In the 251 Interleague games that dotted the Major League schedule in two stints (May 22-24 and June 12-28), the American League went 137-114 (.546) and nine of the 14 AL clubs had winning records. The 2009 season marked the sixth straight campaign in which the AL won the season series, extending its all-time Interleague lead to 1,673-1,534 (.522).

Today was an awesomely fantastic wonderful day here at MLJ.  I didn’t get to participate in the greatness, but I heard things.  I heard that this was the hottest spot to be learning about baseball.  I hope someone mentioned in the Day Baseball Update that Clifford Lee has been pwning people.  The Indians blanked the Meth Sox 4-0 and got home runs from V-Mart and Ryan Garko.  Grady also singled in LaPorta for an insurance run.  Currently, the Nationals are shutting out the Giants 2-0 in San Fran.  As of 5:42 ET, Ryan Zimmerman has yet to get a hit.  It’s the top of the 7th, so he will get another chance to take the streak to 31 games.

One game in the NL has gone for the final.  The Braves defeated the Mets 8-7 in 12 innings at Citifield.  The exciting pitching matchup of Jon Niese vs JoJo Reyes saw over 15 innings pitched from the two bullpens.  Martin Prado homered in the 12th for the Braves and some guy came in and got the save.

There is a full lineup of games tonight.  Here are the matchups: Read the rest of this entry »

Unless you do actually apologize like A-FRao*id did. Oh, what’s that? You haven’t seen the video? Might I suggest you turn on ESPN. If you’re lucky you’ll catch the video which has been on loop like the security footage that fooled Dennis Hopper in Speed. The little ripple in the tape where the Hopper realizes he’s been duped? Those are commercials.

And if you just so happen to turn on ESPN during one of those agonizing moments where the Rodriguez-Gammons interview is not playing, just look to the bottom line which scrolls the transcript 23.5/7. The other half hour is dedicated to President Obama’s response to the question he was asked about A-FR*id at his first Presidential Address. If you don’t think that was a relevant question to ask the President in this economy you’re wrong. A-FRao*id is what they’re talking about in all the soup kitchens.

Before I move on, I should clear up any confusion. I will now be referring to Alex Rodriguez as “A-FR*id,” a combination of all the most clever nicknames that people have come up with over the last few days. A-Rod, A-Fraud, A-Roid, A-R*d – I sure hope I didn’t miss any! They’re all so refreshing and clever. If only Christian Bale could scream them at me! Read the rest of this entry »

I’m worried that we’re reaching a staturation point regarding the internet.

Working backwards, I was going to write a post about this post on Kotaku that appeared on Deadspin. I was amazed that the fact that someone had thought about doing something in the first half of 2008. The post contains incredibly dumb statements like this:

EA’s Joel Linzer said they made the decision to put Favre on the cover before he announced his retirement. When Favre announced his retirement, they considered replacing him with an active player, then bulled ahead and kept him on the cover. He later unretired.

See, they decided to do something, something related to what they were doing changed, but they decided not to change anything and then what had changed, changed back to the way it originally was. Its the kind of story that only a blogger could tell. Want to hear about the time I stole styrofoam cups?

Well, as I was reading this story about nothing I was using Twitter. I’ve been on Twitter for about 3 weeks now. I joined Twitter because my Graduate School professor asked the class to join. That’s got to be the least rock ‘n roll reason to join Twitter ever. Just last week we had a professional jouranlist come in and speak to my class about Twitter. That’s right, Twitter is now being taught in Graduate School. Read the rest of this entry »

With Awards season afoot in college football, it got me thinking: since we all know that winning a Heisman Trophy doesn’t necessarily lead to success in the NFL (right Eric Crouch?), which award does lead to the most success in its respective pro-league?

I’ll be looking at the last decade of awards in the four major pro sports. The respective awards I’ll be basing this on are the Heisman (college football), Naismith (college basketball), Hobey Baker (college hockey) and Golden Spikes (college baseball). There are alternate awards for both basketball (Wooden) and baseball (Dick Howser) but basically by a flip of a coin I decided on the Naismith and Golden Spikes.

One final note, the year’s for Hobey and Heisman are a bit different… the Hobey for 2008 corresponds with the Heisman for 2007, and so on. Read the rest of this entry »

Hef's favorite comedian

Over the weekend, some of the playoff races were shaken up a bit. The Mets imploded yesterday, virtually killing their chances at keeping pace with the Phillies and winning the NL East. The Brewers also lost two of three to the Reds keeping them 1.5GB of the Mets for the Wild Card (2 games in the loss). The Dodgers lost two of three to the Giants, acting as if they already have a playoff spot in the bag. The Diamondbacks decided to play some good ball over the last 10 days and picked up a game this weekend winning two of three over the Rockies. In the AL, The Rays clinched their first ever playoff birth and the Red Sox have a magic number of 1 in the Wild Card. They are 1.5 back of the Rays for the division and we will see if the division means something to either team this week. In the Central, The White Sox and Twins have tried their best to give the division to the other guy, so essentially it is status quo. So let us look a little closer at the races and see what it would take each team to make the playoffs. Read the rest of this entry »

Two of baseball's biggest HOMO players ever sharing some love.

Since our MLJ stat of the day has become so popular I have decided to add a post highlighting some of the newer stats that you may not be familiar with but General Managers around baseball are using to determine value. So I begin at looking at a stat that is becoming all the rage, HOMO. HOMO is Hits Over Men On. It is not a convoluted stat. If a guy is on base, this stat tracks the players ability to move the guy over to the next base. Now some of the leaders in HOMO are very familiar names, Adam Dunn, Alex Rodriguez, Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, Larry Wayne Jones Jr, J.D. Drew. These guys have the ability to move over men with their ability to hit it long and hard. Their power makes them fine HOMOs. So while Adam Dunn doesn’t hit for high average and strikes out a lot, he hits for a lot of Home Runs and extra base hits and drives in runners. That ability makes him a major HOMO. Read the rest of this entry »