Obviously, we want the Cowboys to do well this year, as the only way you can win the Super Bowl is to make the playoffs. But barring the Cowboys winning in the Meadowlands, I was interested to see where the Cowboys could potentially pick if they didn't make the second round of the NFL season. So, I calculated things out and came up with the various scenarios you should root for assuming you only wanted the best for the Cowboys in terms of draft position (assuming they didn't make it to the playoffs). Feel free to vary up your rooting interests based on your own personal likes and dislikes (Tebowmania, anti-Tebowmania, Texans second lover, wanting the Eagles to lose just because you like to see them lose, etc.)

If the Cowboys lose, they can get a draft pick anywhere from 13th to 18th. There are currently 11 teams which are guaranteed to have a worse record than 8-8. There are also 11 teams which have a possibility of becoming 8-8. However, 2 of the 7-8 teams play each other, so, at least one of them will be worse than 8-8. Meaning that if the Cowboys lose, there are a guaranteed 12 teams who will have worse records. For the Cowboys, their SoS is near the worst of those teams who have a chance of being 8-8, so they will pick near the bottom of their rung whoever is on it.

The fortunate thing is that the Giants have among the highest SoS among teams with an 8-8 record so a lot of things that would affect the Cowboys positively won't really change much for the Giants assuming the Cowboys win. So, for the most part you can root for these teams and not have to worry about the Giants getting a better pick in the draft.

Continue reading this post »

So, the idea for this fanpost came about because of some discussion about Sackseer and how effective it really is at predicting sack performance. We seem to have a contingent here at BTB who seems to think that Sackseer has a probative value in predicting pass-rushing performance.

Continue reading this post »

This is supplemental part of the salary cap analysis found here.

The other post was quite long in itself, so I decided to break this out into a separate post, so that it'd be more easily digestible, and so that people could ask questions about a specific player's cap hit.

Update:Due to OCC's helpful suggestions, I re-looked into my numbers and the actual rules, and discovered that I had been calculating guaranteed bonuses incorrectly. Instead of being applied the year that they are obtained, they are treated the same as signing bonuses and pro-rated across the life of the contract. However, guaranteed salaries are applied only the year they are for; THEY are NOT pro-rated across the contract.

Continue reading this post »

Note: I decided to break out the actual Salary Cap Calculations to another post, as it was really blowing out the current post, and could use some good discussion about the actual values of the various bonuses and salaries. Check it out here.

Update: Changed my calculations to fit the actual CBA rules :p. I was taking guaranteed bonuses and putting them in the year they were gained instead of pro-rating them. I'm still kind of off from the numbers that Watkins and Archer quote, but at least the difference is smaller. Surprisingly (at least to me), it didn't really seem to change the recommendation of what to do.

With the lockout hopefully ending this week (knock on wood), I'd thought it'd be interesting to look at how the Cowboys are currently constrained by the salary cap and what they can do to potentially acquire new talent.

Now, according to some reports, the Cowboys are currently at $136.6 million which is $16.225 million above the 2011 Salary Cap of $120.375 million. At first glance, this suggests that the Cowboys would have to just remove players just to meet the Salary Cap and would preclude the Cowboys from even thinking about signing any free agents this abbreviated offseason.

However, there are a couple of points which makes me think that the Cowboys cap situation isn't as bad as has been portrayed:

1. There will be a one time $3.5 million jump in salary cap to be put toward veteran salaries
2. Teams may borrow $3 million from a future salary cap year.
3. When I calculate the salary cap for the contracts the Cowboys have, I come up with a number about $6 million below the reported figure. I will detail the specifics of how I came up with those calculations, along with the caveats with the numbers that I calculated.
4. In addition to the Cowboys cap figure potentially being wrong, the savings that the Cowboys can make seems to have also been off. So, cutting your favorite whipping boy may actually save more money than previously thought!

Continue reading this post »

Since there seems to be some confusion as to where the Cowboys slot in the draft, I decided to make a small post to describe:

• How I arrive at the Cowboys' Draft Position
• Where the Cowboys sit wrt the Draft
• What the impact winning in Philly has on the Cowboys's Draft value

Continue reading this post »

Good article on ESPN (I know, oxymoron, right?) in which researchers went through 184 game broadcasts this year and tagged the close calls in the games, and whether the umpire got it right.

They tagged 230 close calls, and

Of the close plays, 13.9 percent remained too close to call, with 65.7 percent confirmed as correct and 20.4 percent confirmed as incorrect.

They did a survey of 40 HOFers and of them 70% said that an "acceptable" amount of errors was 20% or below. The other 30% declined to answer....

What is an acceptable amount of error to you?

Since there seems to be some confusion about the actual post-season eligibility rules, here are the ones from an actual baseball person, 2007 Red Sox director of baseball operations, Brian O'Halloran:

"The position-player-for-position-player / pitcher-for-pitcher requirement is indeed now gone for substitutions prior to a series," O'Halloran wrote in an e-mail. "However, teams now are allowed to substitute for an injured player during a series. Such in-series substitutions are position-player-for-position-player / pitcher-for-pitcher, and the injured player cannot be active for the remainder of that series or the next series. Those substitutions also require MLB approval.

"The way substitutions (before a series) work in general is as follows: each team's initial pool of eligible players is the 25 players on its active roster at midnight on 8/31 plus any players on the 15-day DL, 60-day DL, suspended list, bereavement list, etc. So we have 28 players in this pool (25 plus Donnelly, Clement, and Mirabelli, all of whom were on the DL on 8/31). Any player in a team's pool who is injured when a given series begins can be substituted for. So if Mirabelli is healthy at that time he will not be eligible to be substituted for, as an example. But if any player of the 28 eligible guys is hurt at the beginning of a series, we could substitute for him. For example, with Donnelly being out for the year, we can substitute any player who was in our organization on Aug. 31 for Brendan. This substitute could be a pitcher or position player, and does not necessarily have to have been a September callup."

So, to substitute ANY player in the organization onto the playoff roster, all you need to have is someone WHO IS ELIGIBLE for post-season play.

That includes all players who, as of 8/31, are on:

• the active roster
• the 15-day DL
• the 60-day DL
• suspended list
• bereavement list
• military list

You can choose your 25-man team for a playoff series from that list.

If a player on your playoff team is injured, you can "substitute any player who was in our organization on Aug. 31."

So, if you had 25 people on the 60-day DL, you could choose ALL of them for your playoff team and then substitute, willy-nilly.

The position-player for position-player and pitcher for pitcher substitution is only for AFTER a playoff series has started and someone gets injured.

And yes, it position-player for position-player NOT some OF for OF/IF for IF belief.

Hope this clarifies things for everybody.

on a blown call by an umpire with 2 outs in the 9th.

ESPN Link to Game (with Video)

SBNation Recap

Full 9th Inning Video

So, this leads to the question: Do you think Replay Should be expanded?

And if so, in what way?

Feel free to give a lengthier answer in the comments....

The umpire "feels bad" about it, but I mean seriously, if you have a doubt (and the ump double-clutched on the call), why don't you ask for help? Especially in that situation?

In addition, this after Austin Jackson made a difficult catch in the same inning to preserve the perfect game.... and with the Tigers' players and manager arguing with the ump....

BTW, what's up with all the perfect games going on this season?

This post and analysis was prompted by a comment that bigsteve had posted in the Tuesday morning thread:

Guys who K alot and hit alot of HRs will generally have a high BABIP

This was with regard to the merits of whether Chris Davis could sustain a high BABIP.

Now, when I first heard this, I was scratching my head a little, because it didn't make much intuitive sense to me. So, I decided to dig a little further....

Continue reading this post »

This is my first post as I usually don't feel that I have much to offer nor the time to offer it in. But since I like analyzing sports, stats, and strategy, in general, and since I already got sucked into creating this for my own analysis, I thought that I might as well share.

Areas for improvement

• End of the 3rd Round Grades (I don't completely have all the information as it's pretty hard to read the names as the camera for the video swings by. I know I'm missing a WR, but I'm not sure if it's Mike Williams or Emmanuel Sanders. (It is NOT Arrelious Benn.) I'm also not completely sure about the TE or the order of the last 5 3rd round grades.
• 6th and 7th Rounds. I strained my eyes trying to figure out who some of the names were, I'm not quite sure if I got the ones I got correct, but they're to the best of my knowledge.
• I'm not sure what the Black magnet breaks are for. There's 4 of them: 1 at the end of the 1st round, 2 in the 3rd round, and 1 in the 4th round.
• I'm not quite sure what the break down by position is. I'm pretty sure about the Defensive positions, though I'm not quite sure what the 5th column (the one with Wootton and Geathers) is. The offensive positions, I'm a little confused about the last 3 columns, as the last column is barely filled and the 6th one seems to have "OT" in there as well as Gs.
• Positions are just guesses as to where the Cowboys assigned players. This was mainly used to confirm suspicions about who a "nametag" was. For example, there were 8 WRs with a 3rd Round Grade. That allowed me to confirm that the 3 of the unknown 6 3rd Round grades were WRs.

This work expands on the great work that JBell523, Theebs, Cowboysaficionado, and 24Hz did in posting the pictures and videos for the draft board and in getting a first draft of the Cowboys' Draft board up.

Quick thanks to starmesh23 for contributions.

Cowboys' Draft

• 1st - Bryant, Dez [WR] Ranked 1,12
• 2nd - Lee, Sean [ILB] Ranked 1,14
• 4th - Owusu-Ansah, Akwasi [S] Ranked 4,1
• 6th - Young, Sam [OT] Ranked 5,4
• 6th - Wall, Jamar [CB] Ranked 5,15
• 7th - Lissemore, Sean [DL] Unranked

List of Notable Missing Players

• Tebow, Tim [QB] (1,25)
• Cook, Chris [CB] (2,34)
• Benn, Arrelious [WR] (2,39)
• Dunlap, Carlos [OLB] (2,54)
• Cody, Terrence [NT] (2,57)
• Spikes, Brandon [ILB] (2,62)
• Angerer, Pat [ILB] (2,63)
• Brown, Charles [OT] (2,64)
• Walton, JD [C] (3,80)
• Griffen, Everson [OLB] (4,100)
  
• Campbell, Bruce [OT] (4,106)
• Thomas, Cam [DL] (5,146)

Please feel free to post more information/corrections.

Enjoy!

http://www.drivelinemechanics.com/2008/12/12/690384/pitching-mechanics-robert

Summary:

Overall, I really like his mechanics! I think his shoulder will hold up fairly well, and the hard pronated release of his fastball will do a lot to protect his elbow (and give him life on his fastball, which he is known for). We can't know for sure how he throws his slider (without high speed video), but it's probably a supinated release and thus dangerous on his arm. In general, I prefer supinated curves to sliders due to the pressure a slider puts on the elbow, but I realize that sliders are called strikes more frequently and are easier to learn to throw.

Don't know enough to know if he knows what he's talking about, but it adds more information.

I do believe him about the scap-loading, and just seeing a pitcher scap load makes my shoulders hurt.

Take a look and see what else he says about Ross.

R

I've heard repeatedly that Botts didn't "do anything with his chance."

Well, here's a couple of other people who didn't "do anything with their chances" either in a 50 AB stint when they were first able to accumulate 50 AB in a year, so obviously, they must suck, too:

Player A: .216/.293/.431 in 51 AB

Player B: .220/.317/.360 in 50 AB

Player C: .220/.291/.360 in 50 AB

Player D: .160/.236/.320 in 50 AB

Player E: .180/.196/.360 in 50 AB

Continue reading this post »

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3099599

Two guys who Adam's had some interest in have been traded for each other.

The Phillies sent outfielder Michael Bourn, pitcher Geoff Geary and minor leaguer Mike Costanzo to Houston, and received infielder Eric Bruntlett in addition to Lidge.

I like Houston's side to it.

While Lidge is good, he's been up-and-down the past couple of years....

Interestingly enough, the Astros have Pence in CF (though I'm not sure if they'll keep him there). So, potentially, this might open up a deal for one of CF.... Req

NL GG Winners

P Greg Maddux
C Brad Ausmus
1B Albert Pujols
2B Orlando Hudson
SS Omar Vizquel
3B Scott Rolen
OF Carlos Beltran
OF Mike Cameron
OF Andruw Jones

Dewan's all-fielding team

First Base - Albert Pujols, St. Louis Cardinals (87 points)
Second Base - Orlando Hudson, Arizona Diamondbacks (90)
Third Base - Adrian Beltre, Seattle Mariners (78)
Shortstop - Adam Everett, Houston Astros (98)
Left Field - Carl Crawford, Tampa Bay Devil Rays (87)
Center Field - Carlos Beltran, New York Mets (90)
Right Field - Ichiro Suzuki, Seattle Mariners (95)
Catcher - Ivan Rodriguez, Detroit Tigers (96)
Pitcher - Greg Maddux, Chicago Cubs and Los Angeles Dodgers (78)

I agree a lot more with the Dewan' All-fielding team than the GGs....

Brad Ausmus?
Vizquel over Everett?
Andruw Jones (he has not been very good over the past couple of years)?

I think it's better to just ignore the Gold Gloves. Hmmmm, maybe that's what I should have done.... Oh, well.

Req

AL defense

and

NL defense

# are above average (RSpt is Runs Saved total,  RS/150 is per 150 games)

Texas Players:

Player     GP   INN   RSpt RS/150
Barajas    94   825.0   1     1
Teixeira  159  1399.0   2     2
Kinsler   119  1032.0  -3    -3
Blalock   122  1063.7   1     1
M Young   155  1356.3   4     4
Wilkerson  80   664.3  -5    -9
Matthews  142  1227.0  -8    -9
DeRosa     60   512.0   2     6
Mench      57   489.7  -6   -16
C Lee(MIL) 98   835.3  -3    -5

Some other notables:

Player      GP   INN   RSpt RS/150
A Gonzalez 155 1341.0   5     5
Soriano    158 1374.7   5     5
D Roberts  116  970.0  14    19
Cameron    141 1244.0   8     9
Giles      158 1399.7  12    11
Pierre     162 1426.0  16    15
Lofton     120  961.0  -2    -3
V Wells    150 1290.3  12    13

Continue reading this post »

Thought I'd post a diary of this since a lot of the information seems to be scattered. This is a further analysis of what I posted earlier. I'm basically using comparisons of what free agents were considered in earlier rankings.

There are some funky ratings that I'm not sure if they're a fluke or not, which might make these comparisons completely wrong, though. So this is just a guesstimate.

Continue reading this post »

Freddy Garcia with a perfect game through 7.....

Watch him give something up in the 8th because of this post....

To get over the word limit,

that's a no-hitter from Anibal Sanchez, a no-hit bid for Randy Johnson and Freddy with this bid all within the span of less than a week.....

Freddy Garcia with a perfect game through 7.....
Freddy Garcia with a perfect game through 7.....
Freddy Garcia with a perfect game through 7.....

Req

It looks like Big Papi is shilling for MVP votes and throwing his teammates under a bus while doing so....

"Don't get me wrong -- he's a great player, having a great season, but he's got a lot of guys in that lineup," Ortiz continued. "Top to bottom, you've got a guy who can hurt you. Come hit in this lineup, see how good you can be."

He also doesn't mention having Manny right behind him (who's likely a BETTER hitter than Ortiz) to provide for that ever-elusive "protection" in the lineup.

Chalk another one to the "baseball players can be dumb sometimes" theory.

Link to story

Req

Ok, I've seen it used on this site before....

But now I've seen it used on a poll at ESPN.com

Now, when the heck did dominate become an adjective?

I've looked at Merriam-Webster, Dictionary.com, and, heck, even UrbanDictionary.com  and none of them references an adjective form for dominate.

Is this word usage occurring because people can't differentiate between a verb (dominate) and an adjective (dominant)?

It obviously can't be a misspelling of dominated, because that is pretty much the OPPOSITE meaning of dominant.

I don't get this.

Req

Rumblings: Clubs Notified that Draft Pick Compensation to be Dropped in Upcoming CBA

Link to story

snippet:

Ken Davidoff of Newsday reported just over a week ago that teams may no longer receive draft picks as compensation for free agents who leave as part of the upcoming CBA....

This would explain, in part, why Alfonso Soriano and Carlos Lee have been on the trading block. Both the Nationals and Rangers have been hot to try and get something for these two players before free agency forces both clubs to possibly walk away without anything for these two top players that were not dealt at the trading deadline.

If this is the case, it makes the Lee deal look quite a bit worse....

Req

I remember some of us had a discussion about the A's and how well they'd do in the second half.

Here's a listing of the A's overall, 2nd half, August, and September records during Beane's tenure as GM:

Year Overall 2nd half August Sept
1998   74-88  33-43    15-15  11-13
1999   87-75  44-31    19-10  15-15
2000   91-70  43-32    11-16  22-7
2001 102-60  58-17    22-7    23-4
2002 103-59  53-21    24-4    18-8
2003   96-66  42-27    20-9    14-11
2004   91-71  44-32    20-8    13-18
2005   88-74  44-31    17-11  13-17
so far in
2006   77-56  32-13    21-6     0-0

Except for the first year of Beane's GMship, the A's have had a better record in the 2nd half than the 1st half.

They have been especially good in August (probably the hottest month) having very good months except for 1998 and 2000 (and even 1998's August was better than the rest of the season).

While I don't know why they do it or even if this run is based on something beside luck, I was expecting this outburst by the A's at the beginning of August, and, unfortunately, they delivered.

I have a couple of hypotheses of why they do so well in the 2nd half (and, specifically, in August).

1. Beane has stated the first 2 months are for assessing what you have. The next 2 months are for acquiring what you need. And the final 2 months are for those teams to finish off the season. I happen to think that Beane is one of the top 5 GMs in the game, and specifically in trades, he's been very good at getting precisely what he needed. If you look at it, August is the first month after the trade deadline. So, August is possibly the month where Beane finally has all the chips in place that he wants to let his team make a run.
2. Beane is excellent at acquiring cheap depth players for his teams. That depth doesn't really seem to show it's value until August when the fields are at their hottest and 4 months of nicks and scratches are starting to take their toll on most starters. Since the A's don't lose as much value going from their starters to their backups, they're able to do much better than teams which don't have that quality depth, and hence, their Augusts tend to be much better.
3. Since August is the hottest month and the A's usually do a good job of pre-habbing for injuries, their players are likely to be in better shape to handle the heat than other players. This hypothesis seems the weakest to me, but I just wanted to throw it out there since it seems plausible.

Unfortunately, as we are in the same division as Beane's A's, unless the Rangers can duplicate what the A's do in the 2nd half or build up a massive lead in the 1st half, I feel like the Rangers are going to have a lot of similar years to this one in the near future.

Req

That'll help the Rangers' post-season aspirations.

Though, if he had just pitched through it, it likely would have been better for the Rangers....

Colon has 56 1/3 IP with a 5.11 ERA, 4.95 K/9, and 1.46 WHIP.

I wouldn't be surprised if at least part of his performance failure has been due to injury.

Link

Req

Basically an extension for his arb years and his 1st year of FA.

Not sure if I like this deal.

His first year of arbitration is next year, and if he tanks he wouldn't do as well as the contract.

I'm not sure if he has the upside of Tejada and/or Jeter....

Still, for New York, it gives them "cost-certainty" which might be fine for slightly overpaying for his performance....

Link to story

Req

in NY when everyone's healthy w/ Sheffield willing to shift to 1B.

C - Posada
1B/DH - Giambi
2B - Cano
3B - A-Rod
SS - Jeter
LF - Matsui
CF - Damon
RF - Abreu
DH/1B - Sheffield

Sheesh, that's a murderer's row....

Not to mention they have all-Star Bernie Williams to pinch-hit vs. LHP, though no one to pinch-hit vs. RHP.

But they don't really need any pinch hitters, I think.

Thankfully their pitching isn't as good, but they might just be able to slug their way to the World Series.

Req

Saw this in BPro, buried in an article about the Brewers.

They stayed to watch the next pitcher, right-hander Jeremy Jeffress, the Brewers' first-round draft pick in June.

"There was heat in more ways than one," said Yost, referring to Jeffress' fastball.

Yost said Jeffress' first five pitches were clocked at 100, 99, 100, 101 and 99 mph. Jeffress went 2 2/3 innings, allowing no hits with two walks and three strikeouts.

"You could hear him warming up," said Melvin, referring to the popping of the catcher's mitt. "The ball is easy out of his hand, and he throws strikes."

Article

It's quite a bit early to tell, but I really hope we don't regret popping Kiker over Jeffress (a la Kasmir).

Req

Just a question for zwyica or anyone else who can answer.

Is the sim league still going? Or is it pretty much dead in the water?

The question has been raised before on the boards, but no one's answered it....

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Thanks,

Req

Story

While Simmons is completely clueless when it comes to baseball, I find his views on basketball really spot on most of the time.

Here, he makes a LOT of sense.

Plus, he publishes some choice e-mails commenting about the sorry-arse officiating.

I think while I've pretty much become convinced that there isn't a "conspiracy" to fix games, I DO think that the NBA does seem to have a tendency to put officials in the situation to tilt the game a certain way (specifically a la Bennett Salvatore).

That's not the same as fixing games, but it DOES increase the likelihood of a certain team winning.

I don't watch many NBA games (mainly because of a lot of the problems I see that Simmons has outlines), but Game 5 was pathetically officiated, IMO.

The Heat was getting call after call on touch (or phantom) fouls while the Mavs weren't getting anything (until the last 5 minutes or so).

I can definitely see though why people think that the fix was in. I just find it kind of implausible. Putting in the bad refs so the home team gets a lot more calls so that there's a more "competitive" series? I can see that, though.

Story on Cuban

Req

For those of you who believe in signs :p.

MLB  story

OTOH, it's really 6/6/2006, so I don't think people should get all worried.

Someone in the MLB scheduling department has a cute sense of humor, methinks.

Also, I wouldn't worry too much about this year's draft. It's a very mediocre draft and I'm not going to be that upset with what the Rangers do on prospects who likely would never pan out anyways.

It's their trades and FA signings that I'm more interested in since the draft sometimes feels like a crapshoot anyways.

Req

Story

Choice tidbits:

The "700 Club" host's feat of strength is recounted on the Web site of his Christian Broadcasting Network, in a posting headlined "How Pat Robertson Leg Pressed 2,000 Pounds."

and

Clay Travis of CBS SportsLine.com called the 2,000-pound assertion impossible in a column this week, writing that the leg-press record for football players at Florida State University is 665 pounds less.

and

Andy Zucker, a strength-training coach at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, said leg presses of more than 1,000 pounds represent "a Herculean effort, and 2,000 pounds is a whole other story."

and finally:

The CBN Web site attributes Robertson's energy in part to "his age-defying protein shake." The site offers a recipe for the shake, which contains ingredients such as soy protein isolate, whey protein isolate, flaxseed oil and apple cider vinegar.

Enjoy!

Req

Story

I didn't realize how much even the slightest injuries can derail pitchers.....

It seems amazing that some of these pitchers can year-in and year-out put up the good numbers they do.

And that doesn't even take into account, the potential career-ending injuries that often plague pitchers, too....

Req