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biggentleben

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Everything posted by biggentleben

  1. Defensively, yes. If you asked for the best defensive shortstops in the league to most national writers, I'd wager at least 4 of the first 5 mentioned and 7 or 8 of the top ten mentioned would be NL guys. The stats don't necessarily agree with that, but I'd wager most people surveyed would list Andrelton Simmons, Brandon Crawford, Adeiny Hechevarria, and Jhonny Peralta high, and Jimmy Rollins had a very good defensive season. Jody Mercer is moving up the list, and Zack Cozart is considered to be very good as well. The common thread among all those guys - very little bat/offense provided.
  2. He at least should round the bag to force the throw. Force the hurried throw that could end up going awry, akin to the play on the wall by both outfielders in that play. I just would have taken incredible delight in him forcing the issue and having Posey block the plate and end up giving up the run on the rule that he created.
  3. So, to throw a little water on this...each game of the WS, national sportswriters were remarking how incredibly large MadBum's strike zone was, including a very funny tweet from Keith Law last evening. In 5 years, do people remember this is a great performance or, akin to Livan Hernandez, do people remember the zone?
  4. I couldn't agree less. The wins against Northwestern and Purdue were losses the last few seasons. They came out flat and never recovered Saturday. That happens to even the best of teams, but the Gophers don't have the overwhelming talent that a number of those teams do that allows them a flat game that can still result in a win. That's being slowly built, and there have been plenty of glimpses of it. The last few years, the team beat up on the non-conference schedule and hoped for a win or two in the Big Ten to get bowl eligible. There's a long way for this team to go still, but they've made exceptional strides, and to say that one loss blinds all that is being either intentionally obtuse or extremely fickle. They have a tough November ahead, but I'd still predict 2-2 in the month, which puts them at a 5-3 Big Ten record, something teams of the last few seasons could not have even considered.
  5. Terrible news for sure. I have the WS on mute, but I'm curious if they bring it up during the game.
  6. In a power running scheme, QB play is mostly about not giving the ball over to the opposition.
  7. We get it, Leidner is the reason for cancer and eats babies for snacks. We should stone him to death. He didn't play well, but the vitriol spewed at him yesterday is ridiculous to me. I'm a former Gopher lineman, and I was embarrassed watching that game yesterday for the o-line. They missed numerous pickups, and I'm assuming their communication was absolutely terrible the whole day as they constantly passed guys with no one to pick up, and that guy got a free run at Leidner after that. To lose to a team like Illinois, much more than Leidner had to go wrong, and it certainly did.
  8. LOL! That is the farthest thing from the truth. I've been part of the messed up system that was Gophers football in the Wacker and the Mason eras, was constantly critical of Brewster outside of his recruiting, and I'm oft talking about the team's needs and weaknesses. That all said, you're talking about a sophomore quarterback who isn't going to be the reason they win the Big Ten, but he won't ever be the reason they don't either. There is no feasible reason the Gophers should have given up what they gave up today on the scoreboard with the defensive showing they'd put up in previous weeks. The offensive line didn't open holes or protect Leidner the way they did in previous weeks. I wasn't impressed with Leidner, but he was far from the primary and certainly not the sole reason of the Gophers' struggles today.
  9. Hard to hit a receiver while you dodge would-be tacklers. I suppose if you want to see the QB to blame, he'll be to blame in this loss, but he's certainly not the only one, or even the primary reason for the loss.
  10. Putting this on Leidner is like putting a Twins loss on Brian Dozier after he makes 2 errors. Yes, he screwed up, but falling behind 14-0 in the first quarter because your whole team came out flat isn't his fault. Getting pressured most of the day isn't his fault, especially when the line has really kept him clean all year. It was just a poor game on the road for the Gophers, and they picked a bad time to do it.
  11. Well, that wasn't the way it was supposed to go. Way too many errors and not taking advantage of opportunities given for the Gophers today. They'll fall out of the polls and to win the West in November suddenly just got a lot more difficult. They outgained the Iliini by 150 yards, but they couldn't sustain drives, going 4/16 on 3rd down, and then the 3 turnovers were just a killer. Can't play like this in November or they'll come out of the month 0-4.
  12. Maddon has mentioned multiple times how much he loves Los Angeles and would like to finish his career on the West Coast. I'm assuming we'll hear soon about Don Mattingly being reassigned or outright fired and Maddon becoming the next Dodger manager.
  13. I guess we'll see, but I would be very surprised if that's the case. Do you think the Dodgers regret their deal to Clayton Kershaw?
  14. He hasn't pitched well, but he's not hurt his free agency a bit, which was my point.
  15. He was ridden hard and put away wet over the course of the season, so anything he really does in the postseason is gravy. I still think he's a better 1A or 2 than an ace, but he'll give you 200 innings each year of solid pitching, and there's a lot of value in that. This was also the first game his team has lost this postseason that he started, so while he may not be spectacular, he's not killed the team's chances either, and he's gone at least 5 innings in every start prior to last night.
  16. There was reportedly a survey of a number of coaches in the SEC, ACC, and Big Ten asking how frequently that call is made on Saturday night/Sunday after the game, and the consensus was that it was called about 2-5% of the time. Heck, if the receiver looks back to the QB for the ball, he could have even got away with it there. Absolutely the right call, though.
  17. Basically took the words from my mouth.
  18. Great ending last night in the Notre Dame/Florida State game! Winston might not last until the end of the season, but he showed up in the fourth quarter last night. I've never been a fan of the Seminoles program going back to Papa Bowden, but on the field, they've had solid success. Now, we'll have to see who the next one who gets in trouble for trying to get their piece of the multi-billion dollar business the NCAA uses their athletes to fund.
  19. It was nice today to put an end to the absolute of the halftime score conundrum. Before today, Kill teams were 22-0 when leading at half and 0-22 when trailing at halftime. It was good to end that absolute for sure.
  20. They'll be ranked this week, most likely, with Illinois next week. Could certainly be 7-1, 4-0 heading into their November from heck that reads home vs. Iowa, home vs. Ohio State, then finishing at Nebraska and at Wisconsin. If they can even go .500 in November, that'd put them at 9-3, 6-2 on the season, one of the best Big Ten finishes of my lifetime. That said, their ball control was terrible today. Purdue has made some excellent strides on offense, but their defense is still extremely porous, and without the Gophers shooting themselves in the foot, this game wouldn't have been close. They can't have miscues like that against teams like the ones they face in November. They luckily fell on most of their fumbles today, but the ball bounces the other way, and we're complaining about a homecoming loss to a team with one conference win since mid-2012.
  21. Frustrating first half to watch as a Gopher fan. Very, very sloppy on offense and defense.
  22. Is there any way to move Viking and Wild talk down under the Sports Bar now that they're being routed off of the site? It's an aesthetics thing as much as anything, and I understand trying to pimp the new sites, but with both of those redirects, the Sports Bar is no longer viewable on the opening page of the forums unless you zoom out on the page in Google Chrome without scanning down. I just like to be able to refresh and see whether there are new posts in the areas I frequent, but I have to scroll down now in order for that to work now that there are both redirects above the Sports Bar forum.
  23. He reminds me right now of where Tommy La Stella was going into last year's AFL. All he did there was show he could handle the keystone position defensively and hit .290 with a 16/4 BB/K ratio, which put him on the fast track to making Dan Uggla expendable this year. No, he didn't break with the big league squad, but he did end up the starting 2B in Atlanta and was a very late cut in spring training.
  24. With the suspension this last year, I was quite curious to see what you'd see from Rosario in Arizona. I don't think you're done evaluating him at this point, but perhaps you've found a guy who's more leadoff than middle of the order, and the Twins really could use both as long as the glove isn't a hindrance in the outfield (and his was good enough to consider moving to the infield at one point). I'd say he's got a pretty solid shot to make the roster next spring, but there's still plenty of evaluating to be done.
  25. Though I will say that the SEC and ACC network have done much, much better by pairing with services like AppleTV and Roku to purchase a subscription just to their network and use your streaming device. I can't do the same with BTN.
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