The 2010 NFL Draft

by Coltrane

The NFL Draft has a new format this year: Round 1 is today at 4:30, Rounds 2 and 3 are tomorrow starting at 3:00, and Rounds 4-7 are on Saturday starting at 10:00 am. All times pst.

An interesting subplot will be to see who goes first– Colt McCoy or Tim Tebow. One mock draft has McCoy at #38 and Tebow at #41. I won’t be shocked if either of them go in the first round instead.

Seahawks picks:

Round 1: #6

Round 1: #14

Round 2: #28 (60th overall)

Round 4: #6 (104th overall)

Round 4: #29 (127th overall)

And some other stuff in later rounds that will be lucky to make the roster.

Waiting For The Other Shoe

by Coltrane

The Seahawks have the 6th and 14th picks in the 2010 NFL draft. This is a deep draft, and it’s deep for offensive and defensive linemen in particular. Having said that, the Seahawks should draft the best available lineman with both first round picks. This is the type of draft where the Seahawks could get their next Walter Jones and/or their next Cortez Kennedy, so long as they don’t blow the picks on skill-position players.

Bill Simmons sums up my concerns about the Seahawks draft (and Pete Carroll) on ESPN.com. He’s referencing the 6th pick:

On Monday’s B.S. Report, Mike Lombardi compared this spot to playing pool: The Seahawks also pick 14th, so they want to make this “shot,” then have the cue ball bounce to a spot where they’ll have another easy shot. This analogy works splendidly unless it’s 2 a.m. and you have some chain-smoking drunk dude trying to pull it off. And I guess what I’m trying to say is this: Pete Carroll might be the chain-smoking drunk dude.

I found it perplexing that Seattle handed the coaching/front-office car keys to Carroll this past winter for two reasons. First, it’s always weird when NFL teams pay huge money to lure successful college coaches when the jobs are so fundamentally different. It’s the distant cousin of Hollywood’s allowing star actors to direct (with a similar track record of success). So you excelled at a job that’s 75 percent recruiting and 25 percent strategy, you’ve been basically playing the “Pro” level of “Madden” and now we’re asking you to jump to “All-Madden” without a safety net, and you have no feel for the other 31 NFL rosters because you haven’t been following our league at all. This should work great!

Second, Carroll became the Patriots’ coach the same year I launched my http://www.bostonsportsguy.com website. He did such a dreadful job that a reader once e-mailed me, “Pete Carroll answers the question of why Fredo was never given control of the Corleone family,” followed by my immediately nicknaming Carroll “Coach Fredo” for the rest of his tenure. As it turned out, the comparison was an insult to Fredo. It took Carroll two years to destroy a Super Bowl team, and after he left, it took the Patriots two years to win a Super Bowl. You couldn’t do worse. Even Fredo has “banged two cocktail waitresses” on his résumé.

Now, this was a good 10-plus years ago, and I was smoking a ton of pot back then, but I specifically remember thinking to myself in 1999, “Pete Carroll is definitely not meant to coach professional football or pick the players.” I didn’t think Carroll was meant to coach football, period. His USC experience revealed that he’s meant to recruit 18-year-olds, hop around on the sideline, pump his fists, do the rah-rah routine, design fun defenses and give likable news conferences. We already saw this routine in the NFL: His name was Herm Edwards. It’s not going to work.

That’s a much longer quote than usual, but parsing it out wouldn’t make as much sense. There is no “quick fix” that’s going to make the Seahawks a Super Bowl contender. Drafting someone like RB C.J. Spiller or QB Jimmy Clausen would be a flashy pick, and the fans would love it, but it would putting the cart before the horse. That’s not how to rebuild an NFL franchise. Especially with the new-look Seahawks.

The new Seahawks are going to require agile offensive linemen. Offensive line coach Alex Gibbs likes mobile guys that dive into the defenders’ knees. Rob Sims didn’t fit that type, so he’s now with the Lions. Personally, I find Alex Gibbs’ tactics repulsive, but that’s a subject for another post.

If Safety Eric Berry drops to 6th then the Seahawks have to take him. Otherwise hopefully it’ll be Big Guys all the way.

The Running…Rangers?

By Blaidd Drwg

I am sitting here finishing up a few things listening to the Red Sox vs. Rangers game on the internet and I just realized the Rangers have 8 (!) stolen bases against the battery of Wakefield and Martinez – 3 by Nelson Cruz (who had 0 going into the game), 3 by Elvis Andrus (who had 1 going into the game) and 2 by Vlad Guerrero (who had 1 going into the game), and have not been caught and they are only in the top of the 8th. You think Ron Washington saw something to exploit?

So many interesting facts about this:
– The Rangers have more than doubled their SB total for the season as a team- they had 6 going into the game.
– Victor Martinez is now 1 for 22 throwing out runners this season and has thrown out only 10 of the last 88 runners to try to steal against him.
– Teams are now 10 for 10 against Wake in trying to steal and 29 for 30 against the Red Sox this season.

The Sox have been historically bad about throwing runners out over the Varitek years, but this is getting ridiculous. Makes me wonder when the last time a team recorded 8 SB in a game.
——————

Postscript – The Rangers managed one more SB (Julio Borbon) and also managed to lose the game thanks to their pen. I still wonder when was the last time a battery gave up 9 SB in one game.

Ichiro on the Verge of Becoming the M’s All-Time Hit Leader?

By Blaidd Drwg

I was looking at the Mariners media guide this morning at the Mariners all time top 10 in offensive categories and I saw this in hits:

All Time Leaders
Edgar Martinez – 2,247
Ichiro – 2,230

Ichiro has 15 hits this year, which would put him 3 away from surpassing Edgar. I found it strange that I had not heard anything about this in the local press, so I did a little digging. Turns out, the Mariners Media Guide has a big error – the table should read like this:

All Time Leaders
Edgar Martinez – 2,247
Ichiro – 2,030

Ichiro, barring injury, should pass Edgar this year, just not this week.

Every year I read through the guide (yes, I am that much of a baseball geek) and every year I find a bunch of errors and typos, but never anything this bad. Note to the Mariners – hire someone to proofread your media guide, since it is what you distribute to the actual media.

Shame on Tony LaRussa

By Blaidd Drwg

The Mets and Cardinals played a 20 inning marathon last night, using a combined 19 pitchers and practically every position player on the roster. The Mets, despite only having one hit in the first 11 inning, managed to win the game 2-1.

Despite the game going scoreless for 18 innings, I really think Tony LaRussa gave up on winning – he not only used 2 position players as pitchers, but used them for 3 innings in the game, which ultimately led to the loss, and managed to have a pitcher play left field.

I really think that LaRussa was trying to lose the game just to get it over or at least hope that they would get lucky and win. Two additional head scratching moves he made:

– Why not bring in a starter? You have a guy who is scheduled to throw a bullpen session that day anyway, and you probably could use him for 60 pitches or so. You could also bring in they guy who is scheduled to pitch on Monday (Brad Penny) and call someone up to make the start in his place on Monday.

– He pulled Denny Reyes out in the top of the 14th after throwing just 15 pitches with 2 outs no one on and Luis Castillo up at bat. By bringing in Hawksworth at that point, I am wondering if it cost him the an additional innings’ worth of use from a real pitcher.

Maybe he really thinks that one game won’t make a difference so didn’t care about what the result was. I just really hate to see a team give up like that.

Recommended Game: Fluxx

by Coltrane

Title: Fluxx

Game Type: Chaotic Card Game

Number of Players: 2-6

Complexity of Rules: Low. Time to learn is about 5 minutes.

Time to Play: Short, usually under 20 minutes.

The Concept: Players start by Drawing one card and Playing one card. Then, the Rules and win condition (Goal) continually change throughout the course of each game.

There are four types of cards in Fluxx:

Keepers: Players can play Keepers onto the table. These are things like Television, Cookies, Milk, Dreams, Time, Love, War, and many others. Having a combination of Keepers on the table that matches the Goal is one way to win the game.

Goal cards: In the course of the game players will receive Goal cards into their hand. A player may opt to replace the Goal card currently in play with a different, new, Goal. The “old” Goal is then discarded. For example, the current Goal might be “Milk and Cookies”. A player wins if they have Milk and Cookies (Keepers) on the table at the same time that the Goal is “Milk and Cookies”. (The player might accomplish this by playing the Goal card, or he might accomplish this by playing the Keeper cards, or possibly both on the same turn.) Another Goal could be to have 10 or more cards in hand. There are many possible Goals, although most of them involve having some combination of Keepers on the table.

New Rule cards: At the start of the game there is a Basic Rules card that states that players must draw one card and play one card. Players will receive new Rule cards into their hand which they may then choose to play onto the table. For example, the New Rule card might say “Draw 3 cards”, if the player chooses to play it onto the table then everyone has to draw 3 cards going forward, at least until *that* New Rule gets replaced. There are also New Rules that limit hand size, or the change the number of allowable Keepers or Goals in play.

Action cards: These are cards like “Trade 3 cards with your neighbor” or “Mix up the Keepers and hand them back out randomly”.

As of the 2008 edition there are now four Creeper cards in the deck. Creeper cards usually prevent the player that owns them from winning. The version of Fluxx that I play is older than 2008, so I can’t speak to these cards. I *have* played Zombie Fluxx, which has Creepers. I didn’t feel like they added anything to the game.

Clear as mud? I’ve taken Fluxx to Adult Beverage Events, car camping, and a bunch of other places. It’s a fun and lightweight game that’s been pretty universally well received.

Here’s the BoardGameGeek page. Note that there are many reviews part of the way down the page under Forums -> Reviews.

And here it is on Amazon.com.

If you’re in Seattle I’d urge you to buy it at Gary’s Games.

Handicapping Top Chef Masters – Season 2

by Iron Chef Leftovers

The new season of Top Chef-Masters has begun and it is an impressive collection of chefs with 3 of Seattle’s own – Jerry Traunfeld of Poppy, Maria Hines of Tilth and Thierry Rautureau of Rover’s, competing. My track record with picking the winner is usually not good for the regular Top Chef (although my choice usually ends up in the top 3 finishers), I did nail Season 1 of Masters with Rick Bayless winning.

Here are my predictions – Maria Hines is the only Seattle contestant to make it into the championship round. She probably has the most dynamic cooking style of the 3 (Traunfeld and Rautureau are both classically trained and never struck me as particularly innovative) and I think that creativity is going to carry her forward. Unfortunately, I don’t see her in the finals.

My picks for the finals – Rick Tramonto, Marcus Samuelsson, Jon Waxman and Mark Peel (I believe 4 go to the finals) with Samuelsson winning it all. Samuelsson is the best overall chef in this competition and should be able to handle everything they throw at him.

The two chef who I would love to see do well – Jody Adams and Wylie Dufresne probably won’t make it out of the elimination round. Adams is a fantastic chef, but like Traunfeld and Rautureau, does not strike me as particularly innovative and Dufresne’s molecular gastronomy style does not seem like it is going to hold up in this type of competition.

Let’s revisit this in a couple of weeks and see how I did.

MLB Salary Collusion?

by Coltrane

The MLB players union is making noise about suing for collusion, but they’ll never win another collusion case again.

Using metrics such as WAR, player performance is now quantifiable to the point that it makes sense that each player sees similar offers from the individual teams. With more complete information the teams now know exactly what they’re buying.

Teams are now much less likely to pay $5 for a $3 gallon of milk.

The players are going to have to deal with the new reality.

—–

Postscript: I’m a day too late with this post. Here’s Fangraphs take on it from yesterday. I guess I should have read Fangraphs late yesterday.

Pickup Game

by Coltrane

This is in reference to the Stanford-UConn Women’s Championship Game post. If the Stanford men’s team were to play the UConn women’s team in a pickup game the matchups would look something like this:

Starter	Size	PPG	Starter	Size	PPG (Conf)
Landry Fields	6-7 G/F	22.0	Maya Moore	6-0 F	18.1
Jack Trotter	6-9 F	6.8	Tina Charles	6-4 C	18.9
Jeremy Green	6-4 G	16.6	Tiffany Hayes	5-10 G	8.9
Drew Shiller	6-0 G	7.5	Kalana Green	5-10 G	11.2
Jarret Mann	6-3 PG	5.8	Caroline Doty	5-10 G	6.2

Bench			Bench
Andrew Zimmermann	6-9 F	4.4	Kelly Faris	5-11 G	3.4
Emmanuel Igbinosa	6-2 G	3.9	Megan Gardler	6-0 F	4.3
Da’Veed Dildy	6-4 G	1.1	Lorin Dixon	5-4 G	3.5
			Kaili McLaren	6-2 F	3.7

The UConn women have two players on their team over six feet tall. They’d be giving up 5-6 inches per player. If this pickup game happened in real life the shorter team would insist on mixing up the teams. No contest.

Why Play This Game?

by Blaidd Drwg

#1 UCONN is playing #2 Stanford for the Women’s hoops crown tonight. Why bother? UCONN has won what seems like 5,000 straight games (they last lost in the 2008 final four to Stanford), has beaten 16 (!) ranked opponents this season (including Stanford once this season), has an average margin of victory of 30+ points, hasn’t had an opponent come within less than 20 points of beating them in over a month and has murdered its opponents in the tournament:

Game	Opponent	Opp Rank	Margin Of Victory
1	Southern	NR	56
2	Temple	NR	54
3	Iowa State	#16	38
4	Florida St	#11	40
5	Baylor	#18	20

That Rank column is National Rank, not seed. When was the last time that you saw a top 20 team in any sport get blow out the way that Iowa St, Florida St and Baylor have? This one just won’t be close – unless Stanford’s men’s team shows up for this game.