Yardbarker: Gary Sheffield

Best Waiver Wire Fantasy Baseball Picks Ups from around the web - Week 14

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:33:15 -0500

Should you give Billy Butler another chance? Check out week 14's most recommended waiver wire pickups from the Hardball Times, Yahoo! Sports, CBS Sports and FFToolbox.com

Fantasy Baseball Five Questions: AL East

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 08:53:46 -0500

The Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees have long been known for their fantasy value, but in a year when they're not living up to the hype, the three other AL East teams are picking it up. Screaming Sports' Phil Yoon answers five questions in regards to the fantasy value of the AL East.

Welcome To MGoBlog 3.0

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 02:49:29 -0500

HELLO! New digs over here, but why do you care? This thing now runs on Drupal, a content management system that's designed to facilitate multi-user sites. It has many, many features, like:

Comment improvements. No more 300-comment threads full of drive-bys, first posters, and several people talking back and forth at each other without any guidance as to just what the hell is going on.

The new comments:

Can be restricted to registered users. I'm going to leave it open for a while to see how it goes, but if things get too annoying I'll lock out unregistered comments.
Prohibit handle-jacking. All unregistered commenters post as 'Anonymous Coward.'
Are more fuctional. A WYSIWIG editor allows you to bold, italicize, link, bullet, and indent without having to know any HTML.
Are local. This should allow them to be searched for in the future, and you can always find a user's entire comment ouevre on his user page.
Can be threaded or collapsed as you please.

Diaries. There is a species of Michigan blog akin to the mayfly. Inspired by this, that, or the other, a reader gets the idea he'll add his voice to the Michigan blogosphere, puts up a couple good posts, and then disappears once the overwhelming feeling of talking to himself is just too much.

These are invariably sad occurrences. Other times people just email me cool stuff, or leave excellent comments that really deserve a wider audience. When I miss these, they die on the vine.

Now registered users can maintain their own section of the site, where they can post whatever they want. SBNation calls these "FanPosts" and they're usually sparse and a little sad; DailyKos calls them "diaries" and there are frickin' millions of them. In any case, the idea is the same: post what you want. The tabbed section at the top of the right sidebar will track and link to various posts that are either new, popular, or "hot" -- commented on lots. If something is really good I might bump it to the front page, and if there's enough quality in that section there will be a regular (weekly? biweekly?) roundup.

Better organization. The old site's sidebar creaked ominously under the extreme pressure of thousands upon thousands of sidebar sections, links, and other cruft. Here, the really important site-usability stuff has migrated up into the navigation bar you see right below the banner, and the piles of links have migrated into flyout menus so that they don't take up too much screenspace when you're not looking for a Purdue blog.

A message board. Drupal comes with out-of-the-box message board software. It kind of sucks, but it works. I plan on doing something about it later, but for now there is a board, and it won't have any porn spam. Probably. It will remain a single board until such time as excessive off topic traffic drives people nuts, at which point there will be a schism.

The message board should be the place all OT talk goes. At some point the comments section exploded into an unmanageable mess and I stopped reading it because there were 500-800 comments every day, many of them about Gary Sheffield. I want to read the comments as long as they're relevant, and they will be relevant henceforth: offtopic posts are strongly discouraged and are subject to capricious deletion.

The future!

But that's not all, folks. Drupal is like a camel: if you beat it enough, it will take you anywhere. When I can find time (read: in January at the earliest), I plan on undertaking various other projects:

A recruiting wiki. Scouring the earth for every piece of information available on the dozens of kids Michigan recruits every year is a task that one man will necessarily leave incomplete. You can see evidence for yourself whenever Varsity Blue updates its recruiting board with 50% stuff I've never seen.

User-submitted photo galleries. Like diaries.

A Bittorrent tracker. Maybe. MGoVideo is up and has a good community around it, but I can't help but think it could be significantly larger and more comprehensive if it was part of this site.

Subscriptions. MGoBlog is and will always be totally free, but some people have expressed such enormous irritation with the banner ads -- though I do try to keep them under control -- that they'd prefer to buy their way out of them. I would love to provide this capability, and once certain add-ons provide versions for Drupal 6, I'll try to get it going.

User points. A big part of organizing a lot of information is providing ways for users to self-moderate the site; I hope to provide incentives for that.

Anything you can think of. I am open to suggestions.

One final item.

I've just hurled together an enormous amount of stuff labeled "beta" or even "alpha" and tested it... somewhat. There will no doubt be bugs. If there are, please email me and I'll get on it. Email me about bugs. Email about bugs.

Send email if there are bugs. Dey tik er jeeeh.

Contagious oblique spasms land Ordonez on DL

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 21:29:52 -0500

Magglio Ordonez hits the disabled list with oblique issues. He joins Gary Sheffield and Brandon Inge to become the 3rd Tiger forced out of action by oblique issues. Whether this is a random clustering of bad luck, or an issue with the training regimen remains to be seen. Given that the Javair [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Contagious oblique spasms land Ordonez on DL", url: "http://www.detroittigersweblog.com/2008/06/contagious-oblique-spasms-land-ordonez-on-dl/" });

MLB Fantasy Busts of the Year

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 08:27:33 -0500

With the baseball season approaching the midway point, Screaming Sports' Andrew Thibodeau has decided to take a look back on the first half busts. With their offseason hype in mind, Andrew runs down a six-player list of the biggest letdowns.

I will not title this post "Shef is cooking"

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:53:22 -0500

So maybe adding Gary Sheffield to the lineup won't disrupt chemistry. Maybe the winning streak coinciding with Sheffield on the DL was coincidence and maybe he isn't a cancer. And just maybe, the guy can still play. I was amazed at the number of people who thought there was causation in that Sheffield being [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "I will not title this post "Shef is cooking"", url: "http://www.detroittigersweblog.com/2008/06/i-will-not-title-this-post-shef-is-cooking/" });

I will not title this post "Shef is cooking"

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:53:22 -0500

Return of the Outfielders

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:40:39 -0500

Josh Willingham, Eric Byrnes, and Gary Sheffield all have returned from lengthy injury absences. Here is their fantasy outlook for the rest of the season.

MLB Injury Extra: Replacements (Week 13)

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 09:06:39 -0500

Screaming Sports' Drew Thibodeau breaks out another Screaming Sports original. With so many valuable fantasy studs going down with injury, Drew decided it was time to take a look at several replacements. So if you're one of the many fantasy GM's who have been ravaged by injury, then this piece is exactly what the doctor ordered.

Fantasy Baseball Five Questions: Injuries

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:56:27 -0500

Injuries are what make fantasy sports so unpredictable. You could easily have the best draft in your respective league, but when players like Erik Bedard and Big Papi go down, it's nothing more than a crapshoot from there. Screaming Sports' Phil Yoon examines five impact injuries and what lay ahead for those players.

Yankees injury round up

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:46:21 -0500

Numerous injuries and returns to talk about when it comes to the New York Yankees. Two key players (Hideki Matsui and Johnny Damon) have some nagging injuries, while two young prospects (J.B. Cox and Humberto Sanchez) make their returns.

Pujols Set to Return for Cardinals

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 23:41:40 -0500

Albert Pujols is now expected to be activated from the disabled list when first eligible Thursday. The All-Star worked out prior to the Cardinals game Tuesday in Detroit, taking batting practice and running the bases. Perhaps the good news inspired the Cards'. Brian Barton, Skip Schumaker and Brendan Ryan led St. Louis to an 8-4 win over Detroit on Tuesday night.

Please retire Gary Sheffield

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:14:59 -0500

For the love of God Gary, will you just retire and end these shenanigans. You're going to do a lot more harm than good. And really, the only reason you're sticking around is because Jim "I can't manage a bullpen" Leyland gets on his knees for you.

Sheffield activated?

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:46:56 -0500

There's been no official word from the Tigers yet, but it appears that Gary Sheffield is Detroit bound. According to the Lakeland Ledger, Sunday's game was Sheffield's last rehab outing and he left to join the team. During Sheffield's rehab stint he only had 2 hits, both homers, in 13 at-bats. And [...]

Sheffield activated?

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:46:56 -0500