Blown Call in Tiger - Red Sox game

A blown strike three call (see excellent recap here) helped the Red Sox to a 7-4 victory over the Tigers.  Both the home plate and first base umpire missed the clear fact that the catcher, Gerald Laird caught the ball.  There is also little evidence that the ball was even foul tipped, rendering the whole issue of whether it was caught moot.

Thought I am in favor of more instant replay in baseball (I think giving managers a single red flag, similar to football, would be a great idea) this quick judgement call is probably not a good argument for replay.  Instead, give Mike Aviles credit for arguing first that he tipped the ball, and that Laird failed to catch it.  Especially when Aviles probably knew that he was, er, stretching the truth.

The solution is up to the players to "police" Aviles for stretching the limits.  Verlander is pitching for Detroit tonight, and he throws 100 MPH.  Aviles should not dig in at the plate.

Charles Blow is a partisan hack - absurd NYT Editorial

Charles Blow complains about a Republican "super PAC" that would bring up Obama's relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.  He goes on to disparage Romney:

Romney used to be a pragmatic, right-leaning centrist. That was until he checked his principles and previous positions at the door so that he could cavort with the Tea Party.

Finally, buried around paragraph 15, Blow mentions that "Romney rightly repudiated it."  If you read that article, the plans by the PAC to bring up Wright were published in the Thursday NY Times, and, that same day, Romney clearly stated “I repudiate that effort" and “I think it’s the wrong course for a PAC or a campaign.”

So Romney shows some character by repudiating a partisan attack on Obama.  Yet Blow hides this fact, and instead uses the episode to claim that Romney lacks principles.  What would he want Romney to do?  Blow is a partisan hack.

Many of the comments miss the point that Romney repudiated the effort.  Apparently Blow the hack did a good job of hiding that.

Fantasy Baseball Verdict: Points Leagues are far superior to Rotisserie

I've been playing in a relatively "fun", non-competitive Head to Head Points (H2H Points) fantasy baseball league for a few years now.  It's a "points league", where players get points for things they do.  Our points are pretty standard.  For a batter, one point per base earned on a hit (so a triple is 3 points), 1 point for a walk, 1 for a steal.  Also, one point for the more traditional categories of run scored and RBI.  I find it completely reasonable and fairly sabremetric.  A single followed by a steal is worth 2 points, same as a double - makes sense, right?  While it doesn't directly track OPS, it more or less does.  Note that a home run is worth 6 points, and a stolen base only 1.  One could argue about that 6:1 ratio, but, in real baseball, a home run is clearly worth much more than a stolen base.  Pitchers gain points per out recorded, and an extra point per strikeout.  They lose points for giving up a hit or a walk, and two points per earned run.  A win or save is worth 5 points, a loss is -5.  Less sabremetric than the hitting, but pretty reasonable, since wins, which are partly out of that pitcher's control, are relatively unimportant.

Most leagues set limits on the number of games pitchers can start, and the number of "moves" (switching players) a manager can do per week.  Our league has a pretty standard limit of 12 starts per week, and a fairly low limit of 5 moves per week.  In a ten team league it's hard to find great starting pitching for your 12 starts, so one is constantly working to find good starting pitching.  Just like real baseball.  Closers and relievers are less important than starters, just like (for the most part) real baseball.  With a limit of 5 moves per week, teams cannot be constantly bouncing players back and forth, like real baseball.

Also, we have weekly "head to head" matches.  You are matched up with one other team, and most points for that week wins.  Then you move on.  This brings excitement that builds through the week as you track your progress, and often feverishly follow your players on Sunday.  One year I had Dallas Braden's perfect game give me a come from behind victory.  There is a weekly scoreboard with spaces to "chat" or "talk smack" at each other if you want to be social.  Then, whether you got slaughtered, or barely eeked out a victory, you move on to the next game.  Much like real baseball.  Some teams get unlucky and lose a lot of close matches, or lucky and win a lot, just like real baseball.  A good (but not great) team can get hot at the end of the year and make a big run through the playoffs, just like real baseball.

All in all, I know that H2H Points is still a game and not completely realistic.  But it at least "feels" fairly realistic.

This year, a friend invited me to help him with his Rotisserie 5x5 league.  This is the more "standard" fantasy league.  It's interesting, but I find the experience pales in comparison to points.  First, you are accumulating stats over the entire year, not weekly.  So it's hard to know when to get excited.  There is no weekly scoreboard or central place to chat.  If somebody runs up a huge lead, you are unlikely to make a comeback in the last month.

I find the scoring semi-absurd.  Your hitters are ranked by runs scored, home runs, RBI, stolen bases and batting average.  These are all ancient, non-sabremetric stats.  Batting average is far inferior to OPS as a way to measure hitting.  Runs scored and RBI have more to do with what your teammates did, not what you did.   In this system, a stolen base is just as important as a home run!  And a single and a stolen base is twice as good as a double.  Clearly wrong.  A patient batter drawing walks, running up the opposing pitcher's pitch count, is worthless.

Pitchers are rated by Strikeouts, Wins, Saves, ERA and WHIP.  At least the system is better than for hitters.  But the big emphasis on wins and saves distorts things horribly.  In our draft, there was a big run on closers, and Grant Balfour was taken number 122.  Now, he's a decent closer for my beloved Oakland As, but no sane person would rate him the 122th best player in baseball with a lifetime WAR of 5.  Few would rate him as the 250th best player in baseball.

The steals thing is absurd too.  Dee Gordon is a star player in Rotiserie due to his speed and steals.  In reality, he's a replacement lever player with a WAR at 0.  The very fact that the expert fantasy columnists even mention Dee Gordon or Juan Pierre as "good players to get" proves the distorted system.

Added 8 May 2012.  More evidence that Dee Gordon is a bad player.  Also here.

This league has a fairly low maximum of 180 games started for the year.  So, managers are gaming the system by looking for wins (and saves) from non-starting pitchers, i.e., late inning relievers.  Aroldis Chapman is a superb example of the pitcher you'd be looking for.  Now he's a great pitcher, pitching in high leverage situations, but he is there for his wins.  And, for the most part, his wins do not come from his skill.  They come from his teammates scoring runs off the other team's pitcher.  And they are fairly random.  Every week the Hardball Times has a column "THT Awards" documenting pitchers who undeservedly miss out on wins, or undeservedly gain wins.  Wins are partly due to pitcher skill, and largely a crap shoot.

This league allows for infinite moves.  So teams are constantly "streaming" in pitchers.  Some of our teams have zero starting pitchers on their roster.  Zip, zero, nada.  Completely unrealistic.  Now, I do some streaming in the points league.  But most of the expert picks for streaming in pitchers is really about picking their opponent.  Many picked Phillip Humber vs. the Mariners.  Not because Humber can be mistaken for Justin Verlander, but because Humber is a pretty good pitcher and the Mariners can't hit very well.  In effect, in streaming, you are often choosing your opponent.  Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but in real baseball you don't get to pick your opponents!  In effect, the fantasy teams are constantly calling up starters for one game, then sending them back to the minors in between.  Real teams can't do this.

With infinite moves, managers will swap players on a daily basis depending on matchups.  Or, if one team has the day off and another has a double header, they will swap for a hitter who will get more at bats.  Not very realistic.

I find that Rotiserie is much more "how to game the system" than "how to pick and follow good baseball players".  And, as you read the expert columnists and daily picks (Hardball Times also has a good column, the "Daily Grind", for ideas on streaming in players) I think you'll see that is the case too.  

Fantasy Baseball 2012 Starts

Our Head-to-head points league had it's draft yesterday.  We use standard ESPN points, with the exceptions that strikeouts do not count -1 against a hitter, but errors do.  And a blown save is only -2, not -5.  So the player rankings are significantly different than the more typical "rotissery" 5x5 league.  I did a lot of practice mock drafts beforehand, and a lot of that effort was wasted because the points and ranking are so completely different.  But it got me familiar with the draft application so that I only hit the wrong key once.  Note that our league allows up to 12 starts per week, so having six, or even more, good starters is one of my strategies.  I tend to devalue relievers.

A few of us had glitches with the rankings in the draft application.  In my case, catchers were all listed at absurdly high numbers, e.g. Buster Posey was listed at some number in the 3000s.  Fortunately, my strategy was to pretty much ignore catchers unless they fell really low.  So I changed it to "ignore catchers completely" and pick up one in the last round.  Our rosters have 27 players, so we had 27 rounds.

My thoughts and comments round to round.  At least one of the teams, the Peregrine Falcons, missed the emails about the draft and she was represented by the computer "auto-picks".  And I think the Ewoks and Nerds may have been also computerized.  If so, the computer did a pretty good job for those two.  And you can submit your own ranking and strategy for the picks, which perhaps they did.

My thoughts and comments.  I had pick #2, too early for my taste.  Since it is a "snake" draft, that means that in alternating rounds I have the 2nd and the 9th pick.  My good friend, Dan Quill, (SF Marauders, he's a big Giants fan) had pick #1 (and then #10) so a lot of times we were competing for the same players.  PLayer #3, the Peregrine Falcons, was on my "other side" in some picks.  I based many of my picks on the ESPN projections for 2012, with some hunches and "I just like the player" thrown in.  As for SS, I had decided on either Tulo or "whomever looks decent sometime later on".

Round 1:  Dan picked Pujols, leaving me a tough call between Bautista and Cabrera (who rate very closely in the projections) but Bautista has the flexibility to play 3B and OF.  I figured I'd pick up a 1B much later in the draft, especially when three more (Cabrera, AGon, and Votto) went quickly.

Round 2: Andover Underdogs start the run on elite pitchers with Verlander, followed quickly by Halladay and Kershaw.  I'm seeing Prince Fielder fall down towards me.  Maybe?  The Falcons, picking before me, had the option of Longoria or Fielder.  They already had Miguel Cabrera, who will theoretically play 3B, so I figured they would take Fielder, in which case I'd have a really tough call - double up on 3B with Longoria (not a bad move, but a bit weird) or pick a pitcher.  But the Falcons took Longoria and I very happily picked Fielder as an unexpected offering at 1B.  As in round 1, a lot of top OF and 2B are picked.

Round 3: I was thinking King Felix or Lincecum, but SF Marauders of course picked Lincecum so I took Felix.  Lots of other elite pitchers (Lee, Weaver, Hamels) go.  IMO, Displaced Braves Fan gets a good deal on Curtis Granderson at #27.

Round 4,5: I was looking at Greinke and a 2B here.  I saw that Dan needed a 2B, and since I prefer Zobrist to Uggla (again, positional flexibility) I went with him.  I was pretty sure Dan would pick Uggla and Panda, which he did.  So, in round 5, I got Greinke.

Round 6,7: I wanted either Price or Shields, but I was scrolling down the list to find Matt Moore and mainly Bumgarner, who I wanted to grab before Dan.  When it came my time to pick, I messed up and picked Matt Moore instead of Shields.  Well, maybe Moore will live up to the hype!  If so, I'm a lucky genius.  If not, well, it's all for fun.  Round 7 I took Mark Reynolds, who scores very well in our system.  remember, Ks do not count against a batter!  I'm feeling real solid at the corners.  By now a lot of the top OF are gone so I figured if all else fails Reynolds can play 3B for me and I move Bautista to OF.

Round 8,9: Just in time, I pluck Bumgarner from the grasping fingers of the evil SF Marauders!  However, he grabs Chris Young, my planned pick for round 9 to start filling in the OF.  The other OF are unappealing (objectively, maybe I should take Heyward or Werth here, but they both have burned me in the past) so I pick another young and promising SP, Daniel Hudson, bringing me to five good SP.

Round 10,11: I was eyeing Nick Swisher, Neil Walker, Ackley, and Scutaro.  In round 10 I picked Ackley because he might become OF eligible (flexibility + covers the OF).  Dan, for the second time, grabs "my" OF, Swisher.  So I fill in SS (which was starting to get thin) with Scutaro, who I'm hoping has a good year at Coors.

Round 12,13: I was eyeing Gio Gonzales (I like the guy) and Carlos Lee.  Picked Gio, so of course Dan picks Lee.  To show we really do think alike, he then gets a good deal on Neil Walker.  Once again, the immediate OF offerings are bleak (Melky Cabrera was the best of a bad lot), so I pick yet another good pitcher, Anibel Sanchez.  I'm up to 7 good SP.

Round 14,15: I was eyeing Beltran, Carlos Pena (he also scores well in our system), Logan Morrison and Jeff Francoeur.  Picked Beltran, Dan picked Pena.  Which was probably good for me, forced me to pick another OF, Morrison.  I like the guy.

Round 16,17:  Jaime Garcia had fallen pretty far by my ratings.  Also looking at Torii Hunter, Josh Willingham, and Andrew Bailey.  But Torii plays for the Angels, ick.  So picked Garcia.  Dan picked Torii.  In round 17 I probably should have picked Josh Willingham for OF.  But, in a bit of frustration and a possible reach, picked Jesus Montero.  If he can hit or catch he will be a good pick at 17, if he can do both he will be a great pick.

Round 18,19: Finish off the outfield with a couple of borderline players with upside and downside, Kubel and Rasmus.  Hopefully one will pan out.  Pickings are getting thin, and lots of "borderline" pitchers like Lilly and McCarthy are going as the others fill their rosters.  Braves Fan picks Alex Rios which could be a great pick.

Round 20,21: Joe Nathan as my 1st closer.  He will get lots of chances in Texas.  Lucas Duda for 1B/OF.  Flexibility again.  But was also considering Austin Jackson and Moustakis.  In retrospect, I might have been better with Austin Jackson.

Round 22,23: I can barely recognize some of the names.  :-)  Since I'm an As fan, and still a bit dubious about my OF, I pick Yoenis Cespedes.  Then Derek Holland.  I like the guy, and I think he's a great value pick in round 23.  I now have 9 SP, so will have some flexibility to trade one.

Round 24,25: Kendrys Morales, Addison Reed.  These are my "fun" shoot for the stars picks.  Was also considering Sean Rodriquez as utility infielder, since Scutaro is my only SS.  But Scoot will become SS/2B so he could become my utility guy.  And utility guys are pretty easy to pick up on the waiver wire.

Round 26,27: Steven Drew as backup SS, though looks like he may start on the DL.  And, finally, a catcher, Russel Martin.

Is free contraception a core constitutional issue?

I've seen a lot of letters and editorials that are just plain ignorantly wrong about the contraception issue.  Today's San Mateo Daily Journal had two.

In a letter, Jorg Aadahl writes that "religious zealots ... (want to) deny women access to contraceptives." as part of a "war on women".  In case you missed it, Jorg then repeats that they are "trying to deny others the right to plan for their own families" and that this is a "war on women's rights".

In an editorial, Michelle Durand writes that, under a potential President Santorum, aspirin would "be the only contraception available", and, repeating the "war" analogy, "reproductive rights are in the crosshairs" and decries "attacks on women’s rights"

Nobody is proposing to outlaw contraceptives!.  Catholic bishops, and their supporters, just don't want to be forced to pay to provide free coverage, on moral grounds.  Women will still be able to obtain contraceptives, just like most Catholic women do today.  The letter and editorial are pure political posturing.

I have to believe that these writers know this, but are harping on a political point.  Why not, Obama is using the issue to woo women voters.

For the record, I think the Catholic position on contraception is silly, and their justifications for it unconvincing.  But  that doesn't matter.  I don't get to decide which religious position is "right", nor does the US Government, unless it has a "compelling interest".  See also the RFRA, which applies to Federal laws.  It clarifies that "A compelling interest relates directly with core constitutional issues."  Now, I'm not on the Supreme Court, but it's hard to imagine that free contraception is a core constitutional issue.

For those on the left who are knowingly, unconstitutionally bashing religion to woo women voters, I say shame.  And for women voters who buy into their argument, shame on them too.

Was this a "victory" for Gay Rights?

The Ninth Circuit Court overturned California's Prop 8, which banned gay "marriage".  For the record, though I lean conservative on fiscal issues, I am for Gay Marriage.  Ideally, I think the state should get out of the "Marriage" issue completely, that is a religious term, but that barn door has been open too long to be closed.  So, as a fallback, I am for Gay Marriage.  Should I be cheering?

The strange, narrow basis for the ruling really concerns me.  And it seems unfair to both sides of the argument.

The appeals panel's majority said Tuesday that Proposition 8 must be invalidated because California's existing laws related to domestic partnerships already give gay couples the same state rights as opposite-sex couples. So in effect, they said, Proposition 8 took away the significant designation of "marriage" while leaving in place all of marriage's legal rights and responsibilities.

So, because California was liberal/generous/open enough to offer a fully equal legal status for domestic partnerships, the ruling says that it must also allow these to be called "marriage".  Imagine yourself as a religious conservative opposing this decision.  Your only logical conclusion is that you should never have been "nice" enough to give any ground and allow domestic partnerships.  Next time a minority group wants "just a few" more rights, screw them, because, as proved by the 9th Circuit Court, it really is a slippery slope.  This decision will rally and harden conservative opposition.  I don't know if any conservative states still prohibit domestic partnerships, but, if there are, the chance of gays obtaining that right just went way down.  Or, if their domestic partnership laws aren't quite equal to marriage rights, they will darned tooting remain unequal, otherwise these "liberal judges" will force them to allow marriage.

The Obama administration is already in a fight with Catholic institutions, attempting to force them to provide contraception coverage.  So, a religious conservative can easily imagine their church, mosque or synagogue being forced to perform a gay marriage.  While I support Gay Marriage, forcing others, against their conscience, to perform the ceremony is a violation of religious liberty and the First Amendment.

And, if I were Gay, I'd be worried by this decision.  The right to "marry" is based upon a very narrow legalistic interpretation of existing laws, not a fundamental right of equality.  And, in any case, it came through the courts, not through acceptance of the general population.  Which ultimately should be the goal, even if that will take time.  And, IMO, this decision pushed that acceptance further into the future.

ADA Shows that America is more polarized, and who is causing it

Americans for Democratic Action, a liberal advocacy group, rates House and Senate members for how well they vote for liberal interests.  All perfectly fine.  A recent study and explanation can be found here.  The graphs (also below) clearly shows more polarization.

So, who is causing this polarization?  Both the Democrats (blue) and Republicans (red) are voting more "in lockstep", as shown by the narrowing bands of color.

However, liberal papers like the New York Times constantly complain of the Republicans moving to the "far right", to the "extreme".  Are they?  From the picture, it appears that they may be moving slightly to the right (down).  However, in comparison, what is immensely clear is that the Democrats are moving strongly to the left (up).

So, according to a liberal advocacy group, and their data, it is not the Republicans, but the Democrats who are moving to the extremes.