Why I Hate Dook, And Why You Should Too

The Face of Evil in NCAA Basketball

I don’t really follow NCAA basketball all that much, but North Carolina lives and breathes it so every March I fill out my bracket, drink lots of beer, and watch the whole tournament. I’m a Boston College fan by NCAA trade, but if the man pictured above is not enough to send you into battle flying flags of Carolina Blue, I don’t know what is. Mike Kyryzesky Kyrzeski Kerzyzewsky Kersheffsky (that’s how it should be spelled dammit, his name even requires an elitist asshole level of spelling skill) is a smug, tyrannical, bastard.

I was going to write a little post on how my time in North Carolina has resulted in my hating yet another elitist and douche bag team, see also: Yankees, New York,  but this brilliant article did all that and more, and far better than I ever could.

I’m hoping for a West Virginia vs. Michigan State championship game.

Update: Thanks to the friend who brought this video to my attention, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Optimism Yields to Boredom

The Red Sox have again been drama free in the spring, and unlike last year, it feels like the quiet sense of purpose has returned to the clubhouse. So, just when I’m feeling all cotton candy and rainbows about the upcoming season things get a little shit stormy. Not a shit hurricane or anything, more like somebody tossed a rock in the pond and it rippled a bit. Less than that even, but I’m bored, so really, anything slightly out of the ordinary is piquing my interest.

On Tuesday, Clay Buchholz had a little relapse to the fragile and stressed out Clay Pidgeon of 2008. He gave up 6 runs in under 2 innings of work. Ordinarily that sort of thing pisses me off. I was a little annoyed, but mostly I just shrugged it off. Clay probably did too. In the same game, Dustin Pedroia sprained his wrist. I’m thinking Dustin is just as over Spring Training as the rest of us and is maybe faking so he can go spend some time on the beach while the rest of the team gets bussed around Florida for one last week. The good news is Pedroia says he’s fine. Nothing showed up as medically wrong when the docs checked him out, but he still gets time off. Smart move Dustin. Maybe Youk will sprain his goatee tomorrow.

My initial excitement at actually seeing live baseball being played has completely worn off and the kids of the future have been sent to the minor league camp. Spring Training is now a grinding death march of boredom as we all wait for games that actually matter.  This season needs to get going before some horrible freak injury takes out a key player. Jacoby Ellsbury could accidentally jump over a fence while making a fantastic catch and get eaten by an alligator or something. That sort of fluke thing is totally avoidable if we could just start the regular season already.

Enough Florida,  time to ship the boys back up to Boston.

I’m Feeling Optimistic. Yes, Really.

Starting fresh with a clean slate, optimism, and all that other happy stuff each spring really only happens if your baseball team doesn’t suck. I highly doubt Pirates or Indians fans are feeling particularly refreshed and optimistic this year. We’ve used the “wait ’til next year” line ad nauseum in the history of Red Sox baseball, but for the past decade now we’ve pretty much had nothing to complain about hope-wise in the month of March. In this spirit I’m feeling quite optimistic about the offense and a few of our offensive prospects. A couple of nice Spring Training wins in which the projected Opening Day line-up and starting pitching staff come out looking great will do that to you. Add in a few great looking prospects and suddenly I’m feeling like Brad Garrett dancing through that stupid 7UP or Sprite commercial he uncharacteristically he tra la la las through. (Or whatever soda he’s selling, I honestly can’t recall.)

After our unceremonious departure from the ALDS last October, and seeming lack of addition of any major offensive talent,  I was ready to hop on the gloom and doom train and ride that sucker straight through the 2010 season. I don’t really care about the loss of Jason Bay, he struck out way too much for my taste and while he was a solid player he wasn’t really lighting anything on fire. Yes, Beltre is a nice defensive upgrade to the broken remnants of the once great Mike Lowell, but his offense is slightly suspect. of once being juiced. He’s coming off injuries, blah, blah, we’ll see. Aside from the 2004 anomaly, his career numbers do not match up to Jason Bay’s, although he does seem to strike out less, so at least there’s that. Oh wait, I was being hopeful and optimistic. The Red Sox have a lot more talent than Seattle had to work with during Beltre’s stint with the Mariners. With a good surrounding cast he should rebound with another career year, n’est-ce pas?

Okay, okay, here’s where my real optimism kicks in. Enter Josh Reddick and Ryan Kalish, both outfielders. In a handful of Spring Training games they’ve dually impressed me. Hitting? check. Fielding? check. Put them next to Jacoby Ellsbury in a year or two and our outfield will be sick. They are the future and the future looks damn good right now. Like, bacon lollipop good. (That was a gratuitous reference for you bacon lovers, I don’t really like bacon. For realz.) I hope they’re with Sea Dogs all year so when I make my annual visit Maine this summer I can see them play. I want to see highly touted shortstop Jose Iglesias and pitcher Casey Kelly too. They are also having a nice little springtime visit to Florida this year. If everyone stays on their current course of progression the Red Sox are going to be mighty talented in 2012.

UZR? WTF is a UZR?

“I don’t go off all those UZRs . . . is it UZR? I don’t even know what it is. I hope my UZR is sick, along with my OBSTR. I don’t know how they do it. How do you measure defense? You make an error, you make an error. You get to a ball, you don’t get to a ball. What if you have a bad hamstring and you can’t get to a ball up the line? I don’t know what they evaluate, but a good ballplayer is a good ballplayer.”

-Kevin Youkilis

I am not a numbers person. Statistics is the only C on my college transcript, if it hadn’t been required for graduation I wouldn’t have taken it. I passed because I found a Mathlete geek (and I’m truly grateful to this kid for pulling all the weight) to be my lab partner and the professor (who thankfully understood that some people just aren’t numbers people) felt sorry for me. I can balance my checkbook, that’s where my math prowess ends. So it’s kind of funny that my favorite sport is ruled by statistics and numbers.

Does anyone else think we’ve gotten slightly out of control with the Sabermetrics and statistics obsession?

Throw the ball, hit the ball, catch the ball.  Worry about your BA, RBIs, ERA, win/loss record and OBP, OPS and WHIP if you must. They’re easy to understand, fairly easy to calculate, and some of the most common stats by which players are measured. Baseball is a simple game until you make it complicated.

If you’re completely preoccupied with win expectancy or leverage index are you really enjoying the game? Do you think players actually care about stats like that? I somehow doubt it. If they did they’d probably go crazy. They have to be concerned with what’s going on directly in front of them. Statistics are useful for reviewing trends and patterns. They’re not a crystal ball into the future and they can’t play in the moment. I’m not arguing that stats aren’t important information to have, but sports are filled with intangibles and miracle moments that defy the statistical probabilities.

That’s why we watch.