Cube Notes

The ratio of Americans to foreigners at the major league level has risen from 3% in 1903 to 26% in 2008. International scouting is more important than ever as there is a high probability that one out of every 5 players on your team will have learned the game somewhere other than in the US.

Some teams and general managers have shied away from foreigners but others have embraced them; to a point where 50% of their players were born outside of the States or Canada. Omar Minaya and Ned Colletti are stocking their teams with imports more than any other General Managers in recent years. Omar Minaya made his presence felt immediately after being hired to lead the Montreal Expos in 2002. Though they already had a large % of foreigners on their team (40.4% in 2001), Minaya quickly boosted it up to 44% and after taking over the New York Mets in 2005, he raised their ratio of foreigners from 23% in 2004 to 47% in 2006. Does this translate to winning? Well, it didn't necessarily result in a World Championship for the Mets but how about for other teams?
Consider the % of foreigners on the last 10 World Series winning teams:

2008 PHI  15%
2007 BOS  33%
2006 STL  24%
2005 CHW  32%
2004 BOS  22%
2003 FLA  28%
2002 ANA  20%
2001 ARI  19%
2000 NYY  30%
1999 NYY  31%

2004 Los Angeles Dodgers 51.2%
2006 New York Mets       51.0%
2005 Los Angeles Dodgers 47.7%
2005 New York Mets       47.6%
2007 New York Mets       46.9%
2008 New York Mets       46.0%
2002 Montreal Expos      44.2%
2003 Montreal Expos      44.2%
2006 Los Angeles Dodgers 44.0%
1997 Toronto Blue Jays   43.2%
2003 New York Yankees    42.9%
2005 Baltimore Orioles   41.3%
2008 New York Yankees    41.2%
2001 Montreal Expos      40.4%
2004 Baltimore Orioles   40.4%
2005 Seattle Mariners    39.6%

Arizona Diamondbacks   25.7%
Florida Marlins        24.9%
Los Angeles Dodgers    24.2%
Pittsburgh Pirates     21.4%
Colorado Rockies       21.4%
Tampa Bay Rays         20.8%
Washington Nationals   20.5%
Toronto Blue Jays      20.1%
Cleveland Indians      18.7%
New York Yankees       18.4%
Baltimore Orioles      18.0%
Seattle Mariners       17.4%
New York Mets          17.3%
Atlanta Braves         16.9%
Texas Rangers          16.3%
Cincinnati Reds        16.3%
St. Louis Cardinals    15.9%
Chicago Cubs           15.8%
Chicago White Sox      15.6%
Milwaukee Brewers      15.5%
Houston Astros         15.4%
Los Angeles Angels     14.6%
Kansas City Royals     14.3%
Boston Red Sox         14.2%
Detroit Tigers         14.2%
San Diego Padres       13.9%
Minnesota Twins        13.6%
Oakland Athletics      13.6%
Philadelphia Phillies  13.4%
San Francisco Giants   12.8%

By Year:

1903 3.3%
1904 4.2%
1905 4.2%
1906 4.3%
1907 3.6%
1908 4.0%
1909 2.8%
1910 2.4%
1911 1.8%
1912 2.7%
1913 2.6%
1914 3.7%
1915 2.3%
1916 3.4%
1917 2.9%
1918 3.4%
1919 2.1%
1920 2.1%
1921 1.9%
1922 1.4%
1923 0.8%
1924 0.7%
1925 1.3%
1926 1.1%
1927 0.7%
1928 0.8%
1929 0.9%
1930 0.6%
1931 1.2%
1932 1.1%
1933 0.8%
1934 0.6%
1935 1.0%
1936 0.8%
1937 1.0%
1938 0.9%
1939 0.9%
1940 1.1%
1941 0.9%
1942 1.5%
1943 2.2%
1944 2.8%
1945 3.1%
1946 1.3%
1947 1.4%
1948 1.4%
1949 2.6%
1950 3.1%
1951 3.4%
1952 3.0%
1953 3.8%
1954 4.2%
1955 5.0%
1956 5.5%
1957 5.7%
1958 6.1%
1959 6.8%
1960 9.0%
1961 7.5%
1962 7.4%
1963 7.9%
1964 8.8%
1965 8.7%
1966 9.3%
1967 10.1%
1968 10.4%
1969 11.5%
1970 11.2%
1971 10.2%
1972 10.7%
1973 11.2%
1974 11.1%
1975 9.7%
1976 11.4%
1977 10.4%
1978 10.3%
1979 10.4%
1980 11.2%
1981 10.5%
1982 10.6%
1983 11.9%
1984 11.2%
1985 11.1%
1986 11.0%
1987 11.9%
1988 13.5%
1989 12.5%
1990 13.1%
1991 14.4%
1992 14.2%
1993 14.5%
1994 15.0%
1995 16.6%
1996 17.9%
1997 21.1%
1998 19.9%
1999 21.3%
2000 22.4%
2001 24.1%
2002 25.4%
2003 25.0%
2004 26.7%
2005 27.1%
2006 27.2%
2007 26.2%
2008 26.2%

+ Not sure why I didn't notice but the South Coast League did not play in 2008. I grabbed the 2007 stats and so there are duplicate stats for all players participating in this league.

I'll have that updated on the site soon.

+ I have added stats for the following Independent Leagues.


American Association
Atlantic League
CanAm League
Continental League
Frontier League
Golden League
Northern League
South Coast League
United League

Two interesting names pop out.

• A new player named Rich Lawyer
• Former NHL hockey player Theo Fleury played in 2 games for the Calgary Vipers.

+ My next project will be to work 100% on the new site design which will hopefully be ready sooner than later. Once that is done, I can go back to my data projects.

+ I'm not sure how much value people put on fielding statistics but in case you are interested, I have finally updated minor league fielding stats for all affiliated leagues between 2006 and 2008. The only exception is that I don't have pitchers fielding stats or DH appearances. As always, for minor leaguers, outfielders will simply appear as "OF" instead of the specific position.

+ At one time, The Baseball Cube was littered with ticket advertisements by competitive ticket companies trying to use link placement as a means of getting higher rankings in the search engines, i.e. Google. Over the last year, Google has made some adjustments to their search algorithm that now penalizes ticket companies and sites that show these ads with respect to search rankings. And so the trend on the Cube is that there are not only less ticket ads but there will likely soon be none.

That provides the opportunity for a site redesign since much of the current design is built around making room for these ticket ads. You can expect to see something new in the next couple of weeks or months. It will be a more vertical display that will require a lot of scroll down but all of the same information will still be there and there may even be a few new surprises.

+ I've started a section on Baseball Studies which thus far only includes the Organization Stability post that I made last week. I have more studies on the way and if you have any interesting "studies" that you'd like to see me complete, don't hesitate to contact me.

+ We're up to date with Major League Stats for 2008. The data products will be completely updated by tomorrow.

+ I've updated the Minor League Team Pages to now include playoff results for 2008.

+ I should have Major League Stats online next week and by extension, all of the data products for 2008 should be available.

+ I have happened on a new band called Kings of Leon. Brilliant straight-ahead gutsy rock. "Arizona" is my new favorite song.

+ Working on a baseball project today, I came across the St. Cloud State Huskies logo and was mortified at their lack of originality. A native Montrealer, I grew up with the Montreal Canadiens as religion and it remains that way into their centennial year.

Surprisingly, I cannot find any reference to this similarity on the Internet either because nobody cares or nobody knows who the heck the St. Cloud State Huskies are.

But no worries. I found some comfort when I saw the name of the St. Cloud baseball field.

+ 2008 Minor League Stats are now available on the site. 

+ From the College World Series winning Fresno State University Bulldogs who to the 4-52 Coppin State Eagles, Division I college statistics are now available on The Baseball Cube.

+ Did you play high school baseball in 2008? Is there absolutely no chance of you making the major leagues like about 99.5% of all high school baseball players? Well, you might now be listed on The Baseball Cube.

I've been adding high school records and rosters for teams one conference at a time, in no particular order and about 2400 US high schools will now have their 2008 record and [possibly] their roster. The long-term plan is to not only post yearly high school data but to link players from the roster to their TBC player page [if it exists].

And if you're a player listed and you'd like to have your own player page with your college stats and biographical information, please send $10 through paypal to us and we'll make the effort to create a page for you and include you in the search.

+ I've also enhanced the high school pages with some additional information. I've added more nicknames and links to web sites as well as the school colors for a bunch of teams. The team's yearly record [2008 only] may also appear on the page with a link to the roster or to the conference standings.

Finally, for many schools, I've included a list of notable alumni that attended the school. These lists are usually debated quite heavily as there will be omissions and corrections for all lists as well as what constitutes notable.

Currently, the "Update High School Information" link does not work so use the contact us form for any corrections until I can get it fixed.

I think this will be a fun and nostalgic section for players and fans in the years to come.

+ If you have any ideas for new baseball lists, please don't hesitate to send them my way.

+ The Devil Rays took Tim Beckham #1 overall for their 4th #1 pick since 1999. The years of futility are finally paying off Pittsburgh Penguins style as the Devil Rays find themselves battling for the AL East lead with the Red Sox.

TBC now has draft results and player pages for all 1504 drafted players.

+ So where have all the updates been? As always, big projects are happening behind the scenes and this time, I'm focusing on high school baseball. You should see some results from this section before September.

+ One of the features that sets us apart from other web sites is our inclusion of disabled list data. I have updated the database for players who were active in 2007 so we now have 2001-2007.

+ The database has been updated to include player deaths and debuts for major leaguers for the 2007 season. The new layout, up until today, did not include this information. Debut dates are linked to the game boxscore from the player page. Death information is for major leaguers only and displays the date of death. For minor leaguers and other players who have passed away, you can send along the date of death for inclusion. For non major leaguers, date of death may be absent as its more difficult to track.

+ I've also added 2008 salaries to the salary database. This is only for players who started the season on a major league roster or on the disabled list. I'll update the rest of the players at the end of the season.

+ Spring training statistics are no more. Not only do they take up space on a player's page, they take up database space and are fairly insignificant. I might try to replace them with more significant statistics like fall/winter Leagues or other International leagues. I've had requests for Mexican League data as well.

+ Disney World was a success for our family. 10 days of non-stop park hopping between the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios (formerly MGM), Animal Kingdom, Blizzard Beach, Typhoon Laggon and Downtown Disney. Our kids are 5 and 3 and they had a good time but they were more likely to enjoy the pool or the arcade at the hotel instead of Small World or Astro Blasters with Buzz Lightyear. I would recommend to any family that if you are planning to go to Disney only once, wait until your kids are all 48 inches or taller (so they can ride on most any ride) and are at least 6 or 7 years old. My favorite Disney rides:

• Test Track
• Aerosmith's Rock n' Roller Coaster
• Splash Mountain
• Primeval Whirl
• Expedition Everest
• Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters
• Tommorowland Speedway

+ Sorry for the lack of updates. Sometimes life gets in the way and sometimes you accidentally overwrite your "site build" program and have to rebuild it from scratch.

Current season statistics are now available on player pages. They were updated late last week, before the disappearance of my site building program. I'll try to update the stats at least twice a week so that each player's page gains more relevance. You might notice that for now, the team statistics pages for 2008 are not available. I'll be updating those next.

Oh, and the stats are for the majors and affiliated minor leagues.

+ You might have noticed an update to the layout of the site within the last couple of weeks and at the time of publication, I liked them but upon review, I have decided to redesign once again.

Today, you will notice that the player pages are updated and looking very different. The data is organized differently and the width of the page is compressed into 1024 pixels making design easier and hopefully overall, the site easier to read. Any feedback is appreciated.

+ Recently updated on The Hockey Cube. Includes player logs, player stats analysis, team logs, a calendar, a daily view with daily standings and leaders and finally, the boxscores. Faceoff data was not available for 2003-04 but I'll try to insert it retroactively when I find it.

2002-03 is already underway.

+ Once again, sorry for the lack of updates on the blog. As is always the case, I get wrapped up in a large project and I neglect all others. Though I am still entrenched in designing a new site layout that will clean up the inconsistencies and control the ads a bit better, I have started in on some of the smaller projects that are on my to-do list.

+ The first project on that list was for player Transactions between December 1,2006 and February 28,2008. One of the new features of the Transactions, going forward, is the inclusion of length of contract. I don't have dollar figures but on Johan Santana's page, for example, you'll see he signed a 6-year contract with the Mets after being traded there.
As with every player update, expired sponsorships have been removed and profiles have been updated as a result of visitor updates submitted.

+ I'm headed back to Disney World at the end of April and I am betting that there is snow on the ground here when I leave. Today is the first day of spring and Montreal is celebrating with more snow. My bet is that if the groundhog could get his head out of his little hole and through the 10 feet of snow above it, he would look outside and say six more weeks of winter before jumping back to his hole and his HD television. Ideally, when I leave for Disney, I would like to see a few inches of snow still on the ground so I could at least feel like I was leaving winter behind and heading directly to summer. I'm still wondering why my ancestors decided to settle up in Canada when there were so many tropical climates available.

+ Another new feature on The Hockey Cube (THC) as it slowly morphs into my ideal web site. I have added the ability to sponsor a player page. Unlike The Baseball Cube, The Hockey Cube will account for almost all revenue on the hockey site.

+ A new feature on the Hockey Cube's front page is Milestones. For THC, a milestone is a significant statistical achievement for a player during a given season or for his career. Usually, our milestones will be a player reaching an even-number stat total. 300 goals or 1400 penalty minutes. The career milestone intervals are based on the frequency of the stat. Shots on goal will be every 500 while goals, assists, points and penalty minutes are for every 100. For career stats, we'll also track a player's 1st of any given stat.

For season stats, we're tracking every 10 of goals, assists and every 25 points while we're counting every 100th shot. There are other stats involved but you get the gist.

The Milestones data will be available moving forward only and there are plans to add milestones for every game day going back to 2005 and might actually happen this week.

You'll also be able to see the milestones on a particular game date. Scroll down past the day's standings.

I might separate season and career statistics since I find the career milestones much more interesting and there are many more season milestones listed. Let me know if you have any thoughts.

+ The player pages were updated today. As part of the update, each player page now has a new sponsorship price. I created a formula where each page started at $7 and then I added to the price based on certain criteria such as years in the majors, awards won, whether they were active, their highest level reached and then I added the last number of the phone number of the first person they kissed, their social insurance number divided by 300 and then I took their weight, multiplied by Pi and...well, you get the idea.

Remember, sponsoring pages in bulk entitles you to at least a 10% discount, depending on how many pages you sponsor. There are currently close to 1500 pages sponsored on The Baseball Cube. Don't be left out

+ The NHL Trade Deadline has come and gone and my 4th place (in the conference) Canadiens traded away one of their #1 goalies, Cristobal Huet. The deadline comes complete with an 8-hour broadcast on TSN. I'm one who thinks deadline deals in hockey are overrated since they tinker with team chemistry and for every happy player on that team, there will be just as many unhappy because it means their best friend just left or their ice time has been decreased. As much as we think that all these players only care about winning, I have to believe that most of them care about themselves playing well first and when that has been achieved, the success of the team. Call me a cynic.

+ For tomorrow's hockey update, historical hockey awards will start appearing on player profile pages. I've tried to find the major awards for all North American Leagues that I track (Minor, Junior, Pro) and if I miss any, please don't hesitate to let me know.

+ One of my favorite features at The Hockey Cube is Stats+. THC builds a Stats+ page for every NHL player/season since 2005-06 (so far). Its Hockey Splits mixed with the interesting and the unusual. For example, did you know that Dainius Zubrus has been in on 76 goals with Alexander Ovechkin? or that Saku Koivu has taken 42 hooking penalties in the last 3 years, 3 times more than any other penalty type.

Here are some of the goodies:

Win-Loss Record: A player's win-loss record when he is in the lineup. Gives you an idea on how much team success he has seen throughout his career and it also gives you an indication as to how important he might be to his team.

Home-Road Stats: Points and other stats on the road vs the comfort of home.

Stats by Month: Does he start off strong and then fade? Or does he get hot in January. Includes the current season and career to date.

Stats by Opponent: Another traditional split-type stat. All major stats broken down by opponent. Ovechkin loves playing the Thrashers.

Successful Linemates: A compiled list of the top ten linemates a player had during the season and career-to-date. In other words, who also received a point on a goal with this player. This year, Nicklas Backstrom has been on goals with Ovechkin 21 times. Over Ovie's career, Zubrus has been in on 76 goals with Zubrus. Chris Clark and Alexander Semin are far behind.

Shootout Attempts: A log of shootout attempts with opposition and even what # shooter the player was.

Penalty Shots: Same as above

Penalty Types: Ovechkin gets caught for high-sticking more than any other penalty but not by much. He has 10 high-sticking penalties over his career. Referees should be notified!

Fights: Includes fighting opponent and a link to the game. Its not quite HockeyFights.Com but it at least will provide you a complete list. Jared Boll has 18 of 'em.,

Note that all career-to-date data is dependent on available data in our database. At the current time, we only have 2.5 seasons of boxscore data. 2003-04 should be available in about 2 months.
So far Stats+ only tracks special stats for skaters but there are plans to create a goalie Stats+ in the future.

If you have any suggestions for this page, please don't hesitate to send them our way. tbc at thebaseballcube dot com

My Hockey Injury
+ Every Sunday afternoon between 2 and 4, I head downtown to play ball hockey with my goalie-friend. We use a whiffle ball with a rag stuffed in the middle. The ball is also wrapped in some tape. Getting the ball off the body doesn't usually hurt. But yesterday, that ball hit my body hard and it hurt worse than anything I had ever experienced playing ball hockey, or any other sport.

I play defense and I don't wear a jock. The other team has pressure in our zone and the ball is thrown back to the defenseman at the point (the point is about half-court. Under attack, the player circles back a little bit and finds himself with space. I am standing to the right of my goalie, 6 feet off the net. I am watching a winger to my right. The man at the point is small but he has a hard, straight slap shot. It is literally like a bullet. He has already put a red welt on my goalie friend's neck and he came within iniches of injuring a player on his own team earlier in the day, his face saved only by the buttend of this player's stick. His shots tend to rise and sometimes are out of control. But they are hard. He's faking passes and his teammates scramble to get open and suddnely, he must see a lane to the net. He takes 2 steps and instead of continuing along, he decides to shoot. He is about 30 feet from me so I don't think to cover the jewels. I assume the ball is going on net and that I will handle the rebound. Afterall, I am not between he and the net. The shot comes in straight and it comes in hard but its not on net. It seems to be on me. It happens in slow motion. My first reaction is to freeze and I'm not sure why. My body and brain fight over how to defend. The brain wants to run. The body wants to use hands. The debate never ends as time runs out. The ball has already hit my jewels dead on. I go down hard. Harder than I have ever gone down. If there were religious Christians on either team, they probably didn't appreciate the subsequent prose. I might have thrown some expletives towards Jesus in the aftermath. It was a blur. The words kinda just flowed out. I heard the collective oohs and aahs from around the gym admist, ironically, splatters of chuckling. I remembered the week before when a similar incident occured and Steve, the guy next to me on the bench said "I don't know why I always find that funny. But it just is."

Now, I am running (skipping/wallowing/crawling) to the gym door exit. I don't know why I am leaving. I think my instinct is to just be alone with this pain. I walk through the halls of the YMCA and the pain is still strong. In my head, I am already at Sports Experts buying a jock-strap. And 3 minutes later, I fold upwards and stand up straight and the pain seems to be gone. Its run its course. Everything seems A-1 again and I proudly strut back into the gym, ready for my next shift and I play the rest of the game at 100%, as if nothing happened, except for my tendency to turn to the side for every shot on net. We blow a 6 goal lead and I'm sure it has something to do with my now-wimpy defense.

I know it happens all the time in sports but until it happens to you, with that velocity attached to it, I don't think any guy can really understand that type of pain. But yesterday, I understood and from now on, every time I see a fellow player go down, I will grimace in understanding, shake my head in sympathy and then, of course, laugh.

+ In my version of heaven, the Montreal Canadiens play the Toronto Maple Leafs every night. For those of you who don't live on either end of Highway 401, you probably won't understand the significancs of a Habs/Leafs matchup and heck, I'm not even sure I understand if it is even a real rivalry.

The Habs (Canadiens nickname) are playing the Maple Leafs tonight at the Bell Centre in Montreal. The Make-Believes or the Laffs are near the bottom of the standings. The Habs are near the top. The rivalry is likely geographical. After all, the Habs and Leafs have not played a playoff series since 1979. They weren't even in the same conference for many of the last 30 years. It was only recently during realignment in 1998 that the Leafs and Habs played in the same conference and for most seasons, the teams were never elite teams at the same time and so the natural rivalry that evolves over multiple playoff series never happened.

And wouldn't the Ottawa Senators and Canadiens be better natural rivals? They are only 90 minutes apart by car. But the Senators have only been around since 1993 and there hasn't been a single playoff series between the teams. And now, they are 1 point apart in the standings near the top so it just might be on the radar screen.

But back to the Leafs. The Montreal/Toronto rivalry extends beyond sports but through hockey, it is the most natural extension of expression of the rivalry between the two cities. Montreal and Toronto are the two biggest cities in Canada but Toronto is quite far ahead due mostly to a large migration of Montrealers to Toronto over the last 30 years. Most media eminates from Toronto and so through the media, there is a natural slant towards all things "Toronto" and this is especially true in sports where the national telecasts start with Toronto. In fact, this playful hate towards the "Center of Canada" is shared throughout the country.

They play each other 8 times a year, 4 in each city and the atmosphere is electric every time. Its a European soccer atmosphere with chanting and cheers and that palpable buzz without the violence. The games are almost always on Saturday Night's so Hockey Night in Canada can broadcast to the largest hockey audience. Hockey Night in Canada is Canada's version of Monday Night Football except your team is always playing.

This particular rivalry is purely for the fans. Unlike the Red Sox/Yankees where the rivalry does extend to the field, the Maple Leafs/Canadiens rivalry is all about the fans. Its all about hockey in general, how we consider it to be our national game and how having our two biggest cities playing is everything it is to be Canadian. And who knows if the Maple Leafs think of Montreal as a rivalry the way the Montreal fans view Toronto. Is there such thing as a one-sided rivalry?

Its just too bad that the teams haven't had a playoff series together since the late 1970s. 1993 was the closest when the Habs made it to the finals while the Leafs lost in the Semis to Gretzky's Kings. The Habs would eventually win the cup and the two teams wouldn't come close to crossing paths again.

So tonight I will be sitting in front of my television, a little bit more excited than normal when watching a hockey game and it will be against a team that has 16 points less and is 14th in the conference of 15th (The Habs have the 2nd best record). But its a tradition that has been around for almost 100 years in this city and anyone who knows anything about Montreal will know that "The City is Hockey".

+ There was no Super Bowl for me yesterday. There wasn't even Super Bad. Yes, I'm a 34-year old male sports fan and I watched The Nanny Diaries with my wife. How can I face the sports world this morning. How can I call myself a man. And worse, it was my idea!

My wife actually suggested that we watch the big game but I suggested instead that we watch one of the two aforementioned movies that we rented. Nanny Diaries is a really bad movie, but with the help of Yahoo's gametracker, I was able to follow the game on my laptop while I watched Scarlett Johansson sleepwalk through a predictable movie and when it came to the last two minutes of the game, we watched the Giants ruin the Patriots perfect record. And really, what more was there to see? I'm not a die-hard football fan and we don't get the American blockbuster commercials up here in Canada anyways so why should I feel like I have to watch? My normal football season involves watching the first x # of week where x is equal to the number of weeks that I am in my Survivor football pool and x is generally less than 6.

+ More layoffs at work this week. This time, its going to be entire departments instead of individuals. Cross your fingers for me.

+ We're going back to Disney World this spring. We figure its the kids last chance to go during off-peak season since they will be starting school soon. Yeah, as if its for the kids. Disney has hundreds of themed restaurants and at least 15 awesome resorts to explore. Not to mention the 4 theme parks, 2 water parks and downtown disney. My wife and I are big kids and Disney World has quickly become our vacation spot of choice.

Though I love to travel I am a terrible traveller. When I get excited about something, I get way too excited and I can become a nervous wreck on travel day so we're looking for ways to mitigate that risk. I'm not afraid of planes, I'm not afraid of cars and I'm not afraid of hotels or airports. There's just something about travel day that my body cannot handle. Good thing I'm not a pro athlete. If anyone has any interesting ways to reduce travel-day anxiety, please send them my way before April!

+ Still working on a number of TBC and THC projects that should be released within the next few weeks. Even though sometimes it looks like we're taking it easy here, trust me, we're not. There are always 3-4 projects in the pipeline.

+ I think this is one of those features of which only about 5% of site visitors are aware. The Head2Head module allows you to search batter/pitcher matchups for the last 50 years and it now updated to include 2007 data.

The feature allows you to search by last name or full name. If there are more than one possible names for a search (Santana yielded many), you will be prompted to choose which player you intended. Its really quite easy to use.

All matchups are listed with grand totals listed below. Each at bat includes the # of outs, the score, the runners and the resulting pitches and outcome.

Another important thing to know about the Head2Head module is that it is available quickly from anywhere on the site. By simply typing Cano vs Santana in the search box on any TBC page, you will be redirected to the Head2Head module. Typing in Robinson Cano vs Johan Santana will provide you with the head to head details immediately.

Turn, Swivel, Ow

+ My home office has a monitor and a television. When I am sitting at my desk looking at the monitor, my television is at about 4:00. In other words, to see the television, I must pivot about 115 degrees to the right. Tonight, I had hockey on while I worked and the Montreal Canadiens mounted an impressive comeback against the Washington Capitals forcing me to swivel/pivot in my chair about once every ten seconds to keep track of the action. I also started to work out with weights again this week and have been sore for the last 2 days (pecs, biceps, triceps) and I woke up this morning with a pain in my upper back.

Turn, swivel, ow. Back to work. Turn, Swivel, Ow. Back to work. That was my night. Too bad Ovechkin ruined the comeback with his 4th goal of the game in OT.

+ MLB Trade Rumors is an incredible web site. Until recently, Tim Dierkes had a day job and he still managed to post about ten times a day with the latest rumors. He's now full-time and he's on top of everything going on in Major League Baseball and if you haven't already subscribed to his RSS feed, I highly recommend it.

+ Hot Stove New York has figured out the best way to take advantage of TBC sponsorships and has earned a sizeable discount in the process. Jeff at HSNY has sponsored all remaining Major Leaguers on the Mets and Yankees for a year. Check out Brian Schneider's page, just above his stats.

If you're interested in return traffic, its always best to sponsor pages related to your site. its contextual advertising. By sponsoring many pages for the same subject, you increase your exposure to your intended audience. HSNY has also leveraged the banner functionality on the sponsorship and so he will likely leave a lasting impression on all Mets and Yankees fan visiting these pages.

Fantasy Baseball Sherpa is another sponsor who has taken advantage of the bulk rate by sponsoring several major leaguers over the last week.

That's not to say that sponsoring a single page has no value. Remember, the ultimate purpose of the sponsorships is to show your support to the site while receiving something in return. But there's no reason why you can't leverage sponsorships to give you a lot more.

+ Tonight's Curb Your Enthusiasm episode: Interior Decorator

+ Its been a busy week for updates (finally) so far and its only Tuesday. We started with the 2007 Independent League Statistics and then the 2007 Japanese Stats. And now, I am pleased to announce the release of the 2007 Boxscore data.

This is game-level data for all 162 games for every team in the majors. It includes boxscores, team logs, player batting logs, player pitching logs, a daily view of scores and standings and links on all pages on the site. Once again, for those who don't know what is different about our boxscores compared to other sites, we include Milestones, Streaks, Notable performances highlighted and the ability to add game notes for those games with interesting occurances. The only thing missing from the package is the update of batter/pitcher data and that is executing as we speak.

+ A little not to those of you who are planning on wearing a new shirt tomorrow. Make sure all the XL stickers are removed. I found a big XL sticker on the back of my shirt while at the company gym at lunch time.

+ I had a nice moment tonight with the children. One of those moments where having children is tremendously joyous. I was doing the dishes and listening to my iPod when my two young girls aged 5 and 3 came waltzing into the kitchen to do what they call, "Their Pretty Dance". They have a "funny dance" where they alternate pointing both fingers up to the sky, open their mouth and point their eyes upwards while goose-stepping in random directions. It really is quite funny. I always ask for the funny dance but my 3-year old said that since quiet music was playing (and not funny music), she would do her pretty dance. So Corinne Rae Bailey comes on the iPod (my wife's selection, I swear) and they start to twirl and spin and move to the music and it occurs to me that the 3-year old actually might know what she is doing. It was one of those happy "I'm glad I have kids" moments. That is in direct contrast to the 8:25am "What the heck are you still doing in your pajamas when we have to be out of the house at 8:30am" moments that occurs every Tuesday and Thursday before preschool.

+ You don't have to be Jewish and neurotic like me to love Curb Your Enthusiasm. Its the official comedy series of The Baseball Cube and related sites. Tonight I watch The Bracelet from season 1.

+ Back to baseball, there are lots of projets in the pipeline and you should see more frequent updates from this point forward for both TBC and THC.

+ I have updated Japanese player and team stats for 2007. It was actually included in the Indy Stats update but with the lack of updates lately, I thought I would split up the announcements.

+ I noticed a glitch with the Independent Stats update. Apparently, on player pages, the team was not linked to the team stats and it was a code issue and it should be resolved in the next update, most likely tonight.

+ I'm jealous. On Sunday, my nephew had a birthday party at a place called Zig-Zag-Zoo. Its a McDonalds play park multiplied by about 50. Its an obstacle course for preschool survivor. Its an arena for American Gladiators, toddler edition. Its a 5-story play structure with slides and ladders and tunnels and everything I would have played with when I was five. "When I was your age," I start to tell my kids, "we only had a stupid McDonalds outdoor park that was closed each winter. Our legs would stick to the hot slide and there were always sticky coke puddles on the merry-go-round." Soft leather couches surround the play structure and there is a snack-bar for parents to spend more money. Its genius.

+ Boxscore data from 2007 is coming soon. This is a part of the site that I would really like to bring to the forefront but with all the other sites out leveraging the same raw data, its really not TBC's forte.

+ The 2007 Independent League Statistics have finally been published. I certainly learned an important lesson this year when it comes to the Indy stats. I had long dismissed these as secondary stats and I am only now realizing the reliance that some players have on TBC being updated with this data in a timely manner. It seems that for many players, its part of their baseball resume and posting the data in late January certainly doesn't help. I'll do my best next year to attack Indy stats a lot sooner.

Surprisingly, I've also received numerous requests for college summer league and winter league stats for players. I'm seriously considering all of them, maybe at the expense of Spring Training Statistics which are neat to have but possibly irrelevant.

+ There are still lots of odds and ends to tie up for 2007 and I admit that I am way behind since I had spent a great deal of time last fall either travelling or working 100% on The Hockey Cube. I'll also be the first to admit that normally when I get into a project, it is very hard to pry me from it. Its actually this tenacity which has allowed me to get through some big projects like the Historical Draft section, the boxscores and the historical minor league stats dating back to 1978.

The Year in Review pages, team information, Japanese stats and even the 2007 boxscores are still not up to date and I hope to be able to get through all of these projects before next season begins.

+ Roberto Hernandez Stadium in Aiken, South Carolina is home to the South Coast League's Aiken Foxhounds. Did he pay a sponsorship fee or is this an actual dedication? I also came across Bruce Hurst Field in St. George, Utah, home of the St. George Roadrunners.

Am I just jealous? Nah. I have my own stadium in, of all places, El Paso, Texas. Apparently there is a jewish population in El Paso.

+ One of the features I will have on this blog are reasons why I consider myself to be a geek. I feel that once you are married and have children, its once again cool to be a geek so here's reason #1.

+ Its 1994 and four friends are headed off to Daytona Beach for spring break. We're in a Pontiac Sunbird and 24 hours later, we're in Florida. Its the Monday after the Daytona 500 and so the hotels are full of race fans. We can tell because everyone one of them is wearing a Nascar t-shirt and a pair of jeans. Half of them have sunglasses and/or a cowboy hat.

I don't know even why I am here. First of all, I don't travel well and I spent Delaware to South Carolina with high anxiety and frequent trips to McDonalds restrooms. That super-sized Coke at the Wendy's in Wilmington, Delaware didn't help. Second, I'm not a ladies man and I don't pretend that I came down here to score with the chicks. Remember, this is a post about proof as to why I am a geek, not a stud. Finally, I am only 20 years old and 354 days. Florida law says you need to be 21 years old to drink and I am 11 days short and the bars down here don't think this is close enough. So they put a stamp on my hand that says "No Alcohol". Quebec law says you need to be 18.

We spend 7 days here and we meet some girls but they all drift off because, well, my friends are also pretty geeky. We play miniature golf. We play Beach Volleyball everyday and we sit and we watch the wet t-shirt and bikini contests. And of course, we hit the bars where I can drink $6 Cokes with my friends and instead of feeling buzzed, I feel the need to pee every 7 minutes. I don't dance, I don't really care for loud music and I don't like staying up late. Again, I wonder why I am here. We start the week trying to be like the Romans in Rome but we end up being 4 geeky Montrealers out of their element.

But on day 3, my friend and I discover a nearby amusement center and the best arcade game ever invented. Better than Gauntlet, better than Punch Out, better than Pole Position and even better than Track and Field. I believe it was called World Series Baseball.

Its the arcade baseball game with the Red vs Blue team. The pitcher has a lever to control the pitch. Pull back all the way, fastball. Slide the lever to the right, slow curve. Pull back a little, straight. Changeup. Pull back all the way, to the side. Slider or Screwball. And the batter had a lever as well and he could place his swing directly on the ball and hit for power or he could swing under, and pop it up or swing over the ball and ground it out. The game was amazingly realistic from an arcade perspective (not simulation). The game felt real and my friend and I played this game every day, 9 innings at a time. While most of our cohorts were chasing young women, drinking, partying and having college student fun, we were playing arcade baseball on A1A, with a stack of quarters lined up on the screen. 1 quarter = 1 inning. While our other friends were at the beach playing some volleyball or conspiring on how to get some alcohol, we'd be at the arcade, hitting the literal homers.

My memory of this trip is not very good overall. It went off like a rocket but ended up like a dud but I'll never forget World Series Baseball and the comfort it provided amid a week of general discomfort. I imagine it was the same for my friend who had an equal love for the game and its one of my favorite memories with him.

+ The purpose of this blog is to provide site updates for both The Hockey Cube and The Baseball Cube. But sometimes, it can be two months between updates. I like to blog, but I don't want to comprimise the purpose of this blog nor do I want to start another blog for other topics so I am stuck with the dilemma of what to do with this blog. Should I stick with the original plan and keep it for updates only or can I expand its purpose and make it free-form. That is, write whatever the heck I want.

I'm not a particularly interesting person. I don't have a glamorous life. I spend a lot of my time in front of a computer, at my day job, at home. I even play computer games with my wife. But I like the idea of sharing my thoughts and mundane experiences with the world between updates so I think I might actually turn this blog into something beyond updates. The main topic of this site will certainly continue to be The Cube sites and all surrounding them but I think that sometimes, life will get in the way.

I'll try to be insightful, witty and succinct. I'll try to stay away from bandwagon opinions and recycled fluff. I'll try to be original and somewhat interesting and hopefully some day, this will be a blog that you look forward to reading every day.

+ Fantistics Fantasy Baseball Insider Baseball has signed on with The Baseball Cube as an advertiser. They have a product called Fantasy Baseball Player Projections and its dubbed "Fantasy Baseball's version of the Theory of Relativity".

+ I don't know exactly what this means for The Baseball Cube but we have been promoted to a page rank of 6 by the almighty Google. Page Rank measures the importance and trustworthiness of your web site. The rating is on 10 and 6 is considered to be very good. Conversely, The Hockey Cube has a page rank of 0. 0 is not very good. But that is most likely because the site is new and I have not promoted the site beyond a small link on TBC.

TBC was actually a 6 a few months ago but we then got demoted to a 5 because we had way too many text links on our front page.

So why I am telling you this? I don't know. Maybe because I have nothing else to write about today or maybe because if you're a potential advertiser, I'm trying to send some hints your way that TBC would be a great place to drop your advertising dollars. Either way, you now know that TBC has a page rank of 6.


+ By the way, we have been getting a lot of emails about the absence of Independent League Statistics for 2007. I hadn't realized how many players actually relied on TBC to promote themselves to scouts and the absence of these numbers can actually make these players really nervous and edgy. I apologize for the delay in posting these stats, I honestly hadn't realized that the industry used the site in such a manner. I assumed it was just fantasy baseball players looking for a little edge.

All this to say that I should have these stats up by early February. Next year, I will try to get them up much earlier.

+ Layoff day came and went and I survived. We had a company meeting today to disclose that there will be more layoffs throughout the year but they'll all be with six weeks notice or more.

» Did you know that I am getting old? I know this because there is a player in my database with a birthday in the 1990s. Thanks a lot Johnny Bromberg. Then again, as long as I still see players who were born in 1973, I shouldn't complain. Thank you very much Todd Helton!

» My company (my day job) is laying people off today. Its like a minefield, co-workers disappearing from their cubicles, escorted out of the building, never to be seen again. It almost seems random though these things generally aren't. The company recently announced 15% layoffs due and so far, I haven't hit a mine. In some ways, I wish I could be ejected into the world of full-time webmastering but its not time just yet.

» B.J. Weed. Funny name. Huh, huh-huh.

+ For anyone who visits The Hockey Cube (THC) regularly, you'll have noticed an inconsistent update schedule. Ideally, I'd update the site each morning but since I have a day job, two young kids and a propensity to sleep-in, it rarely happens. The site is update daily. Its just not always the same time of day.

But it was never my intention for THC to replace nhl.com or any of the other superpower hockey web sites. It was never my intention to have stats update in time for your morning coffee. THC is not intended to complete replace the old Hockey-Recap.com either. THC's future is predicated on preserving NHL history and I am preserving history one boxscore at a time. While I capture and enhance daily boxscores, post standings and game logs, I'm also busy capturing historical boxscores from years past and hope for THC someday be known as the Retrosheet of hockey.

As of now, The Hockey Cube has boxscores for 2.5 seasons dating back to 2005-06.

+ Cube Notes is my latest attempt to keep fans of The Baseball Cube up to date with the happenings surrounding the site. Over the past few years, I've tried a number of methods to keep people up to date from blogs to newsletters and I've even tried to program my own blog but I think that the current blog is here to stay.

I've called the blog Cube Notes since the site will encompass all Cube Sites and not just The Baseball Cube (TBC). Though TBC is still our flagship site, The Hockey Cube is quickly gaining steam and I thought it necessary to provide a consolidated location for delivering updates to both sites as well as information on the pipeline.

I will apologize in advance for the plain-Jane design of the blog. Creativity is at the bottom of my list of talents.

Regular posting will resume very soon. Please subscribe to this blog to receive easy access to updates to our Baseball and Hockey sites as well as other interesting notes.