The Post My Brother In Law Is Afraid To Write

Anybody remember my Sports Pinnacle blog post? I wondered if this was the best it was ever going to get for all of my sports teams. Since that moment Nebraska lost to Texas, the Dolphins have gone 1-2 with two division losses, and the Minnesota Twins were swept (again) in the playoffs. That kind of reinforces the fact that at the time of writing that post it really was the pinnacle since it has all be down hill from there.

Now the question has to come up; Is this the pinnacle for my brother-in-law's teams? Let's run through the list:

New York Knicks - The Knicks no longer employing Isiah Thomas should be reason enough for things to be looking better. Other than that though they just signed Amare Stoudamire and former UNC star Raymond Felton. Also, the Knicks "have made significant progress in recent days to aquire Carmelo Anthony" according to this espn report by Chris Sheridan. I am not saying they are going to be good, but haven't all of these moves at least made them relevant?

Washington Redskings - This would have been a lot better if the Redskins would have had one more drive in them on Sunday night against the Colts. Still they are only one game out of first place (in the division and the NFC) and three wins is only one less than they had all of last year. This is another improving team.

UNC basketball - This is tough to write and I am not just talking about trying to write this without making any jokes about being a runner-up NIT champion. If you were to look at UNC basketball objectively then you would be happy with two titles in the past 6 years, a #1 recruit (Harrison Barnes) this year, and a #3 ranked overall recruting class for 2011 led by James McAdoo.

San Francisco Giants - The Giants are making this whole postseason baseball thing look easy with five of their six wins being by only one run. First they beat the Braves in the NLDS and now they are up 3-1 against the Phillies. From all accounts they seem to be a fun team to watch. Also, in their corner is the fact that they will home field advantage in the World Series and it looks like they get to match up against the Rangers and not the Yankees.

The 2010 Minnesota Twins

The flight into Vegas is a long, strange experience. You can't help but tell there is a little bit of a different energy then say a flight to Memphis. The guys in front of me started off as strangers and after a few (too many?) cocktails were best friends discussing NFL lines by the end of the flight. Unfortunately the airlines had switched my seat and I wasn't sitting next to the two friends from Minneapolis that I was going with to Vegas. That gave me time to think about my expectations of Vegas since despite all of the media portrayals I had been exposed to I really didn't have many pre-conceived ideas on Sin City.

Vegas is a place of excess. There is really no other way of describing it. The lights are brighter, the food is better and the amount of money gambled can make sleeping at night a difficult experience. For me it was a relatively successful weekend. I won 8 out of 11 of my sports bets with the only losses being NC State (against VA Tech), the Colts (against the Jags) and the Seahawks (against the Rams). Those sports bets netted me a decent amount of money that I then conveniently lost playing blackjack, roulette and craps. Unfortunately I didn't win enough money to quit my job or even win enough money to come out head. I did have a great time and didn't lose very much money, which is better than a lot of people who visit Vegas can say.


Blackjack was the main game we played in Vegas. For those of you that don't know basic strategy in blackjack results in the house having a 52% advantage to the player's 48%. In the short term playing a hand of blackjack is close to a coin flip. In the long term that house advantage can add up, so that the casinos build bigger and bigger hotels.

There are two blackjack stories that I would like to pass along as I look back on the 2010 Minnesota Twins. The first one is my first time playing blackjack in Vegas. I lost my first 8 hands in a row with the first five being only one off (I had a 19 when the dealer had a 20 for example). Before I even had a chance to walk around I was down a decent amount of money. At that pace I would have hit my gambling limit before the Saturday morning college football games. It was not a good start that I was able to recover from later that night.

The other story is from watching my friend Brian at the blackjack table on Sunday night. He sat down and promptly lost 10 straight blackjack hands to this friendly dealer. The odds of that happening are less than 1%. Losing 8 to 10 straight hands in blackjack should not happen.

The Twins are now 0-9 in the playoffs since I moved up to Minnesota. There was the 2006 Twins with the Cy Young winner (Santana), batting champ (Mauer) and MVP (Morneau). They had home field advantage and promptly lost three straight to the Oakland A's. The Twins was 0-16 with runners in scoring position before a Rondell White single in Game 3 that resulted in Torii Hunter getting thrown out at home. The 2009 Twins led all three games against the Yankees and lost all three.

This Twins team was supposed to be different. They had moved into a new stadium that had provided the team with enough revenue to sign Mauer, Hudson Pavano and Thome.

They were a well rounded team that could absolutely crush right handed pitching. The regular season went about as well as expected as the Twins won 94 games and clinched the division with two weeks left in the season. They were able to rest key players and get their pitching staff in line. This year was going to be different.

This year wasn't different. The lost three straight to the Yankees. They lost from ahead and they lost from behind. The lost with another questionable call in another Game 2.

They lost because they couldn't pitch and because they couldn't hit. The lost to left handed pitchers and right handed pitchers. The same team that looked like they couldn't lose during the regular season suddenly became the Kansas City Royals.

This was not a successful year for the Twins. They sold out every game and Gardy might win the coach of the year award, but the time for just having success in the regular season is over. I would like to see a World Series game and the Twins are good enough to make it to the Series. I don't know if it bad luck or what, but I am starting to feel like MLB is like Las Vegas. Everyone knows the odds are stacked in favor of the house (Yankees), but that doesn't mean that in a small sample size (5 game series) that the underdog (Twins) can't win. As of now it feels like the string of blackjack hands where the dealer keeps getting a blackjack whenever you are holding two face cards. Maybe next year? Right?

A pesky problem

Normally I don't drink on a weeknight. It isn't that I think it is wrong or judge people who do, but really it isn't something that I normally do. I mean occasionally I might have a glass of wine with dinner or something a little harder if there is reason to *celebrate. Tonight neither situation is relevant, but as I write this a whiskey and coke is sitting two feet away on the coffee table. The reason is the story below.

*After every UNC loss I like to have a little Jameson on the rocks. Last year I might have a drank a little bit more than normal because of everyone's favorite runner up in the NIT.

This morning I was enjoying my cereal and oj and I heard a little rustling in our fireplace. I didn't think much of it until a squirrel popped its head out. At this moment I don't know who was more startled; me or the squirrel. *He ran out into our small duplex and scurried around until going into the bedroom. He was definitely afraid of me as he jumped from the floor to the bed to the lamp looking for a safe spot. Thankfully I was able to prop open the front door and then successfully lead the squirrel to the door. He happily (assuming) ran away in our front yard.

*I am assuming the squirrel was a he just because I don't want to use he or she every time. Sorry.

Anyway, that story was pretty funny when I retold it to M and some of my coworkers. I laughed about the situation and my reaction. The work day went fine and I was thinking it was going to be a little side story. Well it turns out that was just the beginning since when I came home the same squirrel (I'm assuming) was standing there in the middle of our living room next to a broken piece of stained glass and a turned over potted plant.

This time I was prepared and since no shotgun was available I grabbed a broom and chased the squirrel up and out through the fireplace. Then I spent the next 30 minutes cleaning up the squirrel hair and poop as well as the things he messed up around the place. It seems like every where I looked there was something else turned upside down that I hadn't originally seen. M came home and helped with cleaning up. We both were slightly upset about having this small rodent ransack our house. In terms of a having a squirrel in the house I didn't think it could get much worse.

Of course you probably know where I am going with this since it did get worse. M went to go clean behind the wine bottles in our kitchen. Little did she know that the squirrel that I thought had gone up the fireplace had actually come back down (before I blocked off the fire place) and was hiding out in the kitchen. When M got too close the squirrel jumped out in a way that can only be described as being shot out of a canon. M screamed in a way that would make any horror movie producer proud and I immediately jumped on the couch. The squirrel ran underneath the same couch I was perched on and M and I frantically discussed our strategy.

The strategy that we agreed upon was that she was going to open the front door and then I was going to try and move the couch out to startle the squirrel into moving. That didn't work as well as expected since the squirrel seemed content to stay behind the couch. In that moment M suggested that I move the couch in to try and get him to move. Well caught up in emotion I slammed the couch pretty hard into the wall. The rustling stopped. We slowly moved the couch away and saw what can only be described as a barely moving squirrel on it side. Upon further review the squirrel was barely breathing and did in fact die. It is weird to even write this, but I killed a squirrel with a couch.

Now if you have never been in this situation before here is a quick recap of what you do with a dead squirrel in the corner of your house. You panic. You call your jerk of a landlord, who proceeds to complain about his "bad day" and how he hasn't "even had dinner yet" while suggesting I wait till 8:15am to call his secretary to take care of the issue. You start calling all the pest removal companies that Google pulls up. The last one ended up being the most successful option since we were able to get a hold of Michael Tucker of Wildlife Removal Services who according to his business card is licensed, insured and experienced. That worked for us.

Michael came by our house and for $75 removed the squirrel, gave us advice and even cleaned up the small pool of blood from the badly damaged head. Even though I didn't know the social protocol I tipped him appropriately for all of this since what he did was something I wouldn't want to do for$75. He was about as nice as you can get and was extremely helpful cleaning up the squirrel and providing advise. If you ever have an animal in your house and you live in Minnesota I would call Michael at 952-884-3707.

Anyway, the exciting night ended and I am here enjoying my whiskey and coke (I might have a 2nd) and watching Ken Burns special on baseball. Hopefully this will be my first and last blog post on squirrels.

Sports Update - the pinnacle?

I was thinking to myself the other day about how this might be it. This might be the pinnacle of my life as a sports fan. The reason for thinking this is because everything seems to be working out for my favorite teams. Here is a rundown:

Duke Basketball - They won the 2010 National Title and are ranked #1 in almost all 2010-2011 previews like this one from ESPN. They have a really exciting guard based team (Smith, Singler, Dawkins, Irving etc) coming back next year that includes the brother of one of my favorite players Stephen Curry. Also, in addition to that they signed a recruit from Brandon, Mississippi (Tyler Adams) and look to be the frontrunners to sign the #1 ranked player (Austin Rivers) in the Class of 2011. It is amazing how things have changed in a year since at this time last year I was lamenting the state of Duke vs. UNC.

Miami Redhawks football - With two wins they have already doubled the amount of wins from last year. Sure they aren't up to the same level as they were in 2003, but this year's team has definitely made progress from last year. Also, bonus points have to be given to keeping the Florida game close for all four quarters.

Miami Redhawks hockey - back to back Frozen Fours.

Nebraska football - I am not the same Nebraska fan as I was growing up, but it is still nice to see the Cornhuskers do well. This year they have had a great start to the season and are currently ranked 6th in the AP poll.

Utah Jazz - They are coming off another 50+ win season and improved upon the previous year by making it to the 2nd round. The team showed signs of progress last year, but that isn't the most exciting thing. Nor is the most exciting thing the rare Jazz lottery pick of Gordon Hayward. The thing that really makes me want to count down to the beginning of the NBA season is that the Jazz traded for Al Jefferson. Jefferson has been one of my favorite players since I saw him play in the Coliseum in Jackson, MS. I am expecting big things from him now that he is paired with a real team/organization/point guard.

Miami Dolphins - The Dolphins are 2-0 with two road wins against the Bills and Vikings. I was able to cheer on the Fins at the Metrodome this past Sunday and saw a really impressive defensive performance.

The Defense has been incredible with Cameron Wake providing an great pass rush, Karlos Dansby living up to his free agent contract and also great play from Koa Misi, Vontae Davis, etc, etc. Misi, Davis and Wake were highlighted by Peter King as some of his Defensive Players of Week 2 in his Monday Morning Quarterback column.

However, the most shocking thing of all was the play of former 1st round bust Jason Allen. He had two interceptions and looked like the best player on the field. This is the same Jason Allen who was regulated to only playing on the special teams pretty much since he was drafted in 2006. If Allen can now be a productive NFL player, maybe the Fins should think about bring back John Avery and Yatil Green? Anyway, I am not completely sold on Miami due entirely to the fact that the offense has been dreadful under Chad Henne. Still things are also looking up for this team and it should only get better on Sunday when they play on ESPN against the Darrelle Revis less and possible Braylon Edwards less Jets. Ted Cook's will be served at 7pm for those Dolphins fans are interested in stopping by for the game.

Minnesota Twins - While it is a little disappointing that there won't be another fun game 163 like last year, I think all Twins fans will be ok with a better chance of advancing far in the playoffs. This year's team just clinched the AL Central title with a week and a half to go. They became the first team to clinch a playoff spot and are only a half game behind the Yankees for best record in the American League. It has been a fun baseball year with the new ballpark, new players (Thome and Valencia specifically), Delmon's improvement and the return of Liriano. They have been winning and because of that they have gotten some national attention including this post on the team, this post on Gardy and then this cover story from this week's Sports Illustrated from the best writer in sports Joe Posnanski. SI cover, which features a great view of M's office building below:

Let's see how the Twins and the rest of my favorite teams do in the next 365 days.

Personal Finance - the salary question

My parents came and visited Minnesota over Labor Day weekend. The trip included Prairie Home Companion at the Fair, a roadtrip to Red Wing and a Twins-Royals game at Target Field. Also, we all went out to eat a few times. During our last meal (our grand finale as my Mom would call it) at Salut on 50th and France we had an interesting conversation about personal finance. Specifically the topic of salary came up.

I would describe our family as having good communication on finances. Not great, but good. My Dad and I talk pretty regularly on stocks and certain strategies. He has provided not only an excellent financial example, but also has provided sound advice. Also, he got me hooked on Money magazine, which is now one of those things I look forward to every month. Let's just say that I am happy to have been brought up in my family.

There is one thing that hasn't been discussed often in my family and that is the salary question. I think I might have told my parents my starting salary at Target and maybe let my salary at Honeywell slip at one time. However, I have never once known what my parents made, which never concerned me as a kid, but now I find slightly surprising. It is one of those things that is not talked about and is a topic that makes my parents uncomfortable.

Why is that? Why is the topic of salary such a tough subject? The only reason I think it is such an important question is that people place so much importance on it. In some ways people can define themselves by their salary. They literally place their worth on what they are worth to a company. This shouldn't be the case for a number of reasons, but from a strictly financial perspective salary is only part of the total equation. Knowing someone's salary doesn't mean you know how much they spend, how much they save or what their parents have or have not provided for them. There are plenty of people that immediately come to mind who either don't have a salary or have a very small salary who live in expensive houses and go on wonderful trips.

One advantage to people sharing salary information is that it empowers you in salary negotiations with your current or future employer. If you know the going rate for someone of similiar background then you might be pleansantly surpised (your salary > friend) or might realize that you should ask for more money.

Of course the reason people don't do that is because of social norms. There aren't many people out there who want to make others uncomfortable. This is a real concern if the salary question might lead to answers of amounts that are very different. However, I think most of those amounts should be anticipated. A cashier at Taco Bell obviously makes less than than a dentist. If the difference is that large then it probably doesn't matter one bit if either knows each other's salary. Where it does make a difference is when people are in the same or similar fields. And for that I propose something unique: I will tell anyone who asks my salary as long as you also tell me your salary. I don't take great joy or discomfort in my salary and don't think I will have any problem disclosing that information to a trusted friend. Maybe I will? If I do have reservations then I will admit that I am wrong and as M would probably tell you that doesn't happen too often.

New job

I realize it has been awhile since I posted and an even longer time since I posted something non-sports related. No excuses on the front. Anyway, I would like to update everyone on something (work) I don't normally write about. You see after 37 months as a Demand Manager of Combustion it is time for me to take my talents to the new SAP team at Honeywell.

For those of you who are confused let me break it down for you. I am part of the SAP rollout for the ECC team with a primary focus on APO. The ECC team of course is part of ACS, which is one of the main businesses of Honeywell Corporation (ticker symbol HON). I hope this is clear for everyone since people at work use these acronyms without ever defining them. You either have to get a chip implanted into your head (very painful) or pick up what the acronyms mean through context, which is kind of like trying to learn the Egyptian language without the Rosetta Stone.

Anyway, in all *honesty I am excited to be joining a new team. This project should be a learning experience for me and worst case scenario is that I figure out I really hate working on projects. It comes with it a 13 month commitment, which means M and are staying in Minneapolis through at least October 2011. My joke is that will be enough time to see the Twins win back to back World Series.

*Does anyone else hate it when people use that phrase? Taken literally that phrase could imply that everything the person said before that moment was one big lie. The only phrase worse than that is of course when someone says "Can I ask you a question?"

I hope all is well. I have future posts coming up that I am tossing around. The topics include but aren't limited to; personal finance and the salary question, John Stockton vs. Steve Nash, the Twins 2010 review, fantasy football (I'm a genius - I took Arian Foster in the 4th round. I'm an idiot - I took him a round after I took Jonathan Stewart) and a few commercials that have been good (Ore-Ida) and bad (Michelle Bachmann). If you have a preference on what I write about it next just let me know.

Utah Jazz 2010-2011 Season Forecast: Steady with Sloan

My unsolicited advice for those readers with a large ego is to become a forecaster. I am confident that the size of your ego will dramatically decrease when you see just how difficult it is to forecast. The reason I can write this so confidently is that for the last three years I have been a professional forecaster for a Fortune 500 company. In addition to forecasting over 2,000 items I have participated in plenty of training sessions aimed at improving forecast performance. One might think that with this experience that I might be an expert forecaster. I am not. I try my best to increase the probability that my forecast will be accurate, but a good portion of the times the actual demand doesn't cooperate with the forecast.

Now that I have gone over my credentials (or lack of if you prefer) I am going to try my best to go over certain ways you can forecast the Jazz win total for next year. First I look over a few statistical tools for a top down forecast. For this I used total wins over the years where Coach Sloan was the head coach of the Jazz. After looking at those I looked at a bottoms up forecast by looking at the individual players on the roster for next year. For this analysis I used the Win Score per 48 minutes, which is just an estimate of the number of wins each player contributes to the team divided by the amount of time in a game. For more information on this stat please read the following from basketballreference.com.

Anyway, below are the forecasting techniques (in various levels of complexity) I used with the overall wins since the 1989-1990 season.

• Mean - A simple average of the 21 seasons is 51 wins per season.
• Median - The middle number of wins was 53 wins in a season.
• 3 year moving average - The average number of wins over the past three years has been 52 wins per season.
• Regression Analysis - 47 wins (This type of data looks at past data points and tries to create a "line of best fit"that reduces the amount of error between the model and the data. )
• Simple Exponential Smoothing - 52 wins (This type of forecasting places greater emphasis on more recent data points. If you care I used an optimal alpha of 0.79)
• Linear Trend Analysis - 45 wins (This type of forecasting technique tries place the best straight line through the data.)

There are other models I could use, but in the interest of time I stopped at those six. Overall the models predicted a pretty small range between 45 and 53 wins. This speaks to the consistency of Jerry Sloan has had in producing winning teams. Now let's see if the bottom's up approach to the forecast matches what we got above.

Using the stat Win Score and more specifically WS/48 I looked at each player and tried to predict their WS/48 and the amount of minutes they will play. For some players like Deron Williams it was easy because I used the same minute (2802) and same WS/48 (0.177) to calculate the same Win Score of 10.3 as he had last year. That means that according to this statistic Deron Williams directly accounted for 10.3 wins for the Jazz last year.

There was no reason to mess with those numbers, but with other players I made assumptions detailed below.

• Paul Millsap will have the same WS/48 (0.151) but will play more (projected 2673) because of Boozer leaving.
• Al Jefferson will have the same career WS/48 (0.119) and will play about the same minutes (2900) that he did in the 2007-2008 season.
• Andrei Kirilenko will have the same WS/48 (0.171) as last year, but will play more minutes (1802).
• Gordon Hayward was probably the most difficult player to forecast. I looked at the rookie year WS/48 for the past ten 9th picks in the draft. The average WS/48 was 0.0768, which included really good players like Andre Iguodala, Amare Stoudemire and Joakim Noah as well as busts like Patrick O'Bryant and Rodney White. The 9th pick of the draft seems to be very hit or miss with he lone exception being last year's 9th pick Demar Derozan, whad a WS/48 of 0.066 over 1664 minutes. For Hayward I used the average WS/48 of the past ten 9th picks (0.0768) and then estimated he would play 1700 minutes.
• Raja Bell - I estimated 1500 minutes and then used his career WP/48 of 0.085.
• CJ Miles - I increased his minutes to what Wes Matthews played last year (2025) and kept his below average WS/48 of 0.061 the same. The Jazz could really exceed expectations if Miles improves his game since there will definitely be minutes available for him.
• For the other players (Price, Fesenko, Gaines, Evans and Jeffers) I made a few minor adjustments, but nothing that would affect that Jazz win total by more than maybe a game or two.

I then made sure the minutes played for the team equaled 82 games X 5 players X 48 minutes per game or 19,680 total minutes. After all of those calculations and assumptions the total win score totaled up to 50.1 wins. The 50.1 is in almost exactly between the 45 and 53 wins that we got above so that makes me think that it at least feels correct. Also, as a general rule I tend to agree with a bottoms up forecast approach since it takes more time and analysis to do. With all of that that being written my official prediction for next year's Jazz team is 50 wins. Now I can just sit back, enjoy the season and see how wrong my prediction is since that is the life of a forecaster.