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Startup Grip Security secures seed founding round for comprehensive enterprise SaaS security solution
by Mark Cox • April 20, 2021
Grip's technology lets organizations discover and secure all SaaS applications, from any device and any location, with more precision than CASBs, and covering far more applications than providers who rely on deep API integrations.
Grip Security Co-founders, l. to r.: Idan Fast (CTO), Lior Yaari (CEO), Alon Shenkler (VP R&D).
Israeli-based startup Grip Security, which has developed a SaaS security solution that is ultimately intended to disrupt and replace older technologies like CASBs, has announced a $6 million seed funding round. The round was led by YL Ventures with participation from CrowdStrike CEO and co-founder, George Kurtz and other cybersecurity executives. They include: Andy Ellis, former CSO of Akamai; Michael Sutton, former CISO of Zscaler; Sounil Yu, former Chief Security Scientist at Bank of America; Omkhar Arasaratnam, former executive director, Data Protection Engineering at JPMorgan Chase; Sameer Sait, CISO at Amazon (Whole Foods); and Adi Sharabani, former SVP & GM, Endpoint Solutions at Symantec.
While there is an enormous variety of SaaS security solutions already on the market, the fundamental premise behind Grip's existence is that they all have certain deficiencies which have become more apparent in the explosion in the number of SaaS applications used today by enterprises.
"There are a lot of SaaS security companies because it's a big problem," said Lior Yaari, Grip Security's CEO. "The first generation of SaaS security companies, in around 2011-2014, used CASBs. Those CASBs have existed for years and it's clear they do not cover all issues."
Other companies provide very deep API integrations to address SaaS security issues, and while these work well, Yaari said that the issue here is that the large increase in the number of SaaS applications being used leaves many applications uncovered.
"SaaS security which uses API integrations limits the number of applications that can be covered," he said. "The velocity with which SaaS is being introduced has risen greatly, with 300 plus applications being used by many large enterprises. We are a small startup and in after three months since we were founded, we use 30 applications."
Grip's approach discovers nearly 100% of enterprise SaaS applications, and then governs, monitors and secures employee access and usage, and prevents data loss.
"It is a layered solution that offers visibility, monitoring and protection," Yaari said. "We first provide visibility to the entire SaaS portfolio, with a very simple integration that takes 10 minutes without installing anything on corporate networks. By following footprints, we can discover the portfolio and the users, and can then provide a SaaS-centric and user-centric risk assessment and provide protection and monitoring."
Yaari also stressed that the protection and monitoring capabilities are enforced no matter what device is used by a user or what corporate network is used.
"This is a major change, and something that many existing solutions fail to do with access to SaaS," he indicated. "Many connections we would want to monitor do not originate from the office. Our technology lets us prevent and secure access to SaaS applications when accessing SaaS, no matter where they do it from."
Out of the gate, the focus is on the enterprise, even though Yaari said they expect incoming demand from some smaller organizations, at the high end of the SMB and low end of the midmarket.
"We are targeting the enterprise market, although SaaS security is a problem for every organization," he noted. "Larger companies will have more problems though, and we aim to solve those companies' problems. We also expect to attract interest from smaller companies with 500-700 employees."
Yaari also acknowledged that whether Grip can best be seen as a rip and replace alternative to other SaaS security products, or whether it is complementary to them, is a complex one.
"It depends on the vertical," he said. "As SaaS is closely tied to identity, we are complementary to other products around identity. We extend identity to the entire portfolio automatically, to extend the value of products like Okta. Currently, Grip is designed to complement CASBs, as well as companies like BetterCloud that solve SaaS problems with deep API integrations. In the long run, however, we want to disrupt the market. and for that you need to rip and replace the CASB solutions."
Grip is still in the direct proof-of-concept selling stage, but channel is in their plans in the near-term.
"We have thought about channel partners as a way for us to expand our reach once we reach product readiness where we don't have to deploy manually, and that's somewhere we expect to be a few months from now," he said. "Around the same time, we expect to have integrations completed with identity vendors like Okta and others. Identity-focused MSPs, integrators and distributors we see as potential partners, because it makes a difference being able to import 200 applications into an identity platform with us instead of 30 with APIs."
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A missionary doctor
Fr. Lorenzo Carraro | Comboni Missionary
Inspired by his Christian faith, Francis Canova (1908-1998) founded in 1950 the NGO "Doctors with Africa," the largest Italian enterprise in favor of the health condition of the people of that continent, responsible for sending to Africa more than 1,400 voluntary doctors and other health workers.
The hall of the Saint Cajetan Cultural Center at Padua, Italy, was packed with people, on November 11, 2010, on the occasion of the visit of the President of the Republic of Italy, Giorgio Napolitano, for the 60th anniversary of the foundation of "Doctors with Africa CUAMM." The President described the work of "Doctors with Africa CUAMM" as a patrimony of six decades of generosity and dedication.
The most solemn moment took place at Padua University Hall with the conferring of the honoris causa degree in human rights to the priest who, for many decades, embodied the extraordinary performance of the CUAMM: Msgr. Luigi Mazzucato, director of the organization from 1955 to 2008. Present in spirit was the founder, Dr. Francesco Canova, whom the Lord called to himself in 1998 at the ripe age of 90.
The coming of the highest Italian authority was a public acknowledgment that rewarded the "Doctors with Africa CUAMM," an organization that time has confirmed and sealed as a true Gospel initiative. The Gospel is carved in the heart of "Doctors with Africa CUAMM" in its very motto: Euntes, curate infirmos (Go, and cure the sick) from Matthew 10:7-8, a clear and well-defined mandate, without uncertainty. The motto was chosen by Dr. Canova himself at the very beginning.
The origin of a dream
Francis Canova was born at Schio, Northern Italy, in 1908 to a working class family. His father died when Francis was only 9. The widow, Dalila, with the two orphans, experienced extreme poverty until she was hired as house helper by the owners of the factory who also paid for the education of her two children.
Francis, on his turn, got a scholarship and, as a university student, contributed to his upkeep by working. In 1933, he completed his degree as a medical doctor and immediately looked around to see if he could find service abroad, among the poor.
During his years at the university, he was one of the founders of a charity group named after Saint Vincent de Paul which was caring for poor families at Portello, the most destitute section of the city of Padua. It was in the course of this activity that he met the woman who was destined to become his wife: Regina Dal Zio, whom he called Reginetta (my little queen). She soon joined him in his dream to be a missionary doctor by expressing her will to follow him in the missions once she became his wife.
The opportunity of making the dream come true occurred when an "Italian" hospital was planned in Jordan with the aim of offering medical care to the Bedouins who were the most neglected population of the Middle East. In 1935, Francis volunteered and soon became the medical superintendent in charge of the hospital at El-Kerak.
At the beginning of the year, he left for Jordan, promising Reginetta that he will soon be back to marry her and then he will bring her with him to Jordan. He was soon in charge of the hospital and kept the position for five years until World War II broke out and he found himself a prisoner of the British Government, confined forcibly into a camp until the end of the war.
A patrimony of experience
The work in the hospital soon prospered under his dedicated leadership. The Bedouins saw in him not only the medical doctor but also a kind of witch-doctor capable of curing all diseases and even to guess the right diagnosis without asking the patient. He just loved them and cared for them with all the dedication and commitment he was capable of.
In 1936, he came to Italy to marry Reginetta and, together, they went back to Jordan and to the Bedouins, without even taking time for a proper honeymoon. Dalila, his mother, accompanied them. The years he spent with his wife in the mission, from 1936 to 1939, were the happiest for Francis and his wife. They shared the same humanitarian ideal and had an ardent faith.
They enjoyed being in the Holy Land and visited the Holy Sepulcher and Bethlehem together. Reginetta was an amateur archeologist, having a degree in classic literature and, while there, studied ancient inscriptions and cured some publications on the field. She went back to Italy for the birth of their first daughter, Maria Giordana.
Very soon, Italy, led by the dictator Mussolini, entered into World War II and Francis, being an Italian citizen, was taken prisoner by the British and spent the war years in different camps, always exercising his profession. After the war, he could not go back to his hospital which was still occupied by the British Army and, therefore, he succeeded to work as a doctor in Jerusalem, in the hospital of the Franciscans, the guardians of the Holy Land. In 1947, he returned to Italy for good and exercised his profession in different hospitals and was called to teach Tropical Medicine at Padua State University.
The twelve years in the Middle East constituted for Francis a kind of patrimony from which he would get ideas and images during his whole future professional life and special mission as founder of the NGO "Doctors with Africa." He wrote: "I have always experienced in myself the duty of exercising the medical profession. Mine has not been a choice but rather a gut urge…My place had to be in those distant lands, among those people."
In 1949, his second daughter, Anna, was born, and a new bishop was installed at Padua, a son of Francis of Assisi, Msgr. Jerome Bortignon. It is from the collaboration of Dr. Francis Canova and his new bishop that Francis' dream became a reality.
Champion in personal relationships
"Doctors with Africa CUAMM" was initiated on December 3, 1950 at Padua, in Northern Italy. The first idea was to gather young people who wanted to be missionary doctors and host them during their university studies and train them. The acronym stands for University College for Aspirant Missionary Medical Doctors. The first doctor to obtain his degree was a Nigerian young man by the name of Simon in 1964.
Dr. Canova, after his meaningful experience as a doctor in Palestine and Jordan, had even envisaged a University of Missionary Medicine. He had a prevailing interest for the human formation of the candidates more than fostering development in the field. This brought him in partial opposition with the priest director and this explained the fact that he never went to Africa but he knew how to accept changes and had a very detailed knowledge of the people and of the projects. He died at 90 in 1998.
Until a few days before his death, he used to ride his bicycle to attend evening Mass at the College. He had a great capacity for personal relationships: at Easter and Christmas, he used to send to the volunteers in the field gifts of books that he had painstakingly chosen for them in the bookshops. This was in addition to an extraordinary voluminous correspondence that he was keeping with them even in the last years of his life.
A worldwide dreamer
Francis Canova was a dreamer of world dimension. He has been the pioneer of the international voluntary service which later became widespread in the last decades of the 2oth century. But also in the life of the Church, he has pioneered the participation of the laity, both single Christians and married couples, to the mission ad gentes.
Of great present day importance is his image as citizen of the world, sharer of the Gospel message, which made him look at every country, with its problems and riches, as his own country. An all-round personality, Francis Canova, in addition to his professional passion for curing the sick and pioneering in voluntary service, was also a singer of the feminine beauty which he experienced in the satisfying matrimonial relationship with his beloved Reginetta.
Canova was a natural-born writer: he liked brevity and a sententious way of expression, he was attracted by paradoxes. He declared that he felt himself to be more of physician than a writer but, in fact, besides the articles about his specialization ( medical and clinical pathology), he published 33 volumes of different sizes, popularizing a medicine befitting different stages in life and Christian pedagogy.
Finally, we have to recognize the spontaneity by which Dr. Francis was a promoter of the women voluntary service, something which was still unknown in Italy but which soon blossomed not only in Italy but everywhere.
Saint John XXIII and Vatican II
Doctor Francis had his own idea, both Christian and humanitarian, of the medical profession and this idea came to full maturity during the time of Saint John XXIII and Vatican II. He saw the medical profession as an associate of Christianity and considered it to be a lucky profession and a blessing for a Christian, as well as for a committed man or woman.
He used to say that the life of a missionary doctor is beautiful even from a simply human point of view. Dr. Francis Canova is perhaps the most convincing figure of a Christian doctor whom Italy had in the 20th century. He saw in Jesus, who was moving about Galilee, Judea and Samaria, healing people, the most perfect example of a doctor and he was proud to have highlighted this aspect of Christ's person.
For Francis, the skill of a doctor was, first of all, that of consoling. This is what he confided to his daughter Giordana. He embodied the type of physician who aims at curing the sick person, not only the sickness. Essential to this purpose was the personal relationship of the doctor with the patient. He was convinced that the soothing conversation of the doctor with his patients was the best way of helping them to overcome feelings of dissatisfaction and restlessness which often afflict them even after a successful therapy.
The root of a great tree
The first NGO specialized in the health sector to be recognized in Italy, "Doctors with Africa CUAMM" is now the biggest Italian health organization for the promotion and protection of the health of the African populations. It implements long-term interventions, even in areas which are war-torn or facing a humanitarian crisis. It operates at all levels of the health system, from mobile clinics to universities, offering high quality services accessible to all. To this aim it commits itself, in Italy and in Africa, to the formation of the human resources dedicated to scientific research and implementation of health cooperation. It campaigns for the affirmation of the basic human right to health for all, even the most marginalized groups, promoting the values of solidarity, cooperation between peoples, justice and peace in the institutions and in the public opinion at large.
During these 66 years of existence, the organization had sent more than 1,200 doctors to Sub-Sahara Africa as well as 240 volunteers: nurses, technicians, etc…270 medical students, from 35 countries of the developing world, were hosted during their university studies. At present, the CUAMM operates in Angola, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda, in 16 hospitals started or run by the organization, employing, every given year, around 80 people, not only medical doctors but also nurses, physiotherapists and administrators.
The "Doctors with Africa CUAMM" have produced some heroes who have given their lives in the field of duty: the most prominent is Doctor Maria Bonino, struck to death by Marbourg fever in Angola in 2005 while assisting the children threatened by the same disease. This is the huge tree that has developed from the root of Dr. Francis Canova's dream.
He was a lawyer and a civil servant, she a housewife, a writer and a mystic. They are the first couple to be declared blessed, a shining example of the holiness "next door" of which Pope Francis…
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Pedro Calungsod (1654-1672) was a young Filipino Christian and catechist who died a martyr in Guam in the course of his mission, together with the Jesuit priest he had followed, Fr. Diego Luis de San…
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood sets sights on El-Ganzouri govt
Most powerful bloc in Egypt's first post-Mubarak parliament moves to withdraw confidence from SCAF-appointed El-Ganzouri govt, despite assertions by some that it lacks authority to do so
Ahmed Eleiba , Thursday 8 Mar 2012
Ganzouri and Katatni
Abul-Naga: Parliament lacks authority to dissolve El-Ganzouri govt
Leading Brotherhood MP wants to dissolve El-Ganzouri govt
El-Ganzouri govt to stay put until SCAF cedes power: Military source
PM El-Ganzouri addresses Egypt parliamentarians
According to parliamentary sources, a campaign aimed at withdrawing confidence from the incumbent government of Egyptian Prime Minister Kamal El-Ganzouri can be expected next week. The same sources add that various Egyptian political forces are coordinating their positions in hopes of sinking the government via parliamentary channels.
El-Ganzouri, the same sources note, utterly failed to win the confidence of Egyptian political parties in his last statement before parliament two weeks ago.
A more important question now, however, is what will happen next – especially since the Muslim Brotherhood last month declared its readiness to form a majority government. The group's plan has been foiled, however, by last year's constitutional declaration, which stated that Egypt has a presidential, not parliamentary, system – meaning that the parliamentary majority cannot form a government.
"We have a government without a majority and a majority without a government," asserted Mohamed El-Beltagi, secretary-general of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP).
Egyptian Social Democratic Party MP Emad Gad told Ahram Online that Egypt's Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) was expected to amend the constitution on this issue so as to allow the parliamentary majority to form a government.
"This is important for the Brotherhood, which is keen to draw up a government – and I think this will happen," said Gad. "Coordination between the Brotherhood and the SCAF is obvious on all matters, even the issue of foreign NGO funding. There was at least some coordination between the two on how to respond to Washington in the event that the latter blocked or reduced financial assistance to Egypt."
Gad went on to note that Essam El-Erian, FJP MP and chairman of parliament's foreign affairs committee, had "linked the issue of US assistance to the Camp David peace treaty" with Israel.
Gad's statements correspond to leaks by informed sources that El-Erian had received a telephone call from SCAF number-two Sami Anan, who had requested a meeting while the foreign affairs committee had been discussing the issue. Sources revealed this, however, before several indicted US nationals – accused of illegally operating in Egypt – departed the country last week, to the anger of political forces across the board.
A Brotherhood source confirmed that there had been coordination with the SCAF up until then, but added that neither the Brotherhood nor the FJP had had anything to do with what happened afterwards. The source further revealed that there had been numerous contacts between the SCAF and Brotherhood leaders aimed at coordinating their positions against unregistered foreign NGOs operating in the country.
On Wednesday, the Brotherhood's Ahmed Fahmi, speaker of the Shura Council (the upper, consultative house of Egypt's parliament), told the FJP's newspaper that the El-Ganzouri government's performance was "not commensurate with the aspirations of the Egyptian people," going on to describe it as "weak and shaky."
"Egypt has been plagued by numerous problems with this government at the helm," Fahmi added, calling on El-Ganzouri's cabinet to resign in order to make way for "a strong, stable government."
In statements to Ahram Online, Brotherhood spokesman Mahmoud Ghozlan put it this way: "If the SCAF wanted to amend the constitution to allow the parliamentary majority to form a government, it would. The issue is in its hands."
Ghozlan added that the incumbent government's failures demanded the formation of a new one, despite the Brotherhood's initial support for El-Ganzouri's cabinet. "We initially accepted this government as a replacement for the [previous] cabinet of Essam Sharaf, believing that El-Ganzouri had considerable experience, especially given that the most pressing issues were security and the economy," Ghozlan said.
"Today, however, we realise that the incumbent government is no different from its predecessor. No one was arrested for the massacres at Maspero, Mohamed Mahmoud Street and Qasr Al-Aini under the Sharaf government, which insisted on blaming all the problems on a 'third party'," Ghozlan said. "We initially welcomed the El-Ganzouri government because security is considered a red line. We had thought the security situation would be brought under control [under El-Ganzouri], but it has only got worse. This is unacceptable."
Ghozlan pointed to the 1 February Port Said football tragedy and last week's flight from the country of indicted US nationals – the latter of which he described as a "violation of Egypt's sovereignty" – as examples of the current government's failures.
Ghozlan also pointed to "key disputes" with the current government over economic issues.
"El-Ganzouri insists on taking a loan from the World Bank, despite serious reservations about the debt this will incur to Egypt and the large sums that will be consequently deducted from the public's income," he said. "We believe that accepting this loan is unnecessary."
"We've also asked the government to disclose budgets, especially that of the presidency – but it hasn't," he added. "There's also an enormous budget for the police apparatus, close to LE20 billion – why is this so high?"
Ghozlan went on to vehemently deny recent suggestions by US Senator John McCain that the Brotherhood had played a role in last week's release of indicted foreign NGO workers by Egyptian authorities.
"McCain's statements to the US media about this issue were flagrant lies," he said. "We don't have a minister in the cabinet to intervene and our position on the matter has been made abundantly clear in parliament."
Ghozlan added that he had supported International Cooperation Minister Fayza Aboul-Naga at the outset of Egypt's post-revolution phase since she had expressed a "firm position" on the issue of foreign-funded civil-society organisations. But after the departure last week of the indicted foreign nationals from the country, he said, "modesty and dignity require El-Ganzouri and Aboul-Naga to resign."
Ghozlan concluded by holding the SCAF "responsible for all of Egypt's post-revolution misfortunes, including the issue of foreign funding."
He added: "Even if the El-Ganzouri government stays in power and the constitution isn't amended, there will be no choice but to wait until the current transitional phase is over – but this will come at the expense of the people and their elected representatives."
Aboul-Naga, for her part, has stated that Egypt's parliament is not legally entitled to withdraw confidence from the current interim government. Nor, she has said, was it entitled to appoint a new government to take its place, according to the constitutional declaration issued last year by the SCAF.
"Those calling for the dismissal of the current government should read the constitutional declaration before making such claims," the minister told a press conference on Wednesday.
FJP MP Ahmed Abu Baraka, however, told Ahram Online that the constitutional declaration – issued shortly after Mubarak's ouster – included a number of mechanisms by which confidence in the government might be revoked, including the option of not approving the state budget.
According to Abu Baraka, the Brotherhood aims to paralyse El-Ganzouri's government – by refusing to endorse any of its decisions, including the state budget – until it is forced to resign. "When appointing a new government, the SCAF will then have to bear in mind which political group controls the largest bloc in parliament – and that is the Brotherhood," he said.
Abu Baraka stressed, however, that the group would not form a government composed exclusively of FJP members, but would rather forge partnerships with other political parties as well.
Egyptian Prime Minister
Mohamed El-Beltagi
Freedom and Justice Party
FJP
SCAF
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Archive for the 'chris carter' tag
Fantasy Baseball 2015: my team
If Kershaw goes down, my fantasy season is in trouble. Photo via wiki.
Standard disclaimer; I do this post every year. If you don't play fantasy, you probably won't care about the 3,000 words contained herein.
Because of the sheer number of players discussed, i'll eschew my normal bolding of all names except those picked for my team so this post is more readable.
My annual Fantasy Baseball draft was held this week. Here's a re-cap of my team and my drafting strategy.
I had the 4th pick in a 12-team snake draft. 6×6 head-to-head league (the extra categories are OPS on the hitting side and Losses on the pitching side). I obtained the 4th pick through a new draft order selection wrinkle introduced this year; instead of our typical double blind method of picking the order, we each submitted our choice of which pick we wanted. I selected the 4th pick, thinking that Kershaw would be available here (or if he wasn't, then i'd get one of the top 3 hitters who had slipped). I won a coin-toss and kept the 4th pick.
Strategy: I wanted to be strong in Starting Pitching. I wanted at least two top-notch closers. I did not want to over-book OF positions early. I would wait for 1B and the middle infield positions.
At the end of the day, here was my team, in order of round selected:
Clayton Kershaw, LAD
Stephen Strasburg, Wsh
Michael Brantley, Cle
Corey Dickerson, Col
Aroldis Chapman, Cin
Matt Harvey, NYM
Christian Yelich, Mia
Brian Dozier, Min
Chris Carter, Hou
Joaquin Benoit, SD
Evan Gattis, Hou
Michael Wacha, StL
Santiago Casilla, SF
Phil Hughes, Min
Lucas Duda, NYM
Shelby Miller, Atl * (see below)
Taijuan Walker, Sea
Jhonny Peralta, StL
Adam LaRoche, CWS
Nick Castellanos, Det
Brandon McCarthy, LAD
Round by Round thinking
(the notation will be Xth overall pick in our draft, and then the Yahoo o-rank and 2014 rank, and then blended average ADP of the guy selected. the Yahoo "o-rank" is Yahoo's 2015 projected ranking).
Round 1 (4th overall pick, O-rank of #5, 2014 rank of #1, Blended ADP of #3) I had the 4th pick; the first three picks were Trout, Stanton, McCutchen. So my choice was either Kershaw or Goldschmidt? I had targeted Kershaw by asking for the 4th pick, there's lots of 1b depth, so going going with my SP. I targeted Kershaw simply because, despite his ADP and o-ranks, he was the #1 fantasy player last year despite missing a month of starts, and I see no reason why he shouldn't pick right back up. I feel like i'm getting great value at #4 by grabbing the #1 overall player. The pick: Clayton Kershaw. I'll say this: I fully believe that Max Scherzer will have a massive year and may very well be a better fantasy player than Kershaw in 2015 … but at the #4 pick, the odds of getting Scherzer to return to me were beyond nil. I could have gambled on a lower pick in the draft and taken Scherzer later (his blended ADP rank is #16), but there are a couple of "unique" teams in the league who draft home-town heavy. Sure enough, Scherzer went like 3 picks later, a pretty big overdraft.
Round 2 (21st, 22nd, 48th in 2014, 23rd ADP): I really wanted Josh Donaldson here, and he went the pick before me. Which left me with a problem. Beltre, Freeman, Brantley all avail… don't like any of them at this spot. Rendon was best ADP but as we all know he's looking more and more like he's missing half the season. After Rendon in ADP was Bumgarner and Sale; don't really like either of those guys at this spot. To heck with it: I picked Stephen Strasburg. I really, really didn't want to have two SPs at this point, and I promise I was not emulating some sort of pitcher heavy strategy. If it hadn't been for Rendon's injury, I would have taken him there and been very happy. From a value perspective, outside of Straburg's somewhat disappointing 2014 rank this pick was right in line with Yahoo and ADP.
Round 3 (28th, 20th, 6th in 2014, 26th ADP) I wanted Harper here, badly. Literally, as I was thinking "Harper" he got picked, 2 spots before me. My choices then were the likes of Freeman, Posey, Price, Brantley. I don't like Freddie Freeman this year; who would bother to pitch to him? Posey is always hurt, and I just couldn't take a 3rd pitcher in a row. So I took Michael Brantley. Ironically, Brantley was under consideration for my 2nd round pick and was still available 7 picks later. This is always a good sign. Why did he drop to 26th in ADP despite being #6 in Yahoo last year? Maybe it was a career, unrepeatable year, but he's not going to bottom out. 20/20 guy, great average, great OPS and plays in a hitter's park. I think this could be a great pick.
Round 4: (45th, 40th, 39th in 2014, 42nd in ADP) Needing more hitters, I was looking basically at Dickerson and Marte here. ADP has Lester, Reyes; I don't trust Lester going to the bandbox in Wrigley, and I can't stand Reyes in fantasy (always, always hurt). So I grabbed Corey Dickerson. Dickerson had great power numbers in the minors, and had 24 homers in just 436 ABs last year. Plays in Colorado, his slash line is great. I feel like he's going to be a top 25 fantasy producer in 2015.
Round 5 (52nd overall pick, 55th ranked, 93rd in 2014, 46th in ADP): a strategy play; last year I got my two main closers in the 5th and 6th rounds and rode them all year. Knowing that i'd not be picking again for 17 picks … and after my hopeful "sleeper" pick Pujols got nabbed right after my 4th round pick, I looked at the board, didn't like what I saw (Longoria, v-Mart, Hamels, Car-Go; injury, injury, Phillies and injury concern) and grabbed the best closer out there. Aroldis Chapman. Yes Kimbrel might be "better," but Kimbrel is pitching for a team that will struggle to 65 wins. He's just not going to get the save opportunities that Chapman will. Chapman's 2014 rank took a tumble with his injury; he should continue his ridiculous K/9 rate and get plenty of saves for Cincinnati.
Round 6: (69th overall pick, 44th ranked, did not play in 2014, 57th ADP). For the entirety of the 6th round, I was hoping for Harvey. He lasted, he lasted … and I got him at 69th overall pick. Matt Harvey. Perhaps an overdraft based on who he is and what he's coming back from. However, at the time of this pick he was top available player on my ADP list. Debate in the room ensued; is he on an innings limit? Is he ready to come back? My answers are this: Harvey, when healthy, was a ridiculous combination of awesome. Here's some 2013 stats: in just 26 starts he racked up 6.5 wins on Fangraphs. His FIP and xFIP numbers showed that he was due for *improvement*. And perhaps the most amazing stat to me: he was 3rd in the league in K/BB ratio despite leading the league in fastball velocity (for starters). In other words, he threw the hardest *and* had nearly the best control in the league. Sign me up. I think I may have just gotten a top-5 starting pitcher at the end of the 6th round.
Round 7 (76th overall pick, 77th ranked, 33rd in 2014, 60th ADP). Ok, at this point I'm in somewhat of a roster pickle. I have four pitchers and just two batters and face a big gap before picking again. I targeted best hitters available: I wanted someone like Fielder, Davis (gone, gone). I targeted Kyle Seager: he went 2 before me. So I looked at the 2B available (there were a ton at this stage on the board) and Brian Dozier was the pick. 20/20 guy, average not great, but 33rd ranked in 2014 so undervalued here. I got him basically a round later than he should have gone by ADP. Good value, and I have a decent 2B (which I struggled with last year).
Round 8: (93rd pick, 72nd ranked, 76th in 2014, 80 ADP). Another big gap in the drafting; lots of guys off the board. Is it too early for Kris Bryant? I really, really want Bryant. But … he went 3 picks before me. d*mn. I was left with very little to choose from; ended up taking Christian Yelich. Not the sexiest pick; he was good for me last year. Lots of steals, not a ton of power.
Round 9: (100th pick, 108th ranked, 94th in 2014, 118th ADP). Now what? another reliever? Too early for a reliever. There were good starters on the board (like Arrieta and Teheran). But I need bats now. This is the problem with drafting too many starters early; there's a ton of value these days later on (as we'll see with some of my later picks). So I grabbed best hitter on ESPN's board and the best position player that didn't duplicate what I already had (OFs): went with Chris Carter. Huge bat; 37 homers last year. Awful average. How does he only score 68 runs when 37 of them were his own homers? You have to think some of these numbers will improve as Houston improves. He should have more RBIs with better hitters getting on base ahead of him.
Round 10: (117th overall, 145 o-rank, 141st in 2014, 164 ADP). In the 17 picks after I thought about doing a closer … there was a huge run on them. Literally 8 of the 17 picks between my 9th and 10th round were closers. I was hoping that some one like Cishek held out but was disappointed? I took Joaquin Benoit. I figure that any pitcher in San Diego is 15% better just because of the stadium, and figure that SD will be better this year and Benoit will get saves.
Round 11: (124th overall, 110 o-rank, 289 2014 rank, 84th ADP). As with Bryant, I was starting to look at uber-rookie Pederson as a sleeper … and he went way, way early. I also really liked Pablo Sandoval here .. and he got picked just before me. Damn. Evan Gattis is C eligible … best hitter available at this point and he fills my troublesome C slot. Got him. Gattis hit 22 homers in just 369 ABs last year, and he'll be a DH/corner OF in a better hitter's park. So he should stay healthy. Healthier that is. He should immediately get OF eligibility too.
Round 12: (141 overall, 138 o-rank, 232 in 2014, 132 ADP) Was looking at Garrett Richards … but he's hurt and won't be back til end of april. No more decent RPs right now. Can wait for later on. I went with best starter avail; Michael Wacha. This isn't without concern here; a "stress fracture" in his throwing shoulder cost him half of last year. I don't forget though just how dominant he was in the 2nd half of 2013; we'll hope he returns to that form.
Round 13: (148 overall, 171 o-rank, 149 in 2014, 193 ADP). I need a hitter; there are still 1Bs available, and plenty of them. But I don't like what's here at this point for this pick; I can wait. So I got the best remaining closer on the market: Santiago Casilla. And by "best" i mean, closer for the best remaining team. You don't want to invest in a closer of a last place team, or a team with a bullpen by committee approach. Casilla might get supplanted by Romo (and in fact someone picked up my closer "handcuff" later on). We'll keep an eye out.
Round 14/15: (From here out, instead of going round by round, I'll talk about the pairs of picks since they're so close together). I still need SS and 3B. I still don't like what's out there for either and and think they can hold on. So the goal was to get another good hitter plus a good SP. I ended up with Phil Hughes (165th overall, 122nd o-rank, 102 in 2014, 133rd in ADP) and Lucas Duda (172nd overall, 143 o-rank, 72nd in 2014, 155th ADP). I like both of these picks for value: Hughes was great in 2014, came out of nowhere pitching in a big park. By his 2014 numbers he went at least 5 rounds later than value. Meanwhile I had been looking at Duda for a while; had him last year, he's a masher. 30 homers in 2014 while being platooned a little bit. He always scares me when he bats against the Nats.
Round 16/17: At this point, I *still* don't have a SS or 3B. Except that, once again, looking at the board and who is available, I know I could wait on both and still get someone as decent in two rounds from now as if I drafted them now. So instead, I'm looking at pitchers. There's no reason to take an experimental closer at this point, so I'm getting the two best SPs on the market. I got Shelby Miller (189th overall, 228th o-rank, 323 2014 rank, 243 ADP) and Taijuan Walker (196th overall, 202 o-rank, 417 ranked last year, 223 ADP). Both are overdrafts by nearly all measures, but both are interesting plays. All i've been reading about Walker this spring is how awesome he's looked, how un-hittable he's been. And he pitches in the pitcher-friendly confines of Seattle. Miller is more of a riskier pick; he's moved teams, is now pitching for the woeful Braves … but i've always liked him and have had him every year he's been a pro. There is a caveat to the Miller pick; apparently the guy who picked right before me asked me about Miller's availability, and I either neglected to answer or misled him … so he picked Jose Quintana. When I picked Miller immediately after him, he cried foul. I promise I wasn't trying to mis-lead him, and will immediately offer Miller in trade for Quintana as soon as the rosters are available. So instead of Miller, I may have Quintana.
Round 18-21: by this point it was past 11:30pm and we were pretty beat. I had been targeting two specific SS/3B players for several rounds, knowing they probably wouldn't get picked. So I grabbed them, the best hitter remaining, plus one last SP to finish off the draft. My last four picks were:
Jhonny Peralta (213 overall pick, 193 o-rank, 150th last year, 198th ADP): 20 homers last year, serviceable BA and OPS. Best SS left.
Adam LaRoche (220th pick, 126 o-rank, 79th last year, 153 ADP): I love grabbing guys like LaRoche; because he plays a busy position, and despite his production last year (79th best fantasy player should have put him in the 7th round), he drops to almost waiver-wire levels. I'll take that for the 19th round; 79th best player last year with the 220nd pick.
Nick Castellanos (237th pick, 267 o-rank, 303rd last year, 300+ in ADP). Might be a wasted pick; of the 3B left, he sounded the most intriguing. But 300+ in ADP, he wasn't even on my draft list. I'm pretty sure that the likes of Prado, Headley and even *gasp* Alex Rodriguez are 3B eligible and on waivers; we may make an early waiver wire move.
Brandon McCarthy (244th pick, 170 o-rank, 332 last year, 236 ADP): last pick, and I got what I think will be a pretty serviceable starter. McCarthy's numbers were awesome for the Yankees last year once he escaped the sh*tty situation in Arizona. Now he goes to LA, where he's probably the 3rd starter for the 2nd best team in the NL. This could be a seriously good pick.
So, here's the team by positions:
C: Gattis
1B: Carter, Duda, LaRoche
2B: Dozier
SS: Peralta
3B: Castellanos
OF: Brantley, Dickerson, Yelich
SP: Kershaw, Strasburg, Harvey, Wacha, Hughes, Miller/Quintana, McCarthy
RP: Chapman, Benoit, Casilla
Initial glance: I can't remember the last time I had starting pitching anywhere near this good. Incredibly weak at 2B/SS/3B. Not the greatest set of hitters in general. Relievers have one great, one good, one crap-shoot; i'll have to play the waiver wire game to try to grab an extra.
Here's a breakdown of the 2014 stats for my hitters:
H/AB R HR RBI SB AVG OPS
Gattis 97/369 41 22 52 0 0.263 0.81
Carter 115/507 68 37 88 5 0.227 0.799
Duda 130/514 74 30 92 3 0.253 0.83
LaRoche 128/494 73 26 92 3 0.259 0.817
Dozier 145/598 112 23 71 21 0.242 0.761
Peralta 147/560 61 21 75 3 0.263 0.779
Castellanos 138/533 50 11 66 2 0.259 0.7
Brantley 200/611 94 20 97 23 0.327 0.891
Dickerson 136/436 74 24 76 8 0.312 0.931
Yelich 165/582 94 9 54 21 0.284 0.764
So, nearly every guy was a 20+ homer guy; lots of power on this team. Three 20+ SB guys; that's a good sign. The averages aren't great; that's just a blended average of about .270. My blended OPS is about .808. By way of comparison, the MLB average last year was .253 for BA and .714 in OPS. I can't remember what the fantasy averages were, but i'm guessing these are going to be low. A surprising number of decent RBI guys here; three that were near 100 RBIs last year. Another three guys who were near or over 100 runs. So maybe this team won't be that bad on the offensive side.
Tagged with adam laroche, aroldis chapman, brandon mccarthy, brian dozier, chris carter, christian yelich, clayton kershaw, corey dickerson, evan gattis, jhonny peralta, joaquin benoit, jose quintana, lucas duda, matt harvey, michael brantley, michael wacha, nick castellanos, phil hughes, santiago casilla, shelby miller, stephen strasburg, taijuan walker
2014 Fantasy Baseball post-mortem
Stanton blasting another 450-foot homer. Photo unk via rantsports.com
(Standard disclaimer; this is ranting about my fake baseball team. If you don't play fantasy, might as well skip this).
I'm really beginning to question my abilities in fantasy sports. Despite being deep into baseball and knowing random things off the top of my head that should be of use in fantasy (which managers are more inclined to do closer by committee, which ball parks are skewed offensively and thus players who play there may be at an advantage), I struggle year after year.
This year, thanks to an unfortunately timed meltdown (I lost a week 0-10-2 after having been ahead early in the week), I dropped just out of the playoff spots in my league (top 6 make the playoffs out of a 12 team league). But the ills of my team were seen early. Once again, I was plagued by under performing players and a poor draft that left me churning the waiver wire. By the end of the season I had made 58 of the 65 allotted moves in a failed attempt to improve enough to sneak into the playoffs (where honestly, I would have been a tough out; I can grind out 6-5-1 wins with the best of them).
So, what happened? Here's a link to the post talking about my initially drafted team. And here's a matrix of my 21 initially drafted players, their performance on the year and a note indicating whether or not they over- or under-achieved (bold means on the team at year's end, red = badly under performed, green = greatly over-performed).
Player round Drafted/# Drafted overall Yahoo o-rank 2013 Yahoo O-rank 2014 ADP at time of draft 2014 Perf Rank
Adam Jones-OF 1st round (#10 overall) 7 13 10th/11.4 21
Adrian Beltre-3B 2nd round (#15) 15 12 13th/13.2 46
Alex Rios-OF 3rd round (#34) 25 44 34th/35 179
Giancarlo Stanton-OF 4th round (#39) 222 26 24th/27.8 5
Kenly Janssen-RP 5th round (#58) 52 48 49th/53.2 102
Greg Holland-RP 6th round (#63) 36 63 62nd/62 60
Mark Trumbo-1B/OF 7th round (#82) 66 78 53rd/56.0 944
Carlos Santana-C/1B 8th round (#87) 134 87 69th/74.0 159
Shelby Miller-SP 9th round (#106) 76 88 110th/113.0 485
Hyung-Jin Ryu-SP 10th round (#111) 85 101 124th/127.2 95
Aaron Hill-2B 11th round (#130) 402 111 124th/115.8 364
Danny Salazar-SP 12th round (#135) 336 96 154th/150.4 355
Tony Cingrani-SP 13th round (#154) 152 133 156th/156.8 941
Jim Henderson-RP 14th round (#159) 130 155 170th/175.0 750
Shane Victorino-OF 15th round (#178) 67 113 125th/129.0 1144
Chris Archer-SP 16th round (#183) 175 171 208th/209.0 314
Asdrubal Cabrera-SS 17th round (#202) 267 151 171st/177.4 177
J.J. Hoover-RP 18th round (#207) 237 629 344th 922
Tim Hudson-SP 19th round (#226) 299 300 311th 171
Brandon Belt-1B 20th round (#231) 106 104 142th 988
Jake Odorizzi-SP 21st round (#250) 548 358 445th 197
So, what happened?
My first two picks didn't underperform "badly," but were not the super stars you need to take hold of a league. I didn't really like Adam Jones or Adrian Beltre at the draft, and despite some hot streaks they've been disappointments. Beltre got hurt in camp and missed games at the beginning of the season. My #3 pick Alex Rios I finally gave up on and waived; his seasonal rank of 179 belies what he's done the last two months (closer to the 900 ranked range). It's never a good sign when your #3 pick gets waived thanks to performance (and not injury) reasons.
Giancarlo Stanton is my one major "win" out of the draft; a 4th round pick who likely will finish in the top 5 of stats on the season. At the time of this writing, he was trailing only Mike Trout in terms of fantasy rankings for offensive players. He single-handedly carried my team offensively for weeks on end and is a large reason that my team offense was 1st in homers and 3rd in RBI. I feel vindicated here: I suffered through at least two injury-riddled Stanton seasons in the past after having drafted him highly, and he'll have the same issue next year; he'll likely be a top-5 pick with a huge injury risk on his head.
My two big-time closers did not disappoint: both Janssen and Holland performed as expected and led me to be 5th in team saves and have a 14-7-1 record in the category on the year. This is a big lesson learned for me; you can get by with just two big-time closers and be successful in this category. Of course, I wanted more closers but got unlucky; my #3 closer Jim Henderson suddenly and without warning was yanked from the role on opening day. Another team vultured his replacement (Francisco "K-rod" Rodriguez); all he's done is pitch lights out all year and is 6th in the league in saves. That should have been my 3rd closer. That was a disappointment. I tried just one waiver-wire closer grab (Chad Qualls for Houston) and despite picking correctly, Qualls went weeks without save opportunities so I dumped him after two weeks looking for more starter quality.
Lets talk about the god-awful positional player issues I had in the draft: Mark Trumbo started out white-hot, fractured his foot and missed months. Aaron Hill did not come closer to living up to the hype of fantasy analysts. Shane Victorino was on and off the D/L all year. And poor Brandon Belt fractured his thumb, fought his way back and then got hit in the head during BP and still remains on the concussion D/L.
Of the Starting Pitchers I gambled on: Shelby Miller struggled all year, Danny Salazar got demoted, as did Tony Cingrani. Chris Archer did not produce at fantasy levels and Jake Odorizzi struggled early and was dropped (I eventually picked him back up). I only kept two drafted starters on the team all year (Ryu and Hudson) and frankly Hudson was so bad for so long that I came pretty close to dumping him. That basically means that my "wait on starters" strategy was a complete failure, if I'm only keeping ONE decent starter the whole year.
So, for the 2nd straight year I cycled the waiver wires. Here's some of the guys I went through:
Starters: Scheppers, Kluber, Eovaldi, Skaggs, Kennedy, Strohman, Peralta, Montero, Keuchel, Garcia, Beckett, Wood, Leake, Despaigne, Bauer, Liriano, Duffy, Hellickson, Cole, Smyly
Relievers: Qualls
Catchers: Mesoraco, Ruiz
1B: Francisco, Adams, Alonso, Singleton, Napoli, Carter, Duda
2B: Walker, Prado, Gennett, Wong
SS: Aybar, Escobar, Baez, Betts
3B: Castellanos, Seager, Arenado
OF: Rasmus, Parra, Stubbs, Crawford, Ozuna, Eaton, Reddick, Aoki
Scheppers I took a gamble on b/c his numbers were so good as a reliever; mistake. He got shelled opening day and soon was on the D/L. A number of these pitchers were decent moves and pitched well for a while (especially Josh Beckett and Marcus Strohman). The biggest failure here was dumping Corey Kluber after he got hit hard opening day: He's turned into the 16th best fantasy performer all year, a 2nd round talent. That was a huge mistake. I liked Eovaldi's peripherals (lots of Ks) but he struggled with runners and his ERA/WHIP were inflated all year. Skaggs got hurt, Kennedy was ineffective. I got great value for a while out of Keuchel, but after a good mid-summer he tailed off badly. Garcia made like one start before returning to the D/L. Josh Beckett was a great waiver wire pickup for a while, but he too got hurt and remains on the D/L today. Alex Wood was a great find. I snaked Gerrit Cole off the D/L just before he came back on but he contributed little. Most of my other experiments were far too inconsistent week-to-week to trust (see Trevor Bauer, Despaigne, Mike Leake, etc).
As mentioned before, I only tried to gamble on one closer waiver wire pickup thanks to the solid two starters that I had from draft day. Most of the available closers on the waiver wire were in committee situations and couldn't be trusted anyway.
I worked 1B, 2B, and 3B hard. At one point I was trying to engineer a 3B trade, having Seager while he was hot and Arenado after he came off the D/L. But my potential trade partners badly low-balled me for Beltre (offering guys who were worth far less than Beltre was) and suddenly Seager dropped off a cliff, making his trade value useless. Eventually I dumped both.
1B pickups Napoli, Duda and especially Carter turned out to be huge winners. Once again proving my point that some positions are just so deep they're not worth drafting. Same with outfielders to a certain extent; I had Ozuna all year and he's turned out to be well worth it.
My season's end Fantasy team after all this waiver wire churning. Bold are original, red are waiver wire:
C: Santana
1B: Carter, Duda
2B: Baez, Prado
SS: Betts
3B: Beltre
OF: Stanton, Jones, Ozuna
SP: Hudson, Ryu, Odorizzi, Cole, Hellickson, Wood, Duffy, Liriano, Smyly
RP: Jansen, Holland
That's a lot of red.
Lessons Learned for Next Year
You only need two big-time closers to compete. Spend draft picks in the 5th and 6th rounds, try to get a third closer later on and you'll do fine. You must do a better job on the waiver wire though trying to grab closers if you want them.
There's always 1B talent on waivers. Do not over-spend on 1B.
My strategy of over-loading on mediocre starters just doesn't seem to be working. I was 3rd in wins and 5th in Ks, but 8th in ERA, dead last in losses and 11th in whip. Meanwhile the #1 team this year went with an uber-pitching strategy (over-drafting starters and ending up with Kershaw, Sale, Felix Hernandez as well as several top closers) and he just dominated pitching. Despite having a ton of starters, he managed to be 4th in Wins AND be 2nd in Whip. I think he's got a good strategy. And i'm sure people will try to emulate it next year.
Do not sweat churning and burning waiver wire picks early on; you may just end up with a monster surprise player on the year. This was the 1st place team's strategy and it netted him Charlie Blackmon and a couple of extra closers. Two of the top 10 starters on the year were waiver wire guys: Corey Kluber and Garrett Richard.
Do not hesitate grabbing big-name call-ups. I missed out on more than a couple guys that I would have grabbed but hesitated. This cost me last year with Yasiel Puig and it cost me this year with Jorge Soler and George Springer. I waited, and I missed out.
Blech. Hope you enjoyed the rant.
Tagged with aaron hill, adam jones, adrian beltre, alberto despaigne, alex rios, brandon belt, chad qualls, charlie blackmon, chris archer, chris carter, chris sale, clayton kershaw, corey kluber, corey seager, dallas keuchel, danny salazar, felix hernandez, francisco rodriguez, garrett richard, george springer, gerrit cole, giancarlo stanton, greg holland, hyun-jin ryu, ian kennedy, jaime garcia, jake odorizzi, jim henderson, jorge soler, josh beckett, kenly janssen, lucas duda, marcus strohman, mark trumbo, mike leake, mike napoli, mike trout, nathan eovaldi, nolan arenado, shane victorino, shelby miller, tanner scheppers, tim hudson, tony cingrani, trevor bauer, tyler skaggs, yasiel puig
Who *really* should be in the HR derby?
Puig would *make* the home run derby. photo mlb.com
I have to admit it: the home run derby has probably become my favorite part of the all-star game festivities. That and the futures game of course. The all-star game itself has devolved into a farce with a slew of issues (I posted a lot of these criticisms in my 2011 Nats all-star piece, and they remain issues today, so no need to go back into them here). Lets talk about the Home Run derby.
I kind of like the wrinkle of naming "captains," which for this year occurred on 6/23/14. But the captains have to pick the right guys. I hate the format; when a guy like Josh Hamilton is remembered for his epic performance in an early round moreso than the winner, something's wrong with the format. But they're changing it this year. And the players take *way* too many pitches. But whatever. This year's captains are Troy Tulowitzki and Jose Bautista. Fans can vote on who they want to see in the competition.
Here's my ideal home-run derby slate of participants. In the interest of keeping the competition "small" i've limited this to 5 per league:
National League:
Giancarlo Stanton: owner of 3 of the biggest 11 homers on the year, on pace for 45+ homers, leading the NL in home runs. And he wants in this year.
Bryce Harper: last year's runner-up is one of the few players in the majors scouted with 80 power; despite his injury-plagued season he belongs in this competition.
Michael Morse: not too many all-or-nothing hitters like Morse, whose name dots the leader board on hittracker.
Evan Gattis: you don't just turn on chest-high fastballs from Strasburg if you're a plain ole hitter.
Yasiel Puig: just because. Can he do a bat flip after every homer?
Left out:
Troy Tulowitzki: He's in as a captain, but even despite that selection he's a decent choice: he's 5th in the majors in ISO and tied for 6th in Homers.
Paul Goldschmidt: has the power capabilities and the overall game. But he's not nearly as explosive as the guys above.
Ryan Howard: He may not merit inclusion based on his performance, but he's a classic three-true outcomes hitter. Lefties get him out with ease; i'm sure batting practice pitchers don't.
Todd Frazier: his power numbers spike thanks to playing in Cincinnati, but he's still got some serious underrated power.
Justin Upton: Owner of the 3rd longest homer on the year.
American League:
Yoenis Cespedes: gotta let the man defend his crown.
Edwin Encarnacion: MLB leader in Homers as of this writing. Has to be in this competition.
Jose Abreu: MLB leader in ISO and on a 40 homer pace despite hitting the D/L.
David Ortiz: Owns the 2nd longest homer hit this season and would make a nice homecoming in Minnesota.
Mike Trout: He's such a good hitter, that he could just sit at the plate and hit homer after homer. And, he just hit a 489 foot homer to take over the longest homer of the year.
Left Out
Jose Bautista: He's a captain, so we'll list him here. Otherwise he's a stretch to make this list.
Victor Martinez: he's quietly one of the best power hitters in the league right now.
Mark Trumbo: too bad he's hurt; he's a great power hitter to watch.
Nelson Cruz: his homer totals may be augmented by playing in Baltimore, but he's still putting numbers on the board.
Adam Dunn: you know he'd be a favorite to win if he was named to this team, but I could only select 5. He'd be the 6th man in for the AL.
Are these the best lineups you could possibly ask for in this competition? Who else would you put on this list of power-crazy players? Jim Caple posted his own tongue-in-cheek version of this same post, worth a read for a quick giggle. There's a handful of other DH-only types in the AL (Billy Butler, Chris Carter, Adam Lind, Juan Francisco, etc) who might make sense.
(I used three resources to name these names: the current major league leaders in Homers, the current major league leaders in Isolated Power, and an eyeballing of the leader board for most astoundingly long homers on the year from Hit Tracker Online. All stats are as of 6/24/14 and may have changed slightly between then and the publication of this post).
Tagged with adam dunn, adam lind, billy butler, bryce harper, chris carter, david ortiz, edwin encarnacion, evan gattis, giancarlo stanton, jim caple, jose abreu, jose bautista, josh hamilton, juan francisco, juston upton, mark trumbo, michael morse, mike trout, nelson cruz, paul goldschmidt, ryan howard, todd frazier, troy tulowitzki, victor martinez, yasiel puig, yoenis cespedes
Verlander just killed me this year. Photo unk via rumorsandrants.com
My standard disclaimer; this is a whole huge post kvetching about my 2013 Fantasy Baseball team. If you don't play fantasy, feel free to skip this 3,000 word missive. I'll insert a "jump" line here so that RSS readers don't have to see this whole massive post 🙂
Tagged with adam laroche, aj griffen, alejandro de aza, alex gordon, alex wood, alexi ogando, brad miller, brandon belt, brandon crawford, brandon league, brandon moss, brian dozier, carlos gomez, carlos ruiz, carlos santana, casey jannsen, chris archer, chris carter, chris johnson, clayton kershaw, cody ross, corey kluber, danny espinosa, david frese, david huzzard, dee gordon, edinson volquez, eric hosmer, erik aybar, geraldo parra, gerrit cole, howie kendrick, ike davis, jacob turner, james loney, jarrod parker, jarrod saltalamacchia, jason castro, jason heyward, jason vargas, jedd gyorko, jhonny peralta, jimmy rollins, jj putz, john buck, justin smoak, justin verlander, kelly johnson, kevin gausman, kris mdelen, leonys martin, lorenzo cain, matt garza, matt joyce, matt kemp, michael wacha, mitch moreland, nate schierholz, nick franklin, nolan arenado, paul maholm, pedro alvarez, ra dickey, rajai davis, rickie weeks, robbie grossman, scott kazmir, sergio romo, tim lincecum, tony cingrani, trevor rosenthal, tyler lyons, tyler skaggs, vinnie pestano, wade miley, wil myers, will venable, yoenis cespedes, yu darvish, yuniesky betancourt, zack greinke, zack wheeler
Ask Boswell 5/13/13 edition
Zimmerman keeps making news for the wrong reasons. Photo AP via tbd.com
I was out all last week, hence the radio silence here. I couldn't help posting yesterday though about the Nats blowing another excellent start. So lets get back into the swing of things with another episode of Tom Boswell's weekly chats, this one for 5/13/13. As always I write my response here before reading his, and sometimes edit questions for clarity.
Q: With the technology we have today, do we really need umpires anymore?
A: You know, the answer is probably "Yes, we could replace Umps with robots" and have a better product on the field … but the implementation details seem so difficult that I doubt it ever really fully happens. You have to have real people on the field to deal with all the randomness that occurs in baseball games. I think the best eventual solution will be to have challenge systems put in place like we have with Football, only hopefully done much much faster. Sort of like the NHL's New York-office based replay officials. The strike zone issues we're seeing lately though are troubling; can you automate a strike zone call with players who move and bend over in mid-swing? How do you establish a strike zone for these guys? Inside and outside are no problem, but up/down is tough. Boswell supports robot strike zones.
Q: If Harper had been just a normal everyday player, coming up through the system, would that swing of his — namely the left foot coming up and the seemingly wild attack at the ball — have been beaten out of him by now by the coaches?
A: Not necessarily. But if Bryce Harper had been a "normal" prospect instead of an uber-prospect then I think he would have had adjustments pushed onto him. There have been successful players with that trailing foot off the ground; Frank Thomas and Roberto Clemente come to mind. I always have a pet peeve personally when I see a hitter who lifts his back leg; I have the same issue in my own swing and was told by a high school coach that it was a flaw. Well, I don't think guys like Clemente and Thomas were flawed hitters. I think it is what it is; if you feel comfortable hitting off your front foot and are successful, then so be it. Boswell notes Clemente and a few others who have this trait, and agrees with me that it's an overstated issue.
Q: Is this the breakout season for Jordan Zimmermann? Is it the changeup? I've never seen him look so in control out there.
A: Can it be as simple as Jordan Zimmermann has finally fully recovered from Tommy John surgery? Fangraphs shows pretty consistent frequencies and speeds of his pitches from last year to this year. One thing that jumps out for me right now is his very low BABIP (.209 so far this year). That smells like some regression. So while he can't sustain his ridiculous numbers (1.59 ERA through 7 starts), he does seem to be on track for a very good season. Cy Young capable? With his current W/L streak and peripherals, he may pitch his way into the conversation. Boswell notes that Zimmermann would have been in top 10 of league ERA last year with a few more IP, and that poor run support has cost him wins for years … so this all likely is Zimmermann finally getting the full package.
Q: How concerned are the Nats about Zimmerman's shoulder?
A: Can't speak for the team, but is anyone happy with Ryan Zimmerman's throwing issues right now? Nothing has changed from what I wrote in Mid-April about the situation. And I don't know what the team is going to do with him. Jon Heyman quoted an anonymous competing Front Office executive after Zimmerman signed his big deal that the Nationals "now have two $100M contracts but no $100M players." It pissed me off at the time … but is really hard to argue against now. Will these contracts hamper this team's development and/or ability to sign all its players in a few years time? We'll see. Boswell mirrors what i've written before; the team has no place to put Zimmerman and they have to just ride it out.
Q: Drew Storen looks like a different pitcher this year. ERA is up to 4.73, and for the first year since his debut I'm nervous when he takes the mound. What gives?
A: A great question. Others here have predicted that Drew Storen may be demoted this season due to performance. His blowing of the Gonzalez gem was just one more nail in his coffin. But a look at the stats shows that he's basically been unlucky so far this year. Most of his peripherals are improved in 2013 over last year; his K/9 is up, BB/9 is down. His BABIP is incredibly high right now (.370). Despite an ugly ERA his fip/xfip numbers are normal and low. His velocity is a tick lower this year but not appreciably so. I think he's just been unlucky and will improve with more innings as he regresses downwards to the expected mean. The one thing stats can't measure though is his mentality; is he "depressed" because he's not the closer? Any way you spin it, the acquisition of Rafael Soriano represented a "demotion" for Storen, and it comes on the back of a pretty demoralizing NLCS game 5 meltdown last year where Storen single handedly lost the series for a team that most thought was the best in the game. Boswell says his stuff is still "plenty good" but that he's screwing around with too many pitches in his outings, relying on his sinker too much. He needs to just go after hitters. I agree; young guys have a tendency to nibble and work backwards if they're too clever (see Bauer, Trevor) and need to listen to their pitching coaches.
Q: When errors occur or a bad call is made, Strasburg appears to have a difficult time making the necessary pitches to get out of an inning. Is this just an example of him being 24 and still learning or is there a bigger long term issue?
A: Great question again (lots of good ones here). We've all played behind pitchers who lost their composure when a simple error occurs behind them (in adult leagues, this pretty much happens on every other ground ball, so you have to learn to go with it). Stephen Strasburg's mental breakdown after Zimmerman's latest throwing error, leading to 4 unearned runs and a loss in a game where I thought perhaps he had no-hitter stuff, was really disappointing. Is it him being young and immature? Could be, though I have never gotten the impression that Strasburg ran on the immature side. How can you, when you have so much career hype? But the evidence speaks for itself; when your manager and your catcher call you out in the press for losing your composure, you have some work to do. Boswell posted a fantastic stat; 15% of Strasburg's career runs allowed were unearned, twice what Justin Verlander has allowed in his career. That's incredibly telling. Strasburg needs to work on his mental approach after bad things happen behind him.
Q: So Bryce has cooled off some, but what concerns me more is that even when he was scalding hot, he was hitting LHP. Should we be concerned? His OPS against LHP is .502.
A: I'm not concerned about Harper's Lefty split, since nearly every left-handed batter in the game has a bad lefty split. He looked downright awful against lefties in 2012 (highlighted by his 5-K game against Andy Pettitte and the Yankees), but has made adjustments. Now it seems that the league has re-adjusted, so Harper needs to re-adjust. So far in his young career, Harper has shown how well he adjusts (he's years above his age in this regard), so I have confidence he'll be ok. Boswell prints some great numbers so far for Harper and says he'll be ok.
Q: I recently read two articles that said that sabermetics considers a strikout to be no better or worse than any other out. This fact does not seem to make sense because missing the ball completely with two strikes eliminates any chance for productive outs, for foul balls leading to another chance, or reaching base due to normal batting average on balls in play. Also, psychologically, a strikeout has to be more deflating to the individual and team than another out. Thoughts?
A: There's a weird dichotomy in sabremetrics in this regard: batter K's are "not that bad" but Pitcher K's are what everyone strives for. Doesn't this seem at odds with itself? The only reason I can think that a K is "ok" if you're going to make an out is if it somehow prevents a double play. But this is a research-worthy topic. I also heard a great stat on a podcast; 3 players struck out 40 or more times in April of this year (if memory serves it was Jay Bruce, Chris Carter, and Mike Napoli). Joe DiMaggio didn't strike out 40 times in a season his whole career. The league is just different now. Boswell doesn't really say much on the question other than the DP angle.
Q: Yesterday's game was as strong an argument as I could make for the National League to use the Designated Hitter. Gio should have been allowed to finish the game with his low pitch count and excellent throwing, but he was pulled for a batter (who did nothing). Forget tradition! If we had the DH, we could have kept Michael Morse! And we probably would have won yesterday.
A: A good ancillary point to my rant on Gio Gonzalez' replacement the other night. I support a DH across both leagues and posted many good reasons in this space in March 2013. No reason to repeat them here, but this question goes to points #2 and #4 in my March post (fan experience and NL pitcher's getting limited). Boswell talks about the Gio decision and not really about the DH.
Q: Is Zim still among to the top 5 or top 10 3rd baseman in the majors in your opinion?
A: Interesting question. A quick glance at the Third Basemen on depth charts around the league leads to this list of players who I would take right now over Zimmerman: Miguel Cabrera, Evan Longoria, Adrian Beltre, David Wright, and maybe even Chase Headley or David Frese. Now counting contract status/potential at this point given Zimmerman's money owed and his declining performance on both sides of the ball, I'd think hard about Manny Machado, Bret Lawrie, Todd Frazier, Nolan Arenado, Pedro Alvarez and Pablo Sandoval. Of course, potential is potential and Zimmerman already has a long list of accomplishments in this game, so on the whole of his career i'd put him just behind Wright in the above list. So yeah I think its safe to say he's a top 5 third baseman right now. Ironically in my Yahoo Fantasy list, he's also #5 and listed exactly behind the four guys in that upper grouping, in that exact order. Boswell says no, not defensively. But i'm not sure that's entirely how you judge players these days. Cabrera isn't exactly a gold glover at third but would anyone say he's not the "Best Third Baseman" in the game?
Q: No doubt that Jayson Werth is a phenomenal locker room presence and his home run in the playoffs last year was one of the highlights of the year, but he missed half the season last year and is on the DL now. He turns 34 next Monday and the Nats have him on contract for 4 more years. What do you think they can legitimately expect from him?
A: I think you expect Jayson Werth to contribute in the same ways he did in 2012; around a 125 OPS+ with some power and a lot of OBP. Eventually he moves to left field, where he should be a excellent defender in the latter years of his contract. It is what it is: the Nats paid him for his four years of unbelievable offense in Philadelphia, and he'll be lucky to get back to that level in his mid 30s. Boswell agrees.
Q: Is Denard Span the best centerfielder we've had since Clyde Milan? I don't recall seeing a smoother Washington centerfielder.
A: Easily the best "all around" player to play center since the team moved here. I'd probably argue that Rick Ankiel was better defensively and clearly had a better arm, but Denard Span's consistency at the plate gives him the easy nod overall. Can't speak to years prior to 2005. Boswell agrees and signs off.
Posted in Chat/Mailbag Responses
Tagged with adrian beltre, andy pettitte, bret lawrie, bryce harper, chase headley, chris carter, david frese, david wright, denard span, drew storen, evan longoria, frank thomas, gio gonzalez, jay bruce, jayson werth, joe dimaggio, jon heyman, jordan zimmermann, justin verlander, manny machado, miguel cabrera, mike napoli, n olan arenado, pablo sandoval, pedro alvarez, rafel soriano, rick ankiel, roberto clemente, ryan zimmerman, stephen strasburg, todd frazier, tom boswell, tommy john, trevor bauer


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Home » Themes » Conflict » World War One
Sydney - Emden 100 GazeboPrint Page
Photographs supplied by Heather Saunders
The gazebo commemorates the 100th anniversary of the battle between H.M.A.S. Sydney and the German ship SMS Emden in November 1914 during World War One. The Gazebo features interpretive panels telling the Sydney Emden story and crew lists from both vessels.
Emden was a cruiser that, at the start of World War One formed part of the German East Asiatic Squadron. She was detached to stalk the shipping routes across the Indian Ocean and quickly became the scourge of the Allied navies. Between August and October 1914, Emden captured or sank 21 vessels.
In November 1914, nine Allied vessels were involved in the hunt for Emden, and the threat she posed led to a particularly heavy escort of four warships being allocated to the first Australian and New Zealand troop convoy. Surprised by one of these escorts, H.M.A.S. Sydney, while in the process of destroying the British radio station on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Emden was destroyed on 9 November 1914.
Direction Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, 6799
Lat: -12.090304
Note: GPS Coordinates are approximate.
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Sunday 9th November, 2014
Front Inscription
Honour their
Sydney - Emden 100
Cocos - Keeling Islands 2014
Welcome to the Sydney - Emden 100 Gazebo. This place of reflection was erected in 2014 by the Shire of Cocos Keeling Island with the support of the Australian Government to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the First World War battle between the Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney (1) and the German light cruiser SMS Emden, on 9 November 1914.
The battle began just to the north of this site in the waters off Direction Island. It ended at North Keeling Island, some 20km away, when SMS Emden, battered and broken, was deliberately run aground to spare her crew the perils of sinking.
The defeat of SMS Emden by HMAS Sydney was the young Royal Australian navy`s first victory at sea.
The battle exacted a great cost. Emden lost 136 crewmen. Four of Sydney's crew died.
Here we tell their story and honour their memory.
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Blossoming business: Urban farms offer sustainable flowers
(17 Jun 2020) LEAD IN
At an urban farm in Brussels sustainability and biodiversity has been extended to the world of flowers.
Cycle Farm's flower orchard is a blissful oasis where poppies, bees and crickets live and prosper next to each as part of the same eco-system.
STORY-LINE
Tulips, allium flowers, grass and insects sketch their own natural painting at Pascale Malilo van Clooster's orchard just outside Brussels city centre.
Lulled by a soft wind these flowers are a treasure trove for plump bees that dive inside in the avid search for pollen.
Creating a biodiversity heaven for pollinators was one of Malilo van Clooster's goals when she started her sustainable flowers business four years ago in Linkebeek, a green suburban area on the outskirts of the Belgian capital.
Malilo van Clooster's orchard is part of Cycle Farm, an urban garden that includes larger land parcels devoted to vegetable farming.
On a sunny June day the flowers are ready to be picked up by environmentally conscious clients who seek a local, pesticide-free alternative for their bouquets.
All flowers here bloom from organic seeds originating from Belgium or nearby France and England.
They're grown without pesticides and only according to their natural life cycle, Malilo van Clooster explains. This means the orchard is closed in the winter months.
"I plant my flowers according to their blooming season. I don't sow seeds that wouldn't be able to blossom at that particular time of the year," says Malilo van Clooster.
"We have access to a greenhouse that works as nursery and that can help a bit (with the flowers' development) but the greenhouse isn't heated and I don't work out of the seasonal schedule so I can't say 'Here, I have large quantities in the month of December'. It's impossible to do that here in Belgium."
Pollinators abound in this stretch of land. It's easy for them to transport flower seeds to the vegetable garden nearby where wild flowers grow in-between snow peas and broccoli.
Sometimes flowers blossom spontaneously.
Spring varieties here include California poppies, Rose campions, dahlia and the Purple Rain variety of the Allium flower.
Their bright red, yellow, purple and orange hues attract a large population of insects, making this place a biodiversity haven.
Environmental concerns are prompting people to embrace sustainable flower gardening and to distance themselves from farming on an industrial, international scale, Malilo van Clooster says.
Much like urban vegetable gardening, this trend has to do with respect of the natural life cycle, she adds.
"Many young florists and new projects no longer wish to work with flowers that come from Kenya, Colombia or from the end of the world, that are transported by plane, put in a fridge for months and months and grown out of their natural schedule. It's a bit like vegetables; it's the same thing,".
After working as an architect and graphic designer Malilo van Clooster took up a new career challenge by training in organic farming and edible flowers. But it's with sustainable flowers that she found her call and a business that allows her to place trust in the natural world as much as in humans.
"What suits me best is to continue to work with flowers but to have an open system, based on trust, that allows people to come and create their own bouquet, cut the flowers and honestly pay the price by inserting money into a box."
Scissors in hand, customers come to Malilo van Clooster's orchard to can cut their flowers of choice and create their own flower arrangements; the price depends on the bouquet size.
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Biennale 2022 Sydney – Cave Urban – Climate Action
ICUC10 – 10th International Conference on Urban Climate at City College of New York


Background: Previous controlled studies on the effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) - namely the use of facemasks and intensified hand hygiene - in preventing household transmission of influenza have not produced definitive results. We aimed to investigate efficacy, acceptability, and tolerability of NPI in households with influenza index patients. Methods: We conducted a cluster randomized controlled trial during the pandemic season 2009/10 and the ensuing influenza season 2010/11. We included households with an influenza positive index case in the absence of further respiratory illness within the preceding 14 days. Study arms were wearing a facemask and practicing intensified hand hygiene (MH group), wearing facemasks only (M group) and none of the two (control group). Main outcome measure was laboratory confirmed influenza infection in a household contact. We used daily questionnaires to examine adherence and tolerability of the interventions. Results: We recruited 84 households (30 control, 26 M and 28 MH households) with 82, 69 and 67 household contacts, respectively. In 2009/10 all 41 index cases had a influenza A (H1N1) pdm09 infection, in 2010/11 24 had an A (H1N1) pdm09 and 20 had a B infection. The total secondary attack rate was 16% (35/218). In intention-totreat analysis there was no statistically significant effect of the M and MH interventions on secondary infections. When analysing only households where intervention was implemented within 36 h after symptom onset of the index case, secondary infection in the pooled M and MH groups was significantly lower compared to the control group (adjusted odds ratio 0.16, 95% CI, 0.03-0.92). In a per-protocol analysis odds ratios were significantly reduced among participants of the M group (adjusted odds ratio, 0.30, 95% CI, 0.10-0.94). With the exception of MH index cases in 2010/11 adherence was good for adults and children, contacts and index cases. Conclusions: Results suggest that household transmission of influenza can be reduced by the use of NPI, such as facemasks and intensified hand hygiene, when implemented early and used diligently. Concerns about acceptability and tolerability of the interventions should not be a reason against their recommendation.


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What Comes After Click: A Crash Course in Tangible User Interfaces
Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan
For three decades, most of us have interacted with computers in exactly the same way: We point with a mouse (or a finger!), click, and watch the screen. In one way, it's the most outdated element of human computer interaction around. But in another, it's the thing that's shaped every operating system and device designed since its invention. We're starting to leave it behind, though. Here's what's coming next.
Changing an interaction as deeply entrenched as clicking is, well, monumentally challenging. It's also extremely exciting. It asks us to rethink the way we interact with technology altogether. The catch-all name for this field is tangible (or graspable) user interface design, and we're hearing about it more and more often. Here's a simplified version of what our complex future has in store.
Giving Physical Objects Digital Meaning
For the past few years, the conversation around user interface design has been peppered with words like "invisible" and "disappearing." The thinking goes that as interfaces develop, they'll eventually disappear—we'll just be gesturing in an empty room. Or thinking a command to a fleet of brain-embedded sensors.
It's easy to see how conceptually speaking, it's not a far jump from "intuitive" to "invisible." Yet they're not the same thing, as Mark Wilson pointed out a few months back. An interface that's easy to use isn't synonymous with one you can't see. Invisible UIs are confusing. We can't tell whether they're working or if they're erroring. It's hard to learn them. As Berg's Timo Arnall puts it, "literal invisibility can cause confusion, even fear, and they often increase unpredictability and failure."
But what about an interface that's woven into the fabric of everyday life? What if future interfaces aren't just visible, but feel-able? What if they're linked to physical objects that control digital environments? That's the basic foundation of tangible interface design.
It Began With An Answering Machine
In 1992, a design student named Durrell Bishop (who went on to work at IDEO and found Luckybite) created what some cite as the first tangible UI. His Marble Answering Machine symbolized each incoming messages with a marble. To listen to a particular message, you'd pick up a marble. To call back, you'd drop it back on the machine.
Bishop's design laid a foundation for other groups. In 1995, a trio of researchers introduced a UI prototype called Bricks, which let users move Lego-like boxes to manipulate objects on a computer screen. One of those researchers—Hiroshii Ishii—is the founder of MIT's Tangible Media Group.
Since then, graspable UI has wound up in a huge array of applications, ranging from the sensible to the wildly speculative. It can be as simple as Hibou, a radio that you control by touching its palladium surface in different ways:
Or as complex as this MIT project that uses levitating magnets to manipulate, for example, the light levels in a living room:
Not a Mouse, But a Menagerie
But isn't the computer mouse a tangible interface? Yep—and so are touch-screens. They're not ideal for a couple of reasons, though, from a lack of precision to a limited user experience (who wants to stare at a screen all day?).
Besides the obvious health risks involved with how we use computers today (see: digital dementia), there are plenty of social reasons that tangible UI makes sense. At the design consultancy Frog, engineers are creating room-sized interfaces controlled by speaking or gesturing, letting users call out a Seamless order or watch a YouTube video on the kitchen table. "It has the potential to be more heads-up, allowing users to be present in their environment," project leader Jared Ficklin told me a few months ago. "Eventually, room-size computing will touch everything." Here's his prototype in use:
In other cases, users might not actually be able use a traditional interface. Tangible UIs could help the blind use conventional design software, or help the computer-illiterate elderly communicate with loved ones. Good Night Lamp is aimed at long-distance relationships: When one person turns on their light, an identical one goes on wherever the other person is located. It's an ambient way to keep in touch, even when there's not very much to say:
For kids, there's DIRTI, an iPad app that lets young children control an audiovisual symphony by playing with a bowl of tapioca:
So tangible UIs aren't so much a category as a theme—a way of thinking about human-computer interaction that ventures beyond the console-and-mouse archetype.
The Great Inversion
If you look closely, though, there's a certain symmetry between the past and future of UI design. In the early days of PCs, Microsoft and Apple introduced first-time users to computers with interfaces that looked like objects with which they were already familiar. Microsoft Bob, the failed assistant from the 1990s, placed applications and actions into a "house" as books and objects. The Apple OS was symbolized as a "desk," where objects like files and trashcans created easy-to-understand visual metaphors. Today, we know this technique as skeuomorphism.
With tangible and graspable interfaces, though, the relationship between digital and physical is reversed. Rather than trying to make digital features feel like physical ones, designers are imbuing physical objects with digital properties. If the original point of skeumorphism was to help first-time users understand computers, the point of tangible computing is to ween digital natives from the tyranny of the console—or at the very least, to break open the computer and weave its contents into the natural world. So the future of UI might not be as "invisible" as we imagine it—in fact, it could be far more visceral and touchable than it is today.


Dr. Ventocilla has enjoyed helping patients see better since graduating from the UC Berkeley, School of Optometry in 1994. He completed a Pediatric Optometry Residency at Berkeley in 1995 and was a faculty member at the University of Michigan Department of Ophthalmology from 1995-2002. He presently continues as an Adjunct Clinical Professor with the Michigan College of Optometry.
In his spare time, Dr. Ventocilla enjoys spending time with his wife Phyllis and their four children. He is fluent in Spanish and has led volunteers in providing eye care in Mexico, Peru, Haiti and the Philippines.


Chad, Charlie, Dylan and John discuss the news from Comic-Con, including the DC Reboot protests, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Knights of Badassdom, Street Fighter X Tekken character announcements, exclusive con toys, and the upcoming Voltron game. We also discuss the next Anime Fans Give Back To Japan event (on August 13) and follow up our Eden of the East Anime Club podcast with our impressions of the full series.
Posted in: Podcast on August 2, 2011 by The Maitre d'.


Black & White outfit in winter. You don't have to wait for spring to put out your white jeans, a lot of people think white jeans belong to spring, on the contrary you can use it the whole year, that's why we decide to put together this great outfit with a bit of color.
With winter over us we need to be cozy and comfortable, and what a better way to do it than with an oversized sweater a pair of jeans a fluffy jacket and, of course, a super alpaca scarf with a bit of color.
If you like minimalism this is a good option of how can mix just 3 colours in a cool way, one of the things I have learned from my years of study, is that you always need one focus, otherwise you don't know where to look first… Our focus today is the scarf, of course, despite the fact is really green dark color, the green is really special and super elegant and give this grunge look to the whole outfit.
Another cool piece we combine today is the Chanel Coco Cocoon Bag, is really comfortable and easy to combine.