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Lovelance

DyingQuail

Aug 03, 2008 Jan 06, 2009 238 992

I'm a 22 year old college student, who hopes to attend law school. While not hitting the books or selling my soul at summer internships, I live and breath Astros baseball, and baseball in general. I fell in love with the game as a kid, but sabermetrics has made me an addict.

I played little league and went to a lot of games at the Astrodome as a youth because I think it was my dad's mission to make me a life long baseball fan. While I always enjoyed the game, it wasn't until I found new ways of evaluating how teams won baseball games that I fell in love with it. Although, I think I can count July 18, 1994 as a game that showed me just how much I could love the game. It was a game in which the Astros were down 11-0 to the Cardinals going into the fifth inning, and the only reason my family was still sitting in the cheap seats in CF (by the canon) was so that my brother and I could run the bases. In spite of protests from my parents, I kept insisting the Astros could win. They did. 15-12 (I didn't get to run the bases though, never have never will I guess). That game taught me the most important lesson about baseball I've ever received: Above all, the only thing that matters is that there are outs left to work with—which makes them the most prized commodity.

The hours I don't devote to Astros baseball and blogging about my obsessions, I usually spend playing some implementation of Guitar Hero with my roommates or finding new and inventive ways to procrastinate. When not stuck in Georgetown, TX, I spend as much time as I can with my lovely lady friend, Laura. We're the proud puppy parents of Carly, a year old and half old black lab.

a fan of

Houston Astros Major League Baseball Team

Houston Rockets National Basketball Association Team

Houston Texans National Football League Team

Nebraska Cornhuskers NCAA Men's Football Division 1A Team

Texas A&M Aggies NCAA Men's Basketball Division 1 Team

Lance Armstrong Cyclist(s)

Alan Webb, Dathan Ritzenhien, Ryan Hall Other Team(s)

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Try your hand at projecting the 2009 Astros

Sky provides access to the spread sheet, you can look at what I've got done here, and here's a link on how to calculate wOBA.

I need to redo my projected wOBA using CHONE, but that's on my schedule for Saturday. The more people who get involved, the more accurate we can be.

comment about 1 hour ago Lovelance_tiny DyingQuail comment 0 comments 0 recs

Cecil Cooper one of the worst with the IBB in 2008

Not a definitive account, but proof positive enough for me, that Cecil isn't a very good manager.

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Astro-iest Contest: Down Town, Sweet 16

There are a lot of great match-ups here...chose wisely.

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Any requests?

As the off-season continues to dwindle down, a wicked head-cold, scrambling to get my ducks in a row to return to school, and off-season fatigue have me feeling like a worn out record in terms of topics to write about.  In the vein, is there any kind of story, statistical analysis, season/player preview, etc., that you'd like to see from us?

While we're at the requests, something that'd I'd like to hear from everyone is what kind of regular feature would you like to see during the season?  By regular, I mean like a weekly, to bi-monthly series.  Ideas that I've been tossing around, are using the Fan Graphs Swing% statistics for batters (maybe some LD and BABIP% too), and maybe BABIP, HR/FB, and some other rate stats for pitchers, just to try and sort through the noise in the early part of the season.  Those are kind of bland ideas, so suggestions and criticisms are welcome.

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Oswalt to be Team USA Ace

Oswalt will pitch for the team, and right now projects to be the team's ace.

Berkman was offered a spot on the team, but declined; something that in the long run will probably be good, given that Lance has a penchant for Spring Training injuries that he'd feel compelled to play through.

Oswalt also reiterated his desire to retire after '11 and reportedly pushed his training up two weeks in order to be ready to pitch. He, like every other pitcher in the tournament, will be a strict pitch count—hopefully this won't affect him too much.

comment 2 days ago Lovelance_tiny DyingQuail comment 2 comments 0 recs

Astro-iest Contest: Results of Down Town, Round 1

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The match up that surprised me the most was Magnante vs Caminiti.  I thought it would be pretty close—boy was I off.

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Alberto Arias: The dark horse of the 2009 Astros?

Last season, when the Astros acquired Alberto Arias, I initially read of the transaction and just shrugged my shoulders because it didn't seem like a big deal.  Then I pulled up his Baseball Reference minor league page, just to see what I could make of his stats.  The thought process went like this:

  1. Age: 24  Good, someone under 30.
  2. 2.24 K:BB career, in the minors...for the Rookies farm system—especially Colorado Springs—pretty good.
  3. 6.99 K/9 career, in the minors...for the Rookies farm system—especially Colorado Springs—damn, that's good.
  4. Age: 24
  5. Hasn't been a starter since 2005: Crap.
  6. Age: 24
I was mildly impressed.  Young, with good enough stuff to have survived the thin air of Colorado Springs and walk away with some his best numbers there—sign me up.  Then Arias made a start on Sept 8, 2008 that took that mild sense of hope and made me just salivate over Arias' stuff.  He went 5 IP, 6K, 3BB, 3H, 0R, 0ER.  It was an impressive performance...even if it was against the Pirates.

Of course, 10 days later, Arias would toe the rubber against the Marlins, but would only survive 2.2IP, 2K, 3BB, 5H, 2R, 2ER.  So not that impressive, but let's take a look under the hood to see whether or not Alberto Arias, at 25, could be the dark horse in the Astros rotation in 2009.

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Astro-iest Contest: 610 Loop, Sweet Sixteen

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Should the Astros consider Tim Redding?

Harry Pavlidis, of Beyond the Box Score and Cub/fx, breaks down SP FA Tim Redding and shows him to be extremely average, but worth about $4.5 million dollars in value and set to provide about 170 IP and 1 WAR. That's a lot better than Brandon Backe and Mike Hampton can be projected. At around $1 million for 2009, I think Mr. Pavlidis should get some percentage of Mr. Redding's contract because he makes Redding seem like a no brainer, no risk signing. If even if it's mediocre depth, it can't hurt to spend a million dollars to ensure that there is at least some level of competition to make our rotation at Spring Training.

comment 3 days ago Lovelance_tiny DyingQuail comment 2 comments 0 recs

Astro-iest Contest: Down Town, Round 1

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