Out of the Past

It's constantly been show that a weight OBP + SLG has more correlation to runs scored than a strait OBP+SLG. Is weight OBP + SLG more of a correlation to runs scored than OBP x SLG (runs created formula)? Runs created is actually OBP X SLG X PA. Well, that's one of about 6000 RC formulas. OBP x SLG = runs created per PA

It's constantly been show that a weight OBP + SLG has more correlation to runs scored than a strait OBP+SLG. Is weight OBP + SLG more of a correlation to runs scored than OBP x SLG (runs created formula)?

To me OPS is more important than OBP even for little guys. I would prefer if he had a .325 OBP with a .355 SLG than a .365 OBP with a .305 SLG. It's constantly been show that a weight OBP + SLG has more correlation to runs scored than a strait OBP+SLG. Going by your example, the higher OBP is better, going by (OBP*1.4)+SLG. .810 v.s. .816 So it takes 7 more SLG points to surpass the higher OBP (so a .687 OPS v.s. a 670) Certainly OBP has gotten overrated (Or, more appropriately, SLG has gotten underrated). A .370/.330 line isn't anywhere close to a .290/.500 line, but I'm sure the .370 OBP would get more love. But a .340/.430 line is equal to the .290/.500 one, even though it's 30 OPS points less. I guess I should have used .362 SLG in the example instead of .355... I agree OBP gets overrated or SLG gets underrated.

To me OPS is more important than OBP even for little guys. I would prefer if he had a .325 OBP with a .355 SLG than a .365 OBP with a .305 SLG. Wrong. You forgive a guy like Boni for his low slugging because he can get himself into scoring position with his speed to make up for it. The more he's on base, the more he can cause havoc, the more he scores. Wrong. The guy with the .325 OBP creates 4% more runs than the guy with the .365 OBP. If you agree creating runs is a good thing then you go with the guy who creates more runs. Wrong. What's Emilio going to do, drive in runners with nobody on? No. If he hits a few more doubles here and there but stops getting on base at a nice clip, he is not contributing as much as he could getting on base more often and just swiping the bag right after. He has Tavares-like speed, good enough to practically turn every walk or single he gets into extra bases. Literally, almost every walk or single. Cameron will be on base much more often than the normal 8th hitter. Emilio has reached 1st base via single or BB or IBB about 850 times and has 230 SB so it's not every time or pratically every time or anything close to that.. about a quarter of the time.

To me OPS is more important than OBP even for little guys. I would prefer if he had a .325 OBP with a .355 SLG than a .365 OBP with a .305 SLG. Wrong. You forgive a guy like Boni for his low slugging because he can get himself into scoring position with his speed to make up for it. The more he's on base, the more he can cause havoc, the more he scores. Wrong. The guy with the .325 OBP creates 4% more runs than the guy with the .365 OBP. If you agree creating runs is a good thing then you go with the guy who creates more runs.

Hardball Times shows him with 3 balls in his zone and making only 1 play so it looks like they think he should have caught both. http://www.hardballtimes.com/thtstats/main...p;Submit=Submit

the Mets will be defensing him differently and more competently than we just saw from the Nationals. I bet for example you'll see the second baseman playing deeper as they try to cut off those flairs he kept shooting ove the 2B's head all series long. Let's also not forget Carlos Beltran in CF rather than Lastings Milledge. Switch those two this past series and that very very likely takes away at the least his HR and triple. It's awesome both of those fell, but those were both on Milledge and I'm sure everyone would agree on that. I agree. Milledge is BAD. I don't know why he was so highly regarded.

To me OPS is more important than OBP even for little guys. I would prefer if he had a .325 OBP with a .355 SLG than a .365 OBP with a .305 SLG.

Hermida's OPS - .775 +/- .025 Emilio's OPS - .660 +/- .025 Hermida's Defense - Below average Emilio's Defense - Above average

:blink: You gotta love the Congressional Black Caucus! http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uui...86241AC17D6E5E2 CBC members praise Castro By: Alex Isenstadt April 7, 2009 07:01 PM EST Key members of the Congressional Black Caucus are calling for an end to U.S. prohibition on travel to Cuba, just hours after a meeting with former Cuban president Fidel Castro in Havana. ?The fifty-year embargo just hasn?t worked,? CBC Chairwoman Barbara Lee (D-Ca.) told reporters this evening at a Capitol press conference after returning from a congressional delegation visit to Cuba. ?The bottom line is that we believe its time to open dialogue with Cuba.? Lee and others heaped praise on Castro, calling him warm and receptive during their discussion. But the lawmakers disputed Castro's later statement that members of the congressional delegation said American society is still racist. "It was quite a moment to behold," Lee said, recalling her moments with Castro. ?It was almost like listening to an old friend,? said Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Il.), adding that he found Castro?s home to be modest and Castro?s wife to be particularly hospitable. ?In my household I told Castro he is known as the ultimate survivor,? Rush said. Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Ca.) said Castro was receptive to President Obama?s message of turning the page in American foreign policy. "He listened. He said the exact same thing" about turning the page "as President Obama said," said Richardson. Richardson said Castro knew her name and district. "He looked right into my eyes and he said, 'How can we help? How can we help President Obama?'" President Obama vowed during the 2008 presidential campaign to loosen the longstanding travel embargo on Cuba, and Lee ? who has been pushing for an end to travel and trade restrictions for some time - said now was as good a time as any to change the way the two countries did business. There is now serious momentum in long-standing efforts to overturn the nearly five decade ban on travel and trade with Cuba. Previous efforts have been blocked by a vocal and influential Cuban American community, and former President Bush's veto threats on legislation to overturn the prohibitions have kept such proposals at bay. In a statement following the meeting today, Castro said that the delegation had expressed to him that a segment of American society ?continues to be racist,? and is at least partly to blame for the travel restrictions. But the delegation this evening said those remarks were not expressed in the meeting. ?That did not happen,? Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), told reporters.

"And It would be nice if those Hermida stats were real and you didn't make them up." "Those were his real stats in 2007." Picking his one good season out his three and ignoring his career averages without disclosing what you did is almost as dishonest as making up numbers.

And what are we supposed to do when we have to fight a power with a real conventional military? Roll over and die? Looks like Obama is counting on our Europen "allies" to bail us out.

Need to lock him up ASAP.

P-Record of 97-65. Good for #1 in the NL east going by PECOTA :cool On the Sun-Sentinel blog Juan Carlos Rodriguez said Baseball Prospectus has us going 71-91 and the way he wrote his blog entry it he makes it seem as if they used PECOTA in their projections.. so what gives? http://blogs.sun-sentinel.com/sports_baseb...m.html#comments My updated W / L record taking into account Emilio over Dallas / Gabby is 80 wins.

Barry Jackson is wrong...again. FSN is showing 79 away games, not all 81. Maybe he doesn't know how many away games there are, maybe he doesn't know the difference between 79 and 81, I don't know. 79 is still damn good if you ask me. Were are you getting the 79 from?

My guess is the baserunning stats for Colorado players are inflated a bit because there's so much room in that outfield.

Lou's gonna love this. I'm in the "stolen bases are overrated" camp but I don't know how anyone can argue taking extra bases are a bad thing... are you?

I would go with the under. He only hit 13 last year and that's his high. The knock on him is he hits too many balls on the ground. He hit 15 in about 420 PA in 2007. Second, yea he did that in 2008, in just under 500 combined PA. You missed the entire point of what he's arguing. An additional 150 PA, and a little progression from Maybin gets him to 20. Arguing last year's HR stats isn't a deal breaker here. Now pointing out he hit 17 doubles is another thing. He'll get an additional 150 PAs if he stays injury free and if he doesn't struggle... not every top 10 prospect shines from the get go. There may be a little progression but he'll face much better pitching. The safe bet is the under.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/basebal...0,7843700.story Marlins: Speed isn't only factor that improved base-running rankings By Juan C. Rodriguez | South Florida Sun-Sentinel March 31, 2009 JUPITER - Want to know if someone is a quality hitter? Look at his batting average or slugging percentage. Want to know if he can play defense? Errors and fielding percentage are a good place to start. Nothing on the back of the baseball card reveals whether the player is a good base runner. Stolen bases are part of the equation, but in many cases those numbers are more indicative of speed than base-running acumen. Stats guru Bill James and Baseball Info Solutions have devised an evaluation system for player and team base running. According to their analysis, the Marlins went from seventh worst to sixth best in the majors from 2007 to 2008. "Going into spring training last year, we made a complete emphasis on improving our primary leads, our secondary leads, going first to third, being aggressive from the standpoint of pushing the envelope and making the defensive team make the play," said third-base coach Bo Porter, who oversees base running and outfield defense. "All those things we stressed, they came out through the course of the year." The system gives credit for going first to third and second to home on singles, and first to home on doubles above the league average. It also takes into account "bases taken," such as advancing on wild pitches, passed balls, sacrifice flies, etc. Penalties are assessed for things such as getting doubled off or running into outs. Points also are deducted for failing to go first to third, second to home, etc., fewer times than the average player. Add in steals (+1 for a stolen base and -2 for a caught stealing) and that produces a positive or negative number. Think of a '0' as an average player. According to The Bill James Handbook 2009, Willy Taveras was the best base runner in the game last season with a +70, followed by Ichiro Suzuki (+56) and Matt Holliday (+52). At the bottom: Dioner Navarro (-39), Magglio Ordonez (-35) and Edgar Gonzalez (-27). Remove steals from the equation and the top base runner was Holliday (+28), followed by Curtis Granderson and Nate McLouth (+27), and Kelly Johnson and Shin-Soo Choo (+26). The same grading system is applied to teams. The Marlins went from a -9 in 2007 to a +72 in 2008. The Phillies led the pack at +114. Remove steals and the Marlins ranked third in the majors at +52, behind the Rangers (+58) and Indians (+56). "At the beginning of spring training, I congratulated them for a job well done," Porter said. "Yes, we put the information out there, but they took heed to the information, and we're a better base-running team today than we were this time last year." From 2007 to 2008, the Marlins went first to third and second to home on singles a higher percentage of the time. They also had a marked improvement in bases taken, from 134 to 173. As for individual players, Cody Ross went from +4 to +15. Alfredo Amezaga had an 18-point swing (-1 to +17) and Jeremy Hermida had a huge improvement, going from -20 to +13. Also making a big difference for the Marlins was replacing Miguel Cabrera (-23 in 2007) with Jorge Cantu (+9 in 2008). "A lot of it is instinctual, but at the same time you can never remind them too much," Porter said, adding speedsters Cameron Maybin and Emilio Bonifacio "are in a different class" as base runners. Assuming both spend all of 2009 in the majors, that could mean even gaudier base-running grades for the Marlins. Said Porter: "Like I told the guys, 'Congratulations, it's a great job,' but this now becomes the standard."

I would go with the under. He only hit 13 last year and that's his high. The knock on him is he hits too many balls on the ground.

Interesting article. It explains why many people on the right are satisfied with Obama's foreign policy. It's also interesting that many on the left who were so opposed to Bush's policies now support Obama's policies although Obama's policies are pretty much the same as Bush's. This says quite a bit. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/us/polit...agewanted=print April 3, 2009 On the White House The Words Have Changed, but Have the Policies? By PETER BAKER WASHINGTON ? When President Obama briefed Congressional leaders at the White House last week on his plans to send more troops to Afghanistan, Senator Harry Reid offered some advice: Whatever you do, he told the president, don't call it a "surge." Not to worry. Mr. Obama didn't and wouldn't. The exchange, confirmed by people briefed on the discussion, underscored the sensitivity about language in the new era. Mr. Obama and his team are busily scrubbing President George W. Bush's national security lexicon, if not necessarily all of his policies. They may be sending 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan, much as Mr. Bush did to Iraq, but it is not a "surge." They may still be holding people captured on the battlefield at the prison at Guant?namo Bay, Cuba, but they are no longer "enemy combatants." They may be carrying the fight to Al Qaeda as their predecessors did, but they are no longer waging a "war on terror." So if not a war on terror, what then? "Overseas contingency operations." And terrorist attacks themselves? "Man-caused disasters." Every White House picks its words carefully, using poll-tested, focus-grouped language to frame issues and ideas to advance its goals. Mr. Bush's team did that assertively. The initial legislation expanding government power after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was the "U.S.A. Patriot Act." The warrantless eavesdropping that became so controversial was rebranded the "Terrorist Surveillance Program." The enemy was, for a time, dubbed "Islamofascism," until that was deemed insensitive to Muslims. Now Mr. Obama is coming into office determined to sweep all that rhetoric away, even if he is keeping much of the policy that underlies it. Aides argue that they are not trying to spin their priorities through words, only to excise the spin applied relentlessly by the Bush administration. But they are also trying to send a clear and unmistakable message that the old order is gone. "You have to tell the American public and the world that there's a new sheriff in town without opening up the jail and letting all the prisoners out," said Matt Bennett, vice president of Third Way, a moderate Democratic advocacy group. "The changing of the way they talk is a low-risk way of purging some of the Bush-era stuff without doing any damage." Indeed, for all the shifting words, Mr. Obama has left the bulk of Mr. Bush's national security architecture intact so far. He has made no move to revise the Patriot Act or the eavesdropping program. He has ordered Guant?namo to be closed in a year but has not turned loose all the prisoners. The troop buildup in Afghanistan resembles the one Mr. Bush ordered in Iraq two years ago. In cautioning against the "surge" label, Mr. Reid clearly wanted to avoid associating the Obama strategy in Afghanistan with the Bush strategy in Iraq, a strategy that both he and the president opposed at the time. The two have never repudiated their opposition to the Iraq buildup, even though many now credit it with helping to stabilize the country. And any language suggesting parallels between the two approaches could aggravate the party's liberal base, much of which is already suspicious of committing more forces to Afghanistan. Gordon Johndroe, the last National Security Council spokesman for Mr. Bush, said he detected a great degree of overlap in actual policy between the two presidents that is not masked by different words. "A change in rhetoric is fine as long as they don't lead people to believe the threat from violent extremists is over," Mr. Johndroe said. Obama advisers said they were not trying to de-emphasize the danger of extremism but to take the politics out of it. Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, used the term "man-caused disasters" instead of "terrorism" during Congressional testimony and later said that was a deliberate attempt to change the tone. "That is perhaps only a nuance," she told Der Spiegel, the German newsmagazine, "but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur." But the risk, in the minds of some critics, is looking like the government no longer takes the dangers of the world seriously. "They seem more interested in the war on the English language than in what might be thought of as more pressing national security matters," said Shannen W. Coffin, who served as counsel to former Vice President Dick Cheney. "An Orwellian euphemism or two will not change the fact that bad people want to kill us and destroy us as a free people." The White House dismisses such criticism, saying the president is not focused on wordsmithing national policy. "He's far less concerned with" language, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, told reporters last week, "and much more concerned with steps that he's taken and that we need to take as a country to protect our citizens and to keep our homeland safe. And I think that's what he's focused on." Still, the degree to which the Obama team seems intent on distancing itself from any language associated with Mr. Bush has drawn ridicule even from the left. On "The Daily Show" on Tuesday night, Jon Stewart vigorously mocked the Obama administration after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said "the administration has stopped using the phrase" war on terror. Mr. Stewart showed repeated clips of Mr. Obama's budget director, Peter R. Orszag, referring instead to "overseas contingency operations." "Yeah, that'll catch on like Crystal Pepsi," Mr. Stewart joked. Summoning one of the most memorable moments of the Bush presidency, Mr. Stewart then showed a mocked up photograph of Mr. Obama in a pilot's flight suit on the deck of an aircraft carrier under a banner proclaiming, "Redefinition Accomplished."

[...is worse hitter than the average 3B. I don't know the answer but you bring up an interesting point. What does the basic stat line look like for the average third baseman in 2008? MLB 3B OPS the past 5 seasons: '08 - .771 '07 - .782 '06 - .804 '05 - .773 '04 - .796

Both names are incredibly stupid. Seriously, I'm tired of all this cheesy token stuff. Can't we call it the "F*** You Terrorists" tower? I think the article said it was going to be the tallest tower of 5. It would be perfect. The term terrorists is apparently offensive.. thay are now called "man-caused disasteers."

I like to hear about all the hard work Bonifacio put in, but does anyone really feel he's got any future as a thirdbaseman with the Marlins? I say this as he's not not going to put up the power numbers associated with 3b and appears better suited for middle infield. If we keep associating positions with general perceptions of the power numbers that should be ascribed to those positions, then fairly we should just say the power numbers exceed the norm for our second baseman, which offset Boni's numbers. Now the world is balanced again. Or should we just not play Uggla because his power numbers exceed the numbers associated with a middle infielder. The fact that Uggla is a better hitter than the average 2B should does not mean we should be satisfied with a 3B that is worse hitter than the average 3B.

Wild Card - Note that this so called "tax credit" is actually a loan that you'll have to pay back. http://ftp.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=186831,00.html How and when is the credit repaid? A. The first-time homebuyer credit is similar to a 15-year interest-free loan. Normally, it is repaid in 15 equal annual installments beginning with the second tax year after the year the credit is claimed. The repayment amount is included as an additional tax on the taxpayer's income tax return for that year. For example, if you properly claim a $7,500 first-time homebuyer credit on your 2008 return, you will begin paying it back on your 2010 tax return. Normally, $500 will be due each year from 2010 to 2024. You may need to adjust your withholding or make quarterly estimated tax payments to ensure you are not under-withheld. However, some exceptions apply to the repayment rule. They include: If you die, any remaining annual installments are not due. If you filed a joint return and then you die, your surviving spouse would be required to repay his or her half of the remaining repayment amount. If you stop using the home as your main home, all remaining annual installments become due on the return for the year that happens. This includes situations where the main home becomes a vacation home or is converted to business or rental property. There are special rules for involuntary conversions. Taxpayers are urged to consult a professional to determine the tax consequences of an involuntary conversion. If you sell your home, all remaining annual installments become due on the return for the year of sale. The repayment is limited to the amount of gain on the sale, if the home is sold to an unrelated taxpayer. If there is no gain or if there is a loss on the sale, the remaining annual installments may be reduced or even eliminated. Taxpayers are urged to consult a professional to determine the tax consequences of a sale. If you transfer your home to your spouse, or, as part of a divorce settlement, to your former spouse, that person is responsible for making all subsequent installment payments.