Cheech Tremendous

By the way, I am not allowing myself to nominate any mods, Maff guys or AIM buddies this year. It's time to let some new posters shine. Still haven't finalized my list of ten. I'm going to be on the look out for underrated posters the next couple of days. Board hard, TSM.

The first round of last year's tourney went 11 pages. If anything, we've gotten more into the voting in recent years.

Looking over the Hollinger rankings, the Cavs strength of schedule is .484, compared to the Celtics at .479 and the Lakers at .483. It has been one of the easier schedules in the league though. Remember, though, to factor in that the Cavs are also beating the total shit out of those bottom feeders you described. It's not like they are pulling out OT thrillers. Most of those contests have been done by the third quarter. It'll be interesting to see what happens when they get some of the real teams later on.

We should have a chat about Danny Maff. Nah, that'd never work.

Which reminds me... technically, I am still a part owner of this board. I should get to boss someone around.

As I understand it, larvae are new posters. Once they have been here a sufficient amount of time (and made enough posts to adequately determine if they can contribute) they are moved to members. That's the basic answer. Perhaps a mod can better quantify what the expectations are.

It's been addressed repeatedly. Public Account is used for decisions that represent the common position of the mod staff. This protects the mods from receiving an unfair amount of praise or criticism for board matters decided by the collective brain trust. For instance, if Czech starts 15 year-end award threads, Czech would get the brunt of board bitching if it sucked. No need to place that extra pressure on one poster.

Could someone explain and how and when the Pit was started? How did it develop its conservative tilt?

Based on the contracts being signed in the current MLB free agent market, teams are paying about $4.4 million per marginal win. This is down from the $4.8-$5.0 million paid in recent offseasons. It also marks the first time in recent history that the cost of a free agent acquisition has gone down over the previous year (and a 10% drop is hefty). The economy is definitely having a dampening effect on player contracts, but it remains to be seen if it's a short-term reaction (such as Vlad's deal in '02) to a problem or a fundamental overhaul in the way teams do business.

Lot of guys on that list who could contribute as a fourth outfielder or platoon mate. As for as the Red Sox are concerned, I wouldn't mind looking at Jonny Gomes, or maybe even a Willy Taveras or Joey Gathright. Those guys would be a decent compliment to Baldelli (if they end up signing him). Daniel Cabrera might have some value as a middle reliever. The control will always be an issue, but I think you could minimize that with proper leverage. Saito must me really fucked if he didn't get an offer. Ledezma and Majewski have had value before so there might be something there. I'd be all over Wigginton, but he'll go somewhere he can start. The Twins would be a good fit.

That is essentially the same recipe that I use. Could I be so bold as to suggest that you picked up a few mac and cheese tips from Alton Brown?

I now wish we had a real Ombudsman so I could complain about Brody.

According to John Hollinger's stats, the Cavs are currently on their way to having the most dominant season in NBA history. Yes, the 2008-09 Cavs have a chance to be the greatest team in NBA history. I'm not advocating this position or pushing it, but I would like to introduce it for consumption by TSM. Playoff odds currently project the team as having a 54% chance of winning the NBA title. Really. That means if someone offered you the Cavs or the field as NBA champions, you'd be wise to take the Cavs. I'm having a difficult time wrapping my head around this.

I actually like AJ Burnett a lot and think he's a legit #2 or #3 pitcher when he's healthy. However, since I hate the Yankees and I'm not allowed to say anything nice, here's this for you to ponder: IP last four years Tim Wakefield: 225, 140, 189, 181=184 IP a season AJ Burnett: 209, 136, 166, 221= 183 IP a season ERA+ Tim Wakefield: 109, 103, 100, 112=106 ERA+ (innings weighted) AJ Burnett: 115, 115 ,109, 105=110 ERA+ (innings weighted)

For those TSM readers that enjoy sabermetrics, I encourage you to sample the new and improved fangraphs.com. Fangraphs was always one of my favorite sites do to their excellent clutch stats (like WPA). They've now beefed up their site considerably with regards to sabermetric hitting, pitching and fielding stats (plus Marcel's 2009 projections). Pay particularly close attention to the fielding page and the UZR and UZR/150 stats. This is the new "Ultimate Zone Rating" stat, basically the first freely available version for fans of John Dewan's tremendous +/- work. These are real defensive stats, based on actual play-by-play data. If acronyms bother you, or you're having trouble figuring out what any of this shit means, take some time to read the FAQ thread. I can be of some help too if you are confused. They are now getting writing contributions from Tangotiger (who wrote The Book) and the guys from USS Mariner. Essentially, they now have best stats guys AND writers in the sabermetric community contributing to the site. Basically, this is the site that Baseball Prospectus should be. And it's all totally free!

Credit crisis hasn't really stabilized, pbone. It's marginally better than it was a month or two ago, but not in any appreciable way.

Hmmm.... seems like you have a legitimate complaint. You should take it to the TSM Ombuds... oh wait.

What the hell? There must be some behind the scenes stuff with Burrell that we don't know about. Not only is a far superior player than Ibanez, he's five years younger. The fact that he wasn't even offered arbitration, yet they went out and spent $30 million on Ibanez suggests that there is something fishy going on.

Bob Barron is a public spokesman for himself. Let's be honest, Bob's status as "Omsbudsman" is equivalent to that episode of the Office where the captain of the booze cruise had Dwight man the fake wheel. There was no real responsibility, but it gave Dwight his sense of importance. More importantly, it kept him from bothering everyone else.

Aren't merchandise sales just split between all 30 teams anyways? I've never really bothered to read the CBA that closely, but I thought that was the case. In that respect, there is very little monetary gain by changing the unis.

The Yankees paid for their own stadium. As did the Mets. Ummm... http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ap-m...p&type=lgns

It's a tradition thing. The new ownership group beat red to death on the last round of uniform redesigns. Look at the uniforms throughout history. Start in the late '30s and go forward. The road unis are gray with navy lettering. Boston on the front, plain font numbers on the back. I'll advocate simplicity of design and an element of tradition over fancy modern uniforms every day of the week.

Brand new Red Sox uniforms were revealed today. The road unis are a complete redesign, focusing on traditional navy lettering they used in the '80s. Road alternates are navy, matching the bright red used for the home alternates. The hanging sox logo replaces the 'B' on the cap for the home and road alternates. Also, the hanging sox is now the team's primary logo, replacing the existing baseball with Boston text and hanging sox inlay (the "Circle Sox" logo). I'm a big fan of the road redesign. If they remove the names from the backs of the jerseys I'll be ecstatic. I could care less about the alternates, and the hanging sox hat is stupid, in my opinion. The B is just as iconic as the sox.

More like Oms-bitch-man, amirite?

What if it's something that was decided by the mod staff as a whole? It wouldn't make any sense to transfer that burden to a single mod or admin. EDIT: Speaking of which, can someone (Public Account, I'm looking at you) break this discussion out into its own thread?