Lincecum, Cain

The Chronicle is apparently reading this blog.

As I mentioned before, Eddie, I do think he should go 200 innings this year. But not many more.

Incidentally, he didn't make the cover of Sports Illustrated, but Matt Cain is having a pretty good year too. Although he's 7-9 at the moment, his ERA is 3.60 (with a win tonight). He's a few months younger than Lincecum, and he's thrown 155 innings this year. He has more experience--he threw 190 two years ago and 200 last year. I worry that the damage has already been done. Those 190 innings were at age 21, the 200 at age 22. That's earlier than almost everyone on my earlier list.

The Giants have the potential for a great young staff. Even Zito sometimes remembers how to pitch. There's no reason to put them at risk by pushing them much above 200 innings this year.

Ed Cho Stop Reading Now

Ed Cho does not believe in pitch counts, nor innings thrown, etc. (He's also a communist, but that's not important right now.)

ESPN briefly mentioned that The Franchise has thrown 149 innings this year for the Giants. Last year he threw 146. He was 23 when the season started. Compared to the 16 pitchers listed in my earlier post (the 16 winningest pitchers since 1960), his innings are about average, if he gets to 200 this year. Of course, using these pitchers as a comparison skews the average, since by definition they did not burn out early. If I were the Giants, I'd shut him down once he gets to 200 innings.

They should not take any chances, seeing as they are 11 1/2 games out of first in baseball's weakest division.

Football schedules

ESPN has published out of conference schedules for Big 10 schools, and it ain't pretty:

Illinois: Missouri (St. Louis), Eastern Illinois, Louisiana-Lafayette, Western Michigan (Detroit)

Indiana: Western Kentucky, Murray State, Ball State, Central Michigan

Iowa: Maine, Florida International, Iowa State, at Pitt

Michigan: Utah, Miami (Ohio), at Notre Dame, Toledo

Michigan State: at California, Eastern Michigan, Florida Atlantic, Notre Dame

Minnesota: Northern Illinois, at Bowling Green, Montana State, Florida Atlantic

Northwestern: Syracuse, at Duke, Southern Illinois, Ohio

Ohio State: Youngstown State, Ohio, at USC, Troy

Penn State: Coastal Carolina, Oregon State, at Syracuse, Temple

Purdue: Northern Colorado, Oregon, Central Michigan, at Notre Dame

Wisconsin: Akron, Marshall, at Fresno State, Cal Poly


There are a total of just fifteen "respectable" opponents on this list. No one plays more than two respectable nonconference games.

Missouri for Illinois (normally an unimportant game, but this year both teams are good), Iowa State and Pitt for Iowa, Utah and Notre Dame for us, Cal and Notre Dame for State, Syracuse and Duke (nominally) for Northwestern, USC for Ohio State, Oregon State and Syracuse for Penn State, Oregon and Notre Dame for Purdue, and Fresno State for Wisconsin.

I've long complained about this watering down of our schedule. As before, it's easy to compare to USC, which is the model of difficult schedules:

2008: Virginia, Ohio State, Notre Dame
2009: San Jose State, Ohio State, Notre Dame

Commendably, the Pac 10 plays a complete round robin, so they have one less out of conference game. San Jose State is weak, but that's one poor game in two years.

More Sabathia

Aaaaaand it only gets worse for the Cardinals. Now it's three consecutive complete game wins for Sabathia.


I think the Cards are done. If Carpenter had been healthy they could have stuck around, but I don't think they can last.

Dave Duncan is still the best. Kyle Lohse is now 12-2, after having won 12 games total the previous three years. He's still 29, so maybe he'll end up a long term quality starter.

Giants Cleaning House

It should have happened a couple of years ago, but finally it looks like they're ditching the old guys. Ray Durham is gone, which needed to happen. Even if they get nothing for him, at least they're not spending money on him.

Omar Vizquel needs to be next. As the Chronicle points out, though, it could be tough to deal a guy hitting so far below the Mendoza line (.166? Wow, that's awful). It's not exactly new news that he can't hit, but it's better to admit it now than waste more at bats on him.


The chickens are coming home to roost for Sabean. He tried to patch together an old lineup for years in hopes of getting to the World Series with Bonds. 2002 seems a long time ago.

C.C. Sabathia

C.C. Sabathia is just dominating in the National League with complete game wins in his last two starts.

Although it's tough for the Cardinals, it's great for baseball that the Brewers could pick him up. I think it's a demonstration of baseball's vastly increased revenue. Teams are sharing more revenue, which is better because teams like the Brewers (who've been awful for decades) have a shot at the playoffs.

Election

I can't resist.

There has been a lot of talk about how Obama is energizing young people in this election.

As of today, Obama's Facebook group has 1,154,734 supporters. John McCain's Facebook page has 169,280.

Brandon Jennings

Who?

I read about Brandon Jennings recently. He's a high school kid who, instead of playing one year at Arizona, is going to play in Europe

Sportswriters reactions ranged from glee because the NCAA is somehow going down (huh?) to announcements from Lute Olson that he'll no longer sign players who will say for just one year (riiiiiight).

I think it's good and I read exactly one column that started to touch on why. I follow neither high school basketball nor the Italian pro league. I have no idea whether this will be good for Jennings or not.

But it seems to me that the NBA shouldn't be unhappy. Part of the whole point of preventing kids from going pro right after high school was to try to ensure that they were more developed and well rounded both on and off the court. I'm sure that Jennings would grow as a person and as a player at Arizona, but nowhere near how he'll do at, uhhh, Pallacanestro Virtus Roma. I say good for him. I expect he'll learn quite a bit and he'll be a better player if and when he enters the NBA draft next year.

What's the problem?

College Football Last Ten Years

Just as I did last year, I can also list the top college football teams of the last ten years, which is probably more relevant to high school kids anyway. Same rules as my last post, but no points for any season before 1998. Last year was Ohio State (ugh), Oklahoma, Texas, and USC. This year:

USC, Oklahoma, Ohio State, and Texas are again the top four, although USC is in first. Look for that to continue next year. LSU is rocketing up the charts. Michigan, Miami, and FSU continue to fade. Hopefully we won't keep slipping.

College Football

As I noted a year ago at this time, there's nothing happening in college football right now. So I figured I'd update the chart of the most dominant programs of the last 25 years. As before, the #1 team last year (LSU) gets 25 points, the #25 team gets one point. Teams lose one point per year, to the #1 team of 2006 (Florida) gets 24 points down to the #24 team, which gets one point, and so on. There are a few changes from last year:


Florida State is still in first, but their lead is shrinking fast, and will shrink again next year. They will lose 18 points, so they must finish #7 just to stay even. Similarly, Miami will lose 17 points. Those programs will eventually start to move up again, but probably not next year. Ohio State is tied for #3; and they only lose 11 points next year, so figure they will continue to rise. Ugh.

The biggest improvement was Missouri, which rode its #4 finish last year all the way to #36. They may well improve again next year, but not as much.

Just one school dropped out entirely. That would be Virginia. Next year, East Carolina and Fresno State better finish ranked, or they're gone. Meanwhile Missouri, Cincinnati, and Hawaii are new to the list.

As for Michigan, we dropped from 5 to 7, and we'll need to finish in the top ten next year or else we'll lose more points. It doesn't look good. Oklahoma and USC passed us last year, and this year could be Texas and LSU.

Maddux

I thought Greg Maddux would pass Clemens sometime in July. I was wrong. Maddux last won on May 10 and is stuck on 350 wins.

Lately, he's been outstanding. He's had five consecutive quality starts with no wins and one loss to show for it. His ERA is 3.17. He's having a great year.

His problem is his team. The Padres have scored even fewer runs than the Giants. Which is why they're tied for last place in the NL West.

Kevin Garnett

Part of the joy of being a Celtics fan this year is having Kevin Garnett on the team. I'd known about him peripherally in the past, but I paid more attention this year. He's such a likeable superstar because he cares so much.

I found this interview from a couple of years ago, when he was with Minnesota and things weren't going well. It's remarkable:



Seriously, I'm not sure I've ever seen something quite like this.

When he says he doesn't like losing, he's not kidding. When he says it's not about him, it's about his team, he's not kidding.

Galaxy

I went to the LA Galaxy-Earthquakes game last night in Oakland. I'd never seen an MLS game, and they had a good crowd, apparently the largest crowd in MLS history.

Beckham was quite good, probably the best player on the field. In person, you can see that he generally plays far wider on the field than anyone else. Everyone else would be bunched up on one side and he would be all alone on the other waiting for the ball. I would imagine that's because he's used to somewhat better teammates. For fifteen years he played at the best clubs in England and Spain, with better teammates, who are somewhat more used to using the entire field.

He's still an extremely accurate passer. He's got great vision and can pick out any of his teammates on the field, not just where they are, but where they will be when his pass gets to them.

Like the article said, he isn't very physical these days, or at least he wasn't last night. Maybe after all his ankle trouble last year, he made a decision to try to avoid getting hurt.

Sox Pitching

The Red Sox rotation presently consists of:

Bartolo Colon (4-1 with a 3.41 ERA. Yep, we all saw that coming)
Tim Wakefield
Justin Masterson (huh? He's 3-0 with a 2.59 ERA)
Josh Beckett
Jon Lester

I don't think anyone anticipated this.

After Schilling got hurt, the starters were Beckett, Matsuzaka, Lester, Wakefield, and Buchholz. Colon and Masterson have actually been better than Beckett, so one can't complain.

NBA Refs

Now this is news.

The NBA ref who bet on games is alleging that the NBA urged its refs to throw the 2002 playoffs to the Lakers over the Kings. This is juicy.

Curt Schilling, of all people, described the problem that NBA refs face:

Every SINGLE play up and down the floor has MULTIPLE fouls being committed by multiple players. These guys are in close, every play. They are beating the crap out of each other, and the refs see it. That makes me think that the game is called and paced exactly how the refs want it to be.

Everything's a foul; it's all at the complete discretion of the refs about whether to call it.

Just wait until Congress gets involved. As they've shown before, Congress loves to dig into this stuff. NO ONE does Sanctimonious like members of Congress.


As a sidenote, the Celtics presently lead the series 2-1, so in theory they could win the next two games. I would bet dollars to donuts that the series will at least go back to Boston for Game 6. Zero chance the Celtics win the next two games.

Celtics

I was a Celtics fan growing up and then spent many years not caring because the team was so bad for so many years.

I'm watching again. Obviously, Game 2 was a lot of fun.

However. In a courtside seat of the new Garden was a Laker fan wearing an AC Green jersey. This raises all sorts of questions.

-why AC Green (note: this individual did not appear to be AC Green)?
-was this the only AC Green jersey ever purchased?
-seriously, why AC Green? Are there any other famous players for the Lakers?
-AC Green last played for the Lakers in 2000. His "glory years" were in the late 80s. Was this jersey really purchased then?
-this fan had tens of thousands of dollars to spend on that seat. If you have that much cash, would you really be seen in a fifteen year old AC Green jersey?
-is there an age limit on men wearing basketball jerseys in public?

Accountability

The New York Times has an interesting article about Carly Fiorina, who's advising McCain. Her tenure at HP was not much of a success and she was fired.

But she was always good at sales. The article includes a marvelous quote:

“Well, see, the good news about business is, results count. And the results have been very clear. The results have been crystal clear. From the day I was fired, every quarter, even before they had a new C.E.O., has been record after record. That doesn’t happen unless the foundation’s been built.”

Sooooooo, after she was fired, HP's had record results every quarter, and we're to take that as evidence that she is a success? What's Michael Brown doing these days?

Momentous Day in United States History

Today, June 3, 2008, at approximately 8:15 PM EDT, Randy Johnson struck out Mike Cameron, passing Roger Clemens for the second most strikeouts in major league history. He now trails only Nolan Ryan (by about 1100 strikeouts; he's never gonna catch him).



What, did something else important happen today?

Election Day

It's worth pointing out that if our fine state government hadn't moved our presidential primary, then Californians would vote on Obama and Hillary today and would decide the Democratic nominee for president.

I was wrong about Randy Johnson. I thought he would pass Clemens sometime around the 4th of July. Instead, it'll probably happen this week. Johnson struck out 19 guys in his last two starts and he's now tied with Clemens. I think Johnson pitches Tuesday, so he should pass him then.