| ||||||
Links du jour:
| ||||||
Emotional EnergyI guess I've been taking an unplanned and unannounced vacation from my journal lately. The interesting juggling act about journalling is this: If I'm too busy, then I don't have time to write, and by the time I do, I might either no longer be excited by what I did three days ago, or might forget some of the details which excited me about it. But if I'm not very busy, then I might have plenty of time to write but not much to write about. This past week has definitely fallen into the former category, as I've been tied up this week with putting a bid on a townhouse. Yeah, I found a place that I like, and now I'm going through the process of offers and counter-offers. I'm not going to go into the details here. However, it is quite stressful to make the decision to make an offer on a place, to receive the offer documentation to sign (which is, of course, a big bundle of legalese which I feel obligated to read and understand as best I can before signing), to sign and return it, and then to wait to hear back. It's a big step for anyone, I know, and I feel like I'm not temperamentally suited to it in some ways. In particular, I feel like it's too easy for me to look ahead and react to what I imagine might happen down the road. The problems of organizing inspecting the property, or moving into it, or whatever. Which isn't realistic, and I need to keep bringing myself back to thinking one step at a time. I also need to keep remembering the things I like about the place, and not just the things I fear. Fortunately (and perhaps not surprisingly) I feel least nervous just after I've taken the next step, such as faxing the offer back to my agent. Probably I feel happy that I've cleared another hurdle. So that took some of my time and a lot of my emotional energy on Thursday and Friday. I'll let you know when there's substantive news to report.
 I've been fairly unhappy with the baseball playoffs so far. My three least favorite teams of the playoff qualifiers - the Yorkies, Diamondbacks and Braves - all won in the first round, while my two favorite teams - the A's and Astros - lost. It will truly suck if the Yorkies win another World Series. It will be acceptable if anyone else wins, truthfully, though only the Mariners really interest me. Sadly, as I write this they're down 3 games to 1 in their best-of-seven series against the Yorkies. I will probably watch a Mariners-against-anyone World Series. I will probably not watch a Yorkies-against-anyone World Series, just as I completely skipped the Sludgeway Series last year. Anyway, in the midst of this depressing postseason, I had fun figuring out my votes for the Internet Baseball Awards, which are basically the equivalent of the real awards, but these are voted on by the Internet faithful. They tend to be somewhat more skewed to the statistically satisfying picks. Here's my ballot:
Comments: I had been all ready to vote for Giambi atop my AL ballot, but ARod's .976 Zone Rating convinced me otherwise. Notice that Bret Boone and Roberto Alomar are both absent from my AL ballot, as the former has been overrated by the press, and the latter fell off considerably later in the year. In the NL, Bonds was the clear choice, putting up one of the three best seasons ever. Sosa would have won my top vote in almost any other year. Aurilia and Green both got credit for their defense, and Pujols for his multi-positional talents (he played at least 20 games at each of 1B, 3B, LF and RF).
Comments: Both fairly standard stathead ballots, it's amazing just how good Mays was this year. The unusual addition to the NL ballot is Giants reliever Felix Rodriguez, who had a stellar season as perhaps baseball's best relief pitcher, and who applied his talents in many high-leverage innings.
Comments: The AL ballot is pretty standard; only the #3 spot is up for debate. Pujols is the obvious choice for NL Rookie; the surprise on my ballot is Colorado's Shawn Chacon, who had a fine season playing for a miserable and unlucky team in baseball's worst pitcher's park. Imagine if he played somewhere else...
Comments: How does one judge a manager for this award? One way is to measure their team's success against their "pythagorean projection", an estimate of how many games they "should" have one based on their runs scored and allowed. Another is whether they overworked their pitchers, or contributed to an injury, or generally made sound tactical moves. Lou Piniella has had many problems in his career with the Mariners, and is probably directly responsible for the career implosions of several promising young pitchers (Bob Wolcott and Ken Cloude come to mind). However, he's shown true growth as a manager and has overcome his tendencies to expect too much from his rookies and to rely too heavily on his veterans. The Mariners also beat their expectation by seven games, so he seems the clear choice. Tom Kelly, in his final year with the Twins, gets my #2 vote for similar reasons; sadly his team got shafted by some astoundingly poor transactions by the General Manager. Art Howe seems a good third choice, as he's been a fine manager for the A's, but Joe Torre would be an equally fine choice. None of the NL managers thrilled me. Valentine gets my nod for somehow taking a poor Mets team and getting 82 wins out of them (nine better than their expectation). Jim Tracy did a good job with a disintegrating Dodgers team, and Dusty Baker nearly worked his magic with the Giants once again, although his tendency to destroy his pitchers' arms bugs the hell out of me. Given all that, I'll be curious to see how both the Internet awards and the real things turn out.
|
|||||||||
