TwistedLogic

This is probably one of the more dumber comments I've read today. It doesn't matter whether or not colored players are "more talented than whites", it's the mere fact that a massive population of incredibly talented people was barred from playing the game to begin with, which significantly limited the kind of competition players like Ruth had to step to. Anybody who played in that era looks less impressive by default, simply because their competition wasn't as good as it could or should have been. It doesn't matter who is a better player between Randy Johnson and Barry Bonds, if Barry Bonds isn't even allowed to play the game. If Randy Johnson never has to face a player like Bonds, his numbers will likely look better than if he regularly has to face him.

No it's not. WAR doesn't take into account that baseball as a sport back then was a joke compared to what it is now. Sure Ruth was head and shoulders above everybody in his time, but he doesn't even dust Bonds' dirty jockstrap. Bonds was head and shoulders above his competition in a game that was countless degrees more difficult to play. It's like trying to argue that some fat child that destroys everybody in little league is comparable to Mike Trout because of how far above his competition he is.

lol, a poll that was just posted on MLBTR received over 700 votes within 5 minutes of being published.

Kristin Kreuk was the only thing good about that hideous Street Fighter movie.

http://www.celebdirtylaundry.com/2012/jennifer-aniston-finally-admits-to-having-cosmetic-plastic-surgery-0223/

Friends was probably my favorite show ever, so after watching reruns a million times, I'd say Courteney Cox, no contest. rjf is right, it's the characters they played that made people so attracted to them. Both their careers after Friends are incredibly unimpressive in my opinion, but Cox was so much hotter on the show. Really, they were both amazing, but Jennifer Aniston was always such an annoying bitch on Friends, lol. I can't stand the f***ing plastic surgery lol, it's so hard to not notice her disgusting fake lips. She was really hot in Horrible Bosses, but it was really noticeable in We're the Millers.

No I think they won them because the WBC is a hot pile of garbage. With wins above replacement. Given that journeyman players that are only really good for triple-A in the states often go to Japan and become good, and very few Japanese players translate well to the majors, I'd say it's more comparable to AAA than it is to the MLB.

Some of the fantasy GM'ing done on this board is so damn dumn.

The Japanese leagues are the highest level? You do realize that a long track record of "dominance" in the Japanese leagues is like having a long track record of dominance in Triple-A, yes? Shorter by 5 innings? So Stroman in his rookie season was as valuable as Tanaka entering his prime?

How unfortunate for Courteney Cox that, at 50 years old, LongTimeReader is now out of her league. Cox in the 90's was a goddess. She was more attractive than Fox could ever dream of being.

http://i3.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article120602.ece/binary/image-1-for-editorial-pics-05-04-2011-gallery-101062414.jpg Yeah, I don't think it's just me. Or is it just me?

Is it just me, or does she look almost exactly like a young Courtney Cox in that picture?

It's probably not the best list you'll see, but Sickels' list is always the one I look most forward to every year. One of the things he said, it's kinda crazy when you think about; Norris can be a top of the rotation arm, Sanchez has even better stuff than Norris, and Hoffman can out-pitch both of them. There's so much potential in this system. I'm going to make an extremely bold prediction here and say that when all is said and done and we're looking back, the Jays will have drafted the two absolute best players in the 2014 draft, in Hoffman and Pentecost. At least among those drafted in the first round.

Except that you voted for Tanaka, who has a grant total of 5.9 more major league innings pitched over Marcus Stroman, is dealing with a fairly serious injury, and is among the highest paid pitchers in the game. If projections for Stroman are almost useless (I should note that I'm not actually agreeing or disagreeing with that point), what exactly makes you prefer Tanaka to him?

Mark McGwire should be in the hall of fame. Unfortunately, there's fourteen other guys on the ballot right now that should be in before him.

My 2015 ballot would read as follows (in order of induction priority; including fWAR and historical rank at primary position): http://i.gyazo.com/3f5e1eb035fffe438342de62083d4d5a.png Snubs: Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, John Smoltz, Larry Walker, Mark McGwire Assuming that Johnson, Pedro and Biggio are inducted in 2015, my 2016 ballot would look like: http://i.gyazo.com/acd30c5332a94c856493a1ae978834cb.png Snubs: Roger Clemens, Trevor Hoffman, Larry Walker, Mark McGwire Assuming Griffey, Smoltz and Piazza are then inducted in 2016, and Trammell runs out of time, 2017 would be something like: http://i.gyazo.com/7e2a4280e025e69e58ddf9bf53882c07.png Snubs: Manny Ramirez, Jim Edmonds

And go here to read up on one of the better hall-related pieces you'll find this year, detailing what is probably the most irrelevant but probably the most significant ballot, drawn up each year by Jay Jaffe, who doesn't yet have an official vote but perennially influences the votes of many others. If Bonds and Clemens ever make it into the hall, it'll probably be in large part because of this guy.

Of the at least 82 writers that have already revealed their ballots to this point, Pedro and Johnson both had been nominated unanimously until this happened. Go here to follow Ryan Thibs' public ballot tracker, where you should find the writer, the source, the nominations, and the Tango score for each of the revealed ballots so far.

Anyone else have a strong feeling that Vince Vaughn is going to deliver the performance of his life on True Detective?

So The Leftovers was a waste of f***ing time.

Tyrion and Jaime are two of the three most prominent Lannisters on the show and neither fit your "power hungry and evil" pigeonhole. Even Cersei is an incredibly deep character. I do agree though, the Hound and Oberyn were great and I think Littlefinger is f***ing brilliant. Probably the most well-constructed character in the TV series. Game of Thrones is a global-scale fantasy epic, it's hard for it to deliver the same deep reflection that a show like True Detective can, the same way that it is virtually impossible for True Detective to deliver the same scope and grandeur of a show like Game of Thrones. If you wanna talk about gratuitous violence and nudity, look at a show like Spartacus. GoT takes a flawed genre and does the best it can with it.

For the entirety of their contracts. If you were the GM of a franchise that is looking at perennial contention and you had your pick of five starting pitchers listed. I thought strongly about leaving Porcello and Archer off the list because I didn't think anyone would vote for them, but decided to leave them up because they were close enough to the rest of the bunch last year. Sure, that's true. But I just feel more wary of a guy that had a strong possibility of TJS and didn't even go through with the surgery. Tanaka and Stroman were equally valuable in the same amount of innings last year, and one is three years younger and didn't just flirt with a serious pitching injury.

If they made the same amount of money though, would you take Tanaka over Stroman? I'm not positive that I would; he's three years older and has some serious injury concerns. I'd be a lot more comfortable if he had just gotten the surgery over with.

Last year the Yankees were telling everyone that they were trying as best as they could to get under the luxury tax threshold, and then they spent 450M on Tanaka, Ellsbury, McCann, Beltran and Kuroda.

Earlier today, I was wondering if Stroman might actually have a claim to being the best starting pitcher in the AL East, and so I thought I'd get some opinions because I feel like it can be a very interesting discussion. The two guys that were head and shoulders above everybody else in the division, Lester (6.1) and Price (6.1), are both gone. The tier below, however, was absolutely packed with several guys very close together, without anyone really separating themselves from the rest of the pack. With Lackey (2.8) gone, Kuroda (3.5) returning to Japan, and Buehrle (3.5) almost guaranteed to regress, the five best names to follow were Stroman, Tanaka, Archer, Porcello and Cobb. Here's how the numbers break down (all stats from FanGraphs): 2014 WAR 3.3 - Marcus Stroman 3.2 - Masahiro Tanaka 3.1 - Chris Archer 3.1 - Rick Porcello 2.7 - Alex Cobb 2014 RA9-WAR 4.0 - Alex Cobb 3.7 - Masahiro Tanaka 3.3 - Rick Porcello 2.7 - Marcus Stroman 2.4 - Chris Archer 2015 Steamer WAR 3.3 - Masahiro Tanaka 3.3 - Marcus Stroman 3.1 - Rick Porcello 2.9 - Alex Cobb 1.8 - Chris Archer 2015 Steamer RA9-WAR 3.5 - Masahiro Tanaka 2.7 - Marcus Stroman 2.7 - Alex Cobb 2.2 - Rick Porcello 1.5 - Chris Archer 2015 Steamer600 WAR 3.4 - Masahiro Tanaka 3.4 - Marcus Stroman 3.2 - Rick Porcello 3.0 - Alex Cobb 2.0 - Chris Archer Taking everything into account (stats, scouting, stadium, salary, service time, Steamer and stints on the DL), who is your favorite starting pitcher going forward in the AL East?