Thursday, April 9, 2009

Hail Ants


Unfortunately life has kept me from seeing much of this week's games. Despite the scarcity of highlights, I saw Jesse Litsch leaving the ball where Jesse Litsch can't afford to leave it. And that was that.

The worst part, for me, about not seeing the games in real time is the dearth of defensive information. I know! Wilner mentions a great stab by Scott Rolen the other night. Did I see it? Of course not. Fuck my life! Worse yet, I own a PVR! Was I recording tonight's game? Of course not. I'm an idiot (FML).

So, I've decided to quit fighting off our inevitable robot overlords and let the machines run my life. For games I don't see much of, I'll rely on numbers and witchcraft to assign my Mechanical Goat of the Night/Simulated Hero-figure depending on the outcome of the game. I'll use Fangraph's WPA data and do it coldly and dispassionately like Charles fucking Bronson.

Mechanical Goats for 5-1 Loss to Detroit: Adam Lind, WPA -0.135; Jesse Litsch WPA -0.256.

Update! After some errors in the live boxscore last night, the cruel light of day has let Adam Lind somewhatoff the hook. The fly out/throw out double play has been attributed to Scott Rolen, much to my dismay. Lind still did the most damage offensively, but Litsch's punished mistake mean he took the most off the table. So go ahead and ignore the below paragraph.

Well isn't this interesting? I turn myself over my algorithmic foes and they immediately fuck up. Adam Lind's WPA is calculated incorrectly, as a quick scan of the play log shows him being dinged for an "out advancing" with 2 outs in the first. Alex Rios was put out on that particular play, so he should be docked the 0.76 WPAs, whatever they are. After Lind, little Litschy and his gopher ball delivery service would wear the Kevlar hooves. The robots tell me Vernon Wells's GIDP in the third with two on and one out was the single most damaging play of the night. Stop me if you've heard that one before.

Other Stuff of Varying Value

  • Alex Rios has three walks in three games. I'll start polishing my lobo, the zombies can't be far behind.
  • Travis Snider listens to Paul Wall? All the maturity in the world can't stop a 21 year old white dude from being a 21 year old white dude.
  • The Tigers may not be a great team, but they do feature a lot of excellent right handed bats. What better place for the Jays to debut a young lefty for the second year in a row. Good luck Ricky, I hope your dodge bullets as well as Purcey did last year.
  • I should have mentioned it yesterday, but they let us do a second edition of the Walkoff Walk Furious Five podcast this week. You can find it on iTunes if you search podcasts for Walkoff Walk. My soup recipe is killer!
  • Any left coasters, alcoholics, night owls, or criminals looking for something to do tonight can join me as I live blog the Angels/A's tilt on theScore.com. Grab yer phone and comment from the comfort of your own slumber! Sadly, tonight's game has been postponed due to the untimely death of Nick Adenhart. My thoughts are with his family and friends.

Amazing Update


Ummm, there really are mechanical goats!!

8 comments:

  1. Travis Snider listens to Paul Wall? All the maturity in the world can't stop a 21 year old white dude from being a 21 year old white dude.

    Well said, my friend. Well said.

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  2. Is The Score looking for feedback on how their live-blog set up works for phones or are they pretty much set? 'Cause I was using it with my BB Bold for the Phillies/Braves game and it was tough as fuck. With either Opera-mini or the built in browser.

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  3. The key is to use the Score Mobile app. I'm sure they have it for BB, though they only seem to advertise the iphone edition.

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  4. We're about to head off on a long road trip this weekend, so we'll be sure to check out the podcast. That soup better rock.

    And BTW Lloyd, we made our decision on our Premiership team, and we're going with the Hammers.

    Now, we've just got to find a place to write a long-winded bloviation about how they deserve some sort of compensation for losing Carlton Cole for six weeks because of his injury suffered with the English side.

    And they're facing Tottenham this weekend...isn't that Blairsy's team?

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  5. Blair is Charlton as far as I know. But a West London derby is a West London derby.

    They deserve to sign Di Michele on a full time basis, me thinks.

    Another West Ham fan: Barack Obama!

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  6. One day, you, me and Barack will toss back a couple of pints and sing I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles together.

    Though we've got the learn the words first.

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  7. dave: I'm not sure if I'm supposed to reveal this, but I will anyway. The Score is working on a mobile app specifically for Blackberry peeps. I can't remember when it's supposed to be ready, but since a schlub like me knows about it, I'm going to assume it will be ready during this baseball season.

    Scott

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  8. Didn't Rios start off last year with a bunch of walks too? Then he went back to his old self. He's 28 now, I don't see him developing an eye all of a sudden.

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