Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Brian Roberts is My Homeboy!! The losing streak has ended!  At the bottom of the 10th inning, the best second baseman in the American League smoked a first pitch from the Yankees' Mike Stanton deep into the left-field seats.  The Orioles beat the Yankees 5-4!  I would have liked to see the Yucking Fankees get smoked, but I will certainly take the extra inning game for extra effect.  Even better with Cal Ripken Jr. watching in the stands.  The tide has hopefully turned.  Oh, and by the way, go vote for your favorite All-Stars.  Make sure that Tino Martinez does not make the All-Star Game as the American League's starting First Baseman.  11:10:20 PM    comment []  trackback []

Birds' Balky Pitching and Fielding So, last night the Orioles went down to their sixth loss in a row.  Last night also exposed something that has been troubling me about this team.  The largest problem, in my humble opinion, is fundamentals.  For one, the Orioles have been called for eight (8) balks thus far this season, leading the major leagues in that infamous statistic.  I can see one or two balks being called early in the season, but it is now practically July.  There is absolutely no excuse for pitchers to be called for a balk this late in the season.  I will admit that there does appear to be an effort to call the balk more this season--last week in Toronto the Orioles were called for two balks.  Also, the tendency to call balks on certain pitchers is certainly something opposing managers will exploit.  Last night, Steve Kline had his third balk called against him this season, and the most he has had since the first one he had in his rookie season of 1997.  Two of these balks obviously have cost the O's a game--last night's and a game against the Kansas City Royals in May.  The balk is admittedly a judgement call on the part of the umpire, and I am not too happy that Jason "Juice" Giambi was also protesting the balk.  Clearly, some instruction was had at the hand of Joe Torre and his minions.  My point with the balk is that at this point in the season, all of the starting pitchers and relievers should know what constitutes a balk.  There is no excuse to still have the call made against you this late in the season.  Maybe Ray Miller needs to have an extra session with his entire staff to train them on what is and is not a balk.  At this point, it cannot hurt to make sure the Orioles staff knows a balk.  The other fundamental that cost the Orioles the game was the inability for Jorge Julio to cover first base on a double-play.  It is the top of the 8th inning, and the Yankees have runners on first and second with no outs and Ruben Sierra at the plate.  Sierra hits a ground ball to Rafael Palmeiro who begins the relay for the double play--the play would have been scored 6-3-1.  Julio, however, was late to cover first base, and Sierra was safe.  Everyone knows in baseball that you never give the opposing teams an extra out, and that is exactly what he did by not covering the bag.  If he makes that play, Bernie Williams is the last out of the inning and Jorge Posada never scores.  The O's come to bat with the score tied in the bottom of the inning.  Fundamentals are the difference in winning ball games.  When you are on a losing streak like this, fundamentals play a big role in extending or ending the streak.  With all the good that has happened thus far this year, why does it seem like the O's are suddenly looking like their recent past?  I have not given up on the Orioles just yet.  There are some things that need to be done on the pitching and hitting front.  In a post later today, I will talk about what I think the Orioles need to do to get back to their winning ways.  2:32:58 PM    comment []  trackback []

Blog Survey: NOT Spam So, after the small firestorm that was started with Snay's post here, I decided to send an email to Adam Bleser, the graduate student working on the survey as part of his thesis.  For those of you who did not experience this, Adam used the Blog Baltimore Blogring to find other sites to complete his survey.  He then left comments on those blogs requesting they complete a web-based survey.  I was a little skeptical initially, but I had no objection to completing Mr. Bleser's survey.  I will admit that I initially thought it was spam as well.  Of course, the message did not take the typical form of comment and/or trackback spam--it contained no content concerning the purchase of drugs, online casinos, or pr0n.  It is not your typical blog spam.  Below is the email correspondence i had with him today concerning the survey.  From: Adam Bleser <uchicagoblogsurvey@yahoo.com>; To: Jason Thomas <jasonjthomas@gmail.com>; Date: Jun 28, 2005 1:00 PM Subject: Re: Veracity Concerning your Survey Jason, Thank you for writing.  I know it does appear that I may have created a robot to post the link to my survey, but I assure you that it was all done painstakingly by me.  I've generated the sample in two ways.  First there is a random sample of blog users.  This sample was generated using only public weblogs found on blogger.  There is a handy "next blog" icon which randomly links one to a weblog.  If it passed a few general criteria I asked the author(s) to participate in my survey. Second, I generated a non-random sample using weblogs that are listed on websites that list blogs based on geographic proximity (i.e. Chicago, New York, Boston, etc.)  <sentence deleted at request of author> Again, I assure you this was all done without using a robot and has more or less banished me to the computer lab during the summer. You have my permission to include my response in your blog.  I only ask that you omit the section highlighted so as not to influence the responses of any potential respondents Thank you for your help Jason and please let me know if you have any other questions Adam Bleser Jason Thomas <jasonjthomas@gmail.com>; wrote:  Adam, I completed your blog survey, but I did have a question concerning the nature in which you contacted bloggers.  Essentially, it appears as though you had a bot crawl and make a post to the first comment link you found on a post.  Although an efficient use of both resources and time on your side, they create the nasty side-effect of engendering anger at the potential for spam. If you would not mind letting me know that this is on the "up and up."  I would appreciate it.  Also, with your permission, I would like to post your response to me in my blog just to make sure people understand that this is indeed a legitimate research project.     Thanks,     Jason    -------------------------------------    Jason J. Thomas    jasonjthomas@gmail.com So, be kind and help a student attempting to finish his graduate work.  If you have questions about it, please send Mr. Bleser an email at uchicagoblogsurvey@yahoo.com.  According to his email to me, he will be spending a lot of time in the computer lab this summer.  1:46:25 PM    comment []  trackback []