Hopefully Gardner saving 2 runs in LF turns out to be a conservative estimate. And hopefully Winn won’t pull a Berroa-Ransom and ruin the team’s UZR after 3 pitches.

Yeah, I think Gardner can probably be a little better than that, his projection is heavily regressed towards average due to the small sample size of his time in LF.

If Winn can’t play D he probably needs to be cut, because that’s about where all
his value looks to be.

Thames is the guy I worry about.  I really don’t want to see him with a glove on.

“due to the small sample size of his time in LF”

Still think it would make sense to use all outfield innings and apply the average correction factors in such cases, but if it wasn’t a question of underestimating Gardner I’d just sweep this into the systematic error.

No!!!!!!!!

link

[4] My sentiments exactly.

[5] Check the calendar.

[6] I. Am. So. Stoopid.

SG is a genius.

It’s still March here.

I was dreading a Replacement Level Mets Blog, and a Jeff Francoeur projection.

LoHud

1.Curtis Granderson is the team’s center fielder. It’s hardly a surprise, but really the Yankees could have started either Granderson or Brett Gardner in center and been just fine. Girardi said the Yankees see Granderson as an everyday player, and they don’t want him moving around. Gardner will get a chance to be an everyday-type player, but he still has to earn that, and he’ll move to center on the few days Granderson is not in the lineup.

[...]

• Girardi didn’t commit to a full time platoon with Marcus Thames, but it certainly seems like Thames could get fairly regular playing time when a lefty is on the mound. “He’s definitely swung the bat pretty well off left-handers,” Girardi said. As for his glove, “he’s done a good enough job in the outfield” to make the Yankees believe Thames can handle left.

(I can’t believe I still get punk’d by AFD.)

I can’t believe that this team is actually going to give regular playing time, and in the OF, to Marcus Thames.  Where’s Glenallen Hills?

(I can’t believe I still get punk’d by AFD.)

Don’t feel bad. That stupid look on Dolan’s face in that picture almost made spit out my cereal this morning.

SG- Are the RS calculations driven by expect balls in play? In other words, are the projections based solely on a defensive ability trajectory (sort of like a FIP) or does it actually consider the pitchers that the Yankees will be using? Cashman seems to have made a strong effort to stock the 25 man with high K/9 pitchers.

I’m not sure if this counts as a slow day, but with opening day looming, I’m curious if folks can weigh in on if the MLB.com subscription is working for them, and if so, how well. Here’s my situation:

1) Cox Communications services Northern Virginia. It sucks. The MLB package has 1-2 games randomly in HD, and the feeds are randomly home or away, and not every game is on every day, so I’ll randomly miss a Yankees game. I’m also blacked out on Saturday day games. I believe the price is ~$250.

2) MLB.com. I have a decent laptop, but it may be a bit stretched streaming the games in HD. I’m willing to explore upgrade options. The plan would be to run it to an HDTV using the HDMI output on my laptop. Cost is $120/year for the service. I can also use the proxy server trick to get the Saturday day games.

... ugh, continuing on [15].

Any suggestions?

[15] Your computer won’t limit the streaming as much as your internet connection. When I’ve had it in the past it’s been pretty good. But the quality can definitely vary with your connection.

Why would you pay twice as much for a service that sucks more?

If your laptop has an HDMI output, it almost certainly is powerful enough to handle the HD streaming.  MLB.TV says that you’ll be happy with the video quality if you have consistent bandwidth of >3 Mbps, but that seems to be cutting it kinda close for HD.  You should be good to go if you have 5 or 6 though (assuming that you don’t share your connection with a bandwidth hog, otherwise known as a teen-aged daughter streaming America’s Next Top Model marathons sixteen hours a day seven days a week).

[17, 18] Yeah, I think that’s what I’m going to go with. I called Cox and it’s actually $179. I guess I’m sort of clinging to sitting on my couch in the family room next to my 52” as opposed to sitting in the office watching the game on a TV I’ve yet to buy, but that will be definitely be smaller. Although the opportunity to transform said office into a man cave is enticing.

Apparently my internet connection from Cox is 25 mbps, but I’m going to run a few bandwidth tests to see what its really coming in at. I’m recalling streaming a few games last year and getting the choppy video problems.

Some of those bandwidth testers are pretty worthless.  Especially if you have something similar to Comcast’s “power boost” or whatever.  That accelerates the download of the first few megabytes, so you’ll get an artificially high speed rating on tests that use small test files.  The test at MLB.TV seems to be a pretty good one as far a that goes.  I’d also suggest running the tests at different times of the day and different days of the week.  My speed will vary anywhere from just under 5 to over 12 Mbps on the same test, and every once in a long while it will drop even lower, but apparently that only lasts a couple of minutes at a time.

just under 5 to over 12 Mbps on the same test

And what’s your service advertised at?

Especially if you have something similar to Comcast’s “power boost” or whatever.

huh, do you know how that works? Does it just download stuff in advance in the hope that you will want it?

I’ve used speedtest.net for checking speeds; it seems decent.

I think it mostly just allocates slightly higher bandwidth to you in short bursts when you “need it”.  The idea is that everyone on your block shouldn’t “need it” at the same time.

J -  I’m moving to NOVA in a couple months, so I’m very interested in how your situation turns out.  I had mlb.tv 2 years ago and was very happy with it, but I was on a big pipe at that point and was happy to just watch on my laptop.

Yeah, I’m going to try the mlb.com + cheap HDTV from Walmart (~$400 for an LG 30-something”).

I’m moving to NOVA in a couple months

Where to? Where are you working? If you’re in the city, the commute around here is ... not fun.

My new office is right on top of the Ballston metro stop.  I’m looking for something along the Orange-line right now.  I used to drive I-66 in to high school each day 10 years ago (holy moly) so I remember the commute.  1.5 hours each way during rush hour, 20 minutes late at night.  Brutal.

Vienna is nice. Expensive if you’re buying, but doable if you are renting. Unless you want to go more in towards the city, then I would look around Courthouse.

“Vienna is nice”

Ears prick up.

“Courthouse”

Back down.

There’s also a government supplied tester, designed to help with the new network/access plans. I’ll see if I can find the url.

Found it: http://5z8.info/killallimmigrants_q9i8q_—INITIATE-CREDIT-CARD-XFER—

Where are you getting these urls?  They’re hilarious.

I’m a big fan of www.lmgtfy.com

shadyurl.com

For entertainment purposes I slummed a bit over on waswatching this evening. It did not disappoint. This: http://5z8.info/-php-deactivate_phishing_filter-48-_k3m5j_dogs-being-eaten

That “article” is hilarious. Basically it says, if the Yankees didn’t play well last year, like they did for most of the season, last season may have turned out like this random (and stupid) sports writer predicted.

Other things that might have turned out differently had they not happened as they did: every event ever.

[33] Yeah, that’s a sort of creative stumbling block with my much-mooted parody site—about 73% of the crazy is “what if Babe Ruth had been a little fatter…would we all be NY Giants fans?”

26% of the crazy is “What if it turns out A-Rod injected ground up adrenal glands of Haitian orphans?”

1% of the crazy is “Other.”

Although I notice he seems to have added other commenters, many of who spend a lot of time pointing out the crazy. 

What a world!

MLB.com has their predictions up.  Prepared to be wowed: Gammons picks the Sox to win it all.

[35] I got as far as all 5 writers/analysts unanimously picking the Angels in the AL West… when I picked up my jaw off the floor, I immediately closed the window and vowed never to return to mlb.com (not that I normally go there in the first place).

[35] I think we can all agree that the GAMMO projection system is the most fair and balanced, and consistent projection system of all. It has successfully predicted the WS winner twice in the last 92 years (04 and 07).

[37] No, it’s more accurate than that.  I know I’ve seen headlines before, “GAMMO says Yankees just bought World Series!”, and on those years the Yankees have (sometimes) won.

And what’s your service advertised at?

You know, they change it all the time, so I’m not entirely sure any more.  I think it’s currently supposed to be 8 at baseline, 12 with the boost.

do you know how that works?

It gives you more bandwidth for the first part of a download (assuming that the extra bandwidth is available on your node).

PowerBoost provides bursts for the first 20 MB downloading and the first 10 MB uploading of a file respectively on Comcast’s 6Mbps, 8Mbps, 12Mbps, 16Mbps or *22Mbps High-Speed Internet services.

It’s actually a reasonably good idea for a lot of stuff, but it doesn’t help for live HD streaming where you need sustained bandwidth.

Looks like Garko is no longer available.  Texas claimed him, so Cashman never had a shot.

SG, do you adjust relievers less than starters, when accounting for differences between AL and NL (first paragraph)?  I *think* you do, but could be wrong.

[34]
Laughing.  Nice.

SG- Are the RS calculations driven by expect balls in play? In other words, are the projections based solely on a defensive ability trajectory (sort of like a FIP) or does it actually consider the pitchers that the Yankees will be using? Cashman seems to have made a strong effort to stock the 25 man with high K/9 pitchers.

They probably should be, but they aren’t.  It looks like the spread for balls in play was around 600 between the highest (around 4500 BIP) and lowest (around 3900 BIP) teams in MLB in 2009.  Looks like the impact of that difference on a defense would be something like 11 plays, or about six runs, in either direction.  So a bad defensive team with the highest K staff would be about six runs better than their defensive projections would show if they did not adjust for expected BIP.  And they’d be six runs worse if they had a very low K staff.
Not sure that having a high K staff gives you much of an advantage when your defense is essentially average, but it does mitigate the chance that they may not be I guess.

So I checked my bandwidth at what was probably around peak time (last night around 8:30 pm) and then again this morning at ~ 7:30 am.  Last night was anywhere from 0.5 - 2 MBps, this morning was 15 MBps (Cox advertises that I should get ‘up to 30 Mbps’). I have the option of switching to FIOS when my contract is up in mid-May, but I’m not sure if thats going to solve this particular problem. MLB.com requires 3 MBps to maintain to the HD stream.

Jim Duquette, hilarious.

[43] Too lazy to search, but I somewhere in the last week I read that Verizon is halting the further rollout of FIOS because broadband is one of the areas where people are cutting back these days, not spending extra.

Did you get 15 via MLB’s bandwidth test ? I’m on Comcast’s 16Mbs service, and I never get anything more or less than 5-6 at MLB. I figured they were throttling on their side.

[45] I did get ~ 15 MBps using the MLB.com speed test app on their website, but that was at 7:30 AM. In peak time, I’m barely getting enough bandwidth to support the MLB.com standard def. Although, that’s basically what Cox is offering me since < 5% of the games are offered in HD, so it’s still the best option.

I think what I need to do is go to my neighbors house (who has FIOS) and see what speeds he’s getting. If FIOS can sustain 3 MBps in my area, then it makes sense to switch.

LoHud:

Damaso Marte felt some discomfort in his left shoulder while throwing long toss a few days ago. He’s been scratched from today’s scheduled relief appearance.

Marte and Joe Girardi described it as a “cranky” shoulder. Marte said it’s sore, but nothing like last year’s injury. He doesn’t expect this to land him on the DL.

And I thought grad students were poor (they indeed are, but still):

“My parents pay my phone bill, my car payment, and help us out with rent in the offseason,” one Giants farmhand said recently. “I’m 25, married and living off of them. I wouldn’t be able to play if they didn’t help me.”

With his wife on the team’s insurance plan, premiums are deducted from his check in addition to taxes and clubhouse dues, resulting in a bimonthly check of around $308. And he is paid only during the five-month season, netting approximately $3,000 for the entire year. After receiving only a $2,500 bonus three years ago, he now has little choice but to ask his parents for help.

[49] Living the dream!

If MLB ever wants to raise revenue sharing to penalize the Yankees and other rich teams without making it easier for the Marlins to exist, they should force teams to increase minor league salaries.

Marte is trying to help the Yankees by being hurt to start the season two years in a row.

Hey, it worked last year, right?