7 things we learned at the MLB trade deadline

What a trade deadline it has been in 2014, as several blockbuster deals were made just before 4:00pm today. Many players changed teams, and there is plenty to talk about. Here are seven things that we learned from this year's trade deadline.

1. The 2014 Stephen Drew reunion tour was a failure. But we kind of already knew this, right? Drew was signed by the Red Sox after turning down a $14 million qualifying offer at the start of spring training, and after being signed by nobody in Major League Baseball. He came back to Boston for $10 million, hit .176 over 39 games, and was traded for Kelly Johnson. Excellent move by the Red Sox to recognize that it was a terrible move to bring Drew back to the team in the first place.

2. Billy Beane is all-in for 2014. The most notable Red Sox player traded at the deadline was ace Jon Lester, the subject of many trade talks in recent weeks. He was dealt with hero Jonny Gomes to Oakland for Yoenis Cespedes, a move that doesn't fit the Moneyball scheme of the Athletics' front office. It was a move that set up Oakland's playoff rotation, which can be any permutation of Lester, Jeff Samardzija, Scott Kazmir, and Sonny Gray. It would have made Oakland favorites in the AL if not for...

3. The Detroit Tigers acquiring David Price makes their pitching staff lethal. If you thought facing Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, Anibal Sanchez, and Doug Fister in the 2013 ALCS was tough, feel sorrier for whoever will have to face David Price amongst the first three names on that list this postseason. Detroit now owns the past three AL Cy Young Winners (Scherzer, Price, Verlander) and made a move that was essentially made in response to Oakland beefing up their staff.

Sonny Gray after 8 shutout innings in a 1-0, Game 2 victory.

4. The best rivalry in the American League is... Detroit and Oakland? Hear me out here. These two have squared off in the ALDS in each of the past two seasons, with both series going to Detroit in the maximum five games. One of the ten games was decided by more than three runs, and these two are shaping up for an epic seven-game series in October this postseason. Any of the matchups between the pitchers has the billing to be a main event including a Game 4 matchup between Justin Verlander and Sonny Gray, the latter of whom threw eight shutout innings against the Tigers last postseason. More, please!

5. The Red Sox will lead the MLB in runs scored and runs allowed in 2015. The Boston lineup could look like this in 2015: Jackie Bradley Jr., Dustin Pedroia, Allen Craig, David Ortiz, Yoenis Cespedes, Mike Napoli, Xander Bogaerts, Will Middlebrooks, Christian Vazquez. Talk about a giant part of the order, featuring four players who could conceivably end up with 100 RBI if healthy for an entire year. Then again, the Red Sox traded away four of their five Opening Day pitchers, so they'll need to score runs to win games next season.

6. Last season really was an aberration. I talked about the magic of 2013 and how it's been gone this year, and then the Red Sox went 9-5 immediately after I posted that. Since I tweeted remarking that the Red Sox went 9-5, they've gone 1-8. So much for wishful thinking that I jinxed it...regardless, it's clear that the Red Sox cashed in their chips and are stockpiling for 2015. And I think that the Boston fan base is smart enough to recognize this, which should make Ben Cherington's life a little less stressful in August and September.

7. You shouldn't be buying any t-shirts anytime soon. If there's one thing that this trade deadline has taught us, it's that you can't trust that one player will remain on a team for his entire career. Too much happens in the business world of sports where it's become a rarity for one player to stay with one franchise. Lester, Price, and Cespedes were all cornerstones of their respective franchises, and they changed hands within an hour of each other. It will take some getting used to, but when all was said and done, the 2014 trade deadline became one of the most memorable in recent time. Here's to the last two months of the regular season, plus what is shaping up to be one exciting October, even if the hometown team ends up not being a part of it. Another shoutout to the new players arriving in Boston, and a huge thank you to the ones departing. (Yes, even you, Stephen Drew.) Thanks for everything and hopefully we'll see some of you back soon.

5 awesome psychological studies

I was talking with someone today and explaining my roots in math and psychology, and explained that while I had always been better in math, psychology had always been way more fun, because of its applicable nature. As badass as math is, psych comes across as a little more relatable, so with that, here are five of my favorite psychological studies, in no particular order.

1. Cutting people in line (Ellen Langer). This study is the crux of why psychology can get you far in life. Langer simply asked to cut people in line to make copies, and about 60% complied. When she mentioned that she was in a rush, this number jumped to 94%. However, when she asked to cut in line because she needed to make copies, this number was still above 90%. The simple existence of the word "because" is pretty important.

2. Asch's conformity study (Solomon Asch). While the article may not be the best-written, it has some useful bits of information and a handy video. Participants were in a room with a number of other people, who all claimed the single line on the right to be line B, when in fact it is clearly line C. Thirty-two percent of participants conformed, but what's telling here is the reason they did so. The majority of the 32% believed privately that line C was in fact correct, but did not want to appear in disagreement from their peers.

3. A class divided (Jane Elliott). While this study wasn't conducted in a lab setting, it's a pretty unsettling experiment nonetheless. During the days of segregation, Elliott walked into her classroom and told her students that blue-eyed children were superior. The children quickly bought into this idea of the blue-eyed people being the better people and all it took was one authority figure telling them so. Check out the beginning of this video to see the true power of this study.

4. Change blindness. One of the coolest parts about psychology is that you never think that you'll fall victim to what you're seeing other people consistently do. Try this one - you're giving someone directions, and two people holding a large painting get in your way. Would you notice if there was a different person jumping in the conversation? Watch this video and see what happens.

5. The Milgram experiment (Stanley Milgram). This might be the most famous psychological experiment, and once again goes to show how much obedience to authority, even subtle, subconscious hints of it. Participants were told that they were the "teacher" in an experiment involving another human as the "learner," who would repeat lists of words back and would be shocked by the teacher (the participant) if any mistakes were made. Now, no one was actually shocked in this experiment, but the participants didn't know that. Not only did 65% of participants shock what they believed to be was another human to lethal levels in response to the experimenter, but these results held strong across variations of the experiment. There were distinct differences between the attire of the authority figure (white lab coat vs. regular street clothes), the building setup (Yale academic building vs. an old warehouse), proximity of the learner and the authority figure (out vs. in the same room)...lots of variations that make for some very powerful results. Shocking, even.

Here's why we (don't) exist

Alright, so I'm starting this blog post off with a rather imposing question...what is it that makes us exist? A few blog posts ago, I dropped a line that said "technology, like anything in life, exists in relation to its functionality." What I meant by that is that if we really didn't use technology at all, then it doesn't really have a purpose. Are we any different as humans? There are some 1.3 billion people in China, and that's just a statistic for me - I don't know any of those 1.3 billion people, what they're doing, who they are, or anything about them. Go ahead and tell me they exist, but prove it by doing anything short of flying them to Massachusetts or getting them on Skype.

This is true closer to home, as well. I can all but assume that the people in the house next to ours are alive, possibly sleeping, and will wake up tomorrow morning. But I'm not there, I'm not them, so I really have no idea of knowing. Do they exist? You're likely going to assume yes and furthermore that I'm out of my mind, but even as you read this, I may not even have a mind to be in or out of!

So, if all that we can't experience doesn't exist, then it would logically follow that if we experience something, then it exists. I'm typing away on my laptop with a lamp on and a fan running, so those all exist. I'm laying on a bed and have a pillow under my arms, so they exist too. Everything exists in relation to its functionality.

Which seems to be the great paradox of life. If we're experiencing it, then we exist and all of this matters. Once we're not experiencing it, then we don't exist, and none of it matters because we're not even around to acknowledge that we don't exist. Which is the scariest part about death for me, that we may not even be able to know whether or not there's anything after. If there's nothing, then there's nothing, but if there's nothing, we won't know. 'Dead' isn't a term, 'afterlife' isn't a possibility, there's just nothing, but even then, 'nothing' isn't even a thing either. Crazy, huh?

Acrobat

My eyes dart around the train, music pulsing into my ears.
Seated comfortably, my eyes pause at
Every pair they see.
Two in the finance section of the Globe.
Another ten that are locked onto the screen of an iPhone or Kindle.
At least six that are closed. About a dozen concealed behind glasses.

What do the eyes wait for?
The next update of a news feed, or perhaps
Another round of Words with Friends?
Only a few eyes stare out the windows,
Taking in the universe at sixty miles per hour.

Mine remain fixed on another pair,
Briefly,
Until they escape somewhere else
So as not to be taken the wrong way.

But for a moment,
We were connected.
Two sets of eyes
Creating an invisible tightrope,
Perfectly parallel to the heavens and the earth.

How I wish to be an acrobat,
Dancing along the wire
Between the eyes.
A balancing act, situated
In the middle of the human connection.

2014 Home Run Derby running diary

Who doesn't love large men using wooden sticks to hit baseballs very, very far? And who doesn't love a varsity high school career .125 hitter blogging about it? I did a running diary of the All-Star Game last year, but we'll switch it up this time around.

8:02pm Apparently this is in a rain delay? That's a thing?? Disclaimer: this running diary is now subject to me falling asleep in a couple of hours.

8:04 So this thing is broken down bracket-style this year, and you can find all the rules and hitters in the competition over to the right. My pick is Jose Bautista, which I made sure to sneak in on Twitter about 15 minutes ago. Just in case I'm right.

8:08 One of my favorite things ever is when someone is speaking Spanish and all of a sudden something like "Home Run Derby" leaves their lips.

8:26 Adam Wainwright, while not hitting any home runs in this competition, has still been talked about as the named starter for the National League in tomorrow night's All-Star Game. I think that he doesn't get the credit he deserves as one of the best pitchers in the game, and he'll have the chance to make even more of a name for himself tomorrow.

8:31 They should totally let these guys use an aluminum bat when they're down to their final out. Nothing was better than watching the baseball go 650 feet with the aluminum power in Backyard Baseball.

8:35 HOLD on, was that just Jack Edwards broadcasting the 1998 Little League World Series featuring Todd Frazier?

8:36 Hold on, Todd Frazier was in the Little League World Series in 1998? I was in Little League in 2003...this is foolish.

8:46 Derek Jeter is such a class act. Respects the game, respects the players and his place in history...there's a great article about him written by Jayson Stark that you can read here. Perfectly captures his character.

8:48 Alright, this seven-minute conversation with Jeter is great and all, but the fact that they're airing it for this long makes me think that this Home Run Derby isn't starting for some time.

8:54 You know that point in a three-hour movie where you decide that it's definitely past the point that you think the movie should keep playing? That's how I feel about Chris Berman announcing the Home Run Derby every year.

8:59 I'd like to believe that this will be quicker than Home Run Derbies in years past, and it better, because I'll be damned if I see the other side of 11:00 tonight.

9:02 Yeah, that's totally Jack Edwards announcing the 1998 Little League World Series. Love that man.

9:03 It's still raining at Target Field, which I'm sure has an effect on the home runs being hit, but all of the guys with microphones at this thing are making a huge deal about all the strategy and such...at least from me, I don't care about the strategy, or who's pitching...I just wanna see dudes hit baseballs really far.

9:06 Todd Frazier on the board with the first home run of the Derby, and a rainbow shines over the field, and it'll be all over Twitter pretty soon. Here's an awesome double rainbow at Fenway Park.

9:09 In case you had never thought about this before, Brian Dozier looks exactly like Paul "Fitzy" Fitzgerald, Boston YouTube hero.

9:13 The two most underrated parts about any given Home Run Derby - little kids running to catch every fly ball in the outfield, and those random people who are selected to win a house or something if their Derby hitter wins the competition.

9:15 Just found out on Twitter that it's 56 degrees in Minnesota right now. It's Twitter, so it's definitely true, making it the coldest Derby ever. Two hitters with two HR apiece, as Frazier and Dozier haven't really done much.

9:17 Alright, instead of people getting houses, it's children getting baseball equipment and a field refurbishment. That's pretty cool too, I guess.

9:23 Four home runs for Troy Tulowitzki and it's time for my pick, Jose Bautista, to take to the batter's box.

9:27 It's great to see everyone's reactions to fans either catching or dropping home run balls. There needs to be a compilation video on YouTube one of these days.

9:28 And we have our first non-HR-Derby-player-interacting-with-a-batter as Robinson Cano gives Bautista some Gatorade. Riveting stuff, people. Ten home runs for Bautista and my pick to win it all is sitting pretty after two batters for each side.

9:37 Seven consecutive outs for explosive star Yasiel Puig, and he somehow still gets an ovation from the crowd. Took him about two minutes to finish the whole thing. Maybe next year, kid.

9:43 Four home runs for Adam Jones, and Jose Bautista is still the only person with a higher total (10). It's shaping up to be a quick Home Run Derby this year.

9:45 Hold on, they have high school players hitting home runs in between the MLB guys doing it? That makes no sense...

9:50 Time for Giancarlo Stanton, otherwise known as Mike Stanton, otherwise known (apparently) as Giancarlo Cruz Michael Stanton. Take your pick.

9:51 Despite anything you might think, Stanton is actually from California. Here's a picture of the most American batting sleeve ever, as he starts crushing baseballs 430 feet.

9:55 Did I say 430 feet? I meant 510 feet. FAR.

9:59 Josh Donaldson up now for the American League, but I'm thinking about some kind of MLB Skills Competition. Bunting down the lines, accurate throws from the outfield, pickoff attempts or something like that...maybe not...three for Donaldson and one hitter remains for each team in the first round.

10:04 Alright, I'm tired of all these Chevrolet commercials. Give me Bob Seger or give me death!

10:06 Cool moment for Justin Morneau, longtime Minnesota Twin, as he steps into the box for his round. He ends up with two home runs, same as Todd Frazier, so they'll have one of these swing-off shenanigans to determine who makes it into the next round.

10:14 Yoenis Cespedes, 2013 Derby champ, gets some advice from fellow Cuban Jose Abreu (29 HR this season so far (that's a lot)) before his final out. He ends up with as many homers as his teammate, Donaldson, and we'll spend the next 10 minutes in swing-off world, which I don't like. The tiebreaker in the first round should be distance of all home runs.

10:20 Frazier wins the NL swing-off by a resounding 1-0 score, a result that will likely be the final for the AL. Go overtime! Cespedes takes it 2-1 over Donaldson, and we have our second round. Guess I'm not getting eight hours of sleep tonight...

10:28 I love the old Home Run Derby. Always used to be on ESPN Classic, which I totally wish was still on cable.

10:32 Picture of the night - Jeff Samardzija, currently an Oakland Athletic, shown not wearing an American nor National League jersey. He was traded from the Cubs a couple weeks ago, made the National League All-Star squad, but will sit in the AL dugout tomorrow night. Awesome.

10:37 Looks like it'll be Frazier and Stanton in the National League final - Cespedes and Adam Jones will square off for the right to face Bautista.

10:48 Alright, I'm fading. Quickly losing interest in this, but I feel as though I need to keep powering through. But there's at least another 45 minutes of this left, and I'll be damned if I go to sleep at 11:30 for the second night in a row. Sorry world...but let's be honest, if you actually made it all the way to this point, you'd probably benefit from something other than the Home Run Derby. So, I leave you with this.

Why you need to listen to instrumental music

Close your eyes, and count to ten, slowly. Open your eyes after.

You just let go. For ten brief moments, you distanced yourself from everything that was going on in your life. Maybe it wasn't profound, maybe you didn't have any epiphany, but in the ten brief moments you just had, you were simply existing in this universe. So much of what we do is connected to being as fast-paced as possible, to being as connected as we can possibly be, that we don't just be anymore. We don't just sit, close our eyes, and think about our place in the world, or possible lack thereof.

If there's any general theme that you've gleaned from reading my blog, it's that I'm in love with instrumental music. Words are excellent and all - I wouldn't be writing this without them - but the absence of words from instrumental music affords us the opportunity to just break free from everything. I'm on the commuter rail in and out of Boston each day, and I see people - myself included - with their faces buried into their newspapers, or iPads, or notes for work, or Twitter, to the point where almost nobody is just sitting. Everybody is engaged with something. Some of my favorite car rides are the times that I have no music playing; I'm just driving and listening to the sounds of the world instead of what's coming out of my speakers. Now this might seem like a big leap for people who thoroughly enjoy music when they drive, or refresh the Internet every 45 seconds at night, but seriously, find some time to just let go.

Life is ephemeral. If you've ever read The Little Prince, we're just like the flower on his planet. Ephemeral, and needing to be taken care of. We're not doing that enough, and we're hardly doing it for ourselves. So take ten more brief moments. Close your eyes and sink into the abyss. If you're looking for an introduction into instrumental music, try this. Surprisingly, it's not Explosions in the Sky, but it will do as a start. Either way, take those moments of detachment from the universe. Simply be.

Let go.

The magic is running out

Let's talk about the Boston Red Sox. It's an off day for the local nine on this July 3rd, and one could say that it's been an off season for the club as a whole in 2014. Coming into the day, the Red Sox were 8.5 games back of the AL East lead, sitting at a record of 38-47. But let's not talk about what's happened. Let's talk about what it means.

We're at a point for the Red Sox where many (myself included) are thinking that 2013 was the aberration in the most recent years of Boston baseball. Go back one season, and everything worked out for the Sox - Shane Victorino hit .294 in 122 games. David Ortiz drove in 100 runs and was selected to his ninth All-Star Game in ten seasons. Mike Napoli was healthy and productive at first base. Four starting pitchers had double-digit wins. The team had 11 walkoff wins by the beginning of August, capped off by overcoming a five-run deficit to Seattle on August 1st. The season was purely magical, coming off the momentum from what happened in April at the Boston Marathon. Everyone was healthy and productive, and the season culminated in a World Series win at Fenway.

None of that was supposed to happen.

The season the Red Sox had in 2013 was unforgettable, and was one of the most fun and exciting teams to ever follow. But this 2014 campaign looks more like the Red Sox we've expected. Victorino has played in a quarter of the team's games. No outfielder on the 25-man roster is hitting better than .234. The pitching staff is on pace to have two pitchers (Jon Lester and John Lackey) with more than six wins. Of the 14 hitters on the 25-man roster, six have spent time in Pawtucket in either 2013 or 2014, and four of these are regulars in the lineup (Brock Holt, Xander Bogaerts, Jackie Bradley, Daniel Nava). The team's two best players are on the wrong side of 38-years-old (David Ortiz, Koji Uehara).

If you exclude the 2013 season, the Red Sox' winning percentage since September of 2011 is .416 (114-160). Zero playoff wins since 2008 outside of the World Series run. Two managerial changes since the 2011-12 offseason. I'd like to say that it's time to push the panic button on the 2014 Red Sox, but there might not have even been one to begin with.

The ship is syncing

Here's where we're at in society in terms of technology. We have what seems to be an endless supply of potential in terms of technological advances. I'm typing this on a computer that isn't attached to any monitors, or anything at all for that matter. Pretty soon, I'll post this page to two social media sites that allow for essentially anything to be visible to the public. I do this because it works - because I really can't think of any other way to communicate my thoughts other than sending it to as many people as possible at once. Some will read it, most will not (you're in the first category, obviously), but I do this for the some who will.

There are a ton of messages that are being sent that are imploring us to get off our phones. Contrarily, there seem to be just as many that remind us how powerful technology can be. Take a look at two of them here.

There are valid points in each of these videos. I can see both sides of the coin, and I think that each of these videos is done well enough so that you can glean what the message is from each. Which brings me to my point - technology isn't inherently something that's killing our minds or allowing us to connect with everyone, there isn't any black-or-white-ness to all of this. It's how you use technology that makes it what it is. If you're someone who needs to be on their phone for work purposes, or need to FaceTime someone to have the only interaction possible with that person, then technology means a lot more to you than someone who's more old-school and doesn't need those in their life. Technology, like anything in life, exists in relation to its functionality. (Editor's Note: Future blog post?)

So I leave you with this - my post title - the ship is syncing. This one sentence has two separate meanings, depending on your spelling of the final word. One side of the coin is a technological revolution that can make anything seem possible. The other, a driving force behind the loss of personal touch and connection. Where are you on the ship?