I recently attended a presentation for a middle school my daughter may attend. They bragged about how much they use technology in the school. They told us they use Powerpoint for all their presentations! I thought, "O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" Upon which, they launched an incomprehensible Powerpoint presentation, whose bullet points served little purpose other than fodder for buzzword bingo, and even that was useless due to the practically invisible light-purple-on-blue color scheme.

There is a time and a place and a way to use bullet points, and a time and a place and a way not to. There is a time and a place and a way to grab a copy of any book by Edward Tufte and throw it at people presenting useless bullet points. And there is a time and a place and a way to duck.

Quack:

• Over at BTF, philly does the math, and backs up my claim that the A’s have gotten better than average returns from their draft picks since 2002, given their draft positions.
   
• Two Top 100 Prospect lists came out this week. The A’s had seven players on Kevin Goldstein’s list, and four on Keith Law’s list. Daric Barton, Carlos Gonzalez, Fautino de los Santos and Trevor Cahill were on both lists. Goldstein added Brett Anderson, Gio Gonzalez, and Chris Carter.
   
• BP’s new PECOTA projections love Huston Street. PECOTA gives Street by far the highest future UPSIDE of any relief pitcher in baseball. (Street: 108.1, Papelbon: 84.3.) Maybe Billy Beane should try to keep him around.
   
• On the other hand, PECOTA thinks Eric Chavez’ career is almost done. It not only projects Jack Hannahan with a much higher upside than Chavez, it gives Keith Ginter a higher upside than Chavez.
   
• PECOTA also likes Hannahan as one win better than Chavez for 2008 alone: a projected WARP of 4.4, versus 3.4 for Chavez.
   
• PECOTA digs Daric Barton. He has the 13th best 2008 WARP, and 5th best UPSIDE among first basemen.
   
• Mark Ellis: WARP: 6.1; UPSIDE: 116.2. Derek Jeter? 6.0 and 127.4. Roughly equal players still.