And I'm Off

Heading out to the great state of Utah tomorrow with the wife and baby and won't be back until late next week. Whilst I'm gone, feel free to ponder on the following:

- How and why does Brian Bass lead the American League in relief innings pitched? The guy is brutal. I'm also not kidding, he seriously leads the AL in relief innings. He couldn't even crack the Royals big league lineup and now he's the rock in the Twins' pen? There's something very wrong going on here.

- I recently read some research that said there is a rough correlation between line drive % and batting average. So if you take the percentage of time a batter hits a line drive and add .120 to it, you would end up with an expected batting average of .320. Kind of a good way to see who is getting lucky/unlucky and who straight sucks. On the Twins:

Mauer - expected .339, actual .326
Morneau - expected .309, actual .310
Buscher - expected .459, actual .339
Kubel - expected .279, actual .263
Cuddyer - expected .323, actual .252
Casilla - expected .272, actual .325
Harris - expected .280, actual .245
Lamb - expected .289, actual .223
Young - expected .309, actual .284
Gomez - expected .294, actual .274

So in general it looks like the Twins are hitting the ball even better than the stats show, particularly Cuddyer, Lamb, and Harris. Casilla is getting pretty lucky thus far (no surprise there), and as good as Buscher has been, he's actually hitting the ball even better than his numbers (big surprise).

- Interesting how awesome Jaws I and II were compared to how god awful III and IV were.

- How come nobody bothers to mention that Derek Jeter sucks this year? He's never been a good fielder, and now he can't hit either. He's putting up .279/.342/.384 for an OPS+ of 96. That really isn't all that terrible for a normal shortstop, but considering how the media wants to wank him off all the time, somebody needs to point out that he sucks this year. I'm glad I could be the one. Tell your friends.

- On the flip, Mariano Rivera is not too old, that's for certain. 0.62 WHIP with an ERA under 1, giving up just four runs in 37 innings this season. Too bad the Yankees overall suck, just like I said they would. Holla.

- Carlos Gomez leads the majors with twenty bunt hits this season, and is 8th with 12 infield hits. That is 32 base hits that never got to the outfield out of his 93 total hits, over a third. Only Wily Tavares has even close that amount, with 26. Those 20 bunt hits so far are already more than last season's leader, Juan Pierre, had all year, and he has a shocking success rate of 50% - seriously - I couldn't believe it either. What that means is that Gomez is hitting .500 on bunt attempts in 40 at bats, meaning in his other 300 at bats he has 73 hits, for a .243 average. I guess he should be bunting pretty much every time up, contrary to my prior opinion.

- Anybody know how much baby's sell for on the black market? Seriously, if you know anybody who is looking to purchase one, shoot me an email. Not for me, for uh, a friend.

- Fireworks are gay.