ZoomSlowik

If anyone who is already in a league wants to join this league as well, please let me know.

I had to change the draft time because I realized that I'm a dumbass that scheduled 2 drafts on the same night. I moved it to Tuesday August 29th at 9:30. If this is a problem, let me know.

Given the physique of the average poker player, I wouldn't got anywhere near this thing.

I want a Tigers' sweep right now. We can't really about them too much right now with the lead they have and the way we are playing, while the Twins are right there with us in the standings. Hopefully it'll also cool off the Twins a bit.

QUOTE(Gene Honda Civic @ Jul 28, 2006 -> 04:35 PM) His natural position is 3B. he conceded that spot to the elder statesman Enriquez, who was 25, in the WBC. From what I saw, he was very raw at 2B in the WBC, but never saw him at 3B. I don't know exactly how he projects in the field. I would figure that he needs about a year at AAA to get adjusted. He shouldn't be counted on by anyone, especially a contending team, to contribute right away. I believe he was just 21 during the WBC. You're right on the age and position, but he's been pretty dominant in Cuba and in the WBC. I don't know if it would take a full year.

Automated translations are always hilarious. Gourriel is a young stud that will clearly end up playing for one of the big budget teams, probably the Yankees. That should be quite a bidding war though. I'm not entirely sure, but IIRC the other guy is a pretty decent pitcher as well. Edit- my mistake, Paret is a SS, also from the national team.

QUOTE(RME JICO @ Jul 28, 2006 -> 12:23 PM) The GB/FB argument has some weight though. First if he is allowing a hit in 40% of the balls in play for July, that is way too high, then you add that to an increased FB rate, and you are going to let up a ton of hits and a ton of runs. Also, if he is striking out less, then there are more balls in play. The strikeout difference is not huge but 2 less strikeouts means 2 more balls in play. It all adds up. First, he is not pitching as effective as his usual self. Then he strikes out less, gives up more balls hit into play, which equates to more hits and runs. Now even if he was not pitching well, his BABIP should not be around .400 like BP suggests. That will come down and when it does, his hits allowed and runs allowed will go down as well. The problem with that is that his strikeouts are up in July and pretty low when he was good. That wouldn't really make sense. Besides, if you do the math, a 2 strikeout difference doesn't change things that much. That's two more balls in play for every 9 innings, which means a little less than 1.5 more for every start, and around 10 more in a month. Even if you get really unlucky, only 4 of those are going to turn into hits. That's less than a hit a start, which shouldn't translate to that big a difference unless all of them come at the exact right time. We're not even really talking about that big a difference, his career total is 5.23 and his career high is barely over 6. If he were a stuff-pitcher I'd be worried about a 4 K/9 rate, but not for a finnesse pitcher that normally has good control like Mark. As for the groundball rate, I'd say that's more of a by-product of his problem than the actual problem. An increased number of flyballs won't cause problems in and of itself, but if they're all hard hit balls it will. THAT is his problem. His poor pitch placement is causing a couple of pitches that normally would be weak grounders or flyballs somewhere into screaming liners in the gap. I won't argue with the increased number of hits or the increased BABIP. That's clearly the issue. You can't be successful with a BAA against that high. However, striking people out more often isn't the issue. He's got to get his control back, which turns those line drives back into weak grounders and flyouts.

I don't see strikeout/walk rates or groundball/flyball rates being the issue. He's simply getting hit a lot more frequently and harder. He's leaving a lot of pitches up and out over the plate and they're getting hit hard. You don't need to analyze stats to figure that out.

QUOTE(SoxHawk1980 @ Jul 28, 2006 -> 03:00 AM) His peripherals have always been at least decent. Decent K/9, good K/BB, good WHIP. This season, all of those peripherals turned to crap. All of the indictators are down this season. That doesn't look like a slump. That looks like a serious long-term problem, not just a little slump. Sox fans had better hope that this is just arm fatigue or an injury. No, he hasn't been getting lucky in the past. He's been getting enough strike outs, and keeping guys from hitting him too hard. He's had enough velocity, excellent control, and perfectly executed change of speeds. If you look at all of his relevant stats this year, you'll see that they are wildly different from each of his prior major league seasons. This is a major season-long downturn. Not just a little slump. How is it a season-long meltdown? I posted the numbers. He had two great months and one decent one before this. Look at his splits, he's really only sucked for 5 starts. The peripherals argument is bogus. There's virtually no difference between 4 k/9 and 6 k/9 (and even less between 5 and his career 5.23 rate), either way you're still relying on your defense. He had virtually the same numbers in 2003 as well and was still decent. Mark's pre-July numbers: Record- 9-4 ERA- 3.22 WHIP- 1.25 BAA- .268 (not entirely sure on my math with this one) K/9- 3.78 K/BB- 1.68 BB/9- 2.25 Mark's July numbers: Record- 0-5 ERA- 11.48 WHIP- 1.95 BAA- .348 K/9- 5.06 K/BB- 3.00 BB/9- 1.68 Tell me again how that is a season-long slump, and how his peripherals matter so much. The only ones that really matter are his ERA and his WHIP, which are obviously much higher of late.

QUOTE(SoxHawk1980 @ Jul 27, 2006 -> 06:33 PM) His peripherals were bad all year though. Finally, it caught up with him and he's been giving up a lot of runs recently. Basically, it was poor pitching, pretty much all year; he just didn't get lucky in the last month. This is a bad season and he's been pitching poorly in every way: K's, hits, walks, runs...everything. His ERA was 3.22 before the Cubs' start. That's the only thing that really matters in the long run. His peripherals have never looked that great, he's not a stuff-reliant pitcher. His career BAA is .266 and his k/9 is 5.23. Those aren't terrible, but they're not great either. He hasn't been "getting lucky" in the past. Luck doesn't last for 5 and a half years.

He's basically just had one awful month. His ERA for the first three was 2.57, 3.18, and 3.89. It's amazing how a few brutal starts can kill your numbers. Given his track record and his performance earlier in the year, I gotta think he's going to come out of it at some point.

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Jul 27, 2006 -> 03:52 PM) I go by the one at the park. Mark was at 86/87 in the last start I was at hitting 88 a bunch of times also. Then in Garcias last start against baltimore, he was 86 most of the time, dialing it up to 88 a few times and then popped on in at 90. The same radar gun in the next inning woudl have Bedard at 93/94 consistantly. The one at the park definitely seems to be more accurate, though it will occasionally be really far off on a pitch here and there. It registered one of MacDougal's fastballs at 76 on Tuesday.

QUOTE(Jake @ Jul 27, 2006 -> 03:41 PM) I was basing this off the TV gun that has his fastball and cutter slower, but his changeup the same speed, so I assumed his fastball must be slower. There's our general problem. The TV gun has been very erratic this year. It has been up to 8 MPH off, and it generally seems to be slower. I forgot who it was against, but we were facing someone that consistently throws 94 and the gun kept showing it at 86. It's also not uncommon to see Jenks at 92 on obvious fastballs.

What gun are you basing this on? Many of them are very inconsistent. The TV ones rarely seem to be right. From what I've seen he's been right around where he normally, generally about 87-88 on his fastball.

QUOTE(maggsmaggs @ Jul 27, 2006 -> 01:59 PM) I am thinking Madden, but I am not sure about another football game. For all the PS2 games, do you have to have a memory card or something to save seasons? Yeah, you need a memory card, and those two games take up quite a bit of space. I personally prefer NCAA Football, but that's just me. I'd skip basketball personally unless it's NBA Street. It's obviously more of an arcade style game that isn't for everyone. For baseball, definitely MVP 2005, that's solid and cheap.

This isn't really a superstition, but I think pretty soon I'm going to have to pull out the Sox Collectors' Editition DVD set and watch all 18 hours between games. If nothing else I'll be in a better mood.

QUOTE(Jake @ Jul 26, 2006 -> 05:17 PM) Fielding percentage is really not an accurate way to measure outfield defense. It seems to be fairly accurate in this case. I'd definitely rank Dunn, Pods, Lee, and Soriano all in the bottom 5.

QUOTE(dyenamite23 @ Jul 26, 2006 -> 02:02 PM) ozzie was the third base coach when pierre was back in florida and can get pierre to do get back to do what he did in fl Changing managers isn't going to improve a guy's batting average. He just can't consistently find the holes like he used too, and if he's not hitting at least .310 he as a fairly low OBP. He's basically the same player as Pods, if not worse at this point.

QUOTE(southsideirish @ Jul 25, 2006 -> 03:13 PM) But Podsednik is not even close to .370 OBP and never has been, so what is the freaking difference? The only difference I see is we are getting more HRs and RBIs with a better BA than we already have at the leadoff spot. Pods finished his rookie year with a .379 OBP, so that isn't entirely true. He also consistently sees more pitchers per plate attempt, which is something else you want from your leadoff guy. I'm not saying he's great, but he's a little better suited to hit leadoff. I'm not really all that concerned with homeruns and slugging out of the leadoff spot. That inherrently has less value there because he comes up with men on less often than he does hitting lower in the lineup. Move Soriano down in the lineup and he would have probably been around 120 RBI instead of 90 without seriously hurting his runs totals the past several years. I don't really have a problem with acquiring Soriano if the price is right (as in not giving up B-Mac). I'd much rather have him hitting 2nd or lower in the order though. If we were going to add a leadoff hitter, I'd rather have Abreu (not endorsing the deal). We don't need slugging as much as guys that consistently get on in front of the guys that hit all of the homers.

QUOTE(southsideirish @ Jul 25, 2006 -> 03:08 PM) I already said Soriano's career OBP is .325. It is not that far off of Pods' career OBP, which is not a high one. I disagree with your assessment. I think he fits the White Sox lineup much better in the leadoff spot than he does anywhere else. We would have absolutely no one else to put in leadoff anyway. So I don't know what you are thinking from that standpoint. If Soriano doesn't leadoff, then who does? Anderson? Iguchi? Uribe? I just don't get it. That's my entire point, it was my main reason that I don't think he fits on the Sox all that well. We're taking a semi-credible leadoff man out of the lineup and replacing him with an impatient slugger.

QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Jul 25, 2006 -> 02:50 PM) I have two questions zoom. First, if the Sox were to acquire Soriano, who should the leadoff hitter be? I agree that, theoretically, Soriano's production would be better for the offense if he were hitting lower in the order, but I see no one else on the team who could leadoff. Iguchi perhaps, but that's about it. Secondly, Soriano has never proven that he can be a very reliable bat lower in the order. He's still been very solid, with OPS's between .800-.850 or so, but nowhere near the .955 he's put up this year. If the Sox were to acquire him, would he be able to maintain his .955 OPS in the middle of the order rather than the top? 1) That's my problem. We wouldn't really have a solid leadoff option. Ideally I'd like to see our leadoff guy over a .370 OBP. If I had to pick someone off the roster, I'd say Iguchi, but he doesn't thrill me either. 2) I posted the stats a while ago, he wasn't exactly bad in the 3 and 5 spots in Texas, even with weaker protection than he had in New York. He posted a .838 OPS in the 5 hole in 2005, which just above his career average. He actually struggled more in the leadoff spot in Texas. This year is a significant statistical outlier in his entire career. He's never been over .880 even when he was leading off for the Yankees. He's walking a lot more while still showing good power. I'd chalk this up to a Beltran/Beltre like contract year upswing than anything having to do with his spot in the lineup.

QUOTE(southsideirish @ Jul 25, 2006 -> 01:46 PM) So can Soriano. Pods = a career .346 OBP, not exactly a high on base guy. Soriano is not that big of a difference at a career .325 OBP. I am just not understanding why Zoom thinks we are replacing this supposedly HIGH ON BASE GUY with a LOW ON BASE GUY. They are pretty similar with all of the other stats going Soriano's way. Plus he has busted his tail to learn how to play left field. Pods still has trouble playing LF and he is a career outfielder. Soriano is a huge upgrade. And Soriano's career OBP is .325. I'd call that a passable on base guy compared to a lower on base guy. This is the first year Soriano has gotten on base at a decent clip. Plus, Pods doesn't have the ability to hit for power and drive in runs like Soriano, so he almost has to lead off or hit 8 or 9. As a hitter, I'd say he's an upgrade. However, I don't really want him leading off because it's a waste of his best assets. He's much more dangerous as an RBI producer than a run scorer. I've said that several times.

QUOTE(Hanger @ Jul 25, 2006 -> 12:10 PM) Think it would be better keeping Pods, Soriano second. That would make your 7-8-9 hitters be, Tadihito or A.J, Crede and Uribe...not terrible for getting Soriano some RBI chances. We can't afford to put both of them in the lineup though, that'd be an awful defensive outfield.

QUOTE(IowaSoxFan @ Jul 25, 2006 -> 09:16 AM) What about acquiring Pierre to play Center and lead off the rest of the season? CF Pierre LF Soriano DH THome 1B Konerko RF Dye 2B Iguchi C Pierzynski 3B Crede SS Uribe Hopefully after those moves we weould still have BA as a defensive replacement for Piere late in the game Why would we want a leadoff hitter with an OBP of .320? Plus our outfield defense would be horrible, we'd have 2 outfielders that are free agents at the end of the year, and Soriano is a better leadoff hitter than Pierre at this point in their careers.

QUOTE(Jake @ Jul 25, 2006 -> 11:59 AM) They only lead off once a game. That's still a quarter of his at bats where he has no chance to have men on, and having Uribe and Anderson ahead of him doesn't help either. Roughly 2/3 of his at bats have come with no one on in Washington.