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LaBombo

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Everything posted by LaBombo

  1. LaBombo
    Worley had a 3.07 ERA and good peripherals when he made his first trip to the DL in mid-May. Despite the DL stint, at the All Star break he was still on pace for about 170 IP and 150 K's, with a 3.54 ERA. His 2011 ERA+ was 127, a threshold Saunders has exceeded (or even really come close to) only once, in 2008 when he was 27 instead of 32. If Worley is healthy, it seems pretty reasonable to expect him to be a better pitcher than Saunders. The only question is how big the 'if' is. Given the Twins' recent history, he may be equally likely to be either the staff ace or TJ patient.
  2. LaBombo
    If for no other reason than that I need something to be optimistic about in 2013, I'm going to say that Worley doesn't deserve to be lumped in with those guys. Yet. His ceiling may not be waaaay above a Saundersy sort of guy, but his 2011 and pre-injury 2012 performances are a cut above the filler guys. Whether he stays healthy and how his numbers translate to the AL, well, we'll see.
  3. LaBombo
    You're kinda missing the point, which is that most teams that know it's not 1985 DON'T HAVE three catchers. And if they did, they probably wouldn't also have 12 or 13 pitchers and a dead roster spot half the season for a player who's unanavailable to play but not on the DL. By my count that makes either three, two or even just one spot on the bench for a backup who's not a catcher. Let your imagination run wild with the late-inning substitution possibilities!
  4. LaBombo
    Looks like a joke that you forgot to add the punchline to. I'll start another one for you to finish: "So a clueless manager, a pitch-to-contact pitcher, and a sub-Mendoza catcher walk into a bar..."
  5. LaBombo
    You failed to justify your defense of the roid cheaters, so you changed the subject and made up a stance on it for me? My post was addressing the unworthiness of the roid cheats for the Hall. If they vote Selig into the Hall, I'll be just as unhappy, and not just for his role in the steroid trainwreck. Good luck finding anything in what I wrote that implies otherwise.
  6. LaBombo
    You contradicted your entire pointless argument about greenies vs. roids with the single sentence bolded above. So they made you "better" by reducing fatigue. By that silly, nonsensical standard, SLEEP would be an unfair competitive advantage. Or just not having a demanding job. So you're seriously comparing that to making massive alterations to human physiology with constant chemical usage. Bit of a stretch. As silly as that is, it isn't what makes your argument pointless. And neither is your bizarre implication that once one cheater is in, there's no reason to keep others out. No, what makes it pointless is that you're equating the use of a substance that was banned by Major League Baseball to the use of a substance that was not banned. Apples/pianos comparison. Major League Baseball set the acceptability standard for the former. You're setting the standard for the latter. Attempt to defame players like Mays and Aaron all you want with your ridiculous equivalencies and sad little conjecture that they 'would've cheated'. The roid freaks violated MLB rules, the amphet guys didn't.
  7. LaBombo
    Caminiti experienced a huge power spike in the same years (including his MVP year) the other roid users did, so swing and a miss there. His death, if anything, is an indirect argument against your apparent desire to ignore the cheating (a distinction you have ignored in every post) of the roid candidates. Why endorse a deadly drug by rubber-stamping the HOF bids of some of the most notorious steroid abusers in sports? The mental illness analogy is an incredibly sad effort to create the illusion of victimhood in a discussion where none exists.
  8. LaBombo
    Yup, Bonds, MM, and SS all fought through the disadvantage of steroids to get their tree trunk arms around on those fastballs at a suddenly record-setting pace. Way to triumph over adversity! Unbelievable. If you want to think there's moral equivalency between Mays/Aaron and the roid freaks, have at it. You're making the argument that using a publicly illegal drug (a character issue) is the same as using a league-banned substance (a rules violation). It's the same mistake that most of the Pete Rose defenders make at some point. And the semantics of performance-enhancing vs. -altering aside, there are medical journal studies showing that amphetamines have either minimal or even no detectable effect on most kinds of athletic performance. On the other hand, steroids had an incredibly easy-to-detect effect on the roid users. They became ridiculously muscular and began hitting more homers at a phase in their careers where most players begin to hit fewer, or retire. Bonds, for the record, tested positive for amphets too, about 10 minutes after they started testing.
  9. LaBombo
    The worst kind of defense of the roid clowns. Being a bad guy isn't cheating. Don't lump the character defect guys in with the nitwits shooting up so they could put on extra muscle.
  10. LaBombo
    Ugh. Where to begin. First, amphetamines weren't "cheating" when Aaron used them, because they weren't banned by MLB until 2006, 15 years AFTER steroids. Second, amphetamines aren't performance enhancers. They don't make you stronger or faster, they just make you less tired. Third, the "Guilty until proven innocent" rationalization is beyond silly. If you cheat, you shouldn't get in. If Bonds cared about the Hall of Fame, he shouldn't have cheated, and he'd be in today. Now he can buy a ticket like everyone else if he wants to get in. Same for the rest of the 'roid morons. Rewarding dishonesty is always a bad idea. So is patting someone on the back for injecting themselves with dangerous chemicals. Nice messages for America's youth: 'Cheat and abuse your body! See you when you and your shriveled grapes get voted in!'.
  11. LaBombo
    Our 'ace' is likely the 4th starter in a Tigers rotation...without Verlander.
  12. LaBombo
    +1. An Inge-or-Yuney choice reminds me of this exchange from Moneyball: Billy Beane: "Would you rather get one shot in the head or five in the chest and bleed to death?" Peter Brand: "Are those my only two options?"
  13. LaBombo
    Make sure he teaches them the Crane Technique: "If do right, no can defense."
  14. LaBombo
    Unless you're placing Correia and Pelfrey in that latter group of 'about to be unemployed', then you're saying they're really no different from Marcum and Jackson, right? So if you can't get Felix Hernandez you might as well not sweat the difference between Marcum and Correia? If you mean that neither will make the Twins contenders in 2013, that's fine. But if you mean there's no difference ever between Marcum and a guy who gives up an extra run every nine innings, then I disagree. In fact I think it's safe to say that you're leaving out an entire group of pitchers, those who are not aces but are consistently above average. Having two of those guys in addition to an ace and two Correias instead of an ace and four Correias sounds to me like the difference between a potential contender and an also-ran.
  15. LaBombo
    Jackson is apparently off the board, and while I like Marcum too, I'm not holding my breath. But I'm curious about your definition of true quality. Wouldn't Marcum and Jackson fit that category? Didn't Greinke before he signed? And what about guys like McCarthy and Villenueva, with upside and risk? Don't they fit in an entirely different category from the pool from which the Twins signed their guys or have shown genuine interest in? Like you I'm hoping they concentrate on the future, but they could've been better this year while getting a head start on the future instead of wasting time and money with guys like Correia.
  16. LaBombo
    Oops. John C. doubled in size when I posted him. Ok, done for the day, but will leave with the Gardy reaction to news of FA pitcher signings...http://manginphotography.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/109238090BM_Twins_Athletics0125.jpg
  17. LaBombo
    Sweet clip! Kurtwood Smith would make the perfect TR. Even though he doesn't look as much like Gardy as K-wood does like TR, I like John C. Reilly for the role: http://www.aceshowbiz.com/images/wennpic/john-c-reilly-68th-venice-film-festival-01.jpg
  18. LaBombo
    Well, that pretty much leaves two kinds of free agent starters... the expensive kind the Twins won't sign, and the crappy kind they shouldn't sign.
  19. LaBombo
    ...no doubt carried into the runner up spot by the momentum of being played by Brad Pitt in Moneyball.
  20. LaBombo
    Sweet. Was going to go for a caption but knew somebody else would do better. That didn't take long.
  21. LaBombo
  22. LaBombo
    Thanks. I thought of that thread too, but couldn't find it. Still as freshly depressing as the day I first read it.
  23. LaBombo
    AND I forgot that he now has a super-hot girlfriend. So that should improve his ERA. Maybe somebody should invent a stat that factors out girlfriends so we can predict how the gain or loss of a girlfriend would affect pitching. GiP and xGiP?
  24. LaBombo
    Do we need to clear a spot on the 40 for that?
  25. LaBombo
    How bad has it sucked to be a Royals fan? Just three years ago(!), they signed Ponson...after five consecutive seasons with an ERA between 5 and 7. Ouch. And I agree. It seems like the mainstream coverage of the signings has been more realistic than hype during the Livan/Ponson/Ramon O. years. Expectations higher because of the stadium, or just better BS detectors being applied to the Twins PR?
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