Obligatory Granola Bar Post

What is a blog without a recipe for home made granola bars? It's nothin' I tells ya, nothin'! So today, we're making granola bars. With pictures.

(yes, I know I made a Snapguide with the same pictures and instructions a few months ago, but hey. Hey! Hey. Yup.)

Preheat your oven to 350, ladies and germs!

Line a 8x8 baking pan with aluminum foil. Why do you need foil if you're using a pan that's probably non-stick? Well, it's probably non-stick until you're ready to remove the granola 'slab' from the pan. Then it's super sticky, and you need to attack it with pointy implements of torture. If you're not going to use foil, then you'd probably need to grease the pan. That greasing medium is going to go right into your granola bars, and healthy blah blah granola blah blah trans-fatzzzzz..... just use the foil. It aids the browning process (meaning tastier food), and makes removal a breeze.

If you're still with me, ready a food processor, cutting board and measuring cups & spoons.

You will need: Dry ingredients 1 cup cereal (Shredded Wheat, Kashi) 1 cup oats 1/2 tsp cinnamon 1/2 tsp salt Wet ingredients 2 eggs 1/4 cup honey 1/4 cup peanut butter 2 Teaspoons vanilla Optional ingredients 1/2 cup cranberries 1/4 cup chopped nuts 1/2 cup chocolate chips/chunks

Combine all of the dry ingredients in your food processor. Pulse until the cereal and oats are finely chopped and everything is thoroughly combined. In a large bowl, combine the wet ingredients and whisk until smooth.

Add the dry stuff to the wet stuff. Stir to combine, ensuring there are no "dry spots". Gently fold in the extras (fruit, nuts, chocolate chips, etc.)

Spread the mixture in to prepared 8x8 pan, leveling the surface with an offset spatula - the flatter the better. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes, until the edges start to brown. Cool in pan on wire rack until the granola is cool to the touch.

Using the foil as an aid, remove the granola slab from the pan, and flip it foil-side-up onto the cutting board. Peel back the foil to expose the hearty goodness that you're going to eat for breakfast from now on because you don't have time to make a freakin' omelet every day, and you needn't starve to start your morning! No one should! Once we've all calmed down from that little spell of breakfast rage, cut the slab into 8 bars. Wrap them individually with cling wrap and store in an airtight container or zip-top freezer bag.

And that's how you make granola bars. I hope you like them.

Foul territory

The foul lines (or distance to left/right field) for all thirty ballparks, alphabetically by city from top to bottom, where one pixel represents one foot, just because.

As they say at notgraphs, click to embiggen.

Measurements provided by respective parks' Wikipedia entries. An excel workbook with a breakdown of the league's outfield dimensions (and geographic coordinates!!!) can be found here.

From Kansas City to... Kansas?

It has been determined after thorough and extensive research that no one can hit a home run from Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, MO to the state of Kansas.

That's unfortunate.

What HAS been determined is the fact that the miniature baseball diamond in Kauffman Stadium's 'Outfield Experience' named "Little K" faces the fine state of Kansas. To reach it, someone would have to launch a home run over the left field fence....

...and hope that it carries for eight and a half miles.

Having said that, I propose that Major League Baseball change the rules of tonight's home run derby. I first considered that the derby should take place at Little K, and each team would hit home runs until the cumulative distance of their hits totals 8.5 miles. Considering each participant's longest home run is roughly 450 feet, that would take about 99 home runs to make up the distance, and that would take too darned long.

My second (and much more appealing proposal) would also take place at Little K. In this scenario, Jose Canseco would be given the opportunity to hit to his hearts' content. Chris Berman would ask after each hit, "Do you think that one made it to the state of Kansas?" and Jose would tweet his response. That way, the players wouldn't worry about 'messing up their swings', Jose could have his turn at the plate that he so desires, and people might actually tune in.

And that's how we fix the Home Run Derby!

Abstract Baseball: FIP

I like FIP. Thanks to Fangraphs, I can tell you that it’s a stat that shows what a pitchers ERA should look like when looking at the results that a pitcher can control: strikeouts, walks, HBPs and HRs. It is a predictive statistic, and it does a better job illustrating a pitcher’s ability than ERA, which relies on variables that are beyond his control. The results are presented on the same scale as ERA, so it’s read the same way – the lower, the better. For example: a 2.90 FIP is excellent, 4.00 is average, and a FIP of 5.00 is awful.

I was curious to know what happened to a pitchers’ FIP over time. I wanted to see whether or not it would go up after a certain age, if there was a season in recent history that FIP was down across the league, and who had a better overall FIP, starters or relievers.  Again, turning to Fangraphs I pulled the average FIP for Starters, Relievers and Both aged 21 to 45 from 1997 to 2011. I did not include this years’ data because it is only June, and that’s just too small a sample size to mean anything. 
Rather than just putting up spreadsheets (which can be found here), I decided to do something a little more visually appealing, which I have dubbed Abstract Baseball: FIP. Here are the results:

[all pitchers aged 21-45, 1996-2011]

[starters aged 21-45, 1996-2011]

[relievers aged 21-45, 1996-2011]

Each 'canvas' contains 16 columns and 25 rows. The columns (from left to right) represent the years 1996 to 2011, and the rows (from top to bottom) represent pitchers age 21 to 45. As you might imagine, the lighter the square is, the lower the FIP for that age group in that particular year. The absence of colour represents a year where no pitchers in that particular age group made an appearance.
I was hoping to see a definite trend in either age or season, or a major difference between starters and relievers, and I was surprised to see a relatively flat ‘canvas’. In retrospect, there should have been a few more qualifiers in place, as there are a few very dark spots which indicate aberrations in those year’s results.
Next time, I’ll look at xFIP (a regressed version of FIP) and make some changes to see what it looks like.

I plead the fifth... and the ninth

As of this writing, mere hours after handily beating the Yankees, the Blue Jays hold the best run differential in the American League East, a +22. Their run differential is second in the AL in fact, behind Texas who is currently holding a run differential three runs higher than the entire AL east at +78.

It's early in the season yet, and the Jays are still in fourth place in the division, but a healthy and positive run differential is a very encouraging sign. They are scoring a decent number of runs in a variety of different innings, the most (37) coming in the third, which is also the inning in which they score most frequently (15 times). What is discouraging to me are the runs being scored against the Jays in two particular innings on a seemingly regular basis. In the 38 games played so far, the opposition has scored 41 runs in the fifth inning and 30 in the ninth. In those 38 games, 17 of them had at least one run cross the plate in the fifth and 14 had at least one in the ninth.

See the nifty table below.

Blue Jays	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	X	Totals
Runs	10	6	37	26	10	32	14	24	9	7	175
Instances	9	5	15	14	6	15	9	12	7	2	94
Opposition	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	X	Totals
Runs	10	21	5	11	41	12	10	8	30	5	153
Instances	8	12	5	9	17	9	6	5	14	2	87

Note: Runs are runs, instances are innings where at least one run is scored, and the X represents extra innings.

Yes, Sergio Santos struggled before his injury, and the fun times that were had with KoKo B. Ware should sufficiently explain the ninth inning issues, but the concern is not with the bullpen, it is with the starting rotation. The starters have pitched through the fifth inning in all but one game - when Kyle Drabek was pulled after getting one out in the fifth - he was responsible for three of the four runs posted in that inning.

As I said before, it is still very early in the season, and this could be a glaring example of trying to glean answers from a small sample size, but what could cause a scoring spike in the same inning on a somewhat regular basis? Could it be that the starters are wearing down by the fifth and giving up too many good pitches or walking too many batters? Maybe by that point in the game, the opposition has had a good look at their pitch selection and delivery and they are taking advantage of familiar patterns. If that's all true, then why have the Jays only scored 10 runs compared to the opposition's 41?

If I were a real statsasabrmetrigician I might know the answers, but I am just a fan who happened to notice that his favorite team has been giving up runs in roughly the same spot in about half of the games they've played so far. One of these days I'll look up more than box scores to try and sort it out. Until then, I'll try and forget about the 41 runs in the fifth, and enjoy the +22 run differential.

Home runs in Anaheim: nighttime, anytime, it's alright

Baseball analysts on television are a funny breed. They mix stats and narrative to help package a product, to provide insight on what is happening in the field of play. Recently, the Blue Jays were in Anaheim to play the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim at Angel Stadium of Anaheim while Anaheim peppers were being grown miles away in New Mexico.

During a night game, Edwin Encarnacion flied out to center field which caused Gregg Zaun, former Blue Jays catcher and current Rogers Sportsnet analyst, to reason that it would have been a home run had it not been for the 'marine layer'. He purported that a layer of air forms in the Los Angeles area at night which keeps the ball down, turning extra base hits into easy outs. I had heard this theory before, but never in such detail. After a cursory glance at the Wikipedia entry on the marine layer, I was led to believe that the phenomenon would be dispersed by the heat of the sun, and there would be more of an effect on home runs hit in day games, while the dense layer of air was still hanging around.

I didn't take Zaun for much of a meteorologist, and for my first foray into baseball spreadsheetery (a term I just coined), I wanted to prove him wrong. I pored over game logs for Angel Stadium of Anaheim from 2002 to 2011. For my theory to be correct, there would have to be more home runs hit during night games, and for Zaun to be the next Harold Hosein, the opposite would have to be true. Here are the findings:

Year	HR/Day	HR/Night
2002	2.09	1.69
2003	1.95	1.82
2004	2.17	2.10
2005	2.17	1.68
2006	2.04	1.62
2007	1.30	1.71
2008	2.36	1.73
2009	2.43	2.38
2010	1.68	1.69
2011	1.44	1.67

As you can see, with the exception of 2007, 2011 and by the slightest of margins 2010 - Zaun was right. There is a definite decrease in number of home runs hit in night games compared to day games. It should be noted that over the ten-year span, there were fewer home runs hit in Angel Stadium (1495) than in games played by the Angels on the road (1666).

Stupid numbers not backing up crazy theory I had about a ballpark a week and a half ago...

— brendan mcknight (@toysubmarine) May 15, 2012

...at least I now have a somewhat comprehensive workbook on home runs hit at Angel Stadium of Anaheim from 2002 to 2011.

— brendan mcknight (@toysubmarine) May 15, 2012

That's one instance of an analyst that's not completely off the mark when it comes to facts and narrative. Now if we could only get Buck Martinez to stop calling Ben Francisco a 'veteran'.

I'm back, baby!

It's been about three quarters of a year since I've written here - that's a perfectly reasonable amount of time between posts, isn't it? A lot has happened in the past nine months, some of which I will probably most definitely get in to eventually if it strikes me maybe. You'll be mostly subjected to very amateur baseball analysis, recipes that I've either swiped from the internet or come up with on my own, and snippets of my life with my wife our cat. Our cat named Elephant.

That's right, a cat named Elephant.

Buckle up for a wild ride.