TruffleShuffle

are we doing this again this year? i've been 6th, 5th and 4th in the ones that i've participated in - always the bridesmaid and never the bride :x

this wasn't intended to be predictive of what'll really happen, and you were too lazy to read my mention that i'd be slipping by any means necessary, but whatevs lawl! ok it wasn't intended to be a shot at you. you're a little too sensitive, friend.

danny briere coming back is causing all kinds of problems because his salary will now count against the cap - the flyers waived glen metropolit (not a huge deal, but he's fine as a third or fourth line two-way center) and ossi vaananen (he should be playing ahead of andrew alberts, but john stevens is an idiot and likes north americans more than euros). meanwhile stevens' butt buddy from the minors, randy jones, continues to play half his shifts with his head up his ass, but stays on the first pairing. instead we're waiving metropolit, vaananen and probably sending down powe when we could have just shipped jones out to the phantoms. john stevens is just a disaster. can't believe we fired hitch and hired stevens, that's the nhl equivalent of canning schottenheimer and hiring norv turner.

i'm not so sure about that. at this point not many teams have the money left and a void in LF/DH, and nobody else has showed interest in manny like the dodgers have. i'd say they need each other.

yeah as far as being realistic, there's no way that stafford (or a quarterback at least) doesn't get picked in the top 10. andre smith has less than zero chance of going #1 overall but whatevs.

he made 19 saves for the shutout. give ken hitchcock the jack adams. tim thomas should get the vezina. and btw mason allowed 5 goals on 13 shots two games ago. just sayin.

wait andre smith went #1 overall? lol

as long as the league is mostly people who give a crap and aren't idiots, i'm in.

yeah he's not worth $22.5m per year and if he's not going to take a deal like that, he's probably going to be sitting around for quite a while.

Aaron Miles 2/5 i don't see how you can call a 5 million dollar commitment the biggest blunder of the offseason. I dont think he was being serious. It is, however sickening that hes probably making more than Soto, Marmol, Theriot, Fontenot, and Marshall combined. derrek lee is making like 6 times what those guys are making combined, is that sickening too?

unless he puts up his career numbers. then he'll be like the 4th or 5th best hitter on the team. gtyty Read my post again. I never said I didn't expect him to be good, I just don't think it's a foregone conclusion that he'll be a great hitter. He's been a great hitter for about his last full season's worth of at-bats. Before then he wasn't great for a corner outfielder. His career OPS+ is 118, which would have been tied for 6th best on the Cubs last season.... hence my comment about him probably being like the 4th or 5th best hitter on the Cubs if he performed to his career averages. Like I said, I'm not expecting that. I'm expecting him to put up numbers similar to what Aramis put up last year.... rate-wise. oh okay so you were suggesting that he might perform close to his career averages, which are heavily weighed down by terrible years early in his career, but you're comparing his OPS+ to the OPS+ that current cubs put up just last year. why might he perform close to his career numbers but everyone else would perform close to last year? i guess we could talk about what it will be like if rich harden pitches 200 innings, or derrek lee reverts to his 2005 form, or ted lilly spikes his glove so hard that it bounces back up and hits him in the face and he suffers a detached retina and is out for the year, but doesn't it make more sense to discuss what is likely to happen, and not what could perhaps conceivably happen? also, i will again suggest that you use a statistic other than OPS+ to evaluate a player's worth. if two players have the same OPS+ and same clutch/late stats, but one has an OBP that's 40 points higher, that guy will be the significantly more valuable hitter.

whitney isn't a good defensive defenseman. kunitz will backcheck, which is something that pittsburgh forwards don't like to do. they're not struggling to make the playoffs because of a lack of scoring ability; rather, they need to do a better job of preventing scoring opportunities on fleury. this makes sense from their perspective (though they do need a defensive d-man pretty badly).

most people will not regard the closer contracts as bad deals unless they completely bomb. and really, nobody is going to care enough about the aaron miles deal to call it a huge bust.

unless he puts up his career numbers. then he'll be like the 4th or 5th best hitter on the team. that's completely insane. how many cubs have a higher career EqA than milton bradley? derrek lee does, but he's been declining the last two years whereas bradley has been improving, so there's no logical reason to think that lee would outhit him this year. alfonso soriano doesn't. aramis ramirez doesn't. soto doesn't. nobody else could logically be a better hitter than bradley. here are the projections from five sources: Bill James (OPS/wOBA) - Bradley: 880/386 Soto: 869/379 Lee: 868/379 Ramirez: 888/383 Soriano: 851/368 CHONE - Bradley: 927/406 Soto: 837/367 Lee: 870/381 Ramirez: 890/384 Soriano: 867/375 Marcel - Bradley: 895/384 Soto: 861/369 Lee: 825/359 Ramirez: 874/371 Soriano: 854/358 Oliver - Bradley: 855/373 Soto: 781/340 Lee: 831/361 Ramirez: 834/358 Soriano: 828/351 PECOTA (OPS/EqA) - Bradley: 927/311 Soto: 889/297 Lee: 833/285 Ramirez: 872/292 Soriano: 886/294 so basically what you are saying is that you think there's a decent chance that every one of these projections is wrong, that bradley will hit near his career average rather than being the best hitter on his team, in large part because he was a really lousy hitter about 8 years ago.

it's true, if he's healthy he's going to hit and he'll probably be the best hitter on the team.

bad signing

what'd he do in his second ab?

great to have him back. and by great i mean bad.

yeah unless it is every good player who played between 1992-2008 i don't think it'll be that damaging. all it will confirm is that a lot of baseball players were using steroids, and i think the public already knows or at least assumes that.

It certainly helps to have veteran WRs around the young guy, but I think some young WRs can have success without an established group around them. How established do you mean, also? Do you mean only the Colts and Patriots should draft receivers, or can the Titans (who have veterans, but aren't very strong at the position) draft one by your standards? If you mean a strong, quality group, then there's not that many teams like that and most of those don't need WRs. If you just mean solid veterans, then I tend to agree. yeah this doesn't make a lot of sense to me. if you don't have good WRs, doesn't that mean that it would be a good idea to draft one early? otherwise you have to upgrade through free agency or trade, both of which are more expensive options. plus i wouldn't say that you "hardly ever" see a receiver come in and make an impact right away. larry fitzgerald and anquan boldin did. randy moss and marvin harrison did. torry holt did. in fact, i'd say that WR isn't especially hard for a rookie to play, as long as he's physically mature enough. hell, desean jackson had almost 1000 yards for the eagles last year, and he was hardly considered an elite WR coming out of college.

seahawks fans would riot about this pick (if they care)

there was a woman on suze orman (i don't really watch her show, it was on at work and i was facing the tv as i worked) who was being interviewed. the audio wasn't on but according the captions they were putting on, she and her husband were out $5 million, she had to go back to work and they were living paycheck to paycheck. it certainly didn't sound like madoff only took a portion of their money. Okay, but where is the evidence that she's smart? i believe that she and her husband were successful businesspeople. i don't know what they go on their SATs though so you're right, they could be 5th grade dropouts who fell into a successful business.

there was a woman on suze orman (i don't really watch her show, it was on at work and i was facing the tv as i worked) who was being interviewed. the audio wasn't on but according the captions they were putting on, she and her husband were out $5 million, she had to go back to work and they were living paycheck to paycheck. it certainly didn't sound like madoff only took a portion of their money.

what about derrick lee?

if they got in trouble for paying their players, they wouldn't be a force. goes both ways. Has this even been suggested anywhere with regards to basketball? yes