0 Funny RBI story courtesy of Dee-Nee.com Posted by The Duke of GaGa |

So we were browsing one of the two best RBI Baseball websites in the world and came across this post: a guy was injured while playing RBI Baseball. We'll let him tell the story in his own words:

Here is the story: My brother had to work at 3:00, so we decided to squeeze in a game of RBI. Me: Detroit, Him: Cali. Game is tied going into top of 9th. He scores 2 runs. Bottom of 9th with one out and a runner on first, I hit a routine ground ball to the shortstop and he boots it. Should have been a game ending double play. So Chet Lemon comes up next and hits a walk-off three run home run. My brother gets pissed and goes to throw the controller at the wall but ends up hitting me in the forehead with the corner of the controller and now I have a huge gash in my head with tons of bleeding. Its borderline if I should have got stiches or not, but I decided against it. Just thought I would share this unique experience to show the dangers of heated RBI battles.

We would like to thank golfer5714 for sharing this story of anticipation and excitement, followed by misery and woe; and we will now issue a warning to our blog readers to watch out for objects coming at your head. We have made some adjustments of our own and will now be wearing headgear when playing out our season, as we are too pretty to sustain any kind of facial injuries.

0 Joe Posnanski Posted by The Duke of GaGa |

The GaGa Projection System has been on Spring Break and therefore we have not posted in quite a while. We won't get into the details, but let's just say that we booked a trip to Cabo, and somehow ended up in arctic Canada. And our suitcases were full of swim trunks and spray-tan. Ouch!

Friend of the blog Joe Posnanski just wrote something about Johnny Damon, only it turns out that it wasn't about Damon, it was about the correlation between hits, getting on base, home runs, etc. and wins. What he finds is incredibly interesting: the team that out-hits its opponent wins about 80% of the time. The team that gets on base wins almost 83% of the time. And the team that hits the most home runs wins about 76% of the time. So what does this mean? First his methodology: Well we can't really say that much about Posnanski's methodology except that we trust him whole-heartedly (Joe, just tell us what you need and we'll give it to you. What? My wife? Ok, I'll send her on a plane ASAP). And now to his numbers: he seems to confirm what the saber-geeks have been telling us all along: home runs aren't the only way to manufacture runs. And how does this relate to the Mariners? Baseball "analysts" have been on their case for a while now about not bringing in a power hitter like Jason Bay. The Mariners front office and blogosphere have been saying all along that there are multiple ways to construct a lineup and score runs. What the Mariners have done, in bringing in guys like Figgins and Bradley, who can hit and get on base, can be just as valuable (or even more valuable) as breaking the bank for a guy like Bay.

So, we are about to embark on our 162 game projection season, let's see how Posnanski's findings translate into our RBI season. Any guesses on how many wins the M's will end up with? We're hoping for 132!

http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2010/03/15/johnny-damon-detroit/

0 Introducing GUTI Posted by The Duke of GaGa |

Fans of the site have been asking us about defensive metrics for quite a while now. And we can now say that we have completed our study of defense and have come up with a great new system, GUTI. For those of you familiar with defensive metrics already, most notably UZR, GUTI is quite a bit different. Whereas metrics like UZR can seem difficult for the uninitiated, GUTI is extremely simple. It perhaps lacks the power of some of these other metrics, but after extensive comparison, we believe that GUTI comes extremely close to both other defensive metrics and a player's true defensive talent.

Now let's compare UZR to GUTI: Jacboy Ellsbury, for example, had a -18.6 rating last season in center field. Meanwhile, Mike Cameron, who will take over CF duties for the Red Sox this year, put up a 10.0 rating last season in CF. So, what does this mean? Other than Cameron is pretty good and Ellsbury seems really bad, we have no idea. That's why we read Dave Cameron. Also, in order to argue about a player's defensive worth in terms of UZR, you really need 3 seasons worth of data. So how good is Michael Saunders? Nobody really knows.

And here is the brilliance of GUTI. GUTI is an integer-based system, so none of this 5.5, 4.7 or -18.6 business. GUTI's ratings range from 0-1 and are extremely easy to understand. Franklin Gutierrez is a 1. Everyone else is a 0. Some people have said that this system is not as precise as UZR or Dewan. We disagree. Franklin Gutierrez is precisely 1 point better than everyone else. Bang, let's move on. We recently sat down with Gutierrez and asked him how he felt about being the top-rated defensive player based on our metric.

DoG: "So Franklin, GUTI rates you at 1 and everyone else at 0, what do you think?"
FG: "Honestly, it just quantifies what I've felt for a long, long time. I'm just a one, living in a world of zeroes."
DoG: "Wow, good answer. And may we just say that you are incredibly good looking."