"What do you mean, 'we'? You're not on the team!"

People often seem to think it's witty to criticize a fan for referring to the fan's team as "we" or "us" because the fan isn't on the team. Using "we" or "us" to describe a fan's team is a commonly known figure of speech. Criticizing a fan for using "we" or "us" to describe his/her team is like criticizing someone for saying you drive him/her up the wall because it's gravitationally impossible.

It's not like the fan doesn't know he/she isn't on the team. However, sometimes part of being a fan is deciding what you think is best for a member of your team to do in certain scenarios. Whether a catcher who fields a bunt should go for the force at 2nd or take the easy out at 1st. Whether a manager should hit-and-run. Whether a 3rd base coach should wave in a runner. Whether a GM should trade players X & Y for player Z. Just because you may think about these decisions doesn't mean you actually think you're the guy who's in these scenarios for the Red Sox.

Middle reliever ERA

I highly recommend that people not post ERA (or ERA+ for that matter) to say how good/bad a middle reliever is. It can be very misleading because of inherited runners. If a middle reliever enters a game with men on base, the question of whether or not he prevents the baserunners from scoring doesn't affect his ERA. Also, if the middle reliever leaves a game with runners on base, his ERA is affected by how well the reliever after him pitches, which is out of the control of the middle reliever in question.

I'll give you a couple of points to keep in mind before I explain what I do to counter the issue of a middle reliever's ERA. 1) There's no consensus of what stats should be used for a middle reliever. Different stats have different strengths and weaknesses. 2) I'm no sabermetrician by any means. Fortunately that means the feedback I'll give will be easy to understand and easy to find for a player. I'll also mention stats that are recommended by URISoxFan, who knows way more about stats than I do. If you want to do your own sabermetric research, there are plenty of stats and explanations in the SoSH wiki's Statistical Reference Page.

The two sets of stats I use most often for a middle reliever are:
1) Opponents' AVG/OBP/SLG. Espn.com gives additional breakdowns for this stat like Vs. LHP, Vs. RHP, or by situation: what runners are on what bases and with how many outs. Keep in mind that the more you break these down, the greater the chance you're dealing with SSS (small sample size) because a middle reliever pitches in different situations only so many times per season. Unlike ERA, opponents' AVG/OBP/SLG isn't affected by how well the reliever after the reliever in question pitches.
2) IP, H, BB, K. A weakness is that it doesn't factor singles vs. extra base hits like opponents' SLG does. However, this set of stats gives more specific data than middle relievers' ERA, and it isn't affected by how well the reliever after the reliever in question pitches. It's also more specific than WHIP because it separates hits from walks.

URISoxFan gave me feedback of a middle reliever's stats that he recommends for people who want to use stats that are easy to find and easily understood. They are:
K/9
BB/9
HR/9
Innings/appearance (for usage)
K/BB (for command)

For the very few who might not know, "/9"="per 9 innings pitched".

FWIW, URISoxFan tends not to like using hitters' rates because of their dependence on defense/ballpark/quality of opponent. As I said, different stats have different strengths and weaknesses.

Correct spellings of the commonly misspelled

I'll add to this list if/when I think of more examples. These are correct spellings that are frequently misspelled in SoSH:

Buchholz
Belichick
Teixeira. "ei" twice, unless you're talking about Kanekoa Texeira, who went to the Yankees in the Nick Swisher trade.
Pettitte. "tt" twice.
Piniella. Yes, there's a 2nd "i".
Okajima
Amalie Benjamin
Varitek
Papelbon
Rickey Henderson
Kottaras
Jed Lowrie
Peyton Manning. There's a reason he spelled his first name out loud in the MasterCard commercial where he was getting an autograph from an employee in a supermarket.
Brett Favre
Jimy Williams
Yawkey
Jon Lester. "Jon" doesn't have an "h".
Jon Heyman. Ditto.
Jon Stewart. Ditto.
Mientkiewicz
Abreu. People often include a 2nd "a" in his last name.
Rachael Ray. People often exclude a 2nd "a" in her first name.
Jayson Stark
Barack Obama. People sometimes exclude the 2nd to last letter in the first name.
Michelle Obama. Ditto.
Hillary Clinton. "ll", unlike Hilary Duff or Hilary Swank
Scarlett Johansson
Warren Buffett. Two "t"'s.

Commonly misspelled SoSH usernames:
Cuzittt. One "z", three "t"'s.
Sille Skrub. He's not named after Ellis Burcs.
Wills Eeks. It's not "Willis".
Monbo Jumbo. It's not "Mombo". He's named after Bill Monbouquette.

Straw man argument

Here is how the term "straw man argument" is described in wikipedia. According to Myt1, the term is used incorrectly 9 out of 10 times on SoSH. You can be the judge of whether that's a straw man argument itself.

Rickey Henderson/John Olerud/batting helmet

Many baseball announcers continue to mention this one as though it's true. To give credit where it's due, I thought this was true until 2007 when I overheard URISoxFan mention that it's his favorite urban legend. This is explained here.

Another Rickey story. When he hooked up with the Seattle Mariners last year, Rickey is said to have approached John Olerud, who had once suffered a brain aneurysm, and asked about his unusual practice of wearing a batting helmet in the field. Henderson says, "I used to play with a dude in New York who did the same thing."

"That was me," said Olerud, who was Henderson's teammate with both the Mets and the Blue Jays. Good story. Widely reported. And completely untrue -- concocted by a visiting player who had run out of hot-foot victims.

Dan Duquette's "twilight" quote about Clemens

I'm not a fan of Dan Duquette. However, contrary to popular belief, he never said that he didn't re-sign Clemens because Clemens was in the twilight of his career. This urban legend was a classic case of the media taking a quote out of context. It used to be explained in the SoSH wiki but it's still explained in this reference to a 12/14/96 Boston Herald article by Michael Silverman:

 "The Red Sox and our fans were fortunate to see Roger Clemens play in his prime and we had hoped to keep him in Boston during the twilight of his career. We just want to let the fans know that we worked extremely hard to sign Roger Clemens. . . . We made him a substantial, competitive offer, by far the most money ever offered to a player in the history of the Red Sox franchise.

Unfortunately, we just couldn't get together. We were hoping he could finish his career as a Red Sox and we also wanted him to establish a relationship beyond his playing career. We wanted him to have the status of a Ted Williams, but at the end of the day we couldn't get it done."

You'll notice this quote doesn't say anything about when the twilight of Clemens' career will be. It could be starting in the upcoming year, but it could instead be a lot later, or it could be anytime in between.

Often when a premier player leaves a team, the team insinuates to the public (whether true or untrue, but usually untrue) that they wanted the player to stay on the team until whenever the end of the player's career would be, but that things just didn't work out that way. This quote was an example of that scenario.

"Who cares how much the Red Sox sign him for?" or "It's not my money." or "They can afford it."

The reason to care how much the Red Sox sign a player for, or how much a player makes whom they could trade for, is because they have a budget. I'm not saying they're the Pirates or the Rays. It's a high budget, but it's limited. The question regarding whether the Red Sox can afford to sign a player is only legitimate if they can afford it within the budget they set for the team payroll. It's the ownership's team and they have a right to set the budget how they want. It's not like they don't set their budget high enough to be competitive.

If the Red Sox sign a player for more money and years than he's worth, that's money that could have gone to a more productive player, or in some cases plurally more productive players at other positions.

Acquiring a position player for too many years at too much money can also sometime later during the too-expensive player's contract prevent the Red Sox from acquiring a better player who plays that position. Chances are they're not going to pay the too-expensive player many millions of dollars to sit on the bench. Yes, it's possible they could trade the too-expensive player and eat some of the salary (ex. Edgar Renteria), but it's tough to get equal value in a trade when the other teams know the Red Sox are trying to get rid of a player because he isn't worth what the Red Sox are paying him. Also, as an example of what was said earlier in this post, that money they're eating in such a trade is money that could have gone towards more productive players if they hadn't originally acquired the too-expensive player.

"(Celebrity X) isn't hot? I'd like to see how good you look (or what hottie you're banging)!"

We've had many threads in P&G where people discuss how hot or not certain celebrities look. How good someone looks is subjective, but sometimes when a poster says a celebrity isn't hot, another poster who thinks that celebrity is hot will play the card of "I'd like to see how good you look!", or "I'd like to see how good your significant other looks!"

Playing this card is like saying, "You say Eric Gagné wasn't good when he was with the Red Sox? I'd like to see how you'd do out there!"* Celebrities have different standards. Just because a poster doesn't think a celebrity looks good doesn't mean the poster wouldn't bang the celebrity if both the poster and the celebrity were available and the celebrity wanted to bang the poster.

*I wish I could take credit for creating this counterargument, but I can't. I saw a SoSHer use this counterargument once in P&G using a different Red Sox player, but I don't remember which SoSHer originally said it. Otherwise I'd give that SoSHer the credit.

Note for V&N (added during the '08 election race): This also applies when someone compares how smart a poster is to a political candidate.