Cheech Tremendous

This little gem came from Murray Chass of the New York Times today, and it's caused quite the controversy. BP and FJM have already responded to it. Here's the whole snippet from a longer article about Spring Training and topics that should be off limits. Normally this stuff doesn't bother me that much, but this guy write for the NY freakin' Times. His job is to cover and write about baseball. It's just ridiculous that these old time baseball guys can't take 15 minutes to learn a couple new concepts, so they resort to name-calling and holier than thou rhetoric. It's lazy reporting and it's dull writing. And Jay Jaffe from bp.com responds:

At the time HHH got injured, there weren't any plans for an Invasion. WWF was still working under the assumption that WCW would be its own separate entity. Part of the reason they hotshotted the Invasion angle was due to losing HHH for the year and messing up all their plans. He was supposed to turn face and challenge Austin through the summer.

Maybe I'm confused by your question, but every game is broadcast on mlb.tv, including Spring Training games.

I'm fairly sure the Jazz would eat the Lakers for lunch. In fact, I don't think that the Lakers can hang with any of the top 5 teams in the west.

I'm not familiar with Marcel either, but projections as a whole tend to be conservative. There is some mathematical reasoning behind this that is totally escaping me at the moment. For projection systems, I still haven't seen one better than PECOTA. I know they've been shown to be about 70% accurate with hitters, and a little less than that with pitchers. By the way, since you mentioned him specifically, here are some other projections for Lee this year, courtesy of Fangraphs. Looks like 29-32 HR is the expected performance, but I'm not sure that those are tailored for his new home park. Hopefully I can give PECOTAs take on it if BP 2007 ever ships. Carlos Lee

Probably not, but you should be.

Me too.

Press release announcing the merger of XM and Sirius. This will face a lot of backlash from the anti-trust lawyers, but if if goes through it's a total win for consumers.

Hogan made the Warrior at WM VI. Say what you want about what Warrior became, the second he pinned Hogan clean he was a star forever. Hell, we still talk about him and he hasn't done anything of note in 15 years (besides being crazy).

Ok, well I wouldn't call THAT the Invasion, as it took place like a month or so after the angle started. That's a top 10 moment without a doubt.

As someone who's watched Raw from the very beginning, the Foley title win is the only moment from that list that belongs in the top 50. The rest of those were total throwaway moments. I was at Milk-o-mania live and it was a fun moment, but it didn't even get over that well with the crowd. It was just a cute ripoff of the beerbath. As for the rest on that list.... uggh. How you could possibly say the Invasion doesn't belong there? And I think the Kane/Lita wedding is definitely top 50 material. What part of the Invasion are you referring to? Were talking memorable moments and the start of the Invasion angle was probably the least inspiring beginning to a major angle ever. I don't even remember what happened. Are we talking Lance Storm's superkick to a mild pop?

Josh Brown is a great kicker. They don't make the playoffs without him last year.

Just read that article. Manny Acta is awesome. A manager that downplays being "aggressive" , challenges the hacknayed notion of "moving runners along" , reads charts and stuff that have actual stats and evidence. Focusing on defensive positioning and that pesky OBP My kind of manager The part about not bunting probably made Joe Morgan cry __________________ I wish he he was managing in the American League. Ozzie Guillen would probably try to punch him out.

I don't think there's a good rule for ISO in the 2 spot, because it doesn't really give a good profile of the hitter. Ideally, you want a high-OBP guy at the top of the lineup. There's no hard and fast rule other than the fact that you bat your best players at the top where they get the most at bats. Loretta is a number 8 or 9 hitter in a decent lineup.

Real simple: ISO = Slugging - batting average It measures the ability to hit something other than singles, which Loretta has no ability to do. In general, a decline in ISO precludes a steep decline in actual performance, although it is more pronounced amongst young hitters. It's also one of the five stats used to select a player's comparables.

That's only part of it. His ISOp last year was around .080, which is roughly .100 below the league average. That's terrible.

Manny Acta sounds like he is going to be a great manager. He's not going to bunt or steal jus to be "aggressive." He wants high OBP guys at the top of the order. He's going to bat Ryan Church second if he's healthy. And best of all, he's open to new ideas and information. Too bad he has no talent to work with in Washington.

Why does it matter if it was taped or live? I never got why that mattered to people.

What's not good about Mark Loretta? It could be the fact that he has barely cracked a .700 OPS in each of the past two seasons, including his blistering .666 in the second half last year. It could be the paltry .254 EqA that put he put up last year. It could be that he was the like 22nd or something in batting runs above replacement for qualified 2B, even though he played everyday for a good team batting in the 2-hole. I'm not arguing that he's not a possible upgrade to Biggio, I'm concerned that you think he's a "very good hitter."

I just caught this on a second read through. Loretta is not a very good hitter nor is he even a good or average hitter. He's below average and he's lucky he found a team that was willing to pick him up. And don't get fooled by his lack of errors in the field either because he's not very good defensively.

Learn how to spell check.

Oh god yes. That was probably the last and biggest markout moment I ever had. That and Foley's title win are probably the two biggest pops I've ever heard. And a list without the Foley title win as no. 1 isn't worth much in my book. Dude's return and the Benoit/Jericho-HHH/Austin tag match are also top 10 material in my mind.

On HHH and Foley, that program got him over as a main event heel, but retaining at Mania solidified him as a major star in the company. If he had dropped the belt to Rock at that event, a lot of Mick's work would have been undone.

You're sort of ignoring the 800 pound gorilla in the room. A gorilla by the name of Alex Gordon. The Royals are going to finish last in the division, but I think they'll end up much better than anyone else expects. They'll put up a fight against a lot of good teams and beat up on some of the other crappy teams in the AL. Gordon will get the 3B job out of Spring Training, and Billy Butler and Luke Hochevar will probably be up by the All-Star break. They may be young, but they are better than the incumbents and could contribute to a strong second half run. I wouldn't be surprised to see Teahan moved for some pitching help either.