Thurston Fluff

Harden makes Sheets look like an ironman. Here are Hardens starts over the last five years, 31, 19, 9, 4, 25. Which is 88 total. Sheets over those five years (which takes out years of 34, 34, and 25) started 34, 22, 17, 24, 31. Which is 128. Sheets has averaged close to 28 starts a year over his career whereas Harden has averaged 17 starts a year. Not to mention Sheets usually pitches more innings in those games than Harden does.

I'm not sure if by having a business on the side for financial Independence means you want to own your own business and live off that. If you do I think you will have a better chance of it working if you go for it right away. Don't get another job and hope to someday make your side project work full time. Having a business on the side in the hope to someday make it full time is something I think a lot of people who want to run their own business have backwards. The people I see who start a job and work towards their dream of running their own business never quite get there. By the time they are ready they have more to lose. If you start now with little to lose you may end up out of work by age 30 and a wealth of experience to go into the next job. If you go independent at age 30 or so and fail you are now 40 or older and have a house and family depending on it working out. Usually by the time you want to start you have too much to risk to take that leap. I think most people who succeed on their own started when they had nothing to lose. Certainly was that way for us. My wife and I are by no means business experts but we had nothing to lose but time and maybe a little later retirement if we failed. I don't think either of us would have worked for someone else, got financially stable then said, let's risk it all by getting a phone line, gorilla suit and some balloons and make it work on our own. As far as financial expertise I don't know what that even means today. A lot of so called experts couldn't see the crisis we have today coming. How can they be experts if they miss very thing they are supposed to be looking out for? The business model we knew for generations is changing as we speak. Better to write the book yourself than trust what someone else wrote about how things used to work IMO. Trust your instincts, but don't confuse what you want to work with what you think will work, don't be afraid to make mistakes and learn from each of them. It's your 20's anything you screw up there is time to fix. The practical experience you gain in the process will teach you more than any book could hope to. If all you really want is to gain wealth just diversify. Not just diverse stocks but look into property or invest in other ventures locally as well as some safer investments like CD's boring but always gains never loses. Diversity means no single failure takes everything away.

I think the issue with the NFL is that the teams with the worst records get the easiest schedule the following season. That used top be the case but the new scheduleing formula make sthat pretty insignificant now. I think the issue of parity in the NFL is it prohibits teams from maintaining their depth. As soon as a tema gets good enough it gets it's roster raided and they can't rebuild it as easily because they are drafting so low every round. Then they get a few injuries and are introuble. All the NFL would have to do is snake the draft order where the last pick in the first round gets the first int he second and the well run teams would be able to maintain their edge in a competetively fair way. I will never understand why excessive greed on the owners' parts is almost completely tolerated by fans, but players are just scathed for it. I have a theory on that. the average fan has no idea what the owner makes so it's hard to criticize an abstract number as opposed to: A-Rod made $25 million this year and had the same numbers as player X who make half as much. The other factor is most fans sort of believe the owner making more money translates to spending more on the team. So in a weird way the fans want the owner to make the money and criticize the player for taking some of it away since that could go to pay someone they invariably believe would be better. The only thing a payroll cap would really do imo is ensure that the employees most responsible for the product are paid a disproportionately lower rate, and the owners would just rake in obscene amounts of cash. This can be negotiated. If the players get a certain % of the gross revenue there is no reason the players can't make the same or even more on average than they do now. In fact if every team could be good enough to compete I think the over all revenue would go up. If the over all revenue goes up so does the amount the players get.

america operates and was built upon the premise of a free market society. Which is why we now have to impose new rules and spend billions to bail out those companies that the free market failed. This would not be the time to use the America is based on free market principals argument. Even setting that aside if it was a free market in baseball then maybe 90% of the teams should just not play any team with a payroll over a certain point. Let the few teams with the higher payroll play 162 games against the other five teams left and see what type of salaries they can afford. The Yankees like to believe they benefit everyone more than everyone benefits them but without team to play against their revenue would look more like WNBA team while I have little doubt without the Yankees the Brewers bottom line would look identical to what it is now. Giving every team a fair chance to operate effectively and keep thier players whohave some draw for their fans would greatly benefit all the teams.

It has always bothered me that many people think Andro was some sort of illegal substance or that it is the same as taking anabolic sterioids. The reason I brought up the Andro think is because someone said Mac wasn't playing When steroids was banned not that it was illegal to use. That was clearly not the case since he was so insistent that it wasn't a banned substance. What's really interesting to me is that if you adjust for context, Barry Bonds & Roger Clemens are arguably the best hitter & pitcher to ever play. Without steroids they were not the best of their era let alone ever. If you look at the 90's when Bonds wasn't on roids he was no where near the player Griffey was. If you take away the steroids he was not as good as Pujols in the 2000's. If he was never the best while he was playing he cannot be the best of all time. I do not believe Griffey has ever used and there have been no accusations about Pujols who has played at his usual level after testing. Clemons has a host of players that are as good as he was if you subtract the years of performance enhanced play in what should have been the twilight of his career. Where some guys like Johnson, Maddux, Glavine, Pedro all using steroids? I don't know but they have not been linked to them and I do not think all of them were yet they all were just as good as Clemons if you take away the roids. You have a good point that some are probably in the HOF with the assistance of roids but to say it's a roided up Barry vs a roided up everyone else discounts the players who did it right and were still good enough to be in the hall.

The steroid era started in the 1960s so steroid era players are already in, people just didn't care until Bonds. Since weight lifting in the 60's wasn't viewed as a way to increases performance in the field I seriously doubt they were juicing to maximize the effects of their workouts. I'm sure there was use of steroids to help recover from injury quicker but that is different than using them to artificially boost body mass. Doctors to this day prescribe steroids to aid patients in recovery. If it has to do with what MLB defines as illegal why is this a discussion? McGwire never played when its was illegal by MLB. And it only became illegal due to Bonds. This is false. Steroids were banned in baseball while McGwire was playing. Remember the whole andro thing and he went out of his way to say it wasn't on the list of banned substances. Perhaps you meant there wasn't any testing or penalties for steroid use but it was most certainly banned. I believe it was banned sometime in the early 90's but I'm not sure of the exact year. Without a doubt before Mac was done playing. Regardless of when player knew it was unethical. They knew full well it was a way to cheat the game whether it was banned form baseball or merely illegal everywhere. They knew it was a way to gain an unfair advantage over those who chose not to use an illegal substance. For that alone they deserve to be viewed as less a star than their contemporaries who did it the right way.

A Sanchez is shocking -- I NEED to know who's vote that is. A bitter Cub fan with voting privileges. They feel they are the only team with an inalienable right to have can't miss center fielders flop miserably after a brief stay in the league.

How many power pitchers his size really do well in their 30's after major shoulder surgery? At his size to throw the way he did always amazed me but it had to be a max effort type of guy to do that. Max effort + age = diminished returns.

Bando got ten votes. I know he was a part of the Brewers for along time and he was pretty good as a player but his time as GM should not only preclude him from getting any votes but banned from the vote entirely. if the Brewers don't have it, and it looks like they don't, they should impliment a minimum % to stay on the ballot They do. All players and managers receiving votes on at least 5% of the ballots will remain eligible in 2010.

Which is why AJ Burnett got so much money! I guess I don't see the Yankees as a team all that concerned with silly things like value for dollar spent like most teams do. I don't think that comparison is as good as your comparison of Sheets to Lowe. Lowe just signed for 4 years 60 Million. According to you Sheets be as valuable. Why is it we don't see teams lining up to give him that? Might just be health matters more to most teams than statistics do.

I think that shows teams place a higher priority on health than stats do when it comes to doling out high dollar contracts.

It is a bad idea to tell your wife you didn't gain any weight over the holidays My wife made a comment to me about my eating habits and I pinched my waist then hers. Not any better of an idea

I just want to mention I am not trying to pick a fight with you Backup, I just vehemently disagree some of the posts I have seen that insinuate that the Brewers can lose two pitchers like CC and Sheets and replace that quality with Yo and some guy like Looper or another scrap heap reclemation by Melvin without seeing a serious decline in the rotation and rippling into the bullpen. I never thought you were doing anything of the sort. We disagree with what we need to replace. I may very well be wrong but when I look at it I see a guy who was compared Lincecum coming into 08 being on the staff and a Parra who should be more constant all year with one more year and another guy to be named replacing two pitchers who combined made one great one and one, when taking into consideration reliability and performance was slightly above average one. Admittedly Looper was not the best comparison. But I guess I would rather have him the last two Septembers than Sheets the last couple Septembers. I think looking back you are rihgt he was better than a three. He was not better than what I think we can get out of Parra or YoGa next year.

And this is all based on your faulty assumptions that Sheets was bad/hardly pitched in the second half and that "#1 pitchers" have sub 3 ERA for entire seasons. I'm making the faulty assumptions? You somehow seem to assume because I said Sheets did not perform the same way for half the season that somehow translates to he pitched hardly/poorly. I don't know how me saying he pitched like I would expect a # 3 to pitch for half the year translates in any way to - he pitched poor - unless your idea of a third pitcher is far worse than mine. I also should ask how does my pointing out Sheets second half ERA and innings pitched was closer to Looper's career numbers than a #1 type pitcher's numbers translate to Sheets pitched poor or not much? You may know numbers and I learn from you but sometimes you seem to have problems translating them to specific arguments. As far as the assumption that I feel a #1 has to have a sub 3 ERA when did I mention that? I did say his production for half the year was less than what we should expect from that type of pitcher. Given the context of the point being made, that the loss of the actual production from Sheets and CC combined last year is not as hard to replace as it would be if they both pitched all year like two top flight pitchers, I think there is more merit to that than his projected or career FIP. Quite frankly I don't even know what that has to do with last year's production. I used Looper as an example of a pitcher who is very average to demonstrate how replacing the Sheets we saw after the CC acquisition was not as difficult as it would be to replace a top level Sheets. In reality if this team had won the same number of games as they did with both Sheets and CC performing at their best all year long we would have a far more difficult time replacing their loss than what we have to replace now in order to maintain the same level of production. What we have to replace is half a year of CC and half a year of Sheets the ace and half a year of Sheets the number three (my type of #3 not yours which seems to be one who pitches poorly or not much). Not Cy Young Sheets and the CC we saw for a full year.

Cleavland won the division two years ago and without CC still have a Cy Young winner on the team so I don't think it's out of the question they contend this year. LaPorta needs to put in a full year without tailing off before he should be handed the job.

If you want to call out Sheets performance for the post all star break where he pitched 75 innings with a 3.46 ERA and 1.21 WHIP, 50 K and 19BB effort I don't think you can ignore Parra's post ASB performance. Parra only threw 66 innings with a 5.32 ERA, 1.62 WHIP 69 K and 25 BB. Sure I can. In the context of what we have to replace we got one half a season of #1 type pitching from him and half a season of less than that. What we have to replace isn't two pitchers who pitched at a ace level for the entire season. One wasn't here for half of it and the other didn't pitch like it for the other half. Parra can be expected to improve on his rookie year. I think we can expect more improvement from Parra than we can from Sheets at this point. If we can get a full year of YoGa at the level he appears to be capable of and find another pitcher who can pitch close to Sheets career numbers of a little over 6.1 inning per start at a 3.72 ERA with a WHIP of 1.20 and BAA of .256 we have replaced Sheets. Bradon Looper for example pitched 199 inning last year has a career ERA of 3.93 with a 1.35 WHIP and .268 BAA. That is close enough to what Sheets has done throughout his career that added to YoGa and a more experienced Parra we chould come very close to the production we got out of the Sheets Sabathia combo last year.

I have a tradition of listening to audio books about serial killers, Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, that type of stuff, while doing deliveries on Valentines day. My wife thinks it's wrong on so many levels. I think it's funny on an otherwise sickeningly sweet day. Am I a bad person for that?

As far as Sheets and Sabathia being one great pitcher - - Sheets threw 198 innings for the Brewers and Sabathia threw 130, I wouldn't call 328 innings one pitcher. Actually combined they had the numbers of one great pitcher and one #3 type starter. Our # 3 last year was Parra who had 166 IP and a 4.39 ERA. If you look at his numbers for July, August and September you find Sheets was not all that much better. July 29.1 IP 14 ER, August 32.2 IP 10 ER, Sept 24.1 9 ER. That is about a 3.80ish ERA over a three month period. during the same time we had CC and Sheets CC pitched like CC and Sheets pitched more like Parra than CC. I think Parra and YoGa can pitch as many if not more innings than that in 09.

They were the same pitcher pretty much, one just had a blip in BABIP and gave up a couple extra HRs. The important stats for evaluating talent were pretty much steady. That just goes to show there is so little difference between a bad season and good one for even good relievers that trying to predict what type of drop off a team will have by relievers is almost impossible. The Cubs had three things go their way last year that may or may not repeat itself. Their bullpen's talent was there but so was the usual luck factor that goes makes even Turnbow types look great. A few bad bounces here or there and some of their relievers end up having a bad year instead of a good one. They had a few injuries last year but none at spots that they didn't have some depth and very few, if any season ending/long recovery time types. Several of their players had outstanding years unlikely to be repeated. I don't think the cubs will collapse or anything close to it. The Cubs will be a very good team. I do not think they will repeat the number of wins even if they are as good a team talent wise.

So far the Brewers have lost their 3 best pitchers from a year ago. Including a guy in Sabathia who drug the team kicking and screaming across the finish line. Keep in mind Sheets and CC basically were one great pitcher all year long. By the time we got CC Sheets numbers were that of a #3 not an ace. Add a year of experience to Parra and YoGa and the drop off isn't as bad as it looks.

Man, tivo is the greatest invention ever. I missed a great ending, but then again, I didn't miss a thing since I got to rewind and watch it as if it was live (plus skip all the in-between play analysis.) cheater.

I don't know about all the states legalities but when the state's Attorney General was arrested for OWI, after an accident no less, she refused to take a breathalyzer. If the state's top prosecutor thinks that's the best option I guess I'd take that route and let the lawyers work it out. If nothing else you can threaten to go to court and have a jury hear your case. The prosecution may just allow you to plea out to avoid a costly trial. Either way it's academic to me since, like most of us here, I chose not to drink and drive.

Why does a team that easily won the division make lateral moves? It seems silly to get rid of a player that did so well for them in Derosa just to replace him with an player of unknown value to their situation. If I was a Cub fan I'd rather keep the 97 win team intact instead of tinkering with the success. I do think the team played above their head last year with several having career years but they should have been given a chance to prove it wasn't.

And no team can be above average at all positions. The Yankees sure are making a run at it. League average players are extremely valuable. A team of all league average players and then Braun and Gallardo is a playoff team to put it in perspective. What you don't want to settle for is players who are replacement level. Then you don't have a team full of average players do you? The point I was trying to make is we can have some Weeks types on the team but too many and you don't have a good team. Those types of players should be looked at as places to improve on if you can but can live with for the time being. I disagree that an average team with two above average players is a playoff team. I get what you mean but a team of average players and one or two above average seems like a stretch. Perhaps over exaggerated to make your point? If so point taken.

Isn't league average almost by definition someone who will help you get to .500? I thought we were past settling for that. I agree we have other more pressing needs so we end up with him. There is still a decent chance he could figure out which pitch is a good one to hit and which isn't and he may yet be well above average. Those two factors makes him the second baseman and lead off hitter for year IMO. We could not win the division with a team full of Weeks. We can win it all if he is the weakest link.