Features

Hey, another first for me.  I’m the featured blog this uh…day?  Week?  Arbitrary amount of time? Anyway, thanks to whomever picks that stuff, that’s awesome!  Oh the pressure…

Weird to see myself called “Kaiser The Great” on the front page.  I guess it never occurred to me to change my display name to my actual name.  Done!  Nice to meet you, everybody.

The leaders list for September came also came out.  I’m always curious who makes up the Top 50 fan blogs.  So I cataloged a couple stats:

I thought there’d be more females represented on the pie, but maybe that’s just me who happens to be reading mostly female written blogs.  Still a pretty good number considering sports are a “male thing” stereotypically. 

No shocker that the Yankee blogs reign, but not really by much.  Giants come in third behind Phillies and general MLB content, so that’s cool. There’s only 20 teams on the list so 10 teams aren’t being represented, but I’m too lazy to figure out which ones.  I wish MLBlogs had a way a list of all blogs on their site, broken up by team/subject.  

Killing Time

I’ve got baseball on the brain, but at the same time I’m trying not to spend too much time and effort over analyzing every little thing about today’s game.  So instead I revisisited one of my favorite baseball sites, Flip Flop Fly Ball to see what latest and greatest graphs and charts were available to peruse.  And much to my delight, there was a bobblehead chart!  Check it.    

The first thing that came to my mind was which two teams gave away a bobblehead when the Giants were visiting.  Not an easy thing to figure out without researching every teams’ bobblehead activity, which is what I ultimately ended up doing.  (Like I said, this day is crawling way too slowly towards 7 PM!)   So using Flip Flop’s own key, I made my own chart:

I found a few discrepancies in Flip Flop’s chart, but for the most part they’re the same, square-wise.  I added all the applicable teams though, so on the left side you can see what team was visiting during bobblehead day, and on the right you can see what teams gave away a bobblehead while being visiting. 

I would have assumed that most teams would decide to give away a bobblehead when they’re scheduled to play a bad team in an attempt to generate ticket sales.  The Phillies giving away a Roy Halladay bobblehead on the day they have to play the Pirates makes perfect sense.  (And photos of the sucker blew up all over Twitter, so obviously it worked!)  But then there’s the Dodgers giving away a bobblehead when the Giants came to play, and what would fill seats better than a Dodgers-Giants game?  

Note also that the Braves, Red Sox, Rockies and Yankees are too cool for bobbleheads (or draw enough ticket sales without gimmicks) and the White Sox was the only team to give away a bobble when the Red Sox and Yankees came to town (not enough of a draw for Chicago, I guess).  

I wonder if there’s a bobblehead website…

Bad Timing

It’s too soon to brag and too soon to complain, but WE’RE #1 and we lost our first series of the year and of course it was to the Dodgers.

So…

but…

I was supposed to watch the game with my sister-in-law’s husband, but we thought it started later than it did and we ended up tuning in just in time to watch Ramirez break out one run lead by hitting it out of the park.  Gah.  That’s okay, we’ve got 15 more games with them to prove we’re better and to get ‘em back for breaking Rowands face.  Ouch!

I’ve been out of town since April, so I can’t say I’ve watched much baseball.  Actually, last week I was in Canada for a work trade show, and the convention center was right next to Rogers Centre.  Had I known, I might have shot for some Jays tickets to pass the time, but instead I watched the Jays go back and forth with the Sox in the local tavern every night, which was pretty fun.  That Ricky Romero is a heck of a pitcher!

Speaking of fun, it’s interesting to get an opportunity to wear your team’s logo when you’re a stranger in a strange land.  Wear a Giants sweatshirt wear I live and you blend right in, wear one in Toronto and you get some staring.  No one tried to punch me or anything, though someone at airport security jokingly (I think) wanted to downgrade my ticket for the return flight home.  

SF @ CWS

16-6 (but who cares!). 

I don’t really know the guy I mentioned before who is the White Sox fan, but I listen to his podcast enough to where I feel good about his team losing to mine anyway.  I’ve traded a few e-mails back and forth with Jimmy Mac, co-host of the kick-assiest (totally a word) Star Wars podcast ever, The Forcecast, and I’m his best “not real” friend on Facebook too, so I make sure I post Giants vs White Sox scores on his wall.  It makes me feel good inside, even if he probably doesn’t give a crud.

What does this have to do with anything?  Nothing really, other than A) It’s cool that there’s a baseball fanatic out there who’s also a geek and B) A win is more fun when you can rub it in someone’s face.

Is that so wrong? 

http://player.theplatform.com/ps/player/pds/QNEC-FDNiX&pid=AKMULTR2_fFQNjudGD9C3ERbZ8aUmiQL

SF @ CHC

White Sox?  Check.  Cubs?  Check.  We’ve officially fake-beat Chicago. 

7-1.  And the Panda finally came through with a home run!  Bases loaded too!  Maybe he was just waiting for the perfect moment?  Odd that for both the Cubs and the White Sox, we beat ‘em with five runs in one inning.

http://player.theplatform.com/ps/player/pds/QNEC-FDNiX&pid=Kx_M_sU3fOy4oiyHfcEhJ9Kp717mfA_A

CWS @ SF

6-1 for the make-believe Cactus League.  I was worried there for a second that I wasn’t going to be able to rub a win into a White Sox fan’s face that I know, but luckily they pulled together in the eighth for five runs!  Thank you Jhonny Nunez for your pitching.

Seems like the trend is to start off slow and score later.  I guess that’s a good thing.  Better than starting off strong and petering out. 

First game for DeRosa.  Got a single.  Everyone seems to be expecting a lot from him, probably out of desperation that someone will get us on base. Hope he can live up to it.

http://player.theplatform.com/ps/player/pds/QNEC-FDNiX&pid=FhRvxwx0rv8PO3PmxS475a4qeWgk4kvC

Fake #1 in the National League again, as of today.  See?

LAD @ SF

Whew, seemed close there for a second, but they took it with an extra inning.  I’ve got a co-worker who’s a Dodgers fan, so of course I posted the score on her workstation.  It’s the little things in life…!

http://player.theplatform.com/ps/player/pds/QNEC-FDNiX&pid=t52OX3qDj0CJralbdog0T0dwMj1AAI6I

Now if only they’d beat the White Sox today too, I’ve got someone else who’s face I can rub it in!

How We Do 2010

With the real season coming up here quick, let’s take a moment to see what we look like in the grand scheme of things before we add another year of numbers.  (AKA, another excuse to make charts in Excel!) 

From beginning of time to last season, the Giants rank #2 in the league for win percentage.  Not bad really.  The Yankees are the winner, of course, and it doesn’t look like they will be dethroned anytime soon.  Dodgers are catching up, but we still got a decent enough gap there.  (And just as an FYI, we rank #1 in total actual wins, but since not every
team started in the 1800s, that standing isn’t exactly a fair comparison.)

And since I was at it, here’s the rest of the league, for my imaginary readers whose team didn’t make the top 15:

I’m betting Rays fans are hard core. 

Now about some head-to-head?  How do we compare to other teams on a face-to-face level? 

Giants are still beating out everyone else in the National League.  They have more wins vs losses than each and every team, though it looks like the Dodgers are a few wins away from pushing that bar to the left.  But that’s what makes good rivalry, right?  Who wants to have a rivalry with a team that sucks?

American League is kicking our butts a bit harder.  Of course, we face them much less, which makes each loss much more powerful than the National League chart.  Looks like 6 out of 14 teams are beating us more than we’re beating them, including the A’s, which…sucky!  Still above average though.

All-in-all not a bad state of affairs.  Again though, this is over the Giants entire history, so I’m betting a lot of their momentum was built back in the day. Best make sure we keep things going so we can stay on top, eh?

The Mighty Giants

Mottoes?  Subtitles?  Tag lines?  Slogans?

I don’t know what they’re called, but some teams have “we rock!” type sayings on top of their websites, as well as in their stadiums, on merchandise, and anywhere else they can think to plaster it. 

Up until Spring Training came along, the Giants’ slogan read, “Your Giants.”  Now it reads, “It’s Magic Inside.” 

I don’t know how often these things change, or whether anyone even pays attention to them when they do, but can I say yuck on the new idea?  Now they sound like they play at the Magic Kingdom or were turned into candy bars or something.

Here’s a commercial with the new slogan, invented by the marketing genius that is Swirl:

I liked “Your Giants” better.  It sounded more personal to us, like “Hey!  We have our very own team!  Cool, huh?”  It also sorta paralleled or bizarro-fied the evil Dodgers slogan of “This is My Town.”  Yours.  Mine.  See?  It goes together. 

So who else has tag lines? I tried to Google the answer, but either I can’t effectively search for a complete list because I do not know what to call them, or no one cares about them and hasn’t bothered to make one. 

So I’ll make one.

As of right now, at least based off their websites, of the 30 major league teams, 11 have slogans, 5 on the American League and 6 on the National League.

AMERICAN LEAGUE

• Chicago White Sox – There Are Traditions.  And There Are White Sox Traditions.
• Cleveland Indians – Are You In The Tribe?
• Detroit Tigers – Always A Tiger
• Seattle Mariners – Believe Big

NATIONAL LEAGUE

• Atlanta Braves – The Excitement Of Turner Field
• Florida Marlins – Serious Fun.  Get On It!
• Los Angeles Dodgers – This Is My Town
• Pittsburgh Pirates – Pride. Passion. Pittsburgh Pirates.
• San Francisco Giants – It’s Magic Inside.
• Washing Nationals – Nats Town: Get Your Red On

So who wins?  I don’t know, maybe the Dodgers, doesn’t that suck?  I like the Pirates’ and White Sox’ too, though “Sox traditions” make me think of cheating, so maybe that’s not so hot. 

It’s Magic Inside.  Bleh. 

Flip Flop Fly Ball

Craig Robinson’s Flip Flop Fly Ball site is my new favorite thing.  As self-described:

A love of baseball plus a love of infographics equals Flip Flop Fly
Ball.

The thing is loaded with fun statistics in graphics form, and while I haven’t perused them all yet with equal scrutiny, here’s my current favorite (so far):

CLICK FOR FULL SIZE

It’s crazy that the “best team” has only won the series three times since 1995, isn’t it?  (Since the Wild Card system has been in effect.)  I suppose that’s what playoffs are for, but so much for the reliability of stats, eh folks?  Also specifically interesting to the theme of this blog, the last time the Giants made it to the series was the only time that that two Wild Card teams went head to head.  (Giants lost of course – boo!)