42 thoughts on “June 15, 2012: Downer”

  1. Tonight/this morning is a fantastic time for me to have another bout of not sleeping. It's not like I drove 7 hours by myself earlier and I have a triathlon in 24 hours.

    On the upside, I'm getting a well-overdue FB scrubbing done, both of incriminating photos and unnecessary friends.

      1. All Citizens should have made the cut, so if anyone here notices we are no longer friends, that is the result of a 6 AM misclick and I apologize. Re-friend me if that happened, or friend me if you haven't yet.

  2. I have a staff member who is accusing me of harassing said staff member while the staff member is out on medical leave, and who has called me a "liar" publicly. I just received a friend request from said staff member on the book of face.

    1. Well that should make it easier for you to harass her!

      Seriously though, some people are idiots.

  3. Stumbled into a comment section about Mets fans, and this was a reaction to the infamous Philadelphia "booing Santa" incident:

    snowbirdgothic - Jun 11, 2012 at 4:58 PM
    For God’s sake, let the Santa thing go. It was 1968; that’s so long ago that Jamie Moyer was only in his third season.

  4. btw, meant to ask the Citizens here (it's a little far off yet), but the owner of my local baseball card shop is flying up to the Twin Cities and meeting his brother, who's driving up from KC, and they're going to watch the Twins/Royals weekend series the end of the month. He's about median WGOM age and a big baseball fan and a great guy, and it's his first visit to Target Field.

    Anyway, his flight Friday lands about game time, but on Saturday/Sunday, I'm sure he'd be up to hanging out before or after the game, if anyone was interested. Not sure where his seats are, but I can ask.

    1. Also, as DPWY has pointed out several times, that weekend is SABR. I'm currently signed up for the conference (Wednesday - Sunday) too. Could be an opportune chance for some sort of get-together.

    2. Yes, send him to hang out at SABR on Saturday. He'll be in heaven and you'll be jealous.

      I'm not "officially" attending, but I'll be going to the headquarters hotel (Marriott City Center) and arguing about baseball until the wee hours that weekend.

    1. No kidding. No way I'd want my kid playing for a guy who made them drink wine coolers. Gross.

  5. Baseball Prospectus article on Scott Diamond- it's pretty harsh on his chances, but there's also an interesting line about his success being tied to not giving up multi-run homers that was eerily prescient, given last night's mashed tater.

          1. He has the reputation as being a homer-prone pitcher, but that reputation is due to two years: 1986 and 1987. He was a bit better than average for the rest of his career. That is Rally's site, so that's his breakdown of rWAR of Bert's career.

    1. This article is irritating.

      1. I fail to see what Baker and Radke have to do with Sidney Ponson, besides being white, right-handed, and played for the Twins. Kyle Lohse is another "Twin" (he's now thrown more innings for other teams than the Twins) pitcher that doesn't fit. I get the picture, but it's a random collection of players that either sucked or the person just didn't like.
      2. "Get ground balls". Except Diamond, so far, actually can get ground balls. Like, second in MLB for percentage.
      3. His walk rate naturally increases (duh) and Anderson compares him to Buerhle. He has 47 fWAR and a fastball that reaches 89 only on hot, humid days in Coors Field.

      1. Add Slowey pre-wrist surgery to that list. Maybe his malcontent ways would have manifested anyway and turned into a replacement level pitcher, but it seemed like he would be league average before that.

      2. Oh, and apparently Diamond's walk rate is obviously going to regress, but his strikeout rate is fixed in stone. Strikeout rate stabilizes faster, but when I did the math before yesterday's game, there was still 40% regression necessary to get an estimate.

      3. Yeah, some a bunch of those pitchers in the Twins pitcher montage didn't fit. I noticed Baker right away, but didn't think about the rest of them a whole lot. Hell, Boof was in there- I seem to remember him giving up quite a few walks. Even Silva isn't really a good comparison- the velocity and groundball % might be similar, but Silva really couldn't throw anything but a sinker (I remember him experimenting with a pretty useless changeup for a while, but I don't recall much else). Diamond at least uses various pitches, and I hope he might develop into a reasonable facsimile of Buerhle- that seems like the best-case scenario.

        Even if the article is irritating, I guess I like reading about Twins from a different point of view. Beats reading Souhan's latest, right?

    1. Playing Cuddy at second base will certainly increase their chances of not preventing runs, which I'm sure will be winning entertainment for Rockies fans.

  6. Check out Danny Welbeck's back-heel winner for England before the YT police take it down.

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ndi3l2lJH54

    1. Damn you Sweden! The Motherland!

      Oh well, I'm cheering Germany as I'll be studying there this coming year.

  7. Well folks, we signed an actual lease today. We signed four copies, one for each of the parties involved. We're the proud renters of an expensive piece of real estate in New Orleans. Any and all are welcome, but there is a steep fee. Hotels will be cheaper.

    In other crazy meat grinder news, I've been put forward for a killer teaching gig in Montreal. Yeah, no shit. My life is full of things like this.

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