What The Hell?

Via UmpBump:

In a bizarre drama, Hideki Matsui announced on Thursday that he has secretly gotten married, but he refuses to divulge the identity of his wife, showing only sketches of her drawn by himself and his brother.

What made the whole situation even more bizarre is that Matsui may have married her in order to win a bet he made with teammates Derek Jeter and Bobby Abreu.

Offered without comment. This is all very confusing.

Random Bitching About CBS' NCAA Coverage

As a casual college basketball non-fan, I freely admit that I know nothing about the game and only watch it while gambling. Perhaps some of you hoops diehards can clue me in on a couple of things:

1. Why the hell does CBS (or the NCAA, if that's who is making the decisions) run multiple games at the same time? I get the fact that they don't want their viewers stuck watching a blowout, but it sort of sucks that 75% of the country didn't get to watch one second of O.J. Mayo in the tournament. And don't give me some crap about how spacing out the games (even to the extent of adding extra days) would hurt revenue at the arenas, cause travel problems, or hurt the "students'" academics -- ticket sales are chump change, logistic problems are solvable, and basketball players don't go to class. Assuming the games are valuable ratings-grabbers ... wouldn't you want to show more of them?
   
2. Who is the midget playing for Xavier?
   

Mr. McFadden's No Good, Very Bad Day

MSNBC:

Reid, Turley and Lieb are among more than 800 customers who responded to the first wave of marketing for do-it-yourself DNA paternity tests sold as Identigene by Sorenson Genomics of Salt Lake City.

...

Results are reported online, by phone or by mail in three to five business days. They come back as a probability figure that verifies paternity with 98 percent to 99 percent accuracy, Watson said.

What?!?! Oh, shit.

Atonement, Part 2

All good things come to an end, and the greatest thing we've seen in a while is Can The Cubs Mend My Heart?

The author was a recently dumped Chicago fan who dreamed of a Cubs championship ... and his girlfriend coming back to him. Unfortunately, well, people on the internets are big meanies, especially to soul-baring douchebaggery. The site has now been taken down, but you can go here to see some of the best parts.

Tulane Baseball Update: The Hitters: March 25

Week in Review:

Mar 23, 2008	Tulane Green Wave 12, Sacred Heart 0	Box score
Mar 22, 2008	Tulane Green Wave 5, Sacred Heart 2	Box score
Mar 21, 2008	Tulane Green Wave 8, Sacred Heart 0	Box score
Mar 19, 2008	LSU Tigers 7, Tulane Green Wave 5	Box score

Well, the cannon fodder scored on us this weekend, but the story was much the same. By Game 3, Sacred Heart's depth was more or less shot to hell -- the umps could have called mercy sometime in the third inning and everyone would have been happier. Again, I think pulling any conclusions from the weekend slate of games is silly, and WE SHALL NOT SPEAK OF THE MIDWEEK GAME.

HITTERS:

	AVG	SLG%	OB%	EqA
Jared Dyer	0.375	0.556	0.413	0.308
W. McFadden	0.349	0.476	0.468	0.318
Aja Barto	0.333	0.500	0.418	0.308
Rob Segedin	0.329	0.468	0.391	0.284
A. Scelfo	0.301	0.534	0.463	0.322
Seth Henry	0.296	0.507	0.359	0.290
A. Rodgers	0.273	0.527	0.403	0.294
Drew Allain	0.237	0.322	0.338	0.226
Sam Honeck	0.237	0.342	0.341	0.217
Josh Prince	0.164	0.164	0.246	0.113
Marc Robert	0.500	0.750	0.500	0.428
R. Rebowe	0.500	0.750	0.400	0.378
Steve Moritz	0.385	0.385	0.500	0.292
Scott Powell	0.300	0.433	0.382	0.276
N. Boullosa	0.154	0.154	0.214	0.090
G. Griener	0.000	0.000	0.400	0.149

Go here for complete stats.

Observations:

1. Scelfo is quietly having the best season on the team. Even during his early-season "slump," he still showed enough plate patience to be a valuable cog in the lineup. Now that his "traditional" stats (AVG, power numbers, etc.) are coming around, he's headed towards a monster season.
   
2. WoMac Revival, baby! We're still hearing rumors about hitches in swings and bad approaches at bat, but they're easy to dismiss with the numbers he's been putting up. Watch closely when we start to see some decent pitching, though -- if the numbers bottom out, the problems aren't fixed.
   
3. Prince. Let's be clear -- he's in the lineup because he plays good defense and he hit .371/.448/.449. in 89 ABs with Texas last year. At what point, though, does past performance have to be disqualified as a fluke? I'm not saying we should give up on him yet -- the sample size of ABs is still a bit low -- but RJ better be working on a backup plan, because Tulane's lineup doesn't have enough pop to hide a gaping black hole.
4. Again, I'll believe that we're a good offensive club when we hit against a team with a pulse.

Tulane Baseball Update: The Pitchers: March 25

Player	ERA	BB/9	K/9	WHIP	dERA	BABIP
S. Hunt	0.56	4.22	12.66	0.781	1.974	0.179
J. Garrett.	2.31	3.51	7.01	1.126	3.667	0.262
R. Broach	3.25	4.96	4.96	1.654	4.509	0.337
A. Loup	3.56	2.69	6.28	1.196	3.972	0.300
T. Rogers	0.00	5.40	12.60	1.000	2.095	0.200
Mason Griffin	1.88	2.55	7.02	0.851	3.876	0.216
P. Claiborne	2.31	4.82	9.64	1.607	2.653	0.353
T. Martin	2.51	2.55	3.83	0.922	3.205	0.209
M. Petiton	2.84	5.90	7.38	1.475	5.804	0.313
N. Pepitone	3.00	4.50	5.00	1.278	4.968	0.275
J. Zeid	8.31	4.39	7.68	2.439	5.136	0.471
TULANE	2.65	3.87	7.43	1.225	3.690	0.290
Opponents	6.41	4.74	6.75	1.697	5.028	0.359

*dERA is defense-independent earned run average. This is a component-based stat, so think of it as what a pitcher's ERA should be.

Observations:

1. dERA seems to think Petition, Broach, and Griffin are pitching a bit over their heads. High walk rates are the culprit for Petition and Broach, while Griffin's BABIP (batting average on balls in play) may be unsustainably low.
2. Don't get your panties in a bunch over Shooter's jump up from ERA to dERA. The system is designed for a long season, and not league or park adjusted (yet). That said, it's unlikely that Shooter's BABIP stays quite that low, and he is walking quite a few people.
3. Loup may deserve a little more credit than he's getting. If he can bump that K rate a bit, he could look great on paper. Anyone know whether Loup is a primarily groundball pitcher? Just curious, but that could explain his relatively high BABIP and low K rate.
4. Our defense is quite good, judging by these statistics. According to dERA, it is saving us about 1 run a game, which is an enormous number. I'm going to recheck a few things this weekend -- the discrepancy may have something to do with variances between the college and major league game (I used MLB rate stats in the calculation).
   
5. Shooter Hunt is getting some great press across the internets, and it was nice to see my new favorite site, Saberscouting, run a feature on him.

Pitch - Present Grade/Future Grade [ed. note: baseball scouting is done on a 20-80 scale]

Fastball - 65/70

Curveball - 65/65

Changeup - 45/50

Command - 45/50

...

Power pitcher but struggles with command in spurts. Sometimes spots his pitches as well as anyone but can fall out of his groove incredibly quickly. Lots of walks, lots of strikeouts. When on, he’s got frontline potential. Plus makeup, plays to win, great competitive attitude. Must learn to pitch, not throw. Huge upside.

Go read the whole thing -- it's a nice breakdown of his mechanics, his upside, and his warts. At this point, we're talking about a top-15 pick, assuming he holds up against better competition. If he sharpens his walk rate, then watch out.

Tulane Baseball Update: The Week Ahead: March 25

This Week's Schedule:

03/25/08	at Southeastern Louisiana	Hammond, La.	6:30 p.m. CT
03/28/08	at UAB* *	Birmingham, Ala.	7:00 p.m. CT
03/29/08	at UAB* *	Birmingham, Ala.	2:00 p.m. CT
03/30/08	at UAB* *	Birmingham, Ala.	1:00 p.m. CT

SELA goes with Adam Jones tonight. He's started three games this season, but really hasn't stretched out at all, pitching only 13 innings total (he also made a relief appearance). He appears to be a pretty solid pitcher, but don't look for him to go much past 3. After him, SELA has a mishmash of average middle relievers. Efferson, their other midweek starter (who we may see tonight) has been knocked around this season. Hitting-wise, SELA has a core of Hargis-Summerlin-Street, and not much else. They should be out of their depth tonight, but remember that they did knock off LSU earlier this season (throwing a weekend starter, granted).

UAB is the weekend matchup, and it should be a nice way to start the conference season for Tulane. UAB has more or less been beaten like a drum by anyone and everyone this year, and they haven't exactly played great competition. First baseman Ryan Keedy is having a monster of a year, and Bell and Stewart are average players, but the rest of the team might as well be swinging wet newspapers. On the mound, Wallace and Klostkowski are decent starters, but UAB is a giant question mark after that. 9 different pitchers have started games; 8 others have pitched in relief. This should be a perfect week -- anything less would be a disappointment.