First Post! :D

Anyway, I expect the plexiglass principle to hit Beimel hard.

In the last post people were talking about names. This is my actual middle name, which I generally didn't tell anyone because it was weird (its pronounced Ben-ni-uh). Then we had a project on names in high school and I gave a speech on my name, to my surprise everyone really liked it and now it is a source of pride. I was told that it meant "mighty warrior" in Hebrew, but I have no proof that this is actually true.

Also, I looked at how many above average starters each team in the division had and found that the Rockies had5 above average (generally way above average), Dbacks had 4, Giants two and the Padres barely had one (though they had two that were barely below average). Mostly, this tells us that Zips is park adjusted but the averages aren't. Still, besides the Rockies, the Dodgers stack up pretty well against the rest of the division, especially if Gonzo doesn't start the whole year (or magically returns to 2001 form).

And I'm generally not as worried about the Rockies as I am about a couple of the other teams in the division - dunno if that makes me question the validity of Zips or just to take it with a grain of salt (or that I should be more worried about the Rockies).

Argh, another Norbit commercial! That's it, I'm turning the TV off.

Why Eddie Murphy decided to follow his career comeback movie with another fat-suit picture is beyond me.

Add-on to the names thread: One of the best things you can do for your kid is to have a name that is common enough that people have heard of it. It is absolutely fantastic when your little girl comes home and says, "Guess what mom, dad, there are two other Emmas in my class, and we're going to be best friends!" Then, as your child grows up, they don't have to go through the agony of spelling their name for anyone who needs to write it down.

If you have a last name that people will already butcher (Arneson, Shimmin), do you really want your child to have a first name they have to spell every time they give it?

should we be hoping for this?:

1. schmidt-above average
2. lowe-average/above average
3. penny-above average
4. wolf-average/above average
5. bills/kuo-WAY above average

True story (though one best told aloud rather than in print).

Driving through Louisiana, I was paying for gas and sundries at a gas station. I handed over my credit card, and the cashier said, "Your name is so unusual. How do you pronounce it? Jonnn?"

Anyone have a question for BA's John Manuel today?
http://proxy.espn.go.com/chat/chatESPN?event_id=14493

In a Season 2 episode of "The Bob Newhart Show", Emily is invited to join a Mensa-like organization. One member likes to say everyone's name backwards.

Needless to say when he runs into Bob, he just sort of goes, "Oh, I'm sorry, I'm very sorry."

I like Colts DB Bob Sanders because I like to know that there are people younger than me who go by Bob. Even rarer, when such people are African-American.

8 -- Your credit card is casual enough to identify you as "Jon?" Your real name is Jonathan, right? I didn't think nick-names were used on credit cards. But I suppose I don't look at other people's credit cards, so I have just been making an assumption all these years.

11
Rookie mistake there.

I think Roberto Timmerman has a nice sports-y ring to it.

11 - Yes, my real name is Jon.

But you know, some people put middle names or middle initials on their credit cards, but I don't. I don't think they're that strict about it.

I was actually so bored by my names (even more so my last name) that I once considered officially combining first and middle - since they fit together pretty well:

"craigary" (craig + gary)

The drugs wore off, however.
Wish I could change my boring last name, though.

15 Could be worse. You could share a last name with a "singer" who is constantly in the tabloids, most recently for an ostensible split with Cameron Diaz. For a while there we got late-night phone calls hoping he was home.

Why a guy based in Orlando might be at "home" in Honolulu is a question I often pondered.

14 -- I thought "Jon" is always short for "Jonathan," while "John" stands on its own. I guess that isn't the case.

17 - Nope, not always. That's what makes me special :)

And then I have a friend whose son is named Johnathan.

17
Bob Schieffer's real first name is Bob.

God bless his parents!

6

Common is nice for many reasons and certainly easier, but not necessary in my opinion. My wife and I simply like the name to have meaning behind it. Our son is due on the 24th of Feb and we are naming him Benjamin. The 'B' is from my grandmother Bernice who passed away last year. It is sort of a Jewish tradition to select a letter from a recent family member who died.

My wife and I met while traveling to Poland and Israel with Warsaw Ghetto fighters on a teachers training seminar that was led by a couple who smuggled weapons into the ghetto before the uprising. Vladka and Benjamin Meed then married and lived in New York and were leaders in Holocaust education. Ben passed away a few months ago. Because we wanted to use a B and were having a son, we went with Benjamin since he wasn't a family member.

The name Benjamin is more common than our daughter Anneliese's name (after Anne Frank if you were in on the previous thread), but we think the names of our children honor the previous generations of Jews who faced much more difficult lives than we have to.

Of course, every parent has a right to decide themselves and my children might not ever like their names, but we did our best to have substance behind it.

Now if things ended differently in October and we won the Series, my son might be called Olmeda...

I have a high school friend with a very common name, Scott Peterson.

Lately he's been using Gary for some reason...

21 Absolutely. We also have particular meanings behind the names we have chosen as well.

Jonathan Weisman writes for the Washington Post.

John Weisman wrote for TV Guide.

Jon Weisman plays for the Wayne State baseball team.

And there was a Jon Weisman, about the same age as me, who was killed in a car accident on Malibu Canyon Road in about 1985. My answering the phone was very weird for some people in the ensuing days.

23
In my case, my parents were expecting a girl and had run out of ideas for boys names as I am the fourth of four sons. I doubt they put a lot of thought into it.

At least they didn't name me Mario or something like that because I was supposed to be named Mary. But back in 1965, you couldn't find out the sex of your baby ahead of time. It was just like a casino game!

I believe some people had bet $5 on the "No girl" line and won big!

24

My wife's maiden name is Weissman. Two s's. I don't know of a John or Jonathan or even a Jon in her father's family.

22 -- When is it proper to change your name because someone with the same name has done something to tarnish it? It doesn't really seem fair to have to do that. I think there was an episode of Hill Street Blues in which a guy named "Vic Hitler" couldn't understand why people kept beating him up for no reason. And really, where have all the "Hitlers" gone? It was a perfectly normal Germanic name before an evil man ruined it for everybody. If somebody named "Smith" did something horrific enough, would all the Smiths in the world have to change their names?

25 We had a boy when we were expecting a girl. We everything all decorated for a girl at home and had to change course. Even with modern technology, we sometimes get it wrong.

Thankfully, you don't have to give a name at the moment of birth. My wife had plenty of time to think it over afterward.

22 You could get married and take your wife's last name. It has happened.

27- Vic Hitler. The Narcoleptic Comic.

"this type of analysis ignores the 34 great starts that the Dodgers got from Aaron Sele, Greg Maddux, Hong Chih Kuo, and Eric Stults."

Okay -- I have a bit of a problem with this argument. This is essentially saying that we should enter the year with the 4th and 5th spots unoccupied, and hope for miracles with late spring pickups, journeymen, and trades.

It's easy to sit back and notice this kind of remarkable stat, but it's a much better chance that Schmidt will do well. It's not a guarantee, but you're definitely more confident about it.

So no, I'm not going to miss Aaron Sele.

15 Maybe that explains the derivation of the city name "Calgary". No, I thought not...

21 The Jewish tradition is to name a child (the whole name - not a "letter") after a relative who has died (recently or otherwise). A middle name is fine though, it doesn't have to be the first name. "Letter" sounds like a personal accommodation - nothing wrong with that, but it's not a tradition. However it may derive from the common process of "anglicizing" first-generation immigrant names in second (well, usually third, after a grandparent) and later generations, so the "same" name gets altered in translation.

A corollary is that you are not supposed to name a child after a living relative - as it would tend to imply that you wished the relative dead. A taboo, and expains why you don't see Jewish children with the same name as their father or mother. (No Moishe Katz IV, so to speak.) That seems to be true (he says anecdotally with no SABR-like documentary evidence whatsoever) even in non-observant (non-religious) Jewish families. A pretty strong taboo.

31 - That is not the point at all. The point is: the real improvements in the rotation might be offset by the fact that we received very good performances outside of the set rotation last year. He isn't advocating a strategy of using spot starters and non-roster invitees, only pointing out that we were very fortunate last year.

33 - In other words, don't be surprised if the additions Schmidt and Wolf don't make up for the loss of Drew. We happened to have gotten Schmidt like production out of spare parts, but are unlikely to get Drewesq production from the same.

i like less common but heard-of names. also, i especially appreciate pan-cultural names. my top two are omar and maija (pronounced like maya, but spelled finnish-style). omar can sound english (omar bradley), arab (omar shareef), hispanic (the dude from the mars volta), who knows. same with maya.

i am seriously considering changing my DT user name to repent or burn, though.

In the old Dick Van Dyke series, aside from Carl Reiner's son being named Rob, why Van Dyke's character went by Rob even though his full name was Robert.

31 That wasn't my point. The point is that there's been a lot of hype about the Dodgers starting rotation being much improved because we shelved Perez, Tomko and Seo for Schmidt, Wolf and Billingsley. But this ignores we got a ton of good starts from journeyman starters throughout the year. The Dodgers effectively lost an ace pitcher, and that has been ignored in most analysis of the rotation.

I'm not advocating that we attempt the strategy again this year. Lucking into half a season of greatness from a journeyman certainly isn't a reliable strategy. I'm saying that we can't easily replace the performance we lost from these journeymen. It's like the Beltre situation in 2005, we needed to find someone to replace Beltre's production, and Beltre would not have been the man to do it.

The "We're Going To Miss Aaron Sele" bit was a bit facetious, we aren't going to miss him at all, but we are going to miss the 4.15 ERA he somehow provided in 15 starters.

31 - I think you're missing his point. His point was that you can't count on improving upon the performance that Hendrickson/Tomko/Seo/Perez provided while ignoring the fact that Maddux/Sele gave the team decent innings for long stretches.

He wasn't saying you should want Aaron Sele over Jason Schmidt. He was saying that as an overall staff, the Dodgers did better in 2006 than some people are giving credit for, and therefore the impact of the new acquisitions might not be as much as people expect.

BTW I had a friend who always wanted to name her son Tyler but when she thought she would not get married for a while she named her dog Tyler and then of course a few years latet, married, had kids and could not use that name.

32

Hmmm... I am not religous and don't claim any true knowledge about this but I've seen the use of the first letter and the whole name as a middle name of the recentley deceased much more often than using the full first name.

The use of the first letter was explained to me by my mother who sure isn't an expert or anything, so I might be wrong about my intial statement that it is a Jewish tradition. Perhaps it is a family tradition based on Jewish heritage and Americanization of past practices. I'd be interested in what other Jewish people have to say about this. I live in Palmdale so there aren't many tribe members to survey up here.

There aren't any Jewish children I know of with the same first name of their parents.

Where's D4P?

I think you're missing ... oh, never mind.

Where does Houlton fit in this year? Is he insurance in AAA to make those spot starts that came up last year? With Tomko and Hendrickson on the roster, it seems like D.J. could be trade bait.

41
I just got here. Plus, I usually wait for a trifecta (not just a difecta) of nearly congruent posts before chiming in...

I somehow posted first and ended up with more or less what Jon and Andrew would have posted! Oh happy day! I wonder if I can put this on my resume, or will it be too hard to fit into a bullet point?

[38] right, but we're also getting rid of what he refers to as the "bad spot starter" performances too. that, combined with our depth, should mean we're in better shape. yeah, we got rid of some good performance guys too, but all in all, we are improved. and he concludes the same.

On second glance, it looks like a trifecta materialized after all.

difecta? bifecta? How about just a pair?

I hear that DJ Houlton is going to change his name to JD so he can reap all the good PR.

47
Two is just an exacta.

Three is a trifecta.

Four is a superfecta.

45 I agree with that point, the rotation is better, but will there be a huge improvement on the 4.29 ERA the starters had last year? Probably not.

49 There is also the rarely played (at least by me) quinella, which to me is just a cheap to not play an exacta both ways.

You people seem to have forgotten that spring training has still not started. All five Dodger starters will win 32 games and have ERAs of exactly 1.25. To keep the stats even, D.J. Houlton will start the last game of the season and pitch a perfect game.

(The very last game of the regular season will be forfeited by the opposing team after being humiliated by the loss to Houlton.)

6- So, you're saying you don't approve of my plan to name children after truck stops in Utah? I wouldn't impose the bizarre local pronunciation on Tremonton--he could say it like normal people would. Still no good? I guess it's a good thing we're not married.

[50] yeah, but last year they were 4th in the league in team ERA, so is much improvement necessary or that easily achieved? and besides, the guys we have now are just as likely if not moreso to put up unexpectedly good numbers as the guys last year.

50 -- I think we CAN improve on that substantially. I see Schmidt and Lowe having mid-3.00 ERA's in 2007, and Billingsley maybe just a bit higher, if they are all healthy. The wild cards to me are Penny and Wolf, and they have as much chance to do really well as to be distinctly not good. I think our starters collectively have a very good chance to have an ERA under 4.00, and some chance to be well under 4.00. In your post on your blog, I think you underestimated the importance of not having the guraranteed crappiness I came to expect as a matter of course every time Perez and Seo took the mound, and the same thing after Tomko's initial competence in the rotation.

51
I think most race tracks got rid of the quinella when the exacta wager was lowered to a buck. You used to be able to bet a $2 quinella (first two finishers in either order), but now you just bet a $1 exacta box (you get 1-2 and 2-1) and that costs the same.

You can bet the superfecta now at Santa Anita for just a dime.

55 - We had a surprisingly good offense last year, one that we are unlikely to reproduce. In order to get back into the 88 win range, the rotation is going to have to make up some of the difference. The mainstream media (well ESPN anyway) is trumpeting us as a dark horse World Series contender because of our improved rotation, while Andrew is prescribing a grain of salt.

Regarding Penny: has there ever been any publicized confirmation that he was, in fact, injured during the second half of last season?

[58] well, how many runs worse do you think we'll be on offense?

54 I find it odd that you came up with the exact names of my 12th and 13th children. Toelle is a beautiful little girl, and Tremonton is a bouncy baby boy. These names have deep and lasting meanings in our family. They are far more than just truck stops on I-15. We pronounce Tremonton in our family with a French accent -- as in tres montagne.

56 There in lies the difference between you and I, since I have Schmidt and Lowe around four ERAs and Billingsley closer to 4.50.

I'm not sure how important it is to not have guaranteed crapiness. While someone as bad as Odalis was last year is clearly harmful, Seo had five quality starts out of 10. Can Wolf do much better than that?

I think we're a 750 run team which is 8.5% down from last year and right in the middle of the pack. 88 wins would require 690 runs allowed which would have been 2nd in the NL last year. Also I believe someone ran a diamond mind sim already that put us around 720 runs. Yech!

61
Is #17 imminent...?

62 Remarkably, both Seo and Wolf have career ERAs around 4.2. However, Wolf has been much more consistent than Seo, who has had two bad years in a row. If Wolf is recovered from his injury, I fully expect him to be about a run better in ERA this year when compared to Seo.

64 Inevitable.

Shouldn't we have more power than last year? Won't that add up to more runs scored? Certainly Drew's 20 dingers will be missed but how many teams had a guy with so few homers leading a team?, We should get a full season out of Betimeit/LaRoche which has to produce more homers than last years third basemen. Kent has more power than we saw last year and Nomar and Martin have potential to improve on their home run total. Lofton didn't drive in runs so his two from CF is a wash with Juan Pierre and Furcal can drive in more runs if he is hitting second or third.

Kemp and even Loney can improve the home run production from the outfield. Saenz on the bench and a spot start, same with Anderson. I think with plate discipline (hear me Juan?) we can generate as many runs as last year. Perhaps more?

Average Dodger starter in 2006: .171 Isolated Power

Average Dodger starter according to 2007 ZIPS: .160 Isolated Power

While having Betemit/LaRoche for a full year will certainly help, the Dodgers don't look like they have much more power than they did in 2006.

62 - Lowe has had a 3.6 ERA the past two years, and his WHIP, K/9 and BB/9 are very similar the past two years. His Fielding independent Pitching last year was 3.72, on the strength of a 67% GB%. Schmidt meanwhile, has only had one year with an ERA above 3.6 in the past five. Schmidt is a little shakey as his FIP, FB%, K/9, HR/9 ect have all declined. Still, his Marcel projection of 3.99 includes a very shakey 2004. I think he is a pretty safe bet to beat that. Why project them both to have ERAs half a run higher than ~3.6? I would peg Lowe at around 3.6 and Schmidt will be .2 on either side of that.

67 - Plus, we had a great batting average and on base percentage last year. The best way to make up OPS is with the first categories. Meaning, a 330/400/430/830 OPS (a really lucky Juan Pierre line) is incredibly valuable, if not repeatable, while a 270/350/480 OPS is not as valuable.

69 Same reason why I thought Tomko and Seo would plummet when they came to the Dodgers: extreme fly ball pitchers moving from cavernous parks to Dodger Stadium. Add in a little bit of aging, and you get a four ERA.

66
I hope Mrs. Zappala has wide hips...

72
My mom would judge her sons' girlfriends by hip size.

She would not pass on her assessments to the women in question.

73
Were her hip size preferences strictly monotonic...?

57 Who's up for DT day at Santa Anita, lets all go to the Derby. I would be there ready to do an exacta box on 4, 8, and 11.

My best day was when they had the Breeder's Cup Races at Santa Anita and I hit a couple of longshots however I could not get my usual perch in the clubhouse so I had to be amongst the people.

I have a friend who once made a pretty large superfecta bet and then saw one of those signs about being a compulsive gambler so he went back and changed it before the race, you all know what happened, one of his many scenarios came in and he missed out on making a couple of grand.

6 That's a lovely argument. Would you care to speak to my wife?

All this name talk reminds me of a Nick Cage SNL skit from a few years ago.

"It's Az-wee-pay! It's French!"

By the way, if you haven't seen it, it might not make sense without the preceding line...but I'm not sure I can post that here. :)

61
Would you care to supply us with the names of your tribe?

Good article by Jeff Sackman at Hardball Times, comparing the production of starters to replacement players.

His conclusion is it's not worth overplaying/straining your starters, since replacements don't make that big of an offensive difference. (I'm not sure if this translates from paper to dirt, but still a fun article.)

Of course, as he notes, defense may be a factor, depending on the player.

He doesn't supply the averages but here they are. Go ahead and trust my math skills.

Starters and Backups
BA .274
OBP .343
SLG .444
OPS .787

Starters Only
BA .280 +.6
OBP .352 +.9
SLG .461 +.17
OPS .813 +.26

Further, "Using the simple version of runs created, the difference between an average starter's playing time and a guy making every single start is a little less than three runs."

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/average-is-as-average-does/

His conclusion is it's not worth overplaying/straining your starters, since replacements don't make that big of an offensive difference

I gravitate toward that kind of conclusion. Great case in point:

Pierre at $9 million/year vs. Repko at $400k/year

76 Oh no, I can't do that. That's your job!

79 Let's see, besides Toelle and Tremonton, there's Logan, Nephi, Heber, Kanab, Vernal, Sandy, Bountiful, Roy, Providence, River, and of course Etienne.

Zu Zu : George Bailey :: Etienne : Daniel

Rats, I missed the BA chat on ESPN. Did anyone catch it or have insider sub who can see if there's anything Dodger-related?

83 Logan and Sandy both seem like good solid Dodger names.

85

Nothing Dodger-related in the chat.

67 Biggest problem with the expectation that Furcal will drive in more runs in the 2 or 3 spot is that Furcal won't be on base in front of him. In fact, with Pitcher-Pierre in front of him (if he hits 2nd), he may find fewer baserunners than last year, when it was Martin-Pitcher.

And if he hits 3rd, with Pitcher-Pierre-Martin in front of him, that's probably worse than last year with #7 (Ethier/Betemit)-Martin-Pitcher.

You went Logan over Paragonah? I guess that's the safe choice.

Advice sought from the huddled masses:

How should my friend and I go from Downtown to Anaheim during rush hour?

1) Just give up
2) Suck it up and take the 5 all the way
3) Use carpool lane advantages to go 110 South to 105 East to 605 South to 91 East to 5 South

89

He should take Metrolink, I say in my most convincing urban planner tone.

Any route by car is going to stink, but (3) sounds better than (1) or (2). 60E to 57S also gives you a fighting chance, but you have to deal with the vagaries of heavy trucking.

13 Roberto Timmerman is alive and well and living in Argentina.

24 killed in a car accident on Malibu Canyon Road Distracted perhaps by an apparition of the pink lady of Malibu Canyon?

I take that back. (1) sounds best. I see no point in going to Anaheim. ;)