I just want it to be a better day than yesterday. Bit of a low bar.
57 thoughts on “September 30, 2020: Wednesday”
The Twins lost because they did not wear their baby blues
I only worked over lunch yesterday and watched the first 2 innings at my joint. I came home opened my laptop and turned on TV planning to participate in the game log while watching the game. I pretty much made it one more inning and decided to go play a round of golf. Once Maeda was pulled, I just felt like we were done. My front 9 at the course was not too good, but once I shut the game off, my back nine was fantastic. Got home and my wife was expecting me to be a bit miffed regarding the Twins. I just looked at her and said "It's who they are, I have accepted it."
Newbish just had me turn on the Rays/Blue Jays game, decided that he was a Rays fan, and was delighted when they won. Maybe he's onto something.
If I'm not mistaken, yesterday's Zoom was my first in-person interaction with philo
don't forget to wash your hands!
I wish it could have been under better circumstances (and not being distracted by darn work), but it was good to see everyone who called in (and sean). I'd do it again today but I really should focus on work more this time.
"in-person"
I was on a different zoom and at one point my laptop was airborne; luckily I caught it. I'll be living that one down for a long time. Guess I can be an entertaining zoomee. Noon is going to be an interesting hour today.
Only if you don't count our online interactions.
Like, this is the first time I ever saw your face or heard your voice.
And for your having to see my face and hear my voice, I apologize.
Because it's reached the point where I have to just sit back and gawk in amazement, here's the highest Win Probability the Twins had in each of the seventeen games (in order):
88%
62%
97%
58%
58%
56%
69%
92%
73%
89%
67%
50%
81%
67%
54%
63%
79%
So, if all things are equal and those probabilities are accurate, a team in the Twins shoes would manage to lose all seventeen of those games once every 13,337,975,146 times.
Truly amazing.
Hey one in a thirteen billion, three-hundred and thirty-seven million, nine-hundred and seventy-five thousand, one-hundred and forty-six chances happen every day!
Wowza
That really is mind-boggling.
I mean, from a statistical standpoint, that's very much cherry-picking to go with the max WP from each game. To me, it's ridiculous enough to just have 17 straight losses at a 50% chance to win -- 1 in 131,072.
I know I'm cherry picking, but they did reach that point in each game.
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Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kb2vV4iiJR
d@mn you, troublemaker! well, okay, I'll drop in during lunch hour at least, but THEN I HAVE TO GET BACK TO WORK
If I'm not a rablerouser, I don't know what I am.
I updated WordPress and the recent LTE sidebar, an old plugin when we opened this basement, decided it's too old. I've been meaning to write something new for a long time and guess what, tonight is the night I start. Until then, enjoy random snapshots of recent days.
I was gonna say!
Ha, I just noticed that! What's funny is that I've been battling with the new block editor in WordPress this morning while writing a blog post for work. Adding images to posts is simpler, which I like, but everything else is just annoying since I have to re-figure out how to do things I already knew how to do the old way.
Someday I'm going to be telling my kids, "back in my day, we had to draft our blog posts barefoot--and it was uphill both ways!"
I HATE WordPress's block editor. It threw away all my internal anchor links and then spews extra ones into the code. Plus it displays code in a larger font with spacing in between lines -- very frustrating.
My favorite line is: I remember when we used to code with a soldering iron on bare metal.
"You kids these days with your WYSIWYG editors! Pshaw! I had to hand code my <marquee> tags on my Angelfire site."
FrontPage!
I have been avoiding the block editor. When updating it informed me having the Classic Editor active disables the Block Editor. It's going to be disabled for a long time.
Game log isn't on the home page, and worthless left margin -- no easy way to find it.
yeah, now that there are enough posts there to bump it to the homepage
The second row is based on recent comments but the third row is chronological order. Every new post will show up in that third row until it gets a few comments.
"I've been a Twins fan since I was watching Johan Santana was pitching against Mickey Mantle. I'm done with this franchise. Im burning my Clyde Milan jersey"
The weather in The Bronx looks fun
baseball? what's baseball?
*turns on NBA finals*
I kind of want LeBron to win. Championships with three different teams.
Im fine with either team winning. Just want good games going to 7 games
Butler still doesn't sit right with me. I know he's a great player and a lot of people love him specifically for how insane he is, but I'm just not a fan of that. On the other hand, rooting for the Lakers... I'll go with I'm rooting for LBJ and AD.
I’m on board with this.
I hope it doesnt come out that Byron Buxton has to sit in a dark room all winter because of a concussion because the team decided to play him after getting drilling in the head with a pitch and then having to sit out games because of that and with his history of concussions.
Yeah, me too.
I'd want to know how he passsed the concussion protocol, then had reoccurring symptoms, then was allowed to play anyway in Game 2.
Bottom of the 9th starting at 1am ET in Cleveland.
Maybe I'm biased, but the sound of A-Rod's voice is twice as annoying as its content.
So this year, no Donaldson, the biggest free agent in team history, and Buxton unable to start Game 2, the team's rWAR leader.
Last year, Buxton was hurt and Pineda suspended.
'17, Sano, who led the team in OPS, was out with a stress fracture.
'10 Morneau, having a better season this his MVP year, out with concussion, and you could even include Joe Nathan, who tore his UCL in spring training.
'09 Morneau out with stress fracture in his back plus pitching devastated by playing extra innings in Game 163 & Yankees allowed to choose to play next day.
'06 Liriano out and Radke very limited. Game 2 starter was Boof Bonser.
'04 Mauer injured.
Not once in this streak have the Twins been able to field the complete team that got them to the playoffs. Obviously, this still shouldn't have added up to an 18-game losing streak, but the odds were stacked against the Twins every time.
A big reason for the streak is that they just haven't been that good. They were probably favorites in 5 of 18 of the games.
For me, that explains not winning any of the series, but losing every single game is more down to bad luck.
Yes, these are all true. But we just faced a Houston team without Verlander. The flip side of this coin helps mitigate the disadvantages.
Yet with the annual "WE DON'T HAVE AN ACE!1!!" commentary, we're losing these games because we can only score one run.
Well, if we had an ACE!1!!, that wouldn't be a problem!
The Braves/Reds series proves we need an ace! If Twins pitchers had done as well as Braves pitchers, we'd have won both games!
The Twins lost because they did not wear their baby blues
I only worked over lunch yesterday and watched the first 2 innings at my joint. I came home opened my laptop and turned on TV planning to participate in the game log while watching the game. I pretty much made it one more inning and decided to go play a round of golf. Once Maeda was pulled, I just felt like we were done. My front 9 at the course was not too good, but once I shut the game off, my back nine was fantastic. Got home and my wife was expecting me to be a bit miffed regarding the Twins. I just looked at her and said "It's who they are, I have accepted it."
Newbish just had me turn on the Rays/Blue Jays game, decided that he was a Rays fan, and was delighted when they won. Maybe he's onto something.
If I'm not mistaken, yesterday's Zoom was my first in-person interaction with philo
don't forget to wash your hands!
I wish it could have been under better circumstances (and not being distracted by darn work), but it was good to see everyone who called in (and sean). I'd do it again today but I really should focus on work more this time.
"in-person"
I was on a different zoom and at one point my laptop was airborne; luckily I caught it. I'll be living that one down for a long time. Guess I can be an entertaining zoomee. Noon is going to be an interesting hour today.
Only if you don't count our online interactions.
Like, this is the first time I ever saw your face or heard your voice.
And for your having to see my face and hear my voice, I apologize.
Hey one in a thirteen billion, three-hundred and thirty-seven million, nine-hundred and seventy-five thousand, one-hundred and forty-six chances happen every day!
Wowza
That really is mind-boggling.
I mean, from a statistical standpoint, that's very much cherry-picking to go with the max WP from each game. To me, it's ridiculous enough to just have 17 straight losses at a 50% chance to win -- 1 in 131,072.
I know I'm cherry picking, but they did reach that point in each game.
If people are interested I can set up a zoom today and post the deets. Can't promise I'll join, but hip hip José?
Well here is the info:
d@mn you, troublemaker! well, okay, I'll drop in during lunch hour at least, but THEN I HAVE TO GET BACK TO WORK
If I'm not a rablerouser, I don't know what I am.
I updated WordPress and the recent LTE sidebar, an old plugin when we opened this basement, decided it's too old. I've been meaning to write something new for a long time and guess what, tonight is the night I start. Until then, enjoy random snapshots of recent days.
I was gonna say!
Ha, I just noticed that! What's funny is that I've been battling with the new block editor in WordPress this morning while writing a blog post for work. Adding images to posts is simpler, which I like, but everything else is just annoying since I have to re-figure out how to do things I already knew how to do the old way.
Someday I'm going to be telling my kids, "back in my day, we had to draft our blog posts barefoot--and it was uphill both ways!"
I HATE WordPress's block editor. It threw away all my internal anchor links and then spews extra ones into the code. Plus it displays code in a larger font with spacing in between lines -- very frustrating.
My favorite line is: I remember when we used to code with a soldering iron on bare metal.
"You kids these days with your WYSIWYG editors! Pshaw! I had to hand code my <marquee> tags on my Angelfire site."
FrontPage!
I have been avoiding the block editor. When updating it informed me having the Classic Editor active disables the Block Editor. It's going to be disabled for a long time.
Game log isn't on the home page, and worthless left margin -- no easy way to find it.
It was on the home page for me.
yeah, now that there are enough posts there to bump it to the homepage
The second row is based on recent comments but the third row is chronological order. Every new post will show up in that third row until it gets a few comments.
This is a scheduled post.
GOSO.
chefs kiss
apparently there are twins bots out there.
https://twitter.com/ExtraPaleMale/status/1311407031040049152?s=20
"I've been a Twins fan since I was watching Johan Santana was pitching against Mickey Mantle. I'm done with this franchise. Im burning my Clyde Milan jersey"
The weather in The Bronx looks fun
baseball? what's baseball?
*turns on NBA finals*
I kind of want LeBron to win. Championships with three different teams.
Im fine with either team winning. Just want good games going to 7 games
Butler still doesn't sit right with me. I know he's a great player and a lot of people love him specifically for how insane he is, but I'm just not a fan of that. On the other hand, rooting for the Lakers... I'll go with I'm rooting for LBJ and AD.
I’m on board with this.
I hope it doesnt come out that Byron Buxton has to sit in a dark room all winter because of a concussion because the team decided to play him after getting drilling in the head with a pitch and then having to sit out games because of that and with his history of concussions.
Yeah, me too.
I'd want to know how he passsed the concussion protocol, then had reoccurring symptoms, then was allowed to play anyway in Game 2.
She must have received the deluxe basket.
Bottom of the 9th starting at 1am ET in Cleveland.
Maybe I'm biased, but the sound of A-Rod's voice is twice as annoying as its content.
So this year, no Donaldson, the biggest free agent in team history, and Buxton unable to start Game 2, the team's rWAR leader.
Last year, Buxton was hurt and Pineda suspended.
'17, Sano, who led the team in OPS, was out with a stress fracture.
'10 Morneau, having a better season this his MVP year, out with concussion, and you could even include Joe Nathan, who tore his UCL in spring training.
'09 Morneau out with stress fracture in his back plus pitching devastated by playing extra innings in Game 163 & Yankees allowed to choose to play next day.
'06 Liriano out and Radke very limited. Game 2 starter was Boof Bonser.
'04 Mauer injured.
Not once in this streak have the Twins been able to field the complete team that got them to the playoffs. Obviously, this still shouldn't have added up to an 18-game losing streak, but the odds were stacked against the Twins every time.
A big reason for the streak is that they just haven't been that good. They were probably favorites in 5 of 18 of the games.
For me, that explains not winning any of the series, but losing every single game is more down to bad luck.
Yes, these are all true. But we just faced a Houston team without Verlander. The flip side of this coin helps mitigate the disadvantages.
Yet with the annual "WE DON'T HAVE AN ACE!1!!" commentary, we're losing these games because we can only score one run.
Well, if we had an ACE!1!!, that wouldn't be a problem!
The Braves/Reds series proves we need an ace! If Twins pitchers had done as well as Braves pitchers, we'd have won both games!