chw42

LeBron...HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I hope that game screws any momentum Miami had going into today. With Miami and Boston looking like crap recently, the Bulls just need to beat the teams they're supposed to beat to get that first seed (starting tomorrow against the T-Wolves).

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Mar 29, 2011 -> 02:16 PM) They won the AL Central last year with Justin Morneau missing the 2nd half of the season. The entire half. If he's back to full-health, they've improved significantly by inserting a f***ing MVP into the lineup. I addressed that issue. Thome was just as good offensively as Morneau would have been in the second half, if not better.

QUOTE (scotty22hotty @ Mar 29, 2011 -> 05:00 PM) Quentin/Milledge/Teahen worst RF platoon in all of baseball... would rather just let CQ play A platoon with 2 guys who can combine for a .380 wOBA is bad? Huh?

QUOTE (flavum @ Mar 29, 2011 -> 12:38 PM) Indians OD Lineup: Brantley LF Cabrera, A SS Choo RF Santana C Hafner DH Cabrera, O 2B LaPorta 1B Kearns LF Hannahan 3B Sox will face Carmona, Carrasco, and Masterson. I will never understand how you can bat Matt LaPorta and freaking OC ahead of Austin Kearns. It just seems so...illogical.

The A-Rod for MVP and Cardinals winning the division with no Wainwright kind of ruins whatever he says about the Sox.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Mar 29, 2011 -> 12:31 PM) A righty/righty platoon would never happen on an Ozzie managed team. I realize that. Reporter - "Ozzie, Carlos Quentin is hitting .300 against right handed pitchers this season, but only .200 against left handers, do you plan on sitting him against lefties?" Ozzie - "Where you come up with those stats? Right hander never hit bad against left hander, it against rules of besibol. When I was a ked playing in streets of Venezuela, my manager would tell me to go hide in a trash can whenever the opposing pitcher throw with his left hand. You tink I'm going to break the tradition? Who the f*** you think I am? Buck Showalter?"

QUOTE (The Ginger Kid @ Mar 29, 2011 -> 12:14 PM) Passan and Brown have a good discussion on the AL central on Yahoo, and make a valid point: the twins get Morneau and Nathan back. Sure, they've lost some bullpen depth, but it's essentially the same team with an upgrade at 2b. Both the Sox and kitties will have to raise their game significantly to beat them, but they both see the twins prevailing in the end. But Passan is high on the Sox. The Twins also had Morneau producing at a historic pace last season before he went down. His wOBA was .500 in July. Then they got a .430 wOBA from Thome to replace Morneau. In other words, they really didn't miss a beat when Morneau went down. Sure, it meant more PAs for Jason Kubel, but this season, it's more than likely that Kubel and Thome will split PAs at DH. Plus, that Twins bullpen did just fine without Nathan. Capps and Rauch were more than serviceable. Not elite, but definitely good. I think you can say that the bullpen this year for them is lacking depth, but has a lot of punch at the end. As for the Twins upgrading at 2B, I heavily disagree. Orlando Hudson quietly had a great year at 2B in 2010. Nishioka is an unknown commodity. He will most likely hit for zero power (he didn't hit for much of it in Japan to begin with) and might be a .280ish hitter with a .350-.360 OBP and above average defense. I also think those are pretty optimistic projections. Then you have one of the stupidest moves of the off-season - trading J.J. Hardy for basically nothing. His replacement is Casilla, who as we all know, is a bad hitter and maybe an average defender. I really don't think the Twins improved. Perhaps they could still be the same team if things go right (Nishioka is as good as advertised, Nathan comes back 100%, Morneau stays completely healthy, etc), but in terms of talent, they took a decent step back this off-season.

QUOTE (ScottyDo @ Mar 29, 2011 -> 12:13 PM) I'd rather take the first couple of months to see if Quentin can rake on his own. If he can't, I have no problem with a platoon. If he can, though, I want him getting regular AB's. Q at his best >> Half-time Q and half-time Milledge. Well, yeah, obviously. 08 Quentin would make one of the best hitters in baseball. The problem is that he's never fully healthy for extended periods of time.

With Milledge probably making the team, the White Sox have a perfect platoon situation. Milledge rakes against left handed pitchers, something that Quentin and Teahen fail to do. Of course, Ozzie will probably NEVER do this on a regular basis, but there is the possibility that he could do something like this on a Sunday get-away game or when he wants to rest his starters. Milledge vs. LHP Career: 510 PA, .289, 13 HR, .350 wOBA 2010: 145 PA, 4HR, .400 wOBA Quentin vs. RHP Career: 1239 PA, .266, 70 HR, .370 wOBA 2010: 393 PA, .253, 20 HR, .361 wOBA Teahen vs. RHP Career: 2120 PA, .274, 51 HR, .332 wOBA 2010: 221 PA, .276, 4 HR, .336 wOBA The best combination will be Milledge and Quentin. Not to mention Milledge is most likely a better defender than Quentin. There's not too many good platoon situations out there, but this looks like a pretty good situation for it to happen. Even though it probably won't.

Mark's been having on-off seasons for a while now and xFIP really hasn't done much to project him correctly (since xFIP neutralizes luck on home runs, it is best used to look a year or two ahead). Just look at how his FIP and xFIP have been in the past 5 years. 06: 5.27/4.78 07: 4.26/4.41 08: 3.94/3.98 09: 4.46/4.37 10: 3.90/4.49 His xFIP is constantly hovering around 4.5, yet his FIP is more or less around 4-4.2. So he's outperforming xFIP by half a run just about every season. Even with the batted ball abnormalities last season, all the projection systems have Buehrle's FIP at 4.1 this upcoming season. He'll be fine. His fastball velocity's been around the same these past 5 years (around 86), so I don't think he's due for a huge decline.

QUOTE (ScottyDo @ Mar 29, 2011 -> 10:21 AM) Yah, that was pretty weak. I guess I shouldn't have expected much. Anyone else see/hear that SI has us third in the division though? Pfft...who cares? It's not out of the question, but that would mean the Twins are going to stay constant (doubtful) while the Tigers vastly improve (very doubtful).

QUOTE (Felix @ Mar 28, 2011 -> 09:52 PM) On the plus side, at least Rose got a double-double... right? This wasn't one of his better games, that's for sure. 10 TOs is horrible.

Rose is starting to enter Unicorn mode.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Mar 28, 2011 -> 08:51 PM) Korver is god of the catch and shoot. Only when he is in hot sauce mode. Otherwise, not really.

QUOTE (striker @ Mar 28, 2011 -> 08:39 PM) If the Sox get more wins then losses in April then they will win the division That's not saying a lot. Maybe if you expand that to say...the entire second half, I'd say there's a good chance.

The Sixers are shooting extremely well. That's gotta average out sometime soon right?

Thadeus Young made Boozer and Gibson look like little kids in that second quarter.

QUOTE (Felix @ Mar 27, 2011 -> 10:34 PM) There's an easy solution to this: stop reading Bleacher Report. It's easily one of the most worthless sites on the internet. It's not just that site. The Lowry stuff was from another blog. I'm also not the one checking it. People post links to the site and quote it, which interests me enough to read it since it's usually wrong.

For the sake of everyone, can these amateur writers on Bleacher Report and so many other blogs stop comparing Derrick Rose to the likes of Russell Westbrook and Kyle Lowry? PLEASE, STOP! 1) It makes you look absolutely basketball-stupid in the eyes of those who don't care for advanced stats - and that's a lot of people. 2) It doesn't make sense to compare Kyle Lowry to Derrick Rose, it just doesn't. Win Shares doesn't back your argument, PER doesn't back your argument, stop trying to find crevices in the world of flawed metrics to make a stupid point. We get it, D-Rose isn't as good as some people think he is. Big deal, that doesn't mean you can go out and make a horrible comparison. 3) If you want to use advanced stats, quit sprinkling in that Westbrook and Rose have similar ordinary numbers (like shooting percentage, assists, etc). If you want to do a real advanced analysis, do it with actual advanced metrics. Talking about how Westbrook and Rose average around the same number of points and assists like it means everything is like saying Delmon Young and Adam Dunn are similar hitters since they were 10 RBIs apart last year. Like Stacey King would say...STOP IT! It just infuriates me that some of these writers are doing terrible things with statistical analytical writing. If you want to have a case against Rose, that's fine. But don't clown on him with child's play and pretend you know something. *Rant over.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 27, 2011 -> 07:14 PM) This made me laugh: http://espn.go.com/chicago/video/clip?id=6263657 *Facepalm. Kobe is not anywhere near the conversation for MVP if you want to mention supporting casts and statistics in the same argument. Kobe doesn't even have the highest Win Shares on his team, Gasol does. Plus, win shares likes Rose more than Kobe, by about a win or two I think.

He should be hitting in the 4th spot. But I have more of an issue in where Rios is currently hitting. If you're gonna hit him in a spot other than 3rd, put Quentin 5th.

Hmm...Rose seems out of character today. He swore in an interview to KC Johnson and said "the worst thing you can do is give me confidence...if you do that I'm hard to stop" (or something to that effect). This is definitely new to me. I don't remember Rose being this, what's the word,...cocky? He did say he hasn't accomplished anything yet and that the Bulls have seen nothing but first round exits thus far...but still, out of character.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Mar 26, 2011 -> 10:06 PM) I know the RealGM Bulls board came up with it, but Stacey used Windy City Assassin like three times in those last minutes. It's like how Hawk got Cuban Tank from this board. Just an intriguing thought that we as fans can actually do that from our computers. That name is trending on Twitter. I don't know if I want D-Rose to be called Windy City Assassin. The last "Assassin" nickname given out was to Javy Vazquez (Silent Assassin by Hawk). Bad, bad memories.

QUOTE (Jenksy Cat @ Mar 26, 2011 -> 10:30 PM) Didn't Ozzie call him the Cuban Tank? Ozzie was definitely first.

2.5 up on Boston with 10 left to play. 60 wins should get the first seed. Bulls have 6 games left against below .500 teams (one of them being NY...hahaha). The only real challenges I see are the Celtics and Magic games. The Philadelphia one should be a good one as well. I think 7-3 is a pretty realistic expectation for the rest of the games. In that case, Boston has to go 10-1 and Miami can't get the first seed since the Bulls own the tie-breaker.