Tracer Bullet

I'd love to have Stone in the booth, though I've been happy with Bob. Maybe he can do the radio with Pat when Ron is ready to hang it up. And I agree - the fact that Cuban is a Pitt fan is irrelevant to me. In addition to your list, most players probably did not grow up fans of the team they end up playing for. Do they not try as hard when they play against their childhood team? Highly doubtful. That's a non-issue.

ditto

That would depend on whether he wasn't producing at an acceptable clip hitting lead off. If he can put up anywhere close to a .350 OBP while providing the power that he does, I won't ever change my mind. The season just started. The weather has been pretty brutal. The opposing pitchers have been pretty tough outside of Lohse. You can't give out grades on such a small sample size. What's "anywhere close to... .350"? His career .325? .340? If he has an OBP of .350 - I'd support him leading off. But, if he's in the .325-.330 range, he needs to move down. As for the weather - I never buy that. It's an excuse for pitchers b/c they can't get the same grip on the ball when it's cold and then it's an excuse for the hitters b/c they're not used to cold weather (or whatever). It's 3 games, don't make decisions based on 3 games. But I never supported Soriano leading off and he's not doing anything to convince me he should be. If after a month he doesn't have a .350 OBP, move him to 4th or 5th.

When I first saw the list come out (Griffey, Bonds, Lee...Crisp), I thought...Coco Crisp? Really? Then I realized he might be the most prominent African American on their roster (haven't taken the time to really think about that). I like the idea, but it sounded really cool on the part of Griffey to push for it. And even Bonds to get on board early (though it sounds like the idea was brought to him, rather than him asking to participate). But now so many teams are doing it that some guys are just going to wear it b/c the wants to take part in it (whether for profit or to honor Robinson, I don't know) and they only have one or two African Americans on their team, so Player X gets told "you're wearing 42." It's losing some significance, I think.

You're right about that. Since Yahoo does use Pacific time, you added the player at 9:30 P.M. Thursday, so the player is available on your roster for Friday games. If you add the player after midnight Pacific time on Friday, he isn't available until Saturday (on the flip side, you'd still have the player you dropped available for Friday's games). I noticed that. I also noticed something funny. When I go to "my team" on it's main page it shows what my guys got for that day. Even just a couple hours after the game. However when I go to "matchup" it still shows what they did for 1 day ago. Sometimes it seems to even stretch almost past 24 hours ago. It takes a looooong time for "match up" to update. But it's funny, if they already have the results "computed" in "my team". . Then why can't they just update it into "match up". Weird. . The stats in Matchup show you your totals for the week, up to that point. Every morning, they will be updated with the prior day's stats. You'll notice that if you had a guy starting one day, but benched for a game the next day, the Matchup page will only include his stats for the day you had him starting - b/c the stats while he was on the bench don't "count" in the Matchup.

I do b/c I sit at the computer all day at work and can click over and see how my guys are doing. Plus, buy it once and you get it for all of your Y! baseball teams (if you have more than 1).

IP does not count

Not so much a bad call. He was great in spring and showed improvement. I'm sure Lou will pound into him not to be so aggresive with 2 balls. If he is to get better, he needs to be in those game situations and learn from them. it was a bad call. his decision to replace murton with theriot was a bad call, too. Any body can second guess something when it doesn't work. But a lot of people were questioning those moves when they were made. And even if Theriot scores, I think it's a bad move to replace Murton with him. If it were Ward or some huge mass of slowness, I can understand. Unless Murton's hurt, I don't see the reason to PR for him and waste a bench guy. That said, I have no problem with Cedeno. But if this happens all the time (Floyd announced, team goes to pen for LHP, Floyd pulled back) Floyd's going to be worthless as a PH.

because for no real reason, lou pinch ran theriot for murton, leaving ronny as the only rh off the bench. the cubs' bench has too many guys who serve the same purpose -- cedeno and theriot, ward and floyd. for no real reason? theriot stole second. he served his purpose, even though he screwed up and made a dumb out. I agree it was no real reason. A - I'm not convinced Murton couldn't have stolen 2nd. B - Theriot ran into an out. BTW - Eyre sucks.

He got lifted for Theriot, because Cubs used Theriot to steal 2nd base for the go-ahead run. It was a good move in my opinion. This is the same guy that ran into an out at 3rd, right? Maybe it was a good move, but Murton's a pretty good hitter and not exactly Cecil Fielder when it comes to speed. Did we really need to burn through another hitter on our already rather short bench for that? I vote no.

I think it was for the heck of it, I never heard an injury mentioned. Thanks. I never thought of Murton as being particularly slow. And I hate lifting a good hitter in favor for a PH or PR in a close game.

Sorry to back track, but did Murton get lifted for Theriot for the heck of it or is Murton injured? I read back through the pages dealing with that inning and didn't find any mention of it.

Never seen it - never will.

CPatt? I thought that was Tuffy Rhodes.

So hopefully by 2:00 a.m. central time? I'll be up late so I'll check and post what I find. StatTracker I really don't need. I was just curious when the "official" matchup scores get updated. Thanks! Y! doesn't usually update the stats in baseball until around 7 am Eastern. I don't know why, b/c the fantasy basketball stats are usually updated by 5 am Eastern. Maybe more people play baseball, so they have more work to do? I don't know. In fact, I think if you add a player after midnight Eastern, but before midnight Pacific time, it will be reflected as if it was made the day before. For example, if Friday at 12:30 am Eastern, I drop a player and add a different one, that added player will show up on my team Friday, as if I had added him Thursday. I'm pretty sure Y! uses Pacific time to determine what time transaction take place.

"Help negate the defense somewhat"? He's one of the best hitting catchers in the league. I'm not nearly smart enough to quantify "team mechanics" and "handling the pitching staff." But he's been nothing short of great as an offensive catcher for this team. There is just no way that whatever defensive problems he has outweigh what he brings to the table offensively.

I'd love to get ARod for Z under the right circumstances, but saying Zambrano can't throw strikes is absurd. Not really. Z led the majors in walks (115) last season. He was also fourth in the league in strikeouts (a mere six off the leader). Can't get those without throwing strikes. Sure you can. How many guys to you see swing and miss on stuff outside the strike zone? Plenty. Especially with Z. It's all part of the game. His movement is fantastic, but I'd still like to see him hit the zone more frequently. Yeah - I have to agree. Check out the league leaders from last season. Z was 5th in Ks, but, as mentioned above, had 115 walks. In the rest of the top 10, most guys were around 60 walks (Lackey had 72, Santana had 47, but the average was around 60). Z nearly doubled that last year. I love that Z strikes out 200 hitters, but I'd give up some of those Ks if he'd bring his walk total down significantly. I don't know if I'd say he "can't throw strikes" but he certainly doesn't do it as well as other high-K pitchers. link BTW - did Schilling really only walk 28 while striking out 183? If so, that's just insane. Who is disagreeing that he walks guys too much? He gets the strike outs. If enough the balls aren't technically in the zone, well, he's still throwing strikes in some capacity. The original statement that "he doesn't throw strikes," to me, is an inaccurate oversimplification. Well, the point of the statement "he doesn't throw strikes" - is "he throws too many balls." Given that he lead the league in walks, I don't think that's inaccurate. Yes, he does get a lot of swings and misses at balls out of the zone, but he also gets a lot of bats on the shoulder at balls out of the zone. So he gets a lot of Ks, but gives up way too many free passes to get them. So I think anyone who is arguing against the statement that "he doesn't throw strikes" is effectively arguing that he throws enough strikes, relative to the number of pitches he throws. And I just don't think that's true.

I have HRam in each of my 4 leagues. I love HRam.

I'd love to get ARod for Z under the right circumstances, but saying Zambrano can't throw strikes is absurd. Not really. Z led the majors in walks (115) last season. He was also fourth in the league in strikeouts (a mere six off the leader). Can't get those without throwing strikes. Sure you can. How many guys to you see swing and miss on stuff outside the strike zone? Plenty. Especially with Z. It's all part of the game. His movement is fantastic, but I'd still like to see him hit the zone more frequently. Yeah - I have to agree. Check out the league leaders from last season. Z was 5th in Ks, but, as mentioned above, had 115 walks. In the rest of the top 10, most guys were around 60 walks (Lackey had 72, Santana had 47, but the average was around 60). Z nearly doubled that last year. I love that Z strikes out 200 hitters, but I'd give up some of those Ks if he'd bring his walk total down significantly. I don't know if I'd say he "can't throw strikes" but he certainly doesn't do it as well as other high-K pitchers. link BTW - did Schilling really only walk 28 while striking out 183? If so, that's just insane.

At the end of the week, Y! totals up all the R, HR, RBI, SB, W, SV, and Ks that the players each team had "starting" on each day during the week. Y! compares each of those categories and whichever team has more gets 1 "win" for each category. So if you have more R, HR, RBI and SB than your oppoenent, but fewer W, SV, and Ks, you will get 4 "wins" and your opponent will get 3 "wins." At the end of each week, Y! will also compare the total AVG, ERA, and WHIP of each team's starters (it's calculated the same as they do in real life when they refer to "team ERA" or "team batting average" etc) and compare those. Whichever team has a higher AVG gets a "win" and whichever team has a lower ERA and WHIP gets a "win" for each of those. So there are 10 "games" going on between you and your opponent each week (1 for each of the ten categories above). At the end of each week, you'll see the standings on the front page will reflect how many "wins," "losses" and "ties" you have. Those numbers will be added up over the year and the 6 teams with the best winning percentage will make the playoffs (the top 2 teams get a "bye" during the first round of the playoffs). So, right now, you're behind KMacCurve 6-1 b/c your teams are tied in R, SB, and SV and you are only doing better in 1 category (team ERA). Those standings are currently meaningless, b/c it only matters at the end of each week (each week ends on Sunday for fantasy purposes). So, if after Sunday's games, you are still only doing better in ERA, tied in R, SB, and SV, and losing the other 6 categories, on Monday, the front page will show that your record is 1-6-3 and KMacCurve will be 6-1-3. Y! updates around 5:00 am eastern each morning. Sometimes there is a glitch and the stats for the last day don't show up until later, but Y! does a good job of correcting those problems later.

UGH I'll predict that Lou isn't going to like the sound of that. You said it. Now, how do the Lilly, Marquis, and Derosa contracts look? I don't like that Hendry waits until the last minute to get this stuff done. He's had all winter. I've never been a big supporter of JH, but I don't think he can take all the blame here. He's had a history of getting guys signed right before the season or shortly thereafter, and it usually works in the Cubs' favor. If he had gotten Z signed for $80m/5 years, almost everyone on this board would have been thrilled. So the fact that the Trib gets sold and that puts spending on hold shouldn't mean Hendry wasn't doing the right thing by waiting to sign Z.

That might be true. But on the other hand Walker can make the case that all the other rosters were set, and once that happens its hard to just pick up with a team. Why is it so hard to understand that once rosters are set at the end of ST, teams are reluctant to make changes? That's certainly true. But Walker has to prove that he is no ordinary person being released. He has to prove that he is better than that, that if not for the contract he would have been a clear upgrade over the Padres other options. If so, he should be a clear upgrade for some other teams as well. Rosters are not completely set in stone anyway- teams do make moves to acquire players in this time period to fill out their bench. Freddie Bynum and Brandon Phillips are just two examples off the top of my head last year of players acquired for the major league roster either just before the start of the season or just after. Both those players were traded for very little, but the fact that Walker was a free agent should have made it easier than those two players to make his way onto a roster this late than ST, not harder. Maybe his argument is that signing a MiL contract with Oakland (with the chance to prove quickly that he's good enough to be on the 25-man roster) was better than signing a ML contract with some other team (like the Royals or some other terrible team). This might have been his only offer, but maybe not. I don't think the fact that he signed a MiL deal means he couldn't get a ML one. Maybe Beane told him: prove you can play 1B and still hit RHP and you'll be in a platoon at first. If that was his option, signing this deal wasn't that bad of a move. Maybe at this point, having a chance to be a role-player on a good team looked better to him than being a starter on a crap team.

You're KMacCurve, right? If so, you don't have to bench guys that aren't scheduled to play that day. If you want to replace a guy that isn't playing that day with someone that is playing, do that. But if you only have a few guys with games scheduled or scheduled to pitch on a certain day, it doesn't hurt you to have them sitting in your starting lineup. It's not a big deal, but if you bench a guy every time he isn't scheduled to play, it's a lot more work than you need to be doing and you might forget to change it (or have something come up and not be able to change it) and miss games by some guys. I'd recommend putting guys from your bench in for your normal starters whenever you want, but I wouldn't clear out guys that aren't playing/pitching.

3 hours before the draft? You're joking, right? Nope. But if that's not cool, don't worry. No need to stress. I'm not stressed. Just thinking changing the stats a few hours before the draft would be pretty unfair. Moot point anyway.

Right. And if you click ahead (usually up to 2-3 days), your probable pitchers will have that too, so you can plan ahead a few days.