I don't really know why, but whenever I think about Darwin Barney I want to pronounce his name with a Boston accent. I guess it makes it more fun to think about Dahwin Bahney rather than what Barney is actually capable of producing. He returns for his 2nd full season though he's probably not the one who should be starting. He may not even be the best back-up 2nd baseman the Cubs have. – mb21, 2-17-12
Sometimes you're just plain wrong as I was here. When I posted the projections I ignored defense, which is something Barney is excellent at. He was even able to beat out Brandon Phillips for this year's gold glove at 2nd base. That's no easy task, but he did it.
Barney isn't much of a hitter and never will be, but he's a fantastic defender. His projections and actual stats are below.
| Projection | PA | H | HR | BB | SO | avg | obp | slg | wOBA |
| CAIRO | 399 | 100 | 3 | 21 | 52 | .270 | .311 | .354 | .296 |
| Guru | 480 | 118 | 3 | 24 | 60 | .268 | .309 | .359 | .296 |
| ZiPS | 599 | 156 | 3 | 28 | 76 | .273 | .311 | .352 | .294 |
| PECOTA | 523 | 137 | 3 | 22 | 70 | .274 | .307 | .353 | .292 |
| Oliver | 693 | 171 | 2 | 30 | 84 | .265 | .299 | .336 | .283 |
| Bill James | 321 | 84 | 2 | 15 | 36 | .275 | .317 | .356 | .296 |
| RotoChamp | 507 | 142 | 2 | 22 | 60 | .293 | .333 | .371 | .313 |
| Average | 503 | 130 | 3 | 23 | 63 | .274 | .312 | .354 | .296 |
| Actual | 588 | 139 | 7 | 33 | 58 | .254 | .299 | .354 | .287 |
Barney's walk rate improved from 3.9% to 5.6% and his strikeout rate dropped to 9.9%. He does not swing and miss very often. Average swinging strike percentage was over 9%, but Barney's was 4.2% and it's the same in his career. He puts the ball in play, but usually it's not hit all that hard. He did have a higher ISO this year, which is something he said he was working on in spring training. He hit 7 home runs. He has 9 in his career and has yet to hit one away from Wrigley Field.
Not only is Barney a good fielder, he's also a good baserunner. He added over 5 runs last year on the bases and this year over 4. Over those 2 years he's stolen only 15 bases and added 10 runs to the Cubs. You do not need to steal bases to be good at running them as Barney has shown. He's a smart baserunner.
He's a terrific fielder. UZR had him at 13, FRAA at 11.3 and DRS at 29. Obviously the 29 isn't correct. Nobody is worth 30 runs on defense and the others are mostly in agreement. HIs rWAR is therefore ridiculously high because of the defense (4.6). His fWAR was 2.5 and WARP 1.8. It's safe to say he was worth more than 2 wins, but nowhere near 4.6.
At a league minimum salary, that's a lot of production. He does it differently than maybe we'd like, but runs are runs. Whether they're saved or scored, they matter the same. Barney just goes about it differently and he most definitely is a starting 2nd baseman. He is on the Cubs and he is on a bunch of other teams too.
Another improvement from last year (by management) is that Barney batted second nearly half as often as he did in 2011. It was still probably 42 times too many, platoon splits notwithstanding.
I know I say this every year, but it still feels crazy that any position player can post a .287 wOBA and still be worth 1.3 oWAR.
Anyone else surprised to see he had 7 HR??
@ WaLi:
I think only one of them was a legitimate “NOW YOU’RE A MAN” home run, the rest were basket shots to my recollection.
That “Save the iPhone” ad is pissing me off with the noise it makes every 10 seconds.
Need a last-minute costume? Why not Zoidberg?
@ GBTS:
DAMN YOU SEXY FLANDERS
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/nate-silver-and-the-nerd-haters/
@ Rice Cube:
Someone needs to create a Professor Kyle Farnsworth costume. An old grumpy scientist that can throw fastballs and tackle opposing hitters as they charge the mound.
@ Mish:
(dying laughing) at the TLR champion in the comments
@ mikeakaleroy:
Good news, everyone…I just struck out the side!
@ Mish:
One of the commenters on that article had a good point: Nate’s system is relatively unknown to anyone other than him. It’s a fair argument and really the only one I can think of against what he does there and PECOTA. The black box nature of the model should make one question it more, but at the same time Nate has shown me that he’s more than capable of leaving as many biases out of his work as he possibly can. He also understands the limitations and usefulness of the model.
Anyone who doesn’t think Obama has an advantage next week is silly. He’s up in Ohio by more than 2 points last I checked and that’s essentially the election. If Obama was up 2 points nationwide nobody would question Nate’s percentage chance of an Obama win.
This guy usually has a good grasp on the political landscape, I’ve been following his page since Bush-Kerry…
http://electoral-vote.com/
Makes a good point that Obama can continue to appear Presidential and help with the hurricane relief efforts while Romney can’t do anything about it.
/end political talk
@ mb21:
FWIW, I think that commenter’s effective definition of transparency was ” gives us every single formula so we can reproduce it ourselves”. If that was the case, he wouldn’t have a blog (dying laughing). But he does list every single one of his polls in the forecast and the way they are weighted, and tends to mention why he weights polls in certain ways with each update, as well as past posts discussing his methodology wrt things like pollster “house effects”. That’s way more transparent than PECOTA ever was.
I just hope he’s not also doing this one one giant hideous spreadsheet like he did with PECOTA (dying laughing).
@ Rice Cube:
I followed that site back during Bush-Kerry too, but I hardly ever check it after 538. I think that guy just does relatively pure averages of polls, IIRC.
Someone linked to another guy at Princeton who is supposed to have a good model, but it looks like the site is down.
@ Berselius:
I think 538 does a lot better job of doing the polls and stats stuff. E-V is nice for some commentary though.
@ Mish:
I think his problem is that his percentages add up to 100%. He should state that Obama has a 75% chance of winning and Romney has a 51% chance of winning and that way everyone is happy.
@ WaLi:
(dying laughing)
My favorite so far of the Star Wars/Disney mashups:
More here: http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/15-best-star-warsdisney-merger-memes
I promise the political talk will stop now (maybe this should go in the forum later) but this was a fun blog by Joe Pos.
http://joeposnanski.blogspot.com/2012/10/fun-with-electoral-votes.html
I hope you guys realize that your Yellon-on-his-cell meme has essentially been hijacked.
@ Mish:
We don’t negotiate with terrorists.
@ Mish:
REDACTED- See Below
@ Mish:
Where?!
@ mikeakaleroy:
Didn’t realize Eli had such a paunch.
Thought I pasted the link, but here it is: http://elimanninglookingatthings.tumblr.com/
I’ve really dropped the ball with photoshopping Yellon into Hurricane Sandy pics. Many apologies. I’ll say 10 Hail Derosas and return my OV membership card.
GBTS wrote:
This needs to be written out.
@ GBTS:
You should work on correcting your sins right away.
@ Rice Cube:
I’m bored, I’ll give it a shot:
Hail DeRosa, full of grace, the Cub is with thee; blessed art thou amongst BCB, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Mather.
Holy DeRosa, Father of Utility, pray for us Cubs Fans, now and at the hour of the World Series. Holy Cow.
@ WaLi:
Green light this bitch.
@ Rice Cube:
The main difference is that people actually know who Eli Manning is.
We’ll have to put a moratorium on the use of “hobbit” as a descriptor for a certain beat writer as we do not want to get sued by the Tolkien estate.
http://litreactor.com/news/professor-banned-from-using-hobbit-as-title-of-lecture
http://chicago.sbnation.com/chicago-cubs/2012/10/31/3582000/carlos-marmol-cubs-trade-rumors-epstein
I didn’t know Gold Gloves had already been announced.
@ mikeakaleroy:
WTF is Kokanee?
@ josh:
Judging by the rest of them, it’s Canadian..
UPDATE: Looks like it is Canadian and made by the good people at Labatt Brewing
@ josh:
And yes, last night, after a 15 minute delay due to some type of car race in a Vegas parking lot…
@ mikeakaleroy:
I was on baby duty yesterday so the facts I’m certain of are that the duck wants grapes, not lemonade, Muno is scared of the dark, and Mr. Noodle doesn’t know how to do all the things.
@ josh:
Luckily my (almost) 3 year old hasn’t latched on to Yo Gabba Gabba. It’s mostly Thomas the Tank Engine in our house, but he also likes and asks for Futurama by name.
/Good Parent’d
@ mikeakaleroy:
It’s Natural Light for those who live in Vancouver. This concludes the only useful post I will make today.
@ mikeakaleroy:
Kid’s wearing out on YGG. I try futurama, Archer, etc, and he doesn’t dig it. Boy likes a song and dance number. I really don’t care. The particular show he watches doesn’t bother me. I have the superpower where I can ignore about anything.
@ uncle dave:
You’d think Canadians would have better taste. Then again, Canadians like Labatt Blue.
I went to one Expos game in Montreal. I ordered a hot dog and a large beer. I got served a boiled hot dog sitting on a single piece of white bread with a bead of mayonnaise and a Molson Ice. If that wasn’t terrible enough, I then sat and watched this game:
HireJimEssian wrote:
(dying laughing)
Ervin Santana ——> Royals
Some lefty reliever I’ve never heard of ——-> Angels
Good piece on the history of the replacement level: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=18790
@ Rice Cube:
I loved this:
That would be hilarious.
Romney/Biden 2012!
mikeakaleroy wrote:
this might be even better than my bruce wayne campbell costume (which incorporated not only bruce wayne and wayne campbell but also bruce campbell).
@ josh:
@ uncle dave:
kokanee is also huge in montana and parts of north dakota. it fucking sucks but if you’re in eastern montana or north dakota, you’re pretty much screwed anyway. so it’s all relative.
@ Rizzo the Rat:
that kind of reminds me of the 2000 reform party ticket where pat buchanan chose a black woman as his running mate to make up for all of the horribly racist/sexist viewpoints that he had. i guess in theory these two extremes balance each other out but you know it’s just going to be a fucking disaster (but very amusing).
I didn’t read all the comments on the Nate Silver article linked above. I only read all the comments at OV, and believe me, that’s enough! (dying laughing)
Anyway, I don’t think Silver’s model has changed all that much in the last 4 years, and 4-5 years ago, he was pretty thorough in explaining the model on the old http://www.fivethirtyeight.com site. At one point, all the content there was still able to be accessed through that address or the NYTimes. Dunno now. But if you want all the details, I think you actually have to do some research and reading in the 538 archives. Guys like the one referred to in the article don’t do stuff like that.
For berselius:
@ GW:
Your students were right, you do look scarier when carved into a pumpkin.
How do you get a pumpkin to last more than a weekend? We carved ours before we went out of town last Thursday and when we got back it looked like SK’s wrinkly ballsack. By last night you couldn’t even tell what it was we carved.
@ WaLi:
First, you’ll need a fresh chicken. A live you. You must sacrifice it to the ancient god Thoth, ruler of the underworld and decomposer of gourds.
To him you must say the dark prayers as the blood of the innocent animal dribbles a circle around your heart’s one true love (i.e., your TV). It has to be done at midnight Halloween/Nov1. or Thoth will pay a furious visit and deliver his wrath to your TV.
@ Rice Cube:
Is that because each subsequent mathematician keeps dividing by two from the previous beer, never actually getting to the sum of 2 beers (but close enough)?
@ jtsunami:
The summation of 1/x^2 is 2
@ josh:
or maybe not. That’s what I’m assuming the joke meant.
The summation of 1/2^n = 2 (confirmed by wolfram alpha)
Summations were never my strong suit.
@ Rice Cube:
I haven’t even had my Starbucks yet, so when I read that, my head exploded. Thanks, bud.
@ Rice Cube:
Good thing they didn’t ask for one beer, half a beer, a third of a beer, a quarter of a beer…..the bartender would just kick them out before they ran him out of business.
@ Berselius:
HARMONIC SERIES!
I’m not a complete bonehead (yes I am)
Castro might be getting a new agent
http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2012/10/paul-kinzer-leaves-wasserman-media-group.html
Joe Mather ——–> Free Agent. I wonder if the Cubs will make a qualifying offer?
@ Berselius:
First comment win:
(dying laughing) (dying laughing) (dying laughing)
@ Berselius:
Well he’s +3 WAR for Grittitude and Husselation perks. His THACO maybe too low to compete.
OK, fine, I don’t know how sabermetrics works.
@ Berselius:
They need to get grit compensation somehow.
@ josh:
They have a pill for this, now.
@ Aisle424:
I thought that was a homemade video but it looks like that was put together by disney marketing
@ mikeakaleroy:
No one’s hip to old school D&D up in this house or what!?
@ josh:
Sorry, man. When I was younger, I was in to cool stuff like Weird Al Yankovic and Atari 2600.
@ mikeakaleroy:
Me too. Actually, I never played D&D until like high school.
@ mikeakaleroy:
I remember having one of the old faux wood Atari 2600s when I was in Kindergarten or so. With the big switches. Too bad we don’t still have it. They’re selling for as much as $50 on Ebay! I could use $50 right now!
@ josh:
We had the wood one, and then got the “newer, sleeker” version, that I still have and it still works. Occasionally break out Moon Patrol and Midnight Magic.
I can honestly say I have never played nor even witnessed anyone playing D&D in my entire life.
@ Berselius:
There was a time when I was good with this math thing and would have got that joke without Google
Are we talking about classic games today? I got my son into Stratego.
@ Rice Cube:
Is that a good board game that doesn’t revolve around luck like 95% of the board games out there?
I’m looking for a good board game to play that my wife and friends might be into.
@ WaLi:
It has to do with the placement of pieces around a board and the capture of a flag when all pieces are initially hidden from the opponent. There is a lot of luck involved but the protection of the flag, the placement of the spy and bombs etc. provide enough strategy that it’s not all luck. I guess you can think of it as a super-charged version of Battleship?
@ Rice Cube:
Risk and Axis & Allies are kind of fun but I guess they too require luck…not to mention that A&A takes for-fucking-ever to set up and play.
Other games that I’ve seen played are Carcassonne and Catan. Those are actually really fun.
@ mikeakaleroy:
Well, I was always more into GURPS (Steven Jackson games) than D&D. That, and Mechwarrior and Star Wars. Pen and Paper RPGs can be a lot of fun, if you have a good group. Imagine a video game RPG but cut out all the fighting pointless enemies and rearranging inventory and that adapts to what you like to have happen in the game. And that can potentially keep going without having to replay the same parts over and over. Also, better NPCs (usually).
@ Rice Cube:
Yeah, I found an electronic version of A&A once and I liked it way better because no setup. Catan is a classic of course, but right now it’s just the wife and I to play and it’s not as fun as a two-player game (neither is A&A). I haven’t played much Carcassone.
If you don’t already, you should check out TableTop on Geek & Sundry. Wil Wheaton and friends play various board games. It’s actually a pretty fun web-based show.
@ josh:
About 10 years ago, I got into the Statispro table top baseball game. That was a bunch of fun. My friend had it from when he was younger, so our rosters were from like ’79 or the early 80s. I found the 2003 set online so we got to play with more recent players. I found the 2011 cards just now, but now I need to go find the board itself.
/Another new (old) obsession’d
I played D&D a couple of times but we used to play Hero Quest. That was similar to D&D but so much cooler because it had mini figurines to play with and not those stupid cardboard peices you fold in half.
In case you are wondering……….I’m a huge fucking nerd!!!
@ WaLi:
There are tons of great games that aren’t luck based. Check out TableTop, go to boardgamegeek.com and peruse their game selection for the number of players and type of game (casual, strategy, etc., depending on what you like).
@ josh:
I think Carcassonne cost something like 1200 points on Xbox Live but I grabbed it when they offered it for free. Very addictive game.
For tried and true fun and an everlasting source of trash-talking and posturing, there’s always Monopoly
@ Mucker:
Fuck yeah, Heroquest. My dad, brother, and I played the shit out of heroquest.
@ Mucker:
I actually bought Heroquest about 2 years ago from Ebay and tried to get the wife into it. It’s definitely more fun with three players, but she’s pretty lukewarm on RPGs anyway.
Stratego is fucking great.
Had some friends over last night for some casual beers and game night. Played Family Feud (on my PS3) along with Electronic Catchphrase and Cranium. Yay technology!
@ Rice Cube:
Man, I fucking hate Monopoly. Seriously, fucking hate it.
There’s some website that has Carcassone for free (or a ripoff of it). If you’re into Catan, there’s this page: http://www.playcatan.com/
One that my wife and I recently enjoyed that’s a pure 2 player game is Lost Cities. It’s basically a card game, but with a little more imagination.
@ jtsunami:
Cranium out of the box is ridiculous fun.
@ josh:
Seriously? Dude, that game was the shit. I remember my friends dad was cool as shit and he would be the narrator guy or whatever and 4 of us played the characters. He kept the game and pieces on the board when it got late and left it like that for the next time we played. We played every weekend and it seemed like we had the same game going for like a year.
If you have 3 or more players, and this goes for anyone, you could do a lot worse than Ticket to Ride. Even with 2 players it is a damn fun game.
mikeakaleroy wrote:
Same here.
@ Mucker:
Yeah, man, I started like creating my own dungeons and stuff because we ran out of the scenarios in the book it came with. That was a good time.
I agree with Josh. If I’m putting aside 6 hours to play a board game, I’m going with Risk over Monopoly. Monopoly fucking sucks. Especially with people who don’t know the proper trade value of properties etc. After 20 minutes I regret my decision to play Monopoly.
I used to play a lot of Scrabble too, but I guess that’s a bit too nerdy.
I think the problem with board games is you have to get people who really want to play and take it seriously. Like Monopoly, if you got people that really want to play and play by the rules, it can be pretty fun. Risk is the best if you can get people serious into it. But you’ll know who those people are when you ask them if they want to play a board game and they go get Mouse Trap. (dying laughing)
@ josh:
Yeah man, I haven’t played that game in 20 years. I’ll have to check the board game aisle next time I’m at the store to see what games are out now.
@ Mucker:
I played Mouse Trap 8 billion times as a kid, but haven’t once actually played Mouse Trap.
@ Mucker:
Mouse Trap is fun when the contraption actually works!
@ Rice Cube:
Scrabble’s good. We play that a lot. Upwords is fun too, but for some reason the game takes like 3x as long to play.
@ Mucker:
I think you’re right. With any game, you have to have the right people. There are a few good casual games out there. Games make some people self-conscious, though. I’m already a nerd and a buffoon, so I love playing games.
Rice Cube wrote:
Oh God, Cranium (and similar games) are the fucking worst
/introvert
josh wrote:
Hey man, I had the ORIGINAL Dungeons and Dragons box. I liked D&D before it was cool
/nerd hipster
@ Berselius:
Don’t you like anything?
@ Berselius:
I did too, but I bought it years later from a used game store. It was a lot of fun. I tried to impress my friends in college by whipping out my THACO knowledge, but they were all later edition D&Ders and were like “whut”.
Vampire The Masquerade and Werewolf The Apocalypse were very popular at my school (I went to a nerd college), but I never got into them. Magic: The Gathering consumed most of my senior year of high school. There was a D&D card game similar to Magic that my brother and I played my junior year during lunch. Good times.
What was that one game in high school called where your older siblings snuck you booze and you hung out with girls? That was a good one.
Spellfire! It was pretty fun. Drew heavily on Ravenloft and Forgotten Realms worlds. I actually liked it more than Magic the gathering, more complex play structure and interesting abilities.
@ GBTS:
That does not sound familiar in the least.
@ GBTS:
My brother and I played card games over lunch at school. And he was actually a certified “guy who had sex with girls” type person.
@ GBTS:
@ josh:
This is funny if this was the actual context.
@ GBTS:
I married pretty much the only female that would have anything to do with me.
josh wrote:
Thank DeRosa there weren’t that many V:tm fans at my HS/college. They always tended to be the LARPing/taking things way
too seriously types.
@ Rice Cube:
I was responding to my own post, but I see your point.
@ GBTS:
Although I suppose in between getting drunk on my 2.5 Rolling Rocks and failing at making out with girls, my friends and I did nothing but play Mario Kart and WCW/NWO Revenge.
I played Warhammer for the most part in HS, which is a fucking expensive hobby in time and treasure (dying laughing). I’ve recently thought about getting back in to miniatures games but don’t even have time for something as relatively simple as Warmachine.
@ Rice Cube:
(dying laughing)
(dying laughing)
@ GBTS:
Yeah, see that was more like Freshman/sophomore year of college for me.
@ Berselius:
I always wanted to play Warhammer, but couldn’t afford the time and money to get miniatures. I spent many an hour at Hobby Town staring at the miniatures and dreaming. Also, it would have required at least 1 other person, I suppose, to invest and equal amount of time and money. The Penny Arcade guys were talking up Warmachine for a while there. Maybe when the boy is older we can get into some cool miniatures game. Love table top shit. Creating hills and terrain has a lot of appeal to me.
@ GBTS:
I got hitched to my HS girlfriend, so I guess that one worked out for me (dying laughing)
@ Berselius:
THIS!
That’s why I never played. It was all theatre buffoons and their groupies. I played one time and the GM somehow turned it into a drama show. It was fucking horrible.
@ josh:
I had a group of friends who all played. After we scattered to the winds in college it pretty much died off. In retrospect I wish that I had combined forces with one of my friends, because I loved assembling/modifying/etc. models and terrain, but fucking hated painting anything. He was exactly the opposite.
@ Berselius:
I got married my senior year of college. It was her Freshman year (technically, she was a transfer). We dated for about 3 months b/4 we got married. It was kind of that, or probably never see each other again.
@ josh:
Exactly. These are the people who would wear capes and shit and stalk around their one-stoplight “downtown”.
@ GBTS:
I played that game often. That is, until I got arrested and missed sectionals for basketball my senior year. That part of the game is NOT fun.
Okay, enough of this nerdy shit. I have some math to do.
@ Berselius:
Oh man, if I had gotten into taht, I probably would have done nothing but. I put together a couple diaoramas with plastic models. My brain thought it was in heaven. I think that’s the OCD.
@ josh:
@ Berselius:
I know where the original posts are but I’m having fun with context today.
@ Berselius:
Holy shit, my first day of college, one of those guys put on a cape and walked barefoot through campus holding an incense stick. We finally asked him what he was doing and he told us there was a powerful ley line running through campus.
TIME TO APPLY TO GRAD SCHOOL AGAIN!
(I hate my job.)
@ josh:
May your experience be infinitely better than mine was.
/needs a real job
@ josh:
@ Rice Cube:
Real jobs are HIGHLY over rated.
/needs a new real job
mikeakaleroy wrote:
ha, this applies to me too. and i assume everyone who’s ever “played” mouse trap. i would consider this a massive failure of the game designers except that i had a hell of a lot of fun not actually playing it, so i can’t really fault them.
^
Is also on the academic job market. Bleh.
@ Rice Cube:
I need a real job, too, and that’s my problem. I know, I know, everyone hates their job, but I have a master’s degree and I’m a glorified proofreader and am treated kind of like the guy who fetches coffee at the office. I need to find other people to spend time with, and I don’t know how else to do it.
This is the most active the comments have been for awhile. Naturally, it has nothing to do with the Cubs or baseball in general.
@ mikeakaleroy:
Work sucks. That’s why I’m going to try going back to school. I’m batting .500 at grad school (but only a .250 wOBA), so I’m hoping this continues my hot streak of doing things I’m actually interested in.
@ jtsunami:
What is this “base ball” you speak of?
I’m bored, I think I might set up a new movie character account at BCB. Any suggestions?
This conversation really got out of hand (dying laughing)
@ GBTS:
Was Mish banned? If not you can probably post as Batman.
This one still makes me laugh
@ GBTS:
How about Dr. Frank-N-Furter from Rocky Horror Picture Show
Berselius wrote:
Probably. (dying laughing)
@ GBTS:
FDR, American Badass.
Yes now I recall I was banned.
@ GBTS:
Is this because of his latest post about trading for A-Rod?
I can sort of see if if the Yankees paid all of A-Rod’s remaining salary which is the only point at which I’d be like “sure, go for it” but for the most part my reaction was
@ GBTS:
The Big Lebowski?
Edit: I mean, the Dude, his Dudesnes or Duder, or El Duderino, if you’re not in the whole brevity thing.
@ Rice Cube:
Racist.
Also Mike Redmond is the new Ringmaster for the circus that is the Florida Marlins of Miami in Florida.
@ mikeakaleroy:
They should have gone player/manager. It’s not like things could get any worse.
Is OV rebranding as a board game blog?
This place is truly bizarre. (dying laughing)
@ jtsunami:
May as well. Apparently there’s more interest in board games than the cubs.
@ mb21:
We could discuss the possibility of A-Rod manning 3B next year!
/yellon’d
@ mb21:
@ jtsunami:
The Cubs blog FEATURING: Board games! B/c it’s going to be a looooooong while before the Cubs are worth watching.
@ Rice Cube:
What are all those rings? Is that some kind of sick fucking joke?
@ josh:
What rings?
/both a joke and a question
We could all play Risk. By the time the game’s over, the Cubs will be competitive again.
@ jtsunami:
Hopefully by then I will have stormed Madagascar as the final hurdle between me and world dominance.
@ Rice Cube:
On second glance, that one might be a catcher’s mask, and that one a ball with a weird shadow. Funny that I immediately assumed they were rings.
@ jtsunami:
Shit, Axis and Allies makes a game of risk seem like checkers in terms of length of time and complexity. I’ve never played a game of Axis and Allies on the board that didn’t take at least 2 sessions to complete. And that was with 2 people.
From: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/181/risk
This is in response of playing Risk:
(dying laughing). Only a genius playing 5 year old would win in 2 hours.
speaking of board games, how about milton bradley
@ EnricoPallazzo:
Did he ever retire? Or is he still hoping someone needs a volatile, beating his girlfriend, DUI, guy who can’t hit very well on their team?
@ EnricoPallazzo:
This is in Spanish I think, but it came to mind…
mb21 wrote:
mikeakaleroy wrote:
All I really want to know is how well he plays Catan.
If you want to make your friends not speak to each other for a couple of weeks, suggest that you play a game of Diplomacy.
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/483/diplomacy
(It’s also a non-luck based game, for whoever asked earlier, though not very good with just two people).
@ Berselius:
Another one I’ve always wanted to try. Seems like you’d have to have just precisely the right group of friends.
@ Berselius:
Seems like the kind of guy who would kick the board halfway through if he was losing.
@ josh:
The board gaming group in my math department had to ban the game from the building, because tempers generally run so high when people play it (dying laughing).
@ Berselius:
I could see that.
@ Berselius:
That was clearly the most diplomatic move.
One game I used to play all the time was Ambush! (their exclamation point). It was a solo war sim game that had a kind of complicated metric where you had use this scenario card and a decoder sleeve and look up the even in this event booklet, basically all that was to make it complicated so that the enemy’s maneuvers were hidden from you until you did a certain thing or reached a certain point on the map. That game was really long and kind of tedious, but it was a lot of fun. I’d love to see a squad-based war sim on PC.
Think Saving Private Ryan as a video game.
That was after my brother went to prison and I didn’t have anyone to play games with. Man I was kind of pathetic in high school.
BCB says the Cubs and ASU are no longer sharing the new digs in Mesa. Wonder what happened to the deal.
@ Rice Cube:
Didn’t ASU back out b/c they thought the Cubs weren’t working with them? There was a whole stink made a few months ago, I recall.
@ josh:
I’m not sure. I don’t think they had broken off talks but there was some squabbling. Maybe the Cubs wanted ASU to pony up more cash or decided to give them less space to work with.
@ Rice Cube:
Probably aliens.
The ASU thing started falling apart in June:
http://www.obstructedview.net/chicago-cubs/arizona-state-university-president-calls-the-cubs-liars.html
@ Aisle424:
Judging from what I’ve heard from people who work there, the university is probably too busy scrambling to find/pay for teachers/facilities/etc. for its 72000+ students. They recently passed a state law in AZ that requires ASU to accept students from the top 25% of all of the high schools in the state. There’s more adjunct faculty than ‘regular’ faculty members in mathematics just because they need warm bodies in front of classrooms.
I’m pretty sure I mentioned this before, but I just don’t care about ASU being upset at the Cubs. They were always along for the ride and if or when the Cubs wanted them out, they would have been and good for the Cubs. ASU wasn’t paying shit for the facilities so they should get shit.
I understand the argument that it’s better to be professional and I don’t even disagree, but it doesn’t bother me if they aren’t. (dying laughing)
I figured I’d take a 5-min break and catch up on comments since 10:00 a.m. Who knew that Board-Game Con would break out.
A good 2-person card/board game is Guillotine. Some luck, some strategy, moves pretty quick, funny pictures of people from the French Revolution. Always good to be the Piss Boy.
@ Berselius:
Me too. If you here of anything in Ecology/Biology/Forestry/Conservation/Extension in NC, let me know. I’ll probably have to go soft money for awhile.
Major Ughs and
If I wasn’t busy playing all the board games you guys suggested, I’d write about how the Cubs are apparently interested in Ryan Dempster returning next year. This isn’t surprising to me, but some will probably be shocked to learn that the Cubs didn’t give two shits that Dempster declined a trade to the Braves.
link: https://twitter.com/CarrieMuskat/status/264079870735290369
@ WaLi:
Dude
GBTS wrote:
Let us know when the fun begins. I’m not going over there for no reason.
@ mb21:
Yeah, but this time he won’t have a no-trade clause, unless the Cubs give him one. I forget THoyer’s track record on that, but I can’t be as generous as Hendry’s was. (Right?)
@ SVB:
I don’t think they’ll be giving out any no trade clauses. As a result, the Cubs will pay more money for players who might otherwise get one. It’s a trade off. A player wants a NTC, he gets less money. I have no idea what the NTC is valued at, but you will pay more for players who are worthy of getting one.
Hendry opted to pay less. I don’t think either approach is wrong. Ideally there would be a combination. I don’t like the idea of giving out NTC to as many as Hendry did, but I also don’t like the idea of never getting the advantage of paying less while giving one out.
If a team refuses to give out a NTC, it could also cost them the opportunity to sign some impact free agents. That NTC will have a different value to different players. For some players it may be so important that he simply won’t sign a longterm contract without one. The Cubs, if they refuse to give them out, will lose players like that.
I don’t want the Cubs to take the other extreme (refusing to give them out).
@ mb21:
Yeah, I agree that a blend in strategies for NTC is the best option. Also limited NTCs, either to a subset of teams, or over the course of the contract. For example, a 7-year contract with a NTC for the first 4 or 5 years.
Considering the Trib’s mandate to spend money and build a team to win now, I think Hendry did a pretty good job. The NTC’s made it possible to get a discount to sign more folks, even if it didn’t bring the Holy Grail.
Re: my suggestion on forum entry point: Duh. the second list of forum links.
TWO HUNDO COMMENTS MOTHERFUCKERS!
http://www.bleachernation.com/2012/11/01/a-complete-transcript-of-tonights-season-ticket-holder-conference-call-with-theo-epstein-and-jed-hoyer/
@ josh:
Didn’t you get the memo about the off season programming strategy?
@ josh:
“…fringe Cubs blog thinks 200 is a lot of comments (dying laughing)…”
/BCB
@ Suburban kid:
“…if they’d talk about relevant stuff instead of cast iron pans, how much a teaspoon is, and board games, they’d have a bigger following…”
@ SVB:
All of that is important information!
@ Rice Cube:
True, which reminds me about a question I was going to ask that is relevant to OV, if not the Cubs.
Awhile ago my wife read something about cutting boards being safer for food if they were some kind of plastic instead of wood. So now we have a bunch of white plastic cutting boards. But they all have a fine collection of grooves from, you know, knives. Actually they have more grooves than the bamboo board we have, and they are uglier in general. So my question is: Is there something we should do to “maintain” the plastic cutting boards? LIke sand them down every so often, or seal the grooves with a blow torch, or ….
(Surely we can get another 50 comments out of this! (dying laughing) But I am asking seriously.)
@ SVB:
That’s strange, I thought the conventional wisdom was the opposite (wood > plastic) specifically because of all those grooves from cutting.
@ SVB:
I use wood but we don’t eat meat so bacteria isn’t really an issue (although wood has some anti microbial properties). Plastic is mandated by the FDA since it is non porous and can be sanitized, but how often do you bleach your cutting board plus bacteria can harbor inside the groove marks in plastic.
I would recommend having a wood board for fruits and vegetables and use your plastic one for meats.
@ WaLi:
That’s what I do. Wood fucking rules. And if you wipe it down with a halved lemon every one in a while that does an okay job of sanitizing it. I agree plastic gets groovy fast. Also, it seems to me to degrade pretty quickly in the dishwasher. I do what you do and I fucking love my wood cutting board. Although I did chop the tip of my thumb off on it. But let’s face it, that would have happened anyway.
Berselius wrote:
Ask my wife. I thought so too. I don’t buy kitchen stuff. Maybe it’s the sanitizing that WaLi mentioned.
@ WaLi:
Hmm. I usually just cut meat on the tray it comes in, or have the butcher pre-cut it. But I don’t cook much meat either.
@ josh:
Well, we don’t have a dishwasher, that’s my job. Just call me Amana.
@ josh:
Your secret is out, josh. Now we know you’re really Koyie Hill.
I’ve been wanting to take one of the plastic boards and hold it over the flames from our gas stove. Just to see. Either that or take my fine grit sander to it….
/Red Greened
@ SVB:
I accidentally left a plastic colander on a live range element a few years ago. Holy shit, did that stink.
@ Berselius:
Oh yes, the “resemblance” is remarkable.
@ Berselius:
I bet. I was thinking more along the lines of when you whip a nylon rope by burning the end with a lighter or a hot-knife.
@ SVB:
Hilariously, I tried to be a switch hitter in high school. With much the same results. But I was never a catcher, because the ball coming at me always terrified me. I was stuck in right field and was terrible at that.
@ Berselius:
My wife once was on a decorating kick and put a candle on the back of our stove. Maybe not a huge deal, but she neglected to consider that it was a gas stove, and the vent in the middle was where the heat from the oven came out. So the next time we baked something, the candle melted and went all down into the stove and oven. Every time we baked from then on it smelled like potpourri.
@ SVB:
To add more to the Wood vs Plastic (I was on my phone last night so it took a while to type shit):
Wood itself isn’t anti-microbial, but what it does is “suck in” the bacteria via a capillary effect. The bacteria is then trapped inside the wood which is not a good environment for it to grow in, and since it cannot grow, it dies.
Wood cutting boards are also “self healing” to a degree, which is why you don’t see too many knife marks on your wood board. It is also softer than plastic so your knives don’t dull as fast.
From the green side of things, wood is a renewable resource, whereas plastic is made from petroleum.
I wouldn’t recommend a glass or steel cutting board either since the hard surface will damage your knives.
/trying to get to 50 cutting board comments
@ Aisle424:
I recall this but it seemed kind of minor at the time. I guess Darth Ricketts altered the deal and told ASU to pray he doesn’t alter it further. If the original deal was just to have ASU pay for a small clubhouse then I wonder what else the Cubs wanted. If I were an outsider looking in I would probably blame the Cubs for this so I think they have to release their own statement to counter the ASU butthurt.
I suppose I should post a picture of a cutting board at some point to stone for talking about baseball on a baseball blog.
Rice Cube wrote:
/Disney’d
@ Rice Cube:
Apparently “atone” corrects “stone”.
Found some nifty cutting board designs. My wife has the cutting board from Costco that is wooden, but has reusable plastic top sheets to prevent meat juices from mixing with veggies etc.
Make use of your corner space:
Easy to dispense your minced items:
These are kind of cool as I guess you can rinse your stuff after they are cut, over the sink.
WaLi wrote:
I never understood the point of these. A steel cutting board is like cutting in your pan, if the pan isn’t teflon, and trying to wash a big sheet of glass in a kitchen seems like a recipe for disaster to me. These boards seem about as useful as steel-toed crocs.
@ SVB:
The nose is completely different.
@ Rice in limbo:
Looks like the last one hangs over the edge of the sink so that the juices drip through the basket into the sink. Or, once you’ve washed your grapes you can put them in the basket and they can drain while you are cutting them up for your Waldorf salad.
@ WaLi:
Not to mention the horrible sound that cutting on stone/glass/steel makes.
I friggin love wood. Oh, the other purpose of the lemon rubbed on it is to eliminate odors. You can get some odors with wood, but it doesn’t bother me too much to have my board smelling garlicky, since I put garlic in about everything.
Could just be the angle. @ josh:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/whitesox/chi-white-sox-trade-williams-jr-20121101,0,2889163.story
(dying laughing)
@ Rice in limbo:
Eh, I don’t go for gimmick boards. Just give me a big, solid hunk of wood, maybe with some rubber feet. I like using a scraper for picking up large quantities of onion and the like.
josh wrote:
@ SVB:
No, I have the big hooked Roman nose and he had more of a puggish Irish nose. Also, look at my Dumbo ears compared to his Human ears.
Perhaps this:
josh wrote:
(and your wife’s sense of smell)
explains this:
josh wrote:
(All from this thread. 200+ comments rocks!)
Josh, can you create a new post? this one is clogging up the tubes on my interwebz
@ GW:
(dying laughing) (dying laughing) (dying laughing)
I love this journalism, the image caption:
@ SVB:
No, it’s pretty much the board game thing.
@ WaLi:
Working on it.
@ josh:
Is it irony or fate that we moved from board games to cutting boards? Following logic, we should next speak of cutting things; fruits, veggies, cheese, class, ourselves, etc.
All right, new comic up: http://www.obstructedview.net/comics/hope-taunts.html