It's Time!

So...guess what happened?

(espn.go.com)
What went wrong?

USC fired Lane Kiffin.

The state of Tennessee rejoices together on this one!

Perhaps you don't fully understand this kind of universal despise toward a person. Good for you. But, allow me to dive into a recap of why most of Tennessee, particularly the northeast, sleeps soundly this week.

Sit back and imagine this scenario, if you would:

...

You are in a relationship. Things are going ok, you are happy. But lately you have started to notice the familiar face of a friend that's always been there. For years you have wondered what if, but you were happy in your relationship, so you ignored it.

Then, one day, a quintuple bypass hits. You are shaken. What are you to do, how do you go on? Who arrives but a knight in shining armor. Or, more accurately, a nice, orange sweater vest. Suddenly you realize what love is. You understand what your grandma meant when she talked of the perfect man, her "General" as she called him. The world as you know it is completely in tune.

(cbssports.com)
What a man, what a man, what a man, what a mighty good man.

As the years pass, you can't imagine anything better. Until one day, you come home to the best surprise of all, a crystal ball. No one has been that excited about a ball since the townspeople in Rodgers and Hammerstein's version of Cinderella. You are completely content and imagine life could not get better.

Then, life gets in the way. You aren't showered with as many gifts, others are getting new crystal, while yours just collects dust. You hit a rough patch, things aren't great. So you work to fix it, but things keep going badly. Finally, after 17 years, you decide to part ways. You are hurt, but you know it's for the best.

You get back on the market, looking for someone to fill the void left after your messy divorce. When in walks a bad boy out of California. He has a record that indicates some success, but also failure. And his name always seems to be tied to criminal activity, although nothing ever seems to stick. You loved the stand up guy you were with, but this guy could talk his way out of a prison full of foreign, deaf guards. He's Marilyn Monroe to your Tommy Ewell, call it your 17-year itch.

(sportsillustrated.cnn.com)
Working the smolder

So, you take a chance. You are swept away. The impact is immediate. You have all the cool kids wanting to come hang out with you. And after about a month, he gets a dog, and names his middle name after your home city. Things could not be going any better. He has said and done all the right things.

Then, things got weird. He starts calling out other guys for things they haven't done. He makes bold statements that you have a hard time agreeing with. But then he surprises you with a gift or two and talks his way out of your concerns. Next thing you know, you are receiving phone calls from the police about your connection with some scandals, including a potential prostitution ring. You realize something is wrong, so you go and have a heart to heart. He talks you back from the ledge and you go out telling your friends it was all a big misunderstanding.

Then, one night, you come home and he left a post-it note on the phone saying he was going back to California. Your vulnerable heart has just been crushed. You are looking at years of probation based off his idiocy, and you are forced to face it alone. You cry and yearn for the good ole days. With your good stable guy, sure, he had put on some weight, but he would never hurt you. Pounds of chocolate and pints of ice cream later, you emerge back into the public eye. You catch a glimpse in a mirror and see a shattered version of your old self staring back at you. Humbled, you realize the people that used to love you are avoiding you. It's all you can do to get dinner with your old friends, let alone a date.

But eventually, you settle with a guy, sure, he wasn't the obvious choice, but there weren't many great suitors. Plus, he is from a great southern family. His surname perks the ears of many of your friends. Sure, he hadn't done anything...yet. But, you were giving him his chance to shine! Plus, he was a lawyer.

(govolsxtra.com)
His hair, though. Immaculate.

That experiment proved that you should never say, "Can it get any worse?" It can always get worse. He had great stories, but he was kind of a jerk. It was never a good fit, and it wasn't until you saw that smug, private-schooled friend of yours and realized you were a little bit jealous that you knew you had reached rock bottom.

...

There you have it. Lane Kiffin is our John Tucker. Though, we root for firing, not death. He went through USC and screwed them over with Reggie Bush. He went to Oakland and angered Al Davis. He came to UT and pissed off the state, then for some inexplicable reason USC took him back.  And what happened? He crashed the car, again.

I never bought into the Lane Kiffin fever at UT. I would like to say that I knew a snake when I saw one, but really I was just really on team Phil. I thought he should have more time. After all, we were an Ainge pick-six from winning the SEC Championship in 2007. Nick Saban could have been the new coach and I would have been cautiously optimistic. But a lot of my friends, including my roommate bought in. And it was a long, hard fall. I can still remember the night he left. We were sitting in the on-campus apartments and he got a text.

 "Kiffin is leaving tonight for USC."

He was literally speechless. He eventually punched a wall and paced angrily before finally forming words. But it was a tough night for him. Fortunately he didn't go mattress burning crazy, although he seriously debated going out there when he heard, haha.

So, here's to Lane Kiffin. The ex that haunted our dreams has finally gotten the karma everyone hoped would come back around. And honestly, I hope he gets a new job and does great. It was never personal, only about him leaving us for USC. Sure, it was his dream job, but you never like the one you were left for. But hey, it didn't work out. We moved on, now they are.

Consider this my closure.

SEC Dominance? (Regular Season)

photo from EPN.com

"The SEC is the most dominant conference in all of college football."

You have heard it. Everyone has heard it. You might even agree with it, or you might vehemently argue it is top heavy. There are wide ranging views on the SEC's supposed "dominance" over college football.

Being from SEC country, I have always assumed they were the best, because that is what I was told, and also because once Tennessee became an average team, they were abused and embarrassed by the rest of the conference (and obviously that's due to the SEC's strength and not to the low quality of football the Vols put out after '07, right....right?). However, recently I read an excerpt from a book that says the SEC Dominance is a myth based on the media hype and college football wanting to scratch the SEC's back (after all, the BCS creator was a former SEC commissioner).

So....I looked into it.

(Sidebar: The internet is full of lies. It also has some great truths. But you can't assume the person writing is telling the truth, so please, double check things. Don't take everything as fact. Do your own due diligence! Eliminate naivety and become an informed member of society, they are becoming fewer and fewer.)

The argument was that the SEC is simply average when taken top to bottom. Also, it argued regular season matchups mean more than bowl games, because apparently the author believes that the SEC gets favoritism shown in bowl matchups, which aren't always as neutral as they are perceived to be. It also started from 1998. A great year, I might add (Go Vols). The beginning of the BCS.

So here are the breakdowns of SEC records against the automatic qualifier conferences (PAC-12, Big Ten, Big-12, ACC, Big East).

(These records are for regular season matchups)

SEC vs:                     (since 1998)

PAC-12: (12-12)
ACC: (50-39)
Big-12: (8-12)
Big Ten: (9-5)
Big East: (16-17)


Well, that certainly isn't overwhelmingly impressive. Overall the SEC is (95-85), winning 52.8% of the games. They have only dominated the Big Ten during the regular season. They have beaten the ACC, but not impressively. And the others are about average, and they actually only have a 40% winning percentage against the Big-12.

However, the SEC hasn't been completely dominant since 1998. While they did win the inaugural BCS Championship (again Go Vols!), they only won two of the first eight National Championships. In fact, no conference won more than two during that span. The SEC and Big-12 won two, and the ACC, Big East, Pac-12 and Big Ten each tallied one win. Each of the AQ conferences won a championship, and no one repeated (although FSU was in the first 3, Miami the next two, Oklahoma the two after that, and USC in the final two starting with OU's last appearance).

I would argue that the first eight years of the BCS were not dominated by the SEC. They certainly had talented teams, but so did a lot of other conferences. Rather, I believe that "SEC Dominance", as we know it, should begin in 2006. It is from this point that the SEC has won seven straight National Championships (including one game featuring two SEC teams).  The second half of the BCS is where the SEC turned up their game.

So, knowing that the SEC has run the table since 2006, what does that do to its record against the other five AQ conferences?

SEC vs:                    (since 2006)

PAC-12: (9-5)
ACC: (31-17)
Big-12: (6-6)
Big Ten: (3-3)
Big East: (10-10)

Immediately you see how dominant they have been over the ACC. And the PAC-12 as well. But the other three maintain even records.

A closer inspection of the Big-12 shows that while (6-6) is literally average, compared to the overall record of (8-12) it is a vast improvement over the 1998-2005 record of (2-6). Similarly, if you dissect the Big Ten record, while they certainly weren't as good as the (6-2) from '98-'05, two of the three losses are attributed to a 2-10 and 4-8 Vanderbilt team. But, still, top to bottom counts. And the Big East always seems to revel in playing the SEC. They get very hyped and often are better* than our preconceived notions give them credit.


While it is hard to swallow for some people, I think it is hard not to concede the SEC's dominance over the last seven years. (59-41) is a 59% win percentage, and if you are flirting with 60 as a whole conference you aren't struggling. Especially when you consider the winning percentage against AQ conferences from 1998-2005 was only 45% (36-44).


(*more on the Big East sleeper in a later post)


Some research notes I took:

The SEC and Pac-12 need to play more. Especially in bowl games. They have played only one bowl game since 1998 (Auburn v. Oregon in the 2010 NC). In fact, before that game, the last time the conferences met in a bowl game was in 1989.

The Mississippi schools have been pretty terrible. Of all the SEC schools, it is the Mississippi group that really kills the record. (1-14) against AQ conferences since 1998, including a paltry (0-9) in the dominance era. And while they must stay in the official SEC records, if you happened to do an unofficial SEC sans Mississippi record since 2006 it would be (59-32) a winning percentage of 64.8%.

Tennessee owns the Big East. With the record being so close to .500, it is interesting to note that UT has compiled a 5-1 record against the Big East. Only LSU (2-1) and South Carolina (1-0) have a winning record against the conference since 1998.

LSU owns the PAC-12. They have gone (7-0) against them since 1998. Meanwhile Tennessee, the only other team to play the conference more than twice, is (1-4).

Only three schools have played Big Ten teams during the regular season. Kentucky went (6-2) against Indiana from '98-'05. And since 2006, Vanderbilt was (0-3) a loss to Michigan and Northwestern twice and Alabama is (3-0) beating Michigan and Penn State twice.

True-OBP hiatus

I must admit defeat....

     While I like how the True OBP stat was going, I was not up for the task. I got a week behind once, and made it up. Then, craziness hit and it was two weeks, then a month and now it is lost. I still am going to try and finish Atlanta's. Since I actually caught them up, but it took a few days, and I don't have the will to spend every hour of my week catching the other 14 teams up.

     Hope, however, may be on the horizon. We are going to look into some auto updating and other fun Excel features and see if that makes it easier. If all goes well, then look for True OBP to come back with a vengeance and in both leagues! But until then, thanks for enjoying my stats.

Braves Weekend

At Friday's game in the rain

My wife and I went on a Braves weekend to Atlanta on the weekend of Cinco de Mayo. The main point from that sentence is how great my wife is. She willingly joined me on a vacation where the focus was baseball. However, the main point of this post is my life accomplishment.

After high school I realized I was never going to be a professional
athlete. So, a lot of my goals on the life checklist were removed
due to reality. I was never going to catch for the Braves, nor would I ever be discovered in a church league softball game and get drafted. However, one baseball related dream remained: catch a ball at a major league game.

Every game I prepared myself on how I would catch it. Mentally grabbing it, but not going crazy by jumping over rows and knocking over popcorn. As I aged, it was less practical to bring a glove, so I had to mentally prep myself to fight through the pain and secure the catch. Always being aware at games by keeping my right hand free.

Don't be this guy. That is the nightmare.
(per headblitz.com)

However, as the years went by, I was never close. Rarely did a ball even come to the section I was sitting. The closest I ever came was at a Tennessee baseball game. I was down the first base line and there was a rocket hit, I stuck my hand up to catch it, but pulled it down at the last second, crumpling under the internal pressure. I think it probably hit someone in the face, I didn't look. My head was hung, too sick with myself for blowing my only chance. The silver lining that I managed to find was that I was saving it for a MLB game. I didn't want a college ball, I wanted the professional Rawlings.

So was the mindset as we went on the Braves weekend. However, rain threatened my dreams. They were calling for record rain that weekend. And, only Sunday had seats with a realistic chance of catching. Upper deck behind the plate, while a cheap seat and a great view, rarely see a good percentage of foul balls. Sunday, however, we were front row in right center field. But the forecast called for rain all weekend, even through Monday. And it was dead on. The rain began Friday and never stopped Saturday, even cancelling the game 5 hours before hand. And Sunday looked to be much of the same. Cloudy and cool. We assumed that "Bark in the Park" was going to leave Turner Field smelling like wet dog. Fortunately, Mother Nature decided to pull a fast one and turn a gloomy forecast into a very hot, sunny day.

My favorite seats at the Ted.

We were sitting in these great seats in the bottom of the seventh. I was finishing up noting in my scorebook that Tim Hudson struck out looking when Andrelton Simmons took a 2-1 pitch and drilled it right at us. As I watched the ball come toward us, I thought, "Cool, we'll be on T.V." Then as it hit the ground, I realized it would clear the fence. I reached out my hand, pen still there, and reached out to make the catch. It hit, ricocheted off the pen and spun in place as I closed my fingers around it. It was a dream come true. No crazy celebration, no dropped ball, just a great catch.

Catch a ball? Check!

It was even better than a foul ball, it was a live ball in play! A ground rule double. Not a lame, discarded strike. My wife laughs at me still because of how childish I looked, just smiling and holding on to the ball. It was a dream come true. Now it sits on my bedside table, watching over me and pumping in more baseball catching dreams.

The hammer is a bully.

My lovely wife!

El Oso Blanco

T-OBP Update

It has been a long few weeks. Been out of town a few times, a long wedding weekend and even a trip to the E.R. So, I ended up getting way behind on the T-OBP updates. I have just finished up the N.L. East, and plan on finishing the rest tomorrow. Then, I'll update the weeks I've missed, and then we'll be back on track! Just in time for a May final month update. Thanks for your patience, and thanks for reading.

N.L. Team T-OBP Rankings

I always do a team leader update every week for T-OBP. However, this is a look at the whole team. Not just the one star. So, the N.L. T-OBP team rankings!

All rankings don't take into account the pitchers (although in the Braves case, that probably lowered their averages, haha.)

1. Rockies: T-OBP: .388 (OBP: .356) Runs scored: 1st

2. Reds: .361 (.332) 2nd

3. Brewers: .358 (.326) 5th

4. Braves: .354 (.329) 9th

5. Dodgers: .352 (.334) 14th

6. Padres: .351 (.327) 10th



Only an asteroid could stop the Rockies
offense!

7. Giants: .349 (.323) 4th

8. Diamondbacks: .348 (.321) 7th

9. Pirates: .345 (.322) 8th

10. Mets: .344 (.316) 3rd

11. Cardinals: .340 (.321) 6th

12. Phillies: .335 (.308) 11th


13. Cubs: .321 (.291) 12th

14. Nats: .318 (.303) 13th

15. Marlins: .315 (.291) 15th


The key to getting on base, is having someone
hit you home. Some teams are doing that (Colorado and Cincy), but others are struggling (Dodgers, Padres).


Watch out for the Dodgers to work out of their slump, and the Padres might pick up too now that Headley is healthy. Some teams just look terrifying to face, Colorado and Cincy. And others, well, they just aren't very good (cough, cough, Miami). Watch how the Nationals do if Bryce Harper's injury is more than a day-to-day diagnosis. He has literally been their offense in April.



"I'm so mad our West rivals are number 1!!!"

April N.L. T-OBP Leaders

As we enter May (where did April go?), I decided to do an overall T-OBP ranking. This list is everyone who is over .400. I am impressed with some of the names that make the list (looking at you Jordan Pacheco). Everyone had to have at least 50 plate appearances to qualify, so about 2 plate appearances per game on average.

Honestly, I am a little surprised there are so few names on here, but it is early and some teams have been real cold. Your month leader? Shin-Soo Choo!

On base half the time? That's nothing compared to
his floating bat trick!

1. Shin-Soo Choo, Reds: T-OBP: .500

No one has had the month that Choo has had. And the Reds management couldn't be happier. Because otherwise they would have Drew Stubbs atop the lineup. And here is how the rest of the group lines up:

2. Carlos Gomez, Brewers: .468

3. Dexter Fowler, Rockies: .451

4. Joey Votto, Reds: .447

5 Bryce Harper, Nationals: .444

T6. David Wright, Mets: .439

The answer to the question who led the Mets in April walks:
Lucas Duda with 20 

T6. Jean Segura, Brewers: .439

8. Lucas Duda, Mets: .436

9. Carlos Gonzalez, Rockies: .434

10. Ryan Braun, Brewers: .433

11. Michael Young, Phillies: .431

12. Justin Upton, Braves: .429

13. Garrett Jones, Pirates: .424

14. Michael Cuddyer, Rockies: .421

15. Paul Goldschmidt, Diamondbacks: .420

Why is he smiling? Because his last name is so much fun to say.
Pacheco! Try it, go ahead.

16. Carl Crawford, Dodgers: .417

17. Everth Cabrera, Padres: .414

18. Adrian Gonzalez, Dodgers: .413

19. Starling Marte, Pirates: .412

T20. Troy Tulowitzki, Rockies: .406
T20. Jordan Pacheco, Rockies: .406

22. Nick Hundley, Padres: .405

23. Chris Denorfia, Padres: .404

24. Matt Holliday, Cardinals: .402






The Rockies lead all N.L. teams with 5 players in the top 24 players. In other news, they also lead the National League in runs scored. They get them on and knock them in.

The Padres and Dodgers however, can't seem to get the ducks off the pond. The Dodgers have 2 players, their 1 and 3 hitter that make the list, but yet can't get them in to score. They rank second to last (14th) in the N.L. The Padres have 3 guys on in the top 24, but are only 10th in the league in scoring.

And of note: The Giants have no one on the list, yet sport the league's 4th best offense. They don't always get on base, but when they do....they score.

Props to Carlos Gomez for finally figuring the game out. He has been touted for years, but success was always just out of reach. Hopefully he can build off this month and continue all year.


(All images were google searched and found on zimbio)