ORS

Boras is good at what he does, so kudos to him there. However, he accomplishes that with what I consider to be severe breaches of ethics. I'm not excusing Manny because he went along with it, but I have high confidence that Boras orchestrated the fiasco. He couselled his client into threatening a breach of contract in order to get out of town 2 months early. Others will follow his lead, and the tactics he employs now will become the standard. His lack of ethics is what makes him a douche and bad for the game.

Amare is having a "Kneel before Zod" night. Going into the 4th: 15/17 and 11/11 for 41, 6 boards, 6 dimes, 4 steals, 2 blocks

He's not saying what you don't think he isn't.

At the expense of? Resources are only wasted when an expenditure precludes you from acquiring other assets (if the primary goal is fielding the best team you can). The L/T threshold goes up to $162M in '09. The Red Sox were at $133M to start '08, and about $25M of that comes off the payroll (this assumes Varitek returns in some capacity). They'll have a little over $50M of space to play with. Also, the L/T threshold grows to $178M by the end of the current CBA which runs through the 2011 season. If they were to decide to go after Teixeira, I don't see this move hancuffing them in the future.

I guess Brooks Bollinger is no savior.

Net -2 yards, no first downs, 13 total plays in the first half for the Raiders. Just win, baby! Oh, and a big EFF EWE! to Opie Manning. Stupid **** cost me a defensive shut out thus far in FFB. BTW, that is one of the stupidest FFB loopholes, where the extra point counts against your defense and the 1 point puts you in the 1-6 scoring bracket. Just flat out dumb.

Oh, I think it's definitely UT / 'Bama if they both finish the season undefeated. I made my point about the SEC winner having one loss because 'Bama still has to go into Baton Rouge and beat LSU. No easy task. If they win that game, and then the SEC championship against UF, they are undoubtedly in the title game. Florida scores again. I'd love to see the BCS be them against UT. I think they are the best two teams playing right now.

Watching them play today, it's hard to fathom how they lost to Ole Miss. UF / 'Bama ought to be a hoot. If the winner of that game (should it happen) only has one loss, then that team "should" be in the BCS title game. The SEC is brutal. Unfortunately, Penn State is a good bet to finish the season without a blemish at this point, and I don't see a team going clean in a BCS conference being on the outside to a one loss team.

Just so you know RC, there's an IR slot that opens up if your player is on IR. You can put Zubov there and pickup another defenseman to ride out his injury. I'm mulling over an offer for one of your goalies. I may send you an offer later today.

I'm Puck Yeah!

Pena's lucky Longoria decided to remove his hands from his neck for that AB. He cadillac'd it pretty bad on the fly ball off the fence. Should have been on 3B.

Welcome back to reality, Sonnanstine.

I agree, and I have no problem with Schilling when he opens his mouth as long as it isn't about something that could have future impact on the clubhouse. In this case, here's your megaphone, Curt. I wish more athletes would say more than the trite cliches they are all so trained to give to the media. That said, if you aren't interested in hashing out the hypotheticals, why bring them up in the first place? You introduced Schilling pitching in game 4 to this thread. Whether or not he wins that game has no bearing on this issue. And, this is coming from a person who agrees with you, he did a lot at his own personal sacrafice to bring home a title to Boston. Hell, the guy should be teflon in New England.

Tampa's bats were smokin' hot right then too, though. Everything Upton hit was hit hard, same thing for Longoria. An injured Beckett is about as good as an old Schilling, and they torched him in game 2 when they got hot. He was more effective in game 6. Part of that is Josh, but another part of it is them cooling down a bit. I don't know what confidence level I can assign to a statement that Schilling changes the outcome of that game. The offense still couldn't find any clue as to how to hit the King of Scrubs Andy Sonnanstine.

No, compensation picks are protected . The best FA they sign will cost them their 1st round pick, the next best (per Elias) will cost the 2nd round pick, and so on.

As long as "bat" isn't a euphemism for something else.

And then he goes and dances a little jig while calling Baldelli out at home. f***in' cockbiter, it's that "look, I'm part of the show too" attitude that has resulted in so much poor officiating in the first place, IMO.

All well and good. The move for Shaq will handcuff them a bit, and I don't see a title run in the current roster. But, don't forget, Porter managed the Bucks to the highest scoring offense in the East based on the talent he had on that team. He's an intelligent coach, and his roster is set up to play a certain style of ball, which I'm sure he recognizes. They be playing in April, but not in June.

Took their best shot? Their 1-5 hitters went 4/20 to the Rays 3/20. Philly can do more, much more, than what they did last night. They just had one of the big hitters going. Speaking of which, Tampa has cooled off drastically. I think, more than anything, it was the timing of their hot hitting that undid the Red Sox. What was it, 17 homers in 7 games? That's a 390+ homer pace over 162 games. Twice as much as what can be considered a very good year for a team. And if they happen to turn it back on, Philly is one of the teams that could hang with them in a HR derby. Myers / Shields is really a toss up, IMO. Myers started the year awful, but pitched to a 3.06 after the break (when he started seeing a sports psychologist). "Big Game" James will give up the tater. This will plague him his whole career with that flat fastball. Given Myers early season struggles, I could see someone awarding Tampa an advantage here, but I'm not buying. Only game 3 is a clear cut Tampa advantage. Garza is better than Moyer. I don't see how, however, anyone can call Sonnanstine vs Blanton a matchup that favors Tampa. Sonnanstine is Blanton (and Finkle is Einhorn and Einhorn is Finkle). They are the same guy who goes out there with a bucket and rosary beads. Toss up some slop, pray it's hit at a fielder.

Fine, bring him back, but lets go into the year with the mindset that Wake makes an October roster only as part of a contingency plan, mmm'Kay?

He's talking about when he hits LH. Lefty's, trust me, I know, I am one, have the RH on the bottom. And, the lead wrist (RH for lefty's, LH for righty's) is the guide wrist, not the power wrist. The top, or trail, wrist provides the power. Think about it this way. Imagine trying to hit the ball one handed. Are you going to hit it farther with your LH hitting backhanded, or with your RH hitting forehanded? Also, consider the biomechanics. What range of motion is supported by bigger, more powerful muscle groups? The outer deltoid supporting a backhand motion, or the tricep / lats supporting the forehand motion?

Phillies in 5. Game 1 went as expected. I think Shields gets torched tonight. He's proned to giving up the long ball, his one weakness as a pitcher, and Philly has 5 or 6 guys with 30 HR power. Moyer loses to Garza. Blanton beats Sonnanstine in a matchup that will have both sides screaming, "How the f*** does this guy get by with that slop?!?" Hamels, wash, rinse, repeat.

Here's what I think.... We can't just look at the WinShare, WARP, and VORP totals of the 3 vs. the 1. Gom makes a good point about the preseason redundancy of Ellsbury/Crisp. Kilo makes a good point about Ellsbury being needed to play more than CF when Drew went down with injury. So let's look at the total package contributions of who "would", or at least "likely would", have filled the spots vacated if the trade were made. Here are the combinations I'll use: Kilo's Case - Wakefield (in lieu of Santana), Ellsbury, Lowrie, Masterson Gom's Case - Santana, Crisp (in lieu of Ellsbury), Cora (in lieu of Lowrie), Moss* Assumptions: Since Masterson came up from AA, the player who fills that role in system after him is likely replacement level, he needs no offset. Moss is included because I feel he would have been kept as the 4th OF had they traded one of their CFs - and, he's a good proxy for the other AAA internal options they would have gone to after the deadline had they still moved him to get Bay. I'm using VORP, WinShares, and WARP. Keep in mind VORP results don't include defense, and I realize this creates in incomplete picture, but I like to the impact of defense and see if it agrees with my take on the players invovled. Also, I will prorate out playing times to match. Crisp's playing time will be brought up to Ellsbury's, Cora's up to Lowries, and for Moss, I will use only his Pittsburg totals because a) the two month window is about how long JE played RF for Drew, and WARP/VORP is league and park adjusted. [table]Stat|Kilo's Case|Gom's Case|Kilo - Gom|Edge VORP|80.2|100.6|-20.4|Gom WnSh|41|42|-1|Gom WARP|17.7|17.7|0|None[/table] I agree with results for the most part. I can see the defensive improvement from Crisp / Cora to Ellsbury / Lowrie being worth 20 runs over the amount of time they played. The other two stats pretty much show it to be net zero. Santana is great, best pitcher in the game right now, but you are talking about 3 good players in return. The absolute best position players will put up double digit WARP totals through their prime. Guess how many the last dynasty had, the '96-'00 Yankees? One, Jeter in '99. Guess how many years they had the best pitcher in baseball? None. But they were solid from top to bottom. No easy outs. A deep rotation. They played good defense, ran the bases well, grinded out their at bats, and pitched well up and down the pitching staff. You don't get there doing 3 for 1's.