Fantasy Baseball: Team Snowman

Buckle in for the last third of the season. I have. I make a fairly bold trade. I'm in sixth place (out of 14 teams). I've been on a minor climb lately. I've got one guy on my ass for 6th, and I'm about six points behind fifth place and 15-18 points out of first. First place might be out of reach, but I can still get into the top three.

My dilemma is this: All season long I've been way short on power, RBIs and OPS (On-base plus Slugging). I'm somewhere between middle of the pack and top of the crap heap in the other categories, but there's a solid chance a statistical correction can/will happen in those categories anyway. But the biggest ground I could reasonably make up was the three categories I named above. The one stat I'm absolutely locked into was steals. I'm 18 stolen bases behind the league leader and I'm 23 ahead of third place in that stat. So even if I make up the 18 (not happening), I'll only pick up another point. And in the unlikely scenario that I tumble all the way down and cough up a 23 SB cushion, I only lose a point.

So steals were my ideal stat to trade. I don't think I could've found a better deal. I sent Ichiro Suzuki to the last place team for Albert Pujols. Suzuki is hitting below his career average (.330) at about a .300 clip this year. He's among the leaders in the majors in steals, but since late June, when the Mariners were solidly out of it, he's only attempted two steals. His team is going under and he seems fairly disinterested in competing extra hard because of it. I found the one guy that still considers him a three stat dominator, even though he has all the earmarks of packing it in and being pretty ordinary from here on out.

Now Pujols isn't without risk. He's got a balky leg that comes and goes. His elbow ligament could explode at any minute. And he's in a lineup that lacks reliable, consistent protection, so he gets pitched around plenty. But he's still a top 3 pick in any year. He offers power. He'll drive in runs, even when teams don't pitch to him much. He'll still score plenty of runs as much as he gets on base. He draws a ton of walks, and this year, he's soundly outhitting Ichiro - Pujols has just pushed his average into the .350 range in the last week or so. I'll miss Ichiro in one category - triples, but that's it. And you can't really plan on someone hitting triples. They're as much a product of luck as anything else.

Pujols' first game on my roster, yesterday, turned out pretty sweet: 2/4, 3 runs, a double, a solo homer and a stolen base. I seem to be peaking at the right time. All signs point to a big second half. Here's my offense's line from tonight: 19/42, .452 avg, 1.653 OPS, 15 runs, 4 singles, 7 doubles, 2 triples, 6 homers, 11 RBIs.

If there's a concern, it lies with pitching. I've shortened up my bench to hoarde as many potentially useful arms as possible though. I like the second half outlook for most of these guys. My staff looks like this:

SP:
Cole Hamels - Hamels had a solid but unspectacular first half. If he converts a couple of no-decisions into wins, most people's views on him would increase dramatically. He's still a Cy Young winner in waiting with a good ERA, great WHIP, and he's chipped in a couple of complete game shutouts already too. He's got a powerful team in a tight playoff race. I expect big things here.
Matt Cain - Lincecum gets all the press in the Giants' rotation, but Cain is the country hardballer here. He had some tough luck starts in the first half where he got no help whatsoever from his offense, but he's had a very good last couple of months and seems poised to close the season on a roll. He's a good source of K's and limits damage to his stats by getting plenty of ground ball outs. He's coming off a complete game shutout and if his offense backs him up a little he can still win another 7-10 games from here on out. 10 wins is probably awfully optimistic, but not unattainable if he pitches up to his abilities.
Chris Carpenter - Carp made his first start since Opening Day 2007 tonight, going 4 innings of fairly solid ball. It's a low risk gamble to take a flyer on a guy two years removed from a Cy Young. It'll be interesting to see how quickly he can get his pitch count up and relocate command of his breaking stuff. Aiming high, Carp's ceiling is a guy who can squeeze out 7-8 wins down the stretch for a St. Louis team that's still hanging touch in the NL Central.
Francisco Liriano - Don't know why he's still in Triple A. He's been tearing it up down there for about two and a half months now. Minnesota is still in it in the AL Central and there's no excuse to no have your most talented pitcher anchoring your rotation. Yes, he was horrible early in the year because he tried to do too much too soon after Tommy John surgery. But no one in the Minny rotation has the ceiling of Frankie.
Chris Young - Young's first half was so disappointing that at this point I feel like anything I get from the big fella will be icing on the cake. His first start back from taking that Pujols line drive off his nose went well, all things considered. He's fresh, he seems unfazed by having a fractured skull and he's still got nasty stuff. I expect him to put up great peripherals, but with that offense in San Diego, to come up lame in the wins column. Still worth owning for the K's, ERA and WHIP.
Shaun Marcum - Not sure what I'll get from him. He's back from a strained elbow ligament and refuses to lay off the cutters that sent him to the DL in the first place. Toronto is out of it, but they're out of it every year by this time and seem to relish playing spoilers to either the Yankees or Boston. It'll be nearly impossible to top his first half. If all goes well, he gets 6-7 wins, is his usual WHIP monster and is solid in ERA and K's. I might try to sell while people still remember his dominant first half.
Todd Wellemeyer - not sure what I'll get here either. Wellemeyer has never thrown this many innings ever before and hasn't been as sharp since his elbow strain. Unfortunately, I don't think he has a ton of value left. A major downfall with Colonel Wellemeyer is that he doesn't pitch deep into games and the Cardinals' bullpen leads the majors in blown saves, so he's not going to get a big amount of wins. He's still good for plenty of K's, but I have doubts about his usefulness in pretty much all other categories for the balance of the season.

Bullpen: Joakim Soria, Mike Gonzalez, Joel Hanrahan, Grant Balfour, Jim Johnson.
I'd like one more reliable closer. Soria is money, but plays for the Royals. Gonzalez is pretty much uncontested as the closer in Atlanta, but he gets so few save chances and Atlanta has runup the white flag on this season. Hanrahan is the new closer in D.C., but can be inconsistent and won't get many save opportunities either. Balfour has pretty wicked stuff and is the closer in waiting behind injury-prone Troy Percival in Tampa. At the very least he's going to be stout in all categories except saves and he could get a shot at a few of those too. Jim Johnson is being carried speculatively for now in case Baltimore trades closer George Sherril. Baltimore has generated plenty of save opportunites, and at worst, Johnson is a lot like Balfour - pretty overpowering, just might not help in saves.

So I've hung around pretty well and I like my chances to make a solid run here over the next couple of months.

Mark It Zero, Dude

I finally broke down and turned on the air conditioning. I can only stand coming home to a 100+ degree apartment so much. Like Walter Sobchek, I too am armed and ready to let the bullets fly:

• One of the fun things about having a Canadien Yahoo account (and Myspace) is that I get "local" news feeds on my homepage. I also get all numbers and measurements in the metric system, which can be confusing. But on the subject of global warming, here's something the American media would've never told you about. I should've been a scientist. As long as I'm not getting laid, at least I could've been smart and called myself doctor or something.


• Several members of the Bluth family would be so happy about this development: jetpacks (jetpants?) are almost ready for consumers.


• Good news for one of my fantasy football teams: Marshawn Lynch will not be suspended. It's nice to see a millionaire athlete get a break for once after hitting someone with their 2008 Porsche and driving off to get some sleep because it's 3:30 AM. I had no idea there was anything to do in Buffalo at that hour.


• On the same fantasy team, I'm waiting with minty fresh breath for the word on Brandon Marshall's suspension. I didn't realize when I drafted him that it could be as many as eight games.


• There was a triathalon in NYC a couple weeks ago and I found this video amusing. Looks like Pat trying to get into his house after his bachelor party. Seriously, someone should tell that guy the sidewalks are for regular walkin', not that fancy walkin'. How considerate of them to have those signs in the way for him to trip over.


• I'm sure their ACC rivals will let these two Virginia football players slide next year. One can only guess what the fuck happened to the one guy's hair.

• Europeans take their soccer seriously. Too seriously. Look how one German team unveiled their new uniforms.

So much unintentional comedy to mine there.

I had more, but it's late and I'm tired. I think the Pixies wrote a song about that.

America's Favorite New Game

Welcome, bien venue, ladies and gentlemen to the Pilot episode of "Bachelor Party or Random Internet image?"

This week's picture:

Off and Running

Quick shout out to the Bethalto Knights of Columbus Hall. Thursday nights they give out free wings (hot and barbecue) and have 16oz. bottles for $1.50 and 8oz. drafts for $0.75. Being that it's literally a good tee shot from Pat's house it's a no brainer. Pat and I got silly wasted there last night as a sort of precursor to the Official Pat's Bachelor Party of Mayhem Weekend.

I ended up "falling asleep" (not to be confused with passing out) on Pat's patio at like 2 in the morning. Pat drug me inside and threw me on the couch. I stayed there until around 4:30 I want to say, then I fell off the couch and onto the floor. I slumbered there until just before 5:30. I went back to my place, grabbed about forty-five minutes of shut-eye in my own bed (at last!) then managed to compose myself enough to make it to work. That was an adventure, but the day turned out alright.

Lost in the foggy, booze-influenced hours of last night were some nuggets of accomplishment. I got a tentative "yes" from Hott Jenn the Hott Dental Hygiene Student (trademark pending) to be my hot date for my co-worker Mindy's wedding. I then got Mindy to let me RSVP even though its a few days past the deadline and I'd already told her I wasn't coming. I might've promised a big check, I can't remember.

What does all that have to do with the Bachelor Party of Mayhem Weekend? Thursday night sort of turned into the unofficial start. Also, I wanted to not drink tonight so I could go into Saturday with my liver working at full capacity, not bogged down from the night before. That plan didn't exactly go off as I'd hoped. Leach rolled into town at about 7:30. He brought a 30mm round with him. We're still sort of not sure what Leach does, although over the years he's offered up a few more details every time I talk to him. He works for the government testing explosives and ammunition. He's got a Masters in engineering and as best we can peg, he's making over six figures a year. He works at some underground R&D facility in the middle of nowhere in southern Illinois and flies around the country from remote facility to remote facility to blow stuff up and analyze the data. Sounds like the coolest job ever, except the six years of engineering school.

The cartridge he toted up with him is about ten inches tall and two and a half inches in diameter. It's from the gun that's on the A10 Tankbuster plane (search youtube for that). The plane can fire off 4500 of these things per minute of armor piercing rounds. The same rounds are also used on the Abrams M1 Tanks. He's got a couple of interesting stories about testing the 140mm rounds they fire out of the big guns on the M1s.



Besides all that, Leach is Canadien, and used to play some mid-level junior hockey or something until he fucked up his knee. He drinks like a fish but never seems to get drunk, so as soon as he got here we had to make a beer run.

We ended up watching Superbad (strongly recommend) and nursing a couple of beers. One of Pat's other old college buddies, a kid named Feger showed up around 10. I think Pat has a mancrush on this kid because all I ever hear is how much he loves his buddy Brett Feger. They haven't seen each other in two years so they wrestled around for like five minutes like the sorta gay part toward the end of Superbad where Michael Cera and the fat kid are hugging each other in their sleeping bags and telling one another how much they love them.

Fuckin' Internet

I was going to lead off with a subject line like, "I'm So Excited" then embed the video for the Pointer Sisters song by the same name, then go into a meandering line of bullshit about the bachelor party. But the Pointer Sisters video is copyrighted and embedding has been disabled. So there goes that. Side Note: I watched the video about a minute and a half in anyways, and a very interesting development occurs at the 0:57 mark. Is that what I think it is, and how does someone not catch that in editing?

So then I was going to embed some HTML code for a countdown timer, but that got whack on me too and wasn't working, so in the words of Bill O'Reily: "FUCK IT, I'LL DO IT LIVE! I'LL DO IT LIVE! FUCKING THING, SUCKS!!!!"

If you haven't seen his meltdown while working for Inside Edition in the early 90's you must google it now. Classy guy.

So the bachelor party is solid. Still not sure about the guest list, but I plunked down $355 cash for the bus, and we even talked the Bethalto Knights of Columbus Hall into opening seven hours early so we could use it as a warm-up place for a couple of hours in the early afternoon hours on Saturday. Sweet.

And between my government rebate and my quarterly bonus, I'm negro-rich. There's also that stash of singles I've been sitting on for awhile, now up to $111 in George Washingtons. I plan on going hog wild (not to be confused with "going hoggin'") on account of the fact that this is probably the closest I'll ever come to having my own bachelor party.

I'm cleaning out the cooler right now. It was still full of stuff from the 4th of July. Sadly, I had to send nine Bud Lights to the great beer graveyard in the sky. I'm not drinking skunky beer - it's bad enough I have to live with the shame of letting 9 Little Buddies go to waste. The Marines don't leave men behind, and I don't (usually) leave beer behind either. Tomorrow I'm going to scoot on down to Corral Liquors and load up on beverages. I'm thinking about forty beers and enough stuff to make about two gallons of Kamikazees. This is all just for the bus, mind you. We haven't even gotten into my dinner/bar/stripper budget. The government has a word for those secret projects - black opps. And my dinner/bar/stripper funding is one of these off-the-record secret projects.

I also briefly considered, while watching Animal House this past weekend, to show up in a toga and roman sandals and then be all like, "oh, I see....it's not that kind of a party." But I'm not sure how to make a good toga and don't want to look like a dissheveled homeless man in a sheet. So check it. Even though it would've been cool to get a lapdance in a getup like that.

Pat has bad timing. He plans a bachelor party for the same weekend the greatest movie ever (according to reports) comes out, and he plans a wedding the day after the opening of the summer olympics. Ok, so the second one isn't a big issue. No one watches the Olympics anyways. But Batman? Christian Bale? Christian Bale as Batman??? Fuck me. I probably wouldn't have wanted to fight the crowds anyways.

Thoughts on Baseball-Related Matters

Bryan Burwell, who often writes some stuff bordering on asinine or just plain stupid for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch had a very good article this morning on the likely sad and premature end to Mark Mulder's pitching career.

I can't tell you how annoying it gets to read the narrow-minded
stupidity of "fans" who claim some sort of victimization from Mulder's medical
misfortune. Mulder didn't cheat anyone. He tried to come back repeatedly, but
his shoulder wouldn't let him. He visited more doctors' offices than a
pharmaceutical salesman. He tried to relocate that metronome pitching motion,
and when he couldn't do it, he tried every sort of uncomfortable and unnatural
new arm slot. He pitched when he probably had no business picking up a
baseball.

He kept getting back on that mound even when he probably knew deep down
inside awhile ago that he never could reclaim that extraordinary athletic
awareness that used to make him so comfortable, but now only made him
depressed.

The fact that he failed doesn't deserve our derision. The fact that he
tried so hard does deserve our admiration.

Here's the link to the article. Kudos to Mr. Burwell for a fine article.

Corrections: My last post about Mulder was filled with inaccuries, likely because I was working from memory rather than looking stuff up. Among the things I had wrong: Mulder had a two year, 13 million deal, not a 2 year, 16 million contract. He was also not acquired at the trade deadline. He was acquired in the offseason, December 2005, to be exact.

While I'm chatting baseball, something has to happen with the All-Star game. It either has to go back to being an exhibition where the outcome has no bearing on the World Series, or, if that caveat is to be kept, the fan voting has to be overhauled. Alfonso Soriano? Really? Seven Red Sox, or whatever the number was? Huh? Almost every starter on the Sawks is the best player at their position? Come on. This year the number of bogus Yankee selections is actually held in check, but the Red Socks more than compensate.

It's just silly. I heard one guy's idea where fan vote is worth 1/3rd of the vote, coaches voting is worth 1/3rd, and a players vote is worthe the final 1/3rd. If a field of starters isn't formed from a concensus, then the coaches' votes carry the most weight and are used for voting. And the rule about every team being represented has to go if we're going to continue to have home field advantage for the Fall Classic be the carrot on the stick for the winner. That would be fine if the game were an exhibition. But having it in conjunction with a meaningful game results in players being crowbared in because of the team they play for or their position, while a more deserving player is omitted. The end result isn't the two best squads possible being fielded.

But I'm sure MLB loves all this attention being focused on the game and selection process. After all, this controversy just shovels another layer of dirt over the bigger one about juiced players, Hall of Fame resumes being in question, hallowed records becoming hollow records, unreliable stats top to bottom for the last decade, minimally, and trainers with better access to drugs than most doctors. They've got to be eating this controversy up. Anything that will get Roger Clemens' used syringes off of the front pages is good for them.

10 Days Until the Bachelor Party

We've even got a bus and everything! I just have to go pay like $350 for it tomorrow. Fifteen or sixteen confirmed, a handful of undecideds, and a couple of maybes who have to see how their schedules shake out. In the meantime, I haven't done a bulleted list in awhile:

• I have a rabbit that lives in my yard. In the morning, he eats clover in the backyard in the shade. In the afternoon, he moves around to the front yard to eat more clover when the shade moves over there. I like rabbits because they can't take big goopy white craps on my truck. I'm trying to decide on a name. I thought about Hippity-Hoppitty-Bippity-Boppity. That doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. Then I thought about something like Sir-Thumps-a-Lot. I think I'm going with the simple coolness of Dr. Hops though.
  
  
• My dog looks like a gimp. She got "fixed", tore her stitches out and had to go to the pet hospital. They put the stitches back in and put one of those cones on her to keep her from licking them out. She also can't jump, run or go up/down stairs for a week. So we have to basically carry her around from flat spot to flat spot. She still hasn't learned how to judge the added circumference of that cone - she keeps walking into all sorts of shit. It comes off in a day or two so she'll stop looking like a special ed canine then.



• HOUSE, M.D., season four comes out August 19th. I've already pre-ordered. This season has a pretty green cover. I accidentally stumbled onto a re-run a few weeks back and promptly flipped the channel.



• By the way, I'm now noticing the effects of the new writer's guild contract. This House DVD "lists" at $59.98, which is total bullshit, but it's generously marked down to $38.99 - about where all other 24-episode television shows go for. The writers justly wanted additional money for these new additional methods of selling their work, like DVDs, online episode downloads, etc...which weren't in their old contract. The guild and the studios stared each other down, fucked up a season of television, then made a deal where they both still make money. Now the studios artifically inflate the cost, mark it down so you think you're getting a deal and still make about what they did before. I hate this. It's like buying a car. The dealer knows what they'd like to get for a vehicle. I know what I'd like to pay for said vehicle. We both know what we can reasonably agree to on the car so that I'm happy and the dealer still makes enough money on the deal to be happy too. Stop jerking me off and let's get right to the part where we make a deal.



• Speaking of doctors, I'm about ready to get my shoulder looked at. For a solid month now, it hurts to raise my arm. I can't really throw a ball or anything. It hurts to lift my laptop into the front seat of my truck. When I'm sitting on the floor and go to push off to get up I have limited strength and the arm usually buckles. It seems to get better for a bit, then I think I can lift my laptop again and it goes sore for a few more days. Sick of this. No idea how I did this. I'm thinking it might just be a contusion to the Acromioclavicular joint (AC joint) - the socket part of the ball and socket joint in the shoulder. There are varying severity of sprains that can happen to the joint, but a grade 1+/2 is characterized by trouble getting dressed, driving with that arm, etc... pretty simple stuff. I don't think I have quite that severe of a sprain. But another thing that makes me think it might be this rather than a rotator cuff problem is this nugget: With AC joint injuries, overhead use of the shoulder is typically one of the last motions to improve. And that fits my symptoms to a 'T'. I have no pain moving it horizontally, but it's when I raise the arm above shoulder height that a pain shoots through it.


• Poor Mark Mulder. I feel bad for the guy. The Cardinals thought they were getting the winningest pitcher of the last five years when the dealt for him at the deadline three years ago, even though he was struggling a little bit. They coughed up Danny Haren, Kiko Calero and Daric Barton for Mulder. Haren has been to two all-star games since, is still very young and has a few more years before he can hit a big payday, Calero was a good middle reliever before he got hurt, and Barton is an impressive young hitter with great line-drive/gap power and a very good batting eye. Mulder had a shredded rotator cuff that no one caught, and never did much for the Redbirds. After two years, two major shoulder surgeries, a new arm slot, a lot of time spend rehabilitating and getting knocked around in the minors, Mulder got his first start in a couple of years. He struck out Jimmy Rollins, walked Shane Victorino and Chase Utley, then left with shoulder pain. His line: 0.1 IP, 1K, 2BB. Just a hunch, but I have a feeling we'll never see him in a Cardinals uniform again.


• And Mulder is all but done as a major leaguer at the ripe old age of 31. If he never had the injury, comes over to the National League the same pitcher that he was in the AL, he's had three Cy Young-caliber years and is entering his physical and financial prime more than halfway to being a first-ballot hall of famer. But that shoulder just couldn't hold up.


• Cardinal fans like to chastise former GM Walt Jocketty for dealing blue chippers Haren and Barton, but we still accomplished the objective of that trade, even without the help of Mulder. We won the World Series, against all odds. It's just that we expected Mulder to help St. Louis contend for multiple World Series, instead he contributed to none. The bigger goof by Jockety was giving Mulder, already with one major shoulder surgery, an incentive laced 2-year extension for 16 million. If he comes back half as good, but at least healthy, that's not a bad deal given the staggering money even downright awful pitchers make. But we knew that first year would be a complete lost cause. So it was basically a back-loaded one-year deal. We've gotten no return on that investment. I don't fault Mulder - he got hurt, he can't control that and I know he'd rather be contributing.


• a "friend" has "lent" me every David Bowie album ever released. I already had most, but a couple I didn't. Most intriguing are the 30th Anniversary re-issues of his seminal albums which contain numerous bonus tracks. I don't know why I didn't buy these in the first place, but I wish I had. I love some of these demo versions, live tracks and previously unreleased material. Aladdin Sane has an entire second cd of these goodies. Ditto for Diamond Dogs. Hunky Dory has four bonus tracks, Lodger has one, Low has one, The Man Who Sold the World has four (including a really raw original demo for Moonage Daydream that I really like), The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars has five bonus cuts, Scary Monsters & Super Creeps has four, Station To Station has two, Tonight has three and Young Americans has three also. I'm now very close to having every Bowie song that was ever officially released in my collection, at least according to The Complete David Bowie. Great book for the Bowie fans out there.


• I'm a huge Bowie fan, if you didn't know. If he comes out of retirement to do one last grab-the-cash-like-the-Rolling-Stones tour, I don't care what it costs, I'm plunking down upwards of $2000 to drive somewhere, stay overnight and pay ridiculous ticket prices if I have to.