Here is a cute otter, courtesy of the good folks at cuteotters.com:
Because it is timely
FREE KRAUT!
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FREE KRAUT! 
Otters suck.
Fuck you! Otters are adorable and delicious!
Mmmm, that’s good–you can really taste the otter.
The otter white meat?
You otter try it!
Kill it with fire.
You killed otter, you son of a bitch. You killed otter, and by God, I’ll hear you say it.
The otter’s a delight. Let’s sit him next to Grandma.
Or conversely,
{hits MB in the face with coal scoop, looks up, blood-spattered and psychotically at MikeA}:
“This is something I try to teach all my bloggers, kid: ‘Always put one in the brain!'”
FAIL
Correct quote riposte would have been:
Monkey, when I raise hell, you’ll know.
1. Use the “Direct Link” link instead of the “Email and IM” link.
2. Another stats question (I’ll stop eventually):
Does team BABIP-against correlate at all with team UZR (or any other mainstream defensive metric)? Should it?
Also: this thread bored me almost immediately, and I lack the discipline to press on under those conditions, but perhaps one of the Free Kraut syntax mavens can provide the definitive answer (thus simultaneously improving my grammar and abetting my apathy).
1. thanks (I was using the “html” link. I would never click on something that says “email and im.” I’m glad I cleared out my huge photobucket porn collection yesterday.
2. I think it correlates okayishly. babip-against (der) will have park factors and influence from pitchers and luck. Part of the okayish correlation would come from the fact that uzr is going to dock fielders to some extent whenever (or almost whenever) there’s a hit, so there could be an okayish correlation even if both measures are bad at measuring defense.
2. see for yourself by comparing this and this
How can this be true if we are accurately measuring defense?
it’s an exaggeration; but most hits (pretty much every single gb or fly ball) are caught by some fielders at least some of the time. If a gb gets hit through one of the holes, the 3B/SS or 1B/2B or whatever will be docked by some small amount based on the percentage of the time that balls with the same score (same zone, same hardness on scale of 1-3) are fielded by others at the position. You can draw your own conclusions about the accuracy of that.
Oh, I do. One of these days I’ll get around to writing a post about them.
Basically, I think we’re just fudging too many things together and saying “look, an advanced defensive stat!”
sure, but there’s not any better way of figuring it out. Best to look at several of them and think to yourself “subject to huge error.”
That’s probably right, but there are people out there who think we actually have defense figured out.
I like to think of that as “subject to huge irony.”
Defensive stats suck.
That doesn’t answer my question about how to properly use “correlate” in a sentence.
BABIP and UZR
There are a few reasons why they would differ…
–Park factors. Some parks, like Oakland, suppress BABIP.
–GB/FB ratio. Flyballs are more likely to be turned into outs than GBs, so flyball oriented pitching staffs will have lower BABIPs than a GB pitching staff with the same defense behind it.
–Some staffs will give up BIP that are harder/easier to field than others (more LDs, lucky/unlucky placement).
–BABIP equates all hits, while UZR looks at the run values. A bad OF that costs you 20 hits over the season will look the same as a bad infield that costs you 20 hits, but the 20 OF hits will cost you more in UZR because they have a higher run value.
It’s all about PZR, apparently.
Wouldn’t that affect BABIP and UZR similarly? Like, if it falls for a hit because it was a screaming line drive, it also fell inside someone’s range area (or whatever they call it).
Do defensive stats incorporate park factors? Seems like they’d have to.
1. Not similarly, because tougher-to-field balls won’t in theory hurt the fielders at all (in a good system), as they’d get more credit when making the plays and not lose too much if they miss them.
UZR has park factors, not sure about pmr or +/-. The basic ones don’t. The park factor for the Coliseum doesn’t matter much in UZR, because it doesn’t count foul fly balls (for park factor reasons.
Ideally, UZR is supposed to measure the average run value of a BIP versus what actually happened in this specific BIP.
A screaming line drive is very likely to fall for a hit. So a screaming line drive will have an average run value that is pretty close to the run value of a hit, which means the fielder barely loses any value by missing it.
Is that otter dead or just drunk?
I dunno, but I hope that’s his tail …
That’s the hardest I’ve laughed all weekend. Thank you.
TWSS
The just-completed sweep of the slegnA by the Twins was nailed down by Nathan. I love you, Sabes.
When things start to seem bleak, I remind myself that as A’s fans we don’t have to listen to Amy Gutierrez.
Everyone who has criticized or made a joke about otters is banned.
Could you be condescending and passive-aggressive toward me while banning me, please?
A lot of people “believe” that it is not “courteous” to “make light” of the “hard work” that “other people” have put in finding “nice” otter photos. But hey, you can “do what you like”; just don’t expect “other people” to regard your conduct as “appropriate.”
“otter people”?
…
BaNnEd!
Your sarcasm is not welcome here.
not to mention the fact that a couple of them are clearly naked.
and/or Communist. Or homosexual. Or all three.
Are the second and fourth otters wearing skirts or aprons? And does otter #
45 appear mortified because the dog is nuzzling her apron/skirt in an inappropriate way, or because she’s standing next to a nude green otter with a Ned Flanders mustache?[Edit unsuccessful. 4 resists strikethrough. Now I appear to be referring to otter #45. For the sake of argument, otter #45 is a yellow bow and arrow wielding hermaphrodite otter wearing wingtips and a Fidel Castro track suit. And smirking mysteriously.]
Well, if the second and *fifth* otters are female, they should be wearing aprons, shouldn’t they? Otter #2 should also be barefoot, but neither of them appears to be pregnant.
Chauvinist platypi prefer their women webfoot and pregnant.
what about frozen sugar water?
Interesting … none of the female otters are wearing tops … and none of the male otters are wearing pants …
Why I otter …
For about a year, I lived with a man who dealt cocaine (more as a hobby than a career), which produced all kinds of interesting stories. One of the more stark memories I have though, is a tee-shirt he used to wear, that had an otter on it. It was a PSA tee-shirt about donating blood. It said, “Every 54 days…everybody otter!”
Cocaine’s a hell of drug.
Cocaine. Caution: may be hobby-forming
salb918 in the garden. Caution: may be hobbit farming.
It’s his world. The rest of us are just paying rent.
Ah, Krukow and Kuiper. I think I’ll pop this into the dvd and do PIP.
Watching Pablo Sandoval run out his triple, I laughed so hard I woke up JP.
monkeyball: clear a spot on your couch, I’m moving in
Say what you will about hockey, but:
I’ll say: I like hockey.
I’ll say: it doesn’t translate well into a viewable television sport. Live hockey’s a lot of fun, though.
I know that seems to be the general sentiment, but playoff hockey is some bad-ass entertainment. I guess if you didn’t grow up with it and had to try to learn hockey from tv I could agree, but if you already know the game watching it is fine. I hope the Sharks can pull it together tonight, but I fear this is going to be a really tough first round series.
I like playoff hockey. Overtime is great, you can sense the desperation.
Cardenas so far:
.405/.457/.690
Showing a bit of power.
I’m disappointed that this didn’t get a better reaction.
I assume you’re referring to the pun, which I agree otter have gotten more recognition. I just skimmed through it but was caught by the mini thread about Gallego (no pun intended there) and his third base coaching decisions. I think there have been at least 3 or 4 plays already this year that have been head-scratchers, and it can make a huge difference. I’ll go out on a limb and say the biggest loss of Wash going to TX has not been his infield coaching, it’s been his excellent, almost automatic judgement at 3rd.
I miss Swisher low-fiving Wash on the way to the plate.
needs more otters. With otters you would have gotten at least 2 and as many as 5 or 10.
I can’t say “Otters suck.” because that would be a duplicate comment.
Weird.
I otter known.
{jumps down JL’s throat for impugning DaSwinginA’s — and thereby all of **’s — pun-detection skilz}
Good start for Mazzaro: 6 ip, 5K, 0uBB, 1R(HR). He’s probably first in line to replace Outman (or Cahill). Blevins took the loss….
Wait. Why would Cahill be replaced? I know his control needs a bit of work, but wouldn’t Anderson — or, heck, OEE — be likelier to follow Outman off the rota?
Cahill leads the team in ERA, but 5 K vs. 13 BB goes beyond “his control needs a bit of work” all the way to “Yikes!” Anderson’s ERA is much worse, but his peripherals are much better.
As for Eveland, yeah, he’s been lousy, but Cahill is probably more likely to benefit from some time at AAA.
yeah, that. You (mb) must have missed my proclamation that Anderson is by far the best pitcher in the rotation.
(Based on my Keith-Law-like reaction to his two starts.) He looks really really good to me.
1. I haven’t seen him pitch yet
2. I’ve seen 2 (or #?) Cahill starts, and I think he looks really good
3. Cahill’s gotten shamefully squeezed — partly by simply inconsistent/bad umping, partly by b.s. “Jordan rules” rookie strike zone
4. I hadn’t realized his K:BB was so poor (and Anderson’s so good)
5. SSS
6. I don’t know what I’m talking about most of the time when it comes to pitching
7. Jesus. Might as well cancel your couch-surfing — it’s (ess) effin’ hot here in ess eff, too
8. I have no sympathy for a fellow Morlock who chooses to live
on the surface of Mercuryin the East BayRegardless of your East Bay snobbery, I think we can all agree I more accurately represent Mercury surface-dwelling. And if anyone doubts me, I’ve got an extra bedroom, come on down for a little visit this August. We’ll drive on up to the Trop and we can discuss why the Marlins have no fans at the games and why the Rays are COMPLETELY INSANE if they think an outdoor park is their answer.
Response below, so as not to hurl the thread into column barrier violation-induced discombobulation.
8. I’m going to angrily spam Marine Layer.
So has no one noticed the new banner, or is it just that it only amuses me?
Subtle. Yet Awesome.
10 FKpoints
I take it back. It’s not less funny if you have to point it out.
Awesome, Poppy.
I just realized I don’t like cheap thrills, expensive whiskey, or trough urinals.
I’m not fond of expensive whiskey, though I can get downright Proustian about trough urinals.
Dude, I don’t even like cabbage!
And I’ve never tried sauerkraut, kimchi, or any other fermented/pickled form of the stuff.
Brilliant.
It’s the kind of thing we come here for.
I for one welcome our new Otter Pop overlords.
Will we be forced to suck on them?
Okay, so for about the third time in two days, a headline on Yahoo makes no sense.
“Columbine students strive 10 years after massacre”
I’m not certain if this is Yahoo or AP or…what, but they can’t just “strive,” can they? Don’t they have to be striving toward something? M-W defines it:
1 : to devote serious effort or energy : endeavor
2 : to struggle in opposition : contend
I’m an English major and this stuff bothers me probably more than the business majors of the world, but isn’t the word “strive” pretty common verbiage?
Strive for, toward…
Thrive, maybe?
Then again, perhaps we’re expecting too much from a “journalist” named Sandy Shore.
Good point. I should’ve added a link, huh?
I saw the same thing and reacted similarly. Though I’m pretty sure I didn’t look up the word “strive.”
I wanted to make sure there wasn’t some sort of recessive meaning to the word and that the person wasn’t just completely wrong. Turns out, Sandy Shore was. Or maybe just Sandy’s headline writer. When you’re as big as Sandy is, you don’t have to write your own headlines.
…the yahoo headline saga continues…
Blowfiiish!
“THE FALL OF COMMUNISM”
The opening corrida was brilliant.
Season just gets better and getter.
No matter what municipality they slap on the letterhead, the Slegna and their fans will always be 100% in and of Orange County.
Hey mb,
Not sure what you mean but I thought Matt Welch makes a good point in that piece.
Agreed.
My research over the alleged Orange County-ness of Matt Welch led me over to his other blog, reason.com, which I then stayed on for 10 minutes too long. The intersection of politics and sports I can handle. But remove the sports and I quickly become cantankaproid. Cantankaproid, adj: A lethal and metaphysically-impossible mixture of cantankerous and paranoid. Not to be confused with cantakaroid, the relatively-more-common condition of being unsatisfied with dating Madonna.
Well, I’m 100% in agreement that the legislation itself may be flawed. But MW never actually puts up any arguments about that, aside from what I can only infer is his doobie habit that he’s afraid it would detect.
His starting argument is ludicrous: of course MADD is going to exploit Adenhart’s death — it’s their JOB. For them to not respond would be … bizarre. Also, for an alleged libertarian, the “what about the children” {ahem} exploitation of the verb “exploit” smacks of too-sensitive-by-by-half “liberalism.”
He also seems to disregard the fact that simply driving an automobile is a highly regulated/un-free social activity, from insurance to licensing to taxes to, fuck, STOP SIGNS. I don’t take any libertarian seriously who doesn’t think that stop signs and lane indicators and household voltage limitations and cosmetology licensing and grammar are an imposition by The Man on his freedomz.
Between “what about the children” and the sign talk, I’m not sure I shouldn’t be decoding this.
…is there a price on my head?
For those interested, full-sized 24″ by 24″ stop signs retail for $49.95 here at Quiksigns.
Ah, if my old cohort could only see me now.
Can I order a 90-degree-tilt square yellow sign that reads GRAMMAR-FREE ZONE 150 YARDS?
Would you like that installed, sir?
Right.
He lost me as soon as he tried to equate the proposed ignition interlock law to mid-eighties crack legislation on the basis of “sports tragedy” influence.
His arguments are lazy, and boil down to vague warnings about unintended consequences and being “creeped out” by The Man installing gizmos on our “personal possessions” (airbags? seatbelts?). It’s the standard cut-and-paste “most laws are bad laws” polemic, with a few details changed to fit this particular circumstance.
I have no idea whether that ignition interlock law is good or bad. So it would have been really useful if he’d, you know, actually discussed it.
Also note that he jumps from the current proposal, which would require interlocks for those already convicted of a DUI – something that may or may not be good public policy (I’m inclined to say not, but I can see arguments for both sides) – to:
But the only evidence he provides for that talk is a three-year-old article (from his own magazine) about a proposal from a state legislator in NY that even MADD did not support and that, of course, went absolutely nowhere.
I don’t want to live in that world any more than he does; fortunately that world is in no imminent danger of existing.
But it’s so much fun destroying straw men.
Andeux, even though you think Cust sucks he doesn’t. [insert stats here].
thread where Danny argues with Matt Welch, and 800 more comments of other stuff that I didn’t read happened.
I wish comments were threaded there. I’d like to read through that (a chunk of it anyway), but I find it impossible to keep track of who’s responding to what after awhile. ** has ruined me for non-threaded discourse.
and, of course, the HH thread where they discuss MW’s article is far, far worse. I especially love the guy who argues that what Gallo did was far, far worse than what someone who asymptotically approached 0.08 would/could.
[response to monkeyball]
1. Notwithstanding the imminent Tuesday beatdown (I’m already wincing in anticipation), I think it’s clear Anderson is further along than Cahill.
2. Good stuff, certainly. See mikeA’s theory about how he’ll walk a million guys but it won’t be the end of the world because the free passes aren’t likely to be paired with many extra base hits, due to the downward action on his pitches. .215 BABIP so far: that’ll go (way) up, so he’d better start throwing a few more strikes.
3. I don’t think he’s been squeezed. Not shamefully so, anyway. Someone should do a study to determine if young pitchers are indeed the victim of umpire bias (or, conversely, if established pitchers benefit from wider zones, a la Glavine). I doubt it would turn up anything significant.
Addendum to #3: Since sabermetricians pervade the interwebs, no doubt someone has studied that.
Postscript to addendum: I wish stat-inclined analysts were better writers. Every time I set off in search of the answer to a saberconundrum, I end up in some impenetrable insidethebook thread where no one can go half a sentence without invoking an equation. The folks at Beyond the Boxscore, Fangraphs, and elsewhere try their best, but … well, I wouldn’t exactly call their prose felicitous. It’s difficult to plow through that stuff unless your interest is avid. I’d say 5% write well, 25% write clearly, 69.9% write like engineers, and Dave Cameron is [needless and inaccurate qualifier edited out-mikeA] a dick.
Footnote to addendum postscript: I wish sal would write more, because I put him in that 5%.
Oy. Engineers. Don’t get me started on engineers.
Thank you all (honestly, no snark) for correcting my impressions of Cahill and Anderson.