Don't Hold Back

In preparation for the upcoming baseball season and because I am finishing up a statistics course, I am going to do a series on interesting stats from the great game. These are not necessarily original statistics, but the ones that I find interesting. All stats come from last season.

Fast Ball Percentage
To what degree do pitchers feel comfortable throwing the heat? Are they pretty sure that you will chase junk in the dirt? I think answers to these questions should help a player focus on areas to improve during the offseason. The average player sees about 60% fastballs when they come to the plate.

Let's start with players around the league who should swing early and assume fastball. Pitchers think that they cannot get around on a good fastball.

Player	Team	Fastball %
Juan Pierre	Dodgers	70.1 %
Chone Figgins	Angels	69.1 %
Placido Polanco	Tigers	68.1 %
Johnny Damon	Yankees	67.8 %
Matt Holliday	Rockies	67.0 %

Two Rangers this year need to take notice:

Player	Team	Fastball %
Taylor Teagarden	Rangers	70.8 %
Frank Catalanotto	Rangers	66.6 %

As far as players who can't hold back on any pitch, the following are in the cellar. Pitchers think that they can get them to whiff on anything with movement. If this group does not stay planted on their back feet, they are toast.

Player	Team	Fastball %
Alexei Ramirez	White Sox	47.0 %
Hunter Pence	Astros	49.8 %
Dan Uggla	Marlins	50.2 %
Aubrey Huff	Orioles	51.0 %
Ryan Howard	Phillies	51.2 %
Geovany Soto	Cubs	51.2 %

The offending Rangers are:

Player	Team	Fastball %
Hank Blalock	Rangers	53.2 %
Josh Hamilton	Rangers	53.4 %
Chris Davis	Rangers	55.3 %
Nelson Cruz	Rangers	55.4 %

That's So 2003

Today the media got all hyped up and was ready to lynch someone who dared offend them. They posted their 'questions they would have asked' and demanded answers. And today, Alex Rodriguez gave a bunch of answers. Answers that in my opinion are plausible and a demeanor that seemed believable. He claims that he stopped taking something 6 years ago.

If this press conference was held 6 years ago, 500% more fans would care and 5000% more average joes would care. The fact of the matter is that I, like most people, am over it. I have other things to worry about right now (job, savings, a house, grad school, work...). I may have given an impassioned response in the past, but not these days. I think a lot of people have reached this point. Let's move on.

Back when ARod quit using banned substances...

50 Cent and Evanescence had successful debut albums with Outkast's Hey Ya being the most downloaded song of the year.

The Lord of the Rings movies finally closed, Pirates of the Caribbean came out, 2 Matrix films hit the theaters, and Finding Nemo defined a 12 step program for sharks.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers won the Super Bowl over the Oakland Raiders... yes the very same joke of a team that we have today.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected Governor of California.

I was in college that year.

I wasn't even engaged to be married until the end of that year...

Caring about juiced players is sooo 2003.

The Doldrums

We went to check on the house today. Since we are done making decisions, I figure that they should be about done by now too. WRONG! Permits apparently take some time to go through. So until then, nothing happens on the lot.

This reminds of the baseball talk this time of year. Everyone is fishing for a story but is just scrambling for who knows what. Today I hear that "that the Rangers are 'considering' signing Andruw Jones." No one in their right mind would do such a thing. Further proof that things are puttering along waiting to be kicked into gear.

This is a view from about where Kimberlee's office will be:

Thank goodness that Spring Training is just around the corner.

Blog Stimulus

So what has kept me so busy the last couple of months?
Glad you asked, and it happens to be a new house!

We started on January 11th by securing our lot.


We then selected floor plan and options:

So 2 story brick with a front porch.

Bay windows on the Master Bedroom. 12x12 covered patio in the back.

Kimberlee's office in the front.

My office on the middle left. Guest Bedroom on the middle right.

TV / Game room on the bottom left.

Finally, we finished the interior design last night. Below are the samples that we chose. The first has our maple cabinets, granite kitchen countertop, and entry / kitchen / dining tile.


Next we have our bathroom cabinetry, linoleum, master bath granite (bottom left), other bathroom marble (bottom center), carpet, and main paint color for the house.

Thoughts from Panera Bread

Free WiFi is awesome. It allows you to get out of the house and do the exact same thing as always, but with scenery. Panera Bread has given me the opportunity today and I am grateful. Obviously I am a little busy these days if I am posting from here, so let me throw some quick shots out today.

Sports
I am about footballed out right now. Being in Dallas, the Cowboys occupy 75% of the airwaves this time of year at a minimum. This team has done its best to take my little interest and step on it. The high school feuds that exist or are trumped up by the talking heads have me wishing for sports talk in place of the tabloid gossip.

The Ranger's off season so far has been non-dramatic which makes me somewhat happy. We sold on the down tick with Gerald Laird. His five tool player status along with his experience merits more than a high school kid and a slow to mature AA player. I don't think the return was horrid, but it was underwhelming. So far they have yet to sign a blockbuster player. Thank Goodness! Kerry Wood and his permanent spot on the disabled list went for over 10 million a year. Thankfully we are not weighing down our future with such contracts. I don't care how good you are (Teixeira, CC, etc.), 6+ year contracts are nuts in this league. It guaranteed... results are anything but. I for one would love to see contracts have a consistent base league-wide based on experience and then having significant bonuses tied to performance. 55 home runs one year brings in 8 million extra, the slump the next year to 21 homers only brings in 2 million. How much drama could we eliminate with such a system. How much easier to keep franchise players that build a fan base. Most likely it is too simple to actually happen.

Church
I have a structural engineer teaching our Young Marrieds class at church this quarter. This bodes well for both my excitement and my comprehension. I have a subtle feeling that some us may have to be translators if he gets too technical, but I bet his lessons won't be hard to understand.

Cinema
Once again the holidays are here and movies that technical have not been released are being considered for yearly honors. Just sad. I wish they would have awards that require 100 million in sales to get be eligible. No more artsy films that are only released in 17 theaters. I am not saying that all of these films stink, but at least talk about films that people have heard of. Using my new eligibility rules from above, here are the best films of the year based upon the buzz generated by the common man:


Roundhouse to the Oscars
The Dark Knight
Iron Man
Wall-E
Get Smart
Kung Fu Panda
Indiana Jones
High School Musical 3

Not the list that you will see anywhere near the Academy Awards, but certainly the list of movies that I have been hearing about.

New Laptop
I got a new laptop about a week ago. I am so pumped. The last computer purchase that I made was before I started college in the summer of 2000. I went with an Asus that I got off of NewEgg. It has an Intel Core2Duo P8600 processor, 4 Gigs of RAM, a 320 Gig Hard Drive, and a huge 1 Gig NVidia GeForce 9650 GT graphics card. The best games from my old system look like an Atari on an HD TV. Oh, and I got this since I started grad school this fall...

Heard While Making This Post
Weezer - Possibilities
The Calling - Wherever You Will Go
Jimmy Eat World - Sweetness