My God

Sleepless for 266 hours. That's 11+ days.

The NL West's Old Minor Leaguers

I move to the National League West to present the third installment of my review of minor leaguers who are 35 years old or older and haven't played in the major leagues yet this year.

• Kelly Stinnett leads the list off with the Dodgers in Triple-A where he isn't hitting a lick. His .572 OPS matches Los Angeles's major league catching backup, Mike Leiberthal -- also in the 35+ age range.
• No one fits the bill in the Diamondback or Padre organizations. But the Giants have a first baseman named, Scott McClain whose 35 and is hitting at a .754 OPS. Ricardo Rincon (37) is McClain's teammate in Triple-A and has thrown 5.1 innings to this point.
• Colorado knocks in with Frank Menechino whose grabbed nine at-bats in Triple-A. Mike DeJean (remember him?) is in Double-A and has struggled mightly in just 4.1 innings.

Which one of these five is not like the others? Scott McClain of course. The other four have enjoyed years and years of playing time at the major league level and are in these organizations minor league systems as veteran ready talent ready to fill-in for an injured major leaguer.

McClain, on the other hand, was originally drafted in the 22nd round by the Orioles in 1990. He first made it to the show in 1998 with Tampa Bay in their inaugural season. He had 23 plate appearances that year and would see his next and last 16 major league plate appearances in 2005 with Cubs. The cumulative returns of those two stints was a .378 OPS. In between those major league stints McClain played in Japan for four seasons. In his best season there he produced a .905 OPS with 39 homers.

In McClain's last two seasons at the Triple-A level he's hit 30 and 28 homers in the Cub and Athletic organizations respectively. Off to a solid start this season, there's no doubt that he's always been able to hit at the Triple-A level.

McClain in 2005 with the Triple-A Cubs

Always Chirpin'

As we stand on the precipice of Bobby Cox's all-time ejection record we're coming across a bunch of articles lauding him for his managerial skill and the respect he enjoys from those who play for him. Not to mention his respect for them.

Beyond the Stampeding Bulls

The recent run-up of the S&P 500 may actually be indicative of a rising inflationary tide for Americans. Peter Cohan explains.

Lincecum After Five Starts

Hard-throwing San Francisco Giant rookie, Tim Lincecum, made five starts during the month of May and has turned in the following statistical line: 33.1 IP, 22H, 11B and 33K's. Those numbers have led to an impressive 127 ERA+ to start the 23-year old's career.

Lincecum's first career start came on ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball versus the Phillies on May 6th. He only lasted into the 5th inning and allowed five runs in his no decision effort. Lincecum's next four starts, though, have been very encouraging. In all four he's pitched seven complete innings and has walked only 1,1,1 and 3 batters in the starts. He dominated the Houston Astros lineup (albeit a bottom tier offensive force this season) in the span of six days by putting up a 15IP, 7H, 2BB and 14K line. Astro manager Phil Garner batted the same starting eight against him in each game with exception of Mark Loretta playing in the second game in place of Craig Biggio.

San Francisco is getting a very good cumulative effort from their current crop of five starters. Without Lincecum this rotation would be doing some nice damage but with the 5'11'' righty manning the 5th spot in the rotation the Giants could prove to be sleepers in the NL West this season.

Ron Paul's Market Odds Getting Better

Thanks to Lew for being on top of this development.

To The Point

As always Butler gets right to the point regarding his topic of the day. This time it's Fred Thompson.

Fred Thompson would be a perfect candidate...He is, after all, a professional actor, and would be quite adept at learning the lines others have scripted for him.

Shaffer goes on to surmise that politics is really nothing more than imagery. When you really sit back and think about it he's right. Politics is not just about imagery half the time but I'd say about 99% of the time. All one has to do is read this concerning the $59.1 trillion in liabilities this country's taxpayers owe well into the future. That's over $500,000 per household.

The fact that hardly any politicians talk seriously about the issue and many of them actually call for increases in entitlements cleary shows that imagery rules the day as a means of getting votes.

The First Bond Spoof?

Ross Ruediger's take on the oft ridiculed Moonraker .

Albert Broccoli seemingly decided to do some shameless ripping of his own with Moonraker (including the structure of Spy's script). The industry was changing. Star Wars and Close Encounters were all the rage and The Empire Strikes Back was only a year away. Merchandising had become a major component of blockbuster filmmaking. Although the end of Spy announced “James Bond will return in For Your Eyes Only”, a decision was made to put Eyes on the backburner and have 007 engage in a star war of his own. Moonraker’s budget was astronomical for 1979 --
$34,000,000! By comparison Spy was only $14,000,000, Empire’s was a paltry $18,000,000 and in ‘83 Jedi was still only $32,000,000.

Liberty on the Radio

Ron Paul speaks with Dennis Miller.

Gaming

By the way, I'm addicted to this free internet game. Quite simply it's a game where the defensive placement of one's weapons is of paramount importance. I am currently stuck on the 'medium' level and have actually regressed in my march to complete this level over the past 24 hours. This type of regression in skill reminds me of my golf game. If I haven't picked up a club in 8 months I'll invariably play better then if I play a round after a month of weekly play.

A Candidacy Accelerates

Rebmann on Paul and the push to the White House.

Paul will join Dennis Miller on his radio show tomorrow morning at 10:15am.

And Ron catapults into second place in YouTube viewership

Kenny's Drafting Philosphy

The White Sox, led by GM Kenny Williams, have a few very important physical and mental traits they look to get out of their draft picks every June. On the mental side there's this,

The player needs to exhibit a hard-nosed sort of attitude with the ability to handle the pressure brought about by playing in Chicago.

And on the physical side,

A pitcher, for example, also must possess a little sink or movement within his repertoire in order to combat the dog days of summer at U.S. Cellular Field, when the ball really carries in one of baseball's more hitter-friendly venues. Straight fastballs, at any velocity, just don't work.

The White Sox have the 25th pick in this year's draft.

A Reading List

Younghusband's reading list at Coming Anarchy includes Brave New World by John Robb.

Cardinal Gambits & Walks

A smart article from Pip at Fungoes.

Atlanta Suffers First Major Hiccup of '07

The Phillies completed a three game weekend sweep of the Atlanta Braves today. Ryan Howard, fresh off the DL for the weekend series, has declared himself 100% and proved it today with two 2-run homers.

For much of this year observers have been wondering whether Howard's slow start was going to continue and make last year's monster year at the plant an aberration. Perception tied into much of the feeling on Howard's start due to the rough April the Phillies as a whole had. While Howard's OPS+ versus other NL first basemen has been slightly below average (95+) his start hasn't been any worse than Gary Sheffield's versus other right fielder's (60+). Sheffield is given the benefit of the doubt that Howard isn't due to a 20-year track record in the majors.

Recently Atlanta has been reeling a little bit. The loss of reliever Mike Gonzalez for the season and this weekend's sweep at the hands of a division rival have Atlanta going through it's first extended tough spell of the season. With a 13-13 record in May the Braves look to close the month out strongly against the Brewers in Milwaukee starting tomorrow.

Great Stuff on Fielding

I caught part two of John Walsh's defensive measurement series for infielders today. Today's article and part one seem to me like ground-breaking stuff in regards to measuring how well infielders are performing defensively. The graphs he has created uniquely blend quantitative information with a physical plane that resembles the visual picture one would have looking at the infield from behind home plate. From this vantage point a person can quickly get a feel for where a particular team's defense is weak, strong or average. They'll be able to tell if their shortstops are good at going to their left or if their third baseman can't grab balls down the line.

One of the more interesting finds in the study follows.

This graph, like its title indicates, exhibits where ground balls are hit. The horizontal axis can be read from left to right like one would look from 3rd base over to 1st base on a baseball diamond. Note the dearth of ground balls up the middle between angles 40 and 60. As Walsh points out,

I don't know about you, but I find this plot fascinating (I need to get out more, I know). First of all, I wasn't expecting this shape to the ground ball distribution. I expected to see two humps around the shortstop and second base positions, but I am surprised to see that double-peak structure on the left side.

I imagine that the more statistically inclined major league teams have had proprietary defensive measurement/evaluation systems like this dating back to the early part of this century or maybe even back into the 90's.

Walsh's study appears to be the start of a series of articles where he will continue to add tweaks to his system based on different playing variables that help to determine where ground balls on the infield ultimately go and how they are handled by major league infielders.

shawn bentler...92.3 krock?

Fun news via Darren Rowse at ProBlogger. Google has launched a service, Hot Trends, that captures the most searched for items each day in the Google browser.

Among the top 100 on this day are:

• ship s lowest deck
• french birth certificate
• brian leetch
• lyrics to this is my now

Brian Leetch! I'm assuming the Ranger hockey player from the 90's? It's an eclectic list to say the least. It would be great to see numbers associated with these searches. How many individual searches separate number 1 from number 2? Or number 50 from 100? How about number 100 to 10,000? I have a sneaking suspicion that the list may not mean much in the sense that 100th search on Hot Trends may not have that much more in the way of individual searches then the 1,000th or 10,000th ranked search.

How long until someone games Hot Trends so they can spam the Google browser with searches for an item on their own blog or website?

And tom selleck knocks in at number 90!

Bet Ron Paul?

From Lew Rockwell's Blog comes word that the betting line on Ron Paul to win the presidency has changed a bit in the last day.

Bert Blyleven's Path Through Arlington

Jamey Newberg recounts how Blyleven came to Texas in 1976 and just as quickly moved onto Pittsburg after the 1977 season.

Blyleven’s Rangers career got off to an impressive start. On June 5, 1976, in front of a massive Arlington crowd of nearly 33,000 (more than double the club’s average home attendance), Blyleven and Tigers rookie Mark Fidrych each went the distance in a 3-2 Detroit win, with Blyleven fanning 10 hitters and taking the loss when a Howell error led to the eventual game-winner – in the 11th inning. The young righthander’s Texas debut was, at the time, the second-longest outing in franchise history.

Doesn't This Happen Every Night?

Michael McCann on the possibility that NBA teams sometimes tank their seasons to get higher draft picks.

And there's this tidbit on M.L. Carr's '96-'97 Celtic team:

Carr suggested his last season as Celtics coach in 1996-97, during which the team suffered through a franchise-worst 15-67 record, was a tank job designed to deliver the incoming coach (Rick Pitino) with strong draft position. "That was part of the orchestration," said Carr, an obvious indictment of the entire organization and its part in encouraging a losing season in an attempt to get the first overall pick (Tim Duncan). As it turned out, the Celtics lost out on Duncan and settled for the third and sixth overall picks. From: Mark Cofman, Celtics Dismiss Outspoken Carr, Boston Herald, Feb. 1, 2001, at 84.

Fox's Facade Cracks a Little

Radley Balko supports Ron Paul in the Paul-Giuliani conflagration that's raged over the past two weeks.

On another note I was a bit surprised to hear that Judge Napolitano still works for Fox News. He co-hosts a radio show that had Dr. Paul on as a guest a couple of days ago. Napolitano's libertarian streak sticks out like a sore thumb at Fox's neo-con newsroom culture.

Pavano on the Shelf

My, oh my. What a tortured career this guy has had.

Pavano's age 28 season with Florida in 2004 is the one year he put it altogether both health and performance-wise. He went 18-8 with a 137 ERA+ in 222.1 innings that year.

The Dollar Loses Another Friend

Due to the dollar pushing inflation higher in Kuwait, that country has dropped the dollar in favor of a basket of currencies to peg against the dinar.

Old Minor Leaguers: National League Central

On Sunday I used Baseball-Reference's organizational depth tables to highlight those players age 35 or older that were plying their trade exclusively in the minor leagues so far this season. The NL East produced six such players. Now let's look at the National League Central.

• Division leading Milwaukee has 35-year old Jose Macias working a variety of positions in Triple-A this season. Macias has played rightfield (11 games), third base (7), centerfield (6), second base (3) and leftfield (2).
• The Astros also have two players who fit the criteria. The first is Travis Driskill, age 35, who is being used exclusively as a reliever this year in Triple-A. Driskill has thrown in 11 games and posted a .592 OPS against. Scott Sauerbeck is the other and he's been used as a reliever nine games this year. Sauerbeck is 35 also.
• Chicago has Cory Bailey hurling down in Triple-A this season as a reliever. The 36-year old currently has a 3.31 ERA in 16.2 innings.
• For Pittsburgh, Jose Hernandez is getting owned by Triple-A pitchers this year. A .571 OPS and 25 strikeouts in 83 at-bats is not helping the 37-year old in his quest to return to the majors.

Cincinnati and St. Louis do not have anyone on the above list so the NL East tallies five old-timers playing in the minors this year.

Three of the above were legitimate major leaguers during earlier times in their careers. Macias has played in 659 games, Hernandez 1,587 and Sauerbeck has pitched in 471 games. The latter two have had numerous solid full seasons in the majors. Hernandez has cranked 168 lifetime major league homers and has made one all-star team. Sauerback didn't make the majors until the age of 27 but once he made it he stuck until this season. He sports a lifetime 116 ERA+.

Travis Driskill and Cory Bailey have seen less time then the others on the list but their major league service has not simply been cups-of-coffee. In Bailey's eight major league seasons he saw significant action in three of them and performed very well as a reliever in all three instances. He piled up ERA+'s of 142, 141 and 125 in those seaons. He last pitched in the majors in 2002 with Kansas City. Driskill threw in four consecutive major league seasons from 2002-2005. He saw his inning pitched totals dwindle each year over that period from 132.2 in his rookie year as a 30-year old to one inning in 2005.

Pinto on the Reds

Pinto examines why the Reds high 'Beane Count' isn't helping them out in the standings. Narron may be the first managerial casualty this year since Manuel has righted the ship in Philadelphia.

State of the Braves Report

Via Charlie D at Rowland's Office.

Ron Paul on NPR

Via Lew Rockwell's Blog comes a link to a National Public Radio report on Ron Paul.

Old Minor Leaguers - National League East

I've found that using the organizational depth tables from Baseball-Reference is the best and quickest way to stay current on the pecking order for each position in all the major league team's systems.

I delved into the National League East ball clubs tonight to see if there were any older ball players who were plying their trade in Triple-A and waiting for a call-up to the majors that may never happen for them again. Here's a list of the 35+ year old players who so far are playing out 2007 exclusively in the minors.

• Right off the bat we see the Mets with two catchers that fit the above criteria: Sandy Alomar Jr. (.717 OPS) and Mike DeFelice (.818). Alomar comes in at 41 and DiFelice is a surprising 38.


• For Philadelphia Pedro Swan, the 36-year old right fielder, is currently hitting at a .731 clip with most of his AB's coming in Double-A. He was just recently moved up to Triple-A.


• Washington represents with Manny Alexander at shortstop with a robust .483. He's 36. Robin Jennings (35) has split time between Double and Triple-A this season and has combined to produce at a .746 clip. Onto Nat pitchers and Chris Michalak whose started 5 games to the tune of a 3.79 clip at the age of 36.

Those are six players for the whole NL East. Robin Jennings and Pedro Swan have seen the least major league action in their careers out of the six. Jennings last played in the majors in 2001 when he played for three teams to the tune of a 88 OPS+. Outfielder Pedro Swan experienced cups of coffee in '00, '02 and '03. His lifetime OPS+ in 25 games is...28.

Chris Michalak's 191.1 career major league innings pitched are spread out through four major league campaigns - '98, '01, '02 and '06. He's put up a respectable 101 ERA+.

Alomar Jr. (1,369 ML games), Alexander (594) and DiFelice (527) have all had significant stretches of time in major league uniforms.

Barring injuries at the major league level who's the most likely to hit the majors first? I'll go with the left-handed pitcher whose parent ball club is severely short on hurlers. The Nationals have enjoyed solid pitching from their front line relievers but their middle relief and three of their five starters have pitched atrociously this spring. It just so happens that Michalak's served as a journeyman starter/middle reliever for the four teams he's played for in the majors during his career.

The O's Need a Bopper

But I don't think they're going to get it soon even with a Chris Vinyard in their farm system. JM Barten writes a quick profile on the 21-year old big boy who's slugging to the tune of .548 in the Sally league this season. While Barten doesn't fall all over himself regarding the light-years away from the majors Vinyard, I find the following statement by him a stretch.

Vinyard isn't an elite prospect at this point, but there are plenty of good indicators going on here so he's more than worth the effort of checking back in with him every so often. The Orioles need some thunder in their lineup at the 1B and DH spots and there isn't a whole lot in the system that's going to hold him back. If he keeps on hitting, he'll advance quickly.

No doubt the O's need that thunder but to project that Vinyard may get to the Orioles major league club in time to help them with their power defecit any time soon is wishful hinking. Even if he does advance quickly what are the chances that the player that Barten describes is going to be a difference-maker in the major leagues at 22, 23 or even 24?

The Second One Is Tops For Me

Odienator at Edwin Copeland on Film reviews the Sergio Leone Trilogy 40 years after it's American release. A few highlights,

Leone also loves faces, but his compositions are far from glamorous. These men look like they've been outside a long time, and they smell as funky as you can imagine. Leone's close-ups fill the screen with the visage of his male characters in various states of decay, after beatings by human beings, tooth decay and the Sun. The rare female character – always gorgeous – is rarely allowed that type of intimacy.

also,

Morricone's spaghetti Western scores rank as some of the most memorable in film history. Full of strange instruments, whips, gunfire and voices grunting out unintelligible lyrics, Morricone's scores burst out of the speakers with an
originality that's impossible to ignore. They also make for great road trip music, especially when you're driving down dark highways at night.

and from the comments,

The scene in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly where Wallach is consumed with greed and runs around and around the grave markers is filmmaking at it's greatest; a complete fusion of music, sound, acting, editing, and camerawork. Everytime I see it, I hope that the sequence is as long as I remember it, and everytime it is, thank heavens.

I'm still warming to the 3rd movie in the series, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. A very enjoyable viewing no doubt but for me, For a Few Dollars More, is my favorite of the three. The character of El Indio, played by Gian Maria Volonte, is brilliantly portrayed. You hate the sociopathic son of a bitch by the time the 15 minute mark of the movie rolls around. And the final scene when Eastwood and van Cleef's characters exchange their pleasantries after El Indio's killing is my favorite part of the entire trilogy. "Any trouble, boy?!"

Pinella Letting Emotions Get the Better of Him

In commenting about the recall of Triple-A reliever Carlos Marmol, Lou Pinella says, "we'll have some interesting things for you on Monday and Tuesday". This may be the beginning of a major shakeup in the Cub bullpen after they allowed five 9th inning runs to the Mets to lose a heartbreaker this Thursday night.

The Cub bullpen has been under the gun due to the ire that has been directed towards it by their manager for a few high profile meltdowns in the first month and a half of the season. Yet, the peripherals for five of their relievers is solid. Ryan Dempster, Willie Ohman, Michael Wuertz, Neal Cotts and Rocky Cherry have pitched 65% of their team's relief innings and have put together the following line: 75.2 IP, 1.203 WHIP and 71 k's.

Additionally, in a park that's been a favorable hitting environment so far this season, Cub relievers have posted a 4.11 ERA while the National League as a whole is currently sitting at a 4.36 ERA. Cub starters have been even better.

The Cub offense has also been slightly above average. This team appears to be slightly to solidly above average across the board.

With the Cub pythagorean W-L record standing at 22-17 but their real record sitting at 18-21, perhaps Pinella should sit back, relax and write-off his team's semi-tough start to bad luck.

America, Paul and Blowback

From TCSDaily comes an article that reviews Ron Paul's comments regarding blowback in a balanced manner.

Conservatives are rightly skeptical of grand government initiatives aimed at curing various domestic ills. Yet some have become convinced that the same bureaucrats who cannot balance the budget will nonetheless be able to deftly manage the political outcomes of nations half a world away. The tendency is so acute that it led the libertarian blogger Jim Henley to wryly observe that for some 'Hayek stops at the water's edge.'

Stretched Into the 5th Inning

Pip at Fungoes takes Tony LaRussa to task for stretching Kip Wells into the 5th inning of a game he was pitching miserably in just to try and get him to qualify for a win.

I have mixed feelings on this one. On the emotional side of managing a baseball team showing faith in one's players can build trust and loyalty between the players and management which never hurts a team over the seven month grind that is the major league baseball season. Then again, what were the chances that if Wells does hold the 3-2 lead that the Cards would've been able to hold on the next four innings without giving up a run.

Nationalism: Always the Same

In light of the Guiliani/Paul dust up at the Republican debate this week here's a quote from Ludwig von Mises in Omnipotent Government that provides further illumination.

"[Y]ou simply cannot argue with nationalists. The Germans are fully convinced that compulsion applied by them to other nations is fair and just, while compulsion applied to themselves is criminal."

I believe there is a hard-core minority of the American population that thinks as Mises's Germans of seventy years ago did. This ethos on the part of this hard-core minority is one of the important pillars that supports the continued war on Iraq.

Post Lengths

Stew shares his thoughts on how many words your blog posts should average. Graphs figure prominently in his article. ;O)

Daily Blogging Method

D. Rowse shares with us his daily procedure for sifting through all of the web stuff he's tasked to read and track in order to keep his blogging business humming along.

My process is using Google Reader and my Windows favorite folders. Reader is currently holding around 25 websites that generate a couple hundred posts per day. In my favorite folders I have another 40 websites that don't have RSS capabilities.

Having an aggregator for the first time is fantastic. I don't know if Reader's the best out there so I may pick another one to give Reader some competition one of these days.

Amazon to Bust Into iTunes Market Share

The internet music business may be changing pretty soon if Amazon has its way.

Russian High-Speed Growth

Russia's incredbile growth rates over the past 5+ years has required the country's businesses to recruit top-flight investment talent at very high salaries.

A Bit More Cred Today

More today regarding Ron Paul from Andrew Sullivan. And it's positive pub.

Even with all of the internet buzz Paul isn't making any new strides in the MSM polls released since the recent debate that set the internet on fire over Paul. Still, his numbers at MySpace continue to climb as he approaches 15,000 friends at the social networking site. For comparison,

• Hillary has nearly 71,000
• McCain has a little over 31,000
• Richardson comes in at 13,500
• Tancredo with nearly 1,700

Brewing Conflict: Estonia vs. Russia

John Robb's take on the conflict can be found here at Global Guerrillas.

Reliever Leveraging

Evaluating relief pitchers and team bullpens by employing Tango Tiger's Leverage Index and Win Probability Added statistical measurements is starting to gain momentum in the sabermetric on-line community. Sal Baxamusa at The Hardball Times delves into why LI is different for batters as compared to relievers.

Since major league managers have a large degree of control of when to bring in their relievers, evaluating relief pitcher leveraging may actually become one of the most important measures of managers in-game acumen.

Glenallen Hill

Another unexpected Prospect Retro from Sickels.

Bobby Cox Passes George Anderson

Two of the top four managers in all-time managerial wins are managing today. Tony LaRussa of the St. Louis Cardinals (2,312) and Bobby Cox of the Atlanta Braves (2,195) are now alone in chasing the list's number two, John McGraw (2,763). LaRussa, three years younger than Cox, has a solid shot at climbing to number two on the all-time list. It's simply a matter of how much longer the 62-year old wants to manage.

Cox would have to manage closer to a decade if he wanted a shot at reaching McGraw's win total. That's almost a certainty not to happen as Cox has talked openly about retirement in recent years. The current status of Cox and his retirement is loosely slated for after the 2008 season.

Cox's passing of Sparky Anderson for fourth on the all-time list occurred in a 9-2 victory over the Pirates in Pittsburg yesterday.

The Broad Sweep of History

Niall Ferguson compares the Venice of 500 years ago with the New York of today. In a wide-ranging article he also touches of globalization, outsourcing and nuke devices going off in London. The article is macro in nature -- thought-provoking and big-picturish.

Sunday Pitchers

I've been tired of hearing about Clemens for the past couple months and about the Yankees for the past five years but all the hype has compelled Al Doyle to write-up a short history of "Sunday ptichers".

[In 1944] Denny Galehouse couldn't quit his war-related factory job in Akron, Ohio, since leaving would expose him to the military draft. Desperate for scarce talent, the Browns decided to let Galehouse catch a train on Saturday to wherever the team was playing the next day. The right-hander would appear in the first game of the Sunday doubleheader and immediately return home.

Orioles Tease Fans

By winning the opener of the Red Sox series last night (after sweeping the Devil Rays) the Orioles have reached .500 with an 18-18 record. For the second straight season Markakis has gotten off to a slow start. The good news is it's not as slow as last year and the patient approach he employs at the plate bodes well for avoiding debilitating slumps. He turned in a 4-5 night with two doubles in the 6-3 victory over Boston.

Flying Through the Air

I never knew the story behind one of the most famous sports photos of all time. Now I do and you do thanks to No Mas.

Pindelski's Best Bullpens

Here are his top ten major league bullpens. The author uses the Baseball Prospectus statistical measurement named WXRL for his rankings. WXRL takes two measurements and combines them into one number to help assign value to relief pitchers. The higher the number the better.

The first measurement takes the expected wins added over a replacement level pitcher and assigns a value to the pitcher that is being studied. This first measurement is then meshed with a second measurement that determines the quality of the opposing hitters the hurler faces.

Now who knows what a good WXRL is? I certainly don't. It's not like how I can evaluate doubles or batting average. Forty-three doubles? Yeah, that guy had a pretty good darn year in the gapper department. How about a .224 batting average? Well, if you're not Adam Dunn your stinking up the joint.

In 2006 the leader in WXRL was Francisco Rodriguez who checked in at 7.301. Rodriguez was the leader in 2005 also with a 5.619. And in 2004 Brad Lidge hit 8.097 to lead the majors.

Through May 10th, 2007 the major league leader in WXRL is Atlanta's Rafael Soriano with a 1.927. The top WXRL bullpen in the majors this year has been the Padres at 4.664.

Mainstream Candidate?

Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul has hit the internet mainstream. Andrew Sullivan performs the honors.

Good For You, Bad For the Cat

Steve Rubel hits the nail on the head regarding a very important career tool each of us hopefully possesses - curiosity.

Grif Off to a Nice Start

Climbing the all-time home run list. Entering the season Griffey Jr. had played three games in rightfield. This year all 25 of his starts have been in right.

National League Rate Stats Down

Running through the National League hitting totals through Tuesday's games show that compared to recent years hitters are doing worse as a whole in 2007.

The league batting average sits at .257, on-base percentage at .331 and slugging percentage at .399. For each of these three rate stats the last year that they were this low follows.

• You have to go back to 1992 to find a National League combined batting average less then the 2007 figure of .257. In 1992 the NL hit a combined .252.
• On-base percentage only needs to look back one year when the 2006 NL combined for a .330 figure.
• For slugging percentage you have to go back to 1993 to find a figure equal to or lower then 2007's. Back in '93 the NL's slugging efforts came in at .399.

Perhaps unseasonably cold weather the first three weeks of the season have something to do with what is shaping up to be one of the cooler overall offensive efforts the NL has mustered in over a decade. The upcoming summer months will tell us whether the first month and a half of this season have been a fluke or not.

Automative Blogger's Top Movie Car Chase Scenes

Will Thompson You Tube's his top five in this compilation. Famous stunt car driver and less famous actor Bill Hickman can be seen in two of these movies from circa 1970.

After watching Hickman (in video number five and one) try naming an actor who's cooler under pressure then Hickman's characters are in these two films. In Bullitt the unbelievable combination of Hickman and McQueen's on-screen cool is just as important to the scene as their incredible stunt driving.

Henderson's Juices Still Flowing

A fun story from the AP that gives all of us Rickey fans an update on where his head is at.

"I'm going to look at it (returning to play baseball) at the end of the
year. I might come out with some crazy stuff, a press conference telling
every club, 'Put me on the field with your best player and see if I come out of
it'. If I can't do it, I'll call it quits at the end," he said.

Something I didn't know is that Henderson raises cows and is a self-described "old country boy".

Analytics Upgrade

Google unveils it's new analytics for blog traffic tracking. Stuart Brown provides the overview.

A Home for the Jobless

LayoffSpace.com offers those who are out of work a place to commiserate and network with other unemployed souls.

Lincecum Debuts

This guy throws serious gas. He allowed five walks, five hits (2 homers) and four earned runs in his debut. The homer he allowed to Ryan Howard was a mistake out over the plate that Howard crushed to straight-away center. It's the type of pitch that Lincecum could get away with more often in Triple-A.

Division I's Oldest Head Coach

Jonh Winkin, the 125-pound 87 year-old skipper of the Husson College baseball team, is still going strong after 50+ years of collegiate coaching.

Alternative Power Stocks

On the move. Finally.

Guitarist Makes Debut as Knitted Man

Slash.

Vonnegut on Idea Origination

His disgust with civilization.

On the Cust Again

Jack Cust has been traded for by Oakland to serve as Oakland's DH while Mike Piazza is out with a sprained-shoulder. Piazza may not return until the All-Star break. Cust, a favorite of statheads, is now past the point of being a prospect at the age of 28. Known for being a fielding mannequin, Cust has been a very good minor league offensive player and a slightly below average offensive force in the majors. Cust's claim to fame statistically have been the prolific walk and strikeout figures he's put up throughout his career. This may turn out to be the first time in Cust's career that he gets a prolonged shot at a starting job in the majors.

Chips

My favorite place to eat a burrito sees it's stock move higher. Actually, it's my favorite place to eat.

HoJo Retrospective

Sickels hits us with a Howard Johnson Prospect Retro. I was a teenager during his prime and don't remember him walking so much. Perhaps that's because walks weren't the rage back then that they are now.

Johnson was a member of the great Tiger championship team of 1984. In his 3rd major league season at the age of 23, Johnson produced a league average OPS+ and saw the bulk of his playing time occur during the three summer months. He mainly hit 8th and 9th in the vaunted Tiger lineup.