My Stars and Garters #2

Cor, Cavett Blogs!!! I can only hope Rick Moranis gets punchy with him in the comments section.

Mental Inventory

I find these five songs tend to run through my head, uncalled upon, more than any other. The Germans have a word for it (naturally), the Ohrwurm, or "Earworm". Usually, the best way to rid your head of a sonic creepy crawly is to pass it on to another, more susceptible person. And while that often makes for great entertainment in and of itself, these, my pets, tend to silently entertain rather than annoy. They are my most private joy. I'm not exactly what it says about my mental downtime--I don't care to analyze myself or the quality of the songs--but I am grateful they're more than a step or two above jingles.
1. Pussy Control - Prince
If sex crosses my mind every six seconds, then this song is filling the other five.
2. A Whorehouse is any House - B'P'B
Disturbing, sad and catchy. If it's in your head, it might be best to let it rot on the branch, dying slowly in its phonological loop...
3. The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins - Leonard Nimoy
I'd like to hear Ray Davies cover this. It could be his Laughing Gnome.
4. Surfin' Bird - Trashmen
Ignore Brian Eno (not that you were paying him attention anyway), this is the kind of song that inspires men, women and children to pick up a guitar and start a band.
5. The Happiest Girl in the Whole U.S.A. - Donna Fargo
This song has the power to make me fall in love with you, world, all over again.

Oh, These Loves of Mine

Xaime Hernandez channeling Joost Swart to promote Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour. I have yet to listen to the program, but I enjoy pulling the playlists off fan sites and giving 'em a spin in the THEATER OF MY MIND (it's echoey in there). No doubt, true pleasure comes from listening to the incidental bits and anecdotes as well, but I'm happy, for the time being, with my sock puppet renditions of the country blues.

Porter Wagoner
The man knew how to write a song, wear a suit and had an eagle's eye for talent.

I miss putting my hands and brain to use at work...

Thee Lemmyngs' 2007 Season Review From The Commish

THEE LEMMYNGS
2006: 5th 144 Points (67 Hitting; 77 Pitching)
PRE-season prediction: 5th 140.5 Points (82 Hitting; 52.5
Pitching)
Pull Quote – “Bidding early & often.. Was very busy in the
off-season.. Picked up Helton & Thome for some punch & Brett
Myers & Unit for a fearsome fivesome. That bullpen will be
the heel...”
2007: 2nd 156.5 Points (78 Hitting; 78.5 Pitching)

Record I know well that this team resembles:
“Suede” by Suede
Why? – Remarkably consistent through & through. Where the
ballads tail off a little bit, the rockers pick up a little
bit & vice versa. But it doesn’t match the highs & lows of
the follow-up, “Dog Man Biscuits”….

POSITIONAL RANKINGS
Corner Infield – 4th (.321 BA / .410 OBP / .501 SLG)
LG AVG - .288 / .372 / .497

Middle Infield – 2nd (.294 / .371 / .450)
LG AVG - .284 / .346 / .439

Outfield – 10th (.256 / .333 / .408)
LG AVG - .285 / .358 / .472

Catcher – 6th (.262 / .310 / .458)
LG AVG - .279 / .339 / .444

Utility – 4th (.273 / .400 / .533)
LG AVG - .282 / .375 / .499

Staring Pitchers – 2nd (.250 BAA/ 3.99 ERA / 1.30 WHIP)
LG AVG - .265 / 4.25 / 1.35

Relief Pitchers – 7th (.227 / 3.95 / 1.27)
LG AVG - .231 / 3.44 / 1.21

Top 5 hitters
1. Miguel “Fat Ass” Cabrera - $25.9
2. Jose “Butt Face” Reyes - $25
3. Todd Helton - $24.8
4. Placido Polanco - $12.4
5. David Ortiz - $10.6
Side Note: The first two guys = whatever.. Those jerks will
probably be with Thee Lemmyngs for the next 3 years, so
Matthew’s team will remain easily hate-able for awhile..
Helton & Polanco though were real surprises…. Helton at
auction = $27; Polanco at auction = $1

Bottom 5 hitters
1. Mark Reynolds - $-7.6
2. Jason Giambi - $-6.1
3. Bobby Crosby - $-6
4. Gary Matthews Jr. - $-5.5
5. Paul LoDuca - $-5.4
Side Note: Fortunately for Matthew, these 5 guys only
totalled 76 AB’s for him, bearly 1% of his total AB’s, so no
real team killers here…

Top 5 pitchers
1. Jake Peavy - $32.6
2. Brandon Webb - $14.9
3. Justin Verlander - $12.9
4. Jonathan Papelbon - $5.3
5. Ryan Franklin - $4.6
Side Note: Those top 3 were easily the best top 3 pitchers
of the year on any team, and since they were all starters,
that made them all that more important to Tapey. Peavy was
this year’s Johan.. Oh, and Ryan Franklin is a steroid
abuser.

Bottom 5 pitchers
1. Jeff Francis - $-8.4
2. Josh Johnson - $-5.3
3. Jorge Julio - $-5.2
4. Joakim Soria - $-4.4
5. Barry Zito - $-3.9
Side Note: Holy shit.. Golden Boy of the Playoffs Jeff
Francis? Are you kidding me? I just read the numbers here…
On the surface, his rate stas don’t look that bad (.298 BAA;
4.94 ERA; 1.5 WHIP)… But, given that all of those number are
below league average & Francis threw 156.7 IP for Matthew,
that seriously lowers his value…

Best Keeper – Jake Peavy (and it’s not even close)
COST = $9.4 VALUE = $32.6
Worst Keeper – Andruw Jones
COST = $19 VALUE = $-0.2
Best Auction acquisition – I’m gonna call this a tie between
Opera Man Polanco & Bossman Jr.
COST = $1 VALUE = $12.4
COST = $1 VALUE = $9.8
Worst Auction acquisition – Chris Ray
COST = $19 VALUE = $-3.4

HIGH WATER MARK: Period 2 & 4; 172 pts. 1st place.
(The last week in 1st place: Period 9)
LOW TIDE: Period 16; 141.5 pts. 4th place
(Thee Lemmyngs never fell lower than 4th the entire year….)

Best Period: Period 18; 181 pts.
Worst Period: Period 12; 87.5 pts.

Best Trade – 8/14 Traded BJ Upton to Thin White Dukes for
David Ortiz & Dustin McGowan…
Why? – Well, what can I say? Another bummer trade for the
Dukes, but really this is a textbook, late-season salary
dump trade to get a contractable player at a premium
position for next year (who I then traded for the same
thing, but that’s another matter…).. McGowan truly was icing
on the cake for Matthew’s starters, but an argument could be
made that Ortiz got the Lemmyngs 2nd place… Regardless of
what Upton did for me, here’s what Ortiz & McGowan (the
throw-in) did for Matthew in the last month & a half:

Ortiz – 135 AB; .341 / .474 / .741; 13 HR; 35 R; 39 RBI; 35
BB / 19 KO
McGowan – 63.3 IP; 4 W; 5 L; 6 QS; .223 BAA; 4.41 ERA; 1.2
WHIP; 65/23 K/BB; 4 HRA

This trade may go down as the best deadline-deal trade in
league history.. (again with the hyperbole!)

Worst Trade – 1/19 Traded Chris Carpenter & Felix Pie to
Bunson Burners for Andruw Jones.
Why? – How can you say that this was a bad trade, when Pie
did next to nothing for Steve & Carpenter was out for the
year after his first start? The reason why this was a bad
trade is the at-bats, the crucial at-bats that Matthew was
forced to give Andruw Jones in hopes that he would somehow
turn his season around & be of some use.. He never did turn
it around, although he had a brief stint in July where
things looked maybe promising.. It’s also important to note
that Andruw Jones was actually pretty good in April (.261 /
.402 / .534), so it’s hard to ride Matthew too hard for
waiting for the comeback. Had Matthew not committed to
Andruw Jones in CF, he may have been more pro-active in
picking up one of the available CF’s that were around at the
beginning of the year (Rowand, Byrnes, Griffey) OR maybe he
could have just used an in-house option, like BJ Upton, who
was CF-eligible, to take those AB’s away from the black hole
that was Andruw Jones and traded Jones to a team who would
take a gamble on Jones’s seemingly eminent turnaround…
He didn’t do any of those. And it may have cost him the
title this year… It also didn’t help that Matthew’s
reputation around the league as a trading partner is
“difficult” at best….

Short-ish season review
Matthew’s season, as stated before, really was the model of
consistency. I mean, he finished the year with almost
identical hitting & pitching totals. In an interesting
parallel with the 2006 HPRL season, the team that finished
second that year, Sharkey, also had a balanced team (85
hitting; 84.5 pitching)… So, I guess being the most
balanced team gets you second place, but that’s beside the
point and also me pointing out the obvious & by God, I do
enough of that.. This review may be the easiest to write,
since the reasons for success / failure are so readily
apparent in Matthew’s team.. On the positive side, the
starting pitching was wonderful & possibly as important, the
usage of the starters was equally important.. Unlike
virtually every other team in the league, Matthew resisted
the temptation to use too many SP’s to go after the pitching
counting stats (K’s; W’s; QS’s), which helped him maintain
his quality in the rate stats (BAA; ERA; WHIP). For example,
Matthew’s top 5 starters in terms of IP (Peavy, Webb,
Verlander, Francis & Cain) logged 951.7 IP this year, the
highest amount for any “top 5 starters” in the league. With
that, Matthew’s top 5 accounted for 52% of his total IP for
the year. Here’s how that compared to the other teams in the
league:

All Beef Franks – 48%
Black Fred McGriff – 47%
Bugeaters – 37%
Bunson Burners – 39%
Evil Committee – 45%
King Biscuits – 44%
Astronaut Diapers – 40%
Steve Reich n’ Roll – 42%
Thin White Dukes – 36%

So, while the rest of us were giving key IP to borderline
replacement-level pitchers, Matthew held to his guns &
resisted the temptation & it paid off for him. Also, this is
certainly not a case of an owner who forgets about playing
half way through the year & just leaves the same 5 SP’s he
started the year with in for the whole season. Quite the
contrary. After his top five, Matthew gave a total of 172.3
combined IP to three other pitchers (Unit, Boy Chops, &
Zito), essentially another starter for the year & here is
the production he got out of them:

Three-Headed Monster – 172.3 IP; 10 W 12 L; 17 QS; .241 BAA;
4.43 ERA; 1.24 WHIP; 171/57 K/BB; 18 HRA

If you were to plug those numbers into our dollar value
calculater, that’s a $6 pitcher right there. Not bad for
your #6 guy….

It’s also important to remember that Matthew paid $26 for
Brett Myers in the auction to be his #4 starter with Peavy,
Webb & Verlander. We all know what happened to Myers as a
starter, but his conversion to the bullpen was actually a
godsend for Matthew, stabalizing a suspect bullpen & giving
him 20 ‘cheater’ saves & 3 ‘cheater’ holds (‘cheater
saves/holds = saves/holds from RP’s who are SP-eligible),
It had to be tough, as I know that, above just about every
other category, Matthew wants to win K’s the most… His use
of starters this year is a trend that may be followed in the
future by other teams, so Tapey is certainly a trailblazer
in this regard.
The bullpen started off horribly & never truly recovered,
although they did make it back to respectability, which was
all Matthew really needed, given his strength at SP..

On the offensive side, Matthew’s hitting in April, fueled by
Fat Ass, Upton, Reyes & Helton, was the best month of
hitting that any team had in any single month of the season,
totalling 107 points (Dave’s June was 2nd at 101 points.)
Thee Lemmyngs needed all of those points too, as the hitter
quickly went into the deep freeze in May, which continued
into June… The reason for the shutdown, and for my money,
the reason Matthew finished in 2nd this year, were the 3
veteran OF’s that Matthew took with him into the season;
Jason Bay in LF; Andruw Jones in CF; J.D. Drew in RF… In the
simplest terms, all 3 OF’s, all-stars each one of them,
totally underperformed. It cost Matthew $56.1 to keep these
3 OF’s. Here’s the 3-year averages for each of these players
going into this year:

Bay - .292 / .388 / .545; 31 HR; 91 R; 97 RBI; 79 / 142
BB/KO; 9 SB (20th ranked v. all other hitters) = $21.7
Jones - .261 / .351 / .528; 40 HR; 96 R; 116 RBI; 72 / 129
BB/KO; 2 SB (38th ranked) = $20.2
Drew - .292 / .415 / .532; 22 HR; 83 R; 76 RBI; 86 / 91
BB/KO; 3 SB (24th ranked) = $15.9

Here’s what Matthew got out of these guys this year:

Bay – 473 AB; .247 / .326 / .414; 17 HR; 69 R; 73 RBI; 54 /
125 BB/KO; 2 SB = $2.1
Jones – 524 AB; .223 / .315 / .405; 22 HR; 75 R; 84 RBI; 67
/ 132 BB/KO; 3 SB = $-0.3
Drew – 201 AB; .264 / .376 / .379; 3 HR; 35 R; 21 RBI; 38 /
38 BB/KO; 1 SB = $0.1

The real shocker here is Bay. What happened? No one can
really say. Matthew tried to give AB’s to Frenchy & Cust to
stem the tide, but nothing really worked….

And then Ortiz showed up…
Ortiz’s exploits with Thee Lemmyngs were noted previously &
the Lemmyngs were the best team in the league for August &
September, the two months that Ortiz was with the team..

But the difficiencies of the outfield couldn’t be overcome &
it cost Matthew the title.

Top 10 Potential Contract-ables?
Miguel Cabrera - $23
Jeff Francouer - $5
Jeremy Hermida - $5
Brian McCann - $6
David Ortiz - $34
Jose Reyes - $19
Rickie Weeks - $5
Jake Peavy - $21
Justin Verlander - $12
Brandon Webb - $17

Next year in a sentence? – “I came here to do two things:
kick some ass & drink some beer… Looks like we’re almost
outta beer..” – Clint.