The Week That Was
Don Baylor, you could say, was relieved of his duties as hitting instructor. Depending on how you spin it, it could be taken that the Rox expect him to be managing somewhere else or that the lackluster offense, especially in key situations, helped make the decision. Rox welcome Carney Lansford.
Baylor and Lansford have some similar numbers although Lansford played in only 15 seasons. Baylor was more of a power hitter, at least that is whay you would call it in the 70s! Have to think this was done more for a new voice then in bringing in someone with better credentials. I also think Lansford was in the Minors for a lot of these players, maybe he can reach them (Fowler, Stewart, Anyone?).
100 Pitch Limit and 2010 Over/Unders
Last week I tried to determine what exactly 100+ means to a pitcher. 100+ is the magic number where pitcher's arms magically fall off and hitters enter the land of paradise. The graph below shows batter's OPS when the pitcher's have thrown 1-25, 26-50, 51-75, 76-100, and 101+. From the graph it would seem to indicate that the 76-100 pitches is the danger zone. This is also usually the time that the lineup turns over for the third time so hitters have adjusted to whatever the pitcher has for the day. Makes one wonder why a pitcher then doesn't change it up in the 6th inning and make his own adjustments? Of course if a pitcher is going well and makes it through this zone then they probably have all of their pitches that day and therefore they cruise past the 101+ point as indicated by the white line below. So it seems somewhat arbitrary to me on why 100 pitches is the warning sign. Hard to believe that the last 20 years we have set ourselves an imaginery plateau.
Final item for the week is the final over/unders for the year. Obviously the Padres win hands down for the most "come out of no where" team. Going 18 game better then projected was amazing and heart breaking for the Rox. I mean I didn't even consider the Padres to even be remotely in the picture at the start of the season. Although I bet 2011 they will come back to earth. Definately look at taking the under for them next year...it's called returning to the mean!
Second point is that it would absolutely suck playing in the AL East. I mean the Blue Jays had a great year. 85 wins is incredibly respectable and to think you were still 11 games behind in first place and another 10 out in the wild card. Yikes. By the way if you put money on the over for the Rox boy you must have been just a bit angry...no comment!
What a beast of a book. This one languished on my shelf for some time. Partly because of its heft and partly because it takes some mental prodding to tackle a large book because you know you are going to be reading it for a while. When this came out, it won some awards and was lauded for the story. Without reading too much of the reviews, I generally thought I knew what I was getting into when I started to read it....And of course once into it, it was totally a different animal. 
