The Sabertoothed Anteater

Now You Know

2011-10-01T22:35:00.003-05:00

Wisconsin delivered an old fashioned asskicking to Nebraska tonight. Welcome to the Big Ten, Big Red! After the nonconference games I wasn't worried about the offense. Russell Wilson joined a pretty good unit that didn't ask much of its QB, and he brought a lot to the able (and made Nick Toon look good for once).

My main concern entering B1G play was the defense, which hadn't been tested by anyone to speak of. It looked bad in the first game of the season against UNLV's "pistol" offense. They did just fine against Nebraska today, neutralizing their running game and keeping mobile QB Taylor Martinez contained for most of the game. The line got plenty of pressure on him, and the secondary picked him off three times.

About the only complaint was what happened early in the first half, when Abbrederis fumbled a return and Nebraska punched it into the end zone. It anchored a stretch that saw Nebraska jump on three fumbles. Two of them were their own, so apparently they had lots of practice at is (laughing) (h/t cdw).

Wisconsin's schedule looks favorable, with Illinois as the lone ranked team on the schedule. It's always tough to count on a win in the Horseshoe though, no matter how unsettled the aOSU QB situation is, and I'm still worried about Sparty after last year.

vs Indiana
at Sparty
at aOSU
vs Purdue
at Goldy
at Illinois
vs Penn State

Should be a fun ride.

When you say Wisconsin, you've said it all.

Wisconsin Non-Con recap

2011-09-18T09:36:00.003-05:00

Technically the non-conference portion of the season isn't over yet, but I feel safe in saying that anything I say about the first three games will apply to the last one and then some.

But really, what is there to say? Wisconsin's offense looks incredible. My only concern on the offensive side was whether Russell Wilson would have anyone worth a damn to throw to, but Jared Abbrederis and Nick Toon have risen to the occasion. The Badgers are still getting plenty of yards on the ground, though James White hasn't seemed quite as explosive as he was last season.

The only hiccups so far have been some rusty play by Borland and Taylor in the UNLV game (understandable) that seems to have cleared up, and some strange line play against OSU. Early in the game both of Wisconsin's lines were being pushed around, which is unusual to say the least. They won 35-0 so they must have figured it out I guess.

Bring on Nebraska!

NFL season predictions

2011-09-06T17:52:00.002-05:00

AFC Playoff teams:

North: Steelers (12-4)
East: Pats (12-4)
South: Texans (9-7)
West: Chargers (12-4)
WC: Ravens (9-7)
WC: Jets (9-7)

NFC Playoff teams:

North: Packers (11-5)
East: Eagles (11-5)
South: Saints (10-6)
West: Rams (9-7)
WC: Cowboys (10-6)
WC: Lions (9-7)

NFC North:

Packers: 11-5
Lions: 9-7
Vikings: 7-9
Bears: 4-12

Super Bowl: Steelers over Saints

UNLV 17 - 51 Wisconsin

2011-09-05T16:42:00.005-05:00

Like last year, I'm going to try to do some quick thoughts after each game this season. It might be tougher this year because I'm at a short term position in Rhode Island and did not bring my TV. It looks like I'll be spending some time in bars this fall (for the Packers too, of course).

I barely followed Wisconsin football this offseason. About all I knew was that Watt, Carimi, and Kendricks were all drafted (and should play major roles for their teams this year). If you asked me this summer who the QB was going to be I might have said Tolzein --- I couldn't remember if he graduated or not. After I finally emerged from the football-shaped rock I was hiding under I heard lots of great things about Russell Wilson, but my concern was that he wouldn't have anyone to throw to. Between this and the talent drain from the draft I was uneasy with the predictions being thrown around about UW winning its division, let alone winning the B1G and contending for a national title.

How Wisconsin won: Russell Wilson got plenty of praise for his performance, but it was Wisconsin Football that won the day - running, running, and yet more running. At one point they listed all of Wisconsin's drives and they were averaging fourteen yards per play . Ball and White look in midseason form. Wilson looked great in the pass attempts he did make, though he overthrew two passes early. However, there's little doubt that the run game set those throws up so it will be interesting to see how he does against a stouter defense. The Badgers didn't see many third downs and those they did see were mainly third and shorts. Wilson made some great plays with his legs, and the best compliment I could make was that he didn't remind me of Brooks Bollinger*. He made good decisions on when to tuck and run and ran one in for an easy touchdown with WRs blocking down field.

*Bollinger was notorious to me for giving up on plays and trying to run with it. I can't count how many times I heard "Bollinger on the keeper....gain of one yard on the play".

How UNLV lost: I can criticize a few things about UNLV's game (mainly lousy red zone execution), but given expectations this was a win for them. Aside from the financial aspect (which was the main reason they set up this series), their "Pistol" offense gave the Badger defense fits, as well as the camera crew. I must have been misdirected five or six times with their option plays and had no idea who had the ball. They were consistently getting to the edge against a Wisconsin defense that looked very slow. The defensive line was definitely missing J.J. Watt, and Chris Borland (who I had completely forgotten about after he missed last year with an injury) did not seem like the impact player that he was when he won the B1G Freshman of the Year award after the 2009 season. Jesse Palmer or (ugh) Craig James mentioned that they could just be gaming Oregon State with their defenses this week, which is right about the level of analysis I expect from those two.

Game ball: Montee Ball

Next week: Oregon State (who just lost to a FCS team!) at Camp Randall. Wisconsin's non-conference schedule is nuts this year. Three games at home and one game at Soldier Field vs Nothern Illinois.

Summer TV Countdown: #2 Parks and Recreation and #5 Community

2011-07-31T11:31:00.005-05:00

This summer, the Onion's AV Club published 4-part interviews with the showrunners of Community and Parks And Recreation (you can find the final installments, and links to the previous ones, here and here). In my brain Michael Schur will always be Ken Tremendous, so I refer to him simply as KT below.

(Obviously, spoilers if you haven't watched the most recent season of these shows).

These are both shows that I quite enjoy, but I had very different reactions to the interviews. KT's Parks and Rec interview reminded me of everything that I love about Parks and Rec, while Dan Harmon's Community walkthrough magnified everything I'm worried about on Community.

Let's start with the Community one, since it was first anyway. It's a show that is (intentionally) tough to define beyond the fact that it's a comedy. It has a large ensemble cast, pretty much all of whom work well together. It enjoys doing, for lack of a better word, spoof episodes, where they riff on some particular genre of movies or tv. Most importantly, unlike most tv shows (especially sitcoms) it takes risks by challenging and changing its characters and their dynamics, which is always nice to see. These risks the show takes, both with individual episodes and the characters themselves is why it can crank out such great episodes, but they don't always work out.

I thought the biggest character misstep they had this season was with Chang, who was the breakout star of the first season and was largely pathetic and used to little effect this year. What made his character great was how drunk with power he was in the first season. The change they made to his character was interesting in a "let's see what happens" sense and was an organic change with respect to the internal logic of the show, but despite adding the extra wrinkle with Shirley's baby this year it largely went nowhere, and the show suffered without him. Having more John Oliver was nice, but didn't fill in that gap. I don't know what else they could have done - it would have been interesting if he somehow became the new dean, but the current dean is so awesome that you can't write him off the show.

I wasn't a huge fan of what they did with Pierce in the second half of the season either, but I'll give them more of the benefit of the doubt there. He turned into a (even huger) huge asshole and it was hard to figure out why everyone was still friends with him. They did address this in the finale though, and it makes a little more sense if he's being set up as the villain in the next season, which could be interesting.

My biggest issue with the show, which was only magnified by this interview, is how much the show loves patting itself on the back for some of the sitcom-subverting things they do. I'm not sure why it bothers me so much - in some sense it's not too different from doing, say, the zombie episode or the war movie spoof that was the first paintball episode. In particular, I'm thinking of the Documentary Filmmaking episode, where they spoof the mockumentary format, Paradigms of Human Memory, where they spoof clip shows, and Critical Film Studies, where they base the entire episode on an elaborately framed joke related to a lesser-known 1980s movie.

People like what they like - I also am apparently the only one who doesn't enjoy the Troy freakouts they used in the second half of the season - but when the showrunner says things along the lines of "we don't have to reinvent television every week", and you take him seriously in context, it could lead to trouble. I recognize that it takes some careful planning to craft a good comedy show, but this kind of overthinking can spoil things. I don't have a problem with serious episodes - one of my favorites this season was Troy's birthday party. I thought it was just a factor of seeing how the sausage was made - I made these points in the comments to one of the interview parts and the interviewer said that all showrunners were like this.

Fast forward to the Parks and Rec interview with Ken Tremendous. He also goes into great detail about their strategy of crafting their show, but instead of making me nervous it just reminded me of everything I love about Pawnee and those characters in general. P&R isn't afraid of a little change either - it cut Mark from the show after the second season and more or less replaced him with Ben, Chris joined the cast, April and Andy got married, Tom quit his job. The show still had a few issues: they still generally have a tough time with Ann storylines, the Leslie and Ben stuff dragged a bit, and they could be in danger of leaning too much on Ron stories (though not too much, as every plot involving Ron has been absolutely hilarious so far).

The best part of the interview is just that you have a bigger sense of what KT wants to do with the show. Both Community and P&R have established a greater universe (Greendale, Pawnee) to interact with, but I have a better sense of what kinds of stories P&R wants to tell with its characters. Much more so than Community, what keeps bringing me back to P&R is that you get to spend time essentially hanging out with characters you like. The same is somewhat true in Community, especially with regards to Abed and Troy, Annie, and to a greater extent (for me at least) with Britta. But Community thrives more in intra-group conflict than P&R, which has much more to do with the inherent conflicts of governing. One thing KT mentioned about his vision for the show is that he doesn't like that most sitcoms are basically driven by jokes where the characters are all mean to one another. This is definitely something that's bothered me about a lot of the big sitcoms of the last 10-15 years or so, especially shows like Seinfeld (which I like less and less as time goes on) and Everybody Loves Raymond, which we used to love but just got tired of eventually due to all the hate flying around. The same is also somewhat true of The Office, though that show has some heart behind all of it.

Some of my love for the show also stems from the fact that I can connect with Leslie's (and clearly from the interview KT's) view of government, especially the parks. I grew up going on vacation to dozens of National Parks (as my mother worked for NPS for 30+ years), and my wife and I both worked at Harpers Ferry National Park when we were in high school/early college, where we met and worked with many more people who loved their jobs and were very good at them. Leslie is a proxy for everyone we knew who are good at their jobs and enjoy public service. There are certainly plenty of other people on the show who aren't such great examples but they all work anyway because they all respect Leslie.

I could probably say a lot more about Parks and Rec, but the appeal of the show is nicely summed up with what I said above about hanging out with characters you like. I'm really glad to see the show and Amy Poehler getting some Emmy love this year. Apparently Community didn't win any friends by essentially basing their Emmy ad campaign in Hollywood by telling people who haven't seen the show that they're idiots, so it's not that surprising that they got zero Emmy nominations.

Top three episodes for each show this season:
P&R:
1. Flu Season
2. Fancy Party
3. Jerry's Painting

Community:
1. Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas
2. Collaborative Calligraphy
3. Consipiracy Theories and Interior Design

Summer TV Countdown #14: Dexter

2011-07-09T20:11:00.005-05:00

I probably have Dexter rated too low - blame it on how long it has been since I watched it. I got into the show a year or so ago thanks to all the Dexter fans over at Obstructed View. I enjoyed season five but have a reservation or two about the show. If I had to rank the Dexter seasons right now, I would probably go

2
4
1
5
(gap)
3

Spoilers below, obviously.

The good things about this season:

Anything involving Dexter's main storyline. The I remember liking the first episode or two after Rita's death, and I love pretty much any interaction between Dexter and Astor. They eventually leave to live with their grandparents (while Harrison stays with Dexter), and there's a great episode later in the season when Astor returns. Michael C. Hall really carries the weight on this show.

On a similar note, Lumen was great. Julia Stiles really nailed her guest role - John Lithgow was probably the only major guest star that has been better over the course of the show. Despite how relatively formulaic the show has become in the past three seasons (Major Guest Star is introduced, gets Too Close To Dexter, leaves one way or another at the end of the season), one thing that speaks for the quality of the show and its guest stars is that they're compelling enough to share the load with Michael C. Hall in carrying the show. Jimmy Smits was not so good (hence the rankings above), but Lithgow and Stiles brought a lot to the table in their stints on the show.
At first when I looked back on the season I thought that it would have been better if the Lumen story arc occurred in season three, since this season did a far better job with the "Dexter teams up with someone" plot, but it works better this season in the context of Dexter getting over Rita's death.

The not so good things about this season:

While Lumen was a great character and I enjoyed the broader arc of her story, there was one weak link - Johnny Lee Miller (of Hackers fame!) as Jordan Chase, this season's big bad. What he and his crew did to Lumen and their other victims was terrible and I quite enjoyed seeing Lumen and Dexter hunt them down, Jordan himself was kind of meh. I mean, he was evil and deserved to die, but he didn't feel EVIL the way that the likes of Arthur Miller or even the ruthless Miguel Prado. Jordan was just more of an asshole. It feels weird to say that, since I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that sexual assault is bad and I have no sympathy for abusers like Jordan's group anymore than I do with criminals like Miguel or Arthur. But it was a different kind of season - killing him felt much more about closure for Lumen (and indirectly, Dexter) than about some epic confrontation to remove Evil from the world as we've seen in other seasons. Overall I liked the idea of her arc (and Stiles and Dexter did a great job), but it didn't feel executed well on the side of the villains. I'm not sure if it was acting, or writing, or both.

Everything not involving Dexter or Lumen. I'm generally pretty meh on all the sideplots on this show in general. I quite enjoy Deb, but any b-plot that involves anyone else in Miami Metro Homicide that does not involve Dexter is extremely blah. I like Batista's character but I'm not a fan with what the writers have given him to work with, especially his marriage to LaGuerta and all of the internal police department wrangling that those two deal with. Quinn had more to do this season and we got the bonus wrinkle that he knows Dexter is up to something, but every time I look at him I wonder if he's going to die in the next episode from anorexia and/or heroin addiction. I swear you can see his ribs through his back. The other big plot line this season was the hunt for the so-called Santa Muerte killer, which weirdly fizzled out midway through. I don't even remember if they caught the perps. I think there was a shootout at a public location at some point and LaGuerta rightly got in a lot of hot water over it. Overall my memory of it was that it felt poorly tacked on.

Going forward:

One of the biggest complaints about this show from the critics is that it hits the reset button too often and that the broad arc of the season is fairly predictable (as mentioned above, Major Guest Star is introduced, gets Too Close To Dexter, leaves one way or another at the end of the season). Except for season 5, for obvious reasons, pretty much every season has started with promos along the lines of "The old Dexter is back!!!!11!". But, given the premise of the show, I don't see how many ways there are for them to not hit the reset button without destroying the premise of the show, since once someone finds out about Dexter's secret he either has to kill them or get caught, and then it's show over. One way they could have changed things would have been to keep Lumen around past the season break. They might have even been able to keep her around even if she decided to stop with the killing. Maybe I'm just too optimistic about how that would work though.

I don't remember the guest stars that have been cast for season six, except for the always awesome Edward James Olmos. I don't really have the vibe that anyone is supposed to be the big bad that gets Too Close To Dexter. I expect we'll be getting a lot more of Dexter worrying if Harrison is evil, which is kind of meh. Dexter does have a sword hanging over him in Quinn, though Quinn does owe him one for fudging the blood work that fingered him for Liddy's murder. Still, just a few hints to Deb can ruin everything for Dexter. I don't know/remember if Dexter kept an insurance policy against Quinn.

One thing I am hoping for next season is that the plot action will be a little more spread out. The past few seasons have had a dud episode or two in the middle of the season that felt like filler to push us to the big plot points in the last few episodes. Dexter loves to set up all the pieces in the first 7 episodes or so before knocking them all down in spectacular fashion. Those last few episodes are great, but it pulls a lot out of energy out of the earlier episodes. Contrast it with Breaking Bad, where shit can Go Down at pretty much any moment, which does a better job of keeping its viewers on their toes.

Summer TV Countdown #17: Castle

2011-06-25T09:51:00.003-05:00

I'm a huge fan of Nathan Fillion. We're both big fans of Firefly (of course), and we also loved Dr. Horrible. So the prospect of Fillion as a wise-cracking mystery writer hanging out with some homicide police sounded like it would be fun. And it is an enjoyable show, generally.

Here's a basic rundown of the show. Castle is a best-selling mystery writer who uses his clout with the mayor's office to attach himself to Kate Beckett, a hot shot (and also hot) ace homicide detective who is to be the inspiration for a new series of mystery novels. There are a few other supporting characters on the show, who are generally pretty good. Most notable are Ryan and Esposito, two other homocide detectives who generally serve as the comic relief in the series, though thankfully not through the "incompetent cops" trope - they're both good at their jobs. Even better are Castle's family. He lives in a big apartment with his hilarious former Broadway star mother Martha and his teenage daughter Alexis, from one of his previous marriages. All three of them have fantastic chemistry - especially Castle and Alexis, who is smart and does a great job grounding him.

Most of the time it's a fun show - there's some case of the week, they solve it, Castle cracks some jokes, and a good time is had by all. The show also does a decent job with the UST between Castle and Beckett, though it's not nearly as thick as it was between Mal and Inara on Firefly. They have some good capers - my favorite might be the one where they go through secret tunnels in the sewers while investigating some Prohibition era related crime.

However, the show does have a few problems. Whenever it verges into Serious Territory (especially in any of the episodes that focus on the hunt for Beckett's mother's killer) the show is not as good - I often find myself rolling my eyes at some of the cliched Hard Boiled Cops lines in their interrogations etc. I was also extremely annoyed by the season finale (SPOILERS COMING, IF YOU CARE). It gave some resolution to the Beckett's mother storyline...by revealing that Beckett's police captain, who is a regular on the show and is a great guy and great police, has been involved in the coverup for years and is blackmailed in to protect his co-conspirators. He eventually betrays his conspirators and is killed in a firefight protecting Beckett. It pissed me off because it felt completely manufactured by the showrunners who needed to ratchet up the tension for ratings, rather than for any particular plan or character arc on their part. Even more annoyingly, they gave us a "cliffhanger" where Beckett was shot while speaking at his funeral, but where's the suspense there? They're not going to kill off the co-main character and main love interest - this show just doesn't have the kind of balls to do that.

That pretty much sums up my main problem with the show - it's a fun show from week to week when they all run around and solve mysteries. Everyone has great chemistry with everyone else (it's Nathan Fillion's gift), but whenever they try to move away from their basic formula it generally falls on its face.

Summer project

2011-06-19T11:18:00.006-05:00

I'm still plugging along with my Cubs series previews over at Obstructed View, but it's only a matter of time before my apathy with the AAA product on the field overwhelms me.

Luckily, there's a lot of great tv (and great TV criticism) out there. Now that the "main" TV season is more or less over and the award season is beginning it's been a good time to reflect back on the last year in TV. Last week on TV On The Internet, my favorite new podcast, TV critic Todd Van Der Werff and hilarious co-host Libby Hill along with two other AV Club writers break down their top thirty shows of the last season. You can find the list they cooked up here . I haven't watched half these shows but they make good cases for all of them.

I'd like to do something similar this summer on the blog, but I'm not going to use such restrictive criteria. Their list was based only on the shows' most recent season, though of course characters, goodwill, etc., built up from previous seasons do obviously affect people's subjective rankings.

Instead, I'm going to base my list on the following things:

Show that I have watched several episodes of in the last year. That includes shows that I watch on DVD, either for the first time or for the 37th time.
Shows that are fresh on my mind right now. There are a lot of shows that I love that either won't make or should be higher on this list, but I just haven't necessarily been in the mood for lately (most Whedon shows apply here).

Some shows on the list may be more spoiler-alerty than others so if you haven't watched them (I'm thinking specifically of Game of Thrones) I'll try to put spoiler alerts where necessary.

Anyway, without further ado here's my list. I thought about counting down to number one over the course of the summer but I'd rather just choose them more or less at random, as I have a lot more to say about some shows than I do others and don't want to wait (laughing). I reserve the right to change the order of any of these (or insert stuff) as I think about them/watch more things.

17. Castle
16. Saturday Night Live
15. True Blood
14. Dexter
13. The Office
12. Archer
11. Kids in the Hall
10. Good Eats
9. How I Met Your Mother
8. Breaking Bad
7. Mad Men
6. Game of Thrones
5. Community
4. The Wire
3. Firefly
2. Parks and Recreation
1. 30 Rock

Wisconsin loses in Sweet 16 to Butler

2011-03-25T00:24:00.002-05:00

I can't really say I'm surprised by this loss. Even aside from how flat the team has looked since the end of the regular season, it's tough to bet on a UW squad to go far in the tournament. The blueprint has been the same all the way back to the pre-Bo days: play defense, and hope someone gets hot. No one did today. At least the Law of Gus tried to make an appearance.

Aside from all the bricks, one thing that drove me craziest in tonight's game was the announcers complaining that Wisconsin was shooting too many jump shots. Hello, Gus Johnson? How many Wisconsin games did you watch this year? That's UW's game. They live and die by the jump shot.

I made a last-minute change to have UW go to the elite 8 in my bracket - I originally had them losing in the second round to K-State. For quite a while, K-State was actually my pick out of the mess that is the southeast bracket. Really though, I didn't like any of the top 5 teams in the bracket. If I had remembered that Butler went to the final four last year that might have been enough for me to pick them to win it. Instead I have Florida winning that region.

Various cubs blogs to join forces (Updated)

2011-03-09T23:12:00.004-06:00

This hasn't been much of a Cubs blog lately, as most of my Cubs writing has been happening over at Another Cubs Blog for quite a while now. As was announced on Monday, ACB is going to close its doors sometime in the near future (we really mean it this time!). We're forming a new Cubs blog (address TBA) with Adam Kellogg of And Counting and Tim McGinnis of Tales from Aisle 424. Much like The Planeteers, with our Powers Combined we will reforge our snarky, sometimes stat-flavored powers to ramble and rant about the Cubs with a 37% increase in efficiency. I guess I'm the communist one. Obviously Koyie Hill is Captain Cubs.

I'll keep this blog around to ramble about all the other non-baseball things I sporadically ramble about. Once we finish putting the finishing touches on the new site I'll drop a link here.

UPDATE: The new blog is named Obstructed View (http://www.obstructedview.net), and it will launch on 3/27. See you there!

Gender Bias in mathematics (with an assist from baseball)

2011-01-30T15:10:00.001-06:00

Jordan Ellenberg, a mathematics prof at my twice-over alma mater, put up a post on his blog yesterday inviting discussion over gender bias in conference speakers. I had high hopes that it would spark an interesting conversation but it has ended up being pretty frustrating and depressing, mostly driven by a few privilege-blinded men who don't think there's a problem at all, as well as a more overly sexist anonymous coward or two.

Anyway, I just want to braindump a few of my own thoughts on the issue, as well as a few of those comments (Jordan's blog has eaten the comments I've tried to post over there). Of course, these are going to be colored with my own biases and experiences as a white male from a middle class background, and someone who does not actively explore or think about gender/racial issues all that much. However, I was raised by a feminist (and am married to one!) and hope that at least some of that rubbed off on me.

Jordan puts forth a simple question - does math need a campaign similar to the one linked in his post, which acts as a watchdog on conferences with all-male speaker lists. My answer would be - of course! There's nothing wrong in and of itself with all-male speaker lists. Subject-wise, mathematics can be such an esoteric field that simple probability says that sometimes the list of folks qualified to talk about it are all men. Of course, there are many other reasons why the availability of women mathematicians are so low that don't have anything to do with conference invitations, but let's get back to that for a moment.

Not surprisingly, the conversation turned into a discussion as to whether gender bias exists in mathematics at all. Denying that any such thing exists is ridiculous, in my opinion. But the problem is that, from a casual observer such as myself, it's tough to pin down. I've never run into anyone within mathematics who says that women aren't as good at math as men, nor that they are worse conference speakers (not that it means anything, but by FAR the two worst speakers I've seen were both men). However, even my shy, asocial self has heard about bad experiences by fellow female graduate students. I also think that few would argue that bias against women in mathematics/sciences exists in our culture at large, which is one of the reasons that there are relatively few women who major in things like math and computer sciences (my undergrad majors). But suddenly when they become grad students/postdocs/faculty members we're supposed to believe that these biases disappear?

Again, I'm not a scholar in this stuff but I think it's clear there is an implicit bias against women in mathematics. The problem with these biases is that it's really hard to point out without invoking strong reactions in those who benefit from it. I can't speak to gender very well but this has been a drum that we've been beating at Another Cubs Blog for a long, long time with respect to sports reporting (and, by proxy, sports fans) and racism. Just look at how different players are treated by the media - how many times have you heard a black or latino player described as "scrappy" or "gritty", compared to the long line of David Ecksteins and Ryan Theriots of the world? Sammy Sosa was one of the greatest and most popular Cubs of all time and he was run out of town on a rail with little protest by Cubs fans. Milton Bradley, abusive asshat that he is, was never given a chance by the Chicago media. Soriano and Ramirez are repeatedly blasted as lazy, despite the mountain of injuries they've been carrying in their Cubs tenure. Jacque Jones and Dusty Baker were subjected to racist taunting. But if you put a typical Cubs fan to question about it, they'll just say that they just have problems with those individual players, and hey look, Cubs fans all love Ernie Banks so we're not racist, see? (Ernie Banks is our Black Friend!) Bringing this back to math, I don't think that it's enough to say that since there are women in your field/women in conferences you've been to, the problem doesn't exist.

What it boils down to is equal opportunity - and that means for everyone. Simply saying "work harder" isn't enough. Talent will rise to the top, and the female mathematicians many of us could point to demonstrate that fact. But 'everyone' doesn't just mean the most talented. Again, returning to baseball look at how rosters are constructed. Of course you're going to want your biggest stars playing every day, and teams pursue them without any regard for race. But what about the average to replacement level players? There's a lot more of them, and this is where bias comes into play. It's not too surprising that a lot of those 'scrappy' players are both backups and white. Anyway, there isn't really an appropriate analogy for this in mathematics, but simply saying that anyone can be a star, as one of the anonymous cowards on Jordan's blog put it, isn't enough. Not everyone can win a Fields Medal if they just Try Hard.

Anyway, my last point is this. I'm a white male, not a woman, or any other minority, and it's not my place to discount what they express about their experiences and how they differ from mine. I haven't read extensive research or blogs on racial or gender issues, nor do I sign petitions or participate in protests, and I don't really see myself making these things a big part of my life in the future. But I can keep an open mind, treat people fairly, and make sure I question myself every once in awhile whether I'm doing a good job at those things. And that's just what such a campaign would do.

Your turn, Bears

2011-01-15T22:25:00.001-06:00

Packers win 48-14.

Tonight the T in T-Pain stands for...TRAMON WILLIAMS

/Parks+Rec

FF XIII quasi-review/extended rant (and general rambling about the FF landscape)

2011-01-09T22:57:00.008-06:00

(In case the title didn't already clue you in, big time Nerd Alert on this post)

I picked up a PS3 with some of our Christmas swag, largely on a sense of nostalgia that had been kicked up in the previous few weeks playing FFX and meeting Felicia Day at a signing here in Austin, who did voice work in the new Fallout* game. So I grabbed a copy of the newest iteration of the Final Fantasy series to kick off the console (since X was the main reason I bought a PS2).

*I've never played any of the games in the Fallout franchise but they certainly look up my alley. I picked up New Vegas and Fallout 3 since Gamestop had a buy two get one free deal on.

I haven't actually beaten the game yet but so far it has largely been a disappointment, and I just want to rant about it (laughing). I'm floored by all the positive reviews for the game. A lot of it comes down to what you expect from a game. I wouldn't say I'm expecting any one specific thing from FF - I'm not going to be offended if there aren't say, chocobos or dudes named Cid, and I'm not opposed to them experimenting with the battle system. I have a hard time picking my favorite FF game so I'll compare it in terms of the categories that my 4 favorites do best at: Story/atmosphere (FFVII), battle systems (FFX), environment (FFXII), and challenge (FFT).

Story

This is probably the weakest link in this game. I don't expect Shakespeare by any means from a FF game, but this was pretty awful even by FF standards. I just don't give a shit about really any character. They went from being entirely unsympathetic at the start of the game to being just okayish, for the most part. A lot of it I blame on terrible writing, *especially* with regards to Lightning and Snow (the erstwhile main characters). I spent the first 15 hours or so of the game wanting to punch them (and Hope) in the face for their ham-fisted idiocy. The biggest problem that I had was that their actions didn't seem self-consistent with the universe they live in. For fuck's sake, they were leading an armed resistance against *Genocide* of everyone in their city by their rulers, and yet Snow is crippled with guilt over the death of one volunteer, and Hope is fueled by rage against Snow over his mother's death while trying to prevent it. If you want to chalk it up to extreme loyalty to their societal norms, that's fair enough, but the game didn't sell it at all. In VII, we wanted to hate the Shinra and the game did a great job of introducing us to the enemy through Barret's ecoterrorist organization. Here everyone is just blindly lashing out against an arbitrary and nebulous fate, which still isn't really that established hours into the game. The whole L'Cie 'Focus' would be a much better plot device if they actually gave some direction on what it was. Even after they defeat the Primarch and he tells them their true direction things aren't abundantly clear - I'm still waiting for some plot twist that he lied to them somehow (though the Sanctum fal'Cie motives as stated in and of themselves don't make much sense).

The same goes for Lightning's extreme bitchiness to the rest of the crew early on, doing her best to alienate herself from the rest of the characters. I'm sure we're going to learn more about her own past but if you're going to establish a character you better do it well before the 20-25 hour mark in the game. She's still a cipher. At least with Cloud we got the epic look back on the events in Nibelheim when the crew escapes the ~5-hour prologue of escaping Midgar. They did a decent enough job of her mini-rivalry with Snow in the flashbacks, but even then for people in a society raised to despise L'Cie they both jumped to Serah's defense pretty quickly.

Fang and Vanille remain largely underdeveloped, and the whole Vanille-keeping-memories-secret-from-Fang subplot was pretty undercooked. It seemed like they threw it out merely for an excuse to collect Vanille's eidolon for lack of any other personal conflict.

The only note that they've hit particularly well was the Sazh-Vanille subplot involving Sazh's son.

Overall, if you read the various entries in the game's database the story and the world in general seems pretty cool and carefully thought out. The game has a background atmosphere that looks quite mineable, but it's the details that are terrible. To make a cooking anaolgy, it's like they assembled a lot of top notch ingredients and chefs and made a PBJ.

Battles

We've seen many many systems in the FF series over the years, from a turn-based-ish system in the original game, to a more classic ATB-ish one in 5-9, a return to a very turn-based one in 10, and a more AI-centric one in 12. This one builds off the near twitchy ATB system from Final Fantasy Dress Up (i.e. X-2), which was basically a lot of button mashing. I'm fine with adding a bit more automation to the process - after all most of the time you're just attacking, attacking, attacking and it's nice to make a nod to that.

I appreciate many of those aspects of this system and can see the allure of this role-switching based system but the timing in it just drives me nuts. Maybe I'm just old, but the battles generally run waaay too fast and many are largely reliant on luck as much as strategy (anyone who's played this game and has been randomly killed by a bunch of bombs that decided to cook off at the same time knows what I'm talking about). I know you can slow the battle speed down but that just feels like cheating to me. As far as ATB like systems go I liked 12's system better where you *could* leave it on AI, but you could always switch to issuing your own commands if you so desired.

I'd like this game a lot more if you could hybridize, say, two of the roles. Synergists and saboteurs can be pretty useful but it's a big annoyance to bring them out because that's *all* they do. I'd much rather have an offense-oriented class with a few minor abilites, like say a commando that can cast cure, slow, etc but saves the more powerful spells for someone who specializes further in that role. Having to switch in medics all the time drives me nuts because the system rewards speed, so keeping in three offensive roles as much as possible is generally a must. I'm not asking for creating an uber class that can do everything, just saying that it would be nice to have an attacker who could also cast a simple cure spell.

Something else that drives me crazy is the formation switching (and no, I won't call them Paradigms because that's completely lame). I'm all over being able to customize your party mid-battle (it's one of the things I loved about FFX), but having such a long animation to change formations (and having that longer animation happen seemingly arbitrarily) in a battle system that demands speed in insanely annoying. Too many times my lead character has been at/near full health, been hammered by some attack, and killed before I can wait through the animation and for my support character's ATB gauge to fill up and actually cast their cure spell. Gragh.

Speaking of the lead character stuff, the whole "if your lead character dies it's game over" rule drives me nuts too. It just seems unecessary - just do what 12 did and have the 'leadership' shift to someone else in the party.

Overall FFX easily had my favorite battle system* - each character had defined roles (except Kimhari), which they more or less do in this game, and you could use them as you needed without too much micromanagement. But the key difference is that you had time to think in FFX. Your time to think in this game is after you've picked up the pieces and had your ass kicked a couple of times before you figure out how to beat the opponent and/or get lucky (see: just about everyone's eidolon battle).

*FWIW FF8 had my least favorite system, only because it made the game laughably easy. Stupid, stupid junctions.

Environment

XII makes a big push for being one of my favorite FF games because of the world it's in. Just exploring the place and wandering around was tons of fun. There was still a larger plot-path you had to take (which started strong but fell flatter as the game went on) but for the most part you were free to explore the world around you (and the hunting sidequests actively encouraged you to do so). As for this game, well, so far it has been a complete railroad-fest of chasing the orange objective arrow, aside from ONE zone on Pulse (which from what I've gleaned from other reviews is basically just a hub for a bunch of Pulse railroad dungeons). This game did bring over the hunting sidequests but so far they've been pretty meh. For one, since they're mostly in the same zone, it makes in pretty difficult to so much as locate your mark.

The primary thing I've seen this game praised for is its graphics. They're pretty awesome but I've never been much of a videophile as far as these go - it's something that's nice to have, but not crucial to my enjoyment. If anything, the graphics are being wasted by the railroading aspects of this game. Everything is just one long chain from one battle to the next, and because you're fugitives/outcasts you don't get much of a chance to interact with society at large anyway. Rabanastre felt like a living city in 12 - here the characters have only themselves to bounce off of so you need strong characters for it to work (see above).

Challenge

Look, I have no problem with games challenging me. Final Fantasy Tactics is one of my favorite games of all time, and it's legendary for its ability to make players weep with frustration (and that's just for the translation job - heyo!). The Weigraf/Velius battle and the Elmdor battle at Linberry castle are easily the two hardest *mandatory* battles in any game with the FF label that I've played. But despite that this game is driving me nuts at times, either for the aforementioned multiple-bomb-self-destruct scenario above or for some of the Eidolon battles or even some of the monsters-in-the-path battles (Boxed Phalanx = most recent example). Generally I hate grinding but I enjoyed the battles (and leveling up system) of FFT so much that it didn't really bother me. Here, the level-up system feels about as railroaded as the environment. You can get some new skills, but for the most part, meh. There aren't many game-changing skills as you move up the tech tree, just stats for the most part.

In general, with FF games my expectation should be that I, as a veteran of these games, should be able to plow through without a strategy guide/gamefaqs lookup/etc. with little difficulty and simply sit back an enjoy the game. Some bosses should give you a little trouble but when you lose it shouldn't feel like it was at the whim of the battle system instead of your own strategy. Yes, I can see the logic FAIL here but at least in FFT you knew that you could think about what you were doing.

Things I do like

It's not all bad. Easily my favorite thing to come out of this game is its weapon upgrading system. It reminds me very much of the Disgaea one, without the annoying 'weapon dungeons'. So I guess it has that going for it (laughing), My only complaint is that they didn't adequately explain it, leaving me flailing to figure out what catalysts I needed to upgrade my starred weapons by trial and error. I hope they keep this idea going in the future games.

Final thoughts
I'm not done with this game yet, as I mentioned above, but it would take a lot for this to move out of the bottom of my FF rankings (of games that I've played). Right now it would probably be

FF7/FF10/FF12/FFT - tied for excelling in different areas
FF6 - I still hate the world of ruin. FF12 hit my nonlinear gameplay right. This, not so much. Though the first half of the game is probably my favorite FF, if you were allowed to cut them up.
FF4 - Solidly good, no real complaints or praise. The Evil Wall in the Sealed Cave is probably #3 on the difficult mandatory battles list mentioned above.

FF9 - Again, solid but not particularly memorable.
FF5 - Never finished, but I'll admit to being prejudiced against this because I was an old hand at FFT before playing this and loved the job system there a lot better
FF13 - So far this slots in around here.
FF8 - Squall - so whiny. The junction system made this game a complete joke difficulty-wise, and the story was poorly executed. I will cop to my nerdy teenage self loving the final song.
FF1 - Grind, Grind, Grind.
Final Fantasy Dress Up (X2) - pure fan service, but fun if you took the game for what it was.
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest - I'd love to put this higher because it was the first JRPG I ever played and has big nostalgia value, but the game was laughably easy. I still burn through it every once in awhile on an emulator for kicks.

Why Wisconsin lost

2011-01-01T20:26:00.002-06:00

This one is easy

1. Not enough speed on the edges from the defense. Maybe it would have been different with Borland in the game - who knows.

2. Too many dropped passes, especially by Nick Toon (though he did make a nifty snag on that overturned call).

3. They didn't play Wisconsin football on offense, except for the first and last drives. Clay and Ball were running all over TCU, and they threw the ball waaaaay too often. Then when they finally figured it out in the last series and ran down their throats, they went out for the conversion in a 3-WR shotgun formation. What the hell? Play to your strengths, coaching staff.

It was still a fun year, but a bummer of a way to end it.

Rose bowl halftime thoughts

2011-01-01T17:25:00.002-06:00

The three key plays in the game -

1. The complete horseshit pass interference call on TCU's first drive.

2. Welch's missed fg.

3. The ill-advised fake put that worked.

More Montee Ball please.

Quick prediction

2011-01-01T14:37:00.001-06:00

I'm too lazy to write a full preview for the UW-TCU game, so I'll just put up a score prediction:

UW 34 - TCU 30

Go Badgers!

Forget fixing the BCS - how to fix the other bowls

2010-12-31T12:22:00.003-06:00

I know people love to complain about the BCS, but the lesser bowls are far more nonsensical. As I write this, 7-5 South Florida is taking on a 6-6 Clemson team in the Meineke Car Care bowl. What a clash of gridiron titans. This will be followed up by the much higher profiled matchup of Notre Dame (7-5) and Miami (7-5), which at least has some small storyline to it, and Georgia (6-6) vs UCF (10-3).

When did these bowl games become so meaningless? I find it tough to believe that so many schools, advertisers, stadiums, etc. are making money off of all of these matchups. The BCS, I can see since people want to watch top teams square off. But each year it just seems we have more and more meaningless game stretched out over an entire month. Ohio vs Troy? Southern Miss vs Louisville? And somehow, one of the games that should be on today or tomorrow (Utah vs Boise) was played on Dec 22. What the hell? Meanwhile we have epic matchups like Nevada-BC, Pitt-Kentucky, and Middle Tennessee State vs Miami (OH) all after New Year's.

What I propose:

Require a 7-win threshold to make a bowl game: you have to have a winning record.

Get rid of automatic conference bids/tie-ins. This will help ensure that the bowls take more interesting teams.

No non-BCS bowls after the Rose Bowl.

After the BCS bowls, bowls should pick their matchups going backwards from New Year's Day (i.e. before the Rose Bowl).

Reduce the number of non-BCS bowls by a third to a half. 7-5 teams that got there on the strength of wins against Western Cupcake Tech do not deserve a bowl trip.

Well done, Cubs

2010-12-16T09:13:00.003-06:00

It's not officially official yet, but it looks like Kerry Wood might be returning to the Cubs. This is exactly the move the team needed to make this offseason - even though it will likely be for too much money and the 2011 Cubs still aren't going to win anything, it's completely knocked out my preemptively bitter feelings towards the next two seasons and made me excited about next year's team.

Well done.

How the roster is shaping up

2010-12-09T16:55:00.004-06:00

Miraculously, Marquez Smith was not picked in the Rule 5 draft today. However, that shouldn't make a big difference for the 2011 team as the position player part of the roster is set. As things stand now, here's how that side will likely shape up (along with my stab at the likely lineup)

RF Kosuke Fukudome, LHB
SS Starlin Castro, RHB
1b Carlos Pena, LHB
3b Aramis Ramirez, RHB
CF Marlon Byrd, RHB
LF Alfonso Soriano, RHB
C Geovany Soto, RHB
2b Blake DeWitt, LHB

C Koyie Hill, BHB
MI Darwin Barney, RHB
CI Jeff Baker, RHB
OF Tyler Colvin, LHB
OF Sam Fuld, LHB/some NRI

~~Castro~~ Colvin (ed: stupid C names) has been mentioned as an 'everyday player' and may end up getting more starts than Kosuke during a week, my guess is that he'll spend about half his starts spelling Soriano and Byrd.

The 5th OF spot is the main one up for grabs, though the Cubs also have 2 catchers on the 40 man roster so Hill might need to watch his back. The org inexplicably loves him though, so maybe he shouldn't worry *too* much.

The pitching side, as usual, is in flux, even more so considering the Cubs are foolishly looking to add a middling starter to their 10-deep rotation depth. The bullpen is a mess. Aside from Marshall and Marmol (and I guess Grabow), the rest should all come down to who has a good spring.

SP Carlos Zambrano, RHP
SP Ryan Dempster, RHP
SP Randy Wells, RHP
SP Carlos Silva, RHP
SP Tom Gorzellany, LHP

CL Carlos Marmol, RHP
SU Sean Marshall, LHP
P John Grabow, LHP
P Jeff Samardzija, RHP
P Thomas Diamond, RHP
P ?
P ?

The Cubs have an absolute glut of starting pitching prospects in AAA, maybe so many that some guys who are ready for AAA will have to pitch in AA, or in the pen. Samardzija and Diamond are the most likely to be 'penned but it could happen to guys like Jackson and Cashner. Here's the list

P Andrew Cashner, RHP (could spend the year in AAA building up arm strength to start. Thankfully the Cubs are making noises about turning him back into a starter)
P Jay Jackson, RHP
P Chris Archer, RHP
P Casey Coleman, RHP (another bullpen candidate)
P Chris Carpenter, RHP
P Trey McNutt, RHP

They also have a reliever or five that could impress their way into the pen as well
P Marcos Mateo, RHP
P Scott Maine, LHP
P Jeff Gray, RHP
P Esmailin Caridad, RHP
P Justin Berg, HRP
P John Gaub, LHP
P Jeff Stevens, RHP
P James Russell, LHP

If I had to guess, I think it's most likely that the back half of the pigpen will consist of F7, Diamond, Mateo, and Coleman

Cubs sign Carlos Pena

2010-12-09T07:42:00.002-06:00

The Cubs signed former Tampa Bay 1b Carlos Pena to a one year, $10 million dollar contract ($5 million is deferred to next season). At first I was against this deal but the more I think about it, the more I like it. Let's make a list of Pros and Cons, Halpert-style:

Cons

$10 million is a lot of money for a team that is trying to slash payroll and isn't going anywhere in 2011.
The Cubs had much cheaper left-handed 1b options in Bryan LaHair and possibly Tyler Colvin
Pena turns 33 next year and could be on the decline. His injury last year does throw things off a little though. Scouts have always loved him, but he was a late bloomer.
Pena is useless against LHP

Pros

Pena is prime for a bounceback season after suffering from plantar fasciitis last season, especially moving out of the AL east and into the weaker league.
Pena brings a good glove to 1b, and one of the Cubs priorities this season was to get a good receiver for the still raw Starlin Castro to throw to.
It only costs money - the Cubs didn't unload any prospects to pick up a guy like Fielder, Gonzalez, or (ugh) Chris Davis in a trade.
Speaking of prospects, with the Cubs unlikely to contend next year they can flip Pena for some prospects if he regresses back to something more like his numbers from the previous 3 seasons.
Most importantly, the length of the contract. At least one of Pujols and Fielder (if not both) should hit the market next year, and both the Yankees and Red Sox are already locked up at 1b. This leaves the Cubs, with a few contracts coming off the books, in prime position to chase one of those franchise players.

File under "can you believe this shit"

2010-12-08T10:07:00.003-06:00

A big controversy erupted at UW last week when The Badger Herald released a list of 34 students that were attempting to sell their Rose Bowl tickets on facebook mere minutes after they sold out. Shock! Horror! People are selling things at market value!!

What surprised me even more was that so many people agree with the newspaper's stance in publicly calling out these people. What the hell? How is this surprising? Even more appalling and depressing is the fact that many of these students received death threats from other students.

Many have gone on to blame the university for the ticketing process, forcing those who buy tickets to have their names linked to them, or to have to pick them up in Pasadena, etc. It's a good idea as far as limiting these shenanigans goes, but I see no point in blaming the university. It's not their problem if people want to sell these tickets.

Goodbye, Ronnie

2010-12-08T04:12:00.003-06:00

I've been traveling overseas and missed my chance to react to Santo's death here on the blog. Luckily so many other excellent people have beaten me to the punch (links included at the end of the post).

It's tough to pin any particular reason why we are fans of particular sports teams. Many are fans of teams because they were hometown teams, others (like me) because of family tradition, or simply because for many people the Cubs and the Braves played a lot of games on national TV. I was a Cubs and Yankees fan growing up but couldn't have named more than two players on the team in any given year - I pretty much just watched the World Series and occasional games on WGN when we hooked our cable back up when I was in high school. After I went to college, I started watching more games and, more importantly, started listening to games on the radio. It's safe to say that Ron Santo is the reason why I am the Cubs fan that I am today.

Santo cared too much about the games, and that's why I loved him. It always felt like he was your crazy old uncle or grandfather in the booth. Hughes was always good about giving scores, but if you just tuned in you could always tell how the Cubs were doing by listening to Ron for half a second (or more telling, not hearing him at all). His sheer excitement, especially in the 2008 season (that I caught nearly all of on the radio) was infectious and amplified all of our own excitement. The last two years have not been as kind to him, both medically and emotionally (given the team's performance) but Ron was a guy who never gave up on the team or himself.

After the 2003 postseason raised the stakes for Cubs fans and especially after watching This Old Cub, I knew that when the Cubs eventually did win it all there was no doubt that I'd be sharing the experience with Pat and Ron on the radio. I'd get shivers down my spine just thinking about it. Things didn't work out in 2007 or 2008, and now that Ron is gone we will never get to experience this. When they do win it will still be for him. But it sure would be nicer if he could be there to share it with us.

And Counting
A League Of Her Own
Tales from Aisle 424
Cubs f/x
Suburban Kid from ACB's take on Santo
ACB's look at Santo's HOF-worthy career
ACB on Santo compared to other HOF 3b

NFC Playoff Craziness

2010-12-02T16:23:00.004-06:00

Based on my earlier post, I was playing around with ESPN's Playoff Machine scenarios and it looks like a hot mess. My final Standings are

AFC:
1. NE 14-2
2. BAL 13-3
3. SD 11-5
4. IND 11-5
5. PIT 12-4
6. NYJ 12 -4
(JAX, KC at 10-6)

NFC:
1. PHI 12-4
2. ATL 12-4
3. GB 11-5
4. SEA 8-8
5. NO 11-5
6. TB 11-5
(CHI, NYG at 10-6)
Seattle picked up some wins solely on their home field advantage. You can just as easily slide the Rams or whatever other punching bag from the NFC West in there.

What surprised me the most is that two of these playoff spots came down to one game: PHI @ NYG in Week 16 and CHI @ GB in week 17. Whichever team loses those games is likely to be watching the playoffs at home. Even more oddly, in the event that the Giants beat Philly, the Eagles do not go to the playoffs and the winner of the Chicago-GB game gets a bye week, while the loser stays home.

Okay, maybe the Bears are good after all

2010-11-30T21:01:00.002-06:00

I was quick to dismiss the Bears early in the season due to their Swiss Cheese offensive line, but they've really turned it around lately. They really remind me of the 2009 Packers - Rodgers was sacked eleventy billion times in the first half of the season before the offensive line shored up/gelled and managed to protect him pretty well as the season went on. It looks like we're starting to see the same with the Bears this season - now that Cutler has some time he's started to catch fire despite his weak crop of receivers. Their defense is proving how much they missed Urlacher last year on every play, and their special teams look pretty good.

Given the number of wild card contenders in the NFC, the Packers-Bears game at Lambeau on Jan. 2 has a decent chance of being a win or go home game for both teams. The 8-3 Bears should beat Detroit and Minnesota and lose to NE and NYJ, while the injury-decimated 7-4 Packers should handle the Niners, Lions, and Giants, resulting in a matchup of 10-5 teams for the NFC North title. It should be a good one.

Going bowling

2010-11-28T20:22:00.006-06:00

It's still not *technically* official, but with the release of this week's BCS standings Wisconsin is headed to the Rose Bowl for the first time in ten years (most likely to play TCU). Their last visit was just before I arrived in Madison, in Ron Dayne's Heisman season. I thought I would just share some random highlights of each year of my decade as a Badgers fan.

8/25/2001 Wisconsin 26, Virginia 17
This was my first game, and by some coincidence it was against one of the schools that I could have chosen to go to. My dad and I were up that weekend and I might not have even moved in to my dorm room yet. I had student season tickets and he scalped one from somewhere. Little did I know at the time how easy it would have been to buy a student ticket for him too but these were the days before craigslist I guess. The start to this game was delayed for quite some time due to a big thunderstorm rolling through just before game time. Later I would also learn that I didn't need to get there so damn early.

11/23/2002 Wisconsin 49, Minnesota 41
I don't have a lot of specific memories of this season, but the big story was Jim Leonhard's record-setting number of interceptions. He's done quite well for himself in the NFL for a former undersized walkon. He's now the captain of the Jets defense, and I still have a worn-out old #18 jersey that my wife bought me a year later. This year also marked the end of the Brooks Bollinger era, also known as "Bollinger on the keeper......tackled for a gain of one yard". Every. Freaking. Play.

10/11/2003 Wisconsin 17, Ohio State 10
Still easily the greatest game I've attended in person. OSU was ranked number one and College Gameday came to town. The Badgers hung in there and had a lead going into the 4th quarter before Ohio State tied it up. At some point in the half one of the OSU defenders choked Wisconsin QB Jim Sorgi which caused him to have difficulty breathing for the rest of the half. Backup QB Matt Schaub responded to the OSU score with a 79 yard bomb to Leeeeee Evans that turned out to be the game winner. It turned a generally shitty night (slow game, lousy weather) into bedlam, and the fans rushed the field.

11/15/2003 Wisconsin 56, MSU 21
My then-future-in-laws came to town for the first time to come to this game. They were freezing and bundled up as if on an arctic expedition, while we were merely wearing a sweatshirt or two. Things are so much more active in the student section that it was easy to stay warm. This was the Lee Evans 5 TD game, and looking up the recap of this game, Sorgi shattered the all-time UW QB rating record by posting a ridiculous 268.38 rating. The in-laws left after the 4th TD or so to go get warm.

12/31/2003 Wisconsin 14, Auburn 28 (Music City Bowl)
This was our first trip to a bowl game. My wife's best friend went to Auburn for a year, and since it was within driving distance of VA we decided to score some tickets and drive down to Nashville for New Year's. Wisconsin lost to future Redskins QB Jason Campbell, and we ended up sitting on the Auburn side of the field due to some confusion about/literal reading of our tickets. The Auburn fans around us were *quite* annoying. Our Auburn friend had been talking up SEC football and what a Big Deal it was, but she was blown away by the energy of the Wisconsin crowd at the day before the game parade and at the game itself. Also - note to Southern schools. Dressing up for football games does not make it a Big Deal. It just makes you look like assholes. Just saying. The other big highlights of the night were eating an incredible Shephard's Pie at some downtown restaurant and watching the Central Time New Year's on Conan.

10/16/2004 Wisconsin 20 at Purdue 17
We didn't have cable this year so we had to focus on broadcast TV for the Badger games. This was pre-BTN so if one of the national carriers didn't pick up the game, the local CBS channel paid for the rights for the ESPN Plus coverage. This game however, was on ESPN2. We headed down to the Campus Nitty Gritty bar and were lucky enough to stake out a table where we could see the TV. Purdue was riding high that year on the strength of Heisman frontrunner Kyle Orton. Purdue held the lead late in the 4th quarter before Badgers CB James Starks laid a hit on Orton, flipping him completely over and forcing a fumble that he ran in for the game-winning TD. Purdue and Orton went on to disappoint the rest of the season.

11/18/2006 Wisconsin 35, Buffalo 3
We were living in the shadow of Camp Randall stadium at this point and had long ago given up our tickets. Some friends of ours managed to get some tickets from work however and we had our first experience of watching a Badger game away from the student section. It was a cold day made even colder by being in the shadow of the field house and not standing for most of the game. Despite the fact that we were out of the student section they were still not great seats - they were just in the opposite end zone. But it was still Wisconsin football (and a shellacking at that). That team went 11-1 and defeated Darren McFadden's juggernaught of an Arkansas team in the Capitol One bowl.

As you can see the memories tailed off a bit after we let our season tickets lapse. But it's been a great ride.

Everything's coming up roses

2010-11-20T23:49:00.003-06:00

Wisconsin is back in the driver's seat for the Big Ten title after today's events. Things would be even rosier if Purdue hadn't managed to blow a lead and give up 22 4th quarter points to Michigan State. All three top big 10 teams are favored this week:

Michigan State @ Penn State
Denard Robinson @ Ohio State
Northwestern @ Wisconsin

The NW-UW game is (hopefully) the safest bet of these three, as Northwestern lost its best player in QB Dan Persa in their defeat of Iowa. MSU has the toughest route against a PSU team that has looked better the past few weeks.

Most likely result: UW, OSU, MSU win. In this case, the tie goes down to the BCS standings, which Wisconsin currently leads. Ohio State should get a boost from their win over Iowa but it shouldn't be enough to overcome UW's lead in the polls.

Next most likely: MSU loses to Penn State, OSU wins. In this case UW would go to the Rose Bowl over the Buckeyes based on their head to head win.

Next most likely: Ohio State somehow loses to a Denard Robinson Offensive Explosion, MSU wins in Happy Valley. In this case Sparty heads to Pasadena based on head-to-head over Bucky.

Next most likely: Wisconsin loses to Northwestern - they're pretty much screwed if this happens. And this is what NW excels at. Luckily Wisconsin will be riding high on their chance for the Rose Bowl, Senior Day, and the 2010 coaching staff that has been able to make the team show up.

Nagging Badger worries

2010-11-10T10:22:00.004-06:00

I'm missing this week's home game against Indiana (as I'll be watching my brother get married), but I'm starting to have some nagging worries. It's starting to look like Wisconsin might be without both John Clay and James White this week. That said, they were without both of those players in the second half of last week's Purdue game and the Badgers took care of business, so who knows what will happen. My big worry is that the team will write off this game much as I have been doing for the past few weeks and will be surprised by a team that came within a dropped pass of beating Iowa last week. Here's hoping the home-field advantage shows up for the team this week, and the coaches continue to show the preparation, motivation skills, and general adjustability we've seen in the past three games.

Wisconsin 34 - 13 Purdue: Badgers take care of business (eventually)

2010-11-06T16:27:00.003-05:00

Wisconsin turned what was a close game in the first half into a blowout.

The team looked flat on both sides of the ball coming off their bye week, especially the defense. Purdue was moving the ball easily in small chunks of yardage and Wisconsin was having a tough time stopping them, despite the fact that the Boilermakers were starting their third string, true freshman QB due to a rash of injuries. John Clay and the running game had a tough time getting going early, and the offense clearly missed the different look of James White. I was shaking my head on several plays, most notably a sweep to the left where Clay seemed to dance back and forth for about 5 seconds before being tackled behind the line of scrimmage instead of trusting his blockers. Clay is a great between-the-tackles back but it seems like we've been seeing a little too much of this hesitation from him in general this season.

Clay and Watt were both knocked out of the game for a good spell - Clay with a knee problem and Watt with some sort of shoulder injury and the team just looked lost heading into the locker room at halftime. I wouldn't have believed I was saying this a month ago, but big props to the coaching staff for making adjustments at halftime and absolutely crushing Purdue 28-3 in the second half. Wisconsin's defense stiffened and managed to pick off the Purdue QB three times, including a blowout-sealing Pick Six from Antonio Fenelus.

Game ball: Montee Ball and the offensive line for producing the best executed play I've seen all season, by any team. Midway through the third quarter, with Wisconsin clinging to a 13-10 lead, Ball rushed to the left for a 31 yard touchdown and had five or six blockers ahead of him on the way to the end zone. Wisconsin went up 20-10 but you knew the game was over at that point.

Next week UW takes on Indiana at Camp Randall, but I'll miss the game. My brother was smart enough to schedule his wedding for a weekend when UW takes on IU at home and there's no Packers game (laughing).

Election Post-mortem Rant

2010-11-06T08:58:00.003-05:00

Much frustration all around this week, though the writing has been on the wall for months. This stuff has been stewing in my head all week and while some of it is probably irrational, and just wanted to dump these thoughts...

One of the biggest thing that's pissed me off in the election postmortems this week is that I feel no one is hitting on the uncomfortable truth behind one of the common ad subjects used by the Republicans (and a few Democrats) this year: Nancy Pelosi. Has anyone really tried to see what about her gets conservatives' hackles up? I *can* buy the argument that she is emblematic of the Democrats now unpopular (more on that in a minute) health care and progressive agendas and I can see running against them. But what do voters really know about Pelosi, other than that she is liberal? I listened to a long NPR postmortem this week and they chalked it up to Pelosi being a classic 'limousine liberal', due to the fact that she's from a coast, was born into money, and her husband is supposedly very wealthy. But how many people know this? Maybe it's well known withing the Republican echo chamber, but my impression is that those who aren't rabid Rush/Hannity/etc. listeners know three things about Pelosi: she's fairly liberal, she's a woman, and she's from San Francisco. Given those last two things, is there no surprise that so many Republicans ran on a "Let's defeat Pelosi" agenda and featured her prominently in their ads? It was a perfect campaign for them, as they could run against the Democratic accomplishments while simultaneously dog-whistling sexists against women and the strongly-correlated homophobes with those unspoken 'San Francisco values' that she represents. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised that no one is going to that well - it was clear in the 2008 primary that racism >>> sexism as a thing to get outraged about and even then there will be a whole lot of bloviating when the card is played.

I've also been a (little) upset at a lot of the treatment of the Tea Party, from the media and the parties. I strongly disagree with them and they fielded some pretty terrible candidates in several races, most notably Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell. But I don't think it's enough to write off the movement as a whole bunch of nutjobs that may be trouble for the Republicans. I think that the parties aren't taking the right message from them. To the GOP the message taken is "you're not conservative enough", and elements of it could drag them to the right in governmental process (though I don't really see it). But the overriding message, which Democrats also failed to seize on, was "anyone but you", and it surprises me that the Tea Party didn't come up with better candidates all around. Maybe I'm just sad that the seeds for a yet another possibly viable third party in this system are going to be crushed yet again by the heel of corporate, hyperpartisan government.

The last but of this is the Democrats. It absolutely disgusts me that what we can hang our hats on is the fact that Harry Reid, who has been completely spineless, ineffective, and useless as the Senate majority leader, hung on while a far more principled guy like Russ Feingold lost big in his race. All in all, the Onion summed it up best with "Democrats: If We're Gonna Lose, Let's Go Down Running Away From Every Legislative Accomplishment We've Made". Seriously, if the Democrats showed some spine and actually mounted a reasonable defense of their programs and policies, especially on health care, stimulus, and the bank/GM bailouts, they would have gotten some respect from voters. Instead, by running away from their agenda they allowed the Republicans to reframe the debate away from the "We were elected in a landslide in 2006/2008 on these things" instead of signaling that everything they did somehow wrong and and deceptive. If you're going to go through the trouble to spend all this political capital you earned in your last two elections you should fucking stand by it and explain why you did it. One of the things that drove me craziest in this cycle was the Democrats not harping on the fact that all the bailout money was or will soon be repaid (with interest), the stimulus was nearly half tax cuts, and health care will keep the debt from spiraling up even more (and health care in general is still polling positively). Oddly enough, the legislation that seemed to completely disappear from the conversation was the banking and credit card reform that was passed by the government. I don't really see how anyone who thinks the Democrats didn't go far enough in regulating Wall Street would vote for the deregulatory Republicans who got us into this mess in the first place. It's not like the Tea Party was running on that platform either.

I'll end on this, posted by James to one of my facebook venting threads.

It has nothing to do with left vs. right, liberal vs. conservative, or any other idiotic label that Americans throw around without thinking. We just had another election in this country that had absolutely zero substance. Not one candidate discussed the two wars that are draining our economy. Not one candidate addressed the issue of torture that has and is continuing in various parts of the world. Not one candidate addressed any of the structural problems that caused our manufacturing base to erode. Not one candidate described how he or she would prosecute corporate criminals (i.e., the Enrons, banksters, and BPs of this world), or what specific legislation they would pursue to prevent these crimes from happening in the future.
Not one candidate described in any substantial way how they would fix health care, education, lack of public transportation, pollution, mounting income inequalities, or any other issue that actually matters to real human beings. All we get from political candidates from all parties is ignorant quotes that are devoid of all meaning; real gems like "I believe in small government", "I am not a witch", and (now I'm paraphrasing) "I am not qualified for this job, but hey ya'll, at least I'm an account, and not a lawyer like my opponent."

America. Fuck Yeah. :(

Big Ten Power Poll: Week 4

2010-10-28T11:33:00.003-05:00

1. Michigan State (8-0, 4-0)
Still has the best chance to run the table, and they have all the advantages in the B10 tiebreakers due to their win over UW and their non-scheduling of aOSU. If they win at Iowa this week there's a decent chance that they play for the national title.

2. Wisconsin (7-1, 3-1)
3. an Ohio State University (7-1, 3-1)
I almost ranked aOSU above them, since it's inevitable that even if both teams win out OSU will be ahead of UW in the BCS rankings, further diminishing their chances at both the Rose Bowl and a BCS game. It's disappointing, but taking a quick glance at the season results UW wouldn't be in this position if they scheduled some better nonconference opponents. Preseason poll inertia aside, aOSU beat Miami earlier this season, whereas Wisconsin's 'best' opponent was Arizona State. That said, it will be interesting to see the computer rankings for these teams. Wisconsin's signature wins will be over aOSU and Iowa, and OSU's would be over...who exactly? Miami and a potential win at Iowa, which is nothing you can count on.

4. Iowa (5-2, 2-1)
Too many mistakes doomed them against Wisconsin, but the schedule still works in their favor to put up a great final Big 10 record. Their loss to Arizona all but guarantees that they won't be in the Rose Bowl or some other BCS bowl, however.

(big gap)

5. Illinois (4-3, 2-1)
6. Northwestern (5-2, 1-2)
I'm still shaking my fist at Northwestern for not being able to close the door on Sparty. Even in a week where Wisconsin doesn't play them, they're still throwing a wrench into the works.

7. Denard Robinson (5-2, 1-2)
8. Penn State (4-3, 1-2)
It could just be that I'm not watching enough BTN, but I miss the Big Ten commercial that they used to run with all the coaches that ended with a deranged-looking Paterno growling/shouting "COME TO PENN STATE!!!" at the end.

9. Purdue (4-3, 2-1)
10. Indiana (4-3, 0-3)

Vikings at Packers preview

2010-10-24T15:48:00.003-05:00

This doesn't have quite the ZOMG FAVRE!!!!!! factor as last year's matchup at Lambeau was. But it's still a very important game. With Green Bay fielding a hospital squad and the Bears being the Bears the division is wide open even for the disappointing Vikings.

Injury wise, the latest news is that Tauscher, Pickett, Chillar, and Matthews should play, but it looks like Harris and Bigby will (not surprisingly) be out, as they weren't reactivated from the PUP list. Poppinga remains out following surgery but should be back later this season.

The Vikings secondary has been depleted in the past few weeks, with S Husain Abdallah out with a concussion and CB Cedric Griffin out with a torn ACL. They'll throw Jamarca Sanford out there for his second career start, so hopefully that will benefit the Packers passing game since the running game will have a tough time getting around the Williams Wall.

How Minnesota wins: Adrian Peterson is still one of the best backs in the NFL, and he should be able to get rolling against this porous defense. The biggest impact there will that it would take the pressure (i.e. Clay Matthews) off Brett Favre, who has looked pretty awful in general this season. Adding Randy Moss to this team helps, but Favre just looks like a lost kid out there.

How Green Bay wins: They exploit the depleted MIN secondary and force Favre to make mistakes. Oddly enough this is a game where their lack of a running game hurts less because you can't run very well vs MIN anyway.

Prediction: I think this is a high-scoring game but the lack of any sort of running game holds back GB enough for them to lose. Too many injuries, too much AP, and especially too much Jared Allen in this game. Vikings win 41-31

Playoff Scenarios

2010-10-24T09:37:00.004-05:00

There was a bunch of debate around the interwebs about UW's chances at the Rose Bowl due to their loss at MSU. If MSU, aOSU, and UW end up in a 3-way tie (which is what I think happens), these are the rules (from the Big Ten website):

Unless ranked No. 1 or No. 2 in the final BCS poll, the conference champion shall participate in the Rose Bowl. The championship shall be determined on the percentage basis of conference games (tie games counts ½ win and ½ loss). If there is a tie for the championship, the Rose Bowl representative will be determined as follows:

...

If more than two teams tie for the championship, the same selection procedures shall be followed with the following exceptions:

1. If three teams are tied, and if one team defeated both of the other teams, then that team shall be the representative.
2. If three teams are still tied, and if two of the three teams defeated the third team, the third team is eliminated, and the remaining two teams shall revert to the two-team tie procedure.
3. If three teams are still tied, and there is a tie game between two of the three teams, or if two or all three of the teams did not play each other, the representative shall be determined on a percentage basis of all games played.
4. If three teams are still tied, and one of the three teams is eliminated through the percentage basis of all games played, the remaining two teams shall revert to the two-team tie procedure.
5. If three teams are still tied, and all three teams have the same winning percentage of all games played, the highest-ranked team in the final BCS standings shall be the representative.

In this scenario, we have aOSU, MSU, and UW all as one-loss teams: aOSU to UW, UW to MSU, and MSU to Iowa. Cases 1 and 2 will not come into play because they're all one-loss teams. Cases 3 and 4 won't come into play because MSU does not play aOSU and all the teams will have the same overall record. Thus it comes down to case 5, the BCS standings. Since Wisconsin will have lost the least-recently I would say there's a good chance they come out on top, but the big question would be whether Ohio State would re-leapfrog them after a win over Iowa.

Most likely monkey wrenches (in order of likelihood)

Michigan State defeats Iowa, goes undefeated. This is my biggest worry - Iowa has to be seriously deflated after the loss to Wisconsin and it remains to see how they'll respond

Iowa defeats Ohio State, loses to Michigan State. In this case UW and MSU would be tied at the top of the standings, and MSU would advance on the head-to-head win.

Iowa defeats Ohio State and MSU. In this case we'd be looking at a three-way tie between Iowa, MSU, and UW. MSU would got to the Rose Bowl in this case, as Iowa's non-conference loss to AZ would eliminate it per case 3, and then MSU would win on the strength of their win vs UW.

Wisconsin loses to Denard Robinson. You never know what will happen in the Big House. Michigan's defense is awful but Robinson can win a game by himself.

MSU loses to PSU in the last game of the season. PSU is fading big-time down the stretch, but they're still tough to beat at home, and MSU still looks beatable by a good team.

Wisconsin 31 - 30 Iowa: Letdown game avoided

2010-10-23T18:07:00.005-05:00

By Grapthar's Hammer, by the Sons of Worvan, what a ballgame. Strangely enough, Wisconsin pulled through despite all the "keys to the game" pointing in Iowa's direction. White was ineffective and injured early, and Iowa managed to keep Clay from being the force that he can be on offense. Furthermore, Wisconsin was missing several players on offense by halftime, with Toon out after last week, White out with his injury, Kendricks out, and the starting center out. Iowa also managed to stymie Wisconsin's pass rush. Stanzi had all sorts of time and the only sack that Watt managed was a (well-timed) coverage sack during Iowa's last drive. Due to their limiting of Clay and White's injury the UW offense leaned on Tolzein's arm, and he looked great despite missing his two favorite recievers. He even gave them a gift INT at the 26 yard line in the 4th quarter but Iowa didn't do much with it (though the FG definitely gave UW a higher mountain to climb)

How Wisconsin won: Aside from the excellent execution mentioned above, the big thing I took away from this game was the preparation and playcalling. Bielema and Christ had the stones to go for it on two 4th downs, one on fourth and goal at the 1, and the other at 4th and ~4 at the Iowa ~35 yard line in their final drive. However, my favorite play call was the fake punt that sparked that last drive. The coaching staff noticed that Iowa was not sending many players forward on the punt block, and the punter just took it and ran. He had run 10 yards or so before any of the players running back to cover the kick even realized it.

How Iowa lost: Special teams, poor clock management, and erratic passing. Stanzi's overall numbers were great but Wisconsin's coverage today was garbage and he should have had an even bigger game. Iowa left 4 points on the board early with a missed PAT and a bungled FG snap, and further hurt themselves with some dumb penalties in the second half. In Wisconsin's second drive of the 3rd quarter, the Hawkeyes pinned Gilreath deep on a kickoff that was erased by an offsides call. Gilreath took the next punt to the 50, and nearly all the way were it not for the kicker doing just enough to trip him up.

Game ball: Bret Bielema and Paul Chryst
Honorable mention: Clay, Ball, Tolzien, Gilreath

Bielema has completely erased all of my reservations about him in this win. Not only did the team show up (preparation has always been my main complaint with Bielema), but they made several great playcalls and the UW special teams unit seems to have fixed some of the mistakes that were plaguing them early in the season.

Looking ahead
10/30: BYE
11/6: @Purdue
11/13: Indiana
11/20: @Michigan
11/27: Northwestern

Wisconsin gets a week to heal up, then gets to face the two soft Indiana teams before taking on the Denard Robinson Show at the Big House and seeks to avoid another typical Northwestern wrench-in-the-gears game. I shake my fist at them for not being able to close it out against Sparty this week. Ugh. That would have been perfect.

Michigan State is still in the driver's seat, and the rest of their schedule looks favorable (even if they lose at Iowa next week).
10/30: @Iowa
11/6: Minnesota
11/13: BYE
11/20: Purdue
11/27: @PSU

I expect them to lose at Iowa, but I don't really see them losing any of their other games. They'll know exactly what they're playing for if they're still undefeated by the PSU game, and PSU is fading fast. The big question is which team of UW and aOSU gets selected behind MSU to go to a BCS bowl.

Preview: Wisconsin at Iowa

2010-10-23T11:08:00.003-05:00

This is the last big game of the season for the Badgers, so hopefully that's enough to get the team over the letdown game hump. After this week the Badgers have a bye before facing Purdue and Indiana, traveling to the Big House to face Denard Robinson, and ending the season vs Northwestern at Camp Randall. For the Badgers to have a shot at the Rose Bowl they need to win this game and hope Michigan State loses to Iowa and someone else - NW seems like a good candidate this week taking on MSU for their homecoming in Evanston. Aside from that we would just have to hope that PSU picks them off in the last game of the season.

Going into this game I was sure Wisconsin would get blown out - I thought this game had 27-10 written all over it. Now I'm not so sure. Much of the vibe I've gotten this week is that Wisconsin is firing on all cylinders and knows it, and isn't just sitting on their big victory last week. The other question is how good Iowa is. They lost on the road to a decent Arizona team, and crushed a not so great Penn State team at Kinnick. This will be a big test for them as well. Their defense has looked great, but then again, so did OSU's and the Badger offensive line had their way with them.

How Wisconsin wins: J.J. Watt gets pressure on Stanzi and James White gets to the edge consistently. The Badgers did a decent enough job defending Boom Herron last week and I don't think Robinson or the Hawkeyes O-line are as good as OSU's. Stanzi is a good QB if he has time but he is prone to mistakes, and pressure from the likes of Watt and Nzegwu should lead to a few turnovers.

How Iowa wins: Aside from the letdown game factor, Iowa wins this game by making Scott Tolzien beat them. He's a decent enough QB, but only in the context of UW's offense. He's not a guy you want throwing every down.

Final prediction: I'll go with MB's prediction of 28-24 Iowa, though I feel much better about this matchup than I did a few days ago.

The Scrap Heap

2010-10-21T21:22:00.004-05:00

Links and news from this week:

Packers

The Vikings come into town ~~Monday~~ Sunday night, and I keep thinking that it isn't a big deal until I remember that while the Vikings are 2-4, the Packers are 3-3. Ugh. At least they have a few reinforcements coming on defense.

Midweek injury report at APC. Nearly all of the linebackers are banged up and won't be 100% even if they do play. Hawk is out, Chillar is still banged up, and Matthews might return (but probably won't). Al Harris is back and practicing and might even play this weekend. Bigby is back on the practice field as well but is not expected to play. Tauscher might be ready to come back, but I expect him to do as poorly against Jared Allen as Bulaga will likely fare.

Badgers

MB21 over at The Hawkeye State has Iowa winning 28-24. We'll see if he changes his mind after my griping about the UW defense and coaching staff and the clear letdown game potential. I think UW loses by 14+.

Adam Rittenberg of ESPN gives the keys to the UW-Iowa game. He says UW needs to put pressure on Stanzi and make sure James White has a big game, especially against Iowa's apparently banged up linebackers. Rittenberg is completely right that the way to beat UW is to make Tolzien beat you.

Jay Valai says that Iowa is a bigger rival than Minnesota right now. I'm inclined to agree with him.

Scott Van Pelt sure enjoyed his time in Madison last weekend. Listening to this makes me miss Madison even more. This is my favorite time of year there and it's not even close. Looking at nothing but highs in the 80s on the forecast here bums me out even more.

I think this will be a letdown game, but the coaching staff obviously is trying to avoid it. Good luck with that one...

Spurs

Spurs turned shit into shit-ade at Inter today. Spurs went down 3 goals and one player in the first fifteen minutes, thanks to some shambolic defense and an awful, awful red card given by the official on Gomes that should have been a yellow. But then down a man, Spurs Wonder Winger Gareth Bale Scored a short-handed hat trick in the second half to turn a rout into a mere loss on the road. Jermian Defoe can't get back soon enough. Spurs play Inter again at home on the 2nd, with Cudicini in goal thanks to that pants red. They're still second in the group and have 2 more home games, so things are looking better than they could be.

Spurs picked up a nice away win at Craven Cottage on goals by Hudd and the slightly-more-giving-a-crap Pavlyuchenko. I loved the lineup too, and can't wait until Defoe can join it. Harry put out

Gomes
Hutton-Gallas-Ledders-BAE (yuck, except for King)
Modric-Hudd-Sandro-Bale
VdV
Pavs (can't wait for Defoe)

Did I mention that I can't wait until Defoe returns?

Cubs

So, uh.....they hired Mike Quade. My (brief) thoughts can be found over at ACB. Summary: meh

Big Ten Power Poll, week 3

2010-10-19T22:57:00.002-05:00

1. Iowa (5-1, 2-0)
2. Michigan State (6-0, 3-0)
3. Wisconsin (6-1, 2-1)
4. Ohio State (6-1, 2-1)

It should be an interesting few weeks. It's clear at this point that these 4 teams are the class of the Big 10, but the ultimate test is winning tough games on the road. So far OSU has lost at UW and UW has lost at MSU. MSU does not play OSU so the remaining matchups between these 4 are all at Kinnick Stadium, which makes Iowa the clear choice for #1. They just have to take care of business at home against the other three teams.

5. Illinois (3-3, 1-2)
6. Denard Robinson (5-2, 1-2)
7. Northwestern (5-1, 1-1)

These are all teams that you don't want to sleep on if you play them on the road. They all have flaws. Northwestern doesn't have the talent, Michigan has no defense, and Illinois has Ron Zook. I'd include PSU in this list but they got utterly destroyed by Illinois at home.

8. Penn State (3-3, 0-2)
9. Purdue (4-2, 2-0)
10. Indiana (4-2, 0-2)

Penn State has a freshman QB and a team that has been leveled by injuries. Indiana can score points but their defense is as awful as Michigan's

A Rant about Rants about the BCS

2010-10-18T12:21:00.003-05:00

I just saw This article on the front page of ESPN, written by Mark Schlabach. Feel free to read it, but the gist of the article is that The Computers Just Don't Understand and certain teams (i.e. LSU) just don't pass the mythical Eye Test.

Obviously, those hard drives and keyboards haven't watched the Tigers try to operate their offense in the closing seconds of a game.

Those computers were apparently rebooting when the Sooners struggled to beat teams like Utah State, Air Force and Cincinnati earlier this season.

You know what? Go fuck yourself with your computer ranking strawmanning. As if all the poll voters have watched the LSU games. Or all the other games for that matter. Or take strength of schedule into account in any meaningful or uniform way.

I'll be the first to admit that I would rather the BCS ONLY used computer rankings, but I'm in the minority here. Look, the computers have biases too (i.e. whatever model was used to build them), but the important thing is that THE BIASES ARE CONSISTENT. I can't stress this enough. There's nothing more arbitrary than an "Eye Test" especially when one of the main polls used is a coaches poll that is often foisted off on assistants or used for political gain within the system. No one at any of these schools watches all the games.

Besides, the reason why we do a weighted average of the computers and the bullshit polls is exactly the reasons why he's complaining - that computers can't see OU's and LSU's struggles, just as human beings can't watch every play of every game and adjust for strength of schedule with any sense of order or consistency.

VICTORY: aOSU 18 - Wisconsin 31 (update: with Packers prediction)

2010-10-16T21:41:00.003-05:00

What a game. Wisconsin jumped off to a great start and weathered a second half Ohio State comeback to deliver a convincing victory over the Buckeyes at Camp Randall. Everything was firing on all cylinders tonight. Clay and White were able to move the ball against the Buckeyes front line, with a big assist to the incredible performance by the offensive line. When OSU began shutting down the run in the second half UW opened up the passing game and Tolzien marched the Badgers down the field for the game-sealing TD.

Overrated Heisman candidate Terrelle Pryor showed flashes of why he's a Heisman favorite but generally had a poor game. For the first half he looked exactly like the QB I thought he was - tentative, making poor throws, but not really making any specific mistakes (i.e. he didn't throw any should-be-picks that I can remember). Just generally ineffective. In the second half though - wow. His accuracy suddenly went waaay up and he seemingly surrounded himself with a forcefield whenever any Wisconsin player got near him. He had two or three ridiculous plays where he dodged defenders and made a seemingly desperate heave for an easy first down to a wide open reciever. His only truly awful throw was the last play of the game (an INT).

Generally I've been giving a game ball but so many players did a great job in this game. This was truly a team effort. I do want to recant everything I said about David Gilreath being merely average. He had a great game in the biggest game in his career.

Next week the Badgers travel to Iowa to play one of the toughest teams in the Big Ten with a home field advantage as great as the Badgers. After the emotional win this has a large flashing sign saying "LETDOWN GAME", and I expect Iowa to handle Wisconsin easily.

Update: Packers prediction: Green Bay 20 Miami 17 in an ugly game

The Scrap Heap

2010-10-14T13:06:00.002-05:00

This week's links and rants...

First, the Packers injury recap. S Derrick Martin was added to the growing list of Packers on the IR, further compromising the team's already shredded secondary depth. Clay Matthews appears to be out for Sunday's game vs Miami (he did not practice on Wednesday). But the biggest blow is that TE Jermichael Finley's knee injury was worse than expected and he is expected to miss 8-10 weeks, if not the rest of the season. This is a huge blow for the Packers, as Finley is Rodgers's favorite target and he played a big role in the Packers overall offensive scheme.

On the bright side, QB Aaron Rodgers fully participated in yesterday's practice. However, there were no full-contact drills. I would guess that he cleared to play this weekend.

The big news in Madison is that College Gameday is returning to cover the Wisconsin vs #1 overall ranked aOSU. This should be a fun game. My best football memory is still the Badgers rain-soaked victory over aOSU in a night game at Camp Randall in 2003. Sure enough, College Gameday was there that week too.

This Big 10 Power Poll was one of the most hilarious things I've ever seen.

During the international break, Yankee Yiddos has been running a great series called "Yanks we'd like to see at the lane". You can find their pitches here, here, here, and here. This break comes at a good time as Spurs are quite banged up. They play the Cottagers this weekend and then head to Milan to take on Inter in their next Champions League bout.

Packers 13 - 16 Redskins: We've seen this shit before

2010-10-10T16:06:00.006-05:00

Just a horrendous game all around for the Packers. Once again they looked great in the first quarter, putting up 220 yards (including a 70+ yard run from Brandon Jackson). But Rodgers's favorite target, TE Jermichael Finley, was knocked out in the first Packers series after injuring his knee making a tackle after a Donald Lee fumble. Then DE Ryan Pickett went down with a knee injury of his own. Then Donald Lee was taken out of the game with a shoulder injury after the Packers lone touchdown. The offense sputtered after that, marred by a rash of dropped passes, yet more dumb penalties (some of which weren't even called), and unnecessary short passing plays.

Seriously, Packers coaching staff, you have one of the top 5 QBs in the NFL playing against a shaky pass defense and you're throwing dinky 2-4 yard passes? What the hell? Did Greg Jennings even play in this game? Even when the Packers threw the ball down the field the receivers kept dropping the passes. As the game went on Brian Orakpo got going and just began destroying Bulaga and especially Chad Clifton.

But the biggest blow by far was Clay Matthews's hamstring injury, which completely hamstrung the defense. The Packers were all over the Redskins backfield with Matthews tearing around back there - once he left the field Washington started moving the ball again. They also finally realized that they could throw the ball with impunity across the middle with Peprah and a banged up Collins at safety, and we saw plenty of it in the 4th quarter and OT.

Even when McCarthy was right he still was wrong. Lots of Packers fans are complaining that the Packers went for the TD on 4th and inches and were denied. It was absolutely the right move. Even if you ignore some of the secondary chances (like fumbles/ints and the resulting field position of a failure), if you think it's a 50-50 chance that you get your 6 inches you have to go for it - the expected value of it is 3.5 points vs the 3 pts for a field goal. That said, what stupid play calls from MM on those goal line plays. Following a great run by Kuhn to get the ball to the 1 yard line, MM dials up a QB sneak by Rodgers which fails. Then on 4th and inches they call some dumb short passing play. Look, John Kuhn is good at exactly one thing, and that is getting a few inches. Why the hell not use him there?

There's plenty of rage going around about Mason Crosby but I don't fault him for missing a field goals from 48 and 52 yards. Those are no gimmes.

Early reports say that Matthews and Finley will be out for at least one week. That's not great news. To top it all off Rodgers apparently had a concussion in OT. FML.

Game ball: Clay Matthews

The worst part of this loss is that the shitty, shitty, Bears, who watched the Packers beat themselves 2 weeks ago, are now atop the division despite two awful weeks against the Giants and Panthers.

Addendum: Starters now injured
QB Aaron Rodgers (concussion?)
RB Ryan Grant (ankle)
TE Jermichael Finley (knee)
TE Donald Lee (shoulder)
RT Mark Tauscher (shoulder)
DT Justin Harrell
LB Nick Barnett (wrist)
LB Brandon Chillar (Shoulder)
CB Al Harris (knee)
SS Atari Bigby
SS Morgan Burnett (knee)

Packers - Redskins preview

2010-10-10T11:34:00.004-05:00

Too many injuries will doom the Packers in this game, especially in the secondary. The Packers are missing long-term inactives SS Atari Bigby and CB Al Harris and recent inactives SS Morgan Burnett, LB Brandon Chillar, LB Nick Barnett and RT Mark Tauscher. FS Nick Collins is active but not 100%. We'll be seeing a lot of awful, awful S Jarrett Bush. Bulaga will get his first start with Tauscher out. Redskins top pick LT Trent Williams is also expected to get his first start today, though he is a little banged up himself. The big name on the Redskins inactive list is RB Clinton Portis, who is expected to be out for a few weeks. Ryan Torain should fill in nicely. DT Albert Haynesworth is out to attend the memorial for his recently deceased brother, but he hasn't had that big of an impact on defense anyway.

How the Packers can win: Even with their banged up pass defense corps, the Packers still get a good pass rush and the Washington wideouts just aren't that good. The Redskins have a banged up secondary too, and what GB does well is pass pass pass.

How the Redskins can win: Even though their WRs are nothing special, Chris Cooley should have a field day against the Packers safeties and MLBs. I don't think Torain isn't a very big dropoff from Portis either.

Prediction: Green Bay 24, Washington 28. I don't really have a handle on who should win this one, so I'll go with the home team.

Badgers win 41-23, Big 10 Power Poll

2010-10-10T08:51:00.002-05:00

What we learned from the Badger victory:

Once again, James White is pretty freaking good. He and Clay both hit the century mark and scored 5 touchdowns between them
Lance Kendricks is also pretty good. He led the team in receiving yards and threw some great blocks on some of the longer runs by Clay and White.
The Badgers need to use the play action more often. They were getting killed in the second quarter (IIRC only ~20 yards before Gilreath's garbage time 30+ yd catch). Minnesota was stuffing the box and Wisconsin responded by...running the ball some more. Once they opened up the passing game with more play action in the second half the offense really got rolling.
Minnesota just isn't a great team. As I speculated in the preview, it's clear that Weber is a good QB trapped on a bad team. I'd trade him for Tolzien in a heartbeat. There were just too many dumb mistakes all around by the Gophers.

New Big Ten power poll
1. a Ohio State University (6-0, 2-0)
With Bama's loss last night to South Carolina the top spot should belong to aOSU...who so happen to be headed to Camp Randall next week. Rumor has it that ESPN is considering sending Gameday there. It's either that or the suddenly less lustrous Nebraska-Texas matchup. I'm hoping for a repeat of October 11, 2003 where Wisconsin beat OSU (who had the longest winning streak in the nation) 17-10 in a drizzly, energy-filled night game. It's the best football game I've ever attended and it would be tough to top. Hopefully the Wisconsin fans can bring out the same sort of energy for this game, and St. Jean and the Wisconsin linebackers can keep Terrelle Pryor between the tackles.

2a. Iowa (4-1, 1-0)
2b. Michigan State (6-0, 2-0)
Michigan State continues to look impressive, demolishing Denard Robinson in the Big House. As I said last week, they're pretty much what I was expecting Wisconsin to be. I don't think they go undefeated in Big Ten play (their defense still concerns me a bit) but the chance that MSU and aOSU both go undefeated is definitely in play. However, much like a typical Wisconsin team that's 2-0 at this point and riding high I expect them to lose one or two games for simple underpreparedness to a team like NW or Illinois. The last big game they have on their schedule is Iowa at home.

4. Wisconsin (5-1, 1-1)
They're still good enough to go 7-1 in the Big 10 (though it's unlikely with OSU and @Iowa still on the schedule). Clay hasn't been quite as good as his preseason hype but White has more than picked up the slack. The big problem is the defense. Even with Borland out on paper it should be pretty good. Watt and Nzegwu are great pass rushers off the end, and St. Jean and Mike Taylor are both above average linebackers. Valai leads the defensive backfield that doesn't have any outright holes. But the defense just keeps getting burned too often, especially on third downs.

5. Illinois (3-2, 1-1)
Maybe it's a bit of an overreaction to their win yesterday at PSU, and they do still have Ron Zook on the sidelines, but they've looked pretty good for the past 2 weeks. They almost upset aOSU, and then delivered an absolute beatdown to Penn State in their own backyard. They beat them by 20 points and it could have been even more if it weren't for three fumbles on special teams. They've probably peaked as far as the B10 season goes but they're not the pushover we assumed them to be.

6. Denard Robinson (5-1, 1-1)
Still all Robinson, nothing else. Still a work in progress.

7. Penn State (3-3, 0-2)
They just look terrible. They only managed three first downs in the first half, and were given 2 easy touchdown opportunities on PR fumbles by Illinois where they had to settle for field goals. Much as Iowa did, Illinois shut down Royster and made Bolden and the defense beat them, and they just couldn't do it. PSU's defense has had its share of injury problems, and when that's the strength of your team, you're due for a big fall

8. Northwestern (5-1, 1-1)
9. Indiana (3-2, 0-2)
10. Purdue (3-2, 1-0)
1100. Minnesota (1-5, 0-2)

Brett Favre may be suspended, forced into early retirement

2010-10-09T11:07:00.002-05:00

According to The Manolantern, Vikings owner Zygi Wilf is pissed about the sexual harassment charges surrounding Brett Favre's time with the Jets that are now beginning to (re?)emerge. Even if he doesn't the NFL's personal conduct hammer might come down pretty hard on Favre anyway. Orange Guy speculates that if Favre is suspended for a significant amount of time he might retire. Given how the non-AP Vikings offense has performed so far this year it might not be that big of a difference.

Minnesota (1-4, 0-1) at Wisconsin (4-1, 0-1) preview

2010-10-09T00:39:00.005-05:00

Minnesota's struggles this season have been well documented. They won their first game at FCS school Middle Tennessee State on a late touchdown in the fourth quarter and followed that up with a loss at home to even lowlier South Dakota. They put up a fight against USC at home, but then fell to Northern Illinois, again at home. They played a surprisingly good game against Northwestern in the last of their streak of home games, losing 29-28.

Minnesota QB Adam Weber seems like he's been around forever, and I've always thought he was one of the most underrated QBs in the Big 10. The problem is that he's never had anyone else to help him on offense. He had a nice breakout season, throwing for nearly 2900 yards passing and 24 TDs (to 19 INTs). He also put up 600+ yards on the ground. The big problem has been protection. He was only sacked 13 times in his freshman year. In his sophomore and junior years he was sacked 31 and 38 times respectively, and not surprisingly his TDs went down and his rushing yards went WAY down. He still has it in him to be an elite mobile QB but he has to stay on his feet and have someone to throw to.

Apparently the "y" at the beginning of the group was in the bathroom. (h/t to B5Q for the pic and the joke

Who had the axe?
Minnesota won the axe on the strength of running back duo Lawrence Maroney and Marion Barber III in 2001 and 2003. They also should have won it in 2005, when the trailing Badgers blocked a punt late in the 4th quarter to take a miraculous lead. Since then, it's been all Badgers.

How Minnesota wins
Adam Weber has a big game, Watt and Nzegwu get injured, and the Badger offense comes down with some kind of virus overnight. So there's a chance...

A little more seriously, for Minnesota to win Wisconsin really has to beat itself. If we see a repeat of the shenanigans we saw in the ASU and SJSU game, especially as regards to special teams, Minnesota could find themselves in this.

How Wisconsin wins
Watt and Nzegwu tear up Minny's O-line, St. Jean and the linebackers contain Weber, and Bielema runs a steady diet of James White, John Clay, and Montee Ball (once the game is well in hand). Minnesota has been equally poor on defense against both the run and the pass.

Prediction: Minnesota 13 - 38 UW

Go Badgers!

NLDS Preview: Braves vs Giants

2010-10-07T11:06:00.002-05:00

(Originally posted at Another Cubs Blog. Again I apologize for the crappy formatting from the blogger editor's overzealous linebreak translator).

The last of the four Divisonal Series is the Wild Card winning Braves against the NL West champion Giants. Both teams made it into the postseason on the last day of the regular season on the heels of a Braves win over the Phillies and a Giants win over the Padres. Atlanta will have to try to win this series without face of the franchise Chipper Jones, who tore his ACL in August and may be done for good, depending on how his rehab goes. The offense is now led by catcher Brian McCann, former Cub Derrek Lee, who has been hitting the ball well, breakout second baseman Martin Prado, and ROY contender Jason Heyward. His neck-and-neck competitor, catcher Buster Posey joins Pat Burrell and Aubrey Huff as the leader of the Giants suddenly lively offense. What happens in this series will not affect the Rookie of the Year vote, as if I remember correctly those ballots are submitted at the end of the regular season. But it should be a good matchup nonetheless.

Team to team comparison

	Braves	Giants
wOBA	.327	.318
SP xFIP	3.98	4.15
RP xFIP	3.40	4.02
Defense	3	53

I had no idea the Giants were so good defensively. If you look at the average between UZR and DRS (used in the numbers above), the Giants were the best defensive team in baseball. A big part of the assignation of those numbers was Giants OF Andres Torres, who managed to collect a whopping 22.6 UZR across 3 OF positions. Strangely enough even Pat Burrell posted a big year in both UZR and DRS. Speaking of strange defensive numbers, the Braves ended the season with a -34.4 UZR....and +43 by DRS. What the hell? Most notably DRS liked the now-departed Yunel Escobar, the now-injured Chipper Jones, and Jason Heyward a lot more than UZR.

Atlanta Braves

	wOBA	CHONE
C Brian McCann	.361	.364
1b Derrek Lee	.340	.356
2b Martin Prado	.352	.361
SS Alex Gonzalez	.292	.315
3B Omar "All-Star" Infante	.340	.339
LF Matt Diaz	.319	.334
CF Melky Cabrera	.294	.324
RF Jason Heyward	.376	.363
OF Eric Hinske	.341	.335
OF Nate McLouth	.283	.335
2b/3b Brooks Conrad	.356	.314

I listed a few of the backups because we'll probably see most of these guys as the Braves mix and match their crappy players into 3b, LF, and CF and hope someone gets hot. If MLB had a Reverse Comeback Player of the Year Award (Hindenberg award?) McLouth would easily be the guy who wins it. Both his bat and his (overrated) glove took massive leaps backward this year, which led to lots of Melky Cabrera.

	FIP	CHONE
Derek Lowe	3.89	4.02
Tommy Hanson	3.31	3.84
Tim Hudson	4.09	3.94
Billy Wagner	2.10	2.84
Kyle Farnsworth	2.93	3.60

The Braves also have some kid named Brandon Beachy, he of 15 career MLB innings, penciled in as the game 4 starter. I'm pretty sure they'll just go back to Lowe. Former ROY candidate Jair Jurrjens is not on the NLDS roster, and the other option is fellow rookie Mike Minor.

San Francisco Giants

	wOBA	CHONE
C Buster Posey	.368	.356
1b Aubrey Huff	.388	.356
2b Freddy Sanchez	.327	.314
SS Edgar Renteria	.314	.312
3b Kung Fu Panda	.314	.367
LF Pat Burrell	.371	.342
CF Andres Torres	.363	.346
RF Nate Shierholtz	.288	.329
ST Mark Derosa	infinity	infinity

Just about everyone on the Giants is hitting out of their minds. It must be a side effect of Mark DeRosa's stubble. Oddly enough Sandoval, who was the only position player worth a damn in the Giants offense since Bonds left, has had an awful year.

	FIP	CHONE
Tim Lincecum	3.15	3.04
Matt Cain	3.65	3.92
Jonathan Sanchez	4.00	4.14
Madison Bumgarner	3.66	4.67
Brian Wilson	2.19	2.98
Jeremy Affeldt	3.98	3.83

Prediction: Giants in 5. We should several low scoring affairs, but despite the fact that Lowe is a pretty underrated pitcher (by the forecasting systems), SF's superior pitching will win out. Atlanta's positional problems at 3b, LF, and CF would hurt them more if SF weren't essentially punting at RF, 2b, and SS and Sandoval continues to slump. I don't think the winning team scores more than 15 total runs in this series, and I look forward to the epic pitching matchup between the Giants top 3 and the Phillies top 3.

Packers LB Nick Barnett out for the season with broken wrist

2010-10-07T00:22:00.001-05:00

Well, shit.

Playoff predictions

2010-10-06T17:29:00.002-05:00

Divisional Series

Phillies over Reds in 4
Giants over Braves in 5
Rays over Rangers in 5
Yankees over Twins in 5

Championship Series
Phillies over Giants in 5
Yankees over Rays in 7

World Series
Yankees over Phillies in 7

NLDS: Reds at Phillies

2010-10-06T17:22:00.003-05:00

(Originally posted at ACB. Too lazy to fix the stupid auto-returns in the editor, sorry)

This series will start at roughly 4pm CT today in Philly. First, the head-to-head comparisons:

	Reds	Phillies
wOBA	.339	.328
SP xFIP	4.35	3.82
RP xFIP	4.18	4.12
Defense	42	3

Both these teams play in hitter friendly parks, which makes the Phillies SP numbers that much more impessive.

Cincinnati Reds

I laughed when the cellar-dwelling Reds made a seemingly meaningless trade for Scott Rolen last year. I laughed again when many of the projection systems picked them to do well this year, maybe even win the central. As it turned out those were pretty shrewd moves. The biggest difference between my perception of the team and their performance was in defense. I had been too imprinted with years of watching Adam Dunn stumbling around out there to believe that they improved. I still don't know that I buy Jay Bruce as a quality RF though. Again, it's probably some sort of subconscious Dunn comparison. They also picked up Jim Edmonds as a backup OF, but he was left off the NLDS roster.

	wOBA	CHONE
C Ramon Hernandez	.350	.326
1b Joey Votto	.439	.402
2b Brandon Phillips	.332	.338
SS Paul Janish	.315	.298
3b Scott Rolen	.367	.352
LF Johnny Gomes	.330	.341
CF Drew Stubbs	.345	.311
RF Jay Bruce	.363	.362

As you can see above the Reds are quite good defensively. Rolen, Phillips, and Bruce are regarded as above-average glove men, and Janish was the leader among shortstops in Tango's fan scouting reports so it's not surprising to see the Reds at +4 wins due to defense.

	FIP	CHONE
Edinson Volquez	4.00	4.27
Bronson Arroyo	4.61	4.89
Johnny Cueto	3.97	4.60
Francisco Cordero	3.92	4.10
Nick Masset	3.38	3.55
Aroldis Chapman	1.35	3.87

That pitching staff isn't all that inspiring. It looks like they're planning on starting those three in this series. The fourth pitcher on their depth chart, Travis Wood, is a rookie and while he has been effective every Phillie not named Ryan Howard absolutely destroys left-handed pitching. I'm not sure what happened with former ace Aaron Harang, who now seems to be an afterthought. They do have a great bullpen - probably the only one worth a damn in the NL Central.

Philadelphia Phillies

Heading into the season I thought that Philadelphia was easily the best team in the National League, but then they disappointed for the first half of the season. A big part of that was injuries. Here are the players that hit the DL this year for the Phightins:

Joe Blanton 4/1-5/3

J.C. Romero 3/26-4/29

Brad Lidge 3/26-4/30, 5/10-5/31

Jimmy Rollins 4/12-5/17, 5/22-6/22

J.A. Happ 4/16-7/06

Ryan Madson 4/29-7/08

Brian Schneider 5/9-5/24

Antonio Bastardo 6/17-7/15

Carlos Ruiz 6/19-7/10

Chase Utley 6/29-8/17

Placido Polanco 6/26-7/17

Ryan Howard 8/2-8/21

Shane Victorino 7/21-8/12

That almost reminds me of the 2009 Cubs, except the Phillies were lucky enough that Blanton was the only hurt starter, and even then he's not all that crucial to their success. All their primary position players except Werth and Ibanez were hurt, and even then Ibanez's bat pretty much disappeared all year.

	wOBA	CHONE
C Carlos Ruiz	.366	.330
1b Ryan Howard	.367	.366
2b Chase Fucking Utley	.373	.384
SS Jimmy Rollins	.317	.331
3b Placido Polanco	.323	.335
LF Raul Ibanez	.341	.351
CF Shane Victorino	.339	.340
RF Jayson Werth	.397	.375

Lots of disappointing years here. Ruiz is the only guy who's really playing out of his mind.

	FIP	CHONE
Roy Halladay	3.01	3.03
Roy Oswalt	3.13	3.77
Cole Hamels	3.67	3.83
Brad Lidge	3.87	4.09
Ryan Madson	2.61	3.11

The Phillies have a BIG edge in pitching, which is one of the reasons why they're so favored in this series.

Prediction: Phillies in 4. The Reds pitching staff is good enough to rack up wins against the likes of the NL central, but a (finally healthy) offense like the Phillies should be able to break through.

Big Ten Power Poll: Week 2

2010-10-05T20:35:00.002-05:00

1: Iowa (3-1, 1-0)
2: a Ohio State University (5-0, 1-0)

I have a feeling that aOSU's game against Illinois was a harbinger of things to come, much as the San Jose State and Arizona State games were for Wisconsin. What will happen when Pryor has to face a team that can contain him? He only passed for 76 yards last week. I won't be a believer until he wins a tough game on the road, and the credit is obviously more towards Pryor than to their impressively good defense. It's too bad that he plays for aOSU, if only because we never get the chance to see if aOSU's defense would completely render him ineffective (as I suspect). They play PSU at home, at UW, and especially at Iowa, and his performance will make or break the team in those games. Meanwhile Iowa, and especially Iowa's defense, completely dominated Penn State at Kinnick.

3: Michigan State (5-0, 1-0)
They were very impressive in their win over Wisconsin. They're pretty much the team that many of us (well, me) were hoping Wisconsin can be. They can run the ball all over the field with their 3-headed running game, their defense (especially the linebackers) swarm the field and is good but not great, and the two big differences - they actually have a special teams unit, and their passing game is higher risk-reward.

4: Wisconsin (4-1, 0-1)
See last weekend's recap for my complaints. Poor preparation, Clay banged up, Borland out, Tolzien has no one to throw to, special teams blow, etc. etc.
5: Denard Robinson (5-0, 1-0)
The Heisman is his to lose. He just needs to stay on the field after all the hits he's taking
6: Penn State (3-2, 0-1)
Freshman QB, good defense. Tough at home.
7: Illinois (2-2, 0-1)
For a while, I was getting excited about the possibility of an upset over aOSU. Then I saw Ron Zook on the sidelines.
8: Northwestern (5-0, 1-0)
It's tough to win on the road, but Minnesota blows hard.
9: Indiana (3-1, 0-1)
10: Purdue (2-2, 0-0)
eleventy billion: Minnesota (1-4, 0-1)
Just...no. Wisconsin better re-clean the Axe trophy case, since it's been collecting dust in its case for so many years.

Green Bay 28 - 26 Detroit: More mistakes

2010-10-04T15:26:00.003-05:00

The Packers won this game but they sure seemed lucky to do so. Detroit kicked four field goals in the second half, several of which could easily have been touchdowns. Shaun Freaking Hill just tore through the Packers secondary, which also found itself without the services of SS Morgan Burnett (who is currently filling in for the injured Atari Bigby), further depleting the secondary. The Packers front 7 is still getting plenty of pressure on opposing QBs but Charles Woodson can't cover the entire field by himself, no matter what the t-shirts say. This is especially noticeable in the Lions third down numbers - they converted 10 of 17 third downs in the game and seemed to be able to move the ball at will through the air. It's especially worrying considering the string of decent to good teams the Packers play in the next 4 weeks: @WAS, MIA, MIN, @NYJ

Rodgers and the offense looked great in the first three series but couldn't get anything going after that. Rodgers made two uncharacteristically poor throws for his two picks.

Luckily the Packers penalty virus seemed to transfer to the Lions this week, who were flagged thirteen times to the Packers three. Still, special teams continue to hamstring the Packers. This time the goat was Packers return man Jordy Nelson, who fumbled twice in the second half leading to Lions field goals. Nelson isn't a great returner, but paradoxically enough he seems like a guy who is good at reeling off, say, 20 yard returns but is not someone you expect to take it to the house.

Game ball: Charles Woodson, trying to do it all in the secondary with 11 tackles, 3 pass deflections, and a pick-6.

Other games:
I'm even more upset about Monday night's result after watching that awful, awful, AWFUL Bears performance last night. Cutler was sacked 11 times in the first half and was knocked out with a concussion, and backup Todd Collins was knocked out after 11 more attempts. The Packers had that kind of penetration too but Cutler was able to wriggle out of it. Wonder how much the home crowd + monday night adrenaline helped them. I'm licking my chops for the rematch at Lambeau.

Wisconsin 24 - 34 Michigan State: What we learned this week

2010-10-02T17:38:00.003-05:00

Winning on the road in the Big 10 is hard. aOSU struggled to put away Illinois (and was helped by some shady refereeing), NW had a slugfest with lowly Minnesota in Minneapolis, and Michigan and Indiana both forgot to bring their defenses to Bloomington. I would be shocked if PSU is in the game very long at Iowa either.

James White is pretty good. Maybe even better than Clay now that he's banged up.

Nick Toon is an average receiver with the prestige of his family name. He's not a difference maker.

Most importantly, Bret Bielema has to go. They're not going to fire him mid-season, but for a long time this team just simply has been poorly prepared for its opponents. Michigan State's coach wasn't even there today, and special teams (which Bielema has been involved in for years) has been awful for a long time.

Preview: #11 Badgers (4-0, 0-0) at #24 Sparty (4-0,0-0), 2:30 PM CT (UPDATED)

2010-10-01T18:49:00.008-05:00

Update: MSU coach Mark Dantonio was readmitted to the hospital today with a blood clot, probably a complication from his surgery after the Notre Dame game. Not sure how this will affect MSU's approach today. I wish Dantonio all the best and a speedy recovery.

Finally, the real college football season begins. A strong but still-flawed Badger team heads to East Lansing where they haven't won since 2002. My favorite MSU memory was Lee Evans's 5 TD day at Camp Randall back in (November?) 2003. My now-wife had just moved to Wisconsin and her parents were in town that weekend for a visit. We had a great time in the student section in our light sweatshirts but my VA-based in-laws were absolutely freezing despite their arctic gear. They left after Wisconsin went up by 30 points or so to find a bar to warm up in.

I don't know much about MSU so let's take a look at their results before taking a closer look at the individual matchups.

MSU Results
vs Western Michigan: W 38-14
at Florida Atlantic: W 30-17
vs Notre Dame: W 34-31 (OT)
vs Northern Colorado: W 45-7

The most notable one here is the ND game, which they won on a fake FG attempt in overtime. Ballsy call by the coaching staff and it worked perfectly. As for the rest, not much to really conclude. They won the games they should have and with a good enough margin, though the FAU game probably should have been a little higher.

FO Rankings (parens are UW ranks)
FEI: 39 (41)
S&P Offense: 24 (19)
S&P Defense: 92 (111)
S&P Team: 27 (19)

Primary offensive players

QB
--
MSU
Kirk Cousins: 61/91, 863 yds, 6 TD, 2 INT, 164.1 rating
UW
Scott Tolzien: 64/84, 851 yds, 5 TD, 2 INT, 176.2 rating

RB
--
MSU
Edwin Baker: 57 Rush, 449 yds, 7.9 yd/carry, 5 TD
Le'Veon Bell: 48 Rush, 396 yds, 8.2 yd/carry, 7 TD
UW
John Clay: 77 Rush, 501 yds, 6.5 yd/carry, 6 TD
James White: 34 rush, 269 yds, 7.9 yd/carry, 4 TD

I'm surprised to see how well MSU's rushing attack has acquitted itself. Even more impressive is that neither of those guys were at the top of the depth chart heading into the season. Overall it looks like their offense is quite underrated. Defense looks like their big problem. They gave 31 points to a mediocre Domer team at home.

Key Matchups:
MSU LT D.J. Young vs UW DE J.J. Watt
Watt is one of the best pass rushers in the Big 10, and Young has looked shaky against MSU's weak competition. It could be a long day for Cousins, and Sparty in general if he has a rough time.

MSU KR Keshawn Martin vs UW Special Teams
UW's special teams looked like absolute shit against ASU, and didn't have much to do last week against Pile of Electronics State. We'll see if any corrections have been made

Michigan State Spartans vs Michigan State Spartans
Sparty has been the most penalized team in the B10 this year, and they've averaged 78 penalty yards per game on roughly 9 penalties per game.

Prediction: A close game, but Wisconsin pulls away in the 4th quarter. UW wins 34-24

Lots of good games on the schedule in general - there's going to be a lot of channel flipping. Some quick predictions

2:30, #21 Texas vs #8 Oklahoma. The classic RRS. Ryno says Texas can win this game if they stop being cute with their offense. I think Oklahoma wins, 24-17. It will cap off a pretty awful week in general in Austin, after losing to UCLA last week and having the campus shut down by a student gunman.

7:00,#9 Standford at #4 Oregon. This should be a fun one. I'm voting for Oregon to win this barn-burner 38-31, mainly because I'm annoyed that Stanford somehow leapfrogged UW (and moved up 10 spots) after beating ND last week. What gives? I think Stanford is probably the better team but it runs contrary to how this bullshit polling system works.

7:00 #7 Florida at #1 Alabama. Florida could win this game, but Alabama has certainly staked is claim as the #1 team. If this were in the Swamp I might feel differently. AlaGoddamnBama wins 24-13.

7:00 #22 Penn State at #17 Iowa. A shaky freshman QB playing against a fired up Iowa defense at Kinnick? Yes please. Iowa wins 31-13.

Packers-Bears Postmortem

2010-09-30T21:35:00.003-05:00

Okay, I guess I've calmed down enough to write about this game reasonably rationally. The story of the game was penalties, penalties, penalties, with a dash of special teams for that extra dimension of FAIL. I still think the Packers are the best team in the NFC (and Football Outsiders agrees). The Packers are rated 5th in the league on both offense and defense and first overall. However, the Packers are rated 29th in Special Teams play. It's funny - one thing I've often felt in the past is that for some strange reason, the Packers and the Badgers tend to have similar issues from year to year. Back when I was an undergrad the big problem was tackling - both teams seemed to be competing with one another to see who could have the most missed arm tackles per game. This year it's sorry, sorry special teams (despite the fact that Crosby and Welch are both having pretty good seasons kicking the ball).

Give credit to the Bears - they executed where the Packers did not. I'd like to give especial kudos to Urlacher and Briggs, who are still the strength of that defense, Julius Peppers, who had the Packers line worried all game, and especially the Bears fans at Soldier Field who kept things loud and the Bears in the game.

Here's the tale of the penalties (thanks to commenter Bush League All Star over at APC

1) 10:03 left, first quarter – pass interference on Woodson. Thankfully, no points scored on that drive, but only because of Robbie Gould’s missed field goal.

2) 5:41 left, first quarter – false start on Clifton. Green Bay overcame that flag, as Rodgers found Jennings for a touchdown.

3) 4:26 left, first quarter – offsides on Bishop…on a kickoff. A KICKOFF? I haven’t seen that call in years. You see that in pee wee football, not the NFL.

4) 4:01 left, first quarter – face mask on Matthews. The Packers thankfully didn’t pay for it, as an interception by Martin made up for it.

5) 6:02 left, second quarter – holding on Colledge. That wiped out an eight yard run.

6) 3:55 left, second quarter – illegal block on Martin. A 22 yard return wiped out.

7) 14:55 left, third quarter – illegal formation on Clifton. A five-yard pass to Lee negated.

8) 9:18 left, third quarter – holding on Sitton. Another five yard gain, a run by Rodgers, negated.

9) 7:25 left, third quarter – holding on Tauscher. Not just 15 yards lost on a pass to Finley, but a touchdown.

10) 1:50 left, third quarter – false start on Tauscher. Almost no yardage lost.

11) 1:50 left, third quarter – false start on Tauscher. Ditto.

12) :24 left, third quarter – delay of game on Rodgers. It turned a third and 1 into a third and 6, which went incomplete.

13) 13:56 left, fourth quarter – false start on Clifton. Made up for with a 14 yard gain on second and 12.

14) 6:45 left, fourth quarter – roughing the passer on Zombo. That canceled an interception by Barnett, and the drive turned into a tying field goal for Chicago.

15) 6:34 left, fourth quarter – unnecessary roughness on Collins, helping to lead to the field goal.

16) 2:33 left, fourth quarter – intentional grounding on Rodgers, on a drive which led to the game-turning turnover.

17) 1:51 left, fourth quarter – pass interference on Burnett, negating an interception by Collins that would have saved the game.

18) :04 left, fourth quarter – illegal forward pass on Driver, negating a chance at a Cal-Stanford miracle lateral play.

Total yards in penalties: 152.
Total offensive yards lost beyond the penalties themselves: 55.
Points loss by Green Bay or gained by Chicago because of penalties: 13.

Just lots of dumb, dumb penalties. The OP didn't list the downs on these, but I remember from the TV that at least 6 of them were on third down. Penalties happen, especially when playing on the road in front of a fired-up crowd, and I'm never upset when a team fails to get a clean sheet, but this is just inexcusable. I disagree with the poster's characterization of points/picks lost, as some of those might not have been picks if there was no PI.

One other big worry is the Packers complete lack of a running game. I was pretty meh when Grant went down but I was all wrong. Jackson just isn't an every-down kind of back, and Kuhn is only a 2-3 yards and a cloud of dust type *fullback*. I haven't heard any more rumors about the Pack looking for a RB (i.e. Marshawn Lynch).

Turnovers: Aaron Rodgers threw a hail mary pick at the end of the first half, but the big turnover was the James Jones fumble that led to the Bears game winning drive. All credit to Urlacher and Briggs for causing it, but it was just the Packers luck that day that despite the face that Jones was both running along the sideline and carrying the ball on the sideline side of his body, the ball didn't go out of bounds. Cutler threw one terrible looking pick and threw another one that was called back due to a roughing the passer penalty on Zombo. Cutler looked erratic most of the night and IIRC there were at least one or two other near picks on the night, which isn't that surprising considering the pressure the Packer pass rush was getting on him

Special teams: The announcers and some Packers fans were wondering why the hell the Packers would kick to Hester. Well, for one he hadn't scored a TD in nearly two years. On top of that, the Packers punter looks pretty good. He had several absolutely booming punts, including the one that Hester scored his TD on. He made a mistake on the last punt of the second quarter, hitting a line drive right to Hester but at least he made the best tackle that I've ever seen by a punter to stop him from taking it to the house. I like Mathsay's potential - I think the bigger problem is the special teams tackling in general.

All in all: what do you do to deal with penalties? Some of them were dumb (like the multiple false starts, etc) and hopefully the players learned a lesson from this game. I don't think that fining players is going to make a difference. When players are on the field, they're thinking about their assignments, not their paychecks. The Packers play an aggressive defense and they just got burned a bit more than usual, on top of the dumber, much more preventable penalties. I have hope they'll do better next time, but it's something to keep an eye on.

Speaking of dumb mistakes, what was up with McCarthy challenging that fumble anyway? It was clear that the player and the ball were in bounds. They sure could have used those extra seconds at the end of the game. Speaking of which - why didn't they just let Chicago score when they got into the red zone with less than 2 minutes left? Aaron Rodgers was clearly on fire that night - the only thing stopping the Packers from marching down the field was the Packers. Just some generally poor game management by McCarthy that night.

Game Ball: Aaron Rodgers: 34/45 for 316 yards, 1 TD, one meaningless INT, and an average of 7 yards per attempt and just over 9 yards per completion.

Update: check out this link from baturkey in the comments (scroll down past the Failboys analysis). The two sentence summary is that there's little correlation between run-pass balance and scoring. As they say, you "win to run the ball".

Stat of the Game

2010-09-27T22:44:00.001-05:00

17/152

Ugh.

Preview: Packers (2-0) at Bears (2-0)

2010-09-27T14:12:00.003-05:00

Too much work to do today, so this will be short. What's with so many Bears fans drinking this team's Kool-aid? They barely beat the lowly Lions *at home* and only on the strength of a bizarre mistake/rules wrinkle. Then they beat the overrated and asleep-seeming Cowboys in Dallas, which was more impressive. But honestly though - this was 2 games. All the problems that you complained about last season (Lovie, the offensive line) are still in place, though at least Urlacher is back. Cutler was a bit unlucky (and erratic) in general last season, and still does not have a great line in front of him. He's been better in the past 2 games, but, By DeRosa's Stubble, it's only 2 games. I'll be interested to see how their line handles Clay Matthews.

Most of the focus going into this game is on the quarterbacks, and for good reason. Both these teams (the Bears especially) don't really have great rushing games. I'm willing to give Forte a bit of the benefit of the doubt as the Bears O-line is not that good, but he seems like he's more of an outside runner/screen pass kind of guy anyway. The same applies to an even greater extent for Brandon Jackson, who's a great 3rd down kind of back but it not the guy you can count on for 3 yards when you need it. On top of that, the Bears have Urlacher back to shut down the middle of the field. Basically, we're going to see a lot of passing in this game, and I'll take Rodgers over Cutler. But if the Packers get absolutely *nothing* out of their running backs they could be in trouble.

Another reason to worry is that the Packers are still missing half their secondary with Bigby and Harris still recovering from surgery. Tramon Williams looks okay in the second CB spot but he's not all that special. Luckily neither are the Bears WRs. I don't really get the love for Devin Hester, Wide Receiver. They should be giving Aromashadu more touches. In fact, he should be matched up against shaky nickel back Sam Shields tonight.

On the other aspect of passing defense, I think Green Bay has the clear advantage. Clay Matthews and the Packers D, which is rated as the best pass rushing defense in the league according to FO. Clay Matthews has been an absolute terror, totaling 6 sacks.

Predictions
Aaron Rodgers: 2 TD, 1 INT
Jermichael Finley: 1 TD
Donald Driver: 1 TD
Packers D: 5 sacks (2 by Matthews)
Culter: 2 TD, 2 INT

Final Score: GB 23 - 17 CHI

Big Ten Power Poll: Week 0

2010-09-26T14:18:00.004-05:00

Since Big Ten play is finally, blessedly, starting, here's a power poll for the conference.

1. A Ohio State University (4-0, 0-0)

Despite what all the numbers say, I'm still not sold on Terelle Pryor. I'm willing to have an open mind that he *could* be good, but I'm withholding my judgment until he plays a key role in OSU winning a road game at UW and/or Iowa. The defense is the strength of this team, and it's up to Pryor to prove otherwise.

2. Wisconsin (4-0, 0-0)

3. Iowa (3-1, 0-0)

It's pretty close between UW and Iowa for the 2 spot. Both teams have been burned by injuries in the preseason - Jewel Hampton (again) for the Hawkeyes, and Chris Borland for the Badgers. The Hawkeyes are further handicapped by the loss of RB Brandon Wegher to some unspecified personal issues, leaving Robinson as the lone remaining back from their good-looking preseason 3-headed backfield. Iowa's defense is still a class above Wisconsin's, but the main reasons why I rank UW ahead are Scott Tolzien and James White. I've never been that high on Tolzien, but I'm starting to wonder about my evaluation of Stanzi a bit. He throws a lot of picks, but to be fair a lot more has been asked of him in the past year and a half due to Iowa's troubles at RB. But the bigger difference makers are John Clay and James White, both of whom look like they could win B10 offensive player of the year awards if they were solo feature backs. And UW has two of them.

I think Wisconsin has the edge, but since they play in Kinnick this year you just have to flip a coin to guess who wins when they match up.

4. Denard Robinson (4-0, 0-0)

I didn't expect much from Michigan this year, but Denard Robinson has certainly put the school back on the map. No wonder RichRod let Mallett go. I don't really see them contending for the title but they're going to be a tough game at home.

5. Penn State (3-1, 0-0)

Not much shame in losing to the juggernaught that is Alabama, but I'm not sold on their QB. Much like Michigan they won't have much of a shot at a BCS bowl but they'll still be a tough nut to crack at home.

6. Michigan State (4-0, 0-0)

I can't really say much as all I know about Sparty this season is that they beat the Domers on a trick FG play in overtime. Love it. Since UW plays them next weekend I'll write up some more come preview time

Who cares?: Illinois, Indiana, Northwestern

I don't really know how to rank these guys. They'll get their wins at home against each other, and each of them will likely win a home game against the top 6, but nothing much to see here.

10. Purdue (2-2, 0-0)

Purdue lost to the Domers and then lost to Toledo last week, but that's not as bad as...

11. Minnesota (1-3, 0-0)

Goldy beat Middle Tennessee state, and then lost to South Dakota, put up a better game than most thought against USC, and then lost to NIU. Ouch.

That's more like it: Badgers win 70-3

2010-09-25T19:27:00.003-05:00

Wisconsin won 70-3 in a well-executed, and, most importantly, mistake-free game vs Pile of Electronics State. Every aspect of the team was firing on all cylinders, and freshman RB James White was especially impressive, tallying 4 touchdowns and 146 yards. The Badgers scored touchdowns on their first ten drives, averaging 9.1 yards per play. I'm still wary of this team after the last two games, but this is what I've been looking for. Good teams blow bad teams out of the water.

Game MVP: Barry Alvarez and/or Pat Richter, for scheduling this game in the first place

Tip o' the cap: James White for further proving that he belongs ahead of Montee Ball on the depth chart

Wag of the finger: The Wisconsin second-team offense, for failing to uphold their double-digit touchdown drive streak with 11 minutes left in the fourth quarter.

Preview: Austin Peay at Wisconsin

2010-09-24T09:40:00.004-05:00

Since UW is favored by a whopping 43 points in this game there isn't much to preview. So I guess we'll do some edjumacation on Austin Peay instead.

I thought Austin Peay was a Texas School, since they love throwing Stephen F. Austin's name in everything, but in fact it's an old school in central Tennessee that was named after a former governor of TN. The fact that "Leadership" is one of their departments makes me place them on the same level as my hometown's college (ugh). I should probably give it the benefit of the doubt though, seeing as it's been around much longer than a decade. Their men's basketball team has made the NCAA tournament twice in the past decade, only to be stomped by Louisville and Texas in the first round.

Also, their school cheer is "Let's go Peay!". I bet their athletic department's true strength is in watersports *rimshot*

Midweek Scrap Heap

2010-09-21T20:50:00.004-05:00

Spurs lost 4-1 to Arsenal in their Carling Cup match. I had this game on while I was working but missed the extra time goals. No big deal, since the last thing this squad needs is even more games. Phil has a recap up over at Yankee Yiddos.

Bulaga may have passed Clifton on the depth chart at Left Tackle. Clifton has been having some knee issues and was benched for Bulaga in the second quarter of the Bills game. Give him some time to recover, and Bulaga some time to develop and this is a good thing for the Pack. Bulaga is the LT of the future anyway.

Bears fans are riding high after their improbable 2-0 start. I love how they're suddenly Super Bowl bound. Chicago media FTW. Enjoy it while it lasts. Remember that Martz, for all his offensive genius, doesn't have Orlando Pace at LT anymore. The Vikings are at 0-2 and but luckily face the suddenly-frisky Lions at home.

The UW-Austin Peay game will be on the BTN national feed (since I don't get 'extra' channels here). The B10 opener against Sparty will be on ABC/ESPN.

Blake Sorenson will pick up most of the playing time void left by Chris Borland's injury. Expect to see more of James White in this week's game. Nick Toon is also close to returning.

Penn State just received a huge donation to start a hockey program. As they will be the sixth Big Ten school to add a hockey program, this means that there are now talks to start a Big Ten hockey league. That would be pretty cool, especially because it would mean watching UW hockey on the BTN.

Green Bay 37 - Buffalo 7 (and Washington 27 - Houston 30)

2010-09-20T09:53:00.004-05:00

I felt pretty secure in saying that despite the fact I was missing this game on TV, I wasn't missing much. Rodgers threw for 2 TDs and ran for another, and Brandon Jackson picked up his first TD as a starter. The only negative thing I can say about the game is that for a blowout this big, the Packers only put up 91 rushing yards. I like Jackson because he's a decent option to catch passes out of the backfield, but we're talking about Buffalo, the 24th best team against the rush (per FO). I know the Packers are a passing-oriented offense but you have to think that they're looking desparately for a new RB.

Supposedly they are looking at Marshawn Lynch, which I'm not a huge fan of (who else is available though). He's been accused of sexual assault by his ex, struck a drunk pedestrian and fled the scene, and was caught with marijuana and a loaded gun in his car following the 2009 Pro Bowl. He also loves Applebee's, which makes me instantly despise him on top of all the legal issues. Obviously his head isn't screwed on straight.

For the most part this was a scoreboard watching game, and the best news was that the Vikings lost (now 0-2!). The Bears beat the Cowboys, which further dims their chances as a WC contender but with the Vikings 0-2 and Favre struggling the Packers look like they don't really need it anyway. The Vikings get the frisky-looking Lions next week in the Metrodome. The Lions are a pretty good pick at home right now, I think but I don't really see them winning this game on the road.

Game Balls:
Offense: Aaron Rogers
Defense: Clay Matthews (3 sacks)

Next week the Packers travel to Soldier Field to play the improbably 2-0 Chicago Bears on Monday Night. It should be a fun one, for various reasons, most notably the fact that I heard several Bears fans mention on Twitter/fb something along the lines of Cutler should sue his offensive line for attempted murder.

(mini-recap: Washington 27 - 30 Houston)
The Redskins looked much, much better this week, and I take back anything I said about McNabb being done. That said, I don't really have any idea how Houston managed to come back, despite the fact that I watched it. They just have a great, great offense. They look like a playoff team, and could even knock off the Colts in the AFC South.

I still don't know what to think about the NFC East. The Cowboys were overrated but they still managed to surprise me by losing to the freaking Bears IN DALLAS. The Eagles don't wow me either, though McCoy sure looked good. Teams will start gameplanning for the Notorious Dog Killer if he keeps playing, and Kolb certainly did not look impressive against the Packers before he was knocked out. The Giants are kinda good but aren't really blow you away good. I thought the NFC East would be a real muddle but now I'm even more convinced. I wouldn't be surprised if 9-7 won the division (with a bunch of tiebreakers) and I could see the Skins (or any other of these guys) going on a hot streak to win it.

I was going to add some more here about the NFL overtime rules and the lameness of icing kickers, but that deserves its own post.

Preview: Bills at Packers

2010-09-19T08:32:00.003-05:00

The Packers are favored by 13 points in this game, and that's a conservative line I think. The Bills are a mess. They have a great weapon in LEEEEE Evans but have no one who can throw it to him. They do have a decent pass defense but that's about it. It's tough to win a game on your secondary alone.

The big story of the game for the Packers is Brandon Jackson - how well will he do in his first game as starter? Luckily they have a gimme week for him to get his feet wet. I like Jackson, but Kuhn is the only realistic backup here and I'm incredibly underwhelmed at the thought of Kuhn getting more than 2 carries in a game. I've seen some speculation that the Packers might go after troubled Bills RB Marshawn Lynch, but I'm guessing the Bills are waiting until after they play the Pack to make sure he doesn't pass along any info. That way they could lose by 30 instead of 20.

Clay Matthews is still banged up but should be back this week. I hope the Packers take it easy with him against this team.

Prediction: Packers 33, Bills 10

Borland may be done for the season

2010-09-19T00:05:00.003-05:00

Borland re-aggravated his separated shoulder in today's game, and there was talk by Bielema after the game that they might have to red-shirt him. He can play in one more game before he has to sit out.

This is a huge blow for Wisconsin's defense. Borland exploded on to the scene last year after Mike Taylor went down for the year with a knee injury. A LB corps of Borland, Taylor, and St. Jean would be pretty formidable, but now it is weakened considerably.

Arizona State defeats Arizona state (UW wins 20-19)

2010-09-18T17:40:00.003-05:00

Wisconsin was lucky to win this game. They looked terrible, especially on defense and special teams. Wisconsin just couldn't tackle. At all. They were further hurt by the fact that 2009 Big 10 Defensive Freshman of the Year Chris Borland re-injured his separated shoulder three minutes into the game. DE and defensive captain J.J. Watt had to be taken off the field twice (though he returned each time), and Culmer St. Jean missed a fair amount of time too.

Arizona absolutely shredded UW's special teams, running one kick back in the first quarter, taking another to the house in the second (that was called back for two blocking in the back penalties), and nearly got a third at the end of the half (mentioned below). All in all ASU netted 256 return yards. That's just inexcusable.

The story of the game was ASU's miscues. They committed 8 penalties in the first half, including one I hadn't seen before - a sideline penalty on the ASU coaching staff. That sparked a tirade by ASU coach Dennis Erickson that probably should have been flagged a second time. They also committed a costly late hit penalty to keep UW's final, clock-killing drive alive. Erickson waited far too long to burn ASU's timeouts during the last drive, and found Wisconsin able to run out the clock before they could get it back.

Most importantly though, ASU left 15 points on the field. As they were slashing through UW in the first half, ASU missed out on two straight touchdowns, one by a clumsily dropped pass by one of their players, and another on a catch out of bounds by another reciever who just missed getting his foot down by inches. After UW scored to take the lead with 10 seconds left in first half, UW kicked off to ASU and they nearly ran it all the way back until Shelton Johnson finally made the tackle at the one yard line.

Most painfully, ASU led a drive to tie the game late in the 4th quarter and carved through the porous Wisconsin defense yet again to apparently get the game tying score. But then Jay Valai dove in and blocked the extra point, and the Badgers held on to win.

Wisconsin was outplayed in all aspects of the game. The offense looked out of sorts in the first half. When the Badgers were only down by 3, from the playcalling you'd guess that they were trailing by 2+ TDs. Too much passing from Tolzien, though he did make some nice plays to Kendricks. The 'real' Wisconsin only showed up in the 3rd quarter, when they ground out an 85-yard drive for a TD, followed by finally getting some pressure on Threet for once. Clay had a quietly decent game. For some reason they were barely using him early in the game and the announcers were confused that he was on the bench while the offense was sputtering. He still ended up over the century mark.

Game Ball (tie): Sheldon Johnson and Jay Valai
Tip o' the Cap: Steven Threet had a fantastic game. He was fully in command of that offense and was shredding the decimated UW linebacker corps.
Wag of the Finger: Obviously, the special teams coaching staff. I wonder if they'll run around tackling random people during the week, much like P.J. Hill and the rest of the running game had to carry footballs around all week when they had fumbling problems a few weeks ago.

The Badgers are banged up, but at least they effectively have a Bye next week against Austin Peay before B10 play starts in East Lansing on Oct. 2.

Spurs 3 - 1 Wolves

2010-09-18T11:19:00.004-05:00

Spurs got off to a great start but couldn't find the net in the first half, largely due to some great saves by Wolves keeper Hahnemann. The most telling stat was shots fired: Spurs took 25 shots to Wolves 6. At one point late in the first half Spurs had posession of the ball twice as long as Wolves. However, after Wolves rammed in a well-executed goal just before the half (yet another just before halftime goal conceded by Spurs), it was looking like it would be another game where Spurs dominated but only came out with a point, at best. I missed most of what led to the first goal but either Kaboul was hurting or Harry was pissed at him, as he subbed him about a minute before halftime.

Spurs finally picked up an equalizer on a Van Der Vaart penalty in the 76th minute. Then Pavs came in for Keane and redeemed his awful start against WBA with the game-winner just before injury time. Hutton slammed in the insurance goal in stoppage time to make what looked like another disappointing game for Spurs into a rout.

Goals:
VdV (pen) 76'
Pavs 87'
Hutton 90'

Game ball: Van Der Vaart
I didn't expect him to be fit enough to play, let alone have the great start he did. He caused all sorts of problems for Wolves defenders in the first half and Spurs looked much less lackluster on offense than they did vs Werder Bremen. I'm excited to see how the offense looks once Modric gets back.

I'd love to see more Pavs in the lineup over Keane. I like that Harry came out with this 4-4-2 lineup but Keane hasn't looked all that great out there. This team really misses Defoe.

Arsenal on Tuesday. COYS.

NFL Apocalypse looming - can baseball take advantage?

2010-09-17T21:19:00.004-05:00

Players from four teams (so far) have voted to decertify the NFLPA, essentially voting to break up their own union. This will provide them leverage to sue the NFL in the event of a lockout due to labor laws involving collective bargaining. Logic-wise I'm not sure why this makes sense - if the union decertifies they can't, well, bargain, but they can still apparently negotiate as a "trade organization" (though I'm not all that sure how the labor laws work out there). There would be no more grievances, and the NFL would have control over how the players are marketed. But it does provide the owners more of an incentive to work out a new deal before the current one expires I guess.

I'm very interested to see what will happen if we do see a stoppage in the NFL. The 94 strike absolutely murdered baseball. The NFL *may* have passed it by then in ratings but baseball was still the national sport. The Venn diagram of baseball fans and football fans has a pretty big intersection so I would not be surprised if people blame the players.

However, one difference between football and baseball is that the casual fan does not imagine he or she can play professional football (FG kickers excepted). As we saw last week players get injured all the time, and it feels like the concussion issue is finally starting to seep its way into the national sports fan consciousness. Not just anyone can take a bone-crunching tackle from Ray Lewis. But they certainly don't have sympathy with any high-paid star who stops producing (though the NFL mitigates this by just cutting them, thanks to the ridiculous non-guaranteed contracts bandied around).

Can baseball jump in to fill the void? Well, I guess it *could*, but I'm not so sure that Bud Selig is the guy to lead the way. MLB has its own CBA to negotiate soon too, though things don't sound quite as dire on that front. Now that Fehr is gone I wonder if the union doesn't have as much teeth. We'll just have to see how it goes.

Game preview: Arizona State (2-0) at Wisconsin (2-0)

2010-09-17T14:13:00.003-05:00

Arizona State Sun Devils (2-0) at Wisconsin Badgers (2-0), 2:30 PM CT

Well, at least we're playing a somewhat credible opponent, even if they are expected to finish 9th in the Pac 10. I'm hoping to see the Badgers bounce back from their general carelessness in their last 2 games (especially the SJSU game), and hopefully having a real opponent here will wake the team up, though playing Austin Peay next week won't help much on that front.

I love how the UW Badgers website has billed this as a "clash of unbeatens", as if that means anything in the quasi-preseason.

Badgers injuries
KR Gilreath (concussion) and WR Nick Toon (turf toe) are both expected to miss the game. Honestly I'm surprised that Gilreath can even walk, let alone practice, following that nasty hit last week. RT Oglesby will probably be kept out this game too. LB and returning defensive rookie of the year Chris Borland will return tomorrow, further bolstering the Badgers' excellent linebacking corps.

ASU's quarterback is Steven Threet, who Badgers fans might remember from Michigan's 3-win season (the Appalachian State year) a few years back. I'd laugh at them for it, except UM beat the Badgers that year in a game that Threet led them back from a 19 point deficit in the 4th quarter at the Big House. He's now ASU's QB and has put up a QB rating of 157 in 2 games against the perennial powerhouses North Arizona and Portland State. We'll see how they do against a credible team. For what it's worth Tolzien has put up a QB rating of 147 against the crappy opponents UW has played, so I guess it doesn't mean much. I would bet he's probably better than Tolzein.

How the Badgers win this game

What do you want to do ~~tonight Brain~~ this week, Bret?

The same thing we do every week - ~~try to take over the world~~ run the ball down their throats.

You can't really say much about ASU's run defense given their opponents so far (and the scores they ran up on them). Their defense was top rated in the Pac-10 last year, and their secondary is especially good. However, I still expect UW to run all over them.

How the Badgers lose this game
They make a few dumb mistakes early and have to rely on Tolzein's arm. As I mentioned above ASU's secondary is apparently pretty good, and Tolzein's top 2 WRs are out this week. However, I think both of them are pretty mediocre anyway (especially Gilreath) so there shouldn't be a big dropoff.

Prediction
Badgers win, 30-17

The Vegas spread is 13 points, which seems just right to me. I think Clay rushes for 2 TDs, Tolzein hooks up with Anderson for one, and Ball or White pick one up too.

Predictions in other B10 games of interest:
Iowa 27 - 17 Arizona
Notre Dame 17 - 21 MSU
USC 1,000,00 - 3 Minnesota

Tottenham Hotspur Traveling Ambulance at Wolves (preview)

2010-09-17T09:43:00.006-05:00

The tattered remnants of the Spurs squad take on Wolves tomorrow at the Lane. So far it looks like the following will be out:

Van Der Vaart
Modric
King
Gomes
Defoe
Dawson

Wolves lost to the Cottagers last week but faced accusations of playing dirty after they broke the leg of Fulham striker Bobby Zemora. It would be just Spurs luck to see someone knocked out of this game in a similar way.

Not much of a preview, but I'm a bit out of the swing of things on footy with all the american football starting up, not to mention that my knowledge of the depth of Spurs and the EPL is still pretty slight. Here's a much better preview) of the match over at Yankee Yiddos.

My prediction: Spurs 2 - 1 Wolves

Spurs draw, Mini-Scrap Heap

2010-09-14T18:38:00.004-05:00

Spurs drew with Werder Bremen 2-2. They look great for most of the first half, scoring 2 goals, one off Crouch's giant head from a beautiful ball from Van Der Vaart (via Jenas). The other goal was an own goal (that I missed) but apparently Crouch was very much involved in that one too. Then Culdcini let a soft goal through right before the half, and WB quickly scored again after the half. Spurs hung on for the next half hour to escape with a point. I'll take it for a road game, but you'd love to see them come out with 3 points after starting the game 2-0. Injuries have really bit the team - Phil points out on YY (in a much more informed recap post) that the injury list now consists of Defoe, Gomes, Dawson, Modric, Van Der Vaart, Woodgate, and Bentley, all of whom could be starting if they were healthy. Hopefully Spurs heal up as the league goes on, or they'll be ground down by their grueling schedule.

Speaking of injuries, as expected Packers DE Justin Harrell tore his ACL and will be out for the season. The even bigger news is that starting RB Ryan Grant is out for the season with an ankle injury. As I detailed in my preview last week, I don't think this is a huge loss as I'm optimistic about Brandon Jackson (especially his pass-catching ability), and I think Grant is a mediocre back. However, their depth isn't that great, as Jackson and FB John Kuhn are the only other backs on the roster. They signed former ASU running back Dmitri Nance to add to their depth but no one seems to know much about him right now, and he should take some time to learn the system, as he was previously on Atlanta's practice squad. Brandon over at APC speculates that the Packers could go after retreads like Willie Parker or former Packer Ahman Green, but I don't really see either of those happening.

Some great news out of Madison is that David Gilreath is already walking, only a day after the horrific head injury that sent him to the hospital on Saturday. Petroykus even speculates that he could be back on Saturday, though I would be *shocked* if he even puts pads on. Hopefully White gets more opportunities to run some kicks back (and learned a lesson about holding on to the football last week).

I need to stop criticizing players on these teams. In the past 2 weeks I've mentioned how I think Gilreath and Grant are overrated and should lose time to their backups and they've suffered serious injuries.

Mini-preview: Spurs at Werder Bremen (Champions League Group Stage)

2010-09-14T09:23:00.005-05:00

I'm not qualified to comment much on this match, so I invite you to check out the excellent Yankee Yiddos preview instead. This is Mercurial Outfielder from ACB's new footy blog and it looks like it will be great.

Harry is expected to deploy a 4-5-1, though the personnel in it is still up for question. With Defoe out Crouch (ugh) is the likely lone striker, which will mean lots of balls lamely lofted towards his giant head. It sounds like Modric is a game-time decision (I think he doesn't play).

My prediction: Spurs lose 2-0. Too many injuries and general poor play of late. I'd love for them to surprise me though.

Crappy journalism

2010-09-13T09:40:00.005-05:00

Gene Wojciechowski on yesterday's game:

On fourth-and-1 at the Packers' 42, Vick was stuffed like cheesesteak into a roll. Green Bay got the ball and Aaron Rodgers genuflected three times before the clock ran out. The Packers left with a 27-20 win, but it wasn't anything Rodgers is going to put on his Facebook page.

This has the trifecta of crappy journalism in my book - first a lousy and unnecessary simile related to one of the teams. Seriously, do you think a cheesesteak reference will show that you're hip with Philly? Followed by the unnecessary use of 'genuflected' when 'kneeled' would have worked just fine. This just feels like a smug insertion for the author to show that he's smarter than the average fan. Finally, a reference to Facebook to show that you're hip with the new-fangled social media.

Packers win 27-20

2010-09-12T19:44:00.004-05:00

This was a snoozer early on, then got tense in the 4th quarter when the opposing offense suddenly woke up in the hands of a notorious dog murder. The Packers o-line looked shaky early but managed to adjust to the opponent's (admittedly, good) pass rush as the game went on. There were many injuries in this game, most notably opposing QB Kevin Kolb. For the Packers, the casualties inclued:

DE Justin Harrell (knee)- could be out for the season
RB Ryan Grant (ankle) - was in a walking cast and unable to return. I would not expect him back next week
DE Cullen Jenkins (hand) - he broke his hand but isn't likely to miss any time. He'll just wear a club cast for the rest of the season
FS Nick Collins was banged up late in the game but seems to be okay. Losing him would be a big blow since the Packers are already down half their starting defensive backfield with Bigby and Harris out

I would worry a bit about the defensive meltdown in the second half, but I think a big part of it was the fact that the team prepped for Kolb and not the notorious dog killer, who is a completely different QB. It seemed like Capers was asleep at the switch, not leaving anyone to keep an eye him on those big runs.

Despite their impressive comeback, the opponents managed to shoot themselves in the foot several times. They had 10 penalties for 80 yards, and the NDK threw and incomplete pass late in the 4th quarter when he had enough open field to run in for the game-tying TD. I'll take the win on the road.

Game MVP: Clay Matthews. He was all over the field today, terrorizing the opposing QBs (he's the one who knocked out Kolb). Woodson had a great game too, just missing out on a pick and being a big part of a fumble recovery.
Game LVP: Rodgers didn't have a great game, and I have no clue who the hell his second pick was supposed to go to. He threw a near-certain Pick 6 that the defender somehow dropped.

Next week, the Packers play LEEEEEEE Evans and the lowly Bills at Lambeau.

Preview: Green Bay (0-0) at Team that Shall Not be Acknowledged (0-0)

2010-09-11T21:52:00.009-05:00

Editor-in-viceroy's note: don't take me for any sort of objective analyst or football insider at all (i.e. I can't read a defense, for one).

Green Bay takes on another football team (who disappeared off my radar as long as they have a certain someone on the roster) today. I don't know what to make of them. They have a new QB that everyone seems to be falling over to hype (Kolb), and I don't know anything about McCoy, their starting RB. Kolb could be good, I don't know, but I don't really trust a rookie QB in his first season. Even Aaron Rodgers, who is easily one of the top 5 QBs in the league right now, struggled in his first year. That said, Kolb probably still is an upgrade on the Shadow of Donovan McNabb (aside: sorry Redskins fans. He's not McNabb anymore). Though for what it's worth Kolb did put up decent numbers last year when McNabb was injured (300+ yards, 2 TDs in each of his 2 starts).

Kolb will test a passing defense that was pretty good last season, but is missing Atari Bigby and the overrated Al Harris. Tramon Williams grew on me last year, up until the Cards playoff game when he was burned approximately 572 times by the Cardsd receivers. I like Nick Collins but he and Woodson aren't enough to lock the passing game down.

Speaking of Woodson...

Packers players to watch:

Jermichael Finley, TE
He emerged as Rodgers favorite target late last year and generates a TON of mismatches. I think he's going to have a huge year, and it won't be a fluke.

Brandon Jackson, RB
I've never been a fan of Ryan Grant - I was floored in one of my fantasy drafts today when Grant was a high-round pick (avg on Yahoo is pick 23). He doesn't exactly suck, but he's about as forgettable as it gets. Jackson seems to be getting an increased role this year as the third-down back and I hope he impresses enough to get more playing time. He was fairly disappointing after the Packers drafted him but to his credit has been slowly improving since then.

UPDATE: I forgot to include a prediction.

27-21 Green Bay

TDs by Driver, Finley, and Grant.

Wisconsin 27 - 14 San Jose St.

2010-09-11T15:28:00.003-05:00

This was a classic UW preseason game, and is also dashing my (already small) optimism that UW will have a shot at a 1-loss season and a BCS bowl. Once again they dominated the stats but generally looked flat. I've seen this many times before in the preseason - where they dominate the other team but make a bunch of stupid mistakes (White's fumble into the endzone, turning it over on downs inside the 5, Tolzein's pick). I missed some of the second have but was less whelmed than I was last week, when UW played a slightly better opponent.

This kind of stuff comes back and burns you in the Big Ten season. I have no doubt that UW can and will hang with teams like Iowa, OSU, etc. (and play largely mistake-free football), but where they will get into trouble are the medium to lesser teams like Northwestern and MSU. This kind of thing just shows a lack of focus and they'll get burned when they play a half-decent squad. My biggest issue with the program over the years is its tendency to sleep on lesser teams, and I see no reason not to believe it's different this year.

Clay and Tolzien both had big games, though my lack of understanding of QB rating shows through when I goggle at Tolzein's numbers. He was a (seemingly) predestrian 15 for 22 with a TD and an INT, which somehow translates to a 147 QB rating? Clay got a much bigger share of the carries today, and rushed for 137 yards (6 yds/carry) and 2 TDs, which I like to see.

Keeping my fingers crossed for Gilreath, who has a concussion after a nasty, nasty collision on a punt return. No word yet on how he's doing - media reports say he was NOT moving when they took him off the field, despite some of the announcers' initial reports.

The biggest news so far today is JMU beating Virginia Tech. Holy crap. I'm going to be rooting against VT (and Oregon State) the rest of the year so we don't see BSU in the National Championship game. I'm currently rooting for (ugh) OSU in this game vs Miami. They're still the most likely (though not by much) B10 team to make the championship game. PSU-Bama should be a great game tonight, but I think Bama wins by double digits. I'd feel differently if PSU's freshman QB had a few more games under his belt.

Preview: Wisconsin Badgers vs San Jose St. Cupcakes

2010-09-09T23:11:00.005-05:00

I don't really have much to say about this game, except that UW is favored by 38 points. SJSU lost its first appearance as sacrificial lamb to Alabama last week, 48-3. I'm guessing UW puts up at least 250 yards on the ground, maybe even 300

I can't wait for the real games to start. Enjoy your check, SJSU.

NFL season predictions

2010-09-09T12:10:00.006-05:00

A lot of analysts are high on the Packers this season, and I don't blame them. I covered most of my own thoughts about the Packers (and the NFC North) in this post from a month ago, and a few things have changed. For one, I was snookered by the Favre retirement rumors. But even with Favre back I don't really see the need to change the projection much, as he has ongoing ankle problems, Sidney Rice is out for half the season, and Harvin is having issues with debilitating migraines. They still have a great defense and Adrian Peterson, but it's not enough.

Here's my Packers predictions, week by week
@Philly W
Buffalo W
@Bears W
Lions W
@Skins W
Dolphins W
Vikes W
@Jets L
Cowboys L
BYE
@Vikes L
@Falcons W
Niners W
@Lions W
@Pats L
Giants W
Bears W

Total: 12-4

NFC North:
Packers: 12-4
Vikings: 9-7
Lions: 6-10
Bears: 5-11

Playoff Teams:
Packers 12-4
Saints 12-4
Niners 11-5
Giants 10-6
Falcons 10-6
Vikings 9-7

Colts 12-4
Chargers 11-5
Pats 11-5
Ravens 11-5
Bengals 10-6
Jets 9-7

WC Round
Ravens over Jets
Bengals over Pats
Falcons over Giants
Vikings over Niners

Round 2
Packers over Falcons
Saints over Vikings
Ravens over Chargers
Colts over Bengals

Conference Championships
Packers over Saints
Ravens over Colts

Super Bowl
Packers vs Ravens (no pick...)

Some other predictions:
Redskins 6-10
Cowboys 9-7
Eagles 8-8
Steelers 8-8

Bowl projections

2010-09-07T12:08:00.003-05:00

I don't know enough about the landscape of college football to make bowl projections, but I've enjoyed Bama Hawkeye's projections over the last season or two (my memory is pretty hazy as to when I started reading those). I groaned when I saw the matchup that was projected for Wisconsin: Wisconsin-Auburn at the Capital One Bowl in, yet again, Orlando. Maybe Bielema and Alvarez can light a fire under the team to go undefeated due to the fact that they don't want to have to buy condos in Orlando, given how often Wisconsin has been there. Let's take a look at the last 10 years.

Bowls the last 10 years for Wisconsin:
2002 Alamo (San Antone) vs Colorado (remember when they were good)
2003 Music City (Nashville) vs Auburn (I was at this game!)
2004 Outback (Tampa) vs Georgia
2005 Capital One (Orlando) vs Auburn
2006 Capital One (Orlando) vs Arkansas
2007 Outback (Tampa) vs Tennessee
2008 Champs (Orlando) vs FSU
2009 Champs (Orlando) vs Miami

Hrm. They've played in Orlando quite often (in fact, I was at their last bowl game outside the Tampa-Orlando corridor), but haven't played Auburn as often as I remember. Maybe I'm just remembering many end-of-season projections that had the programs playing each other. I also have zero memory of the Colorado, Georgia, or Tennessee bowl games.

UNLV 21 - 41 Wisconsin

2010-09-05T12:08:00.004-05:00

A decent start for UW. It was a classic non-conference Wisconsin game, in that they dominated the other team but still made enough mistakes to make you nervous at halftime. Tolzien threw a pick 6, and Nick Toon fumbled in the red zone, which led directly to 14 of UNLV's 21 points.

However, aside from that one bad throw Tolzien looked really good. I think I heard the phrase "game manager" half a hundred times during the broadcast, and generally when the Badgers needed a completion he and the wideouts came through. But of course, Wisconsin's calling card is the running game and holy crap did it look good. The only negative I can say about it is that they have so many great backs that Clay might not get enough carries to win the Heisman. Clay had several of his trademark runs where he was hit and then ran another 7-8 yards with a guy on his back, and Ball looked good too. But the player who impressed me the most was freshman James White, the 'speed back'. He got 11 carries and looked great, and what especially pleased me was that the Badgers put him back for a few kick returns, though from the stat sheet it looks like he didn't get a chance to run with any of them. Despite all the love the announcers were giving Gilreath I've never thought that he was an especially good returner.

The offense in general was in good form, starting from the first drive where they marched down the field, eating a ton of clock on the way (~7:30 on the opening drive). Wisconsin dominated the TOP by 17 minutes and it felt like a LOT longer.

The special teams have looked better so far, and the best news I saw all game was that Bielema is no longer coaching the special teams himself this year. There was lots of criticism in the media the past few seasons that Bielema's handling of the ST unit was weak due to his other responsibilities, but that could just be a correlation = causation fallacy.

The defense looked great, but of all the team's units I can't really say much about them until they face a real offense at ASU or MSU. Watt still looks great, and Borland looks just as dominant as he did last year. The Badgers were also all over the Rebels backfield early in the game, which was great to see. Valai got beat on one of UNLV's touchdowns but that happens sometimes (that's what the play action is for anyway). The safeties are good but I don't have any clue about the cornerbacks this year.

My memories of the second half are a lot hazier after the Badgers pushed the score up to 41. We were watching it on DVR (to skip commercials) and it was after 1 in the morning at that point, so I was nodding off. I put on the rest of the game in the morning but already knew that not much else was going to happen.

Final stats:
Total Yards: UW 475, UNLV 217
Rushing Yards: UW 278, UNLV 112
Passing Yards: UW 197, UNLV 105
Fumbles: UW 1, UNLV 1
INT: UW 1, UNLV 0
TOP: UW 38:19, UNLV 21:41

I have returned

2010-09-04T18:21:00.005-05:00

So I was going to post about all this sports stuff (Packers, Badgers, Spurs Champions League Debut, etc.) but that whole thesis and moving thing got in the way. Funny how that goes. Besides the thesis and the move, I've also been sucked into Starcraft 2, as I knew I would. Luckily I was self-aware enough to hold off purchasing it until after I defended my thesis. It's pretty awesome. It's like they took the Starcraft that was so awesome from ~14 years ago and managed to overlay a Firefly vibe over top of it as well as adding in an achievement system that pushes my completionist buttons. Bastards. You win again, Blizzard. You win again.

In the intervening time I have also read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which are on the pending review list. Season predictions to come too.

I'm off to watch the UW-UNLV game tonight with the Austin Badger alums. Should be a good time. Hooray for college football!!

Tomorrow we're going to see Kevin McDonald, our favorite Kid in the Hall not once, but twice as part of the Out of Bounds Comedy festival. Seeing the Kids in the Hall reunion tour a few years ago is easily one of my top 5 highlights of our time in Madison.

A few other random NFL thoughts

2010-08-03T18:14:00.003-05:00

Teams I'm down on this year, relative to my perception of the preseason hype

The Jets - I just have no faith in the Sanchize. At all.

The Steelers - for obvious reasons. Even when Roethlisberger is back he'll be rusty, and I think that team was showing signs of age last year

The Cowboys - No particular reason other than I think Romo sucks

I would include the Redskins, but everyone already knows they're going to suck (again) this year.

Teams I think will surprise this year

Baltimore - I just really like this squad for some reason. Can't put my finger on it

Cincinnati - Everyone loves to bloviate about the TO+Ochocinco combo, but FWIW I think those two love to have fun, and I think they'll draw that out of one another. I'm also a big Carson Palmer partisan - I think he's underrated by many. They were throwing less last year, but I think that was more of a factor of Ochocinco being their only real threat and Benson's incredible year (though he definitely won't repeat that). The AFC North should be a great division to watch this year

2010-2011 Packers Season Preview - the crucial players

2010-08-03T17:34:00.003-05:00

There was some big news today that changed a big part of what I wrote, but the basic thesis is the same here. What really has changed from the squad that lost 51-45 to Arizona in the playoffs? The secondary was banged up (Harris out with an ACL injury, Woodson not 100%) against what was a bad matchup. Furthermore, the offensive line just stunk. Despite that, they're still an elite offensive team (and there's a good chance Rodgers could get even *better*). But basically, the Packers 2010-2011 season comes down to 6 players.

Charles Woodson

Al Harris

Chad Clifton

Mark Tauscher

Johnny Jolly's replacements

Brett Favre

The theme here is that most of these players are aging and/or are big injury risks, except for Jolly (who is suspended indefinitely for substance abuse/legal problems).

Before today, the Jolly situation was the one I was least worried about. B.J. Raji was picked in the first round for a reason and I think he'll do just fine, and the news that Justin Harrell is healthy helps assuage any problems with depth too.

Of course, the big news I mentioned above was Farve announcing his retirement. Of course, I'm taking that with a huge grain of salt, but if his ankle isn't good, it isn't good. My gut says that the chances are better than not that he stays retired. Once Ted Thompson is gone he'll likely mend his fences with GB (the franchise definitely needs it more than he does). The Vikes are now looking at Sage Rosenfels and Tavaris Jackson as their starting QBs. Jackson is not great, and he lost a year of development with Favre gone, but let's not forget that he was still decent enough to QB the team through a 12-4 season in 2008. They're not going anywhere in the playoffs with him but the rest of the team could still be good enough to carry him to a playoff game at least.

But those 4 guys at the top (and that aforementioned Cardinals loss) are very worrisome. Harris will be out the first few games and he obviously won't be 100% for the next few games after that, and even before the injury his skills were declining. Woodson is coming off a NFL Defensive Player of the Year award last year but is always a guy who's battling injuries, and he's got a lot of mileage on those legs (turns 34 this season). Don't get me wrong - he had a really good year but it was his gaudy INT numbers that got him the award, and that's not something I put *too* much stock on as my gut would tell me there's a lot of variance in that stat. He and Tramon Williams were completely burned by Arizona's (admittedly, excellent) WRs, and the Packers will see more of the same in the playoffs if they run into another elite offensive team.

Tauscher and Clifton are big worries too. It said a lot that no one took a flier on Tauscher, who was a former All-pro RT, after his last knee injury. The Packers picked him up eventually (after Aaron Rodgers was nearly killed in multiple games) and he did an okay job, but nothing to write home about. The same could be said of Clifton, who's a shadow of his former self. They're both just average players at this point. They do have Bulaga (who I'm very high on) waiting in the wings should one of them go down, but I'm not sure he's a guy you can count on in his rookie season. And there's always the FAIL duo of last year of Barbre and Lang, though I think Lang has a lot of room for improvement (he's probably Tauscher's heir apparent).

Anyway, the Favre maybe-retirement was pretty huge. Here's how I think the NFC North shakes out, both with records and chance of winning the division (note: lots of tough road games for the Pack and the Vikes)

Packers: 10-6 (65%)
Vikings: 8-8 (25%)
Bears: 7-9 (10%)
Lions: 6-10 (0%)

Lilly and Theriot (YES! YES!) traded to Dodgers, other trade deadline mania

2010-07-31T14:48:00.006-05:00

Our long national nightmare is over - Ryan "TOOTBLAN" Theriot is no longer a Chicago Cub. However, as much as we love to bash Theriot for his low baseball IQ, he was a useful player for the Cubs for several years, and we should make note of that. Here are his wOBAs, defensive numbers, and WAR for his years with the team

Year	PAs	wOBA	UZR	WAR
2006	159	.416	0.8 (UZR) 2 (DRS) (2b)	1.6
2007	597	.309	2.2 (UZR) 6 (DRS) (ss)	1.4
2008	661	.338	1.7 (UZR) 5 (DRS) (ss)	3.2
2009	677	.318	3.7 (UZR) 3 (DRS) (ss)	2.4
2010	412	.291	-3.3 (UZR) -5 (DRS) (ss)	-0.1
total	2520	.322	3.4 (UZR) 7 (DRS) (ss)	8.5

Those numbers are nice when you're paying a guy league minimum, but once his arb years hit then he's out the door. Add in his incredibly frustrating baserunning gaffes and his too-frequent 2 pitch PAs, and the decision is even easier. Overall he stole 100 bases with teh Cubs and was caught 35 times, but fangraphs doesn't include non-CS TOOTBLANs in their stats yet (we can dream).

The Cubs picked up Blake Dewitt, who's left-handed and 5 years younger than Fontenot and Theriot. He's only 25 so he has room to improve, and the Cubs don't have to pay him as much. I would not be surprised to see Fontenot traded if not non-tendered in the next 8 months, with Darwin Barney as the new backup SS.

Lilly's gone too, and that's a little hairier. It looks like the Cubs were not planning on offering him arbitration, which is a bad decision. An even worse decision would be if the Cubs resign him in the offseason, which is a definite possibility since the Dodgers are likely smart enough to offer him arb.

The Cubs got 2 minor league pitchers in the deal as well - an A ball RHP starter named Brett Wallach, the Dodgers 3rd round pick last year, who has a big slider and iffy command. According to Matt Swain of Wrigley Bound he's the kind of all around athlete that the org loves (he played SS in college). So maybe the Cubs will move him to SS (dying laughing). They also picked up a 22 year old A+ relief pitcher named Kyle Smit who is having a fantastic season so far. Reliever prospects are essentially worthless, so I don't have much to say on Smit.

Honestly, it's a lot more than I thought the Cubs would get for a 2-month rental of Ted Lilly and the decaying remains of Ryan Theriot's career. You have to wonder why the Dodgers did it too. DeWitt is cost-controlled, so it's not like they were shedding salary. They're also 7 games back of the Padres with only 2 months left in the season (4.5 in the WC). They could still catch up, and the sudden surprising slide the Rockies have had in the past 2 weeks improve their chances a bit, but still.

Here are the biggest winners and losers in this year's non-waiver trade deadline:

Winners
1. Kerry Wood (Yankees). I'll be more than happy to see him get a ring. He's earned it.

2. The Nationals They absolutely stole a top prospect from MIN, in exchange for a closer that was non-tendered last season. Great, great move by the Nats.

3. The Padres. They picked up some much needed offense in former castoff Ryan Ludwick in exchange for a C pitcher (to StL) and a great looking prospect in Klubner (to CLE). But if anyone can develop pitching, it's the Padres.

Losers
1. Minnesota. Maybe my ignorance of the AL is shining through here, but were things that desperate in the Twins bullpen? I was under the impression that their starting staff needed a lot more help. Though for what it's worth the prospect they traded was a catcher, and he's blocked by one of the top 10 players in baseball. Still, that's not a trade chip you spend on a non-tendered relief pitcher. Capps sucked last year, and has been good this year, but no one should mistake him for an elite closer.

2. St Louis. They badly needed a pitcher, given the injuries to Lohse and Penny, and getting rid of Ludwick saves them some money. But I'm not sure if they have enough offense to make up for this. Jon Jay is the heir apparent to RF, and he's been hitting extremely hot (.439 wOBA). Not surprisingly that comes with a .446 BABIP. CHONE had him at .275/.331/.398 going into the season, and he's really just a platoon guy.Furthermore, it saves them some money that they'll need for Albert Pujols in the 2011 offseason.

3. Arizona, for the craptastic haul they got back for Haren. Though they balanced it out with a great trade for Edwin Jackson. Who would have thought Jackson would have netted a better trade package?

Small change in format

2010-07-27T14:06:00.003-05:00

Not that it matters much, since I've barely had time to do any posting thanks to this whole PhD thesis thing, but I figured I'd mention that I'm going to expand the scope of things I'm planning to write about. For the most part this has been a stat-friendly Cubs blog and will likely continue to be one (especially in the pre-season). But MB21's new Iowa blog and last fall's failed experiment of a Packers/Bears blog has given me the itch to write about some football (college, pro, and the non-gridiron kind). The Cubs epically disappointing season certainly helped push me in this direction too. I'm hoping to make at least one post a week on the Badgers, Packers, and/or Spurs once those seasons get rolling.

The Cubs season

2010-07-02T17:25:00.001-05:00

Can't end soon enough. Ugh. I can't believe there are still 82 games to play.

World Cup 2010 thoughts and predictions

2010-06-21T21:39:00.005-05:00

I've become more of a football (the real kind) fan in the past year or so, largely thanks to Mercurial Outfielder over at ACB, who is a big Tottenham Hotspur fan. I watched maybe half the Spurs matches last year and had a great time doing so. Plus, they made the Champions League this year! Yay!

Still, even then I've been surprised by how much I've been enjoying the World Cup. I was talking about this with Adam the other day - one thing that always bothers me about the Olympics is all the nationalistic jingoism stuff. Somehow it doesn't bother me in the World cup. Maybe it's just that the gap between the traditional world powers and the rest of the world doesn't seem so small.

Even though the US doesn't necessarily dominate the Olympics (though they generally do quite well), the media here would like you to think so, and all the planning and media revolves around the US because that's what generates the most money. Not so much with the World Cup - it's much more global than the Olympics - people in the US don't care as much about football, and people around the world could generally give a crap about swimming, track and field, and ice dancing.

It could also be that the World Cup isn't rocked with the kind of scandals and political maneuvering as the Olympics (though this could just be my ignorance shining through). Football fans have respect for good teams, and most of the hate that flies around is either for the refs or for unsportsmanlike play (especially flopping).

I know it's late in the game for predictions, but here I go anyway (based on the results through round 2 of the group stage)

Mexico (1A) beats South Korea (2B)
Germany (2D) beats England (1C)
Netherlands (1E) beats Italy (2F)
Brazil (1G) beats Chile (2H) (Spain, Chile, SUI tie in group H, but goal differential causes the the swiss to lose. Chile is a good team though, and I could see them drawing Spain and knocking them out of the tournament)

United States (2C) beats Serbia (1D)
Argentina (1B) beats Uruguay (2A)
Paraguay (1F) beats Denmark (2E)
Spain (1H) beats Portugal (2G)

Quarterfinals
Mexico defeats Germany
Netherlands defeats Brazil
Argentina defeats USA
Spain defeats Paraguay

Semifinals
Mexico defeats Netherlands
Argentina defeats Spain

Finals
Argentina over Mexico

As much as I hate El Tri...I think they have a good team

Fun fact

2010-06-08T19:41:00.001-05:00

Pudge Rodriguez has caught both Nolan Ryan and Stephen Strasburg.

Strasburg's debut and the Natinals' future

2010-06-08T13:52:00.000-05:00

Stephen Strasburg makes his MLB debut today against the Pirates. The game is sold out (probably one of half-a-dozen sellouts they've had in their new park). Watch out for the Natinals, they're going to be pretty good in 2 years or so, especially when they get Jordan Zimmerman back from TJ surgery.

I'm originally from the DC area and this buzz is nothing but great for the team - no one I know ever gave a crap about the team except for one of my cousins. The Natinals aren't going anywhere this year, but any extra butts they get in the seats is only going to help them contend. DC is a surprisingly big (and growing!) market that the team is only beginning to tap, and if they can actually start getting people to the park they should be one of the teams in the upper half of revenue (though Angelos's MASN screwjob as a part of agreeing to the move there isn't doing them any favors). Honestly, given their advantages in market and the fact that they don't play in the AL east, they've got the potential to be in even better shape than the Rays going forward. The fact thet Jim Bowden is no longer their GM is probably helping too (dying laughing). I'm not sure I have a lot of faith in Rizzo though, since IIRC he was Bowden's right-hand man. He was left to clean up the bonus scandal/embezzlement mess that brought Bowden and Rijo down, but I'm skeptical as to whether he didn't know anything about it either.

Here's the cost-controlled core of this team (more or less in order of talent):

P Stephen Strasburg

3B Ryan Zimmerman

C/OF/?? Bryce Harper

P Jordan Zimmermann

P Drew Storen

C Derek Norris (still in A ball, but has plus-plus power)

SS Ian Desmond (should be a solid regular)

Add in rising revenues and this team will be pretty good in the near future

Rebuilding, Retooling

2010-06-02T13:53:00.004-05:00

The prevailing wisdom over at the 176th best Cubs blog is that the Cubs should just blow things up and go through a few rebuilding years of non-contention. While I agree that the Cubs should definitely be sellers this year - they're a decent team that had their chance with a soft schedule to open the season and blew it - I don't really advocate a full-on fire sale, unloading everyone except for the young guns (Castro, Cashner, Jackson, Soto, Colvin).

The Cubs have a good farm system that should make a great core to the 2012-2013 seasons. But do the Cubs really need to put up some particularly crappy teams in the meantime? The Cubs do, after all, have one of the hugest payroll and marketing advantages in baseball. Ignoring for a second criticism of the current management's ability to do so, Ricketts did say that the team should be modeled after the Red Sox, who have lots of money and have been able to retool and integrate in new players (Pedroia, Lester, etc) on the fly. If the Cubs allocate their resources wisely, why not put out good/decent teams *and* still rebuild? One thing that the Yankees and the Red Sox have going for them is money to sign tough sign draft picks. Why not the Cubs too? I think the Cubs lose tons of money (esp with their debt service) if they put up the kind of 60-win seasons they need to draft guys on the caliber of Strasburg or Harper, but if they invest in the draft they can still get good talent. Maybe that advantage might disappear after the next CBA, though, who knows. It's something the owners are pushing for, and I could easily see draft pick slotting (since current players could give a shit about draftees) traded for the end of the lame FA compensation rules.

Here's what I think should happen (in order of easiness)

1) The Cubs should move Ted Lilly before the deadline. Of all the guys with NTCs on the team, Lilly seems like he would be most likely to waive it. Not that he has a problem with the team or anything, I just think he'd love to play for a contender. This is just idle speculation on my part.

2) The Cubs should also move Tom Gorzelanny, and put some combination of Cashner, Wells, and Jackson in the rotation for the rest of this year.

3) If Ramirez opts out, the Cubs should let him go and replace him with a short-term averageish 3b to keep the seat warm for Vitters, if he ever gets here.

4) The Cubs should trade one of Byrd, Fukudome, or Soriano and start playing Colvin every day. Of those three Byrd is easily the most movable, but I don't really see him being moved until the offseason at the earliest. With one year left Fukudome could be moved but I have a feeling he's not interested in leaving Chicago, and I don't think the Cubs could get much of anything for Soriano (again...jsut gut feeling). Fukudome should be gone by the time Brett Jackson arrives to be the everyday guy.

If the Cubs can't move Fukudome or Soriano before the deadline, they should just trade Byrd in the offseason and make Colvin the 2011 CF. If Jackson is ready, he can be the 4th OF until another spot opens up for him (2012 at the latest).

5) The Cubs should try to move Silva. I don't really see this happening until the offseason, but if they can move him earlier that would be great.

6) The Cubs should try to get whatever they can for Ryan Theriot. There's little doubt that he's going to be non-tendered this offseason, so they might as well get rid of him.

7) The Cubs should try to move Silva. I don't really see this happening until the offseason if at all, but if they can move him earlier that would be great.

8) The Cubs should try to sign Derrek Lee to a 1-year extension. Who's going to replace him next year? Hoffpauir? FWIW I don't see the Cubs moving Soriano or Ramirez (if he doesn't opt out) to 1b. Might as well spend it on a guy who's a good clubhouse presence and likes Chicago. He should be one of the top FA on the market so it might be a tough sign. But if anyone on the team would give the team a discount, it would be Lee.

8) The Cubs should pony up and sign Prince Fielder when he becomes a FA before the 2012 season. It's tough to count on this though, because there's a very good chance that the Brewers move him before then and he signs an extension with his new team. I'm not sure if he signs it though, or if the Cubs should sign him to what he will likely demand. Given what he witnessed in his childhood, he wants to be paid sooner and more rather than later, and I don't blame him for it.

9) The Cubs should try to move Zambrano. I think he might be tougher to move than Soriano at this point, given all the things the Cubs have done to tarnish his value. That bullpen move was the dumbest thing this organization has done since the college of coaches. The only things I can think of are maybe letting Maddux and Palmiero go.

I guess that turned into a bit more of a 'fire sale' than I thought, but I think with the right moves the Cubs can at least be competitive enough to fill Wrigley. I don't think the Cubs will get much salary relief for moving Z and Soriano, if they can even do it so why not just keep them around. I certainly love watching Z pitch. But I don't think *all* of these moves happen, and obviously some of the young players won't pan out (I'm especially looking at Vitters here). But the Cubs have the resources to fill those holes from outside the organization if needed, especially by 2012.

In summary, I'd like the Cubs to plan to hang on to (at least for next year)
Soto
Lee
Fontenot
Castro
Soriano?
Fukudome?
Colvin
Demp
Z
Wells
Jackson
Cashner
Marmol
B Jackson
Vitters
H-J Lee

Series Preview: Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles (25-19) at Starlin Castro (21-24)

2010-05-24T22:26:00.001-05:00

I don't know why, but for some reason I've always disliked the Dodgers. They've just always seemed kind of overrated to me in general. And boring. Anyway, depending on how you feel the Cubs will either keep their recent mini-tear going against the Dodgers, confirming their excellent BsR record, or they will collapse like the shitty team they are and it will trigger a fire sale. I'd be kind of happy with both. *shrug*. This part of the season just came earlier this year. At least we'll get to see Kershaw and the rejuvenated Billingsley in this series, and miss Cub kryptonite Hiroki Kuroda. This godforsaken heat wave should make this an exciting series.

LAD position players (wOBA, ZiPS RoS wOBA, CHONE defense projection)

C Russel Martin, RHB (.330, .341, 0.0)

1b James Loney, LHB (.338, .352, 0.0)

2b Blake DeWitt, LHB (.271, .320, 0.9)

ss Rafael Furcal, BHB (.369, .332, 2.7)

3b Casey Blake, RHB (.354, .330, 5.2)

lf Manny Ramirez, RHB (.396, .411, -6.1)

cf Matt Kemp, RHB (.356, .374, 1.0)

rf Xavier Paul, LHB (.386, .308, -4.4)

Pitchers (FIP, xFIP, ZiPS RoS FIP)

Clayton Kershaw, LHP (3.56, 4.21, 3.38)

Chad Billingsley, RHP (3.51, 4.34, 3.41)

Hiroki Kuroda, RHP (3.49, 3.55, 3.60)

John Ely, RHP (1.83, 3.25, -)

Ramon Ortiz, Holy shit, he's still pitching? (5.49, 4.92, 4.46)

Jonathon Broxton, Holy shit (0.34, 1.43, 1.98)

LAD Bullpen (4.03, 4.45)

2 things: The Cubs might be hitting the Dodgers at the right time, given their injury woes (Furcal, Ethier, Padilla). Too bad they won't get the chance to take some batting practice off Ramon Ortiz. The other thing that surprised me was how mediocre their total bullpen numbers were despite Broxton's absolutely obscene numbers this year.

Injuries

Furcal is set to be activated from the DL tomorrow, but I would be surprised if he played in all three games. He was supposed to be activated ~2 weeks ago but his date had to be pushed back, which is never a great sign. Ethier broke one of his fingers a week or so ago and will miss this series. Vincente Padilla is on the DL with nerve irritation in his elbow (never a good sign) and is expected to return sometime in June. Reliever Cory Wade (i.e. Scott Proctor 2.0) is on the 60-day DL following shoulder surgery in spring training. And the mighty Brad Ausmus is also on the 60-day following surgery to remove 15,682 catching innings from his back.

As for the Cubs, Caridad is on the DL with an elbow injury. Ramirez is expected to sit a few games to allow his bruised thumb to heal and work on his timing with Jaramillo. Gorz's x-rays were negative on the hand that was struck by a line drive last week, but the off-day today means it's not a big deal - they'll probably just move everyone up a day before they decide where to slot in Z.

Players to watch

Starlin Castro owns this spot until any of Andrew Cashner, Jay Jackson, Brett Jackson, or Josh Vitters get a call-up. For the Dodgers, it's Broxton. He's putting up cartoon numbers, and the projections agree that they're no joke. Wasn't he rumored to be part of one of the many Rich Hill deals floating around a few years ago?

Pitching Matchups

Tuesday Clayton Kershaw, LHP (3.56, 4.21, 3.38) vs Ryan Dempster, RHP (4.08, 3.88, 3.78), 7:05 PM CT

Kershaw and Billingsley are both good pitchers, but as you can see they have had a bit of luck this year on HRs. Kershaw has only had one horrendous outing all season - he was touched up for 7 runs in only 1.1 innings by the Brewers at the beginning of May. He's posting an ungodly 10+ K/9, but his control (never his strong suit) has been especially terrible this season, as he has walked 5.26 batters per 9 innings, though it's been a bit more under control in his last few starts. All those walks and the inevitable HR regression (he's a slight FB pitcher) is not a good combination. Speaking of regression, Demp has pitched well this year but has posted a .252 BABIP. His numbers are due for a rise as well.

Wednesday Chad Billingsley, RHP (3.51, 4.34, 3.41) vs Tom Gorzelanny, LHP (2.78, 3.57, 3.89), 7:05 PM CT

I guess you should ignore what I said above about moving everyone up, since Gorz is penciled in as the Wed starter on Cubs.com. That injury was on his pitching hand so hopefully it doesn't mess with his stuff. *insert yet more praise for the theft of Gorz from PIT for two guys who had torn labrums this year*. Billingsley's numbers look a lot better than Kershaw's - he still strikes out a ton of guys but has much 'better' (relatively speaking) control. He's also more of a groundball guy so he's not quite as burned by the HR ball either, though he has had some luck there as well.

Thursday John Ely, RHP (1.83, 3.25, -) vs Ted Lilly, LHP (4.53, 4.83, 4.04), 1:20 PM CT

At least Lilly is pitching on the coolest day of the series. Still though, it could be hot, humid, and raining baseballs on Waveland Ave. At least his control seems to have improved. Ely came out of nowhere (he doesn't even have a projection) and has pitched like Lou Pineilla's wet dream in his MLB debut - it took him 90 batters to issue his first career walk. He was a 2007 draftee by the White Sox out of college, and was one of their top prospects when he came to the Dodgers in the Juan Pierre trade. That was some great work by Colletti.

Series Preview: Starlin Castro (19-23) at Elvis Andrus (23-18)

2010-05-20T17:51:00.000-05:00

The Cubs head to Texas to face the Rangers, who were generally considered to be the best team in the AL west, and have lived up to their preseason projections so far. Here's their lineup and pitching staff

Hitters (wOBA, ZiPS RoS wOBA, CHONE UZR projection)

C Matt Treanor, RHB (.251, .279, -1.3)

1B Justin Smoak, BHB (.291, -, -)

2B Ian Kinsler, RHB (.385, .377, 3.7)

SS Elvis Andrus, RHB (.366, .338, 0)

3B Michael Young, RHB (.351, .354, 0)

LF Josh Hamilton, LHB (.373, .368, 0.8)

CF Julio Borbon, LHB (.240, .310, 13.3)

RF Nelson Cruz, RHB (.445, .383, 4.5)

Pitchers (FIP, xFIP, ZiPS RoS FIP)

Scott Feldman, RHP (4.49, 5.09, 4.77)

Rich Harden, RHP (5.75, 5.76, 4.04)

C.J. Wilson, LHP (3.53, 4.25, 3.69)

Colby Lewis, RHP (3.66, 3.99, 4.10)

Derek Holland, LHP (4.42, 3.93, 4.90)

Neftali Feliz, holy shit (2.86, 3.50, 3.99)

Darren Oliver, LHP (2.90, 2.44, 3.53)

Frank Francisco, RHP (3.94, 4.25, 3.77)

It seems strange that Traenor is their catcher, given the shitton of talent I seemed to remember at the catcher position there. Maybe the mlb.com depth chart is off its rocker. Aside from their erstwhile ace (Feldman), the Rangers have a damned good pitching staff. Just look at all that young talent. This is what the 2013 Cubs should look like before Hendry and Ricketts fuck it up by trading their young talent for the Joe Blantons of the world.

Injuries

Caridad was moved back to the DL (sucking), and Gorz is not expected to make a trip after taking a liner off his hand. He might miss a start, but the Cubs should be able to skip his turn in the rotation with the off-day on Monday. The Rangers have a bunch of guys on the DL whose names I don't recognize, so I figure they're not very important (dying laughing) ST can correct me tomorrow if I'm wrong.

Players to watch

The easy choice is Castro and Andrus, two young and talented SS who broke into the big leagues at a very young age. They've both got great careers ahead of them.

Pitching Probables

Friday Ted Lilly, LHP (4.77, 4.70, 4.03) vs Colby Lewis, RHP (3.66, 3.99, 4.10), 7:05 PM CT

Several of the projection systems had a tough time with Lewis, as he had a shitty early career from 2002-2007, never posting a FIP below 5. He went over to Japan for the next two seasons and pitched out of his mind before returning to the team he started with. So far, his 2010 has looked a lot closer to his Japan years than his earlier MLB ones. The biggest difference is his strikeout rate, which hovered near the mid 6's before Japan but have been over 9 K/9 so far this season. He still walks a fair amount of batters though (3.68 BB/9 this year). Lilly has unsuprisingly been burned by the It could be an ugly game with Lilly pitching at the Launching Pad in Arlington, but hopefully it won't be too warm tomorrow night. Hopefully he strings together a few good starts and the Cubs move him for some more prospects.

Saturday Randy Wells, RHP (2.97, 3.47, 4.08) vs Derek Holland, LHP (4.42, 3.93, 4.90), 7:05 PM CT

Looking at those numbers for Wells really makes me shake my head at the bullpen talk. However, I'd probably keep him on my list of guys the Cubs should hang on to in the event of a fire sale. This is only his second season in the bigs (I don't think his 5.1 innings in 2008 count) so he should still be around in 2012 and 2013. If you look at Holland's strikeouts and walks, his numbers look great, but not surprisingly, given his home ballpark, he's had big problems with HRs. Here's hoping the right-leaning lineup pounds him.

Sunday Fail Whale, RHP (4.21, 4.12, 4.37) vs C.J. Wilson, LHP (3.53, 4.25, 3.69)

I'm not exactly sure what to make of C.J. Wilson's projections, as he was a reliever for pretty much all of his mlb career until this season, and that 3.69 FIP is still largely projecting him as one. He had an insane season last year, posting a 10.26 K/9 in 73.2 innings. He's pretty wild too, though not quite Marmol-esque. So far he's managed to keep things relatively under control as a starter. Silva had yet another decent start in his last outing, scattering 6 hits and giving up 2 runs, and most importantly inducing 11 grounders to only 7 liners/flyballs. It could get ugly to see the Rangers teeing off in him in that park though.

Mini Series Preview: Colorado Rockies (19-18) at Starlin Castro (16-22)

2010-05-17T10:38:00.004-05:00

This is only a 2-game series so I'll make this preview brief. Here are the Cubs and Rockies team numbers, with their NL rank in parentheses

Stat	Rockies	Cubs
wOBA	.337 (6th)	.341 (4th)
UZR	-3.3 (11th)	-0.6 (8th)
Starter FIP	4.05 (8th)	3.73 (4th)
Starter xFIP	4.17 (8th)	3.81 (4th)
Relief FIP	3.50 (3rd)	4.23 (12th)
Relief xFIP	4.42 (14th)	4.34 (11th)

Wow - I don't think I've ever seen as big of a FIP-xFIP split as the Rockies bullpen. They've been incredibly lucky with the HR ball, even more so considering where they play half their games. They've had decent luck on balls in play too, with a .283 BABIP in that cavern of a ballpark (contrast with the Cubs' pen's .335 BABIP)

Pitching matchups

Monday: Aaron Cook, RHP (4.58, 4.87, 4.37) vs Randy Wells, RHP (3.02, 3.66, 4.18), 7:05 PM CT
Cook is a groundball machine, guys who FIP tends to undervalue. He's pitched incredibly poorly this season, and from the looks of it a big part of it is his non-sinker fastball. It's tough to tell from Fangraphs' pitch value chart, since they combine all fastballs into one category, but he's seen a 10 to 15 run per 100 pitches drop in effectiveness. His secondary pitches have never been special either. He's still getting plenty of GB so it's probably his 4-seamer. Wells has done a great job at keeping up his stellar K rate, posting a full 2 K/9 higher than his breakout year last season, while walking even less batters and allowing fewer HRs. His bloated 4.57 ERA is pretty much entirely a factor of his .348 BABIP. I'm a broken record on this, but great work by Wells and Rothschild for avoiding the sophomore slump so far.

Tuesday: Jhoulys Chacin, RHP (3.54, 3.60, 4.65) vs Fail Whale, RHP (4.18, 4.26, 4.35), 7:05 pm CT
Who is this Chacin guy? I was never high on the Rockies rotation except for, of course, Ubaldo Jimenez. I saw the guy pitch in person last year and even from the upper deck I could tell how electric his stuff is. It's too bad the Cubs aren't facing him in this series, because I'd love to see it. I was surprised to see that he threw a no-hitter though. His stuff is as electric as Z's once was (with even MORE velocity) but he has an even bigger tendency to throw too many pitches early in the game. But I digress - I'm supposed to be writing about Chacin (dying laughing). He filled in for Jorge De La Rosa after he went down with a hand injury a few weeks ago and has pitched quite well despite the lousy projection. He gets a decent number of strikeouts and groundballs (a good fit for Coors) and has good projectability - he should be a #3 starter at worst going forward. Maybe not this year though. Silva, meanwhile, is on a roll, and is 4-0 despite throwing three straight starts that are much mroe typical of what we should expect from him - a total line of 16.1 IP, 25 hits, 11 runs, 11 strikeouts, 6 walks (more than I expected), 28:20 GB/FB ratio.

Series Preview: Pittsburgh Pirates (14-20) at Chicago Cubs (15-20)

2010-05-14T09:36:00.001-05:00

The Cubs were swept by the Pirates in their last meeting, and they're facing two of the same three pitchers from that series. The Pirates still aren't a good team.

Batters (wOBA, ZiPS RoS wOBA, UZR)

C Ryan Doumit, BHB (.344, .345, -4.0)
1B Jeff Clement, LHB (.224, .339, 0.9)
2B Akinori Iwamura, LHB (.243, .324, -8.2)
SS Ronny Cedeno, LOL (.283, .300, 4.7)
3B Andy Laroche, RHB (.337, .335, 0.6)
LF Lastings Milledge, RHB (.279, .318, -3.8)
CF Andrew McCutcheon, RHB (.380, .357, -1.0)

RF Garrett Jones, LHB (.339, .360, 0.9)

Pitchers (FIP, xFIP, RoS FIP)

Zach Duke, LHP (5.34, 4.74, 4.30)
Paul Maholm, LHP (5.26, 5.05, 4.10)
Charlie Morton, RHP (5.51, 4.00, 3.99)
Ross Ohlendorf, RHP (5.98, 6.81, 4.67)
Brian Burres, LHP (4.52, 5.73, 4.47)
Octavio Dotel, RHP (5.11, 4.23, 4.11)
Joel Hanrahan, RHP (3.98, 3.09, 3.54)
Javier Lopez, LHP (4.55, 4.87, 4.63)

Not exactly world-beaters. At least the Cubs don't have to face Charlie Morton this time.

For what little it's worth, I was one of the last people to admit that Ronny Cedeno sucked at baseball, defending him for a long time after it was obvious that Theriot was a much better player than he was. I guess he's just another one of those guys whose minor league numbers never translated. I wonder if his forgettable 2006 season hurt his development.

Injuries
Cedeno has a bruised wrist from a HBP on Monday, but should be okay. Ryan Church also has a bruised wrist and missed the last 5 games. Brendan Donnelly is helping the Pirates pen by not pitching, currently on the DL with an oblique strain. Chris Jakubasukas is still out following a scary liner to the back of his head off the bat of Lance Berkman. And former Cub trade pieces Kevin Hart and Jose Ascanio are both recovering from torn labrum surgeries. For the Cubs, Theriot is day to day with right hamstring stiffness. Grabow had a cortisone shot in his knee and has been available for the past 3 games, but hasn't pitched.

Players to watch Gotta go with Ohlendorf and Burres. They're the two worst pitchers on the Pirates staff, so of course they'll pitch back-to-back one hitters. For the Cubs, Starlin Castro has this spot as long as he's in the bigs. He's pretty much my main reason to tune in these days.

Pitching matchups
Friday Brian Burres, LHP (4.52, 5.73, 4.47) vs Tom Gorzelanny, LHP (2.72, 3.34, 3.98), 1:20 PM CT
I was cautiously optimistic about Gorzelanny going into the season, expecting him to put up average-ish numbers. What I was not expecting was for him to strike out over a batter per inning. His K rate will drop as the season goes on, but I'm inclined to believe the improvment is for real. Gotta tip your cap to Larry Rothschild. Here's hoping the Cubs move him at the deadline for someone good. Burres blanked the Cubs for 7 innings in his last start, despite giving up a large number of fly balls (which never left the yard) and walking three batters. Hopefully the Cubs batted ball luck turns around in this start.

Saturday Paul Maholm, LHP (5.26, 5.05, 4.10) vs Ryan Dempster, RHP (3.83, 3.61, 3.69), 12:05 PM CT
Maholm also gave up a ton of contact in his last start vs the Cubs, though his luck manifested itself differently. He allowed a ton of baserunners (11 in 6 innings) without missing bats (only 1 strikeout) but only gave up 2 runs. 2010 Cubs baseball - feel the excitement! Demp had his 37th wasted quality start of the season in his game vs the Pirates, giving up 3 runs while striking out 7 in a wasted 7 innings of work.

Sunday Ross Ohlendorf, RHP (5.98, 6.81, 4.67) vs Ted Lilly, LHP (5.21, 4.38, 4.01), 1:20 PM CT
Ted hasn't looked quite the same since coming back, though this is still basically spring training for him. His fastball is only averaging around 85, and while it seems like he hasn't had great control with his pitches, I was surprised to see that he's only walked 4 batters this year. Still he's not fooling many batters (only 4.88 K/9) and they're making decent contact off of him. Maybe it's time for the Cubs to move Jay Jackson and Cashner into the rotation so they can further shore up the bullpen with Lilly and Dempster. Ohlendorf made his first start back from an injury last week in Cincy, and pitched an uninspiring 4 innings, walking 4 and striking out 3. He's a fly-ball pitcher who has not surprisingly been bit by the home run ball often in his career. If the wind's blowing out Sunday's game might be a long one.

Series Preview (and a Castro-inspired trip down memory lane) Marlins (14-17) at Cubs (14-18)

2010-05-09T20:19:00.001-05:00

Since I've pretty much given up on this season already, I (mostly) enjoyed this series. We were talking about it in the comments a few days ago, but Friday's game was the most exciting Cubs game any of us could remember going back to 2008. Honestly I can't pull out a specific game memory out of any of the 2009 games, but I can list off four great ones from 2008 that were just as memorable:

Sep 20, 2008: Cubs 5 - 4 Cardinals . The greatest Cubs team any of us will see in our lifetimes capped off a fantastic season at home over their biggest rivals. Of course, they were also nice enough to do it in the one game I attended all year (dying laughing)

Sep 18, 2008: Cubs 7 - 6 Brewers, 12 innings. The Cubs were down by 4 runs and facing Brewers closer Salomon Torres. With 2 outs the Cubs rallied to score 4 runs, including a game-tying 3-run HR by Geovany Soto. The Cubs went on to win it in extras on a Derrek Lee walkoff single

July 28, 2008: Cubs 11 - 4 Brewers. The Cubs went into a big 4-game series at Miller park tied with the surging Brewers. The Brewers sent Sabathia to the mound in the first game, who had been mowing down the National league since being traded to the Crew. The Cubs eked out a win in this game, and went on to utterly embarrass the Brewers in their own park, outscoring them 31-11 in the 4 games.

And, of course Sep 14, 2008: Cubs 5 - 0 Astros.

After all that I'm too lazy to write much of a preview (dying laughing)

The Marlins have a pretty crummy offense (.318 wOBA), but then again so do many teams at this point in the season. It's strange that their two best hitters (Ramirez and Uggla) are their middle infielders. Go figure.

They're below average on the field as well, as their defense has cost them roughly half a win thus far. As per usual though, their pitching staff has put up a respectable 3.92 FIP, and it's not all smoke and mirrors as their xFIP is 4.14. I guess it's not that surprising given the pitchers' park they play half their games in.

Matchups

Monday Nate Robertson, LHP (5.55, 5.59, 4.56) vs Ted Lilly, LHP (5.44, 4.06, 4.06), 7:05 PM CT

Robertson is a guy that I wished the Cubs had gone after when they were shopping Milton Bradley. The Tigers pretty much dumped him on the Marlins, paying all of his salary minus the league minimum. For some reason I thought he was right-handed. I thought that the transition to the National League would have helped him (he moved from one pitchers' park to another one), but so far not so much. Lilly just had one of those games in his last outing. It's still spring training for him, and he's a flyball guy. He had a few blowout losses in April last year too. I'm not too worried. One nice thing about Lilly is that he tends to (or at least seems to, I'm being lazy today) give up runs in bunches, so overall he's more helpful to a team than a guy like Silva who you can pretty much count on for 6 innings and 3-4 runs every time. Lilly either gets hammered or shuts them down.

Tuesday Ricky Nolasco, LHP (4.37, 3.90, 3.63) vs Randy Wells, RHP (2.60, 3.44, 4.09) , 7:05 PM CT

Speaking of Cubs pitchers getting hammered, Wells was hit hard in his last start. Though seeing how it didn't make a dent in his FIP numbers some of it was bad luck - his BABIP skyrocketed to .383....but that's right in line with the ridiculous 25.5% LD rate he's posted so far. Nolasco turned in a great 2009 despite his 5+ ERA. He struck out more than a batter an inning, walked 2.14 per nine and had a reasonable HR rate of 1.12 HR/9. He had some bad babip luck (.336), and presumably some bad defense behind him too. Maybe the Cubs could trade Lee for him and move him to the bullpen?

Wednesday Chris Volstad, RHP (4.25, 4.42, 4.47) vs Tom Gorzelanny, LHP (2.71, 3.34, 3.93), 1:20 PM CT

I seem to remember Volstad shutting down the Cubs in their first look at him last year. But my memory is usually pretty faulty. He doesn't strike out very many, but gets a fair number of ground balls. Expect a WAG-fest. Gorzelanny is the 2009 Randy Wells of this season - he just can't get any run support. Huge props to the Cubs for landing him for two guys who are on the DL with torn labrums. Even bigger props to the Cubs and Rothschild in particular for jacking up that K rate - he's struck out more than a batter an inning ever since he joined the team. That was a real steal by Hendry.

I'm out of the prediction game, but I do like the fact that the Cubs face two lefties. Go Castro Go!

Starlin Castro

2010-05-07T21:48:00.001-05:00

Wow.

Castro to the Bigs

2010-05-07T10:34:00.003-05:00

The Cubs called up Starlin Castro today, and I'm a little giddy. I think he's going to be pretty good and do think it is the right move. I'm going to list the reasons why and then my reservations

Why it's a good move

He's tearing up AA, posting a .423 wOBA (as a SS, no less), and hit well in the AFL against the top pitchers in the minors

Theriot is moving to 2b, and while I admit that the defensive metrics think he's okay at SS, everyone agrees he's a plus 2b. Either way as far as defensive value goes it's a lateral move. Moving Aramis Ramirez to SS would be offset by the fact that you'd have his bat playing at SS. Though I guess that's not true of last-month-Ramirez.

More importantly, Bakenot has been seriously underperforming at 2b. Fontenot has posted a .299 wOBA and while he hasn't looked quite as shitty at the plate to me (seemingly less WAGs), he's only had 3 extra basae hits and no homers. Jeff Baker has posted a .287 wOBA but for the opposite reason - he's hitting for power (1 double, 1 triple, 2 HRs) but he has to get his bat on the ball first. In his defense though he has a .200 BABIP. Not so much for Fontenot (.323). And since Fontenot is the strong side of the platoon anyway that's doubly bad. Tracy was send down in the move but I would not be surprised to see Fontenot moved by the trade deadline if Castro sticks around. The Cubs would have 3 2b, and Theriot and Baker are the better options to back up SS and 3b, respectively

The bad

Lou Pineilla is an impatient guy (witness Felix Pie). I'm worried the Cubs don't give him a long enough shot, though at least he has plenty of options, unlike Pie did. It's important he gets off to a good start. Lou did really seem to like him in ST though, so that should help.

Along the same lines, the scouting reports I remember on Castro were that he was still pretty raw, though Total Zone seems to like him. I'm worried that an impatient Lou will move him over to 2b and Theriot back to SS, and inertia will set in.

His AA stats this year are still a small sample size, FWIW. He still has room for improvement, and this move starts his service clock.

The Cubs could be expecting the red-hot Castro to turn the team around, and that's a lot of pressure for a young player

Overall though I still think this is a positive move, and a key point I haven't heard many people mention yet is that Castro still has TONS of options. It's not like they're rushing a guy who was supposed to get a cup of coffee with the team for the next 3-4 years before making the bigs. He earned this promotion.

Series Preview: Chicago Cubs (13-16) at Cincinnati Reds (14-14)

2010-05-06T21:05:00.003-05:00

I guess I'm out of the predictions game.

The Reds are coming off a series win against the Mets. Everyone was writing them off after the first few weeks of the season, but now they're suddenly at .500. They're certainly not doing it with their offense (.313 team wOBA). Their starting pitching is a below-average 4.49 FIP. Their bullpens is pretty good (3.90 FIP, 3.74 xFIP - 2nd best in the NL). Their defense is also below average (-2.3 UZR). So maybe this is a bit of a mirage, though many of the projectatrons did like them in the offseason.

Batters

C Ramon Hernandez, RHB (.327, .319, -0.7)
1B Joey Votto, LHB (.404, .383, 0.0)
2B Brandon Phillips, RHB (.326, .342, -3.0)
SS Orlando Cabrera, RHB (.297, .325, -14.4)
3B Scott Rolen, RHB (.362, .352, 5.6)
LF Jonny Gomes, RHB (.264, .338, -9.9)
CF Drew Stubbs, RHB (.265, .292, 16.4)
Jay Bruce, LHB (.340, .336, 0.0)

Pitchers

Aaron Harang, RHP (5.06, 3.82, 4.13)
Mike Leake, RHP (3.96, 4.37, -)
Johnny Cueto, RHP (4.50, 4.49, 4.23)
Bronson Arroyo, RHP (4.38, 4.71, 4.46)
Homer Bailey, RHP (4.59, 4.59, 4.33)
Francisco Cordero, RHP (4.11, 4.36, 3.48)
Arthur Rhodes, LHP (2.73, 2.55, 3.31)
Nick Masset, RHP (4.36, 2.55, 3.83)

I said this last time the Cubs played the Reds, but I'm still kind of surprised the projection systems liked this team so much. Also, that defense looks pretty atrocious. One thing the Reds do have going for them is their pen (as mentioned above). It's probably the only quality pen in the NL central.

Injuries
Chris Dickerdoodle is on the DL with a broken bone in his hand and will be out until June. Edinson Volquez's Rookie of the Year campaign was halted by his PED 'suspension' earlier this year - he's not missing time he would have missed but he is losing out on a fair chunk of salary. Drew Stubbs has come down with a slight case of sucking. Hopefully it will meet its mate in Aramis Ramirez and they'll run away together.

Players to watch
That Joey Votto guy is pretty good at hitting. So is Soriano, who is still white-hot.

Pitching matchups
Friday: Carlos Silva, RHP (4.17, 4.12, 4.39) vs Homer Bailey, RHP (4.59, 4.59, 4.33), 6:10 PM CT
Silva was hit hard in his last start, and a big part of it was the home-run ball. His sinker must not have been working as well for him, since he gave up more fly balls than grounders for the first time this year. Bailey has been struggling with his control this year (4.13 BB/9), though control is not what he's known for. He threw 122 pitches in his last start, and has topped 100 in every start this year. Maybe we can hope he'll be a little gassed.

Saturday: Tom Gorzelanny, LHP (2.69, 3.70, 3.96) vs Aaron Harang, RHP (5.06, 3.82, 4.13), 6:10 PM CT
Harang has a terrible ERA, mainly due to a unlucky .353 BABIP and HR/FB rate pushing 20%. However, he has improved on his already admirable walk rate, walking less than 2 batters per nine. There were rumors floating around that they could pull a Zambrano on him, moving him to the pen, which is especially dumb because he IS the best starter on the team and they have a good pen. It was probably just interweb speculation.

Gorz had a great outing in his last start, racking up a career high in strikeouts and finally getting some run support. He looks like a whole new pitcher this year. Even when he had his breakout season with Pittsburgh in 2007, he only struck out 6 batters per nine (his peripherals were actually pretty bad that year - 4.88 xFIP). This year he's been striking out nearly a batter an inning. He's had a but of luck with home runs, but things are looking pretty good, even if you ignore the fact that both the players the Cubs traded to get him (Hart and Ascanio) are currently recovering from torn labrums. Great work, Larry Rothschild.

Sunday Ryan Dempster, RHP (3.75, 3.51, 3.68) vs Cy Leake, RHP (3.96, 4.37, -), 12:10 PM CT
Demp has his 157th wasted quality start of the season on tuesday. He's been pounding the strike zone, dropping his walk rate even lower than his 2.93 BB/9 from last year (which is waaay lower than I expected). This will probably be another 3-2 game where Leake allows 14 baserunners in 5 innings but only gives up 2 runs, just like the last start. He walked 7 in 6 2/3 innings in his major league debut against the Cubs but only gave up one run. He walked 5 in his next start, but in the 3 starts following those he seems to have gotten over his jitters, only walking 4 in those starts combined.

PredictionAfter the last series, I'm not going to make one. Though I guess I was right that a sweep was inevitable.

Series Preview: Chicago Cubs (13-13) at Pittsburgh Pirates (10-15)

2010-05-03T22:48:00.001-05:00

Despite the recent offensive explosion, it's tough to believe that the Cubs offense is pretty good. They've scored the 4th-most runs in the NL, trailing the Diamondbacks (who have scored the most but have an awful pitching staff), Phillies (not surprising), and Dodgers (kind of surprising, though they've had some pitching problems too), and one run ahead of the Brewers offense. Looking at wOBA, among NL teams they trail the D-Backs and Brewers and are shockingly ahead of the run-scoring machine that is the Philadelphia Phillies. What the hell? Offensive explosion in the last series aside, it has felt like nearly every game this season has been a repeat of the Natinals/Mets/Astros series.

Luckily, the Cubs are heading to play Pittsburgh, whose season makes those godawful series look like exciting baseball. The Pirates have been outscored by 89 runs in only 25 games this season - on average they have coughed up 3-4 more runs per game than they've scored. They're "lucky" to have notched even 10 wins. The extreme shittiness of the Astros and Pirates this season should help the wild card chances of the other NL central teams, though the Brewers might have already dug themselves in too deep a hole for their shambolic pitching staff to bounce back from. Here are their primary players (note - I'm going to switch to using the updated ZiPS projections, since they're already on fangraphs)

Batting (wOBA, updated ZiPS wOBA, CHONE projected defensive runs)

Ryan Doumit, BHB (.385, .350, -3.4)
Jeff Clement, LHB (.231, .341, -0.8)
Akinori Iwamura, LHB (.292, .332, -1.6)
Ronny Cedeno, RHB (.255, .297, -0.8)
Andy LaRoche, RHB (.373, .338, 1.8)
Lastings Milledge, RHB (.264, .319, -3.2)
Andrew McCutcheon, RHB (.362, .357, 0)
Garrett Jones, LHB (.347, .364, -3.8)

Pitching (FIP, xFIP, ZiPS FIP)

Zach Duke, LHP (5.59, 5.00, 4.31)
Paul Maholm, LHP (4.70, 4.61, 3.94)
Charlie Morton, RHP (7.28, 3.98, 4.14)
Brian Burres, LHP (5.35, 6.31, 4.52)
Jeff Karstens, RHP (5.40, 5.28, 4.73)
Octavio Dotel, RHP (6.30, 4.46, 4.00)
Joel Hanrahan, RHP (5.68, 3.99, 3.48)
Brendan Donnelly, RHP (7.53, 6.16, 4.22)

They've had some crappy luck (team hitting BABIP: .275, pitching BABIP .335, on top of underperformance) but it's not like there's a ton to work with there. Andrew McCutcheon is going to be pretty good, so I guess the Pirates have that going for them. I wonder who they'll trade him for in 2 years?

Injuries
Garrett Jones missed Saturday's game after surgery to remove a chunk of roast beef from Friday's post-game spread that became lodged in his esophagus. He played on Sunday so I guess he's okay. McCutcheon is day-to-day with a sprained right ankle. Brendan Donnelly has a strained side muscle, though looking at his numbers he's probably better off not pitching. Ross Ohlendorf, one of their rotation 'mainstays' is on the DL with back spasms and should miss one more start before returning (Thursday is his usual turn in the rotation). Chris Jakubauskas is on the DL after a scary head injury from a screaming liner off the bat of Lance Berkman. He seems okay - he never lost consciousness and cat scans showed no skull fractures but the team is wisely taking it easy with him. Former Cubs Jose Ascanio and Kevin Hart, the two pieces in the Gorzelanny/Grabow deal, both have torn labrums. Ascanio had his surgery in February and Hart is having his today.

For the Cubs, Silva's wrist is still bothering him, and his next start was pushed back a day. IIRC he injured it while batting a start or two ago. Caridad is working his way back, and threw an inning in extended spring training yesterday. He should be heading to Iowa next, and could rejoin the team this weekend in Cincy.

Players to watch
McCutcheon and Doumit are both pretty good players, and they're pretty much the only guys who have been hitting on the team. As for the Cubs, you have to go with the white-hot Soriano. The fact that the Cubs are facing 2 lefties this series isn't going to hurt his chances at extending his hot-hitting streak.

Pitching matchups
Tuesday: Ryan Dempster, RHP (3.48, 3.61, 3.64) vs Paul Maholm, LHP (4.70, 4.61, 3.94), 6:05 PM CT
Demp has pitched well this year, and gave a good outing that wasn't supported by his offense (8 innings, 3 runs, 2 HR). Obviously he can't be the Ace. Hitters aren't making very good contact off of him - he's posted a 10.5% LD rate so far this season, which is a big reason why he has a .243 BABIP. The most you can say about Maholm, who is probably the Pirates erstwhile ace, is that he 'battles' and 'keeps his team in the game' with his sucky pitching. Honestly, I'd rather have a more volatile guy like Ted Lilly, who is more likely to throw a bunch of really good starts and have a blowout or three (like his last start) to even out his numbers.

Wednesday: Ted Lilly, LHP (5.90, 4.22, 3.99) vs Charlie Morton, RHP (7.28, 3.98, 4.14), 6:05 PM CT
Speaking of Ted Lilly, he's getting the next start. I'm not *too* worried about Lilly - as I mentioned above he's the kind of guy who just gets shelled a few times a year because of his flyball tendencies. He's also still coming back from that injury, and from what I've heard he didn't have great control (Lilly's calling card) in his first start either (he got some help from a hack-tastic lineup). Charlie Morton was a guy a lot of people in the Pittsburgh FO thought would break out this season, but he's been terrible - mainly due to the HR ball as he's allowed 7 in only 19 innings (check out his xFIP). He's also had an absolutely horrendous .439 BABIP on balls that don't leave the yard, though that's right in line with the 31.9% LD rate he's posted. He's a decent pitcher and this should be a good matchup.

Thursday: Randy Wells, RHP (2.35, 3.20, 4.11) vs (probably) Brian Burres, LHP (5.35, 6.31, 4.52), 6:05 PM CT
Brian Burres has been filling in for Ohlendorf and should get the start, but the Pirates might opt with the right-handed Brian Bass given the Cubs right-leaning lineup. He pitched 5 1/3 scoreless innings in his last start but wasn't really fooling anyone. He's had big control problems throughout his career. Wells has sure done a good job os silencing the doubters who figured he'd go into a sophomore slump this year (though there's still plenty of time...). His strikeout rate has jumped by over 2 batters per nine innings, and he's walking one less batter per nine as well. Obviously he's had a bit of HR luck but he's pitched pretty well - he's even been quite unlucky with balls in play (.370 BABIP) but still pitched quite effectively.

Prediction Even when teams are very far apart a sweep is never the most likely outcome, but I'm going to say the Cubs do it anyway. They're throwing their three best pitchers in the rotation this series against (possibly) two left-handers and the anemic Pirates offense. Wednesday's game should be the only one that's close.

New Dogs!

2010-05-02T14:22:00.005-05:00

We adopted two new dogs today - Honey and Lucky

Honey (the female) is 5 and Lucky (the male) is 7. Their bio didn't specifically say so, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were brother + sister. They were surrendered to rescue when their former owners were divorced and could not care for them on their own. It looks like Lucky has cataracts but we heard conflicting information from the rescue people.

We've only had them for a day and they've already settled in. Lucky is much more laid back and likes to hang out with his people. Honey is much more active and likes to keep an eye on everything - she likes to sleep on top of the couch/chair in our living room, and checks out the windows from time to time when we have the curtains open. Honey has a natural tail and it's absolutely beautiful - it looks a lot like a golden retriever's tail.

Kira was a little displeased when the dogs first turned up, but now she seems okay (though Jennie thinks that she's still not all that pleased). She and Lucky were sleeping next to each other this morning so things seem to be fine. I think the biggest issue is on walks, since she moves so much more slowly than the others due to her age and blindness. But I think having some dogs to lead the way should really help her out.

Series Preview: Arizona Diamondbacks (10-11) vs Chicago Cubs (10-12)

2010-04-29T09:47:00.001-05:00

The Diamondbacks head to Wrigley for 4 straight day games this week. I honestly didn't know much about this team before looking at the numbers. I knew a few of their players that had been around for awhile, such as Upton (who deserves the title of Most Exciting Young Player far more than Alcides Escobar), Drew, Young, Reynolds, and Haren, but had no idea how they were doing. Upton especially is a guy who's seemingly been ticketed for superstardom for awhile but was merely really, really good in 2009 (4.7 WAR season) after struggling in his first year as a regular in 2008.

Looking at their numbers so far, the team has been clubbing the ball, with many of their regulars (Johnson especially) outperforming their projections by a wide margin in the small sample of the season so far. They've posted a .349 wOBA, 4th in the majors. Their pitching, however, has more than made up for it. Their staff has posted a 4.81 FIP, only ahead of the Royals, Pirates, and Natinals. The bullpen has been especially fail-tastic. However, overall they've been incredible unlucky with HRs, as their xFIP stands at 4.29.

Hitters (wOBA, CHONE wOBA, CHONE projected defense)

C Chris Snyder, RHB (.352, .329, 1.4)
1b Adam LaRoche, LHB (.383, .359, -2.9)
2b Kelly Johnson, LHB (.470, .349, 3.0)
SS Stephen Drew, LHB (.369, .332, 0.0)
3b Mark Reynolds, RHB (.393, .365, -3.8)
lf Gerardo Parra, LHB (.257, .325, 2.9)
cf Chris Young, RHB (.354, .313, -2.5)
rf Justin Upton, RHB (.300, .383, 4.5)

Pitchers (FIP, xFIP, CHONE FIP)

Dan Haren, RHP (3.84, 2.87, 3.24)
Edwin Jackson, RHP (4.42, 4.25, 4.41)
Ian Kennedy, RHP (5.76, 4.04, 4.70)
Rodrigo Lopez, RHP (4.20, 3.94, 4.68)
Kris Benson, RHP (4.41, 5.72, 5.37)
Chad Qualls, RHP (5.08, 3.25, 3.41)
Juan Gutierrez, RHP (5.52, 5.21, 4.04)
Bob Howry, RHP (8.56, 4.80, 4.41)

Injuries
Still not much to report on the Cubs front. Caridad has been throwing in Arizona and could rejoin the team as soon as Saturday. For the Diamondbacks, their regular LF Conor Jackson is on the DL with a strained right hamstring. Former PECOTA favorite Miguel Montero is out 4 to 6 weeks with a meniscus tear in his knee suffered in mid-April. Worm-killer Brandon Webb is still on the 60-day DL following shoulder surgery from last season. There's no timetable on his return.

Players to watch
The bullpens. Each team has had horrendous performances from their pens. I don't see Arizona moving Dan Haren to the 8th inning.

Pitching matchups

Thursday: Ian Kennedy, RHP (5.76, 4.04, 4.70) vs Ted Lilly, LHP (2.74, 4.34, 4.10), 1:20 PM CT
Kennedy has been racking up the strikeouts this year (21 in 22.1 innings), but has been stung by the HR ball (6 HRs in his first 4 starts). He missed most of last year after surgery to deal with an anuerysm. Lilly was a little wild in his last start (by his usual standards at least), but the hack-happy Brewers were happy to help him out by swinging at a lot of his pitches. Hopefully Chris Young doesn't make him slam down his glove again.

Friday:Rodrigo Lopez, RHP (4.20, 3.94, 4.68) vs Randy Wells, RHP (2.29, 3.53, 4.27), 1:20 PM CT
Lopez keeps bouncing from team to team, built on 2 BABIP-fueled good seasons with Baltimore in 2002 and 2004. He has decent control, but gives up too many HRs and doesn't strike out enough to make up for it. He was hammered by the Phillies in his last start. Wells has pitched quite well this year, improving his strikeout rate while dropping his already great walk rate even lower, and put up his numbers despite a .356 BABIP. However, he has yet to give up a HR this season. He's not as good as his numbers so far, but it certainly looks like his chances of avoiding the sophomore slump are pretty good.

Saturday:Dan Haren, RHP (3.84, 2.87, 3.24) vs Carlos Silva, RHP (3.00, 4.08, 4.67), 12:05 PM CT
Haren is great at throwing baseballs. Like the rest of the staff, he's had some problems with HRs this year (six so far), but the rest of his peripherals are even better than his career numbers. Dave Cameron wrote an interesting piece on Silva's new approach yesterday - basically Silva is now throwing a lot more changeups to LHH rather than a heavy dose of fastballs as he had previously done. Silva's had a big platoon split over his career, but this change in his pitch mix should help out his overall numbers since changeups don't really have a big split. His numbers against RHH are right in line with his career values, so it looks like this success vs LHP is a big portion of his success this season.

Sunday:Edwin Jackson, RHP (4.42, 4.25, 4.41) vs Tom Gorzelanny, LHP (2.49,4.04,4.43), 1:20 PM CT
Speaking of pitchers and changeups, Edwin Jackson's changeup isn't very good, and more importantly it's taking away from his success last season that came from a greater reliance on his slider. Maybe he doesn't have a good handle on it yet this year. He was crushed by Colorado in his last start, surrendering 10 runs in 2.1 innings. Gorzelanny had another wasted start on monday, giving up 2 runs in 7 innings though his strikeout rate (as expected) dropped a bit. I'd love to see the Cubs move him in a hypothetical deal for a Eighth Inning Guy™ which would also solve the problem of moving Z back to the rotation. He's probably the most fungible guy in the rotation - Wells has too much value due to cost-control, Lilly still has the injury question, though he does have the expiring deal, and Silva has too much $$.

Prediction
I like most of these matchups (except Saturday of course), but this is the Cubs we're talking about. They'll get a split and feel lucky to do so. Get used to seeing the Cubs hover around .500

Thanks, IRS!

2010-04-26T18:36:00.001-05:00

I just received an ominious looking letter from the IRS. As it turned out, I made a mistake on my taxes...I forgot to claim a credit. They went in, calculated the credit, and sent me an extra $800. Wow!

Starting to climb on the Tyler Colvin Bandwagon

2010-04-26T11:43:00.002-05:00

I was pretty skeptical of the New and Improved Tyler Colvin this spring training, and would rather the Cubs had sent him to AAA to get regular playing time. Even then, I didn't think that he'd ever be more than a 4th outfielder. After the first 20 or so games here this season, I'm starting to change my mind. The kid can hit. He's not this good, but his likelihood of ever becoming a MLB regular in my mind has risen by about 50% or so in my mind.

The Sabertoothed Anteater

Now You Know

Wisconsin Non-Con recap

NFL season predictions

UNLV 17 - 51 Wisconsin

Summer TV Countdown: #2 Parks and Recreation and #5 Community

Summer TV Countdown #14: Dexter

Summer TV Countdown #17: Castle

Summer project

Wisconsin loses in Sweet 16 to Butler

Various cubs blogs to join forces (Updated)

Gender Bias in mathematics (with an assist from baseball)

Your turn, Bears

FF XIII quasi-review/extended rant (and general rambling about the FF landscape)

Why Wisconsin lost

Rose bowl halftime thoughts

Quick prediction

Forget fixing the BCS - how to fix the other bowls

Well done, Cubs

How the roster is shaping up

Cubs sign Carlos Pena

File under "can you believe this shit"

Goodbye, Ronnie

NFC Playoff Craziness

Okay, maybe the Bears are good after all

Going bowling

Everything's coming up roses

Nagging Badger worries

Wisconsin 34 - 13 Purdue: Badgers take care of business (eventually)

Election Post-mortem Rant

Big Ten Power Poll: Week 4

Vikings at Packers preview

Playoff Scenarios

Wisconsin 31 - 30 Iowa: Letdown game avoided

Preview: Wisconsin at Iowa

The Scrap Heap

Big Ten Power Poll, week 3

A Rant about Rants about the BCS

VICTORY: aOSU 18 - Wisconsin 31 (update: with Packers prediction)

The Scrap Heap

Packers 13 - 16 Redskins: We've seen this shit before

Packers - Redskins preview

Badgers win 41-23, Big 10 Power Poll

Brett Favre may be suspended, forced into early retirement

Minnesota (1-4, 0-1) at Wisconsin (4-1, 0-1) preview

NLDS Preview: Braves vs Giants

Packers LB Nick Barnett out for the season with broken wrist

Playoff predictions

NLDS: Reds at Phillies

Big Ten Power Poll: Week 2

Green Bay 28 - 26 Detroit: More mistakes

Wisconsin 24 - 34 Michigan State: What we learned this week

Preview: #11 Badgers (4-0, 0-0) at #24 Sparty (4-0,0-0), 2:30 PM CT (*UPDATED*)

Packers-Bears Postmortem

Stat of the Game

Preview: Packers (2-0) at Bears (2-0)

Big Ten Power Poll: Week 0

That's more like it: Badgers win 70-3

Preview: Austin Peay at Wisconsin

Midweek Scrap Heap

Green Bay 37 - Buffalo 7 (and Washington 27 - Houston 30)

Preview: Bills at Packers

Borland may be done for the season

Arizona State defeats Arizona state (UW wins 20-19)

Spurs 3 - 1 Wolves

NFL Apocalypse looming - can baseball take advantage?

Game preview: Arizona State (2-0) at Wisconsin (2-0)

Tottenham Hotspur Traveling Ambulance at Wolves (preview)

Spurs draw, Mini-Scrap Heap

Mini-preview: Spurs at Werder Bremen (Champions League Group Stage)

Crappy journalism

Packers win 27-20

Preview: Green Bay (0-0) at Team that Shall Not be Acknowledged (0-0)

Wisconsin 27 - 14 San Jose St.

Preview: Wisconsin Badgers vs San Jose St. Cupcakes

NFL season predictions

Bowl projections

UNLV 21 - 41 Wisconsin

I have returned

A few other random NFL thoughts

Preview: #11 Badgers (4-0, 0-0) at #24 Sparty (4-0,0-0), 2:30 PM CT (UPDATED)