Derwood

so let's assume Durant and Oden stay in college next year. What does that do to the NBA draft? Who is out there that a lottery team would really want? Is the forward from Nevada an NBA hopeful? I read that he won conference POY for the 3rd straight time

http://houston.astros.mlb.com/images/2007/03/02/Kq54nQPV.jpg = http://mlb.mlb.com/images/2007/03/02/ew9vH6do.jpg ?

ASSOCIATED PRESS - Rumors of Barry Bonds' alleged steroid use started again today when Barry's head could no longer fit in the frame. Bonds' agent is denying all accusations and has filed suit against Nikkon. http://www.simleaguebaseball.com/derwood/bonds.jpg * * AP's photo editor unavailable for comment

this was a poll?

new playoff seeding says division winners aren't automatically the Top 3, but they are guaranteed homecourt in the first round, right? So a division winner can't be seeded lower than 4th?

I didn't realize anyone besides me posted here

Cub fan pessimism got the best of me on this one

just here to show off new avatar/signature combo. Tomorrow at noon eastern....

i think all the skiles naysayers (in regards to TT) will be eating their words come season's end. He's starting to get minutes and turning those minutes into quality playing time. I foresee him as a bigger part of the playoffs than most do

http://losangeles.dodgers.mlb.com/images/2007/03/02/ErkAKC9w.jpg Still around? Who knew?

Long lost relative of: http://losangeles.dodgers.mlb.com/images/2007/03/02/4wLdtFa8.jpg ?????

regardless, I can't picture Duke getting out of the first weekend. there is nothing impressive about that team at all.

The Chicago Cubs are #1 in the NL in neck length

The fact that a Duke team with an 8-8 conf. record is a Top 15 team is a joke. Even after the loss to UNC some "experts" had them as a 3 or 4 seed in the NCAA

:shock:

my fault. I'll join his but i'll leave this one open if people want to do two

I started a private group for NSBB. Group Name: NSBB Group ID#: 22643 password: modzilla can't actually pick anything until march 11th, but I thought I'd get it started. if you could use your NSBB username that would make it a lot less confusing this year

We were going to call it Suck Factor, right? I'm still on board for this. SuFa? Sounds good, until Bill James adjusts it for park factors and puts out SuFA+

I agree, but I think it works a little differently. What they fail to do is recognize the damage of the caught stealing. So instead of overvaluing the SB, they undervalue the CS. You never hear about SB%, what you hear is "This guy can steal you 40-50 bases". It's similar to how they talk about pitchers. A 15-16 pitcher means you are "a 15 game winner", while a 10-2 record means you aren't a "15 game winner". Baseball people think in terms of counting stats, and ignore the rates far too often. Yeah, the counting stats are meaningless though, especially when you take the positives only like hits, SBs, wins, and ignoring the negatives like outs, CS, losses. Saying a pitcher has 15 wins like it's a good thing when they also have 16 losses is like saying Ford has 4 billion in revenues while ignoring the fact that the company's expenses were 4.5 billion and they lost half a billion dollars. Calculating value in baseball and business is not much different. If you want to know how valuable something is, you take what you invested, whether it's dollars or at-bats, and see what you got out of those dollars or at-bats. The more output you get out of your inputs, the more valuable an investment, business, or baseball player you have. It confounds me to no end how ignorant the supposedly learned "baseball people" can be. prime example: 2006 Juan Pierre lead the league in hits. He also lead the league in outs made. The result, 200+ hits and a batting average well under .300. 700 AB's for a leadoff hitter is inexcusable

well, you can't actually change your name or rank yourself, you still need an admin to do it for you

i thought his secret was that he filled his SlimFast cans with hot fudge

sign him soriano murton arod lee ramirez barrett who cares who cares To fit Soriano, Arod, Lee and Ramirez into the same payroll, while still employing a pitching staff, gusy like Jones and Barrett will have to be gone. They'd have to go with affordable guys at multiple positions, like Murton, Pie and Patterson. And they'd probably have to find a minimum wage catcher to work in with Blanco. fine, where do I sign? I think having 4 potential 100 RBI guys in the lineup makes up for a scrub playing catcher.

it's funny how guys like this just keep hanging around. At the Blue Jays/Red Sox spring training game yesterday, the Sox sent Kerry Robinson out to play CF. It took me a minute to figure out he used to start for the Cardinals.

i think A-Rod has made Boras enough money that Rodriguez can tell him where to stick it. And I also think that A-Rod is a caliber of player that the team would just find the money to pay. If you were the front office, would you ever say "Sorry, A-Rod just doesn't fit in our budget"?

As I stated in the Murray Chass thread, I'd bet that many, many casual baseball fans couldn't tell you how to calculate batting average or ERA, much less sabermetric numbers. I'm not suggesting we dumb down the game for these people, but introducing new stats to them is going to be difficult.