106 thoughts on “March 28, 2013: King Crimson”

  1. Rochester defeated Pawtucket 8-1 yesterday. Trevor May pitched four scoreless innings and Aaron Thompson pitched two. Clete Thomas hit a home run. Brian Dinkelman and Wilkin Ramirez each went 2-for-3 with two RBIs.

    1. His stats for the past 3 years - aged 22-24:

      W L W-L% ERA G GS GF CG SHO SV IP H R ER HR BB IBB SO HBP BK WP BF ERA+ WHIP H/9 HR/9 BB/9 SO/9 SO/BB
      18 13 .581 3.50 53 46 2 1 0 0 277.2 278 118 108 23 97 6 238 9 1 4 1194 113 1.351 9.0 0.7 3.1 7.7 2.45

      Edit: That was good enough for a 3.2 WAR in 2011 and a 3rd place finish in the ROY voting, but only a 0.7 last year.

      Follow him here...if you think that's a way to learn anything about a person.

      1. Worley pitched much of last year injured, so hopefully that means the Twins bought low on a guy that is due to bounce back. He had a 3.63 ERA on Aug. 1, but had a 6.75 ERA in his last five starts before being shut down for the season.

      2. I mean, hard-throwing, nibbler, etc.
        Flyballs or groundouts?
        Does he have a cool curveball?
        Does he work fast like Buehrle or slow like a Yanqui with BoSox on base?

  3. With all the Tubby angst and general malaise about "student-athletes," one-and-doners, etc. I did want to give a shout out to Trever Mbakwe. Did you know the dude already has his degree and has been working on a Masters Degree? (insert he's been in college for 12 years joke here) Also it was announced yesterday that we is an academic all-american. So many times we hear about all college athletes who are taking "sports management" or on-line classes to barely maintain eligibility until they announce for the pros (I'm looking at you Johhny Football), it's nice to acknowledge someone who has pro prospects and taking advantage of the wonderful opportunity given to them and getting a real college education.

    1. With SSLYBY. On the day my sister-in-law is getting married in Wisconsin!
      Meaning I'll have missed both HHT/SSLYBY tours due to my in-laws. (Can't remember what the first one was due to.)

  5. Seeing Worley was a ROY candidate reminds me, are we doing picks again this year? I don't care to see how far off my picks were last season, but it's a fun exercise in futility!

    1. Linds and I finished up the fourth season on Netflix a couple nights ago. It's excellent from top to bottom. I can't think of another comedy that has the highs of this one.

      Now we really need the fifth season to come out on DVD or summat.

    2. Ben as The Green Lantern is great, but he should really be Batman
      httpv://youtu.be/O0LQV_OQ_Sc

    3. Gleeman says ZIPS projects Twins to stay the same at 66-96. So, that would be an average of about 69 wins predicted.

  9. The Sabres went down 2-0 to the Lightning earlier in the week, and got one back to lose 2-1. That seemed to be a pattern for them, so I looked up the goals by period from NHL.com. I came up with 3 charts - percentage of goals for by period, percentage of goals against by period, and goal differential by period.

    Goals For By Period

    Team Goals For: 1st Pd 2nd Pd 3rd Pd Tot %G 1st %G 2nd %G 3rd
    PITTSBURGH 36 33 44 115 31.30% 28.70% 38.26%
    CHICAGO 36 38 26 104 34.62% 36.54% 25.00%
    TAMPA BAY 30 27 47 105 28.57% 25.71% 44.76%
    MONTREAL 28 34 37 101 27.72% 33.66% 36.63%
    ANAHEIM 27 38 33 99 27.27% 38.38% 33.33%
    TORONTO 30 39 31 102 29.41% 38.24% 30.39%
    LOS ANGELES 21 35 36 92 22.83% 38.04% 39.13%
    NY ISLANDERS 22 37 33 94 23.40% 39.36% 35.11%
    WASHINGTON 26 30 35 93 27.96% 32.26% 37.63%
    BOSTON 28 32 29 90 31.11% 35.56% 32.22%
    ST LOUIS 31 26 29 90 34.44% 28.89% 32.22%
    CALGARY 35 23 30 89 39.33% 25.84% 33.71%
    CAROLINA 21 34 30 86 24.42% 39.53% 34.88%
    MINNESOTA 22 35 27 87 25.29% 40.23% 31.03%
    DALLAS 28 29 27 86 32.56% 33.72% 31.40%
    DETROIT 24 32 31 88 27.27% 36.36% 35.23%
    PHILADELPHIA 32 29 21 83 38.55% 34.94% 25.30%
    WINNIPEG 20 35 29 87 22.99% 40.23% 33.33%
    VANCOUVER 27 35 21 84 32.14% 41.67% 25.00%
    COLORADO 20 34 25 81 24.69% 41.98% 30.86%
    BUFFALO 22 26 34 83 26.51% 31.33% 40.96%
    OTTAWA 24 32 25 82 29.27% 39.02% 30.49%
    PHOENIX 18 27 36 82 21.95% 32.93% 43.90%
    NASHVILLE 28 24 26 81 34.57% 29.63% 32.10%
    NEW JERSEY 20 30 29 80 25.00% 37.50% 36.25%
    EDMONTON 28 24 21 75 37.33% 32.00% 28.00%
    SAN JOSE 29 24 22 75 38.67% 32.00% 29.33%
    NY RANGERS 23 21 29 75 30.67% 28.00% 38.67%
    FLORIDA 24 25 30 79 30.38% 31.65% 37.97%
    COLUMBUS 18 29 22 71 25.35% 40.85% 30.99%

    Goals Against By Period

    Team Goals Against: 1st Pd 2nd Pd 3rd Pd Tot %GA 1st %GA 2nd %GA 3rd
    PITTSBURGH 20 41 23 84 23.81% 48.81% 27.38%
    CHICAGO 21 21 26 68 30.88% 30.88% 38.24%
    TAMPA BAY 26 35 37 98 26.53% 35.71% 37.76%
    MONTREAL 14 40 24 81 17.28% 49.38% 29.63%
    ANAHEIM 36 22 25 84 42.86% 26.19% 29.76%
    TORONTO 20 33 40 93 21.51% 35.48% 43.01%
    LOS ANGELES 27 27 24 79 34.18% 34.18% 30.38%
    NY ISLANDERS 23 34 47 107 21.50% 31.78% 43.93%
    WASHINGTON 30 35 27 93 32.26% 37.63% 29.03%
    BOSTON 20 26 22 70 28.57% 37.14% 31.43%
    ST LOUIS 29 31 27 88 32.95% 35.23% 30.68%
    CALGARY 31 38 35 105 29.52% 36.19% 33.33%
    CAROLINA 29 23 36 89 32.58% 25.84% 40.45%
    MINNESOTA 24 26 26 77 31.17% 33.77% 33.77%
    DALLAS 22 42 30 96 22.92% 43.75% 31.25%
    DETROIT 26 28 24 81 32.10% 34.57% 29.63%
    PHILADELPHIA 37 24 36 98 37.76% 24.49% 36.73%
    WINNIPEG 31 25 41 97 31.96% 25.77% 42.27%
    VANCOUVER 20 30 29 80 25.00% 37.50% 36.25%
    COLORADO 39 40 21 103 37.86% 38.83% 20.39%
    BUFFALO 23 42 33 100 23.00% 42.00% 33.00%
    OTTAWA 25 17 24 68 36.76% 25.00% 35.29%
    PHOENIX 24 34 31 91 26.37% 37.36% 34.07%
    NASHVILLE 25 31 26 83 30.12% 37.35% 31.33%
    NEW JERSEY 20 26 36 84 23.81% 30.95% 42.86%
    EDMONTON 22 31 31 88 25.00% 35.23% 35.23%
    SAN JOSE 17 28 31 79 21.52% 35.44% 39.24%
    NY RANGERS 26 25 24 75 34.67% 33.33% 32.00%
    FLORIDA 42 38 33 118 35.59% 32.20% 27.97%
    COLUMBUS 29 24 26 82 35.37% 29.27% 31.71%

    Goal Differential By Period

    Team GD 1st GD 2nd GD 3rd
    PITTSBURGH 16 -8 21
    CHICAGO 15 17 0
    TAMPA BAY 4 -8 10
    MONTREAL 14 -6 13
    ANAHEIM -9 16 8
    TORONTO 10 6 -9
    LOS ANGELES -6 8 12
    NY ISLANDERS -1 3 -14
    WASHINGTON -4 -5 8
    BOSTON 8 6 7
    ST LOUIS 2 -5 2
    CALGARY 4 -15 -5
    CAROLINA -8 11 -6
    MINNESOTA -2 9 1
    DALLAS 6 -13 -3
    DETROIT -2 4 7
    PHILADELPHIA -5 5 -15
    WINNIPEG -11 10 -12
    VANCOUVER 7 5 -8
    COLORADO -19 -6 4
    BUFFALO -1 -16 1
    OTTAWA -1 15 1
    PHOENIX -6 -7 5
    NASHVILLE 3 -7 0
    NEW JERSEY 0 4 -7
    EDMONTON 6 -7 -10
    SAN JOSE 12 -4 -9
    NY RANGERS -3 -4 5
    FLORIDA -18 -13 -3
    COLUMBUS -11 5 -4

    I'm still digesting the numbers to draw some conclusions, but I wanted to share the numbers in case anyone else was interested. If you want the spreadsheet, let me know and I'll email you a copy.

    1. Those are some nice looking tables. I note it does not sort the percentages at all. I will look at that tonight and try to fix it. I know converting them to reals would work, but aesthetically, the percentages look nicer.

      1. So scoring more goals than opponents is strongly correlated with more points in the standings, but scoring more points than opponents in any one period is not correlated so strongly?

          2. GD 1st is uncorrelated with GD 2nd and GD 3rd, and GD 2nd and GD 3rd are uncorrelated. Not _too_ surprising that.

            so, regressing Points on the three period-specific GDs individually should get you approx. the partial R^2s and they should add up to the R^2 of regressing Points on the summary GD. Unless I am off my rocker.

            1. They aren't completely uncorrelated though, right? Despite Buffalo's efforts to not score in the second period, a team with a good overall GD seems likely to have a good GD in every period. I don't know enough about rotating of players to know if particular lines play more often in certain periods or not, but that could also have an effect.

              1. slight negative correlation between GD 1st and GD 2nd, positive between GD 1st and GD 3rd. Negative between GD 2nd and GD 3rd. But none are close to significant.

              2. The second period is different because it's a "long change" where the bench is farther from the offensive zone. This can lead to defensemen being unable to change as easily, and so potentially being on the ice while tired (and theoretically less effective).

                That's the first thing that comes to mind.

            2. I was thinking it was something like that. Haven't used this stuff in a while, so it's rusty.

              1. Getting the graph to look right and adding R2 has exhausted everything I remember from 3 semesters of physics. Y'all are on your own.

    3. Looks like league average scoring by period is 30% - 35% - 35%.
      I was going to put something quick together on actual minus expected goals by period for their given number of goals scored/allowed.
      But my excel froze (I had work open, too. New computer in like a month or so with 4 times the RAM.).

  10. oh

    Jon Krawczynski ‏@APkrawczynski
    NBA has informed #TWolves that Kobe Bryant should have been called for a foul on Ricky Rubio @ end of game, sources tell AP.

    2. To me, this was as close to professional wrestling as legit sports gets. The cute european gets hit in the back with a folding chair by the rapist black mamba and the referee claims to not see it. You couldn't script it any better than that.

  11. Okay, forget the regular season. Let's talk World Series. Apart from "The Fall Classic" are there other nicknames for it?

      1. no its 'the reason The Simpsons Halloween episode doesnt air remotely close to Halloween'

  13. Twins on TV tonight and Mauer is batting second with Escobar playing second. I'd prefer Mauer batting 2nd all the time, but at least Gardy recognizes that neither Florimon or Escobar should be near the top of the lineup.

    1. I'm definitely on the "Mauer batting second" bandwagon. I would think it would take some pressure off Dozier if he was regularly penned in somewhere in the 7-8-9 spots, too.

    3. Why would The Mayor even consider going to the U over Iowa State? That would be a step down.

  15. must see video: Vanderbilt baseball team pulls off a triple steal

    httpv://youtu.be/78QLIer4ND8

  16. Spring has sprung. I got a mouse in my garage last week and one in an outdoor trap this week. I checked the D-Con last week... Okay. Today, I'm cleaned out. New traps bought and set. It is on like Donkey Kong.

            1. If that's a veiled Arrested Development reference, I won't hear it, and I won't respond to it.

  19. During tonight's broadcast Bert said in the Presidential Fitness test Bert Blyleven threw a softball from one end zone of a football field through the goal posts on the other end of the field.

    1. I can see it. Especially since he probably threw it like a four-seam fastball, which would give him extra distance.

  20. My wife just now said about the movie we're watching that the lead actor wasn't very good.

    Spoiler SelectShow

          1. I definitely dislike Bullock as much as anyone could. I still think the Academy blows it less often than other awards shows do, but man, if you're gonna screw up, do it big.

    3. That is a pretty fantastic critique of Lincoln. I thought Boyd Crowder looking shifty in the woods was the best part of the movie.

  22. Cody zeller is busily showing the nation why I think he is hugely overrated. Dude has lousy elevation and is not very quick.

    1. Well, yeah. He got pwned by Mbakwe, too, and Mbakwe has a pretty limited game (and is much shorter than Zeller).

  23. Shopping at Nordstrom's for shirts the other day - Nordstrom's lady takes my measurements...

    Me: I'm more traditional, prefer button-down collars with ties.

    (we walk over to the shirt section)

    NL: I prefer the look of straight collars.

        1. Ding ding ding!!

          This from a guy who still wears half and full wings, which N'stroms does not carry, but teh other cats do (Florsheims in NYC, and Johnston+Murphy in said Mall).

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