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Dec-26-11
 | | Phony Benoni: <WannaBe> Being a lifelong Lions' fan has taught me respect for the feelings of those whose team doesn't make the playoffs, particularly when this is due to injuries rather than ineptitude. Interesting how the crippled Bears could move the ball effectively on the Packers last night, especially when the game was still close instead of just meaningless yards in garbage time. I think the Lions have motivation to win the game that goes beyond playoff positioning. They've exorcised a lot of demons this year, and ending a twenty-year losing streak at Lambeau would be very meaningful. They probably won't go far in the playoffs due to inexperience and a weak running game, but a win Sunday would take away some of the forthcoming bitterness. |
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| Dec-26-11 | | King Death: <Phony Benoni> Yes, the Bears managed to get some numbers against the Packers, which makes you wonder because everybody knew before the game that the Bears would do nothing but run as long as they could. A lot of people have the Pack down as a lead pipe cinch to win the trophy, but we'll see. We saw what could happen if Rodgers is just a little off in the only game they lost against another team that's really done nothing special. Not being able to stop the run could hurt when they have to play some strong teams down the road. |
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| Dec-26-11 | | King Death: <Phony Benoni> It's a little early, but I was just poking around on baseball-reference.com. These days I'll bet you never see a player who had as awful a season as Adam Dunn keep his job. Of course he was getting a ton of money so the White Sox weren't sitting him. That WAR of -2.7 had to be the worst in quite a few years. Dunn's season got me to looking at who might have had the worst one ever. I was just looking at a couple of the post 1914 A's teams and so far I've found a pitcher whose WAR was -4.5 in 1915. It almost has to be one of those bad early teams and I'm going fishing some more. |
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Dec-26-11
| | Phony Benoni: <King Death> Before looking, I'm going to guess John Nabors. |
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| Dec-26-11 | | King Death: On the '36 A's I found this player with a -2.9 WAR. That was another bad team after Connie Mack sold or traded off everybody and didn't develop a farm system, but in only 39 innings pitched? http://www.baseball-reference.com/p... |
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Dec-26-11
 | | WannaBe: Totally Useless Information Department (TUI Department, with serious apology to Jayson Stark from ESPN, who does this during the baseball season)... Seattle Mariners scored 556 runs in 2011, GB Packers have scored 515 points with 1 game left. The next two, are N.O. and N.E. must be something with the word 'New'... Psst, if you want to be high-scoring, rename yourself, like 'New Oakland', or 'New Miami', or 'New St. Louis'. NY Giants have been outscored by 23 points, Denver have been outscored by 77, Oakland by 62. We possibly can see 2 division winners that have allowed more points than scored. Have that ever happened before? Much less 2 division winners?? NYG, Denver and Oakland are all 5-3 on the road, yep, that means they are 3-4 at home, if they all win at home (Denver goes to play-off on tie-breakers over Oakland), we'd have 2 division champions with .500 home record. What ever happened to .500 on the road and winning at home mantra?? Baltimore is already 8-0 at home, with N.E. 7-0 and N.O. 6-0 (MNF in progress) as the others that can possibly finish undefeated at home. San Diego currently are +17 in points differential, so if Oakland (-62) beats them by 18 or more, everyone in AFC West will have given up more points than scored. (Unless, Denver beats KC by 78 points or more...)
Miami (5-10) have +10 point differential. No other last placed division team even come close to being positive, next closest is Washington 'Skins (-55). |
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Dec-26-11
| | Phony Benoni: <King Death> By habit, I took the easy way out and checked Google. Since 1900, the worst appears to be Steve Blass in 1973, with -5.8: http://www.baseball-reference.com/p... Note that this was the year after he finished second in the Cy Young balloting. Another example of a pitcher imploding after a career year. For position players, the mark appears to be -4.0 by Jerry Royster in 1977: http://www.baseball-reference.com/p... and George Wright in 1985:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/p... In both categories there were worse performances pre-1900, but I discount those. The game was quite different and the data too incomplete for a meaningful comparison. The absolute worst, at -7.0, appears to be Dory Dean's pitching performance in 1876: http://www.baseball-reference.com/p... Apparently he was not related to Dizzy and Daffy. However, I do have a sentimental attachment to John Coleman's -6.5 in his 48-loss season of 1883: http://www.baseball-reference.com/p... It took real talent to give up 17 home runs in a year that the entire league hit only 124. That would be the equivalent of about 314 home runs allowed these days. |
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| Dec-26-11 | | King Death: <Phony Benoni> I just saw that Coleman work of art. Really something.
Looking through a bunch of bad teams from the old days, one of the things that caught my attention was how some of them carried a few players who were anywhere from -1.5 to -2.5. In these years before World War II, there weren't many teams that had much for farm systems and some had nothing. It's no wonder the Yankees Dodgers and Cardinals were able to stay good in the 1940s and 50s. Royster sure brought a lot to the table in 1977. He was an anti four tool player. He could run but couldn't do anything else. The worst part is that he got a nice contract after that. He made $40000 for his miserable year and got $100k in both 1978 and 79. |
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Dec-26-11
| | Phony Benoni: <King Death> Amazing. It turns out that Dory Dean was the Luis Tiant of his day. http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm... |
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| Dec-27-11 | | King Death: <Phony Benoni> I never heard of Dory Dean, but it sounds like he had some impact on the game, even if it wasn't on the mound in that one year. He had himself a good life too. |
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| Dec-27-11 | | Jim Bartle: Has anyone checked Hal Lanier and Tito Fuentes in the mid-Sixties? It seemed like the Giants had three pitchers in the lineup. |
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Dec-27-11
 | | OhioChessFan: http://aol.sportingnews.com/ncaa-fo... |
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| Dec-27-11 | | King Death: <Jim Bartle> Fuentes wasn't too hot but he had a little pop in his bat. He looks like a Hall Of Famer next to Lanier though. Lanier had 3700 at bats with an OPS+ of 49 and somehow played for 10 years? The Giants turned out bunches of players they had to trade away because they couldn't play them all and got to play these two regularly? I'm confused. |
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| Dec-27-11 | | Jim Bartle: Fuentes hit better in the late 60s and early 70s, but in 66-67 he couldn't hit at all. In fact they didn't get much hitting from LF or RF, so basically the Giants' attack was Mays, McCovey, Hart, Haller and nothing else. The Giants did of course trade away many good players, notably Orlando Cepeda and Felipe Alou. They even traded Tom Haller for Ron Hunt later. When Herman Franks was dumped and Charlie Fox became the new manager in 71, Chris Speier appeared at shortstop. Franks complained that Fox wasn't really any better as manager, a good shortstop just dropped in his lap after he'd suffered for years with Lanier. |
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| Dec-27-11 | | Jim Bartle: Wow, Lanier's career slugging average was .275. Now he was a good shortstop, but not exceptional, certainly not close to good enough to justify his lack of hitting. |
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Dec-27-11
| | Phony Benoni: <OhioChessFan> There goes the mascot career. |
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Dec-27-11
| | Phony Benoni: The first few years I haunted this place saw publication of the annual <SILLY DATABASE STATISTICS>. These were meant as a counterbalance to the useful information found at ChessGames.com Statistics Page. It's been almost three years since the last installment, and I finally decided "No more Mr. Nice Guy!" So I gathered the numbers and started crunching when I noticed a recent compiliation of <EVEN SILLIER DATABASE STATISTICS> at SwitchingQuylthulg chessforum. What to do? I didn't want it to seem like I was just imitating User: SwitchingQuylthulg. On the other hand, his statistics are totally unlike mine in that they are interesting and significant. Besides, I'm not going to let all that work go to waste. So, back for a return engagement, we present <SILLY DATABASE STATISTICS>, starting with <The Hortense Wallflower Award for Least Used Opening>: 1. Nimzo-Indian, 4.e3, Main line with 8...dc and 9...cd (E57) (5 games) 2. Benoni, Classical, 9...a6, 10.a4 (A74) (25 games) 3. Queen's Gambit Declined, Orthodox, Rubinstein Attack, Main line (D65) (26 games) 4. King's Indian, Four Pawns Attack, with Be2 and Nf3 (E78) (33 games) 5. Dutch, Ilyin-Genevsky Variation with Qc2 (A98) (39 games) 6. Benoni (A66) (41 games) 7. Sicilian, Dragon, Yugoslav Attack, 12.h4 (B79) (46 games) 8. Benoni, Classical, 9...Re8 (A76) (48 games) 9. Benoni, Classical without 9.O-O (A72) (55 games) 10. Catalan, Open (E03) (60 games) 11. King's Indian, Samisch, Orthodox Main line (E89) (66 games) 12. Dutch, Stonewall with Ba3 (A94) (68 games) 13. Nimzo-Indian, Samisch Variation (E27) (70 games) 14. King's Indian, Four Pawns Attack, Main line (E79) (70 games) 15. Benoni, Classical with ...Re8 and ...Na6 (A78) (71 games) 16. Dutch, Stonewall, Botvinnik Variation (A93) (72 games) 17. King's Indian, Orthodox, 7...Nbd7, Main line (E96) (95 games) 18. Queen's Gambit Declined, Orthodox Defense, Classical, 13.de (D69) (96 games) 19. Nimzo-Indian, 4.e3 O-O 5.Nf3, without ...d5 (E50) (99 games) 20. Dutch, Ilyin-Genevsky Variation with b3 (A99) (100 games) A burst of inactivity carried the Classical Benoni into the 2nd spot, though it seems unlikely that E57 will ever be caught. Some main line. |
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Dec-27-11
| | WannaBe: Gooooooooooo Benoni! Benoni all the way! |
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Dec-28-11
| | WannaBe: Thank you Jayson Stark, thank you, thank you. For those who have read and kept record of how I harp on AFC West for being outscored in 2011 NFL season... Courtesy of ESPN.com columnist J.S.: http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/7... <• All four teams that advanced to the LCS -- the Cardinals, Brewers, Rangers and Tigers -- got outscored by the teams they played in the Division Series … and won. Hard to do, friends.> In the play-offs, all <<<FOUR>>> teams!! |
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| Dec-28-11 | | Jim Bartle: As has been pointed out here, the Yankees outscored Pittsburgh 55-27 in the 1960 World Series. Didn't do them any good. |
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| Dec-28-11 | | wordfunph: Sir Phony Benoni, thanks for helping me in my games collection. Happy new year! |
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| Dec-28-11 | | crawfb5: FYI, I have recently done my small part to dilute the quality of the database: Larry Crawford |
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Dec-28-11
| | WannaBe: I think there's a baseball ump named Larry Crawford. :-) |
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| Dec-28-11 | | crawfb5: I may wear reading glasses, but I'm not blind! :-) |
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Dec-28-11
| | Phony Benoni: And the category for today in the <Silly Database Statistics> is: <The Tchigorin-Bogolyubov "When I am White I Win Because I Am White" Award for the Line with the Best Winning Percentage for White>. 1. Queen's Gambit Declined, Orthodox, Rubinstein Attack, Main line (D65) (26 games; 78.8%) 2. Nimzo-Indian, 4.e3, Main line with 8...dc and 9...cd (E57) (5 games; 70.0%) 3. Dutch, Stonewall with Ba3 (A94) (68 games; 69.9%) 4. Catalan, Closed (E08) (339 games; 69.6%) 5. Queen's Gambit Declined (D06) (520 games; 69.6%) 6. Queen's Gambit Declined, Orthodox Defense, Classical (D68) (153 games; 69.0%) 7. Queen's Gambit Declined, Orthodox, Rubinstein Attack (D61) (459 games; 67.0%) 8. Dutch, Ilyin-Genevsky Variation with Qc2 (A98) (39 games; 66.6%) 9. Dutch, Ilyin-Genevsky Variation with b3 (A99) (100 games; 66.5%) 10. Queen's Gambit Declined, Orthodox, Rubinstein Attack (D64) (201 games; 66.1%) 11. Queen's Gambit Declined (D35) (2312 games; 66.1%) 12. Dutch, Stonewall, Botvinnik Variation (A93) (72 games; 66.0%) 13. Ruy Lopez, Old Steinitz Defense (C62) (459 games; 65.9%) 14. Neo-Grunfeld, 6.cd Nxd5, 7.O-O (D74) (202 games; 65.4%) 15. Queen's Gambit Declined, Anti-Neo-Orthodox Variation (D54) (105 games; 65.3%) 16. Dutch, Ilyin-Genevsky (A97) (195 games; 64.7%) 17. Queen's Gambit Declined Semi-Slav (D46) (1044 games; 64.6%) 18. Grunfeld, Grunfeld Gambit Accepted (D84) (100 games; 64.5%) 19. Old Benoni Defense (A44) (568 games; 64.2%) 20. French (C10) (2721 games; 64.2%) Since the average ECO code has about 1240 games, it's apparent most of these are not often played--which should not be surprising. Most are 1.d4 openings, also confirming the general trend of the database. |
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