XZero771679666304

Eh, this team just needs to figure itself out. All the parts are there, it's just a disjointed mess right now. I think we'll have a real strong team come February.

LOL, definitely not a banner day for the B10.

Figures. I was less than sold on them as a #2, anyway.

seriously? Yes seriously. They waived goodbye to 2 of their biggest stars in Ordonez and Carlos Lee, and another, Frank Thomas was a non factor for nearly the entire season. The replace them with Scott Podsednik, AJ Pierzynski, and Jermaine Dye. they won because of pitching. the white sox had a below average offense in 2005. Pitching and a crap load of home runs. But I thought it was Scotty Pods and Ozzieball... :-k

Well, there's always Aaron Miles. :mrgreen: I refuse to acknowledge that Aaron Miles exists. He's a myth. Yes, Gnomes are a myth.

This. Steve Kerr was a bit player. I know he has the rings, but how much of those championships was he responsible for? There are always going to be players who are essentially an interchangeable part who have the good fortune to be on a great team. When and if Nash wins one ring, it will be worth more than all of Kerr's because he will have been one of the driving forces. Even if he never gets one, I'd rather have Nash's career.

For someone who talks about how little things matter in college basketball this early you sure like to brag about meaningless Big East things. There are 20 posters in this thread who will spend the entire season fellating the Big Ten, so I guess I just have to pick up the slack, don't I? I just thought it was a cool little run to have at the start of the year. I'm not stupid enough to draw blanket conclusions about the Big East based on mostly meaningless games, but it's good to see Cuse beating up on UNC, great to see DePaul beating a good mid-major team. Since I really don't think Notre Dame's going to be making headlines apart from Harangody, I'm planning on enjoying the entire conference, hence my interest. While there are some B10 homers here, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that you will talk about people fellating the B10 a great deal more than it will actually happen, which is saying something.

I'm at work so I can't watch this, but it sure looks ugly in text.

That's what my gut tells me. But otoh, there's no guarantee Castro becomes what we think he will become. Granderson is an established commodity, a good bat at a defense first position, which also happens to be a position of relative need. I would go for the bird in hand, but it could be all those years of our top prospects tanking. If I did cough him up, they wouldn't get much more. Maybe Castro/Fox/Marshall.

I could part with Castro, since we have Hak-Ju Lee in the system. I wouldn't like it, but I'd do it.

If fans were making all the trade demands, nothing would ever get done.

Are you serious? Are you Tommy Chong? I'm sorry, but that is just ridiculous. All of it. The bolded part is just outright stupid. The bolded part is weird, but the rest is true To a degree. The bolded part is just bizarre. I suppose the idea is that you are somehow immune to the negative effects if you have developed a high tolerance. That's ridiculous, but it's a common rationalization. And it's cherry picking. So being a heavy pot smoker affords you the benefits and none of the drawbacks? Right. But it makes you feel normal? Who smokes pot to feel normal? No one I know, and I know a crapton of stoners. If it made you feel normal, why would you do it? You could say it calms you, but that's not normal. People aren't clinically mellow normally. And if being baked is your normal, that's some pretty sad commentary on you. Now if parts of your life have you so worked up you need pot to feel what used to be normal, you're dealing with it the wrong way. That's called escapism, and it's counterproductive.

BS. Driving stoned is no better than driving drunk. Driving drunk is wayyy worse Have you even seen a person having trouble and stumbling while trying to walk? Have you seen a high person slur their speech and then puke everywhere? Have you ever seen a person pass out in a smoke shop from smoking too much weed? I'm not saying it's okay to drive stoned, but it's not at all the same as driving drunk. No, I'll admit driving drunk is indeed worse, but driving stoned is not all that much better. It just infuriates me the lengths people will go to to rationalize driving impaired. And being stoned, while it isn't as bad as many people would have you believe, does impair psychomotor skills. The flipside of the ridiculous "reefer madness" mentality is the equally ridiculous "pot is totally harmless" mindset. And yes, I have seen people stumbling, bumbling, out of it, puking and passed out from weed. And more. It affects different people differently, and I have seen the gamut. I am not some goody goody talking about something he has no experience with, trust me on this.

Are you serious? Are you Tommy Chong? I'm sorry, but that is just ridiculous. All of it. The bolded part is just outright stupid.

I've been saying this for months. I don't have much issue with trading Hardy, but I don't think a CF was what they needed. If Doug Melvin has any brains in his head, he'll trade Prince. Bums in seats. He won't do it. Miller Park will empty out on him. He's not re-signing with them anyway so they might as well get something for him before he's gone. This. He's going to walk, no doubt about that. The picks would be nice, but spinning him for pitching would be better. Besides, it seems to me Braun is the darling in Milwaukee, not so much Prince.

BS. Driving stoned is no better than driving drunk. Unless you're talking about being slightly stoned, which is just as slippery a slope as saying it's okay to drive buzzed. People rationalize this crap to no end, but if you're faculties are impaired at all, you really have no business being behind the wheel. And yes, I've smoked enough pot in my day to know precisely what I am talking about. Pot has a marked affect on your awareness/reaction time. Having said that, I'm all for legalizing it. Too much time and money is wasted trying to stop people from doing something that is really no worse than drinking, and too many jail cells are taken up that should have real criminals in them. Quite frankly, I'm surprised they don't legalize it and tax it. I guess it's the stigma that is the problem. That and the fact that if it were legal, the cops couldn't seize it and smoke it themselves. God knows a couple of the cops in my hometown got high smoking my weed a few times. :-))

I've been saying this for months. I don't have much issue with trading Hardy, but I don't think a CF was what they needed. If Doug Melvin has any brains in his head, he'll trade Prince.

To be fair, Mike Cameron isn't chopped liver out there, and he's been there the past couple years.

Strikeouts should not be counted against a player twice. Sure, you have a better chance of getting a hit on a bip, but at the end of the day if a player is productive, the manner on which they made their outs is nearly irrelevant. Now if you have a case in which a player's propensity to strike out is so pronounced that it allows them to be nearly neutralized (i.e. Corey Patterson, or increasingly so with Soriano), then it can become a big issue. But has been said a few times now, if a player posts a 1.000 OPS and K's 150 times is he worse than a player with an OPS of 1.000 and 50 Ks? Perhaps very, very marginally so, but not to a degree even worthy of discussion. You could make the argument that if said player cut back on the strikeouts they could be even better, but it does not diminish their value. Now if we want to get subjective about it, you could say someone like Granderson would be the type you would like to see put the ball in play more often (because of his speed), as compared to someone like Prince Fielder (who'd you just as soon see K with runners on if he is going to make an out (GIDPs). But does it ultimately make the player markedly less productive? No. A productive player is productive, an unproductive player is unproductive. Stats like OPS, eqa, etc. are indicators of this, not strikeouts. And ftr, you don't know that altering your approach to cut down in K's wouldn't negatively affect a player's production any more than you know that it would. And the end of the day, does the player who Ks a lot still maintain their production? If the answer is yes, then it's a non-issue.

what's wrong with the southeast? It's subjective. I just dislike it. And yes, I have stayed there. I don't care the lame aristocratic pretenses, the political leanings or the "good ole' boy" mentality. I don't like the weather, the accents, grits, sweet tea or mint juleps (yes, that last part was tongue in cheek). Outside of Appalachia, there is no place in the U.S. I like to be less than the Southeast.

Corvallis isn't bad at all. The Big XII has the market cornered on the bad town thing. Almost all of them suck. And it's hard for me to say that, since I hate the Southeast in general.

Assuming Iowa wins next week, which isn't a given.

Hendry has has clear interest in Byrd before, and I don't see how this is a surprise. Barring an unlikely Granderson trade, I think we're looking at Byrd or Cameron in CF next year.

This just in: Brad Lidge sucks. What a difference a year makes.

Based on what metric? BA, I guess. McGwire's OPS those four years was 1.112 to Sammy's 1.058, and that include's 2001 when McGwire started to fall off a cliff, hitting .187, though he did have a .808 OPS. If you look at just 1998-2000, the gap widens since 2001 was easily Sammy's best year and McGwire's worst. I forgot just how many walks Mac drew in that stretch. :oops: Sammy had significantly more hits and XBH during that stretch, and even if you compare just their respective 2 best seasons. Obviously Mac's ability to work the count and draw a ton of walks makes a difference as to the overall offensive package, though. I guess what I was thinking was that Sammy was more likely to hurt you with the bat alone (the ability to spray the ball all over with authority, and a greater variety of pitches) than Mac (who, even at his best was a pull field HR, a single or a walk). Now if you could combine the best traits of both at their steroid fueled best, you'd get Barry Bonds (with a third the strikeouts).