The general consensus regarding the Belliard-for-Hector Luna trade, it seems to me, is that the Indians gave up the better player in 2006 for the younger player whose contract will be more favorable going forward, and who has a chance to be the better player in future years.

Our esteemed colleague Ryan at Let's Go Tribe had this to say:

Obviously Ronnie is the better player as of this moment. He's been a very consistent offensive player since the Indians picked him up 2.5 years ago. He's an intelligent hitter, turns the double play as well as anyone around, and he looks like a super-deformed Manny Ramirez. His range isn't very good, so he'll play an extremely deep second base.

But is Ronnie "obviously" the better player "as of this moment"? I wouldn't jump to that conclusion without some evidence, and while Ryan gives an accurate and eloquent summary of Belliard's strengths and weaknesses, he does little in the way of comparing Belliard to Luna directly.

I don't mean to pick on Ryan, who is, in my opinion, the best Indians blogger there is--I think his assumption about the two players is shared by most fans and media alike. Luna, for his part, has not been a starter for very long; therefore he's not nearly as well known as Belliard, and trails Belliard in nearly every counting statistic.

In his most recent column on Baseball Prospectus, Joe Sheehan writes:

For all the attention paid to the Abreu deal, I’m not convinced it was the most interesting one made on Sunday. It’s been about 12 hours since it crossed by inbox, and I still can’t make sense of the Cardinals’ decision to trade away Hector Luna for Ronnie Belliard. They got the older, more expensive player, which is par for the course in late July, but I think they also got the lesser one [emphasis Joe's].

He goes on to quote some stats:

                 AVG  OBP  SLG  EqA
Luna 2005       .285 .344 .409 .272
Belliard 2005   .284 .325 .450 .276

Luna 2006       .291 .355 .417 .267
Belliard 2006   .289 .335 .419 .269

For a little more background, I would add 2006 Weighted Mean PECOTA forecasts for the two players:

                 AVG  OBP  SLG  EqA
Luna PECOTA     .252 .313 .353 .234
Belliard PECOTA .267 .323 .399 .262

Obviously, PECOTA was not as optimistic about Luna last Spring as Joe Sheehan is now. Luna is having a great year by his standards--he's performing at close to his 90th percentile forecast. But even judging solely by actual 2006 statistics, I don't know how you can make the case for the guy with the lower EqA. Okay, so the EqA difference is two percentage points; I'll grant that Luna and Belliard have been about even in 2006. Factoring PECOTA's preference for Belliard and the fact that BP's defensive metrics slightly favor Belliard's glove, though, I'm willing to go on record as saying that Belliard is the slightly better player right now.

That said, Luna is only going to get better for the next couple seasons, while Belliard is only going to get worse. In my opinion, this was a good trade for the Indians. Don't hold it against Luna if his 2007 is worse than Belliard's 2005; it's still likely to be better than Belliard's 2007, and that's what the front office needs to consider.

Yesterday, at training camp,

Tight end Darnell Dinkins caught a short pass and then spiked the ball off the helmet of top draft pick Kamerion Wimbley, who was defending on the play.

I smell a future "Obscure Brown of the Week" winner.

Yes.

I'm tempted to end the post here, but I'll write about my methodology and findings. Certainly there is no better time to debate the NBA Most Valuable Player than late July. It's timely!

I researched every MVP since 1978, logging a few statistics and their league-wide ranking for each winner. Then I did the same for every player who received a vote in 2006. To measure total offensive contribution, I used Points Produced. To measure total defensive contribution, I used Stops. And to measure efficiency, I used two statistics (because it's that important): Player Efficiency Rating (PER) and Player Winning Percentage (PWP). Since all the statistics I used, excepting PER, are creations of Dean Oliver, to know how they're calculated, read his seminal book on basketball statistics.

There will inevitably be arguments for non-statistical evaluation of candidates, like how Dwyane Wade is a winner and Dirk Nowitzki has funny hair. But it is impossible, I repeat, impossible to objectively quantify what kind of effect intangibles, attitude, or what have you have on performance. In fact, there's no way to subjectively quantify these. Let's stick with what we have then: statistics.

Here come the numbers. But first, a disclaimer: I didn't adjust for league-wide pace changes and I pro-rated the 1999 lockout-shortened season to 82 games. Since 1978, the Most Valuable Player has averaged:

• 2022 Points Produced, good for 3rd in the NBA
• 696 Stops, good for 4th in the NBA
• A PER of 26.6, good for 2nd in the NBA
• A PWP of .893, good for 4th in the NBA

The voters are usually pretty close to tabbing the best player in the league, and if not him, at least the second- or third-best. Here's the rub, in 2006, Steve Nash was closer to the 20th best than 1st. Of all the statistics I tracked, Nash did no better than 13th in the league, in Points Produced. Though he did play better than he had in 2005, when he was arguably the worst MVP in history. Here are the stats and rankings for each player that received at least one vote for MVP, by polling results (R is Rank among qualified players):

        PProd  R Stps  R    PER  R  PWP  R
Nash     1740 13  490 55  23.23 14 .823 18
James    2403  2  668  6  28.08  2 .807 20
Nowitzki 1968  7  611 15  28.11  1 .920  3
Bryant   2575  1  631 11  28.02  3 .741 48
Billups  1632 19  441 85  23.36 13 .919  4
Wade     2088  5  608 16  27.60  4 .835 17
Brand    1849  9  704  4  26.59  6 .888 10
Duncan   1517 25  666  7  23.06 16 .836 16
Parker   1508 26  457 74  20.82 28 .729 51
Iverson  2336  3  540 33  25.94  7 .536 N/A
Marion   1642 18  841  1  23.59 12 .914  6

That leaves the real candidates: LeBron James, Dirk Nowitzki, Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade, and Kevin Garnett. Wait, strike that last one. Despite having another incredible season, Garnett did not receive a single vote because his teammates sucked too much. The other four candidates all have excellent arguments for their candidacy, which I won't go into. LeBron James and Dirk Nowitzki, are one and two in PER, and I think of PER as the best statistic we have right now to judge a basketball player's worth. It's simple and very telling, so it counts for more to me than the other statistics. Elton Brand certainly had an amazing year, but he lags a little behind in efficiency. He didn't receive nearly enough credit in the MVP voting. Brand is probably #3. I consider LeBron and Nowitzki the two best choices, though.

Separating the two could be difficult. LeBron has a 500-point edge in Points Produced and leads Dirk by more than 50 stops. Nowitzki, though, was more efficient--although only by .03 points of PER. From here the debate devolves into issues like "which is more important, efficiency or overall production?" You also get into issues of team success and the quality of the player's teammates.

The fact of the matter though is that LeBron's margin of victory in overall production (Points Produced and Stops) overwhelm Dirk's margin of victory in efficiency (PER and PWP). As a personal aside, I don't believe voters should reward Nowitzki for being a more capable team. The Cavaliers aren't slouches, but LeBron had to do much more on his own than Dirk did. King James was the best player in the league last year. I think we can now hand the 2006 Hypothetical NBA MVP trophy to LeBron James, maybe on the day the Indians raise their 2005 Third-Order Winning Percentage Pennant.

Now we know Browns training camp--or, as they call it at the Cleveland Clinic, "the busy season"--has begun. LeCharles Bentley hurt his knee on the first drill of the first practice of his first training camp as a Brown, effectively ruining the great legacy of Raiders Hall of Famer Jim Otto! Er, scratch that. I haven't seen an injury this prompt since Juan Gonzalez's first at-bat of 2005.

I have thought this over, and it is my opinion that only an injury to Charlie Frye would have had a more detrimental effect on the Browns' abilities on the field in 2006. Other possibilities, in my view, include Andra Davis, Orpheus Roye, Kevin Shaffer, Gary Baxter and Leigh Bodden, but I still think Bentley is more invaluable. Center just happens to be a position where the Browns have little flexibilty, having traded away Jeff Faine for the chance to move up 9 spots in the second round. I love D'Qwell Jackson--a lot--but if you recall, in that trade, the Browns were giving up the #43 overall pick, which is the most valuable single pick in the entire draft, on an investment return basis. Now, on top of that, they're going to miss Faine. Go figure.

Mentor native Bob Hallen: good luck as the starter. And LeCharles: get well soon. Very, very soon!

I just want to point something out, because I don't believe it's getting much media attention. Are you all aware that the Denver Broncos have acquired three more former Browns defensive linemen, to add to the four they famously acquired last offseason? They now employ Kenard Lang, Amon Gordon, and Corey Jackson in addition to Gerard Warren, Courtney Brown, Ebenezer Ekuban, and Michael Myers. If this arrangement continues to pay dividends for Denver in 2006 like it did in 2005, then either Andre Patterson or Defensive Coordinator Larry Coyer is some kind of witch doctor.

There are only three defensive linemen from the 2004 Browns roster left un-Broncofied. Alvin "Mount" McKinley, Nick Eason, and Orpheus Roye: sleep well for the rest of your careers, for you'll always have a place to call home, where the air is thin, the omelettes are filled with ham, and the Coors Light cascades from the mountaintops like manna from heaven!

Obsessing over Cleveland Browns uniform design minutiae might possibly be my greatest contribution to mankind. Thus I took careful interest last winter when, on an episode of the NFL Network show "Six Days to Sunday", Browns owner Randy Lerner hinted that the team might be implementing a slight uniform change in 2006.

Well now we know that such a change is official. And of course, I simply can't let you wait until the start of training camp on Wednesday to find out what barely noticeable design tweaks are new in '06.

While NFL teams left and right are making their non-threatening logos meaner, crowding their uniforms with superfluous design elements, and generally trying as hard as possible to look like crew members from Star Trek: The Next Generation, the Browns, I am proud to say, are blazing a new trail: they're going back to the way things used to be.

In 1960.

The most talked-about change, as you may already have heard, will likely be the replacement of white facemasks with gray ones. In 1954, when the Browns became the first NFL team to don facemasks, they were gray, and remained gray until the 70's when many teams started experimenting with wacky colors. The Browns eventually settled on that wackiest of facemask colors: white. Starting this week, however, it's back to gray.

My personal favorite new change shows up on the sleeve stripes of the brown jerseys, which, in recent years, have looked like this:



Now, however, they're eliminating the thin brown stripes between the white and orange ones:




If you ignore the newly redesigned Al Lerner memorial logo and a bit of Reebok propaganda, these 2006 jerseys look more like those worn by the likes of Jim Brown than those worn by the likes of Courtney Brown.



Other retro-inspired changes include the helmet numbers, which will no longer appear on both sides of the stripe, instead appearing wholly on the right side, as was the case back in the 60's, and the shoes, which will be black instead of white, as the Browns wore black shoes prior to 1974.

Needless to say, I am quite thrilled with each of these changes. I can't help but wonder, though, about the most important uniform element: the socks. LeBron knows, this is not a socks blog (or is it?), so I will make an effort not to babble on about the Browns' many sock combinations, as I have done in the past. Still, does a return to retro jerseys, helmets and shoes signal a return to retro socks? All that need be undone are three and a half years of wayward sock philosophy. Could this be the end, finally, of the hideous all-brown socks? Early last season, it looked like the old striped socks were making a comeback, but by season's end we were back off the wagon. I, for one, will be paying close attention.

Here's one of my patented posts about nothing in particular...

After this afternoon's game at Jacobs Field, Alex and I have attended 4 major league parks in 7 days--a new family record (maybe)! Not that anybody asked for my opinion, but since we've been to a ton of new ballparks over the last few years, here are my quick-'n'-dirty power rankings, without putting too much thought into it:

1. PNC Park (Pittsburgh)
2. Petco Park (San Diego)
3. SBC Park (San Francisco)
4. Wrigley Field (Chicago)
5. Safeco Field (Seattle)
6. Dodger Stadium (Los Angeles)
7. Fenway Park (Boston)
8. Miller Park (Milwaukee)
9. Yankee Stadium (New York)
10. Citizens Bank Park (Philadelphia)
11. Comerica Park (Detroit)
12. U.S. Cellular Field (Chicago)
13. Angel Stadium (Anaheim)
14. Great American Ballpark (Cincinnati)

The differences between all the new parks--even between, say, PNC Park and Great American Ballpark--are slight, in terms of the broad strokes, but there is a very fine line between a truly gorgeous gem of a park and something that feels like a corporate, cookie-cutter version of everything else, I find. At PNC (or Petco, where we were on Wednesday), you notice an uncanny attention to detail, whether it's with regard to sightlines, concessions choices, ease of getting around, whatever.

I purposely didn't include Jacobs Field in my rankings, because while it is unquestionably, hands-down my favorite ballpark in the universe, if I were trying to be truly objective, I would have to rank one or two other parks ahead of it, and anyway, it would be impossible for me to make a truly objective comparison.

I was pretty impressed with Dodger Stadium. Among older parks, it seems surprisingly unhampered by the usual problems of sightlines, cramped concourses, and the like. At the very least, it puts its cross-town competition to shame. Of course, the true Dodger Stadium experience can't be enjoyed unless you are talking on your cell phone and leaving early:




The Indians, meanwhile, have traded Bob Wickman--a move which, you won't be surprised to learn, I support, and not only because they got a kid named Maximiliano. Now if someone could just explain this (admittedly intriguing) Ronnie Belliard situation...

By the way, as of today, the Hot Dog Race standings look like this:

Ketchup 10
Onion    7
Mustard  5

Mustard's third-order win total is probably like 19 or something, but this is just an outrage. Ketchup and onion are very obviously cheating, and no one is talking about it! Mustard is getting beaten by freaking onion, the Greg Dreiling of HTR contestants!

That's all for now. There will be some Browns posts here sometime this week. Auf wiederbloggen.

Greetings from hazy Southern California, where last night we had the unfortunate pleasure of watching the Indians fall to the Angels in Anaheim.

But rather than try to come up with something interesting to say about yesterday's game, I want to bring up another Indians-related debate. Over the last 3 days, I've had at least two conversations with people who feel that Victor Martinez is killing the Indians with his poor baserunner-catching skills. If I'm not mistaken, this has been a general gripe of many fans and media members throughout the season. Usually, the proposed solution to this supposed problem is to let Victor play more first base.

Certainly, Victor has been bad at catching opposing base-stealers in 2006. He has caught 11 out of 73 runners, for a percentage of 15.07%. The major league average caught stealing percentage is currently 28.67%. No qualifying catcher has been worse than Victor at catching would-be base-stealers this season.

The part I disagree with, however, is the idea that all this has been costly enough to "kill" the Indians, so to speak. Let's give ourselves a rough idea of what Victor's arm has cost the Indians this year, using the 2006 run expectancy table.

The table tells you, for every possible bases/outs situation an offense can find itself in, how many runs go on to score that inning, on average. For example, in 2006 (so far), teams that have runners at first and third with no outs average about 1.87 runs by the time the inning is over. This type of information is valuable because it can help us evaluate certain in-game strategies--stolen bases, for example. If you have a runner at first with nobody out, you can reasonably expect to score .93 runs in the inning. If that runner successfully steals second, your "run expectancy" has changed: you can now reasonably expect to score about 1.17 runs in the inning. So in a sense, that stolen base helped your team by about .24 runs. On the other hand, if the runner had been caught stealing second, your team's run expectancy for the inning would have gone down to about .30--so in a sense, that caught stealing hurt your team by about .63 runs.

In most recent seasons, the cost of a caught stealing has been about three times the benefit of a successful stolen base; that's why you hear stats analysts say a baserunner needs to be at least 75% successful on steals to actually help his team score runs. In other words, he needs to be successful at least three times for each time he gets caught just to break even.

It turns out that a successful stolen base in 2006, depending on the bases/outs situation, can be worth anywhere from .01 to .39 runs, while a caught stealing in 2006, depending on the bases/outs situation, can cost anywhere from .24 to 1.06 runs. Since I'm only interested in a rough estimation, however, I'll say that a successful steal is worth .20 runs to the offense (which is more or less the average for the common types of stolen bases, anyway), and that a caught stealing is worth .65 runs to the defense (again, loose averages).

In these terms, Victor Martinez, in 2006, has hurt the Indians to the tune of about 12.40 runs with his 62 allowed stolen bases, but helped the Indians to the tune of about 7.15 runs with his 11 caught stealings. That's a net cost to the Indians of about 5.25 runs.

For comparison's sake, the average major league team in 2006 has allowed 52.83 stolen bases (costing themselves about 10.57 runs), but caught 21.23 would-be base-stealers (saving themselves about 13.80 runs). Thus, the average major league catching staff has saved its team about 3.23 runs with its baserunner-catching abilities so far in 2006. In other words--and again, this is a very loose estimation--Victor Martinez has prevented about 8.48 runs fewer with his arm than the Indians would have prevented by now with a major league average catching staff.

That's less than a win worse than average (not replacement level, but average). And if you don't believe Victor Martinez has been worth at least that with his bat, perhaps you'd like to join a fantasy league with me...

The conclusion I draw from this is that Victor's arm, while poor, does not cost the Indians very much. On top of that, moving him to first base does hurt the Indians' offense, in that the alternative at catcher is a worse hitter than the alternative at first base. On top of that, I don't think there's any reason for us to believe that Victor's defense at first base is any good, so even if we move him, he could still be hurting the team defense (even if it's to a slightly lesser degree, which is not a given).

Eric Wedge, of course, has been starting Victor at first base a fair amount. If the reason for doing this is to try to improve team defense, then I'm fully against it. If, however, the reason is to give Victor's knees an occasional rest, then the idea may have a little merit. At the very least, I don't believe Victor should be playing first base as often as he has been lately.

End of rant. We probably won't be attending any more Indians games while in California, since we already have tickets to Padres and Dodgers games--and hey, the Indians have been pretty depressing to watch so far this year. We'll be back this weekend--sorry if the blog posts are sparse between now and then.

Even though the LeBron contract extension issue is finally settled, everyone is still itching for something big to happen with the Cavaliers. An off-season without exciting changes is like a hot fudge sundae without whipped cream. Unfortunately, the Cavaliers can't sign banner free agents without trading away core players like Zydrunas, which would be a huge mistake. Why dump a center coming off undeniably one of his best seasons as a professional simply because he had a poor 13-game stretch in the playoffs? All-star centers don't come along very often. The Cavaliers have only had two in 36 seasons: Z and Brad Daugherty.

So, it appears fans are in for an uneventful off-season. But that doesn't preclude serious team improvement. First of all, as impossible as it sounds, LeBron will be better next year. I have no clue what He could improve upon, but He will. Secondly, according to every source I can find, the team had a solid if not great draft. Both Shannon Brown and Daniel Gibson may not impress right away, but are good prospects.

Thirdly, the Cavaliers will improve thanks to addition by subtraction. The most hated man at the Mistake by the Lake Sporting Times, Flip Murray, will take his patented brand of low efficiency chucking to the Detroit Pistons next season. This loss couldn't have come soon enough. Larry Hughes, Damon Jones, or even Sasha Pavlovic may not look as active or skilled as Murray on the court, but there hardly is an objective measure that shows Flip to be the better player.

The addition of a mid-level exception veteran would hardly be exciting, but like it or not, the Cavaliers look to be a better team now that Flip Murray has packed his bags. If it takes a boring off-season to shed the deadweight, so be it.

No one can better LeBron James; that is certain. But who else is lucky enough to be associated with arguably the most prestigious name of the modern era? I once heard a rumor that LeBron's true name is unpronouncable by mortals, and if a person were ever to actually say it he would instantly incinerate.

• The Lebron Brothers - Angel, José, Carlos, Frankie, y Pablo Lebrón have been performing boogaloo since the late 1960s. Originally from Brooklyn, the five brothers made it big with their debut album "Psychedelic Goes Latin." Since then, the band has toured worldwide as one of the biggest Latin music acts around. Their classic album "Salsa y Control" is not to be missed.
  
  
• Juan Manuel Lebrón - This Puerto Rican Renaissance man is an actor, writer, producer, model, and singer. Juan got his big break as JuanMa on the hit show "En Casa de JuanMa y Wiwi" during the late seventies and into the eighties. After the show was cancelled, he moved into the realm of salsa music. Juan attempted to cross over into Hollywood in 1995 as "Puerto Rican Cafe Waiter" in "Assassins". The movie stars Sylvester Stallone as a hitman seconds away from his pension when a younger, hipper hitman (Antonio Banderas) tries to kill him for some reason. They fight a lot, and Stallone wins. Somewhere in there they visit a Puerto Rican cafe, or perhaps a nondescript cafe that happens to employ a Puerto Rican waiter. Nevertheless, Lebrón shines. Juan is still successful in Puerto Rico today, and currently hosts the game show "Atrevete".
  
  
• Lolita Lebrón - Ms. Lebrón has championed Puerto Rican independence for half a century but all everyone ever wants to talk about is the time she shot up the House of Representatives. On March 1, 1954, Lolita, along with three accomplices, opened fire on Congress and managed to injure five Congressmen. Well, according to Lolita she fired her bullets into the air. Right. President Carter pardoned Lebrón in 1979, and she returned to Puerto Rico as a hero where she continues to rally for independence. If there's a lesson to be learned in this, it's this: opening fire on the US House of Representatives is bad, but not as bad as selling drugs, which could net you more than 25 years in the clink.
  
  
• Mariasela Alvarez Lebron - The beautiful Mariasela won the 1982 Miss World pageant as the representative for the Dominican Republic. The victorious Lebron returned home to host a talk show and apparently, is now an architect. Mariasela has since moved to Spain.
  
  
• Robert Lebrón - Lebrón was born in New York, NY in 1928, but he spent much of his childhood in Puerto Rico. Some stuff happened, and eventually he started painting with a palette knife. That's kind of a big deal, at least to whoever wrote his official biography. Today, Lebrón continues painting and bills himself as an "important American Impressionist." He's very proud that noted art historians like Ron Howard and Carol Burnett have purchased his paintings.
  
  
• LeBron James Jr. - The infant who needs no introduction, LeBron Jr. was born on October 6, 2004 and has been impressing scouts ever since. With his near-unique blend of size and athleticism, only LBJJ's father can rival him on the court. Nay-sayers counter with unfounded rumors of a forged birth certificate, but have never shown a shred of evidence. Nevertheless, little LeBron looks to be one of the most exciting prospects the world has ever seen, not bad for a one year old.

An honorable mention goes out to Napoleon Eugene Charles Henry LeBrun, a nineteenth-century architect. He and his sons' crowning achievement as architects may be the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower on Madison Square Park in New York. At one time, it was the tallest skyscraper in the world. The spelling is a little off, but then, Gloria James may have picked up her delicious use of the DoubleCapital in her son's first name from Mr. LeBrun.

This reminds me of a hobby of mine that kept me busy during many games at Jacobs Field: double-named marriages. For instance, if Kirby Puckett married Wayne Kirby, he'd be Kirby Kirby! I refuse to make such cracks about our Savior, though. So, in conclusion, if Casey Blake married Sean Casey, he'd be Casey Casey.

This will be a brief, straightforward post; I just want to help put Travis Hafner's first 83 games in some perspective.

For starters, here are the 2006 major league leaders in WARP3:

NAME              WARP3
Albert Pujols     10.5
Johan Santana     10.4
Francisco Liriano  9.9
Carlos Beltran     9.9
Mike Young         9.9
Scott Rolen        9.8
Miguel Cabrera     9.7
Travis Hafner      9.5
Joe Mauer          9.5
Jonathan Papelbon  9.5
Roy Halladay       9.3
Grady Sizemore     9.3
Brandon Webb       9.2
Bronson Arroyo     9.2

And this is a statistic that accounts for defense. In other words, in spite of the oft-invoked handicap of being a DH, Travis has been the 8th most valuable player--not hitter, but player--in the majors, and the 4th most valuable player in the American League.

In terms of pure hitting, however, Travis has no equal. Here are the 2006 major league leaders in Equivalent Average:

NAME               EqA
Travis Hafner     .361
Albert Pujols     .350
Manny Ramirez     .335
Jim Thome         .334
Joe Mauer         .331
Jason Giambi      .329
Barry Bonds       .329
Nomar Garciaparra .328
Reed Johnson      .327
Jermaine Dye      .326
Miguel Cabrera    .325
Lance Berkman     .320
Nick Johnson      .319
David Ortiz       .317

By objective standards, there's no getting around it: Travis Hafner has been the best hitter in all of baseball in 2006. For completeness' sake, here are the 2006 major league VORP leaders:

NAME              VORP
Travis Hafner     55.8
Brandon Webb      51.2
Albert Pujols     46.4
Jason Schmidt     44.4
Joe Mauer         44.2
Roy Halladay      44.0
Jim Thome         43.4
Johan Santana     42.9
Miguel Cabrera    42.2
Derek Jeter       42.0
Francisco Liriano 41.9
Vernon Wells      40.8
Bronson Arroyo    39.7
Chris Capuano     39.0

And VORP is position dependent, so Travis gets slightly penalized for being a DH here, too.

If the MVP votting were to take place today, Travis would almost certainly get no support, being a DH and playing for a team that won't make the playoffs. Still, I can make a very compelling case that he has been the most valuable position player in the American League.

Readers, surely I don't have to tell you that today is a momentous day. Our Lord and Savior LeBron James has agreed to extend His heavenly reign over our humble corner of the Midwest. This is the holiest event since the Lottery Day Miracle itself!

My brother and I went downtown to celebrate, and as it happened, we ran into a few familiar faces. First off, we were shootin' some hoops, bein' witnesses and all, at the Michael Zone Rec Center on Lorain Avenue when we spotted our old pal Athlete LeBron, from The LeBrons.



We were all, "What's up?" but He was strangely silent. We stuck around long enough to watch Athlete LeBron totally school a team of streetball all-stars who happened to be passing through town.

Next, it was on to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And guess who was out front, reminiscing about old times.



Wise LeBron was dancing up a storm. He kept trying to tell stories about His former exploits, and how when He was playin' ball, He signed His extension for $800 million over 50 years! I guess that's Wise LeBron for you.

As if all that weren't enough, as Corey and I were cruising around downtown, we spotted--that's right--All Business LeBron.



"That don't make no sense to me," He said.

Now famished, and wondering if by some coincidence we might run into Kid LeBron, we headed to the West Side Market. And you will never believe who we saw:



It turns out He was looking for some butter; I'm not sure if He found any. As we were leaving, however, He shouted, "Can you guys give me a ride to Public Square?" And of course we could.

Incredulously, Kid LeBron was meeting up with none other than His fellow LeBrons to toast Their next five years here in Cleveland. What a coincidence!!!!!!



Not until Wednesday will LeBron actually sign His extension, which is why, on that day, we will have a glorious feast in His contract's honor. We can now add a new holiday to our budding religion: The Feast of the Extension, to be savored every July 12. So start making your plans!

"Happy birthday, Mistake by the Lake Sporting Times!"


"...and 12 blocks!"

In honor of the Indians' thrilling 19-1 victory over the Yankees, I bring you an extra-speical one-and-a-quarter-tuple-length edition of Concessions Reviews. 'Tis the season for stuffing your face with greasy ballpark food!

Here are links to the previous installments, for you newcomers:

• Concessions Reviews: Jacobs Field, Volume 1
• Concessions Reviews: Jacobs Field, Volume 2
• Concessions Reviews: Jacobs Field, Volume 3
• Concessions Reviews: Jacobs Field, Volume 4
• Concessions Reviews: Jacobs Field, Volume 5

And here are my latest reviews...

from May 18:

Pizza Pan Pizza. I don't remember what brand of pizza they sold at the Jake before 2006 (it probably wasn't even a brand name), but I remember it was nothing special. I have also found that in ballparks where they do offer brand-name pizza, the ballpark version of it is never as good as what you get on the outside. Now, I have never had Pizza Pan before, but I have to believe the real thing is better than the ballpark version. My pepperoni slice was not hot enough and not especially tasty. I also noticed that most of the slices behind the display were about 40% crust, which is great if you feel like eating a big hunk of bread at the ballgame. Seriously, this was some super-puffy crust. Grade: D+

Slider's Mini Burgers. These differ from "Slider's Super Burger" (not to mention the regular ham- and cheeseburgers at the Jake) in that they are mini, have no "orange sauce", have pickles, you get three of them, and they sit upon a bed of fried onion straws. I applaud most of these differences. The burger patties themselves, it seemed to me, while mini, were of a slightly better quality, though maybe the difference in size was simply playing tricks on me. All in all, very tasty. My one major complaint about this item is the ridiculous amount of time it takes to prepare (and they do make them to order). The "Slider's Super Burger" was slow to arrive too, but this was worse. That said, Grade: B+

from May 21:

Fried Fantail Shrimp. I'm not sure if this item was available prior to 2006; I certainly never noticed it. I found it at the "Market Sushi" stand on the first base side, though I noticed it was also available at the "Asian Market" stand in the center field patio. It consists of three fairly large breaded, fried shrimp, served atop a plate that is half brown rice, half fried noodles, and covered with some kind of red sauce, possibly sweet and sour. To my surprise, I enjoyed it very much. My one complaint would be that it came without a cover of any kind, and the plate wasn't deep enough, so I found myself trying to keep the food from blowing away in the strong wind that was blowing. Grade: B

Cleveland Bombers. Put Cleveland in the name, and you could sucker me into trying anything. This item is available at the Mexican stand in the center field patio. As I learned, it's kind of a hybrid between a burrito and an Italian beef sandwich (which is strictly a Chicago thing, in case you didn't know). It has the beef and the giardiniera peppers of the Italian beef sandwich (though it is not drenched in broth), wrapped inside a tortilla with some shredded cheese. I struggled to decide how much I actually liked the Cleveland Bombers. I like both burritos and Italian beef sandwiches, but I think it would have worked better as a straight-up sandwich. The name is neat, though. Grade: C

from July 4:

Strickland's Frozen Lemonade Smoothie. Now that they're competing with cross-town rival Pierre's in the Jacobs Field ice cream racket, Strickland's is offering two flavors of "smoothie": strawberry and frozen lemonade. As I have mentioned before, I am quite the connoisseur of fine fruit smoothies--just ask anyone who's been to my house. Thus, every time I see some new product at Jacobs Field being marketed as a "smoothie"--which is about once a year--I not only feel obligated to try it, I have extremely harsh standards. This particular concoction, not surprisingly, consists of crushed ice and some yellow liquid which I would like to believe is lemonade but may only be some kind of syrupy "smoothie mix". I have to say, it exceeded my expectations--but was still bad. Too tart, I think. Go for the actual fresh-squeezed lemonade they sell out on the left field home run porch. You won't be disappointed. Grade: C-

The criteria for All-Star selection in all three major sports are and always have been so much of a sham, I try as hard as I possibly can not to care. Sufficed to say, I really don't want to start a rant on the topic of how Travis Hafner has been hands-down the best hitter in all of baseball and how Ozzie Guillen is ruining America in about 35 different ways, so I will direct you to another fine blog that has already summed it up about as well as I could have.

Everyone wants to know what exactly is going wrong with the Indians. Among fans and the media, there isn't a consensus. I think we should all agree that we really have no clue what to do, and anyone that thinks there is some panacea is fucking insane. No blogger has an informed opinion on the inner workings of the organization. In stressful times, making changes for change's sake seems like a prudent thing to do. Fire Eric Wedge; kidnap Mark Shapiro, assassinate Larry Dolan; torture Bob Wickman; vaporize Jeff Datz. Hey, it might work, you don't know.

The root problem is that no one cares to admit how big a role luck plays in professional sports. Just take a look at the research recently done by Doug Drinnen about the NFL Playoffs (go back and read all 6 installments so far; you won't regret it). He found that, among other things, the best team in the NFL misses the playoffs about once every ten seasons. And in the NFL, 38% of teams make the playoffs as opposed to the 27% in the MLB. There is absolutely no explanation for cases like this except dumb luck. And as much as it sounds like an excuse, the Indians have been a victim of bad luck.

Baseball Prospectus' third-order Pythagenport winning percentages are objective measures of team performance. You can disagree with their methods (although I don't know why you would), but there is no agenda or bias behind the numbers. Coming into Sunday morning, here's how the AL Central shook out:

          W3   L3   GB
Tigers    50.1 30.9 --
White Sox 46.9 33.1 2.7
Indians   44.2 34.8 4.9
Twins     41.2 37.8 7.9
Royals    28.2 50.8 20.9

Things aren't so dire, though even with these advanced metrics, the Indians look a little disappointing. Five games back is much better than eighteen, but the Indians were predicted to take the division.

I don't think the cause for this is bad coaching, or even poor team management, but unforeseeable fluctuations in player performance. For 130 years of baseball history, players have randomly had uncharacteristically good or poor seasons. It's just how it works. So, if Jason Johnson has a 45.00 ERA after 10 starts or Jhonny Peralta starts the year ice cold, it's stupid to point to Shapiro or Dolan as culprits. Did anyone think replacing Scott Elarton would be a problem? What really gets me is people complaining about the Brandon Phillips trade. Of course it would be nice to have Phillips on the team now knowing his success this season, but everyone who expected anything close to this after spring training, raise your hand. You're all big fat liars.

The source of the Tribe's troubles has shifted throughout the season. First it was awful starting pitching, then it was terrible bullpen, then a lack of "timely" hitting, and now late-inning meltdowns. All the second-guessing of the coaching staff is understandable, only because it's really hard to sit back and say "oh well, that's just the way things go sometimes" when the team you live and die for is scuffling. Looking at the root causes for the Indians dropping games that they should have won, though, I don't see a cut-and-dried explanation. The team should be patient now; the playoffs are a pipe dream. If, by the end of the season, things haven't improved, then that's the time for making change. I hate an Indians loss as much as anyone, but running a consistently successful team is an exercise in patience.