Sports Writing

Minor site redesign, including the placement of Google Ads on the sidebar. Apologies to visitors who find that annoying, just trying to defray some of the costs of running this site. Will provide the same high-quality content. Well, will continue to provide content. Quality inversely related to amount of sleep. Given that the Euro 2004 final is this weekend, don’t expect too much…

You don’t understand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let’s face it. It was you, Tito. Oh, and you, Millar. :)

I. Am. Not. Talking. About. It. Okay, I am. But only to say these things: I know, rationally, whether Nomar was cheering at the top of the dugout or sitting down or even playing Playstation probably wouldn’t have made a difference to the game, but it still would have been nice to see. And two extra-innings losses? It hurts. Hurts to keep losing the close ones. Hurts to have the worst luck. What propitiations shall we offer the baseball Gods?

Many thanks to Michael Mutnansky and the good folks over at East Coast Sports Network for naming me their Sportsblog of the Week! :) ECSN is not too shabby either - funny stuff, and a nice thought-provoking piece on whether Fred McGriff is a Hall of Famer. (Personally: no, but Crime Dog is a great nickname)

More rationally, some thoughts: 1. Still in the wild-card race; 2. I’ve become a McCarty for first base convert; 3. I trust in the fury of Pedro.

I don’t want to talk about it How you broke my heart

Quotes from baseball that could be dialogue from Sex and the City, part 1: “told me at least a dozen times, `I really like that guy, I really like that guy… I knew as soon as he said it once he was good. He is a very good-looking pitcher.”

Okay, I know, a game against the Yankees counts only as much as a game against, say, the Padres. Only not. Yuck. Honestly, though, if this loss spurs the Sox to play like the Y*nk**s have for the last month, I would be very grateful.

Baseball Prospectus’ Teams: a Critical Guide makes for good reading. “No real villains on the pitching staff” just about sums it up, and I feel the same way about most of the lineup. I think one of the frustrating things about the ‘04 Sox is that on any given day anyone can be great or stink. Except Kevin Millar, of course, who needs to stop yee-yahing around and actually put up some numbers. :)

Theo Epstein managed in his interview with the Globe to allude to the sabermetric concept of expected win-loss numbers, while noting that sabermetrics doesn’t mean you completely ignore defense and base running…

Was away for the whole series against Philly, hence the lack of updates. But great to see the Sox win a series, finally. And Ortiz’s play has been astounding: even the New York Times has noticed. (Side note: how come the Times doesn’t need to mention that it’s a part-owner of the Sox when it covers the Sox?) 72 RBI with more than half the season to play? Dear me, Manny’s going to have a hard time getting any RBIs if the Big O keeps clearing up the bases ahead of him. :)

MANNY! What a game! Fielding, hitting, the man had it all. Even a sense of humour: “I think Dwight Evans is going to have nightmares tonight,” Ramirez said with a smile

Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. The injury gods have seemed to conspire to come up with a solution to Boston’s infield logjam: Pokey’s out with a thumb injury. Listed as day-to-day. I don’t really trust Dr Morgan’s estimates so let’s just hope he gets back soon. Competition for spots is always good…

Sigh. Another loss. Can’t this team ever get on a winning streak? Randomly, today’s game had 0 flyouts by Boston pitchers: G-F ratio Lowe 14-0, Timlin 2-0, Embree 1-0. Manny/Damon/Trot getting some good rest out there.

Nomar and Trot’s returns have really reignited this offence (well, excluding the Jason Schmidt game, but then when someone tosses a 1-hitter sometimes you just gotta tip your cap and take the loss). That grand slam was a thing of beauty, but I really liked the feeling I had just when Nomar stepped to the plate. It was like ‘03 - the bases were loaded and for a change this year I actually expected runs to score, rather than seeing Runners Left in Scoring Position.

Sox get Curt Leskanic, yeah. His shoulder is a worry, but that 212 ERA+ last year is pretty impressive, even in a small sample size. Looks like it’s south for Malaska, down I-95. Whatever happened to Phil Seibel?

In honour of Eric “I Didn’t Speak English Till I Was a Teenager” Gagne shutting down the Yankees today, I tried to construct an all-Canadian team, a look at the potential lineup for any Baseball World Cup. Unfortunately, these are the Canadians in the majors:

So anyway I was just thinking about cases where a batter reaches a base on error, and whether it’s worth counting these cases in their OBPs. Whaddya know, Baseball Prospectus runs the numbers and comes to the conclusion that there’s no correlation between a player’s speed and the likelihood of him reaching a base on error. And OBP is a better predictor of runs than OBP + reached on errors. Sometimes luck is everything.

Got the blues from my baby Left me by the San Francisco Bay. For some reason just the mention of San Francisco makes me think of music of the 60s. Janis Joplin’s “San Francisco Bay Blues” just about sums it up… Pedro, 1st inning, deja vu all over again. Maybe we should take a leaf out of the way buildings skip the 13th floor, and start the game with the 2nd inning and end in the 10th. And Embree - all his fastball has is velocity, as far as I can tell, not movement, so if he’s not clocking it’s going yard. And as for Ortiz stretching for second, all I can say is Tito and gang better rerun that Baserunning 101 course…

Never slumbered or slept or waited for lightning to strike There’s no excuse for you to say that we don’t think alike You said you were going to Frisco stay a couple of months