Warpticon

Well, so much for that.

Come on Arkansas. That was a great defensive stop. Let's make something out of it.

Really? You weren't impressed with that?

And to this day, there is incompetence all over the league. We see it in our very own favorite organization. It was stupid for Texas to spend all that money on ARod. I won't argue with you there. They didn't have the components to compete. There aren't many teams that are in a position to: 1. Afford to pay ARod what he's worth. 2. Have the components to surround him with talent for the next several years. 3. The desire to spend that kind of money on a single ballplayer. No, there aren't many. But there are some. I think Anaheim would, could and should do it. I think both LA and SD could do it, but I'm not sure the Dodgers want to and I'm almost certain SD doesn't want to. As for Texas, the $26 million they spent on Chan Ho and Juan Gone were far more damaging to their ability to field a quality team than the $22 they spent on ARod. Don't forget Darren Dreifort! Dreifort was the Dodgers. Saving the Cubs in the process. Ahh...previous mention of Dodgers + mention of Chan Ho = brain fart. :[

And to this day, there is incompetence all over the league. We see it in our very own favorite organization. It was stupid for Texas to spend all that money on ARod. I won't argue with you there. They didn't have the components to compete. There aren't many teams that are in a position to: 1. Afford to pay ARod what he's worth. 2. Have the components to surround him with talent for the next several years. 3. The desire to spend that kind of money on a single ballplayer. No, there aren't many. But there are some. I think Anaheim would, could and should do it. I think both LA and SD could do it, but I'm not sure the Dodgers want to and I'm almost certain SD doesn't want to. As for Texas, the $26 million they spent on Chan Ho and Juan Gone were far more damaging to their ability to field a quality team than the $22 they spent on ARod. Don't forget Darren Dreifort!

He only came through when it didn't matter, and the team was going to lose anyways. :lol: :^o Jeter got on one time TOTAL until the last game. Nobody's gonna say jack about him, and people are going to ride A-Rod for eternity. Because they are stupid.

I got impressions of Mississippi State as an up-and-coming team late last season. They've been tough to date. Arkansas needs to beat Auburn. They did not look good against UT-Chatanooga, though the game was never actually in doubt. They were sloppy. First play from scrimmage was a missnap into the end zone for a safety, if that tells you anything. That won't work against a decent team like Auburn.

USA TODAY/Coaches poll just dropped. 1. LSU (58) 6-0 1,498 2. California 5-0 1,416 3. Ohio State (2) 6-0 1,399 4. Boston College 6-0 1,283 5. Oklahoma 5-1 1,145 5. South Florida 5-0 1,145 7. USC 4-1 1,000 8. Oregon 4-1 936 9. West Virginia 5-1 931 10. Virginia Tech 5-1 913 11. Missouri 5-0 897 12. South Carolina 5-1 823 13. Arizona State 6-0 763 14. Florida 4-2 714 15. Wisconsin 5-1 689 16. Hawaii 6-0 632 17. Cincinnati 6-0 578 18. Kentucky 5-1 493 19. Illinois 5-1 425 20. Kansas 5-0 390 21. Florida State 4-1 213 22. Texas 4-2 195 23. Georgia 4-2 188 24. Purdue 5-1 149 25. Auburn 4-2 143 Others Receiving Votes Virginia 67, Tennessee 60, Texas A&M 52, Texas Tech 44, Rutgers 44, Boise State 37, Connecticut 36, Indiana 30, Penn State 27, Michigan 22, Maryland 20, Wyoming 18, Clemson 16, Colorado 15, Wake Forest 12, Nebraska 10, Mississippi State 6, Brigham Young 6, Alabama 6, Kansas State 5, Stanford 4, Michigan State 3, UCLA 2. Dropped From Rankings Rutgers 21, Clemson 22, Nebraska 23, UCLA 25. The South Carolina discrepancy persists. :lol: They were 18 and 11 last week, now they're 7 and 12. UCLA still got 2 votes this week for some reason. :lol: Purdue remained ranked, Tennessee remained unranked, ...is UConn seriously getting votes in a college football poll? Crazy.

Tennessee? Okay... Gotta love a top 10 with Boston College, South Florida, South Carolina, and Oregon. Mizzou is 11, Illinois is 18. Florida State, Auburn, Tennessee sneak back in. Florida barely moved after a loss. Kentucky dropped 9 spots. Wisconsin dropped 14.

AP Poll is out: 1. LSU (65) 6-0 1,625 2. California 5-0 1,538 3. Ohio State 6-0 1,511 4. Boston College 6-0 1,346 5. South Florida 5-0 1,339 6. Oklahoma 5-1 1,221 7. South Carolina 5-1 1,183 8. West Virginia 5-1 1,059 9. Oregon 4-1 1,047 10. USC 4-1 1,024 11. Missouri 5-0 966 12. Virginia Tech 5-1 910 13. Florida 4-2 822 14. Arizona State 6-0 752 15. Cincinnati 6-0 705 16. Hawaii 6-0 634 17. Kentucky 5-1 612 18. Illinois 5-1 595 19. Wisconsin 5-1 551 20. Kansas 5-0 336 21. Florida State 4-1 307 22. Auburn 4-2 248 23. Texas 4-2 136 24. Georgia 4-2 131 25. Tennessee 3-2 90 Others Receiving Votes Texas A&M 79, Purdue 48, Colorado 48, Indiana 40, Michigan 31, Texas Tech 27, Rutgers 25, Virginia 22, Connecticut 20, Kansas State 18, Boise State 17, Clemson 13, Penn State 13, Maryland 11, Alabama 9, Nebraska 9, Mississippi State 3, Washington 2, Wyoming 2. Dropped From Rankings Rutgers 21, Clemson 22, Purdue 23, Kansas State 24, Nebraska 25.

Bethel-Thompson sounds like a SWAC school.

Wow. 11 in the AP and 12 in the Coaches' poll WILL LOSE THIS WEEKEND. Only one team from 20-25 in the Coaches' poll will survive. (assuming Notre Dame hangs in and wins).

....Zambrano's best year? 2007? Surely you jest.

I'm not going to turn this into semantics. No other catcher in baseball is even close when it comes to giving up SB, especially Kendall's performance as a Cub. He gets run on the most often, he throws out the fewest, and it's because everyone knows he simply doesn't have the arm to do it any more. To ignore the very tangible effect that will have over Soto, who's done everything you could possibly ask out of a catcher, is insanity. Bonus fun fact: Kendall's also in the bottom 5 in passed balls. Nice laydown. That isn't "semantics", but a gross exaggeration. Good grief, did you really think I meant that every single baserunner we allow with Kendall catching gets to second? I've reiterated the point several times now. He's the worst catcher in baseball at throwing out runners, teams know this, and they are running on him more than any other catcher in baseball because of it. This leads to a lot of people getting free trips to second base. A lot more than Soto, who's shown an ability to throw more than 1 out of every 11 baserunners out, and who's also pounded the crap out of the ball for the last 6 months. It's a very easy decision on who should be catching. Nope, I didn't believe it because it wasn't true. It was a gross exaggeration and those kind of statements don't help your arguments. it just makes you seem overly emotional and less rational. The idea that me using a hyperbolic statement to help illustrate(with statistics and comparisons to other players) the nature of just how awful Kendall is at throwing out baserunners makes me look overemotional and irrational is hilarious. You're making strawman arguments and when prodded to the point you don't have an argument other than "Lou made the decision and I trust him". Simply admit you made a gross exaggeration and move on. Or don't, whatever. But stop being silly about your statement. Here's the thing. EVERYBODY KNOWS HE MADE ANEXAGGERATION. WE ALL SPEAK ENGLISH HERE. IT WAS DONE FOR EFFECT. IT WAS OBVIOUS. NOBODY TOOK IT LITERALLY. Everybody seems to understand just fine the intended meaning, but for some reason, you seem inclined to explain it all to us. I'd be shocked if one person didn't get the point. This crap is unnecessary.

:lol: Honorable mention: Antonio Henton: By the way, he offered $20 for sex... nice work Antonio. Even better is that he apparently only had 19 bucks on him.

You can't feel a wraith. They're not tangible. If that's my team, I'd bat Lee 2nd, Soto 5th and DeRosa 6th. For your RF, there's no way Floyd is back, and Jones should get dumped, too. I'm hoping for a Marshall, Murton, Veal and Patterson trade for Miggy Cabrera to round out that lineup there, but that's just me. ;-) I'd put him 5th and move Soto and DeRo down a spot. Seriously, the Fish are in awful shape (again), Cabrera could get moved this winter in the right deal. I want in on that, he is criminally underrated because of toiling in Miami. Given his age, I might even want him more than A-Rod. Financially, the fish are a mess, but talentwise, they're dangerous. 6 out of 8 position players OPS over .800. None are over 28. The only reason they're not competitive now is because the pitching is awful. Their two best young pitchers missed pretty much the whole season, and Dontrelle was useless. Nobody on that team makes anything aside from Cabrera and Willis. I think they give it a shot and bump payroll for one year, because with that amount of young talent, they're very close to being competitive. I'm sure the rumor isn't concrete or real as printed, but there are a lot of factors that could hypothetically put ARod in Chicago if he opts out. If it somehow worked out that way, there'd be no excuse whatsoever not to play Murton, Pie, and Soto every day next season.

Seriously, Ramirez. I could swear I looked at his numbers earlier this year and seen that his homers were way down from a year ago, but I'm clearly misremembering something, since he's got a chance at 30.

Same reason Louisville v. Kentucky was a mismatch...in favor of Louisville.

Tejada's IsoP dropping 4 years in a row is definitely a trend. First of all its 3 years (04 was his career high in IsoP). Second of all, how significant are those drops? I looked at it two ways. One was simply a year over year % change in IsoP. This makes 05-06 look like a big decline with a 20% drop. 04-05 was pretty insignificant with a 6% drop, 06-07 slightly more significant with a 10% drop. Secondly, I normalized for 650 ABs (since he was injured for some of this year and its in progress) and looked at it from a total bases drop perspective. Because his average was so high in 06, the 05-06 drop in Normalized TBs was only 3%, he also only had a 3% drop from 04-05. However, from 06-07, his normalized TBs dropped 10%. The bad news, is you can't use the wrist injury as an excuse, because his IsoP before the injury was a paltry 117. The good news though, is that hes done much better in the second half with a 207 post ASB IsoP. While I completely agree hes in the regression stage of his career, what I'm saying is that I don't expect his OPS to drop 70 points a year from here on out. I still think he'll be an extremely above average offensive shortstop for the next 2 years and would be worth trying to acquire given his undermarket salary. Is a potentially below average defensive shortstop worth 13 million and a starting pitcher or potential starting center fielder if he drops 30 points in OPS, then? He doesn't have to drop 70 points in 2008 to be a disappointment relative to his cost when you're looking at a .750 shorttstop in 2009. A year ago I'd have given up all of the mentioned players for him easily. i'm not entirely comfortable with Tejada at the moment.

I's going to take a 6 game winning streak to make that happen. Two gimmies, Auburn, Ole Miss, FIU, and South Carolina. if they do that and get to 6-2, they'll get back up there. May not matter with tennessee, MSU and LSU to finish the season.

Doesn't help that their best receiver is hurt, and their second best receiver just broke his arm earlier this game.

Arkansas is going to lose a game they should have won.

Thanks, Ref.

and Kentucky takes the lead.