The Greatest Waste of Time

So yeah. Last night I spent close to 3 hours doing something I love, but what most parents (at least parents of my generation) classify as an epic waste of time and just don't understand it. Even some of my close friends  don't even get it or think of it again as a waste of time. But then again there are a bunch of us that fight, nag, rage, tease, troll, and generally enjoy the "sport that isn't a sport" of fantasy sports. I am commissioner (in other words, basically I run the league) of a organization on my college's campus called Christian Campus House's fantasy football league, and we had our annual draft last night. The draft itself took close to 2 hours, which is  a little on the long side for a 15-round, 12-team draft; and the other hour to an hour and a half I was preparing for it-setting up the room and planning out who I was going to take when. We like to do it old-school. We draft offline, or in-person, rather than online wherever the heck we are. It's kind of a tradition. It adds an effect that you don't get online-being in the same room with 11 other guys that are all trying to troll you out of a pick that you know you want but aren't totally sure about.

So how does fantasy sports work? Well it depends on what type of sport you're working with-baseball, football, basketball, and some sick freaks do hockey or even racing. Still not sure how that one works. At fantasy sport's most basic level, you create your own team consisting of current players in the chosen sport, usually done in a "draft". In a draft, you and the other team owners choose available players one-by-one until each owners' roster is full. The draft is technically the most important part of the season because at that point you create majority of the team that will take you through the season. I say "majority" because there are some, including myself, that think that actually the way you manage your team-working  Free Agency (FA, or "waiver wire") list (lists of players that are undrafted or available to anyone) and making trades-makes or breaks your season. After the draft, basically the season consists of matchups that usually last a week in baseball or one week's of games in football. During the season you are allowed to swap out players for available players on FA or making trades with other teams. The commish basically oversees the whole process, and if he sees a obviously one-sided trade he has the power to block it, and generally keeps the peace. After the regular season there are playoffs consisting of usually 4-8 teams based on the way the commish set up the league, completing with one League Champion.

That's how it works. Why then, do we play it? what part of that do we so enjoy that we play (like me) in multiple leagues and keep coming back year after year? First off, the camaraderie we form with the other team owners. Yes, we mash on each other. Yes, we troll and get pissed at each other at times. But it stands as a great way to stay in touch. Second, a way to keep up with sports. Trust me...as soon as you get in fantasy sports you will get to know EVERYONE in EVERY sport you play fantasy about. As impossible as it sounds, you get to know much more than your favorite player on your favorite team. You get to know what's the second-string kicker on the Cleveland Browns (haha gotcha...they don't HAVE a second-string kicker!) or the number 3 starter for the Los Angeles Dodgers (right now Aaron Harang, usually Chad Billingsley but he's on the Disabled List right now). If you don't know it, you better look it up.

And finally, the biggest reason is the sense of accomplishment you get at the end of the season when you bust up people in the playoffs and win a championship!!! Actually you really don't necessarily need a title to feel accomplished. A good season for me is making the playoffs (which my teams tend to do with regularity) but the one-uppance you can put on your friends is the best feeling in the world. Twice in the past year in two different sports my team has backed into the playoffs in the final matchup of the season as the bottom seed (the worst team to make the playoffs) and made the championship game. In one I lost in the title game. The other one is pending right now but I'm winning as of today (wish me luck!!)
And that's all I got.

Whoa..

Ok. I'll get this off my chest right off the bat. I'm an unadulterated, diehard, Minnesota Twins fan. Actually a diehard Minnesota MLB or NFL team fan (yes, that means the Vikings), and I have certain favorite players on both as any good fan does. One of which is Twins catcher Joe Mauer. Who was just put on waivers. Barely 2 seasons after they gave him an 8-year, $184 million dollar contract. Holy smokes.
Now before I burn up my jets and disown the team, there are several things to consider about this move:

• He was placed on the "Revocable Trade Waivers (I'll shorten it to RTW)"
• Because it is the "Revocable" waivers, the team can withdraw the player without actually making a move with said player
• Mauer has a "no-trade clause" in his contract. This means that he has to approve any trade, so he can wreck any deal if he doesn't want to get traded to a different team.

All this means that there are many variables going into any move that the Twins might make with Mauer. Also there is the fact that he's a St. Paul native (St. Paul and Minneapolis sit right next to each other and make up the vast majority of the Twins' fanbase), meaning he's a local boy and may not, for that reason, not leave the team.
In terms of the RTW,  it is a common occurrence for teams to place almost their whole rosters on the waiver wire around this time of year in a kind of "fishing for interest" event. If another team places a claim on one or more of their players, they can use it as kind of a gauge to test interest in their players and to see what kind of deal they can make.
Now, if a deal was to be made, who would be good fits for Mauer and his gargantuan contract? David Schoenfield looked into this in his blog. He mentioned the Texas Rangers, who in the offseason picked up ex-Twins reliever Joe Nathan, would be a good fit based on available cash and a stacked farm system.
Finally all I have to say about this whole waivers thing is this: the Twins overpaid for Joe Mauer. No two ways around that. They paid for his MVP award. They paid for his local-boy status. They paid for his status as fan favorite. They paid for just about everything and then a little extra. They're a small-market team, albeit a really popular small-market team, but still small-market. Up until they shelled out for Mauer and Justin Morneau, they were in the bottom 10 in the MLB in payroll. After? Top 15.
And that's all I got.
Resources: Mauer placed on Trade Waivers (ESPN.com)
                 Would anyone want Joe Mauer?

Musings 2.0

Getting into a new podcast that I just found. Thought I'd pass the gist of today's on to you because I think its good stuff especially in light of the Lance Armstrong, Melky Cabrera, and Bartolo Colon incidents and the dramas involved:

“… if you doubt the voices, there is no opera; if you doubt the bodies, there is no sport. It becomes just another entertainment with special effects.” This line is at the heart of what Frank Deford wanted to pass across to us in today’s  edition of his weekly podcast, “Sweetness and Light”. He feels that doping (juicing, roiding, etc) is the cardinal sin of sports and that athletes that juice cause us not only to lose respect for them but to lose faith in the sport itself: it ruins the overall experience. It ruins the belief that these athletes are doing something a normal person cannot. He stresses that certain arts and presentations are not only okay with being fake, some are actually improved by it. He cites magicians and movies as relying on “special effects” and tricks to make themselves work. Sports on the other hand base themselves on being real. Being “honest”. Being believable.

In my opinion, most athletes can do as much dumb stuff as they want. Dez Bryant, every time he gets busted for drinking or punching out his girl only makes himself look like a total douche. But that’s his prerogative. He can present himself however he wants. But when someone pops a couple pills to create a false sense of superiority and dominance, he not only betrays himself, he betrays all of the sporting community as a whole and even more the fan base who trust that what they are doing is fair and just. Nothing is worse than that.\

And that's all I got.

Except this link to the article and podcast 

Thank god for Billy Beane

Widely unknown and even less used until the mid-1990's, sabermetrics are high-level statistics used to evaluate and analyze baseball players of all positions. Nowadays, they are very commonly used by scouts and GM's to analyze both current professional players and prospects.\
Sabermetrics were rather uncommon and unknown until the GM of the Oakland A's, Billy Beane, famously rebuilt his team in the late 1990's using analysis provided by sabermetrics and pulled in "unknown" players that changed the face of the franchise (if you want to either read a good book about this or watch a good movie, the book Moneyball was just recently made into a movie. Brad Pitt plays Billy Beane). Nowadays, sites like Fangraphs are popular sites for sports nerds like myself to really go in-depth with their favorite players and see how they truly are doing-is the recent hot streak going to last? Is this breakthrough season for real? Are they possibly juicing (Melky Cabrera, I'm looking at you)?
Of course there are the more mainstream stats like ERA (Earned Run Average, a stat that identifies how many runs a given pitcher normally would give up in a 9-inning game), BA (Batting Average, how many hits a player will get in 10 at-bats), and WHIP (Walks/Hits per Inning Pitched, how many baserunners allowed per inning on average for a given pitcher). But sabermetrics go way beyond these. Here is a list of common sabermetric stats and their definition:

• WAR (Wins Above Replacement): how many more games, in a 162 game season, a given player will win over a minor-league callup playing in his place. Statistics are calculated differently for position players than for pitchers. For hitters, fielding and hitting is used. For pitching, hits, walks, and strikeouts are used.
• BABIP (Batting Average Balls In Play): used mainly to see if a hitter is getting "lucky" . A high BABIP usually signifies that regression might be coming, because this could mean that some balls in play are not getting caught when they should. On the other side, if a pitcher is giving up a high BABIP then oftentimes that signifies he is getting unlucky and that his other benchmarks are going to improve.
• FIP (Fielding-Independent Pitching): oftentimes considered by scouts as a better benchmark of a pitcher's performance than just straight ERA. This stat tracks what a pitcher's ERA would be if he played with a perfect defense. The idea is that after a ball is put in play the pitcher normally has no effect on the resulting play.
• UZR (Ultimate Zone Rating): basically measures a player's fielding over the performance of a benchmark "average" player. It analyzes the result of balls hit in play (hit/error/putout) in a given fielder's "zone" on the field and compares that to an "average" player's performance on a similar play.

Didn't know baseball got so technical, did you? Actually, these are some of the easier sabermetrics to understand. Baseball has become (at least even more so than in the past, as it has always been) a haven for statisticians. New stats are getting developed every year to better evaluate players and prospects. And an old-school game that hasn't changed too much in many aspects continues to experience a revolution.
And that's all I got.

Cooked/Toasted/Done/Requests

So yes. I do take requests for blog topics. If you have a request please tweet me, if you have a twitter, at: https://twitter.com/TheStelsnerd
Or just comment on any of my posts. Preferably the most recent one.
This one came from Trent Baird: "Johan Santana: is he done as an elite? Is he even above average anymore?"
A quick answer to these questions is "yes." As an elite he is quite done. As soon as he became an injury risk with his balky shoulder he forfeited that status. No injury risk (outside of Stephen Strasburg) can be called an elite. To be elite means not only "ace" status but also dependable (see Halladay, Roy; Kershaw, Clayton; Hernandez, Felix). You can't be elite sitting on the bench with an injury. It's that simple. Also, in terms of performance, "elites" don't give up 8 earned runs in just over an inning. box score here. They may have a bad outing where they serve up 5 or so runs, but that tends to be in 5 innings or right around there.
Now, the second part of this question is if he is above average. Honestly, when he's NOT injured, as he showed earlier this year when he went all no-no on a tough Cardinals team, box score here, he has the ability and the change-up to shut teams down. So yes, I would put him in the class of "above average"...given he's healthy. But that will change fast if he gets injured again in the next year or so. At that point he becomes "old" and a "name-brand".
And that's all I got.

Avengers...Dark Knight Rises...and...

Dodgers. There. List complete. Nothing like a summer blockbuster to brighten up a day. First the Marlins had a firesale that the Dodgers cashed in on, bringing in shortstop extraordinaire Hanley Ramirez from the Fish. Now the Red Sox defaulted on the mortgages with the names of Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, and Josh Beckett...and the Dodgers said "thank you, we'll take that". In my opinion, the Dodgers, who to gain the services of those three ex-All-Stars and also infielder journeyman Nick Punto, parted ways with 4 minor leaguers and light-hitting first baseman James Loney, got away with highway robbery. Yes, they gained $250 million plus in salaries, but what they gain in the dynasty they have created with this trade is only upside. As co-owner Magic Johnson said,  "We understand that you have to spend money to be good in this league. We understood that before we bought the team. So we're excited." (ESPN.com).

The Dodgers are in to "win now" said Johnson. The Red Sox, with a wrecked clubhouse and a "pretty boy" reputation, are looking to reshape the frachise and rebuild. But they could have--even should have--done better than a light-hitting 1B and 4 minor leaguers--the headliner of which is a SP coming back from Tommy John. For the caliber of players they shipped off, they could have absolutely demolished the Dodgers' farm system. They didn't. That is the definition of "firesale"...and a sign that they are completely folding their hand for not only the rest of the season but for the next couple I daresay. And the Dodgers? They may have just ripped off the Sox to the tune of a World Series victory or two in the next 5 years.

And that's all I got.

Musings 1.0

So as I was catching up on this week's baseball games and matchups earlier today, I had one thought crossing my mind as I watched Chicago White Sox pitchers Fransisco Liriano and Chris Sale pitch against the Yankees. The thought is this: what makes very much equivalent pitchers who throw very much the same pitches and rely on the same pitches so darn different? Liriano and Sale both throw 95 mph fastballs and wicked sliders, and rely on the fastball to get ahead and the slider to put away hitters. But one has a 5.12 ERA (Liriano), and Sale? He's got a 2.65. Huge difference. Obviously there is more to pitching than having nasty stuff. Here's more overlooked reasons that can make or break a pitcher:
   1. Pitch location: Hitting your spot is huge. Unless you get lucky or can consistently get batters to look at it passing by, you're gonna get hit hard because batters can just sit on that 3-1 fastball that you HAVE to pipe. This year's Tim Lincecum is a good example. His stuff is flat filthy. He's striking out over a batter an inning. But the guy can't hit his spot, leaving bad pitches over the middle and good pitches miss. Therefore he has a 5+ ERA.
   2. Pitch selection/sequence: I was watching Jason Marquis (San Diego Padres SP) pitch against Atlanta's Chipper Jones. Marquis threw a slider. Swing and miss. He threw another. Same result. He threw two more for balls. He threw his fifth slider in a row. Chipper deposits it in the seats in left. In other words, Marquis threw one too many sliders. That's what is going to happen in the MLB when you face good hitters. As a pitcher, deception isn't only the break on the pitch but mostly the pitch selection itself. Throwing 2 fastballs and then a change (or something off-speed but change-up works best) is gonna be much more effective based on the speed difference and also the movement on the change--a pitch that looks almost identical to the fastball coming out of the pitcher's hand.
   3. Mental: Coolness on the mound when an outing starts to go south is key. Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee are the kings of cool. Liriano is the polar opposite. As much as I love the guy, he's certifiably a headcase. Now there are variable reasons for this, but that's for another day. But the ability to shrug off a hit batter, an error in the field, or another unfortunate occurrence can mean the difference between an inning-ending double play or a lead-killing homer.
And that's all I got.

The Healing Process

One of the biggest stunners so far this summer in the NFL training camp is the news that Adrian Peterson-who tore his ACL in a game on Christmas last year-not only will be ready for the season opener but may actually play in this week's preseason game versus the Chargers. He has already been sprinting at full speed and has taken some contact in preseason workouts.
Peterson has already created an almost superhuman legacy with his incredible combination of speed, power and agility; he almost always is in the top 5 or top 3 in the NFL in rushing yards and has a bulldog personality in the red zone. The fact that he not only met expectations of when he was going to return to see action in a game but that he absolutely blew them away only serves to enhance that legacy.
Most ACL injuries take about a year to heal. Peterson has returned in just under nine months. This brings up the question of how much workload he can handle. Most players who have this injury are greatly limited especially in the early going. But I think that he could follow the lead of Patriot's wide receiver Wes Welker who didn't miss a game the season after tearing his ACL in January of 2010.

The Start of Something New

Hey! Welcome to my *new* blog. My last blog, http://infielddirt.blogspot.com/, worked well for a time but then I guess I just lost interest. Hopefully with this new blog I'll be much more active.
Now then...what are we gonna talk about on this blog?  Much like the last, it will be a sports-based blog, focusing on baseball (to be specific, the MLB) but I will most definitely branch out into college football and the NFL, college basketball and some NBA. If I find something interesting in another sport it will get talked about too.
Most of my posts will be based on my own personal opinion, so this blog is not associated with anyone else or any organization. So any questions or comments don't feel shy to post a response. I'll try to get back to you ASAP!
My first *actual* post will be going up soon so keep an eye out!
If you want more insights and comments on sports, life, media, etc...follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/TheStelsnerd.