[cross posted at NL Beast]

I will be heading to Camden Yards tonight to see Josh Beckett face off against Jeremy Guthrie. In light of that, this week’s AL roundup will discuss the Baltimore Orioles record thus far this year. The expectation of the Orioles coming into 2008 was that they would be vying with the Giants for the worst record in baseball. Having traded away star shortstop Miguel Tejada and ace Erik Bedard (and making attempts to trade away Brian Roberts, which may still happen), Baltimore was in a full-blown rebuilding process.

Peter Angelos, the owner of the storied franchise, ran the team into the ground and last year “handed”* the reigns over to Andy McPhail. McPhail definitely got good value for Bedard in centerfielder Adam Jones, which gives the Orioles a great young outfield with Nick Markakis and too a lesser extent Luke Scott (who came over in the Tejada deal).

*Angelos certainly didn’t hand over the team to McPhail. He is still meddling in trades and the day-to-day operation of the team. He is right up there with Jeffery Loria and the Nutting family as the worst owner in baseball. The Orioles fans deserve better, but he doesn’t appear to be leaving any time soon.

The Orioles have surprised baseball analysts thus far with what has been a better-than predicted-start, coming into tonight’s game at 19-19 and 3^rd place in the American League East ahead of the Yankees. However, it hasn’t come at the hand of good hitting as the Orioles are 12^th in the AL in runs scored. Their stars have not been carrying the team, as each have batting averages under .270 (Markakis .267, Roberts .257, Ramon Hernandez .215 and Jones .223). Their pitching has been carrying them, although it is only good enough for the 6^th best in the AL.*

*Guthrie, who was a contender for rookie-of-the-year last season, has not lived up to last years numbers. A star in the making, he is mired in a sophomore slump; or at least that’s what the Orioles hope. While certainly not pitching awfully, he is not the un-hittable pitcher he was for stretches last season.

—-

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays are continuing to play above everyone’s expectations, being lead by, of all things, their pitching staff. Yes, you read that correctly; I will give you a second to compose yourself. With Scott Kazmir back and the offense clicking, the Rays have won their last 5 games and come into tonight with a record of 22-16, half a game back of the division leading Red Sox.

Cliff Lee continues to pitch out of his mind for the Indians. Dave Cameron at FanGraphs says that Lee’s current stretch compares with Orel Hershiser’s first 6 starts of 1988 when he set the ML record for consecutive scoreless innings. The Indians are 1.5 games back of the Minnesota Twins in the AL Central, whom they will likely overtake soon.

Last week’s favorite baseball site of the week was Joe Posnanski’s blog. This week, I suggest you check out FanGraphs. It’s got a very cool tool that maps out WPA (Win Probability Added) as the game progresses. Check out the Rangers-Mariners game from last night as an example.

Goose Gossage thinks that Joba Chamberlain celebrates too much. I agreed with the argument that hitters couldn’t get away with Joba’s screams until I thought about Manny Ramirez’s tendency to pose after homeruns. I think both Joba and Manny should stop showing people up (especially when Manny’s poses on balls that occasionally end up being outs). However, I tend to think that if it’s more acceptable for the sure-thing all-star than it is for the rookie. Joba may one day become one of the greatest pitchers of all time, but he isn’t yet, and for now he needs to stop the celebrations (note: take that for what its worth from a Red Sox fan).

ESPN ran an interesting piece on Yu Darvish, a 21-year-old pitcher that has been untouchable in Japan. The article claims he’s the next Daisuke Matsuzaka. Daisuke by the way has the most deceiving statistics of anyone in baseball. His 2.45 ERA is 5^th in the AL, but his walks are way up and his BABIP is very low, which leads to my belief that his ERA will rise fairly soon. As a Sox fan, he is infuriating to watch pitch because of his tendency to nibble outside the strikezone and avoid using his changeup (his best pitch by many accounts).

Asdrubal Cabrera turned the 14^th unassisted triple play in Major League history last night. It was a great diving catch, but as with any unassisted triple play, luck played a major role in it.

First he’s a poet now he wants to be win a gold glove*. The Boston Herald reports [Thanks Buster Olney]:

“I think I’m the best ever to play left field in Boston,” the slugger said.

Manny does judge the bounces off the Green Monster fairly well, but that does not mean he plays a good left field. Discounting his performance on the road, Manny still isn’t a good fielder at home because of his judgment of balls that don’t hit the Monster. When you take into account his road performance Manny is consistently one of the worst left fielders in baseball.

Chalk this up to Manny being Manny.

*The Gold Gloves are the most ludicrous awards handed out by major league baseball. Sabermetrics have shown that Gold Glove winners are rarely the best fielders at their position, and sometimes the winners are some of the worst fielders.

MoveOn announced the winner of their Obama in 30 seconds advertisement contest, and the winner was a bit of a surprise. The advertisement, “Obamacan”, features a veteran who has been a Republican “since before [he] was allowed to vote” talking about why he voted for Obama.

While, I like this ad, I think that some of the runners-up were much better. I particularly liked “It could happen to you.”

Advertisements created by non-campaign staffs have been one of the major story lines of this campaign. From the Hillary 1984 video making waves to the Mitt Romney Jumpcut Ad contest, this is clearly a phenomenon that is here to stay. For all the worrying of political consultants about message control, it will be interesting to see how campaign managers deal with the growing trend of DIY advertising in the future.

The general consensus of the talking heads is that the drawn out Democratic primary is hurting the party’s chances in November. The argument is that Obama was the clear winner of the primary after Wisconsin and the subsequent 2.5 months of attacks on the “presumptive nominee” have hurt him. Obama’s momentum has clearly slowed since his 10 straight wins and the Clintons have now done much of the Republican’s opposition research for them.

I tended to agree with this line of thinking; that Clinton should have dropped out for the good of the party after Wisconsin. However, a good post by Todd Beeton of MyDD got me thinking that perhaps the elongated primary could be a good thing. Todd argues that the number of new voters the Democrats brought into the party in the primary season will end up helping the party more than the negativity within the party has hurt it.

I’m not sure whether he’s totally correct, but it definitely is a more positive way of looking at the long primary. I strongly believe that  polling data that suggests that a significant number of Clinton primary voters will vote for McCain or stay home in the general election is greatly exaggerated. In the heat of a primary voters will answer this question based on passion, but when the party unifies around Obama and it gets closer to November they will fall back to the party line. However, clearly the poll isn’t completely wrong and it begs the question of how different the numbers would be if the primaries ended in February.

Thanks to Chris Brooks for passing this along to me. I watched it about 5 minutes ago and just was able to stop laughing long enough to write this post.

I give props to Mike Gravel for having a sense of humor and for giving twitter a mention at the end (even if he probably has no idea what twitter is).  But, really any time a politician does the soulja boy dance is enough to have me rolling on the floor laughing.

What is the Internet useful for in political campaigns?

The general consensus of many of the “old guard” political consultants that I have come in contact with is that the Internet is not a successful tool for driving messages. This group believes that the best way to promote a campaign’s messages is through earned media and paid advertisements on television, cable, radio or print media. Messaging is considered the top priority of campaigns and is central to the majority of their actions. Part of this disbelief regarding the Internet’s potential among “old guard” consultants certainly derives from a fear that they can’t control their message online (something that has been debated online since the Dean campaign). However, many consultants believe that, regardless of online message control, it is impossible to convince people of anything through Internet tactics.

There isn’t a political consultant in their right mind who would advocate completely ignoring the Internet. However, the Internet is not considered to be the top priority in lower budget campaigns because political consultants don’t see evidence that the Internet can convince people that their candidate/cause is better than their opponent’s.

The real question boils down to this: What kind of medium is the Internet? Is it a reach medium? Or is it a reinforcement medium?

To clarify, I consider a reach medium to be one where a message distributed on the medium reaches and is consumed by a population of people. Thus, if the message is effective and the consumer is receptive, the message will impact the person’s opinion on the matter at hand. Television and the radio are the best examples of reach mediums. They both amass large audiences and more importantly they affect the opinions and decisions made by those consuming them.

Whereas, a reinforcement medium is one where people explicitly seek out opinions similar to their own and through consumption strengthen those opinions. Niche publications and ideologically affiliated publications are the best example of reinforcement media. There is certainly an argument to be made that certain television channels and radio stations are reinforcement media. However, as a whole I view media to fall on a spectrum falling somewhere in between a pure reach medium and a pure reinforcement medium.

“Old guard” political consultants would argue that based on people’s online habits, they use the Internet to reinforce preexisting opinions, rather than seeking out information from both sides of an issue in order to choose a stance. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been an academic study based on whether or not the opinion of “old guard” political consultants is accurate on this issue.

As such, one of IPDI’s next major research projects will be to look into the political information consumption habits of people. I believe any research must combine survey data similar to the Pew Internet & American Life Project with a controlled experiment that specifically watches people’s consumption habits.

We are looking for input on how such a study could be conducted. My current thoughts entail giving people a news story about a topic such as the economy, global warming or foreign affairs. Following the article the research subject would be provided with a list of stories from a variety of ideologically coded news sources, which they would be required to click on at least one. The experiment would be preceded and followed by a questionnaire regarding their views on the issues at hand, in order to determine how their opinion changed over the course of the exercise.

Do you think an experiment in this style would work? Do you have any ideas to improve the study? Please email me at akellner@ipdi.org.

Caveat: If the Internet is just a reinforcement medium, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There is fairly substantial anecdotal evidence that the Internet is very successful at rallying the base and invoking them to take action. A recent example is the number of people who have volunteered for the Obama campaign that was initiated and often carried out entirely online.

At this late hour, with Obama trailing Clinton by only 16,600 votes and key votes in Lake County still to be counted, the Indiana winner still seems to be up in the air. I think Clinton will likely end up winning, but the more interesting storyline is the number of commentators who are saying that Hillary is now completely done and Obama is the presumptive nominee. I would argue that its been over for quite a while now, but it is appearing more likely that the general public and more importantly* key superdelegates will come to this conclusion.

*It really pains me to say that superdelegates are more important as they truly go against small-d democratic values.

EDIT: Hillary now projected to win by CNN. Looks like a win of about 20,000-25,000 votes. Not bad considering the 6% advantage she had about a week according to most polls.

Note: Today is my first day as a weekly contributor to a new baseball blog launched by a couple of my friends called NLBeast, detailing the National League East. Every Tuesday I will be writing a column about the State of the AL. I will cross-post here for the first couple weeks, but be sure to check out their blog.

We have now reached the 1/5^th mark in the 2008 baseball season and so far the surprise of the year in the American League has been the Detroit Tigers’ struggles. After losing their first seven games, the Tigers have rebounded –going 14-12– but still sit in last place in the AL Central. The Tigers were predicted by many to dominate the 2008 regular season and while there is still plenty of baseball to be played (it is the first week in May after all), the team’s weaknesses have been on display for all.

The Tigers are going to score a ton (this is a technical term) of runs this year with an offense that may be one of the best of all time. However, as the Tigers learned the hard way last year, scoring runs alone does not guarantee a playoff berth. In 2007, the Tigers ranked third in runs scored behind the Yankees and the Phillies, but still finished eight games back of Cleveland for the division and six games behind the Yankees for the wildcard. Pitching and defense were the Tigers downfall as they ranked 9^th in the AL for runs allowed.

Pitching, specifically, looks to be the Tigers’ issue this year as well, as they have allowed the second most runs in the American League (only behind the horrendous Texas Rangers’ pitching staff). Team ace, Justin Verlander, has been struggling so far this year with a 6.28 ERA, which joins Nate Robertson and Kenny Rogers as starters with ERAs over six. The only positive point is rookie Armando Gallaraga who has impressed through four starts this year, with 1.88 ERA and a WHIP under one. The bullpen is equally as bad, and despite the hopes of Tiger fans, probably won’t see significant help from either Fernando Rodney or Joel Zumaya. All in all, unless the Tigers pitching steps it up and soon, they may miss the playoffs again despite possibly leading the league in runs.

—-

Bill James uses teams runs scored and runs allowed to come up with a team’s Pythagorean Record, or expected won-loss percentage. While not perfect, teams Pythagorean Records have become a standard in the sabermetric world for predicting won-loss records, much like everything else James has done in his career. Teams’ Pythagorean Records are determined by the formula RS²/(RS² + RA²)*. It is too early, due to small sample size, for Pythagorean Records to give a completely accurate reading, but looking at them is a good exercise in looking at how teams are doing thus far.

* where RS is runs scored and RA is Runs Against

Currently, the Tigers are expected to win 70 games, according to James’ method, which would leave them in last place in the AL Central. According to Pythagorean Records the White Sox would win 92 games, the Indians 83, the Twins 77 and the Royals 72. Now, you won’t find many people (including me) that will argue that the White Sox are going to win the AL Central. Nor will you find many that argue that the Tigers will finish in last; however, without improving their pitching the Tigers probably will not finish in first place (or in position for the wildcard).

Perhaps the next biggest surprise in the American League is the success of the Oakland Athletics (and to a lesser extent the Tampa Bay Devil Rays). The A’s have by far the best Pythagorean Record in the AL, with a predicted won-loss record of 103-59. The Rays meanwhile are expected to go 85-77. The Athletics will come back to earth, as there is no way their pitching staff stays this good or this healthy over the course of the year. The Rays on the other hand, with their overflowing youth, appear to be headed to their first winning season in franchise history and perhaps a third place finish in the AL East.

—-

Joe Posnanski, my new favorite sports blogger, gives us another addition of the “Banny Log”- a regular post following Brian Bannister’s starts from last week. Bannister will need to repeat his dominance from his first several starts if Kansas City doesn’t want to end up in the cellar of the AL Central again.

Top of the line closers in the AL have continued to show their dominance. Joe Nathan is having an incredible year, as has Mariano Rivera, and Jonathan Paplebon. We have also seen the emergence of Joakim Soria. K-Rod, who leads the majors in saves, may not even be one of the top five closers in the AL.

The Blue Jays are disappointing yet again this year, and it is becoming more apparent that they need to change up the coaching staff and/or the front office. The most recent screw up is benching Adam Lind, after giving him only 10 games to prove himself. Richard Griffin explains.

The Yankees are one of many teams shaking things up after the 1/5^th mark. Dropping Hughes and Kennedy from the rotation was clearly the right thing to do, as it appears that both weren’t quite ready to be major league starters. Some time in the minors will do them well, but the Yankees will need two of Hughes, Kennedy or Joba to be at best 3^rd and 4^th starters by the end of the year if they want to be in the playoffs.

The Mariners are already in trouble in the AL West. The Angels are looking to be every bit a dominant team even without John Lackey or Kelvim Escobar contributing, and the A’s are shocking the world so far. The Rangers on the other hand just stink.

Note: Okay, apparently I am still getting used to this regularity thing. Last week was hectic and I didn’t get to post, hopefully I will step it up and get better.

Over the course of the past week or two, I have been thinking about how Facebook has progressed in the past 12 months. This time last year, Facebook was the number one topic discussed in tech circles and was starting to dominate social discourse as well. Since that time, it has stayed in the news with both good PR and bad PR. Yet, among most social networking circles the belief that Facebook has “jumped the shark” is beginning to become more prevalent.

Andrew over at Capitol Valley has a great post reacting to Fake Steve Jobs’ rant:

Then came the Venture Capitalists, and suddenly Facebook was a platform! And it was going to change the world! Revolutionaries in Colombia were using it, and stuff…right…

The truth is, Facebook has jumped the shark. I still keep my profile current, but do I spent much time there? No. Do I use any of the applications? Absolutely not.

Is it a privacy nightmare with dreadful terms of service written by VC’s who want to keep it a walled-garden platform they can sell ads on? Absolutely.

Can I do everything I can do with Facebook with other services, without the hassle or the intrusion or the idiotic problem of people getting their accounts suspended for no apparent reason? Can I do it with more privacy? Yeah. LinkedIn, Drop.io, Flickr, Twitter. ’nuff said.

I agree with Andrew. I spent quite a bit of time on Facebook for a while, but the applications got out of control and Facebook became something it never should have become. Now, I play the occasional game of Scrabble and keep up with friend’s but it become too similar to all of the things I hated about MySpace. There is too much going on, the information I want is too hard to find and I constantly get harassed with Zombie requests (which is perhaps the most annoying thing in the world).

To make matters worse, Facebook had the possibility of becoming a real useful utility for political and issue advocacy causes. However, I think it is becoming less and less likely for any campaign to use Facebook as a major component of their strategy. Instead, to use social networking to one’s advantage, the best option is to create one’s own social network built around the goals of the campaign and/or co-opting a pre-existing niche social network for the cause.

Colin Delaney at e.politics also uses the “jump the shark” metaphor to describe Facebook’s role in online advocacy:

We’ve now seen more than a year of intense use of social networking sites by the U.S. presidential campaigns (and even longer use by issue-advocacy groups), which gives us a solid base of information and experience to judge just how effective Facebook is as a political tool — both for organized political campaigns and advocacy groups and for individual political activists. The verdict? Facebook has not lived up to a lot of its initial political hype, and for reasons that are perfectly natural considering what kind of a site it is.

Facebook isn’t going away and politicians & issue advocacy groups aren’t going to stop using the site. However, I don’t see Facebook as the savior of the Internet and it certainly won’t be the place where campaigns see success in fostering and mobilizing an online audience.

Okay, I am not quite as delusional as to actually predict* this (especially not with Greg Maddux still playing), but I have watched this incredible play by former Red Sox pitcher Joel Piniero 15 times now and I can’t get enough.

*This is not to mention the ridiculous nature of how Gold Gloves are awarded. **

**The use of asterisks in a sports post is absolutely ripping off my new favorite sports blogger, Joe Posnanski. If you haven’t checked him out yet, do so immediately.

Absolutely amazing play (and a little lucky):