After a long offseason, the 2012 regular season finally got underway yesterday afternoon. Roy Halladay was spectacular, as was expected, breaking faces left and right. The offense couldn’t do much, also predictably, but one run was just enough to push them past the home Pittsburgh Pirates.

Factoids and tidbits follow.

Yesterday was just the fifth time in baseball history that two teams won 1-0 on Opening Day, and the first since April 10, 1980, as the Johan Santana returned after taking 2011 off and led the New York Mets to outlast the Atlanta Braves. As noted by Bill Baer, it was the Phillies’ third-ever 1-0 Opening Day win, the previous two starting the 1913 and 1930 seasons.

Via the Inquirer’s Matt Gelb:

Freddy Galvis was the first Phillie to make his major-league début in the opening day starting lineup since Bowa and Doyle in 1970.

— Matt Gelb (@magelb) April 5, 2012

The full list here. Only ten total Phillies have done that since the end of WWII, before which accurate statistics are hard to come by, but Galvis certainly provided the least offense of those ten, and likely of all thirty since 1920. Galvis was also just the ninth in Major League history who made his début in the starting lineup to ground into two double plays, and the first on Opening Day. He was the 25th since the late 1940s (as far back as Win Probability Added has been measured) to decrease his team’s chance of winning by 21% or more. Long story short, he had a historically bad début.

Carlos Ruiz was the first Phillie since Pat Burrell in 2005 with at least three hits and no “outs,” sac flies, of course, excluded.

Halladay’s Game Score of 83 was the fifth-highest by a Phillie on Opening Day, behind a pair of Chris Short and Curt Schilling starts. His .576 WPA was also fourth, behind a different Short game, along with a Robin Roberts and Terry Mulholland. The 14th in baseball history with both GSc and WPA that high in an Opening Day game. The fifth Opening Day starter with 8+ innings, two hits or fewer, and no walks or runs. As noted by Crashburn Alley in the above link in the 1-0 wins section, this was Halladay’s personal best  of his ten consecutive Opening Day starts, again in terms of both Game Score and WPA, and by a wide margin. The previous GSc high was 68 in 2010 against Washington; meanwhile, the highest WPA was a .215 in 2006 when he allowed two homers to the Twins.

I’m in the process of creating a separate section for .GIFs, major props again to Bill for writing/videoing a tutorial to make the process easy enough that even I can do it. Once that is complete, I’ll update this section of the post. For now, here’s a preview, from the Rollins-Galvis-Wigginton double play turned in the first inning.

I can’t say how often I’ll do game recaps like this. Maybe every game, or maybe when I notice something particularly interesting. This is far more just a list of random trivia and minutiae than it is a recap, but regardless, I don’t think anyone needs me to describe the game. If that’s what you’re into, you can find it at so many other Phillies blogs. Phillies Nation and Beerleaguer are two that do that very well, and while The Good Phight obviously specializes in other things, they also have well-written recaps. However, one thing I would like to do after every game is to honor each team’s best and worst player.

For the Phillies

Winner: Roy Halladay, P. Well, no shit, Sherlock. Was that not obvious enough?

Loser: Freddy Galvis, 2B. Despite the nice defense above and lack of experience, two inning-ending double plays is still bad, not even necessarily on a historical level, but on an offense-constricting level.

For the opponent

Doff of the cap: Erik Bedard, P. Despite being on the losing end, 7 innings of six-hit, one-run ball with one walk and four strikeouts is still quite good. It’s also a reminder that, were he not so injury-prone, he could have been a bonafide ace, either staying with the Baltimore Orioles, or after going to the Seattle Mariners. The only season he posted a below-average ERA+ was in 2002, his first ever in the bigs – in two-thirds of an inning in two separate appearances, he gave up one run. He had a 146 ERA+ in 182 IP in 2007, his last year in Baltimore, posting league-leading numbers in SO/9 (10.9) and H/9 (7.0), leading to a fifth-place Cy Young finish. A remembrance of Fantasy Baseball Kryptonites of old, I suppose.

Laugh in the face: Rod Barajas, C. I could go with Andrew McCutchen, who had the lowest WPA on the team, but nearly 66% of that was due to the above first-inning double play with no outs and runners on first and second. Moreso than it was bad hitting, it displayed that (a) Jimmy Rollins still has with the glove at shortstop, and (b) along with other plays, Freddy Galvis’ defense is as good as people say. Remember that before last month, everyone was talking about his shortstop defense and he had never played second base before. So instead, Rod Barajas, who appears to have finally stopped hitting terribly against everyone but the Phillies, and rightfully simply hits terribly all the time. At -.105, his WPA was the lowest for any Pirate without any positive impact.

Yesterday, however, was different. Apparently, Nancy used her show to discuss crimes she plans to commit. She posted this on her Twitter feed at 1:50 yesterday afternoon:

How do you strangle your own toddler to death with a bra? Taking your calls RIGHT NOW: 877-626-2901

— Nancy Grace (@NancyGraceHLN) March 5, 2012

 

You guys, I think Nancy Grace is looking for your advice on how to strangle her own toddler to death with a bra! As soon as I saw her call for help, I immediately asked my own trusty band of Twitter followers for recommendation as to how Nancy Grace should strangle her own toddler to death with a bra. The only advice I got was from excellent pitch data researcher Will Rodeffer:

@uublog Dear @NancyGraceHLN I would recommend taking steroids before murdering your children to best absolve yourself from any direct blame.

— ‘Sup Future Employer (@Screwball77) March 6, 2012

As helpful as that recommendation may be, I’m still somewhat disappointed in you guys. I mean, Nancy Grace is trying to strangle her own toddler to death with a bra, and you hardly gave her any tips! The least you could do is tell her what brand of bra to use or how long to hold her toddler in it! But don’t worry – there’s still time. As far as I know, Nancy Grace has not yet strangled her own toddler to death with a bra. You can still send her your recommendations to her Twitter page. So what do you say, guys? Let’s help this poor, mentally unstable woman strangle her own toddler to death with a bra and send her to a prison/asylum so that we don’t have to listen to her making shit up on all of her radio and television shows anymore!

Related:

-Gilbert Gottfried at the Comedy Central Roast of Bob Saget

-Did Glenn Back Rape and Murder a Girl in 1990? [Know Your Meme] [Gawker] [Wikipedia]

Jeff set me up with a co-manager, Paul Dylan, a Strat veteran, who knows the ins and outs of the best strategies and writes about his own games at One for Five. This is very good for me, as Mysteryball is my first foray into Strat-o-Matic, although it’s been something I’ve wanted to try myself ever since I first heard about Jeff’s projects. I’d like to say that this partnership also benefits Paul because of my something-or-other, but I’d certainly be worse off without an intimate knowledge of the gameplay.

The 1958 Phillies were a very disappointing team, as you can see above. Last place in the league is always disappointing. They scored 0.1 runs per game below average and allowed 0.5 per game more than the average, the highest rate in all of baseball that year. There were, however, certain things they did well, and that is what Paul and I plan to maximize to achieve relative success. For example, they led the National League in hits, walks, batting average, and on-base percentage. They were also second in triples and third in doubles, so there is clear potential with the offense. The pitching is a different story. Walks and walk-related categories seem to be the only ones in which they were all that much better than average. Their 2.9 walks per nine was good for third and 0.4 above average, and a 1.74 strikeout-to-walk ratio ranked second, nearly 0.25 better. The statistical categories in which they finished last – or close to it – were greater: ERA, hits per nine, home runs per nine, and saves. I can’t say being last in saves means anything; a 41-year-old Mariano Rivera had more saves by himself than any team in baseball that year.

Seven of their eight starters had above-average OPS+ numbers. The only one below was SS Chico Fernandez who put a horrific slash-line of .230/.280/.318 for an even more horrific 59 OPS+ in 578 plate appearances. Richie Ashburn was the only Phillie to step to the plate more times. Power and speed were both rare on this team. Only four batters had double-digit homers: 3B Willie Jones, LF Harry Anderson, RF Wally Post, and OF Rip Repulski. Meanwhile, only two even attempted to steal at least six bases: Fernandez, who was 12-18, and Ashburn, 30-42.

On the pitching side, only four all season struck out six or more batters per nine innings, which, to me, is the biggest difference between this era of baseball and the current one today. Jack Meyer struck out 8.7 per nine in 90.1 relief innings, Turk Farrell registered a 7.0 in 94 innings as the “closer,” Don Erickson got a 6.9 in 11.2 innings, and Don Cardwell, in 14 starts and 107.2 innings, averaged 6.4. Robin Roberts and Ray Semproch were the two starters with above-average ERAs, Semproch ever so slightly – they had 122 and 101 ERA+, respectively. The back three, Jack Sanford, Curt Simmons, and Cardwell, finished at 89, 90, and 88, in that order.

They won their first game in Cincinnati on the strength of three doubles by Roberts and solo homers by Anderson and Jones in the 10^th. Roberts seemed to not have his best stuff, though, so unless the offense continues to score eight runs a game, the pitching, like I said, will need to do highly improbably things for a staff of its abilities. Paul and I agree that anything lower than 5^th place would not much of a success, if any. Despite finishing eighth, they were only three games behind the fifth-place Cubs. We’re not expecting some 20-game improvement to take down Hank Aaron, Eddie Mathews, Warren Spahn, and the Milwaukee Brewers who lost the World Series in seven games to the Yankees, but it’d be nice!

Expect regular updates on the status of the fictionalized team and interesting findings I discover from the real version. Jeff updates Mysteryball every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, so be sure to follow the season and mystery there regularly, as well.

Fun game with the musical accompaniments I attach to posts: put the song on repeat while you read it, as I did while I wrote it. Determine how many listens it took from start to end. This is a good measure of how links and things contribute to your procrastination while reading an article. Try it with other articles, too. I got through just under 17 listens, which means I got this article written in about an hour and a half. Pretty good for me considering it’s about 1,050 words, and I’ve been milking a 1,150 word-post since mid-December.

I’ve been preparing my return to Phillies blog world for a couple of weeks now. I had expected to do this at some point, but I hadn’t done much of any work for it – save brainstorm ideas and write about 600 words of a piece that I’m still working on that will probably end up around 2,000 or so – until it was time to renew my hosting fees. In the past week, I’ve really started upping my production: trying (and failing) to transfer stuff from the old site, realizing it’s better to simply start fresh, and making the new site look remotely decent. I was planning to get this back up once I was ready to publish enough content to make it look more like a desert with a few trees scattered around than a completely barren desert wasteland, but I had a goal for myself with it that I obviously missed and I don’t like keeping the five or so people I’ve told about this in the dark. So here we go.

Let me explain to you how I’m gonna do things around here. Then, next month, when it’s the rarely updated piece of shit that I’m constantly trying to avoid, we can all look back here to find the exact point at which I fucked up. The about page will be up by the weekend, so we can see where I fucked up the last two times, and with any luck, not make those same mistakes. It’s fairly boring, however, to describe why I’ve been a shitty blogger up to this point, but I do want a written history of the past and for y’all (Christ, I’ve been in Florida too long) readers to know what you’re getting without having to go back to this every time. I’ll have actual interesting things, like about the Phillies and stuff, going up as well. One thing, which I suppose would qualify under “stuff”, is a really awesome new thing that I’m going to obsess over and quite possibly from favorite perk of being a shitty blogger yet. In the Phillies category, I can guarantee two things soon: the aforementioned post I started about three months ago. It is mostly fictional and uses Dan Lozano, Jimmy Rollins, Ruben Amaro, Jr., and Jon Heyman as characters. Make of that what you will. Also, a thing that furthers my love of connection baseball and music, where I connect a certain beloved Phillie with a 1970′s folk song that no one, according to my three-minute Google search, has made before, probably because it’s really dumb.

As for things that don’t rely on my bizarre humor that no one else seems to understand, I may do some sort of preview for each player, like The Good Phight’s, only weirder and worse. It won’t rely on my bizarre humor, but it will certainly utilize it poorly! (I’m laughing to myself as I’m writing. Yes, my bizarre humor is mostly self-detrimental.) I’m considering ways to recap regular season games, but that’s still over a month away. The sabermetric library I talked about way back in November is still likely, but on the back burner, at least for the time being, while I determine the best way to do these other things.

Another thing I started doing over the offseason was collecting Eric Bruntlett merchandise (yes, I swear to God, I really am this weird), thus the new blog title. I plan to list the stuff I have in a new page and maybe if you do something helpful for me/the blog (like find me a life? or kill me) I’ll send you your choice and you, too, can share in my sad experiences. I am also sponsoring Bruntlett’s Baseball-Reference page, so that will get me about ten extra hits by year’s end. Cool.

Fun Fact 1: If you subscribe at the top of the right sidebar, I will personally send you an e-mail thanking you for joining the Eric Bruntlett Fan Club and congratulating/mocking you for willingly becoming a part of what must be the most useless, unimportant one in the history of fan clubs. If you find a more useless one, I’ll send you a card/picture just for going to that trouble. Maybe if I help you start a memorabilia collection, it’ll help you get a life and spend your time on better things. Seriously, dude, that’s just sad.

Fun Fact 2: If you go to the old site, it automatically redirects you here. You obviously don’t care, because you’re already here, but I find think that’s incredible. Ain’t life grand?

One final note: along with the revival of the blog, I also intend to start a podcast, because much like a blog, anyone in the world can have a shitty podcast if they want. Remember that thing I just told you about life being grand? Also, it’s more fun to make bad jokes to other people with Internet phones (Life is grand, I can not possibly stress this enough.) than it is to do that here to no one in particular. I’ll go more in-depth with it once it’s a real thing and not a mere idea, but I already have one guest lined up.

The blog’s Twitter feed has changed to @beardofanclub, although the one I use even occasionally has not. (@uublog) The Facebook page‘s title has changed to match with the new blog name, but the URL has not. The e-mail address, fireericbruntlett@gmaill.com, also remains unchanged, as those are two things that are unchangeable. Now that I’ve thoroughly bored you, I’m glad to know that you won’t be around when I embarrass myself further.