Dan Gould

Hey Al, the Rangers are out of the Gagne sweepstakes ... and he might actually accept the Red Sox arbitration offer! I'd never have guessed that he'd not pick somewhere to be closer but maybe he's interested in winning another ring (who would have ever imagined that you'd hear that from me? ). Assuming that there was no physical issue in the last two months of the season, I actually believe that Gagne would be a strong addition to the set-up crew and sometime substitute for Paps. He basically had very similar numbers in terms of strikeout rate and walk rate when he was with Boston - it was his batting average on balls in play that skyrocketed. That's a stat that tends to fluctuate; when it gets well over .300 you can pretty much bet that its going to come back down, unless the guy is completely cooked, and he didn't look cooked with the Rangers. My guess is that Boras is using this threat to try to get something done with another team but time is running out and we should know something soon. Accepting arbitration means that he can't get a salary more than 20% less than the 6 million he made last year, and he doesn't have a no-trade clause either. So in fact the Sox could trade him - and probably get a mid-level prospect or two - or release him in spring training and be responsible for 1/6th of his salary. The way I look at is that since his poor finish left him a type "B" free agent, what is more valuable? A second round draft pick or a year of Gagne? I'd be inclined to say that a year of Gagne is less of a crapshoot than a second round draft pick.

A few observations: Chris, you like to pull out the "I don't know who or what you are" card whenever someone who doesn't use their full name as their handle calls you on something. But have you considered the fact that anyone who hasn't been here for a long time wouldn't necessarily know who "Christiern" is? It is equally 'anonymous' as "couw" (which happens to be a shortening of John's surname and rather similar to your use of your given name). I think John is spot on that Chris likes to step in and make known his view of certain people - whether its germane to the discussion or not. He could have simply said "your thread make me think of Peter Nero but I guess that won't help you with your software problem" and leave it at that but instead you felt a need to deliver a zinger to someone who isn't even here and probably wouldn't care less. What's the point? You insist you aren't bitter yet John is hardly the first one to make the accusation, so maybe, just maybe, if you don't feel bitter about anyone you've known in the music industry, you do give off that vibe sometimes. And I think that comes back to what I think should be a lesson from this week's events: maybe its time to try to make the board a little kinder and gentler (sorry in advance for bringing in a 20 year old political slogan). That doesn't mean a lack of candor in the exchange of ideas, but how about not taking potshots at someone when they aren't even involved in the point of discussion?

In the FAQs on the site, it makes it clear that it would take something pretty big to reduce the minimum payment below $25. Can't remember the exact wording but if you go to the site and click on the FAQ link, you can find it.

I actually thought about deleting the thread but figured I should leave it out there in case anyone else ever makes the same stupid mistake and goes looking for help. The rest of your comment, John, is something that I think people really should ponder for a while.

Its all alleged - in these types of class action suits, companies make an agreement to settle while denying all claims because it is cheaper than defending themselves in court and risking an adverse judgment. The allegation is that they "set and conceal fees, typically 1-3% on foreign transactions, and that Visa and Mastercard inflated their base exchange rates before applying these fees ... in violation of state and federal anti-trust laws and consumer protection laws".

A little surprising that Michael doesn't know that the performance of "Tippin'" came out on the CD I linked to above ... but regardless, I'm really looking forward to hearing this, and also to see what Wolf photo they use to create a Reid Miles-like cover. And its sad to hear that Louis Smith had a stroke and stopped playing. His last couple of recordings for Steeplechase have some fine straightahead playing, easily recommended.

The thing I always focus on is it makes sense to accept the terms of any of these proposed settlements because you won't get anything unless you opt out and pursue your own claim - and who has the time and money to do that? As to your specific question - its answered on the inner page of what you received. Its a lot more than $25. Having gone to the website, its clear that you'd be running a risk if you tried to claim a larger settlement than your purchases support, because all claims may be audited. Better to just accept the $25 if that's what you're entitled to.

Got something interesting in the mail today, I'd expect others will have received it too or can expect to soon. Seems that there was a class action suit against Master Card, Visa, Diner's Club, etc. alleging that they conspired to hide fees and jack up exchange rates on US customers using their cards abroad over a ten year period. Now, I've yet to have the opportunity to leave the U.S. but I have nabbed some CDs and LPs fromUK and French online stores, so I guess that is why I got the notification of the proposed settlement. $350 million, give or take, available, and three different ways to file a claim: The "easy" refund simply accepts $25 to cover all potential claims. Since I probably haven't spent more than $100 in online purchases overseas, this is a great deal for me. The other two options are designed for people who spent a significant amount of time overseas during the period. One is an "total estimated refund" and will amount to no more than 1% of estimated foreign transactions. Last is the "Annual Estimated" refund for corporate accounts and those who really spent a lot of time overseas. Now that I think about it, what is to stop someone who logically should accept the $25 "easy" refund from answering the handful of questions for the second option? If you pump up a claim for a large amount of money spent overseas but don't have to document it, surely that 1% of "estimated" foreign transactions will exceed the $25. I imagine a lot of people here should be getting their notifications.

Man I hope that doesn't get pushed back. It will be my number one request for Valentine's Day. Well, maybe not number one ...

One track from this concert showed up on this disc: so I am very interested if the complete concert is coming out.

And whatever you say about such statistical analysis - nonsense, fool's gold, or sheer brilliance - Baseball Prospectus "PECOTA" projection last year for the White Sox roster as a whole was 72-92 - exactly what their W-L record was. In other words, these new-fangled way of looking at things can't be dismissed out of hand. You may be right about the usefulness of various new fangled stats, but let's be clear about one thing. Demonstrating that one PECOTA projection was exactly correct should not be taken as compelling evidence of anything. This just shows that the prediction was exactly correct once. Someone guessing records, or throwing darts at a dartboard, or spinning the wheel of fortune, or letting their dog choose which tree to approach will get lucky and be correct from time to time. I'm not arguing that these stats are BS. I don't know if they are or not--occaisionally I have the inclination, but never the time, to read some of this stuff. You obviously spend more time with it. What website material (that doesn't require $ or a secret handshake) would you recommend for reading about some of this stuff? Patrick, I know you're right of course, I just decided to throw that one up there, as I was kind of impressed that cumulative individual stats resulted in a correct prediction over a 162 game season. The funny thing is that while I've tried to learn some things about these stats, I am by no means dedicated to them, or interested enough to have gone looking for websites - free or not - that cover them in huge detail. I've generally just tried to soak up the information I come across, because as time goes by, its these kinds of statistical evaluations that are going to carry the day when GMs make decisions. Not exclusively, of course - but they are getting there. As an example, here is a post from the Fire Joe Morgan website. Those folks use all of the new-fangled stats, some of which are too involved for me. But check this out:

Baseball Prospectus is dedicated to advanced statistical analysis, so to expect someone who writes for the site not to use WARP is foolish. Having said that, you need to understand some things about the statistic in question. Number one, "Replacement Player" is defined as how a scrub would perform. Its a AAAA player asked to perform full-time, a fourth outfielder journeyman who never amounted to squat. I am not sure what I think that "Replacement Player" is formally defined as about the 20th percentile performance of all players at a particular position. Now, having said that, all that you need to know about WARP is that in order to get "wins" you first have to calculate how many runs a particular player produces above that mythical replacement player, and then relate runs to wins. That is, let's say, for every five runs produced, a "win" is produced. Its somewhat similar to Bill James' "win shares". An alternative statistic is "VORP" which is Value over Replacement Player". It eliminates the rather tenuous and arbitrary extra step of calculating "wins". Understand too that, iirc, VORP and WARP are league and ball-park independent, so no player gets an advantage from playing in a band box like in Philly or disadvantaged by a huge park like Petco. So having said all that, this is the bottom line: Jones has been one of the very best centerfielders in the game, he is only 30 years old and it is more likely that last year was simply a bad year rather than the start of his decline phase. It makes perfect sense, given all of the facts, to expect that the Dodgers have locked up the final prime years of a future hall of famer, while having no financial obligation into his over-paid, under-performing decline phase. That is indeed a "great" signing. And whatever you say about such statistical analysis - nonsense, fool's gold, or sheer brilliance - Baseball Prospectus "PECOTA" projection last year for the White Sox roster as a whole was 72-92 - exactly what their W-L record was. In other words, these new-fangled way of looking at things can't be dismissed out of hand.

I'm not the only one who doesn't think this is a bad deal. Joe Sheehan of Baseball Prospectus thinks its the "best deal of the winter": http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/base...ones/index.html

I was going to say "but of course" but I decided to grab another disc and extract with Goldwave - and what do I discover? Somehow I must have clicked the slider just a hair, and I extracted them at 24 bit. You are the man, John! Thanks a lot even if I now feel like

I have no doubt that my exploration will continue in the blues/R&B realm. As MG knows, I have recently discovered, and been blown away by, Junior Parker. I've now got several more of his later-era LPs en route, and after the holidays, I expect that I'll continue to search out other recordings, unless the near-impossible happens and I decide that his Groove Merchant era wasn't all that great. Aside from that, I plan - or at least hope - to cut way back on any additional purchases. I need to begin to explore last Christmas' gift to myself, which was the complete set of "Blues Collection" CDs. While I've already discovered a lot of the artists that were included, there are plenty I haven't encountered yet and its time that I dive into that set.

Very suddenly I have weird things going on with my Nero burning program. Since I sometimes like to edit the audio before burning, and because it seems to take less time if the audio is on the hard drive than on a disc in the DVD drive, I usually use Goldwave to extract CDA files into WAV files. I did this yesterday in preparation for producing a compilation of Junior Parker tunes. Well, out of the blue, Nero will no longer add these files when I try to set up the disc for burning. The error message it gives is: At first I thought that maybe the problem was my having saved the files with the full title instead of "track 1" "track 2" etc. But even the ones that I left with their cda file name gives me the same error message. I've gone to the Nero website and while there are plug-ins for MP3 things and crap like that, I can find nothing that suggests a plug-in for this heretofore never seen "problem". I am wondering if its a Goldwave problem - but the fact is that Nero sees the files as wav, it just refuses to include them as burn-ready files. In fact, I used the 'batch' option in Goldwave to encode these as mp3s - and Nero had no problem adding the MP3 files! I thought maybe being a wav file was the problem - but the LP tracks that I dumped into the PC and edited are also recognized as proper music files for burning. So what the heck is going on here?? Does anyone have any ideas what I can do? Its not a critical problem because Nero is allowing me to add files from a disc in the DVD drive, but its very disconcerting to have your CD burning program not recognize certain wav files as acceptable formats. Any advice is appreciated!

Couple of things to note: Its a super-short contract at only two years. Andruw ought to be very motivated to perform and then cash in for real in two years. Plus, at two years, if things aren't working out (LA is a bit tough on righty power hitters, more so than Atlanta is), he should be easier to move to a contender who needs a bat but wouldn't want to commit to a long-term/big bucks obligation. I actually think this is a pretty intelligently crafted deal, though certainly a tad more dollars than I'd have offered.

According to the Globe, Theo has left the building (I mean, Nashville) without a deal for Santana. In the end, I think its very obvious that the Twins have an expectation of what Santana should be worth in trade and that neither the Yankees nor the Red Sox ever offered what was required to move a 29 year old, two-time Cy Young winner. Plus it remains early in the process - one of those two teams or another big market team could decide to sweeten the pot in the future. The Twins still have time to make the decision they think is best, including keeping him for the 2008 season or hoping he'll approve a waiver-deadline trade if the Twins aren't competitive. Its real interesting though that both the Sox and the Yankees have stuck to their guns in refusing to give in on their prospects. Certainly a year or three ago, both teams would have probably made much bigger offers in order to land Santana. And I'm sure that if the Sox had another down season instead of winning the Series, they'd have made the offer the Twins wanted, and gone all out to sign Santana, regardless of the cost.

Having just finished wrapping the first gifts of the season - its a little early but I wanted to get them shipped out - I am curious the "wrapping style" of Organissimo folks. Do you obsess on making as perfect a wrapping job as possible, with clean corners, and perfectly straight lines? Or are you like me, who does what he can to make the package look OK but if he screws up a side and mash it in to make the corner look OK, who cares? Its all going to be in a ripped up pile on the floor anyway! Of course, on the other hand, if I was a little more careful with my wrapping attempts, I might not screw up the size of the sheet of paper quite so often.

Archive!!!! Anything can happen (server failures, etc)! I know that Jim already has the info, but it might be useful for him to have this particular list (now 79), so I could simply hand it over to him. If I get approval from list people, I am open to any protected disposition--give me guidance, Organistas. I didn't even bother to try to protect my email by using [at] instead of @, so do with it what you wish, Chris.

Despite Jim's pleas, I hope that between the checks that are in the mail and a few more days of paypal contributions, we can cover two full years of board expenses. My check won't do it, but I'm still putting it in the mail this AM.

Yeah, and no player chooses "very very short-term" over "very very long-term" cuz no one wants long-term security, right? What a joke Boras has become. Or maybe the "very very long-term" offers were for like a million a year. You know, 100 year, 100 million. take it or leave it.

Someone explain to me why he is making a stand over something that with three clicks, he can eliminate from view forever.

Let me add one more thing: Goodspeak bitches that I am refusing to abide by Jim's directives. Yet what is it that Jim said: Use the ignore function I am doing that; he can't seem to manage it himself. He now says that if he can change the settings to not see my avatar, he would do so. So here is the only message I will ever direct to Goodspeak: Click My Controls Click Board Settings (on the left column) Change Do you wish to view members avatars when reading topics? to "no" Done and done.

Now that someone has quoted Goodspeak's posts, I know now what his problem is. As I stated, he has been placed on the Ignore list. He also sent me two PMs, I moved to block his PMs before opening them. IMHO, his complaint, and apocalyptic threats, have no validity whatsoever. I will change my avatar, if and only if, Jim Alfredson asks me to do so. There has been a solution from the start - change your board settings to make avatars not visible - yet Goodspeak refuses to avail himself of this option. I like this avatar a great deal - and it has nothing to do with whether or not it continues to piss him off. I like it as a reminder to myself that whatever instinct I may have to "go medieval" on someone on this board, its really a bit silly to fly off the handle like that. I see myself in that gif of the angry, crazy person battering himself into oblivion over something he sees in the pixels. In short, that avatar serves as a reminder to me that there is no reason to post bitter hateful things. It reminds me of what I used to be, and why I intend to change. I intend to change - but the avatar stays.