The Mariners *finally* DFA’ed Lloyd McClendon’s favorite waste of at bats utility player and called up Chris Taylor, who frankly can’t be any worse than Willie and should, in theory, be at least slightly better. Bloomquist posted a 159/194/171 slash line with his usual lack of power, producing a whopping 8 OPS+ and -0.3 WAR is 72 plate appearances. While I appreciate the versatility that a guy like Bloomquist has, he is the worst kind of guy to have on a roster – an all-glove, no-hit veteran that plays multiple positions. For some reasons managers love to find ways to get these guys in the game far more often than they should, probably because most managers were the same way as players.
Now if the M’s would just do something with Mike Zunino…
I’d been looking for a new “old school” Nerf for a long time. I hadn’t been able to find one because they’re no longer manufactured. This past weekend I knew I’d have some arms willing to test out the new Nerfs, so I purchased the two most likely replacements in advance of some serious throwing around. My elbow is still a little sore four days later.
Pictured below are two new Nerf footballs, as well as what I think is an ancient Nerf knockoff — probably a Poof.
Weather Blitz: The green on the Weather Blitz is actually a semi-hard raised plastic. It’s easy to grip and easy to catch. I found I could get a good spiral on it, though I really had to “snap off” the throws. I found a couple of arm slots that worked, but that was it. It was fun to really get a good tight-spiral throw, though I think it was harder on my elbow than the other two footballs.
Sloppy throws resulted in really “ugly balls”. I didn’t think it was very forgiving — basically All Or Nothing — if my release point was too low the nose of the ball would burrow towards the ground. Additionally, I’d be a little hesitant to play catch using the Weather Blitz with someone young or someone with bad coordination. I’d be worried about hitting them in the nose or eye. It probably would’t hurt them, but I doubt it’d be fun.
All in all though, the ball does “sing” when thrown really well, and that’s really satisfying.
Pro Grip: Easy to throw. A variety of arm slots and deliveries worked. I could rarely get a perfect spiral, but even the imperfect throws were still pretty good. I found it a little hard to catch because, at least when new, it’s fairly slick. It’s also not very dense, so the ball would tend to try bounce off of my hands. Definitely less like a “real football” than the Weather Blitz, but it was still fun. I would have liked it more if it were a tiny bit heavier and/or denser.
Poof: Easy to throw, though it needs a good spiral to carry very far into the wind. This is the ball that Amazon reviewers thought was the hardest to put a good spiral on. I didn’t have that hard a time with it personally. I found that it allowed for some really crummy technique and it would still carry ok. Almost any arm slot and release point worked. Maybe they’re now making them with lighter foam than mine has. I like mine, it’s just so old that it will need replacing soon. I may buy a new Poof and try that out too.
Other Stuff: The Poof is close in size to a regular football. If I remember correctly, it’s also vaguely larger than an “old-school” Nerf. I’m pretty sure that the new Nerfs are somewhat smaller than the “old-school” Nerf, and they’re definitely smaller than I’d prefer.
The gang was fairly evenly divided about which ball they liked best, though all the votes were for one of the two new Nerfs. I think that the Pro Grip is a better ball for smallish kids, and that the Weather Blitz is more for older kids/adults, or for use in windy conditions.
My guess is that the Pro Grip is the one I’ll use more often, just because it’s more forgiving on my arm than the Weather Blitz. I can move my arm slot and release point around more with the Pro Grip, which means I get more play time before my arm bags out.
Ultimately, they’re different and loosely equal — I don’t think you can go wrong either way.
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Peyton Manning in one of my favorite SNL sketches:
I had mostly written a post about how it was time for the Mariners to hit the panic button and then the Mariners went and did it in the worst possible way – they went out and traded for Mark Trumbo, which is exactly what the Mariners did not need to do. Granted, the Mariners traded a bunch of spare parts to get Trumbo (contrary what people may say, Gabby Guerrero, Vlad’s Nephew, is probably not going to be anything beyond a 4th OFer in the majors.
David Schoenfield wraps up the Mariners issues really well in this article. Basically, the team doesn’t get on base. The team has spent most of the Zdrienick era near or at the bottom of the AL in OBP which is why this team is consistently near or at the bottom of the AL in runs scored and near or at the bottom of the standings. This is a fundamental flaw in organizational philosophy. How many hitters have the Mariners developed into all-star caliber players under Z? One – Kyle Seager, despite having multiple top 10 picks. Ackley is looking like a 4th OFer, Zunino can’t hit a curve ball and looks like he will struggle to get to .200 every season, Brad Miller is really a league average SS as a hitter, Chris Taylor looks like he is going to be the same, Nick Franklin, who was traded to TB last season is looking like a 4A player and there isn’t much hope on the horizon.
Those who know me know that I wasn’t high on the Mariners coming into 2015 – they didn’t fix their on-base issues in the offseason and they were historically good last season at preventing runs, which meant that regression in that capacity is likely. Any offense that they added was going to be offset by a bigger increase in runs allowed, which is exactly what has happened so far this season.
Back to Trumbo. The guy has power, which puts him in 30 HR territory. That is great, except that the Mariners already hit a ton of home runs. Trumbo has a career .299 OBP which is horrible. He is a terrible defensive OF (although he isn’t bad at 1B, but it seems that the Mariners are convinced that Logan Morrison is the answer there). He probably ends up as a full time DH and occasional 1B, which is probably about right for him. The other thing that Trumbo has going for him is that he hits right handed. The M’s have an incredibly left handed heavy lineup and this will help balance it out. It doesn’t solve the issue of getting on base.
While we are at it, it is past the time where Fernando Rodney is the Mariners closer. Rodney has converted 14 of 17 save opportunities, which makes him look better than he has been. He has managed to compile an ERA of near 7 and in 7 out of his last 9 save opportunities, he has given up at least 1 run. The scary thing is that he has entered every one of those games at the start of the inning with no runners on. I can’t imagine that the Mariners even remotely trust him to come in with runners on at this point, yet McClendon still says Rodney is his closer.
I figured the Mariners were an 80-83 win team this season. I am willing to bet if they finish anywhere below 81 wins, that you will see a new manager and GM for the 2016 season.
If MLB is going to insist on keeping its current configuration of 162 games and 15 teams in each league, there are a few things that they should change, and don’t worry, what they should change won’t affect the “integrity” of the game.
Change 1 – eliminate the divisions. When you have divisions, all you are doing is potentially recognizing mediocrity. Even with 2 wild card teams, the potential still exists to have a division winner having a worse record than a team that does not make the playoffs, you also have the potential of a division winner having a worse record than both of the wild card teams. That makes a huge difference since the wild card winners have to play in the “coin-toss” game (AKA the wild card game) and then get to not have home field advantage against a team with an inferior record. Granted, home field doesn’t mean much in baseball (home teams win about 54% of the time) but I think most teams would rather have it. I am much more in favor of taking the 5 best teams in each league for the playoffs. Heck, I would even be in favor of adding another team and having the top 2 teams get a “bye” and the next 4 play a best of 3 series to advance. It would make the positioning for the playoffs much more important, forcing teams to play more meaningful games later in the year.
Change 2 – balance the schedule. If you eliminate the divisions, it becomes a no brainer to balance the schedules in the leagues. Even with the divisions, the balanced schedule makes more sense. You don’t think that it gives a team in the NL East a competitive advantage this season to get to beat up on Philadelphia and Miami 18 times each than say the NL Central which only has Milwaukee as a whipping boy? You can never balance the interleague stuff, but it wouldn’t hurt to have all of the AL teams play each other the same amount of times each season and eliminate the imbalance of the division strengths.
Change 3 – have both leagues use the DH. This one will upset people who complain that it will ruin the “sanctity of the game” or causes less strategy in the game. To that I say bullcrap. Here is how MLB pitcher have faired over the last 4 seasons (2015 stats through May 31).
Year
BA
OPB
SLG
OPS+
2015
.121
.144
.150
-16
2014
.122
.153
.152
-12
2013
.132
.164
.169
-6
2012
.129
.162
.166
-8
Honestly, let’s say you were faced with a situation in a playoff game where you are down 1-0, a runner on 3rd, two out in the 8th inning. You have Felix Hernandez pitching and he is dealing – he gave up 1 hit (a HR in the first on a bad pitch) and he has retired every batter since and hasn’t had a hard hit ball against him since the HR. Let’s say you are facing elimination. Your chances of winning in the 9th aren’t good because you are facing a Marino Rivera-like closer in the 9th. What would you do? Before you answer, here is what pinch hitters have done over the last 4 seasons:
YEAR
BA
OPB
SLG
OPS+
2015
.219
.292
.335
78
2014
.213
.291
.322
76
2013
.217
.292
.336
77
2012
.225
.304
.334
80
With a pitcher hitting, you have pretty much no chance that you will be tying up the game. Granted, a pinch hitter is no real guarantee, but wouldn’t you rather have someone who hits for a living up at the plate? So how does it not cause less strategy? Look at it from the other way – if you have the DH in play and don’t have to worry about the pitcher coming up at bat, you have an opportunity to deploy your pitchers more effectively in critical situations. What made Mariano Rivera so great in the post season was that the Yankees were able to utilize him in multiple innings without having to worry about his spot coming up in the batting order. Look at the 2014 WS – the games in KC allowed both teams to deploy the 2 best bullpens in the league over a longer stretch and hit more strategic matchups than you ever would with allowing the pitcher to bat.
In addition to this, if you don’t like the 2-1 games that dominate baseball these days, putting in a DH vs a pitcher is worth about half a run a game. Wouldn’t you rather see a guy with 250/20/75 slash lines up at the plate rather than a guy who has a 100/0/0 slash line? A pitcher in the lineup generally means that you end up with effectively an 8 man lineup with an automatic out thrown in. That isn’t all that much fun to watch.
Because I may have messed up in my admin Group duties, this year we have an official winner, and an unofficial winner.
The official winner is JD, with 1160 points, good for the 90.4th percentile.
The unofficial winner is Annie S., who had an entry that didn’t get entered into the Bracket Of Peril — the root cause of which was likely A.J. Coltrane induced. Her offending bracket was good for 1210 points, with Duke winning the championship.
Thanks to everyone for playing! Maybe I’ll win one of these years if the teams I pick don’t spontaneously implode.
Disclaimer: Castle Anthrax not included. There is just too much peril.
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I told you to make something other than a Kentucky bracket! We had plenty of those!
Vegas, Day 4. Sunday. The last day of sports gambling before we fly out on Monday.
By Sunday morning I should be done placing bets. What that means is that I don’t have to focus on the games as intently, since I’ve already invested what I’m going to invest. It’s a good day to wander around so long as there’s a television nearby — we’ve been glued to seats most of the last three days.
-After breakfast on Sunday we walked a short distance to a “new to us” bar/casino. (Well, newly remodeled, and we haven’t historically hung out there.) The bar featured about 40 feet of big-screen TVs, end to end to end. That seemed like a good place to start the day, so we took five seats in prime real estate, inserted a not insignificant amount of cash into the video poker machines, and ordered adult beverages.
To backtrack a little bit: The casinos have “Player Cards”. When you’re playing a game you put your card into the machine. The casinos track what you play, how fast you play, how much you wager — basically they’re figuring out how fast you’re bleeding so that they can determine whether they want to keep you around as a customer. They’re also determining if you’re worth freebies, and what the form of those freebies should take.
What we hadn’t done was to insert our Player Cards. We didn’t have Cards for that casino and we weren’t going to sweat it.
I started with a high risk/reward game and won $110 on my 3rd spin. I was pretty pleased with that. My plan was then to switch over to a more “normal” game, and if played at all conservatively I could drink for free for the rest of the afternoon..
Within a few minutes a small, polite woman appeared behind us, asking if we wanted Players Cards. Now, normally we’d have to go stand in line for our Players Cards, but we’d triggered something that got us “special attention”. It could of been how and what we were playing, or how much cash we’d dumped into the machines to start with, or it could have been the fact that all we had left at that point in the trip was larger bills, and we’d been passing them back and forth like Monopoly money and the cameras had picked that up. (That’s one of the beauties of Vegas — it always feels like Monopoly money eventually.)
So we got our Players Cards and continued with what we were doing. Maybe an hour went by, then this happened for the traveling companion on my right:
That’s 1,000 bananas. He was dealt that hand. The odds against that are 1 in 650,000.
Then three hours later, I was dealt this:
That’s another 1,000 bananas. At the same odds. The two adjacent machines spit out a whole bunch of bananas in (relatively) rapid succession.
We’ve been going to Vegas for around 20 years and playing a ton of video poker, and neither of us had ever hit the big payout. When finally each won it was within three hours of each other. Wild.
At that point, everything else was gravy. We’d basically paid for the trip.
—————————-
On the Sunday basketball gambling I went 6-2 (again), bringing my total for the trip to 25-22. That’s a winning percentage of 53.2%. Break even is at 52.4%. I beat the break even by not quite 1%. Squeak!
Basically it broke out to:
0-6 (Thursday morning)
7-2 (Thursday afternoon/evening)
6-10 (Friday)
12-4 (Saturday and Sunday)
I’m ok with that. Thursday was a historically good day for the sports books and a bad day for bettors. Taking out the disastrous 0-6 start I won 61%, which is pretty good. I’d like to think I learned a few things again, and that I’ll do better next year. And we had fun long weekend on the cheap!
Of course, it’s not Vegas without an Elvis sighting:
No really! It’s Elvis! I saw him with my own eyes!
Day 3 was Saturday. For the afternoon, a member of our group decided to rent a cabana upstairs by the pool. No kids allowed anywhere near us. We had our own TV in the cabana and an iced bucket of beers. The party drifted in and out, with some of us taking advantage of the water on an 80-degree day.
Realistically, renting a cabana was loosely as expensive as gambling and tipping for comped drinks.
I went 6-2, bringing my total for the trip to 19-20. By and large things went as expected. Villanova lost to NC State, which surprised me. I also took Kentucky to cover -16.5 against Cincinnati, but they only won by 13. (In their previous game Kentucky had crushed West Virginia, winning 78 to 39. To think they’d have a similar result with Cincinnati seemed reasonable.)
Day 2 was Friday. On Friday I went 6-10, bringing my total for the trip to 13-18.
The Thursday losses were a bunch of weird early morning upsets. Friday felt like a decent enough day, with good wins mixed in with assorted narrow losses — a rebound here, a missed shot there, and many of the games could have gone either way… Probably 8 of the 10 losses were in doubt until the end.
It felt like I was getting close, and that order was being restored. I went 6-10, but that’s about as poorly as it could have gone, and it could have just as easily have been 8-8 or 10-6. Of course, that’s the same rationalization that the degenerates use…
As a bonus, Friday was easily the best food day of the trip: We had a very nice Mexican lunch, and an excellent dinosaur-old-school steak-house dinner — the losing went down more easily with a perfectly cooked lamb shoulder and a nice Pinot Grigio.
That, and I didn’t have to sit through getting my head beat in all morning again, so that was nice.
…One sportsbook said Thursday was its biggest single-day win in memory.
“Epic day, absolutely,” Jay Rood, vice president of MGM race and sports, said of Thursday. “Tough day for the players coupled with the fact the books did well Wednesday, too.”
“Yesterday was amazing,” Dave Pemberton, director of specialty games for Caesars Entertainment, added Friday night.
Including the First Four games Tuesday and Wednesday, underdogs covered the spread in the first 10 games of the tournament. Favorites went 4-12 against the spread Thursday. No. 14 seed Georgia State and UAB pulled off upsets as double-digit underdogs, damaging brackets and destroying money-line parlays everywhere.
“We didn’t sweep the board [Thursday] but we were pretty close,” Jason Simbal of CG Technology’s sportsbook said.
I opened Thursday with zero wins against six losses. It got bad enough that I had to go to the ATM to continue.
Baylor by 9? Nope. Defeated. Iowa State as a 14-point favorite? Out of the tournament. Notre Dame didn’t cover, even though they had the #3 offense in the country going in. On and on it went.
Like most of the squares, I’d picked a bunch of favorites. Looking at my sheet prior to the first game it was obvious that it could potential trouble, but then even the picks I was extremely comfortable with failed.
About five hours into the massacre I got my first win — Arizona covered at the half. Fortunately I went 7-2 starting at that point to finish the day at 7-8. The three Over/Under bets and two halftime bets probably helped. I also won UCLA (+4 vs SMU) and Utah (-6.5 vs Stephen F. Austin). From the sound of it, I got off easy.
—————————-
This is the one day that I skipped a game altogether. Kentucky was favored by 34 and I didn’t want to go anywhere near that one. (Kentucky wound up winning by 26.)
We arrived in the casino on Wednesday, early evening. The late, tournament “play-in” games hadn’t started yet.
The game that interested me was Boise St. versus Dayton. I’d seen both teams recently and felt fairly confident that I knew what they were — that I had a good idea of their styles, strengths, weaknesses, and true talent levels.
To backtrack a bit: We’d been enjoying adult beverages starting in the mid-morning. (Especially me.) Free cocktails in the VIP lounge at the airport. Free cocktails on the plane. I was well lubricated. I was ready to make a “fun” bet to kick off the weekend, and Boise St. – Dayton seemed like an excellent place to start.
We made our way to the sports book and were presented with something like this:
But the game I wanted to place a bet on said “SUSP”. Which I took to mean “suspended”. I didn’t know why the betting might be “off” on that game so I asked the attendant:
Me: “Is the betting off on the Boise St. game?”
Attendant: “Let’s see… no, the line is +4.5 for Boise St.”
That means that if I were to take Boise St. at say, $50, and they were to either win outright or lose by 4 or less, then I’d win $45.45 and pocket a total of $95.45, counting my original $50 I’d get back. Not bad. But then I’m thinking that if Boise St. is that slim of an underdog maybe I can make more money by betting them to win outright….
Me: “What’s the Money Line?” (Odds for Boise St. to win outright.)
Attendant: “+175”
Now that’s interesting! If Boise St. wins outright then I’ll win $87.50 and pocket $137.50. That, to my mind, is a good value bet in this scenario. So, quickly, and with confidence…
Me: “$50 on the Money Line please.”
Random Regular Leaning On The Counter To My Right: “Me Likey! They’re my team!”
And by that, he doesn’t mean he’s rooting for Boise St., only that he has money on them too. I take it as an encouraging sign that one of the degenerates approves of my taste in Boise St.
The game begins. Our favorite bartender is feeding me more adult beverages, and I’m feeling pretty good about things:
Boise St. led 29-17 with 2:09 to go in the 1st half.
[Dayton’s] Jordan Sibert’s two free throws tied it at 53-53 with 1:02 left, and his long 3-pointer gave the Flyers a 56-55 lead with 34 seconds to go.
After [Boise St.’s] Montigo Alford missed a driving bank shot, [Dayton’s] Pollard got the rebound, was fouled and missed both free throws with 14 seconds left, giving the Broncos a final shot.
The final, contested 3-point attempt by Boise St. missed everything.
FlatbreadGarden 