Everything’s Coming Up Black & Gold: A Remarkable Night for Vanderbilt Baseball

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Last night might have been the second-best night in Vanderbilt baseball history, surpassed only by the evening nearly one year ago when they won their first national championship. On the fourth birthday of Grantland.com, a sporting internet website named for VU’s second baseball coach, the Commodores completed their super regional sweep of Illinois and secured a spot in the 2015 College World Series.

Soon after the game ended, three Vandy starters– Dansby Swanson, Carson Fulmer, and Walker Buehler– were selected in the first round of the MLB amateur draft, with Swanson as the first overall pick.

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As they make their way to Omaha, here’s hoping this team has a few more good nights left in the tank.

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Previously
Vanderbilt wins the College World Series

How to view the Belmont Stakes

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Our horse racing coverage has been derelict this year, which is inexcusable, particularly in light of American Pharoah’s chance to score a historic Triple Crown win tomorrow night at Belmont Park. To make it up to you, the very least I could do is tell you when and how you can watch (or listen to!) the Belmont Stakes, which runs Saturday night at about 6:50 pm, and the very least is what I have done.

For only the barest of bones Belmont Stakes preview, gallop, don’t trot, over to my post at TechGraphs.

Does Blackhawks jersey ban violate the First Amendment? (via ABA Journal)

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Chicago Blackhawks fans who are lucky enough to snag tickets for the Stanley Cup Finals at the Amalie Arena in Tampa will be barred from wearing team apparel if their seats are in exclusive club seating areas.

The policy, along with another restricting ticket purchases to credit cards associated with Florida zip codes, is raising hackles among Blackhawks fans. The ban on team apparel is also raising First Amendment issues, according to Florida International University law professor Howard Wasserman, who spoke with the Chicago Tribune.

Amalie Stadium is publicly owned and the First Amendment would apply to its actions, Wasserman said. He sees a potential problem if the ban on Blackhawks gear applied throughout the stadium.

He notes that the ban only applies to certain sections, however. “While troubling (and stupid),” he told the Tribune in an email, “if that involves only a relatively small portion of the arena and only a relatively small part of the seats, it may be permissible. Certainly more so than a blanket ban on anyone wearing Blackhawks gear.”

(via ABA Journal)

Window Shopping: We Got Robbed

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The Detroit Tigers shot out to a hot start in 2015, but things have not been too good for Detroit since then. They’ve won just five of their last thirteen series. The team’s active six-game losing streak is its longest in four seasons.

The title of this year’s serial Tigers feature at this site, Window Shopping, comes from the common theme of Detroit season previews that, with respect to a World Series championship, the team was trying to keep open its “window of opportunity,” assuming that proverbial window had not already slammed shut under the weight of expensive long-term contracts, aging players, and perceived defensive burdens.

After the last month and a half, though, it is as if these window shoppers, gazing upon the Commissioner’s Trophy in a fancy Harrod’s storefront display (did we fight the Revolution for nothing??), reached into their back pockets in consideration of making the eventual purchase, only to find they suddenly had no money, no credit cards, no traveler’s checks, nothing. They’ve been robbed.

The Tigers are in a tailspin, and it isn’t exactly anyone else’s fault. Their recent struggles have come in games against teams largely regarded as mediocre or worse, including the Athletics, Angels, and Brewers. What’s happening?

After starting the season with an 11-2 record, the Tigers have gone 17-24, and their performance somehow has felt even worse. By my count, since April 21, the date they entered with that 11-2 mark, Detroit has a -19 run differential. Only two other American League teams– the White Sox and Red Sox– have worse run differentials during that period, and only one AL team, Toronto (187), has allowed more runs over that span than Detroit’s 185. Of course, the Blue Jays also scored 213 runs in those games, a number that dwarfs the Tigers’ 166 and is the most in the league. On the other hand, just seven AL teams have scored fewer than 166 runs since April 21, and two of them, Kansas City and Tampa Bay, still maintained positive run differentials. (Both Sox teams, along with Seattle, Baltimore, and Oakland round out this low-scoring group.) In terms of offense and defense (the fundamental terms of competitive team sports), it’s hard to be worse than Detroit right now.

Offense fueled the Tigers’ strong start, and its disappearance has triggered their decline. They averaged 5.38 runs per game through April 20. Since then, though, they’ve scored just 4.05 runs per game, a drop of more than a run and a third. Omit a blowout 13-1 win against the Twins on May 14, and that per-game scoring average falls to 3.83. No bueno.   Continue reading →

Summer Wedding Jam

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Summer wedding season is right around the corner, if it isn’t here already, and to kick it off, our own bdoyk has an article in Elle this week entitled “A Single Girl’s Guide to Surviving Wedding Season in 9 Easy Steps.” Note step five: “Commit to having a great time on the dance floor.” By way of saluting bdoyk on her article and assisting everyone in carrying out step five this summer, wherever and however attached you may be, this week’s Jam is offered, and it’s sure to have you making the right moves:

Introducing a new hockey stat: scaled plus-minus (SPM)

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I have been interested in the hockey stat plus-minus (PM) for some time now. It suffers from many well documented problems. A lot of those problems, though, are people upset when a player has a PM stat over a short period of time (one game, one week) that doesn’t reflect what seems appropriate for how good everyone thinks that player is.

In any case, scaled plus-minus (SPM) corrects some problems with PM, and makes no attempts to fix others. It is still based on PM, so the problem of where shifts start, and what lines a player is on are still prevalent. But how it is considered in the broader context of judging the strengths or weaknesses of a player suddenly become useful. For example, SPM approaches a constant value – the player’s true value – over time, instead of steadily increasing or decreasing. Also, if a player has a PM of +3, it is hard to tell if the player is above average or not. It is much more clear with SPM: SPM within the range of -1 to +1 is considered average.

Read more in part 1, a discussion of the changes (and a tiny bit of math – the relevant wikipedia page on random walks is mostly about drunk people and has pretty pictures/gifs), here.

For those looking to jump to how SPM affects the way we look at sports, click here.

Window Shopping: Shut the Door, Tip Your Cap

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As I write this, his elbow likely is spontaneously combusting, but it’s beginning to look like the Detroit Tigers finally have a reliable closer. Joakim Soria has been both busy and successful this season, appearing in twenty-two of the Tigers’ forty-eight games so far, allowing just three runs and one blown save in that span. Eight of his twenty-two appearances have been on no rest, and six more were after just one day of rest. Since Joe Nathan went down with a season-ending injury, the ninth inning has belonged to Soria, and, on a couple recent occasions, part of the eighth inning as well. Soria’s success is quite welcome, and this expanded use of his closer also reflects well on manager Brad Ausmus, who was criticized for what appeared to be inartful handling of his relievers last year.

Whatever the cause of Soria’s rediscovered success this year, along with the positive contributions of his fellow relief pitchers, the Tigers suddenly find themselves with one of the best bullpens in baseball, as measured by ERA. (They were fourth-worst in 2014.) This reversal comes not a moment too soon for Detroit, where, with Victor Martinez back on the DL, the offense has evaporated like a mid-May snow melt. Thanks in no small part to Soria, though, the team was able to win two of three in Oakland while scoring just four runs in the entire series. The closer appeared on Tuesday night and Wednesday afternoon, allowing two hits, one walk, and no runs in 2.1 innings pitched to seal both victories. Below is the final pitch of yesterday’s game, which is not unpleasing to watch.

Continue reading →

Veterans Affairs: The Uneasy Marriage of Military Money and the NFL (via Grantland)

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patriotsAll of sports is a pageant. All sports are, in their own way, propaganda. They create a self-contained ecosystem within which people are convinced to vest themselves — emotionally in their teams, and economically in the various corporate partners with which the institutions of sports have allied themselves. It is a universe of cognitive manipulation that has grown thicker and more complex as the media has changed and accelerated. This is fine for selling beer and shoes and expensive automobiles. It should not be used to sell the idea of military service, and it should not be used to create a false iconography of vicarious heroism for the folks in Section 444.

Most veterans you will see on the field in an NFL stadium, or standing on top of a dugout between innings, are genuinely worthy of the country’s admiration. They’ve earned every cheer they get. They also have earned decent health care and a chance at an education and whatever counseling they need to get beyond what they’ve experienced. What they don’t deserve to be are front people through whom the rich get richer, to be walking advertisements for the services that they already have paid back in full. This is a transaction grotesquely inappropriate for their sacrifices. … Read More

(via Grantland)

The Final Countdown

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The final episode of The Late Show with David Letterman is tonight. We don’t write too much about television here, but I’ve enjoyed Letterman since before I ever saw his show by way of digging through the Web 1.0’s trove of top-ten lists when I was a kid. He hasn’t changed my life or been a special inspiration for me, as it appears he has for many others. The purpose of this post is to share the above photograph, which I did not take.

As a bonus, here’s a link to Norm’s final appearance on the Late Show a few days ago.

Window Shopping: Ian Kinsler’s Walking, Not Running

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While the Detroit Tigers’ decision to trade Prince Fielder to the Texas Rangers for Ian Kinsler prior to last season initially came as a shock to Tigers fans, the positive early returns on the trade seemed to provide a calming influence. As I wrote in late April 2014,

Kinsler has provided some real spark, though. Looking at the right side of this graph, you can see that, while he and Prince posted similar batting averages last season, Kinsler has kept the pace this year, but Prince has dropped off sharply with the Rangers.

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While Fielder has the edge in on-base percentage, probably due to his ability to draw walks (of the intentional and unintentional varieties), Kinsler’s hitting for more power (.133 ISO vs. .121 ISO) and is posting a better wOBA— a catch-all offensive metric– than Fielder (.319 vs. .277). They also have the same number of home runs (two), with Kinsler driving in nearly twice as many runs as Fielder (14 vs. 8), while stealing three bases (to Fielder’s zero, obviously).

Less than a month later, Prince’s season would be over, a completely understandable side effect of probably overdue neck surgery.

Kinsler powered right along, though, making 726 plate appearances in a career-high 161 games. His bat seemed to cool off in the second half of 2014 (.353 wOBA vs. .276), but he still managed to finish the season tied with Miguel Cabrera for the title of most valuable Tiger, as determined by fWAR (5.1 fWAR apiece), although much of that was due to Kinsler’s defense (and Cabrera’s lack thereof).

In reviewing last year’s statistics in anticipation of this season, Kinsler’s numbers jumped off the page for one main reason: his walks had disappeared. Continue reading →