I stopped reading this nonsense when you said the Yankees win the ws with him.maybe they do and maybe they lose to the twins but this isn't the NBA.

40 man roster deadline for Rule 5 draft is today at 7pm central. Minor trades incoming. beisbol!

Buddy of mine played in high school. Thought it would be pretty cool to try dip for the first time.

Puts in a dip, goes up to bat. Swings, misses, and accidentally swallows it.

Immediately pukes all over home plate.

Umpire laughs hysterically and says "Well I guess you'll never try THAT again"

Chris Perez got a save a few years back and started puking immediately. Turns out he swallowed his dip while celebrating.

This makes sense. WAR may be a better judge of who the best player is for the future, but other stats that include some context to when performance occurred are a better judge of what happened in the past, which is what the MVP vote is actually about.

Fangraphs posted a response to this, which imo is a lot more convincing than James, who seems to be arguing a strawman that WAR is the ultimate one true stat for all purposes, which no one claims it to be. If you want a stat that takes context into account, plenty of those exist, like WPA. Maybe it makes sense that MVP should be decided more by that than by WAR, since we should care more about actual outcomes than future projection for that purpose, but the Fangraphs piece makes a good case that that's a slippery slope to obfuscating the individual performances that we're actually trying to recognize. There's a reason RBIs are losing favor as a stat even though they measure one of the most important things in the game, driving in runs. It's because they depend on context, which ultimately says as much about a player's teammates as the player himself.

Disagree its a strawman because so many people nowadays are using WAR as a catch-all. It's better for predictive work than it is for assessing performance imo.

That's fair, but it seems to me he's not arguing against a catch-all, but that his own proposed adjustments (i.e. his little-used WAR-predecessor Win Shares) would make for a better catch-all, when there are actually very good reasons why WAR creators consciously decided against doing things his way.

I'd also slightly tweak your statement to "it's better for predictive work than it is for assessing outcomes." I think WAR does just fine at assessing performance. It's just that 2 equal individual performances can produce very different outcomes depending on circumstances beyond the individual player's control, but I think it's perfectly reasonable to base awards on what actually happened rather than what statistically should have happened.

Yep, bad wording on my part. Should have added "for awards voting".

I went to AAU Nationals when I was 11 in Burnsville, Minnesota and it was possibly the best time of my life. The first night we got there my team played flies up with Shaun Boyd-Bouche and he ended up being the tournament MVP and a top ten pick in either the 2000 or 2001 draft.

My parents recently found the scrapbook annual for this tournament and I checked to see how many of those kids made the majors: Rocco Baldelli, Carlos Quentin, and Skip Schumacher.

I played from T-ball to my senior year of high school and I only pitched one season. However, in my last year of non-school ball, I pitched one game. We only played 7 inning games and we were tied at 3... so I pitched the 8th... and the 9th... and we won 4-3. Easily my favorite accomplishment.

HOF ballot out.

Here's my 10:

Bonds
Clemens
Chipper
Guerrero
Manny
Edgar
Sheffield
Mussina
Thome
Sosa

Hall of Merit for life. Lol HoF

http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/hall_of_merit/

Probably not a popular opinion, but I think Vizquel should be a lock. Unfortunately there is a logjam at the top right now, but he would be a first ballot HOF if not for the other first ballot guys ahead of him.

My current crusade is wtf how the hell is Mussina not in yet when lolGlavine moonwalked in first try

Vizquel getting in with 42 WAR while Trammell looks on would anger me.

Early needs to be punished for being born around the same time as Clemens, Maddux, Pedro and RJ.

Vizquel>Trammell

I'm not sure either should be in. Although, it is cool for Tigers fans to have someone who played 20 seasons with their team to be recognized by the Hall.

Joe Morgan and the HoF stance on steroids:





I'm guessing the fact that it literally came from the HoF, that this might backfire on them (hopefully!).

Phillies dfa'd mark appel, who was the #1 pick by the Astros a few years back. For all the credit people like to give Luhnow. He ****ed a duck here. He flipped him for **** face Giles, but that seems like a bust too.

Pretty sure he was the consensus #1. Not like Luhnow was the only one who thought so. He was in the same category as Upton, Harper, and Strasburg.

Really the only outstanding player in the first round of that draft so far is Kris Bryant who was drafted 2nd.

Counterpoint: Votto might be the first guy to double against 4 outfielders ever.

There was definitely debate between Appel & Bryant pre-draft and the Cubs were prepared to take whoever the Astros left them. Lots of people in Chicago were hoping for the franchise pitching prospect too as I recall.

Found this old article looking at scenarios in that draft from the Cubs' perspective. I forgot there were rumors of Houston taking Jon Gray at #1 because it was thought they wouldn't want to pay what Appel would cost. That was the reason many thought Appel would fall to the Cubs, even though he was the consensus best player.

http://www.chicagonow.com/cubs-den/2...the-first-day/

Braves have to forfeit 13 international prospects for violating the international market rules and are having their signing ability/bonus pool slashed for a few years.

Ex-GM John Coppolella BANNED FOR LIFE.

Where's Mcgwire. You have every other cheater in there, why not the guy that put up 70 if your OK with roids?