Don't be Sad Wally

Yeah, I don't know what happened either Wally.

Last night the Red Sox held a commanding five run lead over the Bronx Bombers until the top of the eighth. In retrospect I probably ran my mouth too much because usually getting into a bullpen battle with the Yanks can only end well for your team and we had Petite out by the sixth inning. None the less in true New York fashion the first eight batters reached for the Yanks in the top of the inning topping it off with the go ahead run which Boston was not able to redeem in the following two innings. Boston needs these wins badly, but not as badly as the Yankees want them. Two more nights, two more games. Tonight the two clubs' aces (Beckett, Wang) face off and tomorrow the old guys hit the mound in their first face off in six years (Schilling, Clemens).

For now, the magic number holds at 11.

Go Sox

Money in the Bank. Well, Out of it

500K out of your personal pocket would more than bankrupt most. But not Mr. Belichick. Granted that is still a huge sum of money it isn't going to keep the Patriots' head coach from eating at fancy Boston restaurants. Throw in another 250K that gets docked directly from the team and you would think that would hurt the once glorious dynasty, but I'm going to disagree. The fans will end up paying for that. Either in ticket price gouging or increased food and beverage prices.

The draft picks is where they are going to get hurt, no doubt. Having to give up a first round draft pick is huge, except that it will only go into effect if they make it to the play-offs. If they don't, they still lose second and third rounds which will sting but not like it will if they lose their first pick. So, will Bill make the boys take a dive to keep that pick and take the hit later in the draft?

I have to say, $750,000 is a lot of money and losing picks is a pretty big penalty for cheating. Honestly though, I expected more given the new commissioner's attitude toward his noble sport. I don't know why but I was expecting something like:

• The Patriots only get three downs
• Tom Brady must play blind folded the rest of the season
• Pats touchdowns only count for 4 points with no extra point attempt

or something along those lines.

Funny how in a sport that requires perhaps the most physical contact, people are getting in trouble for stealing signs, and then in baseball (one of the least physical contact sports) where there are 1,000,000 signs given every inning people are getting caught trying to bulk up.
Go Figure.

Tom Brady's Home Videos

If you have three Super Bowl rings, play for an alleged "dynasty" in football, and date the world's most beautiful women and get caught having inappropriate video tapes, let it be of the bedroom with Giselle and not of stealing signals from the Jets.

THE JETS? Come On


Okay so it wasn't really Brady's doing, but I think you get my point. After one whole week of regular season play the team to beat is cheating. No wonder they are so good. As soon as the Jets story broke, we heard that the Pats might have cheating in the Packers game too. Just how long do you think it is going to be before speculation starts flying that they cheating in one of the Super Bowls? I give my over / under at one day, and that's assuming Skip isn't talking about it as I write this.

I'm going to go with my gut and say they haven't been cheating all along. I think they tried something stupid because of last year's upset or some idiot tried to rationalize it by thinking that if you can steal signals with your eyes (which is legal) why can't you use a camera lens. Even before this, the Pats were a fan favorite to go all the way this year regardless of the end of last season.

It is kind of nice to have a little bit of the spotlight out of MLB's eyes and onto another sport dealing with breaking the rules. Although the steroid hype has died down despite two players being found guilty of using HGH and testosterone in the last couple of weeks. I wonder why that is? Couldn't have anything to do with Bonds breaking the all time home run record and now it's not hot news because the Giants still suck? No, of course not.

This week's prediction: Patriots get docked some draft spots and maybe a fine (although that is pointless and just hurts fans) and A-rod belts two more homers, at least one off the Sox this weekend, but Red Sox still take at least two games from the Yanks by that time putting the magic number into single digits.

Cheers

Tulane's Green Puddle

A week after being torn a new one by the LSU Tigers, my Bulldogs took a trip down to New Orleans to take on in-state neighbor Tulane. So the competition isn't quite the same, but seeing as how Tulane came to MSU last year and beat us it was still an important game.

Take note, the game was held in the Superdome and other than this sentence there will be no mention of hurricane Katrina.

Man does New Orleans stink. Literally. It's actually quite odd. I do not think there is another city in the country that you can walk down the street and within four seconds go from saying how the street smells like urine to following your nose to some of the best smelling food in the world. Then immediately back to smelling fecal matter and beer induced vomit. No matter, I love New Orleans.

I was surprised with the fan base that showed up for the game. MSU usually has a pretty good showing in LA, but I would say about 70% of the attendance was clad in maroon and white. Glad we can still rally behind a football team that just got it's tenth win over the past four years.

Our offense had improved from last week. Henig still looked a little poor with his footwork and definitely made some bad pass choices but still it was not a seven interception game. Our run looked much better, particularly the blocking for the run. Defense was more or less stellar with one TD off an INT. However, after our first two TDs our defense let Tulane score the equalizer on the very next possession.

I'm glad we won, the team needed it badly going into next week's game at Auburn (ouch). If Tulane had shown up more though, I do not believe we would be celebrating the win. We owe the Green Wave as much appreciation for only playing up to the level of a moderately deep puddle for our win as we do to our dogs.

But here's to New Orleans for always knowing how to show college students a good time.

My NFL Predictions

I am by no means the biggest NFL fan. When you don't have a team in state (granted N.O. isn't that far away) it is just hard to really adopt a team when they play such few games (what is it now like 7 games a year?). But it is football and I love to watch it none the less, unless there is a more interesting *read "any" college game on. I'm actually heading to New Orleans tomorrow for the MSU v Tulane game, which hopefully will at least be a good game, unlike the likes we can look forward to against Auburn and West Virginia. Either way, Gardner Webb: Bring It On.

Enough bull, here are MY NFL PREDICTIONS

1. Announcers make too many mentions of how the Saints have revitalized New Orleans since Katrina
2. Only 22 Pro athletes get arrested for violent crimes this season
3. Everyone still doesn't know that the Cardinals are also a football team (and just barely a baseball one)
4. Romo cries, again
5. Though sentencing isn't until Dec. no one shuts up about Vick
6. Nearly all of the college drafted players will be disappointments, most notably Quinn
7. Seriously, Reggi Bush rushes for 100+ yrd in more than 5 games
8. The Super Bowl will include two of these teams, Colts, Bears, Cowboys, Pats, or Saints (it isn't going to be that exciting, all the good teams last year are the good teams this year)
9. Favre surpasses Marino in many records making him "the best QB of all time", but Peyton will set pace to eclipse Favre's records if Brett ever does retire
10. And finally, Eli will learn to count to ten without using his fingers

And there you have it, my 2007 NFL predictions.

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The Prodigal Son Returns

So yes, I am back. Actually I've been back for two weeks but I didn't slow down one bit. The first weekend back I headed to Natchez for a Food and Wine Festival. Nothing sports related other than playing a few rounds of Bocce ball. Then this past weekend, Horne, Sox Gal, Miss Rookie, and myself took the long drive to Camden Yards for two games against the Red Sox.

I won't go into too much detail, mainly because I'm just tired. Sox won one and lost one of our witness, and lost the one previous to our arrival. Go Figure. The O's who we have something like a .946 winning percentage against over the last half decade and we drop two out of three while we're there. Still, it was most of our first trips to Camden (Sox Gal with the only prior) and goodness is that a beautiful park. If Fenway is the epitome of a vintage stadium then Camden is definitely the shinning beacon of what a new one should be. Not a bad seat in the house (luckily for us since our seats Sunday were on the last row of the top deck) and plenty of food vendors with ice cold brews including Smithwick's and Guiness on tap. Oh yeah.

Everyone is all in an uproar about the Yanks winning streak since the break. I've always been one to stand back from a mid season streak and go... it doesn't do you any good in July to win 20 out of 25 if you drop 15 out of 20 in Sept. But that's just me. As I'm writing this they are getting the royal bejeezus kicked out of them by the Orioles (again, go figure). Of course the on again off again relationship between our baseball bats and baseballs has us trailing the Devil Rays... so frustrating to have such amazing pitching and then no one can find their swing. Still it's nice to be able to rely on a two run lead instead of having to have a seven point spread.

Of course I haven't lost faith. Not one bit. The Yanks are heading into a tough section with their schedule culminating with a face off against us (my first to watch since May). And on top of that I'll be back in Starkvegas with Horne and Miss Rookie to enjoy it.

Well that is my "return to the post" post. Nothing special, but at least you know I'm not dead.

I picked up Moneyball from Henry and am very excited about reading it. Money and baseball, could their be another book more up my alley? I think not.

Oh yeah, and I hate Joe Morgan still... probably more even. Sheesh.

Currently Drinking: Sweet Tea. Nectar to the gods.

Joe Morgan, you dumbass

Trevor and I talked about this for some length today, so I figured I'd share it with our faithful audience.

Today in a chat session on ESPN.com(many of which are available to me because of an awesome gift to me of ESPN The Magazine), Joe Morgan fielded a question:

Rick in San Diego: Do you think there is often too much weight and kudos given to individual stat data accomplishments in what is supposed to be a team sport?

Joe Morgan: Finally, somebody that understands the game! You're right. Statistics are overrated. What you do to help your team win is what it's all about. These stats like OPS, it doesn't tell you what you do for the team. To my opinion, to help the team, you drive in runs or score runs. That helps the team. That's how you should be judged.


Being a recently baptized "Moneyball baby," I quickly copied, pasted, and emailed this quote to my email in hopes of posting. I just couldn't let this go.

So Joe says statistics are overrated. Are they? Possibly. But it's doubtful. If there is anything Billy Beane and Co. have showed us, it's that even if you focus 100% on statistics and have a cold, hard relationship with your players and managers, you'll WIN games, and you'll be in CONTENTION. From 1999-2004, no team did that better with less money than the Oakland A's. So for that point alone, Joe should be slapped. With a bat. By David Ortiz.

As for the next part, well, Joe is just an idiot. "These stats like OPS, it doesn't tell you what you do for the team." REALLY, Joe? Did you seriously just say that? For those of you with not exactly as much free time devoted to baseball stats as I am, I'll try to explain.

OPS. It stands for "on-base plus slugging." It's a handy way to look at how a player(or team) bats for power, as well as how well he(or they) get on base. Let's break each of those components down further.

On-Base Percentage(OBP). It's basically what it sounds like. It is how many times you reach base safely in the absence of errors or fielder's choices, divided by how many official at-bats you have plus the "unofficial" at-bats. So it's:

(hits + walks + hits-by-pitch) / (at-bats + walks + hits-by-pitches + sacrifice flies)

Slugging Percentage(SLG). A power rate statistic, slugging percentage is just the total bases you earn per official at-bat, or:

(total # of bases) / ( at-bats)

Add OBP and SLG together and you get OPS.

So back to the argument at hand. Joe Morgan said OPS doesn't tell you what you are doing for your team. Well thankfully for my side of things, the hard work has already been done. The guys over at Hardball Times did an analysis over every season of baseball, and they looked at the correlation of runs scored with a host of different parameters, including our lovely OPS statistic.

Their results? As it turns out, OPS and runs scored have a correlation coefficient of .955, which in statistics means that OPS is GREATLY related to run production(with a value of 1.000 meaning they are entirely related).

Do some more tinkering, as HBT did, and you square that term, and you get a coefficient of determination(CoD). If the CoD is 1.000, there is a 1-to-1 perfectly linear relationship between the two variables. OPS and runs scored have a CoD of .913. That means that OPS is almost perfectly linear with respect to runs scored.

So how does this help us? Well, if you(or your team) have a high OPS, then you are scoring some runs. Last time I checked, runs are how you beat your opponent. And I'm no expert, but I'm rather certain THAT is how your teams win. So Joe Morgan, OPS DOES show you what you are doing for your team. It shows that you are contributing to runs, and that is quite important in the grand baseball scheme of things.

Trevor and I have long hated Joe Morgan, but this is just another reason that supports our stance. I'm not saying Joe Morgan isn't knowledgeable about baseball(although he doesn't), but if he doesn't accept well-proven ideas and theories, or if he hasn't stepped into the modern era of baseball in the past 30 years, then he doesn't need to spreading his "know-how" with America, let alone telling them "they finally understand baseball."

I say "Good DAY, sir!"

Oh yeh, and if you check that Joe Morgan Wikipedia article, you'll find more boneheaded remarks by Joe regarding Moneyball. What a complete, utter, dumbass.

Currently Drinking: Coors Light (leftover from the wedding weekend)