LOTD: Elvis vs. Beckham. Who ya got?

August 4, 2009 By 1 Comment
Gordon Beckham - White Sox

Gordon Beckham - White SoxThere’s been a debate going recently around the Dallas / Midwest Sports Fans office about which rookie is better: Elvis Andrus or Gordon Beckham. Jerod had his post defending his boy Gordon, while I had my own post arguing for the case of Elvis Andrus.

The debate breaks down to a fundamental issue: Elvis is better in the field (with the ceiling of an absolutely elite defensive shortstop) while Gordon can flat out rake at the plate. The questions arise on the opposite ends of the spectrum with Elvis’ offense (Jose Reyes, Edgar Renteria-esque at his peak) and Gordon’s defense (improving, but not spectacular).

Most people would probably take Gordon because of the gap in the offense, but Elvis will probably end up being an above-average offensive player as a leadoff hitter with an average in the .280-.290 range. Could be headed for a season with 50 stolen bases at some point in his career (already more than 20 this year).

But everyone around here knows about Beckham’s potential, which quite frankly is scary. He already strikes me as a fan of another AL team as a guy I do NOT want to see come up in a big spot, and I think he’s only going to increase that reputation as a middle-of-the-order threat.

The one definitive advantage Elvis has is his age. Gordon is 22 years old, meaning he’s got a lot of time to improve. Elvis, though, is still 20 for about three more weeks. While it’s not a huge gap between the two, Elvis still could get a lot better as his body matures along with Gordon.

In the end, neither choice is wrong. Both are spectacular players and Jerod mentions in the Dallas Sports Fans post that if Gordon stays at third base, there might come an All-Star Game with Elvis starting at SS and Gordon starting at 3B. That would be quite a dynamic left side of the infield.

Here’s some more links as you trudge through the week:

ESPN’s Mort Goes to Camp = FAIL (Moon Dog Sports)

Who would win in a fight…Young Jeezy vs. DJ Drama (Hail Mary Jane)

NFL Power Rankings – Training Camp Edition (My Sports Rumors)

College Football Relegation Mock Draft (ESPN)

How does Allen Iverson not have a job? (Barkley’s Mouth)

More Arbitrarily-Chosen Power Rankings (Major League Jerk) **Totally because of the movie line at the Padres spot**

The beatdown: Ryan vs. Ventura (ESPN)

Filed Under: Featured Column, MLB Tagged With: baseball, Chicago White Sox, elvis andrus, gordon beckham, lotd, MLB, Texas Rangers

LOTD Video: Scottie Reynolds Shot Beats Pitt, Villanova to Final Four

March 29, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Video: Scottie Reynolds Buzzer Beater, Last Second Shot Beats PittWhat a freaking game.

I was anticipating Pitt-Villanova to be highly entertaining, closely contested game that came down to the wire, and it was even better than I expected. It was also perhaps my most shining moment as a Sweet 16/Elite 8 prognosticator, as Villanova’s close victory was exactly what I predicted.

And the MMP (Most Memorable Play) of the Villanova victory over Pitt came courtesy of Villanova’s superb guard Scottie Reynolds. The video is below, courtesy of Robert Littal at Black Sports Online:


Video: Scottie Reynolds Last Second Buzzer Beater Leads Villanova to Victory Over Pitt

LOTD: Villanova’s Scottie Reynolds Destroying Many Office Brackets With the Buzzer Beater — (Black Sports Online)

I was unable to actually watch this play live, which is why I hopped online to find video of the Scottie Reynolds buzzer beater as quickly as I could. I was out late last night at a sublime authentic German restaurant for my girlfriend’s grandfather’s 92nd birthday. One of the attendees had the March Madness app on his iphone, and we were able to watch up until about 0:30 left, when the signal went out. We finished listening on the radio, first as Levance Fields made his clutch free throws, and then as Scotte Reynolds dashed the Panthers’ dream with his incredible drive to the basket.

Reynolds actually did not have one of his best games statistically in Villanova’s Elite 8 victory over Pitt. He finished with 15 points and shot 7-7 from the line, but only had 2 rebounds and 1 assist. DwaVideo: Pitt Loses on Buzzer-Beater by Scottie Reynoldsyne Anderson stepped up huge and was the statistical MVP for Villanova. He scored 17 points, grabbed 6 rebounds, and had four steals.

And lost in the excitement over Scottie Reynolds’ buzzer beater was the superb play of Pitt’s trio of Levance Fields, Sam Young, and DeJuan Blair. Pitt is going home, but it certainly is not the fault of any of these three guys. Levance Fields made the clutch free throws as mentioned, and also dished out 6 assists against 0 turnovers. DeJuan Blair had another double-double, going for 20-10. And Sam Young was outstanding, scoring 28 points, snaring 7 rebounds, and dominating inside and outside.

Simply put, it was a great game played between two of the five best teams in America.

Unfortunately for Pitt, Villanova just appears to be one of those teams that has caught lightning in a bottle this March, as evidenced by the last second dash of Scottie Reynolds. Villanova is on an absolute roll, having beaten UCLA, Duke, and Pitt in three straight games. That is a pretty impressive list of victims.

Today, they will find out who they play next: North Carolina or Oklahoma. Villanova will be lower seed regardless, but it is going to be very hard to pick against them.

Filed Under: CBB, Featured Column Tagged With: 2009 Elite 8, 2009 NCAA Tournament, CBB, lotd, March Madness, Scottie Reynolds

LOTD: Deep Thoughts (and Brain Farts) by Gordon Beckham

March 11, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Gordon Beckham - Chicago White SoxToday’s Link of the Day comes from Chicago White Sox Spring Training camp, where rookie shortstop Gordon Beckham has his own blog on MLBlogs.com. The blog is called “Deep Thoughts by Gordon Beckham”, with title being an homage to one of his favorite SNL skits.

We will be doing a more in-depth analysis of Gordon Beckham later this Spring, but clearly he is a middle infielder of the future for the Chicago White Sox. Assuming Alexei Ramirez has 5-10 more years in him like season, Beckham will most likely find a permanent home at 2nd base. The White Sox will probably have to resist the temptation start Beckham right off the bat this season — but I don’t expect him to be in the minors long.

Anyway, there was a funny story from earlier this Spring in which Beckham had a bit of a brain fart and asked “Who’s Harold?” in response to a question by AJ Pierzynski about legendary White Sox OF Harold Baines. The story, which Beckham has apparently had to recant on numerous occasions, has provided a good bit of comic relief during camp.

Here is an excerpt from one of Beckham’s blog posts in which he discusses the now infamous Harold Baines story, then a link to the Beckham blog:

AJ: So Beckham, why in the world would they give you number 80?

#80: Not sure man, it’s my first spring, what number do you think I should have been given?

AJ: Well I figured they were just going to un-retire and give you Harold’s number.

#80: Who’s Harold?

Now I would like to stop right there and clarify. I was fully aware who Harold Baines was. I had met him earlier that week. I will admit that I did not realize the magnitude of the player he was in MLB history. What I meant to ask AJ was “What’s his number?”

LOTD: Deep Thoughts with Gordon Beckham — (Gordon Beckham Blog at MLBlogs.com)

It has been a while since a White Sox draft pick has made this big of an impression this early in his career. Remember, Beckham was the White Sox #1 pick just last year. Ozzie Guillen has already compared him to Ryne Sandberg, and while that might make White Sox fans shudder, despite Sandberg’s associated with the Cubs I think we would all have loved to have him on the South Side. If Beckham truly warrants that kind of comparison, and Alexei Ramirez proves to be more than a one-year wonder (which he will) the White Sox will have one of the top 5 middle infields in baseball well into the next decade.

Some more White Sox links for you:

Eight Men In: White Sox pitching staff looking good — (Joe Cowley, Sun-Times)

Sox, Cubs not cutting ticket prices — (Kevin Allen, Sun-Times)

Hold off on that Gordon Beckham White Sox T-shirt jersey until 2010 — (Tremendous Upside Potential)

Wait a second on Beckham hype — (Sox Machine)

Viva La Revolucion! White Sox Cubano news with a Bullet — (South Side Sox)

———-

And now we move onto other links:

Blog of Dreams — (Josh Q. Public)

It was a pretty good season for Michigan State — (Sparty and Friends)

10-year great ensembles of the Big East – Last 15 years — (Hugging Harold Reynolds)

Nothing takes away the pain of being slaughtered like a nice dance in the outfield — (Sharapova’s Thigh)

Lesser known nicknames of the NBA — (Hoop Heads North)

Bert Blyleven offers more proof that he belongs in the Hall of Fame and that he loves to fart — (Babes Love Baseball)

Gordon Beckham photo credit: AP Photo/Paul Connors

Filed Under: Featured Column, MLB Tagged With: Chicago White Sox, gordon beckham, lotd, MLB

LOTD: Newly Sponsored Basketball-Reference.com Calbert Cheaney Page

March 6, 2009 By 5 Comments

While taking a prolonged lunch break and procastinating at work, I stumbled upon Bill Simmons’ most recent mailbag.

Nearly an hour later, here I am — still procrastinating.

Anyway, in the latest Bill Simmons mailbag a reader tells him about a feature at Basketball-Reference.com in which you can sponsor player pages and suggests that Simmons sponsor the Mike DunleavCalbert Cheaneyy page. Simmons, of course, proceeds to do so. Follow the link to view Simmons’ sponsorship of the Mike Dunleavy Basketball-Referene.com page.

If you don’t feel like clicking on a link, it says: “I wasted tens of thousands of dollars on Clippers tickets from 2004-2009 thanks to Dunleavy, only one of the most dreadful coach/GM’s in NBA history. What’s another 10 dollars?”

Well, it didn’t take me but two seconds to realize I needed to sign up and sponsor the page for my favorite basketball player of all time: Calbert Cheaney. I’ve made my love for Calbert Cheaney known many times on this site, so no need to belabor to the point any more in this post. However, I will direct your attention to the newly sponsored Calbert Cheaney page on Basketball-Reference.com with today’s Link of the Day:

LOTD: Calbert Cheaney Player Page — (Basketball-Reference.com)

Note: I just realized there is about a 24-hour delay between when you sign up to sponsor and when it actually shows up on their page. But screw it, I’ve already written this post out so I’m publishing anyway.

Anyway, I encourage you all to wisely invest $15 like I did to sponsor the page of your favorite player — or do what Simmons did and sponsor the page of someone you despise.  Leave a link to your sponsored page in the comments for all to enjoy.

Now some more links for your Friday afternoon pleasure:

NFL Draft Preview: Are the Browns Tipping Their Hat with Jeremy Maclin? — (Waiting for Next Year)

Manny: Worth Every Penny — (Josh Q. Public)

Stan Van Gundy needs to shut up — (Sparty and Friends)

Paxson grows some, but is it a good thing? — (Pippen Ain’t Easy)

Random Retro Baseball Player: Claudell Washington — (Sharapova’s Thigh)

LeBron’s “Pimp Focus” is still going strong — (Black Sports Online)

Filed Under: CBB, Featured Column, NBA Tagged With: bill simmons, Calbert Cheaney, lotd

LOTD: The Death the Cutler for Quinn-Rogers Trade Rumors — and the Mainstream Media

March 3, 2009 By 2 Comments

Cap Implications of Cutler for Quinn-Rogers TradeAs you can tell, today has been a day of pure Browns speculation.

After reading last night about the rumored discussions between the the Browns and Broncos regarding a Jay Cutler for Brady Quinn-Shaun Rogers trade, I threw up a post detailing the speculation, with the caveat that the cap ramifications made a trade highly unlikely. Then, after reading PFT’s piece about the Giants stock-piling defensive lineman, I decided to throw the Braylon Edwards for Mathias Kiwanuka trade speculation out there too.

And things kind of took off from there.

Now though, it is time to throw a little water on the fire, at least with respect to the Jay Cutler for Brady Quinn and Shaun Rogers rumors. And the water comes courtesy of today’s official MSF superstar Barry McBride, who dug a little deeper into the cap ramifications for the Browns of such a trade. His post is today’s Link of the Day, in an effort to bring the Cutler trade rumors somewhat full circle since last night:

LOTD: It’s More Fun to Watch the Media Collapse in Real-Time! — (Orange and Brown Report)

I put some duct-tape around my brain and figured out the cap impact today. Dealing Quinn and Rogers, assuming no new contracts, would give the Browns more than eight million in additional dead cap space for 2009.

That assumes the Browns make the deal before any roster bonuses are paid to Quinn and Rogers this year. If not, then add those to the dead cap pile.

Then you have to pay Jay Cutler, which would be another million at the very least, if you don’t re-do his contract. BTW, he gets a $4 million roster bonus next year.

So, let’s figure you just burned $10 million – slightly less than half your cap space on a team with many holes – to swap Quinn and Rogers for Cutler. That’s a little less than 10% of your total cap space to make that swap. At least that leaves 90% for the other 50 guys.

Wow. Hey. Brilliant move.

You’ll have to hop on over to the OBR Rumor Central to read the rest of the article, but it is highly worth it. The above excerpt is presented as part of a discussion about the challenges currently being faced by the real media as they come to terms with the Wild Wild West nature of the Internet. As McBride says:

Seriously, why would an ad-supported news site even bother to spend time and money breaking news? They maybe get 10% of the page views for breaking the story. Info-scavengers get the rest. The information eco-system is upside down.

He raises some extraordinarily interesting points, especially coming from the perspective of a guy who is helping to run a website that puts a good portion of its content behind a pay wall. You can access Rumor Central for free, but you have to pay the OBR to access the really good stuff. (And as I’ve said before, I am a paying subscriber and it is highly worth it.) There have been plenty of times where I have something interesting at the OBR and wanted to post about it here, but instead have just linked to their main site and suggested that you too should become a subscriber.

It is quite possible that to survive, newspapers will have to begin structuring their websites the same way. Otherwise, the information poachers (and I am guilty as charged) can continue to drive traffic from commentary based off the “free” information provided by the hard-working journalists at these newspapers. The OBR seems to have a pretty good model, although I have no idea what their revenue or profit model looks like; and there is a good chance that we will see more and more websites who provide first-hand reporting (as they do at the OBR) go to a similar model.

I certainly can’t say I would blame them. It would just make the existence of run-of-the-mill bloggers like yours truly a little more difficult…and a lot more expensive. Don’t get me wrong, I am not writing this to decry bloggers or say that I think we are doing something inherently wrong by citing excerpts (so as long as links are provided). I work very hard at what I do and try to take the original source report and add my own spin, insights, commentary, or perspective. Even if I stopped, citing some grand altruistic intentions, what real difference would it make? We drive 2,500-5,000 visitors a day at Midwest Sports Fans, which is exciting to us, but hardly even a raindrop in the ocean of the sports blogosphere.

However, add those raindrops up from all the many sports blogs that primarily post second-hand commentary off of first-hand reporting, and you have part of the reason for the inclement storm currently rocking the mainstream media ships to the point of being capsized.

It’s a very interesting topic, and there is no doubt that the strategies newspapers employ to stay afloat could alter sports blogging, and blogging in general, in the months and years ahead. Post your thoughts down in the comments, but definitely check out the article at the OBR. It is very interesting food for thought.

Here is the link again:

LOTD: It’s More Fun to Watch the Media Collapse in Real-Time! — (Orange and Brown Report)

And more links from around the sports blogosphere:

Is Roberto Alomar telling us the truth? — (Deep Left Field)

The Week That Was College Basketball: March 3, 2009 — (Sparty and Friends)

Lou Piniella outraged by ESPN analyst’s criticism — (Chicago Tribune)

The Worst Contracts in Baseball — (Spring Training 09)

2009 NFL Mock Draft — (My Sports Rumors)

The Real Big Ben Vegas Picks — (Mondesi’s House)

Happy Birthday Ben Roethlisberger — (One For the Thumb)

The WBC and MLB’s Marketing Experiment (Revisited) — (The Biz of Baseball)

Jay Cutler photo courtesy of AP Photo/Ed Andrieski

Filed Under: CFB, Featured Column, MLB, NFL, Uncategorized Tagged With: brady quinn, jay cutler, lotd, NFL, nfl trade rumors, shaun rogers