Gwinnett Ballet Theater dancers in a promotion with the Gwinnett Braves. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

I’m currently out of work, which would have allowed me to sit in front of the TV on Opening Day and live-tweet, as I did in some past years (even before Twitter was invented) — but instead, I’m going to be in [...]]]> First of all, I’d say the Cardinals have found their replacement for Albert Pujols!

I’m currently out of work, which would have allowed me to sit in front of the TV on Opening Day and live-tweet, as I did in some past years (even before Twitter was invented) — but instead, I’m going to be in Ireland, where there will probably not be any baseball on TV.

On to the predictions. Kansas City appears to be Sports Illustrated’s pick to be the surprising team of the year, but our cold equations still have them finishing last in the AL Central. They’re also obviously taking Pujols into account with their Angels prediction, but we’re not.

As you can see, neither we nor SI predicted the Diamondbacks doing as well as they did, nor the Twins doing so poorly. Please note [...]]]> And here’s what has become the entire raison d’être of this site’s existence, in which we compare the Sports Illustrated projections and our own mathematical formula projections with the actual results.

As you can see, neither we nor SI predicted the Diamondbacks doing as well as they did, nor the Twins doing so poorly. Please note that we got the standings order of the AL East and the AL West correct, unlike SI.

In 2004, I sent Levi a condolence card after the Red Sox swept the Cardinals in [...]]]> In 1996, I sent Levi a condolence card after the National League Championship Series, in which the Braves came back from being down 3 games to 1 to the Cardinals (including a 14-0 win at Busch Stadium in Game 5).

In 2004, I sent Levi a condolence card after the Red Sox swept the Cardinals in the World Series.

This year, if the Rangers had won in Game 6 or Game 7, what I would have sent Levi is some random sort of greeting card — perhaps a My Little Pony birthday card that would normally be intended for a 5-year-old girl — and writing in it, “I asked my friend Tony La Russa to call and order a condolence card.”

Of course, I don’t think Levi necessarily minds that he didn’t get to fully enjoy that joke.

Not to mention any movie in which the very first image depicted on screen is that of Johnny Damon. (Unfortunately, he’s only in the movie via archive footage and as a [...]]]> You’ve got to like a baseball movie that can, at the most crucial situation depicted in the film, have the audience hoping for a walk.

Not to mention any movie in which the very first image depicted on screen is that of Johnny Damon. (Unfortunately, he’s only in the movie via archive footage and as a topic of conversation, so we don’t know who would have played him. Instead, we know Stephen Bishop as David Justice and Chris Pratt as catcher-turned-first-baseman Scott Hatteberg.)

Jonah Hill seems particularly good — or maybe it’s just surprising to see him acting dramatic in a drama. Of course, the only reason he’s in this movie is because Paul DePodesta and his Harvard economics degree wouldn’t sign off on the use of his name and likeness, so instead they created a completely different character: one with an economics degree from Yale. (Wikipedia claims that Paul DePodesta would have been played by Demetri Martin, who you may note has a slightly different body type than Jonah Hill.)

Since I remember 2002 fairly well, I was of course on the lookout for anachronisms, and the only one I remember seeing was the current logo of KICU being used, although I’m sure there were some uniform details that were wrong, and they’ll probably get brought up soon on Uni Watch. (Something that did correctly make it in to the movie was the ad on the outfield wall at the Coliseum for “Fox Sports Net/Cable Channel 40.”) I also heard a huge anachronism, but I’ll leave that out of this post to avoid spoiling it for future nitpickers.

A very good baseball movie, and it also has plenty of Brad Pitt displaying emotion for people who don’t like baseball. If you don’t like either of those things, well, too bad for you.

Actually, I do have one legitimate Player to Watch: Evan Longoria, now that we [...]]]> Oh, it’s this thing again. The Sports Illustrated picks, and our ridiculous mathematical picks. SI didn’t include a Player to Watch feature this year, which is good, because it means I don’t have to write 30 stupid jokes about baseball players’ names.

Actually, I do have one legitimate Player to Watch: Evan Longoria, now that we know he is an enthusiastic gun enthusiast, enough that he brought an AK-47 to spring training. Seriously, watch him. Watch out for him.

In the [...]]]> Once again, it’s time to look back and see how two entities did with their predictions for the 2010 season: Sports Illustrated, with their decades of baseball expertise, and this website, with a simple formula I have from an old Bill James Abstract and a deep desire to make fun of baseball players’ names.

In the “actual results” columns, for the most part, the “Player Who Should Have Been Watched” was the team’s leader in the Runs Above Replacement Player statistic — which I only vaguely understand, but fortunately, there are websites aplenty that don’t make you understand it, they just print the results. In a few cases, though, it seemed obvious that someone else (or something else) should have gotten all the scrutiny.