Cup of Coffee

June 26, 2013: Crunch Time

56 Comments

It's four days until the Milkmaid's birthday. I spent the last two weeks wracking my brain to remember what she subtly asked for a month or two ago, and last night, it came to me. This one's gonna come together, dudes.

56 thoughts on “June 26, 2013: Crunch Time”

  1. CER turns ten in a fortnight.
    She's getting a pocket knife for sure.
    Victorinox Classic (not pink).

    1. Is a pocket knife a right of passage gift in your household?

      A Prairie Home Companion is coming to NOLA on Dr. Chop's birthday. Since Free didn't provide a presale code I bit the bullet and donated some money to the local npr news branch in exchange for "the best seats in the house".

      2. A bit of a right of passage, but she's been asking for years and I think she's ready.
        I need to remember THR's speech to me when I got my first knife. (Pretty much the same speech before handing me a gun for hunting or keys to a vehicle. "It's a tool, not a toy." "It's as dangerous as the user." "Expect responsibility or privileges will be taken away." Actually, that's pretty much it. Now I just need the proper gravitas in my voice.)

      3. Ooh, Sheenie's father has always wanted to see a show. When it is in NOLA?

          1. Ooh, he also always tells me about the Sanger Theater. I'll check to see if he's going to be in town then. If so, I may need to get him some tickets.

  2. I'm back, but I have a lot of catching up to do today. Therefore, Minor Details will not return until tomorrow. Thank you for your patience.

  3. Walked out of the house at 3:30AM today. What was that sensation I felt? Oh yeah, summer. It was 75 degrees and extremely humid. What a shocker!

  4. Last night I got my new tent ordered (thanks for the suggestion, free). While I was in a spending mood, I also ordered a new multi-tool and flashlight. Tonight I (hopefully) sell my bike when someone comes to look at it. Then tomorrow, I begin building my new bike after the co-op gets ~80 donated bikes from the Amherst police. And I get about 5 extra hours a the rink today and yesterday. All in all, not a bad few days.

  5. Anybody feel like they've seen this Josh Willingham movie before? Twins sign aging slugger with no defensive value and after good (or great) first year he takes a significant step down in year 2 in power numbers and overall OPS? I think it was called Chili Davis the first time I saw it, then Dave Winfield was the sequel, Paul Molitor was after that (which even had some foreshadowing of the even bigger drop off that comes in year 3). Jim Thome set the bar pretty high in year 1 but took a big step back in year 2. Heck, Rondell White doesn't fit the story, but even after an atrocious year 1, even he found a way to take a signifcant drop in offensive production in year 2.

    1. Willingham had a career year his first year, so could hardly be expected to duplicate that at his age. Still leads the team in homers and is getting on base at a decent rate. Chili had a 130 OPS+ his second season with the Twins and played for seven more seasons. Molitor and Winfield were both in their 40s when they declined. Willingham is only 34. He might be declining, but his last two years were great before this one.

      1. I understand that all the situations were a little bit different, but this is now 6 consecutive DH type players we've signed as a free agent the last 25 years that have all regressed from year 1 to year 2.

        1. I would think it would be rare for that not to happen, considering the age of most free agents. That's why you need to be careful when going into the free agent market. At least the Twins are not signing these guys for 4+ years. The Twins still got a fantastic deal with Willingham at $21M for 3 yrs. He delivered $16M last year and almost $2M this year, so they just need to get $3M out of him over the rest of the contract, which shouldn't be hard at all.

        2. I'd rather keep plugging away at finding good hitters than getting stuck with Jason "TynyDH" Tyner as DH.

    2. Not sure how well that applies to Davis. His worst year by OPS+ was in 1993 and he had two more years that were just as good or better after leaving Minnesota.

      Year Age Tm G PA OPS+
      1991 31 MIN 153 634 141
      1992 32 MIN 138 529 130
      1993 33 CAL 153 645 103
      1994 34 CAL 108 468 148
      1995 35 CAL 119 522 146
      1996 36 CAL 145 623 124
      1997 37 KCR 140 567 131
      1998 38 NYY 35 118 116
      1999 39 NYY 146 554 108

      For Willingham, last year was abnormally good and I don't think expecting something like that is reasonable. His strikeout rate is up and his power is down, but neither are that far out of line.

    3. I didn't notice (haven't been watching much) but yeah, batting .232/.316/.304 in the month of June with 3 extra base hits and an OPS of .661...
      The sad part is, I (and I assume the Twins FO) was hoping he'd go on a tear and they'd get a good return at the trade deadline.* Also tough when he's one of 2 right-handed batters with pop on the roster.
      The "nice" part is, they have enough corner outfielders to replace him as necessary - though I expect they'll keep playing him in hopes he has a surge to add some value.

      *thought the same thing during the Morneau discussion yesterday.

  6. For no reason I can discern, I woke up at 3am this morning. My body didn't deem itself ready to fall asleep again until 7, but I had to start work at 8 so I couldn't get those two extra hours of sleep I'd normally get when I start at 10.

    The best part is, I'm here now two hours before we open, and there's nothing to do, because the thing they scheduled me to do this morning got done by an eager young go-getter a couple of days ago. Me. Whoops.

    2. That's a huge step forward and hopefully it makes finding a treatment (or a cure!) possible.

    3. I'm always happy to hear people proven wrong about "imaginary" diseases. Is that really the best thing that we can come up with when we don't yet understand a disease? Oh, it must be made up...?

      1. I agree completely. Anecdotally, however, I'd say that my experience with fibromyalgia has it frequently occurring in patients who also exhibit significant mental health issues (a fair number of my clients throughout the years). I'm wondering if fibromyalgia doesn't show up more frequently for people with mental health disabilities, and thus it becomes even easier to write off as "imaginary." I guess what I'm saying is, maybe the problem here isn't dismissing fibromyalgia, it's not responding appropriately to people with mental illness.

  9. Howdy, all! I'm waiting to get a sense of how spicy the new little Pepper is before settling on a nickname, but here are a couple photos in the meantime. (Assuming I do this right.)

    Sometimes he looks like a burrito:

    Other times more like a little bean:

    5. I already congratulated you for having the baby. But this time I'll congratulate you for having a cute baby.

  11. For those who were fans of the great Killer Mike album last year, he and El-P just dropped another collaboration today. For free.

    I'm listening right now. It bangs.

    1. Excited to get home and listen to this. I really want to go to their show in the Cities next month but I'm not sure if I can swing it...

    1. I keep waiting for ESPN to ask its new analyst, Ray Lewis, about the Hernandez case.

        1. How do we know that Mr. Lewis did not? I think that that has never really been resolved.

  13. So, today I filled out a personnel development plan for one of my direct reports per company requirements.

    Spoiler SelectShow

  14. so I come work from a hard days work and find the neighbor has hired a crew to dug up every inch on concrete on his property. Apparently this company works past 5:30pm. I just want some quiet. Im not a happy camper right now. ><

    1. Tonight I had to attend an opening at my museum. On my time. Required with no compensation. (Unless you consider the jack and coke). I feel your pain.

      2. Are you hourly, meat? Because that would be illegal, in that case. Not that I'm making recommendations....

        On the other hand, if you are Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)-exempt (i.e., salaried), tough cookies, and drink up! 😉

        1. This. Also if you're a 1099 or some other manner of "contractor"...things get squirrelly.

Comments are closed.