Time for a Little Golf (Masters Preview)

Our very own golf expert, Grand Slam himself, has weighed in with his Masters preview.  As previously mentioned he's destroying everyone in our fantasy golf league this year, so whether you're in a fantasy league, like to make a wager from time to time, or just dig the Masters, it's worth your time to give 'er a read.

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“A tradition unlike any other”, “There it is—as grand as it gets”, “Is it his time?.....Yes!”  “A win for the ages.”  Yes boys and girls, it’s that time of the year when Jim Nantz will give us another memorable quote to end The Masters.  I used to think the NCAA Tournament was the single greatest sporting event, but after that garbage this year, it’s not….it’s that little golf tournament played in April down in Augusta, GA.  

This will be the 75^th edition of The Masters being played at Augusta National Golf Club.  I expect a finish that has been just as, if not more exciting than previous years.  In previous years coming into the tournament, there have been a small handful of real contenders, where I see this year’s addition a little different.  For most, Phil Mickelson, who is also the defending champion has to be the odds on favorite to repeat.  He played last week’s Shell Houston Open with the mindset that he wasn’t there to win, but merely to prepare for Augusta.  So what happened?  Lefty went on to shoot the lowest winning score on the 2011 PGA Tour season.  While lefty heads to The Masters with a lot of steam, I literally see a group of 25-30 players that are legitimate contenders this year.  For that reason, I see this year’s tournament possibly being the best ever.   

Look no further than the OWGR (official world golf rankings) to see the recent domination of the European players.  The contingent to head down Magnolia Lane may be the strongest field to ever assemble in Masters History.  It all starts with the #1 player in the world Martin Kaymer.  Kaymer comes into The Masters with a solid 2011 campaign thus far.  He won his first tournament of the year at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship against a very strong field, and recently finished 2^nd to Luke Donald at the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship.  Kaymer who won last year’s PGA Championship in a controversial finish will be looking for his 2^nd major victory in as many events.  I look for Kaymer to have a solid tournament, but his game doesn’t fit what’s needed to win at Augusta.  And of course there’s the former #1 player in the world, Tiger Woods.  We all know of Tiger’s struggles throughout the last year, but ladies and gentlemen…..this is The Masters.  Remember what happened last year after Tiger’s extensive layoff from the PGA Tour, he finished T4.  There is something about this tournament that brings out something special in Tiger.  Look at his record since turning pro, the results speak for themselves as his worst finish was 22^nd.  Although he’s not coming in on a real high note, come Sunday April 10^th, you will see Tiger’s name near, if not the top of the leaderboard. 

It’s obvious that with The Masters and the type of field invited year after year that you will get some outstanding pairings.  If you are a “rube” like myself and have access to watching specific groupings, I have picked out five that may be of interest:  

Group 6 features Dustin Johnson, Adam Scott, and Nick Watney.  Johnson may be the hottest golfer on the planet over the last year, while Scott has seemed to have found his swing of late as well as an improved putting game with his new long putter, and Nick Watney is coming off the biggest win of his career at the recent World Golf Championship.   

Group 10 features young guns Rory McIlroy, Rickie Fowler, and Jason Day.  Many people believe that both Fowler and McIlroy could win their first major this week.   

Group 16 features Tiger Woods who is a 4-time Masters champion, Graeme McDowell who is the recent U.S. Open Champion, and Robert Allenby who may be one of the top 5 ball strikers on tour and has the game to win at Augusta.   

Group 32 features defending champion Phil Mickelson, U.S. Open Champion Geoff Ogilvy, and maybe the next rising star Peter Uihlein who has remained an amateur for the chance to play here after his 2010 U.S. Amateur victory.    

Finally if you’re a fan of big tee shots, group 33 features 3 of the longest drivers of the golf ball in PGA tour rookie Jhonattan Vegas who notched his first career PGA tour win earlier in the year at the Bob Hope Classic, Gary Woodland who won a few weeks back at the Transitions Championship, and maybe the longest hitter on any tour in Alvaro Quiros.

Finally if you’re a betting man, don’t put money on Luke Donald to win The Masters.  He was the winner of today’s par 3 contest, and the winner of the par 3 contest has never gone on to win the tournament.  This really pisses me off as I have Donald in one of my Masters pools.  Ok, I’m going to shut up now, but as you can see I am extremely excited for The Masters.  It is hands down the greatest sporting event other than maybe the Lingerie Bowl.  Below you will find my 2011 Masters predictions, as if anyone cares.

What Jim Nantz quote will go into the history books this year?

Winner:  Tiger Woods

Contenders: Ian Poulter, Hunter Mahan, Nick Watney, and Bubba Watson

Sleeper:  Francesco Molinari 

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So there you have it folks, straight out of the expert's mouth (or ass?).  For the record, I'm rolling with Bill Haas at 100-1, Francesco Molinari 80-1, Hunter Mahan 25-1, Paul Casey 35-1, Justin Rose 35-1, Steve Stricker 40-1, David Toms 125-1, Jerry Kelly 250-1.  So avoid those players at all costs.  My actual pick, however, mirrors Grand Slam's because I've got a feeling about the Tiger.  You know it's coming at some point, he's been a little too quiet, and this just feels like the tournament where's it coming.  Hide your golfers and your women.

Random Thoughts on a Tuesday

A whole bunch of thoughts while watching the end of the Twins game.  I'm not exactly sure what happened because it was 4-0 Yankees when I left the YMCA and I got home and put the kid to bed and now it's 4-4.  So that's good.  And you know this whole Yankees dominating the Twins thing does have a silver lining - this is shaping up exactly like an 80s movie.  Rag tag group of misfits from the poor side of town continually beaten down by the rich, snobby, evil kids in their fancy preppy clothes, but in the end the good guys finally get over the hump and the bad guys get their comeuppance.  The Twins are really just Daniel LaRusso while the Yankees are the Cobra Kai, we just need our All Valley Karate Tournament moment, and you know it's coming.  Cue Bananarama.

- Well that was quite the turd sandwich on top of what might have been the most entertaining NCAA Tournament I can remember.  I will say though that UCONN isn't getting nearly enough credit for Butler's poor performance.  Yes, the Bulldogs missed plenty of open shots, but they also had difficulty getting good looks and the Huskies had a lot to do with that.  The reason Butler only scored 2 points in the paint the entire game wasn't because they avoided getting the ball inside or because Brad Stevens made a mistake.  They got the ball to Matt Howard and Andrew Smith on the block plenty of times but they just couldn't score against the height, length, and athleticism of Oriakhi, Okwandu, etc.  Either there shots were blocked, altered, or they needed to do something extreme to get an open look and were at a weird angle or off balance.

Butler isn't a bad team, obviously, but this was just their second opponent of this tournament who was overwhelmingly more athletic than the Bulldogs and it showed.  Old Dominion, Pitt, and Wisconsin are at about the same level as Butler, and while Florida  is a more athletic squad they didn't play their best game (credit Butler) and that athleticism translates more when they have the ball rather than when they're on defense.  Unfortunately for Butler, UCONN was/is playing at as high a level as anybody right now (especially defensively) and they just overwhelmed the Bulldogs, stopping basically all dribble penetration and destroying anybody who tried to score from the block.

Howard, in particular, was pretty pathetic, putting up a pretty sad 1-13 shooting performance, getting multiple shots blocked, and getting out-rebounded over and over again.  For the second year in a row he looked out of place in the championship game, this time to the point that my non-basketball watching friend who I was viewing the game with picked him out as "the worst player I've ever seen."  And, of course, he suckered me in and I believed in him and lost some cash on some prop bets I placed on him.  I was a fool and I'm not going to let anything like that happen again.  I'll be back next year to get rich.  As entertaining as this year's tournament was, it was murder on the wallet.

-  I'm not sure I completely understand Shaka Smart's thinking in staying at VCU.  I mean I understand, I just don't know that I agree with him that he can turn VCU into a perennial powerhouse like Butler or Gonzaga, and by turning down NC State's offer he's basically wagering a million dollars a year that he can do just that.  Even if you just look to next year things are going to be a struggle for VCU.  They're losing Joey Rodriguez, Jamie Skeen, Brandon Rozzell, and Ed Nixon off of this year's team (that's four of their top five scorers and all-around best players) and according to Rivals the only player they have coming in to replace them right now is a non-rated forward whose other offers were from Cleveland State and Northeastern.  Meanwhile VCU's previous coach Anthony Grant, who jumped to Alabama after a nice little multi-year run with Eric Maynor and Larry  Sanders, is making almost $2 million a year and took a team that was so bad the previous coach was fired midseason to a team that won their division of the SEC this year, went 19-0 at home, and made the NIT final after just missing out on an NCAA Tournament bid.  Basically his whole team is coming back next year and he has a great class coming in with three kids ranked in the top 125, and he's thought of as a fast riser whose next job could end up being a big one.  Shaka clearly knows what he's doing, but I'm thinking he's being a bit too optimistic here.

- Finally, and this probably wraps up college basketball for the year until/unless the Gophers sign somebody or Tubby Smith finally signs on with NC State, but I would love for somebody to explain to me how they selected the participants in the College 3-point contest.  I thought it was kind of bizarre that Blake Hoffarber wasn't involved, but that was before I realized Jon freaking Diebler wasn't involved.  I was worried that maybe I was just being Big 10-centric, so I looked it up.  Diebler ranked 3rd amongst all seniors (event is only open to seniors) in three-point makes and second in 3-point percentage.  Although looking at the numbers it's kind of surprising Jimmer Fredette wasn't there.  Talor Battle too.  I'm not saying they're screwing it up or anything but the choices for some of the players involved just seem weird, especially since Brady Morningstar made as many threes this year as

- Speaking of white guys playing basketball, when I was at the Y tonight there was no open gym because they had "special" kids playing adapted basketball and I watched for a couple of minutes.  Those kids sure do hustle but man, they have no handles.

-  Twins are now winning.  This is unexpected, but I'm guessing this is like the part where Daniel sprays Johnny with the hose at the Halloween dance - you feel like you got the upper hand, but the night ends with you being held up against a chain link fence while you get the shit beat out of you by guys in skeleton outfits.

- A few players who have caught my eye so far this baseball season who might be worth keeping your eye on:

• Starlin Castro, SS, Cubs - His numbers obviously stand out since they're ridiculous so far (.476/.522/.762) and of course they won't last but I've actually had a chance to watch several of his at-bats and looks awfully good.  He's making solid contact and really driving the ball with some gap power (2 doubles and 2 triples already) and is looking like he could end up being a star.  Ideally you'd like to see a little bit more plate discipline and more walks, but he's a 21-year old shortstop from the Dominican Republic - it kind of comes with the territory.
• Rickie Weeks, 2B, Brewers - I've talked about him on here before, but he's impressed me this year by being less of a knucklehead than I thought.  He had a career year last year and was rewarded with a fat contract and I actually expected him to regress quite a bit but he's having another very good season so far.  Nice work, Rick.
• Neil Walker, 2B, Pirates - Leads the league in RBI mainly due to a grandslam he hit on opening day, but has overall shown an awful lot of power (.684 slugging) for a white middle infielder.  Guy must not be much of a hustler or a gamer.
• Jaime Garcia, SP, Cardinals - I don't know why his complete game 4-hitter against San Diego impressed me so much because it's not out of line based on his numbers from last year (2.70 ERA, 1.32 WHIP, 3rd in NL RoY voting), but I guess I didn't really take him seriously because his name was Jamie and everyone knows that's a girl's name.  I guess maybe he's good though.
• Craig Kimbrel, RP, Braves - Since neither Dawger or Bogart could draft their joint team in our fantasy league we had the Bear come out and do it for them.  When it suddenly came time to draft a relief pitcher Kimbrel was the #1 guy left on every list we had even though none of the three of us (me, Bear, Snake) had heard of him, and we laughed and we laughed thinking about the look on those two clowns faces when they saw this dude they'd never heard of on their team.  Well, joke was on us because Kimbrel has been unhittable - almost literally.  He's pitched two innings thus far (picking up 2 saves), faced just six batters and struck out five of them.  Hell, Adam LaRoche is practically a hero because he managed to fly out.  Look out for this kid. 

-  Hey, the Twins actually won.  Sweet.  The final out came when Joe Nathan struck out Derek Jeter on a high fastball that was clocked at 89 mph.  I don't know who that sentence is worse for, but Nathan's fastball is seriously only at 89 mph there are going to be some extremely ugly game endings in our future.

- Lastly, if you like golf our good buddy Grand Slam has promised me a Masters Preview at some point tomorrow, so look for that either Wednesday night or Thursday morning.  I'm sure it'll be epic.  As for my picks I'm not exactly digging deep here but it's hard to argue with Mickelson the way he's playing, and Watney and Justin Rose are solid picks here as well.  Sleeper picks could be David Toms or Sergio.  I don't know.  Trust Grand Slam, he's smoking everybody in our fantasy golf league. 

Week in Review - 04.04.2011

 The Final Four and opening weekend of baseball at the same time?  It's almost too much goodness.  If only there was some way to move the Masters up, although I suppose that would be overload a bit.  I was a bit bummed by the Final Fours games, only because even though they were close games and entertaining they were kind of boring each time.  Game 1 had both underdog cinderellas while game two had both evil superpower cheaters (although Kentucky/Calipari is far worse, obviously).  No real good narrative to be written for either game.  It's kind of like if Duke played the Yankees, other than rooting for a disaster, natural or otherwise, who would you root for?  At least tonight's championship sets up pretty nicely, although I won't be pissed no matter who wins which kind of takes some of the fun out of it.  My picks will be given below.  I'm hot, baby.  2-0 on game bets and 7-3-1 on player props in the semis.  Take notes, kiddos.

WHO WAS AWESOME

1.  Clay Kershaw.  Oooh baby.  It begins.  I've been waiting on Kershaw since I saw him pitch his first ever game a few years ago and maybe this is the year.  He's been very good the last two seasons, registering ERAs under three with more than a strikeout per inning both in both years, but still hasn't had that breakthrough, I'm a #1 ace Cy Young candidate and everyone can just get out of the way because I'm unhittable type of season yet. He got off to a good start, assuming that's his goal, on opening day by pitching the Dodgers to a 2-1 win over the Tim Lincecum and the World Champion Giants, going 7 shut-out innings with 9 strikeouts and allowing just 4 hits and a walk.  He's always been tough to hit and if he can keep his walks down like that he's going to finally win that Cy Young I've been predicting for three years.

2.  Kemba Walker.  Outside of Shelvin Mack's little solo mini-run of points in the VCU/Butler game no single player really jumped out at me for his performance, but this seems like a nice place to honor the incredible run Walker has been on, particularly since he put up 18 points, grabbed 6 rebounds, and dished 7 assists in UCONN's win over Kentucky and it seemed like an off game for him - that's saying a lot.  He just does whatever they need and can will them to victory.  If they need him to score, he scores (33 vs. Cincy and 36 vs. San Diego State), but if they need him to play the role of distributor he does that too (12 assists against Bucknell, 7 in each of the last two games).  He's also averaging over 5 rebounds per game, has gone 38-42 from the free throw line, and is averaging less than 3 turnovers per game which is pretty amazing when you think about how often he has the ball in his hands.  It's truly been a remarkable year for him this entire season, and it wouldn't remotely be offensive to me if he takes down the championship, even if Calhoun is a sleazeball.

3.  Baltimore Orioles.  Perhaps Baltimore's young pitching is going to pay dividends faster than expected (or perhaps the Rays offense is in serious trouble without Evan Longoria who is out for three weeks after getting sore having sex with so many chicks because he's a machine), but they shut down the Rays this weekend and got the O's off to a 3-0 start for the first time since I'm going to assume the 1970s.  First Jeremy Guthrie (who's actually old) pitched 8 scoreless innings in the opener.  Then Chris Tillman pitched six hitless innings in game two, and then in the third game of the series Zach Britton made his major league debut and gave up just one run through six, helping complete the O's sweep of Tampa.  I don't know if this is more indicative of the strength of Baltimore or the weakness of Tampa, but for now at least I choose to believe maybe Baltimore is back, if only a little bit.  The world just seems a little brighter when there's a good team playing in Camden Yards.


4.  Nelson Cruz.  For a long time I dismissed Nelson Cruz as being any good, mainly because his name is Nelson.  Also because he's a Ranger and the Rangers are super lame-o.  I think, however, it's time to rethink that stance because he's apparently decided that his new thing is going to be destroying baseballs, which he did three times in three games over the weekend as the Rangers obliterated Red Sox pitching (more on that later) with Cruz and Kinsler becoming the first pair of teammates to ever each homer in the season's first three games.  Hard to believe Hrbek and Brunansky never pulled that off, but whatever.  It seems like Texas might actually be a good team, which goes against everything I believe in.  Like church.

5.  Joakim Soria.  MEXICUTIONER!!!!  Want to know how good this guy is and how dependent on him the KC bullpen is?  The Royals have played three games this year and he's pitched in all three of them.  He's picked up a win, a save, and given up zero runs.  It is a bit curious that he doesn't have a strikeout yet this year in three innings despite having a career average of more than 1 K per inning, but I assume he's either realized strikeouts are fascists and doesn't want to promote an oppressive political ideology or he's bored of dominating for such a crappy team and has just been screwing around out there and may or may not being throwing every third pitch left-handed.  In any case this guy is straight dominant, and the fact that he doesn't want to be called the Mexicutioner makes it all the more better to call him that.

WHO SUCKED


1.  Minnesota Twins.  The 1-2 start doesn't particularly bother me because it was on the road against a pretty good Blue Jay team, and even the dismal offense and subpar pitching performances aren't what's currently grinding my gears.  It's the god damn stupid plays, the kind of stuff "Twins Baseball" doesn't consist of if you ask any retarded national journalist or announcer.   Where to begin?  The obvious Nishioki errors or the inability to get runs home when they're in scoring position with two outs?  The lack of hustle by Span in center field which allowed a runner to tag from first to second on a medium deep fly ball and later turned a double into a triple when he loafed after a gapper?  Valencia getting thrown out at home by five feet on a play where he had zero reason to even attempt to score?  How about the way too many walks to bottom of the order opponents?

And want to move it into the dugout?  What the hell was the deal with pinch-running for both Morneau and Kubel in the 8th in Sunday's game?  Taking two of your best hitters out of a 1-run game for a speed upgrade and basically guaranteeing yourself a loss if we hit extras?  Even worse than that though was letting Drew Butera hit in a 1-run game with runners on 2nd and 3rd and two outs in the 8th when you have Joe Mauer sitting on your bench.  Absolutely pathetic.  You're telling me that your best player and a guy you pay $23 million a year to can't get off his ass for one at-bat and two innings of playing catcher?  Just completely gutless and pathetic, and I don't know if I'm more mad at Mauer or Gardenhire, but every game counts you assholes.  Some of these decisions are the kind you'd make if you were actively trying to lose the game.  Manager of the year, folks.  Manager of the year.

I do not like the way this season is going already.  I know it's early, and if I was ranting about the hitting or pitching or a specific players early struggles I'd be an overreacting moron, and I'm sure they're out there.  But what I'm saying is there is something off about this team and they are playing stupid and Gardy's managing is worse than usual.  I'm afraid we're destined for a third place finish.  At least they won't get swept by the Yankees in the playoffs this year.

2.  Boston Red Sox.  Yikes.  I'm not a Boston fan at all, and although I have Lester, Buchholz, and Papelbon in fantasy I also have a wager on them under 95.5 wins so I'm kind of conflicted about their fortunes.  Who isn't conflicted is any Texas Ranger hitter, because they battered the shit out of anybody Boston trotted out to the mound.  Jon Lester:  5 ips, 5 runs, 3 homers allowed.  "Closer of the future" Daniel Bard:  allowed 4 runs and got two outs.  Jon Lackey:  allowed 9 runs and 10 hits in less than 4 innings.  Clay Buchholz:  gave up four dongs in six innings, and even when they brought in Papelbon to stop the bleeding he gave up a run and was lucky to escape with just that solitary mark against him.  This, my friends, was a thorough, thorough ass-whipping, and if I didn't own those three dickfors I'd have thoroughly enjoyed it. 

3.  Fausto Carmona.  When you're a moribund franchise going through a moribund period in your moribund existence and you really only have one or two bright spots, even if the bright side of one of those bright spots is that you might be trading him soon, it really sucks when he gets lit for 11 hits and 10 runs in just three innings.  Eleven hits.  Ten runs.  Three innings.  And this is from one of only three players you'd even consider league average (maybe four if you count set up guys - Rafael Perez).  You want to know what this baseball season is going to be like in Cleveland?  It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be grey, and it's going to last you for the rest of your life.  And the Twins will probably go .500 against them.

4.  DeAndre Liggins.  Ok, so he's a pretty insignificant player overall but he's also a starter on a Final Four team and, if you follow me on Twitter, you know he made me some money this weekend so I'm sticking him here.  When they were announcing players in the starting lineup before the game they showed his face and let's just say "deer in headlights" doesn't quite cover it, it was more like had been caught having sex with a tree - a male tree.  So I checked the line on him and he was OVER/UNDER 13.5 points+rebounds so I slapped down some money on the under, and bingo - four points (on 1-7 shooting) and 0 rebounds later I had a little extra to blow on booze.  So thank you Deadre Liggins, and thank you sportsbook for still accepting prop bets that close to tip off.  I'll be paying attention to the announcements tonight, that's for sure.

5.  John Axford.  This guy may be awesome at having a mustache, but he sucks at pitching (in case you have no idea who this is, he's the closer for Milwaukee with the sweet stache pictured below).  Axelford pitched twice this week against the Reds and, possibly because he wanted to fit in with the rest of the Brewers' staff, he got lit up.  His first time out was opening day and he entered with the Crew winning 6-3.  A couple hits, a sac fly, and a 3-run bomb later and Milwaukee (and Axelrod) was 0-1.  Then he got another turn on the hill on Sunday, this time in a game the Brewers were already losing 12-3, and gave up a couple of hits before being lifted for Kameron freaking Loe, some dork who doesn't spell either his first or last name correctly so that can't be good.  This is a pretty big deal for Milwaukee since with their lineup and starting pitching their looking to make a run at a division title.  If Axnard is just a slimmer, better mustachioed version of Bobby Jenks they're basically screwed.

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I meant to have some info/report on the McDonald's game, but I didn't have a chance to watch it yet.  Still have it on Tivo though, so I'll probably have some notes or something later this week or maybe for next week's Week in Review.  Or not.  I don't know.  I'm tired.

For tonight's big game I'm on Butler +3.5 and the over 128.5, both for 3 units.  I don't know who wins this game, but I think it's going to be close so I'm grabbing the points.  I also think Brade Stevens is probably the best coach in college basketball so I'm sure he'll figure out how to take Kemba out of the game and make the other guys beat him and I don't think they can.  I'm going with the over because 129 is really not that many points and these are two teams that can play pretty efficiently.  This just doesn't seem like a game where both teams are going to be in the low-60s.

Unfortunately it doesn't appear player props are up yet, which sucks and is also kind of weird.  I will be sure to post what I'm going to play once it pops up, just because I want to make sure you make money.  I am so giving sometimes it actually hurts.  Now I know what Jesus felt like.

MLB Preview: American League

After I won multiple awards for my NL preview yesterday, I couldn't very well ignore the American League, especially since that's all anybody around here cares about.  So that's what we got goin' down here tonight, a little American League chatter.  


Also I want to mention as a public service announcement that although the 5-8 Club is famous for their Juicy Lucys you shouldn't ignore the broasted chicken.  It's not quite as good as any random place at least 1 hour north of the cities (and the more norther the better), but for a city joint it's very good.  


Anyway, here you go.

 
AL EAST

1.  Boston Red Stockings.  There's a reason all thdork Red Sox fans are so excited for their team - they're going to be really god damn good.  They signed the top 2 free agent position players available who filled holes for them in Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford, have an excellent rotation 1-5, a bullpen good enough that they can ship Hideki Okajima to triple-A, and, lest you think their 3rd place finish last year means they're overrated, they still won 89 games and several key players (Pedroia, Ellsbury, Youkilis) missed substantial time last season. In short, no matter how much you hate them and their fans (and I do with one exception) this team is going to be a monster.  The shark move here would be to make sure and get Papelboner as your fantasy closer, since he's going to get a ridonkulous amount of save opps.

2.  New York Yankees.  They're lucky that the offense is loaded up because that rotation is brutal.  Sabathia is good, I guess, but AJ Burnett is terrible, Phil Hughes is a dandy, Freddy Garcia is dead, and Ivan Nova will be in AAA ball by June.  That said, they're going to be tough to beat and should win a lot of 8-6 ball games, plus with Soriano setting up for Rivera they essentially just have to outscore you through 7 innings.  Side note: if you look at the lineup there's absolutely no reason Derek Jeter should be hitting anything other than 8th or 9th.  Other than the intangibles of course.  And those piercing blue eyes.

3.  Tampa Bay Rays.  Whoever stocked up the Rays farm system did one hell of a job, because it seems no matter who leaves there is always a hot young prospect ready to step in, and that especially includes the pitching staff.  This year those guys will have to be dead on, because behind provens David Price and James Shields are a bunch of youngins - talented youngins in Wade Davis, Jeff Niemann, and Jeremy Hellickson - but young just the same.  Two other things:  1.  FREE DESMOND JENNINGS!  and 2.  Kyle Farnsworth as your closer?  Seriously?  I dropped them from #2 to #4 for that reason alone.  Then bumped them back to #3 because Evan Longoria is both awesome and sexy.

4.  Baltimore Orioles.  I feel bad for these guys, I really do.  After years of throwing good money after bad, making poor decisions, and decimating the farm system they're finally starting to do things right.  They got a solid manager (Buck Showalter), good young talent (Adam Jones, Nick Markakis, Brian Matusz, Jake Arrieta), with more on the way (Zach Britton, Manny Machado, Chris Tillman), and are signing reasonable free agents who make sense and fit with the roster (Derrek Lee, Mark Reynolds, Kevin Gregg, and trading for JJ Hardy).  Really they're doing a lot right and in any other division they'd be a sleeper to win it.  Here, however, fourth place is their absolute upside.

5.  Toronto Blue Jays.  This is definitely a fun team if you like a youth movement - the oldest pitcher in the rotation is 26.  They also have fun prospects like LF Travis Snider and C JP Arencibia who are going to be handed starting jobs and told to run with them.  If the youth is good and crap factories Adam Lind and Aaron Hill - two of the biggest disappointments in all of baseball last year - can bounce back this team might be able to threaten for fourth place.  That being said, this team would be a contender in the AL Central.  Thank god the Twins are in such a shitty division.


AL CENTRAL

1.  Minnesota Twins.  Hey, speaking of the Twins being in a shitty division, here I am picking them to win again even though I'm not remotely impressed with this team.  If you're reading this you probably know everything you need to about the Twins so all I'm going to say is I hate hate hate hate hate the middle infield and I still don't understand the Hardy trade, but my biggest question is how they handled the whole Scott Diamond thing.  Trading Billy Bullock, he of the 150 strikeouts in 108 innings in two years at age 22 and the Twins second-round pick just TWO FUCKING YEARS AGO means that Diamond better be the best god damn reliever in history.   AGAGDASHKJ the season hasn't even started yet and I'm already mad.  Let's just move on.

2.  Detroit Tigers.  You know who I love this year?  Justin motherfuckin' Verlander.  He's been awesome the last several years, no doubt, but I think this is the year he goes from awesome to AWESOME.   I also love Austin Jackson, and I think if he can just have half of Delmon Young's plate discipline he's got super star written all over him, and the youngster SP duo of Scherzer and Porcello has got potential.  That's it that I like on that team because I hate everybody else including fat alcoholic and girl hair McGee.  I guess I don't hate Will Rhymes, but that's not because of his play (Punto-esque) but because of his sweet name.  If Snow had just called himself Will Rhymes Informer would have hit #1 on the charts.


3.  Chicago Gay Sox.  Ever have a player you love (Adam Dunn) who goes to a team you hate with every fiber of your being?  I always loved Mike Mussina and it broke my heart when he signed with the Yankees, but I never really really cared because it was AL East crap.  This time it's really going to test me.  I harbor no ill will towards Dunnsy right now, but I'm pretty sure the first time he takes a Nick Blackburn 88 mph heater 500 feet the other way (and you know it's coming) I'm pretty sure the hatred will rise up quickly.  Looking forward to the Twins facing Jesse Crain though, pretty sure we have some guys who will return that 500 foot favor.  Of course I'm assuming/hoping they got old Crain, not fancy new Crain from the second half of last season.  Because that guy was good.  Ah god dammit.  This is going to be so frustrating.

4.  Kansas City Royals.  Holy shit you guys are these last two teams brutal.  Honestly these might be the two worst teams in the entire league.  I'm going to throw the Royals in the lead because I like that fat doubles machine and $nake has a shirt of the Mexecutioner.  There's your upside, plus that Hawai'ian dude who's slugging like 3 in spring training.  The future is supposedly very bright here, which is good because the present is full of Jason Kendall and Bruce Chen.  No shit.  The Chenner.  Want to know how fucked up the Royals' are?  ESPN lists Melky Cabrera as their starting CF and starting RF, and that seems like it might be accurate.

5.  Cleveland Indians.  Carlos Santana is going to be awesome.  That's the entire list of positives I can come up with unless you believe in Justin Masterson (kind of sort of) or think Matt LaPorta might still be good (no chance).  Since I got nothin' else to say, here's a picture of a naked Grady Sizemore:

You know you love it.


AL WEST

1.  Oakland Athletics.  Ok fine, I'm buying in.  If San Francisco can win an entire World Series on the strength of their pitching staff, why can't Oakland win a crappy AL West on the strength of theirs?  Trevor Cahill and Brett Anderson are studs in the making, Gio Gonzalez is nasty, and Dallas Braden has the soft-tossing lefty thing down pat.  Add in bullpen additions in Brian Fuentes and Grant Balfour and I really like the pitching they've got here.  The offense was downright dreadful last year, and although the pick-ups of David DeJesus, Josh Willingham, and Godzilla will help it still isn't going to be pretty.  This is going to be another team that's going to have to win those 3-2 ball games quite a bit if they're going to contend.

2.  Texas Rangers.  These guys are the opposite of Oakland with their potent lineup that gets more potenter with Adrian Beltre at the hot corner, but with Cliff Lee gone the entire rotation is rather underwhelming, especially if you're like me and think they all suck outside of C.J. Wilson.  With such a shaky staff I don't understand why they're so strident in keeping Neftali Feliz as their closer.  Yes he was good last year, but he's easily the most talented pitcher on the team and came up through the minors as a starter, and since that's where they could maximize his value I'm baffled at the choice to keep him closing games.  Good for the rest of the AL, I suppose.

3.  Los Angeles Angels.  Just a massive pile of meh, which seems odd because these guys were perennial contenders not that long ago, but I guess missing out on Carl Crawford and having a back-up plan of standing around doing nothing will generally drag you down a smidge.  Jered Weaver and Dan Haren are a great 1-2 punch, especially since it turns out Weaver is actually good which shocked the hell out of me, but after that everybody is boring unless you think 1B Mark Trumbo can win rookie of the year.  I don't, because I have never heard of him.  When the left-side of the diamond is made up of Maicier Izturis, Erick Aybar, and Alex Rios you know damn well you aren't competing for anything, and don't forget their still trying to force Fernando Rodney to be a closer so they'll lose their share of close games as well.

4.  Seattle Mariners.  I picked these guys as my sleeper team last year.  Turns out I'm an idiot.  Good news though, they've taken major steps to turn this thing around by acquiring Jack Cust, Gabe Gross, Adam Kennedy, Miguel Olivo, and Brendan Ryan.  Jesus Christ guys, you only won 61 games last year and THIS is how you address your issues?  How can you be this shitty and only have three young, high upside guys in the entire system (Justin Smoak, Dustin Ackley, Michael Pineda)?  At least the Pirates and Royals look like they have a plan, and don't forget they had Cliff Lee!  What did they get for him, Smoak and a bag of balls?  This is terrible.  I can't wait until Felix forces his way out, maybe the Twins can get him for Cuddyer and Dusty Hughes.


POSTSEASON AND AWARDS:

NL MVP:  Troy Tulowitzki (alternate:  Buster Posey)
AL MVP:  Adrian Gonzalez (Evan Longoria)
NL Cy Young:  Clay Kershaw (Roy Halladay)
AL Cy Young:  Justin Verlander (Jon Lester)
NL Rookie: Domonic Brown (Freddie Freeman)
AL Rookie:  JP Arencibia (Desmond Jennings)
NL Division Winners:  Phillies, Reds, Giants
NL Wild Card:  Brewers
AL Division Winners:  Red Sox, Twins, A's
AL Wild Card:  Yankees
World Series:  Reds over Red Sox

MLB Preview: National League

Since I just learned today that baseball starts up for real on Thursday, which seems ridiculously early but is apparently real, I better get going with my baseball previews.  I'll start with the National League today, and go onto the AL tomorrow.  If you want to know who you should target in your fantasy league, feel free to just go ahead and take a gander at the bottom of this post.  That's your championship team, folks.


Once again, you can consider these to be equivalent to clairvoyant looks into the future.  I almost never get anything wrong.



NL EAST

1.  Philadelphia Phillies.  Pretty obvious pick here, but it's always going to be obvious when your first four starters are four guys who would all be the ace on the majority of teams in the entire league.  Of course, these kind of super team things rarely work out, at least in the regular season, and a very old offense has tons of question marks.  Utley is out and nobody knows when he's coming back, Rollins was a nightmare last year, they just gave a fat, old player a monster contract, and perhaps their best all-around offensive player is now on the Nationals.  They'll still win, but they aren't going to dominate.

2.  Florida Marlins.  They've been a scrappy bunch the last several years, and I think this is the year they finally make the leap.  Their rotation of Josh Johnson, Javy Vazquez, Ricky Nolasco, Anibel Sanchez, and Chris Volstad would be the best in many divisions, assuming they stay healthy, and there's enough offense here to keep them in Wild Card contention.  Whatever you think of Hanley Ramirez's attitude issues the guy is an incredible player and gives Florida a huge advantage by having such an offensive powerhouse at such a traditional weak position.  Mike Stanton is an absolute future star.

3.  Atlanta Braves.  Should be a very solid team, and for no particular good reason just as I'm blindly believing in the Marlins' rotation, I'm expecting the Braves to fall apart.  Tim Hudson and Derek Lowe are older than dirt, Tommy Hanson is inconsistent and for Jair Jurrjens inconsistent would be a huge improvement.  And what's to be excited about with the offense other than Jason Heyward, Brian McCann, and Freddie Freeman?  They'll be in the Wild Card running, but I think Bobby Cox being gone is going to take longer to adjust to than you'd think.

4.  New York Mets.  The division between the 3rd team and 4th team in this division is absolutely immense, because the Mets are absolute garbage.  Let's put it this way:  R.A. Dickey will be prominently involved, and he might actually be the second best pitcher on the entire squad behind Mike Pelphrey - and that's not a compliment to Dickey, these guys are brutal.  There's still some minor jump up potential here based on a decent offense with David Wright, breakout candidate Ike Davis, and contract year guy Jose Reyes, plus Jason Bay and Carlos Beltran.  The offense should be ok, but that pitching staff is terrifying.

5.  Washington Nationals.  I wanted to rank them ahead of the Mets because the Mets are terrible, but I just couldn't after looking at what they're rolling out there.  Livan Hernandez is still here, and so is Jon Lannan, Jason Marquis, and they added Tom Gorzelanny as starter #5.  Sweet, that should make all the difference.  There's a decent young base here with closer Drew Storen, starter Jordan Zimmerman, 3B Ryan Zimmerman, SS Ian Desmond, and, of course, SP Stephen Strasburg and minor leaguer Bryce Harper (Brian Harper's son), but with The Stras out until late this year or next this won't be the year they put it all together.


NL CENTRAL

1.   Cincinnati Reds.  Love this team.  Absolutely and completely love them.  Young and talented pitching staff with multiple candidates to breakout (Mike Leake, Johnny Cueto, Travis Wood, Edinson Volquez), the hardest throwing man in all of MLB (Aroldis Chapman), and a young group of position players who are either already stars (Joey Votto), look to be right on the cusp (Jay Bruce, Brandon Phillips), or are still just in the "potential" phase (Drew Stubbs).  They aren't really the type of team who I'd consider a serious World Series contender unless multiple guys on that staff breakout this year, but they'll win this division.

2.  Milwaukee Brewers.  Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery some donk once wrote, and the Brewers are definitely going with the San Francisco Giants model and have assembled a very good rotation.  If Zack Greinke stops getting hurt playing basketball and doesn't end up on the floor in the fetal position every time someone asks him a question he should dominate the NL, and Shaun Marcum should be a poor man's version of the same after coming over from Toronto.  Add in Yovani Gallardo and a pretty good offense and they'll be a very good team, especially if Prince Fielder's contract year becomes PRINCE FIELDER'S CONTRACT YEAR.  And closer John Axford has the sweetest mustache in the league.

3.  St. Louis Cardinals.  Adam Wainwright is so good at throwing a baseball that his injury knocks St. Louis from division favorite to division also-ran.  Any team with Albert Pujols can't be completely counted out, but the rest of the lineup is either old guys on the downslope of their career or David Eckstein clones.  Honestly, I have no idea why a team with David Freese, Skip Schumaker, Ryan Theriot, and Tyler Greene would possibly be interested in signing Nick Punto since all five of these guys are basically clones of each other and they all suck.  Maybe LaRussa's gone all demented and is starting some sort of bizarre collection, and at the all-star break he's going to encase them all in wax and open some sort of Eckstein Wax Museum.  That's be pretty sweet, actually.

4.  Chicago Cubs.   This should be a pretty competitive division, because I can even see the Cubs jumping up and contending at the top if everything goes their way.  It won't, of course, because we're talking the Cubs here and there's an awful lot that would need to go right.  Carlos Zambrano's head has to be on right, Matt Garza has to be able to dominate more often being in the NL, Ryan Dempster has to be good, Carlos Pena needs to bounceback as does Alfonso Soriano as does Aramis Ramirez, and so on.  One thing is for sure, they have a future star at shortstop in Starlin Castro.  Or at least that's what I told myself when we ended up having to draft him as our fantasy shortstop.

5.  Pittsburgh Pirates. Is this the year the Pirates finally turn it around?  Well, if by turn it around you mean don't finish in last then I say yes, although that's more of a testament to the shittiness of the Astros than the improvement of the Pirates.  I mean, you can at least see that they're trying to turn it around:  Neil Walker, Pedro Alvarez, Andrew McCutchen, and Jose Tabata are a nice young core but after that it's very blah - and that's the upside.  Assembling young arms is a good strategy, but someone needs to tell these guys that it really only helps if at least some of them have some talent.

6.  Houston Astros.  Kind of the opposite of Pittsburgh in that the starting pitching is at least ok (Wandy, Bret Myers, JA Happ, and Bud Norris) but the lineup is just brutally brutal.  The middle infield pairing of Clint Barmes and Bill Hall should make you feel better knowing there's actually a worse combo than what the Twins are trotting out there, I've never even heard of their third baseman, and their first basemen is a rookie who was traded three different times before he managed a major league at-bat.  And they still have Carlos Lee, who continues to kill team morale by constantly pawing through teammates' lockers looking for snacks.


NL WEST

1.  San Francisco Giants.  It's hard to believe any team that was so reliant on it's starting staff can repeat, but in this case you have to pick the Giants because 1.  The NL West sucks, 2.  At least one of those pitchers (Madison Bumgarner) is still waiting to breakout, and 3.  there only losses off the roster of "significance" were Juan Uribe and Edgar Renteria.  They might have the worst hitting outfield in history, but they should still be good enough to win this crappy division, especially since they have a rich man's Joe Mauer in Buster Posey.

2.  Colorado Rockies.  I wanted to pick the Rockies to win the division but I just can't.  Troy Tulowitzki is a pimp and Carlos Gonzalez is awesome, but then it's crickets.  Todd Helton is old with the power of Drew Butera but is still starting somehow, Chris Iannetta and Ian Stewart are starting to look like they're "potential" and that's about it, Dexter Fowler is Carlos Gomez with a slightly better batting eye, and Seth Smith should be a pinch hitter.  They also have Ty Wigginton.  Yeah.  The pitching is alright and could probably clean an office building or hotel like nobody's business, but that lineup is just really, really icky.

3.  Los Angeles Dodgers.  These guys have been about as underachieving as the Mets the last few years, and it all starts with Captain Disappointment (that's also what Mrs. W calls me), Matt Kemp, who decided to go from future superstar do everything five tool player to Adam Dunn with less power.  Think about that one. And speaking of less power we can't forget first baseman James Loney, the only 1B in history with less power than Dough Mientkiewicz.  Clay Kershaw is probably a future Cy Young award winner, but behind him is a soft-tossing old man (although he's a lefty) and a Japanese guy who will probably throw his arm out by July.  And also Chad Billingsley, who sucks.  How you can have that much money and fuck up a team should be the next study done by Dateline.  I think we've got all the sex predators by now.

4.  Arizona Diamondbacks.  You could basically flip a coin between Arizona and San Diego right now because both of these teams are equally depressing and shitty.  I'm giving the nod slightly to Arizona because they at least have a few players who could have huge years:  Justin Upton (although I feel like we're saying this every year for the last several), Miguel Montero (not a huge year overall, but at least for a catcher), and Daniel Hudson (if his post-trade results were real).  They also have a middle infield with some pop in Stephen Drew and Kelly Johnson, even if they field as well as Roger Dorn.

5.  San Diego Padres.  The list of exciting players on this team is Mat Latos and Cameron Maybin.  That's the entire list unless you really like nondescript but effective closers who are going to be traded at some point or mediocre-to-poor starting pitchers who were featured in really awesome books.  All I know is a team with zero offense just got rid of the man responsible for about 106% of that offense.  Plus their middle infield combo is Jason Bartlett and Orlando Hudson.  Ouch.    


The last thing I want to mention here is what should/could be considered a national travesty.  Take a look at this picture and guess who this is:

 

No, it's not the female joker (and I don't mean Harley Quinn), no matter how much it may look like it.  It's actually Rose McGowan, formerly the super hot and busty star of Scream and Jawbreaker.  This is what she used to look like:

Why?  Why would you kill that?  Even setting aside her formerly awesome boobs which have suddenly disappeared, check out this side-by-side of her formerly beautiful face:

Good lord, why?  This is the kind of thing that convinces me that the devil actually exists.  I'm actually near tears right now.  I'm going to go cry myself to sleep and probably masturbate.

Weekend Review - 03.28.2011

 What a retardedly stupid nonsensical and awesome tournament this has been.  I can't remember ever having this much fun watching.  Nearly every game close, and essentially completely impossible to predict.  At this point I'd bet there are more people with zero final four teams correct (including your president - suck it, commie) than even have one, and although I'm sure there are a handful of people who have two correct I'd be pretty shocked if I know anyone who does.  Every year it sucks when this tournament ends because it's always the most fun sporting event to watch, but this year it's going to be even worse.  Doesn't help that the Twins are speeding towards mediocrity even faster than usual, but I won't dwell on that know.  Plenty of time to talk hardball after next week.

WHO WAS AWESOME

1.  Virginia Commonwealth Rams.   Hard not to recognize a team that went from the First Four round to the Final Four, and a team that had the "experts" wringing their hands and bitching non-spot about how they shouldn't have gotten a bid (check the records and you'll see that I said they should be in multiple times - point me).  Since you're about to get force fed more happy fun stories about VCU than you can handle I'm going to tell you a semi-funny story from Chicago instead.  As most bars do at this time, the Dayton bar where we spent an inordinate amount of time had a bracket on the wall and an employee would hand write in each winner.  This bar clearly had a female employee do it, because on the line where you would write the winner of the Georgetown/VCU game the chick wrote "VCU/USC."  So now I'm picturing a bracket on the wall of the bar with four different winner lines with "VCU/USC" written down.  I don't know, maybe you had to be there but it's pretty god damn funny.

2.  Derrick Williams.  Easily the most impressive player I saw this weekend and I don't even know if there was a second one.  What an absolute monster.  That dunk he threw down against UCONN in the second half where he basically powered through two dudes to throw down would have been the most impressive dunk of the entire tournament, except he eclipsed that one with the monster Shawn Kemp NBA Jam style slam he had against Duke.  And it's not like he's a one-dimensional, Trevor Mbakwe dunking machine.  He can shoot from the perimeter, rebound like a mofo, and he's excellent with the ball around the basket.  I don't know what kind of NBA career he might have because I don't watch until the playoffs because I'm not retarded, but Williams is/was an absolute college beast.  Probably has a huge crank, too.


3.  Matt Howard.  If Williams blew me away with his awesomeness, Howard blew me away with his improvement.  Last year he was basically a chubby disaster against good teams and, although I don't want to say he single handedly lost the championship game against Duke, but he was so badly outplayed by Brian freaking Zoubek and looked so ridiculously out of place in that game that it's really just a testament to the brilliance of Shelvin Mack and Gordon Hayward that the championship went down to the wire.

Now, however, he's lost a bunch of that babyfat, added a jumper with 3-point range to his game, cut way way way down on his fouling, and is absolutely brimming with confidence.  Which he should be because he's playing great.  He's played some very good front courts so far this tournament in Old Dominion, Pitt, and Florida, and even the dainty Jon Leuer can be a challenge, and he's played well on both ends of the court against all of them.  Last year's version of Howard would have gotten killed by Florida's super athletic dudes, but this year Howard scored 14, grabbed 5 boards, and most importantly only committed three fouls so he was able to play 40 minutes.  His numbers might not jump out an grab you, but if you saw him this year and last you'd see what a massive improvement he's made, and he's a big, big reason Butler is heading to the Final Four.

4.  Jeremy Lamb.  All season long the one thing UCONN really needed was a second scorer to take pressure off of Kemba Walker who, despite being completely awesome, is not unstoppable despite what the media and announcers decided to make their running story (12-25 and 7-17 shooting in the two games this weekend doesn't make him unstoppable, it just makes him a high volume shooter and scorer).  Lamb really stepped up, scoring 24 against San Diego State, tying a season high and was basically the whole reason UCONN won that game, and then following it up with 19 in the win over Zona.  I still think he's a bit soft, but he's only a freshman so he can either take the good path and toughen up a bit and end up a pretty high level player and scorer, or he can go on about his business as he is, having games where he scores a ton and just as many games where he's nowhere to be found.  I say that second thing like it's a bad thing, but I should point out that even that version of Lamb would be the best player on the Gophers, and it wouldn't even be close.

5.  Kentucky Wildcats.  Well I'm flabbergasted.  It's rare of me to misjudge a team this badly.  Actually strike that, because I think team's are better than they really are all the time, but it's rare that a team I think is terrible ends up doing something stupid like going to the Final Four.  Calipari is a terrible game coach and a terrible game planner, generally winning games by having the most talent, almost in spite of himself.  This year's Kentucky isn't all that talented, at least from a Calipari's most talented team perspective, so I figured an early exit was inevitable.  Shocking that I got something wrong in this year's tournament I know, but apparently Brandon Knight is a lot better than I thought.  Much, much better than Brandin Knight, who, of course, played for the world's most chokiest program in history in the Pitt Panthers, the same most chokiest program who I inexplicably chose as my national champion.  Next year I'm not even filling out a bracket, it's getting too embarrassing.  It's like if Stephen Hawking called you to hook up his tivo.  From an understanding how to do it perspective, I mean.  Not the whole "I have no movement in any of my limbs" thing.


WHO SUCKED


1.  Wisconsin Badgers.  As enjoyable as that loss was for Gopher fans and white people haters that had to be brutal for Badger fans.  Really, I mean if you lose a buzzer beater game it sucks like getting punched in the stomach by a large black man who was just helping you find your glasses in a snowbank sucks - quick, painful, unexpected, but the pain subsides quickly.  It sucks to lose that way, just like it sucks to lose to a team that just blows you away because they're so much better or playing so well at the time, but you can live with those losses.  The way Wisconsin lost, however, has got to just gnaw away at you for a long, long time.  Butler gets credit for shutting the Badgers down, but in reality they didn't do much.  It was simply Wisconsin missing open shots.  Over.  And over.  And over.  And over.  In the mid-first half Jordan Taylor was fouled on a three-pointer and missed the first two free-throws, and that basically summed up the night.  And I loved every damn minute of it.    

2.  Jimmer Fredette.  Did you get a chance to watch the Jimmer?  Freaking amazing when he has the ball, right?  Amazing shooter with unlimited range and a hair-trigger release, ability to get buy a defender off the dribble and get into the lane, an excellent eye to find open teammates for easy hoops, and just amazing body control.  Really an impressive player with the ball.  But did you happen to notice him when he doesn't have the ball?  I've never seen a lazier god damn player in my life.  He does one of three things if he doesn't have the ball:

1. Stand there
2. Clap his hands and call for the ball.
3. Run directly at his teammate with the ball and clap his hands while calling for the ball

That's it.  That's the entire repertoire.  My favorite though is any time he passes the ball and it doesn't directly lead to a shot for this teammate he immediately follows his own pass, naturally while clapping and calling for the ball.  There's a reason nobody on this team every gets an assist other than Jimmer, and that's because he either shoots, creates a shot for somebody else, or immediately demands the ball back.  Honestly I was pretty unimpressed, and I watched all four of his games in this tournament and they were all the same.  Add in a level of defense that would make Blake Hoffarber turn red with embarrassment and he might be the most overrated player since Adam Morrison.  If this guys wins National Player of the Year it'll be a travesty and, frankly, should probably spark off some race riots.  But that's pretty much my answer for everything.

3.  Duke Blue Devils.  hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha oh my god that was so awesome.  It was like, all of a sudden Arizona realized, "hey, these guys are a bunch of nerds.  More athletic nerds than the Northwestern dorks of course, but still nerds.  And we aren't, so let's kill them" and then suddenly a dunk contest broke out and pasty white dorks and Jalen Rose's favorite type of brothers were their props.  They could do the entire one shining moment montage just from dunks from this game.  I think if Duke was playing a women's team that night those broads would have been running and jumping all over there heads.  Or maybe a lay-up line would have broken out instead.  I guess that's more realistic.

4.  William Buford.  Outside the Wisconsin duo of Jordan Taylor and Jon Leuer, I'm not sure anybody looked crappier than Buford.  Here's my impression of his game against Kentucky:  clang clang clang clang clang clang and so on and so forth.  Like Billy Ho once said, "I'll tell you what. Why don't we take all these bricks and build a shelter for the homeless, so maybe your mother will have a place to stay.  And your sister, too.  I want your mother and sister out of my house."   Damn Will, you just got played by a slow, white, geeky chump.  What do you mean, black ball?


5.  Colton Iverson's transfer.  Of all the red flags jumping up around the program regarding player defections this one has to be the worst.  The rest can all be rationalized away if you are looking for a reason to do so:  Royce White was a bad egg, Justin Cobbs was homesick, Paul Carter's sister was sick (ok so that one was pretty legit), Devoe Joesph is a selfish player who only cares about himself, and on and on.  If you want to have blind faith in Tubby you didn't have to try to hard.  For me, however, this one is a stunner and, frankly, makes me more than a little concerned.

I mean, what exactly is the reasoning here?  Iverson can't possibly believe Tubby is holding him back from a professional future playing ball, so what possible rationale could he have for leaving with only one year left to play?  It's not like a playing time issue makes much sense either, because of his style of play, body type, and just overall gangliness he's not going to suddenly jump up to 36 minutes a night no matter where he goes.  I just don't get this one.  Colton would have been my last guess at a player who would be transferring out.  I fear there are some real issues with this program, and I'm starting to think this year may not have been rock bottom.  If Colton can leave, anybody could.  What if both Mbakwe and Rodney end up leaving?  Or hell, anybody else, I don't even know any more.  I just know that I'm suddenly more fearful than ever that Tubby's style of coaching isn't just not winning as many games as we'd hoped but is now actively pushing players out.  Let's just move on to baseball so a different team can let me down.


And since we're almost to baseball season (preview of some sort coming soon, maybe even this week), here's the team Snake and I put together in our fantasy baseball draft.  I don't know about you, but looks like a championship to me.

C - Miguel Montero, Arizona (do you realize there are like 3 good catchers?  And we weren't getting stuck with freaking Wieters again.  I've done that dance twice).
1B - Billy Butler, KC (fat doubles machine)
2B - Rickie Weeks, MIL (counting on last year NOT being a career year)
3B - Evan Longoria, TB (so sexy he'll steal your girlfriend)
SS - Starlin Castro, CHC (please don't suck)
OF - Mike Stanton, FLA (not the middle reliever.  We're buying the hype)
OF - Austin Jackson, DET (how about just a little plate discipline?)
OF - Delmon Young, MIN (no points for fielding)
Ut - Jason Kubel, MIN (got him very, very late.  Decent upside)
SP - Jon Lester, BOS (could win 25)
SP - Justin Verlander, DET (looking even more unhittable this year)
SP - Clay Buchholz, BOS (I guess we're all in on Boston)
SP - Madison Bumgarner, SF (hoping his rough spring doesn't mean anything)
RP - Jonathan Papelbon, BOS (like I said)
RP - Joakim Soria, KC (Will probably end up saving 85% of KC's wins)
RP - Drew Storen, WAS (we can't have Strausberg, so we'll take his little buddy)
Bench - 1B Justin Smoak, SEA (Of course)
Bench - SP Michael Pineda, SEA (we hit it big with Leake last year, might as well try again)
Bench - RP Chris Sale, CHW (already unhittable, just needs to get the closer gig)
Bench - SP Carl Pavano, MIN (steady enough)

CHAMPIONSHIP!








RIP Paul.

Friday's Gambling

This is a much harder slate of games to breakdown than the ones I looked at yesterday.  But because I love you, dear reader, I will continue to march ahead.  I'm like Sojourner Truth and shit.

North Carolina -4.5 vs. Marquette:  I absolutely, abso-smurfly cannot get a good read on this game.  The points almost seem perfect here.  And what do we really have in Marquette?  Do we even know?  They semi-limped into the tournament, but then beat Xavier and Syracuse - two pretty good teams.  I can only come back to what I know, and that's how Marquette is mainly a perimeter oriented team who beat two other perimeter oriented teams.  That's a mark against them since Carolina is very solid in the paint with Henson and Zeller.  Also going against Marquette is that the Heels are one of the hottest teams in college right now, and there last, and maybe most impressive win came over Washington, another perimeter oriented team.    Since I've locked myself in wagering on every game I'll throw one unit on UNC here, but overall I'd rather just stay away.  That includes that over/under 149.5.  It's just too high, but not so high that I'd bet on it.  Overall I hate this game.

Ohio State -6 vs. Kentucky:  Conversely to the one above, this is the game I'm most confident in for a myriad of reasons, and that's not even counting the fact that the Buckeyes have been runnin' and jumpin' all over people's heads so far in this tournament.

Reason #1 would be the coaching.  Recruiting-wise, Thad Matta vs. John Calipari may be a battle of 1a and 1b with no correct answer, but gameplanning wise and in-game adjustment wise Matta blows him out of the water.  I talked a bit in yesterday's post how I got too cute with my bracket picks and backed poor game coaches even though I know better and they all came back to bite me in the ass.  I'm not making that mistake again.

Reason #2 would be how this Kentucky team, and Calipari's teams in general, succeed best when they can use their elite athleticism against teams that can't compete in that area.  I was actually expecting to be picking Kentucky to go out early this year, but seeing their matchups were against Princeton and West Virginia picking them to the Sweet 16 is one of the few things I got right.  But now going against the Buckeyes they won't be seeing any slow white dudes or whatever Joel Mazzulla is, this Ohio State team might be the most athletic team they've faced this year.  Terrence Jones will still have an edge on Jared Sullinger - and it wouldn't surprise me in the least to see him get the better of that match-up - but the Buckeyes or even or better everywhere else.

Reason #3 would be how Ohio State has been runnin' and jumpin' all over people's heads this whole tournament.  Take how they're playing, the points I made above, and a little reminder that Ohio State is an elite (top 10 def. efficiency) defensive team (Reason #4) and this could be a blood bath.  Oh yeah, Kentucky's faced two other top 10 defensive squads, that they've given the Wildcats two of their eight losses this year (Reason #5).  I'll be going with Ohio State big for six units, and I'm throwing a unit on the over 140, just because Ohio State might very well get to 140 by themselves.

Kansas -10.5 vs. Richmond:   At first glance this one is tough and my first impression is that isn't 10.5 points an awful lot for a sweet 16 game?  I mean like, a ton when two teams that are obviously playing well are involved?  I know Richmond's second win was over a 13 seed but Morehead was still the same team that beat Louisville and the Spiders beat them in impressive fashion.  The Spiders have played one team comparable to Kansas this year, Purdue, and beat them on a neutral floor - that bodes very well for Richmond.  They are also a good shooting team, and if Kansas has one weakness - and they don't - it's defending the jump shot.  Richmond is also solid at defending the shot, so they may be able to slow Kansas's incredible offensive efficiency and keep this one close.  Nebraska actually has a similar profile to Richmond in terms of field goal defense and tempo, and they were able to keep the game within 3 and hold them under 65 points in one of their meetings - and Richmond is much better in all facets than Nebraska.  That all adds up to enough for me to go with Richmond and the points for two units.  I'm not touching the over/under because just as likely as the Jayhawks getting held down is them dropping a hunny all by themselves.

Florida State -3.5 vs. VCU:  Ernest Hemingway wrote "Do not ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee" and I'm pretty sure he was talking about Virginia Commonwealth because this ride is about to come to a screeching halt.  Actually your opinion on this game basically comes down to one question, "Do you believe in a team's whole body of work or do you think a team can completely flip the script for a few short weeks?"

VCU was always a good team, but they basically were a poor shooting team who was reliant on long-twos and three-pointers but was always able to score enough points because they took great care of the basketball.  The taking care of the basketball part is still true, but suddenly the past two games they've greatly increased their ability to put the ball in the hole.  Now they come up against Florida State, an absolutely rock-solid defensive basketball team who may actually be the best statistical defense we've seen in years, and whose #1 above all defensive strength is forcing their opponents to take, and miss, difficult twos and threes.

I know you're wondering how they were able to shred Purdue and besides the obvious (missing Kelsey Barlow) they other key here is that although Purdue ranks as a very good defensive team, they don't do anything defensively off the charts well - they're just very good at every part of defense.  FSU, on the other hand, is simply off the charts good at making you miss shots.  They aren't great at causing turnovers, they don't limit opponent offensive rebounds particularly well, and they don't really keep their opponents off the free throw line - but they are absolutely positively great at making opponents take bad shots and miss. 

Overall Purdue might be the better defensive team, but this match-up is absolutely perfect for Florida State, and a complete buzzsaw for the newest little engine that could.  And then couldn't.  Going with Florida State here for 4 units.  I'm also tossing a unit on the under 132 because I think there's a chance FSU keeps VCU in the fifties and they're offensively challenged enough where they couldn't possibly get to 70, but I'm limiting it to a unit because VCU seems like that annoying kind of team that will keep fouling even when they're down double-digits with 20 seconds left.  Also known as under-killers. 

Good luck to all.  Good or bad, I'll be back to break down some weekend action.  Unless I get too drunk at our fantasy baseball draft. 

A Gambling Perspective on the Sweet 16

I am now ready to write again. You may think the reason I haven't put any words down is because I filled out the world's worst bracket. And yes, I most certainly did fill out the worst bracket, but since I've never had any credibility anyway I don't really care how badly I look. The reason I haven't been able to put anything up is I'm still trying to recover from Chicago. Three nights of drinking until 3am - two of which started around noon - is way too many for an old man like me to handle. I've been trying to maximize my sleep in order to try to recalibrate myself back to normal. It hasn't worked yet but it's getting better, so I'm going to at least put something up so nobody thinks I'm dead.

There's no doubt my bracket is god damn awful, and I think I've figured out why other than that I suck - overthinking. It's hard to even rank the stupid things I did in making my picks, starting with believing in a Jamie Dixon Pitt team. Perennial underachievers, taking them to the Final Four would have been stupid, let alone picking them as my national champ. And he's not even the worst coach I backed, because I actually put my money behind Rick Barnes. Rick. Effing. Barnes. So dumb. Hell, after those two believing in a Lorenzo Romar-led Washington Huskies team doesn't even look bad, and that would normally be the biggest mistake one could possibly make in a bracket.

It wasn't just backing obviously poor coaches either, because there were some teams I was behind that should have had more obvious red flags. The most obvious is Notre Dame, and somehow I completely missed it and had them in my final four. Yep, I took a team that is almost 100% reliant on the jump shot to score points and suddenly expected them to be able to beat four straight NCAA Tournament caliber teams. Just stupid. But possibly not as stupid as expecting a team that just lost one of it's best players and leading rebounders to make a surprise run to the elite 8. Why did I back St. John's despite all that? Again, I'm an idiot.

The good news, however, is that although my bracket picks were god awful I did manage to come out ahead by a bit with the gambling gods thanks mainly to a heavy bet on George Mason, a heavy bet on the Zona/UNC over, and a super mega heavy bet on Darius Morris over 4 assists against Duke. So let's all clear our minds, forget my poor picks, and concentrate on picking the sweet 16 from a gambling perspective using what I learned this past weekend. We'll do Thursday's games today and Friday's games tomorrow.


UCONN -1 vs. San Diego State: Right away we hit up one of the biggest subplots of the weekend - don't back a poor game coach. Although I love Steve Fisher and the man has a national championship and a couple other Final Fours, he's the epitome of a "recruit great athletes, roll the ball out and let them play" style coach. That can work, but you run into trouble against teams with similar athletes who are backed by a game coach who can actually influence a game, and that's what you have with the Huskies and Jim Calhoun.

Two big x-factors in this game:  home court advantage for the Aztecs and Kemba Walker for the Huskies.  The game is going to be played just 2 hours from SDSU's campus so it should be a partisan crowd for them, while if you watched any basketball this year you know Kemba Walker is the kind of player who can carry a team by himself - and not only can he, but he's done it over and over in big spots.  I give the x-factor advantage to UCONN, and along with the coach factor that makes this one an easy decision.  Take UCONN -1 (3 units).

Florida -3 vs. BYU:  This one's a rematch of a thrilling first-round match-up from last year that saw BYU take the Gators down in triple-overtime.  Both teams are mainly still intact from last year, particularly Florida who has the same starting five, so if you're looking for some kind of x-factor that could be it.

Personally, I'm a bit more interested in how BYU's has survived without being exposed for a lack of a big man by Brandon Davies suspension for playing a little pickle.  Basically neither of their first two opponents has been able to throw an athletic big man at them - the type of player the Cougars need Davies around in order to slow down.  Wofford's Noah Dahlman is efficient, but he'll never be described as an incredible athlete, while Robert Sacre from Gonzaga is more of a defensive presence.  The real question is if Florida's interior players can make BYU pay for their honor code.

Neither Alex Tyus or Vernon Macklin are offensive juggernauts, although they average 20 pts and 11 rebounds per game between the two of them, but the biggest stat affecting this game is their three-point shooting - specifically their lack of interest in in with just 5 attempts between the two of them all season.  This means they're basically just going to camp in the lane - bad news for the Cougars.  SDSU's Billy Thomas and Malcolm White are similar players to Tyus and Macklin, and in the first two games with Davies BYU held them to a combined average of 17 points and 12 rebounds - both Cougar wins.  In their third game with Davies in street clothes those two went off for 30 and 19 and the Aztecs won.  Good enough for me.  The pick is Florida -3 for 2 units.  BONUS:  Take the OVER 149.5 for a unit.  Florida is going to score at will in the paint, which means BYU is going to have to score a ton to keep this close, pushing the final up into the 80s range each.

Duke -8.5 vs. Arizona:  The coaches are a wash because both are excellent in game, although maybe peg Krzyzewski half a point for pre-gaming, and give Arizona a small advantage for being the quasi-home team in this one with the Dukies traveling across the world to play.  What I'm really curious is to see how Derrick Williams of Arizona plays here, because I'm getting a bit of a Danny Manning vibe from him.

Williams, who averaged 19 and 8 this season and was one of the most efficient players in the league with a FG% of .600 (.581 from three), has scored 22 and 17 (with 10 and 9 boards) in the Wildcats' first two wins and had a game-winning play in each, one from each end (blocked shot vs. Memphis, 3-point play vs. Texas).  Of note is that Duke played a similar player to Arizona's Williams this year twice in Maryland's Jordan Williams, who went for 20 and 10 and 16 and 16 in the two games.  In Duke's late loss to UNC John Henson went 10 and 12.  Virginia Tech's Jeff Allen scored 18 and grabbed 15 in their win over the Dukies, and Justin Brownlee was 20 and 9 in St. J's win - nearly double his season averages.

Look, I'm not saying Arizona is going to win, but I am saying this is interesting.  You have one of the best players in the country carrying his team right now and running himself into possibly the #1 pick in the NBA Draft, and he just so happens to be the kind of player who Duke struggles to contain - the same Duke team that's flying all the way across the country for what will be a semi-road game.  Personally, I'm taking Arizona and the +8.5 points for 3 units, but right now if you threw a little cash at the moneyline on Zona you're getting nearly 4/1 odds.  I can see it.

Wisconsin -4.5 vs. Butler:  In many ways, Butler is just a slightly worse version of Wisconsin - both teams play very efficient offense, good but not great defense, limit opponents possessions by taking extreme care of the basketball and not allowing offensive rebounds, and play at a slow pace.  Hell, they even have the same black guy do everything ball-handler guard and big white guy combination.  The real question is:  is Wisconsin 4.5 half points better than Butler, or less?

Two things have me thinking that Butler is the play here:  Timing, and Ronald Nored.  As far as timing goes, Butler has struggled all year, even losing five Horizon games and suddenly looking like they wouldn't get an invite to the tournament.  Since a three-game losing streak mid-season they've now won the next 11 in a row including a sweep of the second best team in their league (Cleveland State), a win over a team that had previously swept them (Milwaukee) and wins over two very good teams in ODU and Pitt - clearly they're hot.  The other reason is Nored - the Bulldogs best defender.  He's not much for scoring (he'd be great as a BYU student) so he can just chase Jordan Taylor around all day and use his energy up that way, leaving Shelvin Mack free to concentrate on offense.  On the flip side, Wisconsin doesn't have anybody outside of Taylor who I can see Bo Ryan using to guard Mack, so Taylor's going to be playing double duty.  Not that he can't handle it, but it's a small advantage toward the Butler side of this one.

Look, I don't know who is going to win this one and I'm really glad I don't have to pick a winner.  I think this game is straight 50/50, but those small advantages detailed above tell me that the best bet here is to go ahead and take Butler +4.5 for two units, because this should come down to the wire.  As a little bonus, that OVER/UNDER 124 number looks pretty interesting, and I'm taking the OVER 124 for three units.  Both teams play slow but neither is a necessarily great defense.  Since both teams take great care of the basketball (and neither defense is particularly adept at taking it away), both teams will get their shots.  Since both teams are efficient scoring machines, they should score some points.


So there's Thursday's games.  Those should work out pretty well because I've got a lot better feeling for this set than I do for the next nights.  I'll do some math, run some numbers, read some things, and see how I come out.  Right now I'm thinking Ohio State and three question marks.  Stay tuned.