At Fox Sports, Jon Paul Morosi asks whether Ichiro has achieved enough to be a lock for the Hall of Fame.
Meanwhile, Jeff Passan at Yahoo looks at Ichiro’s prospects for reaching 4,000 career hits.
Of course, astute followers of baseball could have examined these issues with the OGS back in 2007 and 2008.
At least these guys are in good company in lagging the OGS.
Interesting article by Chris Ballard in SI asks the question.
And it seems like a very good question, the sort of thing a team like Oakland could wring some mileage out of now that the rest of the league has caught up with Mr. Beane on the value of a) walks and b) happening to develop two Cy Young candidates at the same time.
On a related note, the Yankees are even taking walks again; I haven’t seen so many good at-bats by them since the Paul O’Neill/Tino Martinez teams of a decade ago.
Stupid poetic justice.
In his book on the Yankees’ 1949-1964 dynasty, Peter Golenbock wrote that “During the 1920s New York Yankee owner Jacob Ruppert once described his perfect afternoon at Yankee Stadium. ‘It’s when the Yankees score eight runs in the first inning,’ Ruppert said, ‘and then slowly pull away.’”
I agree with Ruppert, that would be perfect; but this will do nicely.
Since we’ve been weighing in on the various and sundry sentences for wayward NFL stars, I just figured I’d go on record here saying that Plaxico Burress a) is an idiot and b) has gotten hosed.
I don’t really have a problem with people carrying guns, but it is awfully reckless to carry one IN YOUR PANTS, WITH THE SAFETY OFF. That is worthy of some punishment, IMHO. But two years in prison seems utterly unreasonable to me. New York’s gun laws strike me as rather draconian, and in fact, quite possibly afoul of the Constitution, in light of the SCOTUS’ ruling in Heller. I don’t know the history of New York’s gun laws, but I wonder it is connected to the Rockefeller drug laws (which seem equally draconian).
Looking at the offenses and penalties of Vick, Stallworth and Burress, I simply can’t see any relationship between the severity of the offense (as measured by either actual damage or potential risk posed to others) and the severity of their respective sentences. I would like to think that the criminal justice system is guided by some reasonably consistent set of principles, but I just can’t divine any from the treatment of Burress either relative to his offense, or relative to the crimes and sentences of his colleagues.
Free Plaxico!
In short, Stallworth will spend 30 days in jail for killing a human being:
http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=ap-stallworth-pedestriankilled&prov=ap&type=lgns
There are other aspects… two years house arrest, eight years probation, lifetime suspension of driver’s license (although he can apply to have that lifted in five years), and drug and alcohol counseling.
But we talked about this before… Mike Vick killed dogs and has this public outcry to prevent him from returning to the NFL, after he’s served his 3 years (actually, it was more like 2-1/2… wasn’t it)? Obviously I’m not advocating dogfighting, and the associated torture and killing of dogs. But as I’ve said all along, as bad as it is to kill dogs, it’s worse to kill a human being. It just is.
And for killing a human being, Donte Stallworth will spend 30 *days* in jail. So… how long should I wait for the same public furor to face Stallworth as we’ve seen face Vick?
Just curious.
Found this on Yahoo.com:
I admit it… I’ve always been curious myself.
Usqueuque idem eadem idem
I stared at the TV for a while. Then, I stared some more with my hands wrapped around my face. Karen said something to me. I didn’t hear her and I didn’t acknowledge her. I shuffled listlessly to the kitchen and reached into the cabinet, like countless times before.
But since coming off the DL Chien-Ming Wang has cut his ERA by more than half… to 16.07. Two earned runs in eight innings pitched; maybe he’s fixed. If the Yanks keep this up I may start hoping for more than a week of post-season play in the Bronx.
I’ll spare you the details (thus the “abridged version), but suffice to say that when examining defensive metrics, surprisingly Manny is generally measured to be a better LF than Jason Bay - though both are below average. Many fans and media use “hustle” as the lone metric when assessing defensive value. Manny doesn’t usually appear to be hustling, so the general conclusion is he’s not that good defensively - and he’s not, but…. Bay does usually appear to be hustling, so the general conclusion is that he *is* good defensively. Unfortunately, he’s actually not very good in absolute terms (based on the actual, unbiased defensive metrics) and probably not even as good as Manny (based on the actual, unbiased defensive metrics).
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