The Man in Blak

Virtually all of the rules on the board deal with insulating folks around here from harassment, either by reducing the inflammatory content of posts (flaming, trolling) or by reducing opportunities for such content to happen by repeat or anonymous offenders (PBPs, duplicate accounts). If you aren't going to ban somebody for outright stealing an account, then what can you ban somebody for? What's the distinction between a stolen account and a duplicate account? And please don't mention that the accounts were bogus accounts, because the opportunity for other forms of account abuse (repeated PM harassment, anonymous flaming or trolling) is still there, regardless of how active the account is/was at the time of the theft. Did I even mention you in my post? Consider it a direct response to Mike's explanation in the thread. He cuts the check for the site, so I would assume that he doesn't need any help defending his own decisions. And, judging by your comments here and elsewhere, you don't really have much to add to the discussion anyway.

Nevermind, I'll post it in Site Feedback.

But, if they move the World Series to a neutral site, then nobody would have home field advantage. The All-Star Game would have no meaning.

This thread will probably inspire a contribution to the Convenient Thread Alignment thread. And that's always a good thing.

Yeah, pretty much. Like I said earlier, the title track is the only one that I might actually prefer to the studio, but that's only because of the guitar solo (obviously, a major YMMV). Not exactly the most technical solo that Fripp has ever laid down, but the glitched and ultimately fucked up sound behind it makes my day. Though, make no mistake, the Absent Lovers cut is awesome. It's just a great song.

And that takes care of The Adventures of Chris Duncan for one night.

Fear not. Edmonds will strike out.

Despite batting .220, the Cardinals are doing better offensively than the Tigers: St. Louis: .220/.331/.362, 29/19 K/BB ratio in 127 ABs Detroit: .211/.257/.336, 27/6 K/BB ratio in 128 ABs Obviously, we're not talking about eye-popping dominance here, but there is one critical difference: the Cardinals are being patient with the Tigers pitchers, while the Tigers appear to be hacking away. The Cardinals rotation has almost always been filled with finesse pitchers in recent years and a free-swinging team like the Tigers plays right into their hands. (See the 2004 World Series, if you want an example of how St. Louis fares against a patient lineup.) Also, a lot of talk has been made about the errors from the Tigers pitchers, but there hasn't been as much discussion as to why. Two of the throwing errors have come from bunt plays, which don't happen very often in the American League. Though Leyland has done an outstanding job with the team this year, I wonder if a little more practice around bunts may have helped to prepare the young pitchers to deal with the tactic appropriately. That being said, a lot of things definitely aided the Cardinals in their Game 4 win. Granderson's slip obviously comes to mind, as he certainly has the range to turn that double into an out. The same applies for Monroe, who may have been a little tentative going after that ball, having seen Granderson belly flop earlier in the game. Here's a question for Al, if he happens to have the stats. What are the average BA/OBP/SLG numbers for playoff games as a whole over the last few years? My initial thought would be that the run environment for playoffs games would be a lot "tighter", as hitters faced tougher pitching than they would see over the course of the regular season, but you never know with baseball sometimes.

I won't dispute that predicting future performance for pitchers is a much more dicey proposition than position players, but I think you're comparing apples with oranges here. With the pitchers you listed, the general managers only had minor league track record as an indicator of future progress and, as the axiom goes, There Is No Such Thing As A Pitching Prospect. Ricciardi had more certainty with Chris Carpenter, in my opinion. He could consider over 100 starts, through almost five seasons of work, for his evaluation. And, though there's no guarantees that he could have kept him at the league minimum (as Carpenter was making almost $3.5 million in his last season in Toronto), I find it hard to believe that they couldn't have negotiated some kind of an extension to maintain his rights through his rehab. One thing I'm curious about, though. Was it common place for teams to give out contracts that covered rehab time at the start of the contract? I know that the Yankees would do it later with Jon Lieber (and, to a lesser extent, with Dotel), but I can't think of a deal like Carpenter's occurring before the Cardinals offered it. Is there any historical precedent for Carpenter's original contract with St. Louis?

Actually, this is possibly the only time that I'd ever agree with Richard Griffin. Even though Carpenter did have arm troubles in 2002, he was a league average pitcher with decent, though not spectacular peripherals, who looked to be putting things together in 2001. When a young player can hang in there at an average level of performance, that's usually a good indicator for his development, and Carpenter's best work with Toronto all came before he was 27. Though there are never any guarantees when you're dealing with a pitcher coming back from significant arm surgery, Carpenter's track record was still fair enough to warrant a flyer, especially from a team that has arguably been hurting for depth in the rotation behind Halladay for the last few years. Furthermore, the price was right - look at the salary numbers for Carpenter in St. Louis (from BRef): 2003 St. Louis Cardinals $300,000 2004 St. Louis Cardinals $300,000 2005 St. Louis Cardinals $2,000,000 2006 St. Louis Cardinals $5,000,000 Though they swallowed the cash for nothing in 2003, the Cardinals got a bonafide ace for league minimum money in 2004 and, due to their loyalty, were able to get an outstanding contract extension into 2007. Just to pick two examples, Carpenter has made less money in the last two seasons than Esteban Loaiza or Kris Benson (the ultimate "league average innings eater" contracts of the past two seasons) and has outperformed them by leaps and bounds. For Ricciardi, who came into Toronto stressing that he could bring success with a reduced payroll, letting Carpenter get away so cheaply is a bit of a blunder.

I'd love to do a chat, but I'm stuck on a deployment in the office. Yes, I live in a Dilbert comic strip. I'm hoping that I can get home soon enough to catch the last few innings of the game.

I think the point is that all of this media circus from ESPN, etc. is really kind of useless and, ultimately, takes away from the actual games being played from here on out. I would be surprised if Kenny Rogers was the first pitcher to ever load up for a World Series game and, while I think the behavior of the umpires and LaRussa in this situation is puzzling, it really doesn't matter going forward. He cheated, he got away with it, they won Game 2 - now let's play Game 3.

The problem is that Rogers wasn't caught.

I think the Wild Card is a decent improvement, but it could be dramatically improved if they found a way to integrate a balanced schedule for all teams, which would give the WC a little more merit. As for the financial numbers, I trust nothing that comes from MLB.

The pine tar isn't applied to the baseball but, rather, to the fingers to improve grip. With improved grip, you can apply more spin on the ball, adding an inch or so of break onto your curveball, slider, or other breaking pitches. It can also help counteract the effects of cold weather on the baseball, which apparently becomes more slippery as it gets colder. MLB.com actually has a pine tar stick for sale on their online shop.

The thread speaks for itself.

I was reaching for Valentine, since there's actual historical precedent there, but you're right, he probably would have flipped out about the pinetar as well. Bad analogy.

The more I think about it, the more likely it seems that Bobby Valentine whacked Tony LaRussa in the head with a steel chair in the locker room and came out to the dugout in his Tony LaRussa mask. Like Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible.

I'm actually more pissed off at TLR for not pinch-hitting for Molina in the ninth last night. How does he resist the most golden of opportunities for micromanagement that he's seen all series?

After all, it ruined Gaylord Perry's career and reputation.

Weaver was actually good back in 2001-2002, an up-and-coming ace for a Tigers team that was going nowhere at that point. EDIT: Here his BRef link, just for reference - http://www.baseball-reference.com/w/weaveje01.shtml

I'm with Czech on TVOTR. Not just for Return to Cookie Mountain, but their whole catalogue in general. I'll concede that I haven't listened to it (Cookie Mountain) deeply at this point, so maybe the realization is yet to come but, so far, I haven't been blown away by anything I've heard from them.

This whole thing smacks of the CYA that went down for Doug Eddings in the umpiring debacle from last year. The mismatched stories, the bizarre interpretations from the umpires ("it was observed as a clump of dirt"? Are you serious?) and, ultimately, the lack of anything getting done. If you're going to talk to him about it and not throw him out, then why even have the umpires out there to enforce the rules at all? That being said, I don't think there's anything you do to Kenny Rogers for this postseason and, really, even for next season. If they were to suspend Rogers for what has only been seen on TV, even though he's never been caught on the field, you get a classic "slippery slope" situation that the Union would likely fight tooth and nail. What's interesting is LaRussa's reaction throughout all of this. Not only did he not ask for Rogers to be inspected, but he instituted a virtual gag order on the rest of his team for talking about it. One poster on another board put it perfectly - LaRussa will "complain about the way the sun sets if it's distracting his players", but he let this one slide on the biggest stage of the game. That bothers me, not because of possible complacency from LaRussa, but that it gives off the impression that he's trying to cover for somebody on St. Louis.

8.0 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 4 K For people who have been wondering how this team won 83 games this year, consider that they demoted that to the minors for three months of Sidney Ponson.