11.30.2011

Haiku Wednesday

Birthdays

Special day for you
Magical for Mom and Dad
Happy Birthday Son!

11.28.2011

Rox Talk


Coors Field has existed for 17 years. Born in the age of steroids Coors Field has never shaken it's past, even with the advent of the humidor. According to ESPN's ball park factors, Coors Field ranked third in runs scored in 2007 with a 1.16 factor or 16% more runs scored then at an average park (behind Fenway and Wrigley); 2008 Coors was third with a 1.126 factor (behind Chase and Ballpark in Arlington); 2009 Coors was first with a 1.247 factor; again in 2010 Coors was first with a 1.364 factor; and in 2011 Coors was second with a 1.347 factor (behind Ballpark in Arlington). Clearly Coors Field is still a place where runs are not a premium!  In the end, humidor or not, you can't add air and thus batted balls tend to travel 9% farther then at sea level (according to the Rox official website).

In addition to the ball traveling farther, giving the offense a boost, the pitchers have their own trouble because balls tend not to move as much in the thinner air.  So ultimately a perfect storm arrives when the ball and bat meet at home plate.  In the past, the Rox seemed to have the advantage when playing at Coors Field, where they have won more than 57% of their games from 1995 - 2010 versus 40% away.  In 2011 the opposite seemed true as opponents took advantage and Rox only finished 38-43 at home versus 35-46 on the road.  Over the years the effects of Coors Field has been debated especially in regards to a "hangover" effect that might exist when Rox return after a road trip.  My question then -- is there such a thing?

In this specific installment, I am looking at the games played from 2007 - 2011 (recent).  In future installments I will look at 2002 - 2006 (Gen R) and the 1995 - 2001 (pre-humidor).  To begin, is there a break in period for the offense when they return?  I have sorted through the Rox schedule and annotated games played since returning from a road trip.  First game back is Game 1 followed by Game 2 etc.  I then compiled each of the stats for "Game 1" and so forth.  Comparing these compiled stats should reveal the differences between the Rox offense when they first get home and after they adjust to the intricacies of Coors Field.  The graph below shows the average number of hits, walks, and strikeouts for all Game 1's (i.e. all Game 1 data during the season following a road trip) through Game 10.  Averages are used due to the fact that there were 59 Game 1's versus only 8 Game 10's.
Average number of hits, walks, and strikeouts for games after returning from a road trip
While both hits and strikeouts show a very small upward trend, the differences aren't overly dramatic. What is interesting is how Game 4 and Game 8 show a decrease.  Have to wonder if this isn't related to a new team coming into town and showing a different pitching philosophy (?).  Besides these average values what about percentages?  The graph below shows on base, slugging, and BABIP.
Percentages for games after returning from a road trip

Again nothing dramatic except for a Game 4 downturn in which slugging percentage seems to dive (this is a relative nose dive as the slugging percentage for Game 3s is 0.474 and Game 4s is 0.428 which over 50 games is about 3 bases!).  One has to wonder (and perhaps conclude) that not only do the Rox have to adjust but the team coming in does as well and whatever hangover might exist it is neither advantageous to the Rox or the opposition.  Although looking at the Win Loss column below it does appear Rox settle in and teams coming in later during a home stand are at a disadvantage.  Do note that Games 7 - 10 only amount to 69 total games of the 399 home games played after a road trip (Home games starting the season were not counted).
Winning percentage when returning from a road trip
To further coincide with my comment about both teams having a disadvantage when coming to Denver, the graph below includes not only the offense hits, walks, strikeouts (shown in the first graph above) but also now includes what the opposition is doing in sequential games.  It should be noted that the opposition's numbers are only for our pitching staff and not broken down by different team game numbers.  Eerily, hits and strikeouts are fairly consistent but Rox do show some advantage in the walk department.
Rox offense versus pitching when returning from a road trip
Overall the numbers don't appear to show a "hangover" effect when Rox return from a road trip.  Whatever effect exists seems to show up in both teams as they cope with the altitude.  While the raw numbers don't show that the Rox get comfortable, their winning percentage, the longer the home stand lasts seems to favor some sort of positive effect.

Part II will see if the length of the road trip plays a role in the Rox offense and pitching and whether flying east or west matters...

11.27.2011

Kira Salek - The Cruelest Journey

No idea where this book came about although I am sure Outside Magazine had something to do with it.  Also have to figure it was about Timbuktu as well.  Who wouldn't want to read about of the more famous cities in the world?

Fascinating journey and pretty crazy to ride an inflatable kayak down a river in the middle of Africa.  Also didn't realize that this far west and south that the primary religion was Muslim.  Even more crazy for a woman to do this trip.  

All in all a good read but have to wonder if she wasn't having Snickers air dropped to her while she was at!

11.21.2011

Rox Talk

Hot Stove Update
Winter meetings have come and gone and all Rox did was sign a Los Angeles Angel cast off in Brandon Wood.  A former first rounder who has the ability to play 3B, SS, and 1B and has a 0.186 batting average in 272 major league games.  Hard to imagine that Wiggington will be playing for the Rox next year with Wood in the pocket and Pacheco in the fold (minor update:  Wiggy got sent to Philadelphia for a PTBNL).

Players continue to flirt with the Rox but in the end I think they are just using us to get what they really want.  Sizemore appears ready to re-up with the Indians.  Prado still seems an option but it really makes no sense in why the Braves would let a multi-utility player go when you have an aging 3B in Chipper Jones.  It seems they want a center fielder and while Rox have dangled Seth Smith, again which doesn't make sense for the Braves has they have a right fielder in Heyward.  Guess it will come down to how much Rox think they need either a 2B/3B versus Dexter Fowler.  Has Fowler turned a corner?  Couple of stints in the minors over the last few years kind of indicates that perhaps he still doesn't get it.  With him becoming arbitration eligible in 2012 and having Scott Boras as his agent maybe letting him return to his hometown for a infielder wouldn't be such a bad idea?  Time will tell...

Finally while it is nice that Oswalt has shown some interest in coming to Coors, I think ultimately the Rox chance of signing him is slim and none!  Again the lack of any real arms in the league and the need out there among all kinds of teams would lead me to believe that once again he will show interest but in the end sign elsewhere.  Humidor baseball still hasn't connected with free agent pitchers...

Finally it seems that baseball is safe for another 5 years without interruption due to players and management coming to an agreement.  Hard to believe with all the labor strife in professional athletics that MLB is suddenly the Rock of Gibraltar!  Included in this was the sale of the Astros and their moving to the AL West in 2013.  Each league will now have 15 teams which then forces inter league to occur every week.  Also an added Wild Card will be added to each league forcing both Wild Card teams to play a one game sudden death with the winner then going on to play one the three Division Leaders.

Cy Young Results
With Clayton Kershaw winning a Cy Young that makes it the 7th time in the last 10 years that a pitcher in the NL West claimed the prize.  Only Roy Halladay, Chris Carpenter, and Rogers Clemens have broken the mold.  It should also be noted that 6 NL West pitchers have finished second.  Some numbers over the last 10 years:


Maybe the fact that 3 of the better pitching parks in baseball reside in the NL West?  Either way Rox offense day in and day out do face some monsters.  Lucky us we get to play our oppenents 18 times a year!

11.18.2011

Ernest Hemingway - The Sun Also Rises

In a nutshell this is how Hemingway wrote, "She was built with curves like the hull of a racing yacht, and you missed none of it with that wool jersey." and "The cab stopped in front of the hotel and we all got out and went in. It was a nice hotel, and the people at the desk were very cheerful, and we each had a good small room."

Haven't read Hemingway in ages.  I look at Hemingway as a fine wine.  It sits on my shelf for ages and when I need something different I turn to him.  Something about Hemingway's writing as always stuck with me.  First book I ever read that shocked the hell out of me was "A Farewell to Arms"  Important read in High School and I even did a paper on the "Hemingway Hero"  Nothing like scanning a college library stacks to find something to try and write a high school paper.

At one point I even wrote a Hemingway like story...see below.  In the end though, "Brett laments that she and Jake could have had a wonderful time together.  Jake responds, 'Yes, isn't it pretty to think so?'"


The clouds crept over the mountains and moved slowly into the valley.  The earth opened her arms to the coming rain.  The man with the black hat stood under the trees watching the scene unfold.  His journey had just begun and he felt refreshed.  The rain would feel good.  He just hoped it wouldn't rain all night.  He hated being cold in the morning.  His horse did too.  Aspen hated the cold and his muscles were always stiff.  He was a good horse and a good companion.  The rain began to fall and the hand with the black hat started moving into the rocks hoping for an overhand and a little dryness.  All around the rain fell sounding like mother's natures music.  He was to meet someone in this valley.  He hoped the rain wasn't an ominous sign.  The man soon found a place and unloaded his horse.  Aspen whinnied and was happy.  The man made fire and soon felt warm and tired.  He trapped some grub out of his sack and after some water he fell asleep.


11.16.2011

Haiku Wednesday

Wind

Invisible force
Trees shudder, the windows groan
With coat, you still bite!

11.13.2011

Haiku Beer#3

Haiku #3 was a recipe from beertools.com for a stout.  My desire was to brew something for the Holidays.  Called Oaty Malty Madness (5.9% ABV, not verified) it was made with the following ingredients (didn't follow the recipe exactly):

1) 1.75 lbs Maris Otter
2) 0.13 lbs Crystal 60L
3) 0.04 lbs Black Roasted Barley
4) 0.04 lbs English Chocolate (change)
5) 0.04 lbs Torrified Wheat
6) 0.13 lbs Oaks Flaked
7) 0.3 oz Cascade (5.5%AA)
8) White Labs WLP028 Edinburgh Scottish (Liquid) [change]
9) 2 tsp Pumpkin Pie Spice (change)

Used StarSan sanitizer.

The Mash
Heated 2.5 quarts (10 cups) of water (refrigerator water which is carbon filtered) to 154-160 deg F.  Add grain and mixed.  Cooked for 90 minutes at 144-160 deg F and stirred fairly frequently.  Once heated, heat can be removed and then added again around 30 - 40 minutes. 

The Sparge
Heated additional 4 quarts of water (refrigerator water) to boiling then transferred to gallon fermentation jug.  Set up the strainer over the second pot and added the hot grain mash.  Then poured the heated water from the jug over the grains and into the second pot.  Once done recirculated the wort back through the grain once more into the original pot.

The Boil
Heated the wort until it began to boil at approximately 210 deg F.  This was done with just the middle heat on the inside burner on my stove.  Boil lasted 90 minutes with 0.3 oz of Cascade Hops at the start of the boil then added 1 tsp of Pumpkin Pie Spice and then with 10 minutes to go added final 1 tsp of Pumpkin Pie Spice.  Tasted the wort and it was very sweet.

The Fermentation
Placed the brew pot into the sink with ice allowing the temperature to decrease to 70 deg F.  Allowed the mix to settle this time.  When pouring into the fermentor it was strained into a larger pot then transferred to the fermentor.  After the fermentor is full, the yeast was added and throughly mixed to aerate the liquid.  Note:  Liquid yeast is designed for 5 gallon batches.  This time did not shake the yeast but opened slowly and mixed with a tooth pick.  Still difficult to determine exact amount of yeast was added.

The yeast began fermentation and a fairly consistent burp began.  Primary fermentation lasted for about 36 hours.  Transferred beer to the basement and put in the airlock.  Allowed to sit for 2 weeks.

The Bottling
Used bottling sugar and dissolved this in 1/4 cup of water, I siphoned the beer into a pot and then bottled into 6 x 500 mL bottles.  Allowed to sit for another 3 weeks.

The Tasting
Opened and tried on 12/21/11. Slight carbonation.  See photo.  Good basic flavor.  Two of the bottles once again did not have secondary carbonation which causes this beer to taste awful.  Two of the bottles were really good and one just didn't taste right (too spicy).  Probably need to use a bottle cap type system.

A dark Christmas Ale
Hint  of pumpkin spice, maybe
Warming, fire place beer

11.12.2011

Neil Gaiman - Fragile Things

Nice collection of short stuff from Gaiman.  Reading through some blog posts and came across someone saying that Gaiman was England's Stephen King...hmmm have to think about that one.  Funny thing is the connection makes sense for me.  I have read bits and pieces of King and mostly his work doesn't do a whole lot for me but some stories do stick with me like The Stand and The Girl Who Love Tom Gordon but there is a bunch of other stuff I can't even remember.

Gaiman is a a lot like that to me.  Loved American Gods (one of my Top 10) but some of the other stuff not so much which also showed up in this collection.  Loved the Sherlock Holmes homage and the Shadow story and the Day the Saucers Came poem but that is about it. 

Interesting...

11.11.2011

11/11/11

It's binary day!
Last one for a Century...
Will I live that long?

...I'll be 129 on 1/1/00 (Year 2100)

11.07.2011

Rox Talk

My month long hiatus is over.  Time to get back to the blog.  My official endpoint for the season is when the Rocky Mountain SABR has had their end of the year banquet.  SABR is a fantastic baseball group bringing together a lot of different baseball takes.  Last night was the 14th annual version of the end of the year gathering.  This year's guest speakers were Rob Neyer, SBNation, and John Thorn, MLB Historian.

Rob Neyer talked about his meandering journey to becoming a baseball writer.  From a diehard Royal fan, to discovering SABR, and then finally interning with Bill James.  This then launched his career into book writing and a stint at ESPN.com and finally the National Baseball Editor for SBNation.  A fascinating point that Rob made that I had forgotten before the age of internet was when teams played late night games on the West Coast the morning papers normally didn't have box scores for that game and you had to wait for the night edition of the town's competing paper.  Wow how times have changed with instantaneous box scores!  We are spoiled by the information at our fingertips...of course this could be a curse too...

The evening's final speaker was John Thorn who was appointed the MLB official game historian.  Plugging his new book, Baseball in the Garden Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game, Thorn gave a nice presentation on the misleading origin of baseball from the early 20th Century Mill Commission to the recent Commission put together by Selig this year.  Fascinating talk and he even had some early Denver baseball stories recalling that the probable first profession game in Denver was in October 1888 when the Spalding All Star team arrived in town and played at the old Riverfront Park.  The All Stars won 16-12 with Cap Anson having two triples.  Couple of good quotes by Thorn and I paraphrase (I'm not that fast of a writer), "Cooperstown is the wrong place but a swell place" and a general quote on why baseball is the American Pastime because it "connects boys and girls with their parents"  Also Thorn used the word sagacity (or acuteness of mental discernment and soundness of judgement)!  As aside, to me baseball is in our DNA.  It isn't the most popular or talked about sport but it flows along quietly as the unseen current in the river that is American History!

A nice night by all and now that 2011 is officially closed what can we learn from 2,429 games that were played?

1.  First and foremost...if you can stay within striking distance by September you can still get to the Playoffs...Tampa and St Louis proved this.
2.  If you can get into the playoffs the second season starts and all bets are off.  Your 162 game record means nothing!
3.  You can lose you second best pitcher and still win the World Series (no excuses Rox...)
4.  Baseball is confounding!  Numbers in short series really don't matter...thanks for playing Phillies, your three headed pitching monster meant nothing.
5.  Good managers can make teams better (LaRussa and Gibson)

And now what can I say about our team?  I have remarked about this once or twice before but this has to be the most disappointing team in Rox history.  For a team that was marked to win its first division title it got nowhere.  Some thoughts:

1.  Rox were unlucky!  Looking at their pythagorean W-L record it suggested that they were a 77-85  team...not a whole lot better but something...
2.  Rox were 38-43 at home!  In their history they have averaged 44-45 wins at home.  Last two seasons they won 51 and 52 respectively.  This season they outscored their opponents at home 439-427.  Thus they were 4 wins short of what they were expected to win.  Still accounting for this they were still 2-3 wins off their average.
3.  Rox played well on the road winning 35 games which was their 4th highest in history and three games better than their average
4.  May was just brutal.  Looking at the pythagorean W-L they were pretty unlucky.  September was also cruel as Rox have always had a good end of the year performance

Rox Historical vs 2011 Winning Percentage
5.  Rox starting pitching took 68 losses which is about 9 losses more than historical average.  Bullpen was 20-21.  Historical average is about 24-24.  Guess this just meant Rox starters were behind early and didn't have a lot of comebacks.  Only had 5 walk off wins and 41 comeback wins.
6.  Gave up 176 home runs with 101 of those coming at home.  
7.  Rox scored the least amount of runs in their history at 735.  The inability to score runs and the lack of offense was an eye opener especially with a team of Tulo and CarGo.  Kind of shows you that to win requires 9 guys!  Simple graph but always good to see...you score more runs than your opponents and you tend to make the playoffs...duh
Runs Scored vs Runs Agains (2000-2011).  Playoff teams in Red and Rox historical in Purple (excluding 94-95 seasons)
8.  No excuses but injuries did hurt the Rox this year.  Inconsistent lineups and players finding their roles not to mention no production at second and third bases.
9.  Great year by Helton, Iannetta, Tulo, CarGo, and Giambi.  Average years by Smith, Wiggington, and Ellis.  Not so good by Fowler, Stewart, and Spilly.  Rox really need some more raw power at the plate.  Need to find their home mojo...teams aren't afraid of Coors and Rox really seem hesitant at home.
10.  Starting pitching was just a struggle especially with U-Ball starting slow and de la Rosa injury.  Chacin and Hammel showed that they are consistently inconsistent.  Cook farewell tour was painful.  Rogers isn't a starter.   Nicasio looks to be something if he can come back.  Bullpen was adequate.
11.  Role and bench players are not good.  Seems like the Rox have a lot of AAAA players especially in the minors and they just can't reach the conclusion that they aren't going to be everyday MLB players...

Overall Rox have something to build on.  Granted they were bad but I don't think as bad as the final record showed.  Of course bottom line they didn't take the next step.  Next year they will have a lot of new faces and some leadership has to step up to suggest that losing 89 games isn't acceptable.  Big mountain to climb is where are they going to find 17 wins next year?

11.06.2011

Natasha Paremski - Dvorak

This is show number four (although now I have seen her five total times) for me.  First seen here, then here, and then here.  Tremendous performance as always.  Thankfully she must enjoy Denver because she keeps coming back.

This year she was sort of promoting her new CD.  After her piece she signed.  When it was my time for her to sign I asked her about her red shoes.  She smiled and said not this time around.  This goes back to the first time I saw her and she wore these eye grabbing shoes.

This time she wore a beautiful dress.  Very striking.  She played Dvorak this time around (Piano Concerto in G minor, Op. 33).  As always she plays a wonderful show.  Simply crazy the way she can play.  I would love to see her play a piece a know.  Maybe next year!

11.02.2011

Haiku Wednesday

November

Its winter's door mat
Earth hibernates, sun checks out
Thanks to the harvest