Big fan of public transportation here, and I was just introduced to the budget bus company, Megabus. Ran into one almost literally at the LA Times Travel show and it was huge! The double decker bus features comfortable seating upstairs – the better to observe the world rolling by. Downstairs there are tables with electrical outlets and WiFi throughout (although some riders claim the service is spotty on certain routes).
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... actually, am considering making Erasmo the 4th member of the club, however. Pineda and Lincecum, Seager ... hmmmmm ... whattaya think G...
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=== Picture's Worth 1,000 Words, Dept. ===
His September 30th start -- against the awe-inspiring Ranger-ripping Angel-mangling Your 2012 American League West Champion Oakland A's -- is recorded for posterity rat cheer.
I'd watch it. :- / ::dennis leary::
FIRST PITCH against LH Reddick -- 82 deadfish changeup, started middle-out and high, swerved way outside and rolled off the table. Garbage swing by Reddick, leaned wayyyy out, took the snap and accel out of his bat in an attempt to be only one mile in front rather than two, and of course pulled the head way off the ball.
It's kind of hard to get across, in words, how reluctant the batters are to cut loose with a swing after they've had the yo-yo string pulled on them quite that bad. Billy Beane once complained sourly of Jamie Moyer, "we get better swings off Pedro than off Moyer."
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SECOND PITCH against LH Drew -- MLB hitters hate to look like Reddick does on that first pitch ... but do you know what they hate more? Having a 37-mile-an-hour fastball thrown by them -- this latter makes them look amateurish AND feminine.*
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Lonnie of MC sez,
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At FanFest I took a look at where the wall will be and blast if it doesn't look like a short porch to left. Maybe it's because I am more used to seeing the great expanse of Coors Field, but that left field fence at Safeco sure looks like it needs a very large green wall behind it.
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Others have said similar.
The Mariners' stat guy, forget his name but he's got an assistant GM title, like Paul DePodesta did in Oakland. He was just on the radio again, saying Safeco will go from 28, 29, 30 as a pitchers' park to about 20 as a pitchers' park.
Other blogs: I dunno.
SSI, the day the dimensions were announced: Lock and load for arena baseball.
Just so we're on the record. So then when it's May 15 and we're all agape at the runs, SSI gets the assistant GM job, right :- )
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=== Overexposure, Dept. ===
Seen at BJOL:
Last year, California passed a ballot measure banning shark fins from being used in restaurants. The measure takes effect in six months, when restaurants will be prohibited from using any newly-harvested shark fins. (In a loophole, restaurants will be able to keep serving fins that had already been harvested. I wonder how long those will hold out? Shenanigans!)
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Raider free safety / hit man Jack Tatum, who wrote a book, and John Madden, who wrote about fourteen, revealed that the key to Oakland's talent acquisition was that the Raiders always avoided "turf players." They wanted players who were "grass players." They didn't want twinkle-toes athletes who used finesse to step around the action. They literally sneered at finesse players, and believed that such players would always chicken out at some point or other.
You can make an argument that they were right. In the 1970's, and into the 1980's, the Super Bowl was almost always won by Cellblock D teams. Bill Walsh's 49'ers carried on the tradition after the Raiders, Steelers, and Cowboys were done: he built the 49'er dynasty on a vicious secondary led by Ronnie Lott, and some truly objectionable line-blocking techniques.
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=== Quarterback ===
In his book They Call Me Assassin, Tatum lamented the fact that the pre-Stabler Raiders were always doomed to lose in the playoffs, because Daryle Lamonica was a wussy. "The Raiders would never have won anything with Lamonica," he stated flatly.
I thought you amigos would find this exchange pretty cotton-pickin' interesting. Any holdouts on that $3 a month over there? ;- )
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Mr WBC-san a Mariner! YYEEAAAHHHHH!
The Mariners announced that they have agreed to a new deal with right-hander Hisashi Iwakuma that will extend him through 2014 with an option for 2015. Terms of the deal are not yet known.
Seattle had exclusive negoatiating rights with the pitcher through tomorrow night. If General Manager Jack Zduriencik did not reach agreement with Iwakuma by the deadline then the hurler would not have been able to pitch until May 15th.
The M's inked Iwakuma to a one-year, $1.5MM deal last year and did well in his debut MLB season. The 31-year-old 3.16 ERA with 7.3 K/9 and 3.1 BB/9 in 16 starts and 14 relief appearances.
Read more at http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2012/11/mariners-iwakuma-agree-to-extension.html#668GjdPR0c4GiosW.99
If you click on the Iwakuma SSI hashtag you get ... ulp ... 40 articles on him. I've got to do something about this, man. ::insanely stares into mirror for seven hours tweaking:: That's about 20,000 words on him. Our gopher rate was, we modestly claim, in the 0.8 range...
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Q. Where does he rank among AL starters?
A. Iwakuma, as a starter, ran a 3.61 xFIP based on 7.4 strikeouts, 2.7 walks, and 1.0 homers with a >50% grounder rate. That 3.61 xFIP, if he'd qualified, would have put him #9 in the American League. Guess who was #8? Yu Darvish. Guess who was #10? Hiroki Kuroda.
Statistically, Iwakuma was a top-12 starter. Going forward, if he's healthy, I've got no problem slotting him #15 or #20 in the league. he's now a proven NPB conversion.
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Q. Why would the Royals trade Alex Gordon? They just traded for Ervin Santana, trying to win in 2013.
A. The Royals' payroll these days is below Oakland's. Their entire team payroll last year was $63.1M. Here's their 2012 payroll; sort the dollars column.
Gordon's and Butler's contracts, by Angels or Rangers standards, are small. But by Oak, KC or TB standards those are big checks the teams are writing. The guy behind Gordon is Wil Myers, supposedly THE number one prospect in baseball. We are not talking about waiving Alex Gordon here; we're talking about cashing him in for super-talented $480,000 ML players the Royals absolutely love. ... as it pertains to their shopping Gordon in the abstract.
If you are the GM of the Royals, Rays or A's and you are not alert to this - cashing your year 4, 5 players for tremendous year 1 players before it becomes an emergency year 6 situation - you're being derelict. For example, Billy Beane traded Dan Haren with three years of club control left, getting back Carlos Gonzalez, Brett Anderson and several other players.
Could even be that the Royals took on the $12M, knowing that a Gordon deal is imminent; that's the way Billy Beane worked things in Moneyball.
But I don't know that the Royals want to move Alex Gordon. I do know that if I were them, I'd be shopping him -- for the same reasons that Billy Beane is always shopping his year 4, year 5 stars. These small-market teams are in a CONSTANT process of fighting the year 4-6 clocks. Every time you can back the clock up from year 4-5 to year 1, and do it to your advantage, it's a good thing.
*Asterisk: Maybe because of the TV money, the Royals are about to raise their payroll from $63M to $85M or somesuch. Maybe in a new 30% inflated environment, the Royals' whole Moneyball Year-5-to-Year-2 waterwheel no longer applies. But I doubt it.
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We're like you. A little bit different. -- ad seen on a bus ... for an insurance company, of all things
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The Seattle blog-o-sphere has definitely always been a little bit different. One of the ways in which it is different is the way in which we all one-up ourselves in the hustle and bustle to take 1st place in line at the Most Objective counter.
Monday, Dr. D will smile wryly as a writer informs The Faithful that Hultzen, Franklin and Wilhelmsen aren't worth nearly as much as we homers assume that they are. Tuesday, he'll smile sardonically as we're warned to stop noodling about deals for Wil Myers and Billy Hamilton; teams don't trade the diamonds of their farm systems. They play the cheap guys and trade the arb guys. C'mon, don'choo know anything?
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