Here we gooo

Fangraphs article that nicely frames the ongoing argument about how advanced statistics can depersonalize the sport. Short and I found it compelling.

Eirk Bedard starts tonight for the Red Sox against the Orioles. How he performs will largely determine whether or not Boston or Tampa make the playoffs as a wild-card. I don't know about you all but I am torn between rooting for one of my favorite players and glee at seeing the Red Sox implode the way they have.

This was mentioned in the gamethread but I thought it worth repeating. Andy Niehaus, son of the beloved late Dave Niehaus catches a foul ball off the bat of Dustin Ackley on fathers day.

SI's Todd Dybas describes Michael Pineda's Rookie year thus far and fangraphs.com makes an appearance!

Just a shot

Cliff Corcoran of SI writes about how much a manager can really impact a team. Jeff wrote something similar to this recently and I thought it was pretty relevant to our current situation.

JoePa article about sample sizes large and small. He also talks about Yuni, Pedro Feliz, and Matt Wieters

Using things like HR/FB rate, LOB%, and BABIP SI's Joe Sheehan shows the most and least lucky pitchers in baseball. Ubaldo Jiminez has been the most lucky and James Shields has been the least.

He was huge.

They thought he was Franklin Gutierrez and wanted him to have sex with them.

I wasn't sure if anyone would be interested but ESPN has a World Cup bracket similar to the ones everybody does during March Madness. So fill it out if you want and post who you think will win the whole kit and caboodle!

Mark Teixera, Curtis Granderson, and Derek Jeter not hitting so great? That's okay, we have Marcus Thames, Francisco Cervelli, and Brett Gardner. No fair.

How silly.

This guy thinks that Pujols should not be batting 4th, what do you guys think?

Oh, by the way, ERA is a poor predictor of value.

Comes out May 18. It is going to be amazing.

A man jumped off the roof of the hotel that the Angels were staying at in NY. I'm not sure what to think about this.

What do you guys think?

Nice to know that his defense does get him some main stream credit.

Great article by Joe Posnanski over the Cy Young.

It's nice because he talks about how Torii Hunter and Derek Jeter are extremely overrated defensively and how Franklin Gutierrez and Adrian Beltre are excellent.

Check out this clip of Branyan's homer off of Aaron Laffey. Watch Laffey just after Branyan makes contact. He's not... he isn't touching himself to Russell's swing is he? This only confirms my belief that Russell Branyan is made entirely out of sex.

I'm not sure what his arguement is here. He seems to be mad that people are breaking baseball down in order to determine what make a good player.

Guess what everybody? ESPN says The Angels are the best franchise in American sports.