Frayed Knot

My initial reaction to this (without any number crunching and so on) was Carter. Maybe that's the result of the more sepia-tinted memories being better than reality, but there's no denying the value of an all-around catcher and if you're going to be "stuck" with one or the other for the length of a career I think I'd prefer the multi-purpose guy to the more one-dimensional, even if that dimension was awesome for a long time and the gap even bigger than I remember. btw, this sort of either/or question came from my thinking about Bagwell and the HoF. He spent much of his career being overshadowed by McGwire and certainly didn't have the eye-popping peak years of Big Mac. But, offered the entire package and factoring in Baggy's superior base-running, fielding, and consistency, my gut tells me to opt for the clone of him as my 1Bman for the duration of his career over McGwire, and shouldn't that be at least a consideration in determining HoF votes? (even before steroid questions get involved) And I just threw the idea of D'arnaud in there as an example since I'm asking this question just as we happen to have a catcher about to start his career for our team. Not trying to imply that I think he's going to be either of these guys or that it'll be a disappointment if he turns out to be merely good.

Ceetar wrote: Frayed Knot wrote: If you don't buy it, they won't keep coming out hardly true, perhaps because you're not buying it they keep re engineering them to try to find something you'll buy. I can imagine some of the random variations the last couple of years have been selling well. The point is that if fans refuse to buy the ugly ones then they won't be so quick to put out ugly ones (or at least the bath they'll take on the fuglies will be enough to keep them on their toes next time). But if the fans buy, regardless of aesthetics, every new design each year as if driven by some sort of sheepish or completionist urge then they'll keep changing 'em up and shoveling them out knowing they have a captive audience. Saying no to unnecessary merchandise is a powerful weapon when used correctly.

Many NYM fans are going to bust a gut later today if a certain Mr. Piazza does not get the required 75% HoF votes, even though most people assume that (absent some Armstrong-ian revelations) will get in eventually and probably as soon as next year. Is making him wait fair? .... probably not. Ideal? ... hardly. But is this any worse of a crime than Gary Carter having to wait, what was it?, five or six years before he burst through? And that got me thinking about who we think had the better overall career. So if given the choice of having one or the other as your #1 catcher for the length of his career, who would you prefer? IOW, supposing we could wave our magic wands [insert FMan joke here] and give Travis D'arnaud all the attributes of one or the other. We're talking about [u:31kqwl64]their entire careers[/u:31kqwl64] here, not just their NYM stints, and our hypothetical Darn-Oh will be given the same strengths, weaknesses, length of career, injury histories, etc., so there's no copping out and saying you'll take Carter's glove but Mike's bat, or you'll take both but convert Mike early on into a 1st baseman. You get a virtual clone of one or the other and you get him, warts and all, for the entirety of his career. Some relevant facts: Piazza: 7,745 PAs; .308/.377/.545 (922 OPS -- 143 OPS+); 12 ASG; RoY, 7 Top-10 MVPs, 4 Top-5 MVPs; 10 Silver Sluggers Carter: 9,019 PAs; .262/.335/.439 (773 OPS -- 115 OPS+); 11 ASG; #2RoY, 4 Top-10 MVPs, 2 Top-5 MVPs, 5 Silver Slugger Piazza, even given the differences in eras, was obviously the better offensive player although I don't think you'll find anyone who thinks the advantage in defense in Carter's favor doesn't at least partially make up for that.

If you don't buy it, they won't keep coming out

metirish wrote: Where do the FOX exit polls have Piazza? I don't know, but Karl Rove is vehemently disputing Nate Silver's projections.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I can only assume that this means that the Yankees are planning to fold after the 2013 season. I'm holding on to the idea that this is still an option. But mainly it refers to a constant stream of verbiage out of the club that they're being bled dry by paying the luxury tax each year (it's scheduled to get bumped up after next season) and therefore are determined to get the payroll under the $189 million lux-tax limit going into 2014

Ceetar wrote: The writers are waiting for someone to tell them what to do, or somehow do a retroactive blood test for substances on their naughty list. This implies that the writers are voting as if a solid bloc all with the same reasoning. But clearly they're not. Some are taking an absolutist 'Steroids = No' policy while others have stated specifically that they don't care. Most are somewhere in between deciding either they'll take each case individually or that their opinions are still evolving. I may not always like the results but I don't have a problem with the system - and certainly I'm not going to be lobbying for reforms based on the (as yet speculative) outcome from a single year's ballot.

Yeah, the thing about Morse is that a team can't simply sign him, they'll have to trade for him instead. The upside is that whoever gets him is only on the hook for one year and apparently that lack of beyond 2013 commitment is important to the Yanx these days.

Vic Sage wrote: i don't think it's either a "nightmare" or a "mess". If no one gets in this year, someone will likely get in next year. If the writers want some more time to let the dust settle on the Steroids era before jumping in with both feet, or just want to penalize the PED suspects with a 1-year ("not on the first ballot, you don't!") suspension, and if some of the younger voters are considering a wider range of statistical criteria for enshrinement, thus leading to more diversity in the vote than in the past, then we'll have some planes stacking up over LaGuardia for a few years. And that's ok with me. Now if the writers continue to vote no one in over a prolonged period, then there may be a systemic problem to be reviewed, given that they will have been overlooking worthy honorees by any measure. But i don't have a problem, in principle, with keeping the standards high, and in considering the "morals clause", rather than lowering standards to a point where the HoF is debased and ultimately rendered meaningless. Now THAT would be a mess that is uncorrectable. In fact, I think the Hall is done more damage in the long run by voting in players with impressive but not all-time-great careers like Morris, Lee, McGriff, Mattingly or Murphy than it is damaged by holding out Clemens and Bonds for a few years. Yup on all accounts.

bmfc1 wrote: Our feelings about the MFY aside--if the money was close, where would you go? Your kids stay in the same schools, you don't have to move, so there are no personal aspects to the decision. Yeah there are, he'll be 10-15 years younger than most of his teammates if he chooses the Yanx. None of them would know the same bands as him or watch the same TV shows.

Edgy MD wrote: Looks like Griff was able to get a big chunk of his salary locked into his signing bonus. Sure, but the overall size of the contract he was able to get was artificially capped so, even if the guaranteed pct is fairly large, the total package is about half of what a player of his draft status would have received just a few years earlier. But even more important is that he's locked into that deal for, what?, three years?, four? five? and then a year or two beyond that because his team will simply "franchise" him to keep him from negotiating a true open market deal until sometime around the end of the decade ... assuming he lasts that long.

I'm glad MLB doesn't do any of these things, like scheduling virtually every Yankee playoff game during prime time, or colluding on free agent salaries, or starting WS games at 8:40 PM Eastern and extending commercial breaks so they finish at midnight if you're lucky, or rigging salary structures such that even if D'Arnaud were fully ready to start the season at Citi Field he's going to start in Las Vegas to delay his free-agent clock (or arbitration clock, or whatever) a year, or playing games in unbearable weather in order to get them over with and get the next round started. I'd hate to think that baseball would do anything like that. Yes, baseball does all of that - or, as in cases like collusion, has done some of it in the past. The difference here is, and the reason the thread was started, is that while baseball regularly gets cited for these things by the sports media, the NFL gets a total pass on all of it and more from a press corps which often seems more interested in acting like a pr firm. In addition to the things cited here, the NFL never had a steroid problem, they never had a period when black players were banned, never used replacement players or counted the games with those scabs the same as the same-season games with regular players, etc.

Just a thought about kickball in wake of the success and turn-around seasons of top draft picks Robert Griffin & Andrew Luck -- Yeah, even though both of them lost their very first playoff chance this weekend, they were still in large part responsible for turning teams that won [u:10n4gusj]a combined 6 games[/u:10n4gusj] last season to 20 this year. My question is that since the MWWF (mediots who worship football) were so unanimously in favor of a rookie salary cap based on the idea that not all of them reach their (supposed) potential, we should be hearing from them any minute now about how these two are underpaid and should be given new deals now that they clearly met and surpassed expectations. Guess I shouldn't hold my breath on that one, huh? btw, I love the fact that Seattle QB Russell Wilson (another rookie earning far beyond whatever his rigged contract calls for) is succeeding despite being 5' 11". The poobahs who run & comment on that sport have been adamant about the "fact" that the position can't be played properly by anyone under at least 6' 3". What closed-minded thinking that is!

Mex17 wrote: It's Murphy and Parnell this year, then Davis/Gee/Tejada/Turner/Baxter after 2013 going into 2014, correct? Future arb eligibility depends on not only how long your players spend on the ML roster but in some cases how much they spend as compared to players on other teams. You can't always know a year or two in advance when one will be eligible particularly for players who may spend time on the AAA shuttle. Is there any way to roughly surmise what the raises are going to be beforehand? You in charge of their books these days?

Flores as a full-time ML 2Bman is very much just a hope at this point.

MFS62 wrote: Because [sizemore] has been injured for two years, perhaps he would sign a reasonable, second year loaded, one year plus option contract to re-prove himself. He's still under 30. You misspelled the word FIVE. Sizemore's last full season was in 2008 When I first saw him play I immediately thought he was the next Carlos Beltran. Unfortunately that turned out to be more accurate than I imagined - except that he started falling apart at an even younger age.

The major strength of the NFL is its TV deal but the drawback is that you become beholden to that monster. Absolutely. The networks had a problem in that the 1 PM games were going past 4 PM which meant that some of the markets that got the 4 PM games had to miss the end of the 1 PM games. The solution was to start many of the 4 PM games at 4:25. It wasn't to think of ways to shorten these bloated games which would have made the fans happy (e.g. fewer commercial breaks, less time for half-time) but to elongate the broadcast day. Not just elongated games, but the playoffs games used to be slotted in the 1PM & 4PM EST timeslots. The whole window has shifted 3+ hours later for TV in addition to blocking out 3-1/2 hrs per game rather than the previous 3-even. On top of that they will hold up the kickoff of the later game if the earlier one hasn't finished yet; potentially more good news for the actual paying customers in GB.

it's not a drawback to the league, they're more than happy to manipulate the game times. They don't care about the fans (in the stands ) You're right in that they don't care about the paying fans in the stands (even though the talking heads will constantly site the GB fans specifically for their heartiness, loyalty, and publicly owned team) but how again does that non-caring attitude NOT clash with the whole "Best run league" label? I don't understand why it's okay to have stupid wild card games on Saturday and not the Super Bowl.The SB on Saturday night makes sense. The networks say that viewership is lower on Fridays and Saturdays than on Sundays but that wouldn't be the case for a Super Bowl. To a certain extent the viewership would be lower: more people make plans for Saturdays; more people work on that day compared to on Sunday; weekend trips wouldn't be over, etc.; which again comes back to the slave to TV part. When your legacy is built on having great TV ratings, slightly below great isn't considered good enough.

So the "best run league" has decided that the best option for playoff time-slots today is that the game in Texas should be played in the afternoon (3:30 CST) and the one in Wisconsin should be played at night (7:00 CST). Probably the difference between being in the upper 20s/low 30s w/daylight vs upper-teens/low-20s & dark for the fans in the stands in Green Bay. The one in Houston is of course indoors so the temp there is no different no matter when you kick it off. The major strength of the NFL is its TV deal but the drawback is that you become beholden to that monster.

metsguyinmichigan wrote: My son, after much research, obtained JP Howell. I'll alert the Mets. Looks like the kid might be just a little bit late

"been over a year since I saw this" -- wasn't released until August of '12, so "over a year" is unlikely unless you have some real good connections or are time-traveling. " High speed bike chases aren't the usual medium for high speed chases and high speed chases are awesome. there. Just enough hi-jinks to keep me entertained between chases." -- Yeah, the movie isn't a lot more than just escapist fun but it succeeds at that at least, helped out in the heft department by Michael Shannon ('Boardwalk Empire', 'Take Shelter') as the crooked and desperate cop/chaser.

Even though he has the schooling and brains to have more going on in his life, Joseph Gordon-Levitt* --street name: Wilee-- opts to live the high adrenaline life of a NYC bicycle messenger, racing through the streets of Manhattan on his fixed-gear, no-brakes machine. And, really, would you expect a different backstory on a movie bike messenger? But when he's assigned to pick up an envelope from a Columbia University student to be delivered as a 'Premium Rush' down in Chinatown, he suddenly attracts the interest of a crooked cop, a bicycle cop, his messenger rival, his sometime girl, plus some Chinese gambling thugs/human smugglers. * I have trouble remembering the proper order of those names and also where the hyphen belongs

In the future - or actually the future's future since this film takes place in the future about those folks dealing with their future -- the overlords of that time solve the problem of what to do with those who get out of line not by killing them but by using the ability of time-travel to simply 'disappear' them. They solve both that problem and the one about what to do with the body by shipping them back 30 years into the past where assassins, known as 'Loopers', are waiting to execute them. Naturally things do not always go smoothly and hi-jinx ensue when main character Joseph Gordon-Levitt winds up meeting his future self in the form of Bruce Willis.

Wasn't good at much else, but he sure was a capable pinch-hitter.

Voting for who should be in the HoF is the same thing as voting for who shouldn't. Every year there are several dozen choices so MOST of the boxes next to each are blank. Say there are 30 choices in a given year, I'm not getting how one guy's vote with 8 check marks and 22 blanks is automatically superior to the one who went with 3 yeas and 27 nays, or the one who opted for a complete shutout. Hell, Vlad here thinks anyone not voting for the max of 10 should be tarred and feathered. They're voting their consciences here, not for quotas.