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Baseball's Flawed Statistics Ch 1: quality starts

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 10:18:26 EDT

I don't know who really looks at this one. People say how wins and losses are tainted by run support or lack there of. Maybe it goes toward consistancy. Pitchers do lose wins to blown leads by the bullpen, errors by fielders or as I mentioned, poor run support, things that cost Jon Lester a few wins this year. The person with the most quality starts has been the more consistant pitcher. Is that correct? That's what the stat was designed to reflect. Or so I am told and from what I've read. The only reason that I look at it is that it's a scoring category in one of my custom head-to-head fantasy baseball leagues.

For those not familiar with the statistic, a quality start is a statistic for a starting pitcher defined as a game in which the pitcher completes at least six innings and permits no more than three earned runs.

The new avatar policy is here.

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:30:08 EDT

As you can see by my current avatar...

How sad. How truly truly sad. I can believe mine was pulled since it only represented my personality (isn't that the point of an avatar?) and wasn't sports related. I mean, the Grateful Dead? Other than sponsoring the 1988 Lithuanian Olympic basketball team and frequently being invited to sing the national anthem at baseball games, how could they possibly be sports related? So I tried to post a photo of a tennis shoe, a Converse Chuck Taylor (sports-related right?), but it had a Grateful Dead logo on the side. That was denied by the powers that be. Maybe I should post a photo of an athlete, you know, these paragons of all that is right. Who to pick? Plaxico Burriss? Adam "Pac-man" Jones? Michael Vick? OJ Simpson? Charles Barkley? Pete Rose? And the list goes on and on. A-Rod. McGuire. Palmeiro. Pettite. All cheaters. All that is ok. That's what this website wants, right? Wait, now there's an idea. Post a picture of a police car, courthouse or vial of steroids. How unbelievably incredibly sad.

Name your favorite cast members or hosts of SNL!

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 6:57:10 EST

I've been wanting to create a bracket having participated in several of them as well as come up with one that I haven't seen yet. Not sure if the boys at CBS will like this but after seeing Steve Martin host his 15th episode last week, it struck me that I hadn't seen a blog, bracket or poll here devoted to this long running comedy/variety show. It's had its ups and downs but has endured for 34 seasons now and shows no signs of stopping...yet. Brandon Tartikoff couldn't kill it, NBC has been unable to kill it.

I personally would have a hard time narrowing down a list to 10 favorites so please name as many as you like but no more than 20 guest hosts, current or former cast members. The only real criteria I ask in your selections is that they are based on the quality of their work on this show only, so people like Steve Martin or Eddie Murphy shouldn't be penalized for doing crappy films, LOL. I'll keep this open for at least two weeks or until I have enough candidates to fill the bracket. Thanks and rock on in peace!