As the baseball season winds (or wound) down, it's time for a couple baseball posts. After we find out whether the Twins or ChiSox make it, I'll make some nearly-guaranteed-to-be-wrong playoff picks and eventually before they're announced I'll make my year award choices. But for now it's time to for the last time evaluate my predicted records for every major league team. We'll start with the National League. I made these picks here and evaluated them at the half here.

NL East:

Philadelphia Phillies - final record: 92-70 / predicted record: 87-75
Number of games off: +5 (they were five better than my prediction)
Why I was wrong: Well, first what I was right about - that Jimmy Rollins' 2007 was a fluke and would not be repeated. What I was wrong about was the bullpen. Of course, it all starts with Brad Lidge who was the best closer in the NL (although he still walked too many batters, but that's obviously a minor complaint considering) but it continues with their supporting cast of relievers, Chad Durbin, JC Romero, Ryan Madsen and Clay Condrey who all put together fine years to take a Phillies team with a predictably very good line up and okay but not great rotation with lots of trouble on the back end to a first place finish.

New York Mets - final record: 89-73 / predicted record: 92-70
Number of games off: -3
Why I was wrong: Not far off in the wins column, though that number would at least tie them for the lead. The main thing here though, like with the Phillies was the bullpen. While everyone there put together a good season at the same time, a la 2005 White Sox, everyone in the Mets bullpen shut down particularly in the second half to go along with Billy Wagner, whose peripherals were okay, but who blew 7 saves before he got hurt. Aaron Heilman, Duaner Sanchez, Pedro Feliciano and Scott Schoenweis were all culprits among others.

Florida Marlins - final record: 84-77 / predicted record: 67-95
Number of games off: +17
Why I was wrong: Boy, this was a bad one. Well to look what I got wrong is to see what was the difference between the Marlins of 2007 and the Marlins of 2008. They got a little better at hitting, but not much - it was still a very good hitting team in 2007, and though guys like Jorge Cantu and Cody Ross stepped up this year, they had to replace a MVP-caliber season by Miguel Cabrera (hitting, anyways). It's the pitching, that while still below average, was far closer to average than the previous year, plus the fact that the Fins played a couple games above their pythagorean record, though they finally scored more runs than they allowed by season's end. Chris Volstad was a huge mid-season call up, Ricky Nolasco had a breakout huge year and Josh Johnson's midseason return was critical.

Atlanta Braves - final record: 72-90 / predicted record: 89-73
Number of games off: -17
Why I was wrong: Another stinker. Couple clear things that screwed me here. First, the decimation of their aging pitching staff - losing Glavine, Smoltz, and later Hudson for the season crippled their staff and forced them to start guys who have no business starting in the major leagues (though Jair Jurrjens was a breakout). Jeff Francoeur, who many, myself included thought would have a breakout year and continue his trend of slightly increasing his walk total each year, completely fell apart with a terrible 73 OPS+ for the year. Other than that, they hit okay - it was the pitching.

Washington Nationals - final record: 59-102 / predicted record: 73-89
Number of games off: -14
Why I was wrong: Well, I know they'd be bad, I just for some misguided reason though they'd show a little improvement - I'm not sure why. They really have the least promise of any team in the majors - even KC has a couple potential stars (Grienke, Gordon). Zimmerman is supposed to be their star, but he struggled most of the year. Nick Johnson, one of their best offensive players, was out most of the year which I suppose could have been predicted, and Chad Cordero was injured all year and Jon Rauch was traded. Also Shawn Hill their best pitching prospect (in the generic, as in prospect for winning, rather than prospect as in baseball america, as he's in his fourth season by now, albeit always getting hurt) was hurt as usual and terrible when he did play. Honestly, I'm not sure why I didn't predict them to lose more.

NL Central:

Chicago Cubs - final record: 97-64 / predicted record: 87-75
Number of games off: +10.5
Why I was wrong: Well, I still had them in first, so I get points for that. I knew they were good, but it's relatively easy to see what I didn't predict here, and relatively reasonable I think for not predicting it. I didn't think that Ryan Dempster would come out of nowhere to post a 152 ERA+, that they were acquire Rich Harden who would stay pretty much healthy for them, that Jim Edmonds would come over after being waived for being terrible, to be amazing, hitting for a 138 OPS+ with the Cubbies, or that Mark DeRosa would hit 21 HRs and Ryan Theriot OBP .387.

Milwaukee Brewers - final record: 90-72 / predicted record: 84-78
Number of games off: +6
Why I was wrong: Well, I could make this easy and just say CC Sabathia, who could easily account for the difference. But I'll throw in for kicks, Ben Sheets being healthy all year, though with the sad post script, that he's done for the year before the playoffs. And we'll add as minor little factors, Russell Branyan, Ray Durham and Gabe Kapler being great off the bench and in spot starts. But yeah, that's pretty much it, and I'll note they played 3 games over their pythagorean record.

Houston Astros - final record: 86-75 / predicted record 71-91
Number of games off: +15
Why I was wrong: Oof, another bad one here. I'll first note they played 9 games over their pythagorean and allowed more runs than they scored, which means there's a lot of luck going on here. Aside from that, there's the excellent year Wandy Rodriguez turned in, along with the career year for Ty Wigginton. Also, boy, is Michael Bourne bad, and did they get fleeced in that trade. That's not really a reason for anything, just something I thought I can include. Looking over the team, I can see that they clearly overplayed their hand. Good for them.

St. Louis Cardinals - final record: 86-76 / predicted record 71-91
Number of games off: +15
Why I was wrong: Well, I was right in guessing that the Astros and Cards would have the same record. Not many little things here, but rather a couple of huge things. First, Ryan Ludwick. I had accounted him for nothing and instead he goes out and gives 150 OPS+ and 37 dingers. Damn. The other big one is the amazing job by a couple of no-name (or bad-name) starters - Kyle Lohse with a 113 OPS+ in 200 innings, higher than he's ever had, and 115 for Todd Wellemeyer who pitched more than twice the highest number of innings he's ever thrown in his career.

Cincinnati Reds - final record: 74-88 / predicted record 77-85
Number of games off: -3
Why I was wrong: Here's a good one. I wasn't really. Adam Dunn and Ken Griffey were traded, smartly, but hurt the team a little bit. Aaron Harang disappointed big time, as did Johnny Cueto, and Homer Baily never materialized at all, though this is at least partly made up for by the breakout year of Edinson Volquez. Oh, and Corey Patterson mysterously got way too many at bats. That's it.

Pittsburgh Pirates - final record: 67-95 / predicted record 65-97
Number of games off: +2
Why I was wrong: Pretty close again. The team is bad. They had some breakouts which I didn't anticipate - particularly the excellent seasons by all three outfielders (well Pirates before the all-star break) Nate McLouth, Jason Bay and Xavier Nady (well I expected Bay to come back but couldn't be sure). These were made up by the disappointing seasons from their young pitchers, particularly Ian Snell, Zach Duke and Tom Gorzelanny. These pretty much made up for each other - pretty much just a bad team.

NL West

Los Angeles Dodgers - final record: 84-78 / predicted record: 87-75
Number of games off: -3
Why I was wrong: Wrong order, but pretty good record here. Pierre played too much, and Jones was a disaster, while Kemp and Loney maybe under played what I thought by just a little. The starting pitching was very solid led by Chad Billingsley and Derek Lowe, and their bullpen was excellent - their pitching was best in the league - if they could hit any better, they'd really rack up the wins.

Arizona Diamondbacks - final record: 82-80 / predicted record: 91-71
Number of games off: -9
Why I was wrong: I mean, I knew they didn't hit in 2007. But they featured a bunch of young guys who all seemed to have the potential to get better, and none of them did. I knew Eric Byrnes had a fluke good year in 2007, but not so much that he would be both awful and hurt for most of the year in 2008. In addition, their bullpen was quite disappointing.

Colorado Rockies - final record: 74-88 / predicted record: 89-73
Number of games off: -15
Why I was wrong: As much as I underpredicted the teams in the central, I overpredicted the teams in this division. Troy Tulowitski was hurt a lot and terrible. Todd Helton was hurt a lot. Garrett Atkins was terrible disappointing - their hitting went from 2nd in the league in 2007 to 8th in the league in 2008. Their pitching fell a ton as well - Jeff Francis really fell off and whoever they threw at the back of their rotation was miserable.

San Francisco Giants - final record: 72-90 / predicted record: 69-93
Number of games off: +3
Why I was wrong: Not really wrong here. Some great pitching prospects, but can't hit at all. Their starter with the highest OPS+, 111, was Ray Durham and was traded midseason. Tim Lincecum was Cy Young worthy as the Giants abused the hell out of his young arm for no reason (I'll need at least one more rant about this at some point) and Matt Cain was good, but aside from that everyone struggled everywhere.

San Diego Padros - final record: 63-99 / predicted record: 87-75
Number of games off: -24
Why I was wrong: Nothing like ending with my worst pick. This was one of my dumbest going back as well in that there was really no reason to pick them to have so many wins. That said, there was no reason to have picked them to lose 99 either. Chris Young was injured for half the year, as was, well, pretty much every pitcher. Khalil Greene was just beyond putrid, and well, the team was just bad. Peavy was great, Adrian Gonzalez was great, Brian Giles was reliably strong and Jody Gerut was a nice suprise. Beyond that everything else was bad.

Two more quick things...

...it's amazing to be the disparity between the stat/sabermetric/reasonable thinking/whatever you want to call it baseball community and 95% of baseball writers/broadcasters...I'm so used to reading and talking to people who are, if not up to date on second and third order pitching stats, at least know that wins are meaningless, that clutch hitting doesn't exist, that runs scored and RBI are incredibly team dependent, and that baseball is a largely individual game and players shouldn't be faulted for what the other members of their teams do. So it still blows my mind when I leave that community to for some reason read an article where someone, who, regardless of whether they are into the mathematical side and regressions at whatnot, are at least are willing to think about baseball in a sensible matter. Firejoemorgan.com has made a killing out of crucifying these writers and their refusal to even give an iota of credit to a statistic that didn't exist before the 1950s. So when I read an article by Jon Heyman (who has done this thing many times before) where he specifically dedicates a section to how VORP is a worthless statistic that should come nowhere close to MVP voting I am still for some reason stunned how people who are such close-minded are allowed anywhere near the opinion pages of a major (I suppose the major) sports magazine. In just these couple of paragraphs are the same tropes we see over and over - David Wright shouldn't have been in the MVP contest last year because the Mets choked, even though, as we know, baseball players have very little (if any) influence on one other in the lineup, and Wright did about everything he damn could to make the playoffs.

Heyman of course disparages the notion that we shoudln't count clutch hitting. Now, although I'm not a big fan of it - I can live with doing it in a retrospective sense - see who had hit in the clutch in counting who was best over a past year, and the best way to do it is probably win probability added, something Heyman would surely blast if he possibly knew what it was. But just counting it retrospectively is not enough for Heyman. He must add this little footnote as an extra stab at stat guys - "oddly enough, some stat people think that's just luck, anyway" - I love the preface of "oddly enough" as if he's kind of pointing his head to his friends sitting at his cafeteria table to a bunch of nerd crazies in the corner, and adding the anyway at the end to be extra dismissive. Does he attempt evidence? Proof? Nope. Has he read any comprehensive arguments by any "stat people"? I doubt it. Even if he did, would he even open his head to the possiblity it could be true? I doubt it either.

Forget VORP. That's not what this is about. VORP is a great stat, but by no means the only stat one must use - there are plenty of tools out there which measure different things about the player, and there's plenty or room for argument. What it's about is being reasonable, and being open minded to conclusions that don't jive with what you've thought since you were a kid. That if you grew up believing in clutch, thus that's the way it is, and it will never be otherwise. And that if you still believe in it - you can show it through a well-reasoned argument rather than just acting as if everyone who doesn't agree with you is an out and out idiot. All right, done with that rant for now, but it just pisses me off. The day of reckoning will come when common sense enters the mainstream.



Now, my other item is something entirely and completely unrelated.

I recently was watching the second half the Seinfeld episode The Cigar Store Indian. You know, the one where Jerry calls his girlfriend an Indian giver, and the TV Guide.

One of the greatest cameos in Seinfeld history (perhaps sitcom history?) has got to be Al Roker and his two lines at the end of the episode.

Elaine and Jerry are on the subway at the end of the episode, Elaine holding the TV guide, when Jerry gets out to get a gyro. Jerry tries to make it back, but ends up sticking his hand with the gryo through, which Al Roker takes, and Jerry pulls his arm back and misses the train. Al Roker sits down next to Elaine, and utters his first line (copied from earlier in the episode, from Ricky, the creepy TV guide guy played by the guy who plays Ted in Scrubs, but far better when Al Roker does it):

"Guess your boyfriend's gonna have to catch the next train"

To which Elaine replies as before, "He's not my boyfriend."

Now here's where it gets amazing, Roker replies, "He's not? Interesting." - but what makes this so good is the cartoonishly sheepish grin he gives after the line, and the way he says interesting. What also makes this so great is the perfect choice of person - I can think of few others who would work well as Al Roker - someone famous enough he's recognizable, but not so famous that everyone on earth would recognize him, and someone famous as a zany weatherman, rather than as charismatic or attractive or anything like that.

Also adding to it is the reaction of Elaine as she looks at the TV guide and see Al Roker's face and makes the connection.

Brilliant television.

One problem in sports nowadays is the lack of good nicknames. There's too many lazy nicknames - A-Rod, ManRam, etc - just using people's names, and mashing them together somehow. The origins of good nicknames aren't necessarily immediately obvious - often they involve a quick story, or at the least an explanation. Good ones in today's game include Sean Casey as the Mayor and Travis Hafner as Pronk (though of course who knows Hafner will be around the way his career has turned). I think it's everyone's personal duty to rectify this problem, and good nickname developing starts in the grassroots - nicknames start small and grow in force (some, anyway). Thus, I'm making it my personal duty to push some nicknames into the lexicon, or attempt anyway. I ask that anyone reading this should start using these nicknames when they talk about the player involved, and that they explain to their friends and get them to start using them too. Hell, force a conversation involving these players just so you can get the nickname in there.

Our nickname today will be Bills' safety Donte Whitner as "The Prophet"


Of course, I wouldn't expect anyone to go enforcing a nickname that had no explanation. In this offseason, Donte Whitner issued a guarentee that the Bills would make the playoffs. So far, the Bills are 3-0, their best start in 16 years. Coincidence? I'm not sure, but either way, this start surely makes Donte a (the) Prophet. Now, hopefully the Bills will keep it up, but even if they don't, the nickname stays - that's part of what it means to be a nickname, continuing to be used even if the story that made it true in the first place doesn't hold up exactly anymore.

You've got your nickname. Start using it.

A quick note on the Emmys. I may want to say later, but I'm extremely tired so I'm going to focus on two quick things. I didn't really watch the Emmys as there were sports on, and, frankly, the Emmys are pretty lame, the Academy Awards' little stepbrother who constantly underachieves and makes poor decisions. But I checked back and forth and took a look at the winners of course, so here we go.



First thing, major props for Zeljko Ivanek, one of my all time favorite TV character actors. He won best supporting actor in a drama Emmy for his role in Damages, an absurd legal thriller show that I bonded with my dad while watching last summer. He was eastern european Dennis Hopper's son as Andre Drazon, one of the membes of the villainous family in the first season of 24, and he played Juliet's husband who gets hit my a bus in an episode of Lost. He was a recurring character in Oz as the Governor, and in Homicide: Life on the Street as Ed Danvers. I also had the pleasure of seeing him in a Tony nominated performance in one of the last times I've seen a show, in The Caine Mutiny Court Martial. It's about damn time he got his due props and I'm glad to see it happen. So score one for Emmy here.



Second, a word on 30 Rock. I may talk more about it in general - I finished the second season just the other day. But I'm not sure I get why it's so popular with Emmy voters. It's a good show; I like it, and I watch it, and I will continue to. But it's not that good. In my mind, it's kind of a very poor man's Arrested Development (honestly, that's not really an insult) - Liz Lemon is Michael Bluth's straight man dealing with a zany cast of characters trying to hold them together as a show (instead of a family) while sorting out her own not so perfect life. 30 Rock doesn't make me laugh out loud nearly as much as a show like that I feel should (A comparison I make is to It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which whether it's the best show or best episode or not, is always guarenteed to have a few parts that just make you laugh out loud). 30 Rock has a lot of parts where it's almost hits - parts where I think to myself "oh, that's clever" or "that's amusing" instead of actually laughing. Allow me a baseball comparison - 30 Rock is the Torii Hunter of television. A very solid player and a respectable citizen who while someone who will always contribute and help the team is nevertheless consistently overrated and paid more money than they probably deserve. 30 Rock serves as a nice compliment to Vlad Guerrero (The Office? (I need to approve this my sports-TV metaphor guy)) but is what it is a compliment - that I hope will continue to get better, maybe show more plate discipline, will probably continue to the same reliable, useful and good but not great player/show who will have a couple huge turns at bat (scenes that make you laugh a lot? I'm not sure where I'm going anymore) but more often will have a 1-5 game with a double, a productive out or two and solid defense.

I'd like to start by saying that I have improbably been up for 38 straight hours and have no idea how I am still awake. I have some general thoughts on all-nighters, but they'll be saved for a later time.

I have two new precepts which I think should be enforced.

First, you know how everybody once in a while says - "if I had a nickel for every time blank blank" in regards to whatever happens to them a lot. (For example, my name is Andrew Weber. If I had a nickel for every time people asked me if my middle name was Lloyd...you get the idea) The government should fund a program in which each person gets to pick one of these "if I had a nickel" situations and the person gets paid off a nickel for each time. There'd have to be rules, of course - you couldn't just say "if I had a nickel for every time someone knocked down a tree in the rain forest..." - the situation would have to somehow be related to you. Also, there'd have to be some sort of monitor - people can't be trusted to monitor themselves. Anyway, these are all minor details, compared to the gradiosity of this immense plan - so I say, government get on it - it has the benefit of giving people something to keep them going in proportion for the happening of something that bothers them the most.

Second - there should be some universal songwriting rules. The one I have in mind is in reference to girls names in songs. There are tons of songs with girls names, but there are tons of repeats - several Allisons for example, among many others, while some names are simply not covered as well. Any guy wanting to make a mix for a girl should have a song available to him with the girl's name in it. Thus, there should be a universal bank of songs with girls' names in them, and bands who want to write songs with girls' names in them, should be required to check the bank and use names that have not been covered, and at the very least not over covered. That's the only way we can guarentee that overlooked girls' names wind up in songs, ensuring that any mix can be designed with any girl in mind.

A few random notes...

...boy I didn't realize the outcry that actually existed over these Seinfeld - Gates commercials - I'd like to reiterate I was on the positive/completely confused side rather than the negative/completely confused side. While I found them extremely bizarre I was certainly more interested in watching them than 98% of the other commercials on TV - now after two spots it appears they're ending, whether as a planned move to the next wave of the advertising push, as Microsoft claims, or because they were pulled due to the massive negative public reaction...

...an official new feature of this blog for the next week and a half and his next one or two starts will be the Lincecum pitch count tracker...tracking how stupid Bruce Bochy/Brian Sabean are in leaving their young pitcher out for pitch counts that no other major league pitcher throws in meaningless games and more than 60 more innings than he's ever thrown (I blame Sabean most of all - it's his job to shut him down for the year and in lieu of that give a strict pitch count)...

...I need to make my pick for my Survivor league...the first week I took what I thought was the obvious pick and went with New England against the Chiefs, thinking it was the only way I could nearly guarentee not embarassingly bombing out in the first week, even if it meant giving up the Patriots for the rest of the season, and with Brady's injury, that's not such a bad thing - even though they're still good, they're not longer a guarentee against most teams. Second week, my decision came down to the Steelers versus the Browns or the Giants versus the Rams, and I went with the Giants after personally watching how putrid the Rams were against the Eagles the week before. So the third week comes, and there are even fewer good picks than last week. The Chargers are temping versus the Jets, but they've been so mediocre so far. I think Tennessee will probably beat Houston, one team that I expect to get better and always underperforms, but I'm not all that confident in it. I half wish I had saved the Giants for this week against the Bengals. Jacksonville's been pitiful so far, but the Colts haven't exactly been gangbusters either, and while the Browns have been bad, I'm still not sold on picking a Ravens team with a QB starting the second game of his young career. I'm honestly leaning towards picking the Bills, though I hesitate - I don't want my fandom to bias my choice, though with the Bills, the bias probably runs in the opposite direction (against the Bills). Still, against Oakland at home, they seem like the best pick. So that's who I stand with until I panic and freak out five minutes before the first game and try to sign into Yahoo only to find out it's too late and I'm stuck with them anyway.

Californication - or, as I call it David Duchovny having sex - Season 1



So, the day was about a week ago, and the time was, I had just finished catching up on Battlestar Galactica, and I needed to follow it with a show that went down easy, a dessert to follow the four course meal that Battlestar had been (with a 10 episode second part of the fourth course to follow in 2009). This meant a comedy, or at least something half hour long and billed as a comedy, and something relatively short. I took a look around at what I had on my computer on hand, and noted that at some point I had downloaded David Duchovny's latest opus, Californication, and that it was only 12 half hour episodes, so I figured why not, I'd been missing my last dose of Duchovny ever since Connie and Carla finished (Note: I did not actually watch Connie and Carla. Please don't quiz me on it).

My expectations were for something passable - not for something great, but for something that at least makes me want to continue watching it, and that's pretty much what I got, and if that sounds like a bad thing, it's really not - not every show can be Arrested Development.

Really, Californication is more a comedy in the way that Entourage is a comedy - there aren't really jokes, and it's not really laugh out loud funny - it's more of a light hearted drama (is that what a Dramady is? In my mind, the two foremost examples of dramady were always Ally McBeal and Sports Night, but I'm not sure why). The first episode didn't exactly draw me in - David Duchovny plays Hank Moody, kind of an asshole-with-a-heart-of-if-not-gold-then-silver who wants to live in his own idiosyncranic way. This Moody is also a writer who wrote a fantastically successful novel which was turned into a fantastically commercially successful movie adaptation which he thinks is crap, and hasn't written a word in the five years since, when he moved to LA from NY to work on the movie. Oh, and also he's separated from the woman he had been with for at least 12 years and has a daughter with, and this woman is engaged to a man who stands for everything Moody hates, and also has a teenage daughter who Moody (first episode spoiler alert) accidentally sleeps with in the first episode (well, not accidentally the sleeping with more, more accidentally in that he was unaware that she was a teen, let alone the teenage daughter of his ex's fiance). So there's your plot summary. And basically in the last sentence, we get a running theme in the show which I prefaced atop my entry - David Duchovny having sex. Though I didn't count, this pretty much happens in every episode, with different women in each episode. This is neither a good thing nor a bad thing, but if you're into that kind of thing (David Duchovny having sex, that is) I thought I ought to make a point of it. That, and also "David Duchovny having sex" (or "Hank Moody having sex" if we want to stay in character) would be a more straightforward title.

The other main characters are his agent and friend portrayed by Evan Handler, who seems to be popping up everywhere these days and was due to land a main role sooner or later - he had recurring parts in Sex and the City and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, guest apperances in Lost and 24, and well, a starring role in the short lived and quickly forgotten "It's Like, You Know" which was once billed as LA's answer to Seinfeld. His story arcs tend to focus on his relationship with his wife and with his hot goth suicide chick secretary.

With exceptions, most shows live up to the sum of their parts and premises, and you can pretty much tell everything you need to know about the show from what I've already written. Hank Moody don't take no advice from no one and lives on his own terms - he often makes inapproriate outbursts, but at the same time has the courage to take on challenges that people living in the "normal" world wouldn't dare broach. He's kind of a jerk, but you root for him anyway, part because a lot of the other characters are just tools, including most of all his ex's fiance, who doesn't do too much in the storyline explicitly bad, but is still pretty much a tool, and partly because Moody's the main character, and well, if you didn't root for him, it would make the show pretty hard to watch.

He's pretty much the show - the other characters are fine, supporting, but couldn't stand on their own. He deals with the idiosyrancities (yeah, I know I used this word twice. Deal with it) of what a strange place to live LA is, and tries to win back his ex, all while sleeping with as many people as he can. Basically what it comes down to is the show is not a can't miss by any means - unlike The Wire (obviously about as different a genre as it can get) which I tell everyone I meet, even in the urinal next to me in bathrooms to watch, I won't be pushing Californication, but by the time I watched a few episodes, I actually wanted to watch the rest, to the conclusion of the season, and really, that's not at all a bad thing.