It's not an unreasonable prediction. Morneau is 32. Konerko is 37. Morneau showed significant improvement in the second half of 2012 after a lengthy injury. Konerko was playing at full strength. I could make an argument for either player and not think I was wrong. Really, you could add Swisher in there as well. All three have the chance to post nearly identical numbers in 2013.
Braun was also a butcher at every position he ever played whereas Plouffe stuck at short for years and was in the running for a MI spot just last season.
This is an excellent point. As our traffic numbers continue to rise, the blogs continue to gain exposure. Our blog index page receives several thousand page views a month and is one of the top 10-15 viewed pages on the site every month. If you write something, people will read it. Probably more than you'd expect and without dedicating yourself to writing for several years on your own site, more people than you'd get by writing "into the void". And the number increases by tenfold if your blog makes it to our front page, which we do for several user blogs every week (and it's not only for certain people, we try to keep it as quality-based as possible and lend little weight to who wrote the blog).
Agreed. Troll the audience, baseball! Liven up the between-innings entertainment! In that vein, I'd totally pay attention to a "Guess Which Seat The Bomb Is Under" game during the stretch.
The moment I see two dudes macking on the kiss cam my interest will skyrocket, if only to start counting the people who drop dead from sheer terror at the sight of two men making out.
I don't see it that way at all. I think he'll easily be voted in because of his glove and the fact that he was the antithesis to the steroid problem of the 90s. Whether he deserves it is another issue entirely... I know that there's a zero chance I'd vote for Vizquel before Bonds, McGwire, or the rash of other steroid cases who were absolutely dominant during the time.
In all fairness, I'm the wrong person to talk to about this sort of thing. I hate everything at the ballpark that isn't associated with baseball, eating, or getting drunk. Kiss Cams, the Wave, stupid races, whatever... I hate it all.
You can argue stuff but I'll take Hendriks, whose stuff can be quite good at times but has rarely flashed that ability in the Majors (I said from the get-go that he seemed to be pitching scared and still stick by that analysis... Which Parker also concluded in a great write-up a few months back). If he matures a bit and trusts his stuff, he's probably going to be a decent pitcher. And he's still four years younger. De Vries is past the typical prime season (age 27), Hendriks is still three years from it. Neither player is guaranteed prolonged success but if one of them does manage to pull it off, my money is on Liam.
Except that he has better stuff than De Vries, has a very good track record in the minors, and is what, 4 years younger? Wins are far too team-dependent to matter if/when a player gets his first win.
And that's why you never use BA as the sole metric of player performance. (Vizquel, after his breakout season in 1992, did not hit under .250 again until 2003, his age 36 season)
Slash line for Escobar: [TABLE=class: sortable stats_table row_summable] [TD=align: right].346[/TD] [TD=align: right].352[/TD] [TD=align: right].404[/TD] [TD=align: right].756[/TD] [/TABLE] Slash line for Dozier: [TABLE=class: sortable stats_table row_summable] [TR=class: hl] [TD=align: right].278[/TD] [TD=align: right].350[/TD] [TD=align: right].463[/TD] [TD=align: right].813[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] What looks more sustainable to you? The guy with a ridiculous BA, no walks, and no power, or the guy with a modest BA, solid discipline, and a little pop? Dozier has outplayed Escobar. Batting Average is an awful metric to use on its own.
I've recently watched Perks of Being a Wallflower (decent but kinda meh), Take This Waltz (holy balls, Sarah Polley has some directing chops), and Everything Is Illuminated (same goes for Shreiber). I still need to watch The Master... PT Anderson is probably my favorite director right now. I also need to see Zero Dark Thirty to see how it matches up with Point Break after the disappointment that was The Hurt Locker. Also going to watch The Hobbit again to see if it pisses me off as much the second time around.