From the Notebook

-Read John Sandford’s “Wicked Prey.” Typical Sandford, very good. There were some problems, the book takes place during the RNC in St. Paul and I’m not sure how historically accurate some of the background story really is (well, it is fiction after all). I can say that there is no such thing as “street money” (I’m the kind of guy who would get money like that, if it existed. I’m also the kind of guy who would lie about getting that kind of money, if I got it). My other complaints are probably even more nit-picky. Probably based on Sandford’s allegiance to the DFL. Still worth reading.

-Ever since Southpark convinced me “Family Guy” sucked, I stopped watching. It’s been great.

-Old news, but was I the only guy disappointed with the possible survival of Jack Bauer in the season finale of “24”?

-Mitch Berg has lost more posts than I’ve written. Not sure why that bothers me.

-I like Aaron Gleeman, but he sometimes does things which drive me nuts. He writes:

Through two months the Twins have scored 261 runs and allowed 254 runs, which would typically lead to being something like 27-25 instead of 25-27, but their run totals are skewed somewhat by the 20-1 thrashing they gave the White Sox on May 21. If the final score of that blowout win was 10-1 rather than 20-1 the Twins would’ve been out-scored 254 to 251 to more closely match their 25-27 record. Turn the 20-1 into 10-1 and the Twins would rank ninth among AL teams in both run scoring and run prevention.

Why just remove 10 runs? Why not five, twelve or eight? I understand what Aaron is saying, a statistical outlier skews the results away from what one would expect. So, just remove the outliers. You do this and you get 241 RS for the Twins versus 253 runs allowed. Thus the losing record. More nitpicking on my part, I know. But massaging numbers Ad Hoc...Come’on.

-Mathews, Aaron, Adcock: the #2, 3 and 4 hitters for the Milwauke Braves in 1959. So Gardy, how is putting a crappy hitter in the #2 spot “Traditional” baseball?

-Two four-page papers, one ten page paper, a wedding and the Twins Autograph Party are going to keep me pretty busy the next couple of weeks (not to mention the other assignments I’m probably forgetting about).  Expect light to partly-light posting.