ORS

Sorry, I meant relative to the invites. Jacko has yet to sign up.

I think it should be everyone's decision. Here are some updates. Sotks is sending $25 to up the prize pool. I would suggest that anyone who wants to play for money, send me a PM and I'll send you my address. Make it for this same amount so that we have equal contributions. Must contribute to win, 1st contributor 75%, 2nd contributor 25%. Current prize pool: $100 I have received a PM from example1 expressing interest, but I don't want to act unilaterally. This is everyone's league. I'll step in an make a decision if it's close or contentious, but I'd like input from the members. I'd also like to settle this by the end of this week. So, three spots left, three interested parties, 26, Thumper, and example1. I'm fine with that.

Thank, SFoC, for doing the Super Bowl grid, and Kilo for donating his winnings to make this happen. Admittedly, I was going to do this regardless, but the credit goes to them now. And, you're welcome.

I agree. He's perfect for the role too. Switch hitter, excellent speed, excellent D. I'd be hesitant to give him up for a marginal extra starter.

The Admin is in. Invite sent, yeszir. I modified three default settings. We are up to 16 teams now, with 13 spots out for invitation. Nine have registered, and there are 3 at large spots. I changed the Can't Cut List from "Yahoo" to "None", and I changed the trade review from "Yahoo" to "League Vote".

The invites to the premium league are out. Right now the settings are default, and the draft is set for Thurs 3/20/08 at 8:00 pm, but everything is adjustable. The 12 members are as follows: 1. Me 2. SFoC 3. SFoC's son 4. TheKilo 5. schillingouttheks 6. CrespoBlows 7. a700hitter 8. mtbyker 9. CityofChampions33 10. Coco's Disciples 11. YanksHater213 12. Jacksonianmarch I'm sure others would like to participate, and they can if we want to expand the number of teams to 16. I'm personally in favor of this. It does two things. One, as mentioned, it gets more people involved. Two, it tests your baseball accumen a little more with less opportunity to stockpile. So, those interested, state your interest here. Those who have been invited and are going to join, please throw in your $0.02. Once we get the total number set, we can start discussing other matters, like if this is going to be for money (there is already $75 in the prize pool thanks to Kilo), draft date, scoring categories, etc. That is all. Oh, and if we are going to expand, please list those you would like to see join based on your own opinion of their baseball knowledge and likelihood of consistent participation (big one for me). I'm hoping See Red, example1, JayHawkBill, and Gom are interested.

Good news. According to Jacko and Gom, Schilling was toast heading into this year, so this should only make us better in their eyes. I fully expect predictions of the Sox taking the AL East from them now. Ok, seriously, this isn't good, but nor is it season shattering. Schilling had successfully, IMO, made the transition from power pitcher to crafty pitcher with his diminished stuff. I'm confident that the kids will be able to replace his season production in total, but we'll see where that leaves us in October, where he was a force. The big thing, to me, will be in how the team handles this. Attempting to void his contract is the wrong move, IMO. He just negotiated his own deal w/o an agent at an under market amount, took the weight clause incentives, and all after putting his career on the line in '04. Nixing his deal now would play negatively amongst the players, both on the team and future free agents. Bad form. Don't do it.

I read A Season on the Brink when I was 13 and became an instant Knight fan. He was tough on his players, but he did it to take them from boys to men. Gunny Hartman meets the hard court. I grew up in the DC area, so I was already a fan of ACC hoops, particularly Lefty's Maryland teams. Once I learned that Coach K earned his name and learned the game under Knight, and after what happened with Lenny Bias, I became a Duke fan.

If I win anything, I'll be using it toward a premium Yahoo league for fantasy baseball this season. However, if I don't win, I'll still be creating a premium league so that we can get any draft slot that we want. I'll send PM's out to the usual suspects inviting them to the league as the season approaches. No offense to those that don't receive a PM, but I feel I know enough about the usual participants here to determine who knows their stuff and will be active in the league. Activity is the big thing for me. I hate losing games in the standings because someone else in the race has a patsy opponent with 4 guys on the DL taking up starting slots all week.

Sure it does. He's a 6 WARP and 16 Win Share player because of that defense. Players with similar WS contribution last year include DeJesus, Sheffield, Kotchman, Vidro, Andruw Jones, Chris Young, Josh Bard, and Brian McCann. Not an all-star team, but all guys who you'd expect to make more than $5M either now or in the future when they pass arb. BTW, you suck at this.

All well and good, Gom. You are entitled to your opinion, and I'm not challenging that entitlement. It was you, however, who brought up the conflict of interest when JHB was making his point with James' projections. Challenging his objectivity there was wrong, and had you known the facts, that his system is run by others and that it was established prior to his employment in Boston, you wouldn't have done so.

Try reading what I posted again. I'm aware of that issue, and a cost controlled Crisp is compensation for it.

Sorry, not buying it. His projections would lose appeal over time as his projections for his players were consistently overstated. That's without even addressing the fact that his projection system was established prior to his employment in Boston. Tinfoil hat time. http://rightvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/tinfoil-hat.jpg

Well, there's a reason I asked them independent of QB rating. QBr is a POS stat. I can't trust a stat that can't see the difference between 100% and 77.5%, 20 yd/att and 12.5 yd/att, etc. Here are their component scores. [table]Component|Manning|Brady Comp%|1.880|1.945 Yardage|1.543|1.328 TD|1.972|1.730 INT|1.872|2.029[/table] The weighting borders on ridiculous, IMO. Only 0.8 yds/att more almost carries the same weight as 20+ more attempts in between turnovers. Nonsense. Turnover margin is one of the most important things in football. Edit: I take that back, it carries MORE weight. Absurd. Similar to the changes in baseball statistical approach that has occured over the last couple of decades, there is a group of people trying to apply the same methodology to football stats. QBr is on the way out. It's a bad stat.

Injury. No Harrison for most of the season, no Freeney for half.

I intended for that to be used if there was a minimum of 10 participants. When only 5 people play, it's kind of tough to justify penalizing the lowest total.

I think LT would have made up the difference for me himself had he stayed in the game. Unfortunately, Denver was done by halftime so he sat most of the 2nd half.

Gibbs has been good the last couple of weeks, but he's a big reason why they haven't already clinched a playoff spot, IMO. His supporting staff has been on the ball too. They've suffered from poor clock management, which to me is a lack of focus and poor communication. The 12 man on the field challenge to avoid a turnover was a good example of how they've improved the last couple of weeks.

Yeah, and a little further down that link there's a quote that the 565' was where it was found, not where it landed. Back then, it wasn't uncommon to physically hit the ball out of the park with much smaller bleachers. Distances on HTO are measured to where it hits something. Dunn's best shot this year was on 8/17 in Milwaukees. From the link you can view the video file and see the path charted. It hit structure some 60+ feet in the air at about 460' from home plate. Don't think that thing would have gone 565? http://hittrackeronline.com/detail.php?id=2007_4654&type=hitter&sortm=true_dist&sort=desc

Really? LT and Westbrook are 1, 2 in RB points with very good to good matchups next week, and his biggest weapon throws most of his TDs to your WR.

I think the power comp is hittrackeronline.com kind of stuff. Of course Mantle has better numbers in the traditional power categories. He was a much better hitter who squared the ball up more often. He just didn't hit it to places Dunn couldn't.