Boy, I am very much in the minority here. As is well known, I much prefer year-before stats to projections and I really don't like the polls you see at other sites (How Much Time Should Barry Serve In Jail? 1 month, 1 year, 10 years, the rest of his life). Nevertheless, which are the sites that you think have the best interactive, community feel, Mike? I should check them out.

If expansion is the full explanation for the hitting spike in 1961, and I think it was (I don't seriously believe there was a one-year epidemic of performance-enhancing substances), it's not completely clear to me why pitchers were able to reassert themselves so forcefully the following year. Off the top of my head (I am writing without my trusty Total Baseball at my side), it took several years for the pitching brigade to be replenished after later expansions.

Roger Maris wasn't the only one who feasted on expansion in 1961.

It never even occurred to anyone at the time that these folks might have been feasting on something else.

And they probably weren't, since for so many of these players (Jim Gentile also comes to mind), it proved to be a one-year feast.

I like him. I think he's successful so far because he knows what he's doing and trusts his stuff. But that stuff is hittable when things don't go right. He's going to have years where he's as bad as he was last September for two or three months, and have no value--or worse. It's not a big leap from $7 to $10, which may be why I put him at $5 in the Guide.

Any chance you'll address the freeze culture a little more? Bannister's at $10 in a lot of A.L. only leagues, and my money's on him getting kept in almost all of them.

In the short term, it may well be that the best we can do is use the excel/software versions as another way to more easily track changes in bid values, at least on the macro level (that is, to show in an easy way the changes as they happen between the updates in the spring). The comments here are where those can be discussed; and driven, of course, by the comments of the community. I think the exact way this interacts has to be considered an experiment; I worry that if we try to drive it/define it in advance, there's a good chance we'll be wrong.

It only looks like a "funny little swish" on TV. It's one of the most efficient swings I've ever seen in baseball in person.

I think we can think of a few different ways to implement this, but I suspect they all fall under Future Features not in this year's model.

I'd like to see a Projection Line and a Correction module below it, so that in each category the user can adjust the standing projection. Maybe at the end of the day these adjustments would be averaged and a Commmunity Projection would appear, too.

Next year.

I'm not sure if I'm repeating things, but I was wondering if:

a) there can be an audit trail on changed bids and

b) perhaps something like Sickels has at his site with a "community projection" dollar amount. Not sure how you'd do this one, but the blogs out there definitely have a more interactive, community feel, and a feature like this might go a long way.

With a guy like Joba, keeping track of the fluctuations, and of the mood on him, might be useful.

At the tail-end of his career, Gibby started walking people again. Not because his control was regressing to his early years, and certainly not because he was afraid. Because he knew that the age-old chant "A walk is as good as a hit" was a lot of hooey, and all Gibby ever wanted to do was win.

In his 22nd season he fanned more often than he walked, so in disgust he hung them up.

Would the great Sandy Koufax have had an even better career if he had been in a five-man rotation? From the beginning. None of this relief-pitching nonsense. Nonsense that his manager was unable to resist in all but two seasons.

Something else I hadn't noticed until now. His breakthrough season was 1961, a huge hitting year, not just in the AL but in both leagues.

Two years after he retired, the battle between hitters and pitchers was tilted as far towards pitchers as it had ever been. Gibson, Drysdale, Marichal, McLain... what kind of numbers would Koufax have posted at the ripe old age of 32?

If I was in a bar, and had been there long enough, and someone bet me the next round that Bill White didn't drive in 1,000 runs, didn't even come close, I would have paid for the next round (after arguing that he did so come close). Things were different back then.

At least Yogi had the good grace not to pitch in a single game in 19 seasons. But I loathed him too.

Another Yankee who I loathed. You can see why.

Turned out to be the Twins. A nice pickup, I agree. Notably didn't show a platoon split last year (or in 2004 either).

They weren't anemic -- or paltry -- if you were a Yankee hater.

Moose's numbers look positively paltry compared to the last 15 years or so. Or is that anemic?

Speaking of steadily declining SA, according to the Mitchell report, Tejada began taking "performance-enhancing substances" in 2003. Makes 2002 a line worth showing.

Did he take steroids? In his day, he was the only who could consistently hit homers to the opposite field. Drove me crazy.