Wild Swings

Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to actually watch any games yesterday. But, by golly, we can probably analyze said games just as well as your typical TV analyst. At any rate, we'll give it a shot.

Tebow and company lost to Tom Brady and the Patriots pretty handily - 41 to 23. Considering the game would have been 27-23 without the help of two second-quarter Denver fumbles (yes, one by Tebow) in their own territory, the Broncos might just have won.

The Packers lost their first game - to the Chiefs. Embarrassment aside, this is probably a very good thing for them. They're not nearly the team that New England was in 2007 when they went undefeated all the way up to the Super Bowl, and they wouldn't have a chance at winning the Super Bowl without a loss. The target on the back of a team, added to the pressure of being undefeated, is just too heavy to bear for any but the best of teams.

Elsewhere, James Harrison of the Steelers got suspended for an illegal but arguably not dirty hit on Colt McCoy of the Browns. Harrison developed the reputation of being a dirty player a year or two ago when the league started to crack down on "dirty" hits. Unfortunately for Harrison and for the integrity of the league, he is not a dirty player and certainly should not have been suspended for that hit. Especially considering Ndamukong Suh of the Lions got just two (and a half) games for the kicking incident on Thanksgiving. There are just two reasons why Harrison got suspended: The NFL likes making an example out of him, and Colt McCoy got a concussion out of the hit. Whether that stemmed from the slight helmet-to-helmet contact or the contact with the ground, we don't know. Either way, McCoy has a history of concussions, and defensive players should not be held accountable for additional head injuries.

Hydra
6-4-3 double play... Ballgame over! Yankees win! Theeeeeee Yankees win!

We'll Give You Three Guesses as to Who this Article is About...

Tim Tebow. Should he win the MVP? Not too many people are discussing this - probably partially because there's little to no chance of his actually winning the award. But a very compelling argument can be made in his favor.

Generally, the MVP goes to whichever quarterback or running back happens to put up the flashiest numbers in the season. Only three times has the NFL given out the MVP to a non-quarterback or running back since the award was first given in 1957 - once to a linebacker, once to a defensive tackle, and once to a kicker (boy, that would be the day). So the question every year is this: What quarterback or running back is the most valuable in the league?

There are very few instances when one can say that a player's team would be nothing without him. A good case could be made for Peyton Manning. He's been out the whole year, and his team doesn't have a win. (Not that his absence is the only reason why they're losing, but it's a pretty drastic contrast.) But he's been out the whole year, so he can't win the award.

Other players must be approached with caution. People have finally realized that great numbers - record-breaking numbers - don't necessarily mean that a given player is the most valuable in the league. A perfect example is Tom Brady. After breaking records and embarrassing opponents in 2007, he missed pretty much the entire year in 2008. Replacement Matt Cassel, who hadn't started a game since high school, also broke records. So a quarterback with flashy numbers isn't automatically indispensible.

That brings us back to the question of Tebow. Does he deserve the MVP? There's no question that his team is better with him than without him. The Broncos were 1-4 with Kyle Orton as starting quarterback, but they have gone 7-1 with Tebow at the helm. The message? The Broncos cannot win without Tebow and win like crazy with him. If he beats the Patriots on Sunday and ends the season 10-1 with his team in the playoffs, it's difficult to argue that he shouldn't win the MVP.

However, there are three things that stand in his way. The first is that he hasn't started the entire season. This would be a better argument if the response wasn't as simple as "Exactly! He didn't even need the whole season to get his team into the playoffs." The second is his lack of flashy statistics. Yes, his numbers are pretty awful. But he has little talent around him - and he doesn't need flashy numbers to win. Finally, Aaron Rodgers stands in his way. If the Packers go 16-0, there's little doubt that Rodgers will win the MVP. Unfortunately, Rodgers is not as clear a choice as Tebow for the valuable part of the award. Brady didn't have the Packers' incredible receiving core in 2007 and he still went 16-0 - and then Cassel was also very successful the following season. Flashy numbers? They don't mean anything.

Tebow will probably not win the MVP award simply because his numbers aren't pretty like Rodgers'. But it's pretty clear from a common sense standpoint that he should win the award. After all, he's the one who rescued his team from a fight for Andrew Luck to a fight for the division and possibly double-digit wins. And who knows? If he had Jordy Nelson catching his passes, he might just have numbers every bit as beautiful as Rodgers'.

Hydra
6-4-3 double play... Ballgame over! Yankees win! Theeeeeee Yankees win!

A Dose of Monday Roundup

Tim Tebow did it again. With a little help from Bears running back Marion Barber, he brought his team back from 10-0 and won the game in overtime. Dropped passes in the first three quarters notwhithstanding, the passing game really picked up in the fourth. But what was most impressive about the Bronco win was the number of rushing yards they had in the game: 124. Remember when everyone said that Tebow couldn't win because, at some point, the team would have to stop relying so much on its running game? Well, they beat the Bears with less than 150 team rushing yards. Win a game in the NFL: Check. Win without relying on the rushing game: Check. Get into the playoffs: Next on the list.

Elsewhere, the Pack made the Raiders want to forget yesterday. Question: How do you spell "beat-down"? Answer: P-A-C-K-E-R-S. Having said that, the Pack still won't go back-to-back unless they lose a game in the regular season. They'd better do it soon, though; time's running out.

Hydra
6-4-3 double play... Ballgame over! Yankees win! Theeeeeee Yankees win!

We've Got Some Good Moves and Some Bad Moves

Albert Pujols and C.J. Wilson will both take flight from St. Louis and Texas, repectively, to the LA Angels. So, after several years of being in talks to acquire pretty much every big free agent that came along, the Angels finally landed a couple of big fish. Pujols is a good move. He spells bad news for any American League team that wants to get past the Angels in the playoffs (particularly the Yankees, whose pitchers seem partial to giving up homers). Wilson may turn out to be a bad move. True, he is a good, solid regular season pitcher. But last season he became the only player in history to lose an all-star game, a divisional series game, a league championship series game, and a World Series game all in the same year. (Granted, not all those rounds of playoffs have been around for long. However, it still shows that he had one bad year for clutch games.)

Baseball has added an additional wild card team in each league this year: Good move. The wild cards will fight it out amongst themselves every year with a one-game playoff. As long as the time gap between the regular season and the divisional series doesn't expand (don't give us more than two or three days off, please), this seems like a great idea. There will be as much competition between teams trying to get the wild card (home field advantage is still up for grabs), and the excitement of teams playing in a do-or-die game is guaranteed for each season.

Also, the Astros will move to the American League in 2013. Bad move. True, it will even out the leagues so that each has 15 teams. But it also forces baseball to have at least one interleague series a week - probably two, actually. One of the charms of baseball is its clear distinction between and separation of its leagues. National League: Great pitching, bad batting, no DH. American League: Great hitting, bad pitching, a DH. These are over-simplifications, of course, but that's the basic idea. The only way this system would work is if the highly concentrated interleague games played now are simply spread out over the whole season. Highly doubt that will happen. Meanwhile, an increase of interleague play would blur the line between the leagues, and take away from the importance of home field advantage in the World Series. (Thus damaging the integrity of the All-Star Game.)

Hydra
6-4-3 double play... Ballgame over! Yankees win! Theeeeeee Yankees win!

Random Monday Brainwaves

Tim Tebow just keeps winning. While everyone has been busy beating him black and blue over his less-than-stellar numbers, he has quietly compiled a season QB rating of 80.5. That's only half bad considering for his first two starts his coach supplied him with game plans seemingly designed to fail, and also considering his wide receivers drop passes left and right. He just needs more time to get assimilated. Anyone who has a hobby that requires one to keep a distracting checklist in one's head knows that it takes practice, practice, practice, practice, and practice to get to the point where even a little change in one's approach becomes second nature. Given a few more weeks, Tebow will have gotten to the point where he can do some of the alterations to his mechanics without thinking about them too hard. That will allow him to focus less on his mechanics and more on completing his passes.

Then there's Ndamukong Suh. Analysts have started to build him into even more of an NFL bad-boy since his incident on Thanksgiving. Granted, hitting a guy's head into the turf repeatedly and kicking (or stomping, depending on whom you ask) his arm on the way by is dirty. He should have been suspended, and he was. But. He has been painted as a dirty player almost since Day 1 of his career. Now people are even claiming that he has been a problem since high school. (Terry Bradshaw on FOX, to give an example.) Not so. While we don't know what he was like in high school, he was not a dirty player at Nebraska. He had something like nine personal foul penalties in his last two years as a Husker, but the vast majority of them were cheap calls. Yes, we're Husker fans and therefore biased. But even the national TV commentators said that some of the calls were not deserved. Additionally, Suh has never hurt anyone in the NFL. Maybe his by-the-neck throwdowns are a bit extreme for tackles. However, he hasn't put anyone in the hospital. Considering his strength, he could easily have done so if that was what he wanted.

Finally, the Packers just inched closer to winning the Super Bowl again this year. They took out a desperate New York Giants team in New York yesterday, barely escaping overtime with a last-second field goal. Granted, it's the Giants. They're 0-4 in the second half of this season, taking their annual swan dive. (One of us is heart-broken. The other is cold-hearted and doesn't care.) But the Packers proved that they can rise to a challenge. However, they need to work on their defense a little more if they expect to go back-to-back. Giving up over thirty points to anyone, much less the Giants, is a problem. Also, they might have to lose a game in the regular season in order to win it all. It takes a very, very special team to go 19-0. The Patriots were that team a few years ago, but they happened to 1) run into the only team that had even a shot at beating them, and 2) drop an interception that would essentially have won the game. The Packers aren't the caliber of team that the Patriots were, so they will likely not go undefeated all the way. The only question is when their first loss will come: The regular season or the post season?

Hydra
6-4-3 double play... Ballgame over! Yankees win! Theeeeeee Yankees win!

The Gang of Six

Talk about a monkey wrench. Based on their treatment of Phil Hughes so far, the Yankees probably planned on sending Ivan Nova back down to the minors regardless of how he performed. The six-man rotation used last time around might have been some schedule finagling designed to make sure A.J. Burnett didn't face the Red Sox in Fenway this weekend. After completing his duty, Nova would then be sent back down to the minors until the rosters expanded in September. However, the decision might not be so easy.

Here's the way the Yankee rotation would look if GM Brian Cashman and manager Jo Girardi could make decisions based purely on performance: CC Sabathia, Bartolo Colon, Freddy Garcia, Nova, and Burnett, in that order. Hughes had a great start his last outing, but that hardly makes up for the many times he's been plastered this season. In fact, Nova has far out-performed him this year. Unfortunately, the Yankees have to put Hughes in the rotation.

If Hughes gets sent to the bullpen again, there's no going back. It's time for him to make the move from a mediocre starting pitcher to a genuine major leaguer. He's old enough, and he's been around long enough, to finally take that last step and establish himself. If the Yankees send him to the bullpen, that's it. A stint in the bullpen would erase the little progress he has made in the rotation. If they send him down to the minors, his development as a pitcher would be put on hold. Hughes is good enough to get minor leaguers out, and he might not be able to learn much from pitching in the minors. It's only in the major leagues that he'll be able to hone his pitching skills.

Which brings us to the dilemma. The Yankees can't send Nova down, and they can't demote him to the bullpen. Because he's been so good, rewarding him with anything less than a spot in the rotation is just wrong. At the same time, the Yankees can't really do anything except keep Hughes in the rotation. There's only solution left: a six-man rotation. Critics say that Sabathia couldn't handle all those extra off days. Even if that were true, there's no reason why the Yankees can't give Garcia or Colon an extra day off once in a while. Neither is as young as he used to be, and Colon is pretty injury prone. It's not a perfect solution, but it's the best one out there.

To end on a positive note, the Yankees could have more to worry about. People complain about their high payroll, but at least they have the money to support their spending - unlike another entity we could name.

Hydra
6-4-3 double play... Ballgame over! Yankees win! Theeeeeee Yankees win!

Steining Mistakes

Hal Steinbrenner has turned into his father. Rafael Soriano - who was signed at Steinbrenner's orders and against Brian Cashman's wishes - is going to be out until July at the earliest. Sound familiar? Does the name "Jaret Wright" ring a bell? How about Randy Johnson? Kevin Brown? There are a lot of common denominators for these infamous names (including big bucks and injuries), but the one we're interested in is Steinbrenner.

George liked to throw his weight around when it came to bringing in big names to play for New York. In a way, the approach of filling a team with superstars that came through other teams' systems makes sense. After all, why put the time and effort into developing talent when you afford to sign it while it's in its prime? No muss, no fuss, just a big check.

Unfortunately, big names often come with two big price tags - one tag has a dollar sign, the other does not. In the Yankees's case, the second price tags were injury tags. Wright, Johnson, and Brown all got injured and ended their Yankee careers rather miserably. (Granted, Carl Pavano seemed to be more Cashman's idea than George Steinbrenner's, and he's more infamous than the other three put together. However, everyone is entitled to one or two mistakes.)

In the end, Brian Cashman has proved himself to be a very intelligent general manager with the ability to put together a World Series team. If Steinbrenner keeps out of Cashman's way, the Yankees might avoid signing clunkers like Soriano.

Things could be worse. The Yankees could have Steinbrenner as an owner and Theo Epstein as a GM. Then they would Stein - we mean sign several clunkers a year.

Hydra
6-4-3 double play... Ballgame over! Yankees win! Theeeeeee Yankees win!

Surprise and Prejudice

It's difficult to tell whether a team is good or not simply by looking at the first two games of the season. After all, the Orioles are 2-0 this year. However, much to the surprise of many analysts, the Yankees have looked pretty darn good.

With the exceptions of Boone Logan and Luis Ayala, the pitching staff has been good. CC Sabathia finally had a good Opening Day start, and A.J. Burnett gave five innings today despite a bad cold. David Robertson's performance was pretty typical; he pitched himself into a jam before sqeaking out without any runs. And, of course, Mariano Rivera is still Mariano Rivera.

The pitching staff has been merely good, but the Yankee lineup is back to the Bronx Bombers. Much to his chagrin, the media has been all over the little tweak in Derek Jeter's batting stance. Whether the minor adjustment has anything to do with it or not, he's batting .333 so far. However, Mark Teixeira has been the best bomber by far. Who knew that doing less weightlifting over the offseason would result in a better performance early in the season?

Aside from Teixeira's great start, the biggest improvement over last year's position players has to be at catcher. Russell Martin is far and away better behind the plate than Posada has been for several years, and is also a significant improvement over Francisco Cervelli.

According to analysts (who are, naturally, often prejudiced against the Yankees), the Yankees should be pretty much mathematically eliminated already. After all, Theo Epstein's offseason moves such as buying Carl Crawford (who's batting 0 for 2011 with 4 Ks) surely gives the Resilient Red Sox the edge over the Yankees, while the Rays are going to come out of the blue to surprise everyone. Oh, wait. The Yankees have a two-game lead over both teams after only two games.

Hydra
6-4-3 double play... Ballgame over! Yankees win! Theeeeeee Yankees win!

The Two Bracketeers

As we've picked the National Champion three years running, we decided to post our bracket online this year. (Which means we'll probably completely embarrass ourselves. But heck, nobody's perfect, and we don't really know much about college basketball.)



Click to view full size


For the record, we chose our teams before we knew the results of any games.

Our method of picking games is very simple: 1) Listen to the analysts and choose the teams in the National Championship Game. 2) Choose against all schools, cities, states, and all other location-related criteria that we don't like. 3) Pick against Obama; he is always wrong when it comes to sports. He said the top seeds will do well this year, so we picked against most of the top seeds. The sages have spoken.

Hydra
6-4-3 double play... Ballgame over! Yankees win! Theeeeeee Yankees win!

Notes from Spring Training

After an extended break, we are finally back. The baseball world has begun to turn more quickly again, with spring training games and gossip about who's giong to make teams, starting lineups, and starting rotations.

Poor Francisco Cervelli has a broken foot and will definitely not win the backup catcher job for the Yanks. This injury is even more unfortunate because he was the incumbent, so to speak, and was probably going to win the job. Instead, the Yankees will probably have Jesus Montero, who's supposed to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. We're a little wary of him, however, because he has a reputation of being bad defensively. After three years of suffering through Jorge Posada's struggles behind the plate, the last thing the Yankees need is a backup catcher who can't catch.

Off the field, things are much the same as always. Kim Jones of the YesNetwork told a story during the Yankees/Red Sox game last night about Ron Johnson, one of the Red Sox's coaches. Apparently his daughter lost her leg in a terrible horse riding accident. Even though the Red Sox had helped him out, he was still hurting a little financially. So Kevin Long, who played for Johnson in the minor leagues, asked the Yankee players for contributions. They responded.

Not to bring anything negative to this great story, but this just shows the difference between the Red Sox and the Yankees. The Yankees take care of their own; if one of their coaches was hurting financially because of some dreadful accident, the organization would likely step in and take care of everything. If not, the players certainly would. But the Red Sox, who are probably the second-richest team in baseball, didn't supply their own first base coach with enough money to get him and his family through this hard time. Whatever else can be said about the Yankees, the organization and its players are very generous.

Hydra
6-4-3 double play... Ballgame over! Yankees win! Theeeeeee Yankees win!

Rays Take a Page From the Book of Red Sox

In a big surprise, the Rays signed Johnny Damon and Manny Ramirez. This looks like an attempted slap in the Yankees' face, as well as a double replacement for Carl Crawford (who, incidentally, became the Red Sox's forty-fifth outfielder earlier in the off-season). Johnny was probably signed because of his leadership skills, which were even evident when he played for the Yankees. Despite the giant loss of fielding ability in this exchange, Damon seems to be a leadership upgrade over Crawford.

Then there's Manny. The Rays picked him up for two reasons. The first is to replace Crawford's bat. The problems with that are 1) Manny isn't nearly as good when he's not on steroids, and 2) Crawford's most valuable offensive asset is his speed. Hm. Enough said. The second reason the Rays picked up Manny Ramirez is because they have fond memories of when he used to destroy the Yankees. (And, as we know, AL East teams structure themselves purely to beat the Yankees.) However, not only are the Yankees an almost entirely different pitching team than when Manny was with the Red Sox (i.e. Mike Mussina is retired), but Manny is not the same player he used to be, either.

Signing Manny Ramirez is just another example of an AL East team doing something to stick it to the Yankees. The problem is, that strategy doesn't work. Just look what happened to the Red Sox last year. They signed two big free agents, thinking that they were not only getting good players, they were keeping those players away from the Yankees. Turns out the Yankees were a lot better off with John Lackey and Mike Cameron in Red Sox uniforms.

Hydra
6-4-3 double play... Ballgame over! Yankees win! Theeeeeee Yankees win!