Archive for February, 2022

My 1969 Seattle team goes all in for this season Wombat’s Washington team hardest hit

Posted: February 5, 2022 by datechguy in baseball, Dynasty, gaming
Tags: , ,

I haven’t written much about the various online baseball leagues I’m in lately but there has been a twist that I thought was interesting enough to put on the blog.

I had not made a single trade this season and held all my draft picks for next year. I also had one roster spot open in case there was a key injury that required me to make a claim off of waivers.

Yesterday the Cincinnati Reds in our league announced they will looking to trade first baseman Dick Allen. HIs current stat line was as follows:

in 86 games with the @Reds Allen batted .251 with 24 HR & 60 RBI with an OBP of .326 & slugging at .846 He was fielding at .987 with 11 Errors in 879 chances.

PlayerGABRH2B3BHRRBIBBKSBCSAvgOBPSLGOPS
Dick Allen86335488418024603811910.251.326.519.846

Allen was 3rd in the NL in homers (7th in the majors) 7th in RBI’s in the NL and 5th in slugging more importantly he was hitting .310 with runners in scoring position and two outs.

Cincinnati was asking for a 1st & 2nd round draft pick for Allen but claimed a willingness to entertain offers.

To clarify what that means at the end of the season each team is able to retain the rights to 4-12 players from their current roster plus any new rookies debuting in the next season (1970). The rest are re-drafted. So the world series winner keeps 4 players, the runner up 5 and the two worst teams in the majors 12. So in addition to rookies who are just coming up.

In other words the first 134 players in the majors are accounted for and you have to build your team on the rest

So this would mean if I paid cincy’s price and won the world series. I would retain four players (presumably Allen among them) and my first pick for next year would be the 48th overall. So the questions were:

  1. Is Dick Allen be a big enough upgrade to warrant a deal
  2. Could the price be made more manageable?

Now my current first baseman Mike Fiore is currently 6th in the AL in batting .297, 2nd in OBP .441 9th in OBP+ Slugging (.892) 4th in Runs (69), 4th in hits (102) and leads the league in walks with 88, and has incredible range (A) vs Allen (C+). This would suggest that Allen would not be a sufficent upgrade but it turns out Fiore also played the outfield in 1969 albeit at a below avg level. To get him into left I would have to move Pete Rose to 2B permanently so the person to compare Allen to wasn’t Fiore but Dick McAuliffe who would be benched in his favor. here is how their current stats compare:

PlayerGABRH2B3BHRRBIBBKSBCSAvgOBPSLGOPS
Dick Allen86335488418024603811910.251.326.519.846
Dick McAuliffe77215325693838343400.260.356.442.798

As you can see a marginal drop in avg and OBP is offset by a huge increase in slugging. Allen’s addition to the lineup in the cleanup stop also means that Pete Rose would be less likely to be given an intentional walk as the next batter would be Allen rather than Ed Kirkpatrick who while having virtually the same OBP as Allen (.325) has much less pop (.238 6 HR 41 RBI).

Additionally Allen continued to have great years through 1975 while Fiore was a one year wonder who would fade after this season

In short Allen would be a big offensive upgrade and worth getting. Bill James rated him as the 15th best first baseman of all time in his 2001 Baseball Abstract but noting one big downside describing Allen as:

The second most controversial player in baseball history, behind Rogers Hornsby. Allen had baseball talent equal to that of Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, or Joe DiMaggio, and did have three or four seasons when he was as good a player as anyone in baseball, but lost half of his career or more to immaturity and emotional instability.

In short Allen has a bad effect in the clubhouse (An F rating-30 pts teams with a 45 or above have a positive clubhouse below 0 negative 0-30 avg ) Allen would reduce my clubhouse to avgerage from positive so to counter this effect I would need to bring up veteran Dick Tracewski (.214 0 HR 0 RBI) and sending down switch hitting backup Dick Schofield (.227 0 HR 4 RBI) but that was a small price to pay.

The 2nd question was could I pay the price of not picking till #48?

That took some negotiation and in the end the deal was as follows:

I gave up my 1st, 3rd and 5th round picks (if I won the series picks 16, 48 & 70 presuming no expansion)

Cincy threw in their 4th round pick (currently pick 57)

So while I would lose pick 16 & 48 if I won it all I would be moving up 13 spots on trading pick 70 for 57.

So the deal was made. In four games here is Allen’s line so far

PlayerGABRH2B3BHRRBIBBKSBCSAvgOBPSLGOPS
Dick Allen4171501022400.294.368.412.780

Both of those walks were intentional while his power numbers are down his OB is up and I’m sure once he gets a few games in the HR friendly Sick Stadium his slugging will go through the roof.

More importantly Pete Rose batted in two spots where he would normally have been walked and drove in runs both times.

It remains to be seen if this will put me over the top but if nothing else it means that my next Opponent the Washington Senators will not issue Pete Rose seven intentional walks as he did before.

Wish me luck

CNN, Jeff Zucker and the left/Media’s Harvey Weinstein Rules

Posted: February 4, 2022 by datechguy in media
Tags: , , ,

Jim Hacker: I can’t make my support too public

Duncan: It’ doesn’t have to be public, just so long as everyone knows

Yes Minister Party Games

There is one thing that jumps out at me concerning the resignation of Zucker at CNN and the reaction, particularly within CNN to these events that really drives the point home

At Wednesday night’s meeting in DC, Cuomo’s former colleagues made it clear there was no love lost.  

‘An outside observer might say, “Well, looks like Chris Cuomo succeeded. He threatened. Jeff said, We don’t negotiate with terrorists, and Chris blew the place up.” How do we get past that perception that this is the bad guy winning?’ he said.

‘I think the issue is that it’s not a perception. What Jake just described is actually what happened here,’ echoed Chief White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins.

Now I could write volumes about how, with rare fictional exceptions, it is unwise to tangle with a Sicilian who knows your secrets and holds a grudge (or do you think it’s a coincidence that all the Gov Cuomo criminal probes are closed by I digress) but the real story isn’t that team Cuomo exposed Zucker’s secret.

The real story is every person at CNN who is complaining about this scandal knew about it all along and these so called members of the 4th estate whose job it was to inform the public kept their mouths shut for years.

This is consistent with DaTechGuy’s 4th Law of Media Outrage

The degree of media exposure of the corruption or illegality committed by any individual or organization under investigation is directly proportional to its distance from the media’s ideology.

This was a repeat of the Harvey Weinstein story. As long as he was useful to the left the left/media was delighted to be 100% behind him and keep his actions a secret but once they became known in public circles suddenly he was beyond the pale.

But once the public knew what everybody at that table knew he became expendable per DaTechguy’s 2nde law of media outrage:

The level of acceptance of the positions and/or actions of any group or organization by the left and media is directly proportional to their current or potential value in electing liberal Democrats.

The idiot was no longer useful so he was out and those in media are outraged not because of the scandal but because the scandal was made public to those who should never know what the media gatekeepers don’t want them to know.

What a bunch of dishonorable bastards

Truck Trudeau and the rest of the Covid totalitarians

Posted: February 3, 2022 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,

Being the first to connect Trudeau with the word truck, as in the not so polite version of “Let’s Go Brandon,” is another thing I cannot claim credit for.  I first encountered it in this photo, taken by an unknown photographer, which I saw on Facebook.

For more than twenty months I’ve been waiting for organized resistance to all of the Covid tyranny to begin in earnest.  As each month has gone by without widespread revolt I’ve been getting more and more agitated and disheartened.  Because the United States has always been the land of the free, I expected that the people here would have put an end to all of this tyrannical nonsense well over a year ago. 

I got my hopes up too many times, as it appeared that all of these mandates, passports, and lockdowns would all be swept away by an orgy of mass protest, that appeared to be igniting, only to see the flames sputter out.

Finally there appears to be a mass movement, camped out in Ottawa, that could bring an end to the totalitarian nightmare in Canada. 

So far the Canadian Government has not backed down. They are actually considering imposing new mandates.   Trudeau has demonstrated tremendous courage during the mass protest by fleeing to an unknown location.

The protests have been peaceful.  Yet that has not prevented the chief of the Ottawa police from threatening them.

Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly told reporters on Monday that “all options are on the table,” including “enforcement,” to end an ongoing protest led by truckers in the Canadian capital against the country’s onerous anti-coronavirus mandates that Sloly himself admitted had led to no injuries or violence.

These convoys are spreading.  One is planned for Australia, one for the United States, and several in Europe.  Gould this finally be the end of our totalitarian nightmare?

The Real Scandal in the Brian Flores Story out of Miami

Posted: February 3, 2022 by datechguy in nfl, Sports
Tags: , , ,

The Brian Flores suit charging systematic racism against the NFL has been the subject of a lot of talk on sports radio and a lot of beating of breasts.

All of this comes from the so called “Rooney Rule” which requires a minority candidate to be interviewed for any coaching position that opens up. This of course creates tokenism and thanks to the accidental Belichick text that Flores received Flores, who is in my opinion and excellent coach, was called up to interview for the Giants job after it was already given to someone else.

This in itself is not a surprise as when you create a rule that encourages “pro-forma” interviews you are going to get them, but whatever you think of Flores charges of racism his charges include in my opinion a much larger and more significant scandal that everyone seems to be passing over.

One of Flores’ charges is that Miami after a bad start offered him a six figure bonus per game lost to improve their draft prospects. To in effect, THROW GAMES.

Flores being a disciple of Bill Belichick and as I noted, an excellent coach an apparently an honorable man didn’t bite and turned his team around so that after a bad start they finished with a winning record just shy of a playoff birth. Miami played spoiler to the Patriots and only missing the playoffs due to a loss to the #1 seed in the conference in the 2nd to last game of the season. When I and the guys who drive into work with me heard he was fired by Miami we were all shocked but if his charge concerning the bounty for lost game is true then it explains a lot.

Given the expansion of sports betting around the nation I can’t think of anything that could be more damaging to the game of football, not even the woke bullshit, then the idea that teams might be directing coaches to lose. This, and not the race angle, should be the real scandal here and I suspect Flores unwillingness to play ball in throwing games is the real reason why he hasn’t gotten a coaching position that he is eminently qualified for.

But because that scandal would be more damming and if investigated if suspect would be discovered to be more prevalent around the league then anyone wants to admit and has the potential to curb the betting that can draw a lot of extra eyes to the games, it will be downplayed or ignored.

Unexpectedly of course.

Closing thought: Why the leagues don’t see what widespread gambling is going to do to the various leagues is beyond me.

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