EVIL~! alkeiper

It's funny. People look at on pace and they never notice that greater percentages always come in fewer appearances. You see it nowadays with "Can Chipper Jones hit .400" stories, which I will touch upon in the near future. To answer the question, Eckersley in 1990 was even stronger. 0.61 ERA, 73 K's, 4 BBs, 2 HRs allowed. His peripherals over a full season were every bit as good as Wagner's. Wagner's ERA this season is boosted by four of his five runs allowed being unearned.

Cabbageboy expresses my own sentiments well. The wrestling on this show is absolutely superb, top-notch. Look at Hashimoto/Hase vs. Windham/Rhodes though. The crowd is absolutely dead because there is no strong heel on the show. There is no crowd heat all the way through, and that really hurts the product. Sting/Vader in a vacuum though is a great match.

That's a sweet MSG show. *Bob Backlund vs. Bobby Duncum is actually a match to re-establish Backlund as champion. Backlund dropped the belt in controversial fashion the previous month to Antonio Inoki in Japan. *Hulk Hogan's MSG debut match against Ted Dibiase. *Dusty Rhodes vs. Harley Race is on Dusty's dvd. *Antonio Inoki, Riki Choshu, Seiji Sakaguchi and Tatsumi Fujinami wrestle on the show. Inoki faces the Iron Sheik pre-gimmick, Sheik was then known as Hussein Arab. On the Boston Garden show, Hogan and Bossman had a great series of cage matches. Rockers/Brainbusters is a 20+ minute match. WarGames is a fantastic Shorties concept. For Nate's information, there are at least 12 WarGames matches.

Cawthon has Yokozuna's first match on the Saskatoon Oct. 12, 1992 television taping. That was the same show where Bret Hart won his first world title.

ESPN.com has a poll assessing the HOF chances of 25% players. I was one of just 2.8% who identified Billy Wagner as a "first ballot lock." If you draw up a list of relief aces (I came up with a list of all pitchers with 200+ career saves), Wagner and Mariano Rivera leap to the top in ERA+. No other pitchers are even close. Wagner is as dominant a per-inning pitcher as anyone in history, and he is the most dominant left handed reliever of all time. His playoff performances might hurt, but I can't see leaving a guy out because he had 10 1/3 bad innings. Also, less than half think Pedro Martinez is a first-ballot lock? (He's overwhelmingly in though.) Martinez is THE most dominant starter in history, again by a large margin.

Any thought to ranking these guys by win shares? It might be fun to come up with an "ideal" draft ranking.

I could swear that's the proper order.

NCAA.com has fantastic gametracker coverage of the games.

I mentioned the NCAA tournament earlier this week. Bucknell indeed pulled off the biggest upset in school history, beating national #2 Florida State University 7-0. It is a double elimination tournament however, so FSU is not finished. They need to beat Florida, then the Bucknell/Tulane loser, and the Bucknell/Tulane winner twice. Bucknell's only real claim to fame as a baseball school is that they produced Christy Mathewson. I think XM Radio will come up with something as the Sirius merger means there is no other satellite radio provider, so MLB has nothing to gain by shopping the contract elsewhere.

So let me get this straight. Six gallons at .23 a gallon, you waited 45 minutes to save less than a buck fifty on gasoline? Oil fell $4 a barrel today, prices are beginning to fall back.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/TV/05/29/k...obit/index.html Most of you likely know Korman from "Blazing Saddles." Korman was probably one of the best deadpan, straightmen in film. Tremendous talent.

Baseball America is running a bracket contest for the NCAA tournament, which begins on Friday. http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/colle...challenge/2008/

Does a bad minor league club usually mean the farm system is really terrible? Does St. Lucie sucking so hard mean that there's no one on St. Lucie right now who could potentially be a respectable major league ball player? In the same way that bad teams have good players, bad minor league teams can absolutely have good prospects. One player can't be a difference maker. On the flipside, sometimes a dominant team has no/few prospects, just a good collection of minor league veterans. You can't gauge much of a farm system's quality from its win/loss record. So don't worry, I think this Pedro kid can make the majors.

Agreed. I may do a sub-idea in the blog, but another MLB one needs to wait until the offseason.

Also, the Marlins' big test comes this weekend. The Phillies have moved to a half game out, and the Marlins are in town beginning Friday for a three game set.

Sometimes it's amazing how the most extraordinary events of an evening get ignored. Today's XM update stated that the Twins beat the Royals 9-8, thanks to Justin Morneau's go-ahead home run in the tenth. That fails to mention that the Royals were up 8-3 with two outs in the ninth, on their way to snapping a nine-game losing streak. Joe Posnanski expresses it better than I could. http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2008/05/28...efore-the-pain/

Pedro Martinez pitched well for class A St. Lucie last night, two runs over six innings with 6 Ks. He lost thanks to David Price's outing, six scoreless innings, two hits, nine K's. Price is now 2-0 with no runs allowed in 11 innings, 13 K's and one walk. St. Lucie is a bad team, so it might have just been an easy opponent for Price. Still, it looks like Tampa Bay has another top flight pitcher on the way. On the subject of St. Lucie, the Lehigh Valley Ironpigs started 3-24 but have a winning record this month. St. Lucie is now 11-41. They are in last place (sixth), and are 13 games back of the FIFTH place team. Their ERA is a full run worse than any team in the league, and the Florida State League is a pitchers' league at that. Just an awful bunch.

First pick? Wow, this is a bit of a pressure spot. I feel like I am bound to overlook something incredibly obvious. I'm going to take the safe route. Rick Steamboat vs. Ric Flair - Clash of the Champions (April 2, 1989)

That weather is perfect as it is. It got up to high 70s/low 80s here over the weekend and I was sweating my balls off. I was much more comfortable when it was mid-50s and I brought a sweatshirt.

A few weeks ago, Czech inquired whether met fans were satisfied with Beltran's performance. I present center fielders from 2005-08, sorted by OPS+. http://www.baseball-reference.com/pi/shareit/NNub The second best center fielder in MLB and the best in the National League, by a clear margin. He's not unworldly dominant. But when you have the best player at that position, you can't be too unhappy about things.

I'm pleasantly surprised that SNME is the full show and not just the Bulldog/Michaels match.

Here's what I don't understand. The Yankees have a nice bullpen setup with Chamberlain leading to Rivera. They are also under .500. Doesn't that put the importance of relief pitchers into perspective? I'm sorry, but a guy pitching the eighth inning only when his team is ahead is not as important as nine position starters or any of your starting pitchers. The Yankees were only in the game because they scored eight runs. Had they a reliable starter who throws a quality start (three runs, six innings), they win that game easily.

Honestly, the way AWA was going their booking was the least of their problems. It went far deeper than that.

They finished the inning. What a travesty.

I'm surprised Joe Girardi didn't get himself tossed.