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.

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.

Dennis Johnson joins the Hall

by Coltrane

Dennis Johnson has been elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss, high school coaching great Bob Hurley Sr., and WNBA star Cynthia Cooper also were in the class announced at the Final Four. NBA veterans Dennis Johnson and Gus Johnson and international star Maciel “Ubiratan” Pereira will be honored posthumously.

I think that his induction was overdue. It’s interesting though, that when compared to Pippen and Gary Payton his credentials don’t look all that overwhelming:

	Points per Game	Rebounds per Game	Assists per Game	All Defensive Team Selections	All NBA Team	All Star	PER Rating	MVP Award Shares
Scottie Pippen	16.1	6.4	5.2	10	7	7	18.6	0.716
Gary Payton	16.3	3.9	6.7	9	9	9	18.9	0.823
Dennis Johnson	14.1	3.9	5.0	9	2	5	14.6	0.084
Player “X”	15.6	4.7	3.6	5	5	5	18.7	0.695

For example, Kevin Garnett has 2.752 award shares over the course of his career, good for 13th all-time. Chris Webber is 45th with .588 Shares. The complete list is here.

Johnson never got much respect from the voters. Larry Bird called him the greatest player he ever played with. I don’t know what that says about Kevin McHale..

My most vivid memory of Dennis Johnson was from when he was with the Celtics. He was on a fast break, and he and another player met at the hoop. Johnson banged the back of his head on the backboard. I remember him picking himself back up while rubbing the back of his head. I’m sure most Boston fans best remember his basket after this steal by Larry Bird during the 1987 Conference Finals against the Pistons. (Isiah Thomas was the victim on that play.)

I threw Player “X” in there for fun. Player X had a condition with his knees that forced him out of the league by age 33. By contrast, Payton and Pipen played through age 38. Johnson retired after his age 35 season.

Player X? That’s Sidney Moncrief.

Miguel Tejada Knows Where It’s At

by Coltrane

Miguel Tejada knows when say the right thing (at the bottom of this Jayson Stark excerpt):

At least they won’t need a tour guide to find third base.

Fortunately for Miguel Tejada and Placido Polanco, it will be located exactly where it’s been hanging out for the past 165 years.

But playing third base?

That’s the whole new excellent adventure facing both these men this spring.

“I love shortstop,” said Tejada, who has played 1,846 games in the big leagues at shortstop — and zero at third base. “But I love playing baseball more.”

Colt McCoy’s Pro Day

by Coltrane

Colt McCoy had an outstanding Pro Day on Thursday. At least one observer thought he looked better than likely #1 overall pick Sam Bradford.

Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy said McCoy answered any questions about his injury.

“I thought he did a very good job,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy was in Norman, Okla., on Monday to watch former Sooners quarterback Sam Bradford, who might be the first overall pick. Like McCoy, Bradford had a shoulder injury last season. Bradford completed all but one of his passes in front of the scouts.

“I liked this workout better. I thought Colt was challenged more in his workout as far as the types of throws,” McCarthy said. “Sam was very accurate, but Sam’s workout was very controlled. He didn’t do as much movement.”

Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said it would be expected for McCoy to complete all of his passes.

“This is not real football, this is a workout,” Carroll said. “His footwork was really good.”

Carroll rated McCoy’s arm strength, a question mark for some scouts, as “solid.”