Clem Fandango

They need to tweak the format so you get some bonus points for distance. Fans wanna see 500 ft HRs in the derby. If they stick with the timed format, the bonus time needs to be the cumulative time each home run ball spent in the air.

I generally like it. The only thing that annoyed me originally was MLB claiming it would be quicker than in years past and trumpeting that each round would be 5 minutes. In reality, with the bonuses and clock stopping after a homer within 1 minute, it wasn't going to be any shorter. Which makes the timer pointless. The bracket I don't mind. The timer is awful.

I don't like the timer one bit. It's not enjoyable to watch. There's not going to be any of the fanfare of the players going crazy over long home runs because we don't have time to show them. The player reactions are the best, and we can't get that right now. Ball lands, cut directly back to a swing, ball lands, cutto a swing. It's not fun.

This format is [expletive] awful

The game would be to be 100% managerial with a focus on managing for stamina vs. pitch count. Can't tell you how many times my pitcher in The Show got pulled in the 8th for being "out of gas" when I've given up 1 hit and no walks through 60 pitches.

2.0 is about average for a major league catcher. I'm trying to imagine this in my head and 2 seconds seems like it's light speed, but yeah that seems right. There was a statcast of Molina throwing a runner out from his knees that had his pop time at 1.71 seconds.

No to Matt Kemp. He's a corner, and we don't need a corner, especially at the coast of Soler's development or Coghlan's better hitting ability. Neither Coghlan or Kemp will win a gold glove, but Coghlan has one of the team's best BB%, making him a great top of the order hitter, and his BABIP luck from the beginning of the season has been starting to shift and the results are speaking for themselves. On May 22nd Coghlan's AVG was .200. It hasn't been lower since that date. Since then he's gone .285/.400/.400/.800 with a 23:23 BB:K ratio in 46 games. That's a very useful hitter. We don't need someone like Kemp. We need a CF'er to replace Fowler who has been terrible. Coincidentally enough, May 22nd was the last time Fowler's OPS was over .800. Since then he's gone .190/.253/.305/.557 with a 15:47 BB:K ratio in 45 games. Prior to that point he was .265/.358/.445/.803 with a 21:35 BB:K rate. He's clearly been in a massive decline and it's seriously hurting the Cubs. We need a CF'er, not a corner OF'er who is no better than our current options and costs nearly three times as much as both of them combined even when you half his salary.

I hope he'll be looking at a modest 2-3 year extension instead.

his first HR came a pitch after ump called strike 3 a foul http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/0/v252034183/stlpit-reynolds-homers-to-left-leads-to-ejections fast forward to 2:40 to see the bad call

There it is

For starters, stop using ESPN for your stats and start using Baseball-Reference or Fangraphs. Fangraphs is 2.7 and 0.9 for those two season and B-R is 1.0 and 1.1. Either way, Derwood is probably right as both B-R and FG listed his defense as substantially better in 2010 than in 2009. Also, just a little basic WAR 101: http://www.fangraphs.com/library/war/differences-fwar-rwar/

Makes his 396 from last year look pretty pedestrian. He also hasn't given up a home run either of the last two years, 109 innings worth. I never expected to say this at the time of the trade, but the Royals did really well with that trade. Royals total fWAR from Shields, Davis, and Elliot Johnson: 13.8 Rays total fWAR from Myers, Odorizzi, Montgomery, and Leonard: 6.7 Rays WAR will go up significantly when Odorizzi gets healthy, he's been pretty damn good so far. But Davis has been unreal. He was worth 3.0 fWAR last season alone. Only Dellin Betances was a more valuable reliever (3.1 fWAR), and he threw 18 more innings than Davis. If you go by rWAR Davis was worth 3.7 last year and is already worth 2.2 this season. He's absurd.

Bingo. Think of it this way. If you were at a party, and there was a group of people you were listening to talk about the Cubs and talking about sabermetric stats that you're not knowledgeable about, in depth knowledge of the entirety of the Cubs from the business aspects all the way to the lowest minor league systems that you aren't familiar with, and all using a brand of humor they all were in on but you couldn't quite grasp, would you walk up to that group of people and be comfortable jumping in on the conversation with something meatbally like "Man have you seen Lester's W-L record? What a joke! We need a pitcher who knows how to win, right guys?" would you expect them to be like "Dude, good point, never thought of it that way. Welcome to the club! You seem like a fun person to have around!"? You make music. I'm sure you use a cadre of different musical programs to make your music. Maybe you even have some musical instrument ability. If you were having an in depth discussion with your musician friends about something you're truly passionate about and I walked up and was like "So, I was messing around with Garage Band at the Apple Store, it's really neat! I think I can make something like Skrillex! Do you guys like Skrillex?!?! Also been playing a lot of Guitar Hero, I'm getting really good! Watch your back, Joe Perry!" would you think I'm a cool dude or would you immediately wish I'd go back over by the punch bowl and drown in it?

[expletive] pitchers.

I hadn't realized he was DFA'd. He just opted to become a free agent. He'd cost nothing but money, and probably not a lot. No reason not to take a chance on him and see if Bosio can help him out.

Eddie Vedder is a good one. Billy Corgan is...questionable. Seeing him speak about the Cubs, he seems pretty knowledgeable and level headed. As a person though... eh. IIRC, Jack White scheduled his tour at the time around every baseball city, and scheduled it so he could catch a game in each city of his tour, and he wore the team's shirt everywhere he went. I'm assuming at heart he's a Detroit fan.

Gomez has had nagging injuries this season, but when he's healthy, which for the most part he has been the last 3 seasons (148, 147, and 137 games [and he seems like he'll be on his way to around 125-140 games this season if he stays healthy the rest of the year]), he's one of the best CF in the game, and he only costs $9 million next season. There's not a lot I wouldn't give up for Carlos Gomez. I'd give them McKinney and not think twice, and extend him for a few more years if he's agreeable with it.

Sigs and avatars. So much clutter. I like having sigs and avatars to help me know immediately who I should and shouldn't care about reading

Buccaneers cornerback C.J. Wilson blew off two of his fingers over 4th of July weekend. Naturally C.J. Wilson, pitcher, is getting bombarded with folks asking about his ability to pitch on Twitter. [tweet] [/tweet] [tweet] [/tweet]

Freyr is essentially the Norse God of Sex.

This news makes me so happy. \:D/ See, I used the dancing emoticon.

Twas me. http://i.imgur.com/SFEOSLo.png YESSSSSSSSSSS. May I? I don't care, do what you do

Twas me. http://i.imgur.com/SFEOSLo.png