Official Awards Predictions 2009 (Complete With Top 5 Voting)

Figured I’d follow up my divisional predictions with the awards coverage I said I’d have.

Because I’m mean, I’m going to make you follow the jump. You can’t resist the urge to figure out why this post is tagged with “Luke Hochevar”! You know you can’t!

Official Division Predictions 2009

I just want to see how wrong I’ll be.

Actual predictions and pretty pictures are after the jump. (I do have AL predictions, I just don’t like their logo.)

Opening Day Liveblog: Braves at Phillies

Click here to view it. Coverage starts at 8 Eastern … a.k.a. RIGHT NOW.

IT IS OPENING NIGHT AND I AM SO FRIGGIN’ PUMPED, MAN.

Your starting pitchers will be:

• For the Phillies, Brett Myers. He’s making his 3rd consecutive opening day start and is 4-8 with a 4.60 ERA in his career against the Braves.

• For the Braves, Derek Lowe. I don’t know about his Opening Day numbers, but I do know that he’s 4-1 with a 3.02 ERA in his career against the Phillies.

Chase Utley doesn’t care what you think, he’s healthy and he’ll be playing today. Jayson Werth will also be playing — he’s the only Phillie or Brave on my Europa Eccentrics.

UCLA’s Trevor Bauer is your Pac-10 Pitcher Of The Week!

UCLA righty Trevor Bauer won the honors after posting these stats on the week: 2 wins, 13.1 innings, 12 strikeouts, 2 earned runs, infinite awesomeness.

Let the blatant homerism ensue!

Oh, and remember Gerrit Cole, whom the Yankees drafted in the first round but who chose to go to UCLA instead? Here’s a graph of his performance vs. Bauer’s. (If the value is positive, it means that Bauer’s been better — if it’s negative, it means that Cole’s been better.)

(Sorry about the excessive whitespace. Click on the graph to see it full-size.)

Here’s what I see when I look at this graph.

1. There are 14 categories.
2. Bauer’s better in 10 of them, and one’s a draw.
3. H/9 is the only non-ERA rate stat on there — I put it up so you won’t be mislead by the fact that Bauer has allowed 5 more hits. I think since you can see that the positive difference in their IP is greater than the negative difference in H, he’d be allowing hits at a slower clip — but maybe that’s just Crane being Crane at one in the morning. (Yeah, that’s a valid excuse now. So hey kids, do as I say, not as I do: go to bed before 11 PM and wake up before 11 AM.)

Dude, I seriously hope I don’t have any typos in here.

Bored yet? Hey, at least I didn’t make you download a PDF.

Sporadic WBC Update #3

Still not so sporadic, eh? Anyway.

USA v. Japan, 9 PM Eastern. That makes it 6 PM Pacific, which means I am leaving for Dodger Stadium in a few minutes.

Pitching tonight will be Roy Oswalt (USA) and Daisuke Matsuzaka (Japan). So it’s this guy:

"Kentucky Derby". Don't ask.

versus this guy:

I don't know what that is, either.

Liveblog in the comments and knock y’selves out.

Sporadic WBC Update #2

Okay, so maybe these aren’t so sporadic after all — but considering that my motivation may start disappearing at any moment, I think I’ll just stick with the name. Plus, I don’t feel like going back and changing it. (Hello, motivation? Stay nearby, please….)

In other news, unrelated to the crashtastic nature of my psyche, Korea absolutely slugged the tar out of Venezuela today, winning 10-2 and thoroughly demoralizing the Scutarotorians by scoring 5 of their crushing runs in the first inning, chasing Carlos “Fat Man” Silva out of the game after only 4 outs.

Box score says it all, although Venezuela would go on to commit a disastrous 3 more errors by the end of the game. And conveniently, the DH was called "D. H. Lee". Coincidence? I don't think so....

Shin-Soo “Say That Five Times Fast” Choo hit a home run straight dead center in the top of the 1st, scoring 3 runs and causing the Korean PA announcer to yell “Choo, Shin Soo!”. It was quite funny.

I had the great fortune of sitting in the Reserve deck, right in the middle of about 40 Venezuelans who all seemed to know each other:

That's less than half of them, and they were all very drunk by the end of the game. And they were VERY VERY LOUD. And yes, that guy was allowed to bring his drum into the stadium. Don't ask me.

In the top of the 9th, five Korea fans about ten seats away from us stood up, removed their shirts, and began chanting something that sounded like “Ko-re-a!” but may have been whatever Korea is called in Korea. (Is it exonymous? I’ve forgotten.)

Pictured here with a whole bunch of the chicks from the Venezuela cheering section.

All photos credited to Flickr user shaindlin, who was nice enough to go to the game with me and repeatedly yell “Marco!” so I could yell “Scutaro!” and get confused looks from everyone around me. Cool, eh?

Sporadic WBC Update #1

Korea faces off against Venezuela tonight at Dodger Stadium.

I WILL BE THERE.

Cool, eh? I think so.

Your pitchers for the night will be Carlos Silva (Venezuela) and Suk Min Yoon (Korea). In other words, it’s this guy:

Unattractive.

versus this guy:

Unsurprising. Nice glove, though.

If you want to write your own little liveblog in the comments, go ahead. I’ll be fascinated to read it when I get home.

Ted Lilly and Brian Roberts are way hotter than you thought

DISCLAIMER: This post was originally written around midnight while Crane was watching reruns of Lost. The information contained herein may not have any bearing whatsoever on real life, but she’ll try her best to make some sense out of the random crap she finds on Google Images.

I still refuse to like David Wright, but I’ll post a picture of him for all you Met-susceptible girls out there.

I feel like I've betrayed my core values by posting this photo on my blog.

Okay, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s turn our attention to the other heroes of the night: Ted Lilly and Brian Roberts. Roberts is currently OPSing 1.667 and Lilly’s 1.26 WHIP is the lowest of all the USA starters — but I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

Check the socks. That's lovely.

I don't care what you say, I think he's cute.

More pics after the jump.

How We’ve Been Found: March 11th to March 17th

What’s The Point: This is an installment of our “How We’ve Been Found” series, which will appear approximately every Wednesday. The point of this is to give you a bit of information about how we’re doing statistically, and how people (including you, of course,) have been getting to our blog.

Individual Pageviews:

• 03/11: 20
• 03/12: 16
• 03/13: 10
• 03/14: 5
• 03/15: 8
• 03/16: 5
• 03/17: 13

Search Engine Terms:

• 03/11: (info unavailable — dammit, WordPress!)
• 03/12: “pretty boston” (1)
• 03/13: “wbc i love japan” (1), “cole hamels batting” (1)
• 03/14: “does barry zito ex girlfriends” (1)
• 03/15: “sexiest picture ever” (1), “barry zito’s girlfriends” (1)
• 03/16: “philadelphia eagles tattoo” (1)
• 03/17: “zito ex girlfriend” (2), “kevin mench” (1), “barry zito girlfriend” (1), “potentially amoral blog” (1)

A few quick notes: It looks like we’ve gotten our first view by someone searching for us specifically …. Our next post may be about Barry Zito’s ex-girlfriends, considering the high level of demand …. If anyone knows how to find information for specific search dates beyond the past 7 days, shoot me an email and I’ll love you forever …. Who else wishes that Chase Utley would keep on rockin’ the high socks during the regular season? …. Are any of you still reading this?

Who else loves the Dutch?

Does anyone else enjoy extra-innings pitcher’s duels? Does anyone else think that Roy Halladay’s 10-inning CG shutout was one of the coolest things ever? Is that too specific for people to remember?

There’s a simpler question hiding here: Who else thought it was cool that nobody scored until the 11th inning in tonight’s Dominicana v. Nederland game?

It's like they've just beat a heavily favored, ML player-loaded team or something!

Alex Smit (right) talking to Ricky VandenHurk: "So I was like, 'I told you I can pitch', and he was like, 'Nah, I bet you can't', but I was right! Isn't that cool?".

VandenHurk on Marlins Photo Day. He's the tallest guy on the team: I think they told him to slouch so they wouldn't have to reframe their cameras. He certainly looks bored.

I know, I should probably stop posting random photos of Ricky VandenHurk. But he’s so cute….

Nederland plays Puerto Rico at 5:30 PM Eastern tonight (Wednesday) to determine the top seed in Pool 2. VandenHurk should be comfortable pitching in his native Dolphin Stadium once Pool 2 play starts.