TDL’s Sports, Wrestling, & Otherwise

I have seen the end of the Internet and it is, unsurprisingly from the NY Post

I feel like Cartman in the South Park episode where he could no longer laugh because he’d seen the funniest thing possible.

Something happened about a week ago. I was watching Sportscenter and they mentioned that Shaq’s first game in a Suns uniform would come next Wednesday (2/20) in Phoenix against the Lakers. For the first time in three years I found myself thinking “that’s a much watch” about an regular-season NBA game.

I don’t watch the NBA regular season. Even this time of year when I moan and complain about how much the period between the Super Bowl and Opening Day sucks I never watch either the NBA. In my own stupid head, there’s good reason for this: most of the time, by now, the playoff picture in the NBA is pretty well set. In a league where more than half the league makes the playoffs, a good portion of the post-All Star Break NBA regular season is pointless.

The 2007-2008 NBA East is a microcosm of why I don’t watch regular season NBA. Right now the league 50-55 games into their regular season. In the East, the best teams are already clear. Eight teams will make the playoffs, but the finals will likely be some combination of the Celtics, Pistons, and (now) the Cavs. Really, what’s even the point of watching Eastern Conference games anymore. The conference is likely to send two under-.500 teams to the playoffs where they will be summarily destroyed by the contenders. The East is a perfect example of why expansion, a stupid salary cap system, and so many teams making the playoffs has really hurt the league. There are three likely contenders and a pile of awful and I’ve never been a fan of watching meaningless games. It has never helped that I don’t have a dog in the fight. I grew up in a world where half my family liked the Lakers and the other half liked the Celtics. I never got in to either team and I never got in to the Knicks or Nets. The best I could ever do is pick a random team that no one else liked. I spent time with the Los Angeles Clippers (used to play in Buffalo), the Sixers (used to play in Syracuse), the Kings (used to play in Rochester), and the Warriors (because they were called Golden State… it didn’t take much). Not being invested in a team makes it hard to follow through a season when the games stop mattering.

But then someone determined that it was time to start consolidating talent in the West. Crappy teams suddenly realized that holding a super star in a max contract destroys their ability to rebuild. The Nets, after the awful Vince Carter signing, realized that they’re a 30-win team this year and an aging Jason Kidd doesn’t make their prospects next year any better. The Heat realized that Shaq was on the decline and they are far further than one step away from contention and determined they needed to start over. The East created a max exodus of aging talent, shipped them west to a bunch of teams who feel they were, in fact, one piece away from a championship. Teams in the east have entering a rebuilding phase. On top of that, teams in the West who know they are far away also started trading in the conference. The Bucks inexplicably sent Pau Gasol to the Lakers. The Rockets sent parts to the Hornets. Chaos!

Now, all of the sudden, the West is exciting. The West is so good that there’s an honest-to-God chance that a 50-win team might not make the playoffs. 50 wins! There are nine teams in the West playing .600 basketball. Granted, we already know which teams are the contenders in the West and which teams aren’t, but we’re talking about an outside possibility of a 50-win team being in the Lottery and getting the first pick in the draft!

The NBA is managing to be exciting in spite of itself. Never has a league made it so difficult for teams to get good. They have a stupid salary cap system that cripples the league (guaranteed contracts and salary caps don’t play well together). They have a stupid draft lottery system that doesn’t remotely prevent tanking better than the simple envelope system did. They have a diluted talent pool which they want to dilute further by putting teams in Europe. They still have the most horrific officiating of any professional sports league. But every once in a while things manage to come together in spite of themselves. The 2007/2008 Western Conference is one of those things.

Of course, that’s not to say that I’m not looking forward to April 19th… I am. It’s just that I actually have something to watch between now and then. And seeing the Pistons crush the Suns by 30 made it all the more intriguing.

Some random notes on the American Gladiator finale:

- My first thought when I noticed it was two-hours: “Wow, they must be doing a full compliment of events tonight.”

- Second thought: “Thank God I DVRed this.” According to the fast-forward information, the first event started 23 minutes in to the two hours. The first 20 minutes was commercials, crappy interviews, and other filler.

- At this point, I think they should just ban Evan from the events and just spot his opponent the head start at the Eliminator… just to make it challenging for him. Evan’s eliminator times have been 1:29 and 1:23. He’s set the competitor record each time he’s run it.

- If you’re keeping track at home, the first men’s event (after even more filler, commercials, and a Wolf rules at Hang Tough package) doesn’t start until 37 minutes in.

- And we get a commercial between the men’s Hang Tough, so the second guy doesn’t go until 44 minutes in. This show is tightly put together. We’re 45 minutes into a 120 minute show and we’ve JUST completed the first event. As we all know, everyone who’s tuning in to this show is here to see highlight packages, commercials, and filler. Eff the events. Who’s booking this, Russo?

- Wolf falls off the rings during Hang Tough against Evan, furthering my theory that they’re jobbing out for him.

- Shanay says re: Assault: “I didn’t dunk her today, but I hope she gets dunked tonight.” She’s rooting for her opponent to get 10 points. You’re doing it wrong.

- Evan jumps out to a 19 point lead after two events (which, by the way, puts us past the hour mark). Apparently the new strategy is to build enough of a head start to see if he can finish the Eliminator before his opponent actually gets to start.

- They interviewed each contender before they Jousted. Three of them are just going to try their best. Evan has a full interview. We also get a Why Titan Rules At Joust promo package. So much filler.

- I don’t know why, but it really bothers me that Titan always starts his first swing before the whistle in Joust and they never call it. Not only that, but the contender never calls him out on it. Something like: “I didn’t know it was ok to start swinging before the whistle. I’ll try that next time.” If you want to give these guys the microphone CONSTANTLY. Tell them to say stuff.

- At least I finally noticed that when they start playing the over-dramatically music before the event starts, that they’re going to do the super annoying “cut to commercial as the event’s starting” thing.

- Alex catches up five points in pyramid. The next event was the Wall. If you’re not following, Evan is a rock climbing instructor. His wall times have been :27 and :20. Let’s see what happens.

- He gets up the wall in :23, getting his five points back.

- Going into the Eliminator, Evan gets 9.5 seconds. We can probably just skip it.

- And he dominates it again in 1:19, beating his own record.

- I don’t understand the gimmick of giving these guys the “chance to become the next American Gladiator.” These guys are both normal dudes. The Gladiators are roided up maniacs.

- Both women have figured out the “touch the handles of the handbike and fall off because you can run across the pit quicker with no penalty” trick.

- Monica beats Shanay and her husband came over the stands to congratulate her. A living vicariously through his wife and stealing her moment thing or a sappy “I love my family” moment set up by the producers. You decide.

- I guess this is coming back for a 2nd season. I’m on the fence as to whether or not I’ll bother watching. It drives me crazy.

With the news of the end of the writer’s strike, I wanted to find out how Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has been doing in the ratings. While sure they’ll allow it to ride out this season, I wanted to know the chances of seeing it next year.

Unfortunately, Googling “terminator sarah connor chronicle ratings” led to reviews instead of ratings news. Most of them were luke-warmish… this show obviously isn’t being placed on critics’ “must watch” list any time soon… but then I read one that was so far into the realm of “doesn’t get it” that I thought it needed to be mentioned.

You’ll recognize the format… take it away Tim Goodman, sfgate.com.

An overly familiar franchise often has about as much chance of success as a pat “star vehicle.” You know, one of those shows built around someone famous in the hope that fame will bring in tons of viewers. But what usually happens is there’s no real story, no real heart, no real necessity for its creation and no emotional connection to the actual star.

I would have loved to see some examples of this. From what I can remember, there have been a lot of animated movies made into television series (Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Back to the Future, Teen Wolf, Ghostbusters) but I can’t remember a ton of live action movies being made into tv shows (other than the obvious successful ones, like MASH and Buffy). Google was a bit more helpful here; giving me a Wikipedia page. A good number of them that had any success have been in the Sci-Fi genre: War of the Worlds, Alien Nation, Highlander) while the failures are mostly unsurprising. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Attack of the Killer Tomatoes didn’t do well as TV shows? Really?

I’d also point out… I don’t think this list has another entry for “billion dollar, uber-successful American movie franchise”… except Star Wars. So… seems like there’s been one previous attempt and it failed because George Lucas has made it his life’s mission to ruin Star Wars.

Fox, desperate for something it makes to take hold, decided to tap into the “Terminator” film franchise for its newest series, “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” which tells the story of one very determined mother whose son, John, will grow up to lead the resistance against the machines that have taken over the world. For more information on this, just ask your local DVD store clerk, who will no doubt roll his eyes and toss three decently entertaining movies onto the counter.

The conclusion I draw here is that the writer is assuming the target audience for this show are folks who have never heard of the Terminator franchise. I know that if I was pitching a Terminator television series, the first words out of my mouth would be: “I got this show who people who have never heard of Terminator are going to love.”

Fox is making a splash by premiering the series Sunday at 8 p.m. (with the post-NFL playoff crowd as the main attraction), then bringing it back at 9 Monday night. But honestly, you’ll see nothing exciting or compelling enough on Sunday (football excepted) to make you want to come back again the next night (although, in fairness, the second night is better).

The NFL Crowd? You mean… men. Like…. guys who would have liked the Terminator movies? But….. you just said….

“Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” assumes that most viewers will have a working knowledge of the film series but, just to be sure, opens the first night with a voice-over narration from Sarah (Lena Headey) about how difficult it is for a single mother to show tough love to her son.

You mean like….. the entire point of the second movie? I’m confused. Three paragraphs ago, we were talking about people who wouldn’t understand the movie. Now, we’re complaining because they take ten seconds to explain the ten second backstory of the entire Terminator series. “This kid’s going to lead a revolution against robots in the future. The robots are sending agents back to kill him.” Done.

Although she doesn’t get into it much, you can imagine her on the couch, having a chat with the petulant teen about his important role in the future: “Well, your dad was a time-traveling resistance fighter and there’s this ‘Judgment Day’ thing that’s a total downer and billions of people die and later, in the future, you’re sort of going to save what’s left of mankind. Now, about girls …”

It’s called “what went on for seven years on Buffy.” It’s also called “what’s been working for 7 years on Smallville“.

Headey is hit and miss. In the pilot, she’s mostly a miss (and she’s an enormous miss on the voice-overs). It doesn’t help her one bit that the first time we see her, she’s wearing what appears to be either a cheerleading costume or come-hither tennis outfit.

A truck-stop waitress’s uniform? Did a porn tape get mixed in with his pilot DVD?

You can also quibble that Headey seems too young to be the mother of a teenage boy - this trick is pulled off with some regularity on the CW, but not on Fox anymore - but no matter how hot mommy warrior may be, she’s got no business being in a cheerleading outfit that sits way above the middle of her thigh. That’s not a complaint, per se, but it’s hilariously inappropriate.

Lena Headey was born in 1973. By my math, that makes her 35. If she had a 15 year old son, that would make her the “impossible” age of 20 when she had a son. As I get older, I find myself falling into the “she’s too young to have an X year old son” trap… which makes this guy 78, minimum.

If your quibble was “Linda Hamilton was 28 in the movie” and “Lena Headey is 35 in the show” then I can almost give that to you, but Sarah Connor’s age is never explicitly mentioned.

The first hour is all action, no plot, no character development, no persons of interest anywhere.

In a show based on Terminator? Stop it. You mean to tell me to pitch a Terminator show they made the pilot all action and little character development? I am stunned. These people should be fired for misunderstanding the point of the Terminator series.

Sarah’s son, John (Thomas Dekker), seems as if he’s supposed to be on some moody CW drama about alienated teens. Here, as the future savior of pretty much everyone, he seems too mopey and lost (and that doesn’t improve in the second hour).

No argument here.

Worse, perhaps, is Cameron Phillips (Summer Glau), a reprogrammed Terminator of indeterminate origin who has been sent back in time by Future John to protect Pouty CW John. Fox is touting her as some kind of killing machine, but she looks like a teenage Ally McBeal, which is about as far from kick-ass, frightening, machine killer as you can get. She’s supposed to act like a machine, which Glau does all too convincingly.

He’s criticizing the actress for robotic acting when she’s supposed to be…………. a robot?

So, to recap, you’ve got Headey being hit and miss as Sarah (there are scenes where she seems convincingly tough and determined, but mostly she seems like an actress trying to be tough); Dekker putting the anti in hero; and Glau looking like someone who might get her teeth punched in by wispy Willow from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Isn’t this the same kind of casting problem that doomed NBC’s “Bionic Woman”?

As opposed to Sarah Michelle Gellar… who was completely convincing as a 5′2″ ass-kicking machine? Or Kristanna Loken… or Eliza Dushku… or Jennifer Garner… or that chick from La Femme Nikita… or all 5′4″ of Sylvester Stallone for that matter? Or Robert Patrick?

Then there’s the writing, which never misses a swipe at a cliche (particularly in the voice-overs) and fails to build much of a pulse despite millions spent on blowing things up. The first hour, in fact, wastes each opportunity to get to know who these people really are. It’s all run, run, run - the machines are coming! Stop pouting, John! Run!

In a Terminator show? Really? I’ve never seen the point of an episode of television fly further over someone head than this one did. The fact they are running from the machines IS the character development. Or maybe they should stand up to the indestructible robots and discuss why they are trying to kill John.

They spent the first episode establishing this bad guy: “That terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.” What is the most effective way to establish that character? Running the frick away from it.

And really, in 2008, does that herky-jerky “Terminator” walk seem stupid-goofy or what? Yeah, they’re machines, they walk funny. Got it.

He’s arguing that the terminators are acting too much like terminators.

Only in the second episode is there any real attempt at a believable backstory (which will be too late for savvy viewers). Deep into the second episode is also the first time the writers try to inject any kind of humor (and fail). “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” could have been a lot more enjoyable and pop-culture cool if it loosened up the writing (and improved it tenfold).

A believable backstory? In a show about evil killer robots from the future and a human savior who sent his own father back in time so he could be conceived?

And how do you “loosen up the writing” and “improve” it at the same time. Isn’t “tightening” what you’re supposed to do to bad writing? Have I lost my hip lingo card?

Truly ambitious series, like “Lost,” at least put some thought into their mythology. “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” relies on the movie franchise as its backbone, revealing a kind of laziness that immediately hurts this spin-off. By the time the second hour comes on Monday and tries to give these characters some dimension, you already know that the talent on both sides of the camera simply isn’t there to make this a worthwhile trip.

The depths of stupid in this paragraph is stunning. This guy is what’s wrong with Hollywood. It’s jack-offs like this who read The Dark Is Rising and decide it’s a great book. In fact, it will make a great movie, too. If only we change the setting from Europe to the US, change the main character from 8 to 15, change the story entirely so it will look like a video game and a kid collecting power ups, and give it a more marketable name like SEEKER~!.

There is an established mythology for the Terminator universe. In this guy’s world, apparently, to make a successful TV show is to just trash the established mythology and start over. Anything else is “lazy”. In Tim Goodman’s world, the terminators should not be robotic (even though they’ve all been programmed by robots, who wouldn’t have the ability to program the proper nuances of acting human), they should slow down and discuss why they’re doing what they’re doing, and we should be able to kill them by drawing on the power of the Mysterious Golden Scepter Of Robot Bane.

In fact, the primary plot objective of “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” is to run, run, run. Sarah and John and cyborg Cameron are in constant flight but forget to tell us along the way why we should care whether they get caught or killed. After the first two episodes, running away doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

As opposed to standing and fighting the terminators. Because, if anything, we should not establish a sense of danger in keeping Connor alive. It’s much more satisfying to have a Die Hard style hero who can run through a room in a hail of machine gun bullets and come out the other side unhurt. But I forgot, we’re rewriting the universe where the robots don’t have targeting systems… and aren’t really robots… so I guess they miss a lot.

I understand not liking a show. I really do. All I ask is that a writer understand what he’s criticizing. Goodman understands Terminator like I understand the NBA’s EFF rating… I know it’s there, I know what it measures, but I couldn’t tell you whether or not it means anything.

One of the contentions of the stat-crowd is that the manager of a baseball team has a negligible effect on the outcome of a game. Their contention is that the manager in baseball has the smallest in-game effect of any major sport. I found myself disagreeing but, ironically, due to the lack of statistical analysis on exactly WHAT a manager can do to a game there’s really no way to prove it either way. To make up for it, I decided to read some books about managers or by managers. I started with Three Nights In August back in September. A good read. Three Nights was written by an independent observer of Tony La Russa. I wanted to go a step further and read a book actually by a manager, which led me to Kevin Kennedy (with Bill Gutman)’s Twice Around The Bases: The Thinking Fan’s Look Inside Baseball.

Oops.

This book was about 260-pages. Reading past page 50 was a chore… reading past page 200 was impossible. I tapped out at about page 190. One thing to remember: jocks are writers and probably shouldn’t pretend otherwise. It was an awkward read and read like Kennedy drank about ten fingers of Maker’s Mark and muttered stories to Gutman who then tried his best to put them into some readable format. Actually… that’s probably close to exactly how the book was written.

The book is split into two halves. The first half is Kennedy relaying his experiences in the game from minor league coach in the Dodgers’ system all the way through his final gig with Boston. He goes back into his early days managing winter ball in the Caribbean. If there was a whole book written by a good author about managing in the winter leagues, it would probably be an interesting book. Kennedy talks about the differences in the game between here and there… specifically mentioning armed guards on the dugouts and the control bookies have over the game there. He mentions a near-riot that broke out because a pitcher was pulled at 14 strikeouts when the pitcher’s over/under on the day was 15. He specifically mentions a game where the power was mysteriously cut to the stadium as soon as the game was official. There was a lot of money on the game and it was in the bookie’s favor when the lights mysteriously went out. There was no power to the stadium and the back-up generators were never brought online.

He then gets into his first big league job in Montreal and his eventual managerial jobs with the Rangers and Red Sox. He gets into the politics of manager jobs. He also takes the standard digs at how awful the Red Sox were run in the 90s (outlined in much more detail in Now I Can Die In Peace). Dan Duquette played politics with the GM of the Rangers during the strike season to get Kennedy. Kennedy proceeded to manage the team to a division win. Duquette then proceeded to blow the team up and make a ton of moves without consulting his manager. The team sucked the following year. Duquette fired him. He describes the politics and the “good ol’ boy” network that led to both jobs and, if anything, it helps to outline why baseball is so agonizingly slow to grow from within. Old baseball men teach young baseball men all of their prejudices and wrong-headed information. Young baseball men become old baseball men. The cycle repeats.

The second half of the book is the useless and unreadable part. He has four chapters divided in to the best position players, best pitchers, best hitters, best all-around players, and best games he’s ever seen. There’s an awful lot of talk about “confidence” and “swagger” and an awful lot of “I’ve never seen this guy play, so I can’t add him to this list.” I think the most ridiculous instance of this was Ty Cobb. I never saw Ty Cobb play either… but if you want to present an argument to tell me a guy who had over 4,000 career hits, a lifetime line of .366/.433/.512, and a lifetime BB/K ratio of like 3:1 — I’d be interested to hear how much wrong you could fit into one sentence.

Now, for the kinda/sorta good stuff. Kennedy is a big proponent of a running game — something that the statistically inclined will tell you is over-rated. Kennedy makes the point, and it’s probably a good one, that statistics won’t show you if a pitcher makes a bad pitch because he rushes the ball to the plate to prevent a steal. A statistic doesn’t necessarily show you Armando Benitez’s game-losing balk last season because Jose Reyes made a head-fake toward stealing home. The stats won’t show if the shortstop is moving to cover second and leaves a hole for a base hit or a hit that splits first and second because the first baseman is holding a runner. The only raw numbers you really get from a running game, stolen bases vs. caught stealing, doesn’t really tell the whole story of being “aggressive on the base paths.” Could there be something to that? Maybe. Kennedy took over the Rangers in 1993. In 1992, the team was 74-88 with 81 stolen bases, 44 caught stealings (64% success rate), a team line of .250/.318/.393, and 682 runs scored in 162 games. Kennedy took over basically the same team and went 86-76 with 113 stolen bases, 67 caught stealings (63%, indicates much more movement along the bases at about the same success rate), a team line of .267/.326/.431 , and 835 runs scored in 162 games. Could the extra hits have come from pitchers rushing their throws or guys being out of position? Yeah. Could the 150 extra runs be from moving more guys into scoring position? Yeah. Is it definitely those thing? No idea. It’s almost impossible to make a similar comparison during his stint on the Red Sox because he took them over between 1994 and 1995. Baseball was in a bit of a mess at that point and the seasons were shortened.

One of the reasons that people tend to call moving on the base paths “running yourselves out of an inning” is because it’s usually practiced by bat-shiat crazy managers. Ozzie Guillen of the White Sox would be a prime example. Kennedy makes the argument that with proper studying of pitcher’s tendency, what they throw on each count, how long it takes them to get to the ball to the plate, a level-headed manager can control a smart running game that disrupts the defense and creates chaos in the infield. The problem is: instead of backing this stuff up with statistics and a coherent argument, he just presents it as “this is the way it is and here are three anecdotal stories about the time my gut was right.” That’s great and all, but the reason no one ever tries to prove a running game helps on offense is because the people who defend running games defend it with nothing but gut instincts and anecdotal evidence.

Kennedy also outlines a few ways in which managers help their teams win game. Stealing signs, positioning the defense, and studying player tendencies so his team doesn’t have to are a few examples he gives. If a batter tends to hit a certain pitcher into shallow left, a good manager should know that and position his defense accordingly. It should be on the manager to know these things, not individual players. A statistic doesn’t show that a good manager has his left fielder playing shallow instead of deep in that situation leading to an out that may not have happened if his player was positioned incorrectly. I agree with that examples. One can’t necessarily expect players to follow these things. A manager has play statistician and psychologist over the course of a season. A good manager can do both. Kennedy also gives us a decent look at various types of signs… even telling us different ways that guys communicate on the field. For instance, a second baseman leaning on his left foot instead of a right foot can be a sign of who’s moving to cover second.

All told, the book was a rambling mess. The first half is, at least, an interesting rambling mess.

Welcome to the biggest news in New York City to completely fly under the radar. While the Super Bowl hypefest was busy, the Mets went and traded four of their top seven prospects to Minnesota for Johan Santana. Within the negotiating window, they gave Santana a $6M raise for this season in addition to a five-year extension worth about $113M and a team option for 2014 worth $25M which becomes a player option if he wins a Cy Young sometime between now and then.

Thanks Citigroup.

I think this was a move that the Mets had to make to wash the bitter taste of the last two years out of their fans’ mind. People could rationalize the loss to the Cardinals even if it hurt. It was a seven-game series… mistakes were made on both ends… it happens. Last year was unforgivable. Last year was the type of year that books are written about and are given proper names that people remember. For the rest of eternity, Mets fans will call 2007 The Choke. There was no excuse for it. The team didn’t even try. They simply sent an apology letter to fans on their mailing list.

Fans have watched this offseason as the Mets missed all the big name trades. Dontrelle Willis and Miguel Cabrera went to Detroit. Dan Haren went to Arizona (and if you want to talk about an early NL West favorite, Haren/Webb/Johnson could be brutal if Randy stays somewhat injury free this season). We had to deal with the New York Media telling us, in no uncertain terms, that obviously Johan Santana would want to go to Boston or the Yankees. Never has the Mets 2nd-class-citizen tag in New York been more obvious than these last few weeks. As soon as the trade was announced Mike and the Mad Dog wasted no time dismissing the notion that Santana may have wanted to go to the Mets. Why? Why would the guy not want to go to a team where he was going to get the exact same amount of money AND have an easier path to the post-season every year. Do you know what the Mets don’t have in their division? Another big market team that finishes with 90-wins every season. The Phillies are the best other team in the division. The Braves just lost John Schuerholz and are likely going to be on the decline for a few years as the old guy’s contracts filter out. The Nationals are in neutral until their new stadium gets built. The Marlins are still a couple years away from being absolutely terrifying. What in the world would be the rationale for him wanting to stay in the American League? The desire to continue pitching to a DH? The desire to have a 3.50 ERA instead of a 1.98? I’m not saying that Santana didn’t want to stay in the AL… I’m just saying that dismissing the notion that he might have wanted to come to the NL and put a solid stranglehold on “best pitcher of this era” isn’t something so easily dismissed. It was much the same as the notion of A-Rod going to the Cubs. More than half his games in hitter-friendly parks? He might have hit 90 home runs in a season.

So the management did what they could. They waited out the Yankees and the Red Sox. They waited until they were the only game in town and swooped in with a semi-crappy offer to guarantee themselves one-on-one time with Johan Santana. Of course, there were some quick to use the “selling their future” and “destroying their farm” in reference to the Santana trade but I don’t really agree with them. Here’s what they gave up:

Carlos Gomez: A corner outfield prospect who will probably be speedy enough to take over for Torii Hunter. Gomez had 125 major league at-bats last season and put up a line of .268/.288/.304. He really faded down the stretch of last season when the league started to catch up to him. That said, even if he turned out to be a great player, he was going to be mostly blocked off for the next few seasons. The one prospect rated higher than him is a corner outfielder who will likely take over for Moises Alou in 2009, Carlos Beltran is on the books until (I think) 2012, and they have a cost-controlled Ryan Church through 2012. They signed Endy Chavez through his last arbitration year until 2009 to be their fourth outfielder and will probably keep giving him fan-favorite contracts for as long as he’ll take them. Gomez might turn out to be a fine player in Minnesota, but the Mets really had nowhere to play him.

Philip Humber: Mike Pelfrey destroyed his usefulness as a trading chip by going 3-8 with a 1.7something WHIP last season. The Twins obviously wanted an almost-ready prospect to take Santana’s place. Humber went 11-9 last season in AAA and seemed to be someone who the Mets didn’t have a ton of faith in. He’s been described as “a couple ticks down from Mike Mussina.” I’m OK with this.

Kevin Mulvey: Mulvey may turn out to be the dark horse in the deal. He only pitched one game in Rookie league before he was promoted to AA in 2006. Last season he went 12-10 between AA and AAA with a 1.21 WHIP and a 3.20 ERA. His team gave up 18 earned runs around him. I couldn’t pick the kid out of a line-up, but early results are good.

Deolis Guerra: Almost not even worth discussing at this point. Guerra is 18 years old and spent last season in A and A+ ball. We won’t even know exactly what he’ll turn into until 2010.

All of these guys are decent prospects, but that’s all they are… prospects. Not one of those guys was enough to break a deal for Johan Santana. Of all of them, the team may miss Humber the most in the near term. The other two guys have been in the system for two years. The Mets have three picks in the first 33 in the draft this season (Thanks Tommy!). They can be replaced. It should also be noted that the Mets farm system wasn’t exactly in prime condition anyway. Giving up four of their top seven prospects is orders-of-magnitude lower than the A’s or the Marlins doing the same.

The Mets sent four decent players out of their farm system and in return got the exclusive right to the best pitcher in baseball for the next six years. It’s the Pedro deal. There is almost no universe (barring injury) in which this is a bad deal for the Mets. It cost them the money they are getting from Citibank for the next six or seven years, a corner outfielder they’ll never use, and three pitching prospects. The only way this turns out to be bad for the Mets is if Santana breaks down far earlier than history would dictate or if Humber, Mulvey, and Guerra all wind up being front line starters that anchor the Twins’ rotation for the next 12 or 15 years. Lots and lots of pitching prospect data compiled over the years suggest that will not happen. At the very worst, they may have given up the next Johan Santana for Johan Santana. The Mets are doing their best to load up on this season to at least get themselves TO the World Series. It’s quickly becoming obvious that National League Clubs are going to have to spend a ton of money on pitching to counteract the American League’s natural advantage of having an extra, huge bat in the line-up. I have a whole post in draft format about the need to entirely drop the DH in the World Series and Interleague Play, but finding the stats I need has been a pain. It’s based on the fact that it’s patently unfair to force an NL team to counter a $10M/year position with a bench player in any format… especially in the World Series.

I digress. Santana was the best case scenario for the Mets. Sports writers last year were quick to ask whether or not Santana’s bad second half last season was an indication of a downswing. I’ll let the FJM guys do the research I was going to do:

His team had a .721 OPS. That’s 13th out of 14 teams. The league — the American League, mind you — batted .225 off him with a .273 OBP. He had 55 more Ks than anyone on the Mets. And this was a down year for Santana.

The moral of the story: if a sportswriter is going to use the argument that Santana had a “down year” because he went 15-13, he should immediately lose his license to write about baseball. The Mets picked up a guy who can likely expect to blow through the NL for the first half of the season and will probably see his ERA drop by a full run. He’s a “six-inning” pitcher in the AL, which translates to a “seven-inning” pitcher in the NL. He’s the top of the order guy who the Mets didn’t have last year. He’s a guy who’s rallying the fans before ever throwing a pitch as a Met. He’s a guy who won’t press to justify his contract because he already knows it’s justified.

As for the rest; the Mets are looking to go into the season with a rotation of Johan Santana, Pedro Martinez, Orlando Hernandez, John Maine, and Oliver Perez. Mike Pelfrey will likely be their sixth starter to fill in for the inevitable El Duque injury. If Pelfrey shows something, I could envision a scenario where Duque is sent to the bullpen to shut games down for Johan or Pedro. The offense should still be strong.

It’s still the Phillies division to lose. I have to admit, though, the first two sports’ months of 2008 have been fantastic.

It’s finally started to sink in. Maybe it was going to the parade yesterday. Maybe it was watching the replay on the NFL Network last night. Maybe it was actually seeing the trophy going up Broadway. Whatever it was, it happened and I can’t believe it.

No chance. If you’d asked me at the end of Week 16 the Giants’ chance at winning everything, that’s the answer you would have gotten. The Giants looked like they were going to limp in to the post season like they’d done the previous two years. They were going to put up a token resistance to undefeated regular season and then limp into a game with the Bucs, and then they’d be bounced by the Cowboys or Packers in round 2. That was how it was scripted. That was the movie I’d seen the last two years.

Then something happened.

Someone plugged in the lights. In Buffalo, Eli’s passer rating was 32.2. In New England, it was 118.6. Somewhere in that week, the team changed. They apparently decided: “f*ck it, what do we have to lose.”

The year could not have happened better. When the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004, they got there through the Yankees. Who they beat in the Series was incidental. The Giants went through their most annoying division rival, one of their most annoying historic rivals (The Packers knocked the Giants out of the NFL Championship in ‘39, ‘44, ‘61 and ‘62… the Giants rock a stunning 6-12 record in NFL Title Games, Super Bowl or otherwise), and a team who, had they won, would have had a solid claim on Best Team In The History Of The NFL. The Giants beat them all.

And then the Super Bowl went exactly like I said it would. I found myself watching the NFL Network for the sixth time ever tonight because they aired the replay. The NFL Network re-airs the “four best games of the week” during the regular season. They trim useless plays out and key plays are enhanced with NFL Films replays and interviews with the guys involved. I rarely watch them. After the first drive, they cut to Junior Seau on the sideline, sweating and gasping. The Patriot defense wore out much quicker than the Giants’ defense… by the fourth quarter, they couldn’t tackle a quarterback who, as Shaun O’Hara said, hasn’t broken many tackles in his entire career. The Patriots’ pass rush got to Eli Manning in the fourth quarter and couldn’t bring him down.

Were the Giants the dominant team? Absolutely not. In fact, Eli did exactly what I expected him to do: just enough to win the game and not enough to lose it. The Giants have figured out how to use him… something the Jets have never been able to do with Chad Pennington (even though there exists an entire decade of game film out in San Francisco… but whatever). This is why the Giants have spent time collecting running backs, speedy, short route guys, and tall deep threats who can forgive some inaccuracy. That’s certainly not to say the Patriots weren’t presented with opportunities. In fact, the play before (The Grab In Glendale, The Miracle, The Escape, The Play, The Patriot Missile… whatever they end up naming it) Asante Samuel had a chance to end the game. He didn’t. On the following Patriot drive they came within Corey Webster’s ring finger of a Brady to Moss stake through the heart.

For a group of guys who were given no chance and entered the playoffs as a 40-1 dog, they proved everyone wrong. There’s no real way to describe how it feels to root for a team who were touchdown-or-more dogs in four straight games who figured out a way to come out on top every time. They crushed the soul of the Cowboys and their obnoxious fans. They crushed the soul of the Brett Favre media machine. They crushed the soul of the Patriots and their overconfident fans. They erased the awful taste of the Ravens game and added another crazy championship game to their list alongside The Greatest Game Ever Played and Wide Right.

As for The Play. Get used to seeing it, because it will become the Jordan Lay-Up Through Four Guys While Changing Hands or the Laetner Jump Shot of the Super Bowl. For a play that only took four seconds, the range of emotions I experienced shouldn’t fit into that time. From standard can-this-drive-really-be-happening fear, to oh-no-he’s-getting-sacked horror, to holy-crap-he-got-away elation, to ball-in-the-air nausea, to he’s-got-it freakout, to he’s-gonna-drop-it sadness, to there’s-no-way-he-just-caught-that-off-his-helmet delerium, to holy-crap-he-really-did-catch-that-off-his-helmet disbelief, to questionable-man-hug celebration. It shouldn’t have happened. On so many levels that play should not have happened. Eli should not have gotten away. David Tyree, who made 4 catches all season and, according to Amani Toomer, was dropping everything thrown to him in Friday’s practice, made the catch of his life. It proves the adage repeated constantly that to win a game you need to get unexpected contribution from the undercard. If you’d told me David Tyree was going to make a solid argument for MVP of the Super Bowl, I might have argued as to whether or not he was even still on the roster. If you’d told me that Jay Alford was going to make a game-breaking sack with 20 seconds left, I’d have wondered aloud if he played a down this season. If you’d told me that Justin Tuck was going to make a solid argument for a 60 million dollar contract and be ripped out of the Super Bowl MVP… well, I might have believed that.

For me, it made the last two years of Mets chokes a little easier to handle. It’s the first championship won by a one of my sports teams in my adult life. It reminded why nearly every analyst is pointless. 95% of them picked the Patriots. Of the remaining 5%, 4% chose the Giants to make a name for themselves in the off chance they were right. Analysts, however much they think they’re above it, are led by public opinion. Not many mentioned the age of the Patriots’ defense. Not many thought the Giants ridiculously good pass-rush would find their way through the Patriots line. Not many mentioned the fact that Steve Smith was just about as good as scrappy(tm) Wes Welker. They all laughed when Plaxico Burress dared to say that the Giants had a receiving corps nearly as good as the Patriots and who did a few things a little better. They gave them no credit.

Both defenses were exhausted by the end of the fourth quarter, but the Giants found enough for those last few plays. They found enough to sack Brady on 2nd down, get in Moss’s way on 3rd down, and knock the ball away on 4th down. It was great. Great tempered only by the fact I was watching the game with two Patriot fans who brought the mood down. It didn’t seem real.

And the absolute best part of all of it? The Giants are significantly under the cap. They have two more young running backs coming back from injury next season. Ernie Accorsi and his OCD-like need to draft defensive ends and linebackers has set the Giant defense up for the long term. Assuming Jerry Reese has been dyed in the wool by the organization the future is bright.

The Giants delivered finally broke the curse of Hilary Clinton. And for that, God bless ‘em.

And something happened out in Queens, too.

originally posted on Inside Pulse: October 4th, 2006

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While Season One of Lost spent a good amount of time leading viewers to believe the island had some sort of spiritual significance, the second season wasted very little time in letting us know the island was something very, very different. Season two opens to the sound of an alarm going off and a man moves to a computer to enter something. We follow him through a morning routine of doing dishes, brushing teeth, exercising, until he’s interrupted by a blast. It’s our Castaways blowing open the hatch. Someone is inside, and has been there for quite some time if his psyche is any indication.

The man in the hatch is Desmond and he’s been shipwrecked on the island for some number of years. He’s been pushing a button every 108 minutes to “save the world” according to him. Inside the hatch are all the comforts of life, including a stocked pantry all marked with a logo, later discovered to be the logo of the DHAMA Initiative. Locke, emissary of the Island, decides this button is his destiny, which is why the island led him there. But, while the hatch and the button are the first indicators that the island isn’t something spiritual, it certainly wouldn’t be the last, and it also wouldn’t be the first misconception cleared up by the season’s end.

As for our raft group, they are adrift. Jin has gone missing, Walt’s been kidnapped, and Michael and Sawyer are left together to bicker and place blame on one another. They are attacked by a shark. The shark is revealed to have a similar logo to the one we saw in the station on its tail.

The raft eventually drifts to the north shore of the island where we find more survivors of Oceanic Flight 815. We discover that 22 other people survived the crash. But, while the other survivors have been having spiritual experiences and running from the smoke monster, these people have been terrorized by the Others. On the first night, the Others invade the camp, kidnapping three people. Two of them are beaten to death by a new character, Mr. Eko. Later, nine other people are taken, including Zack and Emma, the two children survivors of the plane, leading people to wonder what, exactly, the Others’ obsession is with children. Emma carries a teddy bear later seen when the Others are walking through the woods, but we don’t see who’s carrying it. During the second attack, Ana-Lucia manages to kill one of them, finding a list with the names of the people who had been taken on it. How did they know their names?

Read the rest of this entry »

I went to a buddy’s house to watch Brock Lesnar get his ankle ruined in 1:30 tonight and a different buddy (Saint’s Fan) asked me if I’m nervous about tomorrow.

I’m not.

I was pretty sure the Giants were going to beat the Bucs. The Bucs were not a very good team and they only managed to go 9-7 in a really bad division. I expected the Giants to get beat by the Cowboys leading to another ridiculous offseason full of “Fire Coughlin” and “Fire Eli” idiots telling me that the best thing for the Giants was to get a new coach/quarterback combo. My response to this became simple… which is the same response I have anytime anyone randomly complains about one of my sports teams. Fix it. When they started to tell me that the best thing was to fire Eli and start over, I simply asked them to tell me who they were starting at quarterback next year.

“Draft a guy.” Really? We should use our 24th-ish pick in the draft to get another rookie quarterback? Good plan.

“Get a free agent.” Who? Donovan McNabb? He’s free. Maybe we could get Vinny. Man never retires. Garcia? He’s 90. Daunte Culpepper? Handball-playin Jake Plummer? There is no one out there to get as a free agent. Chad Pennington? Maybe he’d be better playing for a non-insane fanbase?

Backup Jared Lorenzen? News for you: if Lorenzen was any good, he’d have won the starting job.

Giants fans, as a whole, love to complain about their coaches and their quarterback. They would have liked nothing more than to cut Eli after his third season and started over with Brady Quinn… who would have sucked…. who would have been cut… to pick up another rookie… who wouldn’t have been ready… and would have sucked…. etc, etc, etc.

Thank God that the Giant organization, sometimes to a fault, is patient. They gave the team time to develop under insane media pressure. They gave Eli the time he needed. Someone realized “hey, this guy’s been our quarterback for two full seasons and we’ve made the playoffs both times.” Someone realized the team went 8-8 with practice squad guys on the left side of the offensive line for half the season. They gave everyone a new season and now you can’t find a guy who wanted Eli cut. Now the guy who gave me “Anyone but Coughlin” in September won’t admit to ever hopping off the bandwagon. Terry Bradshaw and his stupid, bald face couldn’t say enough bad things about Coughlin for the last few years. But Bradshaw was the first idiot, with his good-old-boy grin, to stick a microphone in Coughlin’s face to congratulate him on a job well done after the NFC Championship game. In a nutshell, Bradshaw’s representative of the insane people Giant fans that reasonable people deal with on a daily basis. Guys who are convinced all we need is to plug a new coach in there and there won’t be any growing pains. Guys who are convinced we’ll get Bill Parcells for one more run or Bill Cowher to come out of retirement. Now, you can’t find a piece of Giants paraphernalia anywhere in the state. Everyone’s pushing their way back on my bandwagon. All the people that didn’t keep the faith all season are crawling back, begging not to be reminded of their transgressions.

As to whether or not I’m nervous? No… not really. I never expected to be here at the beginning of the season. I didn’t expect to be here when the playoffs started. I expected to beat the Bucs, I expected to lose to Dallas, and I expected to beat Green Bay. They Giants have been playing with house money since Dallas. They’ve been touchdown dogs in every playoff game and have been tremendous. At the very least, they’ve made the impossible-to-please New York media just shut up and enjoy the game for once.

And, now that they’re here, I think they’re going to win.

Maybe I’m crazy and maybe I have the fan blinders on… both of which are entirely possible… but I can see it. For the last three weeks, everyone has expected Eli Manning to fold under the pressure. He hasn’t. Everyone is still expecting him to fold under pressure this time around. But here’s the thing: Eli doesn’t really have to do that much.

The Giants have a very solid core of young, fast, big running backs. Over sixty minutes, which 30-35 year-old linebacker is going to hold up getting pounded by Brandon Jacobs or Ahman Bradshaw? For that matter, which old linebacker is going to be able to catch Ahman Bradshaw in the third quarter? For all the lil-white guy love that Wes Welker gets, the Giants have a decent slot guy in Bogus Steve Smith who’s been coming into his own in the last few weeks. On the third hand, they now have a tight end in Kevin Boss who actually doesn’t drop gimme passes and then laugh and clap like it’s no big thing. The Giants do not have a flashy offense because they’re back to standard Giant football. Run the ball until you exhaust the linebackers and then hit short routes over the middle. Have the wide receivers there as a deep threat, but hit them rarely.

The Patriot secondary is really, really good. Analysts love pointing that out. Newsflash, though: the Giants don’t need to go into the secondary if they can dominate this old group of linebackers. The Patriots have been playing with a lead for most of the season… teams have been forced to pass. There’s a reason that the Patriots have struggled in close games. Their front is old. That’s their weak spot. If Eli continues to make good decisions and doesn’t force plays, the Giants can wear this Patriot defense out. Can you think of anything more damaging to the Patriots if the Giants win the toss and grind out a huge, long, 80-yard-drive and start battering Junior Seau and Tedy Bruschi? And also: how closely do you think the referees are going to be watching the Patriots for personal fouls in this game? Do you think Vrabel’s going to get away with any leg-whips this time around? I don’t.

On the other side of the ball, the Giants defense is as good, if not better, than what the Chargers trotted out there a couple weeks back. The Giants led the league in sacks. In the last game of the season they fell apart in the fourth quarter. If they can stop themselves from doing that, they win. Hands down.

The Giants have a second chance to end a historic season. They have a chance to do it on the biggest stage. And for all the faux-motivation things that have come out this week (the Patriots trying to trademark 19-0, the cast, the taping at the Super Bowl, the parade planning) I don’t think anyone’s mentioned the biggest one. This Giants team seems to love Eli Manning. If they go out and win this game, they can FINALLY shut the New York media up about him once and for all. They can FINALLY shut up Tiki and his stupid, toothy face. They put Eli Manning and their team on the short list of beloved, unforgettable teams that the city will talk about forever. They go on the list with the ‘69 Mets, the ‘94 Rangers, the ‘90 Giants, and the ‘68 Jets.

They do all of that AND go into next season $40M under the cap. If anything, win or lose, THAT makes me more excited than anything.

Giants outright, over 53, 31-28.

But could they stop torturing me and just get this done already.