Paul DePodesta, a front office assistant for the San Diego Padres and former general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, now has a blog.

Like so many others, DePodesta first came to my attention in Moneyball, when he served as the Assistant General Manager to Billy Beane on the Oakland A’s. Paul is a brilliant baseball mind, and his blog will no doubt be an interesting read.

Zach Feinstein, a junior from Washington University, declared for the upcoming 2008 NBA draft. He’s been interviewed on radio stations and given press from guys like Henry Abbott of TrueHoop (the best basketball blog on the web).

The catch? He has no basketball experience or skills.

Zach is 5′8″ and 130 pounds, and the last time he played basketball was the 3rd grade. Like many jokers around the world, Zach declared for the NBA Draft this year, but no one else has ever been as funny while doing it. His website, DraftFeinstein, is chock full of hilarious information that you’d be hard-pressed to find on the scouting reports of other draftees this year.

Things such as:

• Strong decision making skills. Brilliant basketball IQ.
• No actual basketball skills, ability or experience.
• FG: 20%
• Rebounding: only to get over Sarah.
• Steals: like a Times Square Rolex.
• BLK: WHTE

Zach was interviewed by John and Lance this morning on 1560 The Game (the best sports station in Houston, bar none) here in Houston, and I laughed so hard that I nearly wept. I’ll post a link to the interview once they put it on the podcast channel, but go check out the website and peep this interview with Zach from Hugging Harold Reynolds in the meantime.

I went to GameStop yesterday morning and reserved Grand Theft Auto IV. Yes, I know that the game came out today, and honestly I hadn’t planned on getting the game when it came out. But the reviews of the game (it’s currently sitting at 99% on both GameRankings and MetaCritic) persuaded me to take a chance on it. As yesterday wore on, I got more and more excited, and I ended up going to the midnight release party at the GameStop here in Katy. I went home and played the game for about an hour before realizing that I needed sleep, and then played a bit more this morning. I haven’t done much, but I can tell you right now that this game is absolutely gigantic. It is utterly massive. I imagine that there will be 100+ hours of gameplay on this disc for those of you who are completist.

I’ll have a bigger review at some point, most likely on Friday. I don’t plan on doing much else outside of work over the next few days.

As anyone who knows me knows, I’m a gigantic Coldplay fan. In fact, they’re my favorite band in the world and have been for a long, long time. So it was with much anticipation that I woke up this morning and downloaded the new single, Violet Hill, which the band released for free on its website.

My thoughts? This is not the same Coldplay I fell in love with, but in many ways, it’s better. Violet Hill is far edgier, darker and more experimental than anything they have ever done. After the long ambient opening, the tune opens up with bombastic drums, guitars that are grittier than anything I ever expected from Coldplay, and an absolutely fantastic bass tone that holds the whole thing together.

Chris Martin remarked that the first three albums were “a trilogy” and that Viva La Vida would be something much different, something much more evolved and edgy, and if the first single is any indication, he was speaking the truth. It’s going to be off-putting to a lot of Coldplay fans who love the slow, soft rock of the past three records, but I love seeing an established band take risks.

Can’t wait for the album.

Check this out — Spike TV has an awards show called The Guy’s Choice Awards, and the voting is now open. I’m mentioning this because Anderson Silva is nominated for the World’s Most Dangerous Man award. Go vote and then watch the show on June 22nd.

This may be the biggest time-waster I’ve seen in the past month.

MLB tracks all pitchers using something called PITCHf/x. If you need a primer on PITCHf/x, then you’ll probably want to read up on this, but in short it’s a system for tracking pitches much more comprehensively than they’ve ever been tracked in the past.

Josh Kalk has put together a tool called the PITCHf/x Tool, and it lets you plot graphs on any major league pitcher, in any imaginable situation. It’s very cool, though there’s a bit of a learning curve, which is why I suggest going to the primer I linked above and reading up on the system before trying the tool for yourself.

(hat tip goes to Jason Kottke)

I got back from Ad:Tech San Francisco this morning at 6am. We had the red-eye flight from San Fran, leaving at 12:30am San Fran time and arriving back in Houston at 5:45 CT. I went home and slept a few hours and then came into work, and I think I’m still running on fumes.

Ad:Tech was good. Met a lot of new people and caught up with some old friends. Everyone in the industry seems to go to these trade shows, so it’s always fun catching up every few months.

I’ll post more later. Still pretty tired.

I’d planned on heading to the Juicebox around 5pm today for the 7pm start time because I wanted one of the team blankets. You know what they say about “the best laid plans?” Yeah, that totally applies here. Didn’t end up leaving the office until roughly 5:40, which meant we got to Minute Maid way too late to get one of the blankets. I must admit that I severely underestimated the popularity of these team blankets that don’t even cover an entire body, much less keep one warm, but I digress. Saturday is Hunter Pence bobblehead day, and I’m planning on being at the Juicebox right around 3pm to make sure I get one of those things.

Josh and I found a killer free parking spot and walked up to the ballpark. I gotta tell you, there’s nothing like a Friday afternoon in Houston where it’s 70 degrees outside and you’re walking up to the Juicebox. There is no better feeling in the world, although If I were to win the lottery I imagine my stance on that would change quite drastically. Minute Maid is such a beautiful park, and I never get tired of seeing it upon approach. 

We met up with Jason, the drummer for our church worship band, and went inside. Our seats were row 12, section 111, so they were pretty much perfect. We watched a bit of Marlins batting practice and heckled Gonzo a little bit, but I think he knows we still love him, steroids or not. I decided that instead of a Super Star Dog being in my future, a Super Star Dog needed to be in my present, so I left for the concession stand, where I proceeded to pay $16 for about $3 of food. Man, I love baseball and capitalism.

My notes on the game, depressing as they are: [box score]

• It’s sad to say, but I think Roy Oswalt might be declining at a rapid rate. In my Starting Pitcher preview, I noted that I felt like Roy was going to decline this year, but he’s dropping far faster than I could have ever imagined. Yeah, he’s Roy Oswalt and he can turn stuff around in the blink of an eye, but his “stuff” just isn’t there. He’s hitting good speeds with his fastball, but nothing else is working for him, and it’s almost like the Marlins were taking batting practice last night. 4 homers and 8 runs in 2 innings? This is not the Roy Oswalt of old. This is not even the Roy Oswalt of last year. It’s going to be a tough year for the Astros unless Oswalt can turn things around and give them a chance to win.
• The bullpen is terrible. Beyond terrible, actually. I’ve come to the conclusion that our starters need to allow zero runs through about 8 innings of work and our offense needs to produce 8 runs per game in order for us to have a chance at the playoffs. Turning the ball over to Dave Borkowski or Brian Moehler or Oscar Villareal is just not a good idea. Especially Villareal. That’s 3 homers he’s given up in two games of work, and 4 bombs total in nine innings.
• Mark Loretta is a LAZY SECOND BASEMAN. Kaz Matsui, I’m sorry I ever said anything bad about you. I’m sorry I questioned the logic behind paying you 4 million bucks a year. You are clearly worth it, if only to keep Loretta from ever stepping foot near second base again. There were about 6 balls hit in Loretta’s direction that he basically allowed to go by because he didn’t try hard enough to get to them. I understand you’re getting old, Mark, but Tejada’s old and he plays the game like he’s ten years old. Plus, the new “Kaz’s Classroom” segment on the titantron was a highlight of the evening for me. Basically, Kaz teaches Astros fans how to say baseball-related things in Japanese, and then they film some fans trying to say the words. Absolutely hilarious, and kudos to the new ballpark entertainment director for coming up with that one.
• I do love how the Astros exaggerate how far the home team’s homers travel. Berkman’s homer into the Crawford boxes barely made it over the fence at the 315′ mark, yet they advertised it as 338′. Nope. It was about 316′ and not a hair more. Cantu hit a homer for the Marlins that left the ballpark and they only advertised it as 365′.
• On the bright side, at least Jeremy Hermida is on my fantasy team. 

Editorial note: For those reading the live recaps on my blog, you’ll notice I am now cross-posting them to The Crawfish Boxes, which is the absolute best Houston Astros blog I’ve ever run across. Stros Bro does a fantastic job over there, and the site is extremely user friendly. I’d highly recommend checking them out, and there’s a pretty good chance that I will start posting some exclusive stuff over there as well.

Once again, I woke up today with no intention of going to Minute Maid Park tonight. I have tickets already for Friday and Saturday, and figured there might be such a thing as too much baseball. I was wrong, however, and there is no such thing as too much baseball. It’s ludicrous, really, and I don’t know why I considered it. So early this afternoon, I texted Jon to see if he’d be interested in going to the game, and he was. We made plans to leave for the ballpark around 4:15. I didn’t know how many people would show up, and after last night’s parking debacle I didn’t want to risk having to drive around for 30 minutes looking for a spot.

Needless to say, I worried for nothing. We arrived at the Juicebox around 4:45 and parked in our super-secret free parking location (seriously, it’s so good that I don’t want to share it for fear of people taking our regular spot. Perhaps if you ask nicely.) We made the trek over to the ticket window, and they had seats in basically every location still available. This surprised me, because it was one of the hottest tickets on StubHub today. We got two seats in section 325, right above third base, and since it was only 5 at this point we decided to head over to The Bus and Home Plate Grille and see about heckling Sean & John from 1560 and Charlie Palillo from 790. 

Got to Home Plate, and the scene was totally not what I expected. For some reason, the remote radio shows on 790 and 1560 always sound like they’re very busy and a generally wild time. This is not the case. At Home Plate, Charlie was sitting at a table by himself at the door doing his show, and not a single person paid attention to him. I actually felt bad about it, so we decided that heckling was out of the question. Plus, he’s a brilliant sports guy, and I figured that if I even said one cross word to him in joking that he might reduce me to a puddle of tears in mere seconds.

We had a drink and went next door to the Bus, where once again our hopes of an awesome remote radio show were dashed. Sean & John sat outside, looking bored out of their minds while doing the show. I actually think John Harris might have been asleep, but I cannot confirm this. At this point, the doors opened and we headed into the ballpark. We were one of the first 10,000 people through the door, so we got our collectible Carlos Lee Silver Slugger statues, which is kinda cool. They are probably plastic, but they are shiny, hard plastic.

We loaded up on foods that are bad for you and settled in to watch batting practice. Either they didn’t open the doors early enough or we took too long in the food line, because the Cardinals were already taking batting practice and the Stros were nowhere to be found. My two recollections from Cards BP? It was very hot, and Albert Pujols is a beast. He hit a shot about the Crawford Boxes that, I swear to God, was probably going 400mph when it bounced off the television screen above the boxes. It made a horrible sound, and I just KNOW that some Minute Maid tech guy is going to be cursing Albert tomorrow while he fixes that thing.

Around the second inning, we noticed that the park just wasn’t filling up, so we moved down to the 4th row in the field boxes in left field. I think I will go with this game plan from here on out: buy a cheap ticket, watch for seats to stay empty, and then move down as early in the game as possible.

Enough with the small talk, here’s the game notes:

• Shawn Chacon had some serious control problems. A friend of mine noted that Chacon can be very good when he’s got control, and very bad when he doesn’t. This was one of those very bad nights. Chacon had only given up 1 hit through 4 innings (I think; it may have been 3 or 5), but had given up two runs due to walks. He didn’t get shelled or anything, but he also didn’t inspire any confidence. I believe he threw 33 pitches in the second inning alone, which has to be some kind of record. I think Fernando Nieve is going to take his place in the rotation before the year is out, and I actually hope it’s sooner rather than later.
• Watching Tejada play is so much fun, because you can tell he’s having a lot of fun. It’s like he’s been given a whole new life in baseball again, and he’s loving every minute of it. His two-run double, scoring Carlos Lee from first base, was a thing of beauty. HIs defense is great, much better than I thought it would be.
• Here’s a note to all major league catchers: if you have the ball in your glove and Carlos Lee is barreling down the basepath towards you, it’s probably wise to just drop the ball and get out of the way. Otherwise, there could be death in your future. Carlos didn’t kill La Rue tonight, and the Cards catcher should be very thankful for this.
• I’m not going to freak out about our bullpen, although I did question why Coop brought Geoff Geary into the game in the 8th instead of Doug Brocail. Isn’t Brocail supposed to be the setup guy? Wesley Wright continues to impress, and Oscar Villareal did a good job tonight in his one inning of work. I was hoping to see Jose Valverde redeem himself for last night’s farce of a closing job, but no such luck on this night.
• Good to see Hunter Pence get out of his funk. Well, kinda. He’s still taking some crazy swings at those low and away breaking pitches, but he did hit a triple tonight. I hope he rebounds soon, because the Astros need him to be the player he was last year, and he’s also dragging my roto team down.

I think I’m going to make a habit of posting these “live recaps” of games that I attend at Minute Maid Park. They’re not actually live, per say, but more of a reflection of my time spent at the ballpark for a certain game.

As I noted earlier today, I made the last second decision to go to the game this afternoon. Khalil had tickets and I was jealous, so I decided to go down and at least see if there was anything available. I had tried Ticketmaster and even StubHub, and no tickets were available at either site, which is a rarity.

I thought the game started at 7pm, so I’d planned on leaving work around 4:30 to make the 20 minute trek over to the ballpark and see if there were any tickets available. At about 4:20, I browsed to Astros.com and discovered that the game actually started at 6, so I immediately left work and headed downtown. It took awhile to find parking and I ended up paying $20 for a spot. I figured that by the time I waited around for a free spot to open, the scalpers would have sold all their tickets. I parked in a lot close to the stadium and asked the attendant if I could go to the “white tents” (where ticket sellers are) and see if there were any tickets available. He told me yes, so I promised to come back and pay my parking fee if I was able to get a ticket.

I ended up buying a field box seat for $40, which is exactly $1 more than they sell for regularly. I had fantastic seats. I walked back over to the parking lot, paid my fee, and then went to the stadium.

The club had a whole bunch of opening day festivities going on, including a few paratroopers jumping into the stadium. One man simply must have been going around 30mph when he landed; I feared for his life. Milo Hamilton introduced both teams, and then Jack Ingram sang the National Anthem. 

And with that, it was time to open the home season! Here’s my notes from the game:

• If Wandy Rodriguez pitched as well on the road as he does at home, he’d be one of the top 5 pitchers in baseball and the ace of our staff. Rodriguez pitched 7 1/3 innings, giving up only 3 hits and zero runs while striking out 7. He was utterly dominating, and I still cannot understand why he pitches so well at home and so badly on the road. Maybe the club really does need to take his home furniture on the road with him. He baffled the Cardinals tonight and baffled me with the home/road difference in his pitching.
• Man, this team can hit some bombs. Lance Berkman hit an absolute bomb to center field that was never in doubt, and Carlos Lee followed it up with a shot that very nearly cleared the ballpark wall in left field. J.R. Towles, a guy I think is going to be the best hitting catcher in baseball over the next few years, hit one in the next inning. And of course, Miguel Tejada hit a 2 run walkoff in the bottom of the ninth to give us the win.
• Michael Bourn is fast. Like, really fast. I think the only way an opposing catcher is going to throw him out is if he overslides the bag, which he has a tendency to do. He stole two more bases tonight, and on the first one it looked like he was going to slide into left field. He makes it look easy and brings a brand new dynamic to the Astros that they haven’t had in 15 years or more, since before Craig Biggio’s legs got old and creaky.
• I hope tonight wasn’t an indicator of what we can expect from Jose Valverde for the rest of the season. I don’t think it is, but it still worries me that he gave up three runs to a team that had barely managed to get on base the rest of the night.
• Tejada is doing a fantastic job as a defensive shortstop. I expected a gigantic drop from Adam Everett to Tejada as far as the glove is concerned, but he has made some fantastic and difficult plays in the first 8 games. His bat gives him a huge edge over Everett overall. My only complaint with the trade when it happened was losing Luke Scott, and he’s got a .538 batting average for the Orioles this season. No way he can maintain that pace, but I think he’s going to be a great player and we may end up regretting his loss much more than we expected.
• And lastly, I just wanted to point out that Albert Pujols is a gigantic, gigantic beast of a human. He looks like a pro wrestler. Seriously. He hit a pop fly tonight that would have been just outside the infield for everyone else, but because he’s Albert Pujols and he’s ungodly strong, it went all the way to the wall, where Carlos Lee grabbed it. A 314 foot pop fly that missed being a homer by about 2 feet? That dude is packing some punch, but we already knew that.