HellaFrank

HellaFrank readers! I am now back from my travels abroad to Argentina, and so much has happened… Just before I left, Major League Baseball implemented instant replay, a sorely needed addition to umpiring and I was very eager to see it in action.

So far things seems to be running smoothly — not being used too much, confirming the right call, and even reversing a call on Friday. Whether instant replay is a success is up for debate. Overall I think the long term success of instant replay will come down to how “instant” the replay actually is.

One of the main knocks on instant replay in football and baseball is that it stalls the game and takes way too long to get a final answer. It’s hard to tell if it will always take 4 minutes, as it did in the recent reversal, or if that’s just growing pains of MLB instant replay, but one would think that in the off-season, the process would be streamlined a bit (why they implemented it mid-season doesn’t make a ton of sense.) The Bleacher Report says it’s taking way too long and is being used for insignificant calls, but is any call in baseball insignificant? That’s the beauty of the game — there’s no clock, no mercy rule… Anything can happen.

The value of instant replay may be debated for a while, and getting it to be instant is key to its success, but once a double off the wall is changed to a walk off home-run in a big game, I think everyone will be believers.

Let me start by saying that this post is going to get very baseball and statistic focused, so if you don’t like that stuff, then… um… read it anyway. Second, despite the colors I chose for the chart below and my love of the Chicago Cubs, this is a (almost) completely objective argument:

CARLOS ZAMBRANO IS ONE OF THE BEST HITTERS IN BASEBALL

(YEAH, I SAID HITTER)

We all know Carlos Zambrano is an awesome pitcher. This year so far he has 12 wins, an ERA of 2.76 and almost 100 strikeouts. But it’s his batting that may even be more impressive. Below is a chart that has Carlos’ current statistics for this season so far (65 at-bats) and the projected stats if he were to get 600 at-bats like an everyday heart-of-the-lineup player that doesn’t get hurt (correct me if I’m wrong, but 600 seemed like a nice round average number, maybe a tiny bit on the high side, but not by much).

WARNING: These numbers will blow your mind…

So, let’s analyze…

Batting Average: .354??? Are you kidding me? Simply amazing, even if it’s just 65 at-bats. I’d imagine luck runs out after about 3 at-bats in the major leagues, so this .354 is legit. It might come down a bit if he were to bat more often, but .354 can handle coming down a little. He would have finished second in batting behind Magglio Ordonez last year. ‘Nuff said.

Slugging%: He’s currently .009% higher than Manny Ramirez. Moving on…

Runs: Ok, this is the weak point but still respectable and moving up in the batting order might help.

Hits: Last year Ichiro Suzuki lead the league with 238 hits. Behind him were Magglio Ordonez and Matt Holliday with 216. Carlos Zambrano would have been tied for 4th in all of Major League Baseball.

Home Runs: 18 home runs in the “post-steroid” era? I’ll take it. Speaking of steroids, last year he would have tied Miguel Tejada.

RBI: 92 runs batted in last year would have had him tied for 49th in the Majors. Not bad, but if you consider that all his at-bats are in the 9th spot, this number would definitely go up if he batted elsewhere.

Strikeouts: I put this in because he does strike out a lot, but no more than some other sluggers like Adam Dunn or Ryan Howard.

So there you have it folks, one of the best hitters in all of Major League Baseball.

World Series. Game 7. Two outs. 9th inning. Runner on 2nd. Tie game. Pull Big Z or let him hit? Put on a helmet Carlos and bring that World Series trophy back to Chicago…

CC Sabathia, the former dominant starting pitcher for the Cleveland Indians (and born and raised in the Bay Area) was recently traded to the Milwaukee Brewers and took out a full page ad in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on Wednesday thanking the city for 10 great years.

Shaquille O’Neal was traded to the Miami heat from the Los Angeles Lakers in 2004 and soon after his departure, took out a full page ad in the LA Times to thank the fans and the city (probably not Kobe though).

So if this becomes a trend, if athletes that are traded, or retire, start taking out full page print ads in the local newspapers, could this somehow save the reeling print industry? Maybe it’s time for ad sales to shift their efforts to something that the economy has very little effect on, apparently — professional athlete’s salaries.

Math is not my strong suit, but if we take CC’s $11,000,000 salary this year and and assume he starts about 30 games and throws around 100 pitches per game, he only had to throw 3.5 pitches to pay for the $12,870 ad he bought. Yeah, he didn’t even have to actually fully-throw that fourth pitch…

Now that I live in New York, I am much more exposed to the fiasco that is the New York Yankees on a regular basis and it has become very clear that Hank Steinbrenner is not smart or tactful.

The Yankees stink right now, they’ve had some key injuries this year and now star pitcher Chien Ming Wang is out for ten weeks because he hurt himself running the bases, something AL pitchers rarely do, during interleague play. So what does Hank Steinbrenner do? He blames interleague play, the national league, and the fact that major league baseball still uses a rule “from the 1800s.” As told to the Associated Press:

“My only message is simple. The National League needs to join the 21st century,” Steinbrenner said in Tampa, Fla. “They need to grow up and join the 21st century.

“Am I (mad) about it? Yes,” Steinbrenner added. “I’ve got my pitchers running the bases, and one of them gets hurt. He’s going to be out. I don’t like that, and it’s about time they address it. That was a rule from the 1800s.”

Wang is an elite professional athlete, a baseball player, and if he’s capable of making contact with a 90 mile per hour fastball (and throwing a ball that fast), then I hope he knows how to run correctly — apparently not. I see teams of 40-year-old obese smokers in Central Park playing softball on a weekly basis that can run the bases better than that.

And what’s this stuff about the 1800s? As far as I know, the DH wasn’t instituted until 1973. Maybe the rule was created in the 1800s, but then again, so was that rule about three strikes and you’re out. Maybe we should get rid of that one too Hank, then you’re players may actually have a chance to get a hit every now and then?

Alright, I’m done… HellaFrank promises to be in a better mood next time!

Steve Jobs is kind of a modern day Pablo Escobar for technology. Employing a huge workforce to work undercover on secretive projects, then smuggle the product to be sold to serious addicts at high prices. Everyone knows he’s doing it but no one can infiltrate or take him down.

But, despite all of this secrecy, these days we pretty much know the big announcements we’re going to hear at Steve Jobs’ keynotes before they hapen. It’s always nice to hear the confirmations, but it’s the little things, the unexpected news, that gets me excited.

This time around, for me, it wasn’t even a product from Apple, but from MLB.com who historically likes to tempt baseball fans with awesome sounding products that end up sucking because of poor technology (i.e. Windows Media Player) or lack of ridiculous amounts of bandwidth.

But at the Apple keynote, they announced MLB At Bat, an iPhone application that not only lets you track baseball games live with detailed updates, but delivers video to your iPhone of the game’s highlights minutes after they happen.

What did you say? Derrek Lee just went yard in the bottom of the ninth to beat the Cardinals? Let’s have a look-see.

And even though MLB.com does not have a great history with providing good video, this year’s overhaul of Gameday (see my earlier post) gives me hope that this will actually work. Dan Frommer at Silicon Alley Insider is right-on when he says that video on mobile phones needs to be delivers in “snacks” not huge meals. Let’s be honest, not many people want to watch full feature programming on a tiny screen, especially something as slow as baseball. So MLB At Bat is definitely taking the right approach.

So yes, thank you Steve for the new and improved iPhone, I’ll be purchasing one soon, but thank you even more MLB.com for ensuring I will never miss a Cubs highlight on this year’s epic road to the World Series.

MLB.com, you have officially dealt a blow to my productivity this baseball season, and I thank you for that.

For those of you not familiar with Gameday, it’s a play-by-play and pitch-by-pitch interface to follow baseball games. Included are a bunch of different stats and information about the game, and it’s always been my go-to place for game updates. My colleague and former sports reporter Corey Lewis tells me that the plays and pitches are updated manually by a person at every major league baseball game… I thought there would be robots or monkeys involved, but I guess not.

This year, Gameday received a huge overhaul and was improved drastically over last year. First, it’s in your main browser window and doesn’t require the opening of a separate new applet… Good start. Second, and my favorite, is the addition of video to the Gameday interface for the highlights — home runs, great defensive plays, etc. About 20-30 minutes after the play happened, a little play-button shows up next to the item in the play-by-play, you click it and it immediately shows you the highlight video without leaving Gameday. Pretty sweet.

Let’s just say if you don’t see too many play-buttons for your team, they’re probably not doing too well.

On the flip side, I also use Yahoo’s StatTracker to track — here goes — live fantasy baseball stats for my Yahoo league which includes a similar service to Gameday. We PAY for this service. For the past three years I’ve played fantasy baseball, not one change has been made to this boring and slow interface.

Seems to be a bit of a trend with Yahoo. I hear about new services they launch and companies they buy, but the never seem to innovate on their existing offerings or generate much mainstream usership for many of them. Aside from Yahoo Mail, Fantasy sports and Flickr, I can’t say there are a ton of Yahoo services that I use. Getting bought by Microsoft should help solve that lack of forward thinking and innovation…. Errr, maybe not.