soccer10k

Florida might have torpedoed their playoff chances because some dumb CB threw a shoe. Tie game, 2 minutes left, Florida gets a stop and was going to get the ball back. Shoe of an LSU player comes off and Florida player throws it downfield. LSU still driving right now.

Ole better hope his team shows up this weekend otherwise he might be out of a job in a week. They easily could have won this group after beating PSG in Paris and hammering Leipzig. At the very least, they should have advanced. Instead they’ll be in the Europa. EDIT: Might have spoken too soon. It’s 3-2 now. ManU only needs a tie to advance.

So apparently the 4th official said something racist to Demba Ba in the PSG-Basaksehir game and both teams walked off. EDIT, sounds like it was said to an assistant coach, not Ba

They’ve both been a lot better lately. 2nd and 3rd longest current winning streaks in the league after the Saints. In the NFC. Chiefs are 2nd with 7 and Cleveland is tied with the Giants for 3rd at 4.

LOL Steelers.

I saw the play also and didn’t know that an LSU player picked it up. I couldn’t believe it didn’t get overturned but that makes sense now why I didn’t.

and three straight NLCS appearances when i had previously seen one and a horsefeathering world series ring on all their fingers so basically you're trying to argue that we should give the white sox extra credit for not having failed yet? i only raise it this way because you're the one who wants to use hindsight. Arguing nothing, legit asking. Judging the Sox core on projection, which is just educated guessing until it happens. We overvalued our prospects. Sure, they won a title, but that doesn’t mean we were right. Schwarber is horsefeathering Rob Deer. But how do you know the White Sox didn't also overvalue their prospects? You're trying to compare two things that can't be compared the way you're trying to do it. You have to wait 5 years to see how things turned out. Obviously we know now that Russell was a horrible human being who peaked in 2016. We know KB hasn't turned into the perennial MVP candidate we thought he would become. We know Schwarber didn't become the high OBP with power hitter we thought he'd become. Could the WS core turn out to be better than the Cubs was? Sure. But they could also turn out to be worse. All we can do at this point is essentially compare the WS right now to where the Cubs were post 2015. Cubs had: -KB was the second pick in the draft, destroyed the minors and had an .858 OPS and 5.3 WAR as a 23 year old in a full season -Schwarber was the 4th pick, destroyed the minors and put up a .842 OPS and 1.3 WAR in only 69 (nice) games. -Russell was a highly regarded defensive shortstop who had a .858 OPS in AA at 20 and while his OPS was just under .700 at 21 in 2015, he still managed a 2.8 WAR. -Rizzo was 25 and coming off back to back .900 OPS seasons where he was worth a combined 12 WAR -Contreras was 23 and had just put up a .891 OPS at AA. And that's not even mentioning Javy (horrid in 2014 but still had a .911 OPS at 22 in AAA) and Ian Happ (#9 pick, .822 OPS in low A and A at 20 in 2015). It's easy to forget how incredibly loaded the Cubs were/appeared to be. They seemed set up to dominate the Central/NL for the better part of a decade. I'm not saying the White Sox aren't talented and I'm not saying what they do over the next few years won't surpass what the Cubs did from 2015-2020. I just think what's happened the last couple years with the Cubs has clouded your view of what the Cubs appeared to be headed into the 2016 season.

Well for one we don't know how long Pat is planning on working for.

What the horsefeathers is this [expletive]? Go horsefeathers yourselves, Ricketts.

i knew it was gonna be ugly so i took my ipad to the gym and watched it on the elliptical so at least it wasn't a total waste of time Yeah, not surprising in the least. Spurs weren’t going to come out of their shell unless Chelsea scored. Same strategy as last week.

If only the NFL thought about their schedule for 2 seconds or, say, looked at the postponement issues MLB had, they might have built in a midseason bye week and/or scheduled a week off between the end of the regular season and the start of the playoffs. Oh no, there were no covid cancellation issues and we gave the players an extra week off for no reason! The horror! And if you do a make up week after the season, you'll know going into the last week whether you have cancellation problems. If you don't need it, you just tell teams that if there are no makeup games, the playoffs move up a week. You wouldn't even have to change the Super Bowl date. If you need the bye week to make up games, there's one week between conf championship games and the Super Bowl and if you don't, there's the standard two weeks between games. And even if you have to move the Super Bowl, it's not like the stadium is going to be hosting anything else in early February. Just so stupid all around.

Is there really that much they can do about competitive balance? The best players are worth so much more in basketball than in other sports so that if there’s a dominant team/player, that team is always going to be good. The Spurs and Lakers won the West all but one year from 1999-2010 and won 9 of the 12 titles. It was Jordan before them. And the Lakers/Celtics before that. I agree that there are desirable markets that players are always going to want to go to (i.e. LA). GS looks good now but they were largely a joke of the league for 40 years. Cleveland made two ECF in 36 years and no finals before 06-07. SA has always been good (39 playoff appearances in 45 seasons) but nobody would call them a destination. And even being a place people might want to play (New York) means nothing if your franchise is a disaster. I’m just not sure what can be done in basketball other than restricting player movement to get players to not bolt all the time. You don’t have to go to MLB style rules of player control to get to make an impact, it’s ultimately about incentives. For example, let’s say every team has one uncapped roster spot, you now can give Anthony Davis(and Durant before him, etc) before him) a real decision to make. In the current setup there’s precious little difference in options aside from markets and teammates which becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. But part of the problem is how much these guys are making now. A few years ago it might have been the difference between 20 and 30 million. Now it’s the difference between 40 and 50 million. Durant’s last year with the Thunder he made $20M. This year he’ll make $39M. Harden made $15.7M in 15-16 and will get $40M this year. Eventually, that extra money doesn’t matter as much and they’re just going to play where they want to play. I suppose if it was, say, double, some guys would stay. But others would rather win, live where they want to and make $30M than not win, live in a place they don’t like as much and make $60M.

Is there really that much they can do about competitive balance? The best players are worth so much more in basketball than in other sports so that if there’s a dominant team/player, that team is always going to be good. The Spurs and Lakers won the West all but one year from 1999-2010 and won 9 of the 12 titles. It was Jordan before them. And the Lakers/Celtics before that. I agree that there are desirable markets that players are always going to want to go to (i.e. LA). GS looks good now but they were largely a joke of the league for 40 years. Cleveland made two ECF in 36 years and no finals before 06-07. SA has always been good (39 playoff appearances in 45 seasons) but nobody would call them a destination. And even being a place people might want to play (New York) means nothing if your franchise is a disaster. I’m just not sure what can be done in basketball other than restricting player movement to get players to not bolt all the time.

Well Alderweireld is going to be out a while with a muscle injury so if Spurs are going to break at the back, it’s going to happen now.

I realize that Liverpool and/or Man City could easily rip off a long winning/unbeaten streak to open up a big gap, however... This year seems like it's shaping up to be one of those weird years were 80-85 points wins the title. The last four years there hasn't been a lot of drama (18-19 there was but City/Liverpool were so far ahead). In 16-17, Chelsea went on a huge winning streak early and pretty much led wire to wire. Spurs were close but I don't think they ever got within 6 points. The next year Man City did the same thing. Last year it was Liverpool. This year, injuries have depleted Liverpool's defense while Man City looks off so far. Then you've got the rest of the teams. Chelsea have a bunch of new players and that can take time (some of you have watched Chelsea this year for Pulisic and can give a better evaluation). ManU is still the same mediocre team as they have been for a few years. Ditto for Arsenal. Spurs have looked good so far but we'll know a lot more about them in the next month after they play @Che, Ars, @Cry, @ Liv, Lei. Plus you've got the ongoing Covid plus a full season packed into a month less of time. Hopefully it turns into a good race where 4-5 teams are all close to each other and nobody really pulls away.

Loved the touch of them showing the Cubs with Obama but not Trump.

So, uh, that Germany-Spain score is a bit shocking.

Related: [tweet] [/tweet]

I had a coworker point out that a Cubs reliever got an MVP vote this year and thought for sure it was Jeffress. Nope, it was a dude with an ERA just under 4. And the guy who voted for him is a St Louis writer. There was an article explaining that it was a mistake - he was trying to give Trea Turner a vote Well that makes a lot more sense. Guess by the end he didn’t bother double checking he put down the right player. It is a 10th place vote so not like he mistakenly voted Tepera 1st.

I had a coworker point out that a Cubs reliever got an MVP vote this year and thought for sure it was Jeffress. Nope, it was a dude with an ERA just under 4. And the guy who voted for him is a St Louis writer.

So pretty good chance we end up with a 6 win NFC East champ. Current standings are Philly 3-5-1, NYG, 3-7, Wash 2-7, Dal 2-7. Remaining schedules are: Phi: @ Cle, Sea, @ GB, NO, @ Ari, @ Dal, Wash NYG: @ Cin, @ Sea, Ari, Cle, @ Bal, Dal Wash: Cin, @ Dal, @ Pit, @ SF, Sea, Car, @ Phi Dal: @ Min, Wash, @ Balt, @ Cin, SF, Phi, @ NYG Philly has the best chance of getting to 7 because they've got the extra game but they'll be underdogs in the next five games and they'll have to win two of those (assuming they beat Dal and Wash) just to get to 7. Giants should lose at least 3 of the next 5 which puts them at 10 losses. Wash will lose 3 of the out of division games. Dallas will probably lose three also. That's not factoring in the 4 guaranteed H2H losses in there. The division now is a combined is 2-18-1 outside of the division so far this year.

I'm not clicking the link because I don't want to reward him, but BPs stats thought deGrom and Nola were better than Bauer: https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/62195/cy-young-awards-in-2020-the-problem-of-opponent-quality/ So if you're going to say "BP told me to do it" then explain Bauer at #1. Yeah, that was my issue with it. He says he likes using DRA but even though Bauer was worse in the metric than deGrom and Nola, his 1.73 ERA (which he admits is flawed) stood out while Darvish’s 2.01 didn’t. Just illogical. If you’re going to discount Yu for only facing crappy Central teams, you have to do the same with Bauer.

If the receiver gave himself up by going to the ground it's a dead ball and they can call a TO. He caught the ball while going to the ground and the Jets touched him down before he had a chance to either get up or give himself up. It’s the Pats so decent chance the receiver would have known to give himself up.

I'll preface this by saying the Jets would have lost in OT anyway but... End of regulation, tie game, Pats have the ball 2nd and 10 from their own 47 with 8 seconds left and they have a time out. They run a play in the middle of the field and the receiver catches the ball while going to the ground without being touched. Rather than just let the time run out, the Jets run to touch the Pats receiver down, thereby allowing the Pats to call a timeout and kick a game winning field goal. No way the Pats receiver gets up and runs out of bounds before the clock runs out. Prior to that, the Jets had the ball up 7 with 6 minutes left but Flacco threw a pick on their first play. Then, after getting the ball back in a tie game with just under two minutes left, the Jets neither ran the clock down enough nor moved the ball, gaining three yards on three plays before punting (they also had a 2nd and 2 but lost 5 yards on the next two plays).

Saints were getting points tonight.