metsmarathon

is football being played by people who are, as a whole, inherently more violent than baseball? one need not look at the demographics to answer that question. is football being played by people who are, as a whole, more violent than their originating communities than are baseball players? then we'd need to care about the demographics.

Perez 3.3 Beltran 2.1 Smith 1.9 Tatis 1.4 Feliciano 0.7 Reyes 0.6

Santana 6.0 Easley 1.5 Castro 1.2 Reyes 1.0 Chavez 0.2 Wright 0.1

Easley 3.1 Maine 2.1 Beltran 1.4 Schneider 1.2 Sanchez 1.1 Armas 1.1

Pelfrey 4.3 Delgado 2.1 Reyes 1.5 Chavez 0.9 Easley 0.6 Anderson 0.6

Easley 3.6 Wright 2.4 Reyes 1.5 Church 1.0 Smith 0.8 Tatis 0.7

wood has more saves, and about as good an era, lidge has 19, like wagner, but with an 0.77ish era and no blownies.

and that assessment holds up when i look at VORP, too. hanley ahead of jose, chipper ahead of wright, and mclouth ahead of beltran. if i open it up to include defense, per wins above replacement, then beltran actually drops to third among centerfielders, with aaron rowand taking top billing. using win shares, wright is third behind chipper and aramis ramirez reyes is third behind christian guzman (!) and hanley ramirez and beltran is the number 2 outfielder, still behind mclouth

wright and reyes and beltran are all the second most offensively productive national leaguers at their positions (based on a quick sampling of runs created per espn.com) wright and reyes should make the team. beltran, tho 2nd best centerfielder, is only the 6th best outfielder, and therefore is less likely to make the team, depending on how many outfielders they carry. mind you, i haven't checked to see if the best thridbaseman and shortstop are also the leading vote getters, so there's always that monkey wrench!

for those balls in play, is he getting a lot of ground balls that are finding holes, fly balls that outfielders aren't catching up to, or are they line drives?

toronto, oddly, chooses to go a different way:

gah! damnit!

that's a nice hat!

Nymr83 wrote: you may hate walmart's labor practices but what do they have to do with being bad for the environment that you can't say about every other company? c'mon, what commodities does walmart sell that aren't, essentially, disposable? the clothing? disposable. the furniture? disposable. the electronics? disposable. granted, i think that costco might fit in more with the "buy in bulk; use in bulk" commentary that is exemplified by buy 'n' large, but walmart is the easy, and no less apt, target. the movie is more commentary on the whole 'buy, use, toss' product lifecycle than it is on mega-retailers, necessarily; but then, who but the mega retailers truly espouses that philosophy? buying new is far more important than servicing old. but really, the criticism is laid not on the company necessarily, but on the consumer. if consumers didn't want to by so damned much, only to waste and/or dispose of it, then there wouldn't need to be so many mega retailers (or in the case of this movie, so much of one). is a message of 'use and waste less' really that subversive? if yo watch the movie, are you really going to equate 'buy n large' to target, or kmart, or macy's, or bloomingdales? or are you going to instead think immediately of walmart, or perhaps costco? and if you do, does that really immedaitely undermine the whole foundation of our capitalist society? i hardly think so. think of the economic opportunity that wall-e represents! why, a small business could get rich by proposing one of them!

my question... how exactly is barry zito overrated? like, who's tooting his horn nowadays? or is his awfulness overrated, and the voters are savvy enough to pick up on it?

c'mon... what about my secret identity? no love for jerry o'connell?

or, y'know, cheered on his new 'mates...

and of course, joe morgan thinks that this is exactly the kind of situation that would make instant replay untenable as it could slow the game...

and shares it, apparently, with slumping teammates...

Rockin' Doc wrote: I can't recall the last time I have seen any youth baseball player (Tee Ball through college) use a wooden bat. The use of metal bats has taken over most of baseball outside of the professional ranks. I know that I never, in all my years of baseball, used a wooden bat after playing Tee ball. My first year of Little League (1970) was when I and every kid on our team converted to metal bats. Due to the proliferation of metal bats in youth baseball, I would imagine that the father of the youth grew up using metal bats, assuming that he played ball as a youth. Anyone that has used metal bats over the years, should be well aware of the fact that they have evolved and improved over the past 30-40 years. Improving their product to meet the demands of the purchasing public is what most companies strive to do. For that reason, it is difficult for me to think that a parent would have absolutely no idea of the risks inherent with playing baseball with metal bats and harder ball. I know that for every team my son played on through the years, I (or my wife) had to sign a consent form acknowledging the potential for injury that he may subject him to through his participation. If I'm not mistaken, my parents generally signed some type of release for me, way back in the dark ages. If these parents signed such a statement, then I don't see how they could possibly hold the league responsible for the tragic injury to their son. As for the bat manufacturers, I may be mistaken, but I thought it was common knowledge that metal bats alllow players to hit the ball much harder for a multitude of reasons. The harder (than wood) surface makes the ball seem to jump of the ball at increase velocity. They are much lighter than a wood bat of comparable size, which allows a player to swing quicker and generate greater bat speed. Basic physics (E=MC2)* tells us that greater bat speed will generate more energy and therefore a greater velocity on the ball being struck. The modern technology and engineering, the sweet spot of a metal bat is larger. It is virtually impossible to get jammed with an metal alloy bat. Even when hit near the handle, the ball can still carry a long way. Unless it can be shown that the bat manufacturer(s) improved their product to willfully make it potentially dangerous, then I personally fail to see how they can be held liable. Should the bat manufacturers have known that improving the bats would increase the potential risk of players of any age? I think common sense would make me think yes. Should parents realize that a metal bats allow players of any age to hit the ball harder and thereby increase the potential for injury? Again, common sense tells me yes. I'm not a lawyer, so do not profess to understand the law in such matters. However, as a former player and the parent of a former player, I fail to see how someone could claim that they were ignorant of the potential risks that sports in general and metal alloy bats in particular pose to participants. I sincerely feel for the young man and his family. I will lift them up in my prayers. If people here want to take up a collection and make a donation to provide for his medical care, I'll gladly donate without hesitation, but I personally fail to see how the bat manufacturer, the stor that sold the bat, or Little League baseball is any more responsible for this tragedy than the parents. *=I don't know how to make C squared. My coding skills aren't that advanced. can the sporting goods retailer be expected to establish criteria which define to what age groups they will sell certain equipment for which there are no existing regulations, yet willing customers? can the bat manufacturer be expected to establish criteria which define to which age groups they will allow certain equipment to be sold for which there are no existed regulations, yet willing customers? the greatest responsibility falls to the league which should be charged with the safety of its participants. the league (or government) should establish realistic injury criteria for its participants and establish specifications for its equipment which will, to the maximum extent practical, minimize those risks. but there's always going to be one kid too strong who hits a ball too well into the chest of a kid too weak, and then shit happens... also, e=mc^2 describes that if the baseball were to be annihilated and converted into pure energy, it would generate some 14,000,000,000,000,000 Joules, or ten megatons of TNT. KE= (1/2)*m*v^2 describes that the kinetic energy of a bat is equal to one half of its mass times its velocity squared. that doubling the velocity has the same effect on energy output as quadrupling the mass.

i am so ridiculously far away from 10,000 posts...

if anyone can provide me with a solid explanation, based on predictions of the responses and behaviors of actual real human beings, of how booing a struggling and/or slumping player is more likely to help him than hinder him, than i'd be all for listening to it. until that happens, i cannot shake the notion that booing and generally creating a negative environment for the team whose positive performance we would hope for is a bad, counterproductive thing. and while booing may not make you less of a fan, it may make you part of the problem. and the enemy of winning.

crap, that reminds me... i have to be so much less of a slacker!

nah... the little guy gave a 1.81 in that game. it was someone else.

wagner is screwed by the fact that he usually only performs in wins. his performances are always normalized and derated due to the increased performances by his peers. in wins, there simply isnt enough schaeffer to go around. in losses, which wagner does not participate in often unless they are by his own hand, a lesser performance is often rewarded by greater beering. for nearly every other player, this effect should balance out. for wagner, it cannot. i think, too, that for teh same reason that we would give wagner more points for a one run save than a two run save - that there is less of a safety net - we should award more points for pitching hte ninth inning than the eighth. if, in his next start, nelson figueroa goes out, pitches a perfect first inning, and leaves the game due to an extended rain delay, the game gets to the eighth inning tied 0-0, wherein duaner sanchez throws a perfect inning, followed by the mets plating a run in the bottom of the eighth, and wagner ices it with a perfect ninth, which of the three pitchers would get the most schaeffer? i'll tell you right now, it wouldn't be nelson. take the same game, and switch it up. lets say it gets to the eigth, and sanchez gives up a run - a perfect inning aside from one measley home run over the center field fence. but the mets score two runs in the bottom of the eighth, and in comes wagner. he, too, pitches a perfect inning, save, of course, for a home run over the center field fence. did one home run affect the outcome of the game more than the other? if we were giving out negative schaeffer points, would more go to sanchez, or to wagner?