Category: Thinking

Thoughts on the 2011 Philadelphia Phillies

They appear to be pret­ty good. Guess they answered the “but can they hit?” ques­tion ear­ly. Nev­er thought Wil­son Valdez and Ben Fran­cis­co would be ear­ly heroes. Polan­co’s not shab­by either.

How much do you want to bet that Jim­my’s talk­ing to Char­lie non­stop about jump­ing back into the lead­off spot? If Char­lie’s smart he’ll keep him bat­ting third. Feel like the bot­tom of the line­up is flu­id, which is great. Like the idea of drop­ping guys like Raul down if Fran­cis­co is hot. Want May­ber­ry Jr. to get some expe­ri­ence and maybe spell Raul from time to time.

Not con­vinced that the bench will be as help­ful as hoped. Love Ross Gload. Did­n’t like what I saw out of Orr at 2nd last night. Might be okay at third, which is fine because Char­lie needs to han­dle Pol­ly with kid gloves. Valdez can do it all if asked.

Start­ing rota­tion? Goes with­out say­ing, but I’m shocked at how effi­cient Doc and Cliff have been and how effec­tive Roy Oswalt was in his start. Cole? He’ll bounce back. Blame it on the bad weath­er. Blan­ton? Any­one else think Char­lie left him out there to die as an object les­son in con­di­tion­ing? Dude just can’t seem to pull it togeth­er in ear­ly going, and with a staff like ours, there’s real­ly no excuse.

Bullpen? Some ques­tion marks there, too. Romero, Hern­don and Baez fright­en me. Kendrick sur­prised me in the mop up role. Got love for Con­tr­eras, but I fear we’re ask­ing for trou­ble when Mad­son looks to have super­star clos­er stuff. Why post­pone the inevitable? If it’s sole­ly for lever­age, that prob­a­bly won’t change much when the time comes for nego­ti­a­tions. Get Mad­son in the clos­er role. That change­up can’t be touched.

Glad that like last sea­son Amaro did­n’t pan­ic and rush to add a bat, right-hand­ed or oth­er­wise, when Utley went down and Werth left town. Let the offense play out and see where you are at the dead­line. Blan­ton’s val­ue will increase, espe­cial­ly if Utley’s able to come back before the deadline.

Look­ing for­ward to see­ing where the Phillies stand at the end of April. Have a good feel­ing about their hot start.

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 0

Optimizing My Home Entertainment Center

Excit­ing, I know, but I’ve real­ly reached a cross­roads with my cur­rent set­up. See, I’m old enough to remem­ber when music crit­ics like Yancey and Sasha suf­fered some pret­ty amaz­ing hard dri­ve crash­es in the last decade. They spent time rip­ping their discs to hard dri­ves, only to watch their col­lec­tions van­ish, thanks to hard­ware fail­ures. It was­n’t pretty.

So I wait­ed. I bid­ed my time hop­ing that some­day I would feel con­fi­dent enough in tech­nol­o­gy to make the leap. Fact of the mat­ter is, I’m still not con­fi­dent, but my mod­est rowhome won’t real­ly acco­mo­date stuff like cd col­lec­tions these days. Add a kid to the mix and you’re sud­den­ly not as con­cerned about the black met­al col­lec­tion you’ve com­piled that you hard­ly ever have time (or patience) to lis­ten to. Thus… Con­tin­ue read­ing →

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Enjoying the 2011 Philadelphia Phillies

Love when my reg­u­lar morn­ing reads include Beer­lea­guer, Crash­burn Alley, Phillies Nation and more of my favorite Phillies blogs. Fol­low­ing the games on Twit­ter is a treat, although Chris @LONG_DRIVE isn’t in mid­sea­son form, yet. Miss check­ing the Fight­ins for all the great flubs. I caught a bad typo on the new Phillies score­board at the On Deck game against the Pirates in tribute.

I love the 2011 team. I know every­one’s freak­ing about Utley, but c’mon peo­ple, get it togeth­er already. Look at the injuries we had in 2008 and 2010. We may not have won it all in 2010, but it was­n’t because injuries held us back. The 2011 team needs to do what it’s doing right now: beat the bad teams hand­i­ly and let pitch­ing keep the good ones in check. I think the Phillies fan men­tal­i­ty aligns with Char­lie Manuel’s too much, i.e. we need home run slug­gers to win games. Truth is, you get a few guys to hit dou­bles reli­ably and we’re still scor­ing runs in bunch­es, just like last night. The home runs will come, but it’s great that you’re not wait­ing for that salvif­ic at bat.

For some­one like me who loves low-scor­ing games, this team is a dream. Watch­ing Roy Hal­la­day and Cliff Lee back to back, pitch­ing for my team, is just unre­al. When Roy Oswalt is going against the oth­er team’s #3, it’s just not fair. Heck, even Joe Blan­ton is going to get some very favor­able matchups over the course of the sea­son. It’s a thing of beau­ty to know you have 4 All Star-cal­iber pitch­ers out there going every day.

Will we win it all? Hard to say. How far can the Phear­some Phour­some take us? I love Mad­son, but there isn’t a great deal of reli­able help out there. Which Raul will we see after the break? Will Fran­cis­co fig­ure out right? Can Dom Brown be an impact play­er down the stretch? Can Jim­my play like it’s 2006 again? Lots of questions.

If this team makes the play­offs, watch out. It’s hard to imag­ine even elite teams not find­ing them­selves down 2–0 just on the strength of our pitch­ing. If we get Utley back at any point, or if Dom Brown can rejoin and con­tribute mean­ing­ful­ly, we may being march­ing down Broad Street again.

(Also, how many teams are think­ing they could use a spare starter right now? Boston’s been bru­tal­ized by the Rangers to start the sea­son. Won­der if they’d be inter­est­ed in Ken­tucky Joe. Can’t wait to see how the Yan­kees rota­tion plays out, either.)

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 0

In Praise of Ex.fm

Remem­ber when music start-ups were such a source of frus­tra­tion for me? Now I real­ly enjoy some of them! Chief among them is ex.fm, which my friend Mark showed me just the oth­er day. Pos­si­bly the most use­ful Google Chrome exten­sion that does­n’t involve a Google product.

What does it do? It sniffs out all the mp3s on a page and stores them tem­porar­i­ly in the exten­sion, which allows you to browse away from their source while you lis­ten via a sleek play­er. I’ve been play­ing Mark’s blog like a mix­tape thanks to it, as well as blogs like Songs from Treme and more.

Now if it could just trav­el back in time to 2003…

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Sad Social Media Commentary on the Fishtown Library

I par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Save the Library protest back in Novem­ber 2008. When I recent­ly vis­it­ed, I checked into Foursquare. If I check in again, I’ll be may­or of the joint. At a time when peo­ple are check­ing into Wawa, you’d think at least a hand­ful of folks would still be will­ing to pop in for a book or two. Does it real­ly make more sense to pay for every book you read?

C’mon, denizens of Fish­town! Vis­it your local library. Check out a book! It’s free and it will make you smarter. And you can hit Kraft­work imme­di­ate­ly after­ward to reward yourself.

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 0