The Running…Rangers?

By Blaidd Drwg

I am sitting here finishing up a few things listening to the Red Sox vs. Rangers game on the internet and I just realized the Rangers have 8 (!) stolen bases against the battery of Wakefield and Martinez – 3 by Nelson Cruz (who had 0 going into the game), 3 by Elvis Andrus (who had 1 going into the game) and 2 by Vlad Guerrero (who had 1 going into the game), and have not been caught and they are only in the top of the 8th. You think Ron Washington saw something to exploit?

So many interesting facts about this:
– The Rangers have more than doubled their SB total for the season as a team- they had 6 going into the game.
– Victor Martinez is now 1 for 22 throwing out runners this season and has thrown out only 10 of the last 88 runners to try to steal against him.
– Teams are now 10 for 10 against Wake in trying to steal and 29 for 30 against the Red Sox this season.

The Sox have been historically bad about throwing runners out over the Varitek years, but this is getting ridiculous. Makes me wonder when the last time a team recorded 8 SB in a game.
——————

Postscript – The Rangers managed one more SB (Julio Borbon) and also managed to lose the game thanks to their pen. I still wonder when was the last time a battery gave up 9 SB in one game.

Ichiro on the Verge of Becoming the M’s All-Time Hit Leader?

By Blaidd Drwg

I was looking at the Mariners media guide this morning at the Mariners all time top 10 in offensive categories and I saw this in hits:

All Time Leaders
Edgar Martinez – 2,247
Ichiro – 2,230

Ichiro has 15 hits this year, which would put him 3 away from surpassing Edgar. I found it strange that I had not heard anything about this in the local press, so I did a little digging. Turns out, the Mariners Media Guide has a big error – the table should read like this:

All Time Leaders
Edgar Martinez – 2,247
Ichiro – 2,030

Ichiro, barring injury, should pass Edgar this year, just not this week.

Every year I read through the guide (yes, I am that much of a baseball geek) and every year I find a bunch of errors and typos, but never anything this bad. Note to the Mariners – hire someone to proofread your media guide, since it is what you distribute to the actual media.

Shame on Tony LaRussa

By Blaidd Drwg

The Mets and Cardinals played a 20 inning marathon last night, using a combined 19 pitchers and practically every position player on the roster. The Mets, despite only having one hit in the first 11 inning, managed to win the game 2-1.

Despite the game going scoreless for 18 innings, I really think Tony LaRussa gave up on winning – he not only used 2 position players as pitchers, but used them for 3 innings in the game, which ultimately led to the loss, and managed to have a pitcher play left field.

I really think that LaRussa was trying to lose the game just to get it over or at least hope that they would get lucky and win. Two additional head scratching moves he made:

– Why not bring in a starter? You have a guy who is scheduled to throw a bullpen session that day anyway, and you probably could use him for 60 pitches or so. You could also bring in they guy who is scheduled to pitch on Monday (Brad Penny) and call someone up to make the start in his place on Monday.

– He pulled Denny Reyes out in the top of the 14th after throwing just 15 pitches with 2 outs no one on and Luis Castillo up at bat. By bringing in Hawksworth at that point, I am wondering if it cost him the an additional innings’ worth of use from a real pitcher.

Maybe he really thinks that one game won’t make a difference so didn’t care about what the result was. I just really hate to see a team give up like that.

Recommended Game: Fluxx

by Coltrane

Title: Fluxx

Game Type: Chaotic Card Game

Number of Players: 2-6

Complexity of Rules: Low. Time to learn is about 5 minutes.

Time to Play: Short, usually under 20 minutes.

The Concept: Players start by Drawing one card and Playing one card. Then, the Rules and win condition (Goal) continually change throughout the course of each game.

There are four types of cards in Fluxx:

Keepers: Players can play Keepers onto the table. These are things like Television, Cookies, Milk, Dreams, Time, Love, War, and many others. Having a combination of Keepers on the table that matches the Goal is one way to win the game.

Goal cards: In the course of the game players will receive Goal cards into their hand. A player may opt to replace the Goal card currently in play with a different, new, Goal. The “old” Goal is then discarded. For example, the current Goal might be “Milk and Cookies”. A player wins if they have Milk and Cookies (Keepers) on the table at the same time that the Goal is “Milk and Cookies”. (The player might accomplish this by playing the Goal card, or he might accomplish this by playing the Keeper cards, or possibly both on the same turn.) Another Goal could be to have 10 or more cards in hand. There are many possible Goals, although most of them involve having some combination of Keepers on the table.

New Rule cards: At the start of the game there is a Basic Rules card that states that players must draw one card and play one card. Players will receive new Rule cards into their hand which they may then choose to play onto the table. For example, the New Rule card might say “Draw 3 cards”, if the player chooses to play it onto the table then everyone has to draw 3 cards going forward, at least until *that* New Rule gets replaced. There are also New Rules that limit hand size, or the change the number of allowable Keepers or Goals in play.

Action cards: These are cards like “Trade 3 cards with your neighbor” or “Mix up the Keepers and hand them back out randomly”.

As of the 2008 edition there are now four Creeper cards in the deck. Creeper cards usually prevent the player that owns them from winning. The version of Fluxx that I play is older than 2008, so I can’t speak to these cards. I *have* played Zombie Fluxx, which has Creepers. I didn’t feel like they added anything to the game.

Clear as mud? I’ve taken Fluxx to Adult Beverage Events, car camping, and a bunch of other places. It’s a fun and lightweight game that’s been pretty universally well received.

Here’s the BoardGameGeek page. Note that there are many reviews part of the way down the page under Forums -> Reviews.

And here it is on Amazon.com.

If you’re in Seattle I’d urge you to buy it at Gary’s Games.

Handicapping Top Chef Masters – Season 2

by Iron Chef Leftovers

The new season of Top Chef-Masters has begun and it is an impressive collection of chefs with 3 of Seattle’s own – Jerry Traunfeld of Poppy, Maria Hines of Tilth and Thierry Rautureau of Rover’s, competing. My track record with picking the winner is usually not good for the regular Top Chef (although my choice usually ends up in the top 3 finishers), I did nail Season 1 of Masters with Rick Bayless winning.

Here are my predictions – Maria Hines is the only Seattle contestant to make it into the championship round. She probably has the most dynamic cooking style of the 3 (Traunfeld and Rautureau are both classically trained and never struck me as particularly innovative) and I think that creativity is going to carry her forward. Unfortunately, I don’t see her in the finals.

My picks for the finals – Rick Tramonto, Marcus Samuelsson, Jon Waxman and Mark Peel (I believe 4 go to the finals) with Samuelsson winning it all. Samuelsson is the best overall chef in this competition and should be able to handle everything they throw at him.

The two chef who I would love to see do well – Jody Adams and Wylie Dufresne probably won’t make it out of the elimination round. Adams is a fantastic chef, but like Traunfeld and Rautureau, does not strike me as particularly innovative and Dufresne’s molecular gastronomy style does not seem like it is going to hold up in this type of competition.

Let’s revisit this in a couple of weeks and see how I did.

MLB Salary Collusion?

by Coltrane

The MLB players union is making noise about suing for collusion, but they’ll never win another collusion case again.

Using metrics such as WAR, player performance is now quantifiable to the point that it makes sense that each player sees similar offers from the individual teams. With more complete information the teams now know exactly what they’re buying.

Teams are now much less likely to pay $5 for a $3 gallon of milk.

The players are going to have to deal with the new reality.

—–

Postscript: I’m a day too late with this post. Here’s Fangraphs take on it from yesterday. I guess I should have read Fangraphs late yesterday.

Pickup Game

by Coltrane

This is in reference to the Stanford-UConn Women’s Championship Game post. If the Stanford men’s team were to play the UConn women’s team in a pickup game the matchups would look something like this:

Starter	Size	PPG	Starter	Size	PPG (Conf)
Landry Fields	6-7 G/F	22.0	Maya Moore	6-0 F	18.1
Jack Trotter	6-9 F	6.8	Tina Charles	6-4 C	18.9
Jeremy Green	6-4 G	16.6	Tiffany Hayes	5-10 G	8.9
Drew Shiller	6-0 G	7.5	Kalana Green	5-10 G	11.2
Jarret Mann	6-3 PG	5.8	Caroline Doty	5-10 G	6.2

Bench			Bench
Andrew Zimmermann	6-9 F	4.4	Kelly Faris	5-11 G	3.4
Emmanuel Igbinosa	6-2 G	3.9	Megan Gardler	6-0 F	4.3
Da’Veed Dildy	6-4 G	1.1	Lorin Dixon	5-4 G	3.5
			Kaili McLaren	6-2 F	3.7

The UConn women have two players on their team over six feet tall. They’d be giving up 5-6 inches per player. If this pickup game happened in real life the shorter team would insist on mixing up the teams. No contest.

Why Play This Game?

by Blaidd Drwg

#1 UCONN is playing #2 Stanford for the Women’s hoops crown tonight. Why bother? UCONN has won what seems like 5,000 straight games (they last lost in the 2008 final four to Stanford), has beaten 16 (!) ranked opponents this season (including Stanford once this season), has an average margin of victory of 30+ points, hasn’t had an opponent come within less than 20 points of beating them in over a month and has murdered its opponents in the tournament:

Game	Opponent	Opp Rank	Margin Of Victory
1	Southern	NR	56
2	Temple	NR	54
3	Iowa State	#16	38
4	Florida St	#11	40
5	Baylor	#18	20

That Rank column is National Rank, not seed. When was the last time that you saw a top 20 team in any sport get blow out the way that Iowa St, Florida St and Baylor have? This one just won’t be close – unless Stanford’s men’s team shows up for this game.

Dennis Johnson joins the Hall

by Coltrane

Dennis Johnson has been elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss, high school coaching great Bob Hurley Sr., and WNBA star Cynthia Cooper also were in the class announced at the Final Four. NBA veterans Dennis Johnson and Gus Johnson and international star Maciel “Ubiratan” Pereira will be honored posthumously.

I think that his induction was overdue. It’s interesting though, that when compared to Pippen and Gary Payton his credentials don’t look all that overwhelming:

	Points per Game	Rebounds per Game	Assists per Game	All Defensive Team Selections	All NBA Team	All Star	PER Rating	MVP Award Shares
Scottie Pippen	16.1	6.4	5.2	10	7	7	18.6	0.716
Gary Payton	16.3	3.9	6.7	9	9	9	18.9	0.823
Dennis Johnson	14.1	3.9	5.0	9	2	5	14.6	0.084
Player “X”	15.6	4.7	3.6	5	5	5	18.7	0.695

For example, Kevin Garnett has 2.752 award shares over the course of his career, good for 13th all-time. Chris Webber is 45th with .588 Shares. The complete list is here.

Johnson never got much respect from the voters. Larry Bird called him the greatest player he ever played with. I don’t know what that says about Kevin McHale..

My most vivid memory of Dennis Johnson was from when he was with the Celtics. He was on a fast break, and he and another player met at the hoop. Johnson banged the back of his head on the backboard. I remember him picking himself back up while rubbing the back of his head. I’m sure most Boston fans best remember his basket after this steal by Larry Bird during the 1987 Conference Finals against the Pistons. (Isiah Thomas was the victim on that play.)

I threw Player “X” in there for fun. Player X had a condition with his knees that forced him out of the league by age 33. By contrast, Payton and Pipen played through age 38. Johnson retired after his age 35 season.

Player X? That’s Sidney Moncrief.

Miguel Tejada Knows Where It’s At

by Coltrane

Miguel Tejada knows when say the right thing (at the bottom of this Jayson Stark excerpt):

At least they won’t need a tour guide to find third base.

Fortunately for Miguel Tejada and Placido Polanco, it will be located exactly where it’s been hanging out for the past 165 years.

But playing third base?

That’s the whole new excellent adventure facing both these men this spring.

“I love shortstop,” said Tejada, who has played 1,846 games in the big leagues at shortstop — and zero at third base. “But I love playing baseball more.”