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I've been thinking about the DH rule. What about a compromise? Allow a DH for the starting pitcher only. Once the starting pitcher leaves, the DH or some other player has to leave the game and that becomes the pitcher's spot. The DH can replace a position player when the starting pitcher leaves, or the DH can also replace a position player earlier with the loss of the DH spot being the only penalty. That preserves the vast majority of the NL strategy while making sure that pitchers rarely bat. It also allows for teams to hide players defensively for most of the game while at least forcing tough choices if their defense is atrocious. It doesn't feel too gimmicky or complicated, at least not more than the current rules surrounding the DH or double switches. It still allows for professional DH's or players returning from injury although it of course doesn't offer all the benefits that it does now. Thoughts? I of course know I'm not the first one to come up with this idea, but I haven't heard it discussed much at all.

I would argue that the Phillies didn't go into hyper win now mode until Amaro took over. At the time, the Phillies had just won the World Series with a young roster, plenty of talent in the farm system, and a rapidly expanding payroll (the 2008 WS team had a 98 million dollar payroll, by 2011 it was already at 165 million). Out of any team in baseball, they were the one who had the ability to go on a long run of dominance. Instead, they only had 3 more years of great teams with one WS appearance before falling apart. They managed to squander every advantage they had in pursuit of a marginal win here or there. It wasn't even injuries that derailed them. They managed to derail themselves through horrific mismanagement. So if you want to be the Phillies during the 2000's, I'm completely on board. The Amaro strategy IMO even though exciting hurt them tons more than it ever helped.

Manning's season has been so good that his 7 TD game is actually listed as his worst game of the season by QBR! That's incredible.

With the NBA's soft cap, it doesn't matter as much. If the Bulls had made Boozer their amnesty player this year, they would have still been over the cap. All it affected was that instead of a mid-level exception of just over 5 million they could offer, they instead only had the mini mid level of just over 3 million (and certain rules on trades that the Bulls weren't likely to take advantage of anyway). It cost ownership quite a bit of money to keep him as the Bulls appear to be paying in the neighborhood of 12 million in luxury taxes this year, but that's it. Next year they could open up some salary cap room by amnestying Boozer and renouncing Deng, but probably not enough to make it worth it to do.

Houston-SF is the Sunday night game, NYJ vs. ATL is the Monday night game. Also, while its not a national TV game, SD-Oakland was moved to AFTER Sunday Night Football because of the A's playoff game. It will be aired on the NFL Network. San Diego-Oakland will be nationally available now as well. Because of the time change, it will be shown on NFL network. It could be argued that the four best games of the weekend are on at 1 PM.

I'd lean towards Atlanta. I completely agree that they aren't that great, and the Jets are ok. But that's a Monday night game for Atlanta at home that they have to have. The crowd is going to be really going, and you have a rookie QB on the other side. Geno has turned it over 7 times in his two road games. St. Louis is a close 2nd, but that's strictly anti-Jaguars. I don't trust the Rams one bit. I don't know if it will make any difference, but you should remember that the Jaguars get Blackmon back from suspension this week. So it's possible their offense is a little better than how anemic they've been.

13 teams in the AFC .500 or better (with 4 undefeated) compared to only 7 teams .500 or better in the NFC (with 2 undefeated).

For some reason I decided 5 minutes before MNF to put in Moreno in at starting RB and bench McFadden using some insane logic that the Broncos would have a big lead and run the ball more while the Raiders would be passing and not use McFadden enough. Of course I lost because of it. Easily my dumbest fantasy move in awhile. Not just because it didn't work out but looking back on it, it made no sense to bench the Raiders feature back for 1/3 of Denver's RB committee, even if Moreno had 2 good weeks in a row. Ugh. If it makes you feel any better, 3 of the 4 rankers on ESPN had Moreno ahead of McFadden last week, and all four of them had Moreno in the top 15 running backs. It was a defensible move either way.

Unless they change the standard for what an overturn is, I don't agree with this thought. There are too many plays where there isn't enough visual evidence to not even attempt to call it right on the field. If they changed it to where things could be overturned on a preponderance of the evidence I would be supportive of that.

George definitely has to get better to be a top 15 player IMO. He seems likely to get there though. He's already there defensively as he is one of the 3 best perimeter defenders in the league, and is a very good rebounder for his position. Offensively, he has all the natural tools. He can explode to the rim, he has great length, and he can shoot. The things he struggles at are things like dribbling through traffic and drawing contact when he gets in close. He has already been getting better at those, and I expect him to continue that. He is a player who has not gotten very great coaching before the pros. Didn't start playing organized basketball until high school, and then played college in a very loose atmosphere at Fresno State. The thing Pacer fans are waiting on with his contract details is if he got the possibility of the Rose rule or not. He made All-NBA 3rd team last year, and if he does it again this year he's eligible for the higher max. The contract estimate that was reported could reflect either max, and that's a big deal for the Pacers as they try to keep Lance Stephenson after the season (Granger is as good as gone).

wow. Miami, Pats, Colts, Browns, Bengals, Chiefs. Aside from the Seahawks and potentially the Bears, slaughter. 49ers, Falcons, Packers, Vikings all NFC playoff teams to lose. I'm shocked at how well the AFC is doing so far. I don't expect them to keep dominating all year (in fact I still think the NFC is a little better), but it looks probable they'll at least finish .500 against the NFC now, and even that would have been a big surprise before the season. To look at it division by division (assuming the Bears win tonight): AFC East 4 NFC South 0 AFC North 2 NFC North 2 AFC South 1 NFC West 1 AFC West 4 NFC East 0

Which team in the AFC North or NFC East gets their division's first non-divisional win of the season? And does either division remain winless in that respect after this weekend?

The financial situation should get quite a bit better after just 1 more year. Let's say the worst case scenario happens and the payroll goes down to 75 million next year (presumably to pay for the renovations). In 2015 the new WGN contract kicks in, and the construction on some of the revenue generating things should be done. Plus the Cubs won't have nearly the dead money they have just in Soriano after next year. That's a lot of extra potential payroll that should be available after just 1 more year. Will the Cubs be able to truly explode the payroll until the CSN contract is up and the renovations are done? Probably not, and that's not good. But things will start getting a lot better than they are currently pretty soon.

They traded a first round pick for a running back? That's my one big trepidation about the deal. But if you are going to deal a first round pick, Richardson probably has as much future value as any RB in the league. Just turned 23, was the 3rd overall pick last year, and other than the Y/C (which I attribute to him being the only option in Cleveland last year) didn't really disappoint. His cap hits should be pretty small the next couple years as well. Base salaries of 2.25 million next year and 3.18 million the year after that. I'm mixed on the deal, but it certainly should be an interesting transition. It certainly cements the Colts offense as very, very good this year even after the injuries.

There was/is a rule in the NFL against excessive crowd noise, although they have understandably stopped enforcing it. In other news, the Colts have lost 3 offensive starters for the season in the last week after they announced Dwayne Allen is done. Hopefully this stops soon or it could get ugly in Indy.

There are lots of matchups between teams that we don't really know about yet. Chiefs/Eagles, Rams/Cowboys, Lions/Redskins, Giants/Panthers, Texans/Ravens, Falcons/Dolphins. Those games should all be competitive matchups featuring mostly teams that may or may not be playoff teams. This is a strange year. I feel like I can only pencil in 3 playoff teams at this point. Denver, Seattle, and San Francisco. Maybe New England and Houston because of weak schedules and being 2-0, but both have been so unimpressive.

Waive after wavie does not mean star after star. It means that we will no longer be sifting though other peoples trash to field a team. We will have a group of kids getting their first shot at the major league. Think about it, since Kerry Wood how many exciting prospects have we had? Cruz, Prior, Zambrano, Patterson, Hill, Choi, Pie and Castro. Did I miss anyone? That's about one guy every other year. I see it setting up as two or three guys a year for year after year (though not next year). If you're not talking about stars, the quartet of Guzman/Hill/Marshall/Marmol all got some buzz. Soto definitely did by the time he came up. Cedeno, Gallagher and Cashner.

I don't see anything saying it's guaranteed. The 3 million they just gave him in signing bonus is guaranteed. In fact, it probably got paid to him immediately. He still very well might get cut after the year, because he has large unguaranteed base salaries each of the next two years. But 2 million in guaranteed cap hit was pushed back beyond this year with that move.

Agreed. You never want to play a team where their perception is worse than their ability. That is exactly the scenario when teams play the top FCS teams (they have a better chance of an upset than probably the last 30-40 FBS teams, but most people don't give them that sort of credit), and playing a bottom tier FCS team is just awful for your schedule strength.

These last two starts for Hendricks (if he gets two more) would impact for me where he goes on prospects lists. I'd expect his peripherals to get quite a bit worse going to the heavily offensive PCL. If he can keep his peripherals roughly the same over 40 innings or so in the PCL (especially his home run rate) then that would really start having me question if he has an elite deception/command tool that separates him from other soft tossers. A person who I'd compare to him, Randy Wells, was not able to do that. He had a very similar season at AA at age 23 over a smaller sample, but was not able to hold those peripherals when he got to Iowa. It took until right when he was in his prime that he found those numbers again even in a tiny sample and had his good couple of major league years before the injuries took over.

I don't think you need to worry about your 2nd RB. When you need to start 3 WR and 2 QB, both those positions become a lot less deep. And with RB being the most injury prone position, I'd take Cam and Spiller and not worry about drafting any RB's for several rounds unless someone is simply a tremendous value. You can load up on lottery ticket RB's later in the draft, maybe grab a Richardson/Hillman just to start the season with, and hope somebody emerges or gets thrust into a starting role. I'd use the first few rounds on WR's and a QB. Probably even WR first since you already have a top 12 QB (again, unless one is a great value), and then pick up a couple upside QB's later in the draft. You could argue there are 20-22 startable QB's in this sort of league, so I don't think you'll have to be desperate for one.

Which team is more likely to have a good season is getting into projections rather than actual records. At this point in your scenario, both teams are actually 1-2. Obviously using the pythagorean method, the first team is more likely to have a better season. While you're playing fast and loose with statistics, small sample sizes, and projections, do you really think that team 2 will only win 9% of the games (their pythagorean win ratio) during the whole season? Of course not. Obviously in that tiny of a sample size, a million variables come into play. The margin of error is so high. Even after 162, there is still margin of error on both Pythagorean records and actual records. Neither records a team's talent level accurately, although obviously the margin is much smaller than the microscopic 3 game sample. I personally don't agree with throwing out either number when coming up with projections. The Pythagorean record is a very good allocation of the things that translate into wins (runs scored/runs allowed), but at the same time we don't know exactly why a team overperforms/underperforms it. A projection that ends up somewhere between the two records (before taking into account changes in the roster) would probably be the most reasonable approach IMO. Using actual records is a good starting point for a projection, but I don't know why that wouldn't be amended using the data we have that might suggest a team is better or worse than their record. To get back to the beginning of the discussion, I'm not sure why you would want to throw out the Cubs Pythagorean record when making a projection for next year. It's an important data point even though it definitely still has error in it.

This is kind of backwards. It's pretty good at telling you whether a team is overperforming or underperforming in terms of W/L... it's not all that effective on its own at telling you anything about what the weaknesses of your team are. The run differential compared to where your team ranks in runs scored and/or runs allowed would allow you to see which area (offense or pitching) needs improvement. or you could just look at how many runs they've scored and allowed Which kind of gets back to my initial point of looking at what's happening on the field instead of fantasy projections of what the team is doing. Let me ask you this. If you saw Team 1 who won a game 9-2, but lost the other two games 2-1. Then you see another series where Team 2 won one game by a 2-1 score, but then lost the other two games 9-2. Their records are identical at 1-2. Do you think either team would be more likely to have a good season, or would they be equal since they have the same record?

Nice set of moves for the Pacers this offseason. Adding Watson, Copeland, and now Scola with the only player of any ability that was lost being Hansbrough. If Granger is even moderately healthy, they will be much better than last year. The race for the top of the East should be interesting this year with four potential great teams, and the Knicks just behind that. The West will likely still be better overall though since the rest of the East is so terrible.

There will be no more discussion about the inappropriate post that was on the last page (do not respond to this post either). The matter has been dealt with.