SB Nation User Blog: benmor78

Commercials shouldn't make you feel this way

benmor78 — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 01:28:02 -0000

I'm not the type of person that has emotional reactions to commercials normally. I don't cry at long distance or Sarah McLachlan SPCA commercials or anything. So, strangely, I've lately starting having an unwanted and uncomfortable emotional reaction to two commercials. They are both Geico caveman commercials.

Here and here are the two commercials in question. What I can't figure out is why these commercials in particular would bother me so much. Essentially, they're the same commercial as all the other Geico caveman commercials. What I've started thinking the past few days, however, is that instead of Geico "comically" causing anguish to the cavemen, this time a cute blonde chick is being dragged into the situation.

Here they are, for instance, going to the beach, and the blonde chick looks happy and everything and is taking off her shirt and she's going to have a good time at the beach, and the caveman starts pussing out about a stupid blimp and they have to leave. Or she's walking behind him with a net while he uses a metal detector, and he gets mad again and leaves.

I'm starting to think that the reason I get so uncomfortable is because she is obviously so used to this behavior. Obviously, many a night out has been cut short for her because "the bouncer looked at him funny so the night is 'ruined,'" or "the live band totally didn't render that Coldplay cover with the right emotional significance so the night is 'ruined,'" or some such nonsense. She's a nice girl, too. You can tell. She was walking along behind him holding his net for him while he used the metal detector... she didn't have to do that, his fucking hands aren't broken! She even looked all happy for him when the metal detector found something, even though he'd probably just gripe about whatever he found. Then, when he went all bloody vag and ran off, she stayed behind to pick up the metal detector, because she's a cool chick that way.

So I'm thinking that the main thing that is making me uncomfortable with these commercials is that the girl seems like such a saintly and cute, long-suffering victim of what I can now see quite clearly is a douchebag self-absorbed whiney-ass caveman. The way this crapsack carries grudges makes Rosie O'Donnell seem almost reasonable. I kind of wish the ad agency had placed a more obviously flawed and bitchy girlfriend for the caveman in the commercials just so that I wouldn't feel so awkward watching them.

Anyway, do any of you guys have a commercial that provokes that kind of response? A weird, visceral emotional reaction? And no, "Feist sucks so the iPod commercial blows" and the like aren't what I'm talking about.

Community Fantasies vs. Reality: A Stroll Down Memory Lane (Hitters)

benmor78 — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 02:58:19 -0000

It's a testament to the type of season the Rangers had to take a look at the community projections for this year... a list that included Botts, Jennings, and human medical curiosities Brandon McCarthy and Hank Blalock. In a season that seemed like, eventually, the Rangers' marketing department would start naming "wild card fans" as injury replacements in the field, many of the projected starters from the beginning of the season faded to irrelevance as the season wore on.

Mr. Burns' team of ringers from The Simpsons had nothing on the 2007 Rangers.

Hank Blalock

Community: .283/.347/.502, 592 PA

Reality: .287/.338/.508, 281 PA

The numbers are about what the community expected, frankly, in almost half the plate appearances. Not even resident sourpuss DJCahill was that pessimistic about Hammer's injury prospects. What's next for Hank, rickets? The smart money, I think, is on disseminating intravascular coagulopathy (DIC), a type of hemolytic anemia that, in the veterinary industry, they call "Death Is Coming" or "Dead In Cage." I understand that the primary causes are pregnancy and being the Rangers' third baseman. Interestingly, in a small sample size, of course, he slugged .566 and was good for a .903 OPS against lefties this season. He's 0 for infinity vs. hemorraghing vaginitis, though.

Jason Botts

Community: .263/.344/.431, 295 PA

Reality: .158/.304/.395, 46 PA

Poor Jason Botts. Did you know Japanese pizza frequently has sweet corn as a topping? Jason Botts does, poor bastard. I picture Jason Botts wandering forlornly through the streets of Hokkaido, a giant blonde monster, munching on some seasoned cuttlefish crackers and reduced to retrieving objects from high shelves for spare change because even in Japan he's still a crappy baseball player.

Marlon Byrd

Community: .287/.325/.402, 385 PA

Reality: .298/.380/.462, 462 PA

Well, he's no Matt Murton. Marlon had a terrible start to the season, of course, and a fairly pedestrian first half. He had an absolute scorcher of an August, though. I think he's going to be a free agent after 2009, so I'm sure the Angels will want to add him to their stable. A team can never have enough 30-something year old centerfielders

Milton Bradley

Community: .287/.375/.485, 430 PA

Reality: .321/.436/.563, 509 PA

Milton Bradley is the shiznit. I don't care if Bradley suddenly turned into Charles Haley, I'd want him to play on my team. Having a season like this from a Ranger DH was simply something to behold. Remember Richard Hidalgo? Remember Brad Fulmer? Oh, well, he's likely gone in 2009, but at least we have the beautiful memories.

Frankie the Cat

Community: .285/.356/.432, 381 PA

Reality: .274/.342/.399, 278 PA

Frankie doesn't really have a place on this team anymore, but at least he's a good sport about it. I figure Frankie is Matt Stairs without the gut or power.

Josh Hamilton

Community: .301/.381/.566, 504 PA

Reality: .304/.371/.530, 704 PA

Wow, I hadn't realized that the community had been so bullish on Josh. The standard deviation wasn't that large, either. My favorite Josh moment... the homer off Putz. And Jeff Sullivan whining about it.

Ian Kinsler

Community: .283/.364/.467, 618 PA

Reality: .319/.375/.517, 583

Damn you, sports hernia. Damn you straight to hell. Ian smashed the community projections pretty good. Of course, if Jamey Newberg has his way, Kinsler, Chris Davis, Holland, Salty, and Hank Blalock's superfluous rib will all go to Kansas City in exchange for Zack Greinke. After all, our coaching staff has done such a wonderful job with arm angles, I'd love to see what they can do with social anxiety disorder. The other thing I found kind of interesting was that Kinsler was able to quite dramatically reverse his platoon splits this year.

Gerald Laird

Community: .253/.311/.392, 344 PA

Reality: .276/.329/.398, 381 PA

Gerald Laird went ahead and had a decent season for himself. Gerald had one of the largest standard deviations in the group, which isn't surprising considering his history. As far as how they handle the catching situation going forward, I just hope they poop or get off the pot... make a decision and not end up with a repeat of Laird's tenure where the player gets jerked around for four seasons.

Michael Young

Community: .312/.363/.443, 701 PA

Reality: .284/.339/.402, 708 PA

Don't worry Michael Young pessimists, he outslugged both Frankie Cat and Jason Botts. And if we can only figure out a way to strategically turn his GIDP's into runs, we may yet get our money's worth from him. Ortonius and grumpass DJCahill get the award for being the most appropriately pessimistic on this one, with honorable mentions going to miles and WhipSmart.

The Daily Show...

benmor78 — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 05:25:41 -0000

You know, I used to get quite a kick out of The Daily Show. When Colbert, Carrell, et al were on the show, the correspondents' bits were hilarious. There seemed to be an intent to poke fun at both sides of the aisle.

Watching it this week, though, is just kind of sad. Stewart is basically just writing a weeklong mash note to the DNC in 30 minute installments. One of the things I respect about Colbert is that he's a lot more subtle (and funny). The frustrating thing is that I like and respect Stewart as a comic, and it irritates me and cheapens the show that he's so readily wearing his allegiances on his sleeve.

It makes me wish that there were a photogenic, TV-friendly P.J. O'Rourke clone that wanted to have a show.

LSB Around the Horn

benmor78 — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 07:52:41 -0000

Despite the fracas where Jeff at LookoutLanding called all LSBers douchebags, I still find myself frequently perusing through his site because it's one of the better written SBN sites out there. Last weekend, he posted this game recap, where he recounts his experience taking on a Padres mascot at Petco Field. So there you have it, Jeff is the Randall Simon of bloggers.

Jeff also had a nice eulogy of John McLaren's short, unhappy tenure as manager of the Mariners. That's a problem we didn't have when Buck was fired, because by all accounts he was an overbearing jackass, and he had a mullet.

Remember how Willie Mays Hayes had game-changing speed? He needed to hit the ball on the ground and leg out the ball? Peter Bendix at BeyondtheBoxscore posts some interesting numbers regarding fast players and speed generating more hits. It would be interesting to see how this data compares with errors committed by opposing teams, since the corollary would be that fast players would force errors, and that wouldn't show up in the BA data.

Gameday Thread

benmor78 — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:06:38 -0000

Don't know if Z's still around, but thought I'd go ahead and get the gameday thread up.

Go Rangers.

Hitching our wagon to Nolan's star...

benmor78 — Thu, 29 May 2008 22:54:19 -0000

Anybody listening to the Hardline today? They were talking about how the Rangers called and requested that they interview Nolan regarding some ticket promotions the organization is running, and Nolan just came on and didn't talk about them. Apparently, they set up the promotion angle at the beginning and end of the interview, and he just wouldn't talk about it.

So, I guess that's the guy that is running the business side of the organization.

For those that don't like Lee Greenwood...

benmor78 — Sat, 24 May 2008 07:00:33 -0000

The Fort Worth Cats are playing the St. Paul Saints this Sunday in Minnesota. The promotional giveaway is a Senator Larry Craig "Bobblefoot" doll . I wonder if I can get one of those on Ebay? If you're in marketing for a baseball team, what political scandal would you capitalize on? Teapot Dome batting helmets? Nah...

I think I'd go with Gulf of Tonkin mini-bat night. Or Mark Foley Free Candy Giveaway Night.

Community Projections - Summary / Comparisons

benmor78 — Tue, 20 May 2008 09:17:31 -0000

Okay, so we're about a quarter through the season, and I thought I'd better get the summaries and data up from the community projections. I've also included, for reference, the projections from Bill James, CHONE, and ZIPS. No outliers were removed except two from Jason Jennings' thread.

As I did last year, I've also provided standard deviations for our projections. Standard deviation is a measure of a spread of values. Essentially, in a normal distribution, about 70% of the data points will be within 1 standard deviation from the mean. About 95% of the data points will lie within 2 standard deviations from the mean. So a larger standard deviation indicates less consensus, smaller indicates more.

Tables and such after the jump...

Blalock	Avg	Avg '''σ'''	OBP	OBP '''σ'''	SLG	SLG '''σ'''	PA	PA '''σ'''
Community	.283	11	.347	13	.502	36	592	74
Bill James	.276		.342		.469
CHONE	.275		.343		.463
ZIPS	.276		.336		.446
to date	.299		.365		.460

Botts	Avg	Avg '''σ'''	OBP	OBP '''σ'''	SLG	SLG '''σ'''	PA	PA '''σ'''
Community	.263	28	.344	41	.431	65	295	107
Bill James	.276		.369		.466
CHONE	.260		.350		.445
ZIPS	.258		.359		.447
to date	.158		.304		.395

Byrd	Avg	Avg '''σ'''	OBP	OBP '''σ'''	SLG	SLG '''σ'''	PA	PA '''σ'''
Community	.267	14	.325	16	.402	25	385	87
Bill James	.277		.337		.420
CHONE	.275		.337		.428
ZIPS	.288		.344		.443
to date	.184		.279		.368

Bradley	Avg	Avg '''σ'''	OBP	OBP '''σ'''	SLG	SLG '''σ'''	PA	PA '''σ'''
Community	.287	11	.375	16	.485	28	430	88
Bill James	.302		.391		.508
CHONE	.284		.373		.481
ZIPS	.261		.348		.407
to date	.321		.429		.579

Cat	Avg	Avg '''σ'''	OBP	OBP '''σ'''	SLG	SLG '''σ'''	PA	PA '''σ'''
Community	.285	12	.356	15	.432	24	381	58
Bill James	.284		.357		.435
CHONE	.277		.353		.428
ZIPS	.274		.355		.413
to date	.275		.362		.431

Hamilton	Avg	Avg '''σ'''	OBP	OBP '''σ'''	SLG	SLG '''σ'''	PA	PA '''σ'''
Community	.301	11	.381	17	.566	31	504	56
Bill James	.307		.383		.605
CHONE	.280		.354		.506
ZIPS	.281		.349		.491
to date	.319		.369		.604

Kinsler	Avg	Avg '''σ'''	OBP	OBP '''σ'''	SLG	SLG '''σ'''	PA	PA '''σ'''
Community	.283	16	.364	11	.467	16	618	44
Bill James	.273		.350		.458
CHONE	.274		.355		.456
ZIPS	.269		.345		.440
to date	.298		.360		.438

Laird	Avg	Avg '''σ'''	OBP	OBP '''σ'''	SLG	SLG '''σ'''	PA	PA '''σ'''
Community	.253	22	.311	23	.392	38	344	74
Bill James	.252		.308		.400
CHONE	.245		.303		.395
ZIPS	.249		.305		.391
to date	.277		.338		.395

Young	Avg	Avg '''σ'''	OBP	OBP '''σ'''	SLG	SLG '''σ'''	PA	PA '''σ'''
Community	.312	12	.363	15	.443	24	701	29
Bill James	.305		.354		.435
CHONE	.305		.358		.443
ZIPS	.303		.352		.427
to date	.282		.345		.409

Jennings	Wins	Wins '''σ'''	Inng's	Inng's '''σ'''	K's	K's '''σ'''	ERA	ERA '''σ'''
Community	11	2	169	25	111	19	4.76	0.33
Bill James	7		150		97		5.04
CHONE			132		86		4.64
ZIPS	7		140		99		4.56
to date	0		27.1		12		8.56

McCarthy	Wins	Wins '''σ'''	Inng's	Inng's '''σ'''	K's	K's '''σ'''	ERA	ERA '''σ'''
Community	8	3	113	40	76	31	4.49	1.11
Bill James	10		176		142		4.30
CHONE			108		75		4.75
ZIPS	8		127		77		4.96
to date	0		0		0		0

Millwood	Wins	Wins '''σ'''	Inng's	Inng's '''σ'''	K's	K's '''σ'''	ERA	ERA '''σ'''
Community	15	2	197	15	148	19	4.36	.37
Bill James	11		193		145		4.01
CHONE			184		128		4.99
ZIPS	12		189		135		4.52
to date	2		48		29		4.88

Padilla	Wins	Wins '''σ'''	Inng's	Inng's '''σ'''	K's	K's '''σ'''	ERA	ERA '''σ'''
Community	13	3	181	19	139	30	4.58	0.42
Bill James	6		120		82		4.5
CHONE			149		96		5.3
ZIPS	10		172		112		4.92
to date	6		62.2		41		3.16

LSB Around the Horn

benmor78 — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:58:00 -0000

I went over to Bless You Boys to look for some snark on the Rangers' performance the past few days, but really, they're too grateful for snark. I was interested, though, in Inge's reaction to the Cabrera / Guillen position swap. Maybe they'll be wanting Laird soon, and we can send him there.

They also linked a pretty interesting article about Edgar Renteria and Orlando Cabrera. Somehow I can't see Michael Young having a blood feud with, say, Yuniesky Betancourt, although it would definitely lend an exciting subtext to what's turning out to be a pretty bleah season.

In one of the interminable discussions about Gerald Laird's defense, someone (I think it was perennial Hatorade quaffer Cahill) linked a piece over at Beyond the Boxscore about catchers framing pitches, because Laird is so awful at framing pitches that it makes Ben Broussard airmail double play balls into left field, and also it makes baby Jesus cry. The numbers run in the first piece resulted in spreads that aren't borne out by the actual game results, so the author went further under the assumption that the picthing staff a catcher is receiving would skew the numbers (explaining why both Salty and Laird, for example, had such wretched numbers). Answer: still inconclusive. It's interesting, nonetheless, though.

R.J. Anderson examines Krivsky's tenure as Red's GM, and comes to the conclusion that he hasn't had a bad record of deals. Nothing on the list stands out to me as objectively awful as, say, the Chris Young deal. But don't worry, folks... when Salty gets promoted back to the big league club, he can catch and GM!

Hey, Adam...

benmor78 — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:44:21 -0000

Your brother just sent me an email and asked me to post this message from your favorite Ranger, attached below. He said that he was originally going to ask him to sign it "Screw you, Adam, Rusty," but didn't think Rusty would like writing "screw you." I was hoping it would be signed by Rod Barajas, Nolan Ryan, or Tom Hicks but alas...

Anyway, if Rowan is half the gamer that Rusty was, you'll have to make sure and get her a lunchpail.

rusty