[cknox0723]

Originally Posted by cknox

this work -- my work -- has been handed heaps of praise for its look into the ups and downs of a rebuilding team. but the pale hose are not the center of this universe. rather than being the sun, they are more like pluto. i guess that makes me galileo.

so the next few posts i make will be my attempt to display that, something that i am hoping will continue on throughout the season. it may turn out to be an excessive amount of writing that doesn't say a whole lot. or maybe it'll be significant, somehow, providing some sort of combination of humor and edification and whatever else. we'll see.

the mvp after one day

jose bautista was the only starting position player not to make an out on opening day, singling all four times he came to the plate and scoring once. that was enough for me to single him out above erik bedard and mo rivera as the key to baltimore's 3-0 shutout over the empire. an infinite number of runs created per 27 outs is one of the neat oddities of small sample size. but bring that up to someone who doesn't know what the hell you're talking about and they'll tell you to get your head out of a spreadsheet (or your ass) and watch a game.

one problem -- there's nothing 'stathead' about it! jose bautista didn't make an out. extrapolate those four at-bats to a hypothetical power forward lineup and you'd never stop scoring runs. what's so hard to understand, dumbass?

yeah, i know. that dumbass would have been lost after you said extrapolate. unless it was someone who knows vris.

kaaihue dreams

kila kaaihue, a 23 year old first baseman from hawaii, was the jose bautista of the minor leagues, going three for three with a two-run home run. unsurprisingly, kansas city's single-a affiliate, wilmington, was victorious behind 22 year old righthander clint everts, who allowed one run on three hits in seven-plus innings.

theory of relativity

toronto won in convincing fashion on opening day, scoring seven mostly thanks to vernon wells' seventh-inning grand salami on rye, and allowing nary a run behind their only pitcher really worth a whit, roy halladay -- but also three innings from aquilino lopez and geoff geary. nice to see such solid work from a bullpen that was supposedly the club's weak link. perhaps there's hope for our northern friends after all.

but don't get too excited, creed. their win was, after all, over the devil rays, who really, really suck. but, hell, a win is a win is a win, right?

guess we wouldn't know.