Transmogrified Tiger

thanks, i was curious about that. it's probably a good thing that daniel won't wear it again though, he was pretty lousy tonight, as was the entire offense. Given how superstitious Daniel is(the ESPN Mag article on him talks about it), I was almost surprised he didn't come out for the second half wearing number 10.

To answer Andy's question about Daniel's number, Aaron O'Neal was a redshirt Freshman at Mizzou who died before his redshirt freshman season. Since this would've been his senior year, one senior is wearing his number, 25, without a name each game this season. Tonight it was Daniel.

If you had told me OSU was going to score 28 points, I would've been stoked. The thing is I can't figure out what went wrong, aside from everything. Daniel was awful and so was the O-Line(some of that goes hand in hand). The run game got abandoned, people dropped passes, a couple interference calls weren't made, it was just an endless concatenation of terrible.

In that instance, Bama and Texas go to the title game, chiefly because their schedule strength dwarfs PSU's, not because they were ranked higher to start the season.

Players that are "traded away" rarely get their true value in a deal. Beltran's contract, his status amongst the fans/media, and Minaya's inability to ignore the fan/media perception mean that if he were dealt it would be less than his actual worth.

So you're saying that during the preseason nobody really knows how good any team is and therefore it's unfair that the BCS could be affected by that uncertainty? I'm saying the first ranking of any kind to come out should be the Week 8 BCS ranking. If you have a situation where three teams end the year undefeated, the one who started the year with the lowest preseason ranking is most likely going to be left out. Yes, the human poll is "only" 1/3 of the formula, but that's big enough that it shouldn't be arbitrary early in the season The Mock BCS from earlier this week had PSU in a distant 5th place. They're not disproportionately ranked in the human polls.

Lee, Cedeno, Pie, Hill/Marshall for Cain and Lewis sounds real interesting. It's hard to balance the Giants' need for youth and Sabean's obsession for age though.

He didn't have possession until he was falling though.

That's an incompletion everyday of the week if it's a WR trying to make the play, good call.

Now THAT is a terrible personal foul call.

They didn't even call it on the dude who wrapped him up, that was the weird thing.

McCoy definitely embellished it, but Lewis shoved him with 2 hands when there was no reason to. Maybe not a great call, but a dumb decision on Lewis' part.

Lowell is under contract through 2010 too, so they couldn't move Euclis to 3rd.

Which Cruz?

It was 3 weeks ago. Link

In this thread I'd like to list some guys who you think would be good buy low candidates. That could mean they sucked last year and you think you'll turn it around, they could've been very good and you think they'll become great, or maybe you think they'll be about the same and their team hates the player or something. Please provide some reasoning about the players you mention, that makes it more fun for everyone. I'll start with a popular one and one kinda off the map. Jeremy Hermida Hermida will be arbitration eligible for the first time on the notoriously stingy Marlins. He was subpar offensively for a RF, but he was quite good away from cavernous Pro-Player, he's only 25 next year, and he has a phenomenal minor league pedigree. He's not a negative on the basepaths or in right field either. Now for the fun one. Clint Barmes Barmes has been reduced to a part-time infielder for Colorado with Tulowitzki and Baker around. There are things working against him. He has a significant Coors split(although there is the hangover effect), and he'll be 30 next season. However, he had a nice offensive rebound after being hurt. He's a very good defensive SS, and we can be relatively certain he can hit LHP quite well. At best, Barmes plays SS every day and flirts with an .800 OPS there with plus defense while Theriot and Fontenot make the super-bayou platoon. At worst, he pushes Theriot to 2B while being a part of a platoon with Fontenot, replicating DeRosa's production out of 2B. In between you can play with how much time you give Theriot and Barmes to find a happy medium. Either way Cedeno is trade bait for someone looking for talent at SS. DeRosa is either an option in RF or a strong trade chip to a team looking to contend. And, with Tulowitzki, Baker, and Stewart all vying for time in the Colorado infield, plus Barmes being first year arbitration eligible, he shouldn't be super expensive to acquire.

This begins a stretch for Texas of #1 OU, #3 Mizzou, #17 Oklahoma State, and @ #7 Texas Tech. You want to root for Texas.

Can anyone point me to where I could find the final numbers for either Dewan's +/- or UZR? Or is that even out there?

If you're going to play that game, then you have to count every hit where he stole 2nd base as a double, and suddenly his slugging percentage doesn't look quite so bad. Not really, the point was that Theriot's baserunning doesn't hurt his sparkling OBP, and a 20-30 point difference depending on whose math was right is definitely significant. And even then, as SSR pointed out in different posts, SB don't achieve the same purpose of advancing and driving in runners as the rest of SLG, and Theriot's sub-.400 SLG even with SB is pretty abysmal.

Favorite Trash Talk Stories

I've found something to the effect of "please speak up, it's hard to hear you down in 4th place" can be pretty effective.

Howard's K's are the result of an approach that gets him a lot of K's, and a ton of hard hit balls/home runs/extra base hits, as well as many walks. If he changed his approach to make contact on half his K's, he'd probably be less productive.

Fontenot significantly outhit Abreu v. RHP last season.

Remember the talk how Baltimore was close to collusion with how badly they wanted Teixeira over the summer? Lee would be a backup plan for them in the absence of Tex. So unless it's feasible for us to sign Teixeira with Lee still on the club(doubt it), you can't really send Lee to Baltimore and sign Tex. Doesn't mean much if you want Dunn anyway, but it's an important consideration. As far as the west coast goes, the Padres don't need Lee, the A's won't want his contract, the Giants have nothing of value outside of Cain, and the Dodgers have Loney. So that leaves Lee+ for Cain, hoping Ned Colletti is completely insane(better odds than getting Cain), or the Angels, who only have what we have quite a bit of(non-ace SP).

I think it's going to get worse with another year of mediocrity and a general state of disarray for that franchise. The schadenfreude is all they'll have.