- 04:47 PM
- 11/20/09
| Name: | Hal Incandenza |
|---|---|
| Gender: | Manly-man |
| Member since: | January 29, 2002 |
| Last visit: | November 20, 2009 |
hincandenza has posted 39 links and 1100 comments to SportsFilter and 4 links and 11 comments to the Locker Room.
Barry Bonds offers to play for free.:
My opinion on Bonds is no secret, however I noticed this tidbit in the paper yesterday and have been meaning to post about it. Barry Bonds' agent has offered his services to all 30 teams, at a pro-rated salary of the league minimum (at this point, about $200,000 total), even offering to play for free by donating that salary to buying tickets for the game; his trial date isn't until next March, so he would not be prevented from playing.
Despite this, apparently Barry's agent has received no interest, bolstering claims that the league is colluding to prevent him being hired.
posted by hincandenza to baseball at 09:32 PM on June 27 - 78 comments
Seattle Mariners (finally) fire GM Bill Bavasi.: For weeks the indisputable worst team in the majors, the $117M Seattle Mariners have finally made a major personnel change by firing General Manager Bill Bavasi today. Many in the media predicted such a shakeup should the Washington Nationals, who came into Seattle with worst record in the NL, complete the sweep of the Mariners in Seattle this weekend.
In his 5 years as Seattle GM including 2008, Bill Bavasi guided the Mariners to a last-place finish in every single year but 2007, where the 88-74 Mariners finished 2nd. The fervent Mariner blog community, who have demanded front office firings for a long time now, are already advocating for his replacement.
posted by hincandenza to baseball at 08:44 PM on June 16 - 5 comments
Sportsfilter Technology Refresh?:
Sportsfilter was founded back in 2002 using a mimic of the Metafilter site code as I understand it- back then, sports posts seemed too "newsfilter-y" back when that was actually frowned upon at Metafilter, and this site was spun up as a dedicated place for that kind of content.
In the intervening years, Metafilter has added a number of features- big and small- that make that site very functional and usable. I'm curious if there is any possibility of having a "technology refresh", in which Sportsfilter gets an update of some of the site code to enable things like live preview, tagging, favoriting, etc.
posted by hincandenza to feature requests at 12:04 PM on June 09 - 48 comments
Patriots advance to their 4th Superbowl in 7 years. : Despite his second worst QB rating of the season, Tom Brady and the Patriots advance to the Superbowl thanks to a second half running game and a defense that held the Chargers to only 4 field goals on the afternoon. The Patriots take their 17-1 unprecedented 18-0 record to Arizona in two weeks, facing the Ravens winner of the Packers/Giants game, in the hopes of completing a truly historic season.
posted by hincandenza to football at 05:25 PM on January 20 - 131 comments
Seattle edges Dallas in a wild, wild 4th quarter:
One of the most nail-biting fourth quarters I've ever seen! Dallas looked poised to waltz into the end zone for an easy 2 or 6 point win in the final two minutes of the game, until an incredible goal line stop by Tatupu and an improbable drop of a FG snap led to a wild finish to Saturday's football action.
posted by hincandenza to football at 10:28 PM on January 06 - 75 comments
How exciting! And still, the Phillies almost blew it; those late inning runs from the Yankees are a killer. Still, we could very well see a game 7- not unthinkable with Pedro going tomorrow, provided Grady Little protege Charlie Manuel remembers to pull him at 100 pitches/leave him in for one baserunner only. And once you get to game 7, anything can happen...
I agree with rcade that the Series isn't over, but you have to admit that the inability to have a lights-out guy come in at the end of the game is a big weakness for the Phillies.
Speaking of lights-out guys... can someone please explain why Mariano Rivera is still so wildly successful? The guy basically throws one pitch; why have hitters not adapted to the mindset of "If I *try* to pop it up, I'll hit a line drive base hit!"? Hours of high def, high speed footage must be available to analyze the exact break of his cutter and come up with the strategy of how to intentionally swing to ground out/pop up and get a clean hit out of it. I think the only team that appears to have done that is the Sox, who haven't been intimidated by the Rivera mystique. But you'd think these Phillies hitters were surprised to see him enter a game in the World Series, the way they flail away and get themselves out of innings in under 10 pitches!
It also raises the question as to why Lidge moved to fastballs against the heart of the Yankees order in game 4; so what if the ball in the dirt potentially lets in one run? The fastballs hanging around the heart of the plate let in 3, and you only need one out. Let the catcher do his job, and you might get out of it 4-4 going to the bottom of the 9th.
posted by hincandenza at 12:29 PM on November 03
Actually, it's not just the PETA PR guys; I saw that and thought "Uh, gross!!!" I mean, shouldn't professional pest control/animal control people come in to deal with that? I'd actually side with PETA on this one: it totally wasn't necessary to kill the animal like he did.
By contrast, whenever these incidents happen in baseball, there's a jovial atmosphere as the crowd roars at the antics of the critter- squirrel, cat, raccoon, whatever- as it dances around the field and eludes the grounds crew, and always ends with a nice net or ushering into a secured area. It's an entertaining diversion, and no one- or no animal- gets hurt. The only time I think I've seen animal control kill the animal(s) was they beekeeper guy earlier this year. But can you imagine the crowd's reaction if someone just took a bat to a squirrel on the field?
Yeah. That's why I could side with PETA if they made a stink about this.
posted by hincandenza at 03:49 AM on November 02
Wow- so I can't possibly win, nor can I possibly get the Costanza. Such joy. :)
I guess I'll pick:
the Yankees to sweep in 4 (ensuring a Phillies win),
name A-Rod the MVP,
under 101.6 pitch average for the starting pitchers,
3 hours and 31 minutes.
posted by hincandenza at 01:52 AM on October 27
I think the Angels coming back would be stupendous... the Yankees would cement their reputations as historically massive choke-job-artists. :)
But yeah... that's highly unlikely. I'm mostly just hoping the Yankees lose game 6 and have to use Sabathia in game 7; that'd leave the Phillies set up with a strong rotation advantage. Too much off time and the Phillies might get rusty, but they have a pretty good shot at winning this year.
posted by hincandenza at 02:36 PM on October 23
Well, congrats to the Phillies, but looks like I'm going to be nailing down the Costanza this year...
Too bad about the Dodgers- they were the only team left that I was rooting for (I dislike the Angels and they've won recently, I loathe the Yankees, and the Phillies won last year). It looks like unless the Yankees pull a 2004 on us, they'll be hosting the Phillies in Game 1. And I'm not so sure the Yankees have this sewn up: the Phillies have possibly a better starting rotation, and some pretty good bats themselves, and I think I will cream my jeans if Pedro pitches and wins against the Yankees, especially at Yankee Stadium (based on his LCS start, the guy's still quite the magician!).
posted by hincandenza at 11:43 AM on October 22
JButton: Whenever the Red Sox succeed (which happens as often as the arrival of Haley's Comet), this "buying a pennant" shit never comes up for some reason.The exact opposite: the Sox have had great success under the new ownership group, making the playoffs 6 of the last 7 years, getting just about 95 wins on the nose every single year (93, 95, 98, 95, 86, 96, 95, and 95).
And yes, with their recent success it's becoming more popular for non NY/BOS fans, such as the local Mariner fans here in Seattle, to hate on the Sox as "just another big market team, blah blah"- even though the M's payroll last year was $117M, only about $16M less than the Sox who won nearly as many games as the M's lost. The Sox earn their income, and spend it more wisely than most any other franchise in terms of player development, tools and scouting, and smart evaluation. They play top-notch Moneyball with a real budget and an ownership group committed to building a long-term winner.
What that payroll chart does show is that you can't really buy success quite so easily- the $65M Twins won one more game than the $115M Tigers- but it does help, since the bulk of the teams (5 of 8) are in the top 9 highest spending teams, while the Twins, Rockies, and Cardinals all made the playoffs with mid-range payrolls (and along with the Sox, none are in the 2nd round).
But while spending $115M instead of $80M might not guarantee success, it's actually pretty astonishing every time I look and see the Yankees have eclipsed $200M the last two years. It really isn't surprising that their talent pool has been able to do what they've done; it should be expected that they win 100+ and have the top-to-bottom lineup effectiveness. They don't really even develop so much as buy: the top free agents flock to the deep pockets of the Yankees, so of course when it all gels they become a very, very, very good team.
They can be stopped, though: the playoffs is a crapshoot, and one team geting hot can beat the Yankees in 4 straight.
posted by hincandenza at 01:31 PM on October 21
I did absolutely awful the last round, so I either have an insane round now to catch up, or shoot for the Costanza. If you want to score some points, do the opposite of what I do.
For the pitchers I picked the two closers from the teams I expect/hope to Lidge and Rivera, on the theory that in a long series they can potentially get 6+ IP in 6 or 7 games, and if they don't give up a run... there's your ERA leader. It's a risk mostly in that they might get 4 or 5 IP and not qualify. But Rivera in particular might have a multi-inning outing.
posted by hincandenza at 02:59 AM on October 14
Well, to their credit Varitez didn't factor into this series because he never came to bat. If they'd done that earlier on, they'd have won 100+ games. And I'd argue that Papelbon might be one of the dead weights to let go this off-season, along with Bay- both might ask for bigger contracts than really they are worth, since closers are overvalued and Bay is on the decline with a DH/power skill set that doesn't age well.
But overall the pro-Sox-management view is vindicated. As evidenced in that John Henry/Theo Epstein thread a couple of days earlier, the Sox philosophy is about building long term winners. The strategy of the Sox has brought them WS in 4 years, and got within a game of it last year. They put up 95 wins year after year, get to the playoffs consistently, and sometimes they're just out quickly, sometimes they make the CS, and sometimes they win it all.
Yeah, they went 3 and out, and looked bad doing it- and the Rockies got eliminated tonight after being up 2 going to the 9th at home. It happens, that's the playoffs: if the playoffs were fair, then the 2001 World Champions would be the Seattle Mariners.
Working pitch counts is part of what makes them good- the Angels didn't really "figure them out", they just got cold at the wrong time. The bats started to look lively in Game 3, and had they won I'd have not been surprised to see them put up double digits in Game 4. Again, that's how baseball is: the worst team in the league can beat the best team 3 of 5 or 4 of 7 every now and then; when they're two solid, 95-100 win teams, anyone can take it and all t takes is a couple of bad series from key players and you're toast.
Sure Ortiz and Lowell were shadows of themselves, and it'll be sad when they have to deal Ortiz when he doesn't choose to retire, but that lineup was good enough to score heavily- they just all hit a cold streak. Catch them in a different week and the Sox could rattle off 11 straight against anyone. Ellsbury, Pedroia, Martinez, Youk, Drew, and Bay make a hell of a lineup, and even a weakened Ortiz and Lowell can hold their own. The SS and when he plays the C are the only real weak spots. And when it's on, that rotation is second to none: Lester, Beckett, a maturing Buchholz, and if he figures his shit out Dice-K can be hell of a 1-4. The Sox were well constructed, very very talented, had their flaws, but all in all could have easily gone 3-0, 4-0, and 4-0 as go out in 3.
All that said, disappointing for the Sox fans, and I know anti-Sox bandwagoneers were crowing about the loss, but 2010 doesn't have to be dramatic in a '98 or '02 Marlins fashion: just cut loose the people who are past their best days, and keep developing the right kind of talent and players. They'll be back in the playoffs, and every so often win it all.
posted by hincandenza at 12:39 AM on October 13
The Redskins are dicks, but the WaPo has with this move shown why newspapers are shrinking and in some cases closing their doors. The WaPo is completely useless! If they can't even take a stand over perfectly valid sports pictures- and if they threaten to remove access, then print the pictures anyway and report on that, you idiots- then why should we believe anything they write about the important stuff?
Disgusting, disgusting actions on the part of the Post.
posted by hincandenza at 12:20 PM on October 12
That was a bizarre and dissatisfying ending- the Sox lost the first two from not hitting, but this last one they- well really Papelbon- choked away in the last moment. This is more like the Sox from 1919-2003 than what we've seen recently, having an 0-2 count with 2 outs in the top of the 9th and then letting the congo line get started. Papelbon let two runs score (but charged to Wagner) with poor pitching in the 8th, and then struggles with two outs in the 9th.
The truth is Papelbon had been having issues all year, either through tinkering with his mechanics but he moved to an almost purely fastball pitcher and was never really dominating in terms of a strike-out laden 1-2-3 pitcher. But even given that, to give up 3 runs with two outs boggles the mind- as does Francona not been quicker with the hook when men started reaching base in a must-win game! In those situations, the first walk issued should bring a hook, period. I should think the cardinal rule in postseason baseball when it comes to bullpens is "Always have a spare bullet in the next chamber". Oki came in and got a quick 3rd out but the damage was done, and if he wasn't in earlier because Francona either had misplaced faith in a struggling Papelbon or because he wasn't ready, that's downright negligible in an elimination game.
The past few years, it'd usually be the Red Sox with that kind of late inning magic, but between the Sox and Twins (who haven't lost *yet* as I'm typing this but are down 4-1 after the Yankees tacked on two in the 9th, and missed an opportunity to tie it in the 8th with one of the worst baserunning choices I've ever seen by Nick Punto) we saw two teams play simply abysmal baseball. Normally rock-solid Youkilis was botching routine plays and giving away outs, and the whole lineup was just smothered in weak sauce. The Sox had every opportunity to win Game 3, and if they had maybe the gremlin creeps into the Angel's heads when they start thinking "Shit, we can't let this go back to Anaheim for game 5", but like the come-from-behind and fall-short of last year's ALCS, the Sox didn't quite have the streak at the right time.
It really underscores that link from the other day, how the playoffs are a crapshoot. If it had started a week earlier, the outcomes of the series might have been wildly different but the Sox bats went cold. In this case, I think the marginally better team lost, but I'm at a loss as to how the Sox could have done anything differently in terms of team construction: they just got cold in a short series and couldn't get warmed up in time.
posted by hincandenza at 10:39 PM on October 11
It's a bit long, but a good read. That one passage about the Steiner family- season ticket holders for 85 years, at one point during the depression the only season ticket holders, and still plenty wealthy enough to afford the new prices- refusing to get new season tickets after the hard and disrespectful sell from the ticket office really drove home the lack of connection to fans.
It's a pretty good microcosm of the last 10 years, really: a somewhat artificial boom drove up prices for these kind of bribe-y luxuries- no different in some respects to real estate prices, etc- and the Yankees organization doesn't understand that the era of stripclub/ballgame/wild private party business deals being closed isn't really the same as it once was.
posted by hincandenza at 07:23 PM on October 09
It's an interesting article, a bit overlong to make its point: the playoffs are an absolute crapshoot, where even the best record in the majors doesn't really win much more than the wild card team.
What's perhaps of more interest than the content itself is that the first link/article is written by John Henry- owner of the Boston Red Sox. When your team's owner is that kind of numbers-intense, smart guy who spends time writing a blog article about post-season success rats based on seeding, who believes in critical and unbiased research as opposed to results-based or gut-instinct analysis, and that attitude filters down into the hiring and decision making process of the GM (Theo Epstein) and even the coaches and players and minor league personnel... well, you can understand why the Red Sox succeed.
The Red Sox don't build a team to shoot for the WS in one year, they build a balanced team that will have greater chance of success by making it to the post-season as often as possible, because they realized that even having a 100+ win season doesn't guarantee you anything in these short series. They've made the post season 6 of 8 years since Henry and company took over, with one of the missed years being a 93 win season in 2002. Their win totals since 2002 are 93, 95, 98, 95, 86, 96, 95, and 95.
That's an insane level of consistency for a franchise to maintain, and it comes about not just because the Sox have money. Sure, their organization has found new ways to monetize the Sox experience, improve the stadium, while also putting out a great on-field product that keeps the seats filled even with higher ticket prices. But they win because they are the kind of smart, thoughtful, analytical organization that knows how to spend the money wisely, and that attitude starts from the top.
While this year may or may not prove otherwise, the Yankees by comparison have far more cash and spend it freely, but haven't the same consistency or success this decade; they take the "Shoot for the moon" approach each year, but simply have the money to do that year in and year out. Any other franchise that did that would either win the WS or not, but in either case would have 3-4 "rebuilding" years afterwards while all their big contracts and poor talent evaluation came home to roost.
For another example of their "We pursue the strategies we know will work, and don't let ourselves be swayed by talk radio, fan chatter, or small sample size aberrations", here's a great SI article by Joe Posnanski about the Red Sox, and in particular Theo Epstein's opinion of J.D. Drew, who is frequently underrated as dispassionate and underperforming because he doesn't have lots of RBIs.
The radio guys here protest a little ... they point out that while Drew's OPS is usually good, they aren't sure that it has led to PRODUCTION -- namely runs scored and RBIs. And this is when Theo really takes over. I bold out a few of my favorite thoughts in this wonderful little lesson:Emphasis my own. It's heartening to hear your G.M. speak like a hardcore sabermetric blogger, recognizing what's truly valuable versus what's superficially valuable, because it means these are people with the with and wherewithal to keep your team competitive for years to come."That's not true. With RBIs, yes. Based on his skill set, he's always going to have underwhelming RBI totals. I couldn't care less. When you're putting together a winning team, that honestly doesn't matter. When you have a player who takes a ton of walks, who doesn't put the ball in play at an above average rate, and is a certain type of hitter, he's not going to drive in a lot of runs. Runs scored, you couldn't be more wrong. If you look at a rate basis, J.D. scores a ton of runs.
"And the reason he scores a ton of runs is because he does the single most important thing you can do in baseball as an offensive player. And that's NOT MAKE OUTS. He doesn't make outs. He's always among our team leaders in on-base percentage, usually among the league leaders in on-base percentage. And he's a really good base runner. So when he doesn't make outs, and he gets himself on base, he scores runs -- and he has some good hitters hitting behind him. Look at his runs scored on a rate basis with the Red Sox or throughout his career. It's outstanding.
posted by hincandenza at 06:44 PM on October 09
Speaking of the Costanza- did the SpoFi Pantheon ever get around to hosting the Championship images on the site itself? I just dug up the original Costanza awards designed by gpsm from around aught-six, and they look fantastic!
posted by hincandenza at 10:51 AM on October 07
Coming out of retirement; haven't played one of these in a while, but with some hardware in the ol' Spofi closet (and possibly even a coveted Costanza if I recall correctly), it's time for an old man to show these young whippersnappers how it's done! :)
posted by hincandenza at 10:42 AM on October 07
Utley ties Reggie's World Series Record
The wickedly premature question I have: if this goes 7 and the Phillies win... is your MVP Cliff Lee or Chase Utley?