memos: matty_fred at hotmail
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Friday, August 26, 2005
lima time in the twilight
Don't thank me coach, thank those guys behind the bullpen.
My brother and I spent nearly the entire game behind the Royals' bullpen at Kauffman Stadium last night. Before the game, we watched the colorful Jose Lima warm up for his start. After Lima's final warm-up pitch before he headed to the mound, my brother shouted down to him "Hey Jose, what time is it?" I yelled in reply "Lima Time!" Jose glared up at us with some of the most intense eyes I've ever seen and tossed the baseball to us over the bullpen wall. Keyed-up as he was , Lima overthrew the ball and one of the 20,000 or so Red Sox fans in attendance got the ball. Oh well, it was still pretty cool.
Lima won his start last night, giving up 3 runs on 5 hits in 5 innings. My brother and I like to think we fired Lima up to victory with our pep talk.
Curt Schilling's start last night was a different story. Schilling's line was 6 runs on 9 hits in 5 innings. On top of this rather unimpressive line, Schilling seemed to me to labor through these five innings. He took lots of time between pitches, and those pitches he did make didn't seem overall to fool the "AAA" Royals hitters. Most of the basehits given up by Schilling were solid line drives or sharp groundballs up the middle.
The Red Sox urgently need Schilling to return to form in order to bolster a faltering starting rotation. The Yankees are now only 2.5 games behind the Red Sox, though they too have their starting pitching woes. It's likely one of these two teams will stumble rather than sprint to the finish line in the AL East.
This is the first time I'd ever been to Kauffman Stadium, home of the Kansas City Royals. While the outfield fountains and open-air ambience of the ballpark are pretty cool, much of the ballpark is showing the effects of continuing years of low-attendance. Entering the lower-level walkways under the upperdeck feels like entering a sarcophagus. Long-since closed refreshment stands and faded section signs indicate a once thriving and highly-attended ballpark. Now it's almost spooky to walk around these halls.
Before the Milwaukee Brewers made their switch from the American League to the National League, the Kansas City Royals were given the opportunity. Kansas City should have taken it. Already guaranteed three home sell-outs a year when the "geographical rival" St. Louis Cardinals come to town, Kansas City in the NL Central would have moved that number up to nine or ten. Add home games against the regionally popular Chicago Cubs, and Kauffman Stadium wouldn't look so much like a ghost ballpark.
There are still diehard Royals fans in Kansas City. My brother and I stood behind the bullpen with two of them. They knew who was up from Omaha, who was hot, who was not, etc. One of these fans told me he was glad the Royals didn't recently set the consecutive loss record, otherwise the Royals would be remembered for only George Brett and losing. Remembered? It seems even the most diehard Royals fans understand their team is in danger of folding or moving. It's really too bad. Only twenty years ago, the Royals were as popular and exciting as any team in the Major Leagues.
Posted at 01:59 pm by matty_fred
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Thursday, August 25, 2005
The Royale and the Royals
Tuesday night, I moseyed on over to The Royale, an eating and drinking establishment owned by my friend Steve Smith. Nice place. If you live in or will be in St. Louis, you should check it out. It's across the street from the (in)famous Courtesy Diner on South Kingshighway. In addition to the Royale, Steve also runs a boxing gym just north of downtown called the Panda Athletic Club. Chronicling his adventures as a bar and boxing gym proprietor, as well as general goings-on about town is his always interesting blog STL Streets. Check it out.
As for me, I think I'll jaunt (rather than mosey) over to Kansas City, MO this afternoon to see Curt Schilling's return to the Red Sox rotation vs. the hapless Royals. I'll have a full report of it tomorrow.
Posted at 12:45 pm by matty_fred
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Tuesday, August 23, 2005
I was planning today to write a little bit about yesterday's release of an American Research Group Poll showing Bush's approval numbers cracking the 30's at 36%. But before I began to write today, I came across this article in Salon. It's a gallery of photographs of the Iraq war most Americans haven't had the chance to see. They are gruesome and they are heart-wrenching.
If you have visited this site regularly, you know I have a predilection for numbers, graphs and statistics. Still, all of the charts, graphs and polls in the world can't adequately describe the gross brutality, agony, and despair of war. In the face of these photographs, any smart-looking chart or graph one could devise appears flippant.
Posted at 01:59 pm by matty_fred
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Monday, August 22, 2005
Fangraphs is a cool new website that provides daily-updated graphs of major league player performance going back to 2002. The graphs remind me a bit of those stock indexes one would find in the business section of the newspaper. Check out the graphs for Tampa Bay Devil Ray Aubrey Huff. Looking at how his on-base and slugging performance climbs high in the second half of each season, Huff's reputation as a "second-half player" appears well-earned.
From a fan's perspective, I love these graphs, simply because I can look up favorite players and see how they've performed over the years. From a fantasy baseball manager's perspective, these graphs could prove very useful, much in the way stock indexes can give a Wall Street speculator valuable information on stock performance. If, for example, you know a player like Aubrey Huff consistently starts the season sluggishly only to hit the heck out of the ball after the All-Star break, you can buy him low mid-season and expect a high return for the second half. Likewise, if you have a player who the graphs show consistently to start strong in the first half but diminish in the second half, you can trade that player for, say, an Aubrey Huff.
Another cool thing about this site is viewing the graphs by season for a player like St. Louis Cardinal Albert Pujols. As the OBP, SLG and AVG points show, Pujols has produced at a remarkably high and remarkably consistent rate. What's further impressive is the yearly decline in strikeout percentage and the yearly increase in walk (BB) percentage, suggesting that his pitch recognition has only improved over time. An already high "upside" is only getting higher for "El Hombre."
Posted at 03:33 pm by matty_fred
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Friday, August 19, 2005
I'll be back home in the STL for the next 10 days. I can't wait to see my friends and family. See you soon.
Posted at 12:10 am by matty_fred
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Thursday, August 18, 2005
fifty polls, one map, one graph and five suppositions
Survey USA's recent state-by-state summary of Bush approval polls shows Bush with higher approval numbers than disapproval in only 10 states: Alabama (+7%), Idaho (+23%), Mississippi (+2%), Montana (+5%), Nebraska (+13%), North Dakota (+6%), Oklahoma (+4%), Texas (+11%), Utah (+19%) and Wyoming (+20%). The Left Coaster:Those states accounted for only 79 electoral votes in 2004. If you want more eye-opening numbers, take a look at how things look right now for Bush in Missouri (-20%), Ohio (-23%), Virginia (-10%), Iowa (-13%), Kentucky (-11%), Nevada (-17%), New Mexico (-15%), and Florida (-9%). These are all states Bush claimed in the red column just ten months ago, and gives you an idea of how the Democrats, with the right candidate, could recapture these key states, especially the border states like Missouri, Kentucky, and Virginia in 2008. Doesn't look much like a political realignment anymore, does it? How has Bush already lost so much support in the "Red States?" Suppose its partly due to the fact that bullets and roadside bombs don't discriminate between "blue state" soldiers and "red state" soldiers:
(via The Palm Beach Post. Click here for an updated and interactive map.)
Or, as I mentioned earlier, suppose it's those rising gasoline prices bringing about higher Bush disapproval in the "Red States."
Suppose it's both, and suppose these two factors of continuing American combat deaths in Iraq and high gas prices reinforce each other's impact. Whether or not the United States' invasion and occupation of Iraq is responsible for high gas prices is debatable. Many economists and industry experts point to increasingly higher global demand as the culprit in raising oil prices. Still, every American knows where their gasoline comes from ... the same region of the world where American soldiers are dying daily in a war in which the prospect of victory (however ill-defined) seems to grow more and more slim. Suppose this connection between Middle East war and Middle East oil is made by someone every time he or she spends sixty bucks at the pump just to get back and forth from work for the week.
Posted at 01:55 am by matty_fred
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Wednesday, August 10, 2005
we got a great big convoy
Ah, breaker one-nine, this here's the Rubber Duck. You gotta copy on me, Pig Pen, c'mon? Ah, yeah, 10-4, Pig Pen, fer shure, fer shure. By golly, it's clean clear to Flag Town, c'mon. Yeah, that's a big 10-4 there, Pig Pen, yeah, we definitely got the front door, good buddy. Mercy sakes alive, looks like we got us a convoy ...
I says, "Pig Pen, this here's the Rubber Duck."
"We just ain't a-gonna pay no toll."
So we crashed the gate doing ninety-eight
I says "Let them truckers roll, 10-4."
Click here for a larger graph from Pollkatz. Click here for complete lyrics.
Posted at 10:36 pm by matty_fred
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