Yet Another OOTP6 Dynasty, Year 2: One Flew Over the Pale Hose

[canadiancreed]

just some random odds and ends that i feel like tying up and typing up before finally (finally! triumphantly!) starting the season.

350 posts almost and the season is JUST starting.

wow

wish my threads were this popular

[cknox0723]

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.

plus ça change...

mark prior finished 20 games over .500 over 252.2 innings last season. most of that was due to illegal enhancement to his movement which prevented him from allowing the four-base hit. no turd jokes, please. the commissioner of this universe, whoever he is, has taken a strict zero-tolerance policy against that movement by applying the cream, the clear, and the 6.12 patch.

nevertheless, the 26 year old still notched his seventy-seventh career win on this opening day, tossing seven innings of three-hit ball against pittsburgh in a 3-0 victory for the north siders. in his pittsburgh debut, joel "ruth graham" pineiro fanned eleven, but allowed solo home runs to richie sexson and both jonesin' chicago outfielders, andruw and jacque. those big flies accounted for all of the game's scoring.

been/bean/beane

richie aurilia sent the crowd home happy when he sent home milton bradley, adam dunn, and himself with a 373-foot blast to the left field seats with two outs in the bottom of the ninth at safeco. it was an inauspicious start to the season for 37 year old arthur rhodes, who walked the prior two batters to allow aurilia a chance to blast his club off to victory. however, rhodes has saved 84 games over the past three seasons, posting an earned-run average of just over two in about 200 innings. so i posit to say that reports of his demise would be greatly exaggerated, 84.00 earned run average be damned. chad "xylophone" zerbe picked up the win in relief for the mariners.

and, hell, let's dig around the minors a bit, shall we?

adriano and the beanstalk

adriano rosario, a slight 21 year old dominican right-hander in the arizona system, threw a brilliant 100 pitches in an opening-day start for single-a lancaster, lasting 8.1 innings and allowing just 4 hits and a walk while fanning 11. the scouting report says he touches triple-digits on the radar gun, and his minor league numbers are rather impressive.

YEAR/LEVEL	IP	H	BB	K	ERA
2004, A		162.2	155	54	140	3.65
2005, A		180.1	150	30	141	3.14
2006, A		125.2	74	34	103	1.50
2006, AA	86.0	70	16	80	3.14

he only throws a fastball and a slider; for this, the scouts think he should be picking cherries. sheer lunacy. the snakes have him on the 40-man roster, so presumably someone somewhere in their organization disagrees. as do i.

[seth70liz76]

A very nice touch--in team/player dynasties it is easy to forget there are other teams out there--this gives us a little more context to work with. It is a great sign to see you aren't content with sticking with the same old same old, even if the rest of us would be happy with it. I think that bodes well for this, and future seasons.

Though I would have loved the inning by inning thing work out--you know how I feel about 'slow-moving' threads.

[cknox0723]

belated thanks to vris and creed for popping in in media res last night.

Originally Posted by seth70

Though I would have loved the inning by inning thing work out--you know how I feel about 'slow-moving' threads.

hey, don't give up hope; that may rear its head once again -- but in full form. i've got a lot of different format ideas i'd like to explore; that is definitely one of them.

Originally Posted by seth70liz76

A very nice touch--in team/player dynasties it is easy to forget there are other teams out there--this gives us a little more context to work with. It is a great sign to see you aren't content with sticking with the same old same old, even if the rest of us would be happy with it. I think that bodes well for this, and future seasons.

thanks, seth. to me, there's a bit too much resemblance to some of last year's off day reports, which i'm not too thrilled with. i mean, they're nice and all, but that certain something is missing.

let's see if a few more dips into the well can find it.

[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.

[Y0DA55]

So Craig, not that I am knocking the slow pace of the thread (as it wouldn't be the Pale Hose if you just sped through the season), but you do realize that if you keep up your current pace, Dakota Fanning is going to win the Lifetime Achievement Award before you even get to the All Star break.

I always enjoy reading this, and, for the record, I liked the departure from the norm.

[canadiancreed]

any port in a storm I say

[BadluckinOOTP]

Like the new format!

[cknox0723]

Originally Posted by Y0DA55

So Craig, not that I am knocking the slow pace of the thread (as it wouldn't be the Pale Hose if you just sped through the season), but you do realize that if you keep up your current pace, Dakota Fanning is going to win the Lifetime Achievement Award before you even get to the All Star break.

I always enjoy reading this, and, for the record, I liked the departure from the norm.

thanks. sugarcoating isn't necessary, though. i'm struggling to figure out what direction to go, too. i want to see the careers of scarborough, bevis, lugo, et al. play out. at this pace it won't happen. but i also want to flesh out their characters a bit! obviously it is a precarious balance, and right now i am really having trouble figuring things out.

it is self-criticism time at 1 am, sunday morning into monday. with that, i've scrapped the other things i had written about opening day (yes, there were more!), and finally played the f*cking game. back to the old format, all that. for now. it's melodramatic, frenetic -- but it came out ok. it picked my spirit up, just a bit, from what had been a ****ty night full of frustration. amazing how that can work.

[cknox0723]

game ii - chw (0-1) @ bos (1-0) - "plastic wall (of sound?)"

last year: L 9-3 vs. kc, though d.y. hit his first of 12 quadrangles in pale hose. also a cameo by the long since-forgotten jon adkins, and this brilliantly prescient line:

Originally Posted by cknox

I know it's very, very early, but Piazza really looks, well, like a 37 year old catcher.

ha! if only i had listened to my gut...

this time around: j. garland (0-0, 0.00) vs. a.j. burnett (0-0, 0.00)

At the moment, I have no thoughts of intermittent frenzies, or of the thousands of possible stories created by the clicking of the 'Start New League' button or the games that are played out of by dozens of OOTP'ers every single day. My only thoughts, both concerning OOTP and my own life, are that things tend to spiral out of control far too quickly, far too suddenly. Then you re-group, fix things just slightly...and they break again.

Things are breaking. Jon Garland, so brilliant late last year? It was all a goddamned illusion. First batter he faces in 2007 is Johnny Damon. His second pitch is a fastball right out over the plate. It ends up in the right field seats. Garland's "Joker" is his control, not the free pass. So how the hell does that happen?

Willie Bloomquist whiffs, but then Garland's bugaboo bugs out, and I boo as Manny Ramirez trots to first. Nomar thumps a double into the left-center field gap, and it's 2-0.

Stays that way until the fourth, mostly thanks to our punchless offense. It's become a sad, never-ending, repetitive home movie already, by the second game. Frank Thomas and Eric Munson striking out over and over and over again. Adam Kennedy stranding Ramon Vazquez, "Buddha" Ordonez hitting three-hop groundouts. Turn it off, please. Please?

We don't clear the wall or thaw the ice off the scoreboard in the top half of that fourth frame, either; rather, it's Boston kicking our asses in the bottom half once again. Garland gives up a few hits, hands out a walk, and The Joker makes him pay once again, hitting a shot to right that just keeps carrying and carrying, my desperate screams into the wind -- "No!!! Hang up, hang up! Why?? Why? ####!" -- doing nothing to stop it. Maggs Ordonez does all he can, but it's not enough, as the ball lands in the outstretched hands of a fan in row four, seat nine -- and not in his outstretched glove.

At the very least, our season-long shutout ends with two outs in the top of the fifth as Burnett hangs a curveball and Yorvit Torrealba pastes it off some green-tinted structure in center, 430+ feet away, for his eleventh career four bagger. Hmm. And there's even more to give us hope.

Ramon Vazquez, that scrappy sum'bitch, legs out an infield single in the sixth, his second such hit of the game. Jon Garland works through trouble against the likes of Millar and Garciaparra in the fifth. But the other shoe drops, too.

Vazquez gets picked off within 300 seconds of getting on first base. Another Boston run comes home in the sixth. ####.

This hope we almost innately have...how much of it is an illusion? Occasionally I'll meet someone...usually a young lady...and think, "####, I should talk to them, get to know them somehow." I like to think my intuition is pretty accurate. What did Jung call that? The "perseverator" personality type? That's me. I can think of what I could...maybe even should do, but normally I just withdraw, and kick myself later.

What does that have to do with the Pale Hose? Hell, what does it have to do with the first sentence of that last paragraph? Nothing. But, damn, am I ever frustrated. Can't find a format I like all of a sudden, can't win a damned game, can't make a single good trade or signing. Chris Scarborough's first AAA start? Four and a third, six hits, seven runs. You can't make this stuff up, folks. When it rains, it f*cking pours.

But then something happens, like a Frank Thomas seventh inning home run. 38 year old Frank Thomas, who's going to retire after the year -- guy went oh-fer in his first six at-bats with five strikeouts! -- but he jacks one Out of the Park (TM) off of Burnett. 510 career long balls now.

It's enough to let the optimist in me have free reign for the night. Things will get better; this is just one of those intermittent, non-frenzied times.

Make no mistake, though; this team is awful, and I am really, really socially inept. Those both need to change. But how?

CHW 2 BOS 7

WP: A.J. Burnett (1-0) - 7 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 1 BB, 6 K
LP: J. Garland (0-1) - 6 IP, 8 H, 7 R, 4 BB, 3 K

Amusingly Average: Certainly not Johnny "The Joker" Damon, who went three-for-four with five runs batted in. Let's give it to Mr. Thomas, in honor of that five hundred and tenth quadrangle -- and also his one thousand, four hundred and sixteenth and seventeenth strikeouts.

[gordyhulten]

Do you really need to use such language? I'm usually a big fan of your work, but all the #### and such is really starting to turn me off.

[cknox0723]

Originally Posted by gordyhulten

Do you really need to use such language? I'm usually a big fan of your work, but all the #### and such is really starting to turn me off.

i know...or i assume, rather -- that this was in jest, but i'm glad you posted it, gordy. that last post was a bit of an indication, but i'll say it anyway...it's been a rough couple of days for me, personally. nothing too serious, but it's aggravating me and it's obviously affected my mood a bit.

but i don't know what's with the vulgarity. like many, i don't cuss much, unless if i'm angry. for some reason i've let two losses get to me.

for all the frustration i've had with this "dynasty" and, hell, this team, recently -- just hit me a couple minutes ago. this is meant to be fun. of course i knew that, and don't get me wrong, i still love writing it. but i'm letting it frustrate me. why? that's silly.

well, one piece has finally fallen in place. hopefully this revelation of sorts will lead to some better writing. we'll see.

p.s. cussing in this medium is really stupid. it just gets censored anyway. and four asterisks or pound signs just don't convey anything!!

[jaykno14]

hope everything gets better craig! let's get the pale hose going!

as the master says...ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

[Dougiestyle]

I think it will be a long season for the fictional PALE HOSE, as much as I want it to be a short one (either to lessen the pain or because they're winning). EVENTUALLY, they have to start winning more games that losing, right?

[gordyhulten]

Originally Posted by cknox0723

i know...or i assume, rather -- that this was in jest, but i'm glad you posted it, gordy. that last post was a bit of an indication, but i'll say it anyway...it's been a rough couple of days for me, personally. nothing too serious, but it's aggravating me and it's obviously affected my mood a bit.

but i don't know what's with the vulgarity. like many, i don't cuss much, unless if i'm angry. for some reason i've let two losses get to me.

for all the frustration i've had with this "dynasty" and, hell, this team, recently -- just hit me a couple minutes ago. this is meant to be fun. of course i knew that, and don't get me wrong, i still love writing it. but i'm letting it frustrate me. why? that's silly.

well, one piece has finally fallen in place. hopefully this revelation of sorts will lead to some better writing. we'll see.

p.s. cussing in this medium is really stupid. it just gets censored anyway. and four asterisks or pound signs just don't convey anything!!

Craig,

I was completely kidding - I'm a habitual (verbal) user of profanity myself.

I hope things get better for you personally, too.

[cknox0723]

Originally Posted by jaykno14

hope everything gets better craig! let's get the pale hose going!

as the master says...ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

very nice "smiley art", jay. and i agree with your post, too!

Originally Posted by Dougiestyle

I think it will be a long season for the fictional PALE HOSE, as much as I want it to be a short one (either to lessen the pain or because they're winning). EVENTUALLY, they have to start winning more games that losing, right?

eventually. just not in 2007.

but i do plan on trying to speed things up a bit if we appear headed on the same long and dusty road that we traveled on last year. how will that go? beats me; i'll have to think on it a bit.

nice to see you around here again, doug, and still looking forward to any updates you might provide on your baltimore dynasty. it's one of the good ones.

Originally Posted by gordyhulten

Craig,

I was completely kidding - I'm a habitual (verbal) user of profanity myself.

yeah, i knew that. thank heaven for smilies.

just the same, i'm glad you posted it.

Originally Posted by gordyhulten

I hope things get better for you personally, too.

thanks. me too. guess we'll know more by the time the pale hose are a central division powerhouse. of course, that could be in 2020!!

seriously, though, the comments are much appreciated. as i alluded to in the last few posts, it's been a long couple days. the little bits of calm in between the storm make things okay enough, though.

ps - last game's post has been edited to reflect last year's result, as was done in the first game. plan on continuing that throughout the year. i know a few folks have said that they did not catch the first year of the pale hose so i figure it might be helpful for them, if not awfully confusing. but i enjoy a whirl in the way-back machine as well, and maybe we'll learn a thing or two! so if you're inclined, scroll back on up and check it out.

[cknox0723]

toronto had the same record as the pale hose last season, 69-93. with another thrashing of the evil fishies, they're undefeated.

the tribe were world champions in 2006. right now, they're 0-2 after yesterday's loss, a fiasco brought upon by four different relievers allowing runs in the last two innings. kansas city closer brian schmack converted his second save in as many days.

in the west, joe blanton pitched six shutout innings to give oakland an improbable win over odalis perez. the two pitchers had a difference of nearly five earned runs allowed per nine innings in 2006. this time, the 4-18, 7.76 guy came out on top, buoyed by a home run hit by the game's second batter -- miguel cairo, a futility infielder in kansas city as recently as last april. either the apocalypse is here...or my perception is becoming too skewed too quickly. things can appear topsy-turvy, but that doesn't mean they are.

we knew this would be a long year in pale hose land. but we're bound to win at least a few games, just as we know that toronto will eventually drift back toward the pack. (sorry, creed)

cleveland is still a fine team, too, if not one particularly likely to become a dynasty. two games shouldn't change that. so let us not let it.

[cknox0723]

game iii - chw (0-2) @ bos (2-0) - "blizzard"

last year: W 4-1 vs. kc!!! shingo takatsu, he of the 8.10 earned run average, picks up a win. jeremy reed takes his first step toward the "clutch god" moniker with a two-run jack in the bottom of the eighth, and my boy bevis picks up his first big league save.

this time around: e. loaiza (0-0, 0.00) vs. b.h. kim (0-0, 0.00)

It's 35 degrees, according to pre-game introduction. Were it that cold the last two games, I sure didn't notice. Maybe there is something to the power of positive thinking after all! Or maybe I've finally learned how to dress myself properly for the cold weather.

Maybe. Maybe not. But lo and behold, top of the first inning, after two quick outs, Magglio Ordonez draws a walk and moves to second on a wild pitch, and then, as I stare on in amazement, Frank Thomas raps a hard single to left field. Ordonez chugs home, and we're winning. But I thought Thomas was a dead man walking. Burnt toast, you know? He got a hit? He got a hit! We're winning? We're winning! But that's not supposed to happen!!

Positive thinking. Bottom of the first, good old Esteban on the mound. "The Joker", Johnny Damon, is at bat. Loaiza misses wide with a fastball, in the dirt with a slider. Two and naught. Damon lays off completely on the next pitch, staring at some beaver in the stands in the interim, and Loaiza comes in the zone to move the count to 2-1, but then bounces another pitch, and it's three balls and a strike. The Art of Suck. Here comes that wonderful stench...

But Damon doesn't trot down to first after the next pitch, and then steal second or third, nor does he hit his third home run of the series. Instead, he flinches when Esteban slides in a breaking ball, buckles his front foot just a bit...takes a weak hack, and bounces it over to Adam Kennedy at second. Goes in the books as 4-3, and there's one away. Bloomquist and Ramirez both strike out, and there's three away. Manny Ramirez, a real live number three hitter, struck down by Esteban! Is it all just positive thinking?

And then the snows come, not letting up for a good hour. Snow? Where the hell are we, Alaska? Esteban, a native of Mexico, can't handle the cold. Hell, I'm from New Jersey, and I can't handle the cold! So I can't blame him, really, that with the snow comes a flurry of second-inning Boston runs. Kevin Millar hits a blast all the way to Amherst to tie the game. Roger Cedeno doubles. Vance Wilson singles him home. Johnny Damon eventually gets up with men on, and of course that goes poorly. The biggest blow is a two-run bloop single by Willie Bloomquist. It's 4-1 by the time Nomar's roller to second puts the second in the books.

Loaiza, to his credit, manages to shuffle through the next few innings mostly unscathed, but (stop me if you've heard this before!) we can't do much against B.K. Kim, either. Esteban finally departs in the sixth, after giving up a two-out double. Aki Otsuka actually retires The Joker to keep the score five to one, which ain't too bad, I guess.

In the top of the sixth, a Raul Gonzalez walk and Eric Munson single give us a pair of runners sandwiched around a Jeremy Reed strikeout. For a moment, I allow myself to dream -- a comeback, a comeback, my kingdom for a comeback! But Yorvit Torrealba follows in the steps of the Clutch God's recent hike, and after that whiff, there's two down and two on for the pitcher's slot. Shea Hillenbrand comes off the bench, gets a whiff of Antonio Alfonseca's cheddar, and sits back down a few minutes later, unable to handle it. So much for that dream.

Then it's Rule 5 pick Marcos Carvajal who pinches me, coming on for the seventh and putting runners on in every conceivable way. Walks, doubles, hard-hit balls that roll around the outfield and somehow go in the books as errors. A three-run home run by Vance Wilson makes it a ten to one game, and after Carvajal's second walk of the inning, I can't take it anymore and bring in P.J. Bevis.

Something about him and big innings. Remember his ill-fated appearance in that Texas chainsaw massacre last year? Johnny Damon walks, Bloomquist and Ramirez single. Then Bevis starts walking the farm, making me want to buy the farm. One run's forced in...then a second, then a third. Finally Mike Gallo comes in and a hard-hit liner is right at Ramon Vazquez. After five hits, an error -- and nine runs, it's finally over.

Except, incredibly, it's not.

[canadiancreed]

remidns me of one of my teams. we cant seem to win enough to matter.

and 35 degrees? damn you playing in some of my CUBA parks in May?

[cknox0723]

Originally Posted by cknox

...it's finally over.

Except it's not.

Of course, 'it', in this case, is the crying. Not the game -- the game's over, but the crying's not. Sorry, hope that didn't get your hopes up...but it was fourteen to one and it's the Pale Hose. Why would you ever get your hopes up??

Luckily, the pain's mind-numbing, but doesn't last as long as that horrific seventh inning. Top of the eighth is where it all goes down. Vazquez and Kennedy knock singles through the infield to give us a quick pair of runners at the corners for Maggs Ordonez. Lookin' good, right? Third pitch, on a 2-0 count, he takes a hack and rips a one-hopper to the left side of the second base bag. Playing at double play depth, Nomah snares it cleanly and tags the base to force out Kennedy and then slings it down to Millar at first to nail Buddha with a few hours to spare. Then the play-by-play spits out something remarkable, something I'd never seen before.

"Vazquez hesitates...
Now he's going home!
Millar fires home...
Vazquez slides...
Wilson with the tag..."

Well, you know the rest, don't you? And, hell, two men on, no one out -- if you're not going to score, may as well be because the number three hitter hit into a 6-3-2 triple play!! So instead of watching Maggs pop out, Frank Thomas strike out for the thirty-ninth time in fourteen at-bats, and Raul Gonzalez fly out to left, as probably was bound to happen, I got to see my first triple play in any medium. Not a terrible trade-off...but, boy, we're horrifyingly bad, aren't we?

A Gonzalez walk, Jeremy Reed double, and Eric Munson sacrifice fly get us a ninth inning run to make the final deficit twelve, also allowing us to take the lead over Boston -- in ninth inning runs in this series. 1-0. Hey, if we're going to get slobberknockered, may as well do it with a smile.

CHW 2 BOS 14

WP: B.H. Kim (1-0) - 6 IP, 4 H, 1 R
LP: E. Loaiza (0-1) - 5.2 IP, 9 H, 5 R

Mr. Mediocre: It may not fit with the little sub-title, but how could I not pick Mr. Triple Play? Our right fielder walked and scored a run, not exactly a mediocre feat for a Pale Hose club that's scored four times in three games!! But Maggs also managed to tally a '1' in the column that's buried on page 472 of the Stats Major League Handbook -- GITP.