SB Nation User Blog: gossamer

13 days to election

gossamer — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:47:05 -0000

as of 10-22

real clear has obama up 7% on average

projected electoral votes...

rcp- obama 364 mccain 174

538 - obama 344 mccain 194

pollster - obama 286 mccain 157 tossup 95

electoral-vote - obama 364 mccain 171 tie 3

karl rove - obama 313 mccain 171 tossup 54

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"battle ground polls"

FL obama +1.5

NC obama +2

OH obama +2.5

MO obama +2.7

NV obama +3.3

IN mccain +3.8

MT mccain +5.6

WV mccain +6.5

GA mccain +6.8

NM obama +8.4

NH obama +9.4

MN obama +9.6

WI obama +11

PA obama +11.4

IA obama +11.8

MI obama +11.8

2008 mvp guesses?

gossamer — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 18:05:52 -0000

might as well. playoffs don't matter to me and offseason hasn't started yet so... my guess to what the top 15 vote getters should be in order (not counting pitchers)

i looked at Runs Scored, RBI (weighted twice, voters LOVE that), HR, AVG, OBP, SLG, OPS (that ends up counting obp and slg twice, i know), wins (weigthed twice even though it's an individual and not team award), RAR and WSAB and SB...

i know it may be tougher for AROD since his team didn't make the playoffs and there's an anti-arod sentiment in the media and with the fans but his numbers overall suggest he's deserving. out of this group he is 3rd in runs, 6th in RBI, 3rd in HR, 5th in OBP, 1st in SLG, 2nd in OPS. i know no angels or rays were represented in this list, but none of them stood out either. this may actually be a year where they give it to a pitcher because no hitter was heads and shoulders above the rest.

rip me apart. or better yet give your opinion on who should win and why he is better than arod, youkillis, quentin or hammy.

2008 Rangers Catcher (who to keep for next year)

gossamer — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:36:37 -0000

We’ve known all year that the Rangers have a really difficult decision to make. They have 4 guys that can hit as good or better than an average catcher. They have some guys that have the ability to play multiple positions. Point is, they have 4 major league caliber catchers when they need no more than 2, and really they can dump 3 of them and pick up a veteran out of the trash heap (a guy that can hit lefties if Laird is dealt?). And their max value is at catcher, none are particularly valuable at any other position. The question is who to keep and who to dump, along with how many? Before looking into this I really have no opinion on who to keep (I have had many opinions, but they changed weekly). We know what Laird is capable of. Salty, we have a good idea of, but he's also the youngest. He can't throw anybody out but he can hit, he started slow but really turned it around before getting injured. Teagarden and Maxram haven’t gotten really good long looks, but I’ll still post their info just to get some kind of look. Will look at team win/loss with player, batting, throwing out base runners, club era with player, fielding %, and throwing errors. For Maxram and Teagarden I’ll also post their minor league batting stats. These stats are for comparison and to my best ability are accurate, but i cannot guarrantee that there isn't any errors. I've posted links at the bottom to check up on.

team wins/losses (will include melhuse so games add up)

games and position distribution:

Now for team records with certain catchers in the game. I'm going to include all games played with at least 3 at bats for the wins and losses. Mainly because I'm too lazy to bring up the boxscores for all 120+games to see where they played when. Since we have some guys that DH'd or played a corner infield, some of these games would have 2 of the guys in them.

That adds up to 79-79 (.500)

The rangers are 0-4 (.000) when no catcher gets 3 at bats.

The rangers finished 79-83 (.488).

There is no clear supreme player in this regard. Teagarden as the best record, but got 3 ab's in only 10 games and any win loss is a 10% swing. Same thing for maxram. Both Teagarden and Maxram are essentially .500 on the year. We can say the same for melhuse, except he sucked. Laird and Salty both performed above the Rangers record, over the course of a full season, they Laird has Salty beat by 3 wins.

HITTING

Laird for his career is a good hitter against lefties (better than righties even), what happened this year? This season, Laird was the only one that was acceptable against lefties. All hit very well against rigthies. Laird, Salty and Maxram mostly hit in the 8 spot, Teagarden in the 9 spot. Laird was the worst hitter considerably against righties, but also the best by a considerable amount against lefties. Teagarden was just amazing in his short time.

Teagarden went to AAA after Salty got called up after the Melhuse injury (if I remember correctly). Maxram stayed behind in AA despite hitting much better. When Laird (I think) went on the DL, Maxram got called up and skipped AAA. Teagarden went to the big club after Salty went on the DL and Maxram went up to AAA. Maxram got called up to the bigs again when rosters expanded. This gave the big team 3 catchers on the roster. Neither hit GREAT in AAA, but neither was THAT bad, look at Teagarden’s OBP despite his AVG. Maxram tore up AA while Teagarden wasn’t good and actually improved in AAA.Overall Maxram hit quite a bit better.

THROWING OUT RUNNERS

The numbers favor Laird. Salty was abysmal, how bad would it be if he caught for the Padres? Maxram was slightly better than Salty, but you'll notice how many attempts were made in a short time against him, teams don’t respect his arm. Teagarden was respectable.

CLUB ERA

Self-explanatory. Laird and Salty are a push, Teagarden was much better than all of them. Maxram was worse than Melhuse (6.86) An interesting thing about Maxram. From July 2 to the 19th he played in 7 games. Salty played in 6 games. In 6 of Maxram’s 7 games, the Rangers gave up 9 or more runs. In 2 of Salty’s 6 games the Rangers gave up 9, so I don’t think the staff hitting a rough patch is a usable excuse. Inexperience could be an excuse however, I guess.

FIELDING %

Another Win by Laird, followed closely by Maxram. Salty is a way back, and then Teagarden brought up the rear.

Wild pitches and passed balls

Teagarden has numbers comparable to Kurt Suzuki and Jason Varitek here. Laird is about average, maybe a little above average. Salty is below average to bad. And Maxram is really bad here.

Throwing Errors (from hardballtimes)

Laird just absolutely demolishes the competition here. Salty of course was last, surprisingly he's tied for last...with Teagarden.

That's it. I am not drawing any conclusions here, that's up to anybody to do and post them here hopefully. Below are links to where I got the stats and there are so many more stats i didn't include.

http://www.lonestarball.com/2008/9/12/613057/charting-the-organization (zywica article on lsb)

http://www.baseball-reference.com/l/lairdge01.shtml (laird baseball-reference)
http://www.baseball-reference.com/s/saltaja01.shtml (salty baseball-reference)
http://www.baseball-reference.com/m/melhuad01.shtml (melhuse baseball-reference)
http://www.baseball-reference.com/t/teagata01.shtml (teagarden baseball-reference)
http://www.baseball-reference.com/r/ramirma03.shtml (maxram baseball-reference)

http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/R/maximiliano-ramirez.shtml (maxram baseballcube)
http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/T/taylor-teagarden.shtml (teagarden baseballcube)

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/teams/fielding?team=tex#c (espn rangers defensive stats)

http://www.hardballtimes.com/thtstats/main/player/?lastName=laird&firstName= (laird hardball times)
http://www.hardballtimes.com/thtstats/main/player/index.php?playerId=5039&firstName=Maximiliano%20R&lastName=Ramirez (maxram hardball times)
http://www.hardballtimes.com/thtstats/main/player/index.php?lastName=teagarden (teagarden hardball times)
http://www.hardballtimes.com/thtstats/main/player/?playerId=5557&firstName=Jarrod%20S&lastName=Saltalamacchia (salty hardball times)

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=1698&position=C (laird fangraphs page)
http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=5557&position=C (salty fangraphs page)
http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=5199&position=C (teagarden fangraphs page)
http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=5039&position=C (maxram fangraphs page)

AL MVP

gossamer — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 22:58:05 -0000

so far at least...with about 22 games left for most teams

i posted this earlier when there were about 34 games left i think. giving a little update. i promise i won't do this again...at least until the end of the season.

i'm thinking this would be the top 20 (not considering pitchers). because the voters give RBI and how good a team is more weight, i did so too.

of course at the end of the year quentin and kinsler will definitely move down seeing as how they are out for the year. and of course we can't quantify the "great story of hamilton" overcoming that stuff and killing the derby. i'm sure he'll get more votes than what he truly merits.

name          runs     rbi      hr      avg      obp       slg        ops     team wins
arod               96       91     32     315        404      602      1006        75
quentin        96     100     36     288        394      571       965        78
youkillis         82       94     24     315        387      560       947        82
morneau        85     109    21     311        388      516       904        77
hamilton         86     121    31     301        363      542       905        69
bradley            74    74     22     327        446      585      1031        69
dye           87    83     32     292        346      565      911        78
pedroia        110     76     17     333        378      505        883        82
huff              89    98    30     313        370      575        945        63
drew                78    64     19    280        408    522        930        82
sizemore        85    84      31     273        385    525        910        67
kinsler            102     71     18     319        375    517        892        69
cabrera           68     110     31     290        349      532        881        67
mauer           84    70        8      322        414      444        858        77
markakis        97      80    18      305        404      493        897        63
giambi            58       87     28      247        374      508        882        75
granderson    99    54      17      305        388      518        906        67
abreu             85        84      15      301        374      464        838        75
ibanez            75        97     22      305        370       512        882        54
damon           85        59     12      313        387       462        849        75

this is how i had it last time i posted this (about 12 games ago)

carlos quentin
kevin youkilis
alex rodriguez
justin morneau
josh hamilton
jermaine dye
aubrey huff
milton bradley
miguel cabrera
ian kinsler
grady sizemore
vladimir guerrero
joe mauer
dustin pedroia
nick markakis
carlos pena
bobby abreu
raul ibanez
melvin mora

carlos quentin out for year

gossamer — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:41:08 -0000

the white sox have a 1.5 game lead.

quentin leads the AL in homers

4th in RBI

4th in slg

3rd in ops

this makes hammy's case for mvp stronger...yet of course it's sucks that he's out.

American League home run leader Carlos Quentin has a broken wrist, and the Chicago White Sox left fielder will have surgery Monday that could sideline him for the rest of the season.

Quentin was removed from the lineup before Tuesday’s game because of what the White Sox described then as a sore right forearm, and he hasn’t played since. The team said Friday that he was hurt during last Monday’s game at Cleveland.

A screw will be inserted into the wrist, and he will be re-evaluated in two to three weeks. Quentin is batting .288 with 36 homers and 100 RBIs.

click here for more info

New Politics thread 9-05

gossamer — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:08:40 -0000

the old palin thread is really full. and it's become a general presidential thread instead of just palin.

obama/biden (Dem)

mccain/palin (repub)

barr/root (libertarian)

nader/gonzalez (independent)

mcKinney / celemnte (green)

discusions to follow...

election day = november 4, 2008

new president sworn in = january 20, 2009

go!

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There's no such thing as white-collar crime. And there's definitely no such thing as black-on-black crime. Crime is crime. Let me explain something to you. I don't care if you have a white collar or a tank top. If you rob me, I'm gonna whup your ass.
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America is the richest, most powerful country on earth. If America was a woman, she would be a big-tittied woman. Everybody loves a big-tittied woman!

will marlon byrd be AL POM for August?

gossamer — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 00:01:41 -0000

i'm guessing no. it's gotta be melvin mora and a former ranger just might finish 2nd

here are the top 15 hitters from the A for august...

name.................runs....rbi...hr...avg...obp...slug...ops

Melvin Mora .....  22.....  32..  8  0.418  0.455  0.765  1.22
Mark Teixeira...   23 ..... 23..  8  0.386  0.479  0.663  1.143
Raul Ibanez .....  22.....  31..  7  0.396  0.452  0.703  1.154
Carlos Pena....   23.....  29..  9  0.278  0.45  0.639  1.089
Carlos Quentin   20....  17..  8  0.322  0.464  0.667  1.13
Marlon Byrd .......  22....  20..  4  0.393  0.468  0.607  1.075
Dustin Pedroia .  33....  20..  6  0.374  0.425  0.635  1.06
Aubrey Huff........  20....  26...  8  0.345  0.402  0.655  1.056
Kevin Youkilis ..  16....  24...  6  0.351  0.43  0.649  1.079
Cliff Floyd..........   12 ... 12....  3  0.353  0.453  0.647  1.1
Miguel Cabrera   14...  25...  10  0.27  0.331  0.613  0.943
Brian Roberts....  26...  17 ..... 2  0.345  0.419  0.454  0.873
Jim Thome........   20 .. 18......  9  0.244  0.33  0.605  0.935
Ichiro Suzuki.....   18 .... 12 ..... 1  0.35  0.389  0.39  0.78
Bobby Abreu.....   16 .... 10 ..... 1  0.342  0.405  0.421  0.826

AL mvp

gossamer — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 23:17:59 -0000

so far at least...with about 32 games left

i'm thinking this would be the top 20 (not considering pitchers). because the voters give RBI and how good a team is more weight, i did so too.

josh has cooled down big time. getting intentionally walked with the bases loaded means the respect is still there. maybe he can heat up. ian to the DL will cost him. milton just doesn't have the AB's. quentin and youkillis play for great teams, josh/ian/bradley don't.

LSB fantasy football league #1

gossamer — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:44:52 -0000

1 team dropped out. that leaves us with an odd number of teams, and the draft is tomorrow Tue Aug 26 5:45pm CDT

currently there are 11 teams, we need 12.

it's a yahoo! league.

ID is 389959

PW is onemanfivetools

if nobody joins by tomorrow around 1, i'll make the league public so we can have a draft.

this league has 3 roster sports for individual defensive players btw

2words needed.

gossamer's rangers weekend 08

gossamer — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 19:57:32 -0000

since i live in tulsa, i can't go to rangers games very often. about once a year for the past 3 years now.

this year i say them play against kazmir and the rays. padilla was supposed to pitch, but i "got to" see nippert instead. whatever.

was happy when i heard bradley's name announced in the lineup. then was disappointed when he wasn't in there. whatever. not like they were gonna win with nippert pitching anyway.

kam loe was awesome. his k/bb ratio was really bad, but the last 2 innings he seemed to get better.

as i posted previously, i went to the frisco game the day before. damn that's a nice park. know exactly where to stand to get a couple foul balls next time i got there. teddy section is a great deal.

next sunday i see the drillers play the same naturals. guess i gotta root for the home team.

pics from the rangers and rough riders

just like i said in the rider thread, the camera ain't great. this is what i got off the metcalf homer

via img.photobucket.com