Sporting Madness

I was in an amateur slo-pitch softball tournament in Revelstoke, B.C. over the weekend, and it brought some interesting ideas to my mind. For one thing, I left a lot of skin behind on the diamonds diving for fly balls in the outfield and sliding into the bases. As a result, I've got some rather painfully bunged-up knees and elbows. Conventional sports logic would suggest that it's hardly woth it to take that pain for so little gain; this was a rather unimportant tournament in the grand scheme of things. Yet, there was no question about it at the time; you do what you need to play hard and win, regardless of the stakes or the level competition. At the same time, though, it was refreshing to be participating in a sport that was just for fun. The most interesting element of the tournament was that there wasn't a lot of blame passed around, though. Yes, people on every team screwed up, but the focus was on encouragement and getting it right the next time rather than assigning...

The power and the glory. It's an odd phrase, but one that's popped up everywhere over time, from a doxology added to the Lord's Prayer by the Byzantines to a 1933 Spencer Tracy film that may have been the inspiration for Citizen Kane , from the title of Graham Greene 's famous novel to a line in Dire Straits' Walk of Life (above). The phrase tells us a lot about life, and about sports as well. Power and glory, at their heart, are rather different concepts. Power at its core is the ability to do things; in physics, it represents the rate at which work is done. Glory is more about recognition of a great acheivement. The two can be combined, with power providing the means to accomplish something great and glory following once the task is completed. Yet, power also often carries a negative connotation, as in the Orwellian theme that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Thus, certain usages of power can reduce the glory associated with a goal. ...

One of the most interesting themes around the Blue Jays lately is the discussion of how their ownership has changed [ Stephen Brunt , The Globe and Mail ] since the death of Ted Rogers . Rogers CEO Nadir Mohamed recently said the company remains committed to the Jays in a conference call, but talked of " bringing costs in line " [ Jeff Blair , The Globe and Mail ]. Those comments, as well as the recent trade of Alex Rios for nothing [ Bob Elliott , Toronto Sun ] and Scott Rolen for prospects , have led to speculation that Rogers may sell the team, as well as plenty of indignation over the team being run like a business. However, that indignation is misplaced in my mind. There's nothing wrong with running a team like a business; after all, a business-driven approach led to Billy Beane 's Moneyball strategy in Oakland. That exact approach is more difficult to execute these days , but the business principles behind it of finding undervalued assets, developing them ...

So, Friday's Scott Rolen trade upset me (and many other Jays ' bloggers ) considerably, as you probably already know if you follow me on Twitter . I already broke it down a bit in my Last Call post at The Rookies Friday night, but I figured it was worthy of some further analysis. Without further ado, let's get to it. First off, let's consider what the Jays lost. Rolen was hitting .320/.370/.461 in Toronto this year with an OPS+* of 122. Looking at Baseball Reference 's batting leaderboards for this season, that's the 30th-highest OPS+ in the entire AL and the second-highest on the Jays (behind only Adam Lind ). Even more impressive is when you compare Rolen's OPS+ to that of other third basemen; only Michael Young (137), Alex Rodriguez (135) and Evan Longoria (127) rank ahead of Rolen among third basemen ( Kevin Youkilis is also ahead of Rolen with an OPS+ of 145, but he's only played 29 games at third this year and has played 59 games at fi...

I managed to make it down to Seattle yesterday to catch the Mariners knock off the Rangers 5-3 [ Lookout Landing ], and thought I'd present a few thoughts on the game in classic GBU style . They follow below: - The Good: - Ichiro Suzuki : Ichiro was impressive as usual, going two-for-five while making several outstanding plays defensively. He scored from first with an impressive burst of speed around on a Jose Lopez double, and pulled off a nice unusual slide at home to boot, staying away from the tag while throwing his arm out and catching the corner of the plate. However, perhaps his best moment of the day was his RBI single; he took a swing and didn't get much on it, hitting the ball lightly to the pitcher, but managed to beat the throw to first with an impressive sprint. He's having an incredible season so far at the age of 35, with a career-best .480 slugging percentage, .873 OPS and 133 OPS+, a .362 batting average (second-highest of his career), and .393 on-base p...

Today's loss to the Tampa Bay Rays (47-39) dropped the Toronto Blue Jays (43-44) below the .500 mark for the first time this season, which, sadly, is probably a more accurate reflection of this team's ability than their 22-12 start that gave them the best record in the American League [ Jerry Crasnick , ESPN.com ]. That early start was largely piled up against weaker opponents, and was also aided by some incredible performances from unlikely pitching stars. Since then, the Jays have fallen back to earth. This still isn't a bad team, though. The Jays aren't the best team in baseball by a long shot, but they are a bit unlucky and have a knack of losing close games by a run or two, as this most recent sweep by Tampa Bay has demonstrated; the Jays fell 3-1, 10-9 and 3-2 in a series of very winnable games that dramatically hurt their record and their playoff chances. Their Pythagorean win expectation (which suggests what a team's record should be based on runs scored an...

Here's the second part of the 2002 draft comparison I started the other day , looking at the success rates of players in the NBA and NHL drafts. See that post for an explanation of what I'm trying to accomplish and a discussion of some of the limiting factors of this type of analysis. The format is almost the same, but the ratings are tweaked slightly to allow for the differences in each sport; full explanations are below. I've also included the ratings as a column in the actual spreadsheets to make it easier to see how players performed relative to their draft position. I have an analysis of the differences between leagues at the end of the post as well. NBA: [Table from Wikipedia ] System: 5 – All-star (at least one all-star game selection) 4 – Solid (played in 60 or more games last season) 3 – Marginal (played in the NBA last season) 2 – One-off (played at least 100 career NBA games) 1 – Bust (played less than 100 games) Ratings: 5 – Ming, Butler, Stoudemire: three play...

Inspired by a Twitter suggestion from Will Carroll of Baseball Prospectus , I figured it would be interesting to compare the washout rate of first-round prospects across the four major North American sports. Carroll suggested 2004 as a year, so I started there, but the baseball evaluation was difficult, as several of those prospects are just beginning to crack the league. Thus, I went back a couple years further to the 2002 draft. It's a nice distance, as prospects' status is usually pretty well set after seven years. This MLB draft also has the added appeal of being featured by Michael Lewis in Moneyball . Here's the first part of the comparison, looking at the MLB and NFL first-round drafts; I'll have the second half, looking at the NBA and NHL, up tomorrow. First, a note on the evaluation system used. I was looking for a simple way to compare prospects across sports, so I went with a five-point scale. Under this system, players ranked as a five are presumed to be a...

Thanks to the brilliance of commenters Ricardo Bortolon and Rob Pettapiece on my last post on the subject of travel and its effects on major-league teams, I was able to find some very interesting academic research on the subject. W. Christopher Winter and a group from the Martha Jefferson Sleep Medicine Center in Charlottesville, Virginia have conducted a couple of studies recently into how travel affects Major League Baseball teams. Their research was published in Sleep , and you might be able to access the original document if your library subscribes to the journal (Queen's apparently doesn't). Still, their abstract and the summary of their results can be found on page 85 of this PDF , and a Scientific American article on the research by Nikhil Swaminathan can be found here . There are some very interesting points to consider in these studies. The pilot study in 2005 looked at the performance of MLB teams during the 2004 season alone, and found that teams did better whe...

Last year, former Journal sports editor (and current features editor) Mike Woods and I had a great tradition of writing point/counterpoint pieces around the major professional sporting events and issues of the year. He beat me in the World Series predictions (though to be fair, I was more making a case that the Rockies could win rather than they would), but I got my revenge in the Super Bowl . Anyway, we weren't able to fit a point/counterpoint on this year's series in the paper, but Mike and I figured we'd each write one for this site to keep the tradition alive. Here's his piece on why the Phillies will win. My case for the Rays will come later tonight. - Andrew Phanatical about the Phillies (Andrew's title) By Mike Woods No last-place team in any professional sport has won its league’s championship the following year. Admittedly, the Tampa Bay Rays have shockingly passed one test after another this season. It looked like their best days were behind them when ...

Langley baseball star Brett Lawrie, recently the primary subject of a feature in this space, was picked 16th overall [TSN] by the Milwaukee Brewers in this afternoon's Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft. That's the highest a Canadian position player has ever been taken: the previous record was 27th overall, established by Kevin Nicholson, a shortstop from Surrey, B.C. who went to the San Diego Padres in 1997. Only six Canadians have ever been taken in the first round: the others are my old high-school acquaintance Adam Loewen (pitcher, fourth overall to the Baltimore Orioles in 2002), Jeff Francis (pitcher, ninth overall to the Colorado Rockies in 2002), Phillipe Aumont (pitcher, 11th overall to the Seattle Mariners in 2007) and Scott Thorman (infielder, 30th overall to the Atlanta Braves in 2000). Lawrie's been getting some very high praise: here's a sampling of it. - Shi Davidi , The Canadian Press "Scouts rave about his raw power and some believe h...

The Blue Jays released designated hitter Frank Thomas today, one day after he expressed disappointment at being benched. Jeff Blair has a great column up about how the real reason was due to Thomas' well-known contract, which would have automatically given him an extension for 2010 if he recorded 304 more plate appearances this year. Of course, J.P. Ricciardi, that paragon of truth , absolutely denied that the contract came into it. "That never came up," Ricciardi told the Canadian Press with regards to the contract issue. "I told Frank our decision is based on performance and his decision is based on not being able to be in the lineup." Pull the other one, J.P., it hath bells on. It would make these decisions a lot easier for Jays' fans to accept if their general manager would tell us the truth once in a while instead of lies that blatantly insult the fanbase's intelligence. I'm conflicted about this decision. From a financial point of view, it...

Yesterday, Jesse Jackson stepped into the fray surrounding Major League Baseball's ill-fated "background checks" on their umpires. As Jackson pointed out, the checks, which involved Tom Christopher, the supervisor of security and investigations, asking neighbours of umpires if the umpires belonged to the Ku Klux Klan, were highly problematic from the beginning and further perpetuated the racial issues that continue to occur in sports . "Major League Baseball has done a disservice to its progressive social history by equating southern whites with white supremacists," Jackson said in a statement. "I am surprised the professional league which helped change social attitudes in all sports leagues about segregation, by championing Jackie Robinson, would make such a destructive move. ... In a year with the injustice of Jena Six, nooses hung around the country and the Tiger Woods-Golfweek scandal, Major League Baseball's false impersonations of friendships a...