Tiger337

7 hours ago, Archie said:

Cortez's personality and thoughts are too ugly to offset anything physically.

She doesn't have beautiful thoughts like MTG.  

3 hours ago, John_Brian_K said:

It is based on some theory that where in the roll the current card is at, not necessarily the game itself, but how many are left in the roll.  

That sounds really far fetched.  

1 hour ago, John_Brian_K said:

I do not buy them, but I have read about this and it does matter.  At least a little.  I know you are a stat guy so you should appreciate it.

It matters in that you might have a .05% better chance of winning on one card than another.  If they know which card gives them the best chance though, they should be buying 10 of that card and not that one of that card plus 9 inferior cards.  

It's not surprising that it is so rare for a team to win back to back championships in baseball.  Due to the randomness in baseball results, it is mathematically very unlikely that a team that makes the playoffs two years will win both years.  If we assume 100% randomness, it's less than a 2% chance.  It's probably not 100% random, so maybe a 5% chance.  And of course, a team has to actually make the playoffs twice in order to have any chance of repeating.  

I put the eight finalists through a random number generator and came up with Los Angeles and Houston.  Houston is winning it all.  

I thought this was going to be a thread about the MLB post-season.  

3 hours ago, Jim Cowan said:

I went to the inconvenience store yesterday, there was one other customer, redeeming a big pile of tickets.  I waited a minute, and then walked out.  Lottery tickets are a big peeve.

I hate when they purchase 10 tickets and instead of buying 10 of the same type they have to buy 10 different tickets.  They choose deliberately like what ticket they buy makes a difference.  

On 10/19/2021 at 8:08 PM, Archie said:

Trump was actually a democrat at one time.  

And he'd be one again if it was to his personal advantage in any way.  

28 minutes ago, Jim Cowan said:

I just buy the index.  Over time it is a low second quartile performer compared to other equity mutual funds, with minimal fees.

Watch out for your bonds.  If interst rates go up, which seems likely, your bond fund goes down.  A lot of "financial advisors" don't seem to know that.  They just remember that risk hierarchy in their textbook, bonds are "less risky".

The problem is stocks usually take a dive too when interest rates go up.  

On 10/15/2021 at 1:26 PM, Motown Bombers said:

Decided to bring the investing thread over to this forum since I started my first foray into investing. I'm pretty low risk and conservative when it comes to investing. I opened up a managed investment account and started buying some individual stocks. The first stock I bought of course was a weed company. Next I bought Merck since they make the dewormer everyone is taking.  All told I spent only $500 on individual stocks. So far they have collectively lost $0.50 and it's still bothering me. I probably won't spend much more on individual stocks and spend more on my managed account since I don't want to get in over my head. I'll leave it to the experts to chime in with their investing advice. 

I bought a tiny bit of Merck about 25 years ago just for fun and never sold it.  Although still tiny, It has grown immensely.  Other than that, I have invested almost entirely in mutual funds.  It's probably less fun, but it feels safer and more practical than investing in individual stocks.  

1 minute ago, Useful Idiot said:

The Giants peaked too soon...lol!

They didn't want it enough.  

27 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

I wonder if there can be such a thing. The team with the best record went out in the 1st round.

And there is still a wildcard remaining.  It is not 100% random, but there is enough randomness to make the outcomes practically meaningless beyond entertainment value.  

2 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

It all comes down to how good these young players are. If they add to the 3 positions Avila has committed to: SS, C, SP with players who are at least moderate improvements, then I would say the remaining projection (and injury!) uncertainty for Mize, Skubal, Manning, Greene and Torkelson and Baddoo is easily the difference between contending and 500 next season. Of course it is still unlikely they all become stars, but they they still hold out the possibility, and for the team to even have that chance is a really nice change.

Yes, It always comes down to the players!  I like that we can dream again.    

I don't think this year's improvement is as anomalous as people are saying.  They finished 77-85.  It is not uncommon for previously poor teams to make that kind of jump especially with an infusion of young players.   What I do I like is the apparent new direction of the franchise in terms of management, coaching and analytics.

19 hours ago, diaspora04 said:

I wonder whether catchers have shorter or earlier primes than they would otherwise have due to wear and tear.

This article is old, but it indicates that catchers tend to peak at the same age as players at other positions.  

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/569/catcher-career-paths-do-they-peak-later/

1 minute ago, SoCalTiger said:

I think Al will definitely add a catcher and probably even pay some money to do so. Gomes, Barnhart , Pina , Perez or similar. We need someone very competent to handle our young pitching even if they do not hit much. I also don't know if we can rely on Rogers bat nor is it a given his arm will recover after Tommy John surgery. The results are good but no guarantee.  And yes we should "go for it " in 2022. damn straight we should !!!

Avila said he would add a catcher and he also does what he says he's going to do even if we don't necessarily like his choices.  

16 hours ago, BringBackLou said:

I'd have to actually post more than once every decade to get initials though 🙂

BBL=Be Back Later

I have gone to sleep before every night playoff game has ended.  

Speaking of gambling:

https://www.golfdigest.com/story/report-details-criminal-record-of-james-adducci-the-gambler-who-won-dollar12-million-on-tiger-woods-masters-victory

That's not him though.  Our Jim Adduci would never allow himself to be caught.    

1 minute ago, gehringer_2 said:

yeah fantasy is big. I have no sense of who gambles or how much. There are obviously a ton of folks spending a lot of money trying to attract them so someone thinks it's a big market, but who knows how many of them will survive to recoup their advertising investment?

Addiction markets usually do well.  

41 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

It's been three rounds  - 5/7/7-  for a long time now hasn't it? As long as they keep each series to 2 travel days it can't really get any shorter. I guess the play in game adds a day?

It is too long - I don't doubt that if they add another round they might well cross the point of decreasing returns on viewership.

Yeah, it's been this way for a while, but now I'm a grumpy old man, so I complain about it.  As for viewership, I think young fans follow sports differently today.  They gamble on games or play fantasy sports jumping from game to game or watching highlights on twitter.  So, I don't know than an extra round will affect viewership.  We'll see.     

35 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Pass on Maldonado. He can go be a 35-year-old sub-replacement catcher on someone else's roster.

Bonus: he's 1-for-24 with nine strikeouts in the playoffs for the Astros.

More importantly, of course, he had a 58 OPS+ this year and 73 lifetime.  

47 minutes ago, IdahoBert said:

I just want the postseason to be over so the wheeling and dealing can begin. The postseason for me is an unwanted interruption of our Sherman‘s march to the sea. 

I don't like the post-season because it has gotten too long and the whole thing just seems meaningless.  The Red Sox and Braves will probably make the World Series because they got hot at the right time.  The media will claim that they won because they wanted it more or they play the game right or some kind of silly narrative.  It's fun if the Tigers are in it.  If the Tigers sneak in with 88 wins and then win the World Series, it will be entertaining, but it won't feel like a true championship like 68 or 84.  

20 minutes ago, Archie said:

I'm still surprised Trump made it through the primary.  I beleive Clinton and Biden were more the choice of the democrat party seeing how and when some of their competition dropped out.  

One could argue that Trump was the choice of the media as they haven't stopped talking about him for five years.  They have enriched each other greatly.  

18 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

I agree with this.  You could argue that their have been worse human beings in the history of the world, but it would be hard to argue that there have been bigger douchebags.  

 

There*   I hate not being able to edit.  😃