TruffleShuffle

do rich people even get sick from aids any more? i'd guess that roberto alomar has more than enough money to get the good meds. magic johnson was diagnosed with HIV almost 20 years ago and he's still alive; in fact he looks about 50 lbs overweight.

i went to the 2000 mcd's game in boston. the rosters: 1 Zach Randolph 2 1 3 1 6-8 C-PF Marion IN Michigan State 2 Eddie Griffin 1 5 2 2 6-8 PF Philadelphia PA Seton Hall 3 Darius Miles 4 2 5 3 6-9 PF-WF East St. Louis IL Los Angeles Clippers 4 Gerald Wallace 3 7 1 4 6-7 WF Childersburg AL Alabama 5 Marcus Taylor 8 4 7 5 6-3 PG Lansing MI Michigan State 6 Chris Duhon 7 3 10 6 6-1 PG Slidell LA Duke 6 DeShawn Stevenson 6 9 4 7 6-5 2G Fresno CA Utah Jazz 8 Mario Austin 12 8 12 8 6-9 C York AL Mississippi State 9 Jared Jeffries 10 14 9 10 6-9 PF Bloomington IN Indiana 10 Taliek Brown 13 10 15 11 6-1 PG Astoria NY Connecticut 11 Andre Brown 15 16 11 9 6-8 PF-C Chicago IL DePaul 11 Omar Cook 11 11 14 15 6-1 PG Middle Village NY St. John's 13 Jerome Harper 14 13 13 13 6-5 2G Limestone TN Iowa 14 Alton Ford 16 17 16 12 6-9 C Houston TX Houston 15 Andre Barrett 18 6 19 20 5-9 PG New York NY Seton Hall 16 Darius Rice 19 12 17 16 6-9 WF Jackson MS Miami (FL) 19 Rolando Howell 17 32 18 28 6-9 PF-C Hopkins SC South Carolina 21 Travon Bryant 23 20 21 32 6-8 PF Long Beach CA Missouri 31 Garner Meads 34 29 45 60 6-8 PF Salt Lake City UT Brigham Young 35 Scott Hazelton 56 43 50 45 6-7 PF Lawrence MA Connecticut 38 Scooter Sherrill 26 - 26 44 6-3 2G Mt. Ulla NC NC State 40 Brian Boddicker 51 - 37 17 6-9 C Duncanville TX Texas 54 Neil Fingleton 42 - 38 62 7-6 C Worcester MA North Carolina 68 Luke Ridnour 78 53 100 57 6-2 PG Blaine WA Oregon i remember zach randolph looked really, really good. neil fingleton was a guy from worcester who i'd seen working out on the holy cross campus; there was one play where someone stole the ball and passed it down the court and fingleton was still running the other way. he was like shawn bradley, except about 90% less coordinated. i knew he had zero shot at becoming a real player.

miles played 27 games there last year. he's not good but he's serviceable. fontenot probably isn't even serviceable but i suppose if it's spring training it can't hurt to have him play there in case he's needed in a pinch.

I was going through some old BP stuff today and came across Rany Jazayerli's excellent research on the MLB draft. One of the most interesting things, to me, was the success rate of various positions broken down into whether they were high school or college draftees. The numbers represent a return on investment - for example, teams got 113% more in value from the college first basemen than they spent to sign them. To summarize: 1984 – 1999 1992 - 1999 Pos Overall Pos Overall COL 1B +155.3% COL 1B +113.1% COL 2B + 41.0% COL 2B + 55.6% COL SS + 37.9% COL 3B + 55.2% COL 3B + 24.4% COL C + 49.8% COL C + 12.5% COL SS + 45.1% COL OF + 12.5% COL OF - 5.3% 1984 – 1999 1992 - 1999 Pos Overall Pos Overall HS 3B - 1.7% HS 3B + 31.1% HS SS - 6.7% HS C + 17.2% HS OF - 31.4% HS SS - 16.3% HS C - 41.5% HS OF - 31.8% HS 1B - 54.5% HS 1B - 52.9% HS 2B - 84.0% HS 2B - 89.7% 1984 – 1999 1992 - 1999 Pos Overall Pos Overall COL LHP + 15.2% COL LHP + 8.0% COL RHP + 4.5% HS RHP - 6.4% HS LHP - 8.4% COL RHP - 22.5% HS RHP - 30.7% HS LHP - 45.2% and the rules that he came up with: I liked #12 the best. apparently if there is a college first baseman worthy of being picked in the first round, go get him, because he's probably gonna be good.

yeah, ahead of verlander among others i mean, it wasn't a great draft overall, but when are teams going to learn that they need to just pony up the $, this signability stuff at the top of round 1 annoys me to no end it's terrible. i don't know why teams go for slot money to avoid the "wrath" of mlb - it's not like mlb can contract your franchise or take players away from you because you spent an extra mil on your first round draft pick. the pirates took daniel moskos ahead of matt wieters purely because of signability. they saved $3.5M and probably have a guy who won't make the major leagues instead of a guy who will be one of the best catchers in baseball for the next few years, at a reasonable price. if i was the gm of a bad small-market franchise, i'd spend less than almost anybody in free agency and be one of the highest-spending franchises in the draft and prospect development internationally. and i'd tell bud selig to blow the slot recommendations out his ass.

4-25 from downtown by michigan, but 12-23 from inside the arc. hey, keep firing up those bricks from outside, great game plan. by the way, shooting the 7th-highest percent from beyond the arc of any D-I team, but having the 233rd-best 3-point shooting percentage, is not a formula for success.

by the way, bp 2009 comes out in a week! i've got mine on advance order, along with the ba 2009 prospect handbook.

oh hey, another big 10 brickfest ending in the 40s or 50s.

if by luck you mean two of the other good teams in that division being moved to another division then i agree. I think you are selling them way short. They were the second best team in the division last year by Pythwins. since then they lost one of their best starting pitchers to another team in the division. marcum and litsch had anomalously low BABIPs. their defense is very good, but their luck on balls in play isn't likely to repeat itself and it'll be tough to have the highest LOB% in baseball. they'll probably be a little worse this year but more importantly, the yankees have improved, the red sox are still excellent and the devil rays are young, very good and improving.

i have a hard time believing that a guy who is currently in the major leagues will rat on his fellow players.

if by luck you mean two of the other good teams in that division being moved to another division then i agree.

Listening to MLB on XM today, I probably heard three or four former players say the exact same thing. That is what bothers them most about the steroid thing. yeah i don't really give a crap about the "bad example for kids" stuff. i think it's easier for people who competed in athletics (like later in life, not playing little league) to feel like there's a problem because of the loss of fairness.

i know it's become just about as popular to mock people who are upset about the steroid use as it is for sportswriters to write articles about the loss of innocence, but shouldn't it be understandable that people have a problem with this? i swam competitively for much of my life; if i got touched out by someone it pissed me off but if i got touched out by someone who i found out was a steroid user, yeah that would piss me off even more. i'd feel cheated. and i was on a lousy college team. imagine how guys feel who might have been able to make a few mil and earn a major league pension feel. or guys that were good players but might have become great. i know they had a choice about whether or not to use steroids, but i do sympathize with a guy who lost out on millions of dollars because he had the integrity to do the best that he could without artificially enhancing his performance.

the AL west is brutal. i remember someone on here saying the NL Central could be won by 80 games, and i think that's ridiculous, but it actually might be true for the AL west. i don't think seattle has much of a chance but i could see any of the other three teams taking it. by the way, how crazy would it be if the rays won 92 games, finished 12 games better than the AL west winner and 8 games better than the AL Central winner, and still missed the playoffs by 5 games? also, toronto has to be the biggest go-nowhere franchise in baseball. it seems like they've been a .500 team since they won the world series, and they're stuck in a division with two franchises that outspend almost everyone else in baseball. plus the rays are really good and young. meanwhile toronto keeps bringing in middle-of-the-road free agents and drafting in the middle of the first round. boring.

what's better than having jeff suppan? having TWO jeff suppans.

That's exactly what I thought. Schumaker at 2nd? That would be awesome to watch. He might not be too terrible of an option. He was a SS in college. If you're worth drafting for anything but 1b or C, you probably played SS in college. you're thinking of high school

yeah you're right :oops:

Here's a video of us beating you in case you missed it. Link in before snood posts a response video of kansas winning the national championship last year.

this guy is awesome

good point, teenaged boys are always transfixed by a large rack.

wait why would a 5-star recruit go to notre dame

the people who were cheated most were those chose not to play in a steroid-dominated era without using steroids themselves. i'll use curt schilling as my example since he's always been a vocal opponent of steroids, so let's assume that he's telling the truth and has never used PEDs. he's regarded as having borderline qualifications for the HoF - if he pitched against lineups that were loaded with steroid-users, doesn't that make his numbers even more impressive? i'm not just talking about guys who may not make the HoF because they didn't cheat. there were also guys who were AAAA-type players who got beat out for MLB bench or role positions by guys who were willing to cheat. the cheaters "earned" a larger salary and an mlb pension; the other guys are probably selling cars these days. it'd be nice to know who cheated and who didn't - and i'm sure we'll have more info guys who did cheat - but it's a lot easier to prove that someone cheated than to prove they were clean. i'm afraid that everyone just needs to be viewed with the same skeptical eye.

my biggest concern with the cubs' pecota projections is not that it has a lot of guys doing better than i expect, but rather that it projects some guys (soriano, bradley, zambrano, harden) staying a lot more healthy than i expect.

inability to foe people has to be the worst thing about being a mod.

i don't want it to be the lakers' year. it's always their year. make it be someone else's year.