Many of you might have been asking, "Hey! What happened to my favorite new feature on Obstructed View? When the hell are they going to do another Ask OV?" Some of you might have been hoping that we never do another stupid Ask OV post again. Most of you probably didn't even think about Ask OV since the last time we posted one. So get ready to be enthralled, close your eyes, or just turn off your computer for awhile because here we go:

What kind of velocity does Michael Bowden have?

Excellent question, though judging from his first outing, the better question might be, "Does Michael Bowden have any clue where the ball is going when he releases it?" But to answer the original question, we'll go to the post MB wrote about Bowden shortly after the trade was completed:

He throws a 4-seamer that has averaged about 92.9 mph over his career. He also throws a slider and a changeup and every once in awhile he may throw a curve. His average fastball velocity so far this year is 92.6.

Where is Steve Bartman now?

Why isnt Lee Smith in the Hall of Fame?

How much does Starlin Castro make a year?

Better prospect, Anthony Rizzo or Brett Jackson?

What are marquee games and silver games?

Is bunting ever worth it?

Did some quick back-of-the-napkin calculations on that Campana bunting question. The answer is….yea, it might actually make some sense to have him laying down sac bunts

Using the base-out Run Expectancies at Tango’s site, I calculated the weighted change in RE using 30% no out on bunt 70% out on bunt runners advance for any situation where I’ve seen a true sacrifice bunt:

 

0 outs:

1 on first: +.0303 RE

1 on 2nd: +.0782 RE

1st & 2nd: +.1739 RE(!)

 

1 out:

1 on 1st: -.0295 RE

1 on 2nd: -.0882 RE

1st & 2nd: -.0355 RE

 

So, yea, there’s a few occasions where this will make sense. The +.1739 RE for the 2 on no outs situation is shockingly high, and would be a great thing to introduce into the game strategy if those situations happened more than 1.5% of all plate appearances. (If Campana were to get 600 PA this year and bunted on every single runners on 1st and 2nd situation, it would likely lead to only an extra 1.56 runs…)

 

There are obviously about 1000 problems with the data presented here, but its an interesting surface-level look at the question.

Bonus Search Term of the Week

The post Ask OV: Because We Had a Day Off and We Haven’t Done This For a While. appeared first on Obstructed View.

The questions have been rolling in ever since our debut of Ask OV last week so we are definitely going to have to hire an intern or something.  I mean, first I had to do the Facepalm yesterday and now this.  It's gotten to the point where I'm thinking of bringing MB back on board (at half-pay, naturally). But for now, Let's just get to the questions:

Let's say you were allowed to spend up to the luxury tax threshold (I'm guessing it's $189MM since that's what the Yankees want to get under) on the MLB team. How would you turn 2013 into a contender through free agency and retaining or calling up whoever doesn't suck in-house?

That all depends what it would cost to get a decent magic wand and some hitmen that could fix some leaky faucets in St. Louis, Milwaukee, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh.  Those guys ain't cheap.

How many games are the Chicago Cubs projected to win?

One very early projection has the Cubs winning 70 games and finishing in 5th place 19 games behind Cincinnati.  I, personally, have been predicting they will lose 100 games, which means they'll win 62.  I base that on the assumption that the current team will lose at least two veterans to trades before deadline.

When do Cubs trade Marlon Byrd?

There are so many variables it is near impossible to predict that.  I doubt that even if Theo and Jed know for sure they want to trade Marlon Byrd, they wouldn't be able to tell you with 100% certainty when it would happen.  For one thing, the market for Byrd isn't exactly red hot.  Nobody is calling Jed at all hours of the night begging for a deal involving Marlon Byrd.  It's not that he's a bad player, but he's not exactly a difference-maker.  And that leads to the next question:

When do the Cubs call up Brett Jackson?

They don't seem in a real hurry to clear space for Jackson, so unless Brett goes down there and starts hitting the crap out of the ball like he says he's going to AND the Cubs start slowly enough that fans start demanding some sort of glimpse of the future, they seem to be content to let him stick down there for awhile so they can keep him under club control for a little while longer.  Best case scenario is we see a Starlin Castro-like situation where they call him up in May, but I doubt we see him before the All-Star break.

How early for bleacher seats to Red Sox Cubs?

If the meaning to this is "How early should I buy bleacher seats for the Red Sox/Cubs games?", the answer is two weeks ago. If this means, "How early should I show up to get a decent seat in the bleachers for Red Sox/Cubs games?", the answer is, how soon can you get to the park?  Seriously though, the gates open two hours before the start of the game, and for popular games, there are lines forming outside the gates well before that.  I don't sit in the bleachers anymore, but if I did, I'd probably try to get in line as early as possible and see if the crazy dude talking about how his hat is 7-2 when he wears it during afternoon games would share his bologna sandwich.

Why? Seriously, why?

This is going to take a little more interpretation, but I think they are asking why we are so awesome. I think it is mostly because we can't help it.

How often does Ask OV have to appear to make it seem like creating the banner wasn’t a waste of time?

Almost there.  Not quite.

* Bonus *

Search Term of the Week 

"huge boobs anal"

The post Ask OV: Cubs Fans Anxiously Waiting to Watch [Insert Name] in Centerfield vs. Red Sox appeared first on Obstructed View.

Today we are excited to start another new feature where we will answer our readers' questions.  Of course, since this is the first installment, we haven't had any questions actually submitted to us.  That would be a problem for a lesser blog, but not for one as discredited as we are.  Occasionally, people will find their way to our corner of the internet by asking a question of their Google machine and they somehow wind up here.  Well, now we'll answer some of the queries that have led here.  For anyone who wants to submit a question directly to us, please use the Contact tab above or this link to submit your question along with the subject, "Ask OV."  We can't guarantee when we'll get around to answering it because, frankly, we've got shit to do, but we do want this to be a regular enough feature that I don't feel like I wasted my time creating a banner for it.

Q. Why can't you measure intangibles?

Because you can't measure heart, that's why.  But seriously, how would one measure leadership?  Or grittiness? Or chemistry?  The reason they are called intangibles is that they can't really be quantified in any meaningful way.  Sure, there are people who believe that Koyie Hill's clubhouse presence made everyone on the team better by half of a win, but that is just assigning value arbitrarily.  If teams ever figure out a meaningful metric to use to determine intangible qualities in players, it would revolutionize player analysis. Maybe this is what the Cubs have Ari Kaplan working on these days.

Q. When John Elway was drafted by the Kansas City Royals in 1979 who was the Kansas City Royals third baseman who said John Elway should play football instead of baseball?

I am not making these questions up.  This is an awfully complicated way of asking who the 3rd baseman for the 1979 Royals was, but it was George Brett.

Q. Why are Cubs bleachers 140?

I'm going to intrepret this to mean, "Why do the Cubs Bleacher tickets cost $140?"  Well, the Cubs are trying out a dynamic pricing model for the Bleacher seats that will change the price of the game based on how popular it is.  I'm assuming whoever asked this question is trying to get Bleacher seats for the Red Sox series.  Those are currently the highest prices Bleacher seats available at $140 each (before taxes, fees, and convenience charges).  Opening Day will run you $100, The White Sox series are running from $78 to $100, depending on when you want to go.  The July Cardinals series Bleacher tickets are currently between $78 to $110.

Q. Old Style not being sold at Cubs games?

Last year there was a report that Old Style wanted out of its contract with the Cubs.  Our friend, wpbc (who runs the awesome tumblr site, Holy Coleslaw), wrote an Unobstructed View about it.  But then in September, the contract got renewed. Fear not. That shitty Midwest beer will still be flowing at Wrigley.

Q. What is Kim DeJesus' breast size?

I want to assure David DeJesus (whom we are sure is a very reasonable and peace-loving man) and his giant kick-ass truck, that none of us on this blog would have inside information on this topic.  Please do not run us over.  Thank you.

Q. Who did the Cubs trade for Theo Epstein?

Until recently, this seemed like it was going to forever be one of those unknowable mysteries, like what Aramis Ramirez's contract said or how much the Cubs owe Carlos Silva.  But then, from out of nowhere, an answer to this question is taking shape.  In late February, the Cubs' relief pitching prospect, Chris Carpenter was informed he would be heading to Boston as part of the compensation package for Theo.  But we also learned that day that there would be two Players to be Named Later to be involved in the deal, one going from the Cubs to the Red Sox, and another going from the Red Sox to the Cubs.  Yesterday, another relief pitcher prospect from A ball, Aaron Kurcz, was named the Cubs PTBNL to go to the Red Sox.  Now the only remaining piece of the puzzle is who the player coming back from the Sox will be.  We expect to learn that sometime during the regular season…. of 2020.

We hope you enjoyed the first installment of Ask OV. We hope you'll send us your questions so we can bestow our vast wisdom and knowledge upon you in the near future.

The post Ask OV: Questions About Bleachers, Breasts, Beer, and, For Some Reason…John Elway and the 1979 Royals appeared first on Obstructed View.