Hairyducked Idiot

That was also when I got in a long argument with Dan Szymbroski (sp?) on baseball think factory, with me insisting that 9 straight losses, all by multiple runs, was such a severe result that it implied some sort of underlying effect was more likely than variance.

It was Cardinals and autism, not Rockies and ADHD. Besides, we're all Twins fans now. We got bought out. I'm almost positive it was after the 2008 season. And checking baseball-refernece, i'm now 100% sure. Cubs had just gotten swept in the playoffs for the second straight year, giving them 9 consecutive playoff losses and a 7-16 playoff record since I was old enough to care. My entire family are Cardinals fans except for the one weird aunt I bonded with when I was a kid, so I felt like maybe I had missed out on my birthright of an actually good team that sustained success. I happened to be in St. Louis for a college media convention in 2006 and was hanging out there when they won the World Series, seemed pretty fun. So that offseason I decided screw it, I'm a Cardinals fan. I made an account on Gateway Redbirds under a fake name, discussed their offseason moves, tried to psyche myself up. On Cardinals opening day, I watched the whole game, and when they blew it in the 9th on a bases loaded triple, I realized I wasn't sad and it was actually pretty funny, so the whole plan didn't work and I hadn't formed any emotional attachment (much like most of my dating in my 30s).

It's fine. 95% of what fans imagine as negotiating tactics are meaningless fluff. No one's falling over themselves to offer you more just because you claim to have a specific offer that they have no way of verifying.

Short-term deals that allow you to buy out any free agency years are absurdly team friendly imo.

Is there a dark mode?

Is 94 really average for a reliever now? I'm not disputing, i'm just impressed velocity creep has gone that far.

Haven't seen a football game in months

True but unrelated to this subject

I did not know that. I cannot emphraize enough how much I have not paid attention to baseball the last five years.

I predict he has a respectable but ultimately uninteresting career as a platoon outfielder outside of one completely random season where he jacks 48 for the Kansas City Royals.

I'm calling this 939nsbb. I miss 636.

Like all end users with all UI changes, I absolutely hate this with a fiery passion but in two months I'll be used to it

There was no sustained success. Just tank and spank then tank again

When will the subsilver be ready

still here

I always assumed it was meant as a compliment.

Correct. Which is why I've always found the "BPA" takes irritating. People didn't really mean it, they would just say it if it happened to fit the argument for whatever player they wanted to draft or draft pick they wanted to defend in the moment. But at least now I know that *they* know they don't mean it, that you're supposed to adjust for "nuance" to whatever seems obvious regardless of what was said. I'm working on adjusting to that. the best way to remember it is that BPA exists on ... a spectrum The best explanation I've ever gotten, in the sense that it makes the most sense to me, is that neurotypicals speak in vibes. The words are not particularly important, they're just vehicles for the vibes. I still hate it and think it's a suboptimal way to communicate, but I'm really trying to get better at translating it. I honest to God thought all these years that people were arguing for a yahoo autodraft list style of drafting. Which *is* what BPA means in other sports. There's functionally no positional considerations in the MLB draft, and if you're drafting for position in the NHL you're doing it wrong. I'm pretty sure that's how you do it in the NBA too. But apparently in football it means "take whichever of a number of players, all of whom are roughly equivalent, that happen to be at a position of need or at least a position where redundancy can still be relatively useful." Which is just ... what good drafting is regardless? The phrase as used like that is so flexible that it doesn't really serve any useful purpose for differentiating it from any other draft philosophy. But as a vibe vehicle, the lack of clear definition becomes a useful trait. If I say I don't think we should have taken a safety with our first pick last year,, a rebuttal of "Poles drafted brisker because he was BPA" can express the vibe of positivity towards Poles, towards brisker, towards giving the benefit of doubt to the team you're a fan of, or toward the positional value of safeties. They're not literally saying there was a Yahoo-autodraft list and Brisker was on top of it, they're just expressing some sort of vibe. And that's absolutely the last post I'll make on the subject in this thread.

Angel Stadium is within walking distance. I can put in a good word with Ohtani for you guys

Bringing it back to the actual discussion, yeah, I'm 100% fine with "I don't like any of these receivers enough to pick them over other players likely to be available at No. 9." I don't pretend to be enough of a scout to have opinions on exactly how to slot the players in the back of the top 10 of the draft. I just don't think that the combination of Moore/Mooney/Claypool, two of whom are in contract years, would be enough to make me pass on a WR if that was who they liked most at no. 9.

Correct. Which is why I've always found the "BPA" takes irritating. People didn't really mean it, they would just say it if it happened to fit the argument for whatever player they wanted to draft or draft pick they wanted to defend in the moment. But at least now I know that *they* know they don't mean it, that you're supposed to adjust for "nuance" to whatever seems obvious regardless of what was said. I'm working on adjusting to that. BPA means don't reach for poor value in the name of need That's ... tautological. You should never take poor value. That's baked into the definition of poor value. But in baseball, you should absolutely take best player available with zero regard for position. Same with hockey. I dunno a ton about basketball but I'm pretty sure you do there too. So BPA does mean BPA in those sports.

This is me admitting that I misunderstood and that my misunderstanding was the cause of disagreement, and that I now know my previous understanding was wrong. What more do you want here? I am just positive you are smart enough to realize that just about everyone here wouldn't want the Bears to take Stroud at #9 if he were somehow available there, regardless of their draft philosophy. Correct. Which is why I've always found the "BPA" takes irritating. People didn't really mean it, they would just say it if it happened to fit the argument for whatever player they wanted to draft or draft pick they wanted to defend in the moment. But at least now I know that *they* know they don't mean it, that you're supposed to adjust for "nuance" to whatever seems obvious regardless of what was said. I'm working on adjusting to that.

I thought "best player available" meant "best player available," yes. you're self aware enough to know that you do this "taking everything too literally" thing, but you don't do anything to adjust for it? or are you knowingly just doing it to do this kyle thing you do on here This is me admitting that I misunderstood and that my misunderstanding was the cause of disagreement, and that I now know my previous understanding was wrong. What more do you want here?

See, that all just sounds like ... drafting. I've always assumed when people were talking about BPA they meant it as some sort of philosophical approach, with drafting for positional need being the opposing philosophy. It actually apparently just means "take a pretty good player who also you kinda want," which seems to me to be vague enough to be useless, but at least now I know it doesn't mean what I thought it meant. You thought this was yahoo draft set to auto pick? I thought "best player available" meant "best player available," yes.

That's a dishonest characterization of Mervis. He likely would have been their 6th pick in the shortened Covid draft so he's not some unheard of dude who came out of nowhere. He did get a lot of helium last year because of how he progressed through 3 levels with progressively better numbers. He's not going to be Goldschmidt but he's not LaHair either. I 100% admit I know absolutely nothing about him that I didn't learn in the last five minutes, so maybe he's awesome, but "he would have been a 6th round pick" isn't a ringing endorsement.

There’s no way to quantitatively value football players and therefore any BPA discussion begins and ends with some variation of the consensus view of the people in the room doing the evaluation. They group these guys in similar brackets and it makes sense to take a guy who fits best from the group that is available at your pick. You might have 2 guys standing alone, then 3-6 more in the next group. If one of that group is available at 9 he technically fits the BPA distinction. But if the next group is 7-11 and the rest of the groups are empty, any one of those 5 will be the BPA by default and should be taken based on fit. See, that all just sounds like ... drafting. I've always assumed when people were talking about BPA they meant it as some sort of philosophical approach, with drafting for positional need being the opposing philosophy. It actually apparently just means "take a pretty good player who also you kinda want," which seems to me to be vague enough to be useless, but at least now I know it doesn't mean what I thought it meant.