Hairyducked Idiot

China controls all the documents, and I can't imagine them stripping medals without official documents proving they aren't 16. We all know they are lying, but they know that no one is gutsy enough to call them on it.

I wouldn't be so sure that Marquis won't be back in the rotation.

the bears have a great core of players. what sucks is that none of them are offensive players, unless you count hester. Their time has passed though. This one was once a great core on the defensive side, now it's a declining core of players. i would argue that only urlacher is declining, 2 if you count brown. the others are in their prime. Harris hasn't been the same either and very shortly both DEs will start to regress. Agreed. Decline starts way, way earlier in football than people think.

It is wrong for me to be so happy that the U.S. women's softball team lost. They go back to everything I hate about women's sports, which is lots.

298 million of which will then wax philosophical about the awesomeness of a 1-0 pitchers' duel, or wet their pants over a 21-14 football game (5 scoring plays in 210 minutes of viewing vs. a 2-1 soccer match having 3 in 115). Don't kid yourself, Americans don't like soccer because Americans aren't raised on soccer. Same reason almost no one likes baseball who isn't raised on it.

Because we're going to explain to him that we need to move Soriano to 1st base to suck out all his offensive positional value FYP

As stated in another thread, it appears (according to Wikipedia, not always the best source, but also correlating with people's memories) the #1 seed in the NL will have the choice of starting either Wednesday or Thursday. If we chose to go Wednesday, each team's No. 1 and No. 2 could pitch two games on normal rest.

Using Harden on short rest is never, ever a good idea. Let alone anyone else. So if we have Lilly, then Harden would have 4 days rest right? Yes, a 4-man rotation in the playoffs is what almost all teams do, except for the Arizona Diamondbacks back in 2001 or something. It depends on whether it's a five- or seven-game series. By a quick eyeball, I counted six teams going to a three-man in 9 LDS that have gone at least four games in the last four seasons. Given that most teams don't have the option of doing it on normal rest, that's quite a bit.

Assuming the dates I had were right, we could do a 3-man rotation without starting anyone on short rest.

None of them are clean. You simply can't be a sprinter at that level and compete with the dopers without being one yourself.

0-0, it's not possible. However, this still somehow works out to a 1.000 winning percentage, defying the scoffers who said you cannot divide by zero.

Do they sing a song predicting victory after the victory has already happened?

As you wish. I'll kick off. I say dumber than George W. Bush but less dumb than Paris Hilton.

Maddux is a guy who will pitch as long as he wants to pitch, and won't put up with any of that fan-issue nonsense of hanging on too long. I could see him getting to 400. It's a longshot, but not completely impossible.

Blah blah blah getting ahead of yourself jinx curse blah. Get that out of the way, then consider this. The Cubs will be playing in the 2008 NLDS, they will probably have time to set their rotation and they will probably have home-field. Presuming we have time to set our rotation, the games would be on these dates: Oct. 1 or 2 at Wrigley Oct. 3 at Wrigley Oct. 5 on the road Oct. 6 on the road Oct. 8 at Wrigley Choosing the first would easily allow us to go with three starter (which I'd assume we would want to do, though maybe if it was Arizona we wouldn't want to give them the option, but I'll ignore that for now). I'm going to make a case that the Cubs should do something they probably won't do: Bump Zambrano to Game 3 and live with just one start from him. First, Rich Harden is the best pitcher, so you need to give yourself the best chance possible to give him two starts. That means he has to get the ball Game 1 and Game 4. Then I argue that you have to start Dempster at Wrigley and not on the road. ERA doesn't seem too much different this season home/road for him, but RA tells a different story. Wrigley RA: 2.86, Road RA: 3.96. This might be a statistical fluke, but there's no way to know for sure. Zambrano has no real split over his career, a much larger sample. Declaring Wrigley Dempster to be a separate pitcher from Road Dempster, we trot out the following RAs by game: 2.19 2.86 3.55 2.19 2.86 Compared with what we get if we do the more expected Zambrano/Harden/Dempster: 3.55 2.19 3.96 3.55 2.19 Or even worse, Zambrano/Harden/Dempster/Lilly: 3.55 2.19 3.96 4.50 3.55 Plus, with Zambrano only throwing one game, there's less pressure to save his arm.

Tony Gwynn "made contact" (not a K or BB) in 87.76% of his plate appearances, and in those he hit .351. Dunn "makes contact" in just 57% of his plate appearances, and in those he hits .311. I see little evidence there that Gwynn was a "pure hitter" in any sense, only that he chose to sacrifice the chance for a BB or an extra-base hit for more singles.

Hitting or quitting?

Don't worry about what fans of other teams say. Some dork will say anything about any team, anywhere. The Cubs could win every playoff game 25-0 against the reincarnated 1927 Yankees (who, incidentally, wouldn't really be that good by today's standards I imagine) and still there would be naysayers.

But anyways: At the high point, fangraphs put us at 95.6% to win the game with one out in the eighth.. I think with Wood pitching and home-field, a 60% chance to win game seven would be a good estimate. So the Marlins needed to hit on consecutive 4.4% and 40% chances, at a combined odds of 1.76% So our high point was 98.24% to make it to the World Series, slightly lower than our current playoff odds (if you believe in the 'no-momentum' approach to analysis.)

I hate you. Die. :)

Start counting from the moment it's relevant: 163.

You can't ask Rich Harden why he hasn't gotten hurt yet and expect any real insight. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases and more specifically: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_correlation (good one for a recently locked thread, btw) Disregard of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean

Seeing what Orton can do involves watching him throw any pass of more than 15 yards besides that skinny post up the middle. Once you've done that, you can conclude he doesn't have the arm to be a big-time NFL quarterback and move on.

Short of a monumental collapse the likes of which even the Cubs have never managed, we're in. It's that simple. If the '69 Cubs had the Wild Card to fall back on, they would have made it too. Unfortunately, the fortunes and legacy of the greatest Cubs team of most of our lifetimes will now be resting in a short-series coinflip :( I think we can say with confidence the Cubs are the best team in the National League. The Brewers have a thin case, but it gets blown away by the sweep and the 120-run-differential difference. What has being the clear best team in the NL gotten teams lately? 2007- no clear best 2006- Mets got clipped in 7 in the NLCS by the sham champion Cardinals 2005- A legit great Cardinals team went down in six in the NLCS to a team they finished 11 games ahead of in the regular season 2004- 105 wins, something even this years' Cubs probably can't manage, and did win the pennant 2003- Braves and Giants win 101 and 100, get punked by two teams that couldn't even win 90, only to have the NLCS mysteriously cancelled halfway through.

If you want a game that rewards pure hitting prowess, take up cricket fandom (which I recommend anyway, great sport). Baseball rewards take-and-rake far more than pure hitting skill.