Tracer Bullet

who keeps voting for the wrong answer when the right answer is posted in this thread a bunch of times?

that might work for some people, but I would have thought you would have felt obligated to take the less popular position.

How many people could possibly be deciding on whether or not they renew/buy seasons tickets based on whether or not Peavy returns? Considering how much talk there has been of a Peavy trade, wouldn't the people most likely to ditch if Peavy is gone have already decided not to buy? I hope every season ticket holder and everyone in front of me in line is refusing to buy/renew if we don't trade for Peavy. Well, he was talking about Padres fans, who are much more likely to be a fickle crew without a long line behind them to pick up the extra tickets. Yeah, I just wanted to take the opportunity to make an off-hand comment about my lack of movement in the season ticket line.

How many people could possibly be deciding on whether or not they renew/buy seasons tickets based on whether or not Peavy returns? Considering how much talk there has been of a Peavy trade, wouldn't the people most likely to ditch if Peavy is gone have already decided not to buy? I hope every season ticket holder and everyone in front of me in line is refusing to buy/renew if we don't trade for Peavy.

I'm shocked that all of you got this wrong. Either that or you're talking about a different Sara Lee and I'd like to know exactly how she does it.

hanley ramirez? I hope not. The 200-page targets never get acquired.

Truf may be over the top with the N Dakota stuff, but let's get serious. Iowa is one of the most underrated states in the union.

The lack of anything to say about spring training is more intriguing than HOF debates. You're posting a lot in a thread about the HOF for a guy who doesn't care about the HOF debate.

If there are voters like that, they are in a vast minority. As I wrote in the blog, most members of the BBWAA take the responsibility very seriously. It's fine to debate the merits of their vote and their methodology, but the writers I know are very responsible. But in any crowd, there always are a few.... Oh, I don't think they aren't taking it seriously. I think that guy probably looks at the character component, says "Rice was a jerk" and thought he deserved some sort of punishment. That's not a question of taking it seriously, imo. I just don't think many of them are qualified to determine who the best baseball players are or were.

That sounds less "balanced" and leaning more toward the subjective nature of evaluating baseball. And you might want to take a look at some of the comments on this site about how many journalists still dismiss and even ridicule sabermetrics: http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/index.php/topic,65754.0.html You might even come back thinking I'm Voros McCracken by comparison. :D Don't take offense if I say I hate you for introducing me to that site. Players should be evaluated by the stats that were en vogue at the time they played. That site would be perfect for an FJM-style assault. That might be enough to bring them out of retirement. I like the guy that says Rice was basically punished for being a jerk and several voters may have always intended to eventually vote him in, but may have not voted for him for years just to let him stew. Goodness.

That sounds less "balanced" and leaning more toward the subjective nature of evaluating baseball. Well, I actually looked at some of the "comparables" to Morris over at baseballreference.com. My first thought, without looking, was Jim Bunning, a Hall of Famer. He was on the list, along with Bob Feller, Bob Gibson and Burleigh Grimes, all Hall of Famers. Then I ran the numbers. Morris' compare pretty well, except for ERA (he played in a DH era, though) and WHIP. Wow, I'm citing stats. No, I do take a balanced approached. Maybe I should have delineated all the stats I consider. And the top 2 on the list were Dennis Martinez and Jamie Moyer. 2 other non-Hall candidates that weren't (aren't) great but pretty good for a long time.

It's a good and fair question and one I'm going to have to confront pretty soon. I had always gone with the Rolling Stones song of time being on my side here when it comes to considering McGwire. But as my friend Joe Sheean of BP points out, that's probably no longer a good approach because we're probably not going to get any more info on McGwire and steroids. Can I ask why you voted for Jack Morris? The main thing I always hear about is that he was awesome in the 1991 World Series. But overall, his postseason numbers are good but not great, and I would classify his career regular season numbers as "pretty good". But definitely not HOF material. "...defintely note HOF material" is your opinion and you're certainly entitled to it. I try to take a balanced approach, incorporating stats, perceived dominance, how a guy helped his team win, what his teammates and opponents thought of him and so forth. Morris: Five-time all-star; 254-186 record; 175 CG; member of three world champion teams; led all pitchers in the '80s in wins (ducks to avoid flying objects); held AL record for most consecutive starting assignments (515) before Clemens broke it; 28 shutouts. I've also talked with people such as Ernie Harwell, Sparky Anderson and Alan Trammell about Morris. To me, he qualifies. This isn't meant to be snarky, but those seem like really bad justifications for Morris. All-Star voting is a crock. It probably wasn't as bad before online voting made it so easy to vote thousands of times, but it still should have absolutely no weight in evaluating a player. I imagine there are a number of guys that won 3 WS rings that aren't good enough for the Hall. He pitched a long time and his arm could withstand going deep in games. Those are valuable things, but lots of mediocre pitchers have those abilities. He did pitch well in some WS games, but WS or not, that doesn't seem like enough to overcome the overwhelming blandness of his complete picture. Did you tell Trammell you weren't voting for him when you asked him about Morris? :wink: You're right about all-star voting being a crock. Being a pitcher, Morris wasn't subject to it. His all-star manager, based on input from other baseball people (presumably who knew the game the kind of pitcher Morris was) chose him. No, didn't tell Tram. Don't think he'd care anyway. I should have been more clear. All Star selection, generally, is a crock. Whether it's managers or fans doing the selecting. But that's a pretty minor point in Morris' candidacy. And I hope you knew I was joking about Trammell. He certainly doesn't seem like he would care. He seems like a real great guy (which makes his poor showing in HOF voting even more difficult for me to understand, I guess).

It's a good and fair question and one I'm going to have to confront pretty soon. I had always gone with the Rolling Stones song of time being on my side here when it comes to considering McGwire. But as my friend Joe Sheean of BP points out, that's probably no longer a good approach because we're probably not going to get any more info on McGwire and steroids. Can I ask why you voted for Jack Morris? The main thing I always hear about is that he was awesome in the 1991 World Series. But overall, his postseason numbers are good but not great, and I would classify his career regular season numbers as "pretty good". But definitely not HOF material. "...defintely note HOF material" is your opinion and you're certainly entitled to it. I try to take a balanced approach, incorporating stats, perceived dominance, how a guy helped his team win, what his teammates and opponents thought of him and so forth. Morris: Five-time all-star; 254-186 record; 175 CG; member of three world champion teams; led all pitchers in the '80s in wins (ducks to avoid flying objects); held AL record for most consecutive starting assignments (515) before Clemens broke it; 28 shutouts. I've also talked with people such as Ernie Harwell, Sparky Anderson and Alan Trammell about Morris. To me, he qualifies. This isn't meant to be snarky, but those seem like really bad justifications for Morris. All-Star voting is a crock. It probably wasn't as bad before online voting made it so easy to vote thousands of times, but it still should have absolutely no weight in evaluating a player. I imagine there are a number of guys that won 3 WS rings that aren't good enough for the Hall. He pitched a long time and his arm could withstand going deep in games. Those are valuable things, but lots of mediocre pitchers have those abilities. He did pitch well in some WS games, but WS or not, that doesn't seem like enough to overcome the overwhelming blandness of his complete picture. Did you tell Trammell you weren't voting for him when you asked him about Morris? :wink:

http://blogs.dailyherald.com/node/1231 Bruce, I'm glad to see that you were among the 22% that voted for Raines. Bruce - I don't want to jump down your throat b/c I appreciate you posting your votes. But, unless my eyes deceive me, Alan Trammel isn't among your vote-getters. Would you mind explaining your thoughts on that? Well, Tram hasn't jumped down my throat yet. Seriously, this is another good question and one I'll have to reconsider. I'm leaning toward voting for him. Never jumped down your throat? Would you mind explaining a bit about how you come up with the guys you vote for? I saw your blog posts on the topic, but I guess I'm surprised that you wouldn't vote for Trammell. Someone here (I think in this thread) linked to a really good piece about Trammell and his hall worthiness (discussing Jaffe's JAWS, google returns links to a couple different articles). I guess I'm just surprised to see a guy like Rice on your list but Trammell left off.

http://blogs.dailyherald.com/node/1231 Bruce, I'm glad to see that you were among the 22% that voted for Raines. Bruce - I don't want to jump down your throat b/c I appreciate you posting your votes. But, unless my eyes deceive me, Alan Trammel isn't among your vote-getters. Would you mind explaining your thoughts on that?

I can't believe all the whining finally got Rice in, while Santo got nowhere and Trammel and Raines appear to be long shots (not to mention Blyleven). I hate the BBWAA.

I'm sure there have been worse polls, but I can't think of any.

Haha, Edgar Renteria, Julio Lugo, Matt Clement, Jason Vartiek, JD Drew(maybe Mike Lowell new deal) and even Curt Schilling last season say hello. I'm not saying Hendry is a better GM then Theo Epstein, because Theo is better. But the reason I really think he's a better GM, is because the Red Sox have gotten great production from their farm system, and the Cubs haven't. But if you wanna compare them on bad contracts given out or overpaying players, it's alot closer then people realize. Keeper you really need to bring these posts to the Cubs.com board. This is his first post that more than 90% of the board will agree with and now you want him to take it to Cubs.com?

neither does the NCAA Tournament Thank heavens for that. SOAB.

I don't know how anyone could still argue that trading Lee for Pods was a good move. fwiw, using the WAR figures, there was merely a 3 run margin between the two players in '05 using the grcf figures, Pods sucks.

I don't know how anyone could still argue that trading Lee for Pods was a good move.

If that was even remotely possible, I would have voted the same way. Since it's not, and the more likely replacement is 50+ games of Reed Johnson, I'll take Dunn.

C+ and I'm highly disappointed that B is the highest vote getter so far.

There are several issues with his post, but you seriously think the Wood and Bradley situations are identical? You think you can just look at say "each costs $10m a year and has a high likelihood of injury. Thus, you must either like both deals or hate both deals." There's obviously more to it than that. Wood in a RP. If he goes down for a week or even the whole year, we have a couple of options to replace him: Marmol and Gregg (maybe others). He's also a huge fan favorite, he's been a great citizen of Chicago and seemed to want to play here. From what I know, teammates liked him. Bradley is the starting RF. If he goes down for an extended period of time, which is likely, we get Reed or Gathright full time (maybe Pie, but that seems unlikely). Neither of whom is likely to come close to the OPS we're hoping to get from Bradley. He's got a pretty bad reputation as a teammate as well. You can certainly like both deals or hate both deals, but a reasonable person can like one and hate the other.

Peavy in your panties?