No way. You can't have a 2B and 3B as shitty as theirs and compete. Moreover, Hanley Ramirez is a shell of himself at this point. 3/4 of that infield is barely above replacement level.

The Dodgers are run like the 2008-2012 Red Sox and they'll get the same results.

I always love it when non-bowlers try to argue about bowling. If you actually knew anything about the sport of bowling you would know that the analogy is spot on. When you bowl in a league you are bowling on a pair of lanes instead of a single lane, and you've got 9 other bowlers throwing their balls in roughly the same area on the lanes.

Just the fact that you are bowling on two lanes instead of one makes it a lot more difficult because you almost always have to play slightly different angles to the pocket on each lane because the lanes aren't identical. Plus, the 9 other bowlers cause the oil on the lanes to move and break down, so you have to anticipate the changes and make slight adjustments (usually by moving your feet a board or two on the approach and/or a moving your target on the lane a board or two to either the left or the right). When the oil breaks down, the ball hooks more.

So to answer your question, No, the pins don't move. But the oil moves A LOT in league play, and it doesn't really move at all in open play.

Serious question: How can you track the movement of oil?

You can't see it, because the oil is clear and therefore virtually invisible. But when you throw the exact same shot with the exact same speed and the exact same amount of lift over and over but the ball starts to hook more and more, you know the oil has either moved or evaporated. It's called burning out the lanes as the night goes on.

On some nights it's not too bad, especially if the guys on the other team are mostly left-handers or if they're not very good. Somebody throwing a straight ball down the middle of the lane doesn't cause the oil to move around where it matters. But if all 10 bowlers are right-handed, they all throw a big hook, and especially if most of them are throwing bowling balls made of reactive resin (which really soaks up the oil), the angle that you have to play to the pocket changes drastically as the night goes on because your ball starts hooking more and more.

Just follow Donger around.

Oh wait, wrong thread.

Yeah i dont know much about the NL but i assume they have solid SP and a pen? I dont even know their 3b (i assume hanley) but knowing the dodgers id assume if their close they'll try to trade.

Puig is fun to watch though

They've got a nice top 3. Kershaw is obviously elite. Greinke is a good, albeit overrated, pitcher, and Ryu is a solid starter.

Their best reliever (Jansen) doesn't close, and there are a number of low character/malcontent guys on that team (Hanley, Beckett, Kemp) that makes the whole considerably less than the sum of the parts.

This.

Me and my Dad used to bowl a lot, and my Dad's highest game ever was 223. He had that same back-handed release, and got absolutely no ball speed whatsoever. Only times he got high scores was if he was lucky as shit, and he'll even admit it.

There isn't really an easy way. What I usually do is try several different starting positions on the walk-through and then tinker with different angles until I find a good path.

But can he play football...:hmmm:

Maas had one of the most beautiful swings I've ever seen.








so......ummmm.....







yeah.....

All I have is my memory and my reputation as an honest person. It was no big deal, we just went there and bowled. I messed around and recorded my scores for attendance/grades [not score dependent]. I wasn't throwing really high scores and really low ones. Just consistent from low 200s to low 240s skewing to high 220s most of the time. Somewhere in the range of 7 strikes and 3 spares, rare open frames. Only explanation is; I'm left handed so I tread untrod ground, we rarely switched lanes, I'm sure the lane maintenance was minimal, and I just regularly hit the same spot time after time.

No way I'm pinning my entire reputation on so trivial and ancient a bit of information. I just wanted to express some nostalgia at fun times past, not stir up some cyber hornets' nest over something so stupid and incidental.

On the up side, Hootie now has something really juicy to roast me over were I so honored, however remote the chances I rate above the luminaries already enumerated, to still somehow rate in the pantheon of the 101.

I have bowled in leagues, and yes there is a difference both physically and mentally. I also played baseball through college and hardball leagues into my late 30's. The comparison between batting practice and bowling practice as it relates to what you face in a game is quite a stretch of the imagination.

I was in no way trying to compare the difficulty of throwing strikes in bowling with the difficulty of hitting a baseball. When I brought up the whole batting practice analogy, I said nobody cares how many home runs Eric Hosmer hits in batting practice because a home run in batting practice is meaningless. Not because the pitcher is a coach who is grooving his 70 MPH fastball down the middle of the plate. Nobody cares about batting practice home runs because they do not count.

Perhaps a better analogy would be spring training games. Nobody cares that the Royals won the Cactus League with a 25-7 record. The Royals have proven pretty effectively that winning 78% of your games in spring training doesn't mean you are good enough to win 78% of the games that count. Or 70%. Or 60%. Or even 50%.

To get this tread back on track somewhat: Yes, I know Yasiel Puig hit over .500 in spring training, and he's tearing up the National League now. But a lot of guys rake in spring training and suck when the real games start. Mitch Maier used to be spring training MVP every year.

Poor guy just got drilled in the face.


Edit- Look's OK