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A couple of interesting matchups today.

John Patterson draws Jason Schmidt today and as of this writing no word on whether Jose Guillen will be in the lineup. With Guillen questionable and Vidro definitely out it’s probably not a great play on the road against the Giants if you need a ‘W.’

Pedro goes against Wes Obermueller and the Brewers which has to be considered a favourable matchup, not that you were sitting Pedro anyway. Speaking of things you didn’t do anyway, kudos to everyone who resisted picking up Josh Fogg after the one start…his ERA is now 5.24 and heading north. Russ Ortiz hasn’t been much good, but he looks good against Fogg and the Bucs today. Sean Chacon has been pretty good in his couple times out, but I can’t like his chances against Beckett and the Marlins this evening.

****UPDATE****of course it goes without saying that Fogg has a no hitter through four innings and is up 2-0.

From a real baseball sense, I am interested in the Eaton vs. Carpenter matchup as well as Bonderman vs. Colon. Colon has to be the favorite, but a good showing on the road against the Halos would certainly give one added confidence in future Bonderman weekends. Likewise each good start for Eaton moves him closer to the ‘it is’ side of the annual Eaton ‘is this the year?’ scale. As with Bonderman, proving it against a tough opponent on the road would be a big step.

L (2-2) 2ip 1h 3r 1er 2bb 3k Mariano Rivera
BS, W (1-0) 1.2ip 0h 0er 0r 1bb 1k Octavio Dotel

Adding to the hit parade of closer explosions is Mariano Rivera of the free falling Yankees. (I bet more than one person hopes Bellamy Road wins the Derby). Dotel “blew” his save on a run scored on a ground out, which seems a bit unfair (and you know someone’s gonna look at that and say…see? Dotel blew another save). Well he did allow a run to score, but what happens if Posada doesn’t go to second when Jeter steals third on the previous play and the grounder is an inning ending double play? We applaud him for getting the job done.

But all of this closer volatility reminds me. How much did your league spend on Lidge, Gagne and Rivera and how do their numbers compare with Lyon, Brazoban and Mesa?

Not that I am condoning this means of dispute resolution, but from Japan we have an novel approach that makes Billy Martin’s tirades look rather ineffectual….from Baseballibrary.com
May 6, 2000
In a Japanese League game at the Nagoya Dome against the Yokohama BayStars, home-plate umpire Atsushi Kittaka calls a third strike on Dragons infielder Kazuyoshi Tatsunami. Tatsunami contests the call, and his teammates rush from the dugout, surrounding and wrestling the umpire. Kittaka’s uniform is left with spike marks and his ribs are fractured.

And from Garrison Keillor on the joys of ‘good neighbour’ radio via The Nation.
“The sports talk station gives you a succession of men whose absorption in a fantasy world is, to me, borderline insane. You’re grateful not to be related to any of them, and yet ten minutes of their ranting and wheezing is a real tonic that somehow makes this world, the world of trees and children and books and travel, positively tremble with vitality.”

As I type this, I see that the bullpen woes that have plagued the entire year continue. Billy Wagner blows a save by giving up a 2 run shot to Derrek Lee in the bottom of the eighth, but is about to pick up the win, since Latroy Hawkins gave it right back in the top of the ninth by trying to do a bit too much and throwing the ball away after grabbing a liner back to the mound…allowing 2 runners to score. Naturally, being absorbed in a fantasy world, and not owning either of these two gentlemen, I don’t care!!!! So the disappointing Phillies beat the disappointing Cubs….did you ever think that a team would be hungry to get Joe Borowski back?

Barry Zito goes this evening against the Yankees. I don’t know whether that is more welcome news for the latest member of the Kevin Brown all-stars (Robinson Cano? Tony Womack?) or the Yankees. Zito brings a 5.84ERA and 5 home runs allowed in 37 innings to the game. In one league I am in, a player picked up Zito specifically for this start which just goes to show the wonderful variety of ideas to be found in your local roto leagues….but honesty compels me to admit that this individual is 14 points ahead of me for the moment, so I can’t laugh that loud.

Oliver Perez takes his 7.11 ERA on the road to Arizona to face a possibly rejuvenated Javier Vazquez. Ollie is about to gain a spot on the Kevin Brown All Stars as well. Allowing a .295 Batting Average Against in combination with 6-1/2 walks a game is not the way to warm the roto owner’s heart. Oh and he’s giving up over 2 HRs a game as well. I DO have Ollie on a couple of teams so I do care. Of course his fine start the last but one against Houston sucked him backed into your lineup (it did mine), only to get pounded by that offensive juggernaut that is the San Francisco Giants. Vazquez on the other hand has been good 3 times out (but still has a 5.11 ERA which tells you where he was coming from.

Bump up your St. Louis guys if you have daily changes…going against Darrell May tonight. May occasionally resembles a pitcher, but against a decent home run team, if he is off it could get ugly quickly. I’d say Suppan is a pretty good bet for a win tonight. As ought to be Santana against the DRays and Brazelton – however the DRays are actually hitting pretty well at home .315ba, .824ops On the road? .255/.663 How’s THAT for a split?
In case you missed the news, Cantu hasn’t been playing because of a sore finger. One of the joys of having a Lou Pinella player is that such information isn’t often shared with the listening public. So you have to guess whether the player is hurt, or whether they are in Lou’s doghouse (an easy enough place for a young guy to find their way to….remember to check out the Toby Hall suite while you are there). In other Rays news, B.J. Upton went o for 4 yesterday in triple-A and was tossed arguing his fouth strikeout of the day. BUT he didn’t make an error (he has something like 12 already).

And in our final bit – Aaron “Babe” Boone was 0-3 last night to drop his average back to .118 and he struck out once. But it couldn’t have been expected that he would maintain the giddy pace of Wednesday’s 1 for 4 which lifted his average to .122. I do not understand how they can keep running him out there as he leaves, by my count, about 20 runners on base every game. My condolences to Boone owners, but the best I can say is that only 5 AL 3B eligibles have more home runs!!

Those of you who frequent the discussion board are familiar with the stylings of Steve P. He’s a knowledgeable provocateur who isn’t afraid to do a little research to pin down the record.

Steve recently mentioned that he was thinking of starting a blog and I suggested that he post at Ask Rotoman, since I’m far too inconsistent a poster. I’m not sure how co-blogging will work, but we’ll see. In the meantime, I hope SteveP as a blogger is an inspiration to us all.

Kerouac Doll Joins Baseball Hall of Fame – Yahoo! News

I guess there goes my chance to get one.

Ron Shandler Says: "Let's look at some possible reasons that Mussina is struggling in the early
going. First, he's had the misfortune to face three of the top
five offenses in the AL: BOS (3rd in R/G as of 4/25/2005), BAL
(5th), and TOR (4th)."

I kind of buy this, but it occurs to me that the potent offenses of the Orioles and Blue Jays have feasted on the depleted pitching of the Yankees and Red Sox.

Mussina may improve when facing the less potent AL West teams, but then again they may get more bopperish facing the Yankees. The Devil Rays certainly did.

The lesson: Be wary about sweeping statements based on sliced information. There is always another side.

Major League Baseball : Fantasy : Ask Rotoman

Questions about buying low (Vernon Wells), selling high (Cliff Floyd), bailing (Jim Thome), going young or old (Greene or Lugo, Piazza or Hemandez). And what the heck is anyone doing with Kevin Brown?

Major League Baseball : Fantasy : Ask Rotoman

Chan Ho Park? Kerry Wood or Eric Gagne? Joe Blanton or Mike Cameron? A lot of questions this week, and just as many answers.

The New Discussion Group has been a great success, except that the hardware hosting the database side of it has been spotty of late and this afternoon seems to have crashed totally. They’re rebuilding the drive, apparently have backups and expect we’ll be operational this evening sometime.

I’m sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience. This new hosting service is so on the ball with customer service that I’m giving the benefit of the doubt for what has been a fairly nasty run of failures on this one server. If the pratfalls go on for too long we’ll have to change things again. Yuck.

The New York Times > Sports > Baseball > Keeping Score: Baseball’s Leading Man of Math Has Some Second Thoughts About the Numbers

In February SABR’s Baseball Research Journal published a Bill James story called “Underestimating the Fog” in which he racants his previous assertions that there are no such things as clutch hitting and hot and cold streaks. His reasons are mature, humble, and well worth noting, especially because they illustrate all sorts of problems SABRmetrics have encounted because of small sample sizes and the “fogginess” of the baseball data.

James wrote: “We ran astray because we have been assuming that random data is proof of nothingness, when in reality random data proves nothing.”

If the intensely complicated calculations required to translate player performance in each stint in each ballpark is used to rationalize entire careers, but if much of that data (or the resulting translations) is actually noise, how conclusive can any conclusions be?

The NY Times link above will turn into an advertisement for you to pay to read the story in their archives in a couple of days. University of Nebraska publishes BRJ, but their website doesn’t seem to have a link to this edition. One reason to get quickly to the Times’ story is because David Leonhardt’s conclusion strikes me as right, in re clutch performance.

I think so because John McEnroe once said to me in an interview about rising to win the big points, “The best players win the big points, because they’re the best players.”

James is probably right about the fog, but oddly that really illustrates more of the problems with Win Shares than it does the existence of clutch hitting.