ORS

Don't tell me you don't want them to make the right call?

Big misses by Boone there. Is it me, or does he have one of the most sullen faces in college hoops?

I wouldn't be too upset with UConn giving them looks. GMU is one of the better coached teams I've seen this tourney, and they really to a good job spacing, using motion, and playing the inside-outside game.

He looked a bit shaky his first two batters faced in the 8th when he 4-pitch walked the first batter and then got lucky on the hanging slider that was GIDP. Normally those types of mistakes go for extra bases. That said, he looked nasty in the 9th. He threw 3 really good sliders to Burrell, one getting the reverse K. A failed drag bunt attempt. Then another nasty slider that produced a weak grounder for the 6-3. With his slider and the sink on his FB, he's going to get a lot of weak grounders in the IF. I like that. Anyone read anything about him experimenting with a 2-seamer? He threw a couple of pitches that had good down and in movement to RH batters. Was that his new change-up?

No. I'll agree with when your point is valid. Saying the SEC is a better basketball conference than the Big-East or ACC isn't valid. That's not biased, that's reality. Deal with it.

The schedule on the Sox website has the Mets playing in Fenway. Sox Homepage

And Howard is hot right now too. He's hit 10 bombs in ~70 spring ABs.

Luckily for us, they have stats that consider the league and park where a player plays. One of these is ERA+, which compares the pitcher's ERA to the league average ERA. The league average ERA is adjusted for the park factors of the pitcher's home park. Out of 75 relievers in the NL that were pitching well enough to get 40 or more relief innings, Seanez' ERA+ was 22nd best in the NL at 143 (Billy Wagner was the best with an ERA+ of 300, but only 7 pitchers were 200 or higher). I know 22nd place isn't anything to jump for joy about, but you need to consider the role Seanez will be filling for the Sox. He's not going to be closing. He's not the setup guy. He's the setup guy's, setup guy. That's 6th and 7th inning territory. Here's a list of 2005 AL comparables (135-155 ERA+, 40+ IP) Rafael Betancourt Fernando Rodney Andrew Sisco Scot Shields Kiko Calero Julio Mateo Danys Baez Jason Frasor That's not a bad list of guys for middle relief, which is exactly what Rudy's role would be on this team. Yeah, I think he needs to be watched and released if he isn't performing. But, I don't see the point of cutting him before the season starts. I know you think he'll tank because he didn't perform well in Boston before, but keep something in mind, he only pitched 8.2 innings during his time in Boston. Let's keep that in perspective when saying he was a failure in Boston.

I hope we see a lot of innings like Beckett's 2nd inning today. K's Howard, K's Burrell, weak grounder to 2B.

Do you mean this? That is directly from my post.

Totally incorrect. Cable providers make their money off of providing the service. When someone upgrades for options, they are just paying the subscription fee. For example, cable companies don't profit any more or less off of HBO, Showtime, or Cinemax. The reason those channels are upgrades is because their subscription rate is fairly high and the cable companies wish to keep their basic service price relatively low. They just pass the cost of subscription on to the customer via the upgrade cost. It doesn't affect the bottom line. It doesn't make any business sense to limit profits by making more off of upgrade subscribers only. The real money is in providing the service, not the upgrades. If that is the reason the Yankees gave and you believe it, then they sold you a bill of goods. Of course they are going to publicly claim they are just looking out for the fans, which diverts attention from the fact that they were really just trying to maximize the amount of subscribers they would collect rates from. Nice try, McGruff. The only thing I changed when I editted it was the last line addressing your "master" comment. The rest of the post is the same. And, it totally proves my point while disproving yours. Avoiding the issue won't change that.

Sun Sports TV, a regional cable network down here in Florida, has been showing UF, FSU, and Miami games on the weekend ever since the season began.

Fair enough. Now let's compare those years to the three pitchers you said were mediocre. Mussina put up a combined 100 ERA+ those two years (98 in 2004, 101 in 2005), which is exactly league average, or "decent", like you say. Loaiza put up a 101 ERA+ before he was traded to the Yankees, so I'll give you that one. He was mediocre to Mussina's bad. The comparison holds. However, Suppan prior to being traded to the Sox and Ponson prior to being traded to the Giants put up 119 and 115 ERA+ respectively. That doesn't come close to being mediocre, in fact, that is quite good. So, in 2 out of 3 examples, your "Bad for Moose = Mediocre for others" comparison doesn't work. This is why your entire premise, that Mussina would be attractive to other teams if he slips, and I contend that he would need to slip for the Yankees to want to trade him, doesn't really make sense. At least, not at his salary, even if it is for only 1/2 a season. If bad for Mussina is league average, I'm sure there are plenty of cheaper league average pitchers that would be available for teams in need of pitching for a pennant race. And this doesn't even touch on the fact that there will be better pitchers available, assuming Mussina slips, that are entering a contract year who could become available if their current teams' are out of contention. Nice. At least you acknowledge that I have some OWNAGE on you based on our interaction on this board. Sorry man, but you left that door wide open.

Wow, I alway thought you were naive, but this takes the cake. Do you know how the cable rate system works at all? Here, let me help you. Every channel picked up by a cable provider charges that provider a standard rate to air their programming. These rates get passed on to the customer via the basic service plan, premium service plan, or service plans plus optional programming. By forcing the YES channel into the basic service plan, YES is guaranteeing itself customers since most people want basic cable, but not everyone is a baseball fan. Cablevision wanted to allow their customers to choose. Either way though, the fan is paying. With YES shoved into the basic plan, the customer pays by having their monthly bill go up. I'm not faulting YES for doing this, since they are just trying to increase their revenue stream and were in a position to do it with the Yankees being so popular. But, Cablevision's bottom line would be the same if YES were an option or if YES was part of the basic service. There's a recent example involving ESPN that should make this concept clear. Recently, ESPN was thinking about raising the rate that they charge to providers. However, the providers got together and said they didn't want to raise prices on their customers so they would have to make ESPN only available as an optional upgrade to basic service. ESPN didn't want to risk losing some of their audience, so they backed off and didn't go through with the proposed increase.

Wedge's use of Riske is his own problem. The guy had a good year. Just because the manager didn't use him in high-leverage spots doesn't mean he wasn't capable.

Let's test your "Bad for Moose = Mediocre for others" theory. Without looking it up, that is the point of this tangent, did Moose have good, bad, or mediocre years in 2004 and 2005?

It is so hard to have an intelligent conversation with someone who contradicts himself so regularly. I admitted they weren't having great seasons, but I never said they were mediocre, that was your description of their performance. More importantly though, you said they would want to trade Mussina if he was "not doing good", ie having a bad year, not a mediocre one. Bad is below average. When I said no contending team would be interested in a bad pitcher, you brought up those examples, none of which were bad. How is this so hard for you to understand? Hell, you even say that those examples don't support your argument. I'm not surprised you don't think you were wrong. You never think you are wrong, even when confronted with evidence to the contrary and, strangely, even when you admit it.

But, that's just it. When you bring up some examples to support your idea and those examples are wrong, then you are putting your foot in your mouth. Sorry if you don't see it that way, but society accepts the meaning of that phrase to be when you assert something and it turns out wrong. You don't just throw ideas out there, though. You throw them out there, someone challenges them, then you defend them, which is what happened here. I'll give you your due when you are right, but I'm going to check to see if you are wrong. That's the way the world works. If you don't like being accused of pulling stuff out of your ass, then maybe you should do some research. Otherwise, get used to it, because without looking it up, that is what you are doing.

Regarless of how important you think it is, wouldn't you prefer to spend a couple extra minutes to avoid putting your foot in your mouth? I don't find any of this important, but I have enough pride to want to post intelligently.

It doesn't take any time to look that up, well it doesn't for me. I have a high-speed cable connection that tranfers information at 100 mega-bytes per second hooked up to my wireless router which transmits to my laptop at 54 Mb/s. When on the boards I frequently have a second browser window up so I can look up stuff while I post. I takes less than 2 minutes at BB-ref.com. No, they weren't doing great, but two of them were doing pretty good. All three of the teams that got these guys had very good offenses though, so league average to above average pitching would have suited them. The only team on the list of possibles that may fit that criteria AND have the resources to pick up part of Moose's contract, is the Mets. They may end up needing pitching, but I don't see Moose as a fit for them. First of all, they have enough older veterans with declining stuff and question marks surrounding them. They also have some good young arms that will likely be ready to contribute if needed by mid-season. Lastly, I don't see Minaya going after someone who is performing below average to help his team contend. The guy has a history of giving up value, but it has pretty much always been for performers. These guys are going into a contract year as well: Pettitte Zito Mulder Kelvim Escobar Jose Contreras El Duque There are others, but that is the short list of those that I think have a strong possibilty of outperforming Mussina. If any of their teams' aren't in contention, they may be able to fleece Omar if the Mets are making a run and need a pitcher. EDIT: It's not DSL, it's high-speed cable. I used to have DSL, but it was only 3 Mb/s.

'Tek is widely regarded as very good at handling the staff and has a rep for calling a very good game. I'm sure you know that just about every pitcher he's worked with has praised him for this and it can affect pitcher performance, but you just had to take that cheap-shot didn't you? No surprises there, Mr. I'm-just-here-to-talk-baseball.

Sorry, not buying it. When the Yanks picked up Loaiza he was 9-5, 101 ERA+, ~2 K/BB -----About league average When the Sox picked up Suppan, he was 10-7, 119 ERA+, ~2.5 K/BB --Above league average When the Giants picked up Ponson he was 14-6, 115 ERA+, ~2 K/BB ---Above league average With the Yanks offense this year, league average will be fine and the Yanks won't want to dump him. If he's below average, no contender is going to want him.

What kind of crap is that? I can appreciate you liking Bronson and wishing him well in Cincinnati, but do honestly want the Sox, the team you root for, to come out losers on this deal? f*** that. I wish Bronson well, but I hope Pena mashes the s*** out of the ball and both teams get what they wanted out of this.

It sounds incredibly shortsighted, but at this point I've come to expect that from you. The SEC is having a good year. The best year it has had since UK won in '98. That still doesn't make it's recent history any better than the other conferences that I mentioned. Now, if Memphis comes back and UCLA goes home AND Florida beats 'Nova, then I'll rank the SEC over the Pac-10. But, that isn't enough to put them over the other four. Look at the final four appearances by conference since '99. ACC - 8 Big10 - 8 Big12 - 5 BigEast - 3 CUSA - 2 (Marquette and Louisville, now both in the Big East) Pac10 - 1 (now 2 with UCLA) SEC - 1 (now 2 with LSU) Look, before I'm a fan of any team, I'm a college hoops fan. Sure, the team I like best is Duke, but I have teams I like in just about every conference. When I look at powerhouse conferences, I look for highly competitive conferences that demonstrate success in the tournament for a period of time. The SEC just hasn't done that. In the last 7 years, the SEC has produced a couple of very good UF teams and an excellent UK team that was upset by the best player in college ball that year, Dwayne Wade. Other than that, the conference has been pretty lackluster. For you to think it is better than it has been demonstrates how far removed you are from reality. I can appreciate that you love the conference your favorite team plays in, but that doesn't make it any better. EDIT: To be fair, and for Moose, I added UCLA in there.

If you don't mind me asking, what's the significance of the 22nd for you? For me, the 29th is a big day since it's my B-Day. But, I already know I'm giving that day up if she decides she wants it.