Jolbert Cabrera looks like he’s not sure he should be playing first.
“Are you sure, skip? First?”
“Go get ’em, kid.”
“Uhhhh.. okay, skip.”
This may be the most frustrated I’ve been in a long, long time… and I’ve been having a rough month. I want to find this book I own because I need to look something up for a post I’ve been chewing on for weeks (oh yes, Dear Readers, there will be a massive post) but I’ve just finished unpacking my books and… it’s not there. I’ve been pulling books out of boxes for hours now, and I’ve been surprised every couple of minutes (“I own that?”).
So for a weird aside as I hunt for that elusive book (ironically, the book is on not getting lost, which is of no help if you lose the book), here are the last ten books I shelved:
Longest Day, Cornelius Ryan
Baseball Signs and Plays, Southworth
Basketball on Paper, Oliver
Essays in Existentialism, Sartre
Light in August, Faulkner
This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald
The 19th Emergency, Byars (a children’s book that actually goes well with Sartre)
Double Lives, Second Chances, Insdorf
Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Disgusting Sneakers, Sobol
Killing Pablo, Bowden
I pity the dude who has to go through my book purchase records and submit a report on what I’m cooking up.
On the start:
If I have a coin and I flip it enough, it will come up heads or tails about fifty-fifty (excuse this for a second). During the flipping, though, you’ll see it come up tails five times sometimes, heads five times sometimes… but that doesn’t mean you don’t have a fair coin.
However, let’s say that you’re doing a trial of 100 flips, and it comes up heads ten times right off the bet. The remainder of the series is going to be 50/50 flips, so it’s pretty likely this trial will come out with a higher heads totals than tails. You’re no more likely to get a ten-tail series in the remainder in the remaining 90 flips as you are to get another ten-head series.
So, to apply this to the team:
If you think the Mariners headed into this season as a .500 team, after a 1-5 start there are 156 games left and the team should win 78 games of those, ending the season at 79-83.
If you think the Mariners are “inherently” a 90-win team, then you’d expect them to win 86 games the rest of the season and wind up 87-75.
The good counter argument here is strength-of-schedule: that the M’s took it on the chin from the A’s, who should win about 90 games, and the Angels, who are a .500 team, and haven’t had a chance to beat up on the bad teams.
If there’s anything to take away though, it’s that these games do count as much as games down the stretch.
And while I’m writing: if you pay attention to the broadcasts — and I mean really pay attention — you’ll be amazed at the number of things they (and I’ve been listening to Rizzs/Henderson a lot so far) say that are flat wrong. I don’t mean “you have to be aggressive early in the count” or that kind of air-filler: I mean flat mistakes, and if you’re willing to extend it to logical leaps, it’s crazy-bad. It makes me wish I could do the Darth Vader force choke through the TV.
“The M’s teams that have scored the most runs haven’t hit home runs… gaaaaaaakkk–akkkk–ppttthhhhhh…”
Though that would be wrong, and I strongly discourage our readers from using force powers against the broadcasting crew.
Aaaaaah! Panic in the streets!