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What a perfectly predictable sac bunt. How about trying to get a hit once in a while and catch the defense off guard.

If you like Star Wars at all, I would be surprised if you didn't like those games. It helps to know the people you are playing with ahead of time. My experience is anything with online the anonymity leads people to act like a bunch of *%%%#%#+$. It doesn't suck, but it isn't exactly great either.

They don't ignore defense otherwise Braun would have been a runaway winner in 2007 instead of barely winning the award.

That's how I would interpret it. It means nothing. I hope he continues to pitch for the Cubs. He is getting worn out from overuse anyway.

According to the plus/minus system, McLouth was the worst CF in 2008, worst CF for 2006-2008 and the third worst from 2003-2008(ahead of Griffey and Edmonds).

His reasoning doesn't matter. Pitcher vs hitter matchups are an extremely small sample with almost no predictive ability. In the Book they took cases where a batter had at least 27 before PA and at least 9 after PA. Of the 30 matchups where a hitter dominated the pitcher, the after PA were roughly split into 10 hitter continued to dominate, 7 hitter matched career stats, 13 hitter was dominated by the pitcher. On the flip side, They looked at the 30 matchups most dominated by the pitcher. The after came out as 8 mauthups dominated by the pitcher, 10 dominated by the batter, and 12 neutral. I am not sure if you could come up with a more random after/before spread. Even if you have 2 guys playing in the same division, they are not likely to face each other more than 24 times in any given year.(18 head to head games, guessing 6 series of 3 games, starting pitcher starts against the opposit team every series, 4 at bats per game, all guesses on the high side as it is unlikely a starting pitcher starts in every head to head series) Assuming that Fangraphs has the point where stats stabalize correct, Link 50 PA: Swing % 100 PA: Contact Rate 150 PA: Strikeout Rate, Line Drive Rate, Pitches/PA 200 PA: Walk Rate, Groundball Rate, GB/FB 250 PA: Flyball Rate 300 PA: Home Run Rate, HR/FB 500 PA: OBP, SLG, OPS, 1B Rate, Popup Rate 550 PA: ISO [/pre]We need over 2 years worth of data before anything becomes reliable. By the time we would get enough head to head matchups to mean anything, the hitter and batter are so far removed from many of the PA for the data to mean anything. What a hitter did 4+ years ago isn't likely relavent to what he is as a hitter now.

Sorry to nitpick, but Villy was acquired in trade and isn't technically one of our guys even though he played some in the minors for us.

It wasn't a save situation.

While I am annoyed with Macha's handling of 3B this season, I agree with PrinceEatMeat that it isn't all that unreasonable to ask & expect a big-leaguer to hit better than the .170/.261/.283/.544 line Bill's scraped together against righties. Yes and no. I don't think it is unreasonable, but he has refused to make changes over the last year(I think that is about the time Branyan came up) since he was benched(mostly) vs RHP. I think it is unreasonable to keep playing him since he won't make the apparent necessary changes.

I think the stache is weak. It doesn't even curl back up on itself yet.

But we are all annoyed by, and probably hate his play. I don't hate him as a person, I just am really starting to hate him as a player. It's just so annoying to keep seeing my in the lineup and failing. I think your anger is misplaced. Hall's limitations are well documented. If you are going to be angry at someone, I think you should be angry with Macha for continuing to play Hall against RHP.

Like I said, you can't take it out, but it adds .225 points of ERA if Parra pitches 200 innings. I think it is a good example of how ERA, even over a whole season, can be misleading. I think that most people would agree that 0.25 points of ERA is pretty drastic. Even if he pitched 4.5 ERA the rest of the year , he would be at 4.72 instead now. He took one for the team. I am not saying he has pitched well, just pointing out how drastically that one extra inning is going to affect his stats.

Man, I hope Lawrie doesn't miss the June 13th game. That will be my first T-Rats game ever.

Hall has been playing just like many people expected. I am not a big fan of Hall, but I will not get angry with or blame Hall for starting against RHP when it has been clear for over 2 years now that he doesn't hit them even adequate enough to be a full time player. I was hoping he would prove me wrong, but he hasn't to this point and with a good player to play against RHP, he should be platooned.

Why does Escobar keep getting included in these deals? Unless Hardy is signed long term, we are going to need him very soon. Same goes for most of our top prospects.

A grad student I employed this past academic year gave me 3 days' notice, stating that I hadn't notified her in writing of my two week preference Wow, I wouldn't even give that person a good reference if they asked. I thought it was commonly accepted that you should give at least 2 weeks notice. I have had people come in to work and tell me it was their last day and they were only working half the night. There is no chance those people ever getting rehired by the company I work for or getting a positive reference. 2 weeks should be plenty.

That game is going to skew his stats all year. I know we can't ignore the game, but he probably would have been pulled 5 runs earlier if our bullpen wasn't burned out. It was a terrible time to have a rain delay, which I think contributed at least a little to his poor pitching.

What I would like to see is Gamel at 3B every day, Counsell getting 2 starts at 2B a week against RHP, Hall getting all the starts at 2B against LHP, and McGehee getting the balance of the starts at 2B. I would be okay with a Gamel/ Hall straight platoon at 3B with Hall as a late inning defensive replacement. McGehee getting all but 2 starts a week at 2B which would be Counsell starting against RHP. "Casey McGehee is swinging the bat pretty well and doing all right," said Macha. "Maybe he'll get some playing time at third. I don't know. We'll see how things go." There is no reason to give McGehee any time at 3B unless Gamel gets the job full time and needs a day off. There is zero reason(baring injury) to start McGehee over Hall against LHP. Generally speaking, I like that Macha is willing to tinker with his lineup. It makes sense to move a guy like Hart down in the lineup vs RHP. However doing things like batting McGehee 2nd against a LHP while Hardy and Hall bat 6th and 7th is just wrong.

As of right now it looks to be PC only. I will say that I haven't read much about it so they might be working on bringing it to consoles at some point.

This wouldn't be a problem if Macha would quit using hitter vs pitcher stats to make lineup decisions and just stick with the RH/LH slits or even assume league average splits.

I guess if it is the only game you are going to play, paying a monthly fee to play is ok. If they are going to give me 4 free months if I buy the game, I would probably buy it. I just don't like having to buy a game then pay more just to play it. I played WoW for a while, but it seemed like I spent a lot of time to get very little accomplished. MMORPG's are cheaper than dinner and a movie Are you saying I should buy the game instead of taking my wife out to eat? You are not going to convince me that having to pay per month is a good deal. If I want a new game experience, I will buy or rent a new game.

Probably going to be a cool game. It is a MMORPG which probably means a monthly fee, which means a big no for me.

He has more AB because he walks a lot less.

I think of bringing in the veteran to close over the young guy as more of a ego thing. If you just used your 2nd best guy to close, your best guy is going to be very upset because Saves=more money. If that 2nd best guy has closing experience it is much easier to tell your best guy, "well so and so has closing experience." Not putting your best guy closing is screwing him out of money even though he may be helping the team more. Generally I think you can get away with a lesser reliever in the closers role. As we have witnessed over the years, good closers can come from anywhere. The way closers are used now, I don't think they should be multi-inning guys either. It seems to be a waste to take a good reliever who can go multiple innings and put him in a one inning role.

In that case do nothing. Parra has an extra day to work things out.