SB Nation User Blog: johnbai

OTFOD: 12-20-2008

johnbai — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 18:48:03 -0000

Saturday and all the roads on Capitol Hill are dangerously icy and the sidewalks snowpacked. This means it's time to lace up the cleats and take a nice long walk in search of the perfect onion rings. First get an iPod (or preferably a Creative mp3 Player) and queue up some walking music. If you have any high-quality giant headphones, now is the time to wear them because they will double as ear warmers.

Recommended tunes for walking in the snow:

American Analog Set ~ I'm the Postman

Lovage ~ Strangers on a Train

Lupe Fiasco ~ Day Dreamin' f. Jill Scott

Modest Mouse ~ Missed the Boat

The Shins ~ Sleeping Lessons

Blue Scholars ~ Bayani

Kings of Convenience ~ Gold in the Air of Summer

June Panic ~ Ghosts

Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter ~ Eisenhower Moon

Beta Band ~ Dry the Rain

Thom Yorke ~ Black Swan

The destination: The Deluxe (sure hope they're open!)

The goal: to drink beer and eat onion rings

The time: 4:30 pm today

Acme this.. dont you patronize to me!

johnbai — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 07:37:20 -0000

Part 3 of today's hot topic postings is necessitated by LONG ASS load times and the failure of my last comment to post. I have at least 500 characters of venom in my bloog. My BVC is 500 miles per hour. There was a perfectly ormal chat happening re: robert's serach for both his jacket and his pizza. RC was about to enlighten us to the secret ingredient in her LImey G&T's (perhaps qualudes) and... I had thoroughly thrashed that vermintz Kevin_Ess, my new nemisis... in a game of "insult each other" but making usre to really scare people like coach, just because. But some rare appearches like POsitive Paul, who may or may not have made a single (malt) drunk post? And there was lots of hip hop links to youtube... which gave me good soundtrack for all night dance party because snow means no workie tomoroow.

OT: Fallout 3

johnbai — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 21:03:03 -0000

Is anyone else wasting ungodly amounts of time playing Fallout 3? I know there was a buzz about it in some earlier threads.

I've just started playing, but could probably share some early tips and impressions if someone wants any part of the game reviewed. Anyone have early tips for me? No spoilers, of course.

Also: I CANNOT get that song out of my head. I've been wandering around at work singing, "I'm not trying to set the world on fire..." That 3 Dog radio station gets repetitive, but they picked out some fantastic music to listen to while roaming the radioactive wasteland.

Playoff Game Threads

johnbai — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:07:00 -0000

Anyone interested in invading SBN game threads for playoff teams? The Rays seem like a logical choice, but perhaps we should storm Halos Haven and post pictures of Nelson saying "HA-ha" every time something bad happens to them. Of course, that would mean rooting for Boston. >:(

Anyone have a specific suggestion on game threads to invade? It might be fun to harrass the Cubbies faithful... though it would actually be kind of cool for them to finally win a World Series (and think of the Lou Pinella love-fest that would follow.) And it's easy enough to root against the Dodgers. How about the Phillies? Is Moyer getting a playoff start? Maybe the Brewers... they can't have many posters for their SBN blog. Or maybe we could go razz the Yankees at Pinstripe Alley... oh wait. I forgot. Man, I'm not sure what to do during the playoffs when I don't have the Yankees to root against.

LL Football?

johnbai — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 17:08:06 -0000

Well, the weather got all shitty... so I guess it's time for the LL folks to consider an offseason of touch football games down at Cal Anderson park. I know the Seahawks ~~accidentally got into the Mariners' vitamin pills~~ have started kicking ass the way they are supposed to. So let's build on their momentum with our own tales of glory.

Remember last year, and that time that Matthew juked everyone out of their shorts and scampered for a 80 yrd touchdown. (Oh wait, that happened like every 3rd play.) But remember the tragic glory of Gomez nose-breaking touchdown catch... Or his rib-cracking touchdown catch... oh wait... Gomez gets injured on like every 3rd touchdown he scores. OK, OK, but remember that time that Bretticus threw an interception... oh wait... that happens on like...

;)

Anyone have some times and dates they want to throw out?

Late addition: Looks like there could be a game as soon as this Saturday... look at the comment below to reply!

the acme approaches (and is now vaguely recognizable behind the mist)

johnbai — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:12:39 -0000

This coming Wednesday... over at Bluebird Blather, or whatever they call themselves... let's invade their game thread. Washburn is pitching for us... which ought to be worth about 200 posts alone. Let's lose in spectacular style.

Their average diary only gets about 4-5 responses. So let's blow their minds with a 600 comment debauched revelry complete with inside jokes, MS Paint versions of Washburn hitting on 14 year old ballgirls, and photoshopped versions of JP Ricciardi wearing a KKK hat surrounded by scrappy white players.

Plus we can offer to trade Geoff Baker back to them for Roy Halladay.

*WARNING* Please do not sully Jeff Sullivan's good name or the fair city of Seattle by venting actually racist or misogynistic rants. Drunk posts are not an excuse to be an asshole.

the acme approaches

johnbai — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 01:38:18 -0000

shine on sweet zenith. blaze brother sun, and scorch us into new realms. graham approaches... the wind blows backwards and the trees shudder as something wicked this way comes. drunk posts appear with increasing frequency. rehashed arguments give way to meta-threads, beer discussion, birthday shoutouts, personalized baseball cards. no one cares that we have are mysteriously winning games. could this be the last days?

my vacation starts next week. i bought 6 fifths of alcohol at the store yesterday. after last night Matthew knows how to make a wicked margarita. (BTW, you left your sausage at my girlfriend's house... something i never thought i'd have to say.) i have a "welcome home" present for mighty Grey-Ham, slayer of the Persian horde. can anyone speak to the quality of Aviator Gin?

AND, it's a hundred fecking degrees outside.

i think all signs point toward an epic all-drunk thread sometime around the middle of next week. can we pick a particular game thread to ambush? maybe on the opponent's blog? anyone else feel the need to unleash the dogs of mildly self-destructive drunk-trolling? i guess i can do it by myself if necessary, but that would just be a sad case of a johnny-come-lately trying on the asshat of intox-o-posting. when you're hocking a loogie, why not shoot for the stars?

"also, fuck you and the shift key you rode in on." - e.e. cummings

Poll

Best midweek night for drunken blogging?

Tuesday natch, I'm busy managing Obama's campaign the other nights

6 votes

Wednesday of course, I'm too busy with my fantasy team on the other nights

9 votes

Thursday I'm afraid, I have Bible study on the other nights

9 votes

24 votes | Poll has closed

Shocking Realization

johnbai — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:47:59 -0000

Reading through the Baker-bashing post below... and hearing the various reasons why many people oppose trading Ichiro... I was shocked to discover that so many people expect us to compete for the division crown next year. Honestly, I hadn't even considered that possibility. I understand that 2009 is impossible to predict, since we don't even know who the GM will be, let alone who he/she will sign or trade. But please vote below so that I can figure out if there's any LOL consensus on an overall optimism or pessimism going forward.

Poll

In 2009, the Mariners will...

Make all the right off-season moves and win the AL West, finally putting an end to Angles hegemony.

11 votes

Finish a close second, and maybe vie for the wild card.

13 votes

Finish somewhere in the middle of the pack.

63 votes

Struggle to avoid the basement, appearing helpless and hopeless.

40 votes

127 votes | Poll has closed

Final Thoughts on Moneyball and our next GM

johnbai — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 01:28:05 -0000

Author Michael Lewis's worship of the Oakland A's breaks down for me when I look at the bigger picture of the importance of games in my life. He sees himself documenting the triumph of reason over stupidity... as if baseball were a reenactment of the Scopes Monkey Trial. Science and reason are unassailable heroes. Lewis salivates at the prospect of Harvard grads with laptops and databases figuring out a smarter way to run a ballclub. He chortles at clubs who were repeatedly fleeced by Billy Beane's famous trades. He points out the genius of Beane's strategy at every point.

But it's more like corporate ethics masquerading as science. To be ruthlessly efficient and to exploit market inefficiencies is a pathway to winning ballgames. It's the same path that Wallmart founders used to build an economic juggernaut. There is a science to it, but it isn't a paragon of "the scientific approach." And it may have unforeseen consequences.

The broader impact is that it rips away the facade of baseball. The game of baseball... a child's game played by adults and paid for by fans that want entertainment... isn't supposed to be all about maximizing your market leverage. It's about hometown heroes. It's about clutch performances. It's about which player you want to be when you grow up.

The problem is that no one ever wanted to be Scott Hatteberg.

And I dug up some actual data to make this case:

In the seven seasons from 2000-2006, the A's had a monster run... They sustained a near .600 winning percentage despite their woeful payroll. They made the playoffs five of those seven seasons. During that time span the league-average yearly attendance was around 2.3 million fans. Oakland averaged a meager 2.1 over that time frame. Their season total attendance eclipsed league average exactly once... in 2003, the year after they had won 103 games. In 2006, a year when they won 93 games and the division title, they actually drew less than 2 million fans... one of the worst showings in the league. Despite their amazing success in the win column, fans really didn't care. They didn't show up because watching guys take walks and go from base to base rather than risk an exciting stolen base attempt is boring. As much as I have tried to like this team (I always root for underdogs) I was never able to latch on to any of their players either.

Compare this to 1988-92, when Tony LaRussa's club made it to the post-season four out of five years. Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire powered a high-octane offense. Rickey Henderson stole every base in sight. These were a rip-snorting, steroids-injecting bunch of bashers. The average attendance per year for that half-decade was significantly above league-average (about 2.6 million fans per season compared to a league-average of 2.2 million.) People just 12 years earlier had shown up in droves for this same team.

Billy Beane decided somewhere along the line that winning ballgames was the most important goal... Win and everybody's happy. The Mariner's front office conversely seems to have decided that making money is the bottom line, so they worry more about drawing 3+ million fans every year than they do about winning. They put more thought into their funny advertising campaign each year than they do the annual draft.

Personally, I find that the real bottom line... the line that everyone keeps smudging... is entertainment. Professional baseball shouldn't exist. It's ridiculous that we pay grown men tens of millions of dollars a year to play a kid's game. It's ridiculous that I follow it as closely as I do. The only reason I pay any attention to this game is for its entertainment value.

Beane and company are changing the way the game is played behind the scenes (constantly evaluating the market to see what skills are undervalued.) They're also changing the way the game is played on the field (fewer stolen base attempts, more emphasis on taking pitches.) These changes have resulted in more wins. More wins means that other teams are adapting to this approach. Already on-base percentage has become overvalued and the A's have had to start searching for other interesting stats. It's an ever evolving process of trying to outshark the next guy.

The problem is that walks are a loophole. They are a penalty invented by the framers of the game. They aren't what baseball is supposed to be about. The core of the game, which is what made America's pasttime popular in the first place, is a pitcher trying to throw the ball past a guy doing his best to knock the stuffing out of it. Walks are boring. They slow down an already glacial game even more. And yet, Beane's success is changing the landscape of baseball so that more and more players are trained to look for walks. This is, as reflected in the attendance data cited above, BAD FOR BASEBALL... because baseball is still about entertainment and walks can never replace the core dynamic of the game.

Hopefully this has just been a market-correction blip, rather than a permanent change. Otherwise baseball is in trouble. Someone upset the applecart and now Bud Selig and the rest of the game's leadership is going to be hardpressed to fix it. Michael Lewis sees this as something to celebrate... a new kind of enlightenment. I don't think I can agree. These changes are going to force changes in the rules of the game to keep it interesting... like when a video game requires an update patch because enterprising players found a way to circumvent the rules and gain an unintended advantage.

MoneyBall Draft Revisited

johnbai — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 08:31:54 -0000

Reading MoneyBall for the first time this weekend. (finally)

The early chapters are all about the 2002 draft, the first year Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta took over from the scouts. Billy had 5 first rounders to play with… and was trying to make them pay off quickly without picking guys who would break the bank with signing bonuses. Much is made of picking Alabama prospect Jeremy Brown, a fat catcher with an insane OBP, in the first round of the 2002 draft. Scouts didn't even have him in the top 25 ranked catchers!

I decided to look up his career stats to see how that panned out for Beane and company... he had a cup of coffee with Oakland, but retired in February of 2008, after putting up an .833 OPS in his 2007 season at AAA Sacramento. He did show good plate discipline throughout his minor league career, with an overall OPS of .809.

Looking over the rest of the Oakland draft:

Beane's biggest prize was Nick Swisher (with the 15th pick.) Swisher enjoyed 2 productive seasons with Oakland before being shipped off for Ryan Sweeney and two minor league pitchers with high k/9 rates.

Another pick (straight out of Paul DePodesta’s laptop) was Mark Teahen and his .493 OBP from St. Mary’s. He had a very good year in AA ball for Oakland before being shipped to KC. His rookie year with the Royals made him a household name… .874 OPS. Now, at 26, he’s tailed off each year and is posting a measly .706 OPS in 2008.

The last bat taken in the opening round was John McCurdy, who absolutely destroyed the competition with a 1.324 OPS at U Maryland… but posted a .667 OPS in the minors, never making it past AA, and retiring after 2006.

The first round also netted Beane three pitchers: Joe "Cupcakes" Blanton (who got rushed to the show and has been a solid middle of the rotation guy for the A’s over the last 3 years,) and two other college pitchers. Ben Fritz looks like he couldn’t succeed beyond AA, though he’s still trying in the Detroit organization now. Meanwhile Steve Obenchain (despite his awesome name) couldn’t do squat above A ball. He spent 2007 in the Independent League. Fun fact: Cupcakes threw 230 innings last year.

2nd Round pick Steven Stanley, a 5’7" outfielder, topped out with a half-season of AAA ball.

The 3rd rounder was William Murphy, a pitcher who impressed, and was part of the deal that landed Mark Redman, who was later flipped for Jason Kendall.

4th Rounder John Baker was a catcher that played the last few years at AAA, he was traded to the Marlins for Jason Stokes, a younger power hitting first baseman (who was picked in the 2nd round of the same 2002 draft.)

Mark Kiger, slap-hitting infielder, kicked around the minors, and now (at 28) is playing for the M’s AA farm team.

Brant Colamarino was touted by DePodesta as "possibly the best hitter in the draft", and he may have been but the #218 pick never managed to hit above the AA level.

6th rounder Brian Stavisky put up some pretty numbers… until he hit AAA where he was overmatched or hurt. LAA picked him up however, and he’s still playing in 2008.

Then there’s a whole lotta names I’m not going to look up… until, sitting way down at the bottom, I see the Athletics’ 40th round pick: Jonathon Papelbon. He elected not to sign, and was then picked in the 4th round by the Bosox the next year. I’m sure Billy Beane threw a chair at a wall when Paps went on to "smear" the rest of the league. (You see what I did there? Haha!)

So Beane and DePodesta actually pulled off an upset in getting good value out of 3/5ths of their first rounders... especially when you consider that they weren't going to touch anyone (outside of Swisher) with a huge signing bonus demand.

---

Looking at the Mariners’ 2002 draft… hmm… #1 John Mayberry is a good player… good enough that the Texas rangers drafted him 3 years later with the 19th pick overall (he elected to attend Stanford.) Mayberry, now 24 is putting up a .905 OPS in AAA.

Our 2nd rounder, Josh Womack spent the first 5 years of his career struggling at A ball.

We also failed to sign our #3 pick, who was redrafted by the Giants the following year.

Our #4 completely sucked and never made it out of A ball.

We tried to draft Travis Buck in the 23rd round. Another signing failure.

But the 39th round saw us pick Bryan LaHair, who’s going into this 3rd year of .800-ish OPS at AAA. He’s only 25.

---

Look at the whole draft here: http://www.thebaseballcube.com/draft/2002/Round-1-1.shtml

The first two rounds contain an awful lot of talent… much of it just now emerging.

You can really see the impact of drafting college guys… most teams are just reaping the benefits of the 2002 draft, while Oakland has already (in Swisher’s case) gotten two good years out of him and dumped him for more prospects.

Fun fact: Micah Owings was actually the second Micah in the draft… behind Micah Schilling.