Welcome To A New Week/Month

When Do Sample Sizes Become Meaningful?

We’re now roughly a month into the MLB season, a point at which individual and team statistics have begun to stabilize. Oakland and Tampa Bay notwithstanding, there are no other teams with an outrageously extreme winning percentage. Similarly, now there are fewer and fewer players whose stats are so extreme that they inspire snarky “he’s on a pace for” jokes. So the question becomes - how far into a season must one go until the numbers Mean Something?

It’s not a one size fits all scenario. For example, is it officially time to start worrying about Juan Soto? Has Max Muncy truly made the leap? Has Jarred Kelenic put it all together? And is it too early to believe in The Pirates? Have The Cardinals already dug themselves into too deep of a hole? More generally, if an aging player coming off a bad season is off to a poor start, that could be foreboding. That’s why Arizona had to finally cut ties with Madison Bumgarner. The pattern of his decline was too obvious, and with the Diamondbacks hoping to contend this year they couldn’t afford to keep throwing him on the mound with the decreasing hope that he still has something left.

Another factor to take into account is the very nature of the arc of a season. Compare it to the NBA. Let’s say there’s a hypothetical player who’s a reliable 17 point per game scorer. You can usually isolate any 15 game portion of the season and find that he scores just about that same rate. You can’t do the same with a baseball player. If you pull a random 15 game stretch out of his season his numbers usually vary widely. That reality is something management has to take into account when making decisions.

As a general rule of thumb, I like to look at game #32 as a signpost. That is just shy of 20% of the season. It’s also worth noting that this point is far enough into the season that if a club still wants to do service time manipulation can do so, although the latest CBA should theoretically cut down on that. Teams are going to hit that Game 32 milestone this week; it’ll be interesting to watch and see if/when clubs begin to increase or reduce playing time for surging or slumping guys. To paraphrase Yogi, it will soon start getting late pretty early around here.

SNL Season 6 Recap

OK, the first episode was painfully unfunny, but chalk it up to the fact that the new cast and writing staff needed to work out the kinks. With one episode under the belts, everyone now has a better sense of each individual cast member’s strengths and which ones work best together. The machine is now better oiled, and the second episode should show strong progress. Or one would think.

Yeah, things did not improve a week later. What’s most striking is how passive the studio audience was; they couldn’t even feign laughter. So much of Update was greeted with complete silence. Not a good sign.

As notable of a career as Malcolm McDowell has had, he is far from an ideal choice to host a live comedy sketch show. At this point he was moving into the middle phase of his career, years removed from his Angry Young Man heyday of films such as If, O Lucky Man, and of course A Clockwork Orange. In 1980 he was coming off of two widely disparate projects; Time After Time and Caligula. He has that perpetually angry phase that made him such an ideal villain as he moved into middle age and beyond. But he’s not exactly a yuckmeister, and it shows here.

Choosing a best sketch of the week is non applicable; the correct answer is none. There was a really odd White House sketch in which the Reagans had adopted Amy Carter for some reason. If you grade on a curve I suppose you could award points for cleverness for the Serf City sketch in which feudalism era noblemen introduce the concept of surfing. It involves their balancing themselves on the backs of serfs while wenches feed them. Beyond that, I’ve got nothing. There was a cringe inducing pre-filmed man on the street piece in which Charles Rocket attempts and fails to interact with New Yorkers. Not exactly Billy On The Street.

A few other quick observations: It is as jarring as I thought it would be to hear Gilbert Gottfried speak in his natural voice. Denny Dillon has been getting the most feature time so far, not that she had strong material to show her talent (The Leather Weather Report? Yikes) and Gail Matthius and Ann Risley already seem to be fading into the background. And this struck me as well. I assumed any content gets cut from the Peacock stream for one of two reasons. One would be that they want to avoid having to pay music licensing fees. That checks, as the musical acts have been edited out of each episode so far. The other would be to eliminate material that is either highly offensive or is aging poorly. But this week included a sketch that included a character using the “n” word.

Current scorecard shows two episodes, two duds. Host for the next one is Ellen Burstyn; another longtime star not known for comedy. I’ll check in on that in a few weeks once the current season ends, unless the Writers Guild goes on strike which would mean no new episode next week.

Like Clockwork

It’s a Saturday morning tradition. I sit down for breakfast, open up Twitter, and see the name “Bill Maher” in trending topics. I then need to decide - do I really want to check to see what idiotic/ignorant comment either he or one of his guests made?

I admit that I used to watch his show; even though he is a frequent a**hole, he used to usually have interesting guests. He does have several issues that, no pun intended, mar his show. First off, he is an absolutely atrocious interviewer. He brownnoses to an embarrassing degree, and he is even worse when he has the type of guest that makes outrageous statements in order to get a rise out of the audience. Rather than push back at his interview subject, he instead chooses to lecture his own audience, admonishing them to not take the bait. Which would be fine if he actually challenged his guest; I’ll bet even Chuck Todd watches and screams at the TV “Ask a follow up!”

What’s worse is that he loves to regularly rotate a specific guest type. It seems that every week there is someone from the Bret Stephens/Andrew Sullivan/Bari Weiss population so that they can whine about the cancel culture strawman. In their eyes there is no such thing as constructive criticism, any disagreement is chalked up to overly sensitive snowflakes. I noticed that this week Elon Musk was one of his guests and they spent a huge chunk of their time complaining about the woke mind virus. Sounds like that was compelling television.

The Final 10

NASCAR is in the process of rolling out its list of 75 greatest drivers. As I had mentioned earlier, the 50 drivers that had made the 50th anniversary list automatically carry over with 25 new names added to complete the list. So far 15 have been announced, at a pace of 5 per week, with 10 to go. Those names will come out over the next 2 weeks. This is this list so far:

So who is left? There are 8 obvious unnamed honorees - Kurt Busch, Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick, Jimmie Johnson, Matt Kenneth, Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano, and Martin Truex Jr. Who will be the other two? Keep in mind some of the previous selections made their mark in one of the lower series. Is there a championship truck series driver worthy of inclusion? Additionally, AJ Foyt stands out. Is there another candidate who was not a full time NASCAR driver but had success when he dabbled? Will they take historical significance into account and include Wendell Scott?

My final answer is that one of the the last two spots will go to a truck driver - either Todd Bodine or Matt Crafton - and the other will go to Clint Bowyer. We’ll know for certain very shortly.

This Week In Guns Keep Us Safe

The tragedy of our epidemic of gun violence is compounded by the fact that so much of it has been easily foreseeable. Unlimited firearms + a populace manipulated into feeling fearful & resentful is a deadly combination. Of course, unlucky people would find themselves caught in the middle of mass shooting events more than once. Of course, trivial incidents such as accidentally ringing the wrong doorbell or pulling into the wrong driveway can have lethal consequences. Every civilized country in the world watches the same movies we do, plays the same video games that we do, has similar rates of mental illness, has schools with multiple entrances, etc. We are the only one with such a high rate of gun violence; the only difference is the easily availability of weapons of mass destruction.

This weekend’s mass murder in Cleveland, Texas is particularly horrifying. A man politely asked his neighbor to stop firing an AR rifle in his front yard, as his baby was trying to sleep. The alleged shooter went on to enter the neighbor’s home and opened fire, killing 5 people execution style including an 8 year old child. This happened mere days after Lt. Governor Dan Patrick proudly proclaimed Texas as a 2nd amendment defender. This sure as hell was not an example of a well-regulated militia. And please continue to tell me how pro-life you are. And Governor Greg Abbott found new levels of tastelessness. Not only is he offering a reward for the apprehension of the shooter (that seems fraught with danger; chances are strong that an amateur bounty Hunter will target the wrong person) but in the press release he described the victims as “illegal immigrants.” My God, everyone already knows that you’re a monster, but young children were among the victims. Show some basic human decency.

What’s it gonna take to do something? Every GOP presidential candidate sends out the obligatory photo op at a shooting range. When you see a story such as this, do you feel proud? Or any sense of shame? I get it, any Democratic candidate trying to do something will get the “my cold dead hands” reply. Is there no Republican brave enough to have a “Nixon goes to China” moment?

BTW, if your instinct is to accuse me of being an out of touch lefty, this is a recent Fox poll. The politicians that refuse to do anything about gun violence are not only morally bankrupt, but also significantly out of step with the wishes of the public they serve.

Take Care Of Yourself, And Each Other

I never watched much Jerry Springer, other than the clips that would show up on Talk Soup. So, I don’t have much to add to what has already been said following his death. TV Guide once famously named his show the worst in television history, and there were few shows that so consistently indulged our worst instincts. Springer often claimed that his public service was shining a spotlight on people that would never appear on television otherwise, but that was weak rationalization. He exploited those people for shock value. And it was hard to watch his Closing Thoughts with a straight face, knowing the circus that had preceded his comments.

What interests me most is wondering what could have gone through his mind once the TV lights went out. When he would take a look in the mirror, how did he feel? His original intention for the show was to produce a Phil Donahue-esque program before it degenerated into what it became. The ratings exploded, so it made him a wealthy man, but at what cost? Later in life he made an attempt to reenter politics, but the show so soiled his reputation that he had no shot at that type of redemption.

This is notable because in the wake of the Tucker Carlson firing there have been reports that Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro are worried that they’re next. I obviously don’t know what goes on in their heads, but did either imagine that one day they would have gone so deeply into the Kool-Aid? Does Matt Taibbi ever think to himself, “what have I become?”

I Will Not Use The “It’s Gonna Be May” Meme

Hope everyone had a great weekend. See you all again on Wednesday, and thanks for reading.