL West
Angels 1
Mariners 4
Athletics 2
Rangers 3

NL East
Phillies 1
Mets 2
Braves 3
Nationals 5
Marlins 4

NL Central
Cubs 1
Brewers 3
Cardinals 2
Astros 4
Reds 5
Pirates 6

NL West
Diamondbacks 4
Rockies 5
Padres 3
Dodgers 2
Giants 1

Aside from the NL West, moving one team would have given me the correct standings in each division (In the NL West, moving one team could have given me the inverse standings). Also, I'd say my labeling of the White Sox as most-overhyped team of the preseason was spot-on.

Roger Clemens did not pitch as well as I thought he would, and, more importantly, was hobbled by injuries. He did not surpass his win total from 2006, partly because he missed a few starts due to injury, and partially because he appeared to have a few run support issues even with the Yankees (bullpen issues, too), as he managed ten "quality starts" but only six wins. Now, not every "quality start" will yield a win, but, especially for the Yankees, most should, and it's certainly possible to pick up a win without a quality start. He was not robbed of wins to the extent he was in Houston, though.

Of the five players being touted before the season as having a shot to reach 500 homers, Gary Sheffield fell short (which should not have been a surprise to anyone), as did Manny Ramirez, fulfilling my prediction of Sheffield and one other. I'd thought about saying two besides Sheffield, but am now glad that I did not.

On the strikeout front, Thome moved into third all-time in a gimme prediction, Adam Dunn and Alex Rodriguez failed to strikeout as much as I thought they would (in Dunn's case, due to injury at season's end). Three players passed Babe Ruth on the all-time list, rather than the five I predicted (Andruw Jones, Frank Thomas, and Julio Franco passed him). Not passing him were Steve Finley (teams finally realized he's not good enough to play regularly anymore; he also struck out surprisingly little during his time with the Rockies, making his horrible average somewhat surprising), and injured Mets Jose Valentin and Shawn Green, though in Green's case, he also reduced his strikeout rate.

Bonds broke Aaron's homer mark in August, not July. He also failed to reach 2,000 RBI's, as the offense around him was even worse than last year. His 600th double also came in August instead of before the All-Star break. His failure to reach any of the three marks by the time I predicted can probably be attributed to the anemic offense around him, which resulted in fewer plate appearances per game, fewer RBI opportunities, and made it easier to walk him, as other teams were virtually assured of not being punished for it. He led the National League in on-base percentage (he lacked the number of plate appearances to qualify, so you won't see him on most leader lists, but he managed to win under the rule allowing a player who is x plate appearances short of qualifying to win the title if giving him an 0-for-x would still give him a higher average than anyone with enough plate appearances to qualify; Ryan Braun won the NL slugging title by the same rule, I believe).

Biggio somehow managed to stay out of the way of enough pitches, and will retire without the all-time beanball record. He does have the modern record, though, if that is any consolation. He attained his 3,000th hit, and fell short of 300 homers, but no surprises there.

I think that covers all my preseason predictions. As for later predictions, yeah, the Diamondbacks did manage to hang on and win the division, and Alex Rodriguez had a hot streak at the end of August and early September to give him 54 homers no the year, beating my prediction, but still not reaching Steve Phillip's what-was-he-thinking 57, and certainly not the 60 or more some were thinking.

World Series

2007-10-25T13:21:00.000-07:00

I meant to post my predictions before the series started, but have been busy and lazy.

I'm picking the underdog Rockies to win the Series. Last night's results are disappointing to that end, but at least I don't look like someone hopping on the bandwagon after a win (not that I think any regular reader would question my integrity).

I'm also predicting that Beckett gives up three or more runs in his start in Colorado, and that Manny Ramirez's defense will cost at least one run in the three games there (though not necessarily with a play in which he gets credited with an error).

Final season recap still on the way, probably after I finished moving, unless I get bored packing tonight or tomorrow.

The Second Annual Playoff Repick Because All My First Round Picks Lost

2007-10-11T15:11:00.000-07:00

Wow, that was even worse than last year.

I'll go with Rockies over Indians in the World Series.

The Rockies are a better team than the Diamondbacks, who, frankly, are not very good. Their luck has to run out at some point. The Rockies' lineup is so much better that I'll skip the analysis and leave it at bald assertion. As to pitching, the Diamondbacks have the best starter in Brandon Webb, though he doesn't guarantee them a victory the way some "analysts" would have you believe. One moronic "insight" I saw gave the Diamondbacks the edge in game one because Jeff Francis is "capable of making mistakes" -- a poor insight not only in that everyone, obviously, is capable of making mistakes, but also in that Webb has repeatedly made them against Colorado this season: in six starts, the final one was the only one in which he did not give up at least four earned runs, and the 7IP 8H 2R 2ER 2BB 2K performance he turned in for that game was hardly dominate. Francis is a capable pitcher, and two of his three starts against the Diamondbacks this season went well. Sure, small sample sizes and all, but this game is not the gimme for the Diamondbacks that some make it out to be. As for the rest of the pitching staffs, I'd give the Rockies a slight edge which evaporates if they pitch Jorge Julio. Both teams have great defense, too. The biggest differences are lineups and number one starter, and between he much larger lineup advantage, and the fact that the number one starter currently looks to play in only two games (but even considering the possibility of three), the edge has to go to the Rockies.

As to picking the Indians, I'm aware that it's more of a contrarian view. Mostly, I think Sabathia and Beckett are roughly equal, and Carmona has the edge over whoever the Red Sox throw out as their number two (looks like it will be Schilling). Daisuke Matsuzaka has suffered a performance drop-off, and I don't really see him as being better than whoever the Indians throw out. I'd say the Red Sox have the better lineup, but not by a wide margin. The Red Sox do have a large edge on hype, though.

I'd say the Rockies-Diamondbacks is more likely to go 5-6 games, while Indians-Red Sox is more of a 6-7 game series. There are my thoughts, we'll see what happens.

Division Series Notes

2007-10-06T13:35:00.000-07:00

So far, I'm 0 for 8. That's pretty bad.

A couple of squeakers yesterday, good games. Thus far, we've had blowouts, squeakers, A-Rod 0-fers, fans affecting plays, and swarms of bugs descending onto the playing field -- everything the playoffs are all about. Well, the last one doesn't have to be bugs, of course -- it could be a tarp machine attacking a player or any number of other things, just something unusual affecting a game or series.

It's pretty amazing that all four series are 2-0 right now. I'm not sure if that's happened before (but might look it up), but I do know that there have never been more than two sweeps in a season, that happening in seven of the thirteen previous seasons with division series (1995-1998, 2000, 2005-2006). Two seasons (1996 and 1997) featured two sweeps in one league (National League both times).

I've found five teams that have come back from an 0-2 deficit to win the division series:
1981 NLDS: Dodgers beat Astros
1995 ALDS: Mariners beat Yankees
1999 ALDS: Red Sox beat Indians
2001 ALDS: Yankees beat Athletics
2003 ALDS: Red Sox beat Athletics

Prior to 1998, the division series featured two games at the lower-seeded city followed by three games (if necessary) at the higher-seeded city. So the first two of those involved the winning team still winning three home games, which is no longer applicable to the situation. The 2001 Yankees are the only team to win the division series after losing the first two games at home.

The League Championship Series was a five game series from 1969 through 1984. Still working on info there.

UPDATED: Turns out the only NLCS one was the one I already knew about: 1984, when the Padres came back to beat the Cubs. Even more painfully for Cubs fans, the Cubs had a lead in each of the final three games. Luckily, I'm too young to have been scarred by it. In the ALCS, the only one is the Brewers coming back to beat the Angels in 1982. So that's seven, total, comebacks from 0-2 deficits, though four of those came under the old format.

I also note that, currently, the Rockies are the only National League team to have never played in a League Championship Series (the Brewers are the only National League team to play in an American League Championship Series, and they have yet to appear in the NL version). The Expos/Nationals are the only other NL team to have never played in a World Series. Over in the American League, the Devil Rays have never made the playoffs, the Rangers have never played in the ALCS, and the Mariners have never played in the World Series.

Thoughts on the Wild Card

2007-10-05T01:00:00.000-07:00

It's the thirteenth year of the wild card, and, despite it's wild success, people are still complaining. Nuts to them.

Jerry Crasnick has a column for ESPN on "fixing" the wild card. He starts with a quote from G.W. Bush on being the lone vote among ownership against the wild card, and how history will prove him right; it's a great set-up for a joke, but he blows it. He offered five options (including keeping the current format) to a front office person from each of the 30 teams, and tallies the results.

Before commenting on each of the options, I must say that I don't see the logic behind the supposed need to punish the wild card team and the inherent superiority of being a division winner. Let's face it, some of these divisions have been ... not so good over the last dozen years. The two central and two western divisions have taken their turns as the worst division in baseball, and I can recall fretting that three of those divisions (AL West, NL West, NL Central, in chronological order) would be won by a team without a winning record (so far, at least, that has not occurred). Is a division winner with an 82-80 record -- which, moreover, only has a winning record because the unbalanced schedule allows it to play extra games against its weaker division rivals -- really inherently better than a 90-win wild card? Thinking people everywhere respond with a resounding no. The people who think that's the case must be the same ones who think wins (or, for that matter, saves) are the best measure of the quality of a pitcher, irrespective of ERA or quality of the team they play for, let alone any of the more advanced metrics. One option I've heard proposed that was not in the column (due at least in part to it not being an option that could be implemented at any time in the near future) is to expand by another two teams and have each league move to four, four-team divisions and eliminate the wild card. This boneheaded plan practically guarantees that there will eventually be a playoff team with a losing record. As much as I love the Cubs, I have to admit that they were greatly helped by playing in a division where Milwaukee was the only other decent team, and the Rockies, who played in the much tougher West, are a more deserving playoff team. Actually, I've looked at it more tonight, and the Rockies are a much better team than I'd given them credit for. Right now, I'd say they're the favorites to represent the National League in the World Series. Of course, I'm still pulling for a Cubs comeback.

Back on topic, one option offered was to have the wild card team play four of the five opening series games on the road. This is the sort of dumb idea that people who believe in the inherent superiority of division winners would embrace, and my reasoning for why they're mistaken stands as my reasoning for why this is a bad idea. It received three votes.

Another idea is to follow old Japan League rules and let a team that won a division by five or more games win a "best of five" series with only two wins, while its opponent needed three (essentially making it a best of four series, with a tie going to the higher-seeded team). Same basic logic applies here, plus it's too gimmicky. Fans are already easily confused by tiebreakers and that would be too much for them. It received no votes.

A third option was adding a second wild card, and having the two play either a one-game play-in, or a best-of-three series. This scenario contains a bit of the previously mentioned biases, but they're less pronounced. If you want to talk fairness, would it be fair to make a team with the second-best record in the league defend its playoff spot against a team with the fifth-best record, when under the current system it might have won that spot by ten games? Yes, it's a scenario that won't nearly happen every year, but it will happen. I despise the one game play-in (except in the case of tiebreakers). Major League Baseball is a place where any team can beat any other team on any day of the week to a degree not found in the other major sports. A one-game play-in will, on average, give the better team only about a 55% chance of making the playoffs. It comes down more to who has the single best pitcher. As someone who dislikes the fact that two top starting pitchers is basically all you need to win the World Series (see the 2001 Diamondbacks), this is even more distasteful. A three-game playoff, while less of a crapshoot than a one-game one, is still more of one than a five-game series, and you already have people like Billy Beane complaining about that. Plus, you've got to figure that this scenario has the division winners resting for at least four days, and probably at least five. It's logistically problematic. This received seven votes (no word on any vote breakdown between one game and a three game series).

A reasonable and popular idea was expanding the opening series from five to seven games. Little surprise, Billy Beane supported this one. I think this is a decent idea, probably the best of the five options. A longer series tends to benefit the better team. Selig, an apparent opponent of the idea, whines that the calendar is a problem for this option. With the newly expanded calendar, this is laughable. You now have a travel day built in between games four and five of the division series (some people have complained about this; I'm more ambivalent), so that takes care of the extra travel day that would be "needed" for a seven game series compared to previous postseason schedules. This leaves you needing to find two more days. First, and most obviously, they decided to add a non-travel off day between games four and five of the league championship series this year, due to thinking that you can provide your own negative adjective for. For the benefit of anyone from MLB that might read this, I'll put the following statement in bold: Non-travel offdays in the middle of a series are bad. I hate them opening week, I hate them in the one division series that does it each year, and now I hate them in the LCS. The final extra day needed can be obtained by eliminating an off day between the LCS and World Series. Currently, one league is guaranteed at least two off days, and the other, three (this year, the American League, and National League, respectively, though it's scheduled to alternate years).Between this lag and the previously mentioned non-travel offday, a pair of sweeps in the LCS would mean a week without any baseball. Not good. So there are the extra days needed without lengthening the playoffs by another day. This option received thirteen votes.

The other option, as mentioned, was maintaining the current format. I'll admit that the added unpredictability of a five game series does tend to add a bit more excitement (compared to the seven game series, that is), which is the only thing keeping me from fully endorsing the previous option. This option received seven votes.

--------------------------------------------

I attended Game 2 of the Cubs-Diamondbacks series. The seats weren't great (my fault for waiting to order them, I guess), the game was so-so. Obviously, there's some bias in that I would have preferred a Cubs victory. The early innings were rather slow (the first 5 1/2 innings took nearly three hours), which led to a total game time that was not justified but offensive output, extra innings, or even a suspenseful regulation game. The Diamondbacks took a four run lead in the bottom of the fourth, and the Cubs never got closer than that. Four runs is small enough that you can hope and root for them to make it up (or hope and root against it, if you're the opposing team), but large enough that a tie or lead change is not likely. Suspense takes a bit hit between three and four runs. The game was lasting long enough that there was a large exodus after the fifth inning, when the Diamondbacks took an 8-2 lead. While six runs is a large lead, it's hardly the blowout that justifies leaving that early, especially in the playoffs. I'm left believing that a sizable percentage of those who left would have stayed longer if not for the time issue (and that previous half-inning was especially time consuming). It was probably a combination of the score and time for several fans, and I imagine that there was somebody who left who would not have if they'd known the Cubs would score a pair in the next inning. Of course, many more left after the sixth, anyways, but I still believe that at least one person out of all of those who left after the fifth would have stayed if he'd known the game would get closer.

The big three hitters for the Cubs have been a big disappointment so far this series, with Soriano 2-10, Lee 2-8 with a walk, and Ramirez 0-9, with each of them having four strikeouts, and all four hits being singles. That's a .148 average, .148 slugging, and .179 on-base percentage.

Not sure how much of it will make the highlights for those who didn't see the game, but defense was big for the Diamondbacks. Quick outfielders were able to catch a couple of balls that seemed destined for extra-base hits. There was the error on what probably would have been a double play, but that proved inconsequential, with neither runner advancing to score. I'm not saying the Cubs defense was bad, but there weren't any moments I can recall thinking what a good defensive move they made. There were only three hit balls from the Diamondbacks that landed in play for extra bases, so it's not like they had as much opportunity to steal those extra-base hits. I did not think they played Byrnes's triple well, they were too slow to field the ball on Davis's suicide squeeze play and should have tried for the out at first instead, and there was a double play they should have executed. That may sound like a lot of problems, but none of those were quite as bad as I may have made them sound, and none resulted in extra runs (unless Soriano had been able to catch Byrnes's triple, but I was faulting them more for the way it was played than the lack of a catch -- though I might change that if I see a replay of it).

All in all, the first professional playoff game for any of the major sports that I've attended is something I'll remember, but not much to reminisce about.

Oh, and my division series predictions are thus far doing every bit as good as last year's, with the teams I'd picked starting 0-6. It's hardly over, especially in the American League, but this start does not bode well. For those of you into betting, I'd say the odds are now about even of another 0 for 4. It did make me feel better to read that Keith Law was only 2 for 7 (I think it was) last year, and he's a reasonably informed professional. Oh, and one final note on my picks: I pick teams more like you'd pick an NCAA bracket for March Madness, or at least a small flavoring of that; I fully admit, for instance, and would have even before the series started, that the Red Sox are more likely than the Angels to win their series. It's good to pick an underdog or two along the way.

Quick Picks

2007-10-03T06:40:00.000-07:00

No time for my regular season recap at the moment, just a quick mention of my picks for the first round of the playoffs. Hopefully, I do better than last year, when I picked every division series wrong (I did manage to pick the Cardinals in both the NLCS and World Series, though).

Cubs over Diamondbacks
Phillies over Rockies
Yankees over Indians
Angels over Red Sox

It was pretty impressive to see Rob Neyer refer to the Cubs as the National League favorites in his chat yesterday. I don't think they've been called that in awhile. Notably, though, they were by no means the overwhelming favorites. Still, I'm taken with the idea of the Cubs winning the World Series on the 100th anniversary of their first World Series win. Why not, I'll go with Cubs over Yankees as my World Series pick. And if Alex Rodriguez tries to relive the Babe Ruth called-shot at Wrigley, he will meet with embarrassing results.

Great play-in game for the Padres and Rockies, I wish I could have watched it on television. I was pulling for the blown save by Hoffman, but I wanted the game to continue a few more innings rather than end there. I had no strong feelings one way or the other as far as who won, I was just rooting for a memorable game. Did anyone else notice that the winning pitcher's ERA was over 7.50? Is that some kind of record for a playoff-berth-clinching game? This was definitely the most dramatic one game playoff in my lifetime, surpassing Cubs-Giants in 1998 (though I was more interested in that game).

Update: Just saw the ESPN picks, and seven of the twenty writers picked the Cubs to win the National League (including my two favorite writers, Neyer and Jason Stark), though only Stark picked them to win the World Series (over the Red Sox). Eight picked the Phillies, and five picked the Rockies (yes, none picked the Diamondbacks). There were two picks of a Rockies World Series title, five for the Yankees, six for the Red Sox, and three each for the Angels and Indians.

If the Cubs, Phillies, Rockies, or Indians win the World Series, that will make eight different champions in the last eight years. How's that for "competitive balance"?

The Pennant Races Are Heating Up

2007-09-20T20:15:00.000-07:00

I was going to put up a post about politics and such, but who wants to talk about that when the pennant races are heating up?

Currently, three divisions only have a game and a half separating the top two teams in the standings and a fourth only has half a game. True, some of the drama is lacking from the AL East race as the loser will almost certainly win the wild card, but it's still there. I think that, whatever the final results of that race are, one additional win by the losing team in their last series against each other would have flipped the results. I'm pulling for the trailing team in three of these four races, with the lone exception being the Cubs. This would be a great year for them to win it all -- the 100th anniversary of their first World Series victory. The Cubs, of course, were the first team to win consecutive World Series titles; that's the tradition of excellence I signed up for when I became a Cubs fan.

I had thought that the Diamondbacks would drop out of the playoff picture, but that's looking less likely. It's still possible, and I do think the Padres will win the division, but they have a large enough lead over the Phillies, Rockies, et al, that they'll probably pull it out. The Rockies and Diamondbacks play against each other the last weekend of the season, though, which gives Colorado a chance if it can pick up a couple of games in the next week.

Being in Arizona, I hear a good deal of talk claiming Jose Valverde is one of the best closers (or the best) in baseball. This annoys me to no end. Mostly, it's due to an over-reliance on the "save" statistic (the correct amount of reliance on that stat would be "zero"). Yes, Valverde has more saves than anyone else this season, and there's a good chance he will remain the leader. However, he also has more save opportunities than anyone else and is among the leaders in blown saves. Along these lines, a lot has been made of Mariano Rivera's decline in saves, but he entered September with only 25 save chances, which makes it kinda hard to rack up 40+ saves (he has racked up eight saves this month already, though). A couple weeks ago, Jayson Stark wrote a column on revising the save rule. Well, maybe not so much revising, because it's become entrenched -- as he acknowledges -- but creating a new stat to take its place, and would apply to middle relief as well. While there would still be the issue of opportunities to achieve this stat (just as there are for not just saves, but wins, RBI's, and assorted other stats), it would be an enormous improvement. I also like its application to middle relief, for several reasons. First and foremost, it would tend to eliminate the silly notion that you save your best reliever for the ninth inning. Bob Wickman could still be in Atlanta. Secondly, middle relievers already were getting credited with blown saves, which makes no sense if you're not going to give them credit for the save (making the blown save a stat less meaningful than the save). Thirdly, the hold is a useless stat, and I believe still has competing standards for its use (though maybe those got worked out before this season); under at least one standard, you can have more earned runs allowed than outs recorded and still get credit for a hold. So, hopefully, this "stop" -- or something similar -- will catch on.

Ken Griffey, Jr., finally suffered his annual injury, but this one occurred close enough to the end of the season that he barely missed playing as much as he did his first year in Cincinnati (one game or eight plate appearances, depending on which metric you prefer, though eight games and sixty-four fewer innings defensively).

Barry Bonds could fail to meet my games played prediction, but that's due to an injured toe, not because Giants management went with the unthinking talking heads and reduced his playing time to 2-3 games a week. It will be interesting to see where he ends up next season. I think he'll make less than the $19 million or so (including bonuses) he made this year.

Sammy Sosa is also looking for a team to play for next year, hoping it will be the Rangers. Somebody's going to pay too much for him based on his RBI total (currently 90) and the fact that he's somehow hitting .336 with runners in scoring position (hence the RBI total). He's hitting .253 overall (meaning about .212 without runners in scoring position (that was a quick mental calculation, it could be slightly off)) and you figure that those numbers will tend to even out. I believe he's played more against left-handed pitchers the last couple of months (when he's only been a part time player) which would explain why his batting average is back over .250.

As long as I'm mentioning players who will be free agents, how about Alex Rodriguez? People have thrown out figures such as $30 million a season and 10 years (not sure if they've done both together, though). It would be a bad idea for a team to do either. However, I wouldn't put it past several different teams. He went on a tear after the last time I mentioned his play, but I still maintain that his season has not been as amazing as it's made out to be. It's been very good, even great, but it's not some historically amazing season. His OPS is close to dipping back down enough to give Bonds the major league lead. It's hard to claim that your season was historically significant when your OPS was bested by a 43-year-old (unless you're talking about something like Granderson's triples, where he's had a shot at the highest modern season total outside of Chief Wilson's obscene 36 in 1912 (the most anyone else has ever had in the modern era is 26; Granderson currently has 23 (most since 1949, nobody has had more since 1925)) where OPS is not relevant to that specialized facet).

More baseball to come at season's end, including my take on assorted awards, the playoffs (hopefully with better predictions than last year) and a recap of my pre-season predictions.

Bonds, 756, and Continuing Asininity

2007-08-10T23:46:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to type up any hand-wringing about Bonds and the steroids controversy. My position on that continues to be that enough has been written about that elsewhere, you don't need me repeating the same tired routine.

Instead, I'm going to complain about the comments regarding Bonds that are, well, asinine. I was looking forward to 755 and 756 because it would mean the end of fairy-tale fantasy world suggestions that Bonds should hit his 754th homer and then retire out of respect for Aaron/the record/the game. Even leaving aside the whole "quit wasting your time dreaming of pansy gestures Bonds won't be doing" issue, why should he have waited for his 754th homer to do it? If you think/thought that he should suddenly retire, why not immediately, let alone several years ago? Alas, my hopes were dashed when, after 755, I heard someone say that Bonds should hit 756 and then hang it up, which makes even less sense. You could argue that it would make more sense in that, having the record, Bonds would have removed a disincentive to retirement (I really couldn't say added an incentive to retire), but then how would retirement really be an act of respect towards anything? Now, hopefully, we'll be rid of all that for good. I don't really have issue with those wishing to see Bonds retire immediately or at season's end -- sure, they may be deluding themselves if they think he will, but at least what they're wishing for is not downright anti-logical (illogical does not seem a strong enough term).

Several "experts" have suggested that Bonds's playing time will be (or could be, for those hedging their bets) severely reduced over the rest of the season. This, too, is nonsense. While Bonds will almost certainly not be the draw he was while striving for 756, he's still the biggest draw on the team, beating out several exciting young pitchers, while the individual draw for other position players is pretty much left to family and friends, many of whom can get tickets for free. Bonds is the best offensive player on the team, and one of the best in the league. He leads the majors in on-base percentage, OPS, walks, intentional walks, ranks sixth in slugging, and is tied for ninth in homers. While you sit veterans to test rookies after falling out of the playoff race, you don't sit your best players. Thirdly, the Giants' outfield prospects are not exactly an impressive bunch. Sure, they could make the majors and stick around for several years, but they seemed destined more for fourth outfielder, maybe third. Lastly, Bonds has repeatedly stated a desire to play next season -- he's not going to want to sit out a bunch of games (or, perhaps more accurately, a bunch more). Barring injury, expect Bonds to top last year's games played total.

As a final note, despite Bonds's statements to the effect that the chase was not affecting his play, I don't believe it, and I think his play backs up my disbelief (not just the struggles in, say, the batting average department, but in things like the mechanics of his swing). I full expect his August-September play to be better than that of the first four months (or, to remove a poor end of July from the equation and give the statement more meaning, better than his play in the first half).

More Baseball

2007-08-02T12:20:00.000-07:00

It never ceases to amaze me just how great a player Babe Ruth was. For today's lesson on the subject, we'll look at slugging percentage. Ruth had a career slugging mark of .690, easily the highest of all time (Ted Williams is second at .634). It's not common for a player to play at that level for even a single season. It's been done 45 times in history if you count two instances in the 19th century (thanks to mlb.com, by the way, for having all their historical stat databases working). Here's a breakdown of how often individual players accomplished it:

10 Babe Ruth
4 Lou Gehrig
4 Jimmie Foxx
4 Barry Bonds
3 Rogers Hornsby
3 Mark McGwire
2 Ted Williams
2 Albert Belle
2 Larry Walker
1 Al Simmons
1 Hack Wilson
1 Stan Musial
1 Mickey Mantle
1 Jeff Bagwell
1 Frank Thomas
1 Sammy Sosa
1 Manny Ramirez
1 Todd Helton
1 Tip O'Neill (the 19th-century baseball player, not the 20th-century Speaker of the House)
1 Hugh Duffy (the other 19th-century player)

I tried to arrange all ties on the list in order of when they first accomplished it, with the exception of dropping the 19th-century players to the bottom. Only seasons in which the player in question qualified for the batting title were counted. Bonds just missed out on a fifth season with a .688 in 2000 (two total bases short). Helton and Walker would not have reached this level without playing in Colorado (Helton had a .698 while Walker had a .710 and a .720). If you raise the standard to .700, you lose ten of the forty-five seasons, one each by Ruth, Gehrig, Foxx, Hornsby, McGwire, Belle, Ramirez, Helton, O'Neill, and Duffy. Nobody reached .690 between 1961 (when Mantle last did it) and 1994 (when Belle, Bagwell, and Thomas each did it in a strike-shortened season). Even in this age of offensive expansion, Ruth still owns this category. You hear lots of people raving about the season Alex Rodriguez is having; going into today's game, he's only slugging .626 (which would be the lowest for a major league leader since 1992, when Bonds was the leader at .624).

Speaking of Rodriguez, ESPN was asking if he'd get to 60 homers today. I'd have to say no. I was skeptically that he'd get to 50 back in April, and I stand by my skepticism. I also think Steve Phillips is smoking crack for saying that he'd end up around his career high of 57. His current season pace is about 52/53. That, however, includes a record-tying April output that he's not matched since. He's failed to hit ten homers in any month since then, and has averaged seven per month over the last three. give him that average for the next two months and he'll have .... 49 homers. See, my skepticism isn't crazy. Now, I'm not saying it's a foregone conclusion that he'll fall short of 50, but 50 is far from a gimmee. The Yankees two games before today featured eight homers by seven different players and five homers by four different players, with neither game having one of Rodriguez. That amuses me.

On to Barry Bonds. Many people have commented that Rodriguez could hit his 500th homer the same night Bonds ties and/or breaks the record. Fewer people have mentioned that Bonds's 600th double could come in the same game. I know the double's not as impressive, but 600 is pretty exclusive territory (he'd be the fourteenth player to reach that mark, comapred to Rodriguez being the twenty-second to reach 500 homers). Watching Bonds's at-bats over the last month, his swing looks really screwed up. He's chasing more pitches and seems to be trying for a 600-ft blast with each swing. It's really not his style, and I'd suggest it's the reason for his struggles. He's said he noticed his swing was messed up after looking at video, so maybe that will change. Despite all this, Bonds is still the major league leader in OPS. I've heard a lot of talk from the chattering classes in baseball questioning whether he'll find a place to play next season. I have to think that he will. First, as his OPS prowess testifies, he's still a great hitter to have in your lineup. The distraction he brings with him is questioned, but I have to think that it will decrease after he breaks the homerun record. There's a chance that he could be around 800 homers at the end of next season, in which case it would pick up again, but it wouldn't reach the same level. As far as steroids, his "attitude" and other general distractions go, look no further than Detroit, which has welcomed Gary Sheffield, every bit as involved in the steroid controversy (though he's garnered fewer headlines for it), and someone who is uncapable of opening his mouth without saying something mind-bogglingly stupid. If Sheffield can find a home, why not Bonds? Not to mention all those accused of spousal abuse, et cetera. As long as Bonds's financial demands are not too onerous, I'm sure someone would sign him. Plus, if he goes to the AL, I could see him playing over 150 games in a season. One writer thought, for some reason (probably mental deficiency), that he'd still only play about 130 games a season for an AL club, but that makes no sense when you figure that he'd primarily be a DH (though I bet you'd see him in the field in a few intraleague (yes, intra-) games still). As to the previously mentioned possiblity of 800 homers, I see a good chance for that if he moves to an American League team with a good offense; he'd play more often, get more plate appearances when he does, and get pitched around less. If he plays for the Giants again, the chances are less good (though he could, of course, play two more seasons). I still think the Giants are his most likely team for next year. Hopefully for the Giants, they'll manage to add someone under 30 during the offseason ... or at least under 35.

Brian Sabean, GM of the Giants, is vastly overrated. Not just the Zito deal, but trading Nathan, Liriano, and Bonser to Minnesota for one disappointing season of Pierzynski? Possibly the worst trade sicne I started following baseball. Then there's the obsession with adding old players. Weird.

I recently saw it written that the Pirates would be better if only they could get some more money. I doubt this, given the way their front office works. This was even before they traded for Matt Morris, agreeing to pay the entirety of his salary. They gave Jeromy Burnitz $6 million for 2006 even after a bad 2005, seemingly in the hopes that he would put up his inflated Coors Field numbers of 2004. They're paying Jack Wilson something in the neighborhood of $6 million this year apparently based on his one good season in 2004. Until they start using the money they have more wisely, I don't see how more will help (unless you suddenly grant them a $200 million payroll, in which instance I'm sure they'd stumble into at least a few decent moves, or, at least, decent players (they'd be the team that signed Alex Rodriguez for over $30 million a year). I suppose the Cubs have compensated for some bone-headed moves with their large payroll.

On the matter of contracts, I'd love to see a move towards more performance-based ontracts. The union would hate this, I'm sure, but there are already many contracts that contain performance bonuses, so I see this as a possible move. A team would offer less guaranteed money, but offer assorted bonuses based on performance at levels the player thinks he can attain, that would bring the total amount of the contract to a higher level than the amount paid by the other hypothetical contract with a greater amount of guaranteed money. Appeal to the player's ego, and there's a good chance they'd go for it.

As a final note, censorship can be entertaining. I was reading this compilation of bad trades in baseball history on the Fox Sports website, and the first name of Boof Bonser was bleeped out, and the phrase "trading a young player" was rendered "tradinBLEEPoung player" because, apparently, there are three letters that just can't appear in a row, even if seperated by spaces and part of three different words.

Slighty Past Mid-Season Baseball Notes

2007-07-26T12:51:00.000-07:00

Yeah, it's been awhile. I'll try to catch up on a few things in the coming days. First, baseball.

The Yankees and Cubs have done a good job of getting back into contention after a lot of people started declaring them out, especially the Yankees. It never made much sense to rule them out, but logical reasoning is not something that goes with Yankee-hatred. Primarily, people get obsessed with won-loss record and don't bother looking at anything else. True, the Yankees did not have a very good record, and true, the Yankees themselves were not happy with where they were, but it's best to look behind the record to see what's really going on. Most notably, as something I intend to invoke with other teams later in this post, run differential is a better indicator of future performance than won-loss record. Luck (chance, whatever you wish to call it) is a factor for success, or lack thereof, in baseball in everything from getting a hit to winning a game. Run differential does a much better job of eliminating luck than the won-loss record does. The Yankees had badly underperformed their run differential all season long, as they had one of the best run differentials, but a losing record until recently. In terms of total runs, they currently have the largest differential, though Boston's is better as theirs has come in a lower run-scoring environment (which is to say, their pitching has been more competent). This leads nicely into my next point, the rash of injuries to Yankees pitchers. They've had other injury problems as well, but position player injuries have been more the typical rate, while those to starting pitchers occurred at an obscene rate. When you consider adding back in pitchers returning from injury, plus Clemens, you have to expect better pitching to go with the stellar offense. Even without making any adjustments based on adding the pitchers back to the Yankees' roster, run differential would suggest the Yankees catching the Indians in the wild card race at this point. There's also the strength of schedule issue. The Yankees-Red Sox season series was almost over by early June. While that obviously does not help the Yankees in their efforts to win the division from this point forward, it does indicate that most of their games against one of their strongest opponents came during their early season depletion. Now, I'm not saying all of this to say that the Yankees will make the playoffs (though I do think they will), I'm saying that it was ridiculous to count the Yankees out of the playoff picture. For those following along at home, the Yankees are now only 4.5 games back in the wild card and 6.5 games back in the division, neither of which could be called insurmountable by any reasonable person. As to the Cubs, most people had stopped discounting them before the all-star break, but, once again, run differential (plus, you really had to figure Zambrano, in the least, was going to turn things around).

The two most over-hyped teams at this point in the season: Diamondbacks and Mariners. Look at the run differentials. Neither team will be making the playoffs, especially not the Diamondbacks. Even after winning their last five, and sitting seven games over .500, the Diamonbacks have been outscored by 22 runs this season. I especially find it hillarious when the same person calls the Diamondbacks a great team and the Giants a horrible one. The Giants have the better run differential. The difference is that the Diamondbacks have played six games ahead of what their run differential would suggest, while the Giants have played six games behind. Now, the difference in run differential between the two teams is small enough that you can make a compelling case for the Diamondbacks being the better team, but to say that they're "great" while the Giants are "horrible" is absurd.

Speaking of over-hyped teams, remember who I called the most over-hyped team at the beginning of the season? The White Sox, who are fighting with the Royals to avoid the cellar in the AL Central (and, I might add, the Royals have the better run differential) after being highly touted as a contender for the division title (most didn't expect them to win it, mind you, but they were expected to contend).

Craig Biggio is closing in on the all-time hit-by-pitch mark. This is something I've followed well before the national media started to do so (I believe I mentioned it in my 2006 season preview, but it's something I've had my eye on since well before then). I had originally thought he'd have the record by now, but the last few seasons have seen a decline in the number of pitches he's taken to the body. It's been pronounced enough that I think it's more than random chance, though I can't really comment as to whether the pitchers are working harder to avoid him, or he's not trying to get hit as much. I had once thought that Jason Kendall would overtake him, but Kendall has also slowed down on this front and given his general ineptness around the plate, may not get a chance to stick around long enough to reach the mark. At any rate, when (if) Biggio does set the record, I hope he rounds first and tries for second (yes, that's a reference to his 3,000th hit). As long as we're on Biggio, in his press conference announcing his retirement, I couldn't help but notice his statement to the effect that he didn't want to be a washed-up player, and wondered if he'd seen his play recently. Of course, he had a great game that night, and a nice run right around the time of his 3,000th hit (including a five-hit game that night).

More thoughts to come later.

Posting on a Thursday Afternoon

2007-05-03T12:32:00.000-07:00

If you thought that the courts were aiding Islamic terrorists in this country, take a look at what's happening across the pond. The "anti-terrorism" court decided that a couple of terrorist suspects could not be deported, were unlikely to receive a fair trial in Britain, and should be released on bail. Makes you wonder what a pro-terrorism court would have ruled.

Compact fluorescent lightbulbs are not quite the saviors they're heralded as. Especially if you drop one and have to spend $2,000 cleaning up the mercury spill. Despite these risks, several groups have succeeded in banning the incandescent lightbulb in favor of the CFL in a few jurisdictions (as I recall, Australia, Ontario, and, at the least, an effort was underway in California). It's illegal in several jurisdictions to throw out CFL's with your normal trash due to the mercury contained in them.

Mark Krikorian sums up the mess that is the Episcopalian Church better than I ever could, shortly and succinctly. He makes mention of disgraced, scandal-plagued former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey's interest in attending seminary, but I'd also like to point out that McGreevey, who cheated on his wife with a man and nominated that man to an important homeland security position despite his utter lack of qualifications (aside from any other typical New Jersey corruption he may have participated in), is now teaching a college course on business ethics. (Sorry, lost the link.)

I previously linked to the Fred Thompson facts on IMAO (in the style of the Chuck Norris facts, which were previously coopted by Jack Bauer). Frank J. has seen fit to continue dispensing facts about Thompson on a more-or-less daily basis over the last month. Good stuff.

Lots of old predictions about what the future (now the past) would look like are on the paleo-future blog, such as this one.

A much improved version of Battlefield Earth has been made.

In California, a student was suspended and a teacher was transfered after the student urinated in a bottle during class when the teacher would not excuse him to go to the bathroom. I have a feeling that there's something lacking in the news write-up of the story.

Someone alert Rosie O'Donnel that fire has once again melted steel when a tanker fire lead to the collapse of a portion of a highway interchange in the San Francisco Bay area. Maybe she can announce on The View how George W. Bush was behind some sort of plan to demolish the bridge and blame it on a tanker fire as part of his scheme to lie us into war with Iran. I'll be eagerly awaiting her comments.

Alasdair Murray has an article in New Statesman on efforts to raise the birth rate in Europe. He sees fit to call the banning of abortion "dishonourable" and "authoritarian" for some reason.

The London Times has an article on Martian climate change. Most interesting is the reader comments below the story. The article states "Since there is no known life on Mars it suggests rapid changes in planetary climates could be natural phenomena." They're a lot more careful about assigning blame for Martian climate change to natural phenomena than they are about assigning Earth climate change to man. Perhaps they're still testing that man-made heat on Earth is radiating outwards, warming Mars and the other planets in our solar system. More details as they develop. Other qualms about the writing: the opening sentence states that the speed of the climate change could melt the ice cap, rather than the degree of change, and the use of "Nasa" instead of "NASA".

Pitcher J.D. Durbin somehow managed to go from the Twins to the Diamondbacks to the Red Sox to the Phillies all in a sixteen day period. That's gotta be some kind of record.

A public service announcement about another pitcher, Dave Bush: his BABIP against going into tonight's game against the Pirates is .419. For what can be expected of his future performance see: mean, regression to the.

Small Post for a Friday Morning

2007-04-27T08:39:00.000-07:00

After all the talk about how many early-season games were cancelled due to poor weather, and whether baseball should be played in early April in certain cities, someone actually decided to do some *gasp* research into the matter. Arizona State University alum Dr. Greg Goodrich of Western Kentucky University researched select cities for miserable baseball weather and concluded that Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh should not host any home games until after April 10, at which point the increased risk of "miserable baseball weather" becomes negligible. The Minnesota Twins plan to move to an open-air stadium, which would mean they shuold delay their home season's beginning until April 15. Toronto has a dome, so no info for that city if it were to switch to an open-air stadium. On the subject of poor scheduling, you have to wonder not so much about (just) why those cities had home games, but also why certain teams were scheduled to visit during those times. Most notable, the Seattle at Cleveland series that was cancelled, and will be a royal pain to makeup, as it was the only scheduled series between the two teams in Cleveland, plus the two cities are about 2,000 miles apart, which makes meeting on their mutual off days tricky.The Indians, naturally, do not wish to play any "home" games in Seattle (the Milwaukee situation was a bit different as they were playing the Angels, who did not have a homefield advantage there). The Giants and Pirates were unable to play a couple of games in Pittsburgh, but that was on the 14th and 15th, late enough to be more flukish, and making up those games will be annoying for those teams as well (I believe they settled on a mutual August off-day following the two teams' meeting in San Francisco, preceding a Pirates' homestand and the Giants' series in Florida). In short, don't schedule home games for those teams in early April, and, if you do, schedule them against division rivals.

Researchers have managed to rediscover three lost texts in a parchment. Basically, John Myronas had erased writing on several parchments in the 13th century to write his own book (a not uncommon practice). What is unusual is finding three manuscripts of decent importance that were not previously known to exist (by Archimedes, Hyperides, and a commentary on Aristotle's Categories).

Also, back on the baseball front, I'm surprised that with all the stories in recent years, nobody is saying anything about Alex Rodriguez and steroids. So, from here until I get tired of it, I shall give him the nickname Steroids, Jr.

Jake Peavy struck out 16 Diamondbacks through seven innings the other day, but was lifted from the game. I think he should have been left in to go for the record. Sure, he'd thrown 117 pitches already, but Nolan Ryan through twice that many in a game before. Pitchers these days are babied too much.

Baseball, Other Things

2007-04-26T09:34:00.000-07:00

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?

That Taxing Time of Year

2007-04-16T07:43:00.000-07:00

I shall once again point readers to my first tax day blog posting. An abridged version now serves as my annual away message on aim for this time of year.

Dishonoring Jackie Robinson

2007-04-14T19:15:00.000-07:00

This whole Jackie Robinson celebration thing has gotten out of hand. When I first heard about Ken Griffey, Jr., wanting to wear number 42 as a tribute, I thought it was a decently nice gesture, but not really worth a second thought. A few more players started to announce that they would as well, and I shrugged it off as a gesture that was becoming "the thing to do." Then I heard the entire Dodgers team would be doing it, and I thought it was absurd and overly-gimmicky. If I thought that about the Dodgers doing it, well, you can imagine how I felt once other teams starting jumping into the fold. It got significant play on the ESPN Baseball Today podcast by Alan Schwarz, who seems a bit too interested in race issues (I'm basing that assessment on previous experience, not just his latest). If you ever wanted to destroy a baseball hero, this 60th anniversary celebration is the way to do it.

Even worse than the normal stuff, is Keith Law trotting out the standard p.c. claptrap about how the team names of the Indians and Braves are insensitive. Perhaps white northners should taken exception to the Yankees. Sea-faring men of all stripes must surely feel deeply hurt and offended by the Mariners. Communists can hardly stand Cincinatti's derogatory slur of a team name, and Queen Elizabeth II must cry herself to sleep after watching Kansas City in action.

There's also the hand-wringing about the decline of African-American baseball players. However, aside from the foolishness of the task to begin with, these leave out the number of Hispanic black players. The number I saw was 9% of all major-leaguers. Well, the black proportion of America's population is about 12%, and foreign-born players have begun to make up a large subsection of the population of major leaguers. I see no problem with this. Should we complain about the lack of whites on professional basketball teams? Until these race hucksters realize that blacks already have a disproportionately large representation among pro athletes to begin with, they're not even worth listening to. Frankly, they're not worth listening to after that, either. I am sickened by people who believe the measure of a man is the color of his skin, and that's what these people are.

Time for the Weekend

2007-04-12T00:46:00.000-07:00

My work week has ended. To those who still have to work on Thursday and Friday, I laugh derisively in your general direction.

In my last post (I think), I mentioned an Indian couple who committed suicide after their dog died. Well, in another case of idiotic suicide, a minister commits it after being awake during surgery. Suicide is a foolish thing to begin with, but a minister, of all people, should know better.

Also updating something from my last post, more on Hillary's supposed effort to join the Marines here and here.

As for people making up stories, Ford's CEO is not immune from the problem. Of course, his "joke" never made much sense to begin with.

The different meanings of Al Gore.

Dennis Kucinich wonders why, when supply goes down and demand goes up, prices go up. At least half (and probably three-quarters) of Congress could really use a remedial economics class.

Fred Thompson announced he has cancer. The headline looked bad when I saw it, but with Thompson calling the cancer "a good kind if you can ever call something like that a good kind," my worries quickly abated. I went from thinking "he's out" as far as the presidential race goes when seeing the headline to "he's in" after reading the article. It's smoething he'd need to announce before running, and seeing that more people with that type die of old age than of anything relating to the cancer, it shouldn't be a big deal. Given the unimpressiveness of the rest of the GOP field, I am currently most interesting in supporting Thompson (Fred, not Tommy). That, of course, could change after aking a harder look at him, much as my interest in Huckabee waned.

The ESPN baseball fantasy game is undergoing a fix, as outlined in this note:

In order to address the issues we have been experiencing and restore your ability to play, we will be performing updates on ESPN Fantasy Baseball from Wednesday, April 11th at 8:00 PM ET through Thursday, April 12th at 8:00 AM ET. During this time the game will be unavailable. The steps we are taking will get the game back on track and ensure the integrity of the season will result in the following:
1) Revert all teams to their opening day rosters (Sunday, April 1).
2) Set the starting lineup of each team's opening day roster as the active roster for all games played to date (April 1 - April 11).
3) Retroactively apply scoring for the entire season to date based on that roster.
4) Void all transactions to date (trades, waiver pickups, roster moves, etc.).

Following these changes, all players not on a roster will be placed on waivers for 24 hours, and the waiver order for each league will be restored to where it was on Opening Day.
We have been working around the clock to fix the problems we are having to make the fantasy season the best it can be. We appreciate your patience.

This seems, well, dumb. Voiding all trades, ignoring whoever was put in or taken out of lineups (especially important when it comes to pitchers), and general all-around no-goodness. They've successfully hit upon just about the worst solution they could have gone with. Bravo, gentlemen. While they did have issues with roster spots being inappropriately locked, this was more of a temporary problem each night (except the first one, when it lasted nearly until play started on the second full day of the regular season), so I see no reason not to go with the stats each team had rightfully earned up until that point. Sure, some people may have wanted to edit their roster for that second day and didn't get the chance, but they're not getting the chance with this outcome, either. I find this "fix" to be far more disruptive of the game than the initial problem was.

I have been referred, once again, to the red button, so I pass it along.

Sleep Deprived Blogging

2007-04-09T06:52:00.000-07:00

A couple of people quit at work. We were already thinly staffed, so this leads to much schedule uncertainty in the near future. Or, perhaps, the less-near future. Whichever.

I hate it when people park in my parking space.

An Indian couple committed suicide after their dog died. How pathetic.

Doubt is shed on Hillary's claims to have attempted to join the Marines.

Don't have any other links handy, and I'm tired, so that's all for now.

Titanic Truth

2007-04-06T06:14:00.000-07:00

At last, the government conspiracy behind the Titanic sinking is being exposed. I'm pretty sure George W. Bush was behind it. He may hide behind convenient excuses like the fact that his parents hadn't even been born at that time, but don't let that fool you. He was on the grassy knoll in Dallas, he was in Ford's Theatre, and, appropriate for today, I'm pretty sure he was Pontius Pilate's political advisor.

Lots of Somewhat Random Links

2007-04-05T05:11:00.000-07:00

After not doing any non-baseball posting for awhile, I have something of a backlog of links, so here goes:

The Department of Homeland Security will be using a former lunatic asylum as its new headquarters. Supply your own comentary.

A hexagon formed on Saturn, which is interesting for reasons being, I am sure. More interestingly, the original USA Today caption called it a "bizarre six-sided hexagon." I've never found six-sided hexagons to be bizarre, myself.

A fun game of converting decimal numbers to binary and vice versa can be found here. Or is there something off-kilter about me enjoying that?

In celebrity news, Keith Richards snorted his dad. Given that celebrities are always trying to outdo themselves, I wonder what is next -- The Rolling Stones Cannibalism Tour: This Time It Really Is Our Last One?

In other celebrity news, K.I.T.T. is for sale. Apparently, without the voice of William Daniels, the man who, to me, will always be a car, a principal, and John Adams. He was also, like Reagan, head of the Screen Actors Guild.

In the final bit of celebrity news, Scotty is being beamed up.

Robot heads, gotta love 'em.

Lots of problems going on across the pond. Cheshire police went after an 11-year-old boy for calling a classmate gay. If schoolgrounds there are anything like the ones I grew up on, the police have their work cut out for them. Some teachers have stopped teaching about the Holocaust to avoid offending Muslims. Good luck with that. A supermarket chain, worried that not enough people knew the true meaning of Easter, decided to teach the public that Easter eggs celebrate the birth of Christ. Well, it's the thought that counts, right?

A collection of great media-perpetrated April Fools' Day hoaxes.

What a Screwed up World We Live in Part 8,897,432,634: a Georgia man raped his 16-year-old daughter in a cemetary. Twice, apparently.

Yale apparently admits foreign students so they can burn American flags. Those that belong to other people, no less.

Iranian Jews are sticklers for following the teachings of Jesus.

The Kerry camp has started to say that McCain's people approached them about being Kerry's running mate. McCain denies it. I'm inclined to believe McCain, at least in this case.

Rosie O'Donnell is spreading conspiracy theories about WTC7. They're ably debunked by Popular Mechanics. Even aside from all the scientific reasons why those theories are wrong, there's the common sense one: why would the government bring it down in the first place. Honestly, I have my doubts whether half the nation even knows that it collapsed. And, frankly, those that do know about it generally don't care. Whenever the WTC attacks are mentioned, it's almost always about "the twin towers" and never "the twin towers and a third really large building". Do the people spreading these theories think that if only WTC1 and WTC2 had fallen, the American people would have just shrugged it off, but the collapse of WTC7 was a major call to action? Why would the government set up explosives and then wait to demolish it for several hours after the twin towers had collapsed (and it had been evacuated)? There's such a lack of not only scientific knowledge but common sense behind this theory that it boggles the mind.

An environmental comparison between the Bush and Gore residences. Show this to the nearest Gore-worshiper and watch their head explode.

The Supreme Court made another mockery of itself in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency. For those of you who have never decided to pass your time by sitting in a law library, reading case law (math games, case law -- no wonder I'm a hit at parties), an excerpt from the Chief Justice's dissent which really highlights part of the wrongness can be found here.

A professor got called on his bias and responded in a less-than-kind manner. I highly recommend following that link to read his e-mail.

Futurama Quote for the Day

2007-04-03T05:55:00.000-07:00

"It was always our plan to trail at the half, thus deepening Earth's eventual humiliation. Also, what game were the refs watching?"

Perfect.

2007 Baseball Season Preview and Predictions Part II

2007-04-03T05:13:00.000-07:00

I've decided to predict full standings, sans records, just because.

NL East:
Phillies
Mets
Braves
Marlins
Nationals

NL Central
Cubs
Cardinals
Brewers
Astros
Reds
Pirates

NL West
Giants
Dodgers
Padres
Diamondbacks
Rockies

AL East
Yankees
Blue Jays
Red Sox
Orioles
Devil Rays

AL Central
Twins
Indians
Tigers
White Sox
Royals

AL West
Angels
Athletics
Rangers
Mariners

There's been a lot of talk about how five players could reach the 500 homerun mark this season. Well, guess what -- Gary Sheffield will not be setting a new career high in homers, and, as such, will not be joining the club. Also, at least one other will fall short.

Roger Clemens will come back and best last season's paltry win total. At least he will if he doesn't come back for the Astros. They gave horrible run support to Nolan Ryan (who once won an ERA title while going 8-16 with them), and lately they've done it to Clemens. Something about disrespecting (or over-respecting?) their native sons .... If Clemens would give up on this retiring for the first third of the season junk, he could certainly move into third place on the all-time wins list, and possibly even pass 400 (not this season, of course).

It seems that ESPN is having major issues with their fantasy game. You'd think they would have tested this all out before the season started. They have issues with locking players for future dates and not displaying teams, both of which hinder efforts to edit your roster, and with adding players to your team. I suppose you get what you pay for. While I'm on the subject of complaining about fantasy set-ups, the new Yahoo drag-and-drop lineup editor is nice, except I'm a compulsive text highlighter and whenever I go to highlight a player's stats, it has me dragging the player instead. Nuts to that.

2007 Baseball Season Preview and Predictions

2007-04-02T12:33:00.000-07:00

It's time for my annual look ahead for the upcoming baseball season, and the random predictions that come with it.

ESPN ran some of their "expert" predictions and projected standings, and also projected standings based on the Diamond Mind software. Some odd predictions in there, including Rob Neyer predicting the Diamondbacks into the World Series. Now, I like Rob's work, but Dbacks in the Series? I don't think so. John Shea predicts an all-Chicago World Series on the 100th anniversary of the other one, but with a different result.

My projections for division winners:
AL East: Yankees
AL Central: Twins
AL West: Angels
NL East: Phillies
NL Central: Cubs
NL West: Giants

Yeah, they're a bit eccentric. As for the wild card teams, I'll say .... Indians and Dodgers. All-overhyped team of the preseason: White Sox.

Other predictions and notes:
Jim Thome moves into third on the all-time strikeout list, while Sammy Sosa continues his pursuit of Reggie Jackson, however, both will retire before attaining that level.

As for another potential candidate for the crown, Adam Dunn will pass the 1100 strikeout mark (that is, have over 173 strikeouts).

As for my annual "how many players will pass Babe Ruth on the all-time strikeout list," this year's answer is five. Write it down.

One final strikeout prediction: Alex Rodriguez will set a new career high (140+).

Barry Bonds will rebound from last season and have a good year. I could see him breaking Aaron's record by the All Star break, but I'll play it safer on my prediction and say by the end of July. I'll go with 600 doubles by the all-star break, and 2,000 RBI by the end of August (those, of course, being career numbers). Some have mentioned that he has a chance to crack 3,000 hits this season, but that won't happen; he's only reached the 159 total he would need thrice in his career, and not since 1998 (basically, he walks way too much for that). He's talked about playing in 2008, which I really believe he wants to do to reach three numbers: 800 homers, 2296 runs (which would give him sole possession of first place), and 3,000 hits. It would also give him enough RBI's to pass racist Cap Anson's 2076 (there are legends that Anson is the reason blacks were barred from the majors, and, though I don't buy them, I think Bonds might derive some pleasure from beating the total of someone who adamantly refused to take the field with a black man). On a note that cannot be mistaken for "hurray for Bonds" he will pass the 1,500 strikeout mark by Memorial Day. As to swirling rumors about his indictment and the chance that it will keep him from playing/breaking Aaron's record, there's no chance of that. Even if he does get indicted, he posts bail, they set a trial date for after the season (or, at minimum, late in the season). He will not be convicted and thrown in jail before the end of the season, the legal system is incapable of being so efficient. I even have my doubts about them being able to convict him of perjury (if they had such an open-and-shut case on him already, they would have indicted him). Thus concludes the legal analysis portion of my baseball preview and predictions.

Craig Biggio will get the needed six bean balls to set the all time record for most times beaned, and the 70 hits needed for 3,000, and then start spending more time riding the pine. He'll fall short of the 19 homers he needs to join the 300-300 club (whose membership showed rapid growth last year and now includes Barry Bonds, his father, his godfather, two of his former teammates, and Andre Dawson, who probably shared an all-star team with Barry -- I just find the way it all revolves around Barry amusing).

FANTASY

On the fantasy baseball front, I am in the same league as last year (also known as the league I care about), and a couple of public leagues. I predict a repeat victory for me in the one I care about.

Once again, I was required to leave the draft early, though the earlier start time allowed me to stay for an extra round despite the extra person. Once again, the good doctor was left to complete my draft and with the ten remaing picks I got ... four first basemen. I guess that Pujols guy I had already drafted might not be reliable. He did draft me Papelbon right before he got switched back to the closer position, and I leveraged that added value into a trade with the GD for Kazmir. Sucker.

I'm off to a horrible start so far this season with Carpenter, Kazmir, and Zambrano each giving up five runs in their first starts, and Smoltz giving up three, none of them getting the win, plus a team batting average sitting at .160 as of this typing. The only thing keeping me out of last place is the fact that two teams have not had any pitchers play yet, so it ranks me ahead of them in ERA and WHIP. So, really, it puts me at about where I was last year -- perfectly primed to come from behind and assume the lead. Victory shall be mine.

Cannabis Apology, Weird Baseball Standings

2007-03-22T15:30:00.000-07:00

Across the pond, the Independent has apologized for its campaign to decriminalize cannabis. It wasn't so much a reconsideration of their initial position as a reaction to the introduction of skunk, a cannabis product with 25 times the potency of what was on the market in the 1990's. Ah, unintended consequences.

In a recent column, Jayson Stark pointed out that coolstandings.com is playing out the 2007 season using 2006 stats. These exercises tend to amuse me, but there were some strange things about it. First and foremost, the Red Sox were 91-24 when he wrote about it (a figure which has increased to 98-24), and several other teams also had screwy records (such as the Giants now at 32-90). It turns out that the site lets you influence games by "boosting" the team of your choice. So, obviously, the site was overwhelmed by Red Sox fans, Bonds haters, and Dodgers fans, among a few others, all of which makes the site less interesting.

I like to keep track of how long I can maintain a connection to AIM, just because, and it recently booted me at 33 days, 22 hours, and 44 minutes. This is the new self-proclaimed record. Admittedly, some program glitches on AIM deleted previous records, but I think this one tops them. My computer is in rather desperate need of a restart now, which is part of the reason I'm clearing out links now.

And, finally, for no reason whatsoever, nuns with guns. I guess parochial schools weren't strict enough on discipline already.

Happy Birthday Republicans, and Uncompassionate Jerk Gandhi

2007-03-20T13:36:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday to the Republican Party, which was founded on this day in 1854. It may not be perfect, but America is better for it.

Police in India have taken their uniforms in an ... interesting direction. The new uniforms will have citrus and floral aromas embedded in their fibers and will also glow in the dark.I dno't think that bodes well for their first nighttime shoot-out with a criminal. On the other hand, regardless of any scandal that may come, they'll always come out smelling like roses.

An expedition to the North Pole that was meant to draw attention to global warming, drew attention to irony instead when one of the explorers got frostbite. One of the organizers of the voyage (though not one of the voyagers) explained it away as "one of the things we see with global warming is unpredictability," proving, once again, that any and all climatic events are evidence of global warming. Also, I'm not exactly sure what they planned as "photographic evidence of global warming" -- holes in polar ice? We've been finding those since we started going to the North Pole, they're nothing new. Of course, global warming alarmists haven't let tat "inconvenient truth" stop them from exploiting people's ignorance and claiming global warming as the sole cause. In somewhat similar news, a group of 24 clergymen marching to raise awareness of global warming were met with a fierce snowstorm.

I always find it interesting the way similar news can be spinned into disparate headlines. MSNBC has the headline "Poll: Iraqis pessimistic about war’s outcome" while the New York Post has "Iraqis' Upbeat Views: Poll Finds Hope." Now, these stories did use seperate polls, but the results were not dissimilar. Just under 50% of Iraqis said they were better off now than under Saddam, which the former news source played as "less than a majority" and the latter played its significant plurality advantage over those who thought life was better under Saddam. The former focuses on safety concerns and feelings towards the allied coalition, while the latter focuses on the fact that most Iraqis do not believe they're in the middle of a civil war, and Iraqis' optimistic views of the future. Larry Kudlow points out that while the number of Iraqis thinking life is better now than under Saddam is in the 40's and the number thinking the opposite is in the 20's, Europeans thinking life is better in the EU is in the 20's while those thinking the opposite is in the 40's. Are we going to see headlines on European pessimism?

Much ink and many pixels have been devoted to the possiblity of Libertarians and Democrats working together. Well, the Cato Institute points out an American National Election Studies survey which included questions on whether funding for various programs and purposes should increase, decrease, or stay the same did not find a Democrat majority for decreasing funding of any of the surveyed programs; the closest they mustered was for foreign aid where "only" 60.1% favored raising funding or keeping it the same.

For those being sucked in by the rehabilitation of Vietnam's image, I always find it useful to point out that they're still a nasty bunch.

Peace protesters often invoke Gandhi. Former senator, tv actor, and potential 2008 presidential candidate Fred Thompson points out what an uncompassionate jerk Gandhi was:

During World War II, Gandhi penned an open letter to the British people, urging them to surrender to the Nazis. Later, when the extent of the holocaust was known, he criticized Jews who had tried to escape or fight for their lives as they did in Warsaw and Treblinka. “The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife,” he said. “They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.” “Collective suicide,” he told his biographer, “would have been heroism.”

Speaking of Fred Thompson, Frank J over at IMAO has a nifty list of Fred Thompson facts reminiscent of the Chuck Norris facts. My personal favorite is "Fred Thompson can know both the exact position and momentum of a particle. Furthermore, he knows Schroedinger's cat is dead because he personally strangled it." I suppose that's a testament to my nerdly impulses.

Should You Vote?

2007-03-08T11:37:00.000-07:00

There's an interesting quiz purporting to tell you whether or not you should vote at DontVote.org. Despite the name, they are in favor of people voting, but want an informed electorate. The quiz involves identifying various political and pop culture figures from their picture, two multiple choice questions per picture -- one for the name and one for the title/occupation. Aside from the basic question of how important identifying the picture really is to knowledge of, say, the issues, I was troubled by the inclusion of pop culture figures until I saw that the questions were weighted; there are a total of 30 pictures with 60 questions totaling 350 points, and the pop culture figures are worth only a point per question. That certainly lessened my objection. I managed to get a perfect score, how well can you do?

It seems that the Democrats are demanding a retreat from Iraq by August 2008. Thus they have demonstrated, once again, that they know nothing about combat and/or care not a whit about our troops or combatting the Islamofascist terrorist threat.

In celebrity news, John Popper, popularly known as the frontman for Blues Traveler, was caught with a pretty hefty arsenal in his SUV, along with some marijuana. The moral of the story is not to let your friend drive your car 111mph if there's stuff in it that you don't want the cops to find.

In D-or E-list celebrity news, Mexico's 1235 pound man has slimmed down to about 840 pounds, and was able to leave his house. While I think it's great that he's working to shed the extra pounds (his goal is to lose 575 more pounds), I always wonder how people get to be like that in the first place. If nothing else, I'd like to think that you'd at least take the fact that you can no longer get out of bed as some sort of sign that you need to lose some of that weight, or, perhaps, that those who cared for him would have done something as opposed to letting him put on another six- or seven hundred pounds. This goes with my big complaint about people being so worried about hurting feelings or whatnot that they avoid the hard truths.

Dred Scott, Captain America

2007-03-07T16:53:00.000-07:00

I didn't get it posted yesterday, but it was the 150th anniversary of the Dred Scott decision. In addition to the general badness of the decision, the opinion invented the "substantive due process" which is at the heart of so much liberal judicial activism today. Damn you, Roger Taney!

Marvel has killed off Captain America. Of course, that might be better than treating him like dirt. Make sure to click the second link to see what Marvel thinks America really stands for.

The web-filter SiteCoach for SiteKiosk apparently lumps together "right-wing" and pornographic content as objectionable content that needs to be filtered. They claim it's a translation error from German; I'm skeptical.

A former defense minister of Iran may be defecting to the United States. Great news, if true. It might mean actually getting some decent intelligence on Iran, what with the CIA doing everything it can to undermine itself after Iraq.

Saturday Morning News Roundup

2007-03-03T05:24:00.000-07:00

All, the headlines, the morning after they happen. It's like the morning paper without the funnies.

Swiss troops accidentally invaded Liechtenstein. They did so with weapons that were not loaded and were met with no resistance. I bet a group of twenty men with loaded airsoft guns could overtake that micronation.

The first Wendy's restaurant was closed. It had no drive-thru, limited parking, and served an area that largely shutdown by 5pm and stayed closed on weekends (that's the area, not the restautrant). Certainly makes sense from a business perspective. Dave Thomas's children, despite the nostalgia, seem to agree with the decision. However, the story cites a woman who presumes to know the man better than his own children, and claims that he'd be spinning in his grave if he found out. Being a broker's assistant, you'd think she was more familiar with business operations. Just because something is affordable does not make it a good business decision. The place brought in less than half the business of an average location.

The Democrats are all kinds of mad at Ann Coulter. This time, it's for remarks she made at CPAC: "I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot,' so I - so kind of an impasse, can't really talk about Edwards." Sure, Coulter's words were not the most appropriate, and a tad odd, but I'll take the complaints from the dems a lot more seriously when they start denouncing those on their side for calling people Nazis, racists, bigots, et cetera. You reap what you sow.

The cavemen from the GEICO commercials have gotten their own sitcom pilot. They always struck me as more the "that's somewhat amusing, but not enough to make me laugh" kind of funny. Gee, cavemen trying to make it in today's world -- sure, it flopped forty years ago (though with a decent theme song), but let's try it again!

Savannah State University kicked a Christian Club off campus. The college accuses Commissioned II Love of harassment because its members shared their faith and hazing because its leaders washed the feet of new members. Got that? Apparently, having their feet washed is “an activity which endangers or is likely to endanger the physical health of a student, regardless of the student’s willingness to participate in such activity.” Perhaps SSU doesn't install showers in their dormitories, either. Anyways, with those two charges, the group was suspended. Several members of the group went to an off-campus worship concert, so the college then decided to escalate from suspension to expulsion. Somehow, I get the suspicion that if the student group had been the Al Qaeda Student Association strapping bomb belts onto new members, the administration would be more accepting.

Doug Hoyt compiled a scorecard comparing real-life results with global warming models. Let's just say the models did not do well. In other global warming news, here is a nice piece on how the European Union's Greenhouse Gas Emissions are rising (at a rate twice as fast as the U.S. since signing Kyoto, and three times as fast since Bush took office), including a nifty graph with an "inconvenient truth" for Europe. Two scientists are trying to claim Richard Branson's $25 million prize for an idea to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide levels with their tongue-in-cheek idea to have everyone "stop breathing so much." Okay, that last one is sort of a joke, but the first two links are certainly worth a read.

Hitler Cats, Giuliani, Huckabee, Bad Teachers

2007-03-02T05:45:00.000-07:00

For all those who have suspected that cats are evil, there is now a website devoted to cats that look like Hitler. I looked at their top four, and perhaps it's just me, but #3 reminds me more of Stalin.

Back on the serious matter of politics, Giuliani has recently been expressing his admiration for judges in the mold of current Justices of the Supreme Court Scalia, Alito, and Roberts. However, his judicial appointments as mayor had a decided leftward tilt. Now, admittedly, the judicial appiontment system there is more restricted, in which he was only able to choose from three applicants that had passed a screening panel for each vacancy, so he might not have been given the oppurtunity to nominate many judicial conservatives. However, the panel is appointed by the mayor (the article is unclear about whether each mayor appoints his own panel, or if each panel member serves a specified term, or what), so he did have some control. Plus, selecting only six Republicans out of his seventy-five total nominations (and fifty Democrats) is a poor track record regardless. My opposition to Rudy periodically lessens, but then there's always something like this to bring me back. Also, his position in the polls is greatly aided by the fact that many people have no idea where he stands on the issues, as pointed out here. (UPDATE: It seems Giuliani had much more discretion than implied, see here for details.)

There's pressure on former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee to drop his declared presidential bid and instead take on democrat Mark Pryor for a Senate seat in 2008. I had considered Huckabee a potential candidate for my support for the presidential nomination, but he finished out his governorship in lackluster fashion, and I've discovered his illegal immigration views are all too similar to McCain and company. Still, I could support him in a run for the Senate, especially as he seems to be Arkansas Republicans' only real hope to take the Senate seat. There's an Iowa straw poll in August; a poor performance there could prompt him to drop out of the race in plenty of time to still make a solid run for the Senate.

There seems to be a boom in bad-teacher stories in the news. There's the middle school teacher (female) who had sex with five students, the substitute who taped students to their desks (which really seems much ado about nothing), an Italian teacher who cut her student's tongue with scissors when he wouldn't be quite, a Pittsburgh teacher who shared a sexual poem with a seventh grader, and, while it's not quite the same, the students caught trying to make a porn film between classes in the drama classroom. Those are only stories taken from headlines that appeared in the last 48 hours on the FOX News website.

Baseball, Weaponized Chimps, and Al Gore

2007-03-01T05:19:00.000-07:00

George W. Bush managed to get on a baseball card with Mickey Mantle and Derek Jeter. Apparently, someone at Topps decided to photoshop the photo for the Jeter card. The card seems to be going for fairly ridiculous prices on ebay at the moment. Topps officials claim they decided to leave it that way because changing it would cause shipment delays. I think they left it that way as a publicity stunt. Discuss.

In other baseball news, Joe Girardi is in some hot water (though he can't exactly be fired twice) over giving Jon Lieber some advice after Girardi's Marlins lit him up for nine earned runs in 4 2/3 innings on July 31 last season. I didn't see mention of it in the stories I read, but I consulted Lieber's gamelog (mlb.com's was not showing, and espn has gamelogs for the last five seasons, so they win) for the season, and saw a few interesting things. While the July 31 outing pushed Liber's ERA over 6.00, he kept it under 3.50 for the rest of the season. Before talking to Girardi, he had faced Florida three times and given up 18 runs (17 earned), with no outing resulting in fewer than four earned runs. Afterwards, he faced Florida twice, and got the win both times. Now, to be fair, he didn't earn it the first time, as he gave up four earned runs (again) in 5 1/3 innings (but with no walks and seven strikeouts), but when your team scores 14 runs, wins tend to fall your way. The second outing was a 7 IP, 2 ER, 0 BB, 6 SO performance. I'm not saying any of this means anything, mind you, but it would seem that there would be more mention of the fact that Lieber faced the Marlins twice mroe and received wins on both occasions, even if the one was not much deserved.

As you may have heard, we're one step closer to The Planet of the Apes. Weaponized chimps killing bush babies, what's not to like about the story? Mark Steyn has his own humorous take on the tale, relating it to the Mesa SWAT team's study of the use of capuchin monkees in intelligence gathering.

There's a new group opposing illegal immigration -- the Mexican wives of illegal immigrants.

Iranian teachers were given a test with questions mocking Mohammed. Hilarious. The questions at the end seem odd, but fairly ho-hum by th standards of our culture; by the same standards, the one in the body of the story is quite funny.

It seems that Al Gore's residence manages to consume over twenty times the amount of electricity consumed by the average American household, and that's despite having natural gas as well. This is in addition to all his private plane trips (an estimated 1 million miles last year). Not exactly Earth-friendly. What's more, his energy use has actually increased since his propaganda film -- er, "documentary" -- came out. Gore and other apologists for his hypocrisy point to his use of energy-saving measures such as flourescent light bulbs (given the way his electrical use has increased, maybe he's actually confused and switching from flourescent to standard light bulbs; this is Gore we're talking about, would that really surprise anyone?), or that he gets most of his electricity from "clean" sources, ignoring that these sources could be used to provide others with non-"dirty" electricity were it not all being hogged by him. They also point to his "carbon-neutral" philosophy, which essentially means that rich people can buy their way out of the system. I am sick of people who set themselves up as champions of the poor, but live more like robber-barons. In other Gore-ish news, I recommend the Planet Gore blog hosted by National Review.

I decided to use an online calculator for individual "carbon footprint" out of curiosity. I came away with a below-average footprint, but the animation it gave me showed me to be some sort of horrible Earth-destroyer who makes flowers wilt, birds fall from the sky, and trees die on a darkened Earth. I suppose I was starving the plant life of the CO2 it needs to survive, thus depriving the bird of the food it needs, and the darkening of the planet -- well, you got me on that one. At any rate, I think the message it was sending is that I need to work on creating more carbon dioxide.

A long list of numbers and what's special about them. Most of these "specialties" will have little interest, or even meaning, to those who are not mathematically inclined.

The EPA has finally decided to update their fuel efficiency ratings to reflect "real life" driving. The new ratings will be used starting with 2008 models, but they provide a calculator for those unable to determine what kind of gas mileage their present car has been achieving. Or, alternately, for those shopping for a car in the interim.

Washington's Birthday, Aquaman's Reprieve, and More

2007-02-21T18:42:00.000-07:00

It's George Washington's Birthday. I expect everyone to celebrate appropriately. It's the 275th anniversary of his birth, but, as our tale does not occur in the book of Genesis, he's not around to celebrate. At the time of his birth, the calendar read February 11. However, the British Empire decided to manipulate time in 1752, and, well, today's his birthday.

Step aside, Aquaman, the world has a new lamest superhero. It's Captain Euro! You can watch each week as Captain Euro uses German bureaucracy and French cowardice in his fight against Dr. D. Vider and his assorted henchmen. Dr. D. Vider apparently wishes to divide Europe and create his own empire. Maybe it's just me, but I'd think that he'd want Europe united under the dominion of his empire. I guess that's just due to the typical irrational thoughts of super-villians, and not poor writing by brainwashed socialist one-worlders ... oh, no, it couldn't be that.

I recently discovered that the house of John Tyler (our tenth president, from 1841 to 1845) is still owned by his grandson. That's right, no "great"s in there. As described here:

John Tyler was born in 1790. Lyon Gardiner Tyler, his fourteenth child of fifteen (eight children by his first wife, seven by his second) was born in 1853, when President Tyler was 63. Harrison Tyler, Lyon Tyler’s fifth child of six (three children by each of his two wives) was born in 1928, when Lyon Tyler was 75. And Harrison Tyler, now 79, still inhabits Sherwood Forest Plantation, the Tyler family home.

From grandfather to grandson, 217 years…and counting.

Not a bad piece of trivia.

Rep. Ed Markey (D, MA-7) has a long history of advocating getting our troops out of harms way, as demonstrated here.

Rep. William "Freezer Cash" Jefferson (D-LA) is being given a seat on the Homeland Security Committee.

David Frum has the right idea on how to use the Newbery Award for children's literature.

Calvin Coolidge Julius Caesar Tuskahoma McLish is quite a name for a baseball player. He shares the record with Greg Maddux, Denny McLain, and Rich Dotson for most consecutive road victories (16), but his career was otherwise pretty unspectacular.

Funny thing about Barack Hussein Obama's voting record in the state legislature of Illinois; on many of the bigger issues, such as banning partial-birth abortion, he didn't vote for or against, but merely cast a "present" vote. How, exactly, does he plan to do that should he win the White House. Should he retitle his book from The Audacity of Hope to The Audacity of Presence?

I was pointed toward a nice pdf file on military deaths. Not that military deaths are nice, mind you. It covers military deaths from 1980 through 2004. Many would be quick to assume 2004 has the highest total, I'm sure, what with Iraq and all. However, the highest total is for 1983 (due to the terrorist attack in Lebanon), followed by 1980, and then ... well, to cut to the chase, 2004 is ninth highest (and 2003 is fourteenth). I'm ranking by total number of deaths; by percentage of total military active duty force, they rank higher. Still, despite being aware that the death rate in Iraq has been relatively low, I was surprised by that tidbit.

For those who've ever felt exasperation trying to explain computers (or technology in general) to someone, here's a nice video from tech support on the upgrade from the scroll to the book. It's in Norwegian, with subtitles in Danish, but it also has English subtitles.

A new ad has been released by 18 Doughty Street. Entitled "A World Without America," the ad is an effort to counter anti-Americanism.

Once again a new record for smallest surviving preemie has been set in America. Born after only 22 weeks of gestation (also a record for a survivor), Amellia Taylor weighed less than 10 ounces and was 9 1/2 inches long. It really rankles me to see America's healthcare system getting knocked, especially those who love to point out our seemingly high infant mortality rate. If a baby is born in America, lives for one minute, and then dies, it's counted as just that. In other countries, it goes down as a miscarriage. If you have a baby born after less than, say, eight months gestation, the United States stands head and shoulders above all other countries.

Purchases That I've Recently Made, Am in the Process of Making, or Will Soon Make

2007-02-14T05:31:00.000-07:00

I purchased Season 1 of House from Borders as it was on sale for only $19.99 through today. It's normally more in the $45 range, or, with the insane non-sale prices at Borders, $60. So, basically, it seemed like a good deal. I've heard several people mention their affection for the show; their affection had better be well-placed. I'm not really in the habit of buying entire seasons of shows I've never seen before -- movies, sure, but not television shows.

On Amazon, I've placed in my cart (only awaiting the finding of gift certificates) Supreme Conflict by Jan Greenburg, Does Education Matter? by Alison Wolfe, and the four Hannibal Lecter novels by Thomas Harris. When I first heard a member of the mainstream media had written a book on the Supreme Court, I figured it was some tired retread of old ideas, information, and the like; however, I've heard many good things about it, so it seems worth a read. Does Education Matter? focuses on credentialism, and asks less about whether education matters than if our debased version thereof does so. As for the Thomas Harris books, I've been in a couple of conversations about novels recently, and that seemed like a popular series I have not read (though I did see two of the movies). I also have not read the Bourne series, nor any John Grisham novels. As for other popular novelists, I've read only one Koontz and one Sandford, no Cussler, and I don't think any Patterson, though I seem to possess at least three unread books from that group. I need to work more on my reading.

Oh, I also purchased a car. Unfortunately, I had to go into debt.

Tomorrow, I shall be purchasing shiny objects. They're pretty.

Lincoln's Birthday and Other Meanderings

2007-02-12T15:11:00.000-07:00

Happy Lincoln's Birthday. You can celebrate by dividing houses against themselves and watching them fall over. Lincoln was born in 1809; in 1909, his likeness was put on the one cent piece (the first time the likeness of a real person was used on a circulating coin produced by the United States; previous coins included generic indians and personifications of Liberty), and in 1959, the Lincoln Memorial was placed on the reverse of the one cent piece. No word yet on official plans for any sort of redesign in 2009.

--------------------------

The latest IPCC summary report has been released, well before the actual report itself, in a move useful for propaganda by doomsayers everywhere. The London Times ran a piece critical of the orthodoxy for ignoring the role of the sun in climate change. Other pieces have been written by Melanie Phillips and the Weekly Standard, among others. On a more interesting, but also older, note, Ronald Bailey of Reason testified before Congress in 2004 about how amazingly wrong environmental doomsayers have been in the past.

----------------------------------

Little Green Footballs has posted a video from Penn and Teller's show that tackles many myths about recycling. Although P&T can be family-friendly (they did appear on the Muppets, after all), this is them uncensored, and, as such, filled with expletives, so be warned.

---------------------------------------

It seems Google-owned YouTube is fine with bashing Christians, but bashing Muslims is out of line. This is par for the course from Google, and it's part of the reason I've switched over to www.goodsearch.com for my search engine needs. I'll admit that it's not quite as good as google, but I much prefer where the money goes.

----------------------------------------

You can come up with these ones all the time, but Debra Saunders has a piece on conservative students running afoul of the administration at SFSU after stomping on Hamas and Hezbollah flags.

-------------------------------------------

From the always-reliable Onion: Thousands Lose Jobs As Michigan Unemployment Offices Close.

-----------------------------------------

That's all for now. In the near future, I intend to revisit potential and actual candidates for the 2008 presidential election. I was going to do it sooner, but various potential candidates kept announcing their intentions to run or not, so it seemed best to wait before updating my lists.