Olerud363

But there were actually games almost every Wednesday Night and Sunday afternoon on CTV. Labatt's Blue Jays baseball. It was excellent. Grandpa could watch it. Grandpa 2015 does not have access to Blue Jays. Even if he has a good cable package I am not sure he can navigate to channel 1600 or whatever to find Rogers and then have to go to Rogers 5 b on 1704. He probably can't even get the TV and the box on. In 85 Grandpa just had to turn on a mechanical switch Wednesday night and turn the knob from 8 (CBC) to 4 (where CTV ussually was).

Also you wouldn't get stats updated daily. I believe every Tuesday the Toronto Star would publish stats for every team... that was an exciting day. If you wanted to know Fred McGriff's on base percentage or Jr. Felix's average you would only get an update once a week.

I personally dislike it when threads like this are moved. I believe in the "invisible hand" theory of threads. Threads that are meaningful will stay near the top. It is off topic... but I don't see anything wrong with an occasional off topic thread... I'm not sure how many people check the off topic forum. However I believe in ownership as well. By contributing as admins a certain group has a degree of ownership over this forum. It is their right to do whatever they see fit to threads. If I don't like it tough luck. I didn't build this place.

Freedom "the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint." I have a business idea that I want to develop. It will make me 4 million dollars in one year. I then want to spend the rest of my life developing some ideas on cancer research that I have. I like money. I want to make a lot of money. I have the skills to do so. I live an extremely frugal life. I can make by working for 10 hours a week. I have a high quality of life mostly reading and thinking. I do not believe in Western medicine and do not want benefits. I have a small business owner that is willing to pay me a small wage and in return he will let me live the simple life I want. Under a socialist system I cannot do these things. To guarantee people a job and a house means you have to take away other freedoms. There is no Utopia. In order to have your vision you have to take away my right to run a small contracting business the way I want. For the greater good... but not for my good. And then I wonder if it is arrogant of you to force your vision of "greater good" on the rest of us.

It's kind of funny... people here take things to literally. Who is Dick Pole even insulting?? Liberals?? Conservative?? Americans?? Democrats?? Republicans?? He's insulting everybody actually. Perhaps making the larger point that none of us have the right to tell Cubans how to live. Many of my far left liberal friends love Cuba and Castro. To them Castro is all that is righteous and good. He is a wise man who gives each Cuban a job, some food, and wonderful health care. Cuba has the highest quality of life. If I point out that lack of financial freedom means lack of choice on how to live your life, if I point out that repression is the only way to achieve Castro's goals my liberal friends say "Olerud363 you are a very bad man, a very bad man to like the free market, you a very bad man" Many of my far "right" friends are actually nothing but coorporate cronyists. They call themselves "libertarians" but there loyalty lies only to the coorporation. If it was up to them (as Dick points out) coorporations would rule Cuba and the farm animals would have more winstrol in their system then Raphael Paileiro and there would be "round up" in the soup. If I argue this my "far right" (phony right) friends say "Olerud363 you are a very bad man, a very bad man to dislike large coorporations, you are a very bad man" Very few actually care about individual freedoms. 49% like big government, 49% like big coorporations, both like a system where man is ruled by large institutions. 2% like freedom and perhaps Dick_Pole is one of the rare ones.

It would be great to add a few more "projected wins". But how?? Keep in mind that a lot of the available moves don't add projected wins. Melky instead of Saunders?? Advanced Stats don't like Melky's defense. Lorie instead of Travis?? From what I have heard the projection systems like Travis. Keep in mind Travis is a .320 minor league hitter with a low k rate. There are not a lot of .320 hitters in the minors. So maybe there is also some advanced analysis going on in the background. The available moves just add to payroll and don't add to much to the win total.

Wilner = Grant?? No. Grant loves Cito. Wilner hates Cito. When did Grant appear?? Maybe as part of keeping his job Rogers forced Wilner to create a fake identity and post love for Cito. I think Grant goes back farther then that though.

There was some weird incident where Rios told a fan off.... I can't remember the details. Plus the Rogers business geniuses were reacting to a slight down turn in profilts and I believe ordered payroll to be cut. It's all part of the never ending cycle...

I looked into it and it seems that Harper actually was drafted 1st overall by the nats. The Blue Jays just did not have a chance to grab him. However did you know that Mike Trout was available when the Blue Jays drafted Chad Jenkins in 2009?? And Troy Tulo was there when they took Romero in 2005?? The blue jays could of easily had Trout and Tulo. All they had to do was draft them instead of crappy pitchers. I blame John Gibbons actually.... He was manager in 2005 and I am sure Gibby thought the Jays needed a pitcher. Riccardi made the pick... I know that. But c'mon. Gibby was in his ear... "C'mon J.P. I need some pitchers... just to get some guys out. It's all about the pitching". I can guarentee you Gibby said that. Then in 2009 Gibby was on his little break... but that annoying whining voice would of still been in J.P.s ear ('cm'on J.P. I need a pitcher). I hate Gibby. I bet we would have Trout and Tulo if it wasn't for that idiot.

Brett Wallace! Grant had the 3rd greatest eye for hitting talent of all time (after Cito and Murph) and guaranteed Wallace would be a star.

It is for sure not Grant. Grant would never admit he was wrong about anything.

It would be interesting to see this happen. I wouldn't be against spotting Goins at short, Reyes at dh occasionally either. Despite giving you a hard time I am rooting for Goins. I don't pretend to know that he'll never hit at all. He could fill the John McDonald role maybe??

Today in Andrew Stoeten news: Andrew Stoeten is now an esteemed writer for the National Post... http://sports.nationalpost.com/2014/12/12/toronto-blue-jays-have-made-big-strides-this-off-season-but-so-have-their-competitors/ However it seems some new poster BlueJaysCC is claiming Andrew Stoeten abused him and kicked him off the Andrew Stoeten forum. Stay tuned... this could be bigger then the Bill Cosby thing. If Andrew Stoeten is truly abusing innocent posters then the National Post will have no choice but to terminate his employment.

You got banned from Stoeten's site?? You will fit right in here. There are threads dedicated solely to compaining about what a f***head Stoeten is.

What forum was that?? You won't get banned here for having a different opinion unless you are a sociopath with 10 accounts. Then you might get banned.

I haven't had those kind of problems with my family... but at "work"... yeah crazy s*** has happened just before christmas several times. I don't know why. Maybe because there are year end deadlines and right around the 20th it becomes apparent no more work is going to get done the rest of the year. As I get older I save my hostility for this message board. It's a good way to blow off some steam. Will Ryan Goins stick?? Probably f***ing not. So go f*** your self Gruber. Not the nicest thing to say to Gruber... but for most people it is probably better to tell off Gruber than their familry or their boss.

Gruber has trouble when it comes to negative numbers.... when told Goins has negative WAR per game Gruber thinks that he'll just make it up by playing more games.

This is hilarious.... you understand that "playing in spurts" doesn't matter?? If he played in spurts for 100 years and amassed 10000 at bats his numbers would still stabilize. There is nothing magical about "playing in spurts". You might have a point that he doesn't have enough playing time yet... but that is the sample size. It would be true if he played 80 games in a row. If a player you didn't like "played in spurts" and played well you'd be the first one to say "league hasn't adjusted to him yet".

Derek Jeter is not that good defensively. Perfect example of a "non-major league short stop" playing short stop because he has a good reputation and bat, same with Jose Reyes. Just saying Toritani may be as good as these guys defensively... but wouldn't hit quite as much... If Reyes or Jeter were to walk up at age 33 or 34 I doubt any one would put them at short stop... a lot of the reason they were there is because of reputation. "Major League Short stop" is a slippery term... it's not black and white. Players need to be evaluate as a whole package.

If he raises his on base percentage from .231 to .250 that's technically more. If he hits .280 in 550 at bats that would be awesome actually... it would help the Jays a lot and this place would go nuts. Gruber - "Bow JFAS and fangraphs before the rule of Gruber. My time will not be brief. Ryan Goins has risen and so have I. Projections and stats are over and most of all the WAR is over and an era of peace, under my 100 year rule, has begun"

I don't think people will pay to vote. I think you need to hire a few of the posters as "beat writers" and "insiders" and "scouts". This is to artificially raise the value of certain players. Maybe give them tweet accoutns. Here some possible blue jays inside tweets. "Blue Jays scouts and insiders still regard Ryan Goins as a valuable asset. "Our analytic guys found a couple of flaws in the formulas. Goins defense is even better than advertised and he had some bad luck on line drives. And of course all our scouts still love him." "Nararo had more rbis and homeruns than Martin. We're not stupid, we know rbis aren't everything. But talk to Joe Madden and he'll tell you about Navarro's effect on the staff in 2008 and 2009. Madden isn't stupid either." "Reyes is like Jeter. The formulas underrate his defense. His leadership is top notch. He missed a few games the last couple of years, but it happens. Happened to Jeter a couple of times. then Jeter came back and led the league in hits at 38... and had the Yankees in playoffs every year until that last injury in the 2012 playoffs. All our guys expect the same from Reyes in his mid to late 30s."

Gruber - New Japanese guy is exactly the same as old Japanese guy (Kawasaki) who needs that crap when we can play Ryan Goins?? Me - Ryan Goins turned out to have negative WAR WardHenke - Bob Ryan says WAR is a piece of crap. I'm shortening and paraphrasing for brevity... but that is pretty much how it went.

It was an incredibly risky trade and would not happen in today's environment. I will probably be fried for this... but it actually didn't gain the blue jays much at all. They won the division by 7, 4 and 5 games or so those years. The transaction gave them about 1.5 wins a year. Wins they didn't need to win the east. If you did that type of trade 10 times you would be burnt 10 times. If you did it 100 times you would win (by a bit) twice. (I mean approximately, I don't know exactly what the numbers are). Alomar and Carter hit important homeruns in the post season. If we could do the experiment over 20 times it would be interesting. But wait a minute we have... presumably the same type of thinking that was applied to the Alomar/Carter trade was applied over and over again by the Beest (not directly by him, but indirectly by who he chose to hire for manager/gm/scouts)... And we didn't win one thing after 1993.

Maybe they post on this board Cito = Gruber92 and/or oldskool (or whatever he has become) Beeston = Moogy (who has been missing lately??)

I actually agree with Bob Ryan to a point. WAR is not gospel. Even in calculating WAR there are assumptions and approximations. WAR is a form of machine intelligence. It is trying to translate human thinking into 1 number. Trout vs. Cabrera 2012 is a perfect example. The Trout crowd would say - They were almost even as hitters, but Trout played a good center field vs. Cabrerra a bad third base. Trout was 49-5 as a base stealer. Trout played in a tougher hitters park. WAR just translates that thinking to a number. And it seems like sound thinking to me. I mean people will think Ryan Goins can make up for a .270 on base percentage with defense, "little things", and grit. But they don't think Trout can edge Cabrera based on the same?