Angels

Total news: 1429
Last news: December 31, 1969 19:00:00

Total news: 50
Last news: December 31, 1969 19:00:00

And once you see who's up, you'll know why I didn't get to these on time yesterday...

Yesterday

Today

Which is here, and one interesting comment that came up:

BK:  We grew up in St. Louis in the 80s so we know you can win without huge power bats.  But there's been a lot of talk about the Dodgers not getting that big bat at last year's trade deadline or during this offseason.  On the other hand, the team scored plenty of runs last year and proved you can win without hitting home runs.  Does that make a big bat not as high a priority to you or just something you don't want to overpay to acquire?  Or is it that there just isn't one to be had so far?

NC:  Well, again, the number of candidates that would fill that type of role is a short list.  Secondarily, acquiring them is tough to do.  You'd have to practically blow somebody away to do it.  In our discussions with teams, those types of players are never brought up over the last year in talks with the other side.  When I bring them up, it's like, "Whoa, whoa!  Before we do something like that, you're gonna have to unload half your farm system."  They're not even thinking about moving that kind of player.

BK:  Regarding the recent Hall of Fame voting, without getting into the specifics of individual players but just as a baseball fan, is it upsetting to you to see the game entering an era where for maybe the next fifteen years or so, the discussion has become as much about drugs as it is on-field accomplishments.

NC:  Yeah, it does.  It's disappointing that it's evolved into that type of discussion.  But I don't sound naive here, either.  I was just talking to a friend of mine about this yesterday.  When I grew up watching baseball-- let's forget about baseball.  When I grew up watching professional sports, you rarely heard anything negative about anybody.  It was rare that anybody ever got into any trouble, or held out, or wouldn't play hard.  It was such a rarity, it was in the mind of a young person, it was almost pure.  Young people growing up today, my kids are in their twenties now, they've never experienced the "purity" of sports and athletes.  It's naive to think back when I was growing that they were all pure, because they weren't.  But that it's such a public (thing), it's so much tied to the world now and tied to life, it's kind of unfortunate that young people today, they look at players that they want to emulate, to wear their jersey or play the game in a (similar) manner, in a batting stance like their hero, shoot baskets like their hero, or skate like their hero, there's a chance that person is going to end up with a note in the newspaper that's going to be less than noble, I guess.

Jayson Stark seems to think the iPod is a revolution in baseball:

Until a few weeks ago, Jennings played for the team that pioneered the iPod's invasion of baseball -- the Rockies. He was one of 17 Rockies players who got swept up last season in a trend that began with an event that didn't exactly have the look of a major sporting revolution at the time:

Brian Jones, then the Rockies' assistant coordinator of video coaching, got an iPod for Christmas. Pretty earth-shattering, huh?

It wasn't even a video iPod, either. Just your basic Nano. But all it took was some initial fooling around with it to get Jones thinking there might be more to this fascinating gadget than the ability to download the Red Hot Chili Peppers on it.

So Jones and his video cohort, Mike Hamilton, did some iExperimenting to see if it might be possible to load their baseball videos on this cool little contraption. And the next thing they knew...

A future Hot Stove Heater was born.

That was just about one year ago exactly. What has gone on since might not quite rival the last 12 months of YouTube. Nevertheless, Jones says now, "it's been kind of crazy."

Because:

Q. Baseball Think Factory has disappeared! What's the deal?

A1. One possibility is a domain name problem. [...]

A1a. Another possibility is the BBTF database being down. Expression Engine produces this delightfully descriptive error message that says it all.

Database Error: Unable to connect to your database. Your database appears to be turned off or the database connection settings in your config file are not correct. Please contact your hosting provider if the problem persists.

The best option here is to wait.

Via Slashdot, the BBC reports that British computer retailer PC World will stop carrying floppy disks once current supplies run out. Those of us who hearken back to the old 5 1/4", 360 kB media will recall what a huge improvement they were over ... audiotape storage. Apple II users used to laugh at some of the more exotic devices other computer users had to suffer through, and I say that speaking as the last generation that had to learn how to care for and feed an IBM 029 key punch.

When Apple launched its 3 1/2" floppy as standard issue with the new Macintosh computer in 1984, it seemed revolutionary at the time, eliminating the need for the sleeve. Only a few years later, everyone had switched to dual-sided, 800 kB disks, and in 1987, both were replaced by the 1.44 MB disk that has remained the standard ever since.

The last gasp for these formats were the various magneto-optical drives, all of which ultimately failed, and the Zip drive, which had a brief flowering in the late 90's; but various technical problems and the plummeting cost of CD-R drives and media (a good CD-R burner in 1993 would set you back around $5,000, but by decade's end, they were no more than $200 or so) killed all of them. The first death knell really came with the floppyless iMac, in 1998; Dell followed suit five years later by announcing the end of floppies as a standard item.

Two weeks ago, I was at Fry's in Fountain Valley, idly looking for the old drives; the pile was now a tiny corner, and I expect soon, even that redoubt of the hard-core geek won't carry them. You'll have to head over to the electronics salvage yards to get the drives, and good luck finding new media. It seems epochal; yet just the other day I was lamenting just how little storage there is on a 4.7 GB DVD-R disk. When I was in high school, a tape containing 20 MB seemed to have more than a man would ever need. In the room next door, my wife's studio has over a terabyte of storage, and even that looks tiny when one Seagate drive holds 750 GB. Zowie. - [Read more]

I've been assured that there's nothing wrong with the SABR website by the various parties involved behind the scenes, and yet — I got what I got. But seeing as how I've been unable to subsequently reproduce the problem, I conclude that whatever was wrong was transient, grumbling a little that from my experience, denials of this sort often accompany actual site failures that have been corrected on the sly. I have witnesses, the original source HTML, and another person who was able to reproduce the problem at the time. - [Read more]

... as one of 10 thirtysomethings to watch next year:

Another offseason has passed and the Angels again have failed to add a player who can suitably complement Guerrero's production, or cover for him if the right fielder is hurt. And some executives and scouts who've watched Guerrero in recent years see signs of physical regression in his movement, if not his production -- he hit .329 last season, with 200 hits, 116 RBI, and 33 home runs.

"He's on the slide," said one scout. "He's turned into much more of a streak hitter than he used to be. It used to be that if you tried to pitch him inside and you didn't bury the ball inside, he'd hit it good. Now you can get away with a little more, and I think it's because there are days when his back doesn't feel so good. He seems to go through periods where any tweak in his back affects his swing."

He's a gifted athlete, but he doesn't have a great body, and he swings as hard as [Gary] Sheffield. When he's going good, he can be as dominant as always. But it's a matter of time now before he breaks down."

The Angels have a promising young hitter in Howie Kendrick, some production out of veteran Garret Anderson, and shortstop Orlando Cabrera is coming off a solid season. But they have question marks at first and third base, and catcher Mike Napoli hit .164 after the All-Star break. The Angels still desperately need Guerrero to hit; it'll be interesting to see whether he stays healthy.

"I've nothing against stats," Stephen Smith starts a recent column about Brandon Wood's strikeouts, "but I do have something against people who abuse stats." Those of us who look at Wood's prodigious strikeout rate and wonder whether he'll live up to his accomplishments in the minors are, apparently, to be dismissed. And why? Because Mike Schmidt was a great player.

While Wood was drafted and signed out of high school, Schmidt was selected by the Phillies after graduating from Ohio University. Taken in the second round of the 1971 draft, he was a couple months short of his 22nd birthday when he reported to Double-A Reading to begin his career. In 74 games, Schmidt had an AVG/OBP/SLG of .211/.302/.350 (.652 OPS) in 268 TPA. Since we're talking strikeouts, Schmidt struck out at a rate of once every 4.06 plate appearances (4.06:1). Schmidt was a shortstop that first year, just as he was in college.

In 1972, Schmidt played the entire minor league season at Triple-A Eugene. In 131 games, he posted a line of .291/.409/.550 (.960 OPS) in 528 TPA. His TPA:SO ratio was 3.64:1. Interestingly, the Phillies moved him all around the infield that summer — 76 games at 2B, 52 games at 3B and five games as SS.

The Phillies called him up to the big league at season's end, with only 40 plate appearances. His TPA:SO ratio in that limited audition was 2.67:1.

At age 23 1/2, Schmidt began his first full major league career in 1973 that finished 71-91 and had one of the lesser offenses in the National League. Schmidt posted a line of .196/.324/.373 (.697 OPS) in 442 TPA. His TPA:SO ratio was 3.25:1.

If sabermetrics had been around then, I'm sure some of its most devout believers would have dimissed Schmidt as a “bust,” “flop,” and “dud” — all words I've seen used by some people to dismiss Wood.

Here's a secret: strikeouts are a good thing for a young power hitter.

Young power hitters who strike out a lot can be good players. Young power hitters who don't strike out often are almost always great players.

The major league burial grounds are filled with players such as Billy Ashley, Roger Freed, Phil Hiatt, Sam Horn, Dave Hostetler, and Hensley Meulens. I could list many, many more but limited the names to a half-dozen of the higher-profile names that have come along in the past couple of decades. More to the point, there are hundreds of unknowns out there who never even got a sniff of the big leagues because they simply didn't make enough contact to get a chance.

Look no further than active players Joe Borchard, Jack Cust, Bobby Estalella, Bucky Jacobsen, Brandon Larson, Ryan Ludwick, Eric Munson, and Calvin Pickering as further evidence of young power hitters who are having a difficult time making the transition from the minors to the majors. I'm even skeptical as to whether Dallas McPherson and Wily Mo Pena will be as good as advertised. Josh Phelps, a one-time Baseball Prospectus coverboy, has a huge hole in his swing and is unlikely to be anything more than a mediocre DH on a poor team.

An easy way to show that this is the case is to notice that Oakland only surrendered 48 unearned runs last year. That was the best record in the league, while the Angels had the AL's second-worst unearned run total, with 80. If we take the A's 48 unearned runs as a sort of platonic ideal for the season, using the Pythagorean method (with a 1.83 exponent), the Angels suddenly have an 88-74 record — one loss worse than their actual record*. Meantime, the Angels' woeful sticks produced an offense that was fourth-worst in the AL.

But let's now play this game with offense. Had the Angels even put up a league average offense (804 runs), they would have been an 88-win team; had they posted a league-leading offense (930 runs as scored by the Yankees) with the defense unchanged, they would have had a 98-win team. (This is only fair, as we were considering the Angels with a best-defense team a moment ago.) Had they had the third-best offense in the league, the White Sox and their 868 runs scored, they would have been a 94-win team. That is to say, the difference between having the best defense in the league and what the Angels' had was one game; the difference between having the fourth-worst offense in the league and the best offense was about ten games. That is to say, you can get a lot farther by improving your bats than you can by improving your gloves. Pretending the Angels' well-below-average offense wasn't at fault for their second place finish in 2006 is just absurd.

*Update: it should be duly noted that the Angels were five games ahead of their Pythagorean won-loss record by the end of the season anyway. - [Read more]

Regarding this, I should mention two things:

1. I was not logged in at the time I started the transaction process. Having to log in during the process almost certainly was part of the issue.
2. Logging in beforehand got me a credit card page with an https URL, and so the transaction proceeded securely, or at least, the credit card data was not transmitted across the Net in plaintext.

Vin Scully has yet another trophy for his overstuffed mantlepiece, this time a lifetime achievement award at the 57th annual Golden Mike Awards, given out by the Radio and Television News Association of Southern California to recognize excellence in broadcast journalism.

Listening to the audiobook Bums, which describes his early career, it's amazing just how much fury accompanied his transition from Red Barber. Barber's summary firing by Walter O'Malley, presumably to save money, was one of a number of actions that got O'Malley in trouble with the declining number of Brooklyn fans toward the end of the team's stay in that borough.

Also: Tommy Lasorda is to be inducted into the Southern California Sports Hall of Fame.

"It is a great honor to be inducted into the California Sports Hall of Fame," said Lasorda. "To have my name mentioned in the same class as the other inductees is particularly gratifying, and I am thrilled with this outstanding honor."

Lasorda will be inducted along with Jerry West, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Eric Dickerson, Rafer Johnson, Jackie Joyner Kersee, Tom Flores, Marcus Allen, Reggie Jackson, Deacon Jones, Elgin Baylor, Chick Hearn, Bill Walsh, Jackie Robinson, Bob Mathias, Wilt Chamberlain, John Wooden, Kellen Winslow, Magic Johnson and Jim Plunkett.

Here's another Nick Adenhart interview from the Herald-Mail. Nick will be in spring training, but

"They told me that I wasn't going to make the club. They just wanted me there to learn. Now they probably want to see if I'm making the step in the right direction. They might be seeing if I could become a leader. It's part of finding where my niche is. Spring was a chance to watch the big leaguers up close and see how they go about their business and see how they do what's best for the team."

I think I'm about the only person who reads the Times' Opinion LA blog. Despite having inhaled former Reasonoids Matt Welch and Tim Cavanaugh, old hands at the online writing business, word from the inside is that that LA's main paper ain't cuttin' it, and editor Jim O'Shea ripped on latimes.com with great vengeance and furious anger, or something like that. Since I smell a sense of panic here, it's worth going over these a little bit:

Latimes.com was established in April 1996. Its stated strategy is to be an indispensable “information retailer” for Southern California, providing news, listings, reviews, databases and the thousands of other tidbits people need to navigate their lives.

This vision is unfulfilled. The website’s own research demonstrates that latimes.com is virtually invisible in greater Los Angeles. By some measures, the site is losing traction even faster than the newspaper. Latimes.com reports that traffic is growing and has reached 5.1 million unique visitors and 73 million total page views per month. But ComScore Media Metrix, an independent traffic monitor that uses an array of indicators, says overall traffic to the site dropped 9% in September, compared with the same month a year earlier. Visits to nytimes.com were up 10%, at Yahoo News 15%, at AOL News 11%. Overall, traffic to news sites grew an average of 4%, according to ComScore.

Latimes.com has slipped from the list of 500 most-visited websites in the world to 766th and does not make the U.S. top 100, according to Alexa Internet. By contrast, nytimes.com is ranked 95th in the world (21st in the U.S.), and washingtonpost.com is 264th (54th in the U.S.). Even in Southern California, the reach of latimes.com is dwarfed by that of sites such as MSNBC, Yahoo News and the New York Times. A 2005 study by outside consultants concluded that few in Southern California consider latimes.com a source of news or entertainment.

1. has much less traffic than its competitors
2. is reporting about a drop in traffic reported by Media Metrix and Alexa Internet despite their own numbers showing an increase during the same period.

Furthermore, the discrepancy between latimes.com traffic numbers and those from Media Metrix — not just a discrepancy in value but in direction — leads me to suspect something that hit my day job about six years ago when we, too, started hyperventilating about the numbers being reported by Nielsen Netratings. As I found out then, the dirty little secret of the online traffic measuring business is that error bands are generally much worse because the Net is so fragmented to begin with. The coup de grâce comes when you try to measure traffic for a small(ish) website: suddenly you're looking at a random number generator. Worse, error bands are almost never reported unless with great screaming and kicking from the rating agencies, whose word is supposed to be both authoritative and impartial. It's hard to imagine that the situation has improved appreciably over the intervening years; sampling costs money. For latimes.com, it reminds you of Groucho Marx's quip "who are you going to believe? Me, or your own eyes?" There are other, better ways to get solid, impartial traffic data for the purposes of selling advertising, and latimes.com should be investigating them.

The article goes on to describe the internecine war that Tribune Corp. has set up between Spring Street and the honchos in Chicago, a conflict that has led to the understaffing of latimes.com, which in turn seems to be taking most of the blame for how poorly the site has fared of late. Some of this is no doubt true; the Times wish to improve web services without additional manpower seems doomed to fail, though, given the sprawling nature of the site. The proposal to reintroduce calendarlive.com as a paid site amounts to a timid step in the direction of charging for content. Given that newspapers used to live or die on their classifieds, Craigslist has utterly kicked the wheels out of that revenue stream, and probably will for the forseeable future, too.

As a result, it's fairly clear that the Times will ultimately need to charge for latimes.com, however divisive that turns out to be; the question is, can they sustain the kind of reporting they currently have even with an online subscription base? Unprivy to the balance sheet, it is a question I cannot answer. Nonetheless, I offer up the following obvious suggestion: $110 a year for latimes.com, $137.80 for the print edition (with free access to the online version), leave the opinion section free, and close the rest of the site off.

(You can read more reactions to the latest fusillade by following the links in this summary post.) - [Read more]

Spring has sprung

So we heard Jered Weaver speak at the Dirtbag baseball season kickoff dinner; what he lacked in public speaking skills he certainly made up for in sincerity, delivering what turned out to be a heartfelt thank-you to his former coaches, teammates, and most of all, parents. He talked briefly about his learning disabilities, and what a struggle it was for him to stay eligible to pitch on the team. He donated some of his signing bonus to the school, and so there is now a facility (with his name?) dedicated to helping student-athletes keep up with their academics.

He talked a fair amount about his brother, how excited and happy he was to be on the same team, and then upon being called up the second time, how he didn't know he displaced Jeff until after he had arrived in the bigs. He waxed emotional as he recalled October 27, after the madness had quieted some in St. Louis, running out to the field, embracing his brother, "sharing tears" on the field in perhaps the crowning achievement of Jeff's career. (Jeff, he also told us, is now a Mariner.)

Towards the end, he mentioned how he got yanked from the rotation and put into the bullpen, and working toward the goal of returning to the rotation made him a better pitcher. It was a recurring theme, overcoming personal limitations, and he advised the incoming Dirtbags to work hard, not to let up — lest they end up in his situation, in which he was having a hard time once more; the room fairly gasped. What he meant by that, I cannot say. But, he will get his old college number 36 back next year.

Thanks to a pleasant happenstance, we got to sit next to Bobby Crosby and his lovely fiancee, with whom Helen chatted throughout the evening. At a table or two away from us, Abe Alvarez, Jason Vargas, Troy Tulowitzki, all of whom we chatted with briefly. We finally got to meet Coach Weathers and his wife, as well as Bob Wuesthoff, who arrived in an electric scooter; the latter thanked us for the support of the scholarship in his name.

And so, the preseason starts Saturday. I can't wait. - [Read more]

Normally I don't care about this, but given the state of the AL West, it's useful to take a look at Dan Szymborski's 2007 ZiPS projection for the A's. This is going to be a terrible offensive team, with no player slugging over .500 (which sounds oddly familiar) — so at least somebody thinks the Angels will have a better offense than the A's. The pitching looks worse than the Angels, too, as ZiPS projects Jered Weaver to have a sub-3.00 ERA next year; no Oakland starter is projected to have an ERA under 3.20. This is going to be a tough division next year within it, but its teams may not have a very good record outside the division. - [Read more]