ORS

Now that, is effing funny, and utterly unsuprising.

Thomas was touching the rim because he was attempting a put back dunk. He muffed it a bit and the ball hit the back of the rim. Fortunately, for him and Duke, it went straight up and down through the cylinder. You see this regularly. I've never seen a ref call a player for touching the rim on his own dunk attempt. I also thought the foul call may have been a gift from the original camera angle. However, CBS showed the top of the backboard looking down view during the broadast. It was a brief replay from that angle, but you could clearly see Udoh all over Thomas' arm during the put back attempt. It was the right call.

Scenario: You are locked in a room with Michael Kay (Yankees TV gasbag) and John Sterling (Yankees radio douchebag). You have pistol, but only one round. Question: Who do you shoot? Answer: Yourself.

Seriously. Hockey, more than any other sport IMO, is much better in HD, and with my provider there is no MSNBC in HD. FAILFOLCOPTER.

Faux pas by the MC. Playing Born to Run during a US sporting event is tantamount to playing Bob Marley during a Usain Bolt track event.

I want to go to a hockey game this intense on LSD. I think I might pass out, or see God. Whatevs.

Kesler is a beast on the forecheck. No doot a boot it.

The 1st has this thing looking like an instant classic.

Sorry for not responding sooner. With the pace of the project we are working on right now, I'm skeptical I'll be able to devote enough attention to be competitive in our annual league. As you can tell from my posting frequency lately, work is taking a bit of my free time away from me. It's looking like it will be like this at least through the end of 2011. Maybe if the next project I'm on is a bit less hectic, I'll rejoin the league, but right now I just won't have the time. Consider me out.

Are you so sure that it "does not matter what [you] think"? The rest of this statement is based solely on "what you think" transpired in the, to date unreported, negotiations Boras had with teams interested in JD Drew that offseason. That's a rather large leap of faith, one that you are apparently comfortable making when it's about "what you think", so I contend that, to you, what you think does matter. Furthermore, using the basis of your logic in defining "overpaid", every FA ever signed, with the exception of those that play for a discount at a preferred location, is "overpaid", because, to some degree, they sign for some amount of money more than another team offered. I know what you are getting at is the magnitude of overpayment, but that's not what was asked. What was asked is if he is overpaid at all, and the application of your basis for determination would lead one to conclude that virtually all FA are overpaid, which is not very useful, not when the core of the original question goes back to the idea of payment vs. production. This is why WAR is meaningful when addressing this question.

Fagraphs has a E-F category in the advanced pitching statistics (this is ERA-FIP). You can sort by each category. Also, if you have excel on your computer, you can right click on the stats table at most websites and export the data to excel, but fangraphs makes this even easier by providing a link at the top of the table for exporting to excel. Then you can run the correlation function between two columns to determine if there is a relationship. While I did not run the function for the top-20 pitchers in the AL (as the data suggested a zero correlation), I will do so now for all qualified pitchers from fangraphs. Specifically, I will correlate the ERA-FIP to K/9. The correlation is 0.304, which as you can see from the graph, is not very strong. http://www.math.upenn.edu/~estorm/115s08/bestfitline/correlation.jpg The data doesn't support your idea. I suggest you drop it.

I looked at what you stated in your argument.

It's scattered.

All of them, or just the anecdotal ones that support your argument? If you look at the top-20 qualified pitchers in K/9 at fangraphs, under the advanced pitching statistics heading, 10 of them had a positive ERA-FIP (supporting your point) and 10 of them had a negative ERA-FIP (countering your point). Correlation? Zero.

They aren't unrelated. BABIP measures what FIP ignores, just on a different scale. When one thing measures something and something else measures what it excludes, specifically what it excludes, I'd call that relationship noncoincidental. The reason FIP ignores the hits that don't leave the park is due to the fact that the stats suggest pitchers do not have complete control over these outcomes. The defense plays a significant role in how often a ball in play gets converted to an out. You may be right that it overvalues K's, but I'd suggest some more consideration before jumping to that conclusion. BABIP is essentially the pitcher's BAA once you eliminate HR and K. The important thing about K's is that 100% (or 99.999%, with the occaissional runner reaching on a passed ball) get converted to outs. The more 100% outs you can produce before relying on the defense, which only averages 70% outs, is important.

DER needs to be adjusted for park. Think about it. It's essentially 1 - BABIP. BABIP uses hits that don't leave the park, and at Fenway, the Monster makes a lot of ball unplayable while not being HR. BP has PADE (park adjusted DER), and the Sox were 18 out of 30 (about where they were with UZR). They are below average (in both), which is bad, but they weren't awful. Regardless. They are a safe bet to be much better at preventing runs (or condoming them) this season. Whichever adjective they are rebounding from is immaterial.

Aren't you the sample size guru? I would have thought career numbers would be a bit more meaningful. Looks like you've grown out of the binky (when it suits your purposes). You're all groweds up and you're all groweds up and you're all groweds up.

I don't think he missed the HOF by 8 votes, but instead he missed, this time, by one loogy. He'll get in the next time around. The voters are very touchy about "1st ballot" inductees, and his lapse in behavior is likely the cause.

I know this is your binky, but in this case, you've gone to the well too many times. A discussion about the durability of an aging player at the position of greatest difficulty when it comes to wearing a player down needs only one recent example of injury to be credible. And, if subsequent injury were to happen, it would not be "freak", not with the reasonable expectation provided by said recent injury. Sample sizes are very relevant to statistics, for sure, but we aren't talking about stats here. This is completely different and unrelated topic.

This, specifically in response to the not being "scaredy-scared" of the Sox offense. There are two routes to winning the games. Score a lot, or prevent a lot. Ideally, you try to be good at both. Historically, and statistically, teams that excell only at one find more success when it is the latter. Personally, I would have done a few things a bit differently this offseason, but the team they have put together can compete. Their run prevention should be quite good with the pitching and defense, which is looking like the best Sox defensive team in quite some time. Offensively, they've traded off some BA/OBP in exchange for better speed on the bases (overall) and, believe it or not, a little more power. They actually remind me of the 2006 White Sox team. Excellent pitching, excellent defense, the ability to put pressure on the opposing D with speed on the bases, good power, but some shortcomings in the BA/OBP department and proned to K quite a bit. Overall, not perfect, but capable of doing the job.

135 when it doesn't count; 85 when it does. This is fantasy sports for me. I fully expect 150+ points next week in my 3rd place match. I'd wish you good luck, Cape, but I don't think I need to. You seem to regularly get the performances you need when you need them in terms of timing.

The AAV (average annual value) of all contracts (including bonuses) is how they determine where a team is relative to the luxury tax limit. Backloading it would accomplish nothing.