To present a different point of view, ESPN’s total QBR gives the edge to Kap’s performance in the NFC title game: http://espn.go.com/nfl/boxscore?gameId=340119026. Now, Total QBR accounts for rushing (among other things) in addition to just pure passing, which I would wager is heavily boosting Kap’s score. The only other thing I would add, is that the 2013 Hawks defense was much tougher than that of the 2015 Hawks.
…Still can’t believe the 9ers lost that fking game.
Life in the ER: explaining to a patient how to properly give a urine sample. I said, “I only need 10mLs, or to the bottom line. Anything more is golden.” I proceeded to laugh at myself for three minutes while standing in the bathroom with the patient.
The first time I heard it I thought it was bad. It just burrows it’s way into your head and wont leave until you decide you must like it. Same with The Hills.
I just bought my first box of Balsamic Vinegar and Basil. Meanwhile I am on like #3-4 of Wasabi and Say sauce thin crisps.
What gets me is that the flavors are dead on, yet I stil get that Triscuit texture and a bit of the “salty blandness” (I have never heard a good term for the taste of a normal triscuit so hopefully you know what I mean).
I think I may really like these as a reaction to all of the Lays flavors that have come out the last few years in that contest. They come up with great names and end up with chips that pretty much all taste like each other and are notthings I would want on my chip. These are all really good combos and they work wll by themselves, but I also have been able to pair them up with salami, hummos, etc for a good light meal.
More on baseball front: I actually either didn’t know or forgot what you get when you keep adding 1 – 1/3 + 1/5 – 1/7 + 1/9 – 1/11 and multiply it with four. It’s beautiful.
Which football manager had this to say about his team achieving 73% possession in a 3-0 defeat this week: ‘One night I went to a bar with a woman and we talked all night. We laughed, we flirted, I paid for several drinks. At around 5am, a guy came in, grabbed her by the arm and took her to the bathroom. He made love to her and she left with him. That doesn’t matter, because I had most of the possession on that night’?
Jorge Sampaoli, Chile manager
Diego GodÃn, Alvaro Pereira and MartÃn Cáceres scored the goals for Uruguay.
I love watching embarrassing displays of incompetence and bigotry as much as the next guy, probably even more. But at which point do you become concerned that the half of the vocal majority of your country are so fucking dumb, blind and brainwashed that they are still backing up these clowns?
I’ll give this answer to Miss Hawaii so she’ll be ready for her biology test. I’ve been looking through her biology textbook and I can’t remember any of it from when I took the class back in the 90’s. Good thing I didn’t become a biologist.
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I still use my work email quite a bit but I mostly text these days. The one thing I notice is I spend a lot less time on the internet. I love it to stream stuff but I don’t find a lot of good stuff to read anymore.
-So tomorrow I have to drive up to SJ for an interview. Who has interviews the day before Thanksgiving? And especially when they know I am from out of town and will now get to drive in holiday traffic. And, based on previous interviews, I am more qualified than the hiring manager. But at least it will be in the middle of a big rain storm!
-We have basically the same meal every year for Thanksgiving, so why am I always sitting here this week scrambling to remember what I need to buy? Do any of you try new things some or every year? I always consider it, and always stick with the family favorites.
-Nice! I don’t think Wedensday afternoon traffic will be all that bad. No one works that day anyway.
-An important part of the Thanksgiving tradition in my family is the more progressive among us discussing whether to switch out old dishes for new ones, and then the reactionary faction complaining about that, and then settling on the same menu as always.
That beats ex Mrs Aces old family tradition of the family waiting until Nov 11th or so to start talking about where Thanksgiving should be, if it will be potluck, and finding out who is fighting so they wont how up. This is then followed by the Thanksgiving discussion of how no one has money for Christmas and maybe we should do a gift exchange instead of buying for everyone.
This is why we started doing our own Thanksgiving like 5 years ago.
We have 2 people who feel it is so rude not to get gifts for everyone. Of course, these are also the same 2 that tell us every year they have no money. I finally have told everyone not to get me anything (and honestly it is better because most of the time the thought was the only good thing about the ‘gifts’.)
Thats what my dad now does when he gives anything.
My mom used to love seeing the kids unwrap gifts so she would wrap up essentials as well as toys, clothes, etc. The kids faces would be all happy even when they realized they got a 6 pack of Mac N cheese or a tub of peanut butter.
Fresno to Sunnyvale (morning): 2:30
Sunnyvale to Fresno (evening): 4:00
the 152 in Gilroy was an even bigger parking lot than the 101 was. Fortunately if I do end up with this job I will just tell them I am not working any big travel days or I am working from home. (my assumption is I will end up in like Gilroy, Los Banos, or some other backwater town for now and be communting in…)
I wanted to go steaks for Thanksgiving but I got overruled even though everybody liked it when we did it in the past…so, just good old turkey for us. I am looking forward to making my pan fried green beans though…those always turn out good.
At some point they are going to relax enough for someone to get them — it just can’t be possible to stay this amped every night — and at some point Kerr/Walton is going to decide to give guys like Iguodala a night off on a back-to-back or take his foot slightly off the accelerator by reducing minutes in a game where they are behind. That should result in a loss on the road to one of these decent teams (Utah, Toronto, Milwaukee, Indiana the best candidates) before Christmas.
Then again, nothing can really surprise me with this team anymore. They are bringing me an inappropriate amount of joy.
yes, with chick hern narrating in between play calls.
I have a 1981 dodgers (english) and 1981 Dodgers (spanish), I think I still have a 1968 cardinals one with Jack buck, but I fear i may have given that to someone.
they are fun. I wish people still did that. now its DVDs
Life as a nurse: I was working the floor, taking care of an elderly woman. I got report then went in to do my assessment. The patient was wearing a hospital gown and sitting up in a chair for breakfast. I listened to the patient’s heart and lungs. I attempted to listen to the patient’s bowel sounds. I couldn’t hear anything over a large lump on the patient’s left side. I squeezed the lump.
Me: “Do you have an ostomy?” I didn’t get report that she did. Hmm.
Patient: “What’s that?”
Me: “Never mind, you would know if you had one.”
Patient: “Is something wrong?”
Me: “Do you have a wad of tissues in your gown?” I continue to squeeze the lump. You’d be surprised the number of people who keep tissues, wash cloths, etc, in their gowns or whatever.
Patient: “No.”
Me: [squeeze, squeeze] “What is this?”
Patient: “I’m not sure. Let’s look.”
The patient then raises up her gown to reveal I had been squeezing her left tit repeatedly.
Pretty small sample, but last year at least, he was much stronger against LHP than RHP. Granted it was only 30 games against LHP and he is better for the career against LHP. Even regardless of that, kinda hard to see how he fits in.
Lowrie’s return all but ensures the A’s next will move either second baseman Brett Lawrie or third baseman Danny Valencia. Both are drawing interest from American League teams, according to big-league sources, but Lawrie, obtained in the Josh Donaldson deal with Toronto last winter, is considered the better bet to be traded: He can play second and third well, he has an enormous amount of natural ability and he turns 26 in January.
I am very interested to see who goes. Since we have been hearing so much about the clubhouse issues, you have to think they will be looking at who the problem child was as much if not more than the talent swap.
The bird is in the oven. Hope you are enjoying what it is you do.
For your enjoyment: Almost 30 years ago Aces had one of his minutes of fame. (You cant see me, but one of my best friends is the sax player who gets a big old close up.)
Dad used to work for the Macy’s Parade Studio after we moved to New Jersey for much of the 90s.
Pretty interesting 24 hours, give or take, starting with getting things together at the studio the night before when it was in Hoboken, to starting the procession through the tunnel into the city at midnight, to setting up about half a dozen floats overnight (which is what each team was assigned to).
First time, I rode inside a hollowed-out “rock” and communicated with my father over a walkie-talkie so I could feed confetti to vacuum tubes he controlled, simulating volcano eruptions for a dragon-themed float. Second time, I caught a nap on one of the charter buses we had for crew.
Then it was a matter of breaking down the floats at the end of the route, getting them back across the river, and having a big Thanksgiving dinner at the studio. Those of us who were just there for the parade got paid something like $250 cash, and at that time it was a pretty nice payday for someone in high school or college.
Aces, just wanted to tell you that your Attention-grabbing Macbeth Essay Subject matter for everyone was my favorite post since Most beneficial Producing within your Very own Essay Knowledgeable
I’m confused about the rate of these posts. And the purpose, I guess. They are obviously machine-generated, so they could just as easily add 1000 of them as 2-3.
I suspect a thousand of them would lead to very quick, decisive action to stop it for good rather than just deleting the random ones that pop up when they do.
This is a timely reminder that tickets for MacBeth at the Berkeley Rep, starring Frances McDormand and the guy who plays Varys on Game of Thrones, go on sale Wednesday.
"Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
On fangraphs, the KATOH top-100 prospects list. It looks like a really weird list to me, but I guess this is because we are used to seeing lists based on scouting opinions, not a projection system.
* Jacob Nottingham, who the A’s got in the Kazmir trade, is at #15. My guess is that he gets a big boost in projected WAR because of the catcher positional adjustment, so he can contribute even if his bat sucks.
* Barreto at #35, Nunez at #39, Yairo Munoz at #64. Matt Olson isn’t on the list.
* Billy McKinney(?!) is at #12, Daniel Robertson at #67
* Byron Buxton at #47(!?)
I think he’s being a little too self-deprecating. Given the bust-rate for highly touted prospects, I think it’s a great idea to try out some completely different methods with counter-intuitive results. I don’t know the details of KATOH, except that it uses minor league stats. I assume that it was trained on past data (which there should be plenty of).
He also said he’s using only one year of data, which I would think would be pretty noisy.
It would be interesting to see what the corresponding results when run on data from 2010 or so look like. Even if there is some overlap with the training set (which would bias results in its favor) it would give at least a vague idea of how much stock to put in its results.
I have a vague memory of mgl running a very simple version of something like this (maybe just using MLE’s, without even an age adjustment) using stats from a few years earlier. The list missed out, for obvious reasons, on the toolsy guys in the lower minors, but also made good calls on a few hitters who never made the BA list but ended up having decent major league careers.
SS Franklin Barreto
LHP Sean Manaea
C Jacob Nottingham
1B Matt Olson
SS Richie Martin
3B Matt Chapman
SS Yairo Munoz
RHP Casey Meisner
2B Chad Pinder
3B Renato Nunez
By comparison, last year’s list was:
SS Franklin Barreto
1B Matt Olson
LHP Sean Nolin
3B Renato Nunez
RHP Kendall Graveman
SS Yairo Munoz
LHP Dillon Overton
2B Chad Pinder
2B Joe Wendle
3B Matt Chapman
Batgirl bait from Stienstra’s column on the critters being spotted in and around the Bay Area:
Voice of wisdom: “I volunteer at an animal shelter where we ask people, as a condition of adoption, to keep cats indoors. But not everyone does. I’m constantly telling friends to keep pets indoors or on the leash, and I’m sad to say at least two have lost either a cat or a small dog to predators. I’m so glad you brought home a new rescue cat, and she sounds like a love.†— Susan Slusser
My interest in the NBA equals my interest in soccer. I will say that longtime Warriors fans certainly qualify as “long-suffering”. They’ll win the NBA championship the same year as the Royals win the World Series, i.e. When Pigs Fly.
I’d be content if the winning streak ends at 19, but if it goes to 20 presumably it will be because they lead 60-0 at halftime, blow the entire lead and see the game go to OT, then win on Curry’s shot from midcourt at the buzzer.
Shopping for the artistic nerd who has everything? They might not have these glorious Star Wars tenugui (Japanese cloth towels, not terry, more like handkerchief material). $25 at Maido stationery in SF Japantown.
Agreed about the arena shows, and we saw them at the Greek in 2012 and it was a great show. The Greek being my “home” venue, I’m always partial to shows there. If you do decide to come out for that definitely let us know, I’d probably be up for seeing them again.
In my geezerness even the Greek is getting too big for me. Our little room up at Crystal Bay is just right. I saw NB & the Gs up there again on Saturday, stood right up at the stage literally within reaching distance of Nicki’s kazoo and cup of champagne (also within inches of Deren’s monitor so the sound was kind of a disaster; I won’t be doing that again for that type of show anyway). Chris Robinson Brotherhood coming up there this Saturday and another show or two later on this winter.
Arena shows…eh, I might hit Phish once or twice but that’s just not my thing at all anymore.
Seems like a stretch to call Alonso’s offensive production “good.” He’s a tick above league average as a hitter, and his power has actually diminished as the years have passed (though he has also cut down on Ks). Plus he’s injury prone and will be 29 next season. It’s hard to see his glove making him much of a plus.
The hope, also via Slusser’s twitter, is that we get a resurgence of sorts because his two-year wrist injury has finally fully healed. The 2015 Reddick scenario.
Pomeranz is no great shakes, but the A’s do need a pitching staff for next year. After Gray and Rich Hill, who are we talking about? Gravemen, Hahn (I forget his injury status), Bassitt for the opening day staff, then Nolin, Doubront, Aaron Brooks, Brad Mills, Arnold Leon? I’m assuming that Jarrod Parker will not return as a starting pitcher.
The “started at 14 and now has 5 million miles flown” was the giveaway.
With United that’s Global Services status, and you automatically upgrade into any available 1st class seat, and if you don’t care where you end up its easy to find a flight with an empty 1st class seat.
Chelski and Leicester swapping places is the most extreme manifestation, but all the big teams being significantly flawed makes for a more interesting season (if not individual games – ManUre being notably dire to watch this year).
Seems like both a shitload of money and a shitload of years to give a reliever who is 35 and was previously out of baseball with injuries for the two seasons prior to this past one.
EDIT: He was out of action for three years, not two.
If he pitches even close to the way he did last year, it will benefit the A’s in shoring up part of last year’s bullpen problems, and likely making him a good potential trade piece if the team continues to otherwise struggle to win games.
There have been indications since late last season that the A’s have interest in re-signing Scott Kazmir, who was traded to Houston in July, and Sunday, Kazmir told The Chronicle via text that Oakland is one of the teams he’s talking to.
“The privilege of an invitation to a football game with the tremendous tradition of the American Standard Terre Haute Bowl is a terrific reward for our student-athletes and their gritty performance in our 0-12 season. We will represent the University of Kansas with great pride, and look forward to meeting the extremely tough challenge presented by Coach Bullwinkle and his fine Wossamotta U. football team.”
As to the Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl in gorgeous Fort Worth, kickoff is at 11 a.m. Pacific time on a non-holiday Tuesday, so it probably won’t be one of the most-viewed games of the bowl season…but ESPN says they get over a million pair of eyes at minimum for any late December game that has a “bowl” label, which is why it’s one of 40 bowl games on the calendar.
It’s unprecedented for a team to be undefeated nearly this long. The previous best start was 15-0. The Warriors are 23-0. The longest streak period is 33 games — how close the Warriors are to that depends on whether you count the four wins at the end of last season as part of the streak. I personally don’t, but the NBA officially does.
The question now is whether they can match or better the all time best record of 72-10 by the 1996 Michael Jordan Bulls. They probably have something like a 1 in 4 or better chance of doing it, which is kind of unthinkable.
They’ve already got more wins this season than they had in all of about half a dozen seasons since moving west, a couple more when you include shortened seasons.
Caleb Kimbrough, who played for the Generals for one year beginning in September 2008, said the fact that he was the “token white guy” meant that he was always the Generals player who got his pants pulled down.
Acquired from the Blue Jays in the Josh Donaldson deal last year, Lawrie was close to being moved to the White Sox for a pair of minor leaguers late Tuesday night. According to two big-league sources at the winter meetings, the teams were still discussing names for the return portion but the Lawrie part was essentially agreed upon.
The team has had talks with former A’s left-hander Scott Kazmir, who is looking for a deal in the $50 million range, but another onetime Oakland pitcher, Bartolo Colon, might be more in the team’s price range should the dollars get too high for someone such as Kazmir.
I love this part. Even if he has nothing left I want him back. Which is 180 from my feelings when we signed him the first time.
Also, I guess we can assume that Lawrie was the clubhouse cancer last year. I could see a guy who is constantly going 200 mph burning out a lot of folks, especially when things are not going good.
Like sitting next to him in the 8th inning of a game you are losing in TX in the middle of July when it is 102 with 85% humidity? I might throw at his head while on the same team…
I know you’re being you, but that doesn’t prove that he wasn’t a cancer. Because he enjoyed it all and was a good sport, doesn’t mean the rest of the team did as well. He could easily be oblivious to his negative impact on others. Many people are like that. Especially the rah rah hyperactive type. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not even suggesting he was a clubhouse cancer, I’m just pointing out this means nothing either way.
This is my speculation, that Lawrie’s “cancer” quality was not so much about being a jerk or a malcontent, but more like being aceaseless loud rah-rah presence in a clubhouse on its way to losing 94 games. A cheerleader who never shuts up would certainly annoy me in such a circumstance.
"Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
One of those guys who is constantly rocking in his seat and elbowing you in the ribs going “dude, dude, duuuuuuude” when you just want to space out for a minute and think about dinner.
Yeah, IF he was a problem, I suspect it had less to do with him being a cancer a traditional sense and more to do with simply not fitting in with the other personalities on the team. Which means he’s not really to blame, per se, he’s just not a good fit. Same thing happens when you’re the serious guy in the playful, loose clubhouse.
As a member of a shitty HS football team (my senior year; we made the playoffs my other three years) it really sucks to walk off the field after a failed drive to a “we’re the best there’s ever been!” chant.
Which is to say, I get it.
"There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want"
I think that’s the No. 1 thing that’s missing, I think, in the game is speed. You know, with the need for minorities, you can help yourself. You’ve got a better chance of getting some speed with Latin and African-Americans. I’m not being racist. That’s just how it is.
Oh, man, that toilet just makes me happy in life. And when you’re happy, you play better. I bet if I did a case study on my performance since I got the toilet, you’d see the difference.
“You can’t trade him to an NL team, he’s totally one-dimensional and when he’s not hitting, he can’t do anything,†one major-league executive said. “I don’t see any of the other AL teams looking for a DH with a bad body coming off two down years. He’s got no upside. They’re just going to have to hope he turns it around, but I’ll never understand that contract they gave him. We all scratched our heads when it happened, wondering what we were missing.â€
Butler’s work habits became something of a concern last season, his first with Oakland, as he was seldom if ever seen in the weight room, but A’s officials said that is being addressed this winter and Butler has been working out with team strength and conditioning coach Mike Henriques.
That’s a bit far for me. 2012-2013 were incredible years. Since then, it’s a mixed bag.
I liked all of the rebuilding trades midseason for example. Shark 2.0 was very good. I quite liked the Zobrist acquisition.
OTOH, Shark 1.0 I got the rationale but thought was an overpay. Cespedes I had huge mixed feelings for since Yo was so entertaining. Moss was never going to be a huge loss.
I think we got lucky on the 2012-2013 moves. They were incredible years, sure, but some were still weird, they just ended up working out and most were minor to begin with. Ever since the start of the Geren era, Beane & Company have been working on some otherworld playbook that just doesn’t make sense and they seem to be going all in on that. And man, I don’t see how you can possibly forgive that Donaldson trade. It’s just so indefensible that he should have been fired for it.
Nah, man, those were legitimately excellent moves. Beane made three good to great trades (Cahill, Gio, Bailey),three great major league signings (Cespedes, Colon, Balfour), and one incredible minor league signing (Moss) in the offseason before 2012. That’s A++ work. I wish he had been able to pull off Hanley that season, but I blame that on ownership being cheap. Then the trade for Lowrie the next off season was fantastic.
After that the wheels came off. Other than the Kazmir signing, he has mostly screwed things up.
I’m not convinced it was ownership’s fault on Hanley. I suspect there was a deal in play, then suddenly LA was willing to give the full salary and they jumped at the chance without playing out if the A’s were willing to match. If someone’s willing to pay full price and you’re a cheap shit like the Marlin’s owner, you just jump. You can say they should have gone all in and offered it from the beginning, but that’s probably negotiating against yourself.
That’s possible, but I see no reason to believe it’s true. Loria is a cheapskate, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t go back to Beane to see whether he could get full price plus better prospects than the Dodgers were offering. I can’t see why the Dodgers wouldn’t wait for him to make that call. Unless there is evidence the Marlins never checked back in with Beane (is there?) I have to assume either the A’s declined to eat the money or the Marlins like the Dodgers’ prospects more.
I guess Butler can hang around until June or something. But unless he’s hitting a lot better, the A’s will have to release him and eat the rest of the contract. His presence causes too many problems, and blocks other players from getting playing time.
The braintrust really made a hash of things during the past year and a half, didn’t they? I pretty much don’t trust anything they do now.
I’d give him Spring Training to figure his shit out. If there’s not sign of improvement, dump his ass and eat the money. I wouldn’t waste a roster spot on him whether he plays or not once games matter. But man, I cringe when I see them trading anyone because it just seems like they’re going to get fleeced by even the most mediocre player they give up.
2 years of Lawrie + McCurry vs. 2 years of Lowrie + Erwin + Wendelken seems like pretty much a wash, no?
On the minus side, Lowrie makes a little more money than Lawrie will get in arbitration, and Lawrie probably has a bit higher ceiling.
On the plus side, there is the “clubhouse chemistry” issue, plus we end up with an extra starting pitcher prospect.
I just don’t think it has to be either Lowrie or Lawrie. The infield as is simply isn’t good enough that they can just start trimming the fat.
Valenica could’ve moved to that gaping left field hole. Or as I mentioned above, they could move him to DH and get rid of Butler. Or play him at first cause Alonso is probably not very good. Sooner or later, someone out of Lawrie, Lowrie, Valencia, and Alonso would get injured and/or suck so having someone adequate to fill in instead of Sogard/Wendle would be nice.
The infield just looks really bad defensively right now. It’s not even projected to hit particularly well or stay healthy. Along with that left field hole, I could easily see another year where Sogard/Fuld get 400+ at bats.
To be fair, Lawrie isn’t some linchpin that could’ve solved all those issues. I think he’s essentially Kouzmanoff. But this move just seems utterly pointless to me given the return. Hopefully they do something about LF.
I think the goal is to put together an entire infield that can compete with Donaldson in terms of WAR. Not individually, mind you. But as a whole, including bench infielders. And maybe outfielders. And a couple of pitchers. They still failed though.
What’s aggravating isn’t that the A’s are bad. It’s that they are bad in predictable, dull ways. All they had to do was, I don’t know, not trade their stud third baseman under team control for the hope that Barreto will be a star one day and a bunch of other guys.
Watching Donaldson and Cespedes was a lot of fun, because the former turned into a star and the latter always put on a show. We can debate the Cespedes trade forever, and I certainly understand the logic of it given that he’s a free agent now, but the team has been horrible and boring ever since he left. The Donaldson trade infuriated me then, and now, because the A’s appear to have gotten a McGwire return for one of the best players in baseball who was under team control.
Shoot, I’m still not convinced that Beane didn’t trade him because Donaldson pissed him off.
This is really accurate. Cespedes was fun. And that hasn’t really come back since he was traded. And then he had to go and break out last year. There were rumblings of a possible reunion in the offseason when he was mediocre with Detroit.
I’m not terribly excited about any of these A’s trades or acquisitions. Some may be OK. I’ll read more later.
And while it’s tiresome to repeat, that Josh Donaldson trade was breathtakingly bad. Not only was Lawrie mediocre, he apparently was one of the jerks (at least in management’s view).
I expect someone to have a majority lined up by the convention, but this feels like it will drag on longer than usual for a Republican race. I just can’t see the support rushing to anyone after March 1. There is a sizeable chunk of people that is hellbent on voting for Trump or Cruz, neither of whom will be able to consolidate the big money establishment crowd, and neither of whom will go away quietly.
It requires two basic ingredients. First, Trump stays in the race, but hits a ceiling in his support. Anywhere from 20-35 percent of the vote or so would do. Second, the GOP establishment is torn between resigning itself to Ted Cruz and some other choice, most likely Marco Rubio.
Both of those things seem … entirely possible to me.
0-12 vs. Stanford, USC, UCLA and Oregon apparently earns the head coach a contract extension and an $800K raise. He could have been gone last week but as I feared nobody else was dumb enough to hire him. Congratulations to the batgirls on extending their Big Game winning streak through the end of the decade. I must drink now.
He inherited a disaster. It’s hard to underestimate how bad things were when Dykes arrived.
That said, he also lucked out with an inherited stud quarterback and a bunch of receivers. I have never been sold on his system and I would have been fine with him leaving, especially since he obviously wanted to get while the getting was good.
The academic disaster Dykes inherited was worse than the on-field one. I’m sure major conference college head coaches have little more direct involvement in academics than assigning an assistant to monitor athletic progress and occasionally calling some kid into the office for a butt kicking. Tedford apparently had run away from even that limited role and was fielding bad teams as well. So I do give Dykes credit for the improvements in that area. Still, with all of California to recruit from, I expect a Cal head coach to be able to assemble a team that can both make acceptable academic progress and compete on the field with teams in the top half of the Pac-12, and I have no faith that Dykes is the coach who can meet that standard.
If you guys thought Balfour was hard to watch, Axford will be utterly infuriating. Hopefully he’s kept out of any high leverage situations. Though with the inevitable injuries of a Doolittle/Madsen helmed bullpen, that seems unlikely.
Infuriated by which Balfour-esque trait: Working at a glacial pace, stomping around and cursing like a petulant child, walking lots of guys, or just plain sucking? I don’t like any of those but could live with the first two if the second two were not problems.
Also, Axford can earn himself bonus goodwill with a strong hair game:
"Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
I spent to hours yesterday analyzing JJ Watt’s broken hand. I called it research. My conclusions:
1. When I heard about the injury, I initially thought ‘he probably broke it punching something’. I can’t prove he didn’t, but it doesn’t appear to be that type of fracture.
2. You cast the joint before and after the injury. Meaning it isn’t his wrist, and it’s not a finger. It would have to be a metacarpal or a carpal fracture. OR both.
3. Hmmm. Buddy taping? Interesting. Maybe a finger too then? Or a sprain.
4. It’s not a boxer’s fracture. Wrong fingers.
5. Wrong hand.
I’m not sure if there is a better quality of trees this year or, as we get older we just arent that picky, but we found our tree in about 5 minutes this year. Literally the first row of the first lot we went to.
My friend said it best “never thought I’d see a day where I’m more intrigued by the ID4II trailer than a Star Trek one”. But people like motorcycles and blowing up ships.
I wish they would just go for it and go to a planet that “evolved into 2010’s Earth with everyone as a superspy”. Thats what they want to do anyways…
Wow. So that looked certifiably awful. I didn’t mind the last two even though they really weren’t Star Trek so much as a pulp fiction variant of Star Trek. But man, that just looks they hired someone from Syfy’s B-movie department to create it with a bigger budget.
If you like Chris Stapleton, you should check out Sturgill Simpson. “The Promise” is my favorite.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=uQCD9Vh_CtE” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen>
I saw Sturgill this summer at Red Rocks and sharted myself.
I should have died after that weekend at Red Rocks, because nothing else is ever going to top it.
I felt the same way after I saw Eddie Money perform at a Pizza Hut in Topeka. He was singing during his break from the counter.
JJ Watt used to work at Pizza Hut.
YES! I brought it back around. Thank you. I’ll be here all week.
Just saw him at the Fox last week. Great show.
JJ Watt is my favorite eligible receiver. Make your own jokes.
Okay but all my jokes involve chickens crossing a road so I’m not sure how to work JJ Watt in.
penis.
Thanks, and go As.
Exactly.
Unfollow – How a prized daughter of the Westboro Baptist Church came to question its beliefs
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/conversion-via-twitter-westboro-baptist-church-megan-phelps-roper
A lengthy but excellent read.
So I guess we’ll hold off on that parade for the Raiders.
Looking back it might have been better if my Dad had just turned me into a two pack a day smoker over being a Raiders fan.
Ideas for the new Free Kraut…we dedicate the site to a statistical analysis of Gene Wilder’s hair.
Statistically, Blaine Gabbert just had a better game against the Seahawks than Kaepernick has ever had.
IDK what to think.
Thanks, and go As.
To present a different point of view, ESPN’s total QBR gives the edge to Kap’s performance in the NFC title game: http://espn.go.com/nfl/boxscore?gameId=340119026. Now, Total QBR accounts for rushing (among other things) in addition to just pure passing, which I would wager is heavily boosting Kap’s score. The only other thing I would add, is that the 2013 Hawks defense was much tougher than that of the 2015 Hawks.
…Still can’t believe the 9ers lost that fking game.
Quick baseball related question…what is the function of the Ti plasmid in the creation of transgenic plants?
Life in the ER: explaining to a group that yes, chlamydia is in fact contagious.
I later overhear the patient telling someone that the doctor told her to drink grape juice to cure the infection.
*palmface*
Life in the ER: explaining to a patient how to properly give a urine sample. I said, “I only need 10mLs, or to the bottom line. Anything more is golden.” I proceeded to laugh at myself for three minutes while standing in the bathroom with the patient.
Life in the ER: patient presented with a deep puncture wound to the head. The patient waited many hours after the injury “because it wasn’t that bad.”
Me: “It’s deep.”
Patient: “How deep?”
Me: “I can actually see your thoughts.”
Life in the ER: “Hello, my name is Jennifer. I’ll be taking care of you today.”
Patient: “Hello, my name is Idiot.”
Me: “Ah, we’ve met before.”
Life in the ER:
Nurse 1: “Doc, can you add a hip series? She complaining about hip pain.”
Doc: “Really? I rocked her pelvis and she had no complaints.”
Me: “That’s what she said.”
these are fanrastic
start a tumblr
Thanks, but I can’t remember too many more.
Adios Jennifer.
Loving “Life in the ER”.
Not nearly as entertaining as Life in the ER, but in case anyone was wondering:
-Only Prince can be presenting an award, show up with his guitar and wearing 3 eye sunglasses, and it works.
-I like the Weeknd, there I said it.
-Triscuit has started doing a bunch of new flavors and they are fantastic. They are so good I forget I am eating bailing wire disguised as a cracker.
I’ve had “I Can’t Feel My Face” stuck in my head for the last day or so.
The first time I heard it I thought it was bad. It just burrows it’s way into your head and wont leave until you decide you must like it. Same with The Hills.
Tell me more about the new flavors.
I just bought my first box of Balsamic Vinegar and Basil. Meanwhile I am on like #3-4 of Wasabi and Say sauce thin crisps.
What gets me is that the flavors are dead on, yet I stil get that Triscuit texture and a bit of the “salty blandness” (I have never heard a good term for the taste of a normal triscuit so hopefully you know what I mean).
I think I may really like these as a reaction to all of the Lays flavors that have come out the last few years in that contest. They come up with great names and end up with chips that pretty much all taste like each other and are notthings I would want on my chip. These are all really good combos and they work wll by themselves, but I also have been able to pair them up with salami, hummos, etc for a good light meal.
Yay fiber!
Balsamic Vinegar and Basil Triscuits sound amazing. Totally know what you mean by “salty blandness.”
Salty blandness: A WASP who occasionally curses.
I bought the sweet potato and sea salt. Pretty good.
More on baseball front: I actually either didn’t know or forgot what you get when you keep adding 1 – 1/3 + 1/5 – 1/7 + 1/9 – 1/11 and multiply it with four. It’s beautiful.
What does pi have to do with the baseball front?
Walk off wins!
ack, how did I miss that one? I’m going to blame the 2015 A’s.
From Guardian quiz:
Jorge Sampaoli, Chile manager
Diego GodÃn, Alvaro Pereira and MartÃn Cáceres scored the goals for Uruguay.
Sampaoli! Great coach, bad metaphor.
But the bill isn’t bent.
Thanks, and go As.
West Ham 2017?
Was there directed parking?
I love watching embarrassing displays of incompetence and bigotry as much as the next guy, probably even more. But at which point do you become concerned that the half of the vocal majority of your country are so fucking dumb, blind and brainwashed that they are still backing up these clowns?
2000.
1776
asvd
Trump’s popularity seems to go up when he says crazier things. This is a very odd election cycle so far…the good news is we only have 11 months to go!
KTOTD.
Quick biology question…what’s the infield fly rule?
When a pop up and a baserunner love each other very very much…
I’ll give this answer to Miss Hawaii so she’ll be ready for her biology test. I’ve been looking through her biology textbook and I can’t remember any of it from when I took the class back in the 90’s. Good thing I didn’t become a biologist.
For just $199.99 you can update to premium Free Kraut content today! That’s right for the low, low price of $199.99 you can get the latest posts about life in the ER from Jennifer sent directly to your email account (AOL accounts only). If you sign up today we’ll throw in Future Ed’s legal services for any misdemeanor or felony (AOL related crimes only) for free! Don’t wait as this offer won’t last forever so send $199.99 to http://www.freekrautpremium.org RIGHT NOW!
But wait…there’s more. If you’re the second person to order Free Kraut Premium you’ll receive a free set of steak knives…if you’re the third person to order, you’re fired.
you joke, but i still see pop ups from some news blogs that i get to through a twitter link that encourage me to sign up for their email list
Email newsletters are back. Or they were back earlier this year. Maybe they’re passé again.
I still use my work email quite a bit but I mostly text these days. The one thing I notice is I spend a lot less time on the internet. I love it to stream stuff but I don’t find a lot of good stuff to read anymore.
-So tomorrow I have to drive up to SJ for an interview. Who has interviews the day before Thanksgiving? And especially when they know I am from out of town and will now get to drive in holiday traffic. And, based on previous interviews, I am more qualified than the hiring manager. But at least it will be in the middle of a big rain storm!
-We have basically the same meal every year for Thanksgiving, so why am I always sitting here this week scrambling to remember what I need to buy? Do any of you try new things some or every year? I always consider it, and always stick with the family favorites.
-Nice! I don’t think Wedensday afternoon traffic will be all that bad. No one works that day anyway.
-An important part of the Thanksgiving tradition in my family is the more progressive among us discussing whether to switch out old dishes for new ones, and then the reactionary faction complaining about that, and then settling on the same menu as always.
That beats ex Mrs Aces old family tradition of the family waiting until Nov 11th or so to start talking about where Thanksgiving should be, if it will be potluck, and finding out who is fighting so they wont how up. This is then followed by the Thanksgiving discussion of how no one has money for Christmas and maybe we should do a gift exchange instead of buying for everyone.
This is why we started doing our own Thanksgiving like 5 years ago.
The Xmas gift exchange conversation is so tedious. We have it every year over email.
We have 2 people who feel it is so rude not to get gifts for everyone. Of course, these are also the same 2 that tell us every year they have no money. I finally have told everyone not to get me anything (and honestly it is better because most of the time the thought was the only good thing about the ‘gifts’.)
my family has not given gifts to each other since the 80s. the kids all get gifts, but not really anyone else.
sometimes my mom wrops up a box of money.
Thats what my dad now does when he gives anything.
My mom used to love seeing the kids unwrap gifts so she would wrap up essentials as well as toys, clothes, etc. The kids faces would be all happy even when they realized they got a 6 pack of Mac N cheese or a tub of peanut butter.
So unofficial times:
Fresno to Sunnyvale (morning): 2:30
Sunnyvale to Fresno (evening): 4:00
the 152 in Gilroy was an even bigger parking lot than the 101 was. Fortunately if I do end up with this job I will just tell them I am not working any big travel days or I am working from home. (my assumption is I will end up in like Gilroy, Los Banos, or some other backwater town for now and be communting in…)
I wanted to go steaks for Thanksgiving but I got overruled even though everybody liked it when we did it in the past…so, just good old turkey for us. I am looking forward to making my pan fried green beans though…those always turn out good.
Who had 10 goals for Barca in the two matches against Madrid and Roma?
Cause you may be correct.
Thanks, and go As.
Man, Roma has taken some serious Champs League ass beatings recently.
That Barca performance against Real was terrifying.
They’re just far and away beyond any other team in the world right now.
Including Bayern IMO.
Thanks, and go As.
Ciao Jennifer.
16-0
Too bad it was so anti-climactic, but the question now is how far they go. Lots of bad teams coming.
TWSS
Also a 7 game road trip. If they somehow make it through that, they go up against Cle at home on Christmas to tie the NBA record for wins in a row.
At some point they are going to relax enough for someone to get them — it just can’t be possible to stay this amped every night — and at some point Kerr/Walton is going to decide to give guys like Iguodala a night off on a back-to-back or take his foot slightly off the accelerator by reducing minutes in a game where they are behind. That should result in a loss on the road to one of these decent teams (Utah, Toronto, Milwaukee, Indiana the best candidates) before Christmas.
Then again, nothing can really surprise me with this team anymore. They are bringing me an inappropriate amount of joy.
i have a record (LP) of the lakers 33 game win streak
That’s awesome. How does one make an LP of a winning streak? Chick Hearn calls?
yes, with chick hern narrating in between play calls.
I have a 1981 dodgers (english) and 1981 Dodgers (spanish), I think I still have a 1968 cardinals one with Jack buck, but I fear i may have given that to someone.
they are fun. I wish people still did that. now its DVDs
I’m starting to feel like the only way to true happiness is if we turn this into a Warriors blog.
You know I’m in.
Didn’t we already try that approach with cricket?
AB de Villiers is no Steph Curry.
nonesense
To quote Jed Bartlet, “I am an educated man, but when someone tries to explain cricket to me, all I want to do is hit him in the head with a teapot.”
Life as a nurse: I was working the floor, taking care of an elderly woman. I got report then went in to do my assessment. The patient was wearing a hospital gown and sitting up in a chair for breakfast. I listened to the patient’s heart and lungs. I attempted to listen to the patient’s bowel sounds. I couldn’t hear anything over a large lump on the patient’s left side. I squeezed the lump.
Me: “Do you have an ostomy?” I didn’t get report that she did. Hmm.
Patient: “What’s that?”
Me: “Never mind, you would know if you had one.”
Patient: “Is something wrong?”
Me: “Do you have a wad of tissues in your gown?” I continue to squeeze the lump. You’d be surprised the number of people who keep tissues, wash cloths, etc, in their gowns or whatever.
Patient: “No.”
Me: [squeeze, squeeze] “What is this?”
Patient: “I’m not sure. Let’s look.”
The patient then raises up her gown to reveal I had been squeezing her left tit repeatedly.
I’m starting to feel like the only way to true happiness is if we turn this into
a WarriorsJennifer’s nursing blog.So, Ted Cruz actually proposed the bill with the acronym “Tripa”. I guess he really doesn’t speak Spanish
Maybe that’s a sign that this is all some kind of Andy Kaufman-esque performance art.
Oh no.
Never go full L(o/a)wrie.
Thanks, and go As.
LOL!
Pretty small sample, but last year at least, he was much stronger against LHP than RHP. Granted it was only 30 games against LHP and he is better for the career against LHP. Even regardless of that, kinda hard to see how he fits in.
A’s send RHP Brendan McCurry to the Astros.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.cgi?id=mccurr000bre
what will ray say… every game?
This may make it all worth it.
I hear Chris Leroux is available.
Slusser says we may never find out.
that makes sense
I am very interested to see who goes. Since we have been hearing so much about the clubhouse issues, you have to think they will be looking at who the problem child was as much if not more than the talent swap.
I forgot about the “problem children” issue when I saw the Lowrie trade.
What why
Holy FK
I need that.
Thanks, and go As.
It’s on sale at the A’s store now!
I didn’t say I wanted to pay actual money for it!
OH MY GOD IT’S 70 DOLLARS WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!?!
Thanks, and go As.
Big black Friday sale!! %’s off!
I got my brother the Broncos last Christmas. He loves it!
Needs some elephants
There was a version with elephants earlier this year in the team store, but I waited too long.
but I really want the green and gold version (which Oaklandish hasn’t made yet) of this
I don’t say it enough, but I love you all.
ditto. except av. he never comes around here no more
I know. I miss him.
Happy Thanksgiving FKers.
Cheers to that, and I give thanks to everyone that keeps this old blog going on.
The bird is in the oven. Hope you are enjoying what it is you do.
For your enjoyment: Almost 30 years ago Aces had one of his minutes of fame. (You cant see me, but one of my best friends is the sax player who gets a big old close up.)
Video getting fixed, please stand by..
I’ve worked the parade a couple times.
Dad used to work for the Macy’s Parade Studio after we moved to New Jersey for much of the 90s.
Pretty interesting 24 hours, give or take, starting with getting things together at the studio the night before when it was in Hoboken, to starting the procession through the tunnel into the city at midnight, to setting up about half a dozen floats overnight (which is what each team was assigned to).
First time, I rode inside a hollowed-out “rock” and communicated with my father over a walkie-talkie so I could feed confetti to vacuum tubes he controlled, simulating volcano eruptions for a dragon-themed float. Second time, I caught a nap on one of the charter buses we had for crew.
Then it was a matter of breaking down the floats at the end of the route, getting them back across the river, and having a big Thanksgiving dinner at the studio. Those of us who were just there for the parade got paid something like $250 cash, and at that time it was a pretty nice payday for someone in high school or college.
awesonme
Forgot the best part of all.
One year we’re setting up a float and my step-brother notices someone getting into the truck that pulls it, obviously to stay warm.
He asks, “Who the FK is that?”
Answer: “Joey Lawrence.”
He asks again, “Who the FK is that?”
Whoa!
that was nice. whe does baseball come on?
I could have sworn for a second that this said who instead of whe. The replies would have been endless.
Brett Favre must’ve lost my number.
I loved that they had him run out in the pouring rain. Then they bring out Bart Starr covered on a golf cart.
When another SB Brett and we will get you some protection from the elements!!
And now Favre is suiting up due to the untimely death of Aaron Rodgers.
I’m guessing November is a man.
It did spawn a monster.
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@Thunderbutt – female
Very nice move by Sean and Eireann.
love him. hope he doesn’t suck now
Yeah, I do worry about that.
Well done, ‘Furd (FK ND).
What a game! I’m really going to miss Kevin Hogan.
Patsies lose.
This sounds so much better than saying the Donkeys won.
Aces, just wanted to tell you that your Attention-grabbing Macbeth Essay Subject matter for everyone was my favorite post since Most beneficial Producing within your Very own Essay Knowledgeable
Of course, then you go and create another gem like Crafting Us Goal Essay about Awesome Gatsby
I’m confused about the rate of these posts. And the purpose, I guess. They are obviously machine-generated, so they could just as easily add 1000 of them as 2-3.
I suspect a thousand of them would lead to very quick, decisive action to stop it for good rather than just deleting the random ones that pop up when they do.
If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow, and which will not,
Speak.
-Billy Beane, on the difficulty in evaluating last year’s trades at this point.
And of course, I always had a soft spot for
This is a timely reminder that tickets for MacBeth at the Berkeley Rep, starring Frances McDormand and the guy who plays Varys on Game of Thrones, go on sale Wednesday.
Ooh, thanks. I made a note to see that but I would’ve forgotten until too late.
Yes thanks, I had missed that. Anyone interested in trying to make this a FKup? Sometime in the mid-March period probably looks best for us.
Also, tickets for the SF Beer Week opening night event on Jan 22nd just went on sale. That is a fun event for beer lovers.
On fangraphs, the KATOH top-100 prospects list. It looks like a really weird list to me, but I guess this is because we are used to seeing lists based on scouting opinions, not a projection system.
* Jacob Nottingham, who the A’s got in the Kazmir trade, is at #15. My guess is that he gets a big boost in projected WAR because of the catcher positional adjustment, so he can contribute even if his bat sucks.
* Barreto at #35, Nunez at #39, Yairo Munoz at #64. Matt Olson isn’t on the list.
* Billy McKinney(?!) is at #12, Daniel Robertson at #67
* Byron Buxton at #47(!?)
That is a weird list (Jeimer Candelario at 43?) although it seems that the author acknowledges that:
I think he’s being a little too self-deprecating. Given the bust-rate for highly touted prospects, I think it’s a great idea to try out some completely different methods with counter-intuitive results. I don’t know the details of KATOH, except that it uses minor league stats. I assume that it was trained on past data (which there should be plenty of).
He also said he’s using only one year of data, which I would think would be pretty noisy.
It would be interesting to see what the corresponding results when run on data from 2010 or so look like. Even if there is some overlap with the training set (which would bias results in its favor) it would give at least a vague idea of how much stock to put in its results.
I have a vague memory of mgl running a very simple version of something like this (maybe just using MLE’s, without even an age adjustment) using stats from a few years earlier. The list missed out, for obvious reasons, on the toolsy guys in the lower minors, but also made good calls on a few hitters who never made the BA list but ended up having decent major league careers.
Speaking of Barreto…
is no errors in cf over 11 games realy that much of an accomplishment?
True. I had two different stretches like that over 20 year career.
Baseball Prospectus just put out their top 10 A’s prospects
Looks like at least one more year of terribleness before we start seeing any dividends.
For the curious, the Top Ten this year is:
SS Franklin Barreto
LHP Sean Manaea
C Jacob Nottingham
1B Matt Olson
SS Richie Martin
3B Matt Chapman
SS Yairo Munoz
RHP Casey Meisner
2B Chad Pinder
3B Renato Nunez
By comparison, last year’s list was:
SS Franklin Barreto
1B Matt Olson
LHP Sean Nolin
3B Renato Nunez
RHP Kendall Graveman
SS Yairo Munoz
LHP Dillon Overton
2B Chad Pinder
2B Joe Wendle
3B Matt Chapman
Life in the ER
Two nurses filling out complicated involuntary detention paperwork:
Me: “Dr. Asshole should have filled out section three.”
Nursey 1: “Well, he didn’t have you telling him how to fill out the paperwork.”
Me: “Man, Dr. Asshole will do just about anything you ask him to do.”
Nursey 1: “That’s all he really wants, someone to just tell him what to do. He’ll deny it, but that’s what all men want.”
she sounds dumb.
Thanks, and go As.
This pretty much guarantees that they’ll continue their streak of winning the WS on even numbered years, right?
Blanks seems like a good candidate to go all Cody Ross in a post-season series.
I see how teams keep going after the promise of Blanks, for exactly the reason you say. But Grant Green?
I don’t recognize the modifiers in front of grant green’s name. what do they signify?
Batgirl bait from Stienstra’s column on the critters being spotted in and around the Bay Area:
I wonder what shelter she volunteers at? Though I wouldn’t run into her as I typically don’t go to Catlandia.
If I end up adopting a female cat next (I’m thinking two, either two boys or a boy and a girl) I will strongly consider Susan as a name for her.
19-0
My interest in the NBA equals my interest in soccer. I will say that longtime Warriors fans certainly qualify as “long-suffering”. They’ll win the NBA championship the same year as the Royals win the World Series, i.e. When Pigs Fly.
I’d be content if the winning streak ends at 19, but if it goes to 20 presumably it will be because they lead 60-0 at halftime, blow the entire lead and see the game go to OT, then win on Curry’s shot from midcourt at the buzzer.
Curry half courter? Na, it would be McAdoo.
Was Reddick there?
Shopping for the artistic nerd who has everything? They might not have these glorious Star Wars tenugui (Japanese cloth towels, not terry, more like handkerchief material). $25 at Maido stationery in SF Japantown.
nice
Omg. I love the red one.
TAGLINE!
The Avett Brothers will be in the Bay Area the last weekend in April. The A’s are also at home that weekend.
Who
Thanks, and go As.
The Oakland Athletics. They “play” “baseball” in Oakland, California.
Never heard of em
Thanks, and go As.
Seeing NBA and NHL arenas starting to creep on to their tour schedule has to be discouraging. The Greek at Cal would be fun though.
Agreed about the arena shows, and we saw them at the Greek in 2012 and it was a great show. The Greek being my “home” venue, I’m always partial to shows there. If you do decide to come out for that definitely let us know, I’d probably be up for seeing them again.
In my geezerness even the Greek is getting too big for me. Our little room up at Crystal Bay is just right. I saw NB & the Gs up there again on Saturday, stood right up at the stage literally within reaching distance of Nicki’s kazoo and cup of champagne (also within inches of Deren’s monitor so the sound was kind of a disaster; I won’t be doing that again for that type of show anyway). Chris Robinson Brotherhood coming up there this Saturday and another show or two later on this winter.
Arena shows…eh, I might hit Phish once or twice but that’s just not my thing at all anymore.
It would be fun to see them at the Greek, but I don’t have a desire to go back to the Bay.
But I’m stilling buying tickets in case I do decide to go.
I got GA tickets for Berkeley and Minneapolis.
MikeV…
but we have Billy Butler!
Thanks, and go As.
Oh.
Thanks, and go As.
Red Sox, of course
They also signed CY25. For two years, and slightly less money.
$217?
$216
I think if they take off the pesky zeroes they can keep the other numbers the same.
Yeah.
FYI – Your son is freaking adorable.
Thank you. His mother is quite pleased by his appearance.
So looking ahead…
My wife and I, plus possibly one or both of my sons, are likely to make a 3 day weekend out of one of the A’s April home stands.
Do I attend the KC weekend or the Astros? KC is annoying but they are the champs. Astros are division rivals.
Please advise.
The Avett Brothers will be in town the weekend the Astros are in town. LOL
fun fact: David Price will make more money PER DAY than I make PER YEAR. By quite some margin.
Thanks, and go As.
But he has to live in Boston. You win.
<cries>
Drew Pomeranz for Yonder Alonso.
OK.
Thanks, and go As.
The Mulder trade tree continues to bear fruit.
Awkward. Relatives: Brother-In-Law of Manny Machado
That’s why we got rid of Donaldson first.
Full deal is Pom Pom and Jose Torres (who?) for Alonso and Mark “Copy and Paste” Rzepczynski. According to Jane Lee, the Padres were going to non-tender those guys anyway, but whatever.
Seems like a stretch to call Alonso’s offensive production “good.” He’s a tick above league average as a hitter, and his power has actually diminished as the years have passed (though he has also cut down on Ks). Plus he’s injury prone and will be 29 next season. It’s hard to see his glove making him much of a plus.
The hope, also via Slusser’s twitter, is that we get a resurgence of sorts because his two-year wrist injury has finally fully healed. The 2015 Reddick scenario.
We can hope for that. Someone must play first. At least the guy acts excited about playing for the A’s.
The team frequently scores with these kind of underwhelming deals, but they’re running out of competent pitchers.
Pomeranz is no great shakes, but the A’s do need a pitching staff for next year. After Gray and Rich Hill, who are we talking about? Gravemen, Hahn (I forget his injury status), Bassitt for the opening day staff, then Nolin, Doubront, Aaron Brooks, Brad Mills, Arnold Leon? I’m assuming that Jarrod Parker will not return as a starting pitcher.
They have to be looking at adding another starter. Probably in a Lawrie trade.
Career ISO of .119, or as a positive person would phrase it, still better than Sogard and Fuld.
SOMEONE TRANSLATE FOR ME.
How likely is Vela to SJ?
Thanks, and go As.
He is in Chicago with a foot and a half.
Yay?
He should probably consider Japan or something.
kitten face will go a long way in japan
Why heeeeello kitty!
I’d have done his shitty job for half that!
Thanks, and go As.
PTBNL bait
The “started at 14 and now has 5 million miles flown” was the giveaway.
With United that’s Global Services status, and you automatically upgrade into any available 1st class seat, and if you don’t care where you end up its easy to find a flight with an empty 1st class seat.
At least Steph is pretty good.
Yeah, he’s OK, kind of.
Meh. That whole team is just lucky.
Yep. So fortunate that the orange round thing goes in the hole so often…
And healthy. So, so healthy. /LeBron
really guys? nothing about greinke to the stewart/hales?
If he repeats last season he’ll be paid 10 thousand dollars per pitch.
Thanks, and go As.
Kind of laughing at the Giants, but this probably helps them because Greinke is moving to a less competitive NL west team.
i read somewhere that az ost its first round pick. did they sign someone else, or did greinke hav a pick associated with him?
It also makes Cespedes -> SF more likely.
their rotation is bumgarner, heston, cain?, ?, and ??
Samardzija
I’m ok with this. I love the idea of Shark, but the actual results do not match with the concept.
They should be required to play him in right field for the comedy value.
I have to say I’m enjoying the EPL more than expected this season. It’s a lot less predictable than it has been in years.
You didn’t expect leicester city to dominate?
Thanks, and go As.
Chelsea being absolute flaming garbage is fun.
Chelski and Leicester swapping places is the most extreme manifestation, but all the big teams being significantly flawed makes for a more interesting season (if not individual games – ManUre being notably dire to watch this year).
Best headline for today’s game:
is
Jose.
Madson -> 22 mil / 3 years.
Seems like both a shitload of money and a shitload of years to give a reliever who is 35 and was previously out of baseball with injuries for the two seasons prior to this past one.
EDIT: He was out of action for three years, not two.
If he pitches even close to the way he did last year, it will benefit the A’s in shoring up part of last year’s bullpen problems, and likely making him a good potential trade piece if the team continues to otherwise struggle to win games.
His season last year was really not that outstanding, though.
I see nothing to complain about.
Compared to TD how could anyone complain?
3 years?
ok. i mean, its not my money, right?
To the extent it does not prompt an increase in beer/ticket prices, I suppose.
or maybe Cpt. lew Alcheapo needs an excuse to raise ticket prices
Huh:
Another chance to trade him for prospects at the deadline? Go for it!
The “Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl”
I’m just so proud of my alma mater.
“The privilege of an invitation to a football game with the tremendous tradition of the American Standard Terre Haute Bowl is a terrific reward for our student-athletes and their gritty performance in our 0-12 season. We will represent the University of Kansas with great pride, and look forward to meeting the extremely tough challenge presented by Coach Bullwinkle and his fine Wossamotta U. football team.”
As to the Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl in gorgeous Fort Worth, kickoff is at 11 a.m. Pacific time on a non-holiday Tuesday, so it probably won’t be one of the most-viewed games of the bowl season…but ESPN says they get over a million pair of eyes at minimum for any late December game that has a “bowl” label, which is why it’s one of 40 bowl games on the calendar.
Not sure what Ian was expecting when he asked that question.
What ends first: the Warriors’ streak or all activity on FK?
it was sad to see no comments today.
I don’t watch bouncy ball enough. How big of a deal is this streak thing?
It’s unprecedented for a team to be undefeated nearly this long. The previous best start was 15-0. The Warriors are 23-0. The longest streak period is 33 games — how close the Warriors are to that depends on whether you count the four wins at the end of last season as part of the streak. I personally don’t, but the NBA officially does.
The question now is whether they can match or better the all time best record of 72-10 by the 1996 Michael Jordan Bulls. They probably have something like a 1 in 4 or better chance of doing it, which is kind of unthinkable.
They’ve already got more wins this season than they had in all of about half a dozen seasons since moving west, a couple more when you include shortened seasons.
For most of my life as a fan, every single Warriors win felt like a minor miracle.
Did you know that the Globies no longer play the Washington Generals?? Best part of this story:
A’s trade Scribner for lack of Scribner.
I wonder if vince reralizes how bad he was last year yet?
He just needed more consistency and possibly confidence.
I liked him as a bounce-back candidate. Dude had 64 strikeouts to 4 walks (to 14 dingers)
sure, but he was never really that good. SS warning, 2014 was just as bad, if not worse in oakland, he was ok in Sacto.
More:
I like this part. I want Bartolo back!
I love this part. Even if he has nothing left I want him back. Which is 180 from my feelings when we signed him the first time.
Also, I guess we can assume that Lawrie was the clubhouse cancer last year. I could see a guy who is constantly going 200 mph burning out a lot of folks, especially when things are not going good.
Can you imagine what it must be like spending nearly every day with that guy for seven months?
Like sitting next to him in the 8th inning of a game you are losing in TX in the middle of July when it is 102 with 85% humidity? I might throw at his head while on the same team…
Obviously a clubhouse cancer.
Thanks, and go As.
Even this thank you note is way too intense.
Speaking of which, thank you 49ers for Michael Crabtree, he is fantastic.
He’s a very good #2 WR.
He’s also about 2 years out from his achilles tear. Makes sense he’s back in form.
Thanks, and go As.
What the hell is #LaQueso?
My guess is an inside joke he had with himself, but thought he had with the rest of the guys. Probably a fart joke.
I seem to remember him always talking about being the cheese after a big hit. I’m assuming it has to do with that.
The shit was unseemly, man.
Thank you note =/= good clubhouse guy in and of itself.
I know you’re being you, but that doesn’t prove that he wasn’t a cancer. Because he enjoyed it all and was a good sport, doesn’t mean the rest of the team did as well. He could easily be oblivious to his negative impact on others. Many people are like that. Especially the rah rah hyperactive type. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not even suggesting he was a clubhouse cancer, I’m just pointing out this means nothing either way.
This is my speculation, that Lawrie’s “cancer” quality was not so much about being a jerk or a malcontent, but more like being aceaseless loud rah-rah presence in a clubhouse on its way to losing 94 games. A cheerleader who never shuts up would certainly annoy me in such a circumstance.
One of those guys who is constantly rocking in his seat and elbowing you in the ribs going “dude, dude, duuuuuuude” when you just want to space out for a minute and think about dinner.
Yeah, IF he was a problem, I suspect it had less to do with him being a cancer a traditional sense and more to do with simply not fitting in with the other personalities on the team. Which means he’s not really to blame, per se, he’s just not a good fit. Same thing happens when you’re the serious guy in the playful, loose clubhouse.
As a member of a shitty HS football team (my senior year; we made the playoffs my other three years) it really sucks to walk off the field after a failed drive to a “we’re the best there’s ever been!” chant.
Which is to say, I get it.
Do you want to build a snowman?
Love is an open door.
Love Will Turn you Around.
First night in Tokyo, and we found the buffet with the bottomless beer mug.
Good beer? Or Sapporo/Asahi?
i always get so confused when you two talk shop
I should stick to more accessible topics, like whether the LiteBIRD team is leaning toward TES or MKIDs.
Trichroic TES.
That’s a lot of readout
Yup.
I suppose the cost scaling of telemetry is even worse than cost scaling of squids.
IIRC, Sapporo is a bit better than Asahi or Kirin.
Asashi unfortunately.
In my searching I did discover the nearest bar in the Japanese Beer Guide, which has the tagline “Craft Beer, Craft Pork”.
Problem?
Isn’t this just british for “we want you to have something to gamble on during the sumer?
Aw, I thought this was going to be about baseball in ancient Iraq.
I’m so glad that Dusty Baker is back to share his theories on society and genetics with us again.
Sometimes abusers don’t always have pants on.
I saw that yesterday, but I had missed:
I have to be honest. I’m glad to have him back to make fun of.
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All the washed up relievers belong to us.
The “get all the injured guys” strategy is winning for the Niners. Why wouldn’t my other team want to emulate.
WTF are the Diamondbacks doing??
Oh, Stew…
In my line of work, if your gut tells you to do something it’s to head to the bathroom.
Steph Curry:
I expect ptbnl to be similarly energized after his first encounter with Japanese toilet technology.
I’ll be sure to keep you all posted with a
blowsquirt by blow account.Face it, Don. America hates you. But ‘Murica loves you!
Uh, neat. Two minor league reliever.
Thanks, and go As.
MLR is so close to MVP, and there’s two of them!
One of whom is actually a starter.
(Probably. It’s a little hard to tell in the low minors where they often use two guys who each go 3 innings or so.)
Erwin was just drafted, he’ll get a full turn in the rotation in 2016.
And I like Wendelken.
I didn’t realize until this and the Dansby Swanson trade that players can now be traded less than a year after they were drafted. That’s interesting.
This Slusser article is just full of depressing nuggets. Re Butler:
Frankly I haven’t really understood most of the A’s trades for the last 5 years or so.
Ew.
That’s a bit far for me. 2012-2013 were incredible years. Since then, it’s a mixed bag.
I liked all of the rebuilding trades midseason for example. Shark 2.0 was very good. I quite liked the Zobrist acquisition.
OTOH, Shark 1.0 I got the rationale but thought was an overpay. Cespedes I had huge mixed feelings for since Yo was so entertaining. Moss was never going to be a huge loss.
And then there was Donaldson….
The constant failure to address the post-Crosby/Ellis middle infield in any of the trades (including trading away Russell) just confuses me.
I mean Lowrie and Zobrist were good. And they were so damn close to Hanley.
But SS has been a problem since Tejada. Besides 2005, every year has had middle infield problems.
However bad he turned out to be, Crosby was at least a credible plan. I’m just not seeing a plan since then.
All the other half-assed efforts were just Semienotics.
asvd
The good news is the team has moved on from failing to address the middle infield!
Now they refuse to address the outfield…
actiely making worse. (crisp extention, cespedes trade, gentry etc)
did the angels give gentry a major leage contract?
Yes. I am reasonably sure that means he will hit about .641 against us this year with 73 SBs.
I think we got lucky on the 2012-2013 moves. They were incredible years, sure, but some were still weird, they just ended up working out and most were minor to begin with. Ever since the start of the Geren era, Beane & Company have been working on some otherworld playbook that just doesn’t make sense and they seem to be going all in on that. And man, I don’t see how you can possibly forgive that Donaldson trade. It’s just so indefensible that he should have been fired for it.
Nah, man, those were legitimately excellent moves. Beane made three good to great trades (Cahill, Gio, Bailey),three great major league signings (Cespedes, Colon, Balfour), and one incredible minor league signing (Moss) in the offseason before 2012. That’s A++ work. I wish he had been able to pull off Hanley that season, but I blame that on ownership being cheap. Then the trade for Lowrie the next off season was fantastic.
After that the wheels came off. Other than the Kazmir signing, he has mostly screwed things up.
I’m not convinced it was ownership’s fault on Hanley. I suspect there was a deal in play, then suddenly LA was willing to give the full salary and they jumped at the chance without playing out if the A’s were willing to match. If someone’s willing to pay full price and you’re a cheap shit like the Marlin’s owner, you just jump. You can say they should have gone all in and offered it from the beginning, but that’s probably negotiating against yourself.
That’s possible, but I see no reason to believe it’s true. Loria is a cheapskate, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t go back to Beane to see whether he could get full price plus better prospects than the Dodgers were offering. I can’t see why the Dodgers wouldn’t wait for him to make that call. Unless there is evidence the Marlins never checked back in with Beane (is there?) I have to assume either the A’s declined to eat the money or the Marlins like the Dodgers’ prospects more.
(crisp mark 1, colon mark 2 also)
They could’ve released him and moved Valenica to DH, and kept Lawrie at 3rd. Or not traded for Lowrie.
Valenica, Semien, and Lowrie is a horrid defensive infield.
I guess Butler can hang around until June or something. But unless he’s hitting a lot better, the A’s will have to release him and eat the rest of the contract. His presence causes too many problems, and blocks other players from getting playing time.
The braintrust really made a hash of things during the past year and a half, didn’t they? I pretty much don’t trust anything they do now.
I’d give him Spring Training to figure his shit out. If there’s not sign of improvement, dump his ass and eat the money. I wouldn’t waste a roster spot on him whether he plays or not once games matter. But man, I cringe when I see them trading anyone because it just seems like they’re going to get fleeced by even the most mediocre player they give up.
Yikes. Way to commit yourself to the team, Butler.
But he couldnt find good BBQ out here, what did you expect him to do?!?
keep looking
(he has)
Thanks, and go As.
Looking at him, I’d say he’s having too much breakfast.
I was hoping for a Starlin Castro esque return. This seems barely better than the return for Scribner.
2 years of Lawrie + McCurry vs. 2 years of Lowrie + Erwin + Wendelken seems like pretty much a wash, no?
On the minus side, Lowrie makes a little more money than Lawrie will get in arbitration, and Lawrie probably has a bit higher ceiling.
On the plus side, there is the “clubhouse chemistry” issue, plus we end up with an extra starting pitcher prospect.
I just don’t think it has to be either Lowrie or Lawrie. The infield as is simply isn’t good enough that they can just start trimming the fat.
Valenica could’ve moved to that gaping left field hole. Or as I mentioned above, they could move him to DH and get rid of Butler. Or play him at first cause Alonso is probably not very good. Sooner or later, someone out of Lawrie, Lowrie, Valencia, and Alonso would get injured and/or suck so having someone adequate to fill in instead of Sogard/Wendle would be nice.
The infield just looks really bad defensively right now. It’s not even projected to hit particularly well or stay healthy. Along with that left field hole, I could easily see another year where Sogard/Fuld get 400+ at bats.
To be fair, Lawrie isn’t some linchpin that could’ve solved all those issues. I think he’s essentially Kouzmanoff. But this move just seems utterly pointless to me given the return. Hopefully they do something about LF.
I think the goal is to put together an entire infield that can compete with Donaldson in terms of WAR. Not individually, mind you. But as a whole, including bench infielders. And maybe outfielders. And a couple of pitchers. They still failed though.
What’s aggravating isn’t that the A’s are bad. It’s that they are bad in predictable, dull ways. All they had to do was, I don’t know, not trade their stud third baseman under team control for the hope that Barreto will be a star one day and a bunch of other guys.
Watching Donaldson and Cespedes was a lot of fun, because the former turned into a star and the latter always put on a show. We can debate the Cespedes trade forever, and I certainly understand the logic of it given that he’s a free agent now, but the team has been horrible and boring ever since he left. The Donaldson trade infuriated me then, and now, because the A’s appear to have gotten a McGwire return for one of the best players in baseball who was under team control.
Shoot, I’m still not convinced that Beane didn’t trade him because Donaldson pissed him off.
This is really accurate. Cespedes was fun. And that hasn’t really come back since he was traded. And then he had to go and break out last year. There were rumblings of a possible reunion in the offseason when he was mediocre with Detroit.
I’m not terribly excited about any of these A’s trades or acquisitions. Some may be OK. I’ll read more later.
And while it’s tiresome to repeat, that Josh Donaldson trade was breathtakingly bad. Not only was Lawrie mediocre, he apparently was one of the jerks (at least in management’s view).
Bed bait:
That tsunami hitting the east coast is the… errm… excitement of every reporter at this possibility.
If it comes down to that, and then they select Rubio in the end, what are the chances that Trump makes a third-party bid?
100 percent, regardless of who else the party picked.
Make America Great Again! (by not allowing the GOP even a shot in hell of competing).
cruz wins iowa, trump takes ne hampshire, then the wheels come off and rubio snakes his way in after super tuesday.
no brokered convention
I expect someone to have a majority lined up by the convention, but this feels like it will drag on longer than usual for a Republican race. I just can’t see the support rushing to anyone after March 1. There is a sizeable chunk of people that is hellbent on voting for Trump or Cruz, neither of whom will be able to consolidate the big money establishment crowd, and neither of whom will go away quietly.
Nate Silver is putting the chances of a “contested convention” at 20%!
Here’s his scenario:
trump has gotten pregressively unhinged. I can’t see him getting to february without calling for the immediate bombing of ukraine or somehing.
Ok. But does that keep him from getting 20-35 percent of the GOP primary vote?
Unhingedness is a feature, not a bug, for at least a quarter of that electorate.
0-12 vs. Stanford, USC, UCLA and Oregon apparently earns the head coach a contract extension and an $800K raise. He could have been gone last week but as I feared nobody else was dumb enough to hire him. Congratulations to the batgirls on extending their Big Game winning streak through the end of the decade. I must drink now.
coaches should be students too.
its college gor god’s sake
Good point.
As we all know here is the real point of college sports (football to be more specific).
pfft. the top teams are going to continue to buy players….er…wait…no…wait wait…no?
He got them to the Weapons System Manufacturer Bowl. Gotta lock the guy up.
He inherited a disaster. It’s hard to underestimate how bad things were when Dykes arrived.
That said, he also lucked out with an inherited stud quarterback and a bunch of receivers. I have never been sold on his system and I would have been fine with him leaving, especially since he obviously wanted to get while the getting was good.
The academic disaster Dykes inherited was worse than the on-field one. I’m sure major conference college head coaches have little more direct involvement in academics than assigning an assistant to monitor athletic progress and occasionally calling some kid into the office for a butt kicking. Tedford apparently had run away from even that limited role and was fielding bad teams as well. So I do give Dykes credit for the improvements in that area. Still, with all of California to recruit from, I expect a Cal head coach to be able to assemble a team that can both make acceptable academic progress and compete on the field with teams in the top half of the Pac-12, and I have no faith that Dykes is the coach who can meet that standard.
They have obviously not been reading academic instructions 5Aces has been posting
If you guys thought Balfour was hard to watch, Axford will be utterly infuriating. Hopefully he’s kept out of any high leverage situations. Though with the inevitable injuries of a Doolittle/Madsen helmed bullpen, that seems unlikely.
Infuriated by which Balfour-esque trait: Working at a glacial pace, stomping around and cursing like a petulant child, walking lots of guys, or just plain sucking? I don’t like any of those but could live with the first two if the second two were not problems.
Also, Axford can earn himself bonus goodwill with a strong hair game:
isn’t he the dude that had weed delivered to his dog?
That was Chris Perez, who is on another level of fucktitude.
Third slowest reliever in MLB this year, walks more guys than A’s version Balfour, and is overall a worse reliever by conventional ERA.
wow, such excitement in sports tonight!
Life in the ER:
I spent to hours yesterday analyzing JJ Watt’s broken hand. I called it research. My conclusions:
1. When I heard about the injury, I initially thought ‘he probably broke it punching something’. I can’t prove he didn’t, but it doesn’t appear to be that type of fracture.
2. You cast the joint before and after the injury. Meaning it isn’t his wrist, and it’s not a finger. It would have to be a metacarpal or a carpal fracture. OR both.
3. Hmmm. Buddy taping? Interesting. Maybe a finger too then? Or a sprain.
4. It’s not a boxer’s fracture. Wrong fingers.
5. Wrong hand.
I’m still not sure what’s broken.
Thoughts on the theory he hurt it while beating the Bishop?
Pics or STFU
It’s a metacarpal! Yuss! Momma’s still got it.
i don’t think i coud be more conflicted
I’m not sure if there is a better quality of trees this year or, as we get older we just arent that picky, but we found our tree in about 5 minutes this year. Literally the first row of the first lot we went to.
mb bait
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAIDERS
MACK IS A FKING STUD
So, who’s from Harvard, again?
FDR, among others.
A Star Trek movie by the director of the Fast and Furious movies. I may as well just end it all now.
My friend said it best “never thought I’d see a day where I’m more intrigued by the ID4II trailer than a Star Trek one”. But people like motorcycles and blowing up ships.
I wish they would just go for it and go to a planet that “evolved into 2010’s Earth with everyone as a superspy”. Thats what they want to do anyways…
Wow. So that looked certifiably awful. I didn’t mind the last two even though they really weren’t Star Trek so much as a pulp fiction variant of Star Trek. But man, that just looks they hired someone from Syfy’s B-movie department to create it with a bigger budget.