Destination Unknown

by Coltrane

The chart below shows the ages of the “rotation” players (19+ minutes per game) of three teams I think Lebron is most likely to go to, listed by order of playing time. I don’t think he’s going to the Knicks or Nets. (The Knicks don’t have the second star to play with, or cap room to afford it without gutting the team. The Nets just plain stink.)

The “21” in the Bulls column is Derrick Rose. Rose is a potential perennial All-Star. The Bulls have Joaquim Noah too. Noah is developing into a very good player.

The “21” in the Heat column is headcase Michael Beasley. Beasley is basically trade bait. The “28” is Dwayne Wade, who has more miles on his odometer than the usual 28 year-old. If Wade breaks down what does Miami have to offer?

Cavs	Heat	Bulls
27	28	25
33	21	21
27	31	29
34	29	25
26	30	24
38	33	34
34	23	30
21	30	27
25	24

Average	Average	Average
29.4	27.7	26.9

The Cavs are borderline old and they’re not going to get better going forward– they’re just going to get more old. It’s time for Lebron to go to elsewhere. If it weren’t for the shadow of Jordan I’d assume he was going to Chicago.

I’m guessing Chicago regardless. My second guess is Miami. It should be fun watching the circus.

The PBA: ‘The Bar Is So Low!’

by Coltrane

As you may or may not be aware — Kelly Kulick won a PBA event in January, drawing the praise of Billy Jean King.

On Sunday a 12 year-old won $400 at a PBA Regional Tournament in Georgia.

What’s next? Obviously, if there are players that are too young to legally drive a car competing it’s either not much of a sport or it’s World War II baseball. (Given that the major leagues featured a one-armed outfielder at about the same time…)

Did You Know? Bobby Riggs was 55 years old at the time of the Battle of the Sexes? After his pro tennis career he became a tennis (and other things) hustler. He used to play guys for money with things like park benches on his side of the court.

Finally– the best song about bowling ever, covered by three girls on ukelele’s. The band name is No Skanks on Sunday. The music starts at about the 45-second mark.

Mike Sweeney and Scooping USS Mariner

By Blaidd Drwg

This post on USS Mariner sums up Mike Sweeney’s At-Bat against Fernando Rodney the other night.

I also would like to point out that I scooped USS Mariner on their story about the pitch selection that Griffey is seeing this season – by almost 2 weeks. I would like to think they stole my idea, even if they didn’t.

Congrats to Mike Saunders on hitting his first big league home run. He made his mom extremely happy.

Breaking News From The Mariners

By Blaidd Drwg

The M’s have fired Alan Cockrell as hitting coach and replaced him with Alonzo Powell.

I have a couple of issues with Cockrell taking the blame for the terrible offense – he has done a nice job at getting the team to be more patient this season and this is a veteran team – the average age of the hitters that have appeared in a game is 30.6 – only the Yankees and Red Sox have older average ages in the AL (The M’s were actually tied with the Sox until the got Mike Saunders in a game). I really don’t think the hitting coach has too much impact on the vets, but something had to be done and firing the coach is much easier than changing the players.

Will Powell help – I seriously doubt it. He was the hitting coach in Tacoma where, despite playing in one of the best hitters parks in the league, the team is in the bottom half of the PCL in OPS and the prospects (Mike Carp, Greg Halman and Mike Saunders) have all struggled so far this year. We will see if this helps at all.

Musings on Last Night’s Mariners Game

By Blaidd Drwg

So much interesting stuff from last night’s game, so here we go:

— Last night’s true WTF moment occurred before the first pitch. The home plate ump, Ed Rapuano, who I have no great love for because of his horribly inconsistent strike zone, did something that made me want to go down to the field and ask him what was he doing – he intentionally erased the inner lines of the batters boxes (the one closest to the plate). Being a former umpire who actually enforced the rule of hitters being too close to the plate, this actually made me sick and angry. It seems that Rapuano truly has no interest in enforcing the rules of the game.

— Low and behold, the Mariners actually had an extra base hit in the game, 3 of them in fact, and 2 of them resulted in all of the runs they scored. The importance of hitting for power made obvious. As I keep saying, getting on base is great, but you need the occasional extra base hit to break an inning open.

— The flip side was the 9th inning for the M’s. Fernando Rodney could not get the ball over the plate, proceeding to walk the bases loaded. The M’s managed to not get the ball out of the infield and thus failed to score.

Two critical decisions were made in this inning, one by Wakamatsu and one by Scioscia, that I question.

— Wak – with no one out and Ichiro on first in a tie game in the bottom of the 9th inning why the heck would you sacrifice Ichiro to second? You have a guy who tends to not swing at bad pitches (Figgins) up, you have your best base stealer on first, a catcher who is not terribly good defensively (Budde) and a pitcher who has control issues (Rodney). To me, you let Figgins work the count or you send Ichiro instead of trading the out for moving the runner. I hate the sacrifice to move a runner to 2nd base when you have the top of you lineup up, especially in a tie game. If Ichiro is successful, you then try the sac and move him to 3rd with 1 out. Figgins is your #2 hitter for a reason, don’t waste the out.

— Scioscia – why not bring in Fuentes in the bottom of the 9th instead of Rodney. You had L-S-L hitters coming up and you have one Lefty in the pen. Seems to me to be the better call, but despite the ugly inning, it did work out with Rodney.

— The Mariners drew 9 walks in the game (which was nice to see) but left 12 runners on base, including 9 in the last 5 innings. This team will continue to lose games if they keep doing that.

— As much as it pains me to say this, why the heck is Sweeney hitting against a RH pitcher with the bases loaded, 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th? You have 2 LH bats you can use in this situation – Griffey and Saunders. Why not use them?

— This team has now lost 12 out of their last 14 and is now 5.5 back of Texas. At what point does Z realize something needs to be done?

On a belated note – Congratulations to Ryan Budde of the Angels on his first MLB HR Friday night. I love seeing milestones for 31-year-old backup catchers!

Sure, I am probably beating a dead horse…

By Blaidd Drwg

The Mariners are LAST in the American League in Runs, Home Runs (and have fewer home runs as a team than current AL HR leader Paul Konerko has by himself), OBP and SLG. They have an OPS+ of 73 (which means that their On Base Percentage + Slugging – a measure of productivity, is 27% worse than league average) and now for the truly frightening stat – they have a team SLG that is lower than 9 teams’ OBP. All of the pitching and defense in the world is not going to help with offensive numbers like those.

This team would have been competitive in about 1977 with the way it is built, but unfortunately, it is 2010.

The M’s Fundamental Problem

By Blaidd Drwg

Reason # 12434231 why the Mariners need to do something about their offense. I am a big fan of On Base Percentage – if you can’t get on base, you can’t score and walks are a great thing. It is nice to see the Mariners finally embracing that concept. The problem is, they seem to have sacrificed hitting for power (slugging) in the meantime. It is pretty rare to see a guy with a higher on base than slugging percentage, especially a month after the season starts – the Mariners have 3 (and almost 5) of those guys in their lineup.

I give you the Mariners’ lineup (before tonight’s game – including the catcher platoon):

Player	OBP	SLG	Difference
Ichiro	.371	.380	-.009
Figgins	.351	.278	+.073
Gutierrez	.393	.475	-.082
Lopez	.250	.290	-.040
Griffey	.269	.226	+.043
Bradley	.313	.371	-.058
Kotchman	.303	.425	-.122
Johnson	.367	.306	+.061
Moore	.200	.209	-.009
Wilson	.266	.338	-.072

Folks, this is one of the worst lineups in baseball. You have 3 guys in Figgins, Griffey and Johnson who have combined for exactly 9 extra base hits in 188 At Bats, you have a cleanup hitter with a .250 OBP and a .290 SLG and this list doesn’t even cover Sweeney, Byrnes and Tuiasosopo who managed to squeeze out a collective .250 OBP with a sub-.200 SLG in 90 AB.

As I said to Mrs. Drwg over the weekend, you don’t feel like this team can score since it seems like it takes at least 3 hits in an inning for them to get 1 run.

Post Script: In watching tonight’s game, the announcers mentioned that Guti’s HR was the first one the Mariners have hit since April 23rd – That is over 8 games ago. Time to get a bat Z.

Cardboard Gods New Book

by Coltrane

Josh Wilker of Cardboard Gods has a new book– Cardboard Gods: An All American Tale Told Through Baseball Cards

Here’s the product description on Amazon.com:

Cardboard Gods is the memoir of Josh Wilker, a brilliant writer who has marked the stages of his life through the baseball cards he collected as a child. It also captures the experience of growing up obsessed with baseball cards and explores what it means to be a fan of the game. Along the way, as we get to know Josh, his family, and his friends, we also get Josh’s classic observations about the central artifacts from his life: the baseball cards themselves. Josh writes about an imagined correspondence with his favorite player, Carl Yastrzemski; he uses the magical bubble-blowing powers of journeyman Kurt Bevacqua to shed light on the weakening of the powerful childhood bond with his older brother; he considers the doomed utopian back-to-the-land dreams of his hippie parents against the backdrop of inimitable 1970s baseball figures such as “Designated Pinch Runner” Herb Washington and Mark “The Bird” Fidrych. Cardboard Gods is more than just the story of a man who can’t let go of his past, it’s proof that — to paraphrase Jim Bouton — as children we grow up holding baseball cards but in the end we realize that it’s really the other way around.

That’s better than I could have put it. Buy the book at the link above.

emmer&rye – a review

By Iron Chef Leftovers

For fans of the Stumbling Goat Bistro pre-ownership change in 2008, Seth Caswell, the former chef at the Goat, has surfaced with his new restaurant on the top of Queen Anne, emmer&rye. After at least one no-go on opening the restaurant and a stint as an occasional chef at Wallingford’s Art of the Table, Caswell finally opened his, local/organic/sustainable place this winter, taking over the converted Victorian that formerly housed Julia’s. Emmer has the atmosphere of having dinner in someone’s house – all of the walls are in tact, so the restaurant is comprised of several rooms, lending a very informal feel to the meal.

The meal was everything you would expect from Caswell. The emmer&rye salad was refreshing – wild arugula, some grains (I believe it was emmer and rye) for some texture and an amazing apple-balsamic vinaigrette. The greens were lightly dressed, allowing the pepper of the arugula to come through but not sacrificing flavor the dressing. The spring vegetable soup was a light puree of fresh vegetables, but the star was the nettle puree which added an earthy flavor to the soup. The Bolognese was a healthy portion of orrechiette pasta accompanied by a slightly creamy pork and beef Bolognese with just a hint of heat – a fantastic meal but not one you would want to undertake on a warm day. The salmon came perfectly seared medium-rare with a refreshing parsley and fiddlehead salad. Caswell also brought along his pastry chef from the Goat and, as wonderful as the meal was, the deserts were the star – butterscotch pot de crème and rocky road brownie. The pot de crème had nice balance and was not overpoweringly sweet as most butterscotch desserts tend to be and the rocky road brownie, was pure evil – basically deconstructed rocky road ice cream, except the individual pieces were just as good as the whole.

My only knock on emmer is the wine list – it is small and reasonably priced, which is good, but there is a serious lack of northwest wines maybe 5 or 6 out of the 25 or so bottles available. If you are going to promote locally sourced food, you really should be promoting local wine one also. There is no excuse for the lack of local choices – we have 600+ wineries in the state and emmer can really make an impact by having a nice selection of smaller affordable wines on the menu.

We were there for the Dine Around Seattle promotion, but price-wise, the menu is quite affordable – apps range from $8 to $12 and entrees range from $16 to $19. Both the apps and entrees come in a small and a large size, so a party of 4 could literally order the entire menu. I suspect that the current menu will change as ingredients become available seasonally.

The Worst Team of 2010

By Blaidd Drwg

We are twenty six games into the season and the Pittsburgh Pirates have been outscored by 88 runs. Why is that news you ask? The Pirates are obviously the worst team in baseball you say. Well, it is news worthy because the Pirates record currently somehow stands at 11-15. Based on their run differential they should be a truly awful 5-21.

Currently, there are only 2 teams in baseball who are more than 2 games +/- between their expected record and their actual records based on runs – the Colorado Rockies who are 3 wins worse than their expected record and the Pirates who are 6 wins better.

How the heck are they doing it? If you remember earlier in the year, I posted about the luck the Mariners had last season winning 35 1 run games. Well, that is the Pirates this year – they are currently 6-1 in one run games, 5-14 in all others. I have absolutely no explanation for this, but if you back out the +5 runs the Pirates have gained in those 5 games, they are -93 run differential for 19 games – which means that they have lost by a 4.9 runs a game. They have a team ERA of 6.60 and no starter with an ERA under 5. I guess that is what happens when you give up 10 runs in a game 5 times in 26 games.