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Phillies are Disappointing-est of All
ESPN's David Schoenfield had a bit Monday morning about how the LAnahfornia Angels are baseball's biggest disappointment, not, he says, the Boston Red Sox*. Well, the headline says that, though I don't think that's what he actually means. Editors often go with pith and punch over, say, correctness.
What I think Shoenfield means to say is that the disappointment created by the Angels' collective failure to live up to this year's expectations should have gotten a lot more media attention than it has, and the Red Sox' clubhouse soap operas and losing record ought to be less surprising and hence less thoroughly covered by the mainstream media than it is. But then the Red Sox are the Ratings Sox, and that's just how it is.
*For me, the biggest disappointment was the Red Sox, but not for the reason you'd think. I finally got to a game at Fenway Park a few weeks ago. Being a lifelong and avid baseball fan (albeit of the Yankees) I was quite excited to finally get to see this old cathedral of baseball, and even more so when I noticed that reigning MVP/Cy Young Justin Verlander would be toeing the rubber against Sawx ace Josh Beckett. Sports betting sites were probably giving fairly even odds for what should have been a tight, well-played game. What more could you ask, right?
Well, it turns out that you could ask for seats that would allow you to, say, actually have knees. You could ask for Verlander not to give up 4 runs in 5 innings (it was his shortest regular season start since August of 2010). Or for Beckett not to pitch lackadaisically for two innings and then leave the game with back spasms. Or for it not to rain all night, forcing the game to be called in the 6th and forcing my friends and me to get drenched on the way back to our hotels. But I digress...
Also, you could ask them to expunge this logo - which I think is a worried, strawberry flavored condom with a billy club - from their nostalgia wall.
Anyway, while Schoenfield's piece is decidedly lacking in hard evidence to support his editor's contention that we should all be more disappointed in the Angels than the Red Sox, Schoenfield does a capable job of describing why we all aren't more aware of what a bummer of a season this is turning out to be for Anaheim.
But the truly surprising thing to me about the article isn't its lack of statistical evaluations or insightful analysis, but rather the absence of one word:
"Phillies."
I mean, seriously, when we're talking disappointment, Philadelphia has got the market more or less cornered. Phillies Phans think they're the center of the universe, and their news media just plays into it*. When rumblings happen in the sports world, Philadelphia fans think their world is ending. And when a true athletic earthquake happens, Philadelphia imagines it is at the epicenter. The Phillies' beat writers, sports anchors and bloggers step right in to cover the carnage and the aftermath as though their team is the only one that matters, and the only one that could possibly ever suffer in this way.
*Fifteen years ago, when the Florida Marlins were making their first surprising run at a World Series title, I saw a Philly newscast in which the anchor said people were referring to the Marlins as "Phillies South" because of the presence of Darren Daulton and Jim Eisenreich on the roster.
Jim Eisenreich, for crying out loud.
Around that same time, the next March perhaps, I saw a column, I think by Bill Conlin, lamenting the fact that the Blue Jays had been forced to cancel a split squad game with the Phillies on short notice due to some unforeseen circumstances. The fist line of the column was "First Joe Carter, and now this."
Because this is exactly like cancelling a Spring Training game.
But melodrama aside, the Phillies and their fans have every right be be disappointed this year. The team kept together the core that had won five straight division titles, re-signing Jimmy Rollins and with discussions of keeping Cole Hamels in a Phillies uniPhorm Phor the Phoreseeable Phuture. (Sorry, I'll stop that.)
They had recently added Hunter Pence to an already potent offense (they scored the second most runs in the NL in the second half of 2011, after getting Chase Utley back) and were expecting continued development from young outfielders Dominic Brown and John Mayberry. They hoped that they could compensate for the loss of Ryan Howard, who tore his Achilles tendon in the last game of the 2011 season, with a decent platoon at first base and a remarkable pitching corps of Hamels, Cliff Lee, Roy Halladay and Vance Worley, who had gone 11-3 in 2011.
And just to be sure, after they jettisoned Brad Lidge and Ryan Madson, they spent $50 million on Jonathan Papelbon, to help make sure all those quality starts wouldn't go for naught when the back of the bullpen faltered.
But it turned out that while Howard was perhaps not that hard to replace, he couldn't just be replaced with literally the worst player in the National League, not if you wanted the Phillies to contend. You also couldn't stomach the losses of both Howard and Utley, whose presence essentially turned the 2011 Phillies season around, for half a year. Not when Placido Polanco, John Mayberry and Yul Brynner Shane Victorino were all losing between 50 and 150 OPS points from their 2011 performances.
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
In fact, with a few noted exceptions, the Phillies' entire offense more or less went in the tank this year. Research has been done to show that "protection" in a lineup is either overrated or perhaps very difficult to measure, and while that may be true of any one batter, the loss of the two best hitters in the lineup seemed to have a trickle down effect on the Phillies hitters.
In years past, during and even before their stretch of division titles, the Phils always managed to score a good number of runs, largely because they always took their walks. Since 2003, during a nine-year stretch of winning seasons, they ranked lower than 5th in the NL in walks only once, and this in 2009, when they led the league in homers and runs and won the NL pennant, so they could afford to only be 7th in walks that year.
But without Utley and Howard to light the way, the rest of the team sunk from 5th to 14th in walks, and without Victorino or Pence on the roster, they're likely to sink even further. Well, probably not past the Astros. The absence of Howard and the death of whatever remained of Polanco's "bat" meant that the Phillies got next to nothing out of their corner infield spots this year. They ranked 11th and 15th out of 16 NL teams in OPS at those respective positions.
Second base has been a hole too, despite ranking 6th in OPS in the NL, because this is an awful year for second basemen. Phillie shortstops (mostly Rollins) and all three outfield spots rank in the bottom half of the NL in OPS. The only bright spot in the lineup is the catcher, and clearly that's not going to do it.
The starting rotation, though sometimes injured or not as spectacular as in the past, has been good enough to complete, but the bullpen (other than Papelbon) has been sub-par, ranking 12th out of 16 NL teams in ERA and allowing 34% of inherited runners to score, very nearly the worst mark in baseball. Papelbon may have 29 Saves and a 2.70 ERA, but he's saving games that don't mean anything, and being paid a fortune to do it.
The worst part about all of this is that it was all eminently preventable. Ryan Howard's ankle didn't hurt itself on Opening Day or in the middle of spring training, forcing the Phillies to scramble to find someone. It happened on October 7th, exactly as the Phillies' 2011 season ended. General manager Ruben Amaro had six months to find a suitable replacement.
Instead he signed Jim Thome in November, even though Thome had not played a game at first base since 2007 and had not spent significant time there since 2005. Then, three weeks later, he traded the proverbial Mr. ToBeNamedLater to the Rockies for Ty Wigginton, who in 2011 had somehow managed to hit just .242 despite playing half his games at Coors Field (including .216 with two homers in the second half). Wigginton hadn't had a decent season with the bat since 2008 and, it could be argued, had never had a decent season with the glove, so Amaro's presentation of him as a potential answer to the missing Howard was a cloudy proposition, at best.
Meanwhile folks like Lew Ford and Dan Johnson and Steve Pearce and Brad Eldred could have been had for a song, and could reasonably have been expected to produce at least as much as Wigginton. Granted, he hit over .300 in April, but has barely cracked the Mendoza Line since, and clearly does not belong in the lineup of a major league team anymore.
After watching Wigginton hit .213 between early May and the All-Star Break, manager Charlie Manuel probably thanked his lucky stars to have Howard back. He's relegated Wigginton mostly to pinch hitting duty since then, and he's no better suited to that job: He's hit .156 in 45 at-bats. Unfortunately, Howard is almost exactly as bad as Wiggy was - with an OPS just 20 points higher in roughly the same number of at-bats - as he tries to regain his form after missing the first half of the season.
The Phillies of 2012 have also suffered from a somewhat difficult schedule and particularly tough losses, at least in terms of which teams fate decided to allow to beat them. The scheduling gods deemed that the 2012 Phillies should play against most of the AL East, generally regarded as the toughest division in baseball, though they also faced Minnesota and took two out of three from the woeful Twins. But they lost two of three each to Baltimore, Boston, and Tampa and then got swept by the Blue Jays ("First Joe Carter...")
And the Phillies played particularly badly against their own division, losing key games against crucial opponents. They have won only five of 12 games against the lowly Marlins, four of 12 against the sputtering Mets, and - most damning of all - only three of 12 against Atlanta. If they had just managed to split the games they've played to date against the NL East they might at least be hovering around .500 and not have had to jettison Jim Thome, Joe Blanton, Pence and Victorino, and might have even picked up some third base help for the stretch. Kevin Youkilis might be mashing for the Phightin's instead of the Pale Hose.
But it was not to be, and of course no amount of hoping by the Philly-centric Phans will help them surmount the 10-game deficit and hurdle four or five teams to make the playoffs. And that, for a team that started the year with three Cy Young Awards (Halladay has two) and two former MVPs on its roster, with a $175 million payroll that is second only to the Yankees, is an extraordinary disappointment.
For once, Philadelphia actually has a legitimate gripe.
OK, two.
The Oakland A's Swept the Yankees, Still Won't Make Playoffs
I'm not sure whether I was more surprised to see that the Yankees suffered a 4-game sweep by the Oakland A's this weekend or that they still have the best record in baseball after four straight losses.
In case you weren't paying attention, the Yankees had been firing on all cylinders for most of the last two months. Since the season's nadir on May 21st, when they lost badly (6-0) to the lowly Kansas City Royals and stood 5.5 games behind the Orioles (!) at 21-21, the Yankees had won nearly three out of every four games (36-13) coming into this four game series in the Oakland Mausoleum. They had scored 5.3 runs per game in that span, owing largely to having hit 85 of their MLB-leading 150 home runs in those 49 games. And the injured Brett Gardner never even took a swing in pinstripes.
The team ERA was a sparkling 3.31 during that stretch, with Hiroki Kuroda and Ivan Nova picking up half a dozen Wins each and Phil Hughes and CC Sabathia (despite a 2-week stint on the DL) adding five more apiece. All of that too, without Mariano Rivera, without Joba Chamberlain, and much of it without Andy Pettitte, who's been on the DL with a cracked fibula for most of the last month.
In that time, the Yankees had swept three game sets against the Indians, Blue Jays, Mets, Braves, Nationals and yes, even the Athletics, had taken three out of four from the Red Sox in Boston, and had lost more than two consecutive contests only once. They could do nearly no wrong.
Of course, none of that mattered once they got to Oakland.
They started the long series on Thursday night with Freddy Garcia, who had been stellar since giving up two runs in mop-up duty in that May 21st loss to the Royals. Since then, he was 4-0 with a 2.52 ERA, including wins against Boston and the LAnahfornia Angels in his previous two starts.
No matter. Garcia surrendered nine hits, two walks and four runs, including a homer to Yoenis Cespedes (who maybe isn't such a waste of money after all) and left without finishing the sixth inning. The Yankees could do little except slap a few singles off someone named A.J. Griffin, who allowed only two runs in six innings for his second major league win. I'm beginning to think the Yankees should just steer clear of pitchers named "A.J." all together.
Fortunately, rookie David Phelps showed some mettle by pitching 2.1 perfect innings of relief to keep them in the game. Unfortunately the Yankees managed to get only one man on base the rest of the game - and that only briefly - as Nick Swisher hit a round tripper in the ninth to bring the Bombers within one, where the score would remain.
Friday's game was more tense and dramatic, but the net result was the same. The Yankees had been 38-9 when they hit two or more homers in a game in 2012. In this case, however, the two bombs were both solo shots, one by Robinson Cano and the other by Russell Martin, who's hitting just .180 despite the double digit jacks (Rob Deer, eat your heart out).
More important, perhaps, was that for the second game in a row, the Yankees did not draw a walk. That marked only the 6th time all year in which the Yanks didn't get a single free pass, and the only time it's happened on consecutive days.
The Yankees' other six hits were all singles, and never more than two happened in the same inning. Still, after Martin hit that homer in the top of the 8th inning they were down only one run, thanks to another solid showing from Ivan Nova (6.2 IP, 2 ER). David Robertson did a little Houdini act, escaping the bottom of the inning without allowing any runs, despite a triple and a walk.
Then Robby led off the ninth with a solo homer to tie the game at 2-2, and things were looking up, but the Yankee Retread Corps (Raul Ibanez, Andruw Jones and Eric Chavez) could not muster another hit, so Joe Girardi was forced to bring in his closer, Rafael Soriano, to try to maintain the tie and hope the Yankees could score in the tenth.
No, wait, Girardi brought in lefty Clay Rapada. Well, with the A's only major lefty power threat coming up in Josh Reddick, I guess that made sense. Rapada had been pretty terrible with four different teams before the Yankees signed him in the offseason and essentially decided not to let him face right handed pitching anymore (he had allowed a .359 batting average to righties in the majors before coming to New York), and he's generally been just what they wanted this year. True to LOOGy form, he struck out Reddick on five pitches and then went to take a shower, another 10-minutes day's work in the books.
That allowed Girardi to bring in Soriano to hold off the A's and maintain the- no, wait, Girardi instead brought in Cody Eppley, who admittedly has been pretty good this year as well, but who promptly allowed three straight singles to lose the game, 3-2. Joe was apparently saving his closer for a Save situation that never happened, which is a crappy way to lose a game.
Saturday's game was much better, as Phil Hughes gave up only two runs in nearly eight innings - his 7th Quality Start in his last nine outings - and, wait, he took the loss anyway? Hughes allowed only two walks and four hits, but two of those hits were home runs - another by the definitely-not-a-waste-of-$36 million Yoenis Cespedes and one by Brandon Inge, whose 1-for-3 showing brought him right up to the Mendoza Line for the year (eat your heart out, Russell Martin).
The Yankee bats remained uncharacteristically silent once again, as they could do little more than slap singles, and not even many of those. A leadoff singly by Derek Jeter in the first went for naught, as did base knocks by Teixeira and Chavez in the third. Singles by Alex Rodriguez and Raul Ibanez - sandwiched around two groundouts - brought the Yankees' only run home in the 4th.
Curtis Granderson did show a little patience and draw a walk to lead off the 6th - the Yankees' first base on balls since the 4th inning against the Blue Jays on Wednesday - but A-Rod, Cano and Tex all failed to bring him home.
The Yankees would not get another hit until the top of the ninth, when Rodriguez singled off someone named Sean Doolittle, who did a lot by striking out Cano, Teixeira and Andruw Jones to end the game and pick up his first career Save. He threw only two pitches that were not fastballs among his 21 offerings, but since the rest were 93-95 mph heaters from the port side, he evidently didn't feel much need for another pitch.
On Sunday, the Yankee bats finally showed a little life, this against their former teammate Bartolo Colon, as they smacked eight hits (including their only non-homer extra base hit of the four game set, when A-Rod hit a 2-run double off Colon in the third) and scored four runs in six innings and change. But the A's bullpen stymied the Yanks, allowing five baserunners in the next five-plus innings, but none of them past second base.
Soriano finally saw his first action of the series, this time to protect a one-run lead in the ninth. Having not pitched since Tuesday, he may have been a little rusty but even if not, he still blew the Save. Seth Smith smacked a hanging slider over the center field fence to tie the game at 4-4, and the two bullpens exchanged zeros for a few innings until the A's again had the pleasure of facing Cody Eppley with the game on the line in the 12th. A single, a bunt to advance the runner and then Coco hit one crisply to right field to bring home the winning run and give the A's the sweep.
As heartbreaking as it is to get swept like this, especially to lose three of the four games in the 8th inning or later, it's not as though the Yankees were thoroughly schooled or severely beaten. With a smidgeon of luck, they could have won any or all of those four games. They just didn't.
And none of that is to say that the A's don't deserve credit for their wins or that the Yankees shouldn't be blamed for failing to come through in the clutch, or be patient at the plate, or whatever. But it does mean that the Yankees and their fans shouldn't be deluded into thinking that the team is somehow horribly flawed, that this series uncovered some glaring weaknesses or that the sky is falling down on the Yankees.
Nor does this happy moment for the small market A's and their fans mean that they are in any way something other than also-rans in the American League playoff hunt. Sure, the A's are 51-44, but they're also behind the Angels and the Rangers in their own division, both of which can much more readily afford to fill a gap at the trade deadline if needed than Oakland can.
Additionally, the fact that the A's have 48 of their remaining 67 games against teams with winning records means that the hardest part is yet to come. While they have played well against such teams (33-25 to date) it's unlikely that they'll be able to continue that pace.
Their 16-12 record in one run games is very good, the result of some good luck and good relief pitching, and their 10-5 record in such contests since mid-June has been a big part of why they went from nine games under .500 to seven games over in just five weeks. Additionally, their 7-2 record in extra innings and their major league best 11 walk-off wins are much of the reason for their apparent ability to contend this late into the season. This kind of "skill" rarely propels a team through an entire season.
More likely they'll regress to the mean and start losing a few of these close contests. An "offense" that carries three regulars hitting below the Mendoza line isn't likely to blow out many of its opponents, so they'll come back to the pack. More important, perhaps, is that the A's would have to fight off not just the Angels but also best the Rays, the White Sox, the Orioles and even the Red Sox, who have a much better run differential than the A's despite their relative positions in the standings.
The Orioles, though they have the same record as Oakland at the moment, are only there because of extraordinary luck (they're 19-6 in one-run games, 32-38 otherwise) and are therefore not likely to stay there, all other things being equal. Still, they already have 51 wins in the books, and money is not a problem for the O's. A few astute trades could turn them into the team their record suggests they already are.
The Blue Jays might have had a shot but now without Jose Bautista for a while and missing essentially an entire pitching staff due to injuries, they're bound to fade. That leaves six teams for two playoff spots, and I have a hard time imagining that Boston, LA or Chicago won't go and get what they need to make a push for that other spot, or that Oakland's hot streak will prove to be just that: A Streak.
And streaks always have an end.
Yu Darvish and a Look at Early Dominant Pitching
Question: What do Tim Fortugno, Mariano Rivera, Bob Milacki, Tim Wakefield, Dennis Ribant and Hall of Famer Juan Marichal have in common?
Answer: Whatever it is, Yu Darvish does too.
Yu Darvish crossed the Pacific a few months ago at great expense to the Texas Rangers and bringing great expectations from his old fans in Japan, not to mention those in Texas and much of the baseball-loving public.
His record in Japan - 76-28 with a 1.72 ERA and more than a strikeout per inning over five seasons - was impeccable, literally. There was nothing that could be found wrong with it. His K/W ratio was nearly 5/1. He allowed only 39 home runs in over 1000 Japan League innings. He was remarkably healthy,durable, and effective, making at least 23 starts and averaging 15 Wins and 10 complete games per season.
So naturally he wanted to prove himself in the US, and who could blame him? His Spring training stats - admittedly in just a handful of games - were largely more of the same: 22 strikeouts in 15 innings, and a 3.60 ERA. But then the season started and some of the polish appeared to be missing form his game.
Though he was credited with a Win in his first start, he allowed five walks and 5 runs, all earned, in just 5.2 innings, and this against the woefully inept Seattle Mariners, a team that walks somewhat less often than Stephen Hawking and gets runs only slightly more often than a pair of Kevlar panty hose.
His next two starts, against the Twins and Tigers, were better (two earned runs in 12 total innings) but he still walked nine batters. So it was fair to wonder what the Yankees - a team that can actually, you know, hit - would do when they faced him on Tuesday night.
Not much, it turns out.
Faced with the best offense in the majors in 2012, a team averaging nearly six runs per contest, Darvish delivered an array of pitches, none of which proved terribly appealing for the Yankees' bats.
Hard to blame them. Darvish exhibited a fastball that averaged 93 mph and touched 96, but also threw a cutter, a slider, a splitter and a curve, all of which were responsible for at least one of his 10 strikeouts over 8.1 innings. He also walked only two batters and though he allowed seven hits, nobody managed to score.
This of course begs the question of how much might we expect out of Darvish for the rest of his career. Given that in just his 4th MLB appearance he nearly managed a 10-K shutout of the best offense in the majors, should we expect more of the same? Or is this a fluke?
Getting back to my initial question, what does Yu Darvish have in common with that otherwise seemingly random and varied array of current and former major league pitchers?
Real Answer: They are among a group of 23 pitchers who, in one of their first five career appearances, racked up at least eight shutout innings with 10 or more strikeouts. The full list:
Player            WAR    IP    Yrs
Juan Marichal      64   3507    16
Luis Tiant         60   3486    19
Mariano  Rivera    56   1218    17
Tim  Wakefield     32   3226    19
Pedro  Astacio     26   2197    15
Kerry  Wood        25   1374    14
J. Vander Meer     23   2105    13
Rudy May           20   2622    16
Jose DeLeon        16   1897    13
Connie Johnson     10    716     5
Dick Selma         10    841    10
Bob Shirley         9   1432    11
Dennis Rasmussen    9   1461    12
Dennis Bennett      8    863     7
Johnny Broaca       5    674     5
Bob Milacki         5    796     8
Dennis Ribant       4    519     6
Steve  Woodard      3    667     7
Dave Morehead       3    819     8
Wade  Davis         2    396     4
Karl Spooner        2    117     2
Tim Fortugno        0    110     3
The pitchers are ranked by career WAR, Wins Above Replacement, according to Baseball-Reference.com's formula. Clearly, the list shows some incredible talent and value, topped off by an actual Hall of Famer (Marichal) and a future one (Rivera), albeit one who is no longer a starting pitcher. Luis Tiant was also a great pitcher for a long time and might have been in Cooperstown himself if a few things had broken differently (or not broken, like his scapula in 1970) in his career.
Though the quality level drops off quite a bit after that, lots of guys would kill to have had the careers of Tim Wakefield (200 major league Wins, two World Series rings, one dramatic walk-off homer to Aaron Boone) or even Pedro Astacio, who held a bunch of Rockies pitching records before Ubaldo Jiminez came along. Kerry Wood won the 1998 Rookie of the Year award, and though he had some injury troubles and only briefly became the pitcher everyone anticipated, pitching in the major leagues for a decade and a half is nothing to sneeze at.
Other notables on the list include Johnny Vander Meer, who is the only pitcher in MLB history to throw consecutive no-hitters, and led the NL in strikeouts for three consecutive years. Rudy May was a quintessential LAIM for most of his career, though he did win an ERA title in 1980 with the Yankees. Ditto for DeLeon, who led the league in strikeouts once, but also losses twice.
What's left is a baker's dozen worth of pitchers offering almost every sort of disappointment imaginable. Connie Johnson pitched a decade in the Negro Leagues and fought in WWII for before making it to the majors, at which point his best years were already behind him. Dick Selma got the first win in Padres history, a 12-K shutout on opening day in 1969, but otherwise had a fairly nondescript career as a swingman for a decade that ended when he was just 30 years old.
Bob Shirley is probably less famous for anything he ever did on a pitching mound than he is for the June 1987 clubhouse wrestling match that landed Donnie Baseball on the disabled list with two bulging disks in his back - an injury that would sap his power and probably cost him his shot at the Hall of Fame. (Mattingly averaged .337 with 30 homers for the four previous years but just .292 with 12 homers for the rest of his career.) Shirley was released just days later, even though the report of the scuffle was denied by both the Yankees and the players. He tossed only seven more innings in the majors.
Rasmussen was another LAIM, though not as good as May or DeLeon. Bennett was a nondescript swingman/spot starter whose baseball career ended before he was 30. Coincidentally, he died almost exactly a month ago. Milacki racked up 243 innings in his first full season (1989) and never had another full, healthy year. (The Orioles in those days burned through young pitchers' arms like a disturbed kid with a magnifying glass and an ant farm: Milacki, Pete Harnish, Jeff Ballard, Ben McDonald...Curt Schilling and Joe Table should thank their lucky stars they got out of there when they did. Mike Mussina managed to get through his injuries in 1993, but he seems to be the exception to the rule.)
Morehead, Fortugno, and Woodard were true flukes, never again showing anything like the kind of talent they exhibited in their early dominant outing. Ribant was rumored to have used a spitball, which may explain his occasional ability to baffle opposing batters (including a perfect game in the minors). Wade Davis is still pitching and still young, but probably trade bait for the Rays, who desperately need bats.
Karl Spooner is the only one to appear on the list twice, tossing consecutive complete game shutouts in his first two major league games, allowing only seven hits and six walks with 27 K's in 18 innings. He looked like the Next Big Thing, but he failed to properly warm up in a game the following spring, hurt his arm, and was never the same.
Johnny Broaca might be the oddest, bitterest case of all. He was a useful member of the rotation for some pretty good Yankees teams in the 1930's, but jumped ship in his fourth season over apparent marital troubles. He attempted an unsuccessful comeback with Cleveland a few years later, but to no avail, and apparently spent the rest of his days as a reclusive day laborer in a little town in Massachusetts, lest his ex-wife should get any money out of him. Weird. And sad.
But not likely the fate of Yu Darvish, which after all, was the point of this post.
And while I'm not sure we're really any closer to having the answer to that question now as opposed to when we started this inquiry, I'm awfully fascinated by some of the results. I don't expect Darvish to end up in the Hall of Fame some day, but neither do I think that he will hurt his arm and spend his retirement shoveling coal to spite his former spouse. Heck, I'm not even sure if he's married!
What this shows us, if anything, is that Darvish seems to be capable of a career that could last 10-15 years in the majors. Flashes of brilliance like his performance against the Yankees on Tuesday night, particularly at such an early stage in his major league career, suggest a pitcher capable of great things, and if not that, at least a decade or so of usefulness and value in the majors.
The Rangers are fortunate to have him early in his career, before the league has a chance to figure him out. Of course, if you can throw a fastball at 95 mph - and have four other pitches you can not only throw for strikes but also use to whiff major league hitters - well, there's not much likelihood that a tour around the AL is going to tell hitters anything other than that this guy is really, really good.
Yoenis Cespedes: Why the A's Just Threw Away $36M
The normally frugal Oakland A's this week signed outfielder Yoenis Cespedes, the latest Cuban defector, who is expected to be...well, nobody knows exactly what to expect from him. Oakland paid $36 million for him for four years, but it's likely that the small market club doled out a good deal more than any of his other suitors were offering, if only because they actually signed him and the others did not.
Additionally, you would imagine that to entice such a prospective talent to come to a team as abysmal as the A's, you would have to offer significantly more than the competition. Consider also that the Marlins, his most oft-mentioned suitor before the actual signing, play in a state that has no state income tax, and that California's is 10.3% for people making over a million per year. With both factors in play, you would indeed have to assume a formidable gap between the respective teams' offers. His agent, Adam Katz, would surely have advised him of these considerations, even if he was unfamiliar with them, having just gotten off the boat, so to speak.
But those issues ultimately pale in comparison to the question of how good Cespedes really is. Projections range all over, and while he apparently has great tools (and a bold and unconventional marketing department) it's literally anybody's guess what he's going to be capable of on a major league field, 1000-lb squat presses notwithstanding.
The history of Cuban prospects, particularly those who have broken in as free agents after defecting, is frankly abysmal. Since 1960, when Cuba became communist and the United States essentially severed economic ties with it, there have been 45 Cuban born players in MLB.
When you weed out the pitchers, you're left with 20 players, and most of them came through the draft after having gone to high school in Miami or something like that. Of those 20, 13 have played 100 or more games in the majors,though several are young enough to yet have a significant career in the majors.
Only seven Cuban born players have produced more than one WAR for their careers, according to baseball-reference.com, though several others had careers of considerable length, even with out a substantially positive career WAR total. Even that isn't worthless, we must realize, as those players had to have good seasons sprinkled in with the bad ones in order to achieve a net result of about zero.
Normally, if you wanted an analysis of what Cespedes would do, you would perhaps take an average of what has been accomplished by all players like him, while controlling for as many factors as you can (age, handedness, defensive position, body type, etc.). The trouble is that we have so few players to use for such an analysis that it would be moot. So instead I'll look at each player more or less individually, and we'll see if there's anything to be learned.
First of all, let's look at the players who were born in Cuba but drafted in the US, typically because they were children when their parents defected from Cuba.
Jose Canseco - Drafted out of high school in the 15th round in 1982, won 1986 AL RoY, 1988 AL MVP, the first "40 HR - 40 SB" player in history, "better living through chemistry" and all that rot. Clearly talented, but we'll never know what he's have been if he wasn't Juiced.
Rafael Palmeiro - Drafted out of college in the 1st round in 1985, one of a handful of players with 3000 hits and 500 homers, will never get into the Hall of Fame because of a failed drug test and the ensuing scandal that ended his career.
*For the record, Jose and Raffy own about half of all the at-bats and hits and almost 3/4 of all major league homers by Cuban players born in the last half century.
Ozzie Canseco - Jose's twin brother, drafted as a pitcher a year later than Jose, by the Yankees in the 2nd round. After a few unremarkable years pitching in the minors, the Yanks tried to turn him into a hitter on the assumption that he couldn't be that much worse than his MVP brother. But he was.
Orestes Destrade - Though the slugging firstbaseman was signed originally as an undrafted free agent, it wasn't for a lack of effort. The Angels tried to draft him in 1980 but he didn't sign, and the Yanks got him a year later. He had some power but little else and never made a mark in the majors in the 80's, then went to Japan for a few years before signing with the expansion Marlins in 1993. He went back to Japan after the 1994 season for a year and has been doing broadcasting ever since.
Eli Marrero - Third round draft pick by the Cards in 1993, Marrero played parts of 10 seasons with seven different teams in the majors, rarely getting into more than half of his team's games. You can do worse than to have a career as a major league reserve/platoon catcher, but clearly he was no star.
Alex Sanchez - This 5th round 1996 draft pick is the type of player who should have "Run, Don't Walk" tattooed on his person somewhere. Sanchez spent parts of five seasons in the majors with four different teams. He had speed, but no patience or power and did not particularly steal bases well (122 steals, but 58 times caught) or play good defense. He was notably the first major league player ever suspended under the new MLB drug testing program.
Nelson Santovenia - Another first round draft pick, 19th overall in 1982, this catcher played parts of seven seasons with three different teams, and his best season involved hitting .236 with 8 homers.
Yunel Escobar - Currently with his second MLB team, the starting short stop for the Blue Jays, this 2nd round draft pick has decent patience and bat control, hits for modest average and power and plays good defense. He'll never be a star, but is worth a couple of wins per year over a replacement level player.
To date, only four free agent Cuban defectors have had significant careers: Rey Ordonez, Yuniesky Betancourt, Alexei Ramirez and Kendrys Morales. Ordonez, of course was thought to be the second coming of Ozzie Smith, and while he had considerable talents as a defensive shortstop - he won three Gold Gloves and probably deserved at least two of them - he had neither the modest offensive skills nor the longevity of the Wizard, and was out of the majors at age 33, his ninth season in the bigs.
Several others have defected in the last decade or so, and most of them are still around somewhere. These players are of particular interest because they were free agents and therefore able to negotiate deals on the open market, unlike drafted players or those won in a lottery, like Ordonez.
Brayan Pena - A true backup catcher, Pena is now 30 years old and unlikely to make an impact on the major leagues, but with parts of seven major league seasons under his belt, including the last three as the Royals backup backstop. He was signed for an undisclosed amount by the Braves in 2000 and got a few cups of coffee with them before going to KC. Again, no star, but good enough to stick on most major league benches.
Juan Diaz - Signed for an undisclosed amount by the Dodgers in 1996, Diaz hit with some pop in the minors but got only a 2002 cup of coffee with Boston in MLB and has basically been out of the system since 2006. He's now thrilling the crowds in places like Joliet and Winnipeg in the Northern League, never having really made it to the show.
Michel Hernandez - Signed by the Yankees as a free agent in 1998, he's your basic catch and throw guy behind the plate, which is to say he'll never hit enough to get a job in the majors, especially given that he's now 33. He's gotten a handful of at bats with the Yanks and later the Rays, but will probably never see a major league field again unless he buys a ticket.
Barbaro Canizares - Free agent signed by the Braves in 2006, he's hit for decent averages with patience and doubles power in the high minors, but was allowed to go to the Mexican Leagues last year because the Braves had an even better prospect, Freddie Freeman, who hit even more and is only 21. Canizares hit .396 in Mexico in 2011, which is notorious for inflating offense but hey, three-ninety six?!??!! Give the guy a shot, right? Anyway, he's 32, so probably not.
Now we're getting into the handful of known commodities, at least in terms of their actual contracts.
Juan Miranda - Miranda defected in 2004, at the age of 21, and signed with the Yankees for about $2 million over four years in 2006. He's hit for modest numbers in the minors (.282/.373/.477 over four seasons in AAA) and has gotten a few at-bats in the majors, but isn't likely to be an impact player. When he was signed, a Yankee official said, "Miranda is projected to hit over 20 home runs and hit .280. He doesn't swing at bad pitches." Presumably the official meant that he would be able to do that in the majors, not at AAA, but we haven't seen it yet, and at almost 29 years old, time is running out. Presumably if the Yankees thought he was likely to do that, they'd have offered him more than a shade over the major league minimum salary for those four seasons.
Dayan Viciedo - Defected in 2008 at age 19 and was signed by the White Sox for four years and $10 million. His numbers were all with the Cuban junior circuit, but they were impressive enough to merit that contract, and he has not disappointed so far. He's improved in each year in the minors and spent parts of the last two seasons with the ChiSox as an occasional RF, DH or firstbaseman. He's projected as the starting RF for the Pale Hose in 2012, now that Carlos Quentin is gone, but he's a DH waiting to happen, if Adam Dunn doesn't bounce back from his miserable 2011 campaign.
Jose Iglesias - Signed to a four year, $8.2 million contract by the Red Sox in 2009, he was regarded as their best prospect before the 2011 season, but then hit just .235 with one homer for Pawtucket last year. He's only 22 and his defense is his calling card, but if he can't hit a little, he'll never get to play it.
Leonys Martin - Signed a 5-year, $15.5 million contract with the Rangers before last season, and hit a combined .295/.362/.421 at three minor league levels last year. That's buttressed largely by the .348 he hit in 29 games at Frisco in the AA Texas League, where .300 batting averages practically fall out of the sky like manna. (Someone named Wes Timmons hit .365 there last year, while non-prospects such as Drew Locke, Jordan Parraz and Paul McAnulty have hit .330 or better there in the last several years.) Viciedo has potential to be a useful major leaguer for a few years, like Ordonez was. Like Iglesias, Martin will need to hit in the majors if he wants to stick around. He'll be 24 in March, so he's got time to make good on that contract, but clearly still needs to prove himself at AAA (where he hit .263 with no homers in almost 200 plate appearances).
So there you have them: all of the position players born in Cuba in the last five decades who ever saw any MLB service time. The list is not encouraging. The numbers are better for the drafted players, because of course the teams signing them have better information on them before doing so and hence we would expect more of them to pan out, or they wouldn't have been drafted.
But the free agents are almost all busts, or marginal major leaguers at best. Viciedo has the potential to be a useful major league for a few years, maybe even have a few really good seasons in the middle of a 10-year career, but the rest look like organizational soldiers or guys with one skill (power, defense) but no others, and hence not MLB material.
It's worth noting that Cuban pitchers have fared better than this, with the likes of Livan Hernandez, Orlando Hernandez, Danys Baez, Jose Contreras, Rolando Arrojo, and now Aroldis Chapman. Even Ariel Prieto had 3.0 WAR for his disappointing career and Vladimir Nunez pitched for almost a decade in the majors, albeit rarely all that well.
The reason for this, I think, is obvious: You can tell right away whether a pitching prospect can throw hard and straight, which is most of what pitching entails. Determining whether a prospect will be able to hit such pitches - not to mention curves and sliders and change ups and the like - is a much more complex and drawn out task.
And as for Cespedes, well, don't be surprised if he takes a little while to get acclimated and even longer to become the star people seem to think he'll be.
Or if he never does.
Yankees Search for Lefty DH
Rumors this morning indicate, not surprisingly, that the Yankees are looking to add a lefty bat to their roster and that the candidates for said position include Former Yankees Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui, as well as Raul Ibanez.
Ick.
OK, so Damon's not terrible. He hit .261/.326/.418 last year, including 29 doubles and 19 steals. Though not the youngest of the trio, he clearly has the youngest legs. Ibanez has not stolen more than four bases in a season since 2005 and Matsui has only 13 steals in his nine-year MLB career. Which means that Damon stands the best chance of being a useful bat next year, especially given the struggles of the other two in 2011.
Matsui hit a paltry .251/.321/.375 last year with only a dozen homers, though it's worth noting that some of that was the result of the Oakland Mausoleum. Baseball-Reference.com's park factor adjustment tool suggests that he'd have hit .271/.343/.403 in Yankee Stadium, making his 2011 numbers slightly more palatable, of not actually any more valuable. According to B-R, he was worth exactly ZERO Wins Above Replacement (WAR) last year and while mediocrity isn't useless on a baseball field, it's hardly something for a team competing for a championship to aspire to. Besides that, he's 37 years old now and hasn't played a full, healthy season since 2005.
Ibanez was signed by the Phillies as a free agent before the 2009 season for three years and $30 million, which resulted in significant amounts of laughing and mockery of the Phillies front office by almost anyone with a computer and an internet connection. But then something funny happened: Ibanez was awesome.
Well, he was awesome for two months, anyway. Despite having a career slash line of .286/.346/.472, Ibanez started his age-37 season hitting .312/.371/.656 with 22 homers in 62 games. Then he sustained a groin injury and when he came back he was a shell of his former self, sputtering to a .232 average with only 12 homers after the All-Star break. In fact, his overall performance in almost 400 games since mid-2009 has been .255/.321/.435 with 21 homers per 162 games, well-below his career averages and not likely to improve significantly as he approaches his fourth decade on Earth.
While not as injury-riddled as Matsui has been, Ibanez was frequently benched last year due to ineffectiveness and so only played about 140 games. The Yankees wouldn't need him to start every day, since he can't hit lefties at all anymore (.211/.232/.353 against them in 2011), but even his line against right-handers last year (.256/.307/.440) was uninspiring. Overall, expecting a full, productive year out of Ibanez seems foolish.
And any thoughts of him spelling Nick Swisher or Brett Gardner at the outfield corners once in a while are misguided at best. Ibanez was a terrible defensive left fielder last year, 1.2 wins below a replacement level player, according to B-R, and this at perhaps the easiest defensive position on the field. That's what Justin Maxwell and Chris Dickerson are for. Even Andruw Jones (+0.4 defensive WAR in limited playing time) is a better option than Ibanez would be.
The trouble with Damon, apparently, is that he wants five million dollars, and the Yankees aren't comfortable with that. Hard to blame them, given that Damon himself is already 38 years old and has no defensive value at all, having not played more than a couple of dozen games in the field since 2009. And of course, if those legs of his give out, he'll be the next thing to worthless.
The irony in all of this is that if the Yankees weren't The Yankees, they would have their pick of younger, cheaper options to fill this void. The Indians, for example, recently picked up the 2011 MVP of the International League, Russ Canzler, for "cash considerations" which is to say, almost nothing. No players, just money, and not very much of it, we presume. Maybe a million. Pocket change to a major league GM, even one from Tampa.
Canzler hit .314 with 18 homers and a .401 OBP for Durham last year, and will make the MLB minimum. He'll be 26 just after Opening Day, so he should be entering his prime as a hitter, and while it's possible that he's a "Quadruple-A" player, who can mash in the high minors but will get swallowed up by major league pitching, it's also possible that he'll be the next Erubiel Durazo or Brian Daubach, a minor league journeyman who just needed enough of a chance at the major league level to prove he could contribute.
The high minors are full of guys like Canzler. Aaron Bates, for example, was signed by the Twins to a minor league contract last year as roster filler, and promptly hit .316/.408/.439 for Rochester. He doesn't have a lot of power, but if he can produce like that in the majors he's an asset, even as a first baseman.
Cleveland's own AAA team featured OF Jerad Head, who hit .284 with 24 homers last season. Journeyman Dallas McPherson hit .283 with 20 homers for Charlotte in 2011. Jeremy Hermida hit .319 with 17 homers for Louisville last year, is 28 years old, is patient, a left handed hitter, and will come cheaply. John Bowker hit .306 with 15 homers for Indianapolis and also hits from the left side. Even the Yankees themselves have such a player: Jorge Vazquez, an almost 30-year old corner infielder who hit 32 homers for Scranton Wilkes-Barre last year, albeit with only 30 walks and 166 whiffs.
None of these guys is on their major league affiliates' depth charts, according to ESPN, and presumably any of them can be had for a song. One of them may give as much value or more to a major league team than the likes of Matsui and Ibanez, at this point in their careers, though they'll be no favorites of the sports betting types. The Yankees, however, rarely go in for the economically sound option, preferring instead the low-risk, known quantity types for such roles.
They can afford to spend a little more cash on a known entity like Damon or Ibanez and then, if they flop, just write them off and trade for someone else in July. Especially when considering that whomever they bring in for this role will only need to play one position for two-thirds of the season (against righties) and won't be expected to be a long term solution to this problem, it would seem that the Yanks have little reason to break from their usual patterns.
But it sure would be nice to see some Cinderella story make a dent in the Bronx this year.
Wakefield, Rivera Milestones Very Different; Notes on AJ Burnett's "Improvement"
Some interesting milestones were reached last night in games across the AL East, at least.
Though it came in a crushing loss to the woeful Orioles, Tampa Bay's Johnny Damon became just the 9th player in MLB history with 200+ homers and 400 or more steals. Four of the nine (Roberto Alomar, Paul Molitor, Rickey Henderson and Joe Morgan) are already in the Hall of Fame and by rights, Craig Biggio will be someday soon. Barry Bonds and his dad, Bobby Bonds, are both on that list, as is Marquis Grissom.
The Ageless Wonder (as in "I Wonder why he's still pitching in the majors"), Tim Wakefield finally won his 200th career game. A somewhat less exclusive club than Damon's, Wake is the one hundred and eleventieth pitcher since 1871 to reach that milestone, and he has the highest career ERA in that club, though with adjustments for ballparks and time frame, he's only 16th worst.
And Mariano Rivera, a truly ageless wonder, notched his 600th career Save, being only the second man to do that. Trevor Hoffman was the first, and he's no longer adding to his 601 career Saves, so Rivera will likely lead the pack before the year is out.
I'll be the first to grant you that Saves are mostly a junk stat, a self fulfilling prophecy, overrated at best and at worst truly misleading. But holy cow, 600 of anything in baseball is kind of a lot, don't you think?
Even so, we don't need that stat to say how good Mariano Rivera has been in his career. There are 126 pitchers who have amassed at least 100 career Saves, and Rivera has the lowest ERA (2.22) of any of them.
His 2.22 career ERA is the best among active pitchers, and has been for four years running. (This isn't terribly unusual for a relief pitcher, as they tend to have lower ERAs in general, and if they stick around long enough, eventually amass 1000 or more innings. Lee Smith, John Franco, Kent Tekulve and Hoyt Wilhelm have all held this honor for multiple years.)
He also has the best winning percentage among pitchers with at least 300 career Saves, which is certainly a testament to the fact that he;s always pitched for good teams, but is also a sign that he manages to hold on more often than he chokes. You know, in case the 600 Saves weren't enough for you in that vein.
His 205 adjusted ERA is the best of all time for pitchers with at least 1000 innings under their belts, and that's one category in which he's not likely to be caught any time soon. No starting pitcher will ever do it, as they simply throw too many innings to ever be that good at relative run prevention for a whole career. For reference, Pedro Martinez is the next man on the all-time career list, and he had a career mark of 154.
Zach Grienke had a 205 in 2009, when he won the Cy Young award. Roger Clemens won seven of those - two more than anyone else in the history of MLB - and his mark is 143. Among active pitchers, Tim Lincecum, Roy Halladay and Johan Santana each have two Cy Young Awards, but are all around the 140 mark, and are unlikely to somehow significantly improve as they age.
The only remote possibility of anyone passing him is Jonathan Papelbon, who has a 201 ERA+ in 422 career innings. But he'll need to actually improve, to be as good as he was from 2006-09, and that for another whole decade, to knock Mo off that hill.
If you'd like to compare him to other elite relief pitchers, we can do that. Dennis Eckersley won a Cy Young Award and an MVP in 1992, pitching 80 innings and striking out 93, with a 1.91 ERA and 51 Saves. That performance was worth 3.0 WAR, according to baseball-reference.com. Mariano Rivera has had 12 years that were about that good or better. That's basically his whole career since 1996, excepting 2002, when he was hurt for part of the year, and 2007, when we was merely very good.
Or, to put it another way, if you add up the Cy Young year performances of every reliever to ever win the award, (Rollie Fingers, Bruce Sutter, Gagne, Eck, Mark Davis, Willie Hernandez, Sparky Lyle, Steve Bedrosian and Mike Marshall) you get a 67-39 record, 334 Saves and a 2.03 ERA (201 ERA+) in 1009 innings. Rivera, for his career, has a better adjusted ERA than that conglomerate, a better WHIP, better walk rate, better K rate, and therefore a better K/W. He also has an additional 198 innings with 14 walks, 216 strikeouts and a 3.18 ERA, or essentially two and a half more seasons worth of Cy-worthy relief efforts.
If you prefer modern metrics, Rivera's WPA of 56 is the best of anyone with at least 100 career Saves, far ahead of John Smoltz and Dennis Eckersley, both around 40. His WAR of 55.9 is behind only those two, though they both had a lot of starts to help in that department. Roy Halladay is only slightly ahead at 59 WAR, which should give you an idea of how valuable Rivera has been to the Yankees.
No active relief pitcher is even close to him, as Frankie Rodriguez has only about 22 WAR in his career. Among pitchers with fewer than 100 career starts, Rivera's 55.9 WAR are far and away the most, almost 50% more than Hoyt Wilhelm and Goose Gossage, both at about 40.
Anyway, congratulations to Mo the Yankees, one of the greatest of all time.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
On a separate note, and of more immediate importance, AJ Burnett seemingly pitched quite well last night, allowing two runs in six innings, with mercifully only two walks and 11 strikeouts. But before we go crazy saying that he's "turned a corner" or "found himself" or "doesn't suck", let's look at the facts:
The mariners are the worst hitting team in the American League. They have averaged a paltry 3.41 runs per game this year. So, in Burnett's six innings, they would have been expected to score 2.27 runs.
They actually scored two runs, so Burnett saved about one quarter of one run better than an average AL pitcher.
Actually, it's worse than that. Because SafeCo Field is so tough on hitters, they've averaged only 3.23 runs/game at home. So Burnett saved 0.16 runs. Whoopee.
How bad are the Mariners' hitters? Well, not as bad as last year, when they averaged just 3.17 runs per game, the lowest mark by any MLB club since before the institution of the Designated Hitter rule. In fact, they're the first American League team since 1971-72 to average fewer than 3.5 runs per game for two consecutive years as well. At that time, however, about a third of the league averaged 3.5 runs per game or less, so clearly these Mariners are much worse, relative to their context.
There have been teams this bad for a year, on occasion, during the last three decades, but they always find a way to improve the next year. The Mariners are the first team not to make a significant improvement after such a terrible year, improving just three tenths of a run since 2011. Maybe 2012 will be their year to go from "atrocious" to just "bad".
But, in any case, let's not get too excited about Burnett's apparent improvement until he faces real major league hitters, OK?
Yankees Don't Need King Felix
The New York Yankees have the second best record in the American League, currently 60-40, a season high 20 games above the .500 level. They have the best run differential in MLB, +135, and they have the best ERA+ (adjusted for ballpark factors and such) in the Junior Circuit as well, 19% better than the league average, trailing only the Phillies, who have a 123 mark in the slightly less challenging National League.
So why does ESPN's Yankees feature writer Andrew Marchand think they need pitching help? I'll let him tell you in his own words:
"[Felix] Hernandez, just 25, is the type of guy the Yankees dream about. They need a starter to team with CC Sabathia to get them through October.
Freddy Garcia and Bartolo Colon have pitched well enough to get the Yankees to October, but can they keep it up for three more months?
Colon might be able to miss bats in the late fall, but Garcia's mid-to-high 80s stuff usually doesn't translate then."
Really? He states that last part as though it's a foregone conclusion, a well-known fact, like that water is wet, snow is cold and that The Pentaverate meets tri-annually at a secret country mansion in Colorado known as, "The Meadows."
But even shadier than the assertion that The Colonel puts an addictive chemical in his chicken is the notion that soft-tossers can't win in October. A brief scan of the career postseason Wins leaders reveals several names known more for their control and smarts than for their blazing speed: Andy Pettitte (19 Wins), Tom Glavine (14), Greg Maddux (11), David Wells (10) and Orlando Hernandez (9) comprise about half of the top ten or 11 postseason winners, and none of them had a fastball that averaged more than 90 mph for most of their careers.
Granted, Wells, Pettitte and El Duque could all get into the low 90's sometimes, but they all lived around 88 mph or so most of the time and got batters out with offspeed stuff, wits and experience. You could argue - and you'd be right, of course, smart-guy - that these "Wins" were largely attributable to the fact that these guys all pitched mostly for the Yankees and Braves of the last decade and a half, very good teams that would be expected to produce pitchers who win, even if they didn't pitch all that well.
But that's not the case here. Pettitte's ERA in the postseason was 3.83. Wells had a career postseason ERA of 3.17, and El Duque's was 2.55, all three better than their overall career ERA's. Glavine and Maddux were 3.30 and 3.27, respectively, though they both had losing postseason records because Braves hitters are contractually not obligated to hit in October. True story.
And besides those guys, the annals of baseball are practically filled with the names of starting pitchers who got outs in the postseason without necessarily lighting up the radar gun. Derek Lowe. Barry Zito. Clem Labine. Jimmy Key.
And while Garcia doesn't have as much experience in the October limelight as Pettitte or Glavine, he's not exactly some starry-eyed kid just up from the farm, either. He just turned 35 years old last month, and has more than 2,000 career innings in the major leagues. More to the point, Garcia has done just fine in the postseason, with a 6-2 record and a 3.11 ERA that's nearly a full run below his career mark in the regular season. Granted, his three postseasons occurred in 2000, 2001 and 2005, when (according to FanGraphs.com) Garcia was still throwing fastballs in the low 90's, but even that was not an overpowering arsenal by any stretch of the imagination.
Besides, Garcia's prowess as a pitcher has always been linked directly to the movement on his pitches, not necessarily their speed. In his younger days, he tended to walk more batters than he does now, a supposed result of trying too hard to steer pitches into the catcher's mitt rather than allow their natural movement to make them tough to hit. His walk rates dropped considerably when he went to the White Sox, and whether that was due to a superior pitching coach, change of scenery, or simple maturity, the change has mostly stuck.
Regardless of past experiences, this Freddy Garcia certainly seems to know how to retire hitters. Granted, he's had a rough time with the Red Sox this year, but then, who hasn't? His record of 0-2 with an ERA of s10.13 against them is terrible, bet then the 0-1, 5.40 record Hernandez has posted is not exactly something you'd want engraved on your Hall of Fame plaque either. Against other possible playoff contenders, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Detroit and Texas, he's 4-1 with a 1.93 ERA in 33 innings of work this season. Hard to complain about that, and certainly hard to justify saying that he can't somehow get the same batters out in October that he owned in May, June and July.
Overall, his 3.23 ERA is 14th among the 49 qualified AL pitchers, comfortably within the top 30%, and his 128 adjusted ERA is 12th in the American League. For the record, King Felix, whom Andrew Marchand is convinced would be a huge upgrade over Garcia, is currently 22nd on that list. Garcia has given the Yankees a Quality Start in 72% of his outings compared to just 64% for Hernandez, despite all the help he theoretically gets from Safeco Field.
Perhaps Marchand somehow perceives that Garcia is something less than he is because of his lackluster Win-Loss record. Though he's generally gotten excellent run support, Garcia has taken two "Tough Losses" this season, i.e. losses in Quality Starts, which is why his record is 9-7 instead of 11-5, as perhaps it rightly should be. A record of 11-5 might reassure everyone that Garcia is part of the solution, not part of the problem in the Yankees' starting rotation - which has allowed the 4th fewest runs per game in the AL this year, by the way. At the very least, it might stop people from writing articles like the one Marchand penned for ESPN.
On the other hand, Marchand specifically mentions the issue of run support when he brings another darling of the trade fodder discussions into the fray:
"If the Yankees were to deal for the Dodgers' Hiroki Kuroda, he might be a postseason upgrade. Kuroda has a National League-worst 12 losses, but that is due to 2.85 runs of support per game, the lowest average in the league. His ERA is barely over 3.00."
So, clearly, he understands that Wins and Losses are not entirely indicative of a pitcher's quality. (It's perhaps worth noting that Kuroda, despite his solid career ERA of 3.53, is singularly ineffective in games against the Junior Circuit, going just 3-8 with a 4.33 ERA in InterLeague games. Maybe he wouldn't be such an upgrade. Unless they could hide him in the bullpen through the first two rounds of the playoffs, anyway.)
Marchand seems to know that Hernandez isn't going anywhere anyway, as he repeatedly refers to how young (25) and how good (really, really) Hernandez is, and that this is exactly the type of pitcher that a franchise would want to use as the foundation of a half decade or so of playoff runs. Also, that the Yankees would have to give up the farm to get him, that he's signed at reasonable salaries through 2014 and...what was it?...something else...
Oh yeah: The Yankees don't need him.


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Global technology and consulting giant IBM reported better-than-expected results this afternoon, earning operating net income of $3.3 billion or $2.78 per share during the first three months of 2012.
However revenue at the Armonk, N.Y. based company was flat at $24.67 billion and below estimates set by Wall Street.
"In the first quarter, we drove strong profit and earnings per share growth. We delivered another excellent software performance, expanded services margins, and continued the momentum in our growth initiatives," IBM Chief Executive Ginni Rometty said. "Our investments in growth market countries continued to generate strong revenue growth across software, hardware and services while contributing to the company's ongoing margin expansion."
On the results, IBM has increased its full year guidance to $15.00 from $14.85 earlier.
Europe weighed on the company's results, where sales declined two percent before adjusting for currencies. Asia and the U.S. saw stronger results, with revenue up four and two percent, respectively.
IBM said 40 markets tallied double digit sales gains and the growth markets of Brazil, Russia, India, and China saw a combined 10 percent jump.
The companies hardware division, which fueled its beat last quarter, reported tepid quarterly results. Within the unit, revenue fell seven percent to $3.7 billion.
Software was a better category for the tech giant this period, increasing 5 percent to $5.6 billion.
A key category Wall Street analysts were looking to, contract signings for future services, saw tepid demand, with the total backlog declining to $139 billion. Contract signings generally act as a gauge of corporate discretionary spending and helps foreshadow the investment magnitude companies are making.
Shares in IBM are two percent lower in after-hours trading.
Global tech and consulting giant International Business Machines Corp. is set to release earnings results for the first three months of 2012 just minutes after markets in the U.S. close.
Analysts polled by Bloomberg expect the company to report earnings per share of $2.65 on revenue of $24.8 billion.
Investors will be looking for color on two key areas from IBM: contract signings and hardware orders.
The first, contract signings, will shed some light on discretionary tech spending by corporates in the U.S. and abroad. A tick up would indicate that companies are once again investing.
Equally important to IBM is its hardware, which fueled the earnings beat last quarter. Hardware unit revenue last surged 21 percent.
"For IT Hardware, bright spots include solid expectations around storage and services spending and ongoing tablet momentum," Darrin Peller of Barclays says. "Indications for corporate PC and server demand down-ticked from our last survey, however."
Shares in IBM traded more than two percent higher during the day.


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The Late Shrimant Maisaheb Bavadekar In The Year 1946 After Taking Tarining From Madame Maria Montessori Herself, In India & Italy. This Was The First Pre-Primary Schools In This Part Of Maharashtra At That Time . Our Primary Montessori Prathamik Vidyalaya (Now Maisaheb Bavadekar (P) Vidyalaya) Was Started In Year 1964.
The Marathi School Follows The S.S.C. Curriculum And Is Permanently Unaided. For The Last Five Years The S.S.C . Results Have Been 100% With Many Students Making It To The Board Merit List Time And Again, Since 1995.


WACO, Texas (AP) — Baylor beat its second Pac-12 opponent in a week, helping erase the disappointment that came between those quality wins.
Makai Mason had 14 points with some key second-half baskets as the Bears beat Oregon 57-47 after holding off a big comeback by the Ducks on Friday — six nights after Baylor's impressive win at Arizona and three nights after losing at home on Stephen F. Austin's game-ending layup.
Oregon (8-4) trailed by as many as 16 points after halftime, but cut its deficit to 47-45 on Payton Pritchard's 3-pointer with 3:32 left. Mason, the first graduate transfer ever to play for Baylor, then hit a jumper and later added a layup and two free throws.
Pritchard finished with 14 points for the Ducks, whose season-best four-game winning streak ended. Will Richardson had 10 points.
Tristan Clark had 13 points and eight rebounds for Baylor (7-4). Mark Vital had 11 points and eight rebounds before leaving the game with 6 1/2 minutes left after he fell hard and was helped as he walked gingerly to the locker room.
A jumper by Vital put the Bears up 37-21 with 15 minutes left. Oregon responded with a 13-2 run when Pritchard had two 3s and assisted on two other baskets.
Pritchard hit another 3 in a 7-0 spurt for the Ducks to get within 45-42 before the teams traded turnovers three times in a row.
Baylor jumped out to a 15-3 lead while Oregon missed 14 of its first 15 shots. The Ducks went more than 11 minutes between Pritchard's jumper in the first minute of the game to Kenny Wooten's putback dunk.
Oregon: The Ducks were without 7-foot-2 freshman center Bol Bol for third game in a row. Their leading scorer and rebounder (21.0 points, 9.6 rebounds a game) is still wearing a protective boot on his injured left foot. Abu Kigab missed his second game in a row because of a sprained ankle. Altman gave no indication when the two might return.
Baylor: The Bears have been up-and-down this season and coming off a home loss to Stephen F. Austin and ending Arizona's 52-game home non-conference winning streak.
After Pritchard's late 3 that made got the Ducks within a basket, he missed his last three shots — all from beyond the arc. The Ducks missed five of their last six shots overall. Oregon followed its 1-of-15 start from the field by making 16 of its next 23 shots, including Pritchard's last made 3.
Oregon gets a break for Christmas before playing Dec. 29 at Boise State in its last non-conference game.
Baylor also gets a few off days for Christmas before playing at home Dec. 29 against New Orleans, the last game for the Bears before their Big 12 opener.


Chasing Dreams Publishing – Helping authors chase their dreams.
Please note that I'm busy moving over to my website!
If you follow this blog, I'll be posting links to the website's blog as I publish new posts over there.
Please head over to chasingdreamspublishing.com to see what's happening. See you on the other side!
Book Review: Heka and the Colour Thief – Local Talent at its finest!
Writer's Block or Boredom? How to add conflict to plot fillers.
That's a wrap! A look back at 2018 and a few guesses about the future.
Chasing Dreams Publishing Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.


This was the fourth painting by David Shepherd to be published as a signed limited edition.
The printing process at that time was not as developed as it is today, and light fast inks together with acid free paper had not been widely used in the industry.
As a consequence the vast majority of this edition has been lost; damaged beyond all repair by the UV in the light..
It is extremely rare to find this title in mint condition, and this particular picture was owned and kept in first class condition by the publishers themselves.
Image Size 33" x 20.75"
This title as a signed edition is extremely rare and a 'one-off' opportunity for a collector to find this image at this price.


Classic literature meets contemporary style in a vibrant introduction to five of Shakespeare's most popular plays. These engaging graphic novels, complete with captions in accessible modern English and key excerpts from the original dialogue, bring the Bard's dramatic scenes to life. A glossary at the foot of each page helps with any challenging vocabulary without disrupting the pleasurable reading experience.
The five plays include: Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, and A Midsummer Night's Dream.


Russia will host the FIFA World Cup for the first time in history in 2018.
My good friends | Artaction | Rayonsflava | Arterror | took part in preparing the stadium for the football matches.
Meet our heroes in these photos!
Special thanks for the translation of Mikheeva Dasha!


Visit Grand Canyon (Skywalk Glass Bridge, Grand Canyon South Rim, Grand Canyon West Rim), Las Vegas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Palm Springs, Carlsbad (Legoland), Long Beach.
Please avoid selecting San Diego City Tour or San Diego Sea World for the last day of your tour.
Flight arrangement: There are still travel activities on the last day of the tour. Make sure to book a return flight departing from Los Angeles after 9:30pm (domestic flight) or 10:30pm (international flight) or Las Vegas after 2:30pm on the last day.You will be dropped off at MGM after the Lunch Buffet (airport transfer is not included, please make your own transportation to airport). We highly suggest booking air ticket(s) 1 hour later than suggested time during high season (summer holiday, national holidays).
Tours depart on Mondays, Saturdays and Sundays will drop off at Los Angeles only.


The Riva degli Schiavoni is a popular waterfront promenade in Venice. Lined with market stalls and brimming with atmosphere (and tourists), it's a Venetian must-visit.
We really enjoyed the trip! Worth buying and experiencing 3 differeny islands. Glass blowing at the factory was really great!
A great way to check out the 3 islands but I felt rushed, especially at Murano. There you get to see a hot glass demo right off the dock (which was excellent) but left me wondering about the rest of the island. What's the rest of it like?
This is such a great value for all that you experience!
The trip was great and the guide could speak in 5 languages (English, Italian, German, French and Spanish). The stops at each island are very quick (30-40 minutes). So if you are with some elderly, you might think twice before going to far from the boat.
We got out at the last stop in Burano and enjoyed a longer trip around the island and take a regular water taxi tô Venice.
One more point, the guy on the tickets desk was very rude and waited until the last minute to tell us where the boat was going to arrive, so everyone had to run.
Great trip, good value. Would have liked more time on Burano.
A really enjoyable day. Apart from we miss heard the time to get back to the boat . In torcello.and got left behind.but got a taxi boat back. More our fault for not listening.
What a great experience! My only suggestion would be to make the time at each stop a little longer.


Mixed vegetables salad with creamy yogurt dressing is a scrumptious and really nutritious salad. It really doesn't take much time to make as long as your dressing is ready. The salad is colourful, pleasing to the eyes and definitely healthy. If you want this salad to be spicy, you can add another twist to it. Simply add two tablespoons of the lemon dressed ginger & chilli pickle. Eat a bowlful of this healthy treat at anytime. Enjoy!
Green Bell Pepper Cut into strips 1 No.
Yellow Bell Pepper Cut into strips 1 No.
Red Bell Pepper Cut into strips 1 No.
Potato Boiled and cubed 1 No.
Tomato Sliced into strips 1 No.
Cucumber Cut into cubes 1 No.
First of all, get the ingredients ready. Slice peppers and tomato. Cube potato and cucumber.
Mix in the lovely, creamy yogurt dressing.
Add organo, lemon juice & honey.
Mix well and serve cold.


It is now a requirement that all new applicants for a Private Hire Car Driver Licence must sit and pass a knowledge test. Details on the knowledge test can be downloaded.
From 1 December 2016 anyone who applies for a new private hire car driver licence will require to submit the application in person to the licensing office along with original documentation to show that they have the right to work in the UK. All existing licence holders will also be required to do the same at time of renewal.


text:
Q: Rails error with CarrierWave and S3 on Heroku, TypeError: no implicit conversion of nil into String I am unable to upload images using CarrierWave and S3. I am using these gems:
gem 'carrierwave'
gem 'carrierwave-aws'

I have the configuration set up properly, in the code, environment variables, and on AWS:
CarrierWave.configure do |config|
  config.storage    = :aws
  config.aws_bucket = ENV["S3_BUCKET_NAME"]
  config.aws_acl    = 'public-read'
  config.aws_credentials = {
    access_key_id:     ENV["AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID"],
    secret_access_key: ENV["AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY"],
    region:            ENV["AWS_REGION"]
  }
  config.cache_dir = "#{Rails.root}/tmp/uploads"
end

class ImageUploader < CarrierWave::Uploader::Base
  storage :aws

  def store_dir
    "uploads/#{model.class.to_s.underscore}/#{mounted_as}/#{model.id}"
  end

  def cache_dir
    "#{Rails.root}/tmp/uploads"
  end
end

One source said to include the cache_dir lines specifically for Heroku inside the uploader, but it seems to have no effect:
https://github.com/carrierwaveuploader/carrierwave/wiki/how-to%3A-make-carrierwave-work-on-heroku
Here is some standard code to save an image, but it gives an error:
> url = "https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22125572/Kira_opt.jpg"
> image = open(url)
> user = User.first
> user.image = image
TypeError: no implicit conversion of nil into String
from /app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.2.0/gems/carrierwave-0.11.2/lib/carrierwave/uploader/cache.rb:171:in `join'
from /app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.2.0/gems/carrierwave-0.11.2/lib/carrierwave/uploader/cache.rb:171:in `cache_path'
from /app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.2.0/gems/carrierwave-0.11.2/lib/carrierwave/uploader/cache.rb:143:in `block in cache!'
from /app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.2.0/gems/carrierwave-0.11.2/lib/carrierwave/uploader/callbacks.rb:17:in `with_callbacks'
from /app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.2.0/gems/carrierwave-0.11.2/lib/carrierwave/uploader/cache.rb:134:in `cache!'
from /app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.2.0/gems/carrierwave-0.11.2/lib/carrierwave/mount.rb:329:in `cache'
from /app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.2.0/gems/carrierwave-0.11.2/lib/carrierwave/mount.rb:163:in `image='
from /app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.2.0/gems/carrierwave-0.11.2/lib/carrierwave/orm/activerecord.rb:39:in `image='
from (irb):4
from /app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.2.0/gems/railties-4.2.3/lib/rails/commands/console.rb:110:in `start'
from /app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.2.0/gems/railties-4.2.3/lib/rails/commands/console.rb:9:in `start'
from /app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.2.0/gems/railties-4.2.3/lib/rails/commands/commands_tasks.rb:68:in `console'
from /app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.2.0/gems/railties-4.2.3/lib/rails/commands/commands_tasks.rb:39:in `run_command!'
from /app/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.2.0/gems/railties-4.2.3/lib/rails/commands.rb:17:in `<top (required)>'
from bin/rails:9:in `require'
from bin/rails:9:in `<main>'

A: It looks like the way I should have saved the remote image is using:
url = "https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22125572/Kira_opt.jpg"
user = User.first
user.remote_image_url = url
user.save

which means the url doesn't need to be opened at all.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


As a woman at the helm of a busy career, your greatest test yet is finding balance between constant round-the-clock demands of work and family. Responsibilities pile up quickly, stress becomes overwhelming, and sleep falls to the very bottom of your to-do list.
If this sounds familiar, try adding some of these tips to your daily routine, so you're better prepared to meet every challenge you face, both at work and at home.
A budget is a useful tool for keeping track of your cash flow every month and making sure that all your family's expenses are covered. Putting your budget in calendar form creates a visual representation of the incoming and outgoing cash, making it easy to keep tabs on your financial responsibilities at a glance. To keep everyone on the same page, create a budget calendar for your family and put it in a place where everyone can see it. That way, the whole family can work together to stay accountable to the plan and make sure bills get paid on time.
Keeping your body fit and healthy is one of the most effective ways to maintain a high energy level and focused mind throughout the day. Working out doesn't need to be another challenge in and of itself, though. Instead of trying to squeeze a full hour into an already packed schedule, try getting your heart pumping in just 10-20 minute bursts. In a study done by McMaster University, a ten minute interval training session, which included only one minute total of strenuous exertion, proved to be just as effective at improving fitness as a 45 minute session of continuous moderate activity. So get creative and take advantage of small breaks during the day to get your body moving.
To make better use of your time, spend the end of each day preparing for the next. Plan out the most important tasks you'll need to get done the following day, so that when you wake up, your mind will already be focused on those critical to-dos. Prep your meals the night before, or even the week before, so that you don't need to spend time planning and preparing them in the midst of a busy day. Pack everything you need for tomorrow before you go to bed tonight, including your meals, documents, gym or work clothes. That way you won't forget anything in your morning rush to get out the door.
If you're stuck in a digital rut and haven't looked beyond the boundary of your work inbox lately, it's time to hit "refresh." The Internet can connect busy parents to resources that help manage every responsibility from writing e-mails, to shopping, to organizing your ever-expanding to-do list. Smart digital assistants, like Apple's Siri or Amazon's Echo with Alexa, can help streamline a myriad of micro-tasks. They can quickly search for information, set alarms, make calls, schedule events, compose e-mails, and help you check in with remote team members. Other tools, like Evernote, Basecamp or Todoist, can aid in keeping all your responsibilities organized. You can also try different coupon apps, like SnipSnap or Yowza, to score deals when shopping or traveling.
A secret weapon can be anything relevant to your work or home life that helps you out in a pinch. It might be a pair of high heels that you keep in the car for an unexpected meeting. It could be an instant-read thermometer in your purse for when your child suddenly comes down with the flu. Maybe it's a backup phone charger, or a relative willing to be an emergency babysitter. Think of all the sticky situations you've encountered in the past where you felt unprepared, and think of a solution you can have at the ready for the next time that problem arises. A little preparation now can save you a headache down the road.
This is often one of the toughest realities for working women to accept: the need to take care of yourself. There's always something else that needs to get done, whether it's for your business or your family, and doing something for yourself can feel like a form of neglect to those other areas of your life. But remember that caring for yourself isn't a selfish act; it's a form of responsibility by itself. In order to be present in the moment, to stay on point at work, and to be engaged at home, you need to keep yourself in working order. So don't be afraid to take downtime after a busy day, and don't forget to do what you need in order to keep your mind and body healthy. The better you take care of yourself, the better you'll be able to perform for others.
How well have you been maintaining your work-life balance? Which of these tips resonate with you the most? Which will you try this week? Please let us know in the comment box below!
Special thanks for the contribution from Emma Bailey. Emma Bailey is a freelance writer and blogger based in the Midwest. After going to college in Florida she relocated to Chicago, where she now lives with a roommate and two rabbits. She specializes in covering personal finance and business topics for women.


text:
Q: Why does getFragmentManager() return null the 2nd time? I have an android application with a submit button.  Pressing submit saves form data into the parse cloud, then replacing the current fragment with a different one:
    submitAnswerBtn.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
        @Override
        public void onClick(View v) {
            String answer = answerET.getText().toString();
            ParseUser currentUser = ParseUser.getCurrentUser();
            Answer newAnswer = new Answer(answer, qid, currentUser);
            newAnswer.saveInBackground(new SaveCallback() {
                @Override
                public void done(ParseException e) {
                    FragmentManager fm = getActivity().getSupportFragmentManager();
                    fm.popBackStack();
                }
            });
        }
    });

I noticed I can crash the app if I quickly hit the submit button twice.  After the crash I see the form data in my parse table twice.

*

*What is the best practice for preventing double submissions?  I was thinking of not persisting if the time between 2 submit clicks is less than 3 seconds:
DateTime lastTimestamp = null;
public void onClick(View v) {
    DateTime currentTimestamp = DateTime.now();
    if(lastTimestamp == null)
        lastTimestamp = currentTimestamp;

    DateTime betweenClicks = currentTimestamp - lastTimestamp;
    lastTimestamp = currentTimestamp;
    // if a click happened within 3 seconds of the last one, show error and dont save again
    if(0 < betweenClicks <= 3 seconds)
    // show error dialog here
    return;

    String answer = answerET.getText().toString();
    // rest of the code(save into parse)

*Not that it matters for my solution, but the debugger showed that the crash was due to getFragmentManager() returning null the second time, why is it null the second time?  If I submit normally, then submit another answer the same way it works fine.

A: I don't think getSupportFragmentManager() is returning null.  I think your getActivity() is returning null based on where you say the crash is happening.
The first time you submit, you will pop the fragment from the stack.  This means the Fragment will get detached from the Activity.  Thus, getActivity() will return null.
To fix this, simply do this:
Activity act = getActivity();
if (act == null) {
   // already popped from the stack so no need to do it again.
   return;
}
act.getSupportFragmentManager().popBackStack()

Another way to prevent clicks is to simply disable the button immediately after the first click by calling setEnabled(false) or setClickable(false).  You can reenable it once you've confirmed that it's been saved (which wouldn't be a problem in this case case you're leaving instantly anyway).

A: I suspect that it's getActivity() that is returning null the second time. Once popBackStack() has been called the Fragment would be detached from the Activity, so later calls to getActivity() will return null.

A: Thinking too hard about an easy problem - once the button is clicked, I should remove it and show a loading message instead.  I still don't get why the fragment manager would be null clicking quickly though; popbackstack removes this fragment but the fragmentmanager can still have memory.


text:
By Matthew PughFebruary 19, 2020October 11th, 2021No Comments
Late last month, I had the pleasure of joining Maryland Lt. Governor Boyd K. Rutherford and a delegation of Maryland-based businesses and state employees on an economic development trade mission to Tel Aviv, Israel. (Thanks to Barry Bogage from the Maryland/Israel Development Center and Brian Castleberry from the Maryland Department of Commerce for making it happen.) The purpose of this mission was to tout Maryland's advanced cybersecurity industry to more than 10,000 attendees from 80 plus countries at CyberTech Global conference.
Israel – or "Start-up Nation" as it's known – has a rich IT and cybersecurity scene, drawing venture capitalists and future founders from around the globe. According to a report by Tel Aviv-based research firm IVC Research Center, Israeli companies raised $2.24 billion in the third quarter of 2019. By end of the third quarter, Israeli startups had already raised a cumulative $4.68 billion in venture funding, almost the same amount raised throughout all of 2018. Also in 2019, Israeli tech mergers and acquisitions hit nearly $10 billion – a 102 percent increase year-over-year, according to a report published by PwC Israel.
Like Israel, Maryland has much to offer for international cybersecurity companies looking to enter the U.S. or for domestic cyber companies looking to expand.
Our state is home to several top U.S. government's cyber assets, including Aberdeen Proving Ground, Fort Meade, the National Security Agency (NSA), and the U.S. Cyber Command. Maryland also has 16 higher universities and colleges that are designated by the NSA as National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense. All of this translates to jobs. Maryland's cyber and IT sectors are comprised of 121,000 private and public sector workers, generating upwards of $45 billion in economic activity.
What's more, Maryland has many resources available to cyber companies to help them succeed. The Maryland Venture Fund, for example, provides seed and early-stage equity funding to startups; the Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO) facilitates technology transfer from academic and federal labs to the private sector; and the Maryland Department of Commerce gives tax credits for companies with high R&D expenditures and credits for those who invest in Maryland cybersecurity companies.
Over the years, we've worked with several cybersecurity companies that have homes in Maryland, including Gemalto, Cybrary, which is now known throughout the cyber world, and Protego Labs, which also had offices in Israel and was recently acquired by CheckPoint. We've also helped several international IT and technology companies successfully break into and establish brand presence in the U.S., despite many challenges they often face.
If you're an overseas IT or cybersecurity looking to move to the states, or if you're already here and looking to grow in a different market, consider Maryland. We're happy to discuss how we can help raise your brand awareness among the audiences that matter most to your business.
Matthew Pugh
Matthew Pugh holds more than 20 years of public relations and communications experience, primarily in the technology space. Before co-founding Pugh & Tiller PR, he served as Vice President at Weiss PR, where he was instrumental in growing the firm and its technology practice, particularly among international and global companies. Prior to that, he served as the Director of Communications for two high-growth technology firms where he devised and executed comprehensive public relations, analyst relations, and social media programs. He also worked as a Senior Public Relations at a leading cybersecurity company, where he provided strategic PR support for corporate and marketing initiatives, industry trade shows, product launches, and employee communications. He also spent several years at a national public relations firm, designing communications and media relations plans for clients in the technology, higher education, commercial real estate, and legal industries, and began his PR career working for a faith-based disaster relief and development organization. Pugh has earned several industry awards including, a MDDC Press Association award for feature writing, several PR World Awards for his work in the technology sector, and was named part of the "Marketing Team of the Year" for a high-growth international technology company. Pugh earned his B.S. in mass communications from Towson University.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Under the term of Tax Refund is understood the amount of tax that a person overpaid during the tax year. It can be the excessive amount of tax withdrawn from wages or pension, or else; in any case when a person paid more than they are liable in accordance to the IRS requirements, they are entitled to income tax refund from IRS. The repayments are usually made in the form of a check or electronic money transfer.
In case of electronic filing, the refund can be expected in about 3 weeks since the tax day; 6 weeks in case of paper variation. On the website of IRS you can check the status of your refund.
The official statistics of IRD claims that about 77% of Americans get refund in the average amount of $2,100 per annum per income.
One of the major questions that bothers everyone is how to calculate your tax refund amount. In fact, the amount of the refund depends on the total amount of tax that is owed and the amount of the tax that was withheld from a taxpayer's paychecks throughout the year.
First step in calculating your tax amount is calculating your tax. This is the total that you owe to the state after all the deductions and adjustments. The final amount is the one you actually owe.
Look at the line 72 on your income tax form – it is the amount of taxes you paid throughout the year. It comprises from the amount indicated in line 62 (tax withheld by employer) as well as estimated tax from line 63 and also some credits that may or may not apply to you.
In order to calculate your tax refund, calculate the difference between the two – this is what you are supposed to get as a refund. If there is a difference (it will not necessarily be the case), write down the amount in the line 73. Further, in lines 74 and 75 choose the way to get your refund.
As it has been mentioned, there are two ways to claim your refund.
In case if you eFiled your return, you are likely to expect your refund in about 3 weeks after your filed your return. Electronic files are processed faster than paper ones; the latter may take more than 6 weeks. It will come as a cheque.
Or, it can be in a form of a direct deposit to your bank account. It is faster and safer and you can indicate up to 3 different accounts for your refund.
You can start checking your refund status 72 hours after you sent your eFile (or 4 weeks after you sent your paper file). On the official IRS webpage there is a special system "Where's My Refund?" It is easy to operate and you just need to indicate your Social Security Number as well as your current status of filing and the amount you expect to receive as a refund.
There can be very different issues concerning refund amount. They can be different – the amount is incorrect, or it is late, or wasn't issued at all. It could have been even lost or stolen. In cases like this you can refer directly to IRS service either by e-mail, or call them directly to their landline.
In case you file your return with TurboTax, you can check both the status and movement of your refund on their website; you can also send all the claims about refund problems to their consumer support. They take their job very seriously and in all the ways alleviate the job of both tax filing and tax refund obtaining to a very considerable degree.
As of the statistics from IRS official files, about 70% of tax filers claim tax returns and the average amount of a return per filer is $2,689 as of 2014. Most taxpayers ask for the refunds to be deposited to their bank accounts; however, a small percent prefers a traditional refund. Before 1999 all tax forms were filed in paper. Since that time the majority of tax forms are filed electronically; which speeds up and simplifies the process of filing to a considerable amount. The same refers to tax refunds – electronic repayments are faster and are considered to be a more secure option; besides, the process involves fewer mistakes. It is also much faster to do with such services as TurboTax as they simplify the entire tax filing and refund process to a really great extent.


text:
Upgant-Schott is a municipality in the district of Aurich, in Lower Saxony, Germany.

Origin of the name
Upgant-Schott was first mentioned in the records in AD 945 as Cuppargent in the endowment register of Fulda Abbey. The name Upgant probably refers to a small stream called the Gant, the course of which is the subject of various theories. For example, it could have come from Siegelsum (a village incorporated in 1969) via the Bollandswater west of Schottjer Grode into the Abelitz; it could however also have come from the raised bog that lies east of Upgant and be identical with the present-day Upganter Zugschloot. This is supported by the word Upgant (East Frisian: up de Gant, German: auf/über der Gant i.e. on or above the Gant). The word Schott comes from the Low German word scheten ("throw"). The earth thrown up from a ditch acted as a kind of embankment along the bank and was formerly called a Schott.

References

Towns and villages in East Frisia
Aurich (district)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE DEATH TOLL DOESN'T PULL ANY PUNCHES
SO what do you think is the most common cause of death for women under the age of 44?
Cancer perhaps, maybe a car crash or even complications during pregnancy and child birth? No, none of these. Women in that age group are most likely to die because their everloving partners battered or knifed them to death.
Every week, two men will kill their girlfriends, partners or wives while another 10 women who can't take it any longer commit suicide.
And every single minute of every single day, cops will be called out to an incident of so called "domestic violence".
One in four women will experience it in their lifetimes, which means a quarter of men will be guilty of abuse.
Not that many of them will end up in court. Nor will some of them think they did anything wrong.
We haven't, despite Women's Aid, really moved on all that much since Victorian times when a husband could lay into his wife so long as he didn't use a stick thicker than an inch. But then in Scotland there is still a sizeable number who think it's all right to hit children.