102 thoughts on “June 2, 2014: 333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333”

  1. Good morning from the Dublin airport. Unlike others around here, this is all I'll get to see of the city.

      1. Missed the chance for that, but I'll drink numerous pints for whoever wants me to during my two weeks here in Manchester.

  2. Got a rather cryptic e-mail from the principal of our daughter's school yesterday referring to a "safety issue". She indicated that the student involved would not be at the school until the matter is resolved.

    What we have heard is that the student (an 8th grade boy) wrote an essay in which he described himself as committing mass murder and suicide.

    The authorities have not been contacted, but the student is apparently at home. From what we understand, the school had no intention of communicating to us as parents, but the story was spreading around the community, so they addressed it just about as vaguely as is humanly possible.

    We kept our daughter home today and a lot of other parents are, too. It is the last week of school. I think the likelihood of something happening is low, but I'm also a little peeved about how the school handled this. I understand that this is a sensitive issue, but if a student is talking like this, real steps need to be taken.

    1. Scary stuff.

      I really hate when organizations don't communicate. I especially hate it when they do finally communicate and start with "as you have heard..." This legitimizes gossip and makes me realize that I am not "in the loop."

      1. One of my friends went to lunch with his daughters at school today and asked my daughter's teacher whether the police were involved. The teacher said that SHE COULDN'T DISCLOSE THAT.

        Parents are being left totally in the dark about this situation, but we are told, the school is safe, send your kids to us! And oh by the way, there's four days of school left, so if something's going to happen, now's the time!

        1. More details: apparently, this kid was suspended earlier this year for threatening to kill students at the school. On Friday, he stood up in class to read his report. In his report, he informed all of his classmates that he would kill them. He was described to me as a loner that no one likes. It turns out that the middle school parents were communicated with more directly than those of us with first graders.

          The school has police on site.

          Before we found all this out, my wife unilaterally decided to send my daughter to school after all. Needless to say, I am an unhappy camper about that decision as well as the lack of communication being provided to us parents. I am rather angry today. Rather. Angry.

        2. I know it probably sucks to hear as a parent, but that teacher is acting prudently. FERPA violations are serious business and could open the school up to a lawsuit and threaten the teacher's employment status (or career). The only proper person to direct inquiries of that nature to is the school's principal or dean of students. Doing anything else just puts a teacher in a situation outside their pay grade and makes them nervous about liability. Theoretically those are the kinds of questions administrators are paid to handle.

          1. I have experience with this as a teacher. It sounds as though the student is out of the building and I assume is undergoing some sort of mental health threat assessment.

            You hit the nail on the head about confidentiality.

            1. Bingo. Teachers and administrators are hamstrung to a degree, by threats of (or fear of and ignorance about) lawsuits. Maybe (slightly) less so in privates than in publics, but still hamstrung.

              That said, the school in this case probably could and should have done an "all-call" with a bit more information. We have received a couple of those calls from our kids' high school over the last several years, alerting us to a security situation on or near campus (one involved a kid brandishing a knife, another with an escapee from the nearby sheriff's detention center).

    2. These issues are so difficult because a thousand kids will say things like that for attention, and just a handful will act on them. However, since the ones who act on them are typically successful in killing large numbers of people, every instance needs to be taken seriously. Without getting into too many specifics, I'll mention that I know about a situation where a kid was doing like this, but when it was related to police, it was swept under the rug because the kid was the son of a cop and not a legitimate risk because of this. Of course, given the kid's father's profession, perhaps no single student in the school had easier access to guns. That's not a comment on the father's safety with them because I'm sure he treated his firearms with the proper respect, but regardless, everyone knew that this kid was in a house that did, indeed, have guns in it.

  3. Monday starting pitching report. Hughes continues to look good and continues to pile innings on his sample size. Nice.

    Nolasco's peripherals are improving. That's about all I have to say today.

    # Name W L SV G GS IP K/9 BB/9 HR/9 BABIP LOB% GB% HR/FB ERA FIP xFIP WAR
    1 Phil Hughes 5 1 0 10 10 61.1 7.34 0.88 0.59 .328 74.6 % 32.6 % 4.7 % 3.23 2.63 3.60 1.9
    2 Kyle Gibson 4 4 0 10 10 56.0 4.66 3.21 0.48 .284 70.1 % 51.8 % 5.1 % 4.18 3.80 4.47 0.8
    3 Kevin Correia 2 6 0 11 11 61.1 4.99 2.05 0.88 .336 59.6 % 42.7 % 6.7 % 5.87 3.96 4.60 0.7
    4 Samuel Deduno 1 2 0 5 5 28.0 5.46 2.89 0.64 .275 64.3 % 58.1 % 7.7 % 4.50 3.85 4.13 0.3
    5 Ricky Nolasco 3 5 0 11 11 66.1 5.83 2.71 1.36 .347 69.6 % 41.8 % 11.9 % 5.70 4.64 4.32 0.3
    6 Kris Johnson 0 0 0 1 1 4.1 10.38 12.46 0.00 .364 100.0 % 60.0 % 0.0 % 0.00 4.91 5.21 0.0
    7 Mike Pelfrey 0 3 0 5 5 23.2 3.80 6.85 1.90 .286 61.9 % 43.7 % 15.2 % 7.99 7.50 6.57 -0.6
    1. Would anyone care to make a recommendation on a good source for the non-enhanced-stat-savvy reader who might wish better familiarize himself with modern metrics?

      1. ussmariner.com has a primer on pitching metrics that they published several years ago. You might want to go over there.

        1. Speaking of Reusse: I unfollowed him last week, but someone retweeted the old fart into my feed. Danny Santana gets a cut in eyelid that requires seven (!!) stitches.

          Come on! #playyousissies

          Later in the week:

          LENIII, who I never read anymore, gets in the act:

          We are surrounded by idiots.

          (EDITED to correct cut and paste mistake.)

          1. If I'm standing in the batter's box while someone throws a fist-sized object at nearly a hundred miles per hour past me, I'd sure like to be able to see out of both eyes... but maybe that's just me.

    2. You're short changing Hughes on his Sunday start.

      Nice to see positive WAR on all the (remaining) starters. Now if we can work on a positive W/L for the bunch...

      1. Cut and paste from fangraphs. They are short changing Hughes! So, even better. Nice.

    3. Since we won't actually get to think about this at the end of the season, how would you set the rotation if the Twins had to play a 7-game series with only the pitchers listed above?

      I would be bold and go Hughes-Nolasco-Deduno with Gibson as a 4th starter is necessary. I would maybe consider Correia as a long relief option, but I'd have to think more about that. In a series against a decent team, I like Nolasco's chances for success better than all the non-Hughes pitchers. As good as Hughes has been, I don't think I'd pitch him on short rest.

      1. I might make Correia a fourth stater. His peripherals are about the same as Gibson's and in that situation, I'll give him the edge because he's been around the block a few more times.

        1. Yeah, it'd be a tough call between those two, I think. It could come down to the opponent--Gibson throws a little harder than Correia, which might work better against some hitters than others.

  4. The NHL could not be happier now with an L.A.-N.Y. Stanley Cup Finals. Especially after an epic 7-game Chicago-L.A. Western Conference Finals.

    1. I think the NHL would have loved Chicago more than LA.

      @Buccigross
      LA had 4.8 HH TV rating, Chicago had a 22.7 last night (per NBC) Chicago would have been better for TV rating. LA will go up but how much?

      1. Illegally drinking beer in quarries outside Mankato Minnesota was what I was doing at 19.

        1. Illegally drinking beer in various rental properties and farm sites near Morris Minnesota was what I was doing at 19. Oh, and attending classes just enough to earn C's...mostly.

                  1. We did a lot of Mario Karting as well, but that original Mario Party was so fantastic for drunk dorm shenanigans as to render all other games useless.

      2. closing out the Spamtown CC library every weeknight. Oh, and drinking in Minnesota bars.... Both were about wiping away the stench of my freshman year at the Alma Mater.

    1. Starting to date my (future) wife and graduating from Tech School.

      Also, not drinking any beer at all, but you take the bad with the good.

          1. My wife and I played the various PS2 versions for a while, but it's such a hassle storing the mats, and I think we had three or four of them.

    2. Working three jobs, enrolling at WSU, and hadn't had my first drink yet. I was no fun.

      1. I wasn't drinking either. (Well ok, maybe I had a drink once every few months, but it was soooooo expensive to drink in DC.) I was watching The Big Lebowski all the time, though.

      1. I scootched up in my chair and leaned over to protect my soft bits as I watched that.

    1. Gleeman went with my suggestion and compared Mauer at age 31 to Jeter at 31. Naturally, he is getting heavily criticized for it.

      1. Facebook can sometimes be cool.

        I now have my WGOM friends arguing with my friend that used to work in the Twins' front office about the value of Mauer vs Jeter.

          1. Just don't make him mad at me! He got me free tickets from Gardy the last time he was in town.

        1. Thanks, guys. Apparently I need to work on my click baiting hyperlink titles.

          1. In all fairness, you gave me the idea for the 'click-baiting hyperlink' title with your excellent suggestion for yesterday's gamelog (which I couldn't use as I was about 4 miles into an 18-mile run by the time I rec'd it).

    2. Great story! Dude wants to be remembered like the most highly regarded player of the last 20 years!

      1. But not like the best player of the last 20 years (*cough, cough, Bonds, cough, cough*)?

  5. Pulled from The Dish:

    At least they didn't put it in the dining room, I suppose.

      1. Heh. Yeah, I figure many folks who wanted to see it saw it at the time, but those of us with our stupidly long backlogs...

  6. Hurricanes with feminine names may kill three times as many victims because people do not perceive them as being as threatening as storms named after men, scientists said Monday.

    1. Or maybe that's not the reason why.

      Jeff Lazo from the National Centre for Atmospheric Research disagrees. He’s a social scientist and economist who has looked into the public communication of hurricane risk, and he thinks the pattern is most likely a statistical fluke, which arose because of the ways in which the team analysed their data.

      . . . For a start, they analysed hurricane data from 1950, but hurricanes all had female names at first. They only started getting male names on alternate years in 1979. This matters because hurricanes have also, on average, been getting less deadly over time. “It could be that more people die in female-named hurricanes, simply because more people died in hurricanes on average before they started getting male names,” says Lazo.

    1. I see potential problems with deals for that long. If the player severely outplays the contract, there could be a lot of potential bad blood.

      1. Potentially. I think a savvy front office could probably find a way to give the exceptional players a bit of an extension/raise at some point after they've proven how good they are.

        The most interesting part to me is whether or not the big agencies--who stand to lose money through this process--are in any position to do something to circumvent it. Scott Boras's firm, for instance, could probably front the players a certain amount of money to keep them from accepting the initial deal to help them hold out for more money later. I have no idea the legality of such a strategy, but that would be my first thought if I was an agent.

        1. Makes me wonder if players who don't sign after being drafted have been thusly compensated to keep them in college for their senior year.

          1. Potentially. I think a savvy front office could probably find a way to give the exceptional players a bit of an extension/raise at some point after they've proven how good they are.

            Jeter's latest extension!

        2. Potentially. I think a savvy front office could probably find a way to give the exceptional players a bit of an extension/raise at some point after they've proven how good they are.

          See: Tulo, Braun, and Longoria's extensions that were signed several years before their current deals ended. If Trout keeps being Trout, he will likely get a large extension too.

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