soupcan

Elster88 wrote: ...but I doubt her best abilities (taking off her top?) would have been that useful, either. Speak for yourself - I find talent like that extremely useful.

Mike Bacsik Rey Ordonez Dave Telgheder Roberto Hernandez

I saw this newest Jennifer Aniston vehicle the other night. The ads lead you to believe it is a tense thriller...it's not. I had this plot pegged within the first ten minutes and spent the rest of the movie picking it apart.. Suffice to say that there have been many movies that utilized a similiar story and were a hell of a lot better, This train got 'derailed' leaving Track Two in my opinion.

Couldn't Piazza have been re-signed for one year at maybe $5 mil? The LoDuca and Piazza numbers are similar and Piazza had 19 HRs last year. Unless Omar is still wheeling and dealing and LoDuca is going to be involved in another trade I'm not sure I understand what he's doing here.

If they didn't want to be traded how about taking less $$$ and getting a no-trade? Um, when exactly would that issue of Playboy be coming out anyway?

ScarletKnight41 wrote: Most, if not all, of the original cast reprised their roles for the movie. Yeah but no Daphne Rubin-Vega as Mimi. She was my favorite thing about the original Broadway production. Granted Rosario Dawson is totally hot but can she sing?

I saw it on Broadway with the original cast and flat-out loved it. Loved the music, loved the characters. Loved it so much I went back and saw it again with a different cast. Hated it. Maybe I'll see the movie, prolly when it's on cable.

Elster88 wrote: ]This team is more fun to watch in the winter than the summer. --soupcan, 11/28/05 is not true at all. Never has been really. I'll take losing baseball over the winter blues any day. Oh shush. We all would rather watch actual baseball - this is tongue in cheek you chucklehead. Just my luck - someone finds something I say entertaining enough to want to remember and someone else has to give 'em a hard time. How's a guy supposed to figure out what to put on his tombstone with critics like you around?

"Eerie how much I look like Cecil Fielder right now, isn't it?"

archive man wrote: hope somebody has more METS 1977-1982! '77-'82? Yeesh. Even If I had games from those years I think I would have had those tapes destroyed years ago. Those were some baaaaaad teams.

Amazin' Two years in a row of off-season, superstar mega-deals This team is more fun to watch in the winter than the summer.

I'm gonna hazard a guess and say that all most of you who are bummed anbout this deal because you expected great things from Jacobs and Petite are in your mid-20's at most. As has been stated already - pitching prospects are so hard to predict. I mentioned David West in a previous post - remember him? I'm guessing not. Touted as a can't-miss, future #1 starting pitcher he was dealt to Minnesota in the Frank Viola deal. I was up in arms over his deal. Viola came here and went 20-12 in 1990. West's career numbers were 31-38, never winning more than 7 games in one season. There's two things I look at when a trade is made - does this deal bring my team closer to a World Series championship and if the player I traded away reaches his full potential would he become even close to the player I got? Well yes, I think that having Delgado's offense brings this team much closer to a WS than Jacobs would. And even if Jacobs is the real deal would he ever become as good a player as Delgado is right now? Not likely and even if he did, we traded him and got his best numbers right now in Delgado without having to wait for Jacobs to develop. In other words - TITTS baby, TITTS.

Oh yeah - the Post also said that Omar is talking to the D'Bags about Benson for Javier Vasquez.

There's a reason some guys are writers and some guys are GMs.

I like this deal mas mucho for many of the reasons already stated in this thread. -It prolly takes us away from Manny and I was becoming increasingly leery of giving up Milledge even though I know there's a better chance of him becoming David West/Alex Ochoa/Alex Escobar than Tom Seaver/Darryl Strawberry/Dwight Gooden. -Jacobs and Petit? HA! Fleeced. Fleeced I tell ya! -Delgado not standing up for the Anthem? You're kidding me right? This is a concern? Last I checked that's kinda what we stand for (pardon the pun) in this country, no? -I'm also thinking that if Omar pulled this deal off he's not so concerned about any imagined ill will between Carlos and the Mets. And if ain't concerned, I ain't concerned. I read in the NY Post this morning that the Mets are also talking about getting Soriano as well with Bannister's name in the mix on that one.

I hear ya Scarlet.

KC wrote: I just have a thing about tailed amphibians - especially of the Caudata order. I've never gotten along with them. Well that's a whole 'nother issue entirely.

How about just ignoring those posts that you find objectionable and moving on? The man makes some compelling arguments if you get past bloody Jesus. Besides methinks he just likes stirring the pot rather than really believing half the things he says.

Personally I'm on the fence with Manny (yes, it's a wide fence), so I'm content to defer to the GM on this one. I defer to the GM quite a bit actually, probably because I assume that GMs know a bit more about building a ballteam then I, an insurance professional, do. Giving up Milledge would bug me but I also bought the hype on David West, Gregg Jefferies and Alex Escobar. Manny has only three years left on his $$$$$ deal so even if he becomes a bust - it really is only three years. Heck Matsui's third year is here already. The Cameroon trade doesn't really irk me. I liked the guy but he was hurt quite a bit during his tenure here and once we got Beltran there wasn't much of point to having both these guys. All this being said - I really don't understand why so many seem to have a problem with Sal. Dialogue my brothers, dialogue.

soupcan = anus cop Yeah thanks, I'll think I'll go peruse another thread.

I own two of these framed, autographed prints because two different people at two different times gifted them tro me. One is in my office-office and one is in my home-office. It also served as my screen saver for quite a while. I relive the euphoria of that moment each time I look at this photo.

I'm sorry dudes. Failed to realize there was another Pecota thread that pre-dated mine. 'Read more post less' is tough when you don't visit as often as you used to. I'll try to rectify that.

From today's New York Times... Based on this, Omar might want to think twice before throwing $40 mil over 4 years at our friend Mr. Wagner... November 13, 2005 Keeping Score Predicting Futures in Baseball, and the Downside of Damon By ALAN SCHWARZ INDIAN WELLS, Calif., Nov. 11 - Thad Levine was distracted. As Levine, the assistant general manager of the Texas Rangers, conversed one evening at last week's Major League Baseball general managers meetings, his eyes kept wandering to an enticing packet of paper sitting on a nearby coffee table: the 2006 Pecota Projections. For the growing number of baseball executives bent toward statistical analysis, a certain anticipation builds every off-season for the release of what is known simply as Pecota, Baseball Prospectus's �berforecast of every player's performance the next season. Most front offices have an employee who consults it - particularly during the free-agent season. "Signing someone to a three- or four-year deal is a risk-management business decision," Levine said, leafing through the pages. "This tool does a fantastic job of managing expectations for what the player will do for you." What separates Pecota from the gaggle of projection systems that outsiders have developed over many decades is how it recognizes, even flaunts, the uncertainty of predicting a player's skills. Rather than generate one line of expected statistics, Pecota presents seven - some optimistic, some pessimistic - each with its own confidence level. The system greatly resembles the forecasting of hurricane paths: players can go in many directions, so preparing for just one is foolish. Take Johnny Damon, the Red Sox center fielder considered one of this off-season's most attractive free agents. Pecota examines many factors beyond his raw statistical record - the effect of playing in hitter-friendly Fenway Park, Damon's age (32), power and speed, even his height and weight - and compares him with every major leaguer since 1949, identifying the trajectories others have taken and assessing the probability Damon will follow them. The system forecasts Damon to have about a 25 percent chance of posting an on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS) of .829 next season, but also a 40 percent chance of declining to .761. This is because players like Damon have maintained their performance only for about one year before beginning a consistent, decided decline. In other words, buyer beware. Pecota is less pessimistic toward shortstop Rafael Furcal, who at 28 has a better chance of maintaining his performance level. (Though the system suggests that middle infielders age more quickly than classic sluggers.) A relative sleeper could be found in outfielder Brian Giles, who despite being 35 has the kind of skills - excellent power, speed and a fine batting eye - that tend to age relatively slowly. Pecota was developed four summers ago by Nate Silver, a 24-year-old Chicago financial consultant. "In some ways it was boredom," Silver said. "If I had a spreadsheet on my computer, it looked like I was busy." (Its official name, Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm, joyfully boils down to the last name of Bill Pecota, a former major league utilityman.) The projections are anticipated enough among some executives that Silver has received e-mail messages saying, "Hey, are the Pecotas done yet?" Though the system naturally cannot predict all player fluctuations, it succeeds more than most. Last winter, it identified Jonny Gomes, a relatively unknown Tampa Bay Devil Rays outfielder, as having an excellent chance at significant improvement. Gomes hit .282 with 21 home runs in just 101 games. It also foresaw even greater production from established players like Andruw Jones, Derrek Lee and Dontrelle Willis. Pecota helps quantify the danger of long-term pitching investments, and points out which types of arms tend to project best. The strongest indicators of future performance are rates of strikeouts, walks and home runs, but also ground ball-to-fly ball ratio and even body type. As for this year's free-agent pitching market, Silver sees a fine future for A. J. Burnett, an enigmatic 28-year-old right-hander. Burnett projects to have a 3.65 earned run average next season, but also has a 15 percent chance of blossoming into a Cy Young award candidate for several seasons. Of the two most intriguing relievers available, the veteran Billy Wagner and the less-known B. J. Ryan, Pecota chooses Ryan as the better long-term investment thanks to his age next season (30 to Wagner's 34) and several other peripheral factors. Pecota's focus on looking several years ahead is what catches executives' eyes most at this time of year - and helps temper what is often unfounded optimism about players' chances of improving. "Sometimes you have a guy with a track record, a guy in his early 30's, and when he declines we act like we're shocked," Levine said. "And we don't want to look at a 26-year-old who does X and think that in two years he's going to do two-times X. This helps us stay grounded." No organization uses Pecota in a vacuum, instead incorporating it with other projection techniques like traditional scouting reports. But a decade after Bill Pecota retired, his name is growing more prominent each winter. "Everyone in baseball is in the guessing business," the Mariners executive Dan Evans said. "This makes it a little bit less of a guess." E-mail: keepingscore@nytimes.com >

I liked calling him 'Monkeywrench'. I'll miss that.

If Met brass doesn't have a problem with it why should I? I'm not the one signing those big checks.