USSoccer

I heard some dope on the radio suggest this on the way to work this morning. Not only is it a stupid trade because we don't have a 3B, but if we wanted to trade Aramis (which I don't unless we're getting an IMPACT player back) we could do much better than Izturis.

Example: Totti's PK today. IMO, the guys who usually miss are the guys who try all sorts of shoulder and hip fakes, and the guys who try and use funny routes to their shot.

Huh? I think he's still pissy because everyone laughed at his WBC vs. World Cup argument. No, France and Spain are playing tomorrow. When you combine a 400-year bitter history with a few pints of beer and a soccer match, you've got a riot on your hands. I doubt that very much.

Roberto Baggio had an 86% success rate with penalty kicks in Serie A which was, apparently, the highest success rate of anyone ever. There's presumably a cut-off point of number taken. I stand by my statement. :D You pick your spot and shoot. The more you think about the PK, the better the odds are that you'll think yourself into a stupid shot. I'm happy to say I never missed one in 18 years of organized soccer. Bah. That's crap. Caveat #1: Like you, I've never missed a PK. Caveat #2: I've saved multiple PK's as a keeper. As a keeper, you can read the shooter. If you watch how he sets up, the approach and the location of the plant foot, you can get a pretty good idea of which side he's targeting. If you watch the hips, head and the shoulders, you can get an idea if the striker is going up or down. If you can analyze all of this in the instant that you have to decide, you too can be a World Cup goalie. As a keeper, if you just guess which side to cover and commit yourself, you might get the lower corner on the dive, and you might save the ball if its poorly struck. Upper corner -- no way. As a forward, I always tried to put the ball in the side net at a reasonable level of power. I blanked my mind until the whistle, picked my side on the approach, and went. No thought. I looked at PK's like a golf shot. If you strike the ball anywhere near decent, the keeper can guess correctly and still not save it. It's all about your approach. You mind your mechanics, and you won't miss.

Roberto Baggio had an 86% success rate with penalty kicks in Serie A which was, apparently, the highest success rate of anyone ever. There's presumably a cut-off point of number taken. I stand by my statement. :D You pick your spot and shoot. The more you think about the PK, the better the odds are that you'll think yourself into a stupid shot. I'm happy to say I never missed one in 18 years of organized soccer.

No soccer player beyond junior high level should EVER miss a PK.

Huh?

Wait, Del Piero started ahead of Totti? Who's the Italian manager, Dustino Bakerini?

Sepp Blatter and David Stern are laughing right now in the secret Colorado cottage known as "the Meadows"

Figo will be very lucky if he isn't suspended for that head butt, which was far more deliberate than that elbow to the nose was.

The only thing they are blessed with is a GM that's made some fairly clever moves and taken a couple risks that worked out. They are a very well constructed team with a pitching staff that stays healthy and is very effective, and an offense that has 2 absolute mashers in the middle, along with Dye, who's really playing well.

I hope he was hurt otherwise he has to explain something. Ruud equals at least a tie if not the win. Very depressed now. I didn't get the sense that he was hurt. He was warming up, and looked like he was coming in. I got the sense that van Basten tried to prove some stupid point by not putting Ruud in, and then when the avalanche of cards came out, he wet the bed and put the guy with 33 letters in his name in. Certainly Ruud finishes the clear chances Kuyt had. I don't even know how you don't put him in, even if he is nursing something. You were up a man most of the half, and you controlled posession, so it's not as if he's going to be making 40 yard runs. You put him in to finish in the 18.

Crede's having a career year in a stacked offense. Aramis is having a down year on an abysmal offensive team. If you look at their respective career numbers, it's not even close. You take Aramis 12 days a week.

No doubt, with the way they use minor league arms. I think they're reactive overall. A player gets booed -- send him out of town. Pick something the last world series team did and base your strategy around that for the year. And so on. It is very irritating that the philosophy seems to change based on whatever happened last. I don't know if they are knee jerk reactive or delayed reactive. They have a tendency to let things completely bottom out, then wait a while, and then make a move.

That looked more like a Mexican league game with all the pushing and such. BTW, shnsajax, I'm sorry about the Oranje.

Marco van Basten must have been saving van Nistelroy for the 3rd Half...that was a crapperrific tactical error. And the FIFA refs are giving the NBA refs a run for their money. A new record for red cards and we're not even thru the round of 16 yet.

Wayne Rooney is the exact kind of player the US needs to develop. Strong, overly aggressive, intense, skilled and dangerous. Rooney makes Landon Donovan look like a ballerina. He dominated 1 v 2 most of the game, and should have had 2 assists if Frank Lampard didn't suck. He's easily becoming my favorite player to watch on the field. And for all you England fans that want to gripe about your team not playing well, I'd like to say that I wish the US was "not playing well" into the quarterfinals.

There's no justification in sending Murton down. Let me run through these arguments and disprove them: -He has a poor SLG% and we need a guy like Carlos Lee. I agree, we need a better SLG% out of LF, but we're not sending him down and bringing up Lee, nor are we trading for him, so this argument is crap. If you want to sign Lee this winter, ok, but demoting Murton isn't a precondition of that. -He needs to work on hitting with Von Joshua Yeah, Joshua is a better coach than the ML guys, but why, then would you keep the ML guys? Wouldn't every hitter benefit from a better hitting coach? Why just send Matt down? Wh not call Joshua up, so to speak? -He's struggled in June and has 5 RBI since May 1st. Yes, he has. So have half the team. Hit run production suffers because our offense sucks as a whole. Aramis has around 40 RBI, which for him is really, really low. Our whole offense is bad; why punish one kid for it? -He's not the answer in LF. On a competently constructed team, he can be an asset. You can allow him to grow into his role. However, this is the Cubs, and they stupidly constructed a team where Murton was counted on to be a run producer right away. Them when he hits a skid thanks to bad coaching and pressure from a stupid manager to be more aggressive, you send him down? Given that we're nowhere close to contending, I see no point in demoting him to learn facing AAA pitching. The best thing the Cubs could do is recognize that their hitting coaches are terrible, fire them, promote Joshua, and allow Murton to grow as a player and play through his struggles. Platooning him with Bynum does nothing ni the short term and damages our options in the long term.

Trading Ramirez better net you an immediate impact offensive position player, or you're stupid for doing it. Despite his slow start he is and will be a very, very good player for the next few years.

Nobody could argue against the opportunities side of the equation. But, if we can't use OPS w/RISP as a tangible measure of "clutch", how can we use OPS/OBP, etc. to determine who is a "good hitter" overall? They are ALL valuable. There are two parts, getting on and getting in. Putting some value on the latter doesn't lessen the value of the former. OPS w/RISP to calculate "clutch" isn't as stable and predictive from year to year as OBP is. If you're building a roster, you want to eliminate as many unknowns and variables in performance as possible, and that means using metrics that are useful and stable year in and year out.

Derrek Lee spent most of his time batting 3rd 1 - 299 2 - 314 I actually started to post those numbers, but they started to make me angry so I stopped. Who was the .314?

That, to me, is the most important question. Whenever I see/hear/read about Hendry or Baker being interviewed, I never see anyone back up an assertation with a statistical fact. I always hear too much deference and use of baseball cliches like "Clutch". I want to see someone point out the disparity in runs scored and hits for the Cubs since 2004. I want to see someone trot out Remlinger's R/L splits, or Neifi's statistical crapiness, or Rusch's anything. I want to see somebody use numbers to put Hendry in a position to justify his crap moves since 2004. I agree. This is one of those, "What the hell is going on???" moments for me. When someone get's the answer, "We lack in the clutch hitting department." Why doesn't someone say, "That's not true at all. The fact is you have far fewer baserunners than anyone else in the entire league. Here are the facts..." Why don't people say these things? Maybe it's because most writers know a lot less than Hendry? I think Bruce is in the minority. Yes and no. I've heard JH interviewed on WSCR here in Chicago by Boers and Bernstein. Bernstein, with all his flaws as a host, is a pretty smart guy (just ask him). He also has a grasp of statistical importance, and of all the people likely to hammer these points, he would be the one I would expect to do so. But it never happens.

That, to me, is the most important question. Whenever I see/hear/read about Hendry or Baker being interviewed, I never see anyone back up an assertation with a statistical fact. I always hear too much deference and use of baseball cliches like "Clutch". I want to see someone point out the disparity in runs scored and hits for the Cubs since 2004. I want to see someone trot out Remlinger's R/L splits, or Neifi's statistical crapiness, or Rusch's anything. I want to see somebody use numbers to put Hendry in a position to justify his crap moves since 2004. I agree. This is one of those, "What the hell is going on???" moments for me. When someone get's the answer, "We lack in the clutch hitting department." Why doesn't someone say, "That's not true at all. The fact is you have far fewer baserunners than anyone else in the entire league. Here are the facts..." Why don't people say these things? And to add to Goony's point, if you ask the follow up question, and back it up with numbers, and he hangs up on you and cuts your access off, you've proven your point. If he's on the air with you, you're in control of the interview. How hard is it to ask a follow up question and attack the nonsense he spews?

That, to me, is the most important question. Whenever I see/hear/read about Hendry or Baker being interviewed, I never see anyone back up an assertation with a statistical fact. I always hear too much deference and use of baseball cliches like "Clutch". I want to see someone point out the disparity in runs scored and hits for the Cubs since 2004. I want to see someone trot out Remlinger's R/L splits, or Neifi's statistical crapiness, or Rusch's anything. I want to see somebody use numbers to put Hendry in a position to justify his crap moves since 2004.

Please cite some examples of this. Are you basing that comment on his reputation or what's actually occured this season? Because the games I watched showed Ramirez actually hustling out a few hits this season, which is something he admittedly didn't do last season. He's made 2 errors this season. His fielding hasn't been a problem at all. What he has done is struggle mightily without protection in the lineup. He's pressed, and swung at bad pitches. He's not a player you trade unless you are getting a very productive ML player in return.