This week the Phillies traded Bobby Abreu for some magic beans and Chase Utley was the talk of baseball with his assault on Joe DiMaggio’s consecutive hitting streak record, so the Phillies are having the best week ever! Oh Utley’s streak ended last night…but hey at least they got rid of Lazy Abreu. You know what rhymes with Abreu? Poo. That’s the kind of hard hitting analysis that you can also get from the TWiB thread.
So with the Phillies in the news the past week I figured might as well
Starting off topic, but are the Red Sox cursed again or something? Seriously stop with this “Boston Massacre” shit ESPN. Oh my god they won’t win the East…just like the last 10 years. They still have a shot at the Wild Card and a shot at ruining the playoffs for me again with another Yankees/Red Sox ALCS.
1975 World Series Game 5 - Reds 6, Red Sox 2 (boxscore and play account)
-As mentioned before the video quality of these games has not held up very well. The first few innings of t
Since my 1991 Mariners entry was flushed and I doubt I’ll try to type it again anytime soon so I might as well do 1991 A.L. MVP redo which does feature a Mariner player being underrated by the voters. But the main reason this particular MVP was interesting is that it’s one of those cases with where player on a losing team won the award. Now in the 1987 N.L. MVP redo Andre Dawson was shown to be one of the worst choices ever, nevermind that he played on a last place team. For the 2003 A.L. MVP re
This may or may not become a regular feature. Probably do entries on Sunday's about the previous day in college football until I run of out of mildly interesting things to say which will probably happen a week from now.
Game of the Day: Tennessee 35, California 18. Oh ya that hit the spot. As I said in the TWiCFB thread this was a game that could give Cal that signature non-conference win that can take a program to the next level. Now I wasn't going to put up with a year's worth Cal in the
I realized that I haven't done a single entry on the NFL out of the first 90. That mainly has to do with that the NFL doesn't interest me nearly as much as it used too. And a lot of that has to do with the current state of my San Francisco 49ers. It's tough to get too inerested when you're force fed your terrible team every Sunday in which I can't typically make it through an entire a game before changing the channel. When your team is this bad there's no point in paying much attention to other
Well I'm going to use the blog for venting my frustrations about the A's right now rather than subject the TWiB thread to it. Hey fine give the Angels credit for not laying down this weekend after an emotional 12 inning game on Friday. BUT YOU DO NOT BLOW A SIX RUN LEAD TO THE FUCKING MARINERS YOU CHOKING DOGS!!!!! Fuck, all I wanted you assholes to do is not make those last four games count and you are really fucking close to fucking this all up. Don't think for a second the Angels can't sweep
After the 2001, 2002, 2003 ALDS and a choke the last week of the season in 2004 I'm a little weary whenever the A's make things more interesting than it neeeds to be as I showed last night. But tonight they made it easy. Angels lose before the A's game ends and the A's crush the Mariners 12-3 for division title #14. Congratulations to Jason Kendall and Mark Kotsay on their first trip to the postseason.
For work and family reasons I can't make it to the ALDS but I am going to purchase ALCS t
For my 100th entry I originally planned on doing a comprehensive list of the 100 Greatest Oakland A's players of all-time and wouldn't just be simply be a career list of Win Shares as that wouldn't really work. I never got Bored enough to start working on it though so maybe sometime in the offseason I'll get around to it. But I guess doing my awards for the 2006 season works as an 100th entry since I've been tracking the MVP award most of the year and I'm sure the three of you are on the edge of
For those who don't remember here were my 2004 and 2005 player rankings I posted on the forums.
2004
2005
These rankings are purely based on what the player did this past season. Past performance and potential future value are not taken into account. For hitters I take into account five statiscal compotents: OPS, Value Over Replacment Player (VORP), Equivalent Average (EQA), Runs Created, and Win Shares.
Now with the regular position lists I take the top 30 players at each p
No College Football Wrap Up today as I was out of town yesterday and missed the majority of the games, not that any of my "insights" ever require watching the games. On to the next rankings...
2004 Top 3
1. Mark Loretta
2. Jeff Kent
3. Ray Durham
2005 Top 3
1. Brian Roberts
2. Jeff Kent
3. Chase Utley
2006 2nd Basemen Rankings
1. Chase Utley, Phillies
2. Ray Durham, Giants
3. Dan Uggla, Marlins
4. Robinson Cano, Yankees
5. Jeff Kent, Dodgers
6. Orlando H
2004 Top 3
1. Adrian Beltre
2. Scott Rolen
3. Melvin Mora
2005 Top 3
1. Alex Rodriguez
2. Morgan Ensberg
3. David Wright
2006 3rd Basemen Rankings
1. Miguel Cabrera, Marlins
2. David Wright, Mets
3. Garett Atkins, Rockies
4. Alex Rodriguez, Yankees
5. Chipper Jones, Braves
6. Aramis Ramirez, Cubs
7. Freddy Sanchez, Pirates
8. Scott Rolen, Cardinals
9. Ryan Zimmerman, Nationals
10. Mark Teahen, Royals
11. Joe Crede, White Sox
12. Troy Glaus, Blue J
2004 Top 3
1. Miguel Tejada
2. Carlos Guillen
3. Michael Young
2005 Top 3
1. Michael Young
2. Miguel Tejada
3. Derek Jeter
2006 Shortstop Rankings
1. Derek Jeter, Yankees
2. Jose Reyes, Mets
3. Carlos Guillen, Tigers
4. Rafael Furcal, Dodgers
5. Miguel Tejada, Orioles
6. Hanley Ramirez, Marlins
7. Michael Young, Rangers
8. Jimmy Rollins, Phillies
9. Bill Hall, Brewers
10. Orlando Cabrera, Angels
11. Edgar Renteria, Braves
12. Omar Vizquel, Giants
2004 Top 3
1. Barry Bonds
2. Manny Ramirez
3. Adam Dunn
2005 Top 3
1. Manny Ramirez
2. Jason Bay
3. Miguel Cabrera
2006 Leftfielder Rankings
1. Manny Ramirez, Red Sox
2. Alfonso Soriano, Nationals
3. Barry Bonds, Giants
4. Jason Bay, Pirates
5. Carlos Lee, Brewers/Rangers
6. Matt Holliday, Rockies
7. Raul Ibanez, Mariners
8. Carl Crawford, Devil Rays
9. Juan Rivera, Angels
10. Adam Dunn, Reds
11. Reed Johnson, Blue Jays
12. Pat Burrell, Phillies
Now moving on to pitchers, starting with the middle men. Now the previous two years I took the top 60 in relief apperances, not counting closers, to put the list together. This time around though I took the top 60 in that most meaningless of stats, Holds. But as worthless as it is at least helps identify who managers trusted to use when their team had a lead since the majority of managers have a phobia when it comes to using their best relievers when they are trailing or tied.
Now for middl
Well it's been a while since I did one of these. Once I finished the Game 5's I wanted to sit down and watch both Game 6's for 1975 and 1986 in one sitting. With all the other games I'd watch them half hour or an hour at a time but for obvious reasons I wanted to be able to watch those two games without interruption. Problem was I never found a chance to watch either game in it's entirety and ended up forgetting about it for a while but with the 20th anniversary of the Bill Buckner play being to
MAC
Conference bids: Motor City, GMAC or MPC Computers, International
Locked up a bid: None
Near locks: Ohio
On the bubble: Akron, Ball State, Bowling Green, Central Michigan, Kent State, Northern Illinois, Western Michigan
The MAC is very hard to figure out when it comes to bowl bids because outside of the MAC title game winner, no one is guarenteed a bowl. In the past the loser of the MAC title game has often been passed up for the MAC's other bowl bid. This year they
Even with the baseball season over I'm always looking for an excuse to do a redo and resident Astros fan vivalaultra gave me one while lamenting over the end of Jeff Bagwell's career in Houston:
Well god dammit I have to solve this quandry!
Jeff Bagwell finished second in the 1999 N.L. MVP voting but he wasn't even close to winning it. Chipper Jones had the best year of his career hitting .319 with 45 homeruns while helping the Braves to a league best 103 wins and would receive 29 of
As I mentioned last week in my bowls entry I wasn't going to be doing any projections as there is still way too many games left to make any solid projections that go beyond guess work. If you want to try to predict how the ACC will shake out the rest of the way, be my guest. But I need content and even though I hate the current state of the bowl system, I love looking at potential match-ups. So in this entry I'm going to do what I've done a few times in the past in the College Football threads a
In my need to always find content after the 2007 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot is released I plan on doing individual entries on each player on the ballot, even the ones that have no business being on it. The profiles will mainly just be useless information on each player and then a short opinion by me on whether or not I'd vote for them into the Hall of Fame. So as a test run I decided to do one on an active player and Gary Sheffield seemed like a good choice since he has recently been in the ne
The likely outcome of who will face Ohio State in the Fiest Bowl, part II is just depressing for me. Either we'll get a traditional Rose Bowl match-up, except not in the Rose Bowl, or we'll get the always lame rematch of a game already played. But now with only two weeks left in the season I can actually make an attempt to make my own projections that go beyond guessing. When it cames to the ACC though it will still be guess work as there is still way too much unresolved business in that confere
Jumping the gun here a bit but things seem fairly clear to me. I am holding out hope the Rose Bowl has the good sense not to pick Notre Dame for a rematch against Michigan but I might be wrong on that. Obviously a lot things can change with the title games next week but at that point there will be no need for projections.
One thing I learned tonight, the rule where bowls can not take a 6-6 team over a 7-5 team to fill a conference bid also applies to at-large bids which means Washington St
This is a bit of a throw away entry but I had been wanting to rundown the 23 MVP redos I've done entries for. I have other redos that I've done (including the entire decade of the 80's) but haven't done entries for yet. What I decided to do is group the redos into categories in terms of how good or bad the choice was by the writers. Thought it would be a good time to do this after the writer's awful choice of Justin Morneau. I had Morneau 9th on my 2006 A.L. MVP mock ballot.
Writers Made th
2007 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot is out so as planned I'm going to do individual profiles on each player on the ballot. I'll go in the order of career Win Shares starting at the bottom. No player on this year's ballot is nearly bad as Gary DiSarcina being on last year's ballot and there are quite a few Hall of Very Good players making their first appearance on the ballot. But we start off with a very dubious addition to this year's ballot.
Bobby Witt - Starting Pitcher
Texas Ranger
Scott Brosius - Third Baseman
Oakland Athletics 1991-1997
New York Yankees 1998-2001
Awards
1998 World Series MVP
1999 AL Gold Glove - 3B
All-Star Selections: 1 (1998)
League Leader
None
Career Ranks
None of note
Hall of Fame Stats
HOF Standards: Batting - 12.6 (1349) (Average HOFer ≈ 50)
HOF Monitor: Batting - 19.0 (780) (Likely HOFer > 100)
Similar Batters in HOF: None
Top 10 Similar Batters: Ed Sprague, Bill Melton, Mike Pagliarulo, Sc
