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That's true-if the Titans beat New England next week, the Jaguars are automatically eliminated. Not if my friend, when. With this team, anything is possible. Sure-anything is possible, that's why I used if. Nothing is guaranteed, that's why I didn't use when :D.

That's true-if the Titans beat New England next week, the Jaguars are automatically eliminated.

The Bills decide to go for it on 4th and 5 with less than a minute left rather than go for the game-winning 45 yard field goal, and Losman throws a despeartion INT-I have no idea why they did that, but now the Titans are 8-7 and still breathing.

I guess Marvin Harrison has decided that he wanted to get back near the league leaders in receivers TD's-that's 5 TD's for him now in the last 2 games. Unfortunately, Ron Dayne is the latest random back to go off on the Colts defense, and the game is tied at 24 with 2:30 left and Houston ball-simply ridiculous.

:shock: Poor reads, poor first step, terrible lateral acceleration, no vertical leap... I think it'd be one of the worst defensive shortstop contributions we've seen in quite a long time. :lol: I think it would be a very fun experiment. You have the choice of a butcher defensively or an automatic out in the line up. Which one hurts the team more? I think it depends on what position that person plays and the team around them. At many positions, a bad defensive player can be compensated for by people with great range around them. At the same time, one automatic out in the lineup does not hurt all that much, as long as they are not surrounded by too many other poor people (or worse, spread throughout the lineup intermittently). In most cases, an automatic out hurts the team more, although the question becomes much more murky when talking about one of the bigger defensive positions, especially SS, and CF if the corner outfielders are also bad defenders.

I doubt they will-that would mean Michigan is basically the exact same team as last year with the exact same results, and they didn't get in then.

How many home games are there this year for bowl teams? This one for New Mexico, Hawaii, LSU (basically a home game an hour away)-I guess you could maybe count USC as well-anyone else?

Sheets is just like Mary, when he's healthy, I think he's a number 1. That particular post confused me as well-I think he meant though that those 4 are not bad for being 4/5ths of a teams starting rotation, not that each of them are 4 or 5 starter quality.

Usually the scheduling is based off of what teams are the most marketable. That's why the Patriots have always played in the Saturday night game the last 5 years (which of course gives them the biggest HFA then also, being the latest time for the game and therefore the coldest). I thought it might also be based off of which WC teams get in, but last year the Colts game was already scheduled before Pittsburgh advanced. I have not found yet which games are scheduled for which time (does the NFC get the Saturday afternoon or Saturday night slot, for example?)-so I can't tell you for sure which one it will be. I'm fairly sure that they won't give the Bears the Saturday night slot-if it goes to the NFC, the network may jump for whoever else gets the bye (Saints or Cowboys) especially if they end up playing the other one-it's simply too big of a media story. Oh-one other thing. The Chargers are one of the bye teams-they won't have the Sunday 1:00 game as it would be 10:00 there, that's pretty much for sure. So that only leaves them for the remaining 3 spots (Saturday 4:30, Saturday 8:00, Sunday 4:30). I hope that helps at all-I'm guessing that it will be announced in the week between week 17 and WC weekend.

OK, you can come back from la-la land any time now. :D If we faced the first stringers, we would have NO chance at all. I think the first game of the season indicated that. I think we definitely have improved since then, but we'd probably still lose by 2 TD's. But if the Bears are smart, they would more than likely rest most of their starters by the 2nd quarter and all of their starters by the start of the 2nd half. I don't think it's THAT much of a stretch :wink: Nah-you don't have a chance, because Brian Griese could lead a team of schoochildren and beat anybody-he's that good :D

I guess GB is committed to throwing the ball tonight-I know why considering the Minnesota run defense, but Favre is going to have a sore arm tomorrow. He has attempted 33 passes in the first half, and at least 2 more have been knocked out by defensive penalties (in addition, Holiday has attempted 1 pass). Dave Rayner is 2-4 in field goals at the half, and GB leads Minnesota 6-0 as a result.

I'm very against Murton having to share time with Floyd, and I'm not a big Jones fan, but how can you say that the projected 07 outfield would be worse than 06 and especially 05? 05 was probably the peak of crappiness followed closely by 06, but Murton, Jones, Soriano wouldnt be a bad outfield. That's what I was thinking when I saw that 5 year outfield. The big bats of Sosa and Alou weren't replaced immediately, and so the outfield declined all the way till 2005. 2006 was a much better outfield (because 2005's outfield was so miserable rather than the great quality of 2006), and 2007 should be again a better outfield than 2006.

I think Hendry's contract is actually through the end of 2008-it's simply speculated that the team has to make a large improvement (likely contention, if not playoffs) for him to stay on through the length of his contract.

When we are talking about the strength of the team, there are a lot of terms thrown around about different players-from above average to terrible-of course, those terms mean different things for each person. So, I thought it would be interesting if people would post 4 possible things: their expectation for each person, what they would consider over-performing from this person, what they would consider under-performing, and for players who they feel need to justify their contracts, what numbers they need to get to to be worth their contract. I'm only going to use OPS and ERA here (because I don't have a great deal of time at the moment) but feel free to expand on that. Barrett- Expected-840, over-880, under-790 Lee- Expected-940, over-1020, under-850 DeRosa-Expected-750, over-810, under-700, contract-750 Izturis-Expected-660, over-710, under-600 Ramirez-Expected-890, over-930, under-850 Murton-Expected-820, over-850, under-760 Jones-Expected-790, over-830, under-745 Soriano-Expected-870, over-920, under-815 Zambrano-Expected-3.35, over-3.00, under-3.70 Hill-Expected-3.80, over-3.30, under-4.40 Lilly-Expected-4.15, over-3.70, under-4.70, contract-4.2 Marquis-Expected-4.40, over-4.00, under-4.80, contract-4.5 Prior/Miller-Expected-4.25, over-3.50, under-5.00 Anyone else want to give it a try on what they expect out of these players?

I sure did. It's hard not to when someone pitches as flat out awesome as he has for the Cubs. It's not like he's come across as some kind of terrible human being...why wouldn't people "warm up" to him? I wholeheartedly agree with this. Prior was my favorite pitcher in 03-don't get me wrong, I loved Wood, but Prior made it look so easy that it was wonderful. I went to game 2 of the Atlanta series, and the Braves fans were talking about how impressive Wood was, but that they weren't sure if Prior was any good or not. I turned around and asked him if they had ever seen him pitch, and they said no. I said "Wait for game 3...you're in for a treat." Then he went out and beat Maddux in that game-also the Bonds-Prior staredown from earlier that season was beautiful as well. By that time, I think everyone was prepared for some of the Wood injuries (we had been hearing about his mechanics for years) but the Prior injuries hurt badly because they were so unexpected. I'd love to see him make a comeback and be that pitcher again, and I hope his shoulder cooperates one day.

what's so "proven" about marquis? that he's put up one slightly better than average year in the past five? wow, that's something to get excited about. and if marquis pitches anything like he did last year, i'd prefer that he not handle the work load of a full season. putting up a 5.50 era for 175 innings is pretty worthless. And I can ask you what's so proven about Gooz and Marshall? Again, nothing is a sure thing and I'd rather have too much pitching then not enough. If Gooz and Marshall are so much better they'll get their shot. no they won't. they're not going to bump marquis out of the rotation no matter how bad he is. oh, and guzman and marshall have proven that their paychecks are a lot smaller than marquis'. i'd agree with you that i'd rather have too much pitching than not enough, but not if you're paying 7 mil a year to the worst pitcher in baseball. Since when is he the worst pitcher in baseball? Are you kidding me? since the day the season ended? he had the worst era of any pitcher with more than 190 innings. he had the lowest vorp among pitchers with that many innings. carlos silva and joel pineiro gave him a run for his money, but they pitched less than him so what he "added" to the team hurt more. One bad (and it was, yes, REALLY bad) season after two solid ones should not qualify Marquis as the worst pitcher in baseball. It's not like he doesn't have decent stuff, and hes 28. With all the people on the boards who go on and on about "past preformance", I think I will use it in this case. Who cares what Marquis did last year? His combined ERA in the previous two seasons before 2006 was under 4. If Rothschild really found somthing he can fix, Marquis could be a huge bargian and pitch well. who cares what he did last year? are you kidding me? Not what I ment and you know it. Just saying thats what some people pretty much say about DeRosa. I think that's a somewhat good comparison (a little iffy in that Marquis has had another couple bad years in his career while DeRosa really hasn't had another very good year, but close enough)-if Marquis had a 2006 like his 04 and 05, he would have easily got 4/44 or more in this market-so he played himself out of quite a bit of money. DeRosa would probably have made about a million again as a utility player, and one good season propelled him to a over 4 million a year contract. The situations are pretty similar, and so should the questions if they are going to rebound to what they did previously, or if they are going to be what they were like last year. The interesting thing is, for the best results to happen, they both involve a change in style-batting stance for DeRosa (that he changed already), and pitching mechanical flaws for Marquis that were supposedly fixed this offseason.

I can't decide if that makes it more likely that GT will win in the Gator Bowl or lose-my first instinct was like when any starting QB goes out, that this would make them much more vulnerable-when I stopped to think about it, I'm not so sure about it-depending on Bennett's talent level, it might actually make them better, especially if Bennett will get the ball to Calvin Johnson.

I definitely agree with this. The offseason is almost over and the payroll is not that close to the limit yet. If Floyd is healthy, then the splitting of time will likely be an upgrade, and when you consider the help to the bench it will certainly be an upgrade to the current team. If he struggles or is not healthy, he is not being depended on to be a starter, Murton will play most everyday, and the money that would just stay unspent otherwise is simply overpaying for a decent bench player (even if he struggles, he'll still be a pretty good bench option).

what's so "proven" about marquis? that he's put up one slightly better than average year in the past five? wow, that's something to get excited about. and if marquis pitches anything like he did last year, i'd prefer that he not handle the work load of a full season. putting up a 5.50 era for 175 innings is pretty worthless. He's had 5 years with at least 15 starts-he's been very good, good, and slightly above average in 3 of those-in the other 2, one of them was bad, and one of them was simply awful. He also had 1 season in the bullpen thrown in where he was very bad also. While he's been way up and way down, I certainly think you're understating his career to insinuate that he has not had significant times during his career where he has pitched as an above average starter to go with the significant times where he has pitched as a below average or worse starter.

Replacing cedeno with Izturis is at best a lateral move. I would say at worst it's a lateral move-there will likely be a small upgrade offensively (probably around 30-40 points of OPS, with 25-30 points of that coming from OBP) and a decent upgrade defensively. The contract is a different story, but Izturis's 2007 is probably going to be a lateral move at its worst from Cedeno's 2006 campaign. It may be an upgrade over what we got from Cedeno last year, but I hardly imagine Izturis will provide four million dollars worth of upgrades over what Cedeno is capable of this coming year. I would agree with that-I just said that because these posts in these threads are talking about just the upgrades on the field, not really the contracts. Was the upgrade to Cedeno to Izturis worth the money that Izturis commands? No-most likely not. Is SS going to be better this year than it was last year? Almost certainly yes.

To make such a proclamation is a bit premature, I would think. I would agree with you that DeRosa is better with the glove than Walker, and better with the bat than Neifi. But to state that this makes him "better by far" than those two is a logical fallacy. If I were to state to you that DeRosa were considerably worse with the bat than Walker, and considerably worse with the glove than Neifi, would that be enough to say he'd be "worse by far?" For my money, I would have rather retained Walker over DeRosa any day of the week... though I will do my best to give DeRosa a chance to prove last year wasn't so far above his head as I believe it to be. I would agree with that-DeRosa is a little bit of Neifi mixed with a little bit of Walker. If he hits even somewhat close to last year (anything over a 750 OPS) he'll be an upgrade at the position. He goes between a 700-750, and with his defense he'll probably be about the same as Walker/Neifi. Under a 700, and he becomes a definite downgrade at the position.

Replacing cedeno with Izturis is at best a lateral move. I would say at worst it's a lateral move-there will likely be a small upgrade offensively (probably around 30-40 points of OPS, with 25-30 points of that coming from OBP) and a decent upgrade defensively. The contract is a different story, but Izturis's 2007 is probably going to be a lateral move at its worst from Cedeno's 2006 campaign.

Well, I have reached the title game with a rotation of QB's. Here are the ones currently on my roster: Trent Green vs Oakland Jake Delhomme vs Atlanta Big Ben vs Baltimore I also have the options of free agent quarterbacks like: Alex Smith vs Arizona David Garrard vs NE Jay Cutler vs Cincy Any opinions?

Unfortunately for you, the Chargers haven't quite clinched HFA yet-LT will be his own self this week, and then they'll see if they can rest him in week 17 or not.

Sure, if that's a guarantee, but I don't buy it. I think Lilly/Marquis at 200 IP each would give you better years than Guzman/Marshall over 200 IP each. But that's MY opinion vs. yours... I really don't think Guzman or Marshall would have to do much to outpace Marquis 2005 and 2006 numbers. As Goony said, stable badness isn't worth much. I don't see how it pitching 200 bad innings is worth anything, 2006 definitely, but 2005? I think Guzman or Marshall would have to do a little more than you think to become a slightly above average pitcher in the league like Marquis was in 2005 (4.13 ERA, 103 ERA+). I think you're right, but I also think it's entirely possible for them to achieve that, either individually, or combined. I agree-and I think if we sent out our 5 rookies as our starters next year, at least one of them would have a great year. I think all of them have the potential to put up a season like that, but the problem is that I'm not sure which one it would be. I think any one of them alone only has a small chance of being the starter who breaks out. If one of them does end up spending a significant amount of time in the rotation though, they shouldn't automatically be dismissed from having that type of season-just IMO, a heavy dose of skepticism instead.