THE MATT THORNTON RULE

Cynic:  Nice job Tief.  You've managed to completely fuck up FNFT with your ridiculous new scoring rule for relief pitchers.

Tief:  What the "fuck" are you talking about?

Cynic:  Gerry's relief pitcher, Matt Thornton, gets 19 points this week!

Tief:  So what?

Cynic:  That's way too many.  That's an FNFT record and it's all because of your new scoring system.

Tief:  The guy faced 7 batters and struck out 5 of them.  How many points do you think he *should* get for that?

Cynic:  10.

Tief:  10?  That's ridiculous.

Cynic:  Alright, 12.

Tief:  Still too low.  Under the old scoring system, Thornton's game would have been 16 points.  Not much different.  And that, by the way, would *also* be a new FNFT record.

Cynic:  Alright then, how can you justify a relief pitcher getting 19 points when Andruw Jones hit two home runs and only got 18?

Tief:  Matt Thornton had a better game than Andruw Jones.

Cynic:  That's bullshit.

Tief:  I know context doesn't matter in our league but Andruw Jones hit two solo home runs.  Matt Thornton came in the game with bases loaded and his team down by one, struck out Ken Griffey, and then shut Seattle down for the next two innings while the White Sox came back to win.

Cynic:  But it was Andruw Jones' walk-off homer that won that same game!

Tief:  Like I said, context doesn't matter.

Cynic:  You're a hypocrit.

Tief:  The point here is that Thornton's game was a once-in-a-decade performance.  That kind of thing isn't going to happen every week.  The new scoring system is working just fine.  Part of the problem is that you have been programmed to believe that relief pitching is less important than it actually is because of the vanilla scoring system we used to use.  Given the opportunities presented to them, relief pitchers still score relatively few points in our league.  There have been 100's of games in which hitters score 20 points.  A relief pitcher never has.  Just accept this for what it is - a great performance by a player on some other team.

Cynic:  I still think it sucks.

TIef:  Well then *you* should have drafted Matt Thornton.

Cynic:  Good point.

Tief:  See.  I knew you'd come around.

(Editor's note:  Thornton's score will be erased if Mariano Rivera pitches on Saturday.)