TTYTT, I'm not sure why they keep monthly stats.

Probably because there are people that still think they're important.

Bill James, whose work I strongly recommend, and who is a serious debunker of "conventional" baseball wisdom, once did a study that ran something like this:

He established certain criteria for what constiuted a "hot streak" and what constituted a "cold streak" for a player.

He then examined hundreds of such streaks over the course of maybe 10 or 20 years, and established that during the period a player was on either streak, he was no more or less likely to do better or worse in his next game or series of games than if he wasn't on such a streak.

As far as a player's performance from year to year during the various months of a season go, I still say that for the most part it's a function of where he plays and who he plays against rather than the month itself.

Not to mention the fact that you are way over-rating the importance of a twenty point difference in batting average.

Figuring in the basis of, say, 120 ABs per month, the difference between a .250 batting average and a .270 batting average is slightly more than two hits for the entire month, or one every 15 games or so.

Also, in comparing Jones July batting average to the other months, you failed to look at extra base hits and slugging percentage.

In fact, despite a lower batting average, Jones may have very well done better in July than he's done in other months.

Finally, I'm not sure where you got your figures from.

I looked at ESPN, and according to them - and their stats only go back to 2002, so the first five full years of Jones career aren't even included - Jones is 99-380 in the month of July, a .261 batting average.

(Is there another site that goes further back with the splits than 2002? You don't have to tell me which site it is, just if there is one or not)

Since Jones' lifetime average is only .272, that translates to about 4 fewer hits over the course of the 380 at bats, or about one hit every 20-22 games or so.

To me, that makes comparing his July batting average to the other months almost totally insignificant and meaningless.

You wanna talk about the heat in July or whatever, maybe it plays a small part in the equation, but I doubt if it means very much.

Even if you want to say that part of his .272 lifetime average is because of his .261 average in July, if we subtract his July numbers from his total it wouldn't raise his lifetime average more than another 2-3 points anyway.

Now, moving on.....

If you want to talk about our relative abilities or past performances in fantasy baseball, be my guest. :p

I'll let history speak for itself.

As far as the games go, it was you who said that the Yahoo game was all a matter of "luck and crafty finagling" or something, and that the Salary Cap Game was the real test of skill.

Um, who's doing better in that game between the two of us? :p

I will say this about the Yahoo game, though, and I probably shouldn't:

If you want to delude yourself into thinking that you are ahead of me in that game, feel free.

But the only reason that your point total is higher than mine is because you've used significantly more of your offensive games than I have, and significantly more of your pitching starts.

As the season progresses and I catch up, your lead against me will shrink, and according to my projections I will pass you.

And one of the reasons, BTW, that I've been neglecting posting the standings is because they're a constant reminder to everyone about where the strengths and weaknesses of their teams lie, and they're too suggestive in telling people what they have to do to improve.

If you want me to post the relatively meaningless raw Yahoo point totals every day so we have a permanent record of how the season progressed, I'd be happy to.