70 thoughts on “October 5, 2012: It’s Friday…”

    3. What browser? No issues here or at home. Now that I've loaded IE8, it is a bit slow when the daily video is showing. Nothing has changed though, so I'm not sure why today rather than earlier except for hungry joe picking a slow video.

      1. Google Chrome

        The music post is scrolling fine now.

        When I go to Youtube and play today's video (which I like, btw), it plays fine; off the WGOM homepage, I get a frame every beat or so, really herky-jerky

  3. Can. Hardly. Wait.

    I pretty much checked out the entire second half (if not more) of the Twins season. I informed my wife last night that the Twins season was over. Good, she said. Then, I said, but the Timberwolves start in less than a month. This did not elicit a favorable response.

    2. I'm ready to get this thing going. I picked up NBA2K13 last night, so I'm hoping I don't have too much crap to do this weekend.

  4. Anyone want to give their choices for postseason awards, as opposed to predictions?

    Here are mine, AL then NL
    MVP: Trout, Yadier
    CY: Weaver, ???
    ROY: Trout, Harper
    MOY: Showalter, ???
    Comeback: Mauer, ???
    Rolaids: ???, Kimbrel

    I really should work, so I'm not going to figure out my ???s right now.

    1. MVP: Trout, Posey
      CY: Verlander, Dickey
      ROY: Trout, Miley
      MOY: Showalter, Davey Johnson
      Comeback: Mauer, Strassburg

      1. I'm just going to ditto this. I think the AL MVP will be closer than necessary, but Trout will still win.

        1. I'd like to believe that Trout's outstanding season, and doing so in his Rookie year, would be enough, but I'm almost certain the the triple crown will push Redemption Cabrera over the top.

          1. It reminds me of the 2010 CYA. There was plenty of talk about who should win it, with the stats siding with Felix. He had 21 first place votes and won easily. The people that vote on these awards are the beat writers, so tend to be younger and more likely to use WAR.

            1. It should be noted that Cabrera only finished 4th in AL rWAR, behind Trout, Cano, and Verlander. AND that Mr. Triple Crown Redemption finished second to Trout in OPS+.

              It should be. It won't be.

          2. Actually, I think being a rookie will hurt Trout. There are still plenty of old school guys out there who don't want to give MVP to a rookie, especially one who doesn't play in Boston or New York.

            1. particularly since his team did not make the playoffs. Hey, Cabrera led his team to the playoffs!!!! Trout, that rookie, did not. How valuable could he have been?

              1. A co-worker was making this argument yesterday when I chimed in: "you know the Halo's had a better record than the Tigers in a much tougher division." He got all kinds of sheepish.

              2. It seems like a lot of the antistats guys are trying to say that this comes down to the stat geeks versus the traditioanlists.

                I don't see it that way. I think most people would agree that the offensive numbers are so close that you can make an argument for either guy. What this comes down to is defense. There are many people that just refuse to recognize that defense has value.

                2. Which is funny, since in the past the old-schooly guys often accused the stats guys of not caring about things such as defense and baserunning (which Trout also dominates Cabrera at).

                  1. Number of guys who can actual DO defense and baserunning (i.e., whose defense and baserunning arguably were big parts of their winning) who've won the MVP the last thirty years? Less than a third of the time, I think. Big Bopper Bias.

                    1. My bigger beef is with using team success as a criterion for MVP. It's an individual award, not an award for the best player whose teammates also happened to be good. Obviously, Trout should have drafted his team better than Cabrera (or something.)

                      As much as the writers want to deride stats and celebrate "intangibles" (even the tangible intangibles), it's easier for them to put faith in the flawed statistics of AVG, HR, and RBI than it is for them to put faith in defense and baserunning. Someone should dig up some articles from back when Zoilo Versalles won the MVP award, I'd be curious to see writers making the case for a guy who hit .273 with 19 HR and 77 RBI as the league MVP.

                    2. Ironically, Versalles actually led the AL in rWAR for position players in 1965 (leading in BOTH offensive rWAR and defensive rWAR).

                    3. Here is a good piece on Versalles with discussion of the MVP.

                      There has been much subsequent debate that Oliva (or perhaps others like Brooks Robinson or Rocco Colavito) and not Minnesota teammate Versalles was the more legitimate league MVP during the Twins’ 1965 pennant run.xiii Bill James eventually gave the matter a sabermetric spin by pointing out that during that peak season Versalles amassed the fewest "win shares" of any previous or subsequent league MVP.xiv Tony Oliva’s supporters would argue that he earned a second hitting title, becoming the first player ever to capture a batting crown in each of his first two full years. But a flip side to this argument is rarely stressed by revisionist historians. Tony Oliva’s performance had been just as strong – in fact arguably even stronger – a year earlier (when his BA and totals for runs, hits and doubles were all higher). Yet the contribution of Versalles was both tangible, as seen in his offensive totals, and intangible – an aggressive style in the vein of Pepper Martin and Pete Rose. That, according to the voting writers, seemed more than anything to shift the ball club from a contender into a surprising league champion.

                      None other than Mickey Mantle agreed. So did Billy Martin, who said, "He does it all now. Fields, hits, thinks – and most important, runs. He’s got to be the most fearsome runner in our league, regardless of the stolen base column." Billy pointed out how Versalles had scored from first base on singles several times that summer. Teammate Bob Allison added, "I don’t think any one man carried this club this year. But if I had to pick one key man I’d pick Versalles."xv

                      xv Francis Stann, "Erstwhile Moody Versalles Finally Wins Acceptance," Baseball Digest, October 1965, 30.

                    4. Ironically, Versalles actually led the AL in rWAR for position players in 1965 (leading in BOTH offensive rWAR and defensive rWAR).

                      That's one of the things I love about Versalles '65.

                  2. But, see, a big part of the reason old-schooly guys like defense and baserunning is because "you can't quantify that", so we have to rely on them to tell us who's good at it and who isn't. Once people show that, in fact, you can quantify it, they don't like it as much.

            2. Ichiro won both in 2001 though. And he had the "he's not really a rookie" thing going against him, plus he wasn't actually the best player in the league, though it was closer than Trout-Cabrera.

              1. True, but he was "Ichiro!" When you think about it, the fact that Trout is a rookie should make what he's done even more impressive, but I don't think it's going to work out that way. I'm fine with being wrong, though.

                1. Right, I'm certain that the writers will look on Trout as the lock for ROY and that if he's the real deal next year, the year after, etc etc etc he'll get his MVP then. I'd love to be wrong about this, too.

      2. Comeback? How many HRs did that pussy hit?

        Posey should/will be NL Comeback POY as well. Have you forgotten that he played only 45 games last season?

          1. true dat. But if you are gonna give the MVP to Posey (and he is deserving), then you gotta go through the whole "he came back from a horrific injury last season" story. Strasburg, meh. He got Shut Down down the stretch.

      3. just to be contrary, I will suggest a couple of differences

        AL CY: David Price. He won 20 (3 more than Verlander) and had a lower ERA.
        NL Comeback: Buster Posey. As noted above.

    2. I was going to type them all out, but I realized I have the exact same picks down to the last man that the Dread Pirate does.

    3. The Angels didn't make the playoffs, the Tigers did. I think that will push Cabrera past Trout more than anything.

      1. Plus the Angels were considered big underachievers. They were expected to make the playoffs even with Trout starting in the minors.

          1. But the people who vote Cabrera won't care about that. They won. For some, that's all that matters.

            1. So basically if the Tigers were in the AL West (where they wouldn't have made the playoffs), and the Angels were in the AL Central, Trout would be ROTY?

              The playoffs argument is hilarious to me because the Tigers won less games than the Angels. And they played 76 games against AL Central foes.

              1. To be fair to the writers, I don't think the Angels not being in the central will cause Trout to miss out on the ROTY.

                But yeah, I'm totally in agreement with you here. I've definitely seen the "Tigers in the playoffs" argument way to many times in the past couple days.

  5. Mauer finished the year leading the league in on-base average (.416) and is now fifth on the active career leaders, sixth if you still consider Manny active. Once Berkman and Helton retire, he'll move up to third behind Votto and Pujols. If Berkman plays next year, Mauer may pass him anyways (.4050 to .4086).

  6. We have internet at the house now. The only problem is I can't remember the admin password to go into the router and change the WiFi log-in password (which I've also forgotten). Right now the only internet is via CAT-5. All of my normal defaults are not working. Looks like a hard reset maybe? I hope not.

        1. Yeah, I was just thinking that. Teach* MagUidhir would be right. I was just trying to use mein Deutsch lessons.

          *Almost pronounced like "tock" but with more of the "ch" from German rhyming with Bach.

          2. One thing to remember is that Germans love compound words. Nothing is popping into my head that's better than Haus von Mags though.

      2. I once spent nearly half a year troubleshooting what I thought was a crappy wireless router. Dropped connections all the time and could only get them back by rebooting the router and sometimes the laptop. After using my work laptop at home for several months and keeping a rock solid connection, I eventually figured out that the culprit was the wireless NIC in my personal laptop. A little digging (and by that I mean a lot of digging) uncovered that I had purchased an internal wireless adapter that used an Atheros chipset instead of the TI chipset it was supposed to have. Once I got the right drivers for that chipset installed, problem solved.

        1. Ain't that a bitch. I would have never figured that out. We're just going to have to turn it into "Troubleshooting Time with Twayn". That should cover trucks, IT, and anything else you fix.

  7. Holy cats, today I saw a guy here wearing a Mewelde Moore Vikings jersey. I... wasn't aware those were ever for sale.

          1. Eh. I'm going to pass. The only NFL merchandise I own is a Warren Moon Vikings jersey I snagged at a thrift store for 25 cents.

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