Baseball Stat Quirk
A new baseball season is upon us. So are the hockey playoffs. So is warm weather. That likely means I’ll be posting again in a semi-regular fashion.
To start out the season, comes something I noticed in the box score from the Blue Jays final spring training game today.
Henderson Alvarez, the Blue Jays gem in the mud from last season, and continuing his quality showings through this spring (until today) pitched 4 innings giving up 8 hits and a walk with no strikeouts, yielding a 2.25 WHIP which is by no measure impressive. That said, he still scored a win (again, these are all Spring Training stats which count for exactly as much as my RBI total from my slo-pitch league last year).
The quirk part is this: the Jays next response for dominant young starter, Kyle Drabek pitched an also less than fantastic outing for 5 innings, and picked up the save. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a 5 inning save. By normal scoring rules a starter needs 5 IP to pick up the win. Its obviously a spring training thing, but what is the justification here? The games are played in Florida and Arizona, the retirement capitals of America. Maybe they feel official scoring should be ended at the 5th inning (before afternoon tea/nap)?
Luckily, the real season starts in earnest on Thursday. And the ‘real’ season in hockey isn’t far behind starting shortly after the playoff teams are decided on Saturday night. There will be yet another hockey playoff pool to follow, so I encourage you to watch the pool page for updates on how to participate!
11.28.11Best Laid Plans of Gift Giving
After an excessive amount of time spent by many people stripping wallpaper in an apartment so that the landlord would paint it, Carolyn has moved into a new place. Given some of the struggles experienced the weekend before in moving some other friends into their new home, all the large items fit in all doorways with relative ease, and most boxes were unpacked with their contents in a proper home by the end of the day Saturday.
After all that, I was left to find a suitable housewarming gift. Given that Carolyn had been accumulating housewares and appliances for years on good sales, there wasn’t much need to fill. However, she had been searching for months to find a universal remote for her old no-name brand, tube TV, to no avail. Despite the hundreds of manufactures seemingly listed on universal remote packaging, hers was never one.
I, being somewhat of a technophile, decided pretty quickly that I would get her a new LED TV to replace the bronze-age tube she had as a combination housewarming-x-mas and birthday (its a big one coming up, somewhere between 29 and 31) gift. So, after relentlessly browsing Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales and finding no particularly good deals that also fell within a modest price range, while still having decent quality, I settled on paying almost full price for a slightly small, but reliable TV.
Then I hatched my plan to give her just the remote at first, under the premise that I had programmed it as her housewarming gift. And obviously, the remote would not work, and I would return to my car wherein I had stored the ‘instructions’ to program the remote, and return with the new TV. Well wouldn’t you know, popping in two batteries into the different branded TV remote, with no programming whatsoever, the damned thing not only powered on the TV, but had ALL the other function buttons work as well. That doesn’t even happen when you find a compatible universal remote and go through all 10 codes they give you to fit various models. Out of the box, the damned thing thwarted my well laid gift giving plan.
For the price of the damned eco-fee (which annoys me to no end, especially when waste collection still refuses to pick up TVs and monitors curbside) I could have had a universal remote, and come up with various other gags for x-mas and the birthday. That said, look who doesn’t have any ‘important’ girlfriend gift shopping to do until next X-Mas!
11.21.11Real Life Zombie
60 hours a week at work for the past month commuting to just north of Toronto every day. Finally some time to relax and reflect.
Things I like about Vaughan, Ontario:
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06.19.11Tow the Line
Routine. I’m kind of stuck in a stagnant one right now, albeit busy. Work is work, feeling more like it on some days than others. After work is ball.
A portion of the rec baseball team I’ve played with the past two summers decided it was time to move to a new league with more games for less relative money. I was one of the main supporters of the change in leagues, and for the most part its been a good decision. The fields are kept in better condition, and the umpiring is far more consistent. On the down side, we’re not quite as competitive in the new league, with some uncharacteristically bad play defensively hurting the team the most. Add to that the fact that we had one of the rainiest springs on record, with something like 8 games in a row cancelled between my work and rec teams. Now we’re left to make up those games, leading to a schedule where I’m playing 4 to 5 days a week.
When I was a kid, I played a summer of house league hardball in which there was a focus on learning to pitch. Unfortunately, the coaches at the time didn’t notice what I realized later was a curveball motion to my throwing, turning my hand and forearm over top of the ball in my throw. That motion was actually also present in my ‘normal’ throwing as well, and after that summer I started having soreness in my arm whenever I got too enthusiastic about making strong throws. I’ve learned to be good about warming up slowly and protecting the arm, and for 2 seasons had minimal issues. But this season with playing almost nightly, and a bunch of early games shortening available warm up time, my arm has been in pain by the 4th inning in almost every game.
This weekend was a 4 day break in the schedule, and hopefully with a bit of rest and a good routine I can get to playing without needing to ice my arm down for an hour after every game. Hopefully its enough to not make baseball seem like a stagnant routine, which it shouldn’t be at all.
05.4.11John McDonald Write-In Campaign #voteJohnnyMac
photo: Mike Cassese, Reuters
I know I’m not the only baseball fan that wants to see defense get rewarded more with players going to the All-Star game. And I’m sure I’m not the only Jays fan that wants to see Johnny Mac recognized. Since we can’t vote on Gold Glove awards for util players, lets do our best to get the Prime Minister of Defense to the all star game. Or at least an honourable mention in the write in section.
The official MLB ballot page is HERE. Remember, the proper spelling is John McDonald. I think the best bet is to write him in at Shortstop as 2B is a bit deeper in the AL with Cano, Kinsler, and Pedroia likely to be the front runners.
John McDonald Shortstop write-in for the Blue Jays! Please spread the word to any Blue Jays fans you know!
#voteJohnnyMac
05.3.11Gripe of the Week : Two
The easy suspect here would be a voting system in which a party garnering 40% of popular vote is declared a hands down majority with 54% of the control in government.
But instead, I’ll go with unlisted numbers and call display. It should not be possible for any caller, let alone a marketing/survey based 800 or 888 number to hide their identity from call display systems. If you are calling my house, and I have call display, the identity registered to the source number should be shown without fail. Its akin to showing up at my door wearing a mask and expecting me to answer on any day that’s not October 31st.
Not that the ‘Do Not Call’ list has been particularly effective to this point, but it would at least provide a point to begin quickly identifying solicitations vs. charities, and reporting more of them. The simplest solution is to not answer any calls from 800 and 888 ‘area’ codes of course, but it doesn’t cut down the disruption of the phone ringing.
Maybe I’m most bitter because I have been waiting for weeks for a call to go pick up my bike from repair after some apparently difficult to obtain parts are taking forever to make their way to the shop.
Maybe this would have been a more fired up, angry rant if I had gone with the ‘easy’ suspect.
04.25.11Gripe of the Week: One
There is apparently something about the kind of people that buy Mercedes’ that makes them terrible drivers, particularly when it comes to highways. Why does one go out and buy a high end performance automobile and fear its gas pedal. What makes these people unable to use their mirrors or indicators? I’ve noted a lot of Audi drivers in recent weeks that are nearly as bad, and I just don’t understand it.
Of the times I see other drivers cut off, or I am cut off myself its some clueless shmuck in a Benz SUV probably 3 out of 10 times. Never mind the ones sitting inattentive at green lights or stale yellows.
And then there is the expressway driving. Twice in the past week I have had to try to merge behind a Mercedes driver who apparently was unaware of the part of their dollars that went to 400+ horsepower in their vehicle, instead choosing to try to merge with 100 km/h traffic at 60 km/h. This of course leaves me with my meager 158 HP (out of the factory) to also try to accelerate to highway speed and merge in very little space.
Tonight, it was an Audi driver who, after finally finding the accelerator and getting into the flow of traffic (itself moving slower than the posted limit) decided to jump on the brakes with no other traffic in any lane within 300 m in front.
There needs to be some kind of provision in the highway traffic act such that people with nice cars that drive them like idiots have them impounded and swapped with a 5 year old base model economy car indefinitely.
04.11.11Mill Street
This weekend’s undergrad drinking buddy reunion in Toronto was a success. Me staying awake and keeping pace with the party: not as successful. Work kicked my ass in the week leading up to Saturday’s shenanigans, but in the past that would have been no excuse. The simple truth is, I really am getting too old.
That said, I popped my TTC cherry. 27 year old subway virgin, also sad. It wasn’t nearly as smelly as I was led to believe. In fact, I have ridden in more rank apartment elevators, so, good on you Toronto. I still don’t think I could handle life in Toronto.
The traffic on a Saturday with no sporting events, or major festivals in town was still a log jam. Everything seems to be 10-15% more expensive than around here (though the delicious “Drunken Buttered Chicken” I had at Mill St. was priced fairly enough). And there are just too many people. I’m not an agoraphobe or anything, but I can definitely only tolerate crowds in small doses. Sporting events, concerts; its expected. Eating a meal, commuting; no thanks. 
But, the Jays are playing competitive ball, and there should be some non-premium priced games coming up, so I’m sure I’ll be back soon to make donations to Green P, and give support to my favourite street meat vendor at Front St. and Blue Jays Way. Plus, a Steamwhistle tour still beckons. The Go Train to Kitchener can’t come fast enough.
04.7.11Mixed Up Muddled Up Shook Up World
A long time buddy of mine may be joining my group at work later in the year. I got a message from him today asking if I had had to fill out a form for a background check when I was hired. I really can’t recall whether I did or not, as there were so many other millions of forms and registrations for this plan and that account (never mind my ongoing hassle with paying health premiums for the year, but apparently not being covered by them), but I suspect I must have.
In any case, its reassuring and disheartening at the same time, that the company I work for apparently follows a more thorough vetting process than the Conservative Party of Canada who, in less than a month, might actually bully enough people into thinking they are deserving of a majority government. Scary.
04.4.11Got a Bit Ranty Back There…
Beer, Blue Jays losses and bitterness will do that.
I’m in a much more positive frame of mind since the ‘mercury’ touched 289K today. On top of that I picked up some new old CDs from the Beat Goes On (Radiohead – Amnesiac and Damien Rice – B-Sides), and have more albums on the way next week from Amazon (NIN – Pretty Hate Machine (remastered), Foo Fighters – Wasting Light, and Queens of the Stone Age’s self titled). So there’s that.
And, on Saturday, plans are in the works for a bit of an undergrad Earth Sci drinking buddy reunion in Toronto, with possible plans that would see me finally make it to the Steamwhistle tour(!). It would provide me a nice setting to really play with my new camera body too, however, given past experiences it might not end so well for the camera. Its probably for the best if I stick with my tried, tested and true (enough) old camera, risking far less financial upset should a beer related incident occur.
The impending warm weather will give me plenty of opportunity to really start getting out anyway before the summer travel, new baby (no worries, not mine) and wedding seasons hit.
Bring on the patios!
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