CanadianChris

I never said he was mediocre. 300+ wins and 5,714 strikeouts would disprove that fairly quickly. In the eighties, though, he really only had two excellent seasons -- 1981 (11-5, 1.69, a no-hitter, 140 K in a strike-shortened year) and 1987 (2.96 ERA, 1.14 WHIP and 270 K, despite a very hard-luck 8-16 record). He never won more than 16 games in a year. His ERA was consistently around the league average, besides the two seasons I mentioned. And he had no top-3 Cy Young award finishes. Yet he's one of the three best pitchers that decade? Two of the guys I would throw into the discussion, Bret Saberhagen and Orel Hershiser, aren't even on the list! As for having a lot of numbers...well, when you pitch for 27 seasons, you're going to rack up a lot of numbers. He should have had a lot more than 324 wins for being such a great pitcher. Plus you have to look at some other numbers he racked up, like the all-time walk record (by over 960!!), or the fact that he has 3 of the 9 total 180+ walk seasons since 1900.

If someone's still giving out invites, I'd appreciate one. Thanks.

Free agent pickings are getting slim. Peter Bondra and Vincent Damphousse are the only really big names on the unrestricted lists that jumped out at me (discounting Mario Lemieux, of course). Some recognizable goalies are still looking for work, though -- Byron Dafoe, Arturs Irbe, Felix Potvin, Freddy Brathwaite, Ron Tugnutt, Steve Shields and Roman Cechmanek are all still unsigned.

It was ROB the Robot. Bowser, the Koopa kids, Ganon, Mother Brain and the can from Hogan's Alley.

The latest useless poll on ESPN.com asked who the greatest pitcher of the 1980s was, presumably as a follow-up to Dwight Gooden's arrest yesterday. Here were the results as of 9 am ET: Ryan 53.1% Clemens 23.9% Gooden 12.6% Morris 8.8% Stieb 1.4% Ridiculous. Internet polls are so stupid. Ryan is probably no better than fourth out of 5 in reality. Is there a player out there who has more of an illusion surrounding his career than Nolan Ryan?

Still two spots left in the Yahoo roto league, if anyone's interested. Signup instructions are somewhere in this thread.

He only signed for about $800K over two years, from what I just heard.

A Chicago-Anaheim ALCS is looking more and more likely every day.

Another non-news story. Bret came back to work on a DVD...big deal.

Wow. I didn't know it was possible for one man to be this deluded. Geez, did they draw those names out of a hat? Just kill the tag team division entirely and be done with it. I think we're going on eight weeks without a tag title defense on RAW. I keep forgetting who the champs even are at times. Yes, because negative pushes have ALWAYS worked in the past.

Which just goes to show how desperate we've been for "big" news.

If there's going to be a weak link on the team, it's going to be at goalie. I haven't talked to anyone who isn't antsy about Hasek in net. Plus ça change, plus c'est le même chose.

Yep. It is, of course, a pipe dream, although I'm guessing Ottawa's going to be in the market for a new goalie next year. Stranger things have happened, but the Leafs look to be setting themselves up to make a run at some big free agents next summer.

All reports are indicating there was just pushing and shoving, no punches.

I saw that, but my eyes were playing tricks on me and I saw Chacon vs. Chacon, wondering when the Jays called up this Chacon fellow.

Sadly, that's likely true, although I'd mark out if he went about five hours east on Hwy. 7 instead. Hang a right at Palladium Drive.

To correct my first point above, given that it's the Rangers, they could very well send 5 first rounders the other way, as the dollar figure I was looking at was for the amount on the offer sheet, not the player's existing salary. Still, I wouldn't put it past them at all.

a) It won't be five first round picks, as Richards doesn't make enough money (extrapolating from the levels in the 2002-03 season, which I was able to find). It might be 3 picks. b) Given the Rangers' abysmal drafting record recently, I wouldn't consider it a stretch that they might want to take a proven player over a few crapshoots. c) Never underestimate the lunacy of Glen Sather.

Man, you ARE going to hell.

You said: I said: I'm pretty sure most people would agree that 7 points scored when way ahead or way behind out of 34 total doesn't constitute "most of them," your efforts to cloud the issue notwithstanding.

Ah, the crutch of the logic-impaired...say something, then claim you meant something else when proven wrong. Nice.

Lets simplify this, how many 3rd period Game-tying or GW points? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> That's irrelevant to the question, even if I cared enough to find it out and figure out if it even means anything.

Why is it laughable? The guy won 18 games as a back-up with a save percentage over 91% and was VERY close to unseating Khabibulin as the starting goaltender. Do we know whether he can lead a team to the cup of course not. However calling it laughable is a stretch in my opinion. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> 91% was quite average in recent seasons. You needed around 92% just to crack the top 10. The fact that his GAA was substantially less than Khabibulin's is misleading also, given that he faced around 3 fewer shots a game. For some reason, the defense played better around Grahame. Bah. In any event, 27 of Hossa's 34 career playoff points were on either game-tying or go-ahead goals, or goals that pulled the Sens to within a goal or put them up by 2.

Still waiting on how much you want to bet on the Hossa thing, smh.

Hossa is a stat boy period. How many of those points were when the Sens were way ahead or way behind I'd be willing to bet most of them. How much?