Detroit

Earlier this month, my spouse and I drove north through Detroit, entered Ontario at Port Huron / Sarnia for a long weekend in Canada, and then returned to Detroit to visit the Detroit Institute of Arts museum and to attend a Tiger game. It was my first visit to DIA and to Comerica Park. It was also our first return trip to Canada since the fall 2018 sabbatical. 

After leaving Detroit we spent several days in our usual western Michigan destinations, Grand Rapids, Holland, and Saugatuck. We managed to visit a couple of additional brewpubs, as per usual.

The DIA features some interesting contemporary work, some pieces by enduring masters, and a terrific room filled with murals/frescos by Diego Rivera. You probably recognize the artist responsible for this self portrait:

Van Gogh

"Welfare Queen" by Amy Sherald comes with an interesting backstory:

It is nearly impossible to do justice to the murals with photos.

As for the Tiger game, Detroit beat the KC Royals 9-4. KC infielders made a couple of key misplays that directly or indirectly led to a handful of runs. I liked Comerica Park, but perhaps not as much as PNC, which seems to have the advantage of being on the river with its statues of former stars outside the park and accessible to the general public. 



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East Coast Vacation 2017

University of Louisville classes started last week and I already taught two sessions of my senior capstone seminar on "Politics of Climate Change."

Before summer slips away altogether, I'm posting a few pictures of our early August vacation trip -- to Baltimore first for a couple of days, then to the Delaware shore for about a week with extended family.

In Baltimore, an old friend snagged four tickets to the August 2 Orioles game against the Kansas City Royals. The O's won 6-0, unfortunately. We were seated very close to first base, so I snapped this photo of Eric Hosmer. The game was briefly delayed by rain in the early innings, but I still had a great time in terrific seats. Plus, the storm presaged the arrival of moderate August temperatures throughout our visit.

The following day, my spouse and I went to the Baltimore Museum of Art. It turns out they have a cast of Rodin's "The Thinker." The same statue has a prominent position in front of Grawemeyer Hall at UofL. In fact, the one at UofL used to be in Baltimore, but was sold when Baltimore acquired this one.

The BMA also has a number of Andy Warhol pieces, including a version of the "Last Supper." The city's artistic side is also revealed in its tribute to local native John Waters (pink flamingo, pictured below).

As beach preparation, I also bought six packs of local beers Duckpin Pale Ale (brewed by Union) and Penguin Pils (brewed by Brewer's Art). I loved the Duckpin, but found the Penguin Pils overly influenced by Belgian style. I prefer German or Czech pilsners.

During beach week, we visited the Dogfish brewpub in Rehobeth, toured the Seacrets Distillery in Ocean City, and ate our share of fresh crab -- including some caught by family members. The younger generation cousins used chicken necks and nets to catch a family-record number this year! The first one we caught is pictured below.

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2015 Bolts from the Blue

For the 27th consecutive year, I'm competing in the Hardy House fantasy baseball league. Our auction draft was held four Saturdays ago, March 28, in Louisville. Two owners participated by phone, including a "new" returning owner. We will all miss a long-time participant who left the league (at least for now). After the auction, the group had some pub grub and watched the Elite Eight basketball game between Arizona and Wisconsin. Then we walked up the street to a terrific local brew pub and watched Notre Dame-Kentucky. The Friday night before the draft, many of us ate pizza and even more drank a beer at the nearby Holy Grale of brews. Oh, and we watched the Louisville-North Carolina State game. 

As a reminder: the league has 12 teams and uses American League players exclusively to accumulate statistics in various hitting and pitching categories. For 22 years, we tabulated results in the traditional 8 categories (HR, RBI, SBs, Batting Average, Wins, Saves, Earned Run Average and ratio/Walks-plus-Hits per Inning Pitched), but in the hot stove period prior to the 2011 season we voted to dump BA in favor of On Base Average. Also, we added runs scored (R) for hitters and strikeouts (K) for pitchers.

My 2014 team finished second for the third straight season, this time only 1.5 points behind the championship squad (People's Choice). Last year's Bolts from the Blue squad led the league in ERA and WHIP and finished in the top three in all categories other than OBA (6th) and saves (7th). With one more HR and two more steals, the Bolts would have tied for first. The top team also picked up a couple of points that it could have lost with a slightly weaker performance in September. It was a very close pennant chase. 

I always mention another roster quirk now in its eighth year: we use 10 man pitching staffs, but only 4 outfielders -- one fewer than the "normal" roto squad. We were probably among the first leagues to accept the fact that this distribution of players better reflects roster management decisions that real major league baseball teams have made over the past 20 years. 

As usual, we allowed the purchase of any player on an American League 40 man roster. After the auction, only players on 25 man active rosters or the major league Disabled List (DL) can be obtained. We now allow teams to retain ownership of players sent packing to the National League -- but only for the remainer of the current season. The league uses a salary cap, but it expires after the trade deadline. This means contending teams can spend their free agent cash in September. Because we drafted in March, some positional battle results were unknown and some rookies-to-be were not yet on 40 man rosters and were thus ineligible for purchase. 

The 2015 Bolts from the Blue (5 retained players in blue):

C Alex Avila (DET) $8

C Jorge Alfaro (TEX) $1 (minors)

1B Eric Hosmer (KC) $23

2B Omar Infante (KC) $1

3B Evan Longoria (TB) $28

SS Xander Bogaerts (BOS) $16

MI Brett Lawrie (OAK) $15

CR Ryan Rua (TEX) $1

OF Alex Gordon (KC) $27

OF Leonys Martin  (TEX) $24

OF Rusney Castillo (BOS) $23 (minors)

OF Oswaldo Arcia (MIN) $10 

DH David Ortiz (BOS) $22

Hitting $199 (up $17 from last season, which was probably too much)

P Hisashi Iwakuma (SEA) $25

P Jake Odorizzi (TB) $5

P Kris Medlen (KC) $4 (DL)

P Jesse Chavez (OAK) $2

P Hector Santiago (LAA) $1

P Brad Boxberger (TB) $4

P Wade Davis (KC) $5

P Junichi Tazawa (BOS) $5

P Charlie Furbush (SEA) $1

P Grant Balfour (TB) $1 

Pitching $53 ($25 less than last year, likely too little)

One team had more than $20 cash left at the end of the auction and another had $9, which meant inflation was a bit lower than it might have been. The total unspent by the league was $46, which is a lot, but not nearly as much as last year. The Bolts unfortunately had $8 left this year, but cash saved to purchase some specific players proved to be insufficient in the late rounds of the auction. Because of mismatched positional needs in the endgame, a few players were purchased then at what I viewed as bargain prices (Infante and Rua). 

The Bolts were also hurt by the fact that I could not retain relatively inexpensive starting pitcher Brandon McCarthy, who worked for the New York Yankees last year after a mid-season trade, but now pitches in the NL in LA. He would have cost $6 if he had remained in the AL. Additionally, I decided not to retain close to market-priced OF Adam Eaton at $17 and pitcher Chris Sale at $32. I didn't want to foreclose OF options and was worried about Sale's injuries. These players ended up selling for $20 and $35, respectively. It probably would have been better to retain Eaton and forego Castillo. 

Once again, I did not purchase any relief pitchers with a strong lock on a closer job. To compensate for this, I bought pitchers with good strikeout rates on teams with old or iffy guys in front of them (BOS and SEA). I did not intend to buy Balfour, he reflects the danger of throwing out someone for $1 that might not garner any additional bids. Various online sources were listing him as the favorite for the Rays closer job and I thought someone at the table would bid $2 and fill a pitching slot. It didn't happen and that hurt me in the endgame. I had other pitchers to buy, but could not because of the lack of roster space.

Actually, my team has its share of young and/or iffy guys. Medlen is returning from his second Tommy John surgery. Alfaro is in double A. Castillo is beginning the year at Pawtucket and I obviously overspent on him. Rua is an untested rookie and has been injured. Going forward, he will not qualify at CR in the Hardy House until he plays first or third 3 times this season. 

As usual, I bought several players from the KC Royals (5), the hometown-favorite team of my youth and surprisingly the defending AL champions. Hosmer had a slow start last year, but hit fairly well prior to his injury last summer and had a big post-season. Gordon has been a solid hitter for many seasons now. I've got very mixed feelings about Infante, but he was really cheap in the end. Davis is now widely recognized as a first-rate setup man who could close on a team without Greg Holland. Medlen has no history as a Royal, but his NL stats were fantastic.

Gordon was on my 2014 team and I bought him again for the same salary he would have cost as a retained player. 

In addition to those 5 Royals, I have players from about half of the AL teams, including 4 Red Sox, 4 Rays, 3 Rangers, 2 Mariners, 2 A's, plus 1 Tiger, an Angel and a Twin. 

To replace initially injured or minor league players Alfaro, Castillo, and Medlen on my active roster, I bought C Carlos Corporan (TEX) and OF Daniel Nava (BOS) for $1 each, plus P Zach MacAllister (CLE) for $7.  I also nabbed 2B Micah Johnson (CHX) for $7 during the second week because the team needs speed and Lawrie can play CR for the injured Rua. The Bolts are going to need a quality starting pitcher or two to replace the now-injured Iwakuma (lat). 

You can find posts about the 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013;and 2014 auctions elsewhere on this blog.

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SABR Day

Photo credit: TJ Perreira on Flickr. 

Today was SABR Day 2015, an annual Saturday in January event featuring local SABR chapter meetings across the United States. I attended the one in Louisville at 10 this morning.

The guest speaker was former major league player Chris Burke, who delivered a worthwhile presentation.  I especially appreciated the fact that he answered our questions fairly directly, even when they involved controversial subjects such as steroid use in baseball.  Burke grew up in Louisville, played his college baseball at Tennessee (All-American SS on the runner-up College World Series finalist team) and then had a fairly significant role on a Houston Astros team that made the World Series in 2005. In the NLDS that season, he hit the series winning home run in the 18th inning of game 4.

After Burke finished and departed, I gave a presentation: "Can Small Market Teams Compete? Revisited." That link takes you to my PowerPoint. As the title suggests, this was a much updated version of a talk I gave to the same local SABR chapter in April 2000.

My 2000 presentation focused on the Oakland A's, much as Michael Lewis did in his 2003 book Moneyball. However, today's talk focused on the 2014 Kansas City Royals, the first small market team to make the World Series since Cleveland did it in 1997. For my talk, I defined the smallest handful of cities as small market: Milwaukee, Kansas City, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. Oakland shares the Bay area with San Francisco, but is often viewed as small market.

While the A's of 15 years ago emphasized on-base percentage, college pitchers, and "Ken Phelps All Stars" (such as Geronimo Berroa and Matt Stairs), the 2014 Royals apparently identified new market inefficiencies: multiple hard-throwing short relievers, terrific outfield defense, fly-ball pitch-to-contact starters, and an all-star quality catcher.




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New Look

Readers probably noticed the new banner and other minor blog updates -- the former made fairly easily thanks to Picmonkey. Once again, the photos are courtesy of government websites, so should not involve any copyright issues:

• Obama with beer
• Kansas Jayhawk
• KC Royals Blue October 2014
• Comedy-Tragedy Masks
• Earth

The last update occurred in 2010. 


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Baseball Prospectus

A few days ago, the good folks at Baseball Prospectus announced that they are soon releasing a 2-volume Best of Baseball Prospectus: 1996-2011. I think it is going to include a mix of web articles and book pieces, as well as some new essays. It would likely make an excellent Christmas gift.

So far as I know, unfortunately, it will not include my two old pieces written for BP many years ago. One of those articles is still available on-line at the BP website: "Do Top Prospects Get Traded?" It was posted April 8, 1999.

However, the other one is apparently not to be found anywhere. It was a defense of then-KC Royals manager Bob Boone, written in response to a piece by Rany Jazayerli. On the Wayback Machine, I found Rany's critique of Bob Boone posted March 3, 1997: "Is There a 12-Step Program for Overmanagement?"

Rany and I are both KC fans and we co-authored the Royals team comments for the Davenport Translations published exclusively on the web (in the group rec.sports.baseball.analysis) during the 1994-1995 winter. Unfortunately, I cannot find those team comments on the web either -- though I did find them for nearly 20 other teams. And I have the February 1995 files on my hard drive.




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Hotstove 2011

As baseball season slowly approaches, I've been looking through the 2011 Bill James Handbook. Consider these oddities just from the letter G:

Rockies outfielder Carlos Gonzales (Cargo) hit 26 of his 34 homers in Coors Field.

By contrast, new Red Sox first baseman Adrian Gonzalez has been a power monster on the road for several seasons.

Cleveland infielder Mark Grudzielanek was 30 for 110 last year, but had ZERO extra base hits. That means his batting average and slugging percentage both weighed in at .273.

It seems less-and-less likely that either Alex Gordon or Zack Greinke is going to help "fix" the KC Royals franchise. Gordon's major league career has clearly stalled (despite another good season at AAA) and Greinke was traded to Milwaukee. Rany Jazayerli says the trade was OK, but I'm not going to let my imagination run away with me.

Incidentally, back in late 1994 and early 1995, I worked briefly with Rany to write Royals comments for the on-line DTs -- precursor to Baseball Prospectus.


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About me

I am a Professor of Political Science at the University of Louisville, where I have taught since 1991. 

In January-February 2026, I spent a portion of my latest sabbatical as a Visiting Professor at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. May-June 2019 I spent a portion of another full-year sabbatical as a Visiting Scholar at the University of Dundee in Scotland.  In fall 2018, I was Fulbright Canada Research Chair at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario.. I served as Acting Department Chair from July 2007 to June 2008 and then was elected as full-time chair from January 1, 2012 through December 2017. 

From 1994-2011, I directed the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, which has long been the largest cash prize administered by political scientists. Decades ago, I was a Fellow at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation (1987-88) and at Chicago's Program on International Political Economy and Security (1988-89). I also taught as a visiting faculty member at Northwestern for two years before arriving at Louisville. Years later, I spent a sabbatical at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Security (2005).

Recent Wofford College President Nayef H. Samhat and I wrote Democratizing Global Politics; Discourse Norms, International Regimes, and Political Community, which was published by SUNY Press in March 2004. A fairly complete list of my other academic publications -- mostly about international security topics, global environmental politics, and/or political communication -- can be found here (or here or here).

For many years, I served as a member of the Provost's Sustainability Council and the Administration, Finance and Outreach (AFO) Committee of that Council. In fall 2010, the Provost named me to the University-Wide Ad Hoc Committee on Socially Responsible Investing (SRI). In fall 2012, I became the chair of the AFO committee, which was renamed the Planning and Administration Committee in August 2015. I resigned from that position in September 2017. We accomplished a good deal at Louisville and the University committed to carbon neutrality by 2050. UofL's commitment to SRI is demonstrated primarily by its decision to hire a third-party firm to vote its proxies using various social criteria.

This personal blog began in September 2003. In June 2005, I was invited to start posting regularly at the international relations group blog, Duck of Minerva, though I eventually departed in 2015. From August 2009 until late 2012, I wrote occasional blog posts on Climate Politics: IR and the Environment for e-International Relations (e-IR).

I love baseball and have been a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) since 1997. Primarily, I am a consumer, not a producer, of baseball research. My first contribution to a SABR publication appeared in December 2017.  I root for the Kansas City Royals (World Series Champions in 2015!) and compete in a couple of fantasy baseball leagues. One is the Hardy House League, which some friends invited me to join in 1989 while I was living in Chicago. It's been a 12 team AL-only league for decades. I've won the title 6 times in 36 seasons, finished second 7 times, and came in third 6 times. Most recently, my team won the 2021 post-COVID championship and was runner-up in 2023. 

The second league is the 24 team Original Bitnet Fantasy League Baseball, which I joined in 1991 and last won in the second half (or "B") season of 2023. We play head-to-head seasons with playoffs, divided by the all-star break when we do a quick redraft. It's a dynasty keeper league so most owners retain major stars for most of their careers. My first dynasty featured Greg Maddux, Pedro Martinez, Jim Thome, and Derek Jeter. In 70 championship seasons, the Louisville Sluggers have won 11 times and made 3 other World Series. My team also made the playoffs in the first halves of 2024 and 2026 and second half of 2025. The current team is headed by Gunnar Henderson, Ronald Acuna, and Will Smith, Dodger catcher. 

I also enjoy watching University of Kansas basketball, reading "hard boiled" detective fiction, listening to Americana music, viewing movies, and playing Texas Hold'em poker. I occasionally blog about these interests. More likely, you'll find me "micro-blogging" on one of my two Twitter accounts (professional and personal). I occasionally hang out on Bluesky. 

My wife reads this blog and often sends me articles or tidbits for topical consideration. Our daughters are now working-world young adults living in New York and California, respectively. 

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