LetsPlayTwo

They can be chosen in the Rule 5 draft.

I think we only have to make up the Card game postponed after Josh Hancock died. The rest are probably off-days when the Brewers played.

Ladies, please take your bickering outside. Murton should definitely get a starting chance, or at least a chance platooning with Floyd.

72/314 43 19 16 47 2 1 13 .289 .443 versus 51/179 25 6 4 31 0 0 3 .354 .385 HUH? i like dye. a lot. he has been a major contributor on winning teams in the past, and while i know that means little to most here, if it comes down to a player that has or has not won multiple world series', i go with experience. He's certainly no Derek Jeter. Dye only has one ring, from 2005. Come think of it, Floyd also has one ring, from 1997. Like I said, it's a wash, and Dye's not worth a good prospect for a half-season rental.

Pass. He's not that much of an upgrade over Floyd and not worth giving up a prospect for a 3-month rental. I'd rather see Murton brought back up.

[hint]They want people to think they don't look like John Kruk. I don't buy it. [/hint]

Let's get some hookers and blackjack! http://www.wma.com/pat_obrien/imgs/Pat_O

I don't think so, but I'm not certain.

Probably not. While I'm sure he's not hurting, the players themselves are most responsible.

I blame Hendry for getting squat for Barret, along with countless other things. This team cant afford to have a defensive minded catcher who cant hit(see Koyie Hill). We already have black holes at SS, RF(when Jones starts) and now catcher. Hendry is to blame for this big pile of crap thats being put on the field, and for not giving Soto a shot to see what he can do. I thought Soto was recovering from an arm injury and just playing 1B/DH right now.

Not gonna lie, I'm pretty interesting in these tickets.

If they put a specific kind of "latino sausage" in there just to appease latino fans who wanted/were complaining about some sort of sausage representation, then yes, that would be stupid and I would call it "politically correct pandering." However, allow me to add that I think the idea is hillarious. I mean, have you seen the thing? It's awesome. And Chorizo's ridiculous sombrero is anything but politically correct. it's symbolic. while we have no problem with old, european-immigrant, white sausages, we have a problem with a new, central american-immigrant, dark sausage. it's okay though, because we put a sombrero on the sausage and watch it runs around like a crazy sausage and it humors us. as long as the sausage is a benign stereotype-sausage coceived of by white people, we find it funny and harmless. just don't suggest that mexican sausages are infiltrating the psuedo-sausage culture of old, white america. because, in the end, it's all about preserving our white sausage culture. sorry chorizo, you're a sausage too late, you should have been here 100 years ago, then you'd have been welcomed into our sausage culture--------perhaps. I just don't like the way they taste. But I suppose that makes me an evil American bigot. [sarcasm]You capitalist pig! How dare you ignore the plight of the Mexican sausage![/sarcasm]

You Won! Yay for you! Don't look now, but we're still 11 games under .500. Win 11 games and then maybe I'll start caring again.

Wee. We won one. Good Luck again.

Have fun watching this game, those who still care. I pity you. On a lighter note, have a happy Memorial Day!

If it's not too late to sign up, I'd like to start a game or two.

I love all comic book characters equally.

I'd just like to pop in and say how this discussion is a clear example of tradition baseball wisdom vs. stats. I just think it's funny.

They're only evil to Cubs fans. I agree with you, but unfortunately I'll have to "root" for the White Sox since "In 2003 we rooted for the Cubs, it's all about Chicago anyways."

How many saves did Farns have as a Cubs?? How many years was he in Chicago?? Dude would have never got over the hump in Chicago. He wouldn't have came close to doing what Dempster did this year in a Cub uniform. He was better than Dempster was this year in '03. The whole "Farnsworth never lived up to his potential" thing is nonsense. He was and is a great reliever, but when he had a less than spectacular '04 and got hurt, people make up nonsense about him being an alcoholic or a headcase or stupid or whatever. He was NOT better than Dempster this year so what are you talking about? Do not count the games that Demspter started. Farnsworth '03 0.88 WHIP 10.85 K/9 2.56 K/BB .196 BAA .580 OPS against Dempster '05 as a reliever 1.25 WHIP 8.17 K/9 1.96 K/BB .218 BAA .580 OPS against Yes, Farnsworth was better. Why are we comparing 2003 numbers with 2005? I was talking about 05 vs 05, but even so Farns whip in 03 was 1.17 according to yahoo with a era of 3.30. So I personally would rather take the lower ERA above the other stats. I apologize, I read the wrong column calculating his WHIP and then got a bunch of critical errors before I had to leave. ERA for relievers isn't a great metric, their smaller number of IP can skew it, and ERA in general has a lot out of the pitcher's control. But, if you want to compare 2005 v. 2005: Farnsworth: 2.19 ERA, 1.01 WHIP, 11.19 K/9, 3.22 K/BB, .180 BAA, .542 OPS Against Dempster: 1.85 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, 8.17 K/9, 1.96 K/BB, .218 BAA, .580 OPS Against Outside of a small advantage in ERA(which has problems like I mentioned earlier), Farnsworth is clearly more effective, just as he was in '03. The bottom line is that Farns wouldn't have done this w/ the Cubs. If Farns was the closer in 2003, the team woulnd't have made the playoffs and Bartman would still be living in Chicago. Bartman IS still living in Chicago. At least if I remember that article I read awhile ago correctly.

Me three.

i thought we were supposed to look past the complicated numbers. Sure. Let's. 99 wins. Any questions? No, but one massive complaint. This is just an expansion on what I wrote earlier, but here's how a baseball team works, baseball philosophy 101... Resources > Talent > Performance > Wins Yadda... I look at it like this. 99 wins means the manager did a good job, and the GM who picked the manager and gave him the players also did a good job. Well you need to get your eyes tested. The Yankees win 99+ games just about every year. And I'll tell you now that they have by far the most ineffective GM in the game, and I don't think a huge deal about their manager either. They win at the resource level, and just about manage to not haemorrage away all of their advantage going from resource to talent to performance to wins. Now the Yankees are a very exceptional example, but the point is that 99 wins on its own means absolutely nothing. It bears absolutely no reflection on its own upon the GM and the manager. It only implies. If you want to find out whether the implication is true, you need to look at the actual job that the GM and manager did in a lot more detail. It could well be that the implication is true, and in this instance I'm not saying it's not. But I'm not going to say that it is simply because you and a bunch of other people childishly scream "99 wins!!!!!! Kenny Williams is GOOD!!!!!!! I want him as CUBS GM!!!!! I heart Williams!!!!!" Now you immediately contradict yourself, and throw in a tired "good teams have good luck" Tim McCarver-esque cliché for good measure. If a GM can't control luck, and luck is a huge factor, and it's possible that the White Sox were lucky this year, why all the drooling over Kenny Williams? Or have you come to the conclusion that the White Sox weren't lucky this year? On what basis? Show your working. More grossly simplified conclusions based on absolutely nothing. You're like a little kid doing mental arithmetic that writes down the answer and nothing but the answer because he cheated with a calculator. Only baseball isn't as black and white, right and wrong as math. But you've come to your conclusion and aren't able or willing to say why beyond throwing out tired stuff about how "he won 99 games, therefore he must have done a good job". That's rubbish. How do you know that without Williams the White Sox this year wouldn't have won 107 games, or 91 games, or whatever? That's the only thing that matters. The effect that Williams had. Not that he just happened to be "in charge" when something happened. Why's that? Because they're extremely efficient at converting reasonably limited resources into talent and then into performance, that and they've seemingly got a grip on the conversion of performance into wins. Seemingly being an important word, because I don't know if they do. The consequence of all that is that they often win a lot of games. But they're not good because they often win a lot of games. They're good because they do the things that conveniently often lead to winning a lot of games. There's a big distinction that is so often overlooked in America's quest to boil everything down into black and white, good and evil, whatever. You're force-fed the most tired oversimplified watered down rhetoric. And you eat it. Perhaps because three supersized McDonalds meals just isn't enough. Oh, no, more oversimplication! You just don't get it. Wins and losses probably are the bottom line, but that doesn't mean that they should be. You can only judge a GM by the efficiency with which he converts resources into talent, and by the people that he appoints beneath him. None of that gives him total control over the win loss record though. Therefore winning 99 games doesn't necessary make a GM any better than one that won just 89, or 79, or 69. You can only judge someone upon the things that are within their control. Fernando Alonso, a Formula 1 racing driver, spent a season with Minardi in 2001, a team with one of the worst cars in the sport, and he didn't score a single point all season. In fact, he didn't finish 8 of the 17 races, and finished in 10, 11, 12, 13, 13, 13, 14, 16 and 17th positions in the races he did complete (20 cars start the race, top 6 at that stage scored points). By your kind of a logic, all that makes him a bad driver, since you can only judge him by wins and losses and all that. I mean, he can't be that good, he didn't even get to the end in 8 races, he never finished higher than 10th in any of the others. Useless. Only he's the World Champion now. So what's changed? Not so much Alonso. He was a very good young driver back then, and he's an even better still young driver now. What's really changed are the things that aren't in Alonso's control. This year he had an extremely reliable car, and he's finished in 15 of the 17 races so far this year (and 1 of them he didn't start, the farce in Indianapolis in which just about no-one started). So he's finished 15 of the 16 races he's started so far this year. He's also had a fast car, if not the fastest, and in 13 of the 15 races he's finished, he's placed in the top three. He also placed 4th in another. And he's also enjoyed quite a bit of luck, with a good driver in a far quicker car (Raikkonen) suffering huge reliability problems. But if you want to measure everything in wins and losses, in any sport, then you can only come to the conclusion that Alonso was crap in 2001 and brilliant in 2005, and it's lucky for him that he didn't remain such a terrible driver and actually got better. Excellent argument. This discussion just underlines the simple fact that in the eyes of the public, winning really does mean everything.

Won't it be so exciting to see all this again next season?

Oh well. At least I got Ron Santo's autograph today.

Rats. Foiled again!