Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Amped up
Eek.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Thank you, Isiah
I ran the ESPN NBA lottery simulator this morning, just for fun. And this was the first result that I got (you can click for a larger version):
Friday, April 13, 2007
The edge of reason?
The NFL Draft is coming up, which means that Mel Kiper slithers out of his chamber and loudly informs us which players will become the next Curtis Enis or Ryan Leaf. I was reading some previews of the draft and came across one in particular, on ESPN, entitled "The edge of reason."
The article is about how the three-year-old daughter of LSU coach Les Miles has a huge crush on JaMarcus Russell, the former Tigers' quarterback who could be drafted No. 1 overall.
Since this is a sports website, they actually talk more about Russell and why coaches and scouts view him as the best quarterback in the draft. He's 6-foot-6, weighs more than 250 pounds and can reportedly throw a football 80 yards. Therefore, he appears to be physically gifted. From the scouts, we get the typical talk about how they've never seen anyone who has the same physical gifts as Russell.
I think the word "never" should be banned from scouts' vocabulary. They say it all the time, and it's ... umm, never true.
Anyway, the best quote in the whole article comes from Brad Childress, the Minnesota Vikings coach:
"Have you seen his gosh darn hands?. They're huge. It's like the kid has an extra knuckle. Sure, there are lots of things I'd like to know about him. But physically, he's off the charts. It's exciting. You just simply can't deny his physical gifts. It all starts with that."
His hands are huge. Therefore, he will be an amazing quarterback.
I don't get it.
I don't get why physical gifts are now the most important aspect of any athlete when being drafted. I think it started in the NBA with all of the high-upside high schoolers who entered the draft in recent years, and it's now filtered over to the NFL and baseball.
Athleticism is great. You need to be athletic in order to succeed in athletics. But you still have to be able to perform finely-tuned tasks and have specific abilities in order to be good at the game. The fact that JaMarcus Russell has freakishly large hands will not help him in any way in the NFL, unless the league changes the game ball from an oblong pigskin to a 14-pound bowling ball.
The ESPN article has a great stat (from Football Outsiders) that says the greatest predictor of a quarterback's ability in the NFL is not his hands, or his arm strength, or his 40 time; it's the number of starts he made in college. In recent years, the quarterbacks with the most starts in college have been Philip Rivers (51), Donovan McNabb (49) and Carson Palmer (45). Russell made 29 starts in college, which places him among Rex Grossman, Joey Harrington and Akili Smith -- another physically gifted signal-caller who had "all of the tools" to succeed.
For the record, Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn made 46 starts in college, and was widely thought to be better than Russell up until the last game of the season. Before the Sugar Bowl, Russell had only thrown for more than 269 yards once in his junior season -- Quinn failed to reach that mark just twice last year.
So why do people in sports continually look past performance and focus on tools and upside? Just the other day, I was reading an article that talked about how athletic the Devil Rays are. The writer talked about how if baseball were to implement a decathlon competition, the Rays would win, hands-down.
That's pretty cool. Except, the Rays play baseball. And they suck at it.
I think that the biggest reason for this approach is just pure arrogance. Every coach thinks they can be the one to coax and teach a physically gifted player to become a star. It's why teams will reach for Russell over a sure thing like Calvin Johnson. It's why Vince Young was taken over Matt Leinart. It's the reason Darko Milicic was drafted ahead of Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, Dwayne Wade and Kirk Hinrich.
I understand the idea of taking a higher risk player in some situations. I think the Bulls were OK in taking Tyrus Thomas last year; it was a weak draft and there were no players available that filled an immediate need for them, so they went with upside. But for teams who have holes all over the place, there's no reason to take a project when a safer bet is available.
I'm curious if this is going to continue, or if sports teams will eventually learn from all of the mistakes. Either we're going to see this trend eventually level off and GMs revert back to drafting players based on their actual ability, or it's only going to get worse, and we'll see football teams draft Olympic sprinters with no competitive football experience to play wide receiver.
Yeah, now that I think about it, this will probably keep getting worse. I can't wait until Jim Hendry drafts Justin Gatlin to replace Matt Murton.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
King Felix, Lord of Men, Dwight Gooden
I hate to add to the hype that now surrounds Felix Hernandez after his start last night in Boston, but ...
OhmyGod did anyone else see how he pitched against the Boston Red Sox lineup and Dice-K and with 350 media members watching his every move people thought that Matsuzaka was going to be the one to watch but no Felix proved them wrong because he has a 99 mph fastball and a 92 mph slider and a 12-to-6 curveball in the mid-80s which is just unfair and he had pinpoint control and David Ortiz who knows a goddamn thing or two about hitting said that he was "filthy" and he almost had a no-hitter until JD Drew broke it up with a single that just barely made it through the middle and this is the best stuff that I've ever seen except for maybe Dwight Gooden and this kid is another Dwight Gooden and maybe better especially if he can avoid arm injuries and drug problems and the Clap and I can't really breathe because hyperbole sucks the wind right from your lungs but this kid is good and I would be stunned to see him give up a run before June and he's basically a non-Jewish Latino right-handed Sandy Koufax but only younger and I can't wait to see what he does in his next start but I tell you right now that if he gives up more than two hits I'll eat my wingtip shoes.
• Alex Rodriguez, who is totally non-clutch (as if you need to be reminded), is lacing the cover off the baseball this season. He's hitting .355 with a .447 OBP, and he's racked up a 1.065 slugging percentage. He's got six home runs and has already driven in 16 runs. He currently has more home runs than 10 major league teams. Since small sample sizes are fun, if you extrapolate A-Rod's numbers over a full season, he's on pace for the following totals:
121 home runs
364 RBIs
203 runs
And they'd still boo him in New York.
While he won't continue that pace -- at least I don't think so -- it would be my greatest joy to see A-Rod hit 60 homers, drive in 150 runs, win the adoration of Yankees fans ... and then use the opt-out clause in his contract to bolt for free agency. They deserve it.
• The Bulls hammered the Knicks 98-69 the other night, and Steve Francis complained after the game that the Bulls ran up the score.
I always find these arguments interesting in pro sports, since we're no longer in Little League and grown men shouldn't really care how much they get beat by. Should the Bulls really be worried about Steve Francis' feelings? Hardly. They didn't play their starters at all in the fourth quarter and didn't score in the final two minutes. I don't think there was much of an effort to humiliate the Knicks. New York does a pretty good job of that on their own accord.
If anything, given how Isiah Thomas has recently tried to hype that he "got the better end" of the Eddy Curry trade, I think the Bulls should have pushed it further and tried to win by 50.
As a sidenote, Eddy Curry still can't guard anyone in the post. He's awful.
• Obligatory Don Imus note.
Sunday, April 08, 2007
This is real. I repeat: This is real
I'm not even going to provide commentary on this. Just a link and a quote. You make all the judgments you need.
Keith Richards: The day I snorted my father's ashes
He is the embodiment of rock and roll excess. But Keith Richards' latest admission is likely to surprise even his most hardened fans.
The Rolling Stones guitarist has told how he snorted his own father's ashes in a drugs binge.
"The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father," he said.
The 63-year-old detailed in a magazine interview how he mixed the ashes with cocaine and inhaled them.
"He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow.
"My dad wouldn't have cared - he didn't give a shit. It went down pretty well. And I'm still alive."
Friday, April 06, 2007
An overreaction
Early-season baseball is fun. You wind up with a lot of funny sample sizes and bizarre stats, as evidence by JR Radcliffe's post that gives out awards if the season ended today. Xavier Nady, eh?
However, while it's only been three games, as a Cubs fan, it's discouraging to see how Alfonso Soriano has performed so far. There's obviously tremendous scrutiny on him because of his ... sigh ... eight-year contract that totals $136 million. But so far, the Fonz has looked clueless at the dish. Part of the reason I was hopeful about his signing was the extra patience he showed last season when he set a career high in walks. This season, however, Soriano has swung early and often. He really looks like he's forcing things and not waiting for the right pitch to hit, which is what allowed him to have such a monster year in 2006.
It's early, of course. The performance isn't so much what bothers me, but the approach is worrisome. He's going to have to calm down and take a few pitches. And I suppose I probably should calm down and take a few deep breaths.
Also:
• I was watching Sportscenter this morning and they showed a highlight of Alex Rodriguez popping up with the bases loaded and the anchor said something to effect of "And his clutch struggles continue."
Can we please stop this? Last year, which was supposedly A-Rod's worst, saw him post the following splits:
Runners in scoring position: .302 AVG, .431 OBP, .508 SLG
RISP with 2 outs: .313 AVG, .495 OBP, .475 SLG
Bases loaded: .474 AVG, .500 OBP, .789 SLG
Looking at the numbers, he was actually at his worst with the bases empty. That doesn't sound very un-clutch now, does it?
• Further stupidity in sports journalism was Bill Simmons' running diary yesterday, specifically the two parts in which he ripped on JD Drew. He made it sound like Drew hasn't done anything so far this year, saying "yet another weak out from Drew."
So I checked into what Drew has done this year, thinking that he was off to a bad start in Boston.
Nope, Drew is hitting .400 with a .500 OBP. He's also got two doubles in just ten at-bats, so he's slugging a rosy .600.
What's the problem, Bill?
• The Office is back. And I'm hiring Dwight Schrute as my personal bodyguard.
"I am not a hero. I am a mere defender of the office. You know who’s a real hero? Hiro, from Heroes. That’s a hero. Also Bono."
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Famous
If you've ever wanted to read heavily-edited versions of my posts, you can do so in the Chicago Tribune.Really.
That's all I've got.