metsmarathon

my team sucks, i'm fairly certain. i have no saves, virtually no steals, and really lack the slugging to make up for it. i only hope my bevy of middle relievers helps drive down my whip and era...

right now, i might lean towards keeping it at 72, for entirely self-serving reasons. i no longer have access to fantasy sports websites at work, and as i'm learning in my basketball legues, i don't check in every day. now, with baseball, i'm more involved, typically, but still, anything shorter than 48 hours would put me at a disadvantage. so... 48 or 72 is my vote.

in

what, no harry potter? its the only movie keeping me from claiming to have seen only academy award nominated movies this year: ratatouille the bourne ultimatum transformers i didn't get to the theaters much...

i might have to get out to a theater to see this. i like movies wherein i can marvel at the technical implausibilities and logical impasses mixed in among overwrought and unneeded cgi and barrels of untapped potential. i just read a synopsis, and it sounds like the type of movie where they try to hit a five-run home run with everything in the movie, and predictably striking out more often than not.

i think the critical consensus is that will smith carries the movie as far as it can be carried, to the point htat his performance is considered by some to be its one redeeming (or positive) quality. if wild wild west didn't undercut his career, i am legend surely cannot. but i haven't seen it, so i can't say for sure.

damn... well, i still suck in my other leagues, a fact that my newfound inability to access any and all fantasy sporting sites due to increased internet scrutiny at work will not be likely to ameliorate in any imagineable way.

sigh... my autodraft team in our league is doing very well - first place well in fact - but my live-drafted teams are sucking major ass. one is understandably so in that its a bunch of white guys with a late draft pick, and my other team which should probably be better is just all kinds of injured. this is totally going to skunk my yahoo profile, since i really don't think i'm attentive enough to maintain a full year in our number one spot!

Nymr83 wrote: why the obssession with replacement level? if everyone was replacement level we'd win 50 games. you should be comparing guys to the average player to determine whether they are helping or hurting Can we just stop posting about the NBA? I honestly don't know what you're talking about. i'm trying to make the point that below-average production over a larger number of chances is hurtful not helpful. quick question: kaz matsui. has he helped or hurt the rockies this year?

ramon castro's VORP (value over replacement player) is 13.1 - that is ramon castro contributed 13 runs more in his plate appearances than a replacement player would have been expected to have contributed. paul loduca's VORP is 9.2. so, ramon castro's offense contributed 4 runs more to the mets' offense this year than paul loduca. but what about defense? well, lets look at another metric or three, also from baseball prospectus. ramon castro's BRAR (batting runs above replacement - effectively the same as/similar to VORP; what's the difference, i couldn't tell you) is 11. paul loduca's BRAR is 7. same 4 run differential. ramon castro's FRAR (fielding runs above replacement) is 5. paul loduca's FRAR is 17. so, ramon castro contributed a net of 16 runs more than a replacement player, while paul loduca contributed a net of 24 runs more than a replacement player. ramon castro's WARP (wins above replacement player) is 1.8, whereas paul loduca's WARP is 2.6.

wouldn't lawrence be a 0 and the remainder of the negatives be one point higher?

see, the current players aren't evaluated against past mets, they are evaluated against their teammates. when a player begins his tenure as a met, he begins to accrue points towards his ultimate ranking, starting from zero. the more he plays, the more he plays well, and the more the mets win with him, the more points he will accrue. his contributions are considered relevant to single years, as what happened in the past stays in the past, and what will happen in teh future will stay in the future. for instance, should reyes' slump at the end of this year affect how he performed last year, and how we ranked him? no. last year was last year. this year, he will be appropriately reprimanded for his struggles, in that he will be ranked lower and will therefore accrue fewer points. a player can never be awarded negative points, and therefore can never see his cumulative point total slide backwards. voters are encouraged to consider playoff performance in their rankings, however voters should also consider that without a player's regular season performance, the team may never have seen the postseason, so weigh accordingly. re: trachsel, and steering this thread way off course, the mets have had only 29 pitchers with 500 or more ip. trachsel is 17th among them with an era+ of 102. he's 14th on strikeouts, 12th in innings pitched, is 10th in W/L%, and 10th in wins. its not like we've had a great history of great players sticking around for a while. steve trachsel in our top 50 is what we get.

name 50 or more mets who should be ranked more highly than trachsel.

thats right... i forgot where i had gotten bedard... thanks!

aside from the basic outline of the jason bourne character, there's nothing else in the movies thats remotely like the books. i like that. both stand on their own. i think i like the movies better, as the characters and such are more believeable in their words, actions and reactions. ludlum never was good with people, imo.

bad boys and the rock entertain me. bad boys 2 was trying too hard, which is quite a statement for a michael bay flick. armageddon had about two entertaining moments - the opening meteor shower, and the two shuttles taking off at the same time. the rest of it was a suck-fest.

i liked it too. its not a movie a grown man should feel embarrassed to see. it really was quite good. fine cinema, no. best blockbuster i've seen in a long time - yeah. honestly, when i heard michael bay was doing the transoformers movie, i cried a little inside. i was afraid of a cross between bad boys 2 and T3. but my fears were certainly allayed. i'd easily slot this somewhere on the blockbuster scale as better than independence day, but a tad bit below T2.

count me in.

i just put in a waiver claim for andy pettitte, and just picked up chad cordero, who somebody really wasn't thinking hard enough about. i think the only reason i won't win this league is if i don't try... my pitching staff is so good, i don't even have to think about picking up ollie perez off the free agency rolls. i mean, damn... check this staff: oswalt meche saito otsuka kazmir zambrano c.cordero harden hendrickson pettitte - maybe

he wouldn't necessarily hurt you if he were whiled away in a DL slot, so long as he showed some promise of playing (well) this year. if you have enough injuries where his taking up a DL slot is hurting you, then you'd have to make the decision, but by then, you'd likely have a better idea of when and if he'd actually be playing this year. also, if he does come back, you'd likely be able to keep him in that DL slot for a while, depending on any other roster moves you might be making, until you were comfortable that adding him to your active roster would actually help you out.

ok, i know you guys really don't want me in the league because i'm just going to crush the competition like so many of the bones in lastings' hand, but really, this is too much! the league page says that the draft will commence at 6:30 PM EDT (whereas i had thought it was at 7:30...) now, see, my team page says the same thing, and yet, as i type this, i do believe it is ~5:30 EDT, and my team page is telling me that there are about 2 hours left until the draft. its really very clever of you all. setting it up so that the first hour of the draft i will be at the mercy of my prerankings. but no matter. once i am allowed into the draft, my late round sleeper picks will knock your socks off! unless everybody is having this same issue... who knows!

Edgy DC wrote: Marathon, our in-house mathematical idiot savant, forgets that we square the ranking --- his own innovation. now, see, i thought those numbers were too high...

top 30 players in a given season, ranked linearly from 30 (best/most productive/most valuable/etc... ) down to 1 (worst, etc..), with no ties, and agreed to, mostly, via consensus of the participants. points were multiplied by wins, so the best and worst '62 mets would have 1200 and 40 points, respectively, and the best and worst '86 mets would have 3000 and 100 points, respectively. (i forget if we accounted for playoff wins) then add up the points that players got throughout their metly careers, and put em in order. i think that's the way it goes. i'm pretty sure gil hodges has used up all of his opportunities to garner additional ranking points. for milledge, its all up to him, mostly, and us, partly. in six years, trachsel has middlingly stayed just ahead of wright and reyes, who have half his service time, but surely have much higher rankings in the past two years. it isn't exatly the same as win shares, but kinda sorts has the same effect of giving credit for both longevity and quality. nobody's in the top ten with fewer than 8 years as a met, but the guy with 16 just misses.

if you're already getting wins from your starters, the middle relievers are good for improving weak ratios.

unless you're in a holds league. then the 7th/8th inning guy can become more valuable. holds aren't as stable as saves, necessarily, and they don't pile up as much, so those guys are still less valuable than a good closer, but now may be more valuable than a bad closer...