TR Interview

JS22 — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 23:24:52 -0000

I saw this over at Baseball Digest Daily and had one thought after reading the interview recap- what does this mean?

"The re-signing of Rondell White has clouded the left field picture as well. Was the move to bring back White an indication that Jason Kubel has still not completely recovered from knee surgery? "Jason is 100%, and he can play defense. We expect to have him in the outfield in Spring Training. He's not limited to playing DH." Ryan continued, "But we brought back Rondell White and he can play out there too. The guys will have to earn their spots, but going into camp, I'd say that Rondell White is our left fielder."..."

This left me puzzled- we haven't heard snot about Kubel since the second surgery, and we find here that he is 100% and can play D, but RonDL is our LF going into ST? I am wondering if this is TR expressing concern over possibly re-injuring Kubel's knees. Could this be a replay of the Castro controversy (and I'm not talking about the Bay of Pigs here)? Better yet, is this TR playing hard to get? While I doubt the latter, I'd like to think that TR doesn't sleep with anyone on the first date-

I like RonDL as much as the next person, in fact I took to calling him RonDH after he returned to good looking form last year- but for God's sake give a healthy Kubel a chance.

you can find the rest of the interview here:

http://www.baseballdigestdaily.com/bullpen/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=189& ;Itemid=39

New metric for old superstitions

JS22 — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 16:30:59 -0000

Jesse pointed out that it was his fault for the Twins loss several weeks ago. He blamed himself for writing an article for gameday, and it got me thinking. So here is my hypothesis:

x + y = z / 3 = negative outcome for the Twins

Whereas X is equal to the amount of money you spent (say on a Tc screen saver for your cell phone, $2.95), Y is intended outcome (in this case I was hoping for a series sweep and win over KC, so we'll assign that a 3.5 on a scale from 1-10 (10 would be winning the world series, 1 would be asking R. White to have 2 hits on the night)

2.95 + 3.5 = 6.45 / 3 = 2.15 (in this case losses caused by my purchase of a twins screen saver) to complicate this further, we have to take into account the distance you live from the Twins to adjust for level of effect. My research shows that the further you live from 34 Kirby Puckett place the more harmful your actions will be. Known as the DKPP effect, it is not terribly strong, but statistically important, for every 100 miles you must add .05 to the final outcome (in my screensaver example take into account that I live in Albuquerque NM, 1365 miles from the dome, my DKPP effect would be .683 negative added bringing the total losses I inflicted upon the Twins to 2.833, a lot of guilt was felt) And considering that I purchased said screen saver on the 27 of August and the twins promptly lost to the ChiSox, then proceeded to lose 2 of 3 to KC, I think my interpretation of the numbers was spot on.

I realize that this statistic is far from perfect, it doesn't take into account my brothers case, a bizarre inverse of this equation. He purchased tickets to the ALDS in hopes that he would be able to attend the weekend games (assuming that we would win the wild card), and a plane ticket from Denver, CO.

238 (tickets) + 550(airfair) 1,250(beer, food...er more beer) + 500 (lodging) + 8.5 (twins win the card) / 3 = 854.5 + .46 (DKPP) = 854.96

854.5, well its obvious that that is the number of runs that the Twins will score in the
regular season (an addition of 38 runs over the next 3 games should ensure that the twins win all three making it entirely possible for them to win the central)
It seems logical to me that his purchase + expectation has caused the tie in the division, good for the Twins, bad for him and the cost of his plane ticket.

So the long and the short of this post is if the twins win the division, he will have to cough up more dough to change his plane ticket, possibly reversing the effect of his initial purchase- but if we as a community band together to offset his costs, maybe that would keep the mojo in our favor, and keep his boss happy that he isn't missing a week of work for 2 baseball games.

SB Nation User Blog: JS22

TR Interview

New metric for old superstitions