Hi there, and welcome to a very special “Day Job Kicked My Keester This Week” edition of Saturday Links…
- Padres Win Streak Ends; We go To Lake Elsinore to See The Storm (Avenging Jack Murphy). Mike visits The Diamond at Lake Elsinore and, like everyone else who goes there, falls in love.
- Latos vs LeBlanc in the rotation? (Padres Trail). A different Mike wonders about the back end of the Padres rotation and suggests that maybe Mat Latos should be sent down when Chris Young returns from the DL. I see Mike’s point, but I wouldn’t jerk Latos around on the basis of four starts.
- Seriously, now… (The Watson Files). Dan Watson offers his thoughts on some current TinCaps players: “Rymer Liriano has a TON of potential. He’s 18, he’s built like a tank, shows all five tools and is still learning the game.”
- Visual Baseball: Introducing the Score Tracker (Hardball Times). Kevin Dame gives use more cool charts.
- Good GMs, Bad Agents (FanGraphs). Matt Klaassen uses the recent Ryan Howard contract extension as a launching point for a fascinating question: “What interests me is the comparison of the negative cases: while someone might call a general manager ‘terrible’ or ‘incompetent’ because of foolish contracts, I’ve never read a piece going on at length that an agent should be fired because of an extremely team-favorable contract.”
- Why We Watch (FanGraphs) Carson Cistulli asks, “Why do we watch? Or, more specifically: all things being equal, what compels us to watch one game and not another?” and identifies five potential criteria. I might suggest a sixth: being at the ballpark.
- Pair of Padres in fine form … at the hoop? (Padres.com). Matt Antonelli and Wade LeBlanc are famous on the Internet.
- Is the win a useless statistic? (Hardball Times). Pat Andriola suggests that “If we want to attract casual fans to sabermetrics, then instead explain why wins are useless!” Speaking from personal experience, it’s difficult to get people to hear things they don’t want to hear. And I’ll piggyback on Studes in the comments, who says: “I like to think in terms of wins.”
- Incidentally gang, beer fest is terrible (Sacrifice Bunt). Hard to tell from the title, but I don’t think Melvin liked Friday night’s promotion.
- NL Central: Trouble brewing in Milwaukee bullpen (Kansas City Star). Speaking of terrible, that’s the kind of start Trevor Hoffman is off to this year. Reader LynchMob shares his thoughts: “Hoffy’s struggles seem to be exceeding anything I/we’ve groused about in the past… is the end now near? I know I’ve Chicken-Littled before… but… really! Especially with a prospect at AAA (Zach Braddock) being lights-out (11.1 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 4 BB, 22 K).”
- Video: Bango strikes again, this time from above the rim (Ball Don’t Lie). LynchMob also sends us this, noting that “The Chicken now has some competition for ‘best mascot’.” Indeed.
That’s all, peeps…