I’m getting closer to finishing the paper, and hopefully life will return to normal then. My adviser and I have decided to try to submit to Nature. In the meantime, the decision to give the NL Cy Young award to Tim Lincecum was the right decision. Though I would have gone Carpenter, then Lincecum, then [...]
Archive for the ‘Baseball’ Category
Life update
Posted in Baseball, Blog Stuff on November 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Also, this
Posted in Baseball, Useless Bullshit, Video, tagged Baseball, dock ellis, lsd, no hitter on November 14, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The best 5 minutes of my life today:
Dock Ellis’ interview about his no-hitter on LSD… with appropriate animation and great funk soundtrack.
My MLB playoff predictions
Posted in Baseball, tagged Baseball, playoffs, predictions, World Series on October 6, 2009 | 3 Comments »
*sing with me* “It’s the most wonderful time… of the year!”
I refer, of course, to October. Specifically, October when your favorite baseball team has made the postseason. As mine has. Every year, I predict the outcome of the MLB playoffs, and every year, I get it either slightly or very wrong. But here we go:
NLDS:
Cardinals [...]
Least Marketable Skill actually pretty marketable
Posted in Baseball, Useless Bullshit, Video, tagged batting stance guy, fandom, gar ryness on August 5, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
If you’re not familiar with Batting Stance Guy (aka Gar Ryness), this is a pretty good primer. (You can see his YouTube channel here.) He mimics/caricatures the batting stances of major league ballplayers the way all kids do, except he still does it.
After YouTube sensationdom and an appearance on Letterman (unembeddable), he has now signed [...]
Nate Silver can also cure cancer while climbing Mount Everest (UPDATED)
Posted in Baseball, Other sports, Politics, Useless Bullshit, tagged 538, genius, Nate Silver, PECOTA on July 9, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Nate Silver is an Unpersons favorite. He first became notable to some baseball fans – including the two who run this blog – for inventing an algorithm called PECOTA. Predicting future performances in baseball is notoriously difficult, due to the high degree of variability from year to year. What Silver did with PECOTA was to [...]
Cubbery: injuries edition
Posted in Baseball, Useless Bullshit, tagged cubbery, cubs, injuries on July 8, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Cubbery, for the uninitiated, is defined as “[The act of losing] a game (or play so poorly) in such a strange manner that only the Cubs could do, that one can only sit in amazement.”
[Many examples here]
In any case, with Ryan Dempster’s broken toe (caused by jumping over the dugout fence), the Cubs have [...]
Baseball + charts = nerd heaven
Posted in Baseball, Useless Bullshit, tagged Baseball, charts, flip flop fly, graphs, infographics on June 22, 2009 | 2 Comments »
If you can’t quite see the chart above, it shows the range of ticket prices of major league ballparks. (That’s the Yankees with the highest, natch.)
As a lover of infographics, I stumbled upon this site when taking a quiz on the shapes of ballparks (no peeking!), but found that the author, Craig Robinson, has a [...]
The folly of “all-time” leadership
Posted in Baseball, tagged all-time leaders, Baseball, home runs, managers on June 19, 2009 | 1 Comment »
I saw a blurb at MLB.com today that Joe Torre has passed Sparky Anderson on the all-time win list for baseball managers. The article had the following table:
All-time winningest managers
Rank
Manager
Wins
1.
Connie Mack
3731
2.
John McGraw
2763
3.
Tony La Russa
2497
4
Bobby Cox
2357
5.
Joe Torre
2195
6.
Sparky Anderson
2194
7.
Bucky Harris
2157
8.
Joe McCarthy
2125
9.
Walter Alston
2040
10.
Leo Durocher
2008
That’s pretty ridiculous, right? Connie Mack has nearly 1000 more wins than the second place [...]
Why the Intelligent Designer designed five-hour rain delays
Posted in Baseball, Useless Bullshit, tagged Baseball, danceoff, rain delay, south florida, uconn on May 28, 2009 | 2 Comments »
UConn and USF had a 5-hour rain delay. This danceoff was the result. My favorite part is…well, watch the whole thing (although you can probably skip the macarena at the beginning).
