CubbieBum

Votto to me is never going to be a big power hitter. He is a guy that will hit .300+ and hit 25 or so HR's but I doubt he ever gets 40 HR's. Add to that the fact he is pretty injury prone and that is why he was not one of my choices.

Still got more a week but we aren't even half way to our number from last year. We are currently at just 17.

You're a Bears fan, of course that hit stands out more than any Packers/Vikings hit. But that also just points out the time factor. That hit was 3 decades ago. A generation doesn't know much, in anything abou tit, and that hit was against the Bears, so Bears fans are going to care more. Packers fans don't care as much as you. Younger fans don't care as much as you. To you, Bears Packers is bigger. To a GB fan, Vikings matters more. To a younger Packers fan, Vikings is probably all that matters. Anyone else slightly aroused by this post?

My brother has lived in the Milwaukee area for the past 6+ years. I remember talking to him after he had lived there a couple years and he said Minnesota is much much more hated by Packers fans. Like most, including myself, he thought the Bears were the bigger rival but Minnesota really is to Packers fans. The way he puts it is Packers fans tend to dislike the Bears because they are Chicago and they are supposed to dislike all things Chicago but Packers fans hate Minnesota because the two states hate each other and are rivals at everything.

I personally don't like sitting behind netting. I find it annoying and it makes it hard to read the pitches. It also makes it near impossible to get a ball. Pay attention the the game or live with the consequences.

Did you read the thread? It is about 3 posts saying it isn't a rivalry anymore, 30 posts laughing at that notion and the rest being arguments about different rivalries.

I prefer to continue.

Nope. Main reason is the lovable losers comment already made but also I don't like buying shirts that are only good for that specific year and then become a show of how you need a new shirt. This is why I don't but the division winner shirts. I don't much care for division championships (just want to make playoffs) but as soon as you lose in the playoffs it serves as a reminder that we lost in the playoffs.

With their second pick in this round the Cardinals take Mike Johnson - OG Alabama. Again with no one really falling I think the Cardinals will look at a guy who has some weaknesses but has the size, strength, technique and long arms to be a very good run blocker. Obviously the Cards have been a passing team but with Warner's retirement and an unproven QB stepping in I think Whisenhunt will be able to transition more to a power run offense everyone says he prefers. A large part of why Arizona has struggled to run is their OL. If the Cards want to run more they must first get the blocking to be able to do it with. Johnson has all the tools to be a good run blocker and proved at a very high level at Alabama to be a good blocker in a run first offense.

With no one falling that the Cardinals really need I see them going with a high potential guy and thus the selection is Chris Cook - CB Virginia. He got great size for a CB at 6'2" and runs a sub 4.5 40-yard dash. A guy with that size and speed can possibly match up with Crabtree, Colston and other big receivers that killed them last season. If Marshall ends up in Seattle this would be a lock in my mind. Oh and I do realize DRC is 6'2" but he is a speed freak of a CB who has little strength. He tends to get bullied by bigger receivers. Cook has almost 30 pounds on DRC and looks to me like a a guy that could turn into a great CB against the big receivers because he has the size and strength to not get bullied and the speed to not get burnt.

But it is a roster carousel. If I don't have internet access the week I'm playing your team and I can't add or drop players (only sub in my current roster of players), and you add and drop 3 or 4 players to fill off days, your team is playing with a larger roster than mine is, which isn't really fair to my team. I'm going to give this league my best effort, but I'm starting to believe that maybe this daily line up stuff won't be for me. I'm often gone for lengthy periods of time due to my work. If teams are basically playing with a bigger roster than my team, my odds of winning against whoever is adding and dropping daily will be greatly diminished. If the idea of a successful team is how many times you can fill off days with free agents to score points against your opponent who doesn't have nearly as much time to manage their roster, I don't think I like it all that much. I think I like the idea of daily changes with the 8 bench players you have, but to add and drop at random is exactly why I stopped playing in free leagues. No disrespect, but it I think my biggest problem is that is a real far cry from attempting to mirror an actual baseball team. In other words, if the best team in the league is the team that makes the most roster changes during the season, I'm not interested. I think you are misunderstanding what he does. He doesn't pick up free agents daily. He carries an extra RP instead of an extra bat at all times. He then rotates amongst his 4 RP's. If one guy has pitched two days in a row he will bench him, if one guy has an off day he will bench him ... etc. He doesn't pick up FA all the time he just carries more RP's than most. I see. He implied that he adds players from the free agent database, and without knowing or at least seeing what he does, it didn't sound much different than what managers in free leagues do with rotating in a whole new batch of players to keep scoring as many points as possible. If that's not what he or anyone else is doing, I can get on board with that. I'm definitely going to need to do some work to my bench before we get under way next week. I haven't played in a league with daily roster changes in years. That definitely changes up how you align your bench. I think he makes more moves than anyone but he definitely doesn't do it on a daily basis. Waiver order is pretty important or at least was due to the way we handled June draftees. Constantly moving to last isn't a good thing but if I remember correctly he does tend to make moves more on a weekly basis based on that weeks matchups or if a RP has gone to the crapper and a better one is out there. As far as daily changes you don't really need to check your team daily. I do but that is because I have the time. You can set your lineup for the whole week ahead of time if you want. Just know that if you drop someone or pick someone up it undoes all the changes you have made and you will thus have to go back and make the changes for say three days from now again. Basically you can go through each day for a week and set the lineup for just that specific day. That allows you to spend 30 minutes to an hour at the beginning of a week to get as many off days for your hitters benched and choose what 7 starts for your SP's you want to be utilized.

But it is a roster carousel. If I don't have internet access the week I'm playing your team and I can't add or drop players (only sub in my current roster of players), and you add and drop 3 or 4 players to fill off days, your team is playing with a larger roster than mine is, which isn't really fair to my team. I'm going to give this league my best effort, but I'm starting to believe that maybe this daily line up stuff won't be for me. I'm often gone for lengthy periods of time due to my work. If teams are basically playing with a bigger roster than my team, my odds of winning against whoever is adding and dropping daily will be greatly diminished. If the idea of a successful team is how many times you can fill off days with free agents to score points against your opponent who doesn't have nearly as much time to manage their roster, I don't think I like it all that much. I think I like the idea of daily changes with the 8 bench players you have, but to add and drop at random is exactly why I stopped playing in free leagues. No disrespect, but it I think my biggest problem is that is a real far cry from attempting to mirror an actual baseball team. In other words, if the best team in the league is the team that makes the most roster changes during the season, I'm not interested. I think you are misunderstanding what he does. He doesn't pick up free agents daily. He carries an extra RP instead of an extra bat at all times. He then rotates amongst his 4 RP's. If one guy has pitched two days in a row he will bench him, if one guy has an off day he will bench him ... etc. He doesn't pick up FA all the time he just carries more RP's than most.

I know one time there was a poor older woman in the 50's or 60's who took her two grandsons to either a Phillies or A's game. She was struck by a foul ball and had to be taken out on a gurney. As they're wheeling her out, she got hit again by another foul ball. That may top Span hitting his own mother.

This made me laugh. http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/spring2010/news/story?id=5043987 To sum it up Denard Span hit a hard foul ball and it just so happened to hit his own mother. I can't remember this type of thing ever happening before.

There were like 30 automatic bids back then. It made some sense. Now you're paving the way for every Big 6 team over 500 to make the tourney. It's ridiculous. It wasn't even close to 30 auto-bids out of 32. What the crap are you talking about? He's saying that there was a time when you had to win your conference to be in the tourney, as only one team per conference was allowed. I think that lasted into the 70s. That left out highly ranked teams who had the misfortune of losing to teams that were better than them. this year, for example, there would have been no KSU or Baylor from the Big 12. No West Virginia (assuming we're using regular season conf champs.) No MSU or Ohio State. No Tennessee. There's no reason now to expand the tournament any further. Teams that will now make it have no reasonable shot at winning anything. Their inclusion will make what is now a borderline inflated field cumbersome, bloated, and unwieldy. It would have been no MSU or Purdue. Ohio State won the tiebreaker. That said I 100% agree with your post.

Brewers = a little brother that I toy with and sort of have a rivalry Cardinals = the white to my black, the oil to my water ... etc.

To an extent yes. I would say a pretty large percentage of those who attend the game are there for the experience but the team who are in it tend to have their fanbase migrate to the host city. From what I know the city is literally filled with fans of the teams but only a small percentage will get to go to the game. The est are there to support and experience it because their team is in it.

Right, but I think the number of fans who won't spend the night in Indy is a lot higher than say if a UConn or someone made it. I don't know, was just thinking and editorializing out loud. And I'm obviously generalizing based on previous interactions with their fans over the years. I think most would probably stay at hotels if the games were in Detroit. They may bus people in and bus them home afterward (re: MSU). They did that for PSU fans last year at the NIT, and NYC is a 5 hour trip from State College That and a lot of people I wold assume make a weekend of the Final Four. MSU fans will likely have a much higher number of people only book one night, go home for a couple days and come back for the championship if MSU is in it.

As far as the keeper points go I think we should hold off on that vote for awhile so we can get an idea of how many points each player will score and how our teams look. My personal preference as it stands now is it keep it as it is. People traded points for next season assuming the points would stay the same. If we then bump the point total up a lot those trades lose value for the person who got points because of a rule change months later. I would vote to keep things the same for this coming offseason because people have drafted and made trades based on this system. Then starting with the following season we go to a more dynasty type league (would have to vote on specifics). The first poll we should do is how to handle guys who will be drafted in June and added randomly by CBS (hold them till league draft, hold a separate Amateur draft, stay with current system). I would then do a simple vote on whether to go into a dynasty type league. Just do that vote in a two parts. First a simple yes or no on going to dynasty format. Then if going to dynasty is the majority we determine whether to go to that immediately or hold off for a season.

He's not factoring in the vast amount of guys who get a cup of coffee in September and never get anything more significant. That number is much much higher each year than the number of guys retiring with 8+ years of experience. As for your Cubs example ... anyone who knows the Cubs knows they would be one of the worst examples. We have an extremely veteran laden team hence the high payroll, injuries and down years for so many of our players. How many guys were on our MLB roster at some point last year that will almost definitely never make 8 years of service? I would bet that number is close or even above the number of guys we have with 8+ years. I'm talking about guys like Scales, Waddell ... etc.

You missed the one talked most about :P . What to do after the June Rookie Draft.

Ozzie Smith wouldn't be that great in today's game (Izturis?) but for his day he was great. Theriot has a career OPS 60 points higher than Ozzie but Ozzie's OPS+ is actually 1 point better than Theriot. So for his era Ozzie was a slightly better hitter than Theriot and was the best defensive SS. If Theriot played defense on Ozzie's level he would likely be considered a very good SS.

I don't think he can turn Iowa into a top team in the league because he will lose many top recruits simply due to location and not having the name recognition of most other Big Ten coaches. However they don't really need that right now. I think McCaffey can get them turned around and make them be a competitive team again. I would think he would then leave for a bigger job perhaps out closer the Siena area where he has a lot of contacts. Iowa would then be attractive enough to perhaps get a big name.

Not really. He's fairly accurate. The only requirement for making the HOF ballot is 10 years of service time. Since the ballot isn't flooded year after year, the vast majority of guys don't accumulate 10 years of service time. I'd say that's not every player isn't it? To me, his statement implies that every player that actually does last 8+ years in the majors should be glad they were lucky enough to be in that tiny minority. I would agree with that statement. Even someone with the talents of Pujols can be derailed by injuries and not make it 8 years in the bigs. Mark Prior doesn't have 8 years in the majors. Same goes for Rich Hill I believe.

Would also give us a 28 man MLB roster, and let's be honest- that's just a terrible idea. Not sure why it is a terrible idea. It may be an idea you don't like but that doesn't make it terrible. I am all for adding something that actually makes RP's more than an after thought where even now after the draft you can find plenty of top notch RP's that will score right around what all but the top 10 closers will score this season. That may be an issue of scoring settings. True. I wouldn't mind seeing a small bump in pts given for saves and holds. If you just do saves then it makes them too important but doing a small bump to both saves and holds it makes top notch set-up guys just as valuable as very good closers (top 5 or so closers I would assume still would be the best). Just an idea but I would like to see some more value added to RP's because bullpen's are very important in real life but in our league they are mostly an after thought somewhat like K's or defenses in fantasy football.