Disclaimer: I recognize how great of a player Rajon Rondo is.  I even believe him to be the best point guard in the NBA.  But, I'm still amazed at his woes at the free throw line, which prompted me to look into his early-season struggles from the charity stripe.

Rajon Rondo is on pace to make history.  He is challenging and very well may eclipse John Stockton's single season record of assists per game.  He is currently averaging 14.25 assists per game, while Stockton's 1989-90 record stands just a hair higher at 14.54 per game.  This would be an amazing feat.  Even if he doesn't match Stockton's 1989-90 record, it's highly likely that he will end up with the an assists per game average higher than this league has seen for the last 16 years.  (Assuming Rondo finishes the season at 12+ assists per game, that will be the highest mark since, again, Stockton's 1994-95 average of 12.33 per game.)  In only his 5th NBA season, Rondo is truly entering following in the footsteps of some of the all-time great point guards.

As amazing as those records are, I find something that Rondo has done this season even more amazing: miss free throws.  If Rondo finishes the season at 10+ assists per game and shooting 60% or worse from the free throw line, he will be the first player in the history of the NBA to achieve those season-long averages.  Think he's just struggling to start the season and will eventually get his FT% up closer to his robust career average of 62.5%?  Even then, he would be only the 2nd player in NBA history to finish with 10+ assists per game and a FT% less than 70%.  The other guy?  Michael Ray Richardson of the New York Knicks during the 1979-80 season.

via Life.com

In order to find anyone in the NBA who has ever shot so horribly from the free throw line and also averaged a decent amount of assists per game, the assists per game bar would have to be lowered to 8 assists per game.  The player?  Wilt Chamberlain (at least Rondo's got great company on this one).  From 1967-1968, The Big Dipper averaged 8.6 assists per game yet only shot 38% from the charity stripe.  Ouch.  (For what it's worth, that was Chamberlain's second season in a row average greater than 7.5 assists per game and shooting worse than 45% on free throws.)

While Rondo's FT% is indeed horrendous, it doesn't seem to be affecting his Celtic's team, which currently holds the best record in the Eastern Conference (9-3).  It just goes to show that despite Rondo's struggles from the line, he is still one of the best point guards in the NBA.

In the midst of this horrible stretch of Dodger baseball, we need to get our minds on something more happy, like work! I've been wondering for some time now what type of people make up this blog. What types of lives do we lead? What kind of jobs do we have? What stage of life are we in?

I figure the kind of jobs that we have is probably the least of the three above that people worry about keeping private. So if you feel like it, vote for the box that most closely represents the industry you work in, and add any comments below.

Maybe there could even be some networking opportunities that come out of this. Or maybe no one will want to divulge what kind of job they hold. Whatever. Just thought I'd try. It interests me I figured it might interest others.

via imgur.com

Via Baseball-Reference.com's team split batting stats, I obtained each NL team's OPS for the leadoff batters of every inning besides the first.  I was interested to see the correlation, if there is any, between the OPS of their inning leadoff batters and the total runs scored by that team.  

The graph above is each NL team's non-1st-inning leadoff OPS.  

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Charlie Haeger's convenient injury was finally made official as he was placed on the 15 day disabled list earlier today.  These types of 'injuries' always get me thinking about the morality and legality involved in the circumstance.  Is it right in either the moral or legal sense?

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As bhsportsguy pointed out and Phil reinforced, our main guys have not been getting it done lately:

Since the Washington Series

Kemp .200/.200/.233 – 0 runs scored, 0 RBI
Ethier .217/.333/.261 – 1 run scored, 0 RBI

I decided to take a look at pitches seen per plate appearance to see if there were any obvious trends occurring.  Back in 2005 The Hardball Times covered this topic and had this to say about P/PA (keep in mind the numbers they're referring to are 2005 numbers):

That said, the players in the bottom 20% of P/PA have an average on-base plus slugging (OPS) of 719 while those in the top 20% have an OPS of 797. Since OPS correlates very well with run production, it is therefore a good proxy, and because going deep into counts forces opposing pitchers to throw more pitches and tire sooner, it's safe to say that on average, players who see more pitches end up contributing more to their teams.

As of today, the league average of P/PA is 3.87.  I next compared Kemp & Ethier's P/PA for 2010 to see what's been going on.

Even though it is still early in the season it's not good seeing trends like Ethier's to start the season.  He hasn't had a P/PA lower than 4.02 since his sophmore season (3.66).  I don't know if this drop off really makes that much of a difference; to be honest, I was expecting Kemp's P/PA and not Ethier's P/PA to be lower during this skid.  Perhaps it's just a normal slump that occurs throughout the season.  Whatever it is, hopefully Kemp keeps up his P/PA trend and Ethier turns around his P/PA to what it's been for the past 2 years (2008: 4.15 and 2009: 4.02).  As the 2005 Hardball Times explain, there are only a few players who have a low P/PA and are still successful at the plate (ironically, in 2005 Garrett Anderson was one of those with a 3.32 P/PA).

As a closing note, it doesn't look like BABIP can be blamed for either player's recent failures at the plate considering both Kemp and Ethier's BABIP on the season (.303 and .333 respectively) are higher than the current league average (.296).

It sucks to lose, so while we are let's take our mind off the matter and go back to one of the sweetest Dodgers victories ever.  Enjoy.

Finally made it out to my first Dodgers game since the 2007 season.  This was one of the bigger drawbacks of living in Hawaii, so now that we're back in California we're happy to be able to get to Dodger games more often.

We arrived just in time for the first pitch from Padilla, but right after finding out seats my wife had to go to the restroom so I showed her where they were seeing it was her first time to DS.  By this time Padilla had already taken care of the Giants in the top of the 1st and Furcal was up.  I picked a spot along the loge level parallel to the left field foul line but close home plate to take in the action while I was waiting there.  After Furcal walked I then got to witness my first Kemp HR in person.  What a beauty!  I had to kneel down to see the ball at its apex it was hit so high.  That got the stadium buzzing.  The next at bat, however, when Ethier hit his laser to right field is when the stadium really started rocking.  Me and another fellow high-fived each other as Ethier rounded the bases.  Unfortunately my wife was in the bathroom the whole time and missed all three of those at bats.  But she told me she could hear the roar of the stadium loud and clear from the bathroom.

We were back in our seats the next inning though, and she was able to capture Ethier's first career grand slam.  Amazing.  Those two guys, Kemp and Ethier, can rake!  Here's a few pictures my wife and I captured from the game.

Padilla throwing in the top of the 2nd.

Manny taking in the game from left field.

Kemp striding into a pitch.

I love his relaxed stance.

My wife was able to capture the ball leaving his bat for the GS shot.

I thought TBLA would get a kick out of this one.  :)

We're finally finished with school in Hawaii and will soon be back in southern California.  One of the first things we're doing when we get back to California is going to a Dodgers game.  The timing could not have worked out better as we arrive in California on the 12th of April, and then Opening Day is the next day.  We thought about going to the game on the 13th, but passed on it and instead are going to the first game of the season against the Giants on Friday.

I've been to a good number of Dodgers games in my life.  In the past I've always just searched for tickets as close to the field as possible without draining my bank account.  I got to wondering though with all the avid Dodgers fans here what seats in Dodger Stadium are the "best" in your experiences?  I guess my only qualification is getting the most bang for your buck.  I'm sure answers will be varied since some fans may prefer different areas in the ballpark, which will make the feedback to this all the more interesting.  We're in section 157 (the red-shaded area in the photo) for the game on 4/16.

So, in your opinion, where are the best seats in Dodger Stadium?

I saw this on MCC and found it much more helpful than magic numbers.  Maybe it's because I'm a visual person.

The Dodgers and Rockies both have 15 games remaining in their schedules.  Assuming that it's the Rockies that win the Wild Card, then the Rockies would have to gain 6 games on us in the win column in order to beat us out for the Division.  Here are the required Rockies records according to possible Dodgers records in order to do that:

via img41.imageshack.us

It just seems so much more comforting seeing it like this than with the "magic numbers."

For some perspective, during the entire course of the season, the Rockies have never gone 15-0 over a 15-game span (link).  And there have been only four 15-game spans in which they went 14-1, and each of those 15-game spans were right next to each other (that was in June when they went a ridiculous 17-1 over an 18-game span).

The Dodgers, on the other hand, have had 44 different 15-game spans in which they have gone 10-5 or better (link).  Amazingly, as well, our worst 15-game span for the season is when we went 5-10 from July 26 through August 9.

In conclusion, I'm feeling a lot better about our situation (and have been for the last week and half or so).

September 8, 2009

Today's win against the Dbacks was a huge win.  With two outs in the top of the 8th, the Dodgers had six straight at-bats that resulted in 5 singles and 1 walk, and the top half of the inning ended with the Dodgers ahead 5-4.  This was one of the better come-from-behind-wins on the season, in my opinion.

Add to the exciting manner in which we won the fact that we maintained our 3.5-game lead on the charging Rockies. 

via d.yimg.com

Pretty great night for the Dodgers. 

And while it's always bad news to hear about players going down with injuries, such as Tim Lincecum, it may just work out that the Dodgers will be able to skip facing him when we play them this weekend.

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