Fatter than Joey

Endaround, what makes you so sure? Delgado is dying a slow death over at 1st base and you know that the Mets wanna make a splash in whatever they do. The Mets may love to have Fielder, but they aren't going to trade Reyes to do it. Reyes is a better overall player. As Endaround points out -- they have a great contract with Reyes. Plus if the season ended today (Mets are #15) the Mets would not lose their draft pick when they sign Dunn or any other player.

That's just a Monte Carlo simulation, which is a valid way to figure out probabilities. As the number of simulations done get higher, the sample odds approach the real odds. 1 million simulations gets the odds accurate to at least 1 decimal point, easy. Right. I know that there are different methodologies though. I think BaseballReference.com when they do their MC simulations simply redistribute the RS v. RA over the course of 162 games, with no regard to matchups, done thousands of times. etc. -- and I think that has proven to be about as accurate as the pythagorean methods used. I think the general conclusion was that the MC method was not worth the extra work that the pyth. method is. I think BP.com actually takes the winning pct. of the teams, and plays out the rest of the games for each team, with specific matchups, rather than simply redistributing RS v. RA. I don't know if this methodology has been proven to be as accurate. My point was not that MC sims are not valid -- rather that if you run simulations for the course of a season, and look at one day, -- given the non-static relationship of the odds of all the teams in a division or WC race -- during interleague esp., when all the NL teams could possibly lose, you may see a big jump from day to day, which is not really indicative of the typical overall daily improvement of odds. I was responding to Toby's question of the validity of the overall simulation process because he thought the "odds swing" was too high. I guess it would be like looking at the win expectancy chart of a game -- A hit in the 9th may swing the win expectancy by 80 points, but that doesn't mean that the typical hit generally swings an expectancy by anything close to that.

If you're going to assign blame for his moves. Why do we need to assign blame? Why can't we just say "it was a bad move, or it was a good move" and explain our thinking. Why can't we just dissect Yost's moves, agree disagree and then move on? I don't see a Melvin ya or nay thread 80 pages long yet he is the one responsible for the bad choices Ned has to chose between. If you start a Melvin yay or nay thread -- I am guaranteed to help to get the page count up to 80. I agree that DM should be fired along with Yost, and frankly a lot of the roster moves (TGJ in Fenway) irritate me more than anything Ned has done lately. I just think we need to be able to talk about a pitching change -- working with the pitchers Ned has -- w/o talking about DM every single time. If I said to you -- BUC, you have bases loaded 0 outs in a 5-4 game the Brewers are winning, who would you bring in from Tavarez, Dillard or DeFelice? -- It would be frustrating for me to hear you talk about how DM did a bad job getting Ned arms, instead of simply making a choice. BUC -- you know I think you are a cool cat -- I am just saying this so perhaps we can cut out the same circular arguments every single night. ********** Given the number of people who post here, there is almost always going to be at least one poster who doesn't like something Yost has done in a game, but I doubt there is any one poster who doesn't like every move. Exactly, furthermore I think people are fairly consistent with what they like/dislike. It leads to one group constantly complaining about Yost and the other constantly defending with very few people doing both. I think if people just stick to discussing what other people actually type, instead of guessing what would have been typed in situations that never happened -- we will be ok...

I hope Adam Dunn hits 10 HRs against the Blue Jays

As far as Bucky's comments go, semantics aside, the basic idea was not far off though overstated. It was a straw-man argument -- nothing more, nothing less. No one blames injuries, Melvin for not finding a better option or Jack Z. for his failure to provide enough pitching prospects in the system. I blame DM all the time for TGJ DHing in Fenway. I blamed DM for having a 14 man pitching staff... However, there has to be a point that in a game we can talk/argue/discuss how Ned plays the cards that he has. I want to discuss leaving Tavarez in for the 12th -- it doesn't have to be about determining blame in an ultimate sense -- I think we should always assume that DM shoulders some blame for crappy pitchers on the roster, and we should always blame crappy players for being crappy to some degree -- but why do we have to talk about DM every time we want to discuss whether Yost should have used pitcher A or B. It has to be the fact that Ned chose bad option A instead of bad option B which, now that the game is over and it can't be proven wrong, would obviously have worked out so much better. I think Ned was dumb for leaving crappy tired pitcher A in the game -- when fresh crappy pitcher B was available -- am I "right"? -- not necessarily, it's just what I would have done. I would like to discuss the whys and whynots of the situation, without talking about DM, how crappy Mota is, or straw men. Would any of the Yost "haters" actually disagreed with putting Torres in even if he had blown the game? I hate Ned Yost. I thought getting Torres was the smart thing to do regardless of the outcome.

Hopefully Ned realizes that Mota is a rich man's Turnbow. He can be really good or really bad... I think the key Ned needs to realize is Mota walks too many batters -- and if Mota gives up a hit, there is a good chance a walk will happen as well.

In other words... every move the guy makes is viewed with a skewed eye, and the assumption is that it's going to be the wrong decision. There is no denying that. This is absolutely and entirely false. You continue to build straw-men to help your arguments. There is no person on BF.net as you describe. Here is the definition of what straw-man arguments are so you can address this. I think Yost is a bad manager. There are things that I agree with him on more often than not, there have been things he has done that I wouldn't have that turned out well. I don't assume every thing he does will be wrong -- nor does anyone here. Please stop this.

March 27, 2002: D-Train traded by the Chicago Cubs with Jose Cueto (minors), Ryan Jorgensen, and Julian Tavarez to the Florida Marlins for Antonio Alfonseca and Matt Clement.

BP's playoff odds bother me... the Brewers jumped 9% after last night's win. Did we really improve our odds from 1 in 5 to nearly 1 in 3 by beating the Blue Jays while a few teams ahead of us lost? You have to keep in mind as well, that what BP does is runs a simulation 1M times and then charts the results. It's really not an "odds" formula in the strictest sense of the word. As Russ pointed out -- the Brewers "odds" are not static in relation to the other teams either -- that is to say it is not as if the Brewers are moving up and down static rungs on a ladder -- the other teams/rungs are moving just like the Brewers do. If each team that loses has their odds decrease, that decrease has to become an increase somewhere else -- If one NL WC team wins and seven NL WC teams lose (especially more probable in interleague play), that one winning WC team is likely to capture the all of the decreases in the seven losing teams (in general terms).

I don't think anyone thought he was capable of doing what he's done so far. I'm getting the impression that people knew he would be an offensive dynamo. No, I think you are right -- I think people are going goofy with the nightly 450 ft bombs -- I just think people wanted a better option off the bench, and given Hall's struggles a replacement for him.

It's easy to say that in hindsight. I mean you look at his career numbers and they don't exactly scream 'savior'. No they don't -- but they certainly scream "PHer capable of hitting a HR" or "Better DH than TGJ".

Why wouldn't you want to see the Cubs best pitcher miss time this season? I am getting too old to watch crappy players. I want to watch Albert Pujols hit as much as I can, not Chris Duncan. When I watch baseball with my son, I want to enjoy watching the best players possible with him. I hate the Cubs as much as anyone on this board, but I do love watching great players like Lee, Zambrano, etc. playing. As pointed out by Homer, watching a Zambrano implosion is one of baseball's great moments. The Cubs have certainly had their share of injuries to SPs over the years. I guess I would rather cheer for our players to beat the Cubs at full strength, rather than revel in every time a Cub gets hurt. Plus the Baseball Gods living on Mt. Branyan, have a way of evening these things out, today's Zambrano injury could turn into tomorrow's Sheets injury, so let's not tempt the fates.

Exit, stage right. You mean left.

Paper Lace? Wow -- well done! Hit #1 Hit #2

The Knack? No -- these guys are Brits.

The more traditional school of thought is to start infants out with "A Little Light Music" -- which is Tull's unplugged album, however I tend to disagree and I think it is important for the young mind to progress as Tull did -- which of course was divinely inspired. Start her first year out with "This Was" which is a solid R&B inspired album, which will lead in nicely to"Stand Up" for year #2 and "Benefit" for year #3. By the time your daughter is 4 and starting to develop her own identity -- she will be ready for the more progressive albums like "Living in the Past" and "Aqualung" Her brain will have developed enough by year #6 to listen to nothing but "Thick as a Brick" When she is 8, she can have a little fun with Bungle in the Jungle from "War Child". Old enough to become socially aware she can digest the insightful lyrics from "Songs From the Wood" and "Heavy Horses" in her pre-teen years. When she turns 14 though -- I would skip "A" -- Black Sunday is a great song, but I would substitute the far superior "Watchers on the Storm" boot that contains concert tracks from the Stormwatch tour. Tull starts to slip around their 18th album, which is fine, because in the words of my old man, "You are now the state's problem" -- and you will have done your part.

The Bay City Rollers, minus one member? No -- but that is a much closer guess --

Hint #4 -- A crappy song we did went to #1 in the UK, but some crappy US band covered our crappy song and took it to #1 in the US the same year before we could unleash our craptitude on the USA --- however, we did manage to crap all over the US charts 2 months later with another equally crappy song. -- So basically we had 2 #1's in the same year in the 1970s.

Is it Focus...as in Hocus Pocus by Focus No. I love Focus though. This band is much lamer, gets a lot of oldies air-play from 2 crappy yet well-known songs. I don't know if you are being punny or not. That was me being funny. One guy looks like Pete Townshend so that is where I started to look. Pete Townshend probably hates you now.

I don't want to discredit Kendall's amazing CS% -- but I think that at some point other teams will quit running on him, much like teams really don't run on the Molina's. I think each catcher has a baseline of SBs that they are going to give up -- due to things they can't control -- indifference, pitchers not holding runners on, etc... and then some catchers get easier opportunities because teams are "testing" them, or think they can run on them. I can't imagine any team thinks running on PudgeRod is a good gamble, unless the baserunner is an elite baseswiper or the manager is a doofus -- so I think Kendall is getting some easy chances -- to his credit he is converting them, but I don't think he has a cannon arm all of a sudden.

Not to mention that he leads the league in throwing out would be basestealers (%) He has been a godsend defensively for the Brewers. Seriously though... unless you have a Russel Martin addiction... I don't think their is a catcher in the NL who has positively affected his team like Kendall has... There is no argument that Kendall should be getting some votes, and is really playing well -- however, he is getting throttled offensively by McCann, Martin and Soto. I'd probably vote for all 3 of those guys and a Molina or two before voting for Kendall.

Sweet Good guess - much lamer though.

These guys were nowhere near as cool as Badfinger

The High Numbers Who?

Steam was a bunch of dirty studio musician hippies..., and not even a real band, they formed after the NaNaNa song. Good guess though. Hint #3 -- We are from the 70s!