Fashion Playtes: Save 50%
Buy a Fashion Playtes package worth $40 for $20. Offer includes customized clothing that children and teens can design by themselves. Offer valid on shipping if desired. Valid through January 25, 2013.
Lucky Vitamin: Save 50% on Nutrition and Wellness Products
Spend $10 for $20 to spend on your favorite health and wellness products at Lucky Vitamin. Use it on Kashi foods, Tazo teas, organic food purchases, vitamins and more. Limit 1 per household. Shipping not included.
The Hunger Site: $10 Off Fair Trade Gifts
The Hunger Site is offeringt $10 off every order of $40 or more when you use the code TEN4U at checkout. A flat standard shipping rate of $4.95 is also available. Order today and get a FREE "Dream" pin in honor of Dr. King on orders of $10 or more. Enter the code DREAM at checkout.
Lots of other sales are also available, including:
- Vietnamese Scarves for $10
- Nepali Bracelets for $5
- Peace Sign Boots for $8.99
And many more items.
Martin Luther King Jr. was super religious, just like me!
Reading Pile: 1/21/13
The End Times of Bram and Ben #1- First of all, I was really impressed with Rem Broo’s art style. It’s sort of a mix between Rob Guillory and Ryan Ottley, utilizing a thin line style with an emphasize on fluid action but with sketchy detail work. The story is fun and silly too, focusing on two friends dealing with the aftermath of the Rapture. One was taken by a clerical error and returned to Earth, deciding Heaven is boring and that he wants to be the Anti-Christ. The other is wondering why he wasn’t raptured, and what that means about the girl he likes and everybody else. Blasphemous hilarity ensues. A-
Thunderbolts #3- This book bothers me for a few reasons, but the one that really gets me may seem minor or weird to others. In this issue, the Punisher is helping guerillas trains by offering them target practice. Instead of just some targets or maybe someone who actually deserves to die, he has a chained orangutan and tells the trainees to shoot it. When they refuse, he releases it and it attacks, prompting someone to shoot and kill the orangutan. Now best case scenario, I can see Frank Castle killing the orangutan if it was a life or death situation and he had no other choice, or if he needed to save someone perhaps. Offering one as target practice? I want the douchbag to die after reading that, so I’m having trouble caring about this book. Also, Sinestro much? C
Threshold #1- While I liked the first story, I am beginning to feel like if you’ve read one Keith Giffen sci-fi thriller you sort of read them all to a point. It plays up the reality tv show aspect, but does put a nice mini-twist on it. I was more amused by the Larfleeze back-up though, and I think the team of Giffen and Scott Kolins is pretty solid for that character.I feel that I should point out that the logo design is one of the worst I've seen a good long while, and customer's can't even spot the book when they are looking for it. B
Plume #1- Another nice example of a successful Kickstarter campaign. While I like K. Lynn Smith’s art style, the storytelling was a bit slow for this format. For twenty-four pages of not too much actually happening, $3.99 is a little hefty a price tag whereas you can go read this online for free. I think a trade would have benefited this story a bit better, but it is nice to see them successfully get this printed. If you like quirky anime influenced supernatural westerns, this is something you should check out. B
Links for January 20, 2013
Much of the discussion on fear of radiation misses the essential point of noise in the data. forbes.com
USS Ronald Reagan crew members have describe illness they attribute to Fukushima accident but medical experts are skeptical. utsandiego.com
Protests spread on the issue of a Cumbri, England nuclear waste dump plan. guardian.co.uk
Carter Capps on a Gray January Day
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=== The Term "GREAT STUFF" Gets Tossed Around a Lot These Days .... ===
If you've got nothing Mariners that's better to do right now, head to MLB.com and enjoy this particular Capps vid. G'wan, nothing wrong with a little sunshine and baseball. Pitchers report in like four days, right?
Capps' first heater is so hard to see that a lefty batter, Josh Reddick, swings over the top of it. Ya don't swing over fastballs when ya miss 'em; ya swing underneath 'em, 'cause of the angle of the swing arc and the 'rise' of the pitch. Watch it again and you'll see that Reddick pulls one of those Nolan Ryan "C'mon, ump, anybody could hear that pitch was low" moments.
Capps' second heater lights up the red 100 font on the radar gun and you can just feel the seismo register as it SLAMMMMS into Olivo's mitt. Cespedes' demoralization is palpable. One time David Henderson took a first pitch like this and said, "Wow. Too tough to even BUNT that pitch. How are you supposed to hit it?"
The rest of the fastballs are pretty easy on the eyes, too. :- ) This moment brought to you by Stars & Scrubs.
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Jeff Sullivan presents a wonderful little Brothers Grimm tale that ends with the troll of Capps' slider waiting under the bridge to feast on Billy Goat Trout. "Look at where the breaking ball is CAUGHT, and consider that MLB GameDay has it touching the border of the strike zone at the FRONT OF THE PLATE," Jeffy sez, emphasis added. "That's how much that pitch moved."
He points out this little leaderboard that reminds us of just exactly where Capps' fastball resides in baseball's pantheon.
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Here is an SSI article from last year that reminds us of the effect of Capps' 89 mph changeup. That change is Capp's third pitch, but it is MUCH farther along than people realize it is (except, of course, for you the discerning SSI consumer). The arm action on it is Major League from the word Go.
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=== Career Arc ===
When Capps first came up to Safeco, he was as terrified as any rookie pitcher that Dr. D has ever seen ... up to and including that kid who thanked Albert Brooks' confidence by yak'king on the mound in his tryout.
Capps' arm slot, first coupla games, was all over the place, and in Capps' very first game MRS. Detecto pointed out that he threw 99 sidearm, 94 overhand.
It took Capps right about 10 games to shake the jitters out, and his arm slot quickly grooved in. His tempo measurably smoothed out. His velocity started sustaining at 98-100. And pesky rodent enemy managers starting hiding the women, children, and Mike Trouts. Here's the SSI article that sidecars the video you started with.
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Dr. D was attracted to Capps' starter's rhythm, and the Randy Johnson arm slot. He banged the drum for a Chris Sale conversion, and Terry McDermott spoke to a couple of people in the M's org about it, one of them being a shot-caller. The impression: Capps would need more control of his breaking ball before such a thing could be considered.
Well, sure, you want to see him throw a slider for a strike on 2-0 once in a while. The thing is, Capps was doing that, in September; it's not like his slider is rudimentary. Why they can put up with breaking balls the caliber of Beavan's and Noesi's, but Carter Capps has got to hit a Michael Pineda standard, you tell me.
NEXT
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Links for January 19, 2013
Fukushima debris hits Hawaii and triggers radiation concerns. rt.com
Ron Hubbard, owner of Atlas Survival Shelters in Montebello, says his shelters will protect owners from nuclear blasts, chemical warfare and other disasters. articles.latimes.com
A repost gives brief summaries of recent developments in Japan related to the accidents at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima plant include. Nuclearstreet.com
Work on a new waste treatment plant at the Department of Energy's Hanford site will pick back up after construction problems delayed progress on some of its facilities. Nuclearstreet.com
...and Carter Capps on a February Pitchers Report Day
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As a general rule, kids like this (by which we mean, Golden Boy relievers on three-year plans to become rich closers) are works-in-progress. They follow a fairly predictable roto arc. Here by the way is Ron Shandler's writeup of Capps for the coming season:
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Converted starter saved 19 games in AA (72K in 50 IP, 1.26 ERA) by pounding 94-97 MPH fastballs (sic - Dr D). Wasn't overmatched in first MLB trial (28K in 25 IP with .260 OBA), but command predictably lagged. Closer-in-waiting could be worth a few holds from the get-go.
LIMA Plan: A+
2013 Proj: 10.1 K, 3.1 BB, 0.7 HR
Ron-o-Vision translation: this kid is going to get 40 saves a year, so roster him in your Ultra league. Even in 2013 he's just as liable to make you $12 roto out of the pen.
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=== Learning Curve ===
Capps' rate of development -- the speed at which he is making progress -- is excellent.
- He went from terrified to just "nervy" in two weeks.
- He corrected his arm-slot issues in about four or five games, and they stayed corrected.
- His slider was perfectly functional already in September, which you can compare to the breaking-pitch development of (say) Blake Beavan.
- His CTL went from 11:6 in August to 17:5 in September.
Carter Capps is a quick study. Belee' DAT.
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=== Dr's R/X ===
Of course the Mariners want to see a functional slider, but Capps' slider was already functional and it was getting better on a weekly basis. He's likely to come to camp in March and throw lots of strikes with it.
And of course the Mariners aren't ready to ram Carter Capps or Stephen Pryor into the closer role for Opening Day, in the Wilhelmsen SP scenario. This might have been what was in the backs of their minds when they moved on Jack Hanrahan.
They wanna SEE it on Carter Capps, not rush him, give him a chance to eeeaaaaase on in to his destiny. Nothing wrong with that. My complaint is -- that philosophy does rule out closer and it does rule out 8th-inning setup man. But it don't rule out #5/6 starter!
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Is he a finished product? No, but as we've seen before, there are any number of orgs who will let a Gio Gonzalez learn in the rotation. It's pretty much just the Seattle Mariners who are too noble to climb the greasy little rungs of bringing a rookie pheenom to stardom WHILE THEY HAVE TO WATCH him take his lumps...
It's Dr. D's team, Carter Capps is a swing man in 2013. He's throwing 3-IP, 4-IP stints and he is getting spot starts, ominously prep'ing the Chris Sale conversion in July or August.
But supposing they don't wanna do that, which we definitely do suppose. You as a Mariner fan have a whoppin' good chance of getting to watch the 2013 Aroldis Chapman out there. This kid is a VERY exciting commodity and he's gonna be in Safeco from day one.
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