The Windy City

Az I just got back from my first business trip in my life (by "just got back" I mean about a month ago. Sorry guys, I was lazy and I had a free trial of Rail Baron on my office computer. Now that it expired I'll have to find other ways to occupy myself during my minimal down-time). The Company sent me out to the Chicago office for a couple of days of training, so I left New York early on Monday morning and stayed in Chicago through Wednesday evening. I want to devote this space to my reflections on that city.

Now, I've never actually stayed at a hotel in New York because... well... I live here, so I couldn't really compare my hotel experience in Chicago to anything here. I did rather enjoy the king-size bed and wide-screen TV, however. I was a bit curious why they went through the trouble of putting those TVs in the rooms but didn't go all the way and get HD service. And the shower left a bit to be desired, but what can you do; you can't have it all.

Anyway, since I was at the office all day I didn't really have a chance to do much sight-seeing; I basically stayed around downtown Chicago the entire time. One thing I noticed was that compared to New York the streets are very clean. This is something I noticed the first time I was in Chicago four years ago for a wedding, but that experience was a bit different because it was a Saturday night; downtown is essentially EMPTY on Saturday night. I was like "where are all the people? I thought this was a big city..." There was no lack of people this time, which is what made the clean streets all the more impressive.

Another thing I found impressive was the fact that every street downtown is a big street. Midtown Manhattan has a few big streets: every avenue, 34th street, 42nd street, etc. Otherwise, every street is a side street. Downtown Chicago has no side streets; every street is a major thoroughfare.

Now here's where things start to make less sense. There are places in New York that have subway tracks above ground. Those places tend to be not-so-good neighborhoods, e.g. 125th street, south Bronx, etc. But downtown Chicago has the elevated train running right through it. It was very strange to see fancy stores and nice restaurants and bars right next to elevated subway tracks.

Three words: Cops on Segways!

Now, as everyone knows, my favorite movie is The Matrix. The movie was actually filmed in Sydney, Australia, but the city is supposed to be Chicago. Az after work on the second day, I walked around downtown to see a couple of sights. I was very excited to find that my hotel was very close to the intersection of Wabash and Lake Streets. In the movie, Tank tells Neo that there is an exit from the Matrix at Wabash and Lake, so that was pretty cool. I almost walked to the Adams Street bridge, which is where Neo first gets picked up by Trinity and the others, but it was a bit far. Anyway, you bet your Segway I took a picture of the Wabash and Lake street signs.

Now for something completely unrelated to Chicago. It was so long ago that I read this, but it was probably in either The Hardball Times, or Baseball Prospectus, or Joe Posnanski. I read in one of those places that because of how Andy Marte is working out, teams should be wary when they trade for prospects from the Atlanta Braves. Marte, who was once a highly touted prospect in the Braves' system, was traded to the Cleveland Indians, and he has been bounced between the Major and Minor Leagues for the past couple of seasons. Anyway, that innocent statement got me thinking: wouldn't it be possible for a team to create a fake prospect? Think about it. I'm John Schuerholz, fromer Braves general manager, and I want to create some fake value. So I take one of my young players in the low Minor Leagues and I make a deal with him. I tell him "listen, you and I both know that your career is going nowhere, but I have an idea that's going to make you a rich man." I tell him that I'm going to pay a few of our opponents' pitchers to tip their pitches, i.e. make it known to our batter what he's going to throw. That will artificially inflate our man's stats and make him a better prospect. Other franchises will start to look at him and perhaps make us an attractive offer to trade for him. That team might decide to pay him much more than he's worth based on his now inflated Minor League numbers. So he gets rich, we get an actual good player or two, and all that's left is just another failed prospect. Seriously, take a look at Marte's Minor League stats:

In four full Minor League seasons from rookie ball through AAA, Marte OPSed .828, .844, .910, and .878. In those four seasons he walked 41, 67, 60, and 64 times. In his two Minor League seasons with Cleveland, he OPSed .773, and .766, and walked just 34 and 21 times. Wha happen?

Mmmmm, I can just smell my first baseball mystery novel. That thing would sell like hot Segways.

Back in the Swing

Today is my fifth day at my new job, and things are pretty busy, which is why I have had little chance to post. I mentioned in a recent post that things would slow down for a while, but they'll pick up eventually.

Anyway, I have a bunch of things to discuss. I'll start off with the non-baseball-related jazz so as to not alienate the vast majority of you. I'll begin with the story of my first day of vacation two Mondays ago. Some of you have heard this story before, but it needs to be available in print, at least for posterity. So I was driving to the East Side on Sunday morning so I could pick up my mom. I was playing softball against my brother, and his wife and my eight month old nephew were gonna come too, az my mom wanted to join the party. On the way home my brother called to tell me that the baby was sick so he and his mother were going to stay home. Fine. Anyway, while I was driving down the Harlem River Drive, I noticed that something just didn't feel right with the car. I exited and pulled over and inspected my tires. Yep, my front passenger's side tire was definitely not going to make it through the day. Az I drove home very slowly and convinced my mother that she needn't go to the game because the baby wasn't going anyway. And then I even learned that my brother had to stay home with the sick baby too, and Mom definitely didn't need to come watch just me. But now I had to carry all the softball equipment, including the bats, balls, catcher's mask, and my glove, by myself. Combining that with the threat of imminent rain made for a very unpleasant 45 minute walk. Anyway, the weather held up and we won our game, so that was nice. I had the others take the equipment back up to the Heights for me and I went back home. I figured I could run errands and spend the night at home and then bring the car in for service early in the morning. Az I traveled around the city like a normal human being for a day; I walked over to my brother's apartment to borrow a book and then grabbed the 6 at 77th and Lex. I went down to the village for a bit of shopping and then back up to 96th street to rent some DVDs. Then I walked down to 86th to buy some shorts at Modell's and then went home. Now we get to the annoying part. I got up at 7:00 to bring my car to Paragon Acura in Queens. I got there and they asked me if I had an appointment. I told them I never needed an appointment before, so the surly gentleman told me they changed their policy recently. Fine. After a bit of needling I convinced them to take my car. Then the same surly gentleman tried to sell me four new tires. I agreed with him that I needed three new ones, but the fourth had just been replaced about eight months ago. He sheepishly consented and he said my car would be ready by 2:00. Then I took the subway back home and napped for an hour and a half or so. We had a family bris at 11:30, so I went with my grandmother and met my brother there. We stayed for about an hour and then I went to the West Side to meet a friend for lunch. I got a call at 1:30 from Paragon, and they told me that they couldn't find the wheel-lock key for my tires (when I first got the car I splurged a bit. Wheel locks are special bolts that you put on each wheel that prevent them from being stolen. You need a special key to attach to your wrench to be able to remove the bolts). I told them it was either in my trunk with the spare tire or in the pocket between the two front seats. The service guy insisted that he could not find it; he was even looking for it while he was on the phone with me. So I told him I could get there in half an hour; az I headed over and followed the service guy to the back. Needless to say, I found the key in no more than ten seconds; it was right where I said it would be, in the pocket between the front seats. By this time they had taken my car off the rack because they couldn't do anything with it, so they said I had to wait until they put it back up; I should expect to wait until at least 5:30. It was 2:30 and I was stuck on Northern Boulevard. There's NOTHING there except for car dealerships, az I gave them a piece of my mind and took the subway back home again. When I finally came back at half past five they actually expected me to pay full price for the service. I told them in no uncertain terms that I pay top dollar for their respect and competence, and if they want to keep my business they'll treat me like a human being and waive the service fee. So I ended up with three brand new tires for the low low price of $747.46. Anyway, that was quite a poor start to my vacation.

Moving right along, last Wednesday I stayed at work for the first time until 7:00 pm. And you know what? The concept of staying at work late is something I find abhorrent, but in practice it's really quite pleasant. Seriously, the instant the clock strikes five and I no longer have to be there it's as if a load has been lifted from my shoulders and I can work more freely. There are fewer people around, nobody calls me, and I can work at my own pace with no distractions. Now if only I could avoid getting to work at 8:45...
On the fourth of July I went shopping at an outlet mall in Long Island. I had a coupon for Lids, a hat store, so I went in to check out their inventory. The first thing I noticed was that the store was divided up; along the right wall were the white hats and along the opposite wall were the black hats. And I don't mean the color of the hats; I mean the hats along the right wall were for white customers and the others were for the black customers. The white hats are the ones with curvy brims, just one price tag, and they are usually fairly empty with small logos. The black hats start off a size larger, have flat brims, and have very large logos and patterns. I didn't have a problem with it; I just found it noteworthy.
Okay, that's all the non-baseball content for today. Those of you who appreciate my sport or even those of you who think David Wright and Grady Sizemore are cute are invited to read on (all stats are through Sunday, July 6th).

I had read last week that Grady Sizemore, the center fielder for the Cleveland Indians, was leading the American League in home runs. This surprised me because one doesn't really think of Mr. Sizemore as a home run hitter. Indeed, PECOTA projected Sizemore to hit .277/.367/.490, with 25 HR, 90 RBI, and 20 SB. PECOTA nailed the batting average and on-base percentage (Sizemore is actually hitting .269/.372), but were way off on the slugging percentage. Sizemore, to this point, is slugging .541 and is on pace to hit 36 HR and steal 33 bases. When I first saw those stats, I was astonished at how similar they looked to Carlos Beltran's stats from two years ago. In 2006, Beltran hit .276/.353/.525, with 33 HR, 112 RBI, and 23 SB. I always thought he'd be more of a prototypical leadoff hitter with a bit of extra pop, but he's actually turning into Carlos Beltran. Another words, if Cleveland wants to make better use of Sizemore's skill set, they better move him to the middle of the lineup.

Az it looks like the Mets are starting to hit a little bit better, and we're a drop over the halfway point of the season, around where you'd expect the All-Star break to be. So I went ahead and looked at some stats, and what really stuck out for me was David Wright. I know I wrote about him recently, but I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that his numbers look similar to his first half from last year. A quick scan of the stats confirmed my suspicions. Through 86 games last year, Wright hit .292/.373/.506, with 16 HR, 51 RBI, and 18 SB. This year, through 87 games Wright has hit .286/.382/.501, with 16 HR, 66 RBI, and 9 SB. He has exactly the same amount of hits as he did in first half last year (97), one less single (58 to 59), and the same amount of doubles (21). If he can duplicate his second half from last year, then he'll be a top MVP candidate again, and then we'll see who should have been an all-star.