Hmmm

Yahoo! News - Bush Keeps Saddam's Pistol As Trophy

President Bush keeps in his White House offices a trophy of one his high points in the Iraq war, the pistol that Saddam Hussein held when soldiers pulled him from his underground hideaway.

I don't know what I make of this, but it just doesn't feel quite right.

Cliff Lee

The A's will face 25-year-old Cliff Lee, and I have to say that I'm becoming a big fan of his.

His numbers last year impressed me, despite his 3-3 record. He started 9 games and pitched 52.1 innings. Opponents batted .220/.300/.371 (avg/obp/slg) against Cliff, and he struck out 7.57 per 9 innings.

I liked his numbers enough to draft him late in my fantasy draft. I actually dropped him early on to make room for someone, but have since been wise enough to pick him back up.

So far this year, Lee is 5-0 with a 3.21 ERA. Interestingly, he's started 9 games and pitched 53.1 innings, so his 2004 stats are easily comparable to his 2003 numbers. In fact, the numbers are very similar. Batters have hit .232/.338/.338 against Cliff this year and he's striking out 7.09 per 9IP.

Since so many of the stats are similar, I'll point out the differences in Lee's performance between last year and this year.

->Doubles allowed are way up from 5 to 13.
->HR are down from 7 to 2.
->BB are up from 20 to 28.
->K's are down from 44 to 42.
->SLG is down from .371 to .338
->OBP is up from .300 to .338
(Those last two changes virtually cancel each other out in OPS - .671/.676)

All of which is to say that Lee was pretty good last year, and he's pretty good again this year. While I hope the A's beat him tonight, Cliff is an "Andrew guy."

The Blog Jinx

Over the last week or so I've suggested that Tim Hudson was pitching as well as anyone in the AL, and that Gary Sheffield is more-or-less clueless. Since then, both players have seen a drastic reversal of fortune. Well, at least for a game or two.

To measure their performances, I'm going to look at Game Scores for Hudson and Runs Created (in a single game) for Sheffield.

Runs Created Formula

(H+BB+HBP-CS-GIDP)(TB+.26[BB-IBB+HBP]+.52[SH+SF+SB])
-------------------------------------------------------------------
(AB + BB + HBP + SH + SF)

Game Score calculation from ESPN:

Start with 50 points. Add 1 point for each out recorded, (3 points per inning). Add 2 points for each inning completed after the 4th. Add 1 point for each strikeout. Subtract 2 points for each hit allowed. Subtract 4 points for each earned run allowed. Subtract 2 points for each unearned run allowed. Subtract 1 point for each walk

So, we go through Gary and Tim's gamelogs and come up with the following information.

Prior to May 26...

• Sheffield was averaging .76 RC/game played.
  
• Sheffield had cracked 3 RC in a single game only twice.
  
• Gary had topped out at 4.17 RC in a single game
  

On May 26, Sheff created 6.05 runs. That's a 45% increase over his previous best game.


And for Tim Hudson, prior to May 25...

• He had a 5-1 record and a 2.90 ERA.
  
• His average game score was a 58. (Randy's perfect game was a 100)
  
• His lowest game score was a 33. (May 2 against the Devil Rays)
  
• He had fallen below a game score of 50 only twice!
  

And then Timmy goes out against the Red Sox and helps himself to a gamescore of 22. Twenty-two!! That stinks.

So, I talk about Hudson's success and it disappears. I mention Sheffield's struggles and they disappear. Perhaps I should point out that the Angels are winning a lot of games...

Lowell McAdam is a Bad Executive

Lowell McAdam, COO of Verizon, is a bad executive.

Read all of Cenedella's Verizon horror story. I had virtually the same experience with their customer service call center today.

I'm 58% of the way through my 400-minute billing cycle - but I've used 95% of my minutes. When I called up Verizon to switch my plan, they essentially gave me three options. (compare to $50 if I stay within my 400-minute allowance)

(1) Stay on my current plan. Estimated monthly charge: $177

(2) Switch to 800 minute plan with pro-rated final month on 400-plan. Estimated monthly charge: $135 (They would bill me as if I'd used 381 minutes on a 232-minute plan before switching over to the 800-minute plan tomorrow)

(3) Go to a Verizon store, sign a new two-year contract, and switch retro-actively to the 800-miunte plan. Estimated monthly charge: $70 PLUS I'd have to deal with the same people that nearly drove Marc insane, and I'd be stuck with Verizon even longer that I currently am.

After hanging up in a huff, I called Verizon back. I asked how much it would cost me to cancel my account, and 5 minutes later, everything's taken care of. They will retroactively switch my account to the 800-minutes for the whole month, and I don't have to do another damn thing.

Meanwhile, I've wasted 50 minutes of my life dealing with Verizon and another 15 minutes writing this. If Lowell McAdam could just put a little more effort into helpful customer service, he would probably make his stock options a little more valuable.

As Marc says:

His poor leadership causes his company’s employees to not respect themselves, their customers, or their own company. When you focus on the short-term revenue opportunity rather than the long-term customer relationship, employees get the message. And as that message seeps into their daily routines – trick the customer into spending more money – it invades their hearts as well. And pretty soon, the low way they treat customers becomes the way they think of themselves.

Where's the Fun in That?

Yahoo! News - Doctorow Booed After Anti-Bush Speech

In a 20-minute address to graduates at [Hofstra] on Sunday, [Author E.L. Doctorow] criticized Bush's tax cuts, anti-terrorism policies and the Patriot Act, but focused mainly on what he called Bush's "untrue" stories about the war in Iraq.

Whether you agree or disagree with Doctorow's politics is irrelevant. The point of graduation is to celebrate the graduates, not to make political statements.

Graduates want to be inspired by commencement speeches written just for them. They don't want their graduation to become a sideshow to someone's political agenda.

For all those Hofstra grads out there that feel cheated, pretend that Ray Bradbury made this speech at your graduation. I think you'll feel much better.

Sheff Can't Smell Own Cookin'

Sheff needs a Koufax
"When I face top pitchers, I'm at my best."

Gary Sheffield is trying to say that his stats so far have been poor because he's facing too many bad pitchers. If he were facing better competition, he'd be hitting the ball better, or so he claims. But is he right?

I've played around a bit on ESPN's batter v. pitcher stats for the Sheff and I think Gary's wrong.

I took the stats for all pitchers availbable on ESPN's BvP database for Gary and ranked each pitcher as either "great" or "not-great." It's a very subjective ranking, but I noted these 32 pitchers as "great" (over the course of Gary's career, sorted by Gary AB's):

Curt Schilling
Greg Maddux
Tom Glavine
John Smoltz
Javier Vazquez
Randy Johnson
Al Leiter
Jason Schmidt
Hideo Nomo
Pedro Martinez
Matt Morris
Trevor Hoffman
Kevin Brown
Roger Clemens
Josh Beckett
Tim Hudson
Bartolo Colon
Jason Isringhausen
Barry Zito
Mark Mulder
Robb Nen
David Wells
Wade Miller
Billy Wagner
Keith Foulke
Eric Gagne
Troy Percival
Kerry Wood
Mike Mussina
Roy Oswalt
Mark Prior
Mariano Rivera

Opposing pitcher	AB	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
Great	596	169	29	1	26	95	94	95	0.284	0.381	0.466	0.848
Not Great	2144	651	105	7	124	381	390	240	0.304	0.411	0.533	0.943

I think it's fairly clear (and not that surprising) that Gary hits better against weaker competition, despite his protestations otherwise.

(There's a more scientific way to choose "great" pitchers, but I've avoided doing that work. If someone else would like to address that, please feel free.)

Sports Guy is Rusty

So, the Sports Guy is back on ESPN.com full time. This is great news, but he's not back at the top of his game yet.

Only the NHL would decide one day, "Hey, let's switch it around, we'll have the home teams wear dark uniforms. This won't be confusing at all."

Uh... Sports Guy, what about the picture of Matt Chatham wearing a dark blue shirt on this page, which also clearly notes that Chatham's Patriots were the home team.

The home teams only wear white shirts in the NFL when the weather is too hot. The Dolphins and Chargers are generally the teams that take advantage of this most often. (I vaguely remember a big to-do about this in the last season when Denver played at San Diego and ONLY brought their white shirts, forcing the Bolts to wear their dark jerseys in the oppressive heat. Am I making this up? Can someone else find a link to that story?)