nymr83

one thing that alot of people fail to realize is that the MLBPA is not your typical union (nor are baseball owners your typical business owners.) They're both filty rich and when they fight there is nobody to feel bad for but the fans. an NFL style Salary Cap would be great, but i'd settle even for an NBA "soft cap" or greater revenue sharing (with minimum spending on payroll of twice what you're getting mandatory.) The players get more andmore bullshit benefits every time and its bad for the game, but its also realy bad for he game when the owners in Tampa Bay, Kansas City, and elsewhere can get big fat checks for Steinbrenner, Wilpon, and Angelos and still not spend more money on players. We'll probably never have NFL-like parity but we can dream.

its not silly. Hudson, Zito, and Mulder were all well thought of coming through the minors and continued their success in the majors, there is no evidence that Peterson did anything. Find me a trend of pitchers coming to him and doing better than expected (i can easily find such a trend for a guy like Leo Mazzone.) That is the only way to show that someone is a "good pitching coach." But hey, lets go with your insane theory that being "top paid" automatically makes you qualified for the job you have.

free agency in the 70's may have CREATED parity in the 70's and 80's. that parity clearly left in the 90's and if baseball wants it back it will take 2 years of striking at least to impose a salary cap.

peterson is a joke anyway, my jr high school gym teacher could have agood staff ERA with hudson, zito, and mulder. peterson has done NOTHING to earn a good reputation.

i have no problems looking at a player's size and "tools" when scouting high school players (because what do high school stats really mean) but at the major league level if a guy has proven he can get the job done who cares how big he is anymore.

i have the feeling that if we signed Gordon he'd suddenly stink. Lets stop looking for old folk to solve our problems.

i was saying that just last week, there are plenty of opportunities open to Leiter inside and outside of baseball, he's not one of those player who is gonna retire and have nothing to do ::coughrickeycough:: everyone loves the guy, i'm sure there are several job in the game that are his for the asking. there is no need to keep trying to play, especially as some kind of lefty-specialist, when his skills have declinedso much and he already has a ring.

]The books were supposed to read: 2003: Chicago Cubs World Champions 2004: Boston Red Sox World Champions 2005: Chicago White Sox World Champions 2006: World Ends.

remember Estrada for Millwood? god i thought the braves were getting ripped off. whoops.

] While he made several spectacular plays, David muffed too many balls this year; ]To get the most of his speed, however, Jose must get on base more often. His on-base percentage of .300 is too low for a premium lead-off hitter. you can cross-out the word "premium" in that second quote, .300 is too low a % for ANY leadoff hitter and arguably for any hitter at all. in any event, i am happy to see that minaya is willing to give criticism where it is derserved, even if he did so in the middle of lots of praise. i'd have preffered more than we got on beltran, it seemed that he was given the kid glove treatment which is suprising since the actual kids weren't: ]He was viewed as a savior to the offense, and that expectation is unfair to any player. that expectation is not unfair given the contract he received.

i gotta go with the white sox for a few reasons: 1. the white sox haven't won in awhile, thus i feel bad for their fans and am fairly sure that their fans actually ARE fans. the angels have won recently and half their "fans" are therefore probably frontrunners. 2. i hate the rally monkey 3. i HATE thundersticks and the assholes in anaheim started that trend. 4. i don't like the whole "los angelos angels of anaheim" bullshit. don't want to be the Anaheim Angels anymore? go back to calling yourselves California. changing the city name of a team that doesnt actually move is really dumb. 5. i know an angels fan who i don't particularly like, i know no white sox fans.

Bernie Castro would definetaly make a good backup at 2B. i'm not really a Jimenez fan but he's better than many others we've had as a backup.

ah but wright averaged that amount. i am sure there are 5 game stretches in which he had 10 points, a pitcher cant possibly get that many points. wright had 140 points, and i can easily see a hitter next year having 150-155. a pitcher's absolute maximum with 34 starts would be 204 with a 6 point maximum, if half his starts were shutouts (and i have to assume a shutout gets a 6) and the other half were "worth 3" (something along the lines of 6-7 innings 2-3 runs) he'd get a 153, surely such a pitcher has had a better year than wright had this year? but he could theoretically still get screwed by a hitter having a good year simply because he cant get maximum points for his efforts.

Yancy Street Gang wrote: I think, in such a case, I would like to be able to vote 6 for the pitcher and zero for everyone else. that still doesnt strike at the root of my problem- a (good) starting pitcher is responsible for a greater number of plate appearances than a hitter is (making him at least as valuable to a team), yet they are concentrated into 1 out of every 5 games. if a hitter contributes 10 points worth of effort in 5 games he can get scores of 3 2 1 2 2. a pitcher should be able to get 0 10 0 0 0 for those 10 points worth of effort in 5 games, yet we are capping him at 0 6 0 0 0. so even though he was objectively as valuable as the hitter over the course of 5 games he is getting far less because of the artificial point cap. i understand the 6 point cap trying to prevent a hitter from getting 10 points when he goes 2-2, 2hr, 6rbi, we want to reward the 4 guys he drove in too, but a pitcher who throws a 9 inning shutout deserves at least the chance to be given more than 60% of the credit for that win. i'd like to lift the 6 point cap entirely, but if thats too extreme how bout a 6 point cap on hitters and no cap on pitchers OR a cap on starters equal to the number of innings they pitched, so a guy who goes 9 can get 9, a guy who goes 8 can get 8.

No more than six for any one player. can we discuss getting rid of this? what happens when a pitcher shuts the other team out and our team scores on an error 1-0? or better yet if a pitcher drives in the runs while shutting them out. the 6 points per player thing is blatently anti-pitching.

the problem with yahoo rankings, and any other fantasy rankings, are that they are normally tailored specifically to the standard 4x4 and 5x5 fantasy leagues. the rankings only rank these players according to their performance in those categories, a guy could have numbers like these- .260, 20, 80 and not look so hot in the yahoo rankings....until you realize that he had 50 doubles and a .370 OBP....i'd look first to things like OPS+, OPS by position rather than rankings that are designed for fantasy baseball

Konerko seems to clearly be the better fit for the 2006-2008 Mets, I think he's the better player as well.

Johnny Dickshot wrote: So far so good, but I swear the Angels will regret getting only 1 run outta a bases-loaded, 0-out situation vs. Leiter -- and on a squeeze! Nice at least that the MFYs fans are getting wet while also being miserable. Perhaps they'll get sick as well. scoring opportunities like that need to be capitalized on. yeah, wet, sick yankee fans is a good thing.

if those idiots can use them, anyone can.

Edgy DC wrote: It wouldn't be fluff, you see, because once that factor is applied, a bunch of 0.50 scores would be reduced to rather small scores. I think we all need to apply the same number of points to a given game --- even if that means, after the game, that we all are offered only six points to vote with, or get as many as 14. Control. Control. i like this alot. even in a crap game you can 2 points to 5 people knowing that once we've scaled it they'll each get only 1 out of it, but it prevents people's votes from being worth different amounts in a given game since everyone must assign 10 pts.

what if guidelines were established as to what each game was worth based on run differential? close wins are worth more than blowout wins which are worth more than close losses which are finally worth more than blowout losses. i dont think anyone ever has trouble assigning point when the mets lose 8-7 (give it to the hitters) or 1-0 (10 points for the SP) the problem comes wn they lose 10-0 or worse yet get no hit while every pitcher gives something up.

2 run double off the rocket... 5-1 braves ...never thought i'd be smiling about that. i hate clemens.

3 run homer off the clemens! 3-1 braves in the only game i hope they win.

none of those choices are right, you left out... Give up on baseball forever and begin saying over and over "its only 7 months till football starts again"

i kind of wonder if in some companies the amount of extra work produced by the internet isn't completely offset by the extra time spent bullshitting as a result of internet access.