119 thoughts on “December 9, 2013: Projectile”

    2. And I vote for the latter because it is within a mile of strat, freealonzo, and, most importantly, my domicile.

              1. Wait, seriously? That's where they're from?

                They were known when I was in college and I didn't even know that. I wasn't specifically into them whatsoever, but you'd think I would have heard it.

                (Citizens, if you don't know who they are, don't Google it. Now you know)

      2. It's a tough time of year because I never know what my wife's schedule is going to be and I end up having to parent my kids and the law says I am not supposed to leave them unattended.

        So, I am much more likely to be able to get to the Lowbrow where they serve delicious hamburgers and beer and happiness. But probably do not plan around me. [sad face emoji]

        2. Dude, bring the kids with you!!

          For the reasons laid out by Will, I'd prefer Lowbrow but honestly not sure if I'm going to make it. Friday is out for sure (Doomtree Blowout!!) and I think Saturday is too (Roller Derby?). Thursday is doable late.

  2. Having kids that can get it in the bucket* is a blessing that people rarely think about.
    I've thought about it lots.

    I also know I was not one of those kids. The poor janitor at my elementary school, and the poor kid** that sat next to me in class.

    * SelectShow
    ** SelectShow

    1. The first round ended up being the only projectile round, while the next ten(!!!) were all in the bucket.

      However, Skim likes to hoard things on her bed for fun. She got it on her comforter, sheets, the floor, her night shirt, her pillow pet, her beloved stuffed puppy, a stuffed Baloo from The Jungle Book that's as large as she is, a few books and a handful of toys.

      2. We've got that bed-hoarding thing going on. CER (10yo) is in the bunk above AJR (3 1/2), and she's got so much stuff up there. She's also been sick the least. AJR collects during the day but at night I remove anything that isn't a blanket, pillow, or plush toy. But I just set them in a pile next to her bed under the ladder. Havoc could be wreaked were she to be pointed that way. Last time she got sick, CER woke and noticed and helped her get to the bathroom before AJR threw up. All over the toilet seat and shower curtain but that was a huge win and deserved the praise they both got. CER then ran to our room to wake EAR and I. We really should have taken her out for ice cream then and there, but it was like 2am.

        As soon as LBR takes to her big-girl bed, she's moving in with AJR and CER gets her own room. I will miss having Ms. Responsible in a room with one of her younger siblings. Even though EAR and I admit we may lean on her too much.

          1. Honestly, my daughters are so well-behaved and easygoing it's scary. They're overly sensitive, but there are worse faults.

            The bed-hoarding is more amusing than anything, and she can go a week without doing it, so I wouldn't say it's compulsory.

            1. I'm just talking about the sick kid clean-up. I'm not looking forward to that first bought with a stomach bug.

              1. Once you change enough diapers, stuff like that really isn't a big deal. And if the kid is actually sick, you're more worried than grossed out or annoyed. Junior had a sensitive stomach as a small child and would easily get car sick or sometimes would just wake up in the morning and puke and that would be it. Once he did, he would be fine, but for a while this became almost a weekly occurrence. He finally grew out of it in 2nd or 3rd grade.

                1. I've learned that I start gagging in the presence of vomit. Sooooo…in a pinch I'm able to cleanup, but otherwise my poor wife usually gets the contact duties.

                  1. And I'm way better than she is.
                    I cleanup. She consoles and cleans the kid.
                    Then she comes into the room and it's still too stinky and she tells me to clean again.
                    So I open a window.

                2. Once you change enough diapers, stuff like that really isn't a big deal.

                  Exactly. Your tolerance for getting disgusting bodily fluids on you goes way, way up.

                3. I don't know, its the smell of vomit that does me in. Plus, there's just something so incomplete about the stuff. We do cloth diapers, so I've sprayed off plenty of awful things, but not too long ago my wife got sick and missed the toilet some and I had a hard time cleaning it up.

                  1. Weirdly, I had no real problem with squeamishness (it's not that I wasn't, but that I was...you know, squeamish the proper amount. Just like I'm not "afraid of bears" but if I was faced with one I'd mess myself) last night. However, my gag reflex seriously kicks in when I'm near garbage. It's so much worse than the next-worst thing.

      2. I end up doing it mostly because my second round of bronchitis a couple of years ago took a large chunk of my sense of smell. That's why they thought of me at work a couple of years ago when a manager projectiled to the back wall in the bathroom one night and nobody cleaned it, leaving it caked on overnight. They paid me well to clean it, but I'm glad that wasn't a habit-forming move.

      1. The Twins aren't perfect, but you get the sense that everyone is on the same page--maybe even too much on the same page. The Mariners' FO just sounds dysfunctional regardless of the decisions they ultimately come to. I have to admit that I was always skeptical of the Mariners fans who would quite continually say that nothing about the Mariners would improve in the long run until Lincoln and Armstrong were out. I figured it was just easy to lash out at some execs whose job was obscured from the public eye. But reading through that article, everything about the Mariners makes even more sense.

        1. Yes. I was highlighting that the Twins were also the #6org and immediately after collapsed in the standings. The front office culture is hugely different from the Mariners front office. This is perhaps best demonstrated by Bill Smith still working for the Twins.

          1. I would also at least nominate the fact that Gardenhire still manages for the Twins after 10+ years and in addition to the managers that the Mariners have fired, they have had 2 managers quit in the last 6 years. That's pretty remarkable considering how few positions there are to manage in the majors. Wedge is certainly going to make at least $1M less this year than he would have if he'd stayed with the Mariners, and that's a lot of money to step away from.

      2. From Dave Cameron's original #6org piece:

        I understand that there’s a large contingency of people who believe that we should not presume intelligence until success has been displayed on the field, and that we should infer that an organization is well run once the fruits of their labor of have been reaped, and those are the people who are going to hate this ranking. I simply have a philosophical disagreement with you on how we should evaluate our expectations for the future. Just as we can separate Jason Heyward from a normal outfield prospect despite the fact that he has accomplished nothing at the big league level, I believe we can also evaluate an organization’s ability to put a winning team on the field before they do so.

        I know the Ms did some interesting things - hiring Tom Tango, for example - that suggested they might take a new direction. At the time, I didn't understand why Zduriencik was the recipient of practically unconditional praise from the sabermetric corners of the baseball press. Zduriencik was fetted before he'd even done a thing with the roster, simply for what he supposedly represented. Where did that image of what Zduriencik represented come from? The Brewers were successful with scouting while he was in Milwaukee, but was there any real indication that he was Billy Beane on steroids? Or Andrew Friedman, but smarter and with a bigger budget at his disposal? I don't remember who created that expectation, or how Zduriencik's "credentials" (if what Blengino told Geoff Baker is true) became public and the foundation for the wishcasting that followed.

        I guess Jack Zduriencik is the sabermetric community's (or Dave Cameron's) Brien Taylor. Sometimes those first round picks flame out.

        1. I remember reading unfettered praise for Zduriencik on USSMariner.com. It's just total deflation over there right now, though they've suspected they were lied to for some time now.

          1. I do find it interesting that Blengino is openly admitting that he committed fraud to get Z hired. That's...a big deal, right? Or does baseball not care, because all's fair in competition?

            1. Not only doesn't baseball care, I don't think anyone cares. Superiors taking credit where it's not due is sort of... the American pastime.

            2. Fraud? That sounds rather melodramatic. He put together a job application that boasted a hybrid stats/scouting approach. The front office even has the stats and the scouts, really what's being accused here is that eventually they just leaned really heavily on the scouting leg. But it can hardly be considered outright fraud when the Mariners went out and actually hired analysts as part of the regime change.

              I feel like the easiest way everything fits together is if Zduriencik's reaction to the meddlesome Lincoln and Armstrong (above him) was to try to placate their every whim in order to keep his job, not standing up for anyone below him.

              1. This. Maybe Zduriencik even "became one of them" in order to placate them, but that kind of stimulus/response analysis seems spot on.

              2. I'm not attempting to be dramatic; I was using the term that seems like it fits. Blengino sold Z as a man who understood and used advanced stats. If that's a major part of why they hired him, isn't that a clear case of misrepresentation? If not, that's fine and I concede. I don't have a lot of knowledge (or even interest) in most legal matters. I'm genuinely curious if there could be repercussions, depending on the stories each side gives, of course.

        2. I don't remember who created that expectation, or how Zduriencik's "credentials" (if what Blengino told Geoff Baker is true) became public and the foundation for the wishcasting that followed.

          To a large degree I think that Bill Bavasi created that expectation. Especially after the Adam Jones trade (and let's not forget the Silva contract, truly one of the worst contracts in recent history), I think that "anyone but Bavasi" would have been reason for optimism in Seattle. They were so drunk on failure that all the girls looked like models.

          As you can glean from the linked article, it was known at the time that Blengino was supposed to be a top Zduriencik assistant, and they went out and started a whole department of analytics. In fact, I'm pretty sure they still have that analytics department, but whether or not they listen to the stat guys seems to be an open question.

          I think there would have been at least cautious optimism if the Twins were in a similar position--say replacing Bill Smith with a new voice, someone who was at least providing lip service to stats and backing it up with significant hires in that area.

          1. I think there would have been at least cautious optimism if the Twins were in a similar position

            I think that adjective makes all the difference. I don't remember much caution when Zduriencik was hired.

            1. Definitely the very initial reaction was somewhat cautious:

              Now, Jack Z isn’t exactly the new school analytical type we were all hoping for. His strengths are all scouting based, and he won’t be the kind of guy to come in and turn the Mariners into the next Oakland/Cleveland/Boston/Tampa Bay. With Engle, Fontaine, and now Zduriencik, the Mariners are clearly going to try to win with the Atlanta/Minnesota/Anaheim method of just outscouting everyone else on earth and developing so much good talent from within that they can’t help but be competitive.

              Observations about this initial take:

              1) This was before Blengino was known to be coming over, so I think what started with cautious optimism grew to full-on optimism when they heard that stats hires were coming.

              2) Fontaine was fired within a week or so of Jack Z's hire

              3) Engle was pushed out by Jack Z

              4) Blengino was also eventually pushed out by Jack Z

              I give Cameron at least something of a pass on this--he was thinking that Zduriencik combined with Fontaine and Engle would lead to a good pipeline of minor league talent. And I do think that the Mariners' farm system is better off today than it was in the '08-'09 offseason. But the Mariners never really embraced stats at all and Zduriencik has basically failed at everything other than improving the farm system (at least as far as I can tell off the top of my head), which seems like it would have been unfair to assume at the time.

  4. The beautiful thing about yesterday's Vikings game is that it eliminated them from any chance of winning the Super Bowl. If they had won that game, they would still be alive. So, this game fits into the pantheon of soul-crushing losses that put an end to the Vikings hopes of a championship (however dim those chances). The four Super Bowls. Take a Knee. 41-0. The Hail Mary game. The Josh McCown game in Arizona. This team isn't anywhere close to those teams, but when it's win or go home time, no one charts a path to home like the Vikings.

    1. Well, that's an okay story, but the Vikings playoff chances had already ended by the time Green Bay beat the Falcons. So as entertaining as the end of that game was, it didn't mean anything to the Vikings.

      1. The Packers with that win are 6-6-1. The Vikings, had they won, would have been 4-8-1. If the Vikings would have then won out and the Packers lose out, the Vikings would have one more win than the Packers. The Bears are 6-6 with only a game against the Packers in the Division. If the Bears beat the Packers but otherwise lose out, they are 7-9. The Lions are 7-6. If they lose out, they are 7-9. Their only divisional game is against the Vikings.

        Vikings 7-8-1
        Lions 7-9
        Bears 7-9
        Packers 6-9-1

        They were alive until they lost.

      1. I forgot the game when Darin Nelson dropped the game tying touchdown pass on my birthday in the NFC Championship game. Also, Take a Knee was on my birthday. I think I've mentioned this before.

  6. speaking of mysterious organizational moves, the Kings just traded Greivis Vazquez (the big off-season acquisition and starting PG), Patrick Patterson (last year's return for the disastrous Thomas Robinson draft pick), John Salmons (steady vet who should be getting 15 min/g on a good team) and Chuck Hayes (should be an assistant coach on a good team) for ball-hogging volume shooter Rudy Gay and junk.

    really, Pete Allessandro? This is your solution to a team that lacks ball movement and athleticism? Particularly when you just traded away your best defender for a Caged Lion at the same position (SF)?

    Vazquez was a disappointment, to be sure. He's got Mark Jackson foot speed and is not a great shooter. But he sees the court well and commits very few turnovers. He'd be an excellent floor general for a half-court team. Which is what the Kings probably should be, what with their best player being DeMarcus Cousins. They didn't need Rudy Gay. They needed some guys who can make spot-up jumpers to open the lane for Cousins, and some wings willing to play defense and share the ball.

    1. To be fair, I think Sacramento is not exactly playing to win at this point.

      But yeah, that is a head scratcher.

      1. If they are not playing to win, why not stand pat? I mean, they were being pretty successful at not winning as is.

          1. The Knicks are tanking! Without a draft pick! They traded it to Denver in the Carmelo Anthony deal!

            Seriously, Bill Simmons recently said that the Magic were the first team to ever trade a superstar for 100 cents on the dollar. I think the Nuggets got 100 cents, at least, in the Anthony deal.

            Spoiler SelectShow

                1. Yea, I can sort of see that. If you count "made last year's team worse--enabling them to land the no. 2 pick (Oladipo)" as an unambiguous positive.

                  How much did their bottom line suffer last season? In 2012-13, they were 18th in the league in attendance (721,414, or 17,595 per game over 41 dates). In 2011-12, they were 11th in attendance (661,279 in 33 dates, or 20,039 per game). How much of the drop is attributable to the lousy product and how much is attributable to lashback from the lockout? I dunno. But that's a big drop in revenue per game: a 12 percent drop in attendance per game.

                  The 3 1st-round picks could be valuable or could be nothing much.

                  The yield for Howard, given his commitment to leave, was understandable, but not exactly overwhelming.

                  Compare it to the Kareem deal:

                  Bucks trade C Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and
                  F Walt Wesley to the L.A. Lakers for
                  C Elmore Smith, G Brian Winters, F Dave Meyers
                  and F Junior Bridgeman

                  Elmore Smith (26) was a former All-Rookie team guy who averaged 15.6/11.4 in his first season in Milwaukee (he was traded the next season to Cleveland with Gary Brokaw for junk and 1st-round picks in 1977 and 1978, which turned into Ernie Grunfeld and George Johnson, I think). Winters (23) averaged 18-19 ppg (and played in 2 All Star games) over the next 4 seasons as a top-tier 2-guard, finishing his 8 years in Milwaukee with a 16.7 ppg average. Dave Meyers (22) was the 2nd pick in the 1975 draft and was developing into a star PF when back problems sidelined him for a year. He then played one more season (at a high level) before retiring, citing family and faith excuses. Junior Bridgeman (22) was the 8th pick in the 1975 draft. He averaged 13.9 ppg over 10 solid seasons in Milwaukee as a very effective swing man.

                  Also, using Simmons' logic, the trade made the Bucks worse in 1975-76 and 1976-77, enabling them to move up to draft Quinn Buckner 7th in 1976 and Kent Benson 1st plus Marques Johnson 3rd in 1977 (not sure whose pick that was; the 1st pick was likely their own because the Nets were screwed over in the draft that year by the merger deal, although they were allowed to purchase the rights to Dr. J; and the Bucks tied for the 2nd-worse record).

                  That's a pretty impressive haul. Perhaps not 100 cents on the dollar for one of the handful of greatest players ever, but considering that he was forcing his way out of Milwaukee anyway, you have to apply a bit of Johan Santana logic to the evaluation.

                  1. I think the improved draft pick part of the argument to be a stretch. But, if you accept that, then OMG, the Knicks are just imploding to give Denver a top pick in what is generally believed to be one of the best drafts ever, wowzers. Plus, Denver's been pretty good (better than the Knicks!!!!) in the aftermath of the trade.

                    1. ...a top pick in what is generally believed to be one of the best drafts ever, wowzers.

                      So Phoenix will definitely be using the Wolves 1st Round pick this year.*

                      *they can choose to use it any of the next three years, right?

    1. When I worked for a major midwestern restaurant, management was a disaster at the store level - we had one guy (otherwise competent) who was fired for sexually harassing a large number of people in the store, including me. His successor, though she wasn't sexually harassing anyone, was one of the stupidest people I've ever met and, in the absence of ever being right, simply continued to make rules.

      Impossibly, district leadership was worse. Our district guy was this douchey windbag with frosted tips who came up with all sorts of directives to sell more and spend less, none of which made logical sense even to the line-levels. "If we switch to black slacks, we'll sell more high-dollar anguses and fajitas." Of course we will, Todd. That's very scientific. He also insisted on making the district's drink special table menus on his own. They looked like they were made using early Print Shop software and at least a quarter of the words were misspelled (not an exaggeration). If you pointed this out to him and suggested that maybe our menus were undoing the "professional" benefit our slacks were apparently giving us, he became angered and said "If you don't like it, you can do it." We offered to take him up on that regularly.

      More impossibly still, management above him was worse. Tons of stores closed without warning on the middle of the day on February 13th (the day before our biggest-money day of the year...huh?). Paychecks that had not yet been cashed ended up bouncing, but we found out that the uppers had made sure to collect their bonuses before bolting while leaving hundreds of us penniless. They were destroyed in a class-action lawsuit the next year and I got a pretty sizable check out of nowhere - shortly after Skim's birth - that was an enormous help at the time. That check probably represented the best I'd ever been treated by the company.

      What I'm saying is: I'm never surprised anymore when big money organizations end up being a disaster in every way imaginable.

      2. It's not limited to for-profits. I have told GW repeatedly that they won't get a penny from me until ______, ______, or _______ are no longer employed by the university because I had to watch them light money on fire repeatedly over the years.

        1. Funny, i just got off the phone with a junior from SUNY buffalo asking me for money. I didn't have a pat answer to give the poor man, but next time I will. (Hint: my answer looks very similar to yours.)

          1. That's my line for now, especially since I'm already on income-based plans for my repayment of said loans. If I had any money to spare, that's where it'd be going.

    1. That seems very odd. Are you sure it's Sir Ian? I'm pretty sure he's on contract with ESPN, unless he got a dispensation or something. Usually Arlo White is their man commentator.

      1. Arlo White is the only NBC guy they have, otherwise they use the World Feed (I think its Sky Sports running things?).
        So, sometimes you get Martin Tyler calling a match. Today, its Ian Darke.

        If you think about it, its brilliant because its pretty cheap to run a broadcast.

        1. Ah, gotcha. It's not Darke for NBCSN, it's Darke for BT Sport, which NBCSN is simulcasting.

          1. Well looky here. From Wikipedia

            From 2013/14, Darke will commentate on the English Premier League for BT Sport. He can be heard on NBC Sports Network, as they use BT Sport feeds in their coverage.

  12. I'm setting up my new SSD as we speak. A few notes:

    1) It's so fast!
    2) It's so quiet!
    3) Like eerily quiet. 20 years of using computers has me trained that when you hit the power button and you don't hear anything, that's a very bad thing.
    4) An SSD weighs about 1/2 as much as it looks like it should.
    5) I'm going to have to put my old HDD back in temporarily. I forgot to sync my Chrome bookmarks in my backup 🙁

      1. Stretching my new extended battery's life even further. It feels so good to be mobile again.

        Now if I could only install a quieter fan I'd be really cookin'

    1. signed a 1 day contract with the Jays.

      Is Halladay a border line Hall of Famer?
      A solid member of The Hall of Very Good.

  14. From digg: Taylor University has a tradition called the Silent Night where the entire crowd remains dead silent until the tenth point is scored.

    httpv://youtu.be/1itrSlRH90A

  15. Probably won't be loved around here, because Easterbrook, but

    "... Judith Grant Long, a researcher at Harvard, calculates that 70 percent of the cost of NFL stadia has been paid for by taxpayers. In general, the public subsidizes pro football to the tune of around $1 billion a year, is what I calculated in my book. And yet it's phenomenally profitable — subsidized up one side, down the other, and yet a very profitable business."

    2. I think Easterbrook makes a lot of good points, but he tends to hammer them into the ground instead of finding new things to say.

      1. ...and hammer them and hammer them and hammer them...
        50% of his weekly column is auto-text with different names!

        Caveat SelectShow

  16. Wow, Nuggets vs. Wizards ends up 75-74. Even without knowing anything more about it, I can't imagine that was a fun game to watch.

  17. there is some steam on the Twitter machine about the Twins possibly nabbing Rajai Davis.

    How do we feel about this?

      1. For whatever reason, Davis was one of those guys that I only remember killing the Twins, and as such I'd wanted them to trade for him for a while. On a two year deal or so for ~$3-4 million per year I think it makes a decent amount of sense. Especially if he was being platooned. He won't be, but I still am on board with this idea.

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