cabiness42

If someone is willing to trade for him before the tender deadline, that's great, but I don't see the Sox committing themselves to $4M+ just to hope that somebody will take him off their hands later in the winter.

Perhaps it isn't a good thing for OL to play 100 snaps per game.

The problem is that the tender deadline comes up pretty early in the off-season. Of course the Sox would love to make a trade, but Viciedo probably isn't any team's Plan A, and by the time they get to Plans C and D, the tender deadline will be passed and I really don't think the Sox should commit $4M to him.

Oregon losing isn't going to affect MSU. MSU is already going to be behind two SEC teams and 1-loss champions of the PAC12, Big12 and ACC, so MSU needs at least two of those three conference champions to have two losses plus ND have at least one loss.

Right before you ask her to do "something" that she's never been willing to try before.

Yes, I get that you have to make the playoffs in order to win in the playoffs, but if you're a GM and you have $15M to spend for next season and with that $15M you can get two 2.0 WAR pitchers, or you can get one 4.0 WAR pitcher and then fill the other spot with a AAAA player, shouldn't you take the second option?

Having an ongoing debate with a die-hard sabrematician about Oakland's persistent playoff failure. He insists that the playoffs are such a small sample size compared to the regular season that you can't judge the success of a team (or a GM who built the team) based on playoff performance. He essentially writes off playoff failure as "random chance." I really think it's a bunch of BS. Every time something doesn't perform to the sabremetric model, it gets written off as random chance. Now I have plenty of background in statistics and completely get that sabremetrics has greatly improved how player talent and performance is evaluated, but I'll never buy that you lose every year in the playoffs due to bad luck. One thing that I've never seen any research on is the impact of the structure of playoff series compared to the regular season and how that might impact certain teams. The regular season contains stretches of 6 up to as many as 20 days in a row with games, which requires five starting pitchers, a second catcher starting several games, and heavy bench and bullpen utilization. In the playoffs you never play more than 3 days in a row, so you don't need a 5th starter, don't need to play your second catcher, and can use your bench and your worst relievers less. Take these two hypothetical teams for example: Starting Pitching WAR: Team A: 4.5, 3.5, 2.5, 2.5, 0.0 Team B: 3.0, 2.5, 2.5, 2.5, 2.5 Catcher WAR: Team A: 5.0, 0.0 Team B: 3.5, 1.5 I could go on to make similar contrasts in the rest of the position players and relievers, but this should be enough to illustrate the point. Both teams have the same total WAR in their starting pitching and catching. Over the course of a 162 game season, both teams should expect to win about the same number of games. However, in the playoffs, Team A has an advantage over Team B due to not using the 5th starter or second catcher. So, I think there are two issues at hand. (1) Is the difference in roster usage from regular season to playoffs enough to change how good teams are relative to each other and (2) if so, do GMs need to take this into account when constructing their rosters?

So maybe there is a downside to having your uniforms stand out so much.

OK, got some new info on the five ND suspended players. Players (plus several of the non-player students who are a part of the investigation) are claiming that the "rogue" tutor in question was only editing papers and not actually writing papers for them. Have no idea if this is just an argument over semantics or a desperate attempt to stay in school, but supposedly at his disciplinary hearing Russell presented a Word file of his draft dated before the date he first met with the tutor and he thinks that is going to clear him. There are going to be a lot of very pissed fans if most or all of these guys end up being cleared of wrongdoing after missing 5 games.

I didn't say a good quarterback. I said a quarterback. If the other team lines up a quarterback under center, the Bears D is in trouble.

This week's opponent has the kind of offense that gives the Bears D problems: an offense with a quarterback.

Talk Dunn out of retiring.

It really should be copied and pasted into the NFL thread, NHL thread, NBA thread and the SLaM Catch-All thread.

OK, here's the situation: Each league gets a 25-man roster, selected only from non-playoff teams, for a 7-game series. Build your rosters and then decide who wins. I will do an AL roster. Someone else can do an NL roster and then the rest can suggest improvements. SP: Felix Hernandez, Chris Sale, Corey Kluber, Dallas Keuchel RP-L: Jake McGee, Charlie Furbush, Aaron Loup RP-R: David Robertson, Delin Betances, Brad Boxgerger, Carlos Carrasco C: Yan Gomes, Kurt Suzuki 1B/DH: Jose Abreu, David Ortiz, Edwin Encarnacion 2B: Robinson Cano, Jose Altuve SS: Alexei Ramirez, Jose Reyes 3B: Adrian Beltre OF: Danny Santana, Jose Bautista, Michael Brantley, Adam Eaton

Both of those teams would be terrible. Also, for those praising the Royals' offensive approach, they were 9th in the AL in runs scored, 5th in the AL Central. Offense didn't get the 2014 Royals into the playoffs any more than the 2005 White Sox.

Should have had Dunn pitch the 12th.

My cat still has the same number of AL pennants as Billy Beane.

Just looked it up, Dunn is hitting 200/300/286 in 40 career PA vs Shields.

ND is a pretty young team. Only 2 offensive starters + 1 defensive starter + kicker/punter are in their last year of eligibility. Even though FSU is overrated and vulnerable, beating them is a tall order for ND. Winning 2 of 3 against Stanford/Arizona St/USC and finishing 10-2 would be nice. Should be preseason Top 5 next year.

So he really is a Chris Christie clone.

Interesting that there are four potential geographic rival WS matchups: WAS/BAL, STL/KC, LAD/LAA, SF/OAK. Just need to find some connection between Detroit and Pittsburgh.

Paulie on Mike&Mike (ESPN2/AM1000) at 8:10 CT.

I know I would celebrate excessively if that happened.

Not liking this idea, but it's not as bad as the things that were running through my mind between the time I read the thread topic and the time I read the first post.

Sale signed for 5 years $32.5M guaranteed. He probably makes that in 4 years if he just goes year to year, but then he also loses all that money if he suffers a career-ending injury before then. So if he plays out the entire contract he leaves money on the table, but the tradeoff is that he has a guaranteed lifetime of financial security before reaching age 25.