Hope for the hopeless or It's time to blow up the Cubs

The title for this post depends on your allegiances. For those teams that are clinging to hope, this is good news:

Chicago Cubs pitchers Rich Harden and Aaron Heilman have been claimed off waivers by contending teams, according to industry sources.

Great stuff, but what else do we have here?

An American League source with knowledge of the process indicated the Minnesota Twins may be the team that claimed Harden. He will become a free agent after the 2009 season.

I like the sound of that, but I'll believe it when I see it. The Twins don't have a great track record of making big acquisitions like this.

Going into the season, the Twins pitching staff was seen as its strength but it has been ravaged by injuries and shattered expectations. Harden would be huge.

Now if you're a Cubs fan this is clearly the front office waving a white flag. I know the new owners are a little cash strapped, but the way to fix that isn't by selling off the good parts. The problem is they have so much money sunk into the wrong people - Fukudome, Zambrano, Soriano, Bradley. They're going to have to find a way to win with those salaries on the books.

Speaking of Bradley, the same guy who it took all of what, three weeks to quit talking to the Chicago media now is complaining about Cubs fans. My heart bleeds for you, Milton. I pulled up Bradley's stats today and almost fell off my chair. Here we have a middle of the lineup guy making $10 million a year and he has 35 RBI. That's only seven more than Nick Punto!

Bradley's teammate, Alfonso Soriano is used to being booed. He's making $17 million this year, has an on base percentage under .300, and plays left field as if he's wearing ice skates. His response to Bradley? Deal with it:

"You cannot listen to those fans because they pay their money, they can do whatever they want. But if you listen, they want to do it more," Soriano said. "But if you ignore them like `I don't care,' they want to get tired."

You Play to Win the Game! (Maybe)

Am I the only person watching the recent win streak by the Pirates but wishing that it were a losing streak?

A week or so ago I read an article in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review by Joe Starkey talking about how Pirate fans should be rooting for the Bucs to lose and lose a lot. The rational for all this losing is to get a shot at drafting baseball golden boy Bryce Harper. I found myself thinking “yeah, why not?” I could handle another 2 months of losing. I’ve swallowed it for 17 years.

There is an example of a sports team that worked this formula to perfection, the 1983 -84 Penguins. Towards the end of the 83-84 season the Penguins were near the bottom of the NHL standings when they lost 15 of their last 18 games. GM Eddie Johnston called up almost every available minor leaguer and sat down large portions of the starting lineup. The end results were a narrow last place finish over the New Jersey Devils by 1 game, drafting Mario Lemiuex in the 1st round, back to back championships, a new owner of the franchise, and eventually a brand new state of the art hockey arena. Had the Pens won 2 more games that season I’m guessing Mellon Arena hosts Hanna Montana, Disney on Ice and not much else. To this day when Johnston is asked about doing his best to finish in last place he grins, winks, and says something along the lines of “We tried to win every one of those games.”

I’m not suggesting that if the Pirates don’t draft Harper then in 25 years PNC Park will sit empty. I’m not even saying the Bucs need Harper to compete in the next 3 – 4 years. But I am asking myself, is it so bad to think “Lets go Reds, Royals, Nationals, and whoever is playing the Pirates!” Is that wrong?

In case your head has been in a hole

or you've been otherwise occupied, after helping to load the bases in the ninth inning with two clumsy plays, Philadelphia Phillies utility guy Eric Bruntlett pulled off an unassisted triple play for just the 15th time ever on Monday night.

These are rare treasures as they're far rarer even than perfect games - there have been 18 of those.

Of the 15 unassisted triple plays that have been pulled off, all have occurred at second base. As our newest contributor, Chad pointed out, it can really only occur either at second or at third under extremely bizarre circumstances.

What's even more remarkable than the rarity of this play is how often they've occurred of late. Since 2000, we've seen five unassisted triple plays including one every year for the past three years.

I'll leave you with this. Prior to Eric Bruntlett's gem, the last person to pull off this feat was Asdrubel Cabrera of the Cleveland Indians. If that isn't a reason for you to name your firstborn "Asdrubel", I don't know what is.

Tearful Favre bids fans adieu

Don’t ask me how I got this, but I recently gained access to an archive of future AP articles. I vowed I would only use this access for good. I refused to pull a Biff from “Back to the Future” and profit from it. Anyway, enjoy the compilation.


Monday, September 21, 2009


After winning a close game over the Detroit Lions at Ford Field, the Vikings sit at a perfect 2-0. Recently unretired Brett Favre led the Vikings on a game-winning drive capped off by a 58 yard touchdown run by Adrian Peterson. Favre has totaled nearly 300 yards passing thus far with an impressive total of 2 TD passes, both play-action passes to Tight End Visanthe Shiancoe.
The conquering hero gave Vikings fans across the nation heart palpitations by announcing he was tired from the long game and was going to “retire”. It was later clarified that he said he was going to “retire for the night”, but the microphone cut out.

Rachel Nichols spent Monday, the Vikings off-day, in front of Favre’s rented house in Chaska hoping for some sign that Favre would return to the practice field on Tuesday. As a symbolic gesture, a concerned Zygi Wilf offered his private jet to fly Favre the nearly ten miles to Winter Park, the Vikings practice facility in nearby Eden Prairie. But Favre opted to ride into town in Vikings Head Coach Brad Childress’s black Cadillac Escalade as he had during his grand, first entrance as a Viking.

Tens of thousands of chanting Vikings fans lined the road for miles to greet Favre and wish him well in the coming week….




Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Despite jaw-dropping performances in his first three games, Brett Favre saved a little extra for his former team, the Green Bay Packers. He topped 200 yards passing and didn’t throw a single interception – both firsts on the year. He was carried off the field by his offensive line, who has embarrassingly given up a total of three sacks on the year. But Favre continues to motor on despite poor line play.

During the press conference after the game, Favre defended the intestinal fortitude of his disappointing running back, Adrian Peterson. Peterson had to leave the field for a series in the fourth quarter to receive fluids intravenously following his fourth TD run of the game. He apologized after the game saying, “I let the team down, the fans down, and most of all, I let [Brett] Favre down. It won’t happen again.”

Fans rushed out following the game to grab Favre away jerseys in preparation for the upcoming game in Green Bay. Brett Favre jerseys now sell at a rate of 2:1 over the next top seller. Befuddled NY Jets fans are still unsure of what to do with their precious relics.



Monday, October 19, 2009

After rushing out to an impressive 5-0, the Vikings lost a tough game to the visiting Baltimore Ravens 6-3. During the press conference, All-Pro Defensive End Jared Allen let the blame fall on his shoulders: “I thought I was playing my butt off but I guess I failed the team.” Allen, who has a league-high 12 sacks in five games didn’t sugarcoat his assessment of his game: “I flat out stunk it up. I’m going to look at the game film, have an O’Douls, and come back and hopefully get five sacks next game.” Allen promised that he’d turn his game around. If not, he said he would abandon his calf-roping sack celebration. “I don’t deserve to celebrate when I go out and lay an egg like that.”

Middle Linebacker E.J. Henderson wasn’t as critical of Allen. Henderson felt he should have had more than two tackles for losses and fifteen overall tackles in the game. When asked about his health he replied, “I feel great. I broke my foot last year and because I’m pain free, I assumed I was fully recovered. But I guess I was wrong.”



Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Vikings quarterback Brett Favre told a reporter that he was suffering from a hangnail on his non-throwing hand prior to Tuesday’s practice at Winter Park. Within the hour, WebMD crashed due to increased traffic from concerned fans wondering if Favre would play on Sunday. All reports indicate that Favre is listed as Probable and should start despite his injury. “What a warrior,” said one admiring teammate…



Monday, November 2, 2009

The news of the Vikings victory over the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field was overshadowed by Brett Favre’s announcement that he was retiring from football following the lopsided win over the ailing Packers. “I feel like I have given the game everything I got,” said a tearful Favre. He also wondered aloud whether he could make it through the grind of the bye week in order to finish the last 8 games of the season. “My heart is in the game. I know I can play and compete, but it’s time. It’s time for me to go home.”

The state of Minnesota declared Monday, November 2, a state holiday and mandated that all flags be flown at half mast for the rest of the year. Plans are already in the works for a Brett Favre statue to stand in the parking lot of the Mall of America. The cities of Bemidji and Brainerd have toppled their Paul Bunyan statues – Saddam Hussein-style and have erected impromptu likenesses of Favre in their place.



Monday, November 16, 2009


An awkward and embarrassing injury has created the unlikeliest of heroes – one who was there only in spirit. Sage Rosenfels, the de facto starting QB of the Vikings following the startling retirement of Brett Favre, let his name be praised, was so nervous about returning under center against the Detroit Lions that he forgot which arm he threw with. During the first drop back of the game, the confused Rosenfels spotted an open receiver, but continued to shuffle his feet, “…trying to remember what felt right,” explained Rosenfels after the game. The Lions defensive line converged on him, making a “Detroit Lions sandwich,” declared Lions defensive end, Jason Hunter.

Even without the presence of their top two quarterbacks, the Vikings managed to pull off the victory. Vikings head coach Brad Childress gave the game ball to the absent Favre. “Brett Favre influence on this team continues in his absence. We couldn’t have won the game without him.”

A miserable Rosenfels speculated that he’d be back on the field by the end of the season. “Crazy as it sounds, we have to learn how to win without Favre. That’s all there is to it,” said a sober-faced Rosenfels.
The Vikings take their 8-1 record into Seattle this weekend but their confidence level has never been lower…



Tuesday, November 17, 2009


ESPN’s Chris Mortensen is reporting that Brett Favre is considering a comeback. Apparently he’s been talking to some close friends about returning to the NFL. Calls to his agent, Bus Cook have not been returned.


Wednesday, November 18, 2009


ESPN’s John Clayton is near verifying the claims of colleague Chris Mortensen that Brett Favre is considering a comeback to the NFL. Favre has been seen around the local high school. One observer in his hometown of Hattiesburg, Mississippi claimed he was “moping around complaining that the high school football season was over and he had no high school kids to throw to”. These comments have not been confirmed.


Thursday, November 19, 2009

The blogosphere is abuzz about the return of Brett Favre. It is reported that Zygi Wilf’s private plane is currently in the air on its way to Minnesota. Governor Tim Pawlenty’s office is reporting that the plane has been given clearance to land on the highway in front of Winter Park. President Barack Obama called off a summit with the leaders of Iran and Israel to discuss the heavy, threatening rhetoric between the nations. According to one anonymous aid, the President is “glued to the tv” apparently waiting with bated breath to see if Favre really has returned.

A lifelong Bears fan, he has publicly switched his allegiances, declaring Favre “an amalgamation of Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr., Henry David Thoreau, and Jesus”. He went on to say, “I know we’ve confirmed that Iran has, uh, attained nuclear status. They have, uh, pointed their weapons at the people of Israel and have a public countdown to launch. But this Favre stuff is, uh, important stuff. The situation in the Mideast is a grave concern to the White House, but we’ll deal with it when this Favre stuff blows over”




Friday, November 19, 2009

Vikings coach Brad Childress has announced that Brett Favre won’t be practicing today either. “He doesn’t need practice,” declared the coach. “Everyone else does, so we’re doing two-a-days both today and tomorrow”. The Minnesota Legislature came back from recess to pass a bipartisan bill that essentially gives the Vikings a blank check to build a new stadium for the Vikings, provided it is appropriately Favre themed.

Vikings running back Adrian Peterson, who is on pace for a paltry 2,500 yards this year told one reporter, “I just hope I can find a role to help Brett win”.

At Favre’s comeback news conference, he announced that he didn’t want to continue to ask the question, “what if”. “I just had to know if I still had it in me. ”



Stay tuned for more on the season that will be.

MVP: What does it mean anyway?

Over at FanGraphs, the debate is raging about the AL MVP race. The same question continues to come up every year. Who deserves the MVP award? The most valuable player or the best player on the best team?

Joe Mauer is having one of the best non-enhanced offensive years in recent memory. He's hitting right around .380 and despite missing a month, he's closing in on 30 home runs. The only chink in his armor is his somewhat low RBI total. But we all know that's a bit of an overrated statistic anyway. It really only measures opportunity, and the Twins haven't been getting guys on base in front of Mauer. In fact, the Twins number two hitter is last in the MLB in OPS.

The case for Mauer is simple. Despite the Twins pitching collapse, the Twins are only six games out of first. They're in the bottom half of MLB in terms of OPS by position at 5 out of the 9 offensive positions, but Mauer's OPS is nearly an astonishing 1.100 making the Twins 8th in MLB in overall OPS. Mauer is carrying the team.

Now, the case for Mark Teixiera. He's is having a good year, the Yankees are in first place and are a vastly improved team from last year. But they've also added A.J. Burnett and CC Sabathia so it's debatable whether he's the best player on the Yankees.

So, there are two questions:

1. Mauer or Teixiera?

2. Most valuable or best player on the best team?

Since we're on the subject of Mauer, FanGraphs also has a post on how Mauer's having the best offensive season of any catcher. Ever.

Weigh in. What do you think?

Your high school coach was right after all... The Lakers WOULD be better off without Kobe!

Wired magazine has this compelling article for those of us who've been waiting for basketball stats-keepers to catch up to baseball's cutting edge analysts. I know this has been keeping you up at night too, right? Um, Ok. But I really have been waiting for this ever since, jaw agape, I received the gospel of selflessness on my father's knee as he regaled me with tales Wooden's UCLA teams. In truth, those of us lucky enough to grow up during the best NBA decade ever (the '80's and you're a tool if you disagree) saw Doug Collins' Bulls get beat every May and Phil Jackson's Bulls win every June. It takes Allen Iverson not to draw the appropriate conclusion.

Now someone has finally gone to the trouble of doing some quantitative analysis as to why good ole' fashioned teamwork really does, well, uh, work.

Now the conclusion seems to follow from the general application of systems analysis principals. It gets more gritty when you factor in defensive matchups, whether Kobe, Allen, whomever, is playing with a big/small lineup, against a big/small lineup, whether possessions are at the end of a quarter, who's in foul trouble, etc. etc. This would seem to be where good coaching comes in. However, the obvious conclusion seems to be that, ceterus pluribus, playing five-man basketball is more effective than playing matchups. Here's the article.

Sorry, Lakers fans, Kobe could be holding your team’s offense back.

Elite players could be taking too many shots for optimal offensive efficiency, according to new mathematical analysis using network theory.

Treating each player like a pathway to get the ball into the basket, a physicist has deduced that the most efficient path to a basket does not always run through star players like Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, or Ray Allen, even though they are better shooters than their teammates.

“The idea that a team could improve after losing one of its best players may in fact have a network-based justification, and not just a psychological one,” wrote Brian Skinner, a physicist at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, in a paper posted to the arXiv.org. (Skinner is no relation to the other Brian Skinner, Baylor standout, Los Angeles Clippers power forward and 22nd pick in the 1998 NBA Draft.)

First, Skinner explains how people making the best decisions for themselves can hurt the efficiency of a total system. Let’s say that there are two roads, a highway and an alley shortcut. The alley takes up to ten minutes, but sometimes less depending on traffic, and the highway always takes ten minutes. Individuals realize they could save time by taking the alley, so they do. Unfortunately, when everyone takes the shortcut, it ends up taking the full ten minutes.

By analogy, perhaps, getting rid of Kobe Bryant could actually make things better by dispersing the “cars” (i.e. possessions) more evenly. Offensive balance could reduce “traffic,” making putting the ball in the basket easier.

By analogy, perhaps, getting rid of Kobe Bryant could actually make things better by dispersing the “cars” (i.e. possessions) more evenly. Offensive balance could reduce “traffic,” making putting the ball in the basket easier.

The key assumption is that a player’s real shooting percentage goes down as they take a greater percentage of a team’s shots. Skinner’s stats show this appears to be the case with Allen — and it stands to reason, too. As a player dominates an offense more, the defense adjusts. They double the player, devote more attention to him, and likely deny him high quality shots that are likely to go in. (We might call this the Iverson effect.)

So, if one were to distribute the number of shots a player takes on the basis of their shooting skill, the math says the team’s overall shooting percentage would go down. If Ray Allen takes only as many shots as the rest of his teammates, he will make more of them than he would if he put it up on 40 percent of the possessions.

By distributing shots more evenly, then, the team’s overall shooting efficiency could go up, even if the other players on the team are only average shooters. For the star player, it’s a bit like that old adage, “You’re promoted until you’re incompetent.”

Of course, Skinner’s analysis doesn’t take defense into account and the interplay between the shooting skills of the best players versus the worst players could change the results somewhat, but it will probably add fuel to the barbershop debates of Brooklyn over whether or not the Knicks really would have been better without Patrick Ewing.

College Football List #1

College football season is right around the corner. This was made clear to me by the headlines recently declaring that my team, the Pitt Panthers, was picked by the media to win the Big East. I had two reactions to this: first, I threw up, and second, I cancelled my season tickets in short order. We can’t have expectations like this; we will fold to a 4-8 season more quickly than President Obama hired lobbyists in his administration.

I am going to take a break from writing about the Bucs to write about college football and why I love it. In fact, I have few loves in life, but two of them are college football, and lists. I love lists, and for the next couple of weeks I’m going to randomly offer you lists about my favorite things in college football. Today we will start with a generic list: The 5 Things I Love about College Football; this list will probably be the subject material for future lists. This can double as the start of a “Why I Like College Football Way More Than the NFL” post, if you want.

1. Rivalries – every team has them, and they are always sweet. You get one game versus your rival every year, which is different than almost every other sport. That gives you bragging rights for the entire year. Ruining your rivals’ season is just about the best feeling in the world, especially when it happens on their turf.
2. Rivalry trophies – akin to the first, but a little different. College football teams play rivalry games and collect trophies, like the “Little Brown Jug” or the “Keg of Nails”. These are great trophies, much better than almost any championship trophy (maybe save the Stanley Cup).
3. Fight songs – seeing your team’s marching band take the field before the game and riling everybody up by playing the fight song is one of the best experiences you can have at a college football game. Singing it after a touchdown is even sweeter.
4. The Bowl System – its corrupt, rewards teams unfairly, tilted toward the “haves”, and really ancient. And yet, there is something about it that makes me sit down on New Years Day to watch bowl games from 10 a.m. to midnight.
5. College Gameday – the best preview show for any sport. I love me some Kirk and Corso. They do a good job with the stories, and preview most of the big games of the weekend. When Corso puts on the helmet at the end of the show, its shameless pandering at its absolute best, especially if he gets to fire some type of toy gun.

Well, that’s a good start. What do you like about college football? Be on the lookout for more lists before the season kicks off on September 3rd!