JoeHova

I'm glad Counsell is beating Lamb out, hopefully that will remove any reason to keep Lamb around. I'd rather not see Counsell get many starts at 3rd though. A .650-ish OPS from a corner spot is not intriguing, no matter how good the defense is.

I wouldn't advocate re-signing him a 2nd time even if he does get healthy at some point. Just let the saga end. The upside is not even there anymore.

If PEDs helped Craig Counsell hit .600, he'd have to be kicking himself for not taking them his entire career.

That's some serious prose right there. That caught my eye too. Pretty funny.

He's 37 (meaning his defense is unlikely to rebound) and projects to have about a .700 OPS. He's probably done but he had a nice little career for a guy who didn't really crack the majors until he was 30. He made a lot of cash and he'll always be remembered fondly in Boston. He's also 2nd in career steals by a Japanese-born player (behind Ichiro).

I wasn't that excited about seeing the film because I didn't think it would be that good but then I read a review on Salon which can only be characterized as a rave. The reviewer says stuff like ""Watchmen" is absolutely devastating. Dense, intense, tragic and visionary, this is the kind of movie that keeps setting off bombs in your brain hours after you've seen it. After coming out of the theater, I wandered the frozen streets of Manhattan watching passersby and wondering which was the real city, the apparently peaceful one I inhabit now or the one that faces Armageddon at the mid-'80s height of the Cold War in the Moore-Gibbons universe. If I could have gone back inside and watched the movie all over again, I'd have done it." The he says about the director: "Although he was easily the least promising of the directors attached to this project over the years -- which have included Terry Gilliam, Paul Greengrass and Darren Aronofsky -- Zack Snyder (of "300" and the 2004 "Dawn of the Dead" remake) reveals himself here as a filmmaker of mightily impressive range and control. For my money, "Watchmen" way out-darks "The Dark Knight," and immediately leaps near the top of the list of apocalyptic pop-culture operas, alongside "Blade Runner" and the first "Matrix" movie (which are obvious influences)." Then he concludes with: "I've made it clear by this point that I think "Watchmen" is a terrific comic-book movie, the most completely satisfying and unsettling one I've ever seen. I also feel pretty sure that its reviews will be all over the map, and that at least some viewers will be profoundly turned off by the bitterness and bleakness of this movie's vision." I like that reviewer a lot and he's not usually given to over the top praise. Suffice to say that I am now pretty excited to see the film. link: http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2009/03/06/watchmen/

I assume Hanel and some other BP catchers are also hanging around if needed. I hope Mike recovers quickly.

Basketball numbers aren't assigned by position, the restriction is that only numbers 4-15 are allowed in FIBA play which means most players can't wear their NBA numbers. That leads to a lot of weird numbers in the Olympics and World Championships. Sometimes a player will get their normal number (Carmelo Anthony got his #15 in Beijing and Jason Kidd got his customary #5 (though he isn't wearing that with his current NBA team because Josh Howard has it)) but often they aren't able to, even if they usually wear a number in that range (Dwight Howard was #12 during the 06 Worlds but for some reason he switched numbers with Chris Bosh for the 08 Olympics).

Maybe it is, I haven't been following it too closely. I just have vague recollections of a bunch of peanut butter recalls lately.

Hi everybody- I don't really enjoy peanut butter that much so I haven't been totally keeping up with the decimation of the peanut industry. My wife likes it a lot though and we ran out of our supply today. Does anybody have any recommendations of a brand that hasn't been tainted by all the recalls? I try not to buy into the hysteria over stuff like this but peanut products seem to get recalled every few days lately so I want to make a good choice. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

If Gagne is hurt on opening day, I doubt the Brewers will want to waste a major league salary and 40 man spot by keeping him around.

I don't understand what you are saying. Every rule is good? If a team's goal is to look as dopey as UPS guys, I guess Indianapolis will have accomplished that.

It's not about celebrating the individual over the team, it's about treating people like adults. If you work at a place where they dictate the height of your socks, I feel sorry for you. It's not the same as requiring people to wear a suit or something, teams already do exactly that with the uniform. It's like not allowing people to wear a double-breasted suit or shoes with laces or something.

Yes, telling grown men how to dress, down to the height of their socks, generally doesn't go over well. People like to have a modicum of freedom. Even if a guy likes to wear his socks high, I bet he'll chafe at being forced to do so.

I don't think signing a good/useful player to a fair contract is ever a bad move. Ever. You play to win the game. Playing to net draft picks is not inspiring to anyone and can even backfire on you (like with CC and Ben). Of course a team should be cognizant of how likely they are to contend in a given year and try to be realistic, but there's nothing wrong with trying to speed up the process a little. This isn't a franchise-crippling Jeff Suppan-esque deal. This is a fair contract to a good reliever who can help a team win. If it's a fair contract for a good team, why isn't it also one for a bad team? I don't get the logic, unless the signing is blocking good prospects (which it isn't in this case). Also, didn't the Royals set the all-time MLB record for biggest signing bonus outlay last year? They can use a later round pick to sign a 2nd round quality player away from college, it's not crippling at all to lose a 2nd rounder. One last point- people here may take an extra 2nd rounder over trying to finish in 3rd but KC fans evidently don't share those feelings. During the recent year they finished 3rd (2003) they had by far their largest attendance since the strike. Their attendance last season was 200,000 less than it was during their 3rd place finish season. Trying to improve the team, even if only marginally, can have tangible benefits.

Classless, but I don't feel like getting into another big thing about this. Suffice to say that what you said is totally wrong. Anyway, I'm skeptical that any league or team (except a couple in the NHL) is in major trouble yet. Owners always cry about how poor they are and how little money they make, even in the best of times. Of course they are going to make those same claims now.

I liked him as a potential signing better than Looper, espcially once it transpired that he would take a minor league deal. Of course, that turned out to be not exactly accurate, but I would offer him a $1 million major league deal with a few hundred thousand in incentives. I think he can help a team as a 5th/6th starter. He's currently undervalued and getting him for less than $3 million or so would be a steal. The Nats should have just changed his deal to a major league one and kept him.

I'd try to sign him if nobody else has yet. He fits the flamed-out prospect vein that Doug likes to mine. You never know, he's still only 25, one year older than LaPorta and other guys who are still considered prospects. (Not comparing him to LaPorta, just saying 25 isn't that old, even in baseball.)

MLB is getting rid of the paper media guides for the AL and NL this season. I wonder if the team ones will follow suit next year? http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3934830 Linkified version (added by hawing. At least, when I first opened your post, the link wasn't active.)

I never heard about this incident (I didn't read all the panic threads and stuff) but I vote for him coming back. Being gone for 5 months is pretty long, I think his sentence could be commuted. Also, why would a promise like that be enforced by a moderator? That seems mean, imo. It's like forcing someone to eat a hat if they say "if Geoff Jenkins makes contact with a curveball at his ankles, I'll eat my hat."

I never heard about this incident (I didn't read all the panic threads and stuff) but I vote for him coming back. Being gone for 5 months is pretty long, I think his sentence could be commuted. Also, why would a promise like that be enforced by a moderator? That seems mean, imo. It's like forcing someone to eat a hat if they say "if Geoff Jenkins makes contact with a curveball at his ankles, I'll eat my hat."

Possibly not, but once their checks start coming in, they'll be fine in terms of paying the rent/mortgage. It's only during spring training where they have to worry. Even on the minimum salary, you're talking $25,000 every two weeks after taxes.

I'm sure their teams would advance those guys some salary until their assets are unfrozen. The Knicks advanced Eddy Curry a couple million earlier this year so he could pay off some of his bills. Or failing an advance, they know a lot of rich guys who could maybe loan them some money for awhile.

Yeah, they trotted her out to talk about it for a minute. She was terrible, stumbling over her lines and sounding like a disinterested high school kid reading from a book in front of a class.

Great move for LA if Hudson's defense is still as good as it was a couple years ago. I was kind of hoping that the Brewers would sign him or Ellis and move on from Weeks (in anticipation of moving JJ to 2nd when Alcides is ready), but the climate apparently wasn't right for that move or they wanted to give Weeks another chance.