Showing posts with label Lute Barnes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lute Barnes. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Mets Preview

Here's an article I forgot to post two months ago by Lute Barnes:


Another year, another chance for the Mets to break our hearts. How will it be this year? Will it be a slow tortuous painful bleeding like last year or a swift collapse like in 2007 and 2008 or a bitter ending like in 2006?

How far the Mets go will begin and end with pitching.
If Santana is not a dominant ace and if Pelfry, Maine, and Perez struggle, there is nothing else to question. Santana won 13 last year in an injury-shortened season. Is he still the dominant pitcher the Mets hoped when they got him from the Twins? Maybe. He better be if the Mets want to contend with the Phillies.

The rest are less certain. The three looked terrible in spring training. Perez looked thinner but his fastball was flat and he was hammered. Maine and Pelfry were up and down and mostly down. Same for Jonathan Niese.

The bullpen could either be a strong suit or a shambles. It is an unknown beyond Rodriguez and Feliciano. Three pitches have never pitched in the majors before, Mejia, Takahashi and Igarashi. Green is a known but was brutal most of the spring.
Nieve was hurt most of last year.

The Mets hitting should be better but will not be in full strength until Reyes and Beltran come back. They should not be hurt by Murphy’s injury and Jacobs will provide more power until Ike Davis takes over the position. Wright hits more homers in spring training but let’s see how that translates to CitiField and its generous dimensions. Bay and a full season from Francoeur should provide more runs though Bay will find that CitiField is not Fenway Park or the Green Monster.

Right now, with the players the Mets have, including Reyes and Beltran, the Mets should win between 75 and 77 games, which is an improvement over last year’s 70-win team.

Will the injured payers come back full strength, will the Mets make any trades, will there be another rash of injuries, will their starters thrive or crash and burn, who knows?
Right now, it looks like third place behind the Phillies and Braves and about 75 wins.



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Saturday, April 3, 2010

Baseball Season Predictions

Spring is in the air and you know what that means…

It is when a young man’s fancy turns to baseball.

I know I haven't been writing much lately, but I'm doing more than that slacker Joe.

Some predictions for 2010:


NL East:

Phillies

Braves

Marlins

Mets

Nationals


NL Central:

Cardinals

Brewers

Cubs

Reds

Astros

Pirates


NL West:

Giants

Rockies

Dodgers

Diamondbacks

Padres

NL Wildcard: Braves

NL Champs: Phillies

AL East:

Yankees

Red Sox

Rays

Blue Jays

Orioles


AL Central:

Twins

White Sox

Tigers

Indians

Royals


AL West:

Angels

Mariners

Rangers

Oakland

AL wildcard: Red Sox

AL champs: Yankees


World Champions: Yankees


Lute Barnes


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Sunday, November 8, 2009

The Year in Review at JiP

All blog writers please comment on this very, very large article. Our regular readers should comment as well if it interests them.

Matthew started our little blog in May of last year, writing his first post on May 21st. New posts were slim, especially in June when Matthew only wrote one article. Eventually, however, Matthew added Joe C. on October 24, and me (Michael) on October 26th. Later on, Squeeblz was added on December 11, and Mr. K wrote his first article the following day.

We are marking the one-year anniversary of Matthew, Me, and Joe C. coming together with our first Year in Review. This, I think, will come out to be one huge article, but we'll see where the information takes us.

Major Events at Our Blog Since It's Founding

May 21st, 2008: Jumping in Pools founded with Matthew's article It's My Life, Don't You Forget. It features a collection of doodles and in-jokes.

Somewhere between May 21 and October 23rd- We have a viewer or two.

October 24th- Joe C. joins Jumping in Pools, making him the first contributor. He writes a quick piece introducing himself. It is one of the last times we see him on the blog.

October 26th- Michael joins JiP and features a horror story about going to Wal*Mart.

November 3rd- JiP breaks one thousand hits in a single day for the first time.

November 4th- Election day. The leaders of Jumping in Pools watch the election together in horror. President Obama is elected, defeating Republican Candidate John McCain. JiP breaks 1,000 views again.

November 11th- Matthew writes one of our first satire pieces: Shock as Obama Declares Dinars Official American Currency. It goes on to be Jumping in Pools's first article to garner 1,000 pageviews.

December 11th- Squeeblz joins the blog with an article on The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It remains his only piece.

December 12th- Mr. K joins Jumping in Pools, writing a piece on New York state, Bill Cherry, and Assemblyman Pete Lopez.

January 5th, 2009- Michael writes a review of Fallout 3. This is the first article to break 6,000 views. Views from it reinvigorate writing for JiP.

January 16th- The Avitabile Brothers write the first Joe's Babe of the Week, a humorous look at annoying women involved in politics. It begins with Nancy Pelosi; the series goes on to garner over 10,000 views.

January 28th- Matthew writes a satire piece entitled Military to Pledge Oath to Obama, Not Constitution. It soon is picked up on Free Republic, and from there goes on to Snopes, Politifact, World Net Daily, and Atlas Shrugs. We break 17,000 pageviews in a single day, break 15,000 the next day, and break 10,000 again February 3rd. In fact, the very first day it hit big, JiP received seven times the pageviews we had in the entire month of December.

The article remains our most looked at, and is quickly approaching 80,000 pageviews.

February 1st- Lute Barnes joins JiP, writing an article about the NY Mets.

March 9th- E_D_Cassabonne joins the Jumping in Pools team and posts a parody of the song American Pie. It goes on to garner over 450 views, making it one of the most successful opening day posts ever.

March 9th (Again)- The first Great Article Race is written. At the time, it only counts the number of posts per person.

March 12th- E_D_Cassabonne writes Is Obama Satan?: The Anti-Christ Test. It goes on to gather over 1,400 views, marking the first article to break 1,000 views that was not written by Michael or Matthew.

March 13th- After months of a near post-drought, Matthew announces that Joe C. may be dead. Later that day, Joe declares that he is not dead.

March 16th- The anniversary of Halabja is remembered.

March 17th- Matthew conducts the first in our series of interviews with Les Hendrix. The series goes on to include Doug Hoffman, speechwriter for President Bush Troy Senik, and Doug Welsh, founder of Stix Blog. The interview series now includes over twenty.

March 25th- Matthew announces that Alezend will be joining the Jumping in Pools family. Alezend writes his first article about Fox News and Canada.

March 29th- The first Joe in History is completed.

April 16th- Jumping in Pools celebrates its 1,000th post ever.

April 27th- Matthew plugs Innominatus's website. Innominatus is really cool.

May 6th- Michael writes an article about the Miss California Nude Scandal. The next day, Jumping in Pools breaks 10,000 pageviews, breaks 14,000 on May 12th, and breaks 11,000 the day after that. The Miss California article goes on to amass over 52,000 pageviews and remains the second largest article in JiP history.

May 15th- Elsewhere breaks onto the Jumping in Pools scene by attacking Serbia.

June 5th- Jumping in Pools tries to control its own destiny with our first of two 10,000 blitzes. This entails extra articles, satire, and at the time, "lols." We write 25 articles that day and do very well, but fall short of our goal with 5,748 pageviews.

June 19th- A second 10,000 Blitz is planned but not carried out because of technical difficulties with Mr. K's computer and "lack of Joe."

July 29th- JiP hits Snopes again, this time for a piece Matthew did on President Obama selling B-2 Bombers to China.

August 2nd- Sirchadthepro comes to Jumping in Pools with his first article, Dota Hero Builds. This article is noted for two reasons: first, it amasses over 500 pageviews, making it an extremely successful first article. Second, it is in the running for nerdiest article on JiP ever.

August 4th- Jumping in Pools reaches 100 followers (including feedburner).

August 13th- JiP hits 2,000 posts ever.

August 22nd- Thecid becomes a writer for the blog, writing what is widely regarded as the worst article in internet history.

August 24th- A gigantic article of stats and peculiarities is written in The Greatest Article Race.

August 25th- Matthew writes a small satire piece on the President's College Thesis, writing that the President believed it was "inherently flawed." Little does he know what the world has in store for it.

August 30th- The first podcast of JiP is released. It features Joe C. (sort of) bothering Michael as he actually tries to complete the podcast.

September 5th- Michael writes a review of the anime Fullmetal Alchemist. It is declared the only good article on our site by Luke.

September 11th- September 11, 2001 is solemnly remembered on the blog.

September 29th- Joe C. shocks the world by writing three articles in one day. Patricia Kay writes a guest article, giving Roman Polanski two thumbs down.

September 30th- Yuriy Malikov is interviewed!!!!!!

October 9th- President Obama wins the Nobel Prize. JiP joins the world by asking WTF?

October 23rd- On a George W. Bush thread, Left Coast Rebel informs us that Rush Limbaugh is talking about our site. Wait, let me rephrase that, RUSH LIMBAUGH is talking about OUR SITE! What is he talking about? Matthew's satire piece on Obama's college thesis.

The internet is abuzz with news that Obama's thesis has been outed. FoxNation runs it along side Pajamas Media, and in particular, Michael Ledeen. Eventually, someone breaks the new to Rush that the piece is satire. He defends the piece, however, declaring it "good comedy." Innominatus leaves the best comment regarding the story, writing "Dude, you almost "Dan Rather'd" El Rushbo with your satire!"

The Huffington Post is all over the story, followed by Media Matters, and on Saturday night, the very front page of Yahoo! News.

On Monday, Matthew is browbeaten on Breitbart in an interview, and then JiP hits prime time. We are mentioned by name in a feature story by Keith Olbermann about Rush Limbaugh being "punked" by our site. The next day, Mr. Limbaugh defended his statement and moved on.

The Obama Thesis article goes on to amass over 31,000 views, making it the third most popular pieces of all time.

October 23rd Continued- For some reason, Little Green Footballs attacks our autistic friend Joe, at first without knowing that he was autistic, then condoning attacks on autistic people as a whole. Charles Johnson himself declared that he had "the right" to attack autistic people.

October 24th- Jumping in Pools breaks 500,000 pageviews all-time.

November 6th- Present Day.


Percent of Readers Per Top 100 Articles

All right, this will need some explanation. First, by "top 100 articles" I mean the 100 articles with the most hits in JiP history. I will take these articles and add up the number of views. Then I will see who wrote them. Then, I will see how many views are from each writer, and finally, I'll put that into a percentage that everyone can understand. Oky Dokey?

By the way, this is an immense amount of work because I've gotta do this by continuing up and adding 100 articles, so give me some love when you leave a comment!

Total Number of Pageviews of Top 100 Articles: 294,737 views

Matthew leads the way with 45 articles in the top 100. Out of those, he got us 187,442 views, or 63.6% of the top 100 views.

Michael in second with 27 articles in the top 100. Out of those, he got us 80,130 views, or 27.2% of the top 100 views.

The Avitabile Brothers, writing articles together, come in third with 15 articles in the top 100. Out of those, they got us 17,500 views, or 5.9% of the top 100 views.

Mr. K comes in fourth with 10 articles in the top 100. Out of those, he got us 7,225 views, or 2.4% of the top views.

E_D_Cassabonne comes in fifth with 2 articles in the top 100. Out of those, he got us 1,923 views, or .7% of the top views.

Sirchadthepro comes in sixth with 1 article in the top 100. Out of that article, he got us 517 views, or .2% of the top views.

Bringing up the rear are thecid, Alezend, Elsewhere, Squeeblz, and Lute Barnes. Get moving you loafers!


And Finally, the Greatest Comment of All-Time:

Innominatus:
"Dude, you almost "Dan Rather'd" El Rushbo with your satire!"


Don't forget to leave a comment everybody!

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Friday, May 22, 2009

The Great Article Race

It's that time of the month again, folks. Unlike previous months, I'm going to lump the statistics in with the number of posts, so this will be a moderately lengthy article. Anyway, this will document our posts from April 14th to today, May 22nd. So, without further ado, the top posters of the last month are:

1. Matthew, with 116 posts
2. Michael, with 61 posts
3. Mr. K, with 36 posts
4. E_D_Casabonne
, with 2 posts
4. Light of the Word, with 2 posts
4. Elsewhere, with 2 posts
And Last, for 2 months running, Joe C., with 5 posts: one had literally no words, another was just one sentence, two were videos, and another mocked Orthodox Christianity.


And back by popular demand are the top 6 posts of the month. In the last month's time, we've had one of the most successful months in Jumping in Pools history, reaching 88,953 pageviews from April 22nd to May 22nd. That's an incredible number that I don't think we'll reach again for a while unless we break some amazing news, or Joe C. actually writes an article or two. Anyway, here are the top articles of the month:

1. Miss California Article About Nude Photos, with 48,993 views, or 55.1% of our views this month
2. Military to Pledge Oath to Obama, Not Constitution, with 4,709 views, or 5.3% of our views this month
3. Miss California Topless Photos Strike Blow for Gay Marriage, with 3,980 views, or 4.5% of our views this month
4. Government Attempting to Seize Smith & Wesson, with 2,297 views, or 2.6% of our views this month
5. Miss California Considering Adult Films After Nude Photo Flap, with 1,322 views, or 1.5% of our views this month
6. Obama to Apologize for American War Crimes During WWII, with 1,066 views, or 1.2% of our views this month

Bold= Satire


Interesting Notes:
Mr. K's top article came in at #18 with his article, France Goes too Far
Joe C.'s article, Swine Flu, Retro Style, is our first article with no words
This is the first time since we started the Great Article Race that an article has beaten Matt's Military Oath article in pageviews
Light of the Word and Elsewhere wrote their first articles this past month
Alezend and Lute Barnes wrote no articles
Hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backwards


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Tuesday, April 14, 2009

The Great Article Race

Yes, it's that time of the month again, folks. It's time to see who our top writers are, and whether or not Joe C. actually wrote an article! We've had a busy month, so without further ado...

The Top Posters of the Month:

Matthew with 145
Michael with 99
Mr. K with 16
Alezend with 3
E_D_Casabonne with 1
Lute Barnes with 1
and the worst poster of the month:
Joe C, who technically wrote 5 articles, but only wrote one that was not about himself.

Here's looking at you, Joe

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Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Keeping Accounts at Jumping in Pools

We'd like to take some time and welcome our new writer, Alezend. Doing this, we'd like to do a rundown of our writers at our site.

1. Matt-- founder, editor, and primary contributor
2. Mike-- editor and primary contributor
3. Joe C.-- contributing writer
4. Editor in Chief-- contributing writer
5. Eli-- apprentice writer
6. Alezend-- apprentice writer
7. Lute Barnes-- intern
8. Squeeblz-- intern

To our writers, holler if you want your title changed...


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Monday, March 9, 2009

The Great Article Race!

We here at Jumping in Pools have taken tally of the number of articles written by our illustrious writers, and partially in honor of our new writer, Eli. We now share these with you, fellow writers, to urge you to keep writing. Especially you, Joe!!!

Number of Posts in 2009:

Matthew: 293 Articles
Michael: 67 Articles
Mr. K: 47 Articles
Joe C.: 8 Articles
Eli: 3 Articles (Almost as many as Joe)
Lute Barnes: 1 Article
Squeeblz: 0 Articles (Still almost as many as Joe)


Total Number of Posts, All-Time:

Matthew: 508, 71.4% of Articles
Michael: 124, 17.4% of Articles
Mr. K: 56, 7.9% of Articles
Joe C.: Only 17 Flippin' Articles, or a measly 2.4% of the Articles
Eli: 3, .4% of Articles (Even Though He's Only Been on for 1 Day)
Squeeblz: 2, .3% of Articles
Lute Barnes: 1, .1% of Blasted Article


And with a grand total of 711 posts.


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