Mid-Season Progress Report

The mid-point of the inaugural season for the New Jersey Transit All-Stars sees them sporting, for the first time in their history, a record worthy of a playoff spot. 11 weeks of frequent and only ostensibly aimless roster manipulation have led the All-Stars into the teeth of the playoff race. However, extraordinary parity among the Intergalactic Destroyers to this point suggests that any self-satisfaction on the part of the division's current leaders ill-suits the jostling for position sure to continue through the season's second half.

The same cannot so easily be said about the race for a playoff spot in the much less fluid Defenders of the Stars division. After quick starts propelled Impending Doom, béisbol and the Beasts of Burden to the front of the pack, shuffling at the top has failed to keep numbers one through three from building more than 20-game leads on the rest of the division. Though 20 games is all that separates the first and last of the somewhat democratic Destroyers, unorthodox managerial decisions on the part of the Slippery Logicians and a failure to gain much traction on the part of the other three teams currently looking from the outside in on the playoff picture has created a rather rigid caste system. It remains unclear whether any team among the three forming the Defenders' version of a petty bourgeois--The Poppersteins, PinYELLa, and Hunters--has the ingenuity, determination, and free time otherwise occupied by more rewarding social experiences necessary to challenge the hegemony at the top.

There is, however, hope. At least one of the division's three topmost seems ripe for the picking. Though revered baseball minds Mordecai and Shaun are clearly still at work putting together a championship-caliber rosters for Impending Doom and Beasts of Burden, respectively, noted BoDeans enthusiast and small-market football team fan Sam McMyler has yet to take even a sniff at the free agent pool. One can only assume a similar indifference from Sam toward the trade market, which begs the question how he expects to arrive at September with a shot at an all-important championship. Now 18 games ahead of Kei and her Poppersteins, béisbol has ridden a closer-heavy pitching staff and 4th-round wunderkind Ubaldo Jiménez to a league-leading 9.45 K/9, 1.91 ERA, 1.03 WHIP and 63 Saves. However, a weekly pitching volume more than 10 innings below league average, the unlikelihood that Jiménez maintains a 30-win pace through the season's next eleven weeks, and the ever more easily distinguished gap between legitimate and untrustworthy candidates for the other pitching staffs among the Marauders of Time would seem to seriously limit béisbol's ability to compete in more than 3 pitching categories per week from here forward. This team is still in position to gain an even tighter grip on the saves market, should the White Sox revert to their form of one month ago and trade away Bobby Jenks. Without more starting pitching, however, béisbol will find it very difficult to capitalize on Matt Thornton's potential move to the closer's role, and even Mariano Rivera's talents are taxed when asked to do more than rake in saves.

Offensively, béisbol sits above average in the power categories alone, and if not for the spectacular production of final-round draft pick Chris Young and 14th-rounder Alex Ríos could be dwelling among the pretenders of the Defenders rather than the contenders. Offensive production in the short term will only decline as a result of SS Troy Tulowitzski's broken wrist, though it's too early to predict a decline of the battery equal to that we should expect of béisbol's pitching staff. Aramis Ramirez remains a second-half sleeper and Carlos Peña is only getting closer to the incentive of real-life MLB free agency. Yet, just as is the case for the pitching categories, stiffening competition and a roster able to compete regularly for only half the weekly points will not present much of a challenge in the playoffs, if the team can indeed make it that far.

With this, I present a ranking of ranks. The unofficial Marauders of Time Power Rankings are simply the average of the average weekly ranks of each team in all scored categories:

1. BEASTS OF BURDEN
2. NJ Transit All-Stars
3. Hit by Pitch
4. Stunna
5. Impending Doom
6. béisbol
7. The Wabash Mashers
8. Mendoza Manatees
9. Waste Wildenstein
10. Ladies Love Us
11. The Poppersteins
12. PinYELLa
13. Hunters
14. Slippery Logicians

Notes: The biggest discrepancy between average weekly rank in all categories and actual record is that of Waste Wildenstein. Like béisbol and Ladies Love Us, Waste Wildenstein is exceptionally consistent in the power categories. However, the return on investment in power is exceptionally fickle, for though béisbol has a record of 8-3 in total home runs, WW rests only a half game above .500 and LLU, meanwhile, a half game below in the same category. In contrast, the Beasts of Burden maintain one of the lowest scores for consistent power production and yet have managed the third-best record in this category in the league. In HR's and RBI's seems to lie the greatest gap between the totals a team puts up relative to the rest of the league and the wins and losses that correlate to those totals.

That argument, though perhaps explaining a worse-than-expected record for Ladies Love Us and a better-than-expected record for béisbol, fails to address the success of Waste Wildenstein to date. In fact, on that argument Waste Wildenstein should be much better in the second half, provided outliers regress to the mean. The unfounded part of WW's success are the wins and losses the team has gained in volume pitching stats. Mediocre strikeout and quality start numbers have somehow resulted in league-leading records in these categories, and unless the luck holds for another 11 weeks, it's unlikely opponents will fail to take more than they lose against the league's current overall leader.

Good luck to all the managers in what's left of Week 12.

UPDATE: This week's team in focus, béisbol, suffers another setback: Dustin Pedroia goes on the 15-Day DL with a broken bone in his foot. For the Poppersteins, PinYELLa, and Hunters to make up some ground the time is now...

this just in

You ever pour yourself a glass of what you think is milk and then it turns out you poured yourself orange juice instead? That's what I feel like when Yahoo! overhauls player profile photos:

Week 1

PLAYERS OF THE WEEK

After the first week of matchups, not surprisingly, Stunna is ranked first in the "Intergalatic Destroyers" division. Surprisingly, Impending Doom is running the "Defenders of the Stars" division. Nice start, boys.

In real life, NL and AL players of the week were announced. The NL crown goes to Roy Halladay, owned by Ladies Love Us. I'm up against Jenni this week, and I'm getting my nightvision goggles out. This man (demi-god?) is LIGHTS OUT BITCHES!!!!111

And the AL title went to Miguel Cabrera, who has had a solid start, trying his best not to waste at-bats, especially in desperate times. Who can poke at the mighty arm of Cy Younger Zack Greinke? Why only THE LORD MIGGY!!!!11

There's no honorary mention in reality, but in fantasy, I've created one this week just for team béisbol. Not only is the team name profoundly epic and deeply influential, but he owns Jorge Cantú, RBI ROYALTY.

(Sorry, no crown. Maybe more like aristocracy, but that doesn't alliterate.)

Cantú has said that he wants to have 100RBI this season. So I was thinking, AN RBI A DAY! But after his stellar performance this week, it's more like AN RBI A DAY! OR 2 OR 5! Keep up the fine work, Jorgie and béisbol! Let's hope some idiot pitcher doesn't smashy his wrist this year after a solid start to the season like last year. Looking back..haha I didn't even have Jorgie in my lineup that week of 14RBI beasting last year. (Sidenote after looking at that post again: Joe, if you have some spare time from eBay labor, I'd like to request beasting reports from time to time, whatever catches your eye.)

In the near future, you will see an updated banner for this blog. A zygotic vision is beginning to develop. Once it is more or less fully developed, I will neglect some important paper and spend my time on Photoshop instead with the banner so that we will have something functional and relevant up for May. If you have any suggestions of what to add or omit, please let me know.

Profile Pictures

I finally got around to looking at baseball box scores a few hours ago, and something I saw struck my attention.

These two guys were the 'top batters' for their respective teams.

Which reminded me of this:

Last year after Pudge left the Yankees to sign with the Astros, this became his profile picture sometime in the first month or two of the year. It was the first time I had seen the slightly zoomed out camera angle that I think makes the players look malnourished. Actually I can't think of any player picture with that view since Pudge, until this year's new photos came out. So I looked at the box scores of every game played yesterday and looked for new pictures, and here's what I got:

Johnny Damon


Vladimir Guerrero


Miguel Tejada


Adrian Beltre


Rick Ankiel


Milton Bradley


Juan Pierre


Victor Martinez


Marlon Byrd


Jake Peavy


Marco Scutaro


Chone Figgins


Hideki Matsui


Jason Bay


Rich Harden


Adam Laroche


Alex Rios


Matt Holliday


Curtis Granderson


Nate Mclouth


Jeff Francouer


Melky Cabrera


At first I thought the zoomed out view made everyone look younger, but it seems to be more when they don't fill the frame vertically.
One thing I'm wondering is why it seems like everyone's jerseys are hanging a little to the left as evidenced by the amount of undershirt you can see.
Another odd thing-no new pictures for any pitchers.
Part of me prefers the old-frame filling photos, but those photos of the Mets and Melky Cabrera I would keep in my wallet if I were related to them. That's some Van Gogh School Photographers poses right there.