SB Nation User Blog: DSheppard

My "Newberg Report" cover artwork - Wallpapers & stuff

DSheppard — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:28:28 -0000

Double Newberg fanpost attack!

Newberg subscribers who get his emails have seen the cover design for this years Newberg report which I was proud to be able to participate in this year along with Marty Yawnick (who did the previous covers as well) and Jamey's personal input.

The concept of the cover and photos is a visual of a player development, obviously a key concept of the Newberg Report. A player is shown at different points of a pitch or swing in different stages of his development. For example Andrus begins his swing looking very rough in his Blaze uni, then is much more complete in AA, and finally finished in the MLB. A slight painting style fit in with that pretty well.

Anyway why I'm posting here is because you can't see the graphics at that size, on the book themselves all but Andrus will be too small to really see well heh, so here are some wallpapers for you.

All of these were done in photoshop directly based on great shots by MLB Photographer Brad Newton.

Elvis Andrus (link)

Neftali Feliz (link)

Others: Derek Holland, Tommy Hunter, Julio Borbon

Random detail shot of Elvis, probably going to change this later:

(link)

If Jamey sends out the back cover at some point I'll update this with those but otherwise I'll wait for the book release, not exactly a huge deal heh.

Check his fanpost here for info on the books release if you arn't on the email list.

And finally, since not everyone has been here for a long time, here are my last two major ranger art project posts: Stadium art and 30 second fan commercial.

Neftali Feliz stats and potential records

DSheppard — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 03:40:42 -0000

So I bought a 1 day subscription to B-R to use their stat finding tool, and found Neftali Feliz has some record potential.

I placed a minimum of 22 innings to eliminate guys who made even briefer appearences since he will be signifcantly past 22 innings at the end of the season anyway. Obviously no matter what its going to be a pretty low innings requirement, but hey we are looking at decades of seasons so its still quite telling in my opinion. Beyond the innings there are no qualifiers, just straight up 1901 to 2009 MLB seasons for some stats, 1954 to 2009 for those unavailable previously.

click here to see the image in its own window.

WHIP: This is by far the most interesting stat because of his significant lead. Lets say he throws 18 more innings to reach 40, which would be an almost respectable innings cutoff for a reliever. If he could allow a completely reasonable 18 or fewer additional walks/hits, Feliz would hold the record for lowest WHIP ever in a 40+ inning season at .6 (or lower).

K/BB: Well this is sure to drop heavily, I just can't see him matching it at 1 batter the rest of the way. But again lets project an at least possible 20/4 the rest of the way and ends up at around a 10 k/bb rate. That again could keep him on the leaderboard + knocking some guys out with the innings requirement again (I'll stop repeating this now).

H/9: This is one that would be heavily effected when you raise the innings requirement. He can't maintain his current hit rate but he could still be very high for people who throw 35+ or however many innings.

No real commentary on the others beyond that he is almost sure to fall off the lists on era and bb/9. However I will add that since I made the image I looked up .ops against and the record with at least 20 IP .316, or Eric Gagne's .375 with a 40 IP requirement. Feliz is at .209.

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And finally, some non-speculative stats I've managed to figure out. Lots of qualifiers but whatever.

Feliz is the only reliever to start a season with 8 games of at least 1.1 innings pitched in which only 1 or 0 baserunners reached. Drop it to a more conventional at least 1 inning per game and hes the 15th behind a bunch of top tier closers.

He is the 9th middle reliever (eliminating guys who went more than 3 innings in an outing) to start a season with 5 games of 2 strikeouts or more. First to do so to start his career.

I'm sure the k/bb, whip and such would be all over such records to start a season, but BR does not allow me to search that.

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He could easily fall off all these lists and obviously he'd still be an amazing prospect that I love having on the team, although if he does I'll just have to add some time period/rookie year qualifiers =). Anyway I enjoyed getting some historical perspective to just how good hes been and thought some others might too.

So remember- Don't worry, be happy.

Rangers T-Shirts - Any idea requests?

DSheppard — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 22:39:26 -0000

So I posted a T-Shirt design in one of the GDTs and a few people thought I should put it up for sale on cafepress or whatever.

I'm going to go ahead and do that just in case anyone might actually go through with a purchase since I spend half my freetime making rangers graphics stuff anyway.

So heres where I'm at right now.

click to here to see it its own window.

Anyway while I put that together, make some more and figure out some technical issues to make them work properly on a t-shirt....

Anyone have a request? I don't have that many other ideas (though I am working on a few more), if anyone has something clever they think would work and they would buy post the idea and if like it/ithink I can execute it it decently I'll try to make an attempt.

Obviously I don't have the mlb license heh so I can't include logos and such.

note: I'll be posting some additional possibilities later in the thread.

warning: graphic violence. (feliz .gif)

DSheppard — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 19:33:17 -0000

warning: graphic violence. (feliz .gif)

Rangers calendar wallpaper

DSheppard — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 15:24:11 -0000

Rangers calendar wallpaper

Feliz 16 K's extravaganza. Music videos in comments.

DSheppard — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 13:39:40 -0000

Feliz 16 K's extravaganza. Music videos in comments.

Whitesox get Rios - for nothing

DSheppard — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 23:15:05 -0000

Whitesox get Rios - for nothing

This was the rumor, and yep it actually happened. Straight up waiver claim, take on the contract but give up nothing at all.

I know hes got a big contract and is having a meh year, but this is still pretty crazy to me, hes a good player.

Sox release Smoltz

DSheppard — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 20:54:06 -0000

Sox release Smoltz

Title says it all.
He has looked very bad lately so its not too surprising, but he still had his velocity.

Stadium/Player art signed + updated version

DSheppard — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 12:26:37 -0000

Due to the magic of photobucket's view tracking I saw exactly how diminished the views are for fanshots so I'm going to go ahead and fanpost this.
Note: These images are larger resolution than LSB will show, copy/paste the url for the real sizes if you wish.

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Picked up the signed version of my stadium/player cartoonish artwork at the game today, thanks to Chuck Morgan for getting that done for me.

Here is a link to the original pic.

In the meantime I also continued to revise the "realisitic" version of the stadium a little bit.
Here is where I was at the fanshot. And here is probably the finished version.

Here is an additional night version, it was a rushed alteration and needs more work but I don't feel compelled to do so right now heh.

Main changes would be the new sky plus field texturing which I'll highlight below next to the original. And some lighting.

Here is a standard widescreen desktop of the realistic dusk pic, here for night.

And finally links to my previous signed things since its been years aside from a random GDT post.
Young (the only of these 3 I spent a ton of time on), Kinsler, and Dellucci.

Ballpark Art Project

DSheppard — Thu, 28 May 2009 17:07:23 -0000

Ballpark Art Project