ORS

Every time you think this, just remember: Julio Lugo = Rick Porcello. Might not mean much to you now. It likely will in couple of years when you are hoping he's not on the slate when the Sox face Detroit.

This is the link I posted when the story first broke. Again, I don't know how credible the report is as far as the numbers go. It does suggest that they could have come to terms on an agreement during this meeting, and failing to do so opened the door to have the Yankees reenter the negotiations. Once that happened, their chances of landing Teixeira essentially disappeared.

This doesn't agree with what was reported after the Sox meeting. According to that report, the Sox came in with their offer, were told it was short of expectations, but were given an opportunity to leave the meeting with an agreement of $184M/8. Henry called "BS" and left the meeting, made his statement about the Sox being "out of it", a move at the time lauded by everyone as "calling Boras' bluff", and everyone was confident over the next couple of days that the Sox offer was the highest. Well, it didn't work out that way. Turns out the Yankees weren't really in the game yet. Where Henry & Co. failed is that, according to the initial meeting report, they let the Yankees back into the game. If that report is credible, which I have no idea whether or not it is, they could have left the meeting with an agreement in place. It turns out that agreement value is only $1M more per year than what the Yankee offer that won his services is for. I agree, if given a chance to counter the Yankee offer, had they gone over it, the Yankees likely come back higher yet again. Many of those who say the Sox had no real chance reference this as the centerpoint of their argument absolving the FO from blame. It's just wrong, IMO. Those who say, "...for a few dollars more....", are right, if you look at it in the context of coming to an agreement before the Yankees were a factor.

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Keep in mind, Ellsbury played many games in LF and RF, where his range makes him really good relative to the rest of the league at those positions. Fangraphs has UZR now, and in CF, Jacoby was 9 runs better than average according to UZR/150 (he was 29.4 and 21.7 in LF and RF). He's really a CF, so discussions of his fielding prowess, at least in terms of his future value, should focus on his performance there. He's better than most, but he's not quite brilliant compared to his peers. It's certainly not enough to seriously mitigate his main shortcoming from last year, the inability to consistently get on base, which is something I think the future holds for him. He's done it accross the board in the minors, and he's even done it at this level, but only in flashes to date. I think time/experience will add the consistency.

I thought the KO return at the end of the 1st half was fumbled. Now that call looms huge since SD can only tie it if Kaeding makes this.... and he does. I think SD got jobbed a little. They get at least a FG out of that to close the 1st half.

I recall Petty being bastardized, and if you think about song lengths, it had to be. The halftime is extended from 20 mins to 30 mins, but 10 of that is setup and demo of the stage. That's 20 mins for 5 to 6 songs, which is 4:00 or less per song. Most artists songs are in the 5:00 to 6:00 min range, particularly the iconic good ones. Like, I'd want to hear The River, but that and Born to Run pretty much kill the whole time alottment.

By my recollection, yeah they cut the songs down to the money, ie recognizable/marketable, segments. Rut roh, quick TO for points for 'Zona.

And Atlanta has the lead. Matt Ryan is really impressive for a rook.

Who's looking forward to seeing The Boss perform at halftime of the Super Bowl? I'm torn. Springsteen kicks major ass live, but I hate the way they have performers do like 12 partial songs in the allotted time. Born to Run is such an epic song that it needs to be played in full, with the E-Street Band jamming in full live glory, which I know won't happen at the Super Bowl. Back to the game. Big turnover after the score. Looks like we have a bit of a game here.

Wow, horrible drop by White.

http://lolmonkeys.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/poopthrowing.bmp That one looks like David Wright for Matsuzaka +. This one, if you stand over here, looks like Josh Hamilton.

Yeah, and you ignored the part that prefaced the comment you quoted. That part might make someone who's been here a bit longer than two days think there's some history in our interaction. Since you couldn't put two and two together, I'll give you the background. Diony is like every Yankee fan that joins here. Hellbent on telling us how awesome the Yankees will be and how awful the Red Sox will be going into the new season. Only he likes to couch his behind some statistical cliches that he clearly doesn't know that much about. I've been exposing his fraud, and when you strip away the window dressing, his posting is nothing more than, "My team is better than your team, neener, neener, neener". I don't care that his posts were in response to Sox fans poking fun at Sabathia's weight. I would expect Sox fans to have a little fun at the expense of the Yankees on a Sox forum. This is the place for it.

Awww, it's cute how you get all butthurt over your buddy. You guys have a long future together from what I see here, lots of love to go around.

He's consistently about 10 runs worse per 150 games at 1B than he is in LF, according to UZR. The best place to play him on the Sox is in LF, where he costs about 15 runs per 150 games in the field. To be fair, though, UZR does not like Jason Bay either, as he was -15.9 combined in Pitt/Bos last year. Although, Bay was a positive LF as recently as 2006, whereas Dunn has held in the -11 to -16 range for the last 4 years.

I recall reading that. And, I think if you look in a search engine, you can find him quoted saying he doesn't project pitchers.

Well, "he" doesn't do anything. His system does. Currently, Bill James' projections are the work of Baseball Info Solutions, run by John Dewan (STATS, Inc.). And, that projection accounts for some of it, as they neutralize previous years to account for home park and league prior to putting the data in the projection system. Neutralized stats are a good proxy for what you could expect from a player's road performance, with a minor adjustment for league. I'd take that from our 5th starter. Of course, I have no faith in the projection system. It says Phil Hughes will lead the Yankee rotation with a 3.35 ERA.

Is this what we get when you aren't pretending to be intelligent about statistics, silly schoolyard taunts? Yeah, we're very jealous you've picked up one of the bigger goats from the last two Octobers. Yeah, we're shaking because you picked up the guy our best pitcher put in his back pocket when he wasn't pitching injured. Yeah, we're worried about your assessment of our rotation when they are all wearing rings, due in large part to your guy s***ing all over himself when the chips were down. Oooh, scary.

I only watch games, and I only tune in once the game has started. It's a shame, really. Back in the late 80's, early 90's ESPN was great. Olberman and Patrick were brilliant as the Sunday anchor duo on SC.

It's not surprising you ignored this. FTR, assuming 550 ABs for a full season, 178 will yield results that are +/- 8% at a 99% confidence level.

This is about where I am too. Good answers to those questions and this is a team that will see internal improvement on team that should have won 102 games based on their context independent performance. But, if there are bad answers to a good portion of those questions, they'll struggle to compete. It appears as if the "3rd place" crowd, which unsurprisingly contains all our Yankee fans here, has moved forward with the assumption that every bad thing that could happen with those question marks, will happen. Similarly, the "we're fine, nothing to worry about" crowd seems to have moved forward with the assumption we get improvement everywhere. What makes me optimistic is their D3 performance. It's a safe assumption that they'll pick up a little at one position at the expense of another just through random variance, and they'll end up in the aggregate about where they were last year. Unchanged from last year, they pitched and hit well enough to go 102-60. Their underperformance is due to poor situational hitting, but every study done to identify clutch players has failed because no players show a historical record of being able to perform better in clutch situations over extended periods of time. In other words, assuming no luck, neither good nor bad, and they are 7 wins better than last year. Kilo asked to know what people really think about this season going into it, so here goes. I think the division, right now, is.... 1a - Yankees 1b - Sox 3 - Tampa whatever It isn't just their FA signings, although they will certainly help. It's the improvement from Molina to Posada. It's the fact that they likely get a full year of CMW. It's that I expect Cano to be significantly better than he was last year. It's that I'm assuming the Sox get 50/50 good answers to their question marks. Now, I will caveat. If Beckett is healthy, Lowell's hip turns out to not be a problem, and Ortiz's wrist is fine. Put the Sox at 1a. Tampa is good and young and all that jazz, but until I see the big components of that bullpen do it a second time, then I think that unit holds them back. Those schmucks were never that good before. They all blew up at the same time. We all know how volatile BP performance is. We'll see if they can do it again.

And that pick could have been Rick Porcello. Don't think they didn't notice.