Who Knows, You Might Even Meet THIS Guy

Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video, Part 1

The 2013 holiday season is over, 2014 has begun, and it's back to work.

I was speaking on Christmas Day with my mother, who was visiting in Cleveland, Ohio.  A couple of siblings had come into town (one from California, the other from Georgia) to celebrate.  We talked about a number of things, including the past, present, and presumed future.

Among the topics was the city of Cleveland and northeast Ohio more broadly.  

My family moved to the Cleveland suburbs at the very end of 1980 (late December, if memory is correct), so whilst it's not really true that I "come" from Cleveland, I spent a number of my formative years in the city, and though I've been gone for more than 20 years and have spent virtually all of my adult life (and a good chunk of years as a kid) elsewhere, I remember the area mostly fondly.

My sister, who lives just outside the San Francisco Bay Area, and my brother, who resides in Atlanta, from time to time express a desire to return to Cleveland.  Both are three years younger than I am, spent more time in the area than I did, and have a stronger "home" tie to Cleveland.  I like to tease my brother about the city, and have had more than one go-round about the video above, a satirical "travel guide" which was put to YouTube by a professional comedian. 

Turns out, the guy (Mike Polk) himself is from nearby (Warren, Ohio), and has written a book entitled Damn Right I'm from Cleveland. 

Some of the jokes in the video seem good-natured ("the Flats look like a Scooby-Doo ghost town").  But some I think might be a bit too close to the truth.

One of the spots focuses on a barren patch of land with the comment that "here's a place where there used to be industry;" another, showing a train heading to some unmentioned destination with the tag, "this train is carrying jobs out of Cleveland."

The struggles of the city are well-known, including the implosion of the steel and auto industries, the default of the city, the immolation of the Cuyahoga River, the disappointments of the Indians/Browns/Cavaliers.  Cleveland had a population of just under a million residents in 1950.  At that time, it was (I believe) the 9th largest city in America.

Cleveland and its leadership have tried to right the ship.  The old rail terminal under the Terminal Tower (the signature building in the city) was converted to a nice retail mall (that was mostly empty the last time I visited).  The Rock Hall of Fame opened just after I moved away.  The Indians opened a new stadium.  Slogans have been tried.

What result?

Today, the population stands at less than half of its peak, and Cleveland has fallen to 47th on the list of cities.

In our family, I live in Paris, France.  Another brother lives in New England.  My mother has returned to Canada.  My oldest friend lives in Texas.  

As stated, my youngest siblings have indicated that they would like to return, and in fact, I believe my sister is actively looking to return.  My friend left Cleveland not necessarily by choice, but out of necessity to provide for his family.

If I wanted to return to Ohio, what would I be able to do?  

So the question I had was, how is it that a city gets to the point that its educated, productive citizens who would like to remain, simply are not able to because the outlook is frankly too bleak?  Does the city reach a point of no return - a death vortex - which, with increasing speed, spins out those who would/could make it a thriving, vital location that people want to live?  Has Cleveland reached such a point, where, for all the talk about growth, and the future, and perpetual comebacks has become a fantasy?

Detroit comes to mind.  The video ends with a quip that "at least we're not Detroit."  I am not so sure.

I laugh about the video, but it is in fact quite sad.  

"C'est Le Retour du Roi" (Return of the King?)

The King is Back in Paris

After 16 years, the King has been restored in Paris.  No; not the Bourbons.  THE King.  The Burger King. In a headline story this morning in one of our local papers, it is being reported that the fast food chain has opened a new restaurant in the Gare Saint-Lazere Monday.  Burger King closed all of its French outlets in 1997 due to poor sales, but has in the past couple of years, returned in places such as the airport in Marseille, and most recently, an "aire" (rest stop) on the autoroute near Reims.

Well, the King has now come back to the capital.

Data provided by the local franchiser indicate that there has been an "explosion" or burger sales, with the average French person consuming 14 fast-food burgers in 2012.  No word on whether that "explosion" has been followed by others...

It must be tough being Burger King, however.  The article explains that the top offering for BK is its "le fameux 'Whopper'" - described as l'equivalent du Big Mac.

Defined, literally, by the competition.

The somewhat creepy "King" has been updated for the more sophisticated, Romantic French palate.  A sample of the made-over King is shown below.

The Burger King, Adapted to French Sensibilities

No word yet from authorities on whether it's merely a coincidence that the return of Burger King matched the recently revealed scandal of improper horse meat being introduced into the French food chain.

Details are still evolving.

Bowls, Bowls Everywhere

We've reached (and passed) the Ides of December.  Christmas is just a bit more than a week away, and right upon its heels, the new year.  That can only mean, of course, that the college football "bowl season" is upon us.

I'm not any sort of football fan, and did not really watch any of the games when I lived in the US, so I reckon that there is close to zero probability that I will watch any of them now that I live in France.  Nevertheless, looking this morning at ESPN's web site, I was amazed by just how many of these bowls there are.

For example, there is now a "Pinstripe Bowl," to be played of course, in the front lobby of one of New York's white shoe law firms.  No; that's not true.  I think it is played in Yankee Stadium.  The game features Rutgers (a team that had a 6-6 record in a mediocre conference) and Notre Dame.  Not sure how the Irish fell to this level.

There is a "San Diego Credit Union" bowl - I guess it survived the subprime crash, unfortunately. Two traditional powers - Utah State and Northern Illinois - face off in that one.  An attempt by the Franklin-American Mortgage Bowl to cut it into tranches and sell as AAA+ debt instruments failed, apparently.  Maybe because the Heart of Dallas Bowl Presented by PlainsCapital Bank funding was not approved?

Two perfectly named bowls - the "Northrup-Grumman Military Bowl" and the "Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl" - will occur at year's end.  Real truth in packaging.  I wonder if there will be a trunk sale in the parking lots, featuring nervous, sweaty guys wearing Ray-Bans selling "merchandise" out of the back of nondescript, Ford econoline vans?

My personal favourite, though, is the "Fight Hunger Bowl," which is to be played in San Francisco.  I suggest that there exist natural synergies here - why not merge the Fight Hunger Bowl with the Beef O'Brady's Bowl?  Perhaps the whole thing could be supplemented by the "Famous Idaho Potato Bowl?"

And of course, waiting in the wings are the Chic Fil A Bowl, the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl (my wife would love that one), the Outback Bowl, and the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl.

The Crystal Ship

Odd news story of the day - a councilor here in Paris has sent a recommendation up to the city council to nominate a street in ville de lumière after the late Doors front-man, Jim Morrison.  Morrison's life ended famously in Paris's Marais district nearly a half-century ago.

Jerome Dubus, representing the gentrifying 17th Arrondisement proclaimed "c’est étonnant...qu’aucun lieu dans la capitale ne porte encore le nom Morrison, étant donné son lien particulier avec Paris" (astonished that there is no place in Paris carrying Morrison's name, which has such a particular tie with the city.)

Strangest of all, Dubus is a member of the UMP, the conservative party of France.  One does not typically associate Jim Morrison, or the Doors, or rock music, for that matter, with the political right.  In 2012, his party nominated him to be the national party lead for economic growth and freedoms.

I guess the Doors did sell a lot of records.

The socialist mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoe responded that the the idea is a good one, via his cultural spokesman Bruno Julliard.  Some of his socialist peers are less enthused, sniffing that streets and other public places take a long time, and perhaps Morrison's name would be better associated with a building - a music conservatory, perhaps.

So a battle may be shaping up, where the conservative party is pushing to name a street after Jim Morrison, against a left-wing opposition.  Morrison's father was an Admiral in the US Navy, of course.  Hmm.

Morrison died in July 1971, and is buried in the famous cimetière du Père-Lachaise.   

Les Villes en Equation: The World According to Zipf

Read a short article this morning in the RER on the way to work (aside: yesterday there was a rail strike here in France, affecting hundreds of thousands if travellers.  The timing could hardly be worse, as residents here in Ile de France are being asked to take measures to curb emissions in an effort to reduce a string of days of pollution deemed "Très élevé"; the strike forced many to take to their cars) which touched upon several of my own peculiar curiosities.  Mathematics, language, and geography.

There is a not terribly widely known model paradigm known as Zipf's law, named for a mid-20th century linguist, in which elements of a finite or countably infinite set  can be rank-ordered, with the frequencies inversely proportional to the item's rank.

Put simply, the first item in the list will appear with a frequency that is twice that of the second; the third most common will appear approximately 1/3 as frequently, etc.

In mathematical terms, this is written as:



where N is the total number of elements in the set; k is the rank of the item in the set (1...N), and s is the power parameter for the series.

George Zipf, for whom the distribution (and law) is named observed that, empirically in language, the most frequently used word will appear approximately twice as often as the second, three times as frequently as the third, etc.  Zipf applied his thinking to the famous Brown corpus of English from a study of American texts conducted by Brown University, and discovered that the most common word in the texts ('the') appeared about 70,000 times in American literature surveyed.  The second most common ("of") appeared about 36,000 times; the third ("and") was used in 28,000 cases.  1.00, 0.51, 0.40.  Not a perfect fit, but close.

In the article, it is pointed out that, ranking the most populous US cities (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia) one sees an approximately Zipf-ian distribution.

The populations (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) are

8.4MM, 3.9MM, 2.7MM, 2.2MM, 1.5MM

The ratios:

1.00, 0.46, 0.32, 0.25, 0.18

Very close to 1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, and 1/5.

Since Zipf also studied the patterns of use of Chinese, I thought it might be interesting to examine if Zipf's law applies in that giant country.

According to the CIA Fact Book, the most populous cities in China are Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen.

Populations:  22MM, 19MM, 11MM, 11MM, 10MM.

The distribution here seems to fail, with three observations.  First, Chinese census data define 'cities' somewhat differently, tracking "built-up areas," "urban areas," etc., so comparisons may be a bit off.  Second, whilst I knew that China had some big cities (the country is more than a billion and a half people), these are massive cities.  New York would be about eighth.  China has cities that would be the third largest state in the US.  Third, I am shocked to see Shenzhen as the fifth largest city in China.  I visited Shenzhen in 1989, and there was not much there besides a few glass apartments that catered to business travelers who came and went from Hongkong, just across the Shumchun river.  It has added I would suspect nine million residents in 25 years.

All in all, not Moore's law, but still quite something.

Le "Selfie" de la Discorde

Hey - Don't Forget to Tag Me

Don't Make Me Separate You Two

The tech age is truly a thing of beauty.  Smart phones.  The internet (thanks Al Gore).  The 24-hours news cycle.   All of this is no doubt a boon to guys like Jay Leno - if not to say Jon Stewart.

Still, who could resist the recent furore over the "selfie" snapped by US President Barack Obama.

The president was in Soweto in South Africa to attend the homage to the late South African President and anti-apartheid warrior Nelson Mandela.

President Obama has come under somewhat mild fire for his less than reverent behaviour, including not a small amount of speculation as to the fallout it may have had on his wife Michelle.  Michelle has at times been described in less than flattering terms in the soft press, including a book released about this same time last year.  A sort of political Upstairs Downstairs in which the First Lady was portrayed as somewhat controlling, petty, and jealous.

Here in France, the whole thing is being described in the press as "Le Selfie de la Discorde."  One need not be a French scholar to reckon out the meaning.  In one article, the president's insouciant behaviour is compared to "le regard renfrogné de sa femme." (The sullen look of his wife).  

To me, the most interesting thing of the whole affair is the French adoption of the term "selfie."  Unlike English, French nouns are masculin or féminin. Anyone who struggled through school-boy French remembers the tribulations of sorting the two.  Who hasn't written an essay, pausing to recall if it's les liaisons dangereux  or les liaisons dangereuses?

For certain neologisms, like "selfie," there actually is an Académie française, established centuries ago by Cardinal Richelieu, whose job it is to rule whether the new word is to be (m) or (f).  

In this case, "le selfie" is the ruling.  

Not sure how "twerk" has come down, though.  

Microsoft: A Rose by any Other Name

Ah, yes.  What would modern life be without Microsoft and its wonderful products?  Nothing says innovation, or smooth transition, or well-conceived features like the software behemoth of suburban Seattle.

Well, not quite.

Stories of glitch-filled "upgrades" are by now legend.  In my opinion, the "Windows" operating platform probably reached its peak 15 years or so ago with Win NT.  It was somewhat Spartan, with limited time-saving "short-cuts" or cute, useless features such as an animated dog to help you find topics.

But it was relatively bug-free and, for its time, fast.  By contrast, MS Word had its high-water mark round about 1989.

I'm convinced that with each release, Microsoft's products become a little bit worse in every way.  Features we liked are removed.  Options that we could fine-tune are now gone, replaced by "Wizards" that don't quite do what we really need.  Menu-driven actions are replaced with impenetrable icons that one must be an Egyptologist to reckon out.

Yesterday, my company more or less pushed me to "upgrade" my office computer to Windows 2010 (I know; it's three-years obsolescent technology if labelling is to be believed.)  I had resisted previous changes, but this time, the warning was somewhat stern.

So, I held my nose, clicked all the various "I read and acknowledge" ass-covering tick boxes, and followed the instructions.

Guess what happened next?

The GUI is, as predicted, unrecognisable, and of course, terrible.  MS, God bless them, wiped several programmes I like (Google Chrome - gone and replaced by the hideous "Internet Explorer.")  It's fairly easy to undo this dubious mischief.

But then, this AM, I opened my Outlook mail, and.... my entire archive of read mail...gone.  Approximately five years of correspondences, idiotically erased.  A bit of research quickly detected the cause.  When migrating read mail from the server to my local computer (a necessary task, as server space is restricted), the mails (and attachments) are placed into a .PST file for storage.

The geniuses at Microsoft - for no apparent reason - have with the newer release changed the hierarchy.  Previously, the user .PST file was stored in the C:\Documents and Settings\USERID folder.

With the new release, this critical file is now placed in a folder called C:\Users\USERID\App Data folder.

The critical problem is the root directory - one is C:\Documents and Settings, and one is C:\Users.

When the new version of Windows installed itself, it simply removed the prior structure root and branch.  Thus, all user-specified data for Outlook is gone.  Sig file.  Mail archive.  Contacts.

Gone.

For no reason whatsoever.

Brilliant.

I now face the task of trying to recover from this criminal stupidity.

Thanks, guys.

Les Casques Bleus et Verts

Francois Hollande Meets with Mali's
President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita

As the French government debate and wring their hands about what to do in sub-Saharan Africa - the appalling killing in the Central African Republic, the civil war in Mali, the destabilisation of the Ivory Coast - the cynic in me got to see the foolishness of the UN in full bloom.

As fate would have it, this weekend leaders of the various countries of the region came to France for the august-named "Sommet de l'Eysée pour La Paix et  la Sécurité en Afrique" (Summit for Peace and Security in Africa) to discuss peace, development, climate issues (!!!), and the like.  The timing coincided with plans to deal with the emerging human horrors.

I live in Paris on the same block as both the Palais de l'Elysée and the ultra-luxe Hotel le Bristol.  For good measure, the UK, US, and Japanese embassies sit a bit further down the street, and just beyond, Hermes and Cartier boutiques.  Le Bristol hosted several potentates and presidents of these nations.

As I was heading off Saturday to pick up our Christmas tree, a motorcade of vehicles was idling outside the hotel, surrounded by police in vans, cars, and on motorcycles.  Each of the various large, black sedans had a sticker indicating whom it awaited.  Among the nations, Tchad (Chad), Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), and Togo.  Not fewer than three vehicles for each idled in the street.

Aside from the obvious irony about a summit dealing with 'climate change' being facilitated with a motor pool of heavy, polluting cars which sat for at least twenty or thirty minutes idling, waiting to drive the attendees not 500 metres down the street (the walk from Le Bristol to the Palais de l'Elysée is not more than five minutes), I was struck by just the surreal, grotesque dissonance before me.

A room at the Hotel le Bristol is not less than $1000 per night.  Rooms can easily top $5000 per night.

Each of these nations - Togo, Ivory Coast, and Chad - commanded multiple rooms, I suspect.

The per capita, PPP-adjusted GDP per capita of the three nations is $1900, $1000, and $1600 respectively.

So, each of these individuals spent the equivalent of an entire year's wealth for one of his population for a single night's accommodation.

In a nut-shell, this is my largest complaint about the current state of "diplomacy."  It's manifestly ridiculous - perhaps offensive - that allegedly democratic institutions (the president of Mali pictured above was ostensibly elected to power in his nation) lavish truly wasteful luxury on their leaders in such a manner.  In the US, as the government has repeatedly teetered at the brink of bankruptcy, it's now become famous the travels of the president for his personal vacations as well as for "official" business.

The French revolution was in no small part precipitated because the common man desires leaders, not rulers.  We are citizens and not subjects.

Les Casques Bleus

Living in a foreign land (in this case, France) can provide one a glimpse into the way others see the world and the events occurring in it.  For example, over the summer, as the US President painted himself into a corner in an ill-advised stance on red lines and Syria, it was to say the least ironic as the one ally Mr Obama found among the Western powers was the erstwhile socialist president of France, Francois Hollande.  The French people were somewhat less enthusiastic about the affair - there was a series of "manifestations" and rebukes to M Hollande, and ultimately, when a back-door was discovered, the two were able to escape any serious damage - either real or political.  At least for the time being.

Fast forward to December, and the events that are unfolding in the Central African Republic.  Apparently, much like Rwanda a couple of decades ago, militias are committing atrocities - killing civilians, chopping off limbs, emptying villages.

The French government has decided to send 1600 or so soldiers to the region - these are countries that in the past were French-controlled, so there is a bit of guilt mixed with some nostalgia, I suppose - to help to end the violence.  The opposition is lining up, with questions about "n'est-elle plus qu'une simple compagnie de CRS de l'Oncle Sam?" (is this more than a simple clean up job for Uncle Sam?) and implications that the whole thing is a "blanc-seing de l'ONU" (UN whitewashing)

For once, it's someone besides the US playing world cop.

The Grade Cards Are in: Blue Jays' Mid-Year Grades

Tonight is the Major League Baseball All-Star game, the traditional marker of the half-way point of the season.  Of course, it's not really the midpoint of the season (162 games - Toronto at 45-49 - have played 94 games, a bit more than half of their schedule), but what do you expect from a league where pitching stats are presented such that 6 and 2/3 innings are abbreviated as 6.2?

Details, details.

Anyhow, at the semester break, thought I'd rate the performance of the team.

For context, the 2013 season began with enormous expectation and hope - a hope that frankly had not had much basis for nearly 20 years.  The Jays have not made the playoffs since their second World Series title in 1993.  No; that's not fair.  They had not contended for the playoffs since then.  Following that golden season, the team was acquired by InterBev, a massive, Belgian brewing conglomerate who promptly dumped a lot of salary, including future HoF Robbie Alomar.  Things have not been quite the same since.

Well, in this off-season, the team made a number of high-profile deals, landing the reigning NL Cy Young winner (R.A. Dickey), most of the talent of the Florida Marlins, and the (statistical) batting champ from the NL, Melky Cabrera.  Given that the AL East is uncharacteristically weak this year - the Yankees are old and bedeviled by injury, the Red Sox were coming off a terrible year and made no moves that indicated that they would improve significantly - there was real optimism.

It hasn't worked out quite that way.

With that in mind, on to the Report Card.

Offence:  B-/C+

The Blue Jays do one thing very well; they hit home runs.  With Edwin Encarnacion, Jose Bautista, and J.P. Arencibia, the team is second in the AL with 115 homers, tied with Seattle (!!) and trailing only Baltimore.  They play in a very HR-friendly stadium, but have actually hit 58 long-balls at home (46 games) versus 57 on the road (48 games), so it's not quite right to say that the result is due to park effects.

That hasn't really translated into a terrific performance.  Despite the number of homers, the team is eighth of fifteen in the most important stat, runs scored.  This is largely due to the fact that the team is poor at getting on base.  As they found out most recently in Baltimore (where Earl Weaver, as manager, put to words the best strategy for winning, pitching, defence, and the three-run homerun), those long balls bring a much smaller impact when there is no one on base.

The Blue Jays sit 10th in the league in OBP (.316).  Worse still, Blue Jays leadoff men are 11th in that category.  They just are not reaching base enough.

Adam Lind has had a surprising resurgence.  Jose Bautista continues to both get on base and hit homers, despite a relatively poor batting average.  Edwin Encarnacion also has been very effective, leading the team in HR, RBI, and OPS.

These figures are offset by some truly terrible performances.

Emilio Bonifacio (Bonafiasco) has been amongst the worst regulars in the league, his .207 batting average just north of the Mendoza Line. His OBP of .248 is terrible.  J.P. Arencibia has been almost as bad, a .256 OBP.  His performance has been somewhat mitigated by the fact that he can hit the ball out of the park (his 16 HR lead AL catchers).  Looking beyond the top line, however, it gets ugly.  With runners on, Arencibia is hitting .207; with runners in scoring position, a ghastly .156.  J.P. has struck out 98 times in 308 ABs, against only 13 walks.  His backups have been worse.

Ouch.

The bench/spot starters (Rajai Davis, Munenori Kawasaki, Mark De Rosa) - about all that can be said of them is, "At least they are not Mike McCoy."

Missing from the equation is Brett Lawrie, who has missed significant time due to injuries.  When on the field, he's been very poor. In 147 ABs, Lawrie has hit .204 with a poor .621 OPS - comparable to what John McDonald might post.  His play last year and this has been so poor, it calls into question his value as a quality regular.  Lawrie's been hurt, to be fair, but his inability to stay healthy hardly militates for the long-term value of his career.

Starting Pitching:  F

In a word, Blue Jays's starters have been awful.  In the somewhat new stat "Quality Starts" (essentially, completing six innings without allowing too many runs), Blue Jays' starters are second to last in the American League. In 38 of 94 games (about 40%), the starter has logged such a start; only the Minnesota Twins (34) are worse.  Roughly speaking, Toronto starters are less than a 50-50 bet to pitch more than five innings.  About half the time, they don't complete even five innings.

That is a SHOCKING statistic - in almost half of their starts, Toronto pitchers do not even go enough innings to qualify for a win, even if they somehow managed to hold the opposition to fewer runs than their own team scores.

That is terrible, and puts a huge strain on the relief corps (more later).

The rotation is racked up a 5.07 ERA, again, better only than the Minnesota Twins. They are allowing a .274 batting average (the league average is .259), and have allowed 78 home runs.  Over 515 innings, that amounts to almost 1.5 per game.

R.A. Dickey, the staff ace, has been, to put it kindly, mediocre. At 8-10, he's already exceeded his 2012 loss total (in 2012, Dickey was 20-6).  He's posted a 4.69 ERA, which is above the league average (4.08).

The rest - with the exception of Esmil Rogers, who in an emergency role has been OK, are even worse.  Josh Johnson - one of the big acquisitions from Florida, has been flat-out awful, 1-5, 5.16.  Probably not what he was hoping for in his contract season.  Mark Buehrle (5-6, 4.89) has been hit hard.  Brandon Morrow started poorly and then hit the DL.

If one wants to point to the main reason for this year's disappointing result, one need look no further than the starters.

Bullpen: A-

The relief pitchers - with a few notable exceptions - have been outstanding.  Toronto leads the AL in ERA from the pen (2.90).  Toronto relievers have held opposition batters to a .224 batting average, second only to Tampa Bay.

Because of the horrible starting pitching, they've accumulated 334 innings thus far, in 93 games.  Yes; Toronto starters have ONE complete game.  The bullpen is averaging 3.5 innings per game.

Brett Cecil has been outstanding, as have Steve Delabar and Aaron Loup, all in long relief/setup roles.  Casey Janssen, as the closer, has been very good, with 18 saves.  Not surprisingly, the bullpen has 21 wins, tops in the American League.

It remains to be seen how long they can continue, given the huge workload.

Defence: F

Toronto fielding has been awful; it's been sufficiently poor that the glove work may be a significant contributor to the woes of the starters.  The Blue Jays have allowed 42 unearned runs; only the woeful Houston Astros have been worse (48).  The league average is 29.

Given that the team has allowed a total of 440 runs, that means that almost 10 per cent of all runs allowed are unearned.  The Blue Jays are giving away nearly a half a run per game.

The most basic fielding stat - fielding percentage - puts Toronto 12th in the league, better only than the White Sox, Angels, and Astros.

It's tough to win with that sort of fielding.  Toss in the mediocre to poor pitching, and you have a team that is now four games under .500 despite an 11-game win streak.

Management: D

To be fair, the management cannot pitch or play the field, and hence it's impossible to make a silk purse from a sow's ear.  But John Gibbons, in his second tour of duty, has not even made a faux leather purse from said ear.  The batting orders lead one to scratch one's head (for example, Jose Bautista, one of the top sluggers, has been ensconced in the number two slot.)  Gibbons has at times used Kawasaki (.617 OPS) and Josh Thole (.338) at DH.  He continues to write Bonifacio's name on the lineup card - a guy who has been terrible at the plate and worse in the field.  Bizarre pinch hitting choices are made, and pitching changes sometimes seem random - leaving in a reliever one batter too long, and then subsequently making the opposite mistake.

Though it's not really explicitly a management item, the team's fundamentals have been awful as well - running into outs (for example, down by three runs late and getting thrown out stretching a double into a triple), striking out with runners on third and less than two out, throwing to the wrong base.  Mental mistakes and poor fundamentals reflect a less than stellar leadership.

Overall: D-

The team, despite high expectations, has actually been worse in 2013 than it was at this point in 2012.  It's very hard to see how the second half is likely to improve, given the demands placed on the bullpen, and to be frank, looking across the roster and asking "who is likely to play better in the second half", let alone significantly better.

All in all, another dismal performance in what is now a long and expanding history of failure.