Tim

Wow. This suprises me. I would rather hace Hendry then either of these 2. DePo has run the Dodgers into the ground and although their minor leagues have been upgraded, I am unsure of how much credit goes to DePo for that since he has only been around for 2 drafts. DePo's trades have been highly questionable, and his FA acquistions have been overpaid and questionable. JP has been unspectacular yet solid. He did give Koskie a longer term deal then I would have wanted if I were a Toronto fan considering he already had options there. I am firmly on the Hendry bandwgn. He has made smart baseball moves, most of his trades have worked out and he has given the modern Cub fans more to hope and believe about both in the Majors and the minors in a long time. To me the biggest glaring issue with his reign is the Sisco loss. If all we are questioning is the loss of a middle reliever then I think he has done well in his years, especially considering some of the controversial moves he has had to make (Sosa). Run them into the ground? He took over a team that was already floundering. He got them into the playoffs last year for the first time in how long? They've been pretty bad this year, but we talk about all the injuries the Cubs have had. The Dodgers have been absolutely ravaged. DePo has managed to find bargains like Perez to be filler while guys recovered. And he had to do all this while being under a mandate to reduce the budget by around $20M. You can say the trades are questionable, but I love the Bradley trade. I thought the trade for Penny was solid (DePo can't help it Penny got hurt). What else was there? He was absolutely right in not resigning Beltre. He was right to take the chance on Drew -- I wish the Cubs had done so. What bad moves have there been?

Fortunately, that doesn't happen very often. and fortunately, for you, he's pitching against the cubs. Bloody Cubs. Just when I need them to roll over and play dead, they come alive against the best pitcher in the NL this year.

Fortunately, that doesn't happen very often.

Zambrano?

Wow, what a switch in points with Cordero blowing that save. If he closes the game and gets the save, I likely earn 4.5 points, Eaton would take the loss, so DB would lose 3. Instead, Eaton gets a no-decision and Cordero loses 6.2 points. A 13.5 point swing. Instead of being up 20 on the last day, I'm only up seven. Ouch!

I should have done the maintenance yesterday. It was the lowest traffic day I've had since Feb.

Well, the board software isn't much different at all. Mainly just security enhancements. On the other hand, the advertising scheme is quite different after spending yesterday afternoon on the phone with Google. It was interesting as they actually called me to tell me that I was getting around 1/10th the click throughs of other sport sites. :( Am I the only person who clicks these ads every day? Is it really that hard? The one thing that maybe does hurt though, Tim, is that the Fever Pitch ad is on seemingly 99% of the pages, while the multiple Google Ad is only on the temporary "between hitting submit and seeing your post" screen. I can only individually click that Fever Pitch banner so many times... The Fever Pitch ad is paid on the number of views instead of the number of clicks, so I'm loving that one. Best ad revenue I've ever had (I've been earning around $15-20 a day from that!). In August, I got 994,959 page views of the google ads on the forum. I got 563 clicks, or less than 20 per day. Given that there's around 300+ non-premium members that show up here sometime during the day (even on slow days), that's not so good. As a result, I averaged WAY less per day in ad revenue without the "pay per view" ad campaign running. Typically a few bucks a day. Enough to cover the costs of the ads I run on google (I pay to be advertised in several keyword searches), but not much more than that. I really appreciate those who take the time to check out the ads (and of course, the Premium users, as well!!!). The money I've been getting from google has been helping to pay for advertising. The premium subscriptions have helped pay for things like the minor league POY award, the Peoria outing (10 tickets), convention t-shirts and server expenses. My current server deal expires in early October (those who have been here more than a year may remember the horrendous server issues I went through at the end of last season). I plan on moving to a fully dedicated server to increase the bandwidth, hopefully eliminate many of the connection error issues and so forth. Earning the money to pay for a much more expensive server setup is why I've been focusing so much on the revenue side of the site in the past few weeks.

I'd rather have DePo.

I like your thinking, but I don't think Corey + Ricky comes close to getting Quentin. Despite Nolasco's solid numbers throughout his minor league career, he's not thought of as an A prospect. (Here's the danger of just looking at the numbers. ;) ) Would Nolasco be enough to get Cameron and then replace Nolasco with Hill in the deal to Dbacks? I think you're going to have to send someone at Williams' level in at least one of those two deals.

So you think that Neifi Perez (assuming he is/was the best-defending SS around) is more valuable than Manny Ramirez? Should Ozzie Smith be considered the best player of all time instead of Babe Ruth? 'Cause if you think that defense is that much more important than hitting, you pretty much have to answer yes to both questions. He said that pitching and fielding was more important than hitting. PITCHING AND FIELDING. Not just pitching by itself. And not just fielding by itself, as you've ridiculously tried to suggest that he's saying. Both of them together. No one here is saying that Neifi Perez/Ozzie Smith are better than Manny Ramirez/Babe Ruth. Personally I think the game is 45% hitting, 40% pitching and 15% fielding. Something like that. I don't have any numbers to bear that out, but that's my suspicion. But that doesn't mean that you can say that for any hitter hitting is 3 times more important than fielding. It depends on the player's position. I think those percentages vary based upon who is on the mound. When you've got Kerry Wood out on the mound and he's on top of his game (or a younger Unit, etc.), fielding is less important because there simply aren't as many balls in play. When you've got someone like Suppan on the mound that "pitches to contact", fielding may be equal in importance to pitching. Blanket statements are always hard.

I like your thinking, but I don't think Corey + Ricky comes close to getting Quentin. Despite Nolasco's solid numbers throughout his minor league career, he's not thought of as an A prospect. (Here's the danger of just looking at the numbers. ;) )

This, to me, is the danger of scouting. You see a guy when he's at his very best and think that he's a world-beater. In this particular case, I'm not saying that you're wrong. I'm just saying that it is dangerous to ignore the longer track record. Basing things off the three times you've seen a guy is dangerous.

Also a quick thanks to O_O, for starting the minor league threads and posting the stats on a daily basis.

Quite so, with the fans that I know.

yeah, I actually pulled up the game log after I posted and saw that Santana loaded the bases to start the inning and Nathan came in and struck out three straight to save the game. Damn fine job.

Can anyone explain to me how Nathan comes in to pitch the ninth with a 5-0 lead and gets credited with a save? :?

in the minor league radio booths! It has been a great minor league season for all of us here at NSBB, in large part due to the insight you have given us. On behalf of everyone here, thank you Ron, Bo and Nathan once again for coming here this year and sharing your thoughts with us. And once again, thank you for helping us get to know the players in the system better though the Q&A sessions. It has been our honor having you here this season and I hope we can find ways to expand the relationships even further in 2006!

Google is very finicky about that kind of thing. If you mess around with the code on the link, they won't credit you for the views/clicks/etc. If you're using IE, you can hit ctrl-n and it will open a new window and open the same page you're viewing. Then you can go use the google search without losing your place on nsbb.

That might just be the worst lineup of the entire year. :(

Also please note the new google search option at the bottom of the page. Do your google searches from here! :D

Well, the board software isn't much different at all. Mainly just security enhancements. On the other hand, the advertising scheme is quite different after spending yesterday afternoon on the phone with Google. It was interesting as they actually called me to tell me that I was getting around 1/10th the click throughs of other sport sites. :(

That was a big night. Patterson came up huge and Randy getting tossed (and rocked) helped a lot. Looks likely to be a GHS vs NSBB final.

Ah... The newly uploaded board was preventing people from logging in. :oops: Fixed. :D

Must be a good night to be doing this. Eight people online? I haven't seen things that low in just about forever.

I'm going to be uploading the latest version of the phpbb forums to the non-premium UI tonight. There should be minimal disruptions, but I wanted to let everyone know what is going on.