How to Build a Winning Baseball Team

I have to take a moment to say something about baseball. It's been a while. I enjoy the game and the team I have followed since 1994 has been the Cleveland Indians. They enjoyed their big years in the 90s, with sellout home games, and then lost many of their best players to big contract free agency (Albert Bell, Manny Ramirez, Jim Thome), or to big trades (Bartolo Colon, Roberto Alomar). They went through their "rebuilding" phase (a term teams use when their players are young and mediocre and they don't really expect them to compete). Well, this season, it may finally be paying off.

As of today, the Indians own the best record in all of baseball, have a 7 game lead in the AL central, and are highest in the league with +66 runs scored versus runs allowed.

One of the ways they got to this point was through trades. Trades of big name players, especially Cy Young award-winning pitchers (two years in a row!) is particularly painful to watch. You're giving up a proven and known quantity for "prospects." (Another baseball term that means "we think they're going to be pretty good.")

So looking at key trades over the last five years, we can see how the current team has emerged. Below is a partial list of trades. Who was traded, and who was received in return. I only included players who are on the current big league 25 man roster.

PLAYERS TRADED --- CURRENT MLB PLAYERS

Eduardo Perez	Asdrubal Cabrera
Ben Broussard	Shin-Soo Choo
CC Sabathia	Matt LaPorta, Michael Brantley
Casey Blake	Carlos Santana
Franklin Guiterrez	Joe Smith
Mark DeRosa	Chris Perez
Cliff Lee/Ben Francisco	Carlos Carrasco, Lou Marson,
Victor Martinez	Justin Masterson
Kelly Shoppach	Mitch Talbot

So in evaluating this chart, one of the questions we must ask ourselves is, knowing what we know now about these young players, would we make the trades in reverse today? In other words, would you exchange Justin Masterson for Victor Martinez today? Probably not.

What's in Your Wallet?

A few weeks ago I made a decision to stop carrying a wallet. There were a couple of reasons for this. First, I fairly unscientifically concluded that while I think everything is ok, sitting on a lump of leather and plastic on one cheek, but not the other can't be good for the lower back over the long haul. Second, I had a fear, rational or not, that my wallet could easily slide out of my back pocket and could disappear all together. This would happen not in my office or in my car, but in some place like a food court at a mall, where I would likely never recover it again. Finally, I've noticed a specific kind of wear in my pants, right along the fold or edges of the wallet, where some of the fabric is beginning to tear. Fabric of my pants, not the wallet.

Wallets for most guys are a microcosm of most women's purses. Most guys, if they were to dig their wallets out of their pants right now, would find business cards, receipts, the phone number to the local Chinese restaurant, a couple pictures, a miniature day planner, calculator, various credit cards, drivers license, and maybe a stick of gum or something. Even if you don't carry a wad of cash around (and who does these days anyway?), some tri-fold wallets can mount to an inch or more in thinkness. Who needs that?

So back to my decision. After considering a money clip, I opted for a band. Not just any rubber band--but a band designed specifically to snugly hold items the size of credit cards.

So here is my question. Forced to be minimal, what items do you carry? For me, it is my key card to get me around the building at church, my drivers licence, a credit card, my ATM card and my heath insurance card. Other near necessities I've considered adding: my Qdoba card, Blockbuster card, and the AAA card.

What else should I be carrying?

Can You Name the Elements of the Periodic Table?

I just spent the last 15 minutes of my life trying to recall what I had once completely memorized my junior year of high school: the periodic table. I remembered plenty of obscure elements and forgot some of the most obvious ones. If only I had a chance to review before I took the test, I probably would have gotten twice as many. Don't cheat. Name as many as you can in 15 minutes. Just start typing the element names in and if entered correctly they will appear in the table.

Take the test here.

I could recall only 27 of 118 elements. How did you do?

Except for Me, of course!

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 0 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

I know my US geography!

The hard part was spelling them all correctly...

Click here to try the quiz.

Guaranteed to waste your time!

Vote for your favorite Superbowl commercial!

A little trivia

I'm almost done with my book of Benjamin Franklin. It's really a good book about an interesting man. Hopefully soon I'll get a chance to write a little post about it.

One thing I learned from it today was that there was a state that wanted to join the union under the name "Franklin." Do you know what modern day state that is? This would have been around the time of the First Continental Congress.

New Theme Song

Who else noticed the new theme song of TWiT's episode 50? OK--new arrangement!

Another dumb online quiz

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

My Star Trek Character

I'm not a big fan of Star Trek, but I took the test and found out who I am most like. Those of you who know me may not be surprised: (Take the test and post your result!) (and thanks to Matt Brown for the link!)

Your results:
You are Data

Data 61% An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 60% Jean-Luc Picard 60% Spock 57% Geordi LaForge 50% Chekov 45% Beverly Crusher 45% James T. Kirk (Captain) 45% Worf 40% Will Riker 40% Leonard McCoy (Bones) 35% Deanna Troi 30% Uhura 30% Mr. Sulu 30% Mr. Scott 25%

Even though you are a genius you are always striving to be better.

Click here to take the "Which Star Trek character am I?" quiz...

TV Themes

For years the trivia question went something like this: "What is the onlyTV show with no theme song?" The answer: 60 Minutes. OK, so what about Lost? What consitutes a song? The theme for Lost is the logo, with a key pad sweep. Is that a song? Alan Silvestri might say no. John Cage might say "sure!" In fact, Cage would probably say the tick-tock of 60 minutes is a theme song. So back to Lost. Is it a "song?"

I'm not that smart

We had a brief discussion today about IQ and the validity of the online and traditional tests that are designed to test one's intelligence. Me, being the over-stimulated learner that I am stumbled upon this site which indicates that none of us are probably genius material.