4.29.2010

Comic Splat (10)

Captain America #605 - Kind of a violent issue...this storyline was a bust...both publicly and fan wise. Just didn't work for me.

New Avengers #64 - Can we finish this and Siege and get us where you want us to go? It is just painful.

Detective Comics #864 - Yup Rucka is moving on and thus I am moving on...Batwoman was the only reason that I read this one...

The Marvelous Land of Oz #5 - Again another book to read! Good characters funny to see such a wide range beyond the known ones

Ultimate Spider-Man #9 - OK I bought this one for the cover...still don't like the internal art and miss the old ultimate spider-man

Joe the Barbarian #4 - Nice issue...whole concept is just spooky

Superman #699 - Only one reason I picked this up...next stop #700 although the free comic book War of Supermen looked pretty interesting.

Conan the Cimmerian #20 - My goal is to read Howard's novels much like ERB, although I prefer Conan over Tarzan...

Iron Man #25 - Love what Fraction has done for Tony...even better than the movies! Nice restart just in time for new readers from Movie #2.

S.H.I.E.L.D #1 - Pretty good start...interesting concept...although is this the SHIELD that Nick Fury becomes?

4.28.2010

Haiku Wednesday

Salsa

Tomato Party
Onions and cilantro dance
Naked chips happy!

4.26.2010

Rox Talk

The Week That Was
A 4-3 week against the Nationals and Marlins. The Rox currently stand at 10-9. Game and half back from division leading San Diego in third place. Currently 6-3 at home and 4-6 on the road, the Rox have outscored its opponents 93-72 (expected wins is 12 versus historical wins at 9). On pace for 85 wins with 793 runs scored and 614 runs against. Playoff indicator (Runs scored/Runs Against ratio) is 1.29 (>1.16 indicates high playoff potential).


Considering the emotional roller coaster, the team played remarkably well last week. Sure they probably should have won another one in DC and it would have been nice to sweep the Marlins but with the unexpected passing of team president, Keli McGregor, early last week I think a winning record for the week was OK.

Without considering last week, although the trend continued, it seems to me that the team is just going through the motions. I realize it is April and there is a lot of baseball left but they just seem up and down. Nice game followed by a ho hum lost. They don't seem to be building on anything. With a bunch of division rival games coming up in the next two weeks I think they need to start playing with a bit more fire. Pitchers need to get it going.

First Inning
A 162 game schedule can easily be broken into "9 innings" of 18 games a piece. Over the years I have tracked monthly averages and I am always amazed how similar the averages are. So this year instead of months I am simply tracking 18 game stretches to see if anything changes. The spreadsheet below shows the first inning.


The team was 9 - 9 overall. Record was a bit low considering their runs scored/runs against differential. This can mostly be seen in the bullpen's 1 - 3 record. Jimenez was a monster with Stewart and Olivo leading the offense. Pitching was night or day. Four games had game scores above 70 and yet we also had some clunkers in there too. Nice start...last year the record was 7 - 11 (although 9 - 9 in 2008).

4.24.2010

Pinball!

Something fun about pinball machines. Certainly in the 80s the pinball machine might have gotten a bit stale especially with the wow factor of Space Invaders, Asteroids, and Pac Man but it seems there is something retro about sending a metal ball around a table. Went to a pinball convention (?) where you paid a flat fee to get in the door and then had free reign on about 50 machines. It appears that pinball has its origins in France in the late 18th century with improvements incorporated in the late 1800s in America by a British inventor in Cincinnati. With advent of electronics the modern day pinball machine took off in the late 1970s...Disco! Fascinating topic the most interesting machine I played today was the Joust pinball game. Basically a flat table with players playing across from each other and having balls bounce back and forth between both players. Pretty neat!

4.21.2010

Haiku Wednesday

Rain

The Sky opens up
A gentle pitter, patter
Smell the Earth swallow

4.20.2010

Emily WInterburn - The Stargazer's Guide

Another one of those books I just sort of ran into at Powells (good thing I don't live in Portland!). This was a good overview of the night sky and the constellations. Nothing spectacular but I did like reading about the stories behind the constellations. I think it is interesting how mangled the sky really is. Most of the constellations were Greek but an amazing amount of star names are actually Arabic. One of the more beautiful atlas of the sky was done by Bevis in 1750 and his Uranograhia Britannica. Beautiful rendition of the night sky. A very rare book.

Overall I still think HA Rey is one of the better guides!









Photo of my favorite constellation:

4.19.2010

Rox Talk

The Week That Was
A 3-3 week against the Mets and Braves. The Rox currently stand at 6-6. Two games back from division leading San Francisco in second place. Currently 4-2 at home and 2-4 on the road, the Rox have outscored its opponents 58-48 (expected wins is 7 versus historical wins at 6). On pace for 81 wins with 783 runs scored and 648 runs against. Playoff indicator (Runs scored/Runs Against ratio) is 1.21 (>1.16 indicates high playoff potential).

Two weeks in and a .500 record. What to think about this team 12 games in? As any self respecting fan I expect this team to be 12-0 but 6 - 6 isn't too bad. Are they playing great? No but they are playing good enough to be in most games (really only the 5-0 defeat to the Mets and the 9-5 lost to the Braves were the only games not winnable). April is just one of those months. The real kicker is that our offense which is supposed to be our strength really hasn't turned it on. Besides CarGo, Stewart, and Hawpe (40 of team's 108 hits, 19 of team's 54 RBIs and 6 of the team's 14 HR) the rest of the team is anemic. Throw in the fact that two of those players have been sidelined with slight injuries and it is probably amazing we have 6 wins. All in all I think we are in a good place. Plus we aren't going through the growing pains of a new season against divisional rivals. Nice to get the Giants and Dodgers when the kinks have been worked out! This is a distant run not a sprint. Although in a week's time if we didn't take 3 of 4 against the Nats and win 2 of 3 from the Marlins I am going to be angry!

No Hitters
Are we enjoying a Goldern Era of rare occurrences for our Rox (of course this paper would suggest statistically we should expect these things)? What I mean is that in the last 3 years we have witnessed an unassisted triple play (2007), a cycle (2009), and on Saturday night the Rox first no hitter.

On Saturday night Jimenez had the 264th no hitters all time from (1876 - 2010). To compare there have been 680 triple plays in that time and 288 cycles. It is amazing and somewhat jaw dropping to think in that time there have been approximately 390,762 games. What an event. Read more about no hitters here - retrosheet or wikipedia. Some other interesting tidbits:

- 33 have been thrown since Rox existed
- Rox have been no hit twice (have fielded 2 triple plays but batted into 3 and have batted 5 cycles)
- Rox first no hitter occurred in Game 2703. Hope we don't have to wait another 2500 games for the next one...you are talking about someone who is probably 5 or 6 years old right now!
- U-Ball game score of 88 moved him into the Top 5 of Rox pitching performances

Tulo has seen it all...when is the perfect game?

4.16.2010

Frank Miller - Ronin

You figure the guy who wrote the greatest comic story ever, The Dark Knight Returns, might have some other good stories in him?Well yes and no...his follow up to the Dark Knight was awful, his Sin City was good, mostly for the art work and unusual story telling method.

Ronin was an earlier work and it was okay. I like the story of the Ronin especially early on but the future setting got a bit weird. A good character and with him juxtaposed in the future brings and flushes out the character more. Overall kind of disappointing but a good read.

4.15.2010

Comic Splat (6)

Uncanny X-men #523 - Chapter 2 of the Second Coming storyline. Not following this crossover...the X-Line needs some trimming. The excess just bloats the entire universe...the X-men should be one book...maybe Hope will destroy them all!

X-Factor Forever #2 - Can't bring back the old days...

Daytripper #5 - Another gut wrenching heart felt story...ughhhh

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #34 - Having Whedon manage the Avengers movie scares me after the latest in Buffy. Really Buffy and Angel going at it...come on Buffy is better than that...no?

Powers #4 - The problem with this book now is that it seems Bendis has moved on. I mean the overall book is still good, great characters, great art but it seems that with all the volumes and restarts and what not that the book is a bit disheveled...it has lost its continuity. Plot points directions have abruptly stopped and gone in other directions and frankly the cop drama of Pilgrim and Walker made this book!

Black Widow #1 - Blatant movie tie-in...where will this book be in 6 months when the movie is over? Can a monthly book last for longer? I doubt it, it will be canceled probably by December...I think BW is a better mini-series. We shall see...

4.14.2010

Haiku Wednesday

Environment

Only one planet
Sad to think we pollute it
Mother Earth forgives...

4.13.2010

Karma

If Tiger Woods is supposedly returning to his Buddhism roots then this weekend's Master's should be a good lesson in Karma. Sometimes even world events can be scripted so well as to tell a great story. Completing his 4th major win, Phil Mickelson, did so while his wife battles breast cancer as well as his mother in law. Meanwhile Tiger cheats on his family and has sexcapades with who knows how many woman. To think the media and public throw so much attention at his feet as if he was the second coming. Once again his true nature showed over the weekend while Phil played his style and ended up winning an emotional event. Nice to see real life make up a good ending!

4.12.2010

Rox Talk

The Week That Was
A 3-3 week against the Brewers and Padres. The Roxs currently stand at 3-3. Two games back from division leading San Francisco in third place. Currently 2-1 at home and 1-2 on the road, the Roxs have outscored its opponents 29-22 (expected wins is 4 versus historical wins at 3). On pace for 81 wins with 783 runs scored and 594 runs against. Playoff indicator (Runs scored/Runs Against ratio) is 1.32 (>1.16 indicates high playoff potential).

Rox are 10 - 8 in opening day games and 11 - 7 for home openers. What to think about a 3-3 week out of the gate? Team certainly looked a bit rusty. The defense was not sharp (5 errors), offense inconsistent, and the starting pitching pretty much accounted for the 3 wins (Jimenez and de la Rosa). The bullpen overall is settling in...although Morales makes me nervous! One week doesn't make a season although it would have been nice to sweep the Padres and losing two to the Brewers was tough. The Brewers are probably a top end team and Rox have only had one winning road record in their history so I wouldn't expect to win an opening weekend away from home. In the end I think if Rox can tread water through April (0.500 record) and keep division leaders in sight I would be happy. Historically the team has played 0.460 ball in April for an average 10 - 13 record (2009 8 - 12, 2008 11 - 17, and 2007 10 - 16). Bottom line is they can't afford to spot a division rival 6 - 8 games in April. Wins count in April too, you don't get bonuses for winning down the stretch ;-)

Extra Inning Affairs
Game 5 of the 2010 campaign featured this year's first extra inning game. Against the Padres no less which got me thinking, is it me or do we seem to play the Padres a lot after 9 innings? The quick answer is that the Padres do figure in two of the most memorable extra inning affairs 1) Game 163 in 2007 which sent our Rox into the playoffs and 2) Game 15 of the 2008 season which lasted 22 innings and took over six hours to play!

Using data collected here, I have found that our Rox have played in 185 extra inning games from 1993 - 2009. This comes out to about one in every 15 games. About 11 extra inning games occur in a year with more accounting at home (1 every 13 games) then away (1 every 16 games). Rox record in extra innings is 91 - 94 (0.492) which is better than their overall record (0.476). One of the strangest stats is the Rox are 41 - 61 (.0402) at home and a whooping 50 - 33 (0.602) on the road. Compare this to their all time record where they are 0.552 at home and 0.399 away!

Additional extra inning trivia:

- Most Wins (Herges and Reed)
- Most Losses (Fuentes and Reed, note T. Hoffman has 5 losses)
- Game 23 has the most extra inning occurrences at 6
- Extra innings occur the most on Tuesdays (34 times) followed by Sunday (32), Friday (30), Monday (24), Saturday (23), Thursday (23), and Wednesday (19)
- 45% of the extra inning games end at 10 innings, 28% in 11 innings, 14% in 12 innings, 8% in 13 innings, and 3% in 14 innings (one game each at 15, 16, 18, and 22 innings)
- Average extra inning game is 215 min vs 174 min for a 9 inning game
- May and June have the most extra inning games at 70. (Odd finding is that June Friday games have had 10 instances...management trying for extra food sales...and why do they end alcohol sales at the end of 7?)
- Best winning percentage against an NL opponent is Mets (6 - 3) and worse Milwaukee (2 - 5)
- And finally an answer to my first question about seemingly always playing the Padres in extra innings...well, in fact we have faced the Padres 26 times in extra inning affairs (the most of any team) by comparison the next is LA (18 times), followed by Arizona (16 times), and then Washington/Montreal (12 times). In those 26 games the Rox are 14 - 12 (6 - 12 against LA, 7 - 9 against Arizona,and 7 - 4 against Giants).




4.08.2010

Final Four


24/32 games correct - 1st round
9/16 games correct - 2nd round
4/8 games correct - 3rd round
2/4 games correct - 4th round
1/2 games correct - 5th round
0/1 games correct - 6th round

Overall 63% correct during the tourney. 180 of 384 possible points.

4.07.2010

Haiku Wednesday

Skyscrapers

Man's ego defined
Always bigger and taller
Steel, concrete symbols

4.05.2010

Rox Talk

Enough Talk - Play Ball

Why I Love Baseball - Great article at Hardball Times. Kind of explains to those non baseball lovers why we love this game.

Sports Illustrated Picks for 2010 - Some great articles in the 2010 SI baseball preview issue. Nice piece on Doc Halliday. Hope he gets the ball when he visits Coors this year.

ESPN the Magazine also had some good preview stuff although the SI issue projections were better than ESPN ;-). Although SI was gut, ESPN was more stat driven on expectations. Have to take exception to the use of ZiPS. See the data below obtained from fangraphs. It lists the Rox starters and the projections. The four projections project a run score range of 774 (ZiPS) - 823 (Marcel). Runs allowed ranged from 672 (James) - 750 (ZiPS). Therefore any 100 game simulations would suggest that the Rox will be subpar. Although even with these values the simulations gave the Rox the Division title 24% of the time.


Taking the runs score/runs against (and using adjusted runs based on season AB totals) I get win totals of 94, 88, 90, and 83. Now ZiPS gives us 83 wins (note the Vegas line is 84.5) so go figure. Average gives us 89 wins which I like. Will that be enough? I think so.

Bottom line - Rox just need to be patient, not press due to these high expectations, and try and get a decent April start. At this stage Rox need to put Street and Francis injuries behind them. If they come back fine but the team should not use them as excuses if things get rough...


4.02.2010

Don DeLillo - Cosmopolis

"Sleep failed him more often now, not once or twice a week but four times, five."

One of the more crazy reads that I have undertaken. Have to think the book spoke to me on the shelf. I was at Powell's in January...just meandering...had a list of things I was looking for but this book caught my eye. Always wondrous when that happens. I had heard of DeLillo, never read any of his books. This isn't one of his better books (so says Wikipedia) but I enjoyed it for its raw intensity. It bites you makes you aware because of its rawness. I found it kind of a cross between Copland and Palahniuk. Palahniuk for the rashness and Copland for some of the outlandish situations. I loved the main characters description of buying a Russian Blackjack bomber and then the description of how it would be fitting end to be entombed in the plane and have it crash in the desert.

In reading the reviews the book is kind of the author's take on Ulysses...the main character being driven to get his hair cut. It goes through his trials and tribulations. Meeting his wife, betting the farm on the Yen, getting stuck in traffic because of the President, being stuck in a riot, meeting numerous women, having discussions with his people, being in a movie, and finally getting that haircut. The ending is truly the ending has he meets up with his stalker. Decent read. Quote of the book, "To know and not to act is not to know" - Chinese Proverb

4.01.2010

Comic Splat (7)

X-Force #25 - Boy Necrosha never got on track...pathetic storyline, ought just toss all the x-figures in the trash and start over. What a mess...

Detective Comics #863 - With the announcement that Rucka is moving on and Williams is out then my guess is Batwoman isn't getting the support from the editorial staff. Too bad because Rucka has developed a decent "new" character. With Rucka out, I'm out...

Captain America #604 - Good issue. I like how Brubaker has wrapped in headlines in our world and created storylines for his book. Bad Cap? Falcon is a great character.

New Avengers #63 - These "event" just destroy continuity. Can't we just put these to bed. With the Avengers coming back what is the use of these issues?

Punisher Max: Butterfly - Bought and read it because I read her blog thoughts. Interesting story although kind of dark and depressing. Wonder if she will get a real gig?

Cloak and Dagger One Shot - Nice story didn't realize they weren't mutants? Great art.

Uncanny X-men #522 - The next mega crossover starts next issue. Why oh why does this continue to happen. You simply throw crap between these crossovers. Never establish anything, team is all mixed up, no consistency, what a mess!