MrRain422

Yeah, that one took a while to grow on me but I like it now. I had a really hard time getting used to the organ instead of some crazy guitar playing to complement Watt. I'm really excited about this though. Probably my most anticipated release this year.

A couple songs are great, the rest blah.

Are you really going to do this to me, Todd Jones? Edit: Finally.

oh shit yes marcus thames

I like it a lot.

Yes.

I will be at Lolla.

Right on.

I agree that Dusty is a terrible manager, but do you really think the 2006 team that went 66-96 (their worst record under Dusty) would have won over 100 games with a better manager? Would the 2004 team win minimum 124 games (which would be a record) with a better manager?

And over the course of the games they've played so far, that's worth....5 wins? I know you said it isn't measurable but it's sort of pointless to argue if we can't even hazard a guess.

Just realized I misread this: "I know you and bobbob and some others think their impact is slighter than GMs and players generally do and that's cool." I was taking that to mean that bobbob and I thought that their impact was less than GMs and players, and therefore was inferring that you did not feel this way. Re-reading it, I realize that you meant that bobbob and I think that the manager has less impact than GMs and players think that managers have. I definately don't disagree with that. Sorry for rushing to judgement before I gave what you said a proper reading.

Speaking only for myself, I never said that the first week was meaningless, just that it only had so much meaning, especially in the context of managerial success. You can learn a little bit about a team in one week, and only a tiny part of that is about the manager. How much of the Tigers' struggles so far are due to poor management? And how much is due to injuries and/or a couple guys starting off the season in a slump? Did Jim Leyland make Miguel Cabrera make a throwing error today? What about Leyland's management style could have caused Justin Verlander to give up a lead off homer

Sure, I agree that managers are not all completely interchangeable and a team may do better under one manager than they would with another. But just how much of a difference does the manager make? I contend that it's not very much.

And how did they do last year? Are you really going to tell me that we can tell more about Ozzie's management skills based on the last week than all of last season? I'm of the opinion that managers have only a small impact on how good a team is anyway, but to use one week's worth of games for evidence of anything at all is pretty silly. Ozzie is not the reason the team stunk last year, their lineup that put up an OPS+ of 86 was, and he was not the reason that his team won the World Series in 2005, their crazy awesome pitching was. But if we're really to judge managers for the small effec

Firey intensity is nice, but there are about 27 other managers in the game right now that I'd want running my team over Ozzie Guillen.

Is the season over yet?

Sure. It's a metaphor.

Just because you disagree with its usage doesn't mean that it's wrong.

I'm just busting your balls.

No it's not. You said that there's a difference between disagreeing with someone and saying that they are wrong. You didn't say anything about claiming someone is lying. Those are different things.

Technically the only ones who can call timeout are the umps anyway. I'm not sure why umps grant every single request for timeout. Especially when it's just being done to fuck with the pitcher. It's annoying. I'm not sure if James has commented on this specifically, but I think another good way to speed up the game would be to actually enforce the rule about how long a pitcher can take between pitches. I'm pretty sure they're not supposed to take longer than 20 seconds.

The only one of Bill James's ideas that I remember involved limiting the number of pitching subsitutions. I remember that he wanted to make a rule that a pitcher could not be removed from a game unless he had already given up a run in that inning (except for injuries, of course).

Selig's view that it would slow down the game makes sense theoretically. But I think in a lot of instances it could also speed the game up by making it unnecessary for the umpires to meet for 10 minutes to discuss it rather than just looking at it on video.

Also, there's a lot of politics involved. If you make a big enough stink now, then you might get a close call in your favor from that ump later in the series.