The Z-Factor

It's been less than a week since the Mariners announced Jack Zduriencik (zur-EN-sik) as their new GM and I'm already back against the dike, plugging holes with my little rationalizing fingers. On the other side is that vast sea of Mariners pessimism filled with the tears of the last five years.

Jack Zduriencik was a disappointing selection.

That's not to say that he's not qualified for the job. As scouting director for the Brewers, he rebuilt a tattered farm system, providing the solid core of young players that (with a healthy dose of Sabathia) put Milwaukee in the playoffs for the first time in my life. He's also famous for being the first non-GM to win Baseball America's Executive of the Year award.

But what the Mariners desperately needed was an analyst. The Mariners are a backwards, 20th-century organization, with weak technological infrastructure and little understanding of the advances in baseball research in the last 20 years. We just got rid of our Dan Duquette, our Chuck LaMar, but we didn't replace him with a Theo Epstein or Andrew Friedman. Instead, the Mariners tried to find the next John Schuerholz or Terry Ryan. If they found him, it's going to be a great decade of Mariners baseball, but it's a risk that just doesn't make a lot of sense.

Bill Bavasi was a terrible general manager at the major league level, but he oversaw huge increases and improvements in our amateur and international scouting programs. Scouting director Bob Fontaine and international scouting director Bob Engle are outstanding, by all accounts. And, although the Mariners player development program has been dubious at best, the amount of talent flowing into the system increased dramatically under Bavasi.

Though Bavasi's gone, all of those people and improvements are still in place. Scouting is a Mariner strength. Analysis is our glaring weakness. We consistently overpaid for the wrong skills, gave away far too much in trade, and assembled an expensive team of hacktastic lead gloves who slapped and bobbled their way to 101 losses. Given the budget the Mariners have run the last few years and our scouting success, there is absolutely no reason we shouldn't be contending for the division every year. And with a GM who really understands modern player valuation, we could.

Instead, the Mariners went out and got another top-notch scouting guy, making our current front-office talent redundant, and not addressing our major weaknesses at all.

But, here's the thing: I'm an optimist at heart, much to the chagrin of my biggest fan. I want to like Zduriencik and I want to be excited about the M's again. So, I convince myself that an old scout like Jack-Z must've learned a thing or two about modern statistical analysis from Doug Melvin in Milwaukee. He must notice the sustained success of the Red Sox, and the rapid improvement of the Rays. Or maybe he doesn't, but maybe it doesn't matter because the three-headed super-scouting team of Zduriencik, Fontaine, and Engle actually will turn us into the next Minnesota or Atlanta. Maybe Howie and Chuck knew what they were doing after all...

Jack Zduriencik's first move as general manager? Bob Fontaine was fired yesterday. And that dike just sprung another leak.

Bizarro Bathroom

One of the stranger features of our new apartment is the bathroom, in which nearly everything that is wired or plumbed is done so backwards.

The sink's hot and cold water plumbing is backwards. The hot knob is on the left and the cold knob is on the right, as expected, but the hot knob controls the cold water and the cold knob controls the hot water.

Similarly, the shower hot and cold water plumbing is backwards. Again, the knob is correct, showing hot water to counterclockwise, cold water to clockwise, but the actual water temperature is controlled opposite of that.

Finally, there are two light switches which control two lights, one over the toilet/shower area, and one over the sink. Amazingly, the light switches actually control the lights closest to them. However, the fan, which should come on when the shower/toilet light is on (it is part of the same ceiling unit) actually turns on only when sink light is on.

Maybe our apartment's construction crew was Australian?

Status Report

Well, it's becoming more and more clear that I'm not going to end up posting every detail of my Germany trip after all. For an impressively detailed account, complete with illustrations, check out Chris's journal. Days 1-9 are currently scanned and online. I'll update the links below as more become available (or will I?).

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10-12

Lots of exciting things have happened since my last post.

School started again. I've only got one class this quarter, and it's been painfully easy so far. It's good to have everyone back in town and in the lab.

I submitted a paper to JFP. I've been working on this paper, in some form or another, for nearly a year. While I'm really proud of the code, the paper still isn't nearly as polished as I would like. As Martin says though, it's good to get it onto somebody else's desk, and off of mine.

We moved. One thing we didn't really realize is that the new apartment is a bit scuzzier than the old one. Although we have new carpet and paint (yay!), the shelves everywhere in the house have this grimy, old contact paper on them, and the popcorn ceilings are cobwebby and gross. We got some rubber shelf liner for the kitchen shelves, and I guess we'll just have to dust the ceilings and see how effective that is. Thanks to the massive crew that showed up to help us move furniture and empty our jam-packed storage closet!

I'm going to Nebraska. I'm actually at the airport right now! I'm headed there with quite a few other people from OSU for the annual meeting of the EUSES group. I'm leaving poor Allison to deal with the mountains of unsorted stuff alone, for three days. It could be kind of a rocky trip since my presentation isn't finished yet, and I have a homework assignment due on Tuesday, while I'm gone. I should get to work on all of that...