June 14, 2013
Pitching wins are bogus 27% of the time. Why is this still a stat?

Tony Sipp is one lucky bastard. Monday night at baseball’s finest ravine, Sipp, a pitcher for the Arizona Diamondbacks, earned himself a Major League win. What did he do? Sipp came into the game with two out in the eighth inning to face Andre Ethier of the Dodgers. Either popped out weakly to center to end the inning. Arizona went on to score four runs in the ninth against LA closer Brandon “minor” League. Sipp, for his troubles in getting all of one out, was awarded the win.

Don’t tell Mike Francesa, but pitcher wins are stupid. It’s not just that wins are sometimes unfair, they are often misleading. Just look at the example above. The only two people on earth that believe Tony Sipp deserves an honest win for retiring one batter are Tony Sipp’s mother and Tony Sipp’s agent.

What separates the pitching win from the game-winning RBI, another pointless number that became a stat in 1980 and was subsequently revoked when people saw how arbitrary and dumb it was? Nothing much. Here’s what you need to do to get a game-winning RBI: bat in the first run of the game that gives your team the lead. This could be a home run in the first inning of a 9-6 game or a scoring fly ball in the ninth to break a 2-2 tie. It’s all the same. You see how meaningless this information is.

Now consider the pitching win. If you’re the starter, you must complete five innings and you must either finish the game or leave with a lead that is never relinquished. If you’re a reliever, you need only be the pitcher on record when your team takes the lead for good. Far too much of this is arbitrary. For instance, what if your team doesn’t score?

Ask Felix Hernandez of the Mariners about this. In the 2010 season when he won the Cy Young Award, Hernandez averaged 3.07 runs of support per nine innings. In his 34 starts, Hernandez allowed the opposition to score four runs or more just six times.* That means he was good enough to win the game — the average offense scores a bit more than four runs per game — 28 times. He finished the season with 13 wins. Five times he pitched at least seven innings with one or no runs allowed and walked away with nothing.

And what about those bullpen “wins” where the pitcher really didn’t do much except come in at an opportune time. You might be thinking that’s not really much of a big deal, but in reality, distorted wins like this occur in about 27% of games. The below table shows all games for the past five seasons along with those in which the winning pitcher recorded six outs or fewer:

GBSW%
2012  2,430  642  26.4%
20112,42966427.3%
20102,43063626.2%
20092,43065627.0%
20082,42868228.1%
Total12,1473,28027.0%

These are indicated as BSW or BS wins, which is what they are. So far in 2013, there have been 274 such games out of a possible 945, or 29%.

Worse, so far this season there have been 53 “wins” awarded to pitchers who recorded just one out. This is the pinnacle of absurdity.

The great thing about baseball, as opposed to other team sports, is the ability to track everything as a series of discrete events. Mark Reynolds struck out 223 times. Derek Jeter reached base 37.9% of the time leading off an inning. The Red Sox have seen 10,920 pitches, the most of any team. Yet fans and analysts seem to accept the pitching win alongside these legitimate statistics despite the fact that much of what goes into the win itself is completely out of the pitcher’s control.

That people in the media, and particularly radio talk show hosts born before 1970, continue to god-up wins is doing a disservice to players and fans. Broadcasters chatter all the time about will there be another 300-game winner? Sportscenter anchors crow about the first guy in the league to get to 15 wins. And talking heads of an earlier generation protested when Zack Greinke and Felix Hernandez won Cy Young awards despite having “only” 16 and 13 wins. This is a bunch of crap.

Lots of “wins” doesn’t mean a pitcher is good. Look at 2012 Phil Hughes. He “won” 16 games. Pretty much any idiot could have done that when the Yankees scored seven runs or more in 10 of his starts. (His record: 7 wins, 1 loss, 2 no-decisions.) They scored five or more 18 times behind Hughes in 32 starts. But old people like to tell you he was a 16-game winner.

The best solution to this is to eliminate the win altogether. The traditional earned-run average has flaws for sure, but it at least tells you to some degree who is good and who is not. Couple that with some meaningful information, such as how many times was a starter gave his team a chance to win. One way to do this currently is with quality starts, defined as six innings or more while allowing three earned runs or fewer. That’s a 4.50 ERA. Given the average team scores that many runs per game, anything better from the pitcher means his team is more likely than not to win. It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough. So instead of displaying arbitrary wins and losses, you should see James Shields, 2.79 ERA, 12/14 QS. (Shields is tied with Hisashi Iwakuma of Seattle for the best quality start ratio in the AL, 86%, while he has but a 2-6 record. And you see why wins are dumb.)

At least a generation of people is going to have to die off before this would ever happen. In the meantime, why not at least eliminate the BS win. Make wins the exclusive provenance of the starting pitcher. So what if a game ends without a “winning” pitcher. Is that worse than awarding a win to someone who had minimal impact, something that now happens more than a quarter of the time? Or, to give deference to long relievers, allow awarding of wins only to those who pitch a majority of the innings, so if the starter comes out in the third and another guy finishes the game, he can be the winner. Fine.

*If you’re scoring at home, he allowed four or more earned runs only four times. In an August game at Cleveland, the Indians scored six unearned runs against Hernandez, sending him to his 10th loss of the season. In a July start in Chicago, only two of the four runs he yielded the White Sox were earned. That would make his 2010 Quality Start Factor 30/34 (88.2%).

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June 12, 2013
This is the best ad campaign for meat you will see all year

Looking for that special gift this Father’s Day? The good people at Oscar Mayer have a suggestion.

Do yourself a favor and visit sayitwithbacon.com

The two minute clip is worth your time. Actual quote “All you have to do is listen, and the bacon will show you the way.”

For $22 to $28 you can send dad a carton of bacon and a nifty pocket knife or money clip along with a card. (Sorry, the third option, a set of bacon cufflinks, is currently sold out.)

In case you may be a tad skeptical, here’s an excerpt from the FAQ:

Q: Is this real? Can I really send my special someone the highly-coveted gift of fine bacon?
A: Yes.

This is really brilliant work.

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Filed under: advertising 
June 10, 2013
Someone at the Times turned the pretentiousness dial up to 11

On an otherwise uneventful Monday afternoon, what does the New York Times have to offer on its online front page? See for yourself:

To the left is the reasonable news. You have a little immigration legislation and a timely dispatch from a foreign bureau. Then there’s the main attraction: a teaser for a slide show entitled “Eating Frogs in France.” But of course. (Link here if you would like to read 1,400 words about the history and grandeur of preparing frogs’ legs.)

With the advent of nouvelle cuisine in the 1970s, frogs’ legs seemed to lose their cachet. But search hard enough and you will find a lover of cuisses de grenouilles.
Chances are, you’re not finding that in The USA Today.

Over on the right, there are these items from the opinion page:

“A Digital Solace: The iPad is the fatherly reassurance that Freud says we all crave.” That headline should be fair warning enough that this was coming:

Though the birth classes my wife and I took last summer while we were expecting our daughter were almost painfully thorough, they did not answer a few pressing questions: What is one to do if the imminent arrival of his first child engenders nothing but fear and dread? If the creation of new life turns his morbid mind to the inexorability of death? If the mere notion of bringing an innocent creature into this malevolently entropic world fills him with an anxiety that is like a persistent, unreachable itch?

Here’s a helpful suggestion for this guy’s kid: a thesaurus would not be a good father’s day gift. Also, you will need counseling and probably Xanax.

Finally, below that item on the right, is some lamenting from an op-ed contributor about how some hotels are discontinuing Champagne delivery by room service. This would definitely be a problem for rappers. But how many are staying at the midtown Hilton? As for Jerry and Bev from Cleveland, they weren’t spending $1,000 for booze anyway. But the horror!

Now, starting this summer, the New York Hilton Midtown, the city’s biggest hotel, will stop offering room service. Who needs it, when every guest has MenuPages? So goodbye to the cloche — that polished, bell-shaped dome that is lifted off a plate to release a rush of steam and reveal a gourmet meal. And hello to the paper bag.

Wait a second, chief. They had no problem letting that first guy use the term “malevolently entropic” and yet they don’t think the reader knows what a cloche is? Really?

All the news that’s fit to print, indeed!

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June 3, 2013
The new logo for the old Big East is hideous

Here’s a quick quiz: Below is a list of 15 schools. Can you pick out the 12 that will eventually be in the conference formerly known as the Big East?

Houston, UConn, Navy, Syracuse, Temple, South Florida, Central Florida, Ohio, Tulane, Memphis, East Carolina, Cincinnati, Boise State, Southern Methodist, Tulsa.

Take your time; this is not designed to be easy.

If you correctly identified Syracuse (formerly of the Big East, now going to the ACC), Ohio University (charter member of the MAC, still in the MAC), and Boise State (at one point agreed to join the Big East, decided instead to go to the Mountain West, the school’s fourth conference since 1995), you should immediately stop what you’re doing and open your own CDO trading desk.* That stuff is simple compared to conference realignment.

As you may have heard, this new amalgam of also-ran athletic programs, having been summarily divorced by the Catholic faction of the Big East, has chartered a new league to be called the American Athletic Conference. Presumably as tribute to the excellent Cold War era TV series The Americans, the conference suggests you refer to it as “The American.” Classy. And they have a new logo:

image

Wow, that is awful. So many gradients. Such superfluous outlining. What a heinous font. And that bizarrely-shaped star. There are Army surplus stores in Des Moines with better looking logos than this.

This was clearly made using Word. And the designer seems to have taken visual cues from the Devil Rays, the ugliest logo in baseball:

image

Here’s what conference commissioner Mike Aresco said in a release: “Obviously this is a media world we live in, and we wanted to make sure we had the kind of mark that would be distinctive and would make an impact when people saw it. We wanted it to be something people would like and remember, but the notion really was to make it as simple as possible but also strong.”

So, wait, they were going for simple? And ended up with … that? That’s like going to the doctor for a chest X-ray and being given a heart transplant. Give him points for “strong” in the sense that they cranked up the typeface from merely bold to extra bold. But that wasn’t bold enough, so they added an extra layer of outline and a stupid drop-shadow for this alternate version:

image

What a disaster this is. Fitting, of course, for this league that will doubtless be the least competitive of the major conferences. But the marketing people in the league’s Providence headquarters** have to spin this somehow. The conference website posits the line “Strong. Stable. United. Competitive.” Those are four words that could not possibly be less true. Strong, for instance, would suggest they have some leverage in negotiating television rights. False; they accepted a pittance from ESPN after much begging and no other offers. If they are so united, then why are some of the teams not joining for two years? Does their definition of competitive mean winning the Papa Johns.com Bowl more often than not? Because that’s not necessarily a given. And they seem to have a particularly nuanced understanding of stable. The coming football season will be played with 10 teams, two of which will be in the conference for 2013 only (Louisville and Rutgers), while the 2014 season will feature 11 teams and then 2015 will have 12. Yes, stable indeed.

They didn’t stop there. Yet more slogans from the website:

“You want to see a reinvented conference that competes nationally … on day one. Watch The American.” “You want to see a strong, unified conference that surpasses and surprises. Follow The American.” “You want to see a conference that excels on every college athletic stage in every major sport. Tune in to The American.”

So that’s what Baghdad Bob has been up to these days.

* Collateralized Debt Obligations. For the uninitiated, these are financial instruments mostly blamed for the 2008 financial crisis. Banks created these to make money and diversify risk, unlike conference realignment, which was done solely to make money for football.

** Must be in the Providence Place Mall. Everything there is in the mall. And wouldn’t you think they would put the conference office somewhere easily accessible for most of the schools? Providence, Rhode Island, is located north of every university scheduled to be in the conference, unless they go crazy and add UMass. There are no direct flights from even the major cities where some schools are located, such as Dallas or New Orleans.

NOTE: This really is the logo they are going to use. It’s not a joke. It’s also not the winner of some contest. The league paid money for this. Consider that when the Big Ten did its latest rebranding, they hired Pentagram, one of the premier firms in the world, who’s work you might recognize from Microsoft, Citibank, United Airlines and Saks, among others. The American conference hired something called Mad Creek Advertising, of Upper Montclair, N.J., (other clients include Mycell Technologies, Oritani Bank and Union Catholic High School). And this was the result.

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May 31, 2013
More than half say “no, thanks” to Dartmouth, again

Given the opportunity to spend four years in lovely Hanover, N.H., — where Winter Carnival comes but once a year, while the snow lasts until April — more than half of students recently accepted by Dartmouth turned them down. The College’s class of 2017 yield rate was just 48.53% according to the Times, marking the second straight year where a majority of students said “no thank you” to beer pong played with paddles.

College presidents, particularly those in the upper echelon, care about three things: U.S. News rankings, yield rate and finding new ways to say they are “integrating knowledge,” whatever the hell that means. (Also, in the Ivy League, they care about keeping their football teams from participating in the seedy underworld of the NCAA playoffs, a great scourge upon higher education, they say.) While the U.S. News figures are easily manipulated and largely arbitrary, the yield rate, which is share of accepted students who choose to enroll, actually tells you something about a school’s appeal. (It’s also easily manipulated by controlling several factors such as acceptances and financial aid offerings.)

Within the Ivy League, yield rates vary. Harvard enrolled 82% of those it accepted this year. Penn (64.3%), Princeton (66.9%) and Yale (68%) all post respectable scores as well. Brown, Columbia and Cornell, which compete against those schools in athletics, historically have yields in the 55% range. As for Dartmouth, they did finish ahead of Wisconsin (43.1%), barely.

Elsewhere, Stanford’s class of 2017 yield was 76.65%, meaning 23.35% of students accepted to Stanford are stupid. At Cooper Union, where the kids don’t pay (yet!), 76% chose to attend. And Cal Tech surprisingly only enrolled 43% of accepted students. Didn’t they send them literature on how enjoyable Pasadena is in December?

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May 29, 2013
Get excited: it’s Bee Week!

Nothing captures the imagination of America quite like kids spelling. Will he add that extra “e” at the end? Will she pick up on the clues from the language of origin? Will Dr. Jacques Bailly swear on air? Will one — or several — of the kids faint? You can bet the nation will be watching with rapt attention.

Except during breaks in the action on espn3, when America will see this:

image

Clearly they had this graphic left over from the 1992 Bee. And with the staggering cost of prizes to be awarded — the winner really does get an Encyclopedia Britannica, street value $2,000 — why not save a few bucks.

Here are highlights from the ESPN release:

  • The production open will be themed to Matilda the Musical, the Broadway musical nominated for 12 Tony Awards. In the open, Miss Trunchbull, played by actor Bertie Carvel, shows her jealousy for the champion spellers’ knowledge of words via a dark and twisted monologue;
  • Video of select champion spellers lip-syncing to the Macklemore and Ryan Lewis hit song “Can’t Hold Us”;
  • Best of the Bee – Highlights the most memorable moments from ESPN’s two decades of National Spelling Bee Finals;
  • Emmy Award-winning essayist and reporter Tom Rinaldi will be featured in a series of short, poetic essays that capture the essence of the Bee competition and its stars;
  • ESPN’s television coverage of the 2013 Bee Finals will include introductory profiles of select champion spellers, highlighting their hometowns, schools and hobbies. Two profiles tell the stories of Arvind Mahankali from Bayside, New York (sponsored by New York Daily News), who has placed third in the championship round each of the last two years, and Vanya Shivashankar from Olathe, Kansas, (sponsored by The Olathe News), whose sister Kavya won the National Spelling Bee in 2009.

Perhaps if they had spent a little less on the rights to that Maclemore song or chosen a musical with fewer Tony nominations, they could afford a better graphic. Or at least get these kids some clothes that fit.

This year’s field includes 281 spellers. All of them surely have interesting stories to tell about their love of Harry Potter, their passion for obscure languages or their many, many unusual pets. But a few are worth keeping an eye on. ESPN’s release highlights five spellers in particular who have made the finals four years straight:

  • Grace Remmer, Jacksonville, Fla. — She plays the violin in the mold of her favorite musician, Itzhak Perlman. When she’s not knitting or singing Broadway tunes, Grace is researching ancient civilizations and studying neuroscience. And Grace is a fierce speller, finishing tied for 9th, 14th and 22nd previously.
  • Amber Born, Marblehead, Mass. — She plays keyboard in a Beatles tribute band. Last year, Amber tied for 42nd.
  • Sriram J. Hathwar, Corning, N.Y. — He plays a pretty good game of badminton. Sriram is the only speller in the field who has given a TED talk. His previous best finish is 6th in 2011. Have to like his moxie.
  • Arvind V. Mahankali, Bayside, Queens — His favorite word is sardoodledom. Arvind says his favorite athletes are Novak Djokovic and Shaq, but his spelling game is more like that of Sergio Garcia: 9th, 3rd and 3rd in the prior Bees.
  • Chetan G. Reddy, Plano, Texas — He prides himself on his sports skills, including basketball, cricket, badminton and table tennis. Maybe he should work harder on his spelling skills: previously 27th in 2011 and 22nd last year. But Chetan is a two-way player — he also captains his school’s Whiz Quiz team.

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(Notes: 2)
  
Filed under: Spelling Bee 
May 25, 2013
"Could I get a Smith from Detroit? Please?"

— Gus Johnson on calling some soccer game today for Fox. All the players have wacky German names, and sadly none are from ‘Nap Town. (Story here from the Times)

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May 22, 2013
Some quick hits

Everyone’s favorite feature!

TNT’s coverage of the NBA is demonstrably better than ESPN’s. Everyone knows the Turner studio show is far superior.* And while Mike Breen and Jeff Van Gundy are the best broadcast tandem, the best of the rest – particularly Marv and the Czar – work for TNT. But there’s another subtle but important difference: the sound mixing. ESPN is terrible at this. Practically all of their games have far too much crowd noise, often so much so that you cannot hear the commentators. It’s really quite obnoxious, and a problem that’s easily solved by turning a dial to the right.

But couldn’t TNT spring for a larger table here:

image

Baseball has to do something to fix replay. Bud Selig has been a miserly old coot about this for too long. Take, for instance, this sequence of events from Sunday. The Devil Rays are in Baltimore. Matt Joyce of Tampa hits a ball down the line strikes the base of the foul pole (which, moronically, is not painted yellow for about a foot) and bounces into the stands. This is called a double. Crazy Joe Maddon argues that it’s a home run. The managers and umpires go back and forth on the field for six minutes real time before the umpires decided to use replay. (More on Maddon’s argument here, which further indicts the current rule.) This takes another three minutes. Home run. Correct call. Fine. But a) this review should happen automatically on close plays such as this, and b) should be done by a dedicated replay official in the press box. The official scorer is already reviewing the game; let him do it. It should take 30 seconds and get the calls correct. There’s no excuse for the current state of things, Bud.

It’s time for people to tone it down with the jean jackets. They’re ugly, and they always look dirty whether they are or not. And whatever you do, never leave your home in the Canadian tuxedo, that is jeans with the jean jacket. Unless, of course, you’re headed to the Hudson’s Bay Company to trade some beaver pelts. In that case, by all means is the Canadian tuxedo an appropriate wardrobe choice.

Google Now is a fine idea. It would be better if it weren’t always a day behind.

Why do businesses feel the need to list their telephone numbers on their storefronts? Every deli and bodega has this. See here:

image

Why are you calling the bodega in the first place? (Sample phone call – owner: “yeah,” you: “hi, do you have any quarts of milk?” owner: [unintelligible], you: “so you do, then?” owner: [unintelligible] “five dollars”, you: “that seems a bit much,” owner: [unintelligible] “screw you.”) And if you are standing right in front of it, why are you still calling? Some even list fax numbers. Who is sending a fax!?! In 2013!?! To a place that sells cigarettes, beer and lottery tickets!?!

A friendly reminder: In the United States, gray is a color, Grey is an advertising agency. These are not interchangeable.

Uncooked onions are terrible. There are perfectly fine uses for onions, but they all require cooking. Onion rings are great. Onion soup is always a winner. The crispy fried onions they have at Press are one of the top reasons people are willing to spend $10 for a glorified salad wrap. Funyuns do not contain onion. But just raw onions by themselves are disgusting. Worse than beets.

Selected NYC grocery chains from best to worst: Fairway (decent but too crowded), Morton Williams (reasonable prices, small, sometimes dirty), Food Emporium (often a scam but clean), D’Agostino (definitely a scam), Gristedes (filthy and terrible).

The last thing America needs is another oral history of something. Those seem to be all the rage these days. You know what an oral history is? It’s a news story done by a lazy person. Instead of talking to sources and crafting a narrative – telling the reader what happened – the unimaginative modern blogger just types up the quotes and arranges them. Bam, it’s an oral history!

*ESPN’s NBA studio show, by contrast, offers just about as much interesting analysis as it does entertainment value, which is to say hardly any. But really, didn’t you want to know how Memphis stacks up against the 2008 Celtics? Or whether Ray Allen is as important to the Heat now as he was to the 2008 Celtics? Or if the 2008 Celtics would beat the Spurs in five games or six if they played right now? Also, Magic Johnson thinks Kobe Bryant is a unique and talented player … and break. That’s basically the ESPN show.

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May 20, 2013

Slide show: Madison Square Park’s latest dumb art project: piles of rope! (click to enlarge)

Spring means two things at Madison Square Park: hour-long lines at the Shake Shack (helpful hint: it would be faster to take the subway to one of four other locations!) and another silly art installation. Previously these arts projects have included fake metal trees, statues of people (many of which appeared to be jumping from nearby buildings, prompting frequent calls to police), and several varieties of painted boxes.

According to a description offered by the Madison Square Park Conservancy, these mounds consist of 1.4 million feet of rope covered in over 3,000 gallons of paint. The whole lot weighs over 100,000 pounds. “The monumental commission entitled Red, Yellow and Blue will feature the artist’s renowned usage of intricately hand-knotted nautical rope covered in paint, creating a work that will transform the park’s lush lawns into colorfully-lined chambers.” More description is available here.

So if you’re scoring at home: yes, there is plenty of paint available to color heaps of ugly rope lying on the ground; no, there is not enough paint for the MTA to repair the ceilings in subway stations that have been peeling since the Reagan administration. Good to know.

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May 16, 2013
Three Dumbest New Shows 2013: CBS

If you’re a regular reader, then you obviously know who Les Moonves is. But just in case you arrived searching for ivory paint here’s a quick primer. Moonves is the president of CBS. If you recall the film Django Unchained, he’s a bit like the Leonardo DiCaprio character sans the ascot and long cigarette holder. (Who knows, perhaps privately he does smoke, and if he did, you can bet he used one of those sweet cigarette holders.) In the movie, DiCaprio’s character takes great pleasure in watching two able-bodied slaves fight to the death in front of him. They were expendable, and the brutality of this entertained their master. Undoubtedly this is exactly what pitches are like at CBS. The network has been in first place for so long that the programmers have little use for weakling shows. They didn’t invent the crime-scene drama, they just replicated it many times over. Turns out the 60-to-dead demo loves that crap. Throw in a little Tom Selleck and it’s ratings gold! So it shouldn’t be too hard to conjure that image of Calvin Candie at the plantation when you read what Moonves had to say in response to Jimmy Kimmel’s needling at the ABC upfront:

“We’re very flattered when he called us ‘smug motherfuckers,’ that means we’re winning. We’ll try to be a little bit more gracious but that’s hard for me as you know… And ABC will finish No. 4 in 18-49.”
The man is not wrong. If you’re scoring at home, ABC is introducing 14 new shows this season. CBS is rolling out eight. Here are the three dumbest:

MOM — 9:30 p.m. Mondays
From the network: “MOM is a comedy from executive producer Chuck Lorre starring Anna Faris as a newly sober single mom raising two children in a world full of temptations and pitfalls, and multiple Emmy Award winner Allison Janney as her critical, estranged mother. Christy (Faris) is a waitress at a posh Napa Valley establishment who is four months clean and doing her best to be a good mom and overcome a history of questionable choices. Her sobriety is tested when Bonnie (Janney), her recovering alcoholic mom, reappears chock-full of passive-aggressive insights into Christy’s many mistakes. Bonnie joins Christy’s already complicated circle of relationships: her handsome, married boss – and lover – Gabriel (Nate Corddry); the restaurant’s hot-tempered chef, Rudy (French Stewart); her pretty, 16-going-on-25-year-old daughter, Violet (Sadie Calvano); her sweet but overly honest son, Roscoe (Blake Garrett Rosenthal); her irresponsible ex-husband and Roscoe’s father, Baxter (Matt Jones); and Violet’s clueless boyfriend, Luke (Spencer Daniels). Christy tries to remain positive as she pursues her new path in life, but she faces an uphill battle, surrounded by a dubious support system – and a copious amount of dysfunction. ”
In English: Bet you’ve been wondering what happened to C.J. Craig since the West Wing ended. Well, here she is as an overbearing drunk! Also, French Stewart got another job in TV!
Why it will fail: Judge for yourself the decisions being made by the lead character here. She’s a recovering alcoholic, yet lives in the wine capitol of America. She’s having an affair with her boss. She named her kids Violet and Roscoe; married a Baxter and dumped him for a Gabriel. You don’t want to know the other names in the hat that didn’t get picked by the producers.
This will last: Nine episodes. Chuck Lorre is to CBS what C.C. Sabathia is to the Yankees. They pay him a fortune and he delivers nine times out of 10. This one is that bizarre start in mid June where Toronto scores eight runs in the first three innings.

WE ARE MEN — 8:30 p.m. Mondays
From the network: “WE ARE MEN is a single-camera comedy about four single guys living in a short-term apartment complex who unexpectedly find camaraderie over their many missteps in love. Carter (Chris Smith), the youngest and most recent addition to the group, moved in after being ditched at the altar mid-ceremony, and is now eager to re-enter the dating scene and get on with his life with some guidance from his “band of brothers”: Frank Russo (Golden Globe and multiple Emmy Award winner Tony Shalhoub), a successful middle-aged clothing manufacturer and four-time divorcée who still fancies himself a ladies man; Gil Bartis (Kal Penn), a small business owner who was caught having the world’s worst affair; and Stuart Strickland (Jerry O’Connell), a speedo-wearing OB/GYN who’s hiding his assets until his second divorce is settled. Jill (Rebecca Breeds) is Frank’s charming and attractive daughter, who stands as the one positive remnant from his failed relationships. Armed with a hot tub, pool-side barbeque and plenty of questionable advice, these losers in the marriage department take Carter under their wing to impart their own brand of wisdom about the opposite sex.”
In English: Remember those several shows ABC is developing about groups of romantically challenged guys? Well in this one, one of the guys wears a Speedo.
Why it will fail: It will not. They’ve slotted this in between “How I Met Your Mother” and “2 Broke Girls” and this show appears on the surface to be the exact midpoint of those two. The people running this network are very good at geometry.
This will last: Full season. No guarantees about year two, though. It takes a lot of witty antics to get through 22 episodes. Hard to see them having anything left in the tank come next May.

RECKLESS — TBD, midseason
From the network: “RECKLESS is a sultry legal drama set in Charleston, S.C., where a gorgeous Yankee litigator and a charming Southern attorney must hide their intense mutual attraction as a police sex scandal threatens to tear the city apart. Jamie Sawyer (Anna Wood) is enviously cool, confident and armed with south-side-of-Chicago street-smarts as she takes on the good ol’ boys in the South. Her handsome courtroom rival, Roy Rayder (Cam Gigandet), a divorced father of two, embodies the Old South and is the newly minted City Attorney, thanks to his influential former father-in-law, Dec Fortnum (Gregory Harrison). When disgraced cop Lee Anne Marcus (Georgina Haig) hires Jamie to represent her in a lawsuit against the police department, Jamie and Roy discover that Lee Anne is at the epicenter of a sinister case with dire implications for the members of the Charleston P.D. Heading that department is Deputy Chief Holland Knox (Michael Gladis), a family man who radiates integrity. Working under him are Terry McCandless (Shawn Hatosy), a cocky and corrupt detective, and Preston Cruz (Adam Rodriguez), Jamie’s well-respected boyfriend who might not be all that he appears. Helping Jamie is her confidante and paralegal, Vi (Kim Wayans), an expert at digging up case-winning information. As Jamie and Roy spar in and out of the courtroom, dark secrets simmer behind every door and threaten to tarnish the genteel facade of seductive Charleston.”
In English: It’s just what you think it is: the sassy lawyer from the big city descends on the small town to teach those southern boys a thing or two. Really ticks all the boxes: the city attorney? Nepotism! The detective? Cocky and corrupt! Could there be any other kind? The paralegal? Brains of the operation! The boyfriend? Mysterious! This is a paint-by-numbers lawyer show where most of the characters have bad southern accents.
Why it will fail: Perhaps this is just an oversight of the intern who wrote up this copy, but a critical character seems to be missing. Where’s the hangin’ judge? You can’t have a courtroom in the South without this! (Assuming there’s plenty of courtroom time, one could fashion a great drinking game for this show. One shot for each time the opposition council refers to Jamie here as “sweetheart,” two shots every time Judge Jim Bob or what have you says “I do declare you out of order!” and three shots any time the bailiff has to get involved.)
This will last: Six episodes. This feels a lot more like an ABC show, and chances are, it will attract and ABC-size audience. Doesn’t cut it in the big leagues, kid.

HONORABLE MENTION: Undercover Boss – 8 p.m. Fridays
This awful dreck is, amazingly, still on television!

And one that just might work:
HOSTAGES — 10 p.m. Mondays
From the network: “HOSTAGES, from executive producer Jerry Bruckheimer, is a high-octane suspense drama starring Emmy Award winner Toni Collette as a premiere surgeon thrust into a chilling political conspiracy when her family is taken hostage by rogue FBI Agent Duncan Carlisle (Dylan McDermott). Dr. Ellen Sanders (Collette) and her family are held captive in their home by Carlisle, a desperate man doing the wrong thing for the right reasons, who orders her to assassinate the President (James Naughton) when she operates on him. His highly skilled accomplices include his brother-in-law Kramer (Rhys Coiro), whose loyalty to Carlisle will be tested; quick-tempered and intimidating archer (Billy Brown), an ex-military man with a razor-sharp tongue; and the only woman involved, Sandrine (Sandrine Holt), a mysterious last-minute replacement to the team. With her family’s life in peril, Ellen faces an incomprehensible moral dilemma in order to save her overbearing husband Brian (Tate Donovan), her secretive daughter Morgan (Quinn Shephard) and her not-so-innocent son Jake (Mateus Ward). In this high-stakes standoff between Ellen and Carlisle, fraught with tremendous national and personal consequences, the choices between right and wrong become even more blurred.”
Why this could work: Presidential assassination plots are great for ratings. Plus, think of the spinoff possibilities! A rogue park ranger plots to kill the commerce secretary. Assistant deputy director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing kidnaps the ex-wife of the head of the Council on Foreign Relations. Three janitors at the Pentagon stumble upon an international scheme to vandalize the Jefferson Memorial.
How CBS will likely screw it up: This is a serial drama, which means they’re asking the audience to remember what happened the week before. That’s risky. There’s no telling how many viewers will be totally confused when the crime isn’t conveniently solved by the end of the hour.

As you can tell, not only do the CBS people have a much better feel for what sells in Omaha than the other networks, they also do a superior job of writing this marketing copy. Clearly something is working, even if no one under 40 will watch a minute of any of these shows.

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