Last night was a rough one for all those Twins/Cavs fans out there.
32 thoughts on “June 8, 2017: Cuts Deep”
Good morning from Toledo*, OH. Turns out there are two zippered openings that need to be secured. Oops. On the plus side, I think the oldest is finally over his fever. That will be nice. It only took five days. Poor guy always gets fevers that last a while.
* Actually Perrysburg.
Gonna go to the Mud Hens game tonight? (The stadium is pretty interesting)
That would be fun but we've already left.
And by left, I mean we drove 30 minutes and stopped for lunch and potty break.
Ah, gotcha. I read wrong thinking Toledo was your destination. Congrats on it not being that!
Ahhhhh, Toledo--we'd always stop there for the night on our summer drives to my grandparents' cabin (known in the local parlance as "camp") in the Adirondacks. When we crossed the bridge over the Maumee River on the way out of town, my dad would always comment on the name of the river.
we're going to be spending time in the Adirondacks (Lake Placid) in late September.
It's a nice area! I'm most familiar with Old Forge--there's a fun, enormous hardware store in town and the Pied Piper for ice cream (across the road from the Enchanted Forest amusement park). Canoeing the Moose River is great, and there are lots of small mountains to hike. It was a family tradition to go up Bald Mountain every year.
Sorry to talk work here, but I found this pretty cool: yesterday I met for the first time with someone working on the train performance simulation and was wanting to use some of our engineering data. While talking, the high speed line between StL and Chicago was brought up, and he pulled up data that he'd generated -- while a current locomotive might use 1900 gallons for that trip, the new high-HP Charger locomotive that is being brought in for the high speed runs would use on the order of 660 gallons! Outstanding
Sorry to connect works here, but we probably reduce the exhaust noise on the engine running that thing.
And we'll be out working on track, making it late!
track gang??
My nerd cred is high: I'm watching Comey's testimony and am excited by a new set of stamps coming out soon.
NEEERRRRDDDD!!!!!!!
(listening, not watching)
I listened through Senator Warner's questions while driving and that was really interesting to hear. He was not mincing words.
If Sen. Warner wasn't mincing words, then McCain was stirring porridge. Not sure what his point was in that bowl of mush he provided.
In case anyone was wondering, accidentally dropping an earbud in your mug of tea and then letting it steep while you have a meeting with your boss is a good way to ruin said earbud.
But how was the tea? You might be onto something!
Yeah, that tea sounds good.
Ummmm . . . uhhhhhhh . . . oh, dear. I guess I now have to admit that I removed the earbud and just went ahead and continued drinking the tea. (It's this tea.) Tasted fine.
Ha!
So, I just read the first section of this about the Blue Jays:
And I found the analysis soooo wanting. It's June, and they are doting on the Jays' April record. They are 2 games under .500 in the first week of June! Of course they aren't out of the race. Sure, there are other reasons to doubt their chances of making the playoffs--despite only being 6 GB of first in their division, they are in last so they have a lot of teams to get past, but focusing on their poor April is just as silly as focusing on their good May. Paine could just as easily have posted a bunch of anecdata about how teams that are good in May tend to be good teams.
Just off the top of my head, the 2006 Twins were 26-33 at this point in 2006 and they made the playoffs. I'm sure that A's team that had a 20-game win streak was pretty crappy in June, too. Disappointing read.
I have been underwhelmed by the sports reporting at 538. The article the other day about how the shift ruined Ryan Howard's career was lazy writing with multiple logical fallacies and a click-bait headline
Perhaps like Bill James the game has passed him by a bit but I can't imagine Baseball Prospectus Nate Silver writing or approving crap like this
I wouldn't be surprised if Silver is pretty detached from the sports side of things, to be honest. He's not doing national TV interviews for sports statistics, so it's kind of natural that he's more focused on politics, but at the same time, it's surprising he couldn't find better analysts.
Maybe all the good analysts have been hired by the clubs.
Since April, Joe Mauer has been very, very good at baseball.
April - .225/.271/.275/.546
May/June - .336/.418/.514/.932
What's really encouraging is all of his strikeout and batted ball ratios are as good or better than his career averages. His walk rate is a little low but at the low end of what he had done preconcussion. And I believe his walk rate is trending up of late. Also, his line drive rate would be a career high and his groundball rate would be a career low, so he's been turning ground balls into line drives.
Radio crew shared a week or two ago that Molly and coaches were "pleased" that on review most of his called 3rd strikes were not legitimate strikes (in their eyes), so his strike judgment has their backing
I have definitely noticed fewer topped grounders to second.
Good morning from Toledo*, OH. Turns out there are two zippered openings that need to be secured. Oops. On the plus side, I think the oldest is finally over his fever. That will be nice. It only took five days. Poor guy always gets fevers that last a while.
* Actually Perrysburg.
Gonna go to the Mud Hens game tonight? (The stadium is pretty interesting)
That would be fun but we've already left.
And by left, I mean we drove 30 minutes and stopped for lunch and potty break.
Ah, gotcha. I read wrong thinking Toledo was your destination. Congrats on it not being that!
Ahhhhh, Toledo--we'd always stop there for the night on our summer drives to my grandparents' cabin (known in the local parlance as "camp") in the Adirondacks. When we crossed the bridge over the Maumee River on the way out of town, my dad would always comment on the name of the river.
we're going to be spending time in the Adirondacks (Lake Placid) in late September.
It's a nice area! I'm most familiar with Old Forge--there's a fun, enormous hardware store in town and the Pied Piper for ice cream (across the road from the Enchanted Forest amusement park). Canoeing the Moose River is great, and there are lots of small mountains to hike. It was a family tradition to go up Bald Mountain every year.
Sorry to talk work here, but I found this pretty cool: yesterday I met for the first time with someone working on the train performance simulation and was wanting to use some of our engineering data. While talking, the high speed line between StL and Chicago was brought up, and he pulled up data that he'd generated -- while a current locomotive might use 1900 gallons for that trip, the new high-HP Charger locomotive that is being brought in for the high speed runs would use on the order of 660 gallons! Outstanding
Sorry to connect works here, but we probably reduce the exhaust noise on the engine running that thing.
And we'll be out working on track, making it late!
track gang??
My nerd cred is high: I'm watching Comey's testimony and am excited by a new set of stamps coming out soon.
NEEERRRRDDDD!!!!!!!
(listening, not watching)
I listened through Senator Warner's questions while driving and that was really interesting to hear. He was not mincing words.
If Sen. Warner wasn't mincing words, then McCain was stirring porridge. Not sure what his point was in that bowl of mush he provided.
In case anyone was wondering, accidentally dropping an earbud in your mug of tea and then letting it steep while you have a meeting with your boss is a good way to ruin said earbud.
But how was the tea? You might be onto something!
Yeah, that tea sounds good.
Ummmm . . . uhhhhhhh . . . oh, dear. I guess I now have to admit that I removed the earbud and just went ahead and continued drinking the tea. (It's this tea.) Tasted fine.
Ha!
So, I just read the first section of this about the Blue Jays:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-blue-jays-are-getting-hot-but-it-may-already-be-too-late/
And I found the analysis soooo wanting. It's June, and they are doting on the Jays' April record. They are 2 games under .500 in the first week of June! Of course they aren't out of the race. Sure, there are other reasons to doubt their chances of making the playoffs--despite only being 6 GB of first in their division, they are in last so they have a lot of teams to get past, but focusing on their poor April is just as silly as focusing on their good May. Paine could just as easily have posted a bunch of anecdata about how teams that are good in May tend to be good teams.
Just off the top of my head, the 2006 Twins were 26-33 at this point in 2006 and they made the playoffs. I'm sure that A's team that had a 20-game win streak was pretty crappy in June, too. Disappointing read.
I have been underwhelmed by the sports reporting at 538. The article the other day about how the shift ruined Ryan Howard's career was lazy writing with multiple logical fallacies and a click-bait headline
Perhaps like Bill James the game has passed him by a bit but I can't imagine Baseball Prospectus Nate Silver writing or approving crap like this
I wouldn't be surprised if Silver is pretty detached from the sports side of things, to be honest. He's not doing national TV interviews for sports statistics, so it's kind of natural that he's more focused on politics, but at the same time, it's surprising he couldn't find better analysts.
Maybe all the good analysts have been hired by the clubs.
Since April, Joe Mauer has been very, very good at baseball.
April - .225/.271/.275/.546
May/June - .336/.418/.514/.932
What's really encouraging is all of his strikeout and batted ball ratios are as good or better than his career averages. His walk rate is a little low but at the low end of what he had done preconcussion. And I believe his walk rate is trending up of late. Also, his line drive rate would be a career high and his groundball rate would be a career low, so he's been turning ground balls into line drives.
Radio crew shared a week or two ago that Molly and coaches were "pleased" that on review most of his called 3rd strikes were not legitimate strikes (in their eyes), so his strike judgment has their backing
I have definitely noticed fewer topped grounders to second.
Ah, the ol' easy DP. Yep, me too