So we haven't had one of these in a while and atobin22 in the OT just pointed out that Half TIme Beverages in NY will ship beer to you, which has inspired me!

Since we haven't done this in a year or so, what new brews have impressed you since then? Any new brewers specifically?

What about palette changes? Right now I'm not too into sours, but super into lighter beers, mainly saisons, black ales & black IPAs, and really dark Belgian-style IPAs.

Any neat festivals? I just went to Stone's Winter Storm, which is basically an excuse for them to pour everything in their cellars and had the really outstanding 12th Anniversary Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout a few times (which somehow is even better than it sounds).

Lastly, what beers can you not get where you are that you really want? This is what inspired this FanPost, as Southern Tier still doesn't distribute in California so I can't get delicious, delicious Iniquity. Also Three Floyds, but I'd rather have Southern Tier by a mile - I'm just glad that we now get almost everything Great Divide does.

75 words 75 words 75 words 75 words 75 words

With March Madness here and real baseball yet to begin, here's a thread for the wackiness leading up to the opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament!

Who is your team this year? Happy with your draw? Unhappy? Are you participating in bracket pools? Should someone organize a bLLacket on Facebook or Yahoo!?

Usual questions - overrated? Underrated?

Do you have any NCAA Tourney traditions? Mine are pretty simple - study a lot, watch some basketball, study some more, then do more work. Thankfully not an undergrad anymore, so that's been replaced by "skip work and drink good beer while watching mostly bad basketball."

Thanks to Robert for putting together an ESPN Bracket Group

Name: 20LL
Password: felixxx

Link to .pdf bracket

Per the request of our glorious overLLord(s), this thread shall be used to talk about beer and other alcoholic beverages.

Beer prompts!

• What are your current favorite beers? As a sub-topic, since these always seem to change, what are your all-time favorites?
• If you've never participated in one of these before, standard questions include
  • What are your favorite styles of beer?
  • Who are your favorite brewers?
• Any new beers from 2010 or early 2011 to report on? Were they good?
• Favorite local places to pick up bottles or pints (or 8 oz Belgian pours)
• How have your style tastes changed as a function of time (graphs acceptable and encouraged)

Welcome to the 2010 LLemmie awards! As usual, we'll be recapping the best moments of the 2009-2010 Mariners season on Lookout Landing and giving awards to those deserving folks.

Please note that you are permitted one (1) vote in each category unless you are a current or former mod at LL, in which case you receive two (2) votes. Votes will be carefully tabulated via an advanced Excel spreadsheet and displayed after the close of voting at  time to be determined later, but probably three months from now.

Nominations

Categories

Front Page Post of the Year

The All-Jane Austen Team

First Half in Review: The Mariners As Things Near Jeff's Apartment

If It Goes Wrong

Your Daily Recommended Intake of Fact

Giant Walking Banana

FanPost of the Year

On Fanhood by Eyebrows

An Adventure in Awfulness by Chris Hafner

On the Shoulders of Giants: A Compilation by Fett42

The Sabermetrics of Cats by ARock

Off-Top FanPost of the Year

Scrappy's! by royalcurve

FanShot of the Year

Why I Don't Care by CapSea

Lookout Hitler by Fett42

Fuck the Diamondbacks by Goose

Comment of the Year, Non-Image

My Cat is Like Cory Lidle by CapSea

Kermit Runs Around a Boat by Kermit

Tyson Gillies Should be More Careful by CMC_Stags

Everyone Keep Michael Pineda Away From Cars by katal

Enforcing the Rules, by Robert

Comment of the Year, Short Subthread

Mystery Box! by Jeff and Matthew

Killer Whales by Robert and seattlebruin

Future Jeff by Jeff

Jeff and Dewey Need to Send Their Words to Obedience School by Jeff and Dewey N

Comment of the Year, Still Image

Aaron's Felix Rape List in Image Form by Aaron Campeau

EnoLLa Gay by OlSalty

Dog Boner by Robert

Fucks Used Over Time by Snowman1025

Scrappy in Art by Graham

Comment of the Year, Moving Image

Jeff is Not the Father by Scruffy Lefty

NOT SAFE FOR WORK by Scruffy Lefty

Almost Sunny Scrappy by Wilder.

Ian Snell Lips by Scruffy Lefty

Milton Bradley by Matthew

Comment of the Year, LL Meme Related

Where's Nyjer?, by Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth

Pokeball by Fett42

404 Error Not Found by bagsflyfree

Two Sport Athlete by Wilder.

Comment of the Year, Unintentional

Tranny by BrianL

Cat on the Keyboard by Craig3140

I Like Bears by BigR

This Might Need a Comma by Brian Floyd

Thread or Gamethread of the Year

Lacrosse Girl Part One, Robert Starred at Duke

Let's Ask Katal

Pitch Face

Cliff Lee is Coming!

Commenter of the Year

Kermit.

CapSea

Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth

Robert

pdb

Commenter of the Year in a Supporting Role

joof

OlSalty

Decatur

Fett42

BrianL

Commenter of the Year, Most Helpful

JY

marc w

msb

Faux

CapSea

BrianL

Commenter of the Year, Visiting Mod

Scruffy Lefty

Graham

NOLAMarinerGirl

Aaron Campeau

abender20

Rookie of the Year

Chris Hafner

seattle_since_81

ThomasG

MeLLtdown of the Year

It's Probably Only Funny if You Were There or Can See Hidden Comments

I Think We Signed Rich Harden

FIRST is Not Acceptable at LL

Jeff is a Shitty Writer

Jim Bowden Likes Stats

Hello all, and welcome to the third annual LLemmies, Lookout Landing's end of season blog awards!

For the first two versions, please refer to these links

2008

2009

Comments and posts made between October 17, 2009 and now are eligible for this year's awards.

Please base your votes for individuals on their overall body of work rather than a single great thread or comment. Please take into account overall contribution to the community and work of this site.

For votes on comments, images, threads and posts, please consider both technical (baseball) and artistic (Kermit's flags) value

CATEGORIES FOR NOMINATION

Commenter of the Year

Best Commenter in a Supporting Role

Rookie of the Year

Most Helpful Commenter of the Year

Commenter of the Year, Visiting Mod

Comment of the Year, non-image

Comment of the Year, still image(s)

Comment of the Year, moving images

Accidental Comment of the Year

Comment of the year, Nyjer Morgan Photoshop meme

Thread or gamethread of the Year

Subthread of the Year

FanPost of the Year

Off-Topic FanPost of the Year

FanShot of the Year (FanPosts that should have been FanShots are not eligible)

MeLLtdown of the Year

Meme of the Year

Here are some links to get you started. I will add them to the main FanPost as good ones come up.

Nominations will extend through Sunday, with voting to begin Monday morning

http://www.lookoutlanding.com/2010/9/27/1715219/ot-9-27-cripes-someone-has-to-do-it#47889706

Please be creative and Robert-archiving-esque in your nominations searches!

A random prompt inspired both the given name discussion a few weeks back and the rash of SBN 2.0 name changes (I'm looking at you, 7500 To Holte mods).

• What is the inspiration behind your LL screen name?

• Is it a screen name you regularly use?

• If you've changed it, why?

Additionally, Starcraft II just came out and is pretty much sweeping the gaming world.

• Are you interested in video games?
• What platforms do you prefer? Genres?
• What do you look for in a game, and what about unknown games can cause you to buy them?

Note that it's not a specific "this game is good, this game is bad" discussion, but what types of games people like to play.

Also, beer. Beer is like water, but tasty and with alcohol in it. Unless it's Coors Light, then it's just water with alcohol in it.

• Favorite drinking games?
• Beer pong specific - what set of rules do you play by?
• Russian River Sanctification - overrated. One bottle up for trade, though!

Since the rest of you all are apparently too lazy to post a new OFFTOP (keeping in mind I don't like link dumping)

So I've realized that I have a problem with the working world - I have an incredibly dim view of stupidity, which doesn't help with some of the people I work with who learn at approximately the pace of Robert with electric fences (hugs~). What characteristics in others do you have a very difficult time dealing with?

I wish yesterday's World Cup final had been a better game - as much as I've loved watching soccer throughout the tournament, this game reminded me of all the things I don't like about the game - how choppy it can be when the referee takes over, and just how awful the diving can be at times. It was really annoying to see Andres Iniesta get the World Cup winning goal after he had spent half the game lying on the ground looking for calls. Most annoying things you find about individual sports?

BrianL has nominated me to make today's OTFPOTD, so I'll go with a topic that is near and dear to my heart - accident comments.

Everyone has had one of those days where we accidentally post a comment intended for another person, or write a comment and hit submit and realize afterwards that it's bad. Look at Taylor H posting to his Facebook or BrianL posting very NSFW tranny porn

Favorite regrettable comments both in real life and on Lookout Landing?

Place in the United States you would want to spend - one week? One month? One Year? A lifetime? (please do choose four different places)

Favorite non-Seattle team, any sport?

Early Lookout Landing Comment of the Year nominations?

Since it's a holiday weekend and many of you probably have lots of time off, who would be interested in getting a game of softbaLL together at some point?

Unfortunately, I am not overly familiar with Seattle softball fields outside of the Laurelhurst/Viewridge area, so I'd need some help doing field coordination, but I wanted to gauge the interest level.

Would Saturday or Sunday work better? Fields will probably be widely available on Sunday as people BBQ at their homes and such.

Please post here if you're interested - I've never gotten to play softbaLL before and would love the chance to meet many of you (or hang out more for those I've already met!)

EDIT: How is Friday evening?

EDIT #2: Friday evening around 6 PM looks to be the best for everyone. Who can make it?

@ Garfield HS on 23rd Ave in Seattle, 6 PM.

Meetup @ Elysian (?) post game

In:

seattlebruin

Mariner John

Two Rs and Two Ls

harkening

Decatur

InSpokane (umpire)

Katal (+1!)

seattle_since_81

'Kirk"

Kirsten S.

Kermit!

acblue (maybe)

Graham!

Matthew (maybe)

NewLocal

CapSea

tootthekazoo

JamMaster Jesus

Taylor H

Jaejo

Robert

Fuzz

marinerschas2

In for post party:

pdb

tootthekazoo

Sec 108

royalcurve

acblue

So the first few series the Mariners are playing in Southern California are rapidly approaching. Even though we've lost our glorious leader this year, SoCaLL should still be a great event, as there are still many LL posters residing in the area.

Current plans are to attend the San Diego games from 6/11-6/13. I'd suggest the best day for a meetup is probably Saturday, so please post in this thread if you'd be interested in meeting up with LL folks pre or post games for drinks.

In

seattlebruin

Teej

Tentative

bluemax

SankTheTank

abender20

lemonverbena

ExiledToSocal

I actually don't have an off-topic topic in mind, I am just scared of spider .gifs and bees on eyes and such.

So it turns out that I can cook when I put my mind to it, but I'm lazy and don't know many good, easy recipes. Who has good recipes that are 1) quick and 2) require simple ingredients/spices?

Where were you at this time last year? Five years ago? Ten years ago? I'm having random nostalgic moments lately, mostly thanks to watching Ken Griffey's rotting corpse remind me that ten years ago, he was actually good!

Spent the last weekend at Lake Shasta in CA for a friend's bachelor party. I can't rave enough about how peaceful and wonderful it is to just hang out on a boat with friends, no distractions, no internet, no phones, no connectivity with the world, and do nothing for a weekend. Only shitty thing is that holy hell is it a long way from Redding to San Diego.

So from what I've heard, the local nine isn't playing very good baseball right now. Apparently one of the players had a bit of a blowup in the game last night, the local legend is playing actively preventing some of this fans from touching themselves and the team has now lost four straight games, two of them very tight losses that the team should have won.

On that note, here is a thread about adult (alcoholic) beverages such as beer, wine, whiskey and other liquors to A) discuss and B) learn new things to help you drown your sorrows in the wake of the Mariners being bad again and Griffey really sucking.

Continue reading this post »

Self-explantory. Basketball discussion = OK. Beer discussion = OK. GTE = OK. Robert-baiting = OK. SB-baiting = pointless, UCLA isn't in the tourney.

Link to LL Bracket Group!

9:20 AM West - (7) Brigham Young 99 vs. (10) Florida 92 FINAL 2OT

9:25 AM South - (6) Notre Dame 50 vs. (11) Old Dominion 51 FINAL

9:30 AM South - (2) Villanova 73 vs. (15) Robert Morris 70 FINAL OT

11:30 AM West - (4) Vanderbilt 65 vs. (13) Murray State 66 FINAL

11:40 AM West - (2) Kansas State 82 vs. (15) North Texas 62 FINAL

11:45 AM South - (3) Baylor 68 vs. (14) Sam Houston State 59 FINAL

11:50 AM South - (7) Saint Mary's 80 vs. (10) Richmond 71 FINAL

1:45 PM West (5) Butler 77 vs. (12) Texas-El Paso 59 FINAL

4:10 PM Midwest (8) Nevada-Las Vegas 66 vs. (9) Northern Iowa 69 FINAL

4:15 PM East (1) Kentucky 100 vs. (16) East Tennessee State 71 FINAL

4:20 PM East (6) Marquette 78 vs. (11) Washington 80 FINAL

4:25 PM Midwest (3) Georgetown 83 vs. (14) Ohio 97 FINAL

6:30 PM Midwest (1) Kansas vs. (16) Lehigh

6:35 PM East (8) Texas vs. (9) Wake Forest

6:40 PM East (3) New Mexico vs. (14) Montana

6:45 Midwest (6) Tennessee vs. (11) San Diego State

Scruffy's OFFTOP is starting to slow down a bit in comments and size, so here's a new one with some new topics!

• Words With Friends on the iPhone/iPod touch is fantastic. Do you have it? If you do, what's your username? Play with me @SeattleBruin!
• NCAA Tournament starts tomorrow! Who's in the Final Four? Upset specials? South regional - bad region or worst region ever? (I mean seriously, Duke and Villanova are the top two seeds? There's a region where Baylor has a legitimate chance to lose in the first round OR make the Final Four? ugh)
• BEER!! - it's been a while since we had a beer thread, so feel free to discuss here (not that we don't just do that anyway).
  • Recent things I've liked - Dogfish Head Festina Peche, Russian River Salvation, New Belgium La Folie, Stone Smoked Porter with Chipotle, The Bruery Trade Winds, Russian River Pliny the Younger, Ballast Point Victory at Sea.
  • What have you had that's been good lately? What's in your cupboard? How drunk are you right now?

NOW THAT WE'VE DISCUSSED IRRATIONAL FEARS AND RATIONAL FEARS THAT NO ONE TALKS ABOUT, LET'S DO THE OPPOSITE AND TALK ABOUT IRRATIONAL LIKES AND THINGS THAT ARE UNDERRATED.

UNDERRATED - NIGHT TIME DRIVING, NO ONE ON THE FREEWAY AND YOU CAN GO AS FAST AS YOU LIKE. INCREDIBLY RELAXING FOR A FEW MILES.

PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THAT THE THEME OF THIS POST IS ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, YELLING AND SUPER EMPHASIS. IF YOU NEED MORE EMPHASIS THAN NORMAL, BOLD LETTERS ARE YOUR FRIENDS!

THINK OF IT LIKE AN ENTIRE THREAD OF JACK BAUER GOD MICHAEL WESTEN WOULD OWN JACK BAUER LIKE NO OTHER

A certain LL member told me that we should have another beer thread recently, so here it is.

The other day I went to the store and picked up a bunch of bottles, anyone had these?

Jolly Pumpkin Maracaibo Especial, Noel de Calabaza

The Bruery White Oak

Rodenbach 2007 Vintage Oak Aged Ale

What are your favorite places to go drink beer? What types of establishments/where specifically? Favorite styles and beers?

New to craft beer? Don't worry, we love to educate

Questions:

Where are you going for the weekend? Family? Friends? Travel?

What are your favorite Thanksgiving foods?

OK to stuff yourself for no apparent reason on Thanksgiving even when trying to be healthy?

Are you shopping this weekend? If so, are you going to do the whole Black Friday line-up Thanksgiving night thing?

Great Thanksgiving travel and food stories

What's your favorite holiday?

Most importantly, what are you thankful for this year?

Hilariously, this FanPost was 74 words long when I tried to publish it the first time. Never been so close yet so far.

Might as well post this now, since I heard there's a big game coming out next week.

A bunch of LL-ers are on Xbox Live and play games with each other - who else out there has an Xbox and wants to join up? As of Tuesday, Nov 10, we will be playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 pretty much fulltime, so feel free to join the party and get a few games in.

A forewarning - do not put your earpiece too close to your ear when playing with me.

LL SN - XBL tag

seattlebruin - seattlebruin

Scruffy Lefty - Scruffy Lefty

tootthekazoo - TootMyKazoo

Robert - WeaselRed

BrianL - BDL88

JamMaster Jesus - imeatinbutter

Phildopip - Phildopip

BrettJMiller - Bretticus

Ralphie81 - Ralphie81

royalcurve - Royalcurve

Coach Owens - Coach Owens 00

Nate Dogg - herr414

Ckel - Ckel44

seattlesundevil - Hessbian

hcoguy - hcoguy

bmxnw - Distant Echo

seattlecougar - Heeb McMazeltov

joof - Joofie

Jason X USN - Jason X USN

bluemax - BlueMax MB

qrsouther - PapaBear94 (seriously?? 1994??)

Add your names in the comments and discuss, will update the FanPost with everyone's names as we go.

One vote per person in each category unless you're Jeff and you get Fogel's votes too

BEST FRONT-PAGE POSTER

Jeff - Matthew - Graham - "Robert"

Best Commenter

Fogel - Robert - abender20 - Eyebrows - Kermit. - acblue

Rookie of the Year

abender20 - royalcurve - Decatur - Attractive Nuisance - JamMaster Jesus

Comment of the Year, Non-Image

Foot Fetish by Fogel - Line Breaks by Matthew - The Lore of Coach Owens by OlSalty - I CAN HAZ FRANKLIN'S PENIS by Jeff - BBQ by abender20 - Silva Kiss by acblue

Comment of the Year, Small Subthread (comments < 10)

ASCII 9/11 by Eyebrows - Matthew Can Suck Fogel's Dick by Fogel & Matthew

Comment of the Year, Images Permitted

This is My Belief by Fett42

Comment of the Year, Images Permitted, Non-Fett Division

Stephen Strasburg Dead Due to Masturbation by Vatinius - Griffey Scooter by Wilder. - MSPaint Guti by Gihyou

Best FanPost

The Poem by Attractive Nuisance - Felix by Robert - Why Graham is Right by Graham

Best Front Page Post

Mariners Win the World Series - First Half Review, M's Go Driving - LL QC - Is This SPARTA?

Best Thread or Subthread

Scruffy .gif-bombs LL, Franklin Wins Game - Aumont to the Minors - Corcotopia - How to Get Lost in San Diego

Best Random Thread

Pike Street Stench - IS THE KID ON HIS WAY HOME -

Best LL Meltdown

LoLCat Night Announcement by Lookout Landing - THE NCAA FUCKED THE HUSKIES by Robert

It's that time of year again for the Lookout Landing Awards ceremony, affectionately known as the LLemmies!

This thread will serve as the nomination thread - please feel free to nominate additional categories as well. Please do not nominate more than two entries per category, to keep this thing at a reasonable length.

Voting will occur in a new FanPost a few days after nominations are in

CATEGORIES

Best Moderator

Best Commenter (non-mods only)

Comment of the Year (non-image)

Comment of the Year (images permitted)

Comment of the Year (images permitted, non-Fett division)

Rookie of the Year

Best FanPost (FanPost content only)

Best Front Page Post (Post content only)

Best Thread (overall thread after post)

Best Beer Subthread

Best Baseball Subthread

Best Other Subthread

Best Off-the-Wall Subthread (such as the duckyou thread)

Meme of the Year

Please provide links to nominations!

We have not discussed excellent beer in a while. Let us commence discussing beer that is good so Dave Cameron will have reason to refer to us as "that blog that drinks a lot" next year as well.

What have you had recently that's been good? All-time favorites? Favorites in each style? Preferred breweries?

City you would most like to live in for no reason other than beer? (really only two acceptable answers here, far as I can tell)

It's occurred to me that a lot of the terms we use around LL can be confusing even to established regulars, much less new posters. We throw around terms like "expect to regress," "tRA," and "J/M/G."

Many of these things are general baseball or statistics ideas, and some are LL-specific, but all contribute to making LL both an incredibly informative, if at time confusing place to read and post.

I propose that we start a FanPost collection of all the phrases we use, a Lookout Landing Dictionary. I know we tried it before with the Lookout Landing wiki, LLikipedia, but that didn't work as expected. What I propose is that we use this one FanPost as a giant dictionary and continue to add to it as we find new things that should be here, or stumble across old ones that need to be included.

The dictionary would include both baseball and LL specific jargon, and would be intended mainly to help new posters figure out what the hell we're talking about, and as a handy reference for older posters who might have been confused by something and never asked.

I think we should use a format in which we'd provide a brief definition, as well as a link to a relevant subthread or FanPost which might explain the idea in more detail.

EXAMPLE

Regression - Regression is a statistical concept that relates to non-conforming results. It essentially states that given an expected normal distribution, an outlier will, over a large sample size, move towards or "regress" to the mean value.

A good example of this is provided by Kermit. in this subthread.

Let me know what you guys think. Option B is to just re-create LLikipedia, but with less insanity (and probably a restriction on who can edit pages)

September of last year, our intrepid hero made the following bet - if the Mariners are within five games of .500 at the conclusion of play, August 31, 2009, he becomes a mod for the month of September. If the Mariners fall outside this nine-game window, each mod gets to cockpunch him at a time and location of their choosing.

Just today, new user Poochie asked for an update on the status of the bet.

I've created a simple WE chart for the bet, based on a simple binomial distribution, and assuming the Mariner's current Pythagorean Expectation to be their odds of winning the next game. After that, it was a simple matter (well with a lot of numbers) to determine the approximate odds of the Mariners winning between 64 and 69 games before September 1

robert2 (via seattlebruin)

After tonight's game against the Orioles, the M's have a Pythagorean expectation of .442 from here on out, and they've won 25 games already. Thus, I simply needed to find the probability of them winning between 38 and 43 of the next 80 games. As you can see, the odds aren't bad - about 40%.

I repeated this process retroactively for the beginning of the season - as you can see, the team was much too good to hover around .500 at the start of the year. Ironically, the high point of the graph came on Silva's last start - it's been all downhill from there.

EDIT: Updated through tonight's 3-2 victory over Baltimore - Robert checking in at a robust 26.4% chance to avoid three junkpunches

So, welcome to the first discussion forum for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies! You should have read through chapter 24, so if you haven't read that far, either don't read the thread (yet) or don't complain about spoilers.

Discussion questions/topics

1. First impressions (and second impressions, since we read a third of the novel)

2. Comparisons between Pride and Prejudice vs. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

3. Characters so far - strengths, weaknesses, who is likable/dislikable, and why?

4. How has the view of marriage changed both relative to time, distance from England and the number of zombies roaming the American countryside?

5. Please pose other discussion questions!

EDIT: Need to discuss what book we should read next so people can get started acquiring it. The leading suggestion right now is The Avenger of Blood by Miguel Batista, but please make suggestions.

The Avenger of Blood - Miguel Batista

EDIT(11:20AM): For anyone new to LL or advanced analysis, this is the perfect time to ask any question, no matter how basic. I can't stress this strongly enough.

We've discussed some more advanced nuts&bolts-type stuff in the comments, but even if you have a question like "what are tRA and wOBA and why do you use them instead of OPS and FIP," ask ask ask!

We had one of these last year, and it seemed to work out pretty well to get people's questions, however basic answered.

I think it would be a good idea to do this again this year, esepcially with the influx of new posters to Lookout Landing, it would be nice to have a place where you can ask any advanced analysis question and have it answered by someone with great knowledge of this area.

Jeff, Matthew, and Graham have been great at answering questions, and another thing I'm hoping will happen here is that other knowledgeable non-mod posters will be able to contribute and help out as well. I know that at least for me personally, I've learned a ton just in the last year, to the point where I'd be comfortable fielding at least basic questions regarding advanced analysis and metrics.

So feel free to ask any question and we'll do our best to answer them. I'd ask that the regulars really take it easy on everyone in this thread and just do your best to help the asker understand, no matter how basic the query.

Of course this doesn't mean that I don't have my own questions that I'd like to have answered, and honestly, part of this thread was me being selfish enough to make a FanPost hoping to get a few answers out of everyone.

- How does pitching tRA convert to runs above/below average? Is it just a simple [(tRAplayer-tRAleague)*xO]/27?

- What's the definition of replacement-level for a pitcher? For a hitter, we know it's ~20 runs per 600 PA or like .033 runs/PA. Is there a similar sliding scale for pitchers? Is it different for relievers/starters? And what would be that number, if there is one.

- It's my understanding that positional adjustments are defined so that an average hitter at a position in relation to his peers who is exactly an average fielder will always be worth 2 WAR. Why do we value positions like C and SS over corner OF and 1B? Shouldn't a 2 WAR player be a 2 WAR player, regardless of position? I understand scarcity, but due to positional adjustment, shouldn't a 2 WAR catcher be just as available as a 2 WAR LF?

- How does positional adjustment work if a guy plays a lot of positions? Does he just get each positional adjustment multiplied by percentage of playing time at a given spot?

- Are positional adjustments based on ~600 PA? Do you get a bigger adjustment if you play, say CF, and get 700 PAs in a season?

Also, when this is all said and done, I'll try to compile the answers and post them in a new FanPost so we'll have a lot of good information stuck in one spot.

I have no purpose in posting this OFFTOP. I have no particular subjects I want to discuss (except beer!), no particular links to share or images to chortle over. I just need a dose of LL off-topicness, especially given that the last two are both well over 1,000 comments and no one seems to be posting in them.

So please, come, enjoy, talk about stuff related to the Mariners or not (we should rename Scrappy's to the Rally Puppy!) and don't think about how little effort I put into this FanPost.

I can't believe I strung that out for more than 75 words.

EDIT: One of my life goals is to be able to view the rec leaderboard on my own. What are your random life goals?

Alright all, since quite a few of us live in Southern California full time, who's up for a meetup next Saturday Sunday for the game against the hated Angels?

Not sure what there is to do around the stadium (I know there's a few bars, but given that it's Anaheim, it's a fair bet they suck), but we could meet up, have a few beers, get abender the Speedway Stout he can't find, and watch the M's smoke the Angels.

I don't have tickets yet, I'd imagine they won't be too expensive, even if we get them as a group for everyone who doesn't have them.

EDITED: Sounds like Jeff is going to go Sunday, not Saturday, so how does Sunday sound instead? We can still do group tickets, and maybe we can meet up before/after for lunch/drinks. Let me know.

Welcome to Day 2 of the Madness!

Some fantastic games last night, lucky escapes by certain higher seeds. Hope today is just as good. Should be some interesting stuff, not too many 1 and 2 seeds playing today.

If the morning games are any indication...

Sorry for not having any deep thoughts today, I'm just trying to get to the limit so we can have a discussion thread

(8) Tennessee vs. (9) Oklahoma State

(6) Marquette vs. (11) Utah State

(3) Syracuse vs. (14) Stephen F. Austin

(3) Kansas vs. (14) North Dakota State

(6) Arizona State vs. (11) Temple

(1) Pittsburgh vs. (16) East Tennessee State

(3) Missouri vs. (14) Cornell

(6) West Virginia vs. (11) Dayton

Alright guys, it's finally here, the Christmas day of the college hoops world. It's Madness time!

No more bitching about seedings and pairings, no more thinking about matchups and injuries and team colors and stupid mascots based on civilizations that lost ancient wars.

What do your guy's brackets look like? I'm in a pool where last gets money back and there's a lot of reward for upsets, so I have a super high risk/reward bracket with UCLA, Syracuse, Louisville and Memphis in the FF with Louisville taking it all.

Schedule

SOUTH (8) Louisiana State 75 vs. (9) Butler 71 - FINAL

WEST (2) Memphis 81 vs. (15) Cal State - Northridge 70 - FINAL

WEST (8) Brigham Young 66 vs. (9) Texas A&M 79 - FINAL

WEST (5) Purdue 61 vs. (12) Northern Iowa 56 - FINAL

SOUTH (1) North Carolina 101 vs. (16) Radford 58 - FINAL

WEST (7) California - Berkeley 71 vs. (10) Maryland 84 - FINAL

WEST (1) Connecticut 103 vs. (16) Chattanooga 47 - FINAL

WEST (4) Washington 71 vs. (13) Mississippi State 58 - FINAL

EAST (7) Texas vs. (10) Minnesota - Greensboro, NC

SOUTH (7) Clemson vs. (10) Michigan - Kansas City, MO

EAST (3) Villanova vs. (14) American - Philadelphia, PA

SOUTH (4) Gonzaga vs. (13) Akron - 4:25 PM, Portland, OR

also contains off-topic stuff.

HEY NCAA SELECTION COMMITTEE I HATE YOU

ANYONE BUT VILLANOVA

THREE STRAIGHT WEEKS PLEASE NO NOVA PLEASE NO NOVA PLEASE NO NOVA

SORRIES ALSO GO TO -

MEMPHIS FANS BECAUSE UCONN BLOWS. At least your bracket is weak and you're going to the Final Four

WASHINGTON FANS BECAUSE HOLY CRAP IS THAT THE WORST DRAW EVER

Who else do you people like?

Talk about basketball now.

EFF YOU GONZAGA FOR SUCH AN EASY DRAW