soccer10k

I'm going to make a bold prediction and say that this series will not return to Oakland.

The similarities are eerie. White Sox almost blew a huge division lead and rode unbelievable pitching to their title. The Tigers did blow a huge division lead and are currently riding unbelievable pitching.

UGH.

Are the A's this bad or are the Tigers just this good?

http://espn-ak.starwave.com/i/mlb/profiles/players/65x90/5771.jpg 15-8, 3.09 ERA NLDS Game 1 vs SD: 6.1 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 1 ER NLDS Game 4 vs SD: 7 IP, 7 H, 2 R, 2 ER vs http://espn-ak.starwave.com/i/mlb/profiles/players/65x90/7386.jpg 6-5, 3.60 ERA NLDS Game 1 vs LA: 4.1 IP, 6 H, 1 R, 1 ER

I'm not feeling so good.

I miss when Baseball Tonight was "have to see" I don't know if it was becasue I was young and stupid, or if the show's really gotten that much worse, but man I loved that show when I was younger. I have the same feeling about Baseball Tonight that you do.

Drinking this early on friday=not good:) Not good, ggggggggreat! :pint: All this talk of beer has made me thirsty. I think I'll have a couple during the A's game. After all, it's happy hour somewhere in the world.

Sweet Lou announcing again. This should be entertaining.

ARam, is that you? :D

:beer:

Cincinnati (-5.5) NY Giants (+3) Washington (-10.5) Dallas (-13) Baltimore (-3) Detroit (+1) St. Louis (+3) Philadelphia (-3) NY Jets (-2.5) Kansas City (+7) San Diego (-10) Denver (-15) Chicago (-10.5)

Thanks for reminding me. I knew they were playing earlier but forgot to change the thread title. And I'm in the same boat you are - I'm busy tonight so I wouldn't have been able to watch the game.

Before I get to my picks, allow me to direct your attention to the Colts ESPN.com page. Indy was 17 point favorites at SF, 14 point favorites at Houston, and 16 point favorites at Jacksonville (absolutely insane spread considering the Jags were 12-4 last year) in 2005.

Where did you find this data? Could you post a link to the exact page. Here is the base page with sortable stats. 2006 NL stats 2006 AL stats You'll have to scroll down on the 2006 AL and NL stats pages to find the 'Outs' leaders.

It's the Cubs. Anything is possible.

Can we please stop the Beltre comparisons. Soriano isn't the next Adrian Beltre or even a 'Beltre-light'. Soriano career stats Beltre career stats Soriano: 2006 BA: .277, Career high: .300 in 2002 2006 OBP: .351, Career high: .338 in 2003 2006 SLG: .560, Career high: .547 in 2002 2006 OPS: .911, Career high: .879 in 2002 (his OPS+ in both years were 132 and 131 respectively) 2006 HR: 46, Career high: 39 in 2002 (also hit 38 in 03 and 36 in 05) About the only huge difference in Soriano's 2006 from other years were his walk totals and subsequently his IsoD. Beltre: 2003 BA: .334, Career high: .290 in 2000 2003 OBP: 388, Career high: .360 in 2000 2003 SLG: .629, Career high: .475 in 2000 2003 OPS: 1.017, Career high: .835 in 2000 (also never had another year with a .800+ OPS) 2003 HR: 48, Career high: 25 in 2006 Just look at the stats across the board. Beltre's 2003 was such an anomaly and was so much different from the rest of his career that you would think that somebody substituted the stats of a different player in there. While I don't think that Soriano will put up the same numbers in 2007 as he did in 2006, comparing him to Adrian Beltre and saying he is the next Beltre is completely unfair to Soriano. There are plenty of players that have career years in their contract year and then show a slight dropoff the next year. But Adrian Beltre is in a league of his own in that respect. Note: The 'career high' stat is obviously excluding the one year in question i.e. Soriano's 2006 and Beltre's 2003.

No, but you can't judge him solely on those years. He's done better, and obviously there's a slim chance he could once again do better. That justifies an invite to camp, which costs next to nothing and involves no roster spot. The only guys who I don't want to see brought to camp are guys who would likely become a crutch for a manager and are guaranteed to suck, like Neifi Perez and Jose Macias. Bellhorn has upside those guys don't have. Yeah, I guess one positive to Bellhorn is that he's always shown the ability to take a walk (career IsoD of .111) so he's not all bad.

Have you seen his numbers the past two years? 2005 .210/.324/.357 2006 .190/.285/.344 Yikes... He said invite to camp not sign to a 5 year 70 mil. Go Team "Belhorn to the Cubs"!!! His 05 and 06 lines don't even warrant an invite to camp.

yawn. You won't be yawning in March. I'll be celebrating. I'm going to assume from your extreme level of bitterness you're a UI fan. I don't know you guys are pretty pompous. It could be any Big 12 fan as well. Care to place a wager on you celebrating a KU final four run? Wow. Am I really seeing the internet wager challenge? Excellent. Assuming you're being serious, I'll pass anyway. I'd never bet any team vs. the field to get to the FF. I've seen some great teams (96-97 KU: Paul Pierce, LaFrentz, Pollard, Jacque Vaughn, Billy Thomas) not make the final four. But I'm as confident about this team as I have been since our squad that lost to 'Cuse. Predicting in the preseason which schools will make the Final Four has to be one of the hardest things to predict in the preaseason because of all the uncertainty in college basketball.

Point spreads anyone?

Shall we take bets on how long it is before this thread gets locked? I say 30 minutes.

There are highly publicized deaths every week, and thousands of other deaths that go unreported. I think it is much better to have a story about Tillman's death, than no stories about soldier's deaths. At least it brought attention to the soldiers' plight. It's not a matter of him being more special. But the fact that he walked away from millions to serve is a story worth being told. Likewise, the guys who died in the battle that eventually turned into the Blackhawk Down got a ton of press, including books, movies and tv specials about them. What makes them so special that they deserved the attention? Don't get me wrong. I have tremendous respect for anybody that joins the military for whatever reason because I could never do it. I applaud Tillman for walking away from NFL millions to join the military. As for Blackhawk Down or most of the other military movies, I can't speak for those stories because I don't know much about them and don't watch those types of movies (just not my thing). So I can't offer a comparison to Pat Tillman and Blackhawk Down or other based-on-true-events movies. BTW there was just an ad for a Pat Tillman "Outside the Lines" special on Sunday. Worth mentioning.

Or teams that only win 83 freaking games in the regular season and almost choked away an 8.5 game lead on September 20 with 13 games to go. ETA: At least the Tigers worked the whole second half to blow their lead and still finished with 95 wins.

Cliches and overboard are entirely different. The cliches are thing BS about putting things in perspective, then the same guys will go out and freak out about ARod in the playoffs or whatever else. I don't get complaining about the Tillman coverage just because he got more than most soldiers. You, if you don't want to hear the stories, it's extremely easy to avoid them. People seem to like complaining about the media a lot. They are an important part of society, but many think of them the same way they think of your typical congressman. To counter the anti-media talk, here is a nice story on the Lidle situation, written by a member of the media, and friend of Lidle's. I do avoid the Tillman stories. It ticks me off because what makes Tillman more special than any other soldier that has died in a war? That he was lucky to be skilled enough at football to play in the NFL? That's BS. I know the media is an important part of society and I am trying to make my way into that part of society but they do go overboard with a lot of these stories.