Well, another season has come and gone, without the good guys winning again. Being a numbers-guy, I'd like to take a look at how the teams in MLB performed against their Pythagorean records (in case you don't know what I'm talking about, and haven't backed out of this post, look here). I'm especially interested in who under- and over-performed against their Pythag records, and want to take a stab at figuring out why.

All of the team data in the graphs and tables below came from baseball-reference.com or fangraphs.com.

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If you want to skip the commentary and just want pics, click here.

Mrs doctorK and I loaded up the flivver and motored on up the expressway to beautiful Shibe Park to enjoy a nice afternoon of baseball. The Athletics had some nice gentlemen playing some of the latest ragtime tunes just outside the front gate.

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Once inside, the home team wanted to make sure we knew where we were.

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Some nice people decided to show off the new model that ol' Henry Ford has just introduced.

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Here is another new Ford model, with a strange-looking elephant on the back. I'm not sure what the girl in the hat was doing. Also, that grass looks like it has been around since 1829.

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Here, some of the home-team ballists are getting ready to play some baseball.

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A replica of the jersey of the Athletics' latest Hall of Famer hangs in a place of honor.

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(I'm not sure what the '.com' sign means, but I guess it has something to do with baseball.)

This ballist for the Chicago White Stockings is named Scott "Bugsy" Podsednik. When it comes to defense, he is bad at baseball.

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Here, Athletics manager Robert "Finger-sniffer" Geren argues with the second base umpire after the atrocious call he made that somehow, Athletics shortstop Robert "Low and Away" Crosby pushed the Pale Hose baserunner off of second base with his glove. Mr Geren was invited to enjoy the rest of the game from the clubhouse.

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When I was a young lad growing up in the Territory of Hawaii, I used to feel bad for tourists who would dress in identical aloha-wear. I feel the same way for baseball fans who do the same thing.

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With two outs in the bottom of the 9th frame, Athletics second baseman Mark "OMG UNICORNS!!!!!!" Ellis ended the game with a line drive home run right over the Henderson jersey. Here, Mr Podsednik demonstrates the modern term for such a feat by Mr Ellis, the "walk-off".

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Final score, Philadelphia 3, Chicago 2.

I want a new freaking DLD, so here we go.

Star Tribune's recap of last night's game. Looking at the picture, it looks like Cuddyer's right leg/foot was over (above) the plate as Wuertz tagged him - looks OUT to me.

Watching last night's game made me think of this game from last year (which I was fortunate to attend). Like last night, Holliday had two HRs in that game, including a slam. The park factor between Coors and the Coliseum looks like about -8 runs.

Today is the 40th anniversary of the first successful manned launch from the surface of the moon. That moonwalk stuff is so yesterday.

As Englishmajor announced during last night's game thread (one of them, I don't remember which), California has a budget agreement. I guess this means no more IOU's.

Finally, some overdue recognition is given to some true American heroes.

I really hate flying. Air travel (actually, the TSA) just sucks the life out of me. And renting a car leaves a lot to be desired as well. Therefore, when Mrs doctorK said she wanted to take a trip to Philadelphia after our time in Pittsburgh was up, I did some checking and found that Amtrak has a daily train from Pittsburgh to Philly, which on Sunday leaves at 1:20 pm (yay - we get to sleep in), so I was able to avoid another flight and renting a car.

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This year, Mrs doctorK has brought me and little miss specialK to the annual Mensa geek-fest, which this year is in Pittsburgh. The Pirates were in town finishing up a home stand with the Cubs, and since I've never been to this fine city, I thought it would be fun to take the family to a game at PNC Park.

As always, you can click here to get all the photos without the doctorK snark.

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Those of you who were at fANfest might remember my daughter Kate (aka "little miss specialK"), especially those of you who were there early enough to see her fall off the glass staircase at the showroom. Anyway, for her first 8 years, Kate had not yet been to an A's game, so today we decided to fix that little problem.

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My entire photo stream on flickr is available here. Here are some highlights.

A junior ROTC group presented the flag today.

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The Star Spangled Banner and God Bless America were both performed by a sergeant from the Air Force reserve, who, in fact, has an excellent voice.

Chris Jakubauskas was the starter. He was, well, bad.

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Some game observations

• We had an ejection after a mystery strickout in the 1st inning (I was afraid they were going to call AK out due to interference by Zooks)
• Giambi forgot the count and tried to walk on three pitches, although it seemed to me that the plate ump lost track of the count as well.
• Suzuki (theirs, not ours) took advantage of an immobile 1B-man and an inexperienced pitcher to get two of his four hits, only one of which made to outfield.
• The only run the Mariners scored was on a HR by Johjima, who hit it with a broken toe. Despite having runners on base for the first 7 innings, the Mariners were offensively inept.
  
• Kevin Cameron pitched three innings for a save. The real save was to give the rest of the 'pen the day off, and to give the fans a day off from the rest of the 'pen.
  
• Buck made a fantastic catch on Beltre's drive to RF that would've made Joe Rudi proud.
• Kennedy robbed Sweeney (theirs, not ours) with a terrific sliding catch by the foul line.

Here is Jack Cust's 1st inning RBI ground-out. A productive out is not a True Outcome, Jack.

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Here the A's have runners at 2nd and 3rd in the second inning after Jack Hannahan's RBI double, a rocket to RF that even Ichiro Suzuki could not catch up to.

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And here, we have AK at 2B after his 2-RBI double down the RF line.

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Here is Travis Buck at home plate:

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What is Travis doing there, you may ask. Well, he had just hit the ball here.

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Here are some other things, not quite as impressive.

Suzuki on 1B, for one of four times. This time he was there because Anderson forgot that the pitcher needs to cover 1B on a ball hit to the right side, especially with someone as mobile as Iron Man playing first.

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Yo, Adrian, I don't think you are bad and/or overrated, but that is a nasty line you're carrying so far this season.

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Here, Jack Hannahan demonstrates why trying to sacrifice with a four-run lead, two on, no out, with someone who can't bunt, is a really bad idea.

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Anybody want to guess what Crosby did on this pitch? (To be fair, he did work a walk in this plate appearance.)

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Edit: Here is the last out of the game. You can hear Kate proclaiming that the "Puppies" (her name for the A's) win!

Ah, sweet victory.

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You can't beat good family fun at the old ball park.

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Seems like everybody has an opinion on Manny:

Lee Jenkins (SI.com)

Tom Verducci here and here.

Joe Po

Heyman

Mark Purdy

Ratto

My favorite comment came from the McC thread (spelling corrected):

Manny being Banny

OK, enough with the PED stuff. How about some other linkage.

LL has a great post on advanced stats, where they encourage those who don't know tRA from EPA to get their questions answered.

The A's actually scored 9 runs yesterday during a day game. Maybe they should consider moving to Barrow, Alaska - starting Sunday, there will be no night games there until early August.

Tim Kawakami had this column a couple of days ago. I normally don't pay much attention to what (little) he has to say, but this line caught my eye (and I'd like it back, please).

Infield non-keepers: Jason Giambi, Mark Ellis, Nomar Garciaparra, Eric Chavez, Bobby Crosby, Gregorio Petit, Jack Hannahan, Landon Powell.

General Manager Billy Beane has never wasted as much time, energy and money as he has on this predictably injury-ravaged bunch.

If Bobby continues like his last few games, Kawakami might need to change his opinion, but otherwise his Beane comment is right on.

The BART extension to San Jose appears to be going forward.

Happy Friday Dumping.

Just a quickie since I'm at work, and need a new link dump.

No more bus trips for John Madden.

Madden, 73, was a Hall of Fame coach for the Oakland Raiders, but is best known to millions as an ebullient football commentator.

To me, Madden will always be the Raiders coach who happened to go into broadcasting. Edit: You can listen to him talk about it here.

Welcome these guys home.

This has to be the stupidest thing I've seen on an SBN blog (including rosa's strickout post). In the previous DLD, kaweahkaweah made perhaps the best comment I've seen on AN. Needless to say, any good will towards HH that I may had after the Adenhart incident has quickly been wiped away by the Rev's actions (not to mention his lame commentary, such as in this pre-game post).

The dumping, let it commence.

This being March, the annual basketball mayhem is upon us. My family has a number of college ties, so let's see how we did.

Me: My two schools are UC Davis and Iowa State. Neither team is in any tournament, although ISU's women's team is seeded fourth in the West regional. The NCAA wrestling tournament is this week, and the Cyclones are tied for first place after the first day of action (although I expect the Hawks from Iowa City are going to win it).

My dad: Dad did all his schooling at the University of Illinois, where he was also on faculty before we moved to California. How did U of I do? - FAIL (BTW, I don't know what a Hilltopper is, but they have some cute logos). When we came west, dad took a faculty position at Berkeley. How about them Bears? Oh, yeah.

My brother: Undergrad was at Michigan - yay! Medical school was at Hawaii, (he, unlike me, is an MD) who is not in the tournament. My brother lives near Akron, OH, so how did the Zips do? Nuts.

Obviously, being even remotely connected to my family is the kiss of death for a basketball team this time of year.

Jon Heyman lists 34 (why 34? - who knows) prospects making noise during Spring Training this year. Anderson and Cahill at 10 and 11, Mazzaro is 23

Happy Vernal Equinox (at 4:44 am PDT) to all. Dump away!