The only site I'll ever need...

[MAD]

If you like baseball just get one or both of these things. Well worth it, in my mind.

What if you love baseball but hate the Cubs?

[Canadouche]

Anyone have a chance to try the MLB.TV app for the iPhone?  Seems pretty cool, but not sure I want to shell out for it.

I had it last year. It's pretty cool - but you have to have the MLB TV subscription to watch games on your phone. It looks better than you'd expect and if you've got wifi access it is a nice way to kill a few minutes assuming you've got the battery life. If you just pay the 15 bucks for MLB at-bat you won't get the ability to watch games on your phone, but you will get the ability to have live game updates and to listen to either team's radio broadcast, which is fantastic.

If you like baseball just get one or both of these things. Well worth it, in my mind.

I'm debating the purchase of this.  The pro is the easy access to all the games, the con is that when the Cubs start eating ass I'll be stuck with easy access to all the games.

[Yeti]

A baseball question for everyone here: does anyone have a good place to find the stats on what's a good % of success for driving in a runner from third with less than 2 outs? There are a lot of arguments to be made about how valid this statistic is but it's something my friend and I were discussing and we're having minimal success finding out the answer.

Thanks for your help, only site.

http://keith.baseballevolution.com/walk4me.html

3. Runner on 3rd, one man out

In this situation, a team is likely to score 69% of the time for an average of .98 runs scored in the
remainder of the inning.   

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-monster-in-the-mirror/

The problem is that we don't know how valuable each event is. One way we can help quantify the impact of each event is through a run expectancy chart. Here's one for 2009, courtesy of Baseball Prospectus:

Men on    0 outs   1 out  2 outs
0-0-0      0.517   0.279   0.106
1-0-0      0.883   0.533   0.223
0-2-0      1.142   0.688   0.322
0-0-3      1.315   0.965   0.370
1-2-0      1.484   0.922   0.456
1-0-3      1.769   1.202   0.522
0-2-3      2.014   1.414   0.562
1-2-3      2.279   1.558   0.750

As the name implies, it tells us how many runs we expect to score in any one of the 24 base/out states until the end of the inning. We know that a runner on third with no outs has a high probability of scoring; RE tells us that, on average, a team with a runner on third and with no outs scores 1.3 runs from that state to the end of the inning.

This crap help?

[Slaky]

A baseball question for everyone here: does anyone have a good place to find the stats on what's a good % of success for driving in a runner from third with less than 2 outs? There are a lot of arguments to be made about how valid this statistic is but it's something my friend and I were discussing and we're having minimal success finding out the answer.

Thanks for your help, only site.

http://keith.baseballevolution.com/walk4me.html

3. Runner on 3rd, one man out

In this situation, a team is likely to score 69% of the time for an average of .98 runs scored in the
remainder of the inning.   

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-monster-in-the-mirror/

The problem is that we don't know how valuable each event is. One way we can help quantify the impact of each event is through a run expectancy chart. Here's one for 2009, courtesy of Baseball Prospectus:

Men on    0 outs   1 out  2 outs
0-0-0      0.517   0.279   0.106
1-0-0      0.883   0.533   0.223
0-2-0      1.142   0.688   0.322
0-0-3      1.315   0.965   0.370
1-2-0      1.484   0.922   0.456
1-0-3      1.769   1.202   0.522
0-2-3      2.014   1.414   0.562
1-2-3      2.279   1.558   0.750

As the name implies, it tells us how many runs we expect to score in any one of the 24 base/out states until the end of the inning. We know that a runner on third with no outs has a high probability of scoring; RE tells us that, on average, a team with a runner on third and with no outs scores 1.3 runs from that state to the end of the inning.

This crap help?

Yup. Thanks.

[Quality Start Machine]

I've got a pair for B.B. King at the House of Blues on 4/25 I need to unload.

$179 (face value) for the pair. Anyone want them?

[flannj]

I've got a pair for B.B. King at the House of Blues on 4/25 I need to unload.

$179 (face value) for the pair. Anyone want them?

Thrill is goin?

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

I've got a pair for B.B. King at the House of Blues on 4/25 I need to unload.

$179 (face value) for the pair. Anyone want them?

Thrill is goin?

BB King sucks.

[Yeti]

MLB At-Bat for the phones: Did anyone else get this? I have had it since opening day. So far, it works out great, but I'm having one problem with it. Maybe one of you has found a fix for this. When I open the app, it goes to the listing of the day's games. It will show the games in progress first followed by the next soonest game, etc. That works fine. Well, let's say it's 2pm and the Cubs play at 2:20. I open the app and it shows it as an upcoming game and when you click on it, it shows "Gameday Preview". Ok, that's fine. If I stay on that page, it will not automatically update the game if it starts. For example, if I stayed on the page until 2:30, it would just stay with "Gameday Preview" and not show the pitch-by-pitch. I don't see any "Refresh" button. My assumption was to go back to that main listing of the games and it would update. Well, when you go out there, it still shows it as an "Upcoming Game". When you click on the game again, it shows it as "Gameday Preview" again. I thought it would work right if I went to another day and it would refresh the current day's games.. No such luck.. So my question is, does anyone know where a "Refresh" is or do you know how to get around this? It's quite annoying. My only solution has been to close the app and reopen it, which is annoying as well.

[Saul Goodman]

MLB At-Bat for the phones: Did anyone else get this? I have had it since opening day. So far, it works out great, but I'm having one problem with it. Maybe one of you has found a fix for this. When I open the app, it goes to the listing of the day's games. It will show the games in progress first followed by the next soonest game, etc. That works fine. Well, let's say it's 2pm and the Cubs play at 2:20. I open the app and it shows it as an upcoming game and when you click on it, it shows "Gameday Preview". Ok, that's fine. If I stay on that page, it will not automatically update the game if it starts. For example, if I stayed on the page until 2:30, it would just stay with "Gameday Preview" and not show the pitch-by-pitch. I don't see any "Refresh" button. My assumption was to go back to that main listing of the games and it would update. Well, when you go out there, it still shows it as an "Upcoming Game". When you click on the game again, it shows it as "Gameday Preview" again. I thought it would work right if I went to another day and it would refresh the current day's games.. No such luck.. So my question is, does anyone know where a "Refresh" is or do you know how to get around this? It's quite annoying. My only solution has been to close the app and reopen it, which is annoying as well.

Email the At Bat team from the app, there should be an email address under Support.  That sounds like a bug or missing feature, not user error, to me.

Is it worth it, by the way?  I had it last year, but then they raised the price and yanked the 99-cent pay-per-view games out.

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

I'm trying to burn some videos shot on a Motorola Droid to DVD for someone using Pinnacle Studio (Windows XP).

When I view the 3GP files I pulled off of the phone directly in Studio, the audio tracks seem fine, but the video appears with what looks like two different shots interlaced together, like a double exposure.

I then tried transcoding the files using SUPER, changing as few settings as possible from the default.

Outputting to MP4 yields the same effect as above.

Outputting to both AVI and MPG results in videos with (again) perfectly fine audio tracks, but with video that's thrown into hyperdrive, zipping by as if it's playing at like 4-8x fast forward. (No interlacing with these, though.)

Little help, only site?

[Saul Goodman]

I'm trying to burn some videos shot on a Motorola Droid to DVD for someone using Pinnacle Studio (Windows XP).

When I view the 3GP files I pulled off of the phone directly in Studio, the audio tracks seem fine, but the video appears with what looks like two different shots interlaced together, like a double exposure.

I then tried transcoding the files using SUPER, changing as few settings as possible from the default.

Outputting to MP4 yields the same effect as above.

Outputting to both AVI and MPG results in videos with (again) perfectly fine audio tracks, but with video that's thrown into hyperdrive, zipping by as if it's playing at like 4-8x fast forward. (No interlacing with these, though.)

Little help, only site?

I'm guessing the videos don't play back that way on the Droid.  Can you play them back in other programs, and do you experience the same effect?  If you're on OS X, does it play that way within the Finder?  If on Windows, does WMP play them that way?  If so, the video file itself is messed up and there's probably not a lot you can do.    Have you tried transcoding with MPEG StreamClip?

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

If on Windows, does WMP play them that way?

WMP on this machine won't play the 3GP files directly. Windows doesn't recognize the format at all.

It does play the transcoded MP4, MPG and AVI files in the manner described above (just as Studio plays them).

If so, the video file itself is messed up and there's probably not a lot you can do.

That would suck. (I think these videos may be needed for legal proceedings.)

Have you tried transcoding with MPEG StreamClip?

Nope.

Looking at the MPEG StreamClip site, I don't see 3GP listed as a supported input format, but I'll give this a shot tomorrow. (Any idea what codec the Droid uses inside the 3GP container?)

[ChuckD]

If on Windows, does WMP play them that way?

WMP on this machine won't play the 3GP files directly. Windows doesn't recognize the format at all.

It does play the transcoded MP4, MPG and AVI files in the manner described above (just as Studio plays them).

If so, the video file itself is messed up and there's probably not a lot you can do.

That would suck. (I think these videos may be needed for legal proceedings.)

Have you tried transcoding with MPEG StreamClip?

Nope.

Looking at the MPEG StreamClip site, I don't see 3GP listed as a supported input format, but I'll give this a shot tomorrow. (Any idea what codec the Droid uses inside the 3GP container?)

What happens when you play them in VLC?

Assuming you can access these on OS X...

For the codec issue, you might try Perian. It's a bit of a shotgun approach, but may solve the playback issue.

As for transcoding, I've had good success using Handbrake over the years.

[Saul Goodman]

If on Windows, does WMP play them that way?

WMP on this machine won't play the 3GP files directly. Windows doesn't recognize the format at all.

It does play the transcoded MP4, MPG and AVI files in the manner described above (just as Studio plays them).

If so, the video file itself is messed up and there's probably not a lot you can do.

That would suck. (I think these videos may be needed for legal proceedings.)

Have you tried transcoding with MPEG StreamClip?

Nope.

Looking at the MPEG StreamClip site, I don't see 3GP listed as a supported input format, but I'll give this a shot tomorrow. (Any idea what codec the Droid uses inside the 3GP container?)

What happens when you play them in VLC?

Assuming you can access these on OS X...

For the codec issue, you might try Perian. It's a bit of a shotgun approach, but may solve the playback issue.

As for transcoding, I've had good success using Handbrake over the years.

I second trying VLC, Perian, and HandBrake.  I forget I have Perian installed sometimes.

[Dr. Nguyen Van Falk]

If on Windows, does WMP play them that way?

WMP on this machine won't play the 3GP files directly. Windows doesn't recognize the format at all.

It does play the transcoded MP4, MPG and AVI files in the manner described above (just as Studio plays them).

If so, the video file itself is messed up and there's probably not a lot you can do.

That would suck. (I think these videos may be needed for legal proceedings.)

Have you tried transcoding with MPEG StreamClip?

Nope.

Looking at the MPEG StreamClip site, I don't see 3GP listed as a supported input format, but I'll give this a shot tomorrow. (Any idea what codec the Droid uses inside the 3GP container?)

What happens when you play them in VLC?

Assuming you can access these on OS X...

For the codec issue, you might try Perian. It's a bit of a shotgun approach, but may solve the playback issue.

As for transcoding, I've had good success using Handbrake over the years.

I second trying VLC, Perian, and HandBrake.  I forget I have Perian installed sometimes.

VLC and Perian would just help with computer playback, right? I need to get these videos burned to DVD—I'm just interested in playback of the files on the computer for sake of seeing what will play on the disc.

As for Handbrake, can it be used to transcode to MPEG-2?