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and, one more note on barry: when he comes back, expect his numbers to remain consistent with the past. he didn't miss this much time for what was supposed to be a very minor problem. he's not failing to inform his team o any medical progress just because he's an a**hole. he's waiting it out until he can get a masking agent. if bonds returns and plays poorly, it convicts him of steroids. see sammy sosa. he needs to wait it out until his buddies formerly associated with BALCO can get him some better juice.

raffi took stanozolol. it's what ben johnson took that caused his medal to be revoked. it must be taign for 6-8 weeks to be effective. it's typically taken by injection, though it can be taken in pill form (orally increases chances of liver problems). i wonder if palmeiro really didn't realize that the needle sticking into his buttocks contained steroids? also, stanozolol doesn't increase muscle mass as much as other anabolic agents (it still does have muscle-building affects). however, it does prevent injury. in the past ten seasons (including pre-suspension projections for this year), raffi has played over 150 games every time.

it's long, but it's necesary. unless someone prefers to continue delusions about steroids and battign average, this is worth the read (well, i damn well better hope what i wrote is worth reading). bonds was a great player. had he never touched the juice, he was a first ballot hall of famer. if he retired prior to the 2001 season, which is when he likely startign juicing, he'd still be in the hall because he was real close to both 500 steals and 500 homers. but the last 4 years change everything. he cheated. there's no question about it. he admitted to taking steroids. end of discussion. so, he claims he took them accidentally. that doesn't change the fact that he took them (and anyone believing bonds, the man who trusts no one and is incredible cautious with nutrition type things, accidentally took anything is a fool). his continued cheating undoes what he had previously done. it makes it null. if spieldberg's in line for a lifetime achievement award, and then suddenly releases four movies that he stole-pure plagiarism-he's not gonna get that award anymore. continued fraudelence tarnishes and cancels out prior excellence. and don't tell me that steroids don't improve batting average. that plain doesn't make sense. first, with steroids, a player can swing the bat faster because he's stronger. the 37 ounce bat feels 30 ounces-a lot more bat speed. more and better contact results. when someone's using roids, the ball goes farther and faster. faster means it finds the gaps a hell of a lot quicker. a ball that the ss would have been able to get to is already in center field. that's a hti when it shoudl have been an out. that raises the batting average. soft line drives that would be caught easily be an infielder or, if hit further, an of, suddenly become hard liners that blaze past the infielders and hit those outfield gaps long before anyone can reach them. outs become hits. ba goes up. long, high fly balls that would be easily caught by the outfielder now become home runs. again, would-be outs are registered as hits. the batting average rises. with increased bat speed, the player has the luxury of sitting on offspeed pitches. this lets him read it better and make better coontact. additionally, this, along withbeing abel to handle any fastball at one's luxury, leads to fewer strikeouts. fewer strikeouts meaning fewer outs, replaced in many cases by hits. battign average rises. for 13 of his first 15 seasons (i disclude high totals in his rookie year and low totals in the shorteed season), bonds struck out an average of 83.6 times a year. since 2001, that number mysteriously dropped to 59.8. unless you want to believe that bonds suddenly learned plate discipline, this shows that steroids prevent k's (the 2001 season has high total because he was swinging for the record. even with that included, the numbers are still grossly lower). steroids have a large affect on batting average. notice how rarely bonds gets out on soft hits or blooper. notice how his outs tend to be hard grounders hit at fielders or high flies. these would be outs regardless, so steroids doesn't hurt his battign average at all. but by turning many would-be outs into hits, bonds's average is aided by the juice. more evidence: in 15 seasons prior to 2001, bonds hit over .310 only three times, with his best being .336. from 2001 onward, bonds's worst average was .328. he hit .370 once, and over .360 on another occasion. batting average is nto affected by steroids? yea...

they'd trade for one of the many craptastic catchers otu there before puttign inge back there. inge's offense suffered when he caught. he says he expended too much energy behind the plate to hit well.

inge has said he's not a catcher. he doesn't catch anymore, and he has no intentions of returning to the position. when someone (a reporter. not an actual offer) proposed to him just before the asg when pudge had the jammed finger that, if pudge were too hurt to play, inge take pudge's place behidn the plate for the asg, inge said no thanks he doesn't catch.

fielding's overrated. moneyball philosophy. you wind up paying too much for fielding when an exceptional fielder is only gonna save about 17 more runs a year than a crappy one, while an exceptional hitter is gonna score about 70 more than a crappy one. that being said, manny is definitely overpaid. he puts up numbers comparable to guys like a-rod, vlad, abreu, tejada, and others, yet for that kind of money, you need to have at least a little bit of fielding and maybe some speed. and, the king of moneyball, mr. beane, wanted manny out of left and into the dh spot.

marlins aren't gonna make that deal. the only way they would take a package with a pitcher that doesn't help them now is if they can give away lowell and his contract. the only way we're getting burnett is if he signs with us in the off-season.

4.5 games is a lot to be back with three days left in july. i think everyone, even those that believe wholly in the tigers, recognize the impossibility of cachign up to the whitesox. that means, to make the playoffs, the tigers must finish ahead of texas, baltimore, oakland, minnesota, cleveland, and the yankees (idc about toronto). two games over .500 in a month in which we lead the league in hits isn't good. in fact, it's quite bad. going by your "should be" reasoning, we shoudl have won the series against seattle. we should have done more than split the series against kc just after the all star break. for the rest of the season, we play 15 games against teams with less than .500 records. discluding us from that below.500 group (idk why i would do that, but i did), this is the amount of games our wild card competition has against sub-.500 clubs. oakland: 12 baltimore:12 cleveland:20 minnesota:14 yankees: 16 texas:20 three wild card teams have more games against sub .500 clubs than us. i love the tigers. i picked them for 90 wins before the season. i picked them for 86 wins at the beginnign of june. i'm now hoping for 84, and i realize that there's no chance we're gonna get past 6 teams with comparabel schedules and better records.

it's games liek tonight that show why we won't make the playoffs. 9-2 loss to the mariners. the mariners!!! maorth walks 4, hits one, gets hit 5 times, and surrenders 3 earned in his 1 and 2/3 of work. an error on one of the most basic plays scores three. we lost a series to seattle in july. we're one game below .500 in the last week of july. we're not making the playoffs.

so what that he's not a power hitter? what the hell difference does that make. ichiro, pierre, izturis, eckstein, and many others are excellent players that don't hit for power. logan has been called the fastest player in baseball. he has a real nice arm. regardless of what you want to say, he might be our best fielder (check the highlight reels: robbing a couple home runs in some games doesn't qualify as lazy-granted, you did say sometimes). he's made some errors, but he's also made some great plays. he's got a better glove than granderson, who many have tabbed as a corner outfielder. also, logan looks to have dominant leadoff stuff. unfortuneately, he's been slumping bad the last month, but if you dropped a guy when a slumps for a month, then neither inge nor pudge would be playign for us. granderson's great, but keep in mind that he's a call up. he'll be ready next year, but this year is pushing it a little. look at other manager's decisions and compare what's out there. guys like mazzilli, gardenhire, manuel, wedge, and even guillen have made much worse moves more frequently. dy's ops, and his rankings in both contributing categories, is his than that of pudge. ultimately, it means pudge contributes less offensively than dy.

no one will take him. they left the guy on waivers and no one took him. i guess that's what happens when you sign a 2-tool player to a contract worth over 20 million a season.

i still don't think we'll make the playoffs. we have devastating consistency issues. the only time we score runs is when the pitching is truly indomitable and the runs are icing. when we need runs, we either can't score them for our lives, or we score them in the late innings when they have zero consequence since they bring us within 5 of the tie. then we stop scorign at that point. tigers rotation can be unhittable. we have three guys with ERA's below 4. jj's above 4 but is ninth in the al in quality starts. maroth's our only weak spot, yet he compares mroe than favorably to the back end of the twins', a's, and sox's rotations. not to mention mr.5th in k's, second in wins bonderman. the bullpen can be fantastic as farns and rodney will testify to. not to mentioned german and walker. we lead the league in hits for july. yet we can't get the runs across the plate or get timely runs (last night was a wonderful exception). until the team can click on all cylinders all the time, we'll be a .500 club with postseason hopes being nothing than that: hopes.

yea, that was pretty bad. sox are kinda screwed without him. their staff hasn't been anythign worth discussing this season, with wells, wakefield, and miller all posting ERA's higher than mike maroth's. the sox need to get schill back in that rotation.

bonderman=perennial cy young and future HOFer. i just hope we sign him to a long-term deal this year instead of letting him get to arbitration. verlander=him and bonderman coudl potentially finish 1-2 in cy yougn voting for quite some time (unfortuneately, they'll have felix hernandez (or is it rodriguez-mariners prospect), santana, haren, etc.). zumaya-from my understanding, the soonest he'll be here is 2007, but his heat with respectabel command is very promising. sleeth-just had tommy john. no idea how that'll turn out. he might be relegate to pen duties. granderson, inge, monroe-perennial all-stars. infante-seriously? he's hittign .233. he's got the glove, but his bat has been ugly. last year seems liek an apparition, and if last year's his peak, i hate to see his worst.

i agree. he has 5-tool written all over him. great at the plate, he's developing great speed which is making him look like a cf, and he has a cannon.

Percival is retiring after this year.... Curtis Granderson anyone!? it's nto yet certain if percival is retiring. he will try to rest the arm and forego surgery. if he foregoes surgery, then he will attempt to play next season. if he goes for surgery, he will not play next year. the decision is expectedin decemeber. i mentioned granderson as part of our amazing outfield next year. i doubt he'll be an all-star in his first full season simpyl because it will be his first full season.

with inge and bonderman, i think thy should have been on the all-star team simpyl because they had legitimate arguments, and the game was here. bonderman's era was noth of 4 at the time, so i think clement deserved it more on performance, but, given it being in detroit, he should have been on that roster. when i saw hillebrand's name on espn, i was rather taken aback. a lot of guys, including inge and (youck) jeter, were more deserving of that spot.

i think we will win the al central next year. consistency should come with experience. our outfield will eb sick: choose 3 to play daily: logan, monroe, granderson, maggs. maggs-yes. logan, if he's consistent, could be there with damon as the best leadoff man. monroe and granderson both are great. we'll have a wonderful logjam. inge, shelton, guillen (if ever healthy), polanco, maggs, and bonderman will all have great all-star bids. monroe should as well, but, idk why, i'm less confident in his early success. rumors say farns won't sign up with us again. i hope that's not true, because he could be the first automatic closer the tigers have had since willie. i have zero confidence in a percival return to anythign resembling effectiveness. if farns is back, he will close. i don't think pudge will be an all-star. mauerdefinitely makes that team, and i think varitek beats out a rapidly declining pudge. i'd be stunned if white were resigned given our overflow in the outfield. next year: great pen: 7-german, 8-rodney, 9-farns (please). that's the best trio around. that's the best su-close duo around, provided gagne's not back. great rotation: bonderman-cy young contender with 20 w's and 200 k's; robertson-dominating the al as he has this year; verlander-the debut of the best minor league prospect the tigers have had in my lifetime. the 99 mph fastball and knee bucklign curve will own, especially once he gets the confidence that comes with experience and regular mlb play; 4t and 5th-douglass, ledezma, maroth, free agent (jj?)??? regardless, it's a nice back end of the pen. devastatign outfield, rock solid infield. beautiful. granted, i had the same confidence this year. to eva: the only red sock that francona had a say over was clement. the rest were fan-voted.

i don't think we'll make the playoffs. looking at the lineup, there really isn't any position that you could hope for much improvement: shelton's been outstanding, pudge is the third best catcher in baseball, polanco might be the third best al 2b, guillen is fantastic at short (the power's gone because of the knee. he's still got the average), inge, prior to the current slump, was a .300 hitter, as was logan. despite recent failures, dy's one of the better dh's, and maggs and monroe are great out there. our era has been fantastic at times. the problem is consistency. we can't get everythign to work at once. when the offense lights it up, it's trying to make up for a 7 run deficit against kc. when the pitchign is outstanding, the lineup gets shutout by wang. by next season, i think guys lie logan, inge, and bonderman will be less inclined to the slumps or disastrous outings(bonderman's had a couple terribel starts. he's also been untouchable the rest of the time). i don't think tram should be fired. if he had his team healthy all year, they would be over .500. certainly, tram has made some crummy decisions, but if you look as hard at the decisions guys like guillen, gardenhire, and mazzilli have made, you'll see that tram compares favorably. tram's just been down on his luck. keep in mind, though, that this team can taste a winning season, which would be their first in 12 years. tram took over a team that was predestined to have a historically bad season, and he has brought them far (as has the front office and ownership). the team's quite different. new personnel of consequence: shelton, maggs, farnsworth, rodney (dl last year), german (minors last year bc he sucked), polanco, douglass (great in his couple starts-who's a thunkit). the bulkof credit for improvement goes to the front office, time (bonderman and robertson have had important development), and bob cluck. cluck harnesses farns's fastball to make him devastating, helped rodney develop one fo the best chageups around, has aided bondo in his development, and, perhaps most importnatly (up there with farns), gave jj a sinker and slider that have made him solid.