I got this off of slickdeals.net. My card has been charged and it looks good. Lots of folks in the forums are able to watch old games already. If you need boxee help, I'll post what I can. But, for $20 for a year, I'm willing to take a risk.

Claims to need Boxee, but Boxee is a free download. Its good for the year! I got mine. Good luck.

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/subscripti...duct=boxee

If you haven't read Baseball Analysts, you're missing out. Very good work done. Rich Lederer is a pretty smart guy, but he gets a lot of even smarter guys to do some work there (Dave Cameron and Jeff have both written there). An article popped up yesterday by Myron Logan (of Friar Forcast) regarding defense. He takes Inez's work with THT's data and comes up with some info. Not sure how accurate it is, but it looks pretty sound.

Some of the things it shows is that Beltre is the 3rd best fielder (given his percentage of plays in zone and plays he makes out of the zone).

The article also takes a long look at Yuniesky Betancourt. He's slighly below average at at plays in the zone and well below average at balls out of the zone.

Well worth the read.

This is listed as one of the reasons for Bavasi's firing, along with his refusal to fire McLaren. Now, that being said, if Lee is now going to try and trade Bedard, this brings up some interesting options. At that point, the M's would be looking for someone to either "Put them over the edge" or to solidify injuries. Teams that jump to mind are the Cardinals and Braves. Both are within reach of their respective divisions, and both need starting pitching. Bedard would be a definate upgrade.

I'd trade Bedard for Texiera (if a contract extension is worked out prior). If they'd throw in a pitching prospect (Cuevas?, James?), it'd be icing on the cake.

With the Cardinals, I can't come up with anyone plausible from their ML roster. Maybe Nick Stavinoha (solid LF), Barden (SS having a pretty good year), and Joe Mather (very good OPS guy) all in AA?

What a bath the M's will take if they trade Bedard. What realistic options are there?

Jose Lopez, who has been the Mariners' best overall hitter this season, has been talked up by the manager as a potential All-Star.

McLaren Calls Jose Lopez All-Star

He who is batting .297/.312/.425 is All-Star quality.

For context:

Ian Kinsler (Tex) : .307/.358/.478

Placido Polanco (Det): .297/.355/.425

John McLaren is rubbish. John McLaren is rubbish. John McLaren is rubbish. John McLaren is rubbish. John McLaren is rubbish. John McLaren is rubbish.

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/7938762?MSNHPHMA

From the article

Brian McNamee, the personal trainer who has said he injected former Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone, fainted while driving and crashed his car head-on into a city bus, a newspaper reported

Brian McNamee told police he blacked out because of an ongoing medical problem and regained consciousness only as his Lexus hurtled into the bus Thursday in Queens, the Daily News reported Friday.

First off, I'm a bit of a techno-nerd. I love technology for technology's sake. That being said, the Red Sox are once again demonstrating why they are so good. They have a data system that archives everything. And its portable. They take it on the road with them.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206902277

From the article:

Also making the trip will be the team's modern coveted talisman -- its EMC.

"Information makes winners," said EMC's Mark Lewis this week at a session at the AIIM 2008 conference in Boston. "Information is becoming more and more important in sports all the time." So important for the Red Sox, in fact, that the team brings along its data center to all of its away games.

Lewis, who is president of EMC's content management and archiving division, told the packed session at the AIIM event that players and managers have virtually instant access to the center. A batter suddenly scheduled to face a new relief pitcher can instantly call up videos of the pitcher to study his delivery and assortment of pitches. Conversely, a pitcher can study videos of batters he is likely to face. The pitcher can search for a weakness -- for example, the batter may have trouble hitting curve balls or a split-finger fast ball.

Lewis said teams always have to be on guard against being flooded with useless information. The days of hunches, superstitions, intuition, or second-hand stories from scouts are long gone, replaced now by the hum of EMC's storage arrays, storage area network, and sophisticated software from its Documentum unit.

"The Red Sox have gone a little crazy" with technology, said Lewis as he outlined the team's near-obsession with statistics and videos -- all of it captured, stored, and pulled up quickly.

Rich Lederer has a great article up on http://www.baseballanalysts.com/. The article takes everything into account as far as batting. The numbers are based of Total Plate Appearances rather than At Bats. Shows Ichiro as an example. Ichiro gets out 60.6% of the time. Rich breaks down:

TOP 20 IN HITTING PERCENTAGE (H/TPA)
TOP 20 IN WALK PERCENTAGE (BB/TPA)
TOP 20 IN OBP/LOWEST OUT PERCENTAGE
TOP 20 IN SLUGGING OR ADVANCEMENT PERCENTAGE

The work here is based off an earlier article by Sully, that I thought was interesting but Rich really put some nice context around it.

Recommended Read.

I want 3 or 4 different buttons (Red Badges of Courage). There needs to be different buttons that I can swap, dependant upon who's up to bat or whatever the circumstance of that game are.

I'd think one of Red with the Beltre poster.
Another with his "Red Hex" going.
A "Rally Red" with an image of his dance.
The June 03 recap photo of Red could be usefull.

I would pay through the nose for Red Badges of Courage. And I would defy anyone who says this is poor taste. Red has power. I want to use it. Dude is awesome.

http://www.baseballanalysts.com/

Its by Jeff Albert: here's a quote for you.

After a stellar 2004 season, Seattle 3B Adrian Beltre has somehow lost his belt. Unfortunately, the belt I am referring to has to do with producing long hits instead of holding up long pants. What's intriguing is not that Beltre's production fell off after a career year, but the degree to which his numbers have declined. After what seemed to be an MVP-type season where Beltre put it all together showing his tremendous ability, it seems that 2005 resulted in a return right back to square one - do not pass go, do not collect your $200 (uh, rather collect your $64 million, but I suppose that
is another story).

Yeah, this freaked me out a bit. I never knew Jared Weaver was a shakespearean actor....

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r296/TheEmrys/harry.jpg

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r296/TheEmrys/baseballsgiving2.jpg

Good lord. *Fixed name

Continue reading this post »

Posting fees do not count against Luxury Tax. It goes against everything the psuedo-salary cap is supposed to do. In the current (insane) situation, the cash-laden Boston Red Sox bid $50m (lump sum? over a year?) for the right to talk to Matsuzaka. Kansas City had no chance in this bidding. In all honesty, most teams had no chance. Only the big-market/spend-happy-ownership could even contemplate this move.

An equilibrium must be achieved. There are two viable solutions, as far as I can see.

Have the posting fee count towards the Luxury Tax.

-or-

Restructuring of the posting fee process. One way this can be accomplished is through MLB paying the posting fee to the JBL. The money for this would come out of the Luxury Tax. Yes, this will reduce the tribute given to KC and Pittsburg, but at least these teams would be on more even footing vis-a-vis japanese baseball players.

While KC could not have spent $60m this year (total) for Matsuzaka, they could have taken the $10m they gave Meche (which matches the purported amount the Red Sox are paying Matsuzaka) and at least come close.

This year has been rather lackluster for the M's. There were no big deals or signings. Even the people talked about were, well, underwhelming. However, there is a bright ray of hope that I see as a change in approach pitching that is really revolutionary. But first, let's look at the pitchers that have been acquired or even talked about being acquired:

Miguel Batista
Horacio Ramirez
Jon Thomson
Sean White
Jason Jennings
Justin Lehr
Jeff Suppan

Now then, most all of the numbers on these pitchers are rather dismal. Well, in all honesty, they suck. Suck bad. But, the single ray of hope is here:

48.1%
49.7%
44%
52%
48%
50.1%
46.8%

These are the groundball percentages. All of these pitchers lean toward groundballs. This possible pitching roster construction can be effetive.

I will not be suprised to see these pitchers succeed, particularly with the double-play.

I, for one, have found the moves this winter encouraging. We have seen the front office pursue pitchers that are atypical: ignoring the usual W-L and ERA stats, which are not accurate judges of pitching. Did they pay too much for this off-season? Yes. But everyone did. God help the Royals with Meche. But, for the market, the Mariner's made good moves.

Tangentially, I don't think Soriano's arm is going to take it much longer, and Batista and Ramirez are definately an improvement over Pinero and Meche.

Maddux's numbers weren't overly hot. But the change from Wrigly to Chavez ravine did well for him. His Dodger ERA of 3.30 matched with his WHIP of 1.09 make him attractive. Put him into SafeCO and his pitching can really shine (again).

In 2005, Maddux had (if my source is correct) a 2.37 GB/FB ratio. The M's infield (minus Ritchie Sexson) can really shine with Maddux.

He is definately not the pitcher he was. However, at his age he can be successful at SafeCo. Plus, he could be had at a discount. He should be signable at 8-12 million for a 1 year deal. However, I'd look at 2 years at 8 million, with 4 million in incentives for each year.

If nothing else, I'd like him to be around to help the King fine-tune his pitching. IIRC, Maddux taught Moyer his change-up, so he shouldn't have problems teaching people how to pitch.

Yet another USS Mariner piece from msb. Good lord, I can't take the hope/hopelessness roller coaster I'm on now. Here's the snip from USS M.

Hot Friday update: msb wrote us to tip us to this gem from the Star Ledger's Dan Graziano:

"But there may be loopholes. It can be in the Japanese team's best interest for the winning bid to come from a team with which the player wants to sign, since that is the only way the Japanese team gets money. So a Japanese team could make an under-the-table deal with a U.S. team in which only a portion of the winning bid would have to be paid. When the Seattle Mariners won the rights to sign Ichiro Suzuki in 2000, there were rumors they paid just $4 million of the $13 million winning bid to the Orix Blue Wave."

http://www.baseballanalysts.com/

I found this article quite interesting. It's by David Appleman at FanGraphs.com and it has some very good information. It is a bit early in its research, but you can see some very promising correlations. Here's a quick snip:

Do pitchers tend to throw the ball to the same location year after year?
Which pitchers throw the ball to a particular location the most?
What does throwing to that location generally mean for pitchers?
For the purpose of this study, the strike zone coordinates has been mirrored for left-handed batters in order to lump inner or outer pitches into a single metric.

Title says it all. Its a quicky post on USS Mariner. Maybe Dave can post an update here....

Wikipedia post for length:
The Tokugawa shogunate (徳川幕府 1603-1868), or Edo bakufu, was a feudal military dictatorship of Japan established by Tokugawa Ieyasu and ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family. This period is known as the Edo period and gets its name from the capital city of Edo, now Tokyo. The Tokugawa shogunate ruled from Edo castle until the Meiji Restoration.

Following the Sengoku Period of "warring states", central government had been largely re-established by Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi during the Azuchi-Momoyama period. After the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, central authority fell to Tokugawa Ieyasu who completed this process and received the title of shogun in 1603. In order to become shogun, one must be descendant of the ancient Minamoto clan.

The Tokugawa period, unlike the shogunates before it, was based on the strict class hierarchy originally established by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The warrior-caste of samurai were at the top, followed by farmers, artisans, and traders. The very inflexibility of the caste system unleashed disruptive forces over time. Taxes on the peasantry were set to fixed amounts which did not account for inflation or other changes in monetary value. As a result, the tax revenues collected by the samurai landowners were worth less and less over time. This often led to numerous confrontations between noble but impoverished samurai and well-to-do peasants, ranging from simple local disturbances to much bigger rebellions. None, however, proved compelling enough to seriously challenge the established order until the arrival of foreign powers.

Toward the end of the 19th century, an alliance of several of the more powerful daimyo with the titular Emperor finally succeeded in the overthrow of the shogunate after the Boshin War, culminating in the Meiji Restoration. The Tokugawa Shogunate came to an official end in 1868, with the resignation of the 15th Tokugawa Shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu and the "restoration" of imperial rule.

Okay, I just have to sort of vent on this... its from http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/clubhouse?team=sea
Here's the quote:
<quote>
September 19, 2006 - Associated Press
Manager Mike Hargrove did not have 2B Jose Lopez in his starting lineup. Lopez started the night in a 5-for-17 slide, having played in 139 of the first 150 games.
<end quote>

He was in a 5 for 17 slide. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that would mean he's batting just under .300. According to my calculator, its .294. Shoot, if he's sliding at .294, we should be so lucky.

I'm not a doctor, but I've worked around enough kids to pick up a few of the signs that indicate someone needs to have their eyes checked. I live in San Diego and I won't alienate my wife through mlb.tv (its our first year, maybe in the next couple of years), but during the series against the Padres, it looks to me like Beltre needs an eye exam. The big indicator for me is how he uses the muscles in his upper-middle cheeks when looking at the pitcher. It is almost a squint, but not fully. But, it is the sort of thing that really wants to see him get evaluated.