Baseball stats- ya gotta love 'em!

One of the many things I love about baseball is the stats. It starts with a pitcher's number of wins, losses, games started, games completed, shutouts, strikeouts, walks allowed, and ERA (run average per nine innings of pitching not including those runs scored due to defensive errors), and much more. And there's players fielding percentages- the number of errors compared to the total number of times the player fielded the ball. And then there's the batters hitting stats- number of hits, number of doubles, number of triples, number of home runs, number of runs scored, number of walks, batting average, on-base average, slugging percentage, and much more. 
Then there's the story of my poor Montreal Expos, who one year decided to improve their offence at the expense of defense. At the end of the year, they were the top team in their division in pitching (measured by pitcher's ERA, strikeouts, and other stats), and they were the top team in their division in hitting (measured by batter's batting average, runs scored and other stats). That year, they finished third in their division, because they used the better-hitting Wallace Johnson at second base instead of defensively amazing (but anemic hitting) Rodney Scott. Their preference for offensive numbers ahead of the less-measureable defensive capabilities was their downfall.
Then there's the story of the movie MoneyBall, and the real-life exploits of the Oakland A's in the early 1990s and the Boston Redsox on the early 2000s- proving that focusing on some statistics- the more important ones- does deliver results.
I bring all this up because I just read this article: http://www.athleticsnation.com/2013/6/12/4419388/bartolo-colons-historic-season. It's about the A's Bartolo Colon, who is having a good season pitching, while walking very few batters. And to quantify Colon's season, the author has dug deeply into the data (big data) to find the player's walks per nine innings of pitching and to calculate the player's walk percentage of total batters faced. But not just that-- also, the percentage of pitches in the strike zone, as called by the umpires, and of course, the percentage of pitches in the strike zone, as determined by Pitch f/x (which tracks the number of pitches that a pitcher throws both in and out of the strike zone, no matter what the umpires actually call the pitch).
So what does this all mean in the greater scheme of things?
Almost nothing.
But it makes me love baseball even more!

How to catch a football

Just wanted to present the most awesome photo of a football catch I have ever seen. The man's name is JJ Stokes. He was a decent receiver, not a great one; he played on the San Francisco 49ers when Terrell Owens was becoming a huge star...

No, it doesn't look like much, but what it does show is the super-intense concentration it takes to make a catch- even a seemingly simple catch. Hands ready and spread wide, eyes wide open and focused on the ball. Turning the body as much as possible towards the ball. That's what you have to do.
It's true that some players make 100 or more catches in a single year, so how hard can it be? Well, on the NFL broadcasts every Sunday (and Monday and Thursday, and sometimes Saturday), you're watching the best players in the world catch footballs. The truth is, the 3rd and 4th string receivers on most teams drop the ball a lot. Semi-pro receivers drop even more passes. Even the great Terrell Owens dropped tons of balls in his last couple of years.
The most common reason for dropping a passed ball is that the receiver just can't do it well. But those that do it well drop balls, too-- they take their eyes off the ball early. And that's the second most common reason for dropping the ball. A receiver will sometimes think too far ahead of the catch: "now that I'm about to catch this ball for sure, what will be my next move? where will I run? where is the nearest tackler? where are my blockers? where is....oops..."
The problem was right at the start- taking the eye off the ball.
And that's why I love this photo. Stokes shows us what you have to do-- what the best in the world have to do:
KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE BALL !!