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Friday, March 31, 2006

no yelling on the bus
two things i'm sick of hearing about this week:

(1) the duke lacrosse team scandal. holy shitballs, give it a rest. at this point what the fuck are all those students protesting? not one player has been charged with a crime. and despite this glaring fact, the team has been suspended. so much for innocent until proven guilty. i could understand a protest if the whole team was arrested and convicted yet the school allowed them to play. but nothing even remotely close to that has happened.

(2) jaokim noah. we get it. he're intense. he cares a lot. he's trying to emerge from his father's shadow. but good lord does he need to let out a primal scream every time he grabs a rebound or scores a point? imagine playing beer pong with this guy...

2006 mlb preview
chisox-tribe is just over 48 hours away and i'm chomping at the bit. without further ado, here are my predictions:

al
nyy - best lineup in baseball and an 8-man rotation that can handle injuries.
bos - too many if's on their staff and lineup to overtake the yanks.
tor - much improved, but not good enough to overcome an injury to halladay or burnett.
tam - if you plan to take ab's from gomes and give them to gaithright, i can't take you seriously.
bal - one of the worst-run organizations continues to struggle. kevin maas could be playing 1b for them in 2007.

chi - no more timo perez in the dh slot. good team is now even better.
cle - questionable rotation knocks them out of playoff contention.
det - underrated lineup and (possibly) deeper rotation than minny takes em out of 4th
min - offense still blows. poor johan.
kc - signing dougie m, grudz, and sanders. it's like they're not even trying.

oak - nasty rotation, nasty lineup.
laa - nasty rotation, weak lineup.
sea - much improved roster, but not enough to overcome the teams from cali.
tex - good o, terrible rotaion. some things never change.

playoffs
nyy > laa
oak > chi
nyy > oak

mvp: eric chavez
cy young: johan
roy: delmon young (in 1/2 a season)

nl
atl - in a very tight race, hudson and smoltz give braves the edge.
nym - vastly improved despite losing seo, but pedro's toe is too iffy to take 1st.
phi - decent lineup can't overcome mediocre rotation in this tough division.
was - too many question marks (both in health and in soriano's status).
fla - not going to be as bad as everyone thinks, but still finish last.

stl - more loss than gain, but still the team to beat in a weakening division.
hou - wilson could hit 40 homers at minute maid, clemens could help them run at wc.
mil - aren't ready for the playoffs yet, but could overtake stros if clemens is done.
chi - keep making poor decisions. could finish worse than 4th but 30 starts (combined) for prior and wood keep them out of the cellar.
pit - i don't fully understand the veteran deals (especially burnitz). not all the young arms will succeed right away.
cin - scary lineup but as usual too many #4 starters.

sf - bonds + good rotation = best in weak west.
la - eh. at least kent will mash.
ari - a better lineup than san diego, but just as many question marks in the rotation.
sd - too many players on the wrong side of their careers. poor peavy.
col - they could be the next texas!

playoffs
sf > atl
nym > stl
nym > sf

mvp: pujols
cy young: schmidt
roy: hermidia

ws
nyy > nym in another subway series.

blockbuster trade:
johan to mets for lastings milledge and aaron heilman.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

they'd be better off trading for 33 pounds of meat
i spent a good portion of yesterday thinking about the arroyo-pena trade over on slack, but there's another one brewing that i just don't get. the orioles and cubs are considering a trade of luis matos and todd walker. seriously, who the fuck is running these organizations? here's what this trade would mean for each team:

baltimore - they get todd walker, and most likely pay his entire $2.5 mil salary. he never plays (barring some terrible injury to roberts) and is used solely as a pinch hitter. i'd say he could log some time at 1b, but lopez, conine, and millar already make that a crowded spot. they lose matos, who hits lefties okay and could platoon in center with patterson (who is terrible, but better against rhp than matos). patterson becomes the o's everyday cf. gibbons plays right with some weird concoction of old guys in left (i don't see markarkis starting right away).

chicago - they get matos, adding him to the of mix of pierre, murton, jones, mabry, grissom (who baker is evidently leaning towards taking - his love of veterans knows no bounds). pierre is playing cf everyday, and matos doesn't hit nearly well enough to be a regular corner outfielder. grissom hits lhp better than matos, so platooning matos with jones doesn't seem reasonable. also, felix pie is blocked even further. the cubs then lose the best offensive second basemen they have (by far), and hand the position over to niefi perez and/or scott hairston (yuck). if cedeno struggles at short or doesn't get the starting job (which is what baker is leaning towards), you have a middle infield of perez and hairston, neither of which should be an everyday player.

it's not often a trade hurts both teams, but this one's certainly got potential.

don't call it a comeback
i suppose now that the dust has settled a bit, i can get back to posting. the last 6 weeks have seen me travel to houston (twice), colorado, and reno. here are some things i picked up in that span:

i learned that if i had to sum up houston (or whatever town nasa officially resides in), i would need only 4 words: churches, metallica, strip malls. also, i was there for two separate weeks and saw the sun once. that place blows.

i learned that whoever designs hotel bathrooms doesn't understand laws of gravity. correct me if i'm wrong, but a short person can still use a shower head that is a bit taller than they are, and a toilet that is more than 8 inches off the floor. but it doesn't really work too well the other way around. regardless, in one two week stretch i only spent 11 nights away from home and not once could i take a shit or shower without contorting into some horribly uncomfortable position. hotel bathroom designers? blow.

i learned that the former owner(s) of the fantasy team roy and i inherited make joe morgan and tim mccarver look like baseball geniuses. it would've been difficult to have a worse first 25 rounds of drafting. more on this in a later post. but trust me, those guys really blow.

now, i don't want to sound too negative on my first post since before valentine's day. so here are some better things i either learned or was reminded since then:

durango mountain (aka purgatory) is just a phenomenal mountain. multiple terrain parks, great lodging options, an area called the beach at the base of the main lift with tons of lawn chairs and some cocktail waitresses. this year we hit up red river (nm), angel fire (nm), blue knob (pa), sipapu (nm), durango (co), wolfcreek (co), and heavenly (nv). durango was my favorite, even at a time when the snow wasn't too great. for the record, nina's favorite was wolf creek (lots of snow and a more backcountry feel - no terrain parks). as an aside for you mit cats, we also rode a chairlift up at heavenly with a guy who played for and knows coach lenihan (from beverly, ma).

having friends who work for harrah's and reside in south lake tahoe is really fun. we even so a show while we were there - former members of cracker (hey hey hey it's like bein stoned) now in a band called camper von beethoven. they had a cool fiddle player but old, old groupies (the band was pretty old so maybe those were wives). i don't recommend flying thru san francisco on the way home though.

preparing for rounds 26-40 in that fantasy draft was incredibly time consuming and incredibly awesome. anytime you have to rank 450 of the worst mlb-ers you are going to learn something (e.g. how can kc be so bad and still not find a place for calvin pickering?).

per usual i had some good experience involving beer:
-bottles shaped like pins at the bowling alley (referring to myself as "manute bowl" the whole night didn't hurt that experience none either)
-green beer for st. patty's day
-24 cans of bud at the holiday inn express in seabrook, tx while i worked on the aforementioned draft (purchased at a convenience store so shady they didn't carry sports illustrated, only really old looking porn mags. i mean like plastic-wrapper-disintegrating old).

i'll wrap this up with the most important thing we learned in the past few weeks - that nina will be cutting her time in the af short. we will most likely be spending september-november travelling and not working (which most certainly does NOT blow), and then moving back to the massachusetts/new hampshire area after that.

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