Give 'em Some Stankeye!

Giants. Cards. Are you revved up? Well, you should be. The Cardinals still sport the second-best record in the league, and the Giants were one bullpen implosion away from taking three of four from them last weekend. Cardinal fans are already talking shit on Rob Neyer and Keith Law ESPN chats due to the fast start, apparently unable (or unwilling, more likely) to comprehend that a rotation anchored by Todd Wellemeyer and Joel Piniero probably couldn't carry you to a pennant even in the Pacific Coast League. I realize belligerent Internet denizens make up a very small sample of the St. Louis fanbase, but I'm still going to use it as extra motivation to root the Giants on to a sweep.

--Jim Baker thinks the Giants will have a historically bad offense this season, even comparing them to (gasp!) the 2003 Dodgers. That's just uncalled for. If anything, the threat of joining such dubious company should convince the Giants to continue playing Fred Lewis, Eugenio Velez, and John Bowker, and to...please, God...get Rich Aurilia out of the everyday lineup.

What I want to know, though, is what is Jim Baker, a respected former BP analyst...a smart guy...doing writing for Page 2? I thought that was just where the Skip Baylisses and Ralph Wileys of the world lurked. I guess if Baker starts peppering his articles with references to Teen Wolf Too, then he'll be past the point of no return.

--Luckily, I think I may have solved the Dave Bush Conundrum. Turns out he probably just plain sucks. After years of trying to figure out why his terrific peripheral numbers didn't translate into a low ERA, it seems as though all the time and energy I spent fretting over this (I even e-mailed a Brewers blogger to ask him if he knew what was going on) was all moot. Whereas before Bush never walked guys but struck out his fair share (166 to 38 K:BB ratio in 210 innings in 2006...drool), in 17 innings this year he's already walked ten batters. Small sample size, blah, blah, but that's still scary. Luckily, Bush is no longer anywhere to be seen on my fantasy team, so I guess I should stop caring.

--OK, not that anyone really cares, but I just got too busy to finish my division predictions, so here's a condensed list, with some off-color comments thrown in for good measure. Now, these predictions were written down like three weeks ago, and I haven't changed them to reflect how the season has gone so far. Honest.

NL Central

1. Milwaukee Brewers
2. Chicago Cubs
3. Cincinnati Reds
4. Houston Astros
5. St. Louis Cardinals
6. Pittsburgh Pirates

The Brewers are the sexy pick to win the NL Central this year, so I guess that means I've been seduced. They haven't made the playoffs since the year this piece of genius came out, so they're due. This division is just awful, though. The Dusty-fication of the Reds is going to be a grisly process, and they only rank this high because they're the best of a bad lot after the Brew Crew and the Cubs. Too bad this guy isn't a Reds fan. And no, I obviously don't think the Cardinals are for real.

AL Central

1. Cleveland Indians
2. Detroit Tigers
3. Kansas City Royals
4. Chicago White Sox
5. Minnesota Twins

If we're going by who I want to win this division, I'd pick the Royals. Too bad their offense is horrendous. I'd probably change my ranking of the Tigers nowadays due to how poorly they've played out of the gate, but they've got too much talent not to rebound and they should be okay.

On a related note, if you want a beautiful example of the difference between a great GM and one who is a miserable failure, read this.

NL East

1. New York Mets
2. Atlanta Braves
3. Philadelphia Phillies
4. Washington Nationals
5. Florida Marlins

I'm calling it now. The Phillies will sink into the depths of the division this year due solely to Pedro Feliz's abysmal bat, and Phillie phans will be calling for his head by August. If you think it's crazy talk to say that one bad player can destroy a team's playoff hopes, well, you don't know Pedro.

The Mets and Braves, I think, should battle it out right until the end. I thought the Johan Santana trade tipped the scales clearly in New York's favor at first, but they have some serious rotation problems and their outfield is a bit of a mess. The Nationals are going to suck, but at least they give us the joy of watching Manny Acta try to reign in not one, but two, out-of control malcontent outfielders. The Marlins, meanwhile, trot out a defensive unit that has about as much range as your local beer league softball team.

AL East

1. Boston Red Sox
2. New York Yankees
3. Tampa Bay Rays
4. Toronto Blue Jays
5. Baltimore Orioles

I was watching the Sox-Yanks game last weekend when the unthinkable happened. I found myself rooting for the Yankees. That's right, it must be the end of the world. Cats and dogs living together, and so forth. It's gotten so bad that the formerly underdog (at least in this matchup) and somewhat charming Sox have now usurped the never-likable Yankees for title of Evil Empire. A blowhard, right wing starting pitcher and a drunken, obnoxious fanbase will do that, I guess.

The Blue Jays are probably better than the Rays, but I'm going to violate my own convoluted code here and pick Tampa Bay higher simply because I want to root for them. If even two-thirds of their hitting and pitching prospects pan out, they could be frightening, although some of that depends on how much cash their new ownership is willing to shell out to keep everybody around. The Orioles won't be good again until Peter Angelos sells the team, which ain't happening any time soon. Sorry, O's fans.

For what it's worth, the Yanks will win the AL Wild Card, and the Braves will take it in the NL. For World Series picks I'll go with the Red Sox versus the Brewers. Yeah, I'm all about the Brew Crew this year. If they fail to live up to my expectations, just picture me screaming "Brauuuuuuun" a la Captain Kirk, as the camera circles over my head.

--TGIF vid. Haven't done one of these for a while. Work and beer-swilling will do that. Here's a creepy-ass Brian Eno/David Byrne collaboration. The music is great, but if you figure out the point of what is going on in the video, give me a call.

Labels: bad predictions, brew crew, dave bush conundrum, link drop

It's Friday, and why use your brain when you can just throw some links around and comment on other people's work? To wit...

--Chris at Bay City Ball provides a neat breakdown of Barry Zito's hugely disappointing 2007 season using Pitchf/x data. The coolest part? Rob Neyer linked to the article on his ESPN blog, which is pretty awesome.

For the layman, Pitchf/x is a means of tracking the flight path and velocity of every pitch thrown by a pitcher on the season. It can give us an approximate idea of how well a pitcher's pitches are breaking, how often batters are swinging and missing, and the location of each pitch relative to the strike zone, among other things. Unfortunately, not every ballpark utilizes the technology, so, as the article acknowledges, this is sort of an incomplete sample, but for the sake of quick and dirty analysis, it'll do just fine.

So, does Pitchf/x predict any improvement from Zito in '08? Does it provide any sort of justification for my purchase of a Zito jersey last spring, when I was six beers deep at Mays Field with a pocket full of twenties just begging me to do something stupid with them? Well, read the BCB article and judge for yourself, but I'd have to say no.

It seems that the reason that Zito can still get batters out (somewhat) is that his fastball, even with its precipitous drop in miles per hour, has so much separation in velocity from his curveball (which is still a plus-plus pitch), that hitters still have a tough time picking his offerings up. With that said, Zito's walk rate continues to be unacceptable and that, combined with decreasing velocity and strikeout rates, never portends good times.

Anyway, the article is the first in a series over at BCB, and I'm very interested to see what Pitchf/x has to say about Noah Lowry and his magic act last year.

--Speaking of Zito and Rob Neyer, Neyer talks about a deal the Twins are proposing to Johan Santana in relation to the Zito contract, and finds the time to rip all over the Giants some more. Salt on the wound, my friends, salt on the friggin' wound.

--The Tampa Bay Rays (is it me or does that new, exorcised name just not ring true?) have signed former Giants sinkerballing reliever Scott Munter to a minor league deal. Munter was one curiosity that I'm glad we don't have to deal with anymore. He had one legitimate major league pitch, his sinker, which was nigh-impossible to hit in the air. So the idea, then, was that in tight spots with runners on and less than two out, the team could bring in Munter and his sinker and, voila, inning-ending double play.

It was a great plan, except for the wee problem that Munter had no control whatsoever and would instead exacerbate the problem by walking everybody and their mom's dog. He had a decent run in limited action in 2005, but his K:BB ratio was horrible and it caught up to him in a bad way in 2006. Eventually everybody realized that no matter how great your one freak pitch may be, you still have to strike some batters out with it (Munter struck out just 14 batters in 58 AAA innings last year...egads!) and so off he went into the wilderness of non-tendered-dom.

I'd say that this is probably the last we'll hear of Munter, but given the Giants' history of bad luck in letting go of young relievers (think Joe Nathan, Scott Linebrink, Jeremy Accardo), it wouldn't surprise me to see Munter somehow turn into a halfway-decent reliever.

--Speaking of ex-Giant relievers, David Aardsma was DFA'd by the White Sox the other day, and I'm going to start the campaign right now for the Giants to grab him. Aardsma, a former Giants number one pick, was traded to the Cubs along with Jerome Williams in 2005 for LaTroy Hawkins in one of the most idiotic trades of Brian Sabean's tenure. He was okay with the Cubs in 2006, but flamed out after being traded to the White Sox.

Since the Giants should be in rebuild mode and should be looking for any good arms they can find on the cheap, I think Aardsma would be a great pickup, if only to see if Dave Righetti can get hold of him and work some magic. Aardsma's undoing last year was his control, but he still struck out more than a batter an inning, and that indicates the stuff is still there. If he can get his control problems ironed out then there's a pretty good pitcher lurking there. Remember, guys like Feliz Rodriguez and John Johnstone were sucky relievers who had lost their way, then they came to the Giants and turned it around. It could happen.

The White Sox have another couple of days to trade Aardsma or else he becomes a free agent. I think the Giants would do well to take a flyer on him if he slips through, not that they should have given up on him so easily in the first place.

--Joe Posnanski's wonderful The Soul of Baseball was named as the best baseball book of 2007. I just did get the book this past Christmas, and I can say that it is easily one of my favorite baseball books, right behind Lords of the Realm and Fantasyland. What makes it so great, in my opinion, is that it tells wonderful baseball stories and revels in the greatness of the game while never, not for one second, presenting the players and those involved in the game as anything more than simple human beings, as flawed and rife with self-doubt as the rest of us.

I think a lot of baseball writers fall into the trap of presenting baseball history, which is long and rich, with a sort of whimsy or mysticism, and then begin to deify their old heroes as if these players were pure souls who could do nothing wrong. I find that crap unreadable. It's why I find books like Moneyball and Lords of the Realm so fascinating, and books like Shoeless Joe so interminable. I enjoy books that cut through the bullshit and present baseball for what it is: a cutthroat industry with a long, crooked history.

What is great about Posnanski's book is that it doesn't deny any of that, and yet it still provides us with the sense of wonder that we felt as little kids when watching baseball. The book's subject, Buck O'Neil (one of the game's great personalities and ambassadors) tells one great story after another, about how much he loved the game, about how baseball was his life, about how he played for so little, and he never, ever wanders into treacle territory. He tells wonderful stories, stories that inspire, and it never turns into one of those mushy ruminations on how baseball is America or some other gobbledegook. It's a great read, and highly recommended even for the non-baseball fans amongst you.

--TGIF vid. Modest Mouse, one of the best contemporary bands around, and my favorite song of theirs. The sound quality sucks, but it's the best I could find, so apologies in advance.

Labels: bad zito, link drop

It's time for everybody's favorite...TGIF links! Here's a collection of random tidbits, most baseball-related, some not. I've also concluded that January sucks, at least in a baseball sense. Only one more month until pitchers and catchers report. One...more...month.

--Today on ESPN.com, Rob Neyer chatted with fans about which pitcher would be better, our own wunderkind Tim Lincecum, or Brewer uberprospect Yovani Gallardo. Lincecum has hellacious stuff and destroyed everything in his path in the minors, but Gallardo is younger and has shown better control. The answer of who will be better isn't exactly as clear-cut as we Giants fans might like.

It makes for an interesting read, and some good points are made, especially in counter to all the people freaking out about Lincecum's small frame, and the injury risk involved, and also just about the general unpredictability of pitchers. He's a pitcher and he exists, therefore he's an injury risk. It happens. Some chatters brought up the example of Mark Prior, who was considered a brilliant physical specimen who could never get hurt, then...got hurt.

Another point raised is that just because Lincecum's delivery is bizarre doesn't mean it's dangerous. It seems like most of his power comes from his lower body, which would take a lot of strain off of the arm. Power pitchers like Nolan Ryan and Roger Clemens had notoriously strong legs, which enabled them to throw hard as hell, and both those guys pitcher forever.

I also realize from reading this chat that some fans just don't live in reality. A majority of the people submitting questions come from the Bay Area, understandably, and some think Lincecum is a top ten pitcher right now. I'm just as excited about Timmy as anybody else, but let's get a hold of ourselves here. He's still young and he's thrown just 146 major league innings. Given the adjustments hitters are likely to make against him, and again given that pesky (knock on wood) injury risk just by him being a pitcher, there are bound to be some bumps in the road before true greatness.

--I try to stay away from Baseball Think Factory, really I do. It's not because the site has a bunch of bad baseball writing or anything. Au contrere, BTF is home to some of the richest baseball analysis out there by some of the most amazing fans of the game. It constantly blows my mind how smart a lot of these guys are.

No, I try to stay away because once I get on, I can't get off. First there are the front page articles, then there are Dan Szymborski's ZiPs projections, then there's the News Blog, which points out some really crappy articles from around the country, then skewers them. One interesting baseball thread leads to another, and before I know it, I've wasted away five hours, my complexion has developed that pasty-white sheen, and when I go outside I hiss at the sun like the Nosferatu or some other denizen of the night. For the sake of a healthy dating life, I try to stay off.

So I basically take it in small steps, kind of the Atkins Diet of baseball stat nerdery. During my 12-step BTF recovery process, I came across this writeup by Chris Dial, where he presents his choices for who should have won the NL Gold Gloves (because the real GG voting is a joke), using a number of (confusing) defensive metrics.

According to his analysis, Pedro Feliz was 2007's best defensive third baseman, which comes as no surprise. I've harped about that before. No, the real shocker is that he rates Omar Vizquel as the best shortstop. We all know Omar is still pretty good, but it seemed like common wisdom that he was declining rapidly. Not so, says Dial. In fact, check out this quote:

>That (outstanding defense) could have been enough to make Omar an average player in 2007, shocking as that sounds.>

Whoah. Omar must have been one hell of a wizard with the glove to make him average, as his bat reached Neifi depths of putridness. I'm not sure I agree, as this is the only bit of analysis that I've seen that rates Vizquel as the best (whereas just about every defensive metric has Feliz as the top 3B), but if true, it gives his re-signing a more positive outlook.

--There was an article today on the Giants official website about the Giants apparently letting Ray Durham and Kevin Frandsen fight it out for the second base job, but I think Chris Haft is just scratching for things to write about. When is the last time the Giants actually let a young player compete, fair and square, for an everyday job against a veteran? Remember the Jamey Wright vs. Brad Hennessey "contest" that really wasn't a fight at all, because Wright had the job as long as he didn't completely mess himself in the spring. Same with Russ Ortiz this past season. Do you really think the Giants are going to give Frandsen a fair shot at taking the starting job from the savvy veteran making $7 million? Please.

For the record, though, I do want to see Frandsen start at third base (assuming the Giants don't upgrade that position in the interrim), and I expect Durham to be considerably better this year. His track record is is just too good for him to fall apart this much, this fast. Plus, how could he be any worse?

--I discussed the lunacy that can go hand-in-hand with Hall of Fame arguments last week, especially involving Jim Rice, but if you want to take a head-long plunge into the darkest depths of the stark-raving-mad HOF argument, I direct you to this bit of wisdom from everybody's favorite Curly-Haired Boyfriend. FJM tears into poor Dan quite nicely here.

--Ten years after my Freshman English teacher in high school sent the class into a baffled stupor by citing it, I think I finally get this joke. Or do I?

--Ah, TGIF video, how I've missed ye. I'm not sure I can really explain this, but...just check it out.

Labels: awful sportswriting, defense, Hall of Fame, link drop, omar vizquel, Tim Lincecum

It’s very nearly time for my Friday afternoon nap, so before I conk out and surrender to dreams of Minka, let’s take a look at some stories going around MLB today…

--The latest Giant-related rumor is that the team is in talks with the Indians regarding their young third base prospect Andy Marte, or the guy formerly known as Baseball Prospectus’s number one prospect in 2005. The shine has rubbed off of Marte's blue chip status quite a bit after some regression at AAA and a hideous major league showing in 2006, but he’s just the sort of player the Giants should be targeting, a guy who still has tons of upside and who can be had at a lower price.

Marte probably won’t be the superstar many envisioned at first, but he’s still just 24, and wouldn’t it be neat to see him bust out in the black and orange after disappointing so many franchises for so long? Best of all, it would reduce Pedro Feliz to being merely a bad three-year-long dream. Or perhaps a nightmare.

--The Tigers today DFA’d first baseman Chris Shelton, who had a rocky career in Detroit, to say the least. Shelton was the flavor of the month in April 2006 when he hit 10 home runs to start the season, then completely crapped out and ended up wasting away in AAA while the Tigers rolled to the World Series. Jim Leyland was so down on him that he spent all of last season in the minors while Sean freaking Casey provided a .393 slugging percentage and all kinds of non-productive-y goodness.

Shelton now joins ranks of those souls known in these parts as the Easily Obtainable First Base Talent, a group from whence the likes of Carlos Pena and Jack Cust came last season. Shelton would be worth a minor league invite or something on the off chance that he can produce. His power slumped in AAA this year, but he’s shown good power in the majors before (Tyler Walker knows all about it) and I don’t really think he was given a fair chance in Detroit. Best of all, the risk involved is zero, because he’d probably cost pennies on the dollar, and therefore could just be tossed back into the muck if he didn’t pan out.

--Thought I'd talk a bit about the Hall of Fame ballot that came out this week. The two big Giant names on the newcomer list are Robb Nen and Rod Beck, who, as great as they were for the Giants, really have no business garnering even one vote. In my humble opinion, in order for a reliever to make the Hall of Fame, he has to be on another planet compared to his peers. Mariano Rivera, I'll buy. Bruce Sutter? Possibly. Nen and Beck? No way in hell.

Nen had two absolutely dominant years while Beck had one, and you need to be the best of the best for a stretch of close to a decade if you're a closer, at least in my mind. In these modern times when closers only generally pitch one inning per game, it's becoming even harder to make a Hall of Fame case for them. We'll just have to honor them ourselves and remember them as two pitcher who probably killed their arms trying to get the Giants to the World Series.

--As for the deserving Hall of Fame candidates, Tim Raines is the only one of the newcomers who really merits selection. Reading all of the arguments for Raines, you realize how awesome he was, and for a stretch of about five years in the 1980's he may have legitimately been the best player in the National League. Just check it out. Unfortunately, he had his best seasons while playing in obscurity in Montreal, and that might be enough to keep him out of the Hall.

The other guys I'd vote for if I had a ballot (someday, dammit) would be Bert Blyleven and Alan Trammell. The case for Blyleven has been made over and over again by statheads, but at this point it looks like he's doomed to fall victim to a historical misintepretation of park factors and win-loss record. Trammell, meanwhile, was probably the second-best shortstop of his era, but sadly he was overshadowed by the number one shortstop, Cal Ripken, and that might prevent him from ever being recognized.

--Random video, a quickie...

Labels: easily obtainable first base talent rant, link drop

It's Friday, and I'm heading up to the A's game tonight. I'd take pictures and post them here, but who really wants to see pics of the Oakland Coliseum and its pee-soaked corridors? And this is a Giants site after all. In fact, I'll probably be rooting for the Rangers tonight, since they have Kason Gabbard going, and he's on my fantasy squad (it's a really deep league...don't ask).

Well, here are some random links I thought you readers would find fun and interesting. Enjoy!

---Last week, ESPN's Jayson Stark wrote a wonderful article detailing why the save is probably the most ridiculous statistic in baseball. The insane overvaluing of saves is something I've ranted about repeatedly over the years, but this is the first time, I think, that I've ever seen a columnist from the mainstream sports media talk about it. I haven't gone on an anti-saves tirade in a while, but Stark opened the door, so I be a rantin'.

There are so many things wrong with saves, I don't even know where to begin. Let's start with a somewhat extreme example. Let's say a reliever, we'll call him Paulie Rice, comes into a game with a 5-2 lead. Now, I know there's probably more pressure in the ninth inning, but protecting a three-run lead by getting three outs seems like something most guys can do, right?

So Paulie comes in, walks the bases loaded, gives up a two-run single, but gets out of the jam and the team wins 5-4. Paulie gets credit for the save, even though he pitched atrociously. That save is somehow supposed to reflect upon some quality inherent in Paulie's ability, even though he pitched like crap. True, there are a lot of one-run saves, where the room for error is smaller, but coming in with no one on base to get three outs doesn't seem too taxing for a big league pitcher, no matter what the score is.

The problem is, closers are often paid vast amounts of money based on their save totals. This is just silly. You know who leads the AL in saves this year? Joe Borowski, with an ERA of 5.40. Yet you can bet that Borowski is going to get the "proven closer" label and stick around in the majors for a while, probably stinking up the joint. It's crazy. You can find pretty much any decent pitcher off the scrap heap and plug him in as a closer and he'll rack up saves. Remember Tyler Walker and his 23 saves in 2005? Okay pitcher, resilient fellow, but "proven closer" my arse. Matt Herges also saved 23 games in '04, and he stunk. The list goes on. If a guy consistently blows saves and can't get it done in the ninth, it usually just means he's a bad pitcher. Do I need to bring up Armando Benitez here?

If you look at BP's Wins Expected Above Replacement Level (WXRL, yeah it's a mouthful), which gauges reliever performance based on stranding inherited runners and difficulty of situation, among other things, a lot of the guys at the top aren't even closers. It's because the most critical situations in a baseball game usually don't come in the ninth inning. Yes, there are good pitchers who don't have what it takes to close, for whatever reason (LaTroy Hawkins is one). However, there are also a lot of guys who couldn't consistently come in with the bases loaded and one out in the seventh inning and strand every duck on the pond, and I guaran-damn-tee you Joe Borowski is one of them.

And I won't even go into the ridiculous three-inning rule that allowed Wes Littleton to get the save in the notorious 30-3 game this year. So please, everybody, stop overvaluing saves. It's a bad statistic and just because a guy racks up 35 in a season and has a pair of goofy glasses or a scary mustache, it doesn't mean he has some sort of grit or intestinal fortitude that other pitchers don't. Ok, I got that out of my system. End rant.

--Also last week, BP founder Gary Huckaby caused a furor amongst the stathead community by announcing, in pseudo-Nietzschian fashion, that "baseball analysis is dead". This, of course, sent all of us nerds into a panic. Here we had the founder of the most prestigious and influential stathead website in the world just coming out and saying that everything we believe in is all for naught and we should just stop trying. What's going on here? Is OBP suddenly not life? Have our efforts to dissect VORP been rendered moot? Has Joe Morgan won?

Well, no. Actually, it really isn't that apocalyptic. Huckaby's point is a little muddy (even he admits that in a subsequent chat), but I think he's basically saying analysis is dead in the context of front offices actually utilizing such information. His argument is that all the obvious stuff (like OBP is good, don't shag young pitchers' arms) is pretty much accepted by major league teams now, so there are only so many things a stathead can give you if you're a GM and you hire him on to your staff. The thing is, most of the real in-depth number-crunching is being done independently all over the Internet; it's out there so anybody can grab it, unlike traditional scouting measures. So in that sense, why hire a bunch of stat guys to give you data that you can just get for free by having some intern spend five minutes on The Hardball Times?

I think Huckaby has clearly got a point here, but I also think he's being a merciless drama queen. Does he really have to announce that "baseball analysis is dead"? It just seems like a ploy to get people yelling. Why can't he just say something like, "We've reached a point where quantitative analysis has essentially reached its limits in being an asset to major league front offices. Good job, people. You nerds, don't stop doing what you're doing, though." As for the argument that every front office has accepted the common sense arguments of the saber-types...ladies and gentlemen, I direct you to the Juan Pierre signing.

Huckaby has always been sort of a pompous writer, and he's definitely not my favorite of the BP squad. Dave Studeman and Nate Silver have appropriate rebuttals to the "baseball is dead" article. It's a fun little controversy to wrap your brain around.

--The Giants are apparently looking to bring back Omar Vizquel on a one-year deal for 2008. If it's just one year, then this is a perfectly acceptable move. Vizquel still plays Gold Glove defense, and that's a tremendous thing to have with young pitchers who could get rattled by a bunch of errors behind them. With no immediate alternatives (I do not want Kevin Frandsen as the everyday shortstop, and who does?), bringing back Vizquel would make perfect sense.

One thing though: I really didn't realize until now just how bad Vizquel has been with the stick. He's hitting .243/.303/.300 on the year. That's mother-bleeping atrocious. This is seriously his worst season offensively, and he had some pretty crappy seasons early in his career with Seattle. I'd say there's no way he can get worse, but he's 40 and seems to be done. Like I said, I'd still advocate bringing him back for a year based on his defense alone, but man, his bat has been friggin' awful this season.

--There's really no point to this, but I'm a big Dave Matthews fan, so this is a little something I found on YouTube for all you DMB lovers. It's a live performance of one of his more, er, cult-ier (is that a word? Ah, screw it) songs, Halloween. It's neat because the song rocks and the band almost never plays it live. I think they've only played it in concert like seven times in the past ten years or so. The best part is at the end when Dave just starts talking gibberish into the microphone, like he's having some kind of epileptic fit. Enjoy, and have a good weekend!

Labels: anti-saves rant, arbitrary youtube links, link drop, omar vizquel, stat nerd stuff