TruffleShuffle

i'm sure that had a lot to do with it, but the year that mays finished 2nd to wills the giants beat the dodgers in a 3-game playoff to win the pennant. so even when the giants won the league mays still got screwed royally.

the grand final replay was about as boring as the grand final was exciting. [expletive] collingwood.

Was that the year Terry Pendelton won it? Yes. Ridiculous when you look at their stats that year. http://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/awards_1991.shtml#NLmvp Agreed. But go to the next season and look at AL MVP. That makes Pendleton's win look appropriate. there was also the year that ted williams hit .406/.553/.735/1.287 and lost to dimaggio, then hit .356/.499/.648/1.147 and lost to joe gordon. he won 2 MVPs and should've won about 8. nobody got screwed more than willie mays though - he finished 1st in the NL 11 times and only won two MVP awards, losing to terrible selections like dick groat (.325/.371/.394/.766), maury wills (.299/.347/.373/.720) and ken boyer (.295/.365/.489/.854)

he really needs to get stronger. get him on beefcake 3000 in the offseason.

2 more and he has 140 on the season. as a reliever. that's [expletive] insane. i love his numbers over the last three years: 239 IP, 123 H, 158 BB, 345 K. 4.63 H/9 IP, 5.95 BB/9 IP and 13 K/9 IP. i don't know how baseball-reference has any similarity scores for him... who else pitches like this??? certainly not the top two similarity scores (scott strickland, matt guerrier) - both of them are way more hittable and less wild.

just with the naked eye, his bat speed looks really impressive too

what i would like to know is how ted lilly learned how to stop walking people when he put on a cub uniform. his BB/9 IP was 2.37 as a cub and 4.06 in the three years before he became a cub. he was always home run-prone because of the fly ball rate and the big curve, but at least when he became a cub more of those home runs were only solo shots.

yeah last night's home run he hit out just to the left of the 434 sign in CF. probably went about 450.

bets: utah st +4.5 air force -10 texas +3.5 indiana +10 north carolina -14 iowa st +7 boston college +3 LSU -16 illinois +17.5 arizona st +3.5 (kind hate this bet) oregon -7 florida +8 louisiana tech +8.5

the marlins' one, not the former relief pitcher. dude hit his 22nd home run of the year last night (in 97 games); he has 22 homers, 1 triple and 21 doubles in 348 ABs. his line on the year is .259/.327/.514/.842, his K rate is no longer appalling (see pre-All Star Break) and he's not allergic to walks. and he's 20 years old. kid is gonna be a beast and hit a hell of a lot of home runs (assuming he stays healthy).

speaking of kosuke, he's been quite good in the second half, which is weird because we all know that he completely falls apart every year after the all star break.

the phillies lineup was also great last night: J. Rollins ss W. Valdez 2b S. Victorino cf M. Sweeney 1b B. Francisco lf J. Mayberry rf G. Dobbs 3b P. Hoover c J. Blanton p rollins probably was only in the lineup because he's coming back from injury. naturally, sweeney and mayberry hit home runs and francisco hit 2, and they won 7-1.

no, wins are pretty much the worst statistic. why on earth are you basing an argument around wins? last year he made 28 starts with an ERA in the high 3's and only won 9 games... something should jump out at you (like he should win more than 30% of his games when he's pitching reasonably effectively. here are a few results from last year: 6 IP, 3 ER, no decision 7 IP, 3 ER, loss 6.1 IP, 1 ER, ND 8 IP, 1 ER, ND 7 IP, 3 ER, ND 7 IP, 3 ER, ND 7 IP, 1 ER, ND 6 IP, 2 ER, loss 7 IP, 1 ER, ND 6 IP, 1 ER, ND 6 IP, 2 ER, ND there's 11 quality starts where he had a record of 0-2. the offense didn't score many runs for him last year (2 runs or fewer in 10 of his 28 starts) and the bullpen blew too many of his games. that's why he won only 9 games. your argument also conveniently ignores that he won 16 games a year from 2006-08 (two of those years the cubs could actually score runs to support him).

your team is going to be atrocious if you're counting on those players to give you production like fukudome or soriano.

jemele hill writes another shitty article my favorite parts: what??? how is that the ultimate insult? of the teams that were looking for a starting qb, the redskins had the best team and mcnabb refused to consider deals to oakland and buffalo (and who can blame him?) originally the eagles refused to trade him to washington but then they agreed to do so - which is what he wanted. but that's the ultimate insult. great research jemele. The team did absolutely nothing to paint him as a "perennial underachiever." If that perception exists, it comes from the fans. The Eagles spoke glowingly of him at every turn; they just felt that Kolb was the QB of the future and he had made it clear that he wouldn't sign an extension if he were not the starter (he was slated to become a free agent after this season). They made a choice. Veteran players get released and traded all the time; why is this so "classless?" WTF? he was benched for half of a game when he was playing terribly. he turned the ball over three times in the first half and had turned the ball over four times against a bad bengals team the previous week. he was struggling and the team needed a spark (which they obviously didn't get because kolb sucked too). then mcnabb back to starting the rest of the time in an eagles uniform when he was healthy. but i guess giving him the hook for a half in 2008 negates 11 years of andy reid praising the hell out of him. i'm not sure what more she has to do to get fired. she writes articles that are usually riddled with factual errors and little to no research whatsoever. she said that rooting for the celtics is like sympathizing with hitler, compared john calipari to charles manson (???) and told packer fans to throw batteries at brett favre.

i think that would be nice, you're not going to lose again on a bye week

hey tom from chicago, you might want to check a guy's age and background before you start complaining that he's not on a prospect list.

That struck you? yes, i didn't realize that hitting 50 was as rare as it was before steroids.

one thing that burns said on the colbert report struck me - george foster reach the 50 home run mark in 1977, and then the next guy to do it was cecil fielder 13 years later. then by the mid to late 90s everyone (brady anderson, luis gonzalez, greg vaughn) could do it.

there's not really something in the NFL like the 15-day DL, where you know a guy is going to miss a couple of weeks but be back after that. so if you have a bunch of guys who are dinged up you have to either be short a few on the 53 man roster or put them on IR, in which case you lose them for longer than you want.

ballllllllllerrr

also would've been better if more than 10,000 fans had shown up to say goodbye to the best player in franchise history.

oh i see we still don't understand the rule about completing a catch. the call was correct, it may be a stupid rule but it was ruled properly after the review. and the "unimpressive dallas team" just won in houston; that houston team beat indianapolis in week one. dallas is still a good team and winning in dallas is a very good win. and your third point, i haven't really seen anyone saying that the bears are the favorites to make the super bowl because they won last night's game. i HAVE seen you suffer a complete meltdown because of your team losing a close game to a rival, though, so that's been pretty fun.

is he writing about rhee from seeing him in spring training or right now (at instructs)? if his stuff was lousy now it doesn't surprise me at all; he got hammered pretty much every outing toward the end of the year.

ok so his FIP in august was 3.68 and september was 3.28. isn't that "turning it around" from how he pitched earlier in the year? i don't think anyone believes that he's going to start posting christy mathewson ERAs every year. we'd just like him to pitch like he has for most of his cub career, that will be fine.