Mephistopheles

He is and that's what shocked me. isnt he flatout a cards fan?

W L RS RA AVG OBP SLG Chicago Cubs 85 77 829 791 .275 .337 .460 Milwaukee Brewers 85 77 788 748 .266 .335 .445 St. Louis Cardinals 81 81 731 734 .260 .331 .417 Houston Astros 80 82 769 781 .260 .334 .435 Pittsburgh Pirates 76 86 752 805 .270 .331 .434 Cincinnati Reds 71 91 726 827 .259 .329 .417 Remarkably similar RS and RA for the Cubs that I had way back in December. IIRC I had 824 runs and 786 RA. And wow at the Cubs leading the division in OBP.

Blake Beavan

Sure, at just under 5. Yes, but the CL is very offense oriented I understand, but it's still not something to brag about. Apparently you don't. How good you are at something is always relative. If I told you that the Cubs have a 3.41 team ERA, your first line of thought would be that the Cubs had an excellent pitching staff. Suppose after that I told you that it was in the 1968 season and was good for second to last in the league. So in reality they weren't very good. While the Cubs pitching staff has produced a terrible ERA in the sense of our recent season lines, it has produced a very GOOD ERA relative to the pitching environment they're in - which again is the ONLY way of determining how good something is, since good intrinsically includes how everyone else is. Granted, you're more or less right. It does show they've pitched well compared to everyone else, but it also does not mean much because it's open to a huge list of sample size caveats. On the other side of the coin (as of a few days ago the numbers are off the top of my head so dont quote me on them) the Cubs had a team batting average of .311. Great, right? Not so much. They're right in the middle of the Cactus League in AVG, where the league BA is roughly .300 or so. It's relative. You cannot make any conclusions without looking at it like you did.

Brackman, much like Samardzija, has more projection than your average college starter. His first two years he spent quite of a bit of development time on the hardwood. You have to take that into account. He's also pretty athletic for a big guy, which isn't as common as you'd think with the other pitchers that are tall. On average the taller pitchers do turn out better. I don't know where the hell your get the exception to the rule crap. He's not tall and just throws hard. He has pretty good offspeed stuff and has shown a much better ability to dominate hitters than Samardzija. His potential is through the roof. He's nearly seven foot tall, throws in the upper 90s with quality secondary pitches. How can you NOT like that? To be honest, I'm not so sure he's not the best college prospect. It's between him and Price, and I am not one to buy the whole take Price because he's left-handed argument.

Not really. Personally I think Price has to show just as much as he does. Last year he crashed down the stretch once he reached the meat of the SEC schedule. He's not off to a great start this year.

not really, then it wouldn't be the median...

Dang it. Just a bit off.

Thanks, but all of my essays this semester are finished. Next semester I'm loading up on Econ, Physics and Math classes so I won't have to write any essays, thank God.

The irrelevant: Alan Schwarz is leaving BA and joining the NYT. Ask BA: And other random stuff from a Callis chat. Some of these may have been posted elsewhere. Shoot me.

I believe some of them are used for the Florida State League as well. Some are used for the Arizona Summer and Fall Leagues.

You assume my math skills are strong enough to put that together. There's a reason I have a teaching certification in English/Language Arts and my first college degree was Religion/History. If you have some data you'd like to share, I might dumb it down for my readers though. Ha! Maybe I should pay you to proofread my terrible grammar.

Nostalgia.

If he's healthy, he could have that by midseason. Its because PECOTA doesn't know what kind of injury he sustained in 2006. For all it knows, he could have ripped off his arm, literally. If you rate it out the PT its pretty good. There's also a bit more regression due to the injury, that's probably fine considering how hitters *usually* never fully recover from a wrist injury.

man i wish i was organized enough to actually write at my blog. i do fine for like three days and then stop. rinse and repeat a few weeks later. im terrible at it. oh well. /rant for a geeky and i know we're all geeky fantasy article you could discuss average draft slots and then cross reference those with projections and scarcity at various positions to completey shatter the average draft slots. but yeah im not so sure a newspaper is the best place for that article.

Not that he can't be effective or anything, but I just love fine journalism from Carrie: There's no way he's better than the sub 3.50 ERAs he put up in 01, 02 and pre-injury 04.

NC State IP H R ER BB SO AB BF NP -------------------------------------------------- Andrew Brackman..... 4.0 9 6 5 3 2 20 25 96

i watch ESPNEWS for the highlights. There's no analysis, just runs through all the games every half hour. <3

What a letdown. Bummer 4 ER in 6 IP, 8 K, 4 BB

Overall they're accurate (I have 2 of them one Stalker and one JUGS), but if you have a pitcher throwing 70 pitches and ten guns on him, there's bound to be an odd reading out of the 700 readings. If he's been at 87-89 most of the time and he gets one of the reading at 93, there's not much of a conclusion there from that 93. As far as angles, it doesn't matter much as long as you are within about a 0-15 degree swing. A scout won't run his gun sitting by the on deck circle and are always within accurate range behind home plate. if my math is right, then being over 15 degrees either way is going to produce a reading that's 3-4 MPH off. I'd say that's fairly significant. 15 degrees is going to be about 20-25 feet off the ray pointing out from the mound through home plate. I did it at 40 feet behind the catchers mound, which is probably how far back the backstop is in a minor league park. it's my understanding that they measure speed in the direction the gun is pointed at. So it really is a velocity.

yes

It is Nick Schmidt versus David Price tonight! Last time Price faced the Razorbacks he struck out 17 of them. His 2006 season went down the crapper after that game.

uggggh do you really think your eyes can tell the difference of 4 mph, on TV, at an angle that's nearly right behind the object in motion? i dont think so.

a gun that the team puts in a fixed place is going to be more accurate than a scouts gun, assuming that they both are calibrated correctly. A team can measure the angle(s) of the gun relative to the flight of the path and make an adjustment based on the reading that the gun gives them. Think intro physics where the movement is one direction and the viewers is looking differently. Gotta love Newton's billion theories he didnt create. Anyways a scout doesn't measure the exact angle he's shooting at, so he could be off some. In this case the gun the team/tv used is probably NOT measured off with the angle included because its a ST park. The one at Wrigley might. I do know the one at Enron is. They have the gun (or used to) at the top of the netting behind home plate and it's off the line from home to the mound by i dunno 20 degrees or so horizontally, and then it is off that same line about say 35 degrees vertically. Again this really means nothing here if they used the same gun. I don't know. Just my 2 cents. Maybe they were the same gun. The TV displayed adjusted values (maybe from the same formula they use to adjust the wrigley one?) and the gun read 86 MPH. I dont know the layout. EDIT: Comparing the readings to guys we know (Maddux and Hill) and making judgements based on that is probably the best thing. The relationship wont be linear, but since the guns are calibrated to detect a wide range of speeds, its likey theyre pretty damn linear on a small interval like (85,95)