...and when I went to preview it, it told me to log back in. No biggie it has happened before with previous entries and I've always been able to hit the back button, copy the text, and log back in. But nope not this time. So I really don't feel typing that up again although I'd be even more pissed if this happend with my original A's preview idea where I'd talk about the entire team. I started typing it in a word file a couple of weeks ago but got Bored after seven players so I decided to go wit
It's Christmas time for stat geeks as Hardball Times has released the first Win Shares of the 2006 season and thus I can now I start tracking the MVP candidates for the season. Of coursing being that we are just a little over six weeks into the season this can all be taken with a grain of salt but hey I need excuses for entries. So every Tuesday now I'll have an updated Top 10 list for each league.
I'll start with the National League as let's face it, the race is alredy over. Barring injury
Here's a look back at the first two years of my contest. Also for the first time full BCS rankings from 2005, pre bowls. The post bowl rankings for 2005 will be used for the Preseason Top 10 for 2006 but I won't be posting those until the sign ups are done. Also at the end is the all-time records list.
2004 Standings (regular season)
Pac-8
1. UCLA (6-1, 8-5)
2. Boise State (5-2, 7-6)
3. Hawaii (4-3, 7-6)
4. Stanford (3-4, 8-5)
4. Washington State (3-4, 7-6)
4. Oregon (3-
-So Monmouth blew out Hampton 71-49 in the play in game tonight. Hampton had the worst RPI of any team with a winning record in the entire country and you can thank those conference tournaments for that. Now every year after this game ends the ESPN analyst has to talk about the school getting it's first ever NCAA tournament win, which always annoys me, and tonight was no different. Did Monmouth really win a tournamnet game? After all it is the "play in" game which by the wording of it seems to i
ESPN is already doing the "Chasing Bonds" treatment for Albert Pujols but it really should be "Chasing Wagner." According to HardballTimes.com Pujols is on pace to tie Honus Wagner's single season record of 59 Win Shares set back in 1908. I am outraged the media is ignoring this potential historic event. Come on the homerun record has been broken twice in the last eight years, the Win Shares record hasn't been broken in 98 years! Don't you remember as a kid always wondering if someone would reac
In recent years the WWE has made a killing on wrestler themed DVD's that feature several full length versions of classic matches. Now not necessarily influenced by the WWE but Major League Baseball has now started releasing DVD box sets of classic World Series featuring full length games from the entire series. This year they've released 1975, 1979, and 1986 World Series on DVD and I'd imagine there will be more of this in the future. Even though I'm not a fan of the Reds, Pirates, or Mets I do
I had almost forgotten that the NBA Draft was only a week away. I used look forward to the draft before ESPN took over coverage of it from TNT. Now in the early days of my blog (waaaaaaaaay back four and a half months ago) I did an entry on the 1989 NBA Draft, ranking the players drafted using the basketball version of win shares. I decided that would be a better way to do a Draftback entry for the NBA rather than the usual listing of the first round making stupid comments.
I picked the 19
OMG two entries in one day, I'm out of control! This year I decided to track the number of games that each team had televised by MLB's three television partners. The final week's schedule was finalized today so figured I'd actually post the final "standings" for the year. I thought it'd be better to post it on the blog rather than the TWiB form because we don't need another debate of the overexposure of two certain teams from the Northeast and God knows I've instigated a few of those debates.
Took a different rout with the next Draftback by just focusing on the top quarterbacks to come out of each draft with brief comments on each class.
1980
Good depth but not one star came out of this class. Marc Wilson only had one year as a starter that he threw more touchdowns than interceptions. Mark Malone had to follow Terry Bradshaw and he was just awful. David Woodley had his 15 minutes of fame when he started Super Bowl XVII but he was not a good quarterback and only lasted until
In the ongoing debate in college football of playoffs vs. bowls I certainly come on the side of playoffs. I personally think the bowls have out lived their usefulness and that any tradition left in the system was pissed away when the Big Ten and Pac-10 agreed to join the BCS a few years back thus no longer guaranteeing that those two conference’s champions would meet in the Rose Bowl. Since the creation of the BCS in 1998 it has only avoided controversy twice, in 2002 and 2005 simply because the
Hey its entry #200! Ya I had nothing special thought out. I've tried putting together a list of the Top 50 Oakland A's of All-Time but am never satisfied with the list when I put it together. I also tried putting together a list of the Top 100 baseball players of my baseball lifetime but that became too difficult and eventually too subjective as I made adjustments to it. So as a total cop out I decided to list the Top 50 most replied to threads in the Sports forum here at TSM which is pretty muc
Time to take a brief break from the nostalgia. On Tuesday the first conference tournaments in college basketball will tip off and thus starts the two weeks of the season that render the regular season meaningless. The idea that with two weeks left in the season that almost every team in college basketball has a chance to qualify for the tournament is insane. The majority of conferences every team qualifies for their conference tournament. It is technically possible for a team to go winless in i
I had been looking for an excuse to do an entry on one of the most bizarre years in baseball history and the A.L. MVP pick in 1981 was controversial so might as well do a redo. 1981 featured the strike to end all strikes, until the 1994 strike trumped it of course. The players went on strike on June 12th that year over free agent compensation and did not comeback until August 9th, losing 712 games in the process.
Now the owners decided to come up with an idea to drum up some interest back
There's a new Sports Illustrated poll of 470 Major League players asking who are the most overrated and most underrated players in baseball. Stuff like this is incredibly subjective as someone may consider one player underrated while the other considers that same player overrated. My assumption is that the player's perspective would be how they feel the media and fans view the player and that will influence their opinion on whether or not they consider someone overrated or underrated. So here's
Ugh, I had almost finished the entire entry and my dumbass clicks the back button by accident. Click forward, nothing there. So fuck it I'm not typing all that out again so here's the quick version of the Top 10 for each league and maybe I'll edit in some numbers later.
Pujols still has a huge lead although it could be gone if he misses the full six weeks like many think he will.
Edit: Okay I've put the numbers in now.
National League
10. Jason Bay, Pirates
.305/.427/.614, 49
Don Mattingly - First Baseman
New York Yankees 1982-1995
7th year on the ballot
Past HOF Voting Results
2001: 28.16%
2002: 20.34%
2003: 13.71%
2004: 12.85%
2005: 11.43%
2006: 12.30%
Awards
1985 AL MVP
1985 AL Gold Glove - 1B
1985 AL Silver Slugger - 1B
1985 ML Sporting News Player of the Year
1986 AL Gold Glove - 1B
1986 AL Silver Slugger - 1B
1987 AL Gold Glove - 1B
1987 AL Silver Slugger - 1B
1988 AL Gold Glove - 1B
1989 AL Gold Glove - 1B
I've made it no secret I'm a junkie for original televised footage of classic sporting events. Back in the day when ESPN Classic actually showed classic games I would love watching classic games from the 70's and 80's. I was thrilled when two years ago MLB started releasing complete World Series boxsets of the 1975, 1979, and 1986 World Series which I promptly bought all three and did write ups of all three sets on the blog. Last year two more World Series sets were released, 1977 and 1987 but I
Now finally finishing off these Worst lists with designated hitters. Since the DH has only been around since 1973 these are the worst DH seasons of all-time. Unlike every other position, there is no additional value to be provided by DH beyond what they do with their bat. They aren't even expected to be threats on the basepaths either as most DH's are aging veterans or guys who are so slow they couldn't even handle first base. The top of the list falls into the aging veteran category as he was a
Back by popular demand, add another "Worst" list with the worst pitcher seasons since 1961 using ERA+. Checking baseball-reference.com, unlike qualifications for the batting title, it appears the qualification for the ERA title has never changed. In order to qualify a pitcher must pitch at least one inning per team game. Now I could have gone back to 1901 then but again it would been littered with too many early 20th century pitchers that most us have never heard of. The worst ERA+ of all-time w
In a couple of weeks we have the chance to witness something none of us have seen before (I assume we have no one in their 60's on this board) and that is see the Cardinals as champions of the NFL. This got me to wonder about how many franchises in the four major North American professional sports leagues have never won their league's championship in my lifetime. I also wanted to know who would replace the Cardinals as the most moribund franchise in the NFL (I know you will all be shocked!) and
A week ago on the wonderful baseball stat geek site Hardball Times there was this article about the 1994 Montreal Expos. The article is titled "Where Are They Now?" but it more or less only tells you were they went rather than where they are now, not that I was needing to find out where Freddie Benavides was nowadays. So I figured I'd do the same for another team from the past but have a more approriate title for it. Now for picking the team I was going to go with 1989 Oakland A's or the 1997 Fl
Draftback...ain't I clever? The NFL Draft is later this month and the point of this blog is a lot of nostalgia so might as well look back at some old drafts, plus I've done no football content to this point. Pretty much picked in 1990 at random and because at first glance the 1st round looks rather uninspiring. I will only be looking back at the first round picks as to hell with going over the whole thing. Don't expect any real insight as unlike baseball there isn't much in terms of statisical a
I decided to watch Baseball Tonight because apparently I want to punish myself, might as well make an entry out of it. Watching people analyze one week of baseball is always hilarious anyways especially when it’s done by the likes of Harold Reynolds and John Kruk. Who cares about sample sizes? Tigers/Brewers in the World Series!
-Chris Berman is doing the show because it’s the Sunday of the Masters and he must do Baseball Tonight every Masters’ Sunday every year to show off his green jacket
With all the MVP talk for the potential "non-steroid" single season homerun record holder Ryan Howard, even though he wouldn't really deserve it, I figured it'd be good to redo for the year of the homerun chase, 1998. Mark McGwire would beat out Sammy Sosa for the homerun record that year but it was Sosa who that took home the MVP in a landslide.
Sosa won the MVP over McGwire for one simple reason, the Cubs won the Wild Card and the Cubs making the playoffs is always a big deal. The Cardin
Jose Canseco - Rightfielder/Designated Hitter
Oakland Athletics 1985-1992, 1997
Texas Rangers 1992-1994
Boston Red Sox 1995-1996
Toronto Blue Jays 1998
Tampa Bay Devil Rays 1999-2000
New York Yankees 2000
Chicago White Sox 2001
Awards
1986 AL Rookie of the Year
1988 AL MVP
1988 AL Silver Slugger - OF
1990 AL Silver Slugger - OF
1991 AL Silver Slugger - OF
1998 AL Silver Slugger - DH
All-Star Selections: 6 (1986, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1992, 1999)
League Lea
