My daughters are in Tucson with my mom for the next few days. Yesterday was shockingly quiet without the girls around. I'm not sure I liked it.
94 thoughts on “March 14, 2013: Quiet”
mmmmmm, pi(e)
I was planning to wait until 1:59 this afternoon to begin celebrating.
you missed it, it was 1:59 this morning
Grr. In any case, here's a selection of lovely pi pies.
Can also use 15:55.59, or 3:56 pm.
55.59/60 = .9265
Although this does show the folly of converting decimal numbers into mixtures of units that are not decimal. (Because you're saying use whole and decimal hours, but not days or months.
Bless your mathematically inclined heart! (Or brain, rather.)
To hell with your technicalities, it hasn't stopped me from having a piece of pie provided by the company at 1:59 today.
hell, it hasn't stopped me from having a piece any day of the year, for that matter!
I'm headed to Aberdeen, SD today to watch the undefeated Potter County Battlers in the state basketball tournament.
Thursday morning presale time. This week it's the 6.29.13 Tom Petty show at Target Center! Code is FALLING and is good starting today at 10:00a.
Gibson sent to minor league camp. Not surprised this happened, maybe a little surprised at the timing. Probably don't want Gardy to be tempted to keep him. Assuming he's in the Rochester rotation with Trevor May and at least one of Cole De Vries and Liam Hendriks, the Red Wings might have a better rotation than the Twins to start the season, at least until Blackburn gets to Rochester.
PMac noted that Gibson is on a 130 IP limit this year, so a chunk of that will be spent in Rochester.
Not sure I understand such a low limit. There has been some research that shows Tommy John only lasts for so many innings. Perhaps the Twins believe that and want to limit the number of innings and have the adjustment period in the minors where it's less visible and much cheaper.
yeah, I was going to say that he's being sent down because lately he's not getting the job done
However, Ryan, who has been down the Tommy John road before with Francisco Liriano and Joe Nathan, among others, said there is no Stephen Strasburg-style hard innings limit for Gibson in 2013.
"It's not a firm number," Ryan said. "He's different from (Francisco) Liriano. He's different from Joe Nathan. ... We're going to make sure that we take care of him, but we're also going to give him an opportunity to develop.
I am heading to SD this morning for a boondoggle (on vacation time, not state time). I'll be sure to wave to socal as I fly overhead.
trying to figure out why you're going to South Dakota, and why you'd be flying over Louisiana
#10 - Marshall Tigers first state tourney appearance! Kind of funny since this year's team probably isn't even in the top 5 best Marshall teams of the last 10 years, but they got hot at the right time. Pretty cool to have that banner to raise.
I found that way more enjoyable that I should have.
I would have put "Cotton Candy" #1, but then I only played hockey one year.
I may pick this one back up after half time.* 19-2 run for Illinois…Goofs down 21-9 (that’s 2 points in 11 MINUTES). 9 turnovers and all sorts of foul trouble. Ugh.
Halftime: 25-16. Forget that the Gophers are getting pummeled, look at that score. College basketball. Ugh.
Obviously the low scoring rate doesn't bode well for a higher scoring second half, but they aren't even losing by double digits. (I say this with the caveat that I haven't even looked at the box score for the first half, so the Gophers could well be getting trounced in all the non-points categories.)
What is with low scoring in college basketball? It seems so widespread that it has to be more than missing NBA talents. The NCAA loses more way more players to graduation (or at least expired eligibility) than it does to the NBA each year. Is it the shot clock? Defense is easier to coach up than offense? No one wants to play an up-tempo offense? (Even though that seems like the best option in an elimination game for a team that considers itself better on a per-possession basis.)
Grantland had a feature a couple weeks back about a West Virgina coach who runs up the score, but the article kind of digs into whats up with the scoring problems (my takeaway from it is that college coaches are control freaks and dont lets players play a more freestyle game)
Scoring has been going down since the late 80s
That's a cool feature, thanks for the link.
This basically convinces me of my long-held belief that there's no need for all the timeouts that basketball teams get, and I loved this:
Crutchfield's no. 1 rule of defense, as posted in the locker room: "A strong desire to keep your opponent from scoring."
I've watched more college basketball this season than in the past 10 years, I think. What I see is teams burning 20-25 seconds (at least!) in so many possessions before actually trying to score.
That seems consistent with the Grantland feature that dw linked to. What surprises me from a detached standpoint is that both teams in a particular game would engage in such behavior. It makes sense for one team to slow the game down--if you feel like you are at a disadvantage, like Molinari at Western Illinois in the Grantland feature, slowing down the game gives you a better shot at frustrating your opponent and with fewer possessions, you give yourself a better chance to luck into a win. But it doesn't make a lot of sense for me that both teams would want to slow the game down, except for the explanations of the stakes being so high that the "joystick coaches" feel the need to dictate everything that happens. After all, this isn't a game any more, this is Serious Business.
Anyway, I can see some entertainment in an underdog grinding out an away game, but only if their opponent is willing to press the issue. I haven't watched much of the NCAA tournament in a few years, but I feel like that used to be the typical 2 seed vs. 15 seed scenario--15 seed slows down the game because they can't afford to use their bench and they hope they make their 3s and limit the damage on defense, while the 2 seed pushes the tempo because they really shouldn't expect to need the whole shot clock to find a good look. Maybe there's more urgency in an elimination game, I don't know.
49-49 Minnesota ball with 19 seconds on the clock.
Law of Gus in full effect
Now 16 seconds
And Minnesota steps on the sideline.
Nice choke job Tubby
20 turnovers. not all of it is on Tubby.
running a stagnant offense is a Tubby problem. Players stepping on the out of bounds line 10 times in a game is not.
I always feel that how a team performs is a reflection on how well it is coached. In my mind turnovers and stepping out of bounds in crucial situations indicate a poorly coached team. I might well be wrong, but that's always the way I've looked at things.
And Illinois hits the buzzer beater.
Good result for me since I'm an Illinois alum, but they've been so inconsistent this year I doubt they'll do anything with it.
Early in the fourth quarter, a loud, taunting chant of “Where is Melo?’’ rang out in the thin Denver air as the Nuggets (44-22) won their 10th straight game — the longest winning streak in coach George Karl’s Nugget reign. With 1:30 left, the fans chanted “Who needs Melo?’’
Rarely does a trade of a "superstar" work out as well for the team that traded him as the Melo deal did for Denver. They are an awesome team to watch and I think a top five team in the NBA (Heat, Thunder, Clippers, Spurs, Denver). Plus, the Knicks are falling apart. I'm not such a hater that I want to see Melo hurt, but that's about where I draw the line.
looking at the standings, the Knicks are in first, but its because they have 3 games in hand over Brooklyn (37-27 to Brooklyn's 37-27). The supposedly dead in the water because Rondo is gone Boston is 4 games back, and 6th overall in the East.
Plus, Knicks are playing three more on this west coast trip w/o Melo, Amare, and maybe even Chandler. Could lose all three.
It seems way more fun to watch a dislikeable player struggle than it is to just have them sidelined.
That game was great for a half. Jon Barry is positively giddy every time he does a Nuggets game. It seems like every possession ends with a shot in the paint, within fifteen seconds.
My favorite was a fast-break dunk after giving up a MADE three-pointer.
Finally! No more staying up until midnight to watch division games!
Of Note:
-Red Wing & Blue Jackets moving to the Eastern Conference.
-Dallas stays in the West, but will be in the "B division" (mostly Central time zone) with the Wild, Jets, Blackhawks, Predators, Avalanche and Blues.
and
The Stanley Cup Playoffs will still consist of 16 teams, eight in each conference, but it will be division-based and a wild-card system has been added as a new wrinkle.
Top three teams in each division + 4 wild-cards make the playoffs.
its a good plan. Not that many teams are getting screwed (the two Florida teams probably, but they have Original Six teams coing to their arena.)
the less I see of Vancouver, the more I like this plan.
also, too bad the NHL didnt tweak their scoring system by making all games worth 3 points (3 point win, 2pt OTW, 1OTL)
agreed. The stupidity of the current system is beyond me. It's just awful math, plain and simple.
While I think that would be a scoring improvement, lately I feel that in sports where it is impractical to break ties by just playing overtime until the tie is broken (soccer, hockey, football), they should just determine the rankings based on wins (regulation or overtime counts the same) and keep track of draws, but only use draws to break ties between teams with an equal number of wins. In the NHL, if they want to keep regular season shootouts at the end of draws, shootout wins should only count as a tiebreaker for teams with the same number of wins and draws. For the NHL, ranking would go by the following criteria:
1. Wins
2. Ties
3. Shootout Wins
4. Etc.
After that, the tiebreakers start to get really arbitrary. Head-to-head is not unreasonable. Goal differential is not unreasonable over a long enough season. I like Away Wins as a tiebreaker, too, especially in soccer where teams seem to cherish a draw on the road.
See below...specifically, the "I like this...make it happen" part.
That's more or less how I think baseball should align itself. More games televised at a decent local time and less travel for players. More ability for fans to travel to away games. You lose some traditional match-ups, but with interleague play now on the table, those traditional match-ups can come every two or three years.
Twins, Brewers, White Sox, Cubs, Royals? I think those are the closest teams in this time zone, with the possible exception of the Cardinals.
From an overall perspective, in MLB, you have:
Eastern Time (14): NYY, BAL, TB, TOR, BOS, DET, CLE, WAS, ATL, PHI, NYM, MIA, CIN, PIT
Central Time (8): CHW, KC, MIN, TEX, STL, MIL, CHC, HOU
Mountain Time (1): COL
Pacific Time (7): OAK, LAA, SEA, SF, LAD, AZ*, SD
*Effectively Pacific Time during the baseball season due to their refusal to observe DST.
Throw Colorado in the Pacific time zone and add two teams to the east (my favorite destinations are Brooklyn and Montreal), and you can easily make 4 divisions of 8 teams, each division contained essentially in a single time zone. If you didn't want to screw over the central time zone with more games on the west coast, you could balance the non-division games equally throughout the 3 other divisions, although that decreases the benefit somewhat for teams on the west coast, where having a weekday game in the eastern time zone must put a good dent in their ratings. (Meaning basically that not many fans are actually able to watch those games.)
You could also sub-divide into groups of 4, but I don't see the point in that.
I like this 8 team division...make it happen ubes!
If you have ever been a part of a private school, you know this: fund raising is almost non-stop. It does get tiring. Plus, girl scout cookies, etc. Well, just recently, there was a raffle. God, I hate selling raffle tickets. I told the wife, just buy the tickets.
I did nearly non-stop fundraising from kindergarden through 6th grade*, and then intermittently for various sports throughout high school. Now I do them voluntarily, but for causes of my choice.
*Edit: I used to eat "just a few" candy bars on "credit" and then be forced to work them off when my parents invariably had to cut a check...
I did attend one and there weren't many fundraisers. I can think of only one*. However, I was part of Scouting at the time and that also had fundraisers.
My parents once won first prize (trip for two to Ireland) for a raffle in which they sold about 200 tickets themselves.
It ain't just private schools. My life has been fundraisers for school sports and music for the last seven years. Only two more to go and I can retire to solicitee status.
!!!!:
LaVelle E. Neal III @LaVelleNeal
MEGA blast from the past! J.D. Durbin is in Red Sox camp and is on the trip today. But he's listed as an extra pitcher.
Deduno with a Deduno first inning. Strikes out Braun swinging, walks Hosmer to score Phillips, and then gets a strikeout looking.
I thought the DR wanted to win.
Deduno sure does. 7 K and 2 BB.
I'd love for this to carry over to the season.
I mean, it won't. But boy would that be awesome.
Okay, I'll say it.
I hope Deduno makes the opening day roster.
I've never flagged in my appreciation for him*.
*And Tyler Robertson. Don't let me down, Tyler!
waiting for the gif of that angel hernandez "strike" call.
That was a great call. Only a left-handed Vlad could hit that.
mmmmmm, pi(e)
I was planning to wait until 1:59 this afternoon to begin celebrating.
you missed it, it was 1:59 this morning
Grr. In any case, here's a selection of lovely pi pies.
Can also use 15:55.59, or 3:56 pm.
55.59/60 = .9265
Although this does show the folly of converting decimal numbers into mixtures of units that are not decimal. (Because you're saying use whole and decimal hours, but not days or months.
Bless your mathematically inclined heart! (Or brain, rather.)
To hell with your technicalities, it hasn't stopped me from having a piece of pie provided by the company at 1:59 today.
hell, it hasn't stopped me from having a piece any day of the year, for that matter!
I'm headed to Aberdeen, SD today to watch the undefeated Potter County Battlers in the state basketball tournament.
Thursday morning presale time. This week it's the 6.29.13 Tom Petty show at Target Center! Code is FALLING and is good starting today at 10:00a.
Gibson sent to minor league camp. Not surprised this happened, maybe a little surprised at the timing. Probably don't want Gardy to be tempted to keep him. Assuming he's in the Rochester rotation with Trevor May and at least one of Cole De Vries and Liam Hendriks, the Red Wings might have a better rotation than the Twins to start the season, at least until Blackburn gets to Rochester.
PMac noted that Gibson is on a 130 IP limit this year, so a chunk of that will be spent in Rochester.
Not sure I understand such a low limit. There has been some research that shows Tommy John only lasts for so many innings. Perhaps the Twins believe that and want to limit the number of innings and have the adjustment period in the minors where it's less visible and much cheaper.
looks like the reason he is being sent to Roch is that he doesnt have his command back.
yeah, I was going to say that he's being sent down because lately he's not getting the job done
I am heading to SD this morning for a boondoggle (on vacation time, not state time). I'll be sure to wave to socal as I fly overhead.
trying to figure out why you're going to South Dakota, and why you'd be flying over Louisiana
You might as well stop by Slaters....
And if you gubment job falls apart you can always be a professional beer snob.
My preciousssss! We wants it!
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUkKOnXMmGg&feature=player_embedded
Ediner present!
#10 - Marshall Tigers first state tourney appearance! Kind of funny since this year's team probably isn't even in the top 5 best Marshall teams of the last 10 years, but they got hot at the right time. Pretty cool to have that banner to raise.
I found that way more enjoyable that I should have.
I would have put "Cotton Candy" #1, but then I only played hockey one year.
I may pick this one back up after half time.* 19-2 run for Illinois…Goofs down 21-9 (that’s 2 points in 11 MINUTES). 9 turnovers and all sorts of foul trouble. Ugh.
*or not...Free audio online.
Gophers down by 9 at the half, 16-25.
Edit: 'y' beat me by --><-- that much!
Halftime: 25-16. Forget that the Gophers are getting pummeled, look at that score. College basketball. Ugh.
Obviously the low scoring rate doesn't bode well for a higher scoring second half, but they aren't even losing by double digits. (I say this with the caveat that I haven't even looked at the box score for the first half, so the Gophers could well be getting trounced in all the non-points categories.)
What is with low scoring in college basketball? It seems so widespread that it has to be more than missing NBA talents. The NCAA loses more way more players to graduation (or at least expired eligibility) than it does to the NBA each year. Is it the shot clock? Defense is easier to coach up than offense? No one wants to play an up-tempo offense? (Even though that seems like the best option in an elimination game for a team that considers itself better on a per-possession basis.)
Grantland had a feature a couple weeks back about a West Virgina coach who runs up the score, but the article kind of digs into whats up with the scoring problems (my takeaway from it is that college coaches are control freaks and dont lets players play a more freestyle game)
Scoring has been going down since the late 80s
That's a cool feature, thanks for the link.
This basically convinces me of my long-held belief that there's no need for all the timeouts that basketball teams get, and I loved this:
I've watched more college basketball this season than in the past 10 years, I think. What I see is teams burning 20-25 seconds (at least!) in so many possessions before actually trying to score.
That seems consistent with the Grantland feature that dw linked to. What surprises me from a detached standpoint is that both teams in a particular game would engage in such behavior. It makes sense for one team to slow the game down--if you feel like you are at a disadvantage, like Molinari at Western Illinois in the Grantland feature, slowing down the game gives you a better shot at frustrating your opponent and with fewer possessions, you give yourself a better chance to luck into a win. But it doesn't make a lot of sense for me that both teams would want to slow the game down, except for the explanations of the stakes being so high that the "joystick coaches" feel the need to dictate everything that happens. After all, this isn't a game any more, this is Serious Business.
Anyway, I can see some entertainment in an underdog grinding out an away game, but only if their opponent is willing to press the issue. I haven't watched much of the NCAA tournament in a few years, but I feel like that used to be the typical 2 seed vs. 15 seed scenario--15 seed slows down the game because they can't afford to use their bench and they hope they make their 3s and limit the damage on defense, while the 2 seed pushes the tempo because they really shouldn't expect to need the whole shot clock to find a good look. Maybe there's more urgency in an elimination game, I don't know.
Hindsight is 20-20.
Gophers down 25-16 at the half.
serious. 16 points in 20 minutes.
This is ugly. Might need to rally cap it up.
49-49 Minnesota ball with 19 seconds on the clock.
Law of Gus in full effect
Now 16 seconds
And Minnesota steps on the sideline.
Nice choke job Tubby
20 turnovers. not all of it is on Tubby.
running a stagnant offense is a Tubby problem. Players stepping on the out of bounds line 10 times in a game is not.
I always feel that how a team performs is a reflection on how well it is coached. In my mind turnovers and stepping out of bounds in crucial situations indicate a poorly coached team. I might well be wrong, but that's always the way I've looked at things.
And Illinois hits the buzzer beater.
Good result for me since I'm an Illinois alum, but they've been so inconsistent this year I doubt they'll do anything with it.
As an admitted hater, I enjoyed this:
Rarely does a trade of a "superstar" work out as well for the team that traded him as the Melo deal did for Denver. They are an awesome team to watch and I think a top five team in the NBA (Heat, Thunder, Clippers, Spurs, Denver). Plus, the Knicks are falling apart. I'm not such a hater that I want to see Melo hurt, but that's about where I draw the line.
looking at the standings, the Knicks are in first, but its because they have 3 games in hand over Brooklyn (37-27 to Brooklyn's 37-27). The supposedly dead in the water because Rondo is gone Boston is 4 games back, and 6th overall in the East.
Plus, Knicks are playing three more on this west coast trip w/o Melo, Amare, and maybe even Chandler. Could lose all three.
It seems way more fun to watch a dislikeable player struggle than it is to just have them sidelined.
That game was great for a half. Jon Barry is positively giddy every time he does a Nuggets game. It seems like every possession ends with a shot in the paint, within fifteen seconds.
My favorite was a fast-break dunk after giving up a MADE three-pointer.
the Big Ten as Simpsons characters
Ralph Wiggum as a Gopher seems right.
RalphismsGopherismshttpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzfYyMkz5u8
Trevor and Dre need to stay on the floor. Looks like a different team.
This is a cool picture. St. Peter's square yesterday and 8 years ago.
That is pretty cool.
Finally! No more staying up until midnight to watch division games!
Of Note:
-Red Wing & Blue Jackets moving to the Eastern Conference.
-Dallas stays in the West, but will be in the "B division" (mostly Central time zone) with the Wild, Jets, Blackhawks, Predators, Avalanche and Blues.
and
Top three teams in each division + 4 wild-cards make the playoffs.
its a good plan. Not that many teams are getting screwed (the two Florida teams probably, but they have Original Six teams coing to their arena.)
the less I see of Vancouver, the more I like this plan.
also, too bad the NHL didnt tweak their scoring system by making all games worth 3 points (3 point win, 2pt OTW, 1OTL)
agreed. The stupidity of the current system is beyond me. It's just awful math, plain and simple.
While I think that would be a scoring improvement, lately I feel that in sports where it is impractical to break ties by just playing overtime until the tie is broken (soccer, hockey, football), they should just determine the rankings based on wins (regulation or overtime counts the same) and keep track of draws, but only use draws to break ties between teams with an equal number of wins. In the NHL, if they want to keep regular season shootouts at the end of draws, shootout wins should only count as a tiebreaker for teams with the same number of wins and draws. For the NHL, ranking would go by the following criteria:
1. Wins
2. Ties
3. Shootout Wins
4. Etc.
After that, the tiebreakers start to get really arbitrary. Head-to-head is not unreasonable. Goal differential is not unreasonable over a long enough season. I like Away Wins as a tiebreaker, too, especially in soccer where teams seem to cherish a draw on the road.
See below...specifically, the "I like this...make it happen" part.
That's more or less how I think baseball should align itself. More games televised at a decent local time and less travel for players. More ability for fans to travel to away games. You lose some traditional match-ups, but with interleague play now on the table, those traditional match-ups can come every two or three years.
Twins, Brewers, White Sox, Cubs, Royals? I think those are the closest teams in this time zone, with the possible exception of the Cardinals.
From an overall perspective, in MLB, you have:
Eastern Time (14): NYY, BAL, TB, TOR, BOS, DET, CLE, WAS, ATL, PHI, NYM, MIA, CIN, PIT
Central Time (8): CHW, KC, MIN, TEX, STL, MIL, CHC, HOU
Mountain Time (1): COL
Pacific Time (7): OAK, LAA, SEA, SF, LAD, AZ*, SD
*Effectively Pacific Time during the baseball season due to their refusal to observe DST.
Throw Colorado in the Pacific time zone and add two teams to the east (my favorite destinations are Brooklyn and Montreal), and you can easily make 4 divisions of 8 teams, each division contained essentially in a single time zone. If you didn't want to screw over the central time zone with more games on the west coast, you could balance the non-division games equally throughout the 3 other divisions, although that decreases the benefit somewhat for teams on the west coast, where having a weekday game in the eastern time zone must put a good dent in their ratings. (Meaning basically that not many fans are actually able to watch those games.)
You could also sub-divide into groups of 4, but I don't see the point in that.
I like this 8 team division...make it happen ubes!
If you have ever been a part of a private school, you know this: fund raising is almost non-stop. It does get tiring. Plus, girl scout cookies, etc. Well, just recently, there was a raffle. God, I hate selling raffle tickets. I told the wife, just buy the tickets.
Don't you just hate that?
I do.
I did nearly non-stop fundraising from kindergarden through 6th grade*, and then intermittently for various sports throughout high school. Now I do them voluntarily, but for causes of my choice.
*Edit: I used to eat "just a few" candy bars on "credit" and then be forced to work them off when my parents invariably had to cut a check...
I did attend one and there weren't many fundraisers. I can think of only one*. However, I was part of Scouting at the time and that also had fundraisers.
Nice.
It ain't just private schools. My life has been fundraisers for school sports and music for the last seven years. Only two more to go and I can retire to solicitee status.
!!!!:
Deduno with a Deduno first inning. Strikes out Braun swinging, walks Hosmer to score Phillips, and then gets a strikeout looking.
I thought the DR wanted to win.
Deduno sure does. 7 K and 2 BB.
I'd love for this to carry over to the season.
I mean, it won't. But boy would that be awesome.
Okay, I'll say it.
I hope Deduno makes the opening day roster.
I've never flagged in my appreciation for him*.
*And Tyler Robertson. Don't let me down, Tyler!
waiting for the gif of that angel hernandez "strike" call.
That was a great call. Only a left-handed Vlad could hit that.
well, it's not the best quality, but here you go.
This Angel Hernandez anecdote is hilarious on all levels.
My gosh. Every time I think he's set the bar impossibly low, Angel manages to still get below it.
I am pretty sure the Calf is left handed, you guys.
...and I welcome him into the club with open arms.
I just hope he is better looking than Randy Johnson.
Me too.
Better make him a pitcher unless he's an awesome center fielder.
i've been taping Pete's right arm down, but it doesn't seem like it's taken yet...
If I had known it runs in my wife's family I wouldn't have had to do it.
Lefties named 'Pete' are awesome, yo.
Make it happen, TR!