caulfield12

http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/splits/_/id/...3/dexter-fowler 870 ops vs. 733 against rhp as a lhb. The whole problem is that he's getting three times as many AB's against righties compared to lefties, so what reason do we have to believe he'd end up closer to 800-825 in the AL hitting only RH compared to switch hitting in the NL? His one year in the AL, he was a sub 2 war in Houston. I just don't see the argument for a second tier guy making nearly the same as Gordon, who doesn't have much of an AL or non-Rockies background orvtrack record and who will also cost a precious draft pick to the Cubs. If you're not signing one of the bigger names, it makes more financial sense to go fewer years with Span, Parra or Jackson in some combination and preserve the draft pick.

http://www.royalsreview.com/2016/1/1/10699...racts-for-teams Argument for why awarding premier free agents 2-3 years isn't much different than paying out on 4-5 year deals. If you scroll down to the comments, there's an interesting five paragraph from Vandalia. "This highlights the important fact that there are two ends in baseball: to provide entertainment (thus revenue), and to win baseball games. The two are not necessarily the same. In fact, one can argue that they are rarely the same. Most of the star players with the mega-contracts will never be able to produce enough value to justify their salaries based on on-the-field performance. However, they put fans in the seats and provide good TV ratings. Therefore they might be good for the ultimate bottom line, the balance sheet. If you sign Zack Greinke or Giancarlo Stanton you are paying a premium for their "entertainment" value. That will never show up on the WAR statistics. On the other hand, if you sign Kendrys Morales, you are paying primarily for his talents at baseball alone. It has been written that the Kansas City Royals of the last two years are a "boring" team without "star" players – and some would argue TV ratings. But of course in KC, you don’t have the surplus population who might come out to the ballpark to see Alex Rodriguez even if they have never watched a baseball game before. To maximize the crowd in KC, you have to have a good baseball team." It's an interesting premise. That Gordon would be worth more at a lesser price to a team where winning is absolutely paramount (like the Sox as well) and where even "star" players (if you want to put Cespedes and Upton in that category) don't really bring in enough extra revenue on .500ish clubs to justify their price tags. And we can study Sox attendance to see there's not much more than a slight blip up when Sale pitches...as opposed to Halladay in Toronto or Greinke in his Cy Young season where 5-10,000 walk ups were typically added for those games.

The PERCEPTION is that Ortiz was better because we heard about him 10X as much because of the ESPN/East Coast bias thing. If he'd remained on the Twins and put up those same numbers, he might not be getting into the Hall. The three World Series titles after 80 odd years without one has inflated his influence, as well as having Manny Ramirez, an even better hitter in his prime, paired with him. You'd have to argue Ramirez and Miggy are the two best overall hitters (hitting for both high average and power) of the last two decades of players. Bonds has to be somewhere in that conversation as well, depending on how you view him.

Supposedly it has been withdrawn but they're still looking to keep him (Davis) for a lower amount/less years...also depends on what the prices are for Upton, Gordon and Cespedes, one would think.

http://heavy.com/news/2016/01/eric-jamal-j...-suv-road-rage/ http://www.star-telegram.com/news/state/te...le53085270.html You should have all the elements necessary for a media frenzy. The men inside the vehicle began to talk to Mutschlechner’s friend, Cori, asking where they were going and “making lewd comments about the two females in the vehicle, saying they wanted to ‘f**k them’,” police said. According to the affidavit, Cori told them he “didn’t appreciate their comments” and one of the men in the back of the SUV said he would “beat his ass.” The driver then said, “I’ll shoot your ass” and showed a handgun, Cori said. They continued driving and two shots were then fired at the car, police said. Mutschlechner’s friends say they recognized two of the men from the party they had left. They said one of the men looked “very young” and had braces. The other was wearing a Chicago Cubs baseball hat they recognized. Both were in the backseat of the SUV. Police said they found photos of the Daytona Boyz members, Tay-K and PimpyZ, with Santana Sage, later identified as Eric Jamal Johnson. The photos and videos showed them performing at the party and in the SUV. Johnson was wearing a red sweatshirt with the words “F**k Everybody” on it, police said. It's also interesting how long it took for the Cologne/Germany stories to come out from New Year's about all the (so far alleged) rapes/robberies/lewd behavior by roving groups of "Middle Eastern/Islamic/Arab" (according to witnesses) against mostly German women...seems that story is being picked up and going out worldwide now. Lots of speculation what will happen when they have their version of Carnivale.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown...-165723465.html Seems like a disaster waiting to happen...since it's the Browns, after all. Hired as "Chief Strategy Officer" which sounds quite vague. Seems so far removed from Bernie Kosar, the Dawg Pound and all those great defensive backs in the 1980's. Of course, Manziel was pretty much the antithesis of the statistical revolution (along with Tebow as well). http://medinagazette.northcoastnow.com/201...ront-offices-2/ The other big front office hire is Sashi Brown, who like Rick Hahn (and Pres.Obama), has a Harvard Law degree. http://sports.yahoo.com/news/why-paul-depo...042555-mlb.html Why it's the right move. Tim Brown/yahoo sports. Love the line about "Jonah Hill is the new GM of the Browns!" Wat? must be the reaction.

Well, the counter-argument is that Griffey, the Big Unit and finally Ichiro took away a lot of the press from Martinez, who also never was much of a self-promoter but always had a good reputation around the league with writers and fans alike. You have three once-in-a-generation talents in the same organization, it's hard to break out. Heck, Jay Buhner is an iconic hero and perhaps more famous than Edgar to the more casual M's fans who never seriously paid attention to how good he really was on a daily basis. He's the kind of hitter you have to watch day after day over a course of a full-season to really appreciate IMO. (Pretty much the antithesis of the McGwire/Sosa duels).

Probably the bigger issue is what do they have left to trade if they don't sign Gordon, Cespedes or Upton? Although most of the guys traded for Shark, Frazier and Lawrie weren't more than 0.5-1.5 war players (with the exception of Semien and/or Montas), they constituted 5-6 of the top ten prospects. It's difficult to imagine Trey, Danish, May or a depreciating Hawkins being enough to entice CarGo deal, for instance. One hopes because of financial reasons they don't clear out the rest of the farm. That would be penny wise and pound foolish for the future.

QUOTE (Brian @ Jan 5, 2016 -> 01:10 PM) I feel like I liked "The Big Short" more than most. Top 10 liked. It's a really hard movie to categorize. You've got all those cameos, Ryan Gosling's crazy hair, Steve Carell...it's not over the top like The Wolf of Wall Street and while it does have Margot Robbie and Selena Gomez for 3-4 minutes, certainly not sexy, either. It's a topic that everyone should try to understand, and maybe a lot of those who suffered or made in hindsight foolish financial mistakes should see just to remember so it doesn't happen again in their lifetimes. There really wasn't a hero to cheer for. The movie suggests Carell/Baum, but to me it was Dr. Burry/Bale, who was admittedly more difficult to like than Steve Jobs at his worst. I can't even imagine who they'd hire to play an Asian-American role for The Flash Boys (another Lewis novel)...he's actually closer to a hero than anyone here. Baum essentially still made his profits betting on people losing their homes and shorting the market. In the end, fiduciary responsibility won out. And yet there also weren't many good villains, either...the condescending but generic big banks, those who kept rooting the market while Rome was burnin, Alan Greenspan and the CDO swap guy.

Poor Olt. Before Frazier, he arguably had one last chance at a starting job in the big leagues.

The presence of Anderson, Fulmer and Adams (to a lesser extent) make it top 21-25, but it's hard to argue between Sanchez, Saladino, Rodon and the three we traded to LA that the system's nearly as strong as the status entering 2015. Last year, we were 12th or 13th to 17th in most rankings, right? Our overall pitching depth is down, no catchers yet in sight and still waiting on the hitters. May also seems a stretch...and obviously Hawkins is closer to suspect than prospect. Adolfo and Danish took steps back. It's still difficult to make the argument that we are well set up to graduate wave after wave into the big leagues, that's for sure.

Django was better to me...I can't imagine wanting to watch 8 again for a LONG time.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Jan 4, 2016 -> 01:23 PM) ? The Braves aren't as worried about Bourn, Swisher, Markakis because they saved a ton of money on Olivera compared to what they were planning to pay him as a free agent before last season. They also got money back with Arroyo. That said, they certainly will clear them from the roster for the right price. Finally, let's not forget the Braves also got $11 million back with Swisher and Bourn.

Apparently, he thinks the Angels need to bring back Kendrick and add Upton to balance out their top-heavy line-up.

For hitters, it's 130 plate appearances or at-bats, can't remember which now....50 ip for pitchers and there's a formula for service days on the roster as well.

"Because the Dodgers have already provided a $28.5 million signing bonus, the Braves will simply be responsible for the $32.5 million Olivera is owed from 2016-20. Atlanta also saved some money as the Dodgers are picking up an undisclosed portion of the approximate $7.6 million owed to Arroyo, who has been recovering from Tommy John surgery since the Braves acquired him from the D-backs in the Touki Toussaint deal a month ago. Though the 30-year-old Olivera has played just 19 professional games, the Braves have seen enough of him in international play and during multiple workouts this past winter to believe it made much more sense to provide him an average annual salary of $6.5 million over the next five seasons than to pay the much more significant price that would have been required to land a proven bat via free agency or trade." Mlb.com Something else to consider...financially.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jan 3, 2016 -> 05:55 PM) Nothing says great TV like trolls in their Mom's basement There's actually a really nifty little documentary named "Finder's Keepers" that is symptomatic of this whole fame/attention malaise in America today. I kid you not, the entire premise is all about a Southern "good 'ol boy" who buys a BBQ smoker at auction and ends up unsuspectingly with a man's lower leg/foot inside (strangely kept after an amputation...another part of the story), yet he refuses to give it back...instead hoping to profit from it and use the foot (he becomes the "Foot Man") as leverage to become famous. At some point, you would think there would be a tipping point where people just got tired of it. But I'm not so sure. There's a saying..."anyone's autobiography could be a best-seller if you only found the right scribe to author it." And, for every 50-100 trolls, there's one Chris Cotillo who becomes quite famous when he's only a university sophomore.

QUOTE (Middle Buffalo @ Jan 3, 2016 -> 05:02 PM) On a bit of a holiday movie kick with the wife these past two weeks: Star Wars (no wife for this one, took my 11 year old) - nice return to the feel of Eps 4 & 5. I feel good about the series going forward. I wasn't a huge, huge fan like most kids my age (43), but it was undeniably an important film series to my generation. The Martian - Saw this at the $2 theater. Pretty predictable, but worth seeing. The Big Short - My wife loved. I thought it was just ok. I read the book, though, and that usually has an impact on seeing the movie version of the story. They did a good job of explaining the real estate meltdown - which is something we should all be much madder about than we are. Book was really good, but it's a pretty tricky read because the subject is pretty complicated. The Danish Girl - Good movie. Eddie R. will be nominated. He does a really good job of showing how confusing gender identity is for some people. The Hateful Eight - Not Tarrantino's best. I put it below my favorite 4 (Resevoir Dogs, Pulp, Inglorious, & Django). It was a little slow, and I didn't find any character especially likeable. And, I mean likeable in the Tony Soprano sense of a bad guy that I like and root for. Spotlight - I really liked this. An expose on the cover up in the Catholic Church priest abuse in the Boston diocese and even higher up. Really well told. Good acting. And I think it's a good representation of the way absolute power corrupts absolutely. In this story it's the Catholic Church. But it's applicable to so many other things (Government, Wall Street, Police Departments, etc). The average citizen is pretty powerless against the machine. And the powers that be know how to distract and divide the people that are being screwed. Walter Goggins is as close as it gets...but even that's not so cut and dried.

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/carly-fiorin...-155518374.html Rose Bowl Gate It would be better if Fiorina was honest and admitted it completely backfired instead of rationalizing.

Who goes to the ceremony representing the Expos with Raines if he gets in? It can't be Loria or John Henry...one would hope.

15-20 years ago, The Sporting News, cnnsi and cbssports were three of the better sources out there for baseball content. Now with ESPN losing top writers (see Simmons and Grantland) it is yet another indicator of the financial issues (related to overpaying for football and basketball deals and increased fees charged to providers passed down to subscribers) plaguing the industry. It's also an interesting time with the proliferation of all the Twitter "experts" as well. I suppose it could have been developed into a whole bigger thesis and placed into financial news or the sports pub, but oh well. If I worked for yahoo sports, i wouldn't be too comfortable about having a job a year from now either. At any rate, I couldn't find where all the Grantland comments were so I simply made one here. You're welcome to move it.

http://www.salon.com/2016/01/03/the_middle..._workers_drown/ Here's a pretty good reason the GOP still has a shot at the presidency, especially with Kasich as the VP on the ticket.

You could have a great niche reality show comprised of all the tools pretending to be Heyman, Rosenthal, Morosi, Stark, Nightengale, Law, etc.

At least they could have had Stanford and OSU in the Rose...and Iowa/ND a more competitive Fiesta. (That said, for Hawk fans waiting 25 years it was completely worth it except for all the travel plans thrown into last minute chaos). All the experts got fooled by the close MSU victories...and overlooked the Nebaska loss. Iowa blew out NW that defeated Stanford inexplicably but most of their games were down to the last possession...and of course not playing Michigan, MSU and OSU during the regular season along with the weaker/rebuilding western teams in the conference.

Only reason I use cbssports these days is for Jerry Palm's RPI ratings for football and 90% of the time college bb. They bought him out and moved his collegerpi info to their webpage a few years ago.