EVIL~! alkeiper

You trade peripheral guys who aren't foundations but nice pieces somewhere else. David Delucci absolutely should be traded, because he's too good to sit on the bench. If you can deal Gordon as well, pull the trigger. Lidle I wouldn't be sure of, because this team absolutely can not find starting pitching. But I'd make the deal if the right one came along. As for Abreu, I wouldn't deal him for a pitching prospect. We already have Gio Gonzalez, Mathieson, Haigwood, and the entire Lakewood pitching staff. We need either established pitching, or hitting prospects.

UNC's second baseman committed a two out error that allowed the go ahead run to score in the 8th. Oregon St. is 3 outs away from a National title.

I wrote up my All-Star piece on my blog. I hope you can see what I'm getting at.

Top Five Reasons You Can't Blame the Fans for Messing Up the All-Star Voting. 1. They're hitting a moving target. MLB started their All-Star balloting sometime in late April. At the end of April, Victor Martinez held a gaudy .398 batting average, while A.J. Pierzynski had a .342 average. Joe Mauer had a good .319 average, but not spectacular. How were voters to know that Mauer would hit .388 over his next two months? Most fans evaulate All-Star selections based on their first halves. Well, the player with the best season statistics often change two or three times over the course of the voting. The All-Star voting is not a scientific survey conducted at that instance of the season. It is a two month process. 2. The media/players/coaches are no better. Last year, a survey of managers and coaches selected Bobby Abreu as one of the three winners of the National League Gold Glove. In 2003, a select group of National media, refusing to yield to Alex Rodriguez, seriously floated the idea of Shannon Stewart, Most Valuable Player. You want to give the vote to these guys? What about the players, who given a choice to select reserve All-Stars, selected Shea Hillenbrand? The fact is that no matter what group you select as your voting population, you are going to have problems. At least when the fans make a bad pick, it is someone they want to see play ball. 3. The process leads to mistakes. This is an absolutely key point, and it escapes critics all the time. Let's take a look at the American League voting. Fans are complaining that most of the players are either Yankees or Red Sox. The problem is not that the fans are all Red Sox or Yankee fanboys. The problem is the voting process coupled with either a plethora or lack of qualified All-Star candidates. As of the last voting, six of the eight leading starters were Yankees or Red Sox. Derek Jeter (SS), Alex Rodriguez (3B), Manny Ramirez (OF) and David Ortiz (1B) are perfectly reasonable choices. That leaves Robinson Cano (2B) and Jason Varitek ©. Let's look at those one at a time, because they illustrate the opposite points. Jason Varitek, C There are several good catchers in the American League. Varitek's production has declined, but he was an All-Star for the last few years. Jorge Posada's produced an .889 OPS this season. Ramon Hernandez leads A.L. catchers in home runs and RBIs. Victor Martinez was the best hitting catcher over the last two seasons, and he has not exactly fallen off the face of the earth this season. Now, you have a couple groups of smart fans. One will vote for "reliable stars," the other will vote for players with the best current statistics. Then you have the fans who goof around with the process. Now hypothetically, let's say 70% of your fans are smart, 25% are clueless, and 5% are those who vote for players because Tigers sound cute and cuddly. The problem is that the 70% of smart fans have to vote for one player. They can not hedge their votes and list Mauer first, Martinez second, etc., like an MVP voter can. So if you have several good candidates at a position, a player who has broad appeal to a limited group, in this case a big name like Varitek, he will invariably float to the top of the All-Star ballot. Robinson Cano, 2B Same scenario, different specifics. In this case, you have smart voters choosing from several mediocre players to try and find the most deserving player. In this case it appears to be Seattle's Jose Lopez, but it takes a couple months for a player like that to emerge in the statistics, let alone the fans' consciousness. 4. Do the Math. Catcher 1. Jason Varitek, Red Sox 831,154 2. Ivan Rodriguez, Tigers 803,964 3. Jorge Posada, Yankees 608,670 4. A.J. Pierzynski, White Sox 493,385 5. Joe Mauer, Twins 464,161 That's 3.2 Million votes among ONLY the top five. There is somewhere in the vicinity of five million votes total. That means Jason Varitek was selected by approximately 16% of voters, about 1/6th. How can you chastise the voters for selecting the wrong player when 5/6ths of voters did not even select him? 5. Most Voters do not have access to current statistics. Go to the ballpark. Pick up a conveniently located All-Star ballot. You are a knowledgeable voter, you are not like those nitwits that pick all Yankees. But what do you have to go on? There's no listing of current statistics. You have names and a vauge recollection of what you saw in Sunday's paper, or Sportscenter highlights. Even smart fans are bound to make a funny choice or two under those conditions. Many people cite ballots such as one listing say, Bernie Williams. Those ballots do not make a difference, and fans are for the most part wasting their vote. Fans do stuff ballots for their favorite teams, but fans from every city do this, and the votes often cancel each other out. On the occasions they don't, they are at least selecting players from popular teams. There are some problems with that I admit, but we have to face the fact that part of being an All-Star is name recognition. You could give the voters a ballot that lists one through five and give them a complete printout of current statistics. We could give the voting to a select group of SABR's elite and let them debate in a dark chamber. But what would it improve? The current process selects the right players about 70% of the time, and the other selections are at least players the fans want to see. Some purists may scoff at that, but we need to remember that the All-Star game is an EXHIBITION, and it is for the fans. Comments, questions, criticisms are welcome.

As far as Red Sox/Phillies go, also remember we were down to our mop-up reliever at that point. Clay Condrey is not really good enough to retire the AL's top slugger.

UNC/Oregon St. is tied in the 6th. Winner takes the CWS.

I thought so too at first, but I can see Papelbon getting that call.

YES! Chase Utley has done the impossible!

I plan on writing a piece about this in the near future. I think the fans are just as good a group as any other. The problem isn't the fans, it's the process.

ESPN I believe has exclusive rights to the 8pm timeslot, but I could be wrong on that. Phillies/Red Sox tomorrow, when I can actually watch it (probably not a good thing). The Phillies claimed Rick White off waivers. I think he's a good pitcher, but it's not like the bullpen's been the problem. We just transferred Julio Santana to the 60 day DL to make the move, so no biggie.

If the Yankees/Marlins game were blacked out I would blame the Yankees first. This constant day/night doubleheader nonsense is a slap in the face to the players and fans, because god help us if fans get two games for the price of one.

Exactly how many pitchers don't give up that homerun to Ortiz in that situation? Agreed. Gordon's a righty, pitching against a lefty. Ortiz is 5 for 14 off Mariano F'n Rivera. I was surprised to hear Ortiz was 1 for 8 against Gordon coming in, with five strikeouts. This doesn't have anything to do with Gordon being unclutch. Ortiz is just a really, really good hitter.

I don't know. I've had the same thoughts regarding that "english Only" sign. The problem is that there are many, many Spanish speaking people here legally, especially via Puerto Rico which is both American territory, and primarily Spanish. Can we inhibit travel to our own territory, or go down and force the whole island to learn English. Then you have the tourist trade, where you have many people who come to Philadelphia from Europe, and the plethera of languages there. I don't think it's the government's job to get involved here. If it causes problems, people should simply not patronize the establishment. But I've noticed a lot of commonality between people saying "kick the immigrants out," and people saying "speak English." I'm not comfortable with making English the official language. In fighting illegal immigration, we should not make life a burden on legal immigrants, many of whom ARE trying to learn our language (and let's face it, it's difficult).

You were better off doing this one. There's already a book about the '92 Mets.

The old timers among us have learned not to question Mik's predictions.

Alex Cora hitting that single was the (second) worse thing that could've happened. If he doubled or tripled, fine, because then we issue the intentional walk. But because of it, first base was occupied for a lefty slugger with Manny Ramirez on deck. That's why Ortiz gets so many clutch hits, because no one wants to pitch to Manny. The Sox' broadcasters claimed that Ortiz was exhibit A as to the existance of clutch hitters. Ortiz isn't a clutch hitter, he's a great hitter, period.

It's cyclical. The NL had similar dominance in the 1960s. The problem is that the Yankees went nuts and everyone had to catch up in order to compete.

Brett Myers is a piece of crap. Seriously.

If you were a homosexual, would you want to be grouped with Jay Mariotti?

State represenative I believe. I don't remember if it was for a state seat for the US House. It kind of runs together, especially since it wasn't specifically my voting district. Voting against the incumbants has its merits, but I know that the people who go in instead will do the same kind of crap.

It's funny to watch Bob Casey lead the polls when he couldn't beat Don Sherwood in two attempts in local elections the last few years. I'm not sure about Casey. He's the kind of politician who survives by not exposing a real viewpoint about anything. He'll get my vote though because Santorum comes off as a real wack-job at times. I guess I like my politicians moderate. While I'm on the subject, what's the appeal of Lynn Swann? Putting parties aside for the moment, why should I vote for a candidate with no real experience? Because he played football?

That list is such an un-Neyer like project that I have to think his editors foisted it on him.

Oregon State and Rice play tonight at 8pm ET. The winner goes on to play UNC in a three game series starting Saturday.

2003 Marlins. The team that made the Phillies, Braves, Giants, Cubs and Yankees all come together to mutter, "fucking Marlins." It was. It was stunning that the Phils came back from that to make it a pennant race.

Yankees' 2003 Record: 101-61. Yankees' 2004 Record: 101-61. I am aware that the Yankees weren't really hurt as far as fielding a competitive team when Clemens and Pettitte left, and I'm also aware that the Astros dramatically underperformed for the first half of 2004 and Pettitte only started 14 games in 2004, but it was a big deal for Texas people everywhere to see two Texas guys leaving the big city to come back home. Don't hate us...we're just simple country folk. Don't worry. If I were really mean I'd just provide a link to the 1980 postseason.