Geek Stuff — World Series, and More

 The folks over at FiveThirtyEight have pretty much wrapped up their year. It looks like their world series prediction is coming down to a draw. 

Pretty good article about the teams here. But there’s a lot more out there.

Did you know that the Braves’ manager Brian Snitker had three seasons as the manager of the Durham Bulls? They were in 1983, 1984, and 1987 when the Bulls were in the Single-A Carolina League and an Atlanta Braves franchise. Playing at the famous old Durham Athletic Park, of course. How’d he do? 1983: 3rd place, South Division, 59-78; 1984: 3rd place, South Division, 68-72; 1987: 4th place, South Division, 65-75. We also saw a good bit of him as the manager of the Gwinnett Braves (Triple-A) 2014-16. I guess I’ll have to root for the Braves this year. Assuming I don’t go to sleep in the middle of the game.

Meanwhile, this part of the season brings with it some of the usual, and much-needed, hand-wringing. I could not agree more with the need to get a handle on the pace of play issues. It drives me nuts to watch batters adjust their gloves between every pitch (ban gloves; ban taped bats); pitchers twitch and scratch. And let’s not talk about the six pitchers per game. Who’s to blame? Just about everyone. But I’m coming around to blaming the players union as much as anyone else. And the season length? You could whack off 10 games and nobody’d notice.