It’s baseball season again, and in downtown Denver that means traffic and bad cell phone connections. We can’t do much about the latter, but be sure to use GameTonight for warning about potential traffic concerns.

GameTonight is a single-serving site that answers “is there a game tonight?” and tracks the major sports teams in 1516 metro areas:

• Atlanta
• Bay Area
• Boston
• Chicago
• Cincinnati
• Dallas
• Denver
• Los Angeles
• Minneapolis
• Oakland
• Philadelphia
• Phoenix
• San Francisco
• San Jose
• Seattle
• Washington DC

If you live in one of these areas, check it out.

2008

7 of 12 teams (bold) failed to make the playoffs the next season.

• Dallas
• Green Bay
• Indianapolis
• Jacksonville
• New England
• NY Giants
• Pittsburgh
• San Diego
• Seattle
• Tampa Bay
• Tennessee
• Washington

2009

6 of 12 teams (bold) failed to make the playoffs the next season.

• Arizona
• Atlanta
• Baltimore
• Carolina
• Indianapolis
• Miami
• Minnesota
• NY Giants
• Philadelphia
• Pittsburgh
• San Diego
• Tennessee

2010

5 of 12 teams (bold) failed to make the playoffs the next season.

• Arizona
• Baltimore
• Cincinnati
• Dallas
• Green Bay
• Indianapolis
• Minnesota
• New England
• New Orleans
• NY Jets
• Philadelphia
• San Diego

2011

Who will miss the playoffs this season (you must pick at least 5)? My guesses are in italics – what are yours?

• Atlanta
• Baltimore
• Chicago
• Green Bay
• Indianapolis
• Kansas City
• New England
• New Orleans
• NY Jets
• Philadelphia
• Pittsburgh
• Seattle

I flipped a coin between Baltimore and Pittsburgh, went with Baltimore because they’ve made it 3 years in a row and that’s really hard to do. If Philly loses Vick for any period of time, they could be on the bubble as well. I’m curious to see how their all-star defense actually works out.

I can’t believe we’re seeing something worse than diamondplate. It’s one thing for the University of Nike Oregon to be a testing ground, but Florida too? Yikes, it’s spreading!

Discuss…

became my first rainout at Camden Yards.

The rain was definitely welcome as it had been a scorcher (97 degrees plus humidity) in Baltimore today. Along with the rain came some impressive wind and lightning.

Camden Yards is an excellent ballpark – definitely recommended. It’s clearly the father of the great new ballparks I’ve been to (Coors Field in Denver, Safeco Field in Seattle and formerly PacBell Park in San Francisco). Our seats were on the third base side letting us see the warehouse to right field and a bit of the Baltimore skyline to center field. The Orioles? Let’s say they’re still rebuilding…

1. Interleague play. Before interleague play the only time the best hitters and pitchers from each league faced each other was in the mid-summer classic and the World Series. Interleague play has cheapened that – it’s a shame.

2. Television. When I was growing up as a baseball fan in the 80s and 90s in Seattle, I would rarely have a chance to see any Nation League games. Maybe I’d catch the Dodgers on another NL West team on the “game of the week”, but it was rare. Cable TV and the internet has changed all that. I probably get more Red Sox and Yankee news that I get about the Rockies (and my office is a few blocks from Coors Field).

And the home field advantage for the World Series is stupid all around, even if it is meaningless.

First post attempt from the BlackBerry app – forgot to post it earlier this week.

Had they won, their close games down the stretch would have been an example of their greatness: they “found a way to win” when they needed to. Now that they’ve lost to the Giants, those same close games show that the “rest of the league figured them out”.

I wonder which will be known as the more spectacular collapse, this or the 2004 Yankees blowing a 3-0 lead in the ALCS.

However, if you take a look at the number of points earned on a per-start basis, you see a very different picture. Tiger jumps way out in front.

Talk about separating yourself from the field…

A Roto-League Standings Visualization

Brilliant!

A great way to see where you are in your league, and particularly what areas you need to make a move in.

Improved Offline Draft Submission

My keeper league does an offline draft every year. In the past, it’s been several hours of agony entering the results for each team. This year, that all changed. They have a slick little auto-complete widget (probably using the same Y! UI library I do in PHP Tag Engine) that made it quick and easy to enter in all of the draft results.

Drag and Drop Roster Management

Now when you make a bunch of position changes, you don’t have to worry about leaving two players in your first base slot, etc.

Thanks for the great improvements, Yahoo!

Now about getting some RSS feeds for league activity…

Albert Pujols scored a perfect 100 on his citizenship test, are you impressed?

Tony Kornheiser:

I am. Brad Lidge served that up to him.

I can’t wait for baseball season.

Between his idiotic babbling and Fox missing half the game to show random close-ups of people’s faces, it’s really hard to enjoy the postseason so far. And that’s a shame.

The comments are open, throw your own log on the fire.

Yankees 2006 payroll: $198,662,180
A’s + Twins + Tigers 2006 Payroll: $208,434,171

No additional commentary needed.

Choo basically spent the entire year in AAA, and had very good numbers, compiling an .893 OPS. He’s had good numbers (especially his OBP) at every stop along the way in the minors, and is only 24 years old. This is exactly the kind of guy a rebuilding team like the Mariners should be promoting and letting play every day.

Had the Mariners brough Choo up and committed to him, they could have used him in left field and as the DH, letting Raul Ibanez see more at bats at DH and first base (letting Sexson DH while Ibanez plays first). The Mariners had just brought in lefty-killer Eduardo Perez to be the right handed half of a DH platoon, so bringing up the lefty swinging Choo accomplishes that platoon nicely – and upgrades our outfield defense at the same time.

Of course, the Mariners didn’t do this.

Sometimes it seems like they don’t trust players out of their own farm system. Scott Podsednik is another good example.

No, instead of bringing Choo up and giving him the at bats he needed to succeed, they dealt him to Cleveland for Ben Broussard. Now, Broussard isn’t a horrible player, but he’s already 29 this is his 4th full season in the major leagues. Broussard is a “known commodity”. He’s going to give you an OPS around .800, with 15-20 home runs. While he’s not a bad player to have, at first base he’s pretty much the definition of a “replacement level” player.

So the Mariners traded a young player who was inexpensive with upside and some speed for a player already in his prime that earns $2.5M/year and has very little upside or speed. This is the very definition of a “bad deal” in my opinion.

Granted it is a small sample size, but since the deal here are the stats for each player with their new teams:

          G   AB  R   H   2B  3B  HR  RBI  BB  K   SB  CS  AVG   OBP   SLG   OPS
Choo      23  76  10  23  7   1   2   17   8   21  1   2   .303  .376  .500  .876
Broussard 24  68  7   14  2   0   5   11   1   16  0   0   .206  .222  .456  .678

This kind of write-up isn’t really my bag. Why haven’t the guys at the USS Mariner been all over this? Do they all feel this way?

For those of you with a competitive and curious nature, we came in 3rd on Monday, 3rd on Tuesday and 1st tonight.