Today I discuss the rise of the strikeouts in the modern era amongst other random thoughts.

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By the way, this daily show, "The Baseball Show" is really awesome. I have been checking them out this year everyday. One of them has the interesting name of Lifshitz. Exactly. His first name is Ralph. He's from Massachusetts and is a really good analyst. His cohort Andy Singleton (from NYC) is equally awesome.

Anyway, check this out.

Don't sleep on the Milwaukee Brewers this year y'all. Up and down the lineup -- and even on the bench. The pitching staff isn't all that bad either. Defense might be an issue however.

This is starting to get fun. I would like to add imported pictures, video, and stats to my comments, but that takes time. I got the skills and the software, but again, culling the various data and using the video software is time consuming. In general, assume 5 minutes of raw video takes 20 minutes of back ground work, depending upon the amount of addition. And the time it takes to process is not insignificant either, except that when you are processing you don't have to be engaged. The process is quicker once you set up templates, but you still have to cull and organize what you put in the placeholders.

But that is my eventual goal. For now, I am satisfied with the raw unedited video footage of myself mouthing off about baseball. My second love. :-)

By the way, Youtube has gotten a lot better with their upload user interface. OMG it used to be a pain as those of you who know will attest. Now, you just open the upload dialogue, drag and drop, and type in the words and preferences while the video uploads. The new video manager window is also now tremendously awesome and very easy to navigate. Thanks Youtube-Google.

Alright y'all, I want to start making video's of me discussing baseball and fantasy baseball related topics. I will try to do this daily or at least a few times a week for the next 26 weeks. That is my goal.

It does require a fairly dystopian strain of doublethink for a company to celebrate how hard and how constantly its employees must work to make a living, given that these companies are themselves setting the terms. And yet this type of faux-inspirational tale has been appearing more lately, both in corporate advertising and in the news. Fiverr, an online freelance marketplace that promotes itself as being for “the lean entrepreneur”—as its name suggests, services advertised on Fiverr can be purchased for as low as five dollars—recently attracted ire for an ad campaign called “In Doers We Trust.” One ad, prominently displayed on some New York City subway cars, features a woman staring at the camera with a look of blank determination. “You eat a coffee for lunch,” the ad proclaims. “You follow through on your follow through. Sleep deprivation is your drug of choice. You might be a doer.”

Fiverr, which had raised a hundred and ten million dollars in venture capital by November, 2015, has more about the “In Doers We Trust” campaign on its Web site. In one video, a peppy female voice-over urges “doers” to “always be available,” to think about beating “the trust-fund kids,” and to pitch themselves to everyone they see, including their dentist. A Fiverr press release about “In Doers We Trust” states, “The campaign positions Fiverr to seize today’s emerging zeitgeist of entrepreneurial flexibility, rapid experimentation, and doing more with less. It pushes against bureaucratic overthinking, analysis-paralysis, and excessive whiteboarding.” This is the jargon through which the essentially cannibalistic nature of the gig economy is dressed up as an aesthetic. No one wants to eat coffee for lunch or go on a bender of sleep deprivation—or answer a call from a client while having sex, as recommended in the video. It’s a stretch to feel cheerful at all about the Fiverr marketplace, perusing the thousands of listings of people who will record any song, make any happy-birthday video, or design any book cover for five dollars. I’d guess that plenty of the people who advertise services on Fiverr would accept some “whiteboarding” in exchange for employer-sponsored health insurance.

At the root of this is the American obsession with self-reliance, which makes it more acceptable to applaud an individual for working himself to death than to argue that an individual working himself to death is evidence of a flawed economic system. The contrast between the gig economy’s rhetoric (everyone is always connecting, having fun, and killing it!) and the conditions that allow it to exist (a lack of dependable employment that pays a living wage) makes this kink in our thinking especially clear. Human-interest stories about the beauty of some person standing up to the punishments of late capitalism are regular features in the news, too. I’ve come to detest the local-news set piece about the man who walks ten or eleven or twelve miles to work—a story that’s been filed from Oxford, Alabama; from Detroit, Michigan; from Plano, Texas. The story is always written as a tearjerker, with praise for the person’s uncomplaining attitude; a car is usually donated to the subject in the end. Never mentioned or even implied is the shamefulness of a job that doesn’t permit a worker to afford his own commute.

There’s a painful distance between the chipper narratives surrounding labor and success in America and the lived experience of workers.

[SOURCE: Jia Tolentino | The New Yorker | 22 March 2017]

Hail the psuedo-hero who genuflects to the chiseled and enhanced stereotype. Worshiping these survivors of the post New Deal working class is getting ludicrous.

Hello. Prostitutes and gang members are also "entrepreneurs" . If you don't perceive the aggregate health of the overall economic system, then you describe the deterioration as something that is beneficial to your own paradigm. Thus desperate people clinging to the erratic social system as best they deem or find possible, are called "entrepreneurs" rather than desperate survivors trying to make ends meet as best their individual lives can provide within their mindset or circumstances.

What?
What is that?
What did you say?
Did you say that you wanted something other than what?
What?
What is this what?
Does is mean W ... HAT?
A hat you wear in almighty honor to the letter W.
Or is it WH ... AT.
Where are you AT?
Are you somewhere other than here?
What the Fuck?
Here where you are there or maybe everywhere.
It's just what you want that makes you what you are.

Those of you who know me, know that I am an avid baseball nerd. Once baseball season starts my soul is sync'ed into baseball every single day. And not just one team. I can give you info on all 30 teams in the league. I am somewhat partial to the Giants, but that doesn't come at the expense of the other 29 teams in the league. I just love baseball. It is the best sport that combines individual achievement with team other than basketball. Football is too player dependent, and too limited in the number of games, in my opinion to appeal to me. Nothing against football, mind you. Give me 30 more games maybe, and I'd be on board.

As such, I play fantasy baseball. I have been playing every year since ... I think 2006. I win every single year. I have not lost any roto league ever. In weekly leagues, I have won every single league, except once when I lost in the final game of the playoffs, and took 2nd place. I don't say this to brag, but to reinforce the fact that I know my fucking shit when it comes to baseball.

So March is Spring Training month for baseball. Thing is that Spring Training hero's very often do not translate into regular season studs. Every year some dude just gets hot, or takes advantage of the environment and looks like a superstar. You cannot think the next best thing will be every single dude who has an awesome Spring Training because the accumulated data over the last umpteen score years indicates otherwise. The key is to know the difference. What statistics and data should we rely upon to determine how likely a Spring Training superstar actually indicates a relevant condition that will produce an excellent regular season.

For me, when it comes to pitchers I look at the Strikeout to Walks Ratio. I sort the MLB Spring Training stats by strikeouts and scroll down (without looking at the names). I only look at the name of anyone with an excellent K-BB ratio. Then I think about that pitcher, and consider whether this is a potential indicator of future success. Is the pitcher in the National League where pitchers hit? Is there a good defense behind the pitcher? Who is the pitching coach? Did the pitcher develop or improve on a new pitch or pitching repertoire? Regardless of these questions -- because you can talk yourself into anything -- this subgroup of pitchers has a much higher likelihood of future success so you are better off taking a chance from these pitchers.

For the hitters, I look at a few more data points, but mostly I trust the Walks to Strikeouts ratio, because for hitters, having a good eye is the quintessential need for future success. Foremost, a hitter who isn't helping the pitcher get him out will have a higher Batting Average, in addition to other counting stats. With hitters however, the potential for steals, spot in the batting order, the potency of the other hitters in the lineup, and even the ball park are also relevant factors. So in this case, I use the Walks to Strikeout ratio more as a backstop or check off. So in my view of things, a good hitter in a good situation with a poor ratio is a notch less than a good hitter in a mediocre situation with an impressive ratio.

In case you are not aware, Echidne is a blogger who has a quite incisive instinct for the gestalt of the zeitgeist (Whoa man, two German words). I visit Echidne on a regular basis, because the information and insight is both amusing and accurate.

Jane Mayer has written an excellent and important piece about the longer-term consequences of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision which gave every dollar the same political power. Most of us could foresee what that might mean: The very rich can now legally buy almost any administration they wish and create almost any laws they want.

And Mayer shows us, very carefully, how that led to Trump and the large number of white supremacists and possibly even a Nazi or two in his administration. These shadowy super-billionaires Mayer writes about, using Mercer as her example, are the true deep "state" in the United States, our true overlords.

Granted, we still have voting for the hoi polloi, though it's more and more restricted for the black Americans every day. But if you think of voting somewhat like picking a meal in a restaurant, remember that it's people like Mercer who wrote the menu, who decided what dishes should be on it.

Click here for the Jane Mayer piece. Jane Mayer is no slouch herself. She has been a reputable journalist for the New Yorker since 1995.