Routine Revelations

First sign of color this fall.

Every team to beat the Brewers has gone on to be in the World Series, so the Mets are going to the World Series! If one is a Brewer fan, do you feel cursed?

The 2024 Detroit Tigers are exhibit A of evidence for how pitching in Major League Baseball is changing from a emphasis on starters to a team pitching staff. The Tigers basically got in to the playoffs with only one legit starter in Tarik Skubal, who dominated the Astros in his first playoff outing yesterday. Today and tomorrow, if necessary, the Tigers will deploy their entire pitching staff with a combination of openers, middle relievers, and closers and they can do so because they have one of the lowest team ERAs. I am sure the Tigers would love to have more than one starter on their staff, and they had that up to the trade deadline, but the quality of the bullpen was good enough to get them a wild card spot, and that would have been the case for the Cubs if the pen were better in 2024.

I am surprised the BleedCubbieBlue.com’s playoff summary of the Mets/Brewers series doesn’t ask the obvious question. Will the Brewers find their problem of not advancing in the playoffs was Craig Counsell? The first year of Counsell’s management of the Cubs produced the literal same result as the prior year, suggesting he is not the difference maker and that David Ross was not the problem. What might it mean about Counsell if the Brewers make it the World Series in the first year after his departure?

I use Readwise Reader to read items that I find on the web. One way it could apply AI/LLMs is to filter what I send to it so that for example I see only sports items or only tech items and then I can just read those items.

I find the essay, Free Speech on the Internet: The Crisis of Epistemic Authority, thought provoking. The essay establishes our reliance on trusting “experts” (epistemic authority) in forming our beliefs and how the inherent disinter-mediation of the Internet is disposing of that trust because it infers anyone can be an expert and it enables us to find the experts we want to hear. It raises a question of how we view the First Amendment in light of the Internet. At the root of the problem is belief in a democracy that means anyone can pretty much do whatever they want, with no central authority (central government) in place to put limits on individuals. It seems to me that even after a Civil War the old Federalist/Anti-Federalist debate has never been resolved, and that debate is coming to a head.

On this day in 1984 I watched the Chicago Cubs make the playoffs for the first time in my lifetime thanks to the pitching of Rick Sutcliffe. At the time it felt as though the best NL team, the Cubs, would meet the best AL team, the Detroit Tigers, but then the debacle in San Diego and Steve “bleeping” Garvey.

Forty-five years ago, before the World Wide Web.

Just yesterday I wrote about how major league baseball has changed making the bullpen more important, at least as important, as starting pitchers and today BleedCubbieBlue.com reinforces that with stats about how trend of fewer stating pitching pitching 162 innings per year.

A great thing about baseball is that because it has existed for so long debates over who are the greatest players are endless. A case can be made that Shohei Ohtani is the greatest, his three home runs and two stolen bases that contributed to his 50+ home run and 50+ stolen base season last night was probably the single best game performance ever. But I know there are going to be those who point to Barry Bonds. I am looking forward to seeing how Ohtani performs during the playoffs.

According to the Apple Weather app, the 80 degree temps we are experiencing will continue through the weekend and then we drop down to the 70s, which is the average for this time of year, for a high starting Monday. Needed rain is also coming. Does this make this weekend the last one of “summer?”

The Cubs did not meet their expectation to win the NL Central division this year and they will not be in the playoffs this year. Last year I wrote that during the off-season the Cubs needed to sign two reliable starting pitchers and retain Merryweather in the bullpen; they only signed one reliable pitcher and Merryweather was injured all season.

Assad has earned the right to be in the starting rotation next year along with Imanaga, Steele and Taillon, but Hendricks should be gone so they will need one more starter and it is uncertain whether that starter is currently in the Cubs system.

Before deciding whether the Cubs need to sign a starter, there needs to be consideration that the bullpen in today’s game may be more important than starting pitching. Working with a slate of new bullpen pitchers is not a good strategy for how pitchers are now used, so I would focus more on keeping the bullpen pitchers you can count on and replacing those you cannot with people who you expect to be on the team for several years. I don’t think enough consideration has been made on the consequence of the three hitter minimum on relief pitchers.

Finally, it should be clear by now that the Cubs batting line up is too easy to shut down. It looks to me like every hitter has the same profile such that if a pitcher has success against one person they likely will succeed against all. Because nobody gets one or more hits in every game, there needs to be diversity such that when one player gets 0 hits another gets 2 or more hits.

The Cubs line up is a result of a system of evaluating hitters and that system, for which the Cubs front office is responsible, is clearly flawed. Exhibit A of this is the mid-season signing of Paredes this year and Candelario last year, both were no different than the other Cubs hitters and did not much help once inserted in to the lineup. The 2024 Cubs had the same results of the prior team and every team since 2017. If we want a different result then the system needs to change.

It’s time for a turnover in the front office, a new approach is needed in evaluating hitters. I am convinced that despite the new, cool metrics, team batting average still matters. A high team average exists with a good ratio of good, consistent hitters who have a high individual average, to unreliable low average hitters. Home runs might win games, but it doesn’t look like an entire line up of 20 home run hitters will win championships. The 2024 Cubs hitters excelled against poor pitching, but was not competitive against good pitching.

Cool view of the moon the other night.

I understand people’s reasons for why they do not like either Trump or Harris, in fact those reasons are obvious, either vote to put a person in office who only thinks of himself or vote for the person who is part of an administration supporting ongoing war and killing in Gaza and Ukraine. The Biden administration that Harris is part of is not doing all of what I want it to do, but in making my decision for whom to vote I also ask myself, of these two candidates which one is more likely to be influenced by public outcry or activism after being elected? Which party in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches is more likely to produce change that I want?

I see a better chance for what I want happening if Harris is President rather than Donald Trump because my values align better to Harris than Trump. Further, I do not see either not voting or voting for a third party or write-in candidate as furthering my cause and I feel no satisfaction in declaring that I did not support either as if that washes my hands of any responsibility.

These are my views on this election and they do not matter except in the possibility that they are a point of view you are open to considering. Perhaps you disagree and that is ok, that is the purpose of non-compulsive elections, private and split-ticket voting.

I think John Gruber’s description of the differences between Apple led by Steve Jobs and Tim Cook is right on. Just today I was in a meeting in which the presenter used Apple an example of a lack of innovation, but even if that is true Apple is doing very well. I also like this idea, even if I don’t think the differences between the two are as stark as Gruber is suggesting:

Jobs was driven to improve the way computers work. Cook is driven to improve the way humans live.

We are experiencing above average temperature in southeast Michigan, but it is very pleasant in the morning and evening.

It’s my opinion that too much focus is put on the presidential election. The congressional election is much, much more important because it enables all of what is happening at the presidential level. Imagine, for example, if Democrats had majorities in the House and Senate to impeach AND convict Trump when he was in office. Would we be where we are today? Given the SCOTUS ruling on presidential immunity that puts the President above the law that means the only check on any President is Congress. Congress also has say in who are Supreme Court justices, and it is Congress, not the president, who has to act to expand the number of justices on the court. More than anything, we need real (not just one vote or two) Democrat majorities in the House and Senate otherwise little that Harris wants to do for the country can get done.

After reading Jeff Jarvis blog post, What Became Of The Times & Co?, I wonder whether/how USA Today contributes to the problem Jeff describes. One of Jeff’s theories of why The New York Times is in it’s current state of disfunction is self entitlement to the “mass,” which I take to mean all of us in the United States. While The Times has always been “the paper of record,” supposedly for the country, many people, including myself, really didn’t think of a national newspaper until USA Today. Is the attempt to appeal to everyone in the country causing The Times whipsaw of reporting? If it is not the only factor, it surely is a huge contributing factor.

I think too much weight is put on the presidential debates mostly because of the first ones in 1960 between Kennedy and Nixon. Presidential debates didn’t really become a thing until 1976, but the current incarnation are not really debates but rather a form of a cage match of participants in suits. The sole purpose of these debates is to make one look good and their opponent an idiot, and you don’t really hear substance or anything new. Even those 1960 debates are not remembered for substance but rather for how bad Nixon looked on television. You could say that debate was the beginning for performative era of presidential elections that we now bemoan.