Derwood

This is horrible. First off, I earlier explained that friction (at least from the ground) is not in play here. You are diving to touch the bag immediately, not to slide into it. Second...the bold part. A science teacher's head might explode if a student told him this with no explanation. No, you just explained why when you stop running you don't necessarily decelerate. F=ma. There is air-resistance...but that effects you when you are running, too. In fact, continuing to run will INCREASE the frictional forces working against you as you are still connecting with the ground. I'll conceed the point that not taking those last two steps will decrease your speed as you cross the bag. I am not arguing that and never will. But the advantage of being able to reach out and touch the bag as your center of mass is significantly behind the bag offsets that slight loss of speed. if you slide, foot first, into the bag trying to time it so you don't actually slide on the ground, i guarantee that your foot will no longer be attached to your ankle about 0.03 seconds later Great, while you test that, I'll dive in head first, since that will be faster anyways. have fun breaking your finger/dislocating your shoulder when you run into the first baseman's leg

also, wouldn't sticking your foot out to reach the bag by sliding but not actually sliding just = sticking your foot out for the bag? i'm confused

This is horrible. First off, I earlier explained that friction (at least from the ground) is not in play here. You are diving to touch the bag immediately, not to slide into it. Second...the bold part. A science teacher's head might explode if a student told him this with no explanation. No, you just explained why when you stop running you don't necessarily decelerate. F=ma. There is air-resistance...but that effects you when you are running, too. In fact, continuing to run will INCREASE the frictional forces working against you as you are still connecting with the ground. I'll conceed the point that not taking those last two steps will decrease your speed as you cross the bag. I am not arguing that and never will. But the advantage of being able to reach out and touch the bag as your center of mass is significantly behind the bag offsets that slight loss of speed. if you slide, foot first, into the bag trying to time it so you don't actually slide on the ground, i guarantee that your foot will no longer be attached to your ankle about 0.03 seconds later

Were you able to get the top-end white guys like Nash and Dirk? i don't think i had either actually, but I still did pretty well. i had guys like ginobli, korver, brad miller, etc. it was 2 or 3 years ago, i'd have to look it up

i'm curious about this "experiment". you had 10 buddies run to first and slide into first and timed them. how many times did they do each version? were they just running or were they hitting off a tee? 1/2 a second faster sounds awfully dubious

I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but isn't that the same concept as trying to get your hand/body in the vicinity of the base faster? Not really. While you can touch first with your foot, you cannot catch a ball with your foot. But by your reasoning diving for the ball at the end could not be faster than just running to it on a full sprint at all times. the base is a stationary object, the ball is a moving object. this isn't rocket science What does the object moving have to do with anything? If the base was moving, then diving would be faster? Man, this isn't brain surgery. usually when a player has to dive for a ball it's because the ball is on a trajectory that is moving it away from the player.

I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but isn't that the same concept as trying to get your hand/body in the vicinity of the base faster? Not really. While you can touch first with your foot, you cannot catch a ball with your foot. But by your reasoning diving for the ball at the end could not be faster than just running to it on a full sprint at all times. the base is a stationary object, the ball is a moving object. this isn't rocket science

anyways, to answer my old question, it sounds like you would rather have a .300 hitter with a .400 SLG up in a critical game situation than a .240 hitter with a .500 SLG. am i right?

you're assuming we've all seen them? you've put out so many lists that i stopped looking I'm using them. Mainly because I guarantee more work and research went into these than in any other fantasy rankings out there. Thanks, Meph. if everyone is using them, it sort of balances everything out though, right? ;) admittedly, i have no real strategy here at all. i'm at least taking this semi-seriously, unlike past years when i had my all-white guy fantasy basketball team

I thought about it a lot, and I couldn't come up with any reasons why it's a bad idea. 1) Dangerous? No, I think people sprain their ankles a lot more landing on the bag the wrong way. I've sprained my ankle 3 summers in a row hitting the bag at a wrong angle or landing on the 1B's foot. 2) If you run through the bag and the ball gets passed the 1B, you have to take such a wide angle to try and advance to 2nd. If you just slide and pop up, you can be on a direct line to 2nd. 3) If a throw pulls the 1B off the bag, then you're supposed to slide into 1st to avoid a tag. Yet we see it happen a million times where the guy doesn't slide and gets tagged out. If they are sliding the whole way then they don't even need to think about it. I would like to hear some reasons why it's bad. sliding is dangerous always, so there is inherent risk in it if you slide and pop up, you are at a stand still and have to run from a stand still to advance a base. we see it happen all the time at 2nd and 3rd

even if sliding into first was the fastest way to get there (of which i'm dubious), it's a bad idea for so many other reasons

4th Rnd. 37. Justin Verlander 38. Erik Bedard 39. Aramis Ramirez

why don't olympic sprinters slide through the finish tape then?

getting hits isn't lucky? you mean that you, as a .500 hitter in high school, could place with the utmost precision every ball you made contact with? you never had hits just "fall in", or had a guy take a bad route to a fly ball, maybe stumble on his first step to the ball? ever heard of BABIP?

you're assuming we've all seen them? you've put out so many lists that i stopped looking

Sorry, its gone now. But it is not correct. Average is very important. There's a reason why that is the 1st stat shown when a player comes up to bat. It shows how good a hitter is. There are other stats that might tell more about a player, but there is no way that average isnt an important stat. You are a very good hitter if you can bat .300 over a season. Hopefully you have some other tools as well besides being a batting average hitter, but having a high average is a good stat to have. The reason average isn't that important is that it can't stand on it's own. If a guy has a .300 average but a (let's say) .320 OBP, he is not a good offensive player. It doesn't matter that he can hit for high average because overall he's making outs too often because he doesn't get on base in other ways. On the other hand, if a guy has a .240 average but a .370 OBP, he's a pretty good offensive player (might even be very good, depending on how much power he hits for), regardless of the low average. OBP encompasses BA and tells you more about the hitter on top of it. There's really not that much of a reason to look at his BA, other than if you want to evaluate how likely a player is to continue to perform at the level he has previously exhibited. In other words, you might want to look at it to see if a given player's OBP is highly batting average dependent, because if it is, without getting too far into detail about stuff like BABIP, it's probably less repeatable, particularly as the player ages. If a guy hits .240 hes a terrible hitter regardless of his OBP. Hits are better than walks. Hits can get you more than one base, and can actually drive in runs. Id rather have the .300 .320 guy, but it depends on his power and speed too. quick quiz: who is the better hitter? A) .264/.386/.554 B) .309/.356/.382

A HR is also better when there are people on base. And Soriano would be up with people on base more often in the 5 hole. These arguments arent about whether Soriano gives us value in the leadoff spot. Of course he gives us value there because he is a great player. But guys like him should be batting lower so that those HRs are not all solo shots. I think we need to move him out of the leadoff spot (only if we get a legit leadoff hitter like Roberts) so that he is more valuable to us. that's not my point. my point is that there is absolutely no way you can say that a walk by Roberts >>> a HR by Soriano when leading off an inning. okay, you can say it, but you're 100% wrong

everyone repeat after me: A HR IS THE BEST POSSIBLE OUTCOME OF ANY AT BAT IN ANY SITUATION some of you need to write this on the blackboard 100 times every day this week

just want to say that the Red Sox used to lead off with Kevin Youkilis. how many steals did he have again?

lot's of hyperbole going on here. there is a huge amount of gray area between a squeaky clean program and Huggins style coaching

25. Derrek Lee 26. Russell Martin 27. Joe Mauer 28. Brandon Phillips 29. Brian Roberts 30. BJ Upton 31. Derek Jeter 32. Corey Hart 33. Josh Beckett 34. Manny Ramirez

no, but to say that graduating players is more important than winning is usually a rationalization for having a mediocre but clean program

you'd trade graduating kids every year for a run of Final Four's. A lot of Indiana fans wouldn't. If I had a choice of a program who had 2 national championships, 2 other final 4 appearances, and in the tournament every time in a 10 year period but was run like Cincinnati was run in the 90's, or if I could have a program with 0 titles, 1 Final 4, and 8 tournament appearances in 10 years with a clean program, I'd very gladly take the latter. I'm just saying that it's not really important to coaches anymore. Heck, even Duke isn't graduating players anymore, and that used to be Coach K's "thing".

i'm still waiting for a pic of the fro

you'd trade graduating kids every year for a run of Final Four's.