Larry Granillo at Baseball Prospectus passes along video of the Marlins’ Home Run Thing in action:
It’s spectacular.
The Marlins’ Home Run Thing is predictably amazing
Reply
See you at the Convention Convention!
AIBTM is the leading global exhibition for the U.S. meetings and events industry. Each June we bring together the world’s entire meetings and events industry in Baltimore for three days of focused business.
Oh wow, is it already time to start planning my trip to AIBTM? It’s the leading global exhibition for the U.S. meetings and events industry, but everyone I know just calls it the “Convention Convention. ”
And this year’s Convention Convention is going to be straight-up ridiculous. We’re talking hundreds of hosted buyers and thousands of exhibitors from the meetings industry, meeting to network, exchange information, share strategies, partner and associate.
.jpg "Here's what AIBTM looks like.")
Since AIBTM falls under the venerable IBTM umbrella, you know from its Wikipedia page that was definitely not written by an IBTM employee that the destination will be stunning. So no one should be surprised that the Convention Convention will be in Baltimore, easily one of the United States’ most stunning cities.
Plus, this year’s AIBTM is tricked out with new strategic partnerships with PCMA, SITE and ACTE. And they’ve ramped up their existing partnerships with ICCA and CSPI (formerly ACME)!
To top it off, this year’s Convention Convention heard the demands of last year’s Convention conventioneers and added an exciting new Business Travel sector. And you know who’s going to be there? We’re talking CEOs, senior directors, management, corporate travel managers, procurement managers, finance HR managers, personal assistants and travel agents. And there will be suppliers of various business-travel technologies, including self-booking tools!
And since Baltimore is a memorable destination with several cultural attractions and excitement around every corner, maybe after the networking event ends Monday evening you can head out for some electrifying nightlife and catch the area’s hottest new alt-rock band, The Self Booking Tools.
The Convention Convention is the biggest event in events this year, with something for everyone from corporate planners to junior planners. Just don’t plan anything for Tuesday from 1-2 p.m., because you’re not going to want to miss the vibrant panel on “Delivering Meetings that Meet Your Organization’s Strategic Plan.”
No one can throw a convention like the people whose jobs it is to throw conventions. Why waste your time at some other, more narrowly focused trade convention, like one more pertinent to your occupation? Convention Convention transcends those convention conventions, allowing you to trade the trade thrust for a concentration on convening.
New York Times recognizes
A Tim Tebow joke I made on Twitter got quoted in the Metropolitan section of Sunday’s New York Times. Check it out. They even copy-edited me, adding a comma where I omitted one.
The Gray Lady, reduced to fishing for pageviews from area sandwich blogs?
Thanks to @CoreyNYC for pointing it out.
Mets over-under
Context: 25-year-old Chris Schwinden looks likely to start the season sixth on the Mets’ starting pitching depth chart — pitching every fifth day in Buffalo and getting the first call whenever someone in the big league club’s rotation needs to miss a couple of turns. Schwinden started four games for the Mets in 2012.
The Major League Mets will probably carry Miguel Batista, who could make a spot start here and there. Schwinden is on the Mets’ 40-man roster, as are fellow Triple-A starter Jeremy Hefner and prospect Jeurys Familia. Familia threw 87 2/3 innings in Double-A in 2011 and could start the year in Triple-A as well. Matt Harvey also figures to play into the Mets’ rotation discussion later in the season.
[poll id=”97″]
Mets over-under
Context: Because the Mets appear distant longshots to take the NL East in 2012, because they’re coming off three straight losing seasons and because we live in a world with ever-shrinking grey areas, someone will inevitably suggest that the 2012 Mets will vie with their 1962 predecessors for the worst record in Major League history.
Barring catastrophe, the 2012 Mets should win way more than 40 games. The 1962 Mets were almost unimaginably bad, and unlucky on top of that.
The 2009 Mets won their 41st game on July 11, the 2010 Mets won it on June 23, and the 2011 Mets won it on June 29. July 9 this year marks the beginning of the All-Star Break. The game on July 8 will be the Mets’ 86th game of the season. Also, my dad’s birthday.
[poll id=”96″]
Tacocopter: A thing?
We guess a delivery car or bicyclist was too pedestrian for tech folks; over in San Francisco, something called TacoCopter has popped up, delivering online orders of tacos via helicopter — an unmaned, robotic one, to be exact.
According to the bare bones web site, all you have to do is place your order on your iPhone, tap away, and await the TacoCopter
– Jessica Chou, the Daily Meal.
My wife is oddly vigilant about making sure people actually make wishes at appropriate moments: Before breaking a wishbone, while blowing out birthday candles, when the clock strikes 11:11. I love her so I usually indulge her, though she’d never know if I didn’t since the wishes are never spoken.
Anyway, unless all those banked wishes from the two and half years I’ve been married (and all the time we dated before that) suddenly came true, I’m going to go ahead and assume that the Tacocopter is not a real thing.
I mean… no way, right? An unmanned, robotic quadrotor helicopter that delivers tacos? That’s what you call “too good to be true” my friends. This has to be some sort of publicity stunt. Maybe guerrilla marketing for some movie about a utopian future, or a scam to trick honest, taco-craving Americans into divulging their locations and credit card information.
The Tacocopter “co-founder,” Dustin Boyer, said on quora that it’s “definitely real” but that “there are a number of technical and legal hurdles that our team is working through.”
Straight up: I will believe this when I’m eating a taco that was delivered to me by an unmanned robot helicopter and not a second before.
Via Paul Vargas.
Mets over-under
Context: Josh Edgin is a 25-year-old left-handed pitcher in Mets camp who topped out at High A St. Lucie last year. He has turned heads in Spring Training with his mid-90s fastball and strong breaking stuff and appears to be in the competition to replace the injured Tim Byrdak in the Mets’ Opening Day bullpen. Edgin is not on the team’s 40-man roster.
[poll id=”95″]
Talking Murphy’s defense with Larry Bowa
Your browser does not support iframes.
Another thing to remind you how young Ruben Tejada is
I tried to fool people with a Twitter poll based on this but most people were on to my trick: I plugged Ruben Tejada’s 2011 stats in Buffalo and with the Mets into the ol’ Minor League Equivalency calculator then added them up to see how he would have performed if he spent the whole season at Double-A Binghamton.
Obviously it’s not a perfect way to determine what would have actually happened, but Tejada’s Triple-A and Major League stats translate to a .338/.424/.426 line in over 500 at-bats at Binghamton. And Tejada would have been the youngest player on the team.
Remember that: Ruben Tejada would have been the youngest player on the Mets’ Double-A team last year. He’s seven months younger than Matt Harvey and Juan Lagares, more than two years younger than Matt den Dekker, and two weeks younger than Jeurys Familia.
Tejada’s one year and 10 months younger than Jordany Valdespin, who caught the eyes of many Mets fans with his .297/.341/.483 line at Binghamton in 2011.
Hak-Ju Lee, a shortstop in the Rays system that ranked No. 44 on Baseball America’s Top 100 prospects list, is a year younger than Tejada. In his Double-A debut in 2011, he hit .190/.272/.310 in 100 at-bats. Braves shortstop Andrelton Simmons, a month and a half older than Tejada, hit .311/.351/.408 in High A ball last year and ranked No. 92 on the same list.
An .850 OPS would have put Tejada 19th among Eastern League players with at least 141 at-bats at the level in 2011. But of the 18 players ahead, all but four played primarily in corner positions and only one — Blue Jays catching prospect Travis d’Arnaud — is less than a full year older than Tejada. And d’Arnaud, born Feb. 8, 1989, is 10 months older than the Mets’ shortstop.
Point is, Ruben Tejada is very, very young. A variety of circumstances forced him through the Mets’ system quickly and into the big leagues in 2010 and 2011, but I suspect many Mets fans would be more psyched about him if he were a 22-year-old shortstop that tore up the Eastern League last year and they’d never seen play instead of a 22-year-old shortstop that performed adequately in the Majors for most of 2011.
So the other point is that many people overvalue prospects, which you probably know. What Tejada did in the Majors at 21 in 2011 is rare and impressive. It’s not a guarantee that he’ll turn out a big-league All-Star or even a capable regular, but it’s a very nice start.
Tebow-MG
Remember this? Jeremy Lin’s just some point guard now*, even with the Knicks surging. It’s Tebow Time:
Maybe Drew Stanton is just upset this didn’t happen the last time the Jets acquired a backup quarterback.
If the Jets were actually hoping to generate buzz with the move, they did. Winning football games we’ll have to see about.
*- Not really, but he lacks that certain Tebow cachet.
Tedquarters 