TruffleShuffle

well yeah their bricks are so bad that they're getting lots of long rebounds.

clemson shooting a solid 22% so far. texas back tied after crapping the bed early.

i think the clemson guy airballed a shot from a foot away.

nice shooting clemson

You gonna watch Penn State tonight? Oh, wait... we've already made it one round farther in our tournament than you guys will in yours.

go clemson!!!

How so? The Yankees have fans that have the cash to spend more than many make in a year to sit in a seat. If you can make money, why shouldn't you? yeah they also have a lot of very rich corporations based in NYC. i would guess that 95% of the very expensive seats are sold to companies who either take customers to games, or reward their employees with great seats for a ballgame. they're not expecting joe blow to drop 200 grand on a season ticket.

what, you wouldn't like to have paul maholm rather than matt wieters? crazy talk.

i was asked if i wanted to go to that game. i thought about it but then i realized that a real basketball tournament is happening at the same time, and politely declined.

meh in most pools the 8-9 results mean nothing. i suppose if you were really pining for the 10 grand from yahoo then it hurts, but if you're in an office pool with 20 people, the big thing is keeping your final four and champion, not losing an 8-9 game. i didn't know that isaiah thomas played for u-dubs... i feel better about picking them to go to the elite eight now.

i'm now annoyed that i changed my mind about memphis and have them beating washington in the elite 8. oh well, whatever... i am rooting for fun upsets not for the $7 that i spent on ncaa pools. nothing pisses me off more than someone rooting for memphis over northridge because they have a few bucks riding on it. if you put in $100 or something then i understand; otherwise, just have fun with it and root for the little guy. No, I don't really care about my bracket, just saying is all. I have Michigan State in the finals, but it would be fun to see them lose the first game. not referring to you. i'm going to the bar shortly to watch the action, and i can't stand that half the bar will root for a team like memphis because they have them in their pool. shut up already.

i'm now annoyed that i changed my mind about memphis and have them beating washington in the elite 8. oh well, whatever... i am rooting for fun upsets not for the $7 that i spent on ncaa pools. nothing pisses me off more than someone rooting for memphis over northridge because they have a few bucks riding on it. if you put in $100 or something then i understand; otherwise, just have fun with it and root for the little guy.

What more does he need to build on? Theriot is cheap and gives you above average offensive production at SS. . Defense. Theriot might give you slightly above average offense for the shortstop position, but well below average defense. that's wrong. he's not well below average defensively.

they need to get his ass to the memphis game asap what they need to do is just have him in a studio watching every game, and if a game is close within the last 5 or 10 minutes, just lose the guy who's announcing it and have gus do the rest of it.

yeah especially this nickname, it's awful. are you still referring to texas as the rangators too? how about the new york yankioles or the los brooklynos dodlantics?

there's a big difference; jenkins spent the prime of his career with the cubs while maddux really only had one great year as a cub and then built his hall of fame resume in another uniform. If Maddux's '89 wasn't great, then Jenkins only had 1 great year too. i guess great is relative in this case... maddux was much greatER after he left the cubs; jenkins had his best years with the cubs.

if victor martinez gets good again he'll be a nice trading chip, as i'm sure someone will need a catcher who can provide offense. i don't know what to think about him though.

there's a big difference; jenkins spent the prime of his career with the cubs while maddux really only had one great year as a cub and then built his hall of fame resume in another uniform.

well it's a good primer until you publish your comprehensive draft research on the NSBB front page.

yeah your whole whole post is right on the money. the only way he will increase his IsoP is to go back to hitting more fly balls, but as we saw last year, he does better if he focuses on hitting line drives and hard ground balls rather than putting some loft in his swing. he had a higher IsoP in 2007 than 2008, hitting 11 more XBH's, but clearly that approach comes with a hit to his BABIP and it's not worth the extra power to go away from the slap-hitting that he did last season. that being said, i don't really like saying that he's not good. he was probably league-average for a starting shortstop last year, defensively and offensively, which is a lot better than the replacement-level crap the cubs put up with in 2006 and 2007.

and if they're one of the last teams in lose in the first round, there's really no publicity at all. st. mary's was probably one of the last teams out, they've been discussed more than a team like wisconsin or michigan, and if they make the final four of the NIT they'll get publicity out of that too. so really, does it matter that much?

tango put the number at 72.7%. if the guy has been healthy and in the big leagues for 2-3 years, it's probably best to use that time frame rather than 1 season or his entire career as a professional. the thing that bothers me the most about the theriot hate is that there is a lot to admire about the guy. for most of his minor league career he was regarded as someone who would likely not make an adequate utility player, let alone a starting shortstop. last year he cut way down on his FB% - which is a good idea given that he has no power and has pretty good speed - and saw more pitches, and drew more walks. he's not a great fielder by any means but he gets good reads on balls and makes accurate throws, so he's at least fashioned himself into a decent fielder. in fact, the only thing that he really DIDN'T improve last year was his baserunning, and certain people bitched constantly about that while ignoring all the things that he worked to improve. given the cubs dearth of shortstop candidates and the need for cheap production from a couple of positions on the diamond, that people would appreciate a guy who with limited physical ability who turned himself into an average starting shortstop through intelligent adjustments to his game. especially since we had plenty of opportunities to see cedeno, a guy with better tools across the board, continue to flail at breaking balls out of the zone and make careless mistakes in the field. i guess some people were so down on him after 2007, or were such big supporters of cedeno, that they look for the inadequacies of theriot's game rather than viewing him as a guy who maximizes his ability where so many other guys fail to do so.

i wish fukudome was good like everyone thought he'd be

why, just because there are some fluky performances that are not representative of a player's value? i'm guessing that there is some worth in spring training performances; that being said, you do not make personnel decisions based purely on the numbers of a player in spring training.

plus let's be realistic, these bubble teams really don't have a chance to win a championship. does anyone think that san diego st, st mary's, creighton, penn st or auburn could win six games in a row in the big dance? not on your life. the ceiling for any of those teams is probably a sweet 16 appearance, maybe elite eight if everything breaks right and they play out of their minds and they get easy matchups.