Midafternoon Royals Links: Getting Ready for the Show Me Series, Trading for Omar Quintanilla, Edition

by royalsreview on Jun 19, 2009 2:30 PM EDT Comment 43 comments

The mood's always interesting before these matchups against St. Louis. On the one hand, there's our healthy AL chauvinism. On the other, there's a natural pessimism regarding games against the Cardinals, as well as lots of angst surrounding the possibility of the K being overrun with "the best fans in baseball".

Willis Back to the DL; Figaro to Start Saturday - Bless You Boys
It's never to early to start worrying about resigning Albert Pujols I guess.
Khalil Greene may be reactivated soon. Baseball has found a way to cure social anxiety/depression in two weeks!
The Columbus Dispatch : Rochester pounds Columbus starter Cassel from start (Oh, and some guy named Huber had two hits as well. I love Rochester Wings baseball!)
Revisiting the projections - Viva El Birdos
Fact or Fiction: Dogs Can Talk: Scientific American (But can they play shortstop?)
This is an oldie but a goodie: Evaluating Defense | U.S.S. Mariner
Pedro Martinez to the Rays Seems Unlikely Based on Asking Price - DRaysBay
Royals are actually in the top ten, and bested by only one NL team: BtB Power Rankings: Through Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 - Beyond the Box Score
Granderson’s Odd Season | FanGraphs Baseball
Nationals Shopping Dunn & Johnson
I've often wondered, would I rather teach in a HS, or in prison.

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I've liked Quintanilla for awhile

Although honestly I couldn’t tell you why. He seems to do well in my DMB projections all the time. Seems like an upgrade over what we have now, although he still doesn’t seem like a long-term solution. Of course, just a year ago, that’s what Ben Zobrist looked like. I’d kill to have him now.

Relive Royals History at royalsretro.blogspot.com

by RoyalsRetro on Jun 19, 2009 2:43 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Sad thing is, Zobrist might have been available at a decent price before the season started

Before Bartlett got hurt and they realized Brignac needed more time to develop. Now, it would probably take Meche to get him. Straight up.

"Now…put that in your [BLEEP]ing pipe and smoke it." -Hal McRae

"I was doing this when BJ was in his father's nutsack." -Renzo Gracie

by Sweep_the_Leg on Jun 19, 2009 3:35 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Zack Greinke's sacrifice made Greene's "resurgence" possible

I'm not a sabermetrician, but I do play one at Driveline Mechanics.

by devil_fingers on Jun 19, 2009 2:45 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

it's sad that dontrelle is still suffering

~~not being a good pitcher~~ “depression” is a real tough problem

by royalsreview on Jun 19, 2009 3:24 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs

good thing they have

blood tests to find that kind of ailment these days.

Don't Stop Believing!

by KC Chris on Jun 19, 2009 6:08 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

JoPo rips apart Harold Reynolds

http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2009/06/19/bugging-harold-reynolds/?3ed09c38

But more interesting to me is that he thought “Hook” would be good. Really? It looked stupid to me.

My top five “biggest disappointments at the movies”

1. Phantom Menace (goes without saying)
2. Matrix II
3. Forgetting Sarah Marshall
4. Matrix III (yea, I honestly thought they would redeem themselves)
5. Club Dread (I absolutely LOVED Super Troopers)

Relive Royals History at royalsretro.blogspot.com

by RoyalsRetro on Jun 19, 2009 2:50 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

wait, there were three matrix movies

I guess i remember that… I thought the first one was pretty lame… you’re talling me Cornell West didn’t save the series?

All three of the prequels were horrible, horrible, horrible…. well, I guess the third one was okay, since there was a relative minimum of political and romantic dialogue (although what there was was still the equivalent of fingernails on the chalkboard).

Forgetting Sarah Marshall? Was that another Judd Apatow yukfest?

I'm not a sabermetrician, but I do play one at Driveline Mechanics.

by devil_fingers on Jun 19, 2009 2:57 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I liked Forgetting Sarah Marshall

If you were thinking, you wouldn't have thought that.

by Warden11 on Jun 19, 2009 3:41 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Seems like I've heard JoPo mention his "Hook" disappointment before

It must have really affected him.

My top five disappointments (of somewhat recent memory):

1. Children of Men (one of the worst movies I’ve ever actually seen—I’ve generally got a good filter)
2. Indiana Jones 4 (I’m not even going to bother trying to remember what the whole title was)
3. Pearl Harbor (I know, it’s a Michael Bay movie…I should have known better, but I’m a big WWII buff)
4. Vantage Point (just annoying in many ways)
5. Taken (not a terrible movie, but it just could have been so much better, if it had had a little more polish)

"Now…put that in your [BLEEP]ing pipe and smoke it." -Hal McRae

"I was doing this when BJ was in his father's nutsack." -Renzo Gracie

by Sweep_the_Leg on Jun 19, 2009 3:10 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Congo... real letdown

one of my friends and I got on a MC kick for awhile in early hs/late ms, and I think we’d both read Congo about a year before this one came out… i was actually pretty excited to see it

the movie just seemed horrible

by royalsreview on Jun 19, 2009 3:23 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I too was

emotionally raped by Congo on the screen. The book kicked some serious ass.

by MarioVanPeebles Republic of China on Jun 19, 2009 3:42 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

A lot of Michael Crichton stuff

Seems to get mangled on-screen.

Relive Royals History at royalsretro.blogspot.com

by RoyalsRetro on Jun 19, 2009 3:44 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

yea...

which is counter-intuitive

i think his complete lack of characterization weighs down even action movies like congo

when you are reading the book, you are drawn in to all the science stuff, but on screen, its not as cool and the other falts show up

its kinda backward

by royalsreview on Jun 19, 2009 3:58 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

i thought Terminator: Salvation was awful

horrific, terriblly awful film

Waiting for April.

by DC Royal on Jun 19, 2009 5:15 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Code Talkers

Jeff Zimmerman - Protecting the world from RBI's and Wins from my mom's guest house.

by Jeff Zimmerman (TucsonRoyal) on Jun 19, 2009 3:23 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I think you mean Windtalkers (about the Navajo Code Talkers in the Pacific? Nicholas Cage?)

That could easily take the No. 5 spot on my list, too. Not absolutely, completely godawful, but pretty close. John Woo = Asian Michael Bay. Nicholas Cage was particularly terrible in that movie. Peter Stormare played his sergeant and had the craziest, most mangled attempt at a Southern accent I’ve ever seen.

Really a shame, too, because those guys (the Code Talkers) deserved a much better movie about their story.

"Now…put that in your [BLEEP]ing pipe and smoke it." -Hal McRae

"I was doing this when BJ was in his father's nutsack." -Renzo Gracie

by Sweep_the_Leg on Jun 19, 2009 3:31 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

poz's "hook" thing IS baffling

it was a kids movie that was released in… what? 1990? what exactly was the appeal for a late 20s early 30s (guessing) Poz?

by royalsreview on Jun 19, 2009 3:26 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Not only that

He took a girl there on a second date. I’m no symbol of machismo or anything, but I would guess I’d take a girl to something less nerdy than “Hook”.

Relive Royals History at royalsretro.blogspot.com

by RoyalsRetro on Jun 19, 2009 3:30 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Yeah, exactly

Maybe it was her suggestion, which would make a little more sense, but he seemed to really be pumped about it, too.

"Now…put that in your [BLEEP]ing pipe and smoke it." -Hal McRae

"I was doing this when BJ was in his father's nutsack." -Renzo Gracie

by Sweep_the_Leg on Jun 19, 2009 3:32 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I guess it did have an "all-star cast"

not that in reality this should have been appealing

by royalsreview on Jun 19, 2009 3:36 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Was Trey in it?

by The #1 Bockel on Jun 19, 2009 4:11 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Nope... Brian Bannister

If all else fails, stop using all else

by ksuroyals on Jun 19, 2009 4:15 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

cameo appearances by Mark Redman

and Ken Harvey.

by Fernando Vina School of Linguistics on Jun 19, 2009 4:18 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Ken Harvey?

http://thefatkidfromhook.wordpress.com/2006/08/25/the-fat-kid-from-hook-loves-you/

Royals, NBA, Golden Hurricane, Hawkeyes, Chiefs, and KU basketball, in that order.

by Rowyal on Jun 19, 2009 5:18 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

how can we all forget

the best movie every made?

Sister Act II: Back in the Habbit

by MarioVanPeebles Republic of China on Jun 19, 2009 3:43 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I Walked Out

Of “Taken”; it needed a plot and script as far as I could see.

I used to be an A's fan until they left town and got good.

by philofthenorth on Jun 19, 2009 3:58 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Children of Men wasn't that bad

I guess if you had really high expectations for it, maybe I could see it being a disappointment. I thought it was ok. But that list reads more like crappiest movies of all time with IJ4 and Pearl Harbor on it. You really thought those would be good?

by AxDxMx on Jun 19, 2009 7:33 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

I thought it was really solid, but I don’t care one way or the other about the Apatow factor so I didn’t have any expectations. Paul Rudd was the bomb!

But yeah…Super Troopers set the bar too high.

by PopeSoria on Jun 19, 2009 3:31 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Superbad = huge disappointment

Did not amuse me very much at all… Minus 3 stars on the Poz scale. And I LOVE swearing.

by PopeSoria on Jun 19, 2009 3:33 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Concur on Club Dread -- I had really high hopes

by Top Ramen on Jun 19, 2009 11:55 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Rank of teams if BtB use Expected Runs Scored minum Expected Runs Allowed

My guess is that many of the unusual results come because of the defense portion. Here is how the teams would rank if you use only the difference between BtB’s runs scored minus allowed, which i think takes defense out of the process (only wOBA and tRA factor in, for Runs Scored and Runs Allowed, respectively). Right or wrong, this jives with our overall perceptions a little more.

Rank/Team/Exp (RS – RA)
1 TB 90
2 LAN 71
3 BOS 62
4 TOR 57
5 NYA 50
6 NYN 31
7 COL 27
8 PHI 18
9 MIL 13
10 LAA 4
11 TEX 3
12 ARI 2
13 DET 2
14 CHN 0
15 MIN 0
16 KC -1
17 CLE -2
18 ATL -4
19 PIT -4
20 STL -5
21 CHA -14
22 CIN -33
23 BAL -35
24 SF -42
25 HOU -43
26 FLA -43
27 SEA -43
28 WAS -52
29 OAK -55
30 SD -70

by benfunke on Jun 19, 2009 3:23 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

I'm pretty sure defense is included in expected runs allowed.

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Jun 19, 2009 5:55 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

A few things

1. Expected RA as reported in my table does include fielding. tRuns does not, so that’s what you’d want to look at to do what you were trying to do.
2. Looking strictly at run differential doesn’t account for the nonlinear way that runs scored and runs allowed accounts for wins. It’ll be similar, but not quite right. Since you’re using the same RS and RA totals I was using, this is why your ranking differs from mine.
3. Why would you want to ignore fielding and look strictly at fielding-neutral pitching performance??
-j

My blog: Basement-Dwellers.com

by JinAZ on Jun 20, 2009 3:01 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

thanks for posting your comments, Sky and JinAZ

sorry i didn’t notice them sooner.

i was looking to exclude fielding just on a hunch that small sample size/fugitive nature of fielding statistics was making the royals seem like a better team than they really were. i was interested to see how things looked if we were only considering hitting and pitching.

by benfunke on Jun 22, 2009 12:40 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs