Daily Round Up- Friday March 13th

Its only fair that I start off with a game that ended five minutes ago. If you don’t know what game I’m talking about with that intro, then I don’t know what to tell you. The UConn/Syracuse game is one of those games you will be telling your kids about for a long time. Awesome game that makes it tough for me to hate on the college kids.

Everytime I think of Syracuse I think of Carmello Anthony and everytime I think of UConn I think of Ray Allen and Khalid El-Amin for some reason. I do know this, that kid A.J. Price is the real deal. They might have lost but he’s going to make a great PG for some team some day.


You’d think it was only fair that after spending a half a billion dollars on hitters and pitchers, the Yankees would find some pocket change to throw to bolster the bullpen. Then you look at the stats again and realize that despite logging in the second most innings for a group, the bullpen was actually rather good. In fact, the ERA of the group which was 3.79 (or basically half of what the Mets bullpen ERA was- Just kidding. Maybe not.), was good for fifth in the AL, the supposedly stronger league. No wonder Brian Cashman spent all that money on other areas, all those years of pounding the desk about drafting power arms is at least coming through. Mark Feinsad writes about the guys before Rivera and after C.C. and the pitching factory.

First off, I want full credit and 20% of all eventual profits that the Yankee machine will gross off the eventual t-shirt. Secondly, I like the Yankee bullpen. During the latter part of last year, you could tell that the bullpen had been overworked but it was not because of incompetence like all the other years (yes, a Joe Torre low blow, I promise to keep that to a minimum). You see a unit as much as Yankee fans did of the bullpen, you begin to appreciate them. Yankee fans had to be happy to see the bullpen succeed with their young stud arms. Having let go of all their big money disappointments, the Yankees went the shrewd way in one department and allowed their young smoking guns to log in the kind of experience that can only help them this year. Look for Brian Bruney to be especially good in the 8th inning set up role.


Good news Met fans, Johan Santana threw and nothing bad happened.

Now that this whole Johan Santana thing is all coming slowly lower in decibal level, I’m glad to report that the Mets can now focufy on righting the fifth reliever slot. What was once an embarrassment of riches has turned into simply an embarrassment. How can the Mets not look into Pedro Martinez when clearly their fifth reliever job is the kind of mess that needs a lot of fine tuning? Clearly it’s a hot potato because no one wants to hold on to the job.
Also, how can the Met ownership group, the Wilpons, deny that this Madoff thing isn’t affecting their business practices? I wish they would just fess up and say listen, we lost a lot of money thanks to this doofus and the economy isn’t helping us any so we have to play it safe this winter. Instead they talked about how everything was fine, and how they were ok, and left us, the Met fans, to wonder why we didn’t pony up the pesos to land Manny. I mean, a two year guarantee with a third year option for $75 million makes sense for a team that is good financially, going into a new stadium, and having their own television network making even more money for them. Somehow, someway, they think we are all fools and we believe them, or maybe they just don’t care what we believe about their current financial situation but they had better straighten out their public face, because if we go in the toilet offensively, all the talk about not needing Manny will come back and as some people know, its kind of hard to keep those reporters quiet.


While the Knicks are playing starting switch with their line up before the big summer of 2010, Larry Hughes has been the newest person on the hot seat. He had something to say about the big prize of 2010 and Knick fans, you might not want to see this one.

While everyone is applauding the Knicks and especially Larry Hughes for his recent performances, I don’t share the same sort of optimism in Larry Hughes. He has this well known reputation as a pouter and a guy who can throw team chemistry out the window all in the name of getting more shots for himself. Of course the Knicks, being the enablers that they are, tell him to be their shooting guard and with no clear offensive threat other than Nate Robinson who every team views as a sideshow freak anyway, Larry has taken it upon himself to launch every single shot and take every single lay up.
I know I’m judging based on very limited action I’ve seen. But this guy takes shots regardless of who’s open. Its always one on one with him. You know why those And One players never make it into the NBA? Because they can’t see past their own guy. They don’t understand team defense and why it’s so much more effective than a shut down defender. They do their one on one moves and then can’t seem to get past the second guy because they used all their energy to fake out the first guy. Larry is just like that.
Take for instance one play that I was ready to give him credit for and allow my heart to open up to the guy. He got the steal and he was clearly five steps behind Nate Robinson on a break away slam, and Nate slowed down eventually coming up underneath the rim, while Larry just went the length of the court to put in a lay up. How hard would it have been to assist to Nate? I just despise the selfish nature of Larry Hughes and considering he has a lot of skill and I respect his ability, it takes a lot for me to not like a Knick but he’s one guy I just can’t stand. I mean if he passed a bit more and became more of a complete player, not only would the team be better, but his scoring would eventually improve because teammates would trust him more. Now when they give him the ball, they do so knowing that they are not getting it back.



Someone wants Pedro at least. Well he’s a reporter and he wants him for karmic reasons to come back full circle. Bill Plaschke feels that Pedro should just come home.

Pedro is healthy supposedly. Pedro pitched great for the Dominican Republic recording a stat sheet that goes something like this: 2 G, 6 innings, 0 runs, 1 hit and 6 strikeouts. Vintage Pedro stuff. Of course, the problem with that is, as a Met fan who have the inside track on him, this is the kind of mirage like performance that can suck a team in into paying a guy 5 million too much to spend time on the disabled list which Pedro might do. Of course, the Mets should just take the chance given the fact that our stable of fifth starters suck and I wouldn’t trust Jon Neise as an every fifth day guy just yet. So Pedro on a one year flier sounds good to me.

To end, here’s Peter Vecsey handing out some justice to those who badly need it.

I’d call out Chris Webber on any commentary he does on clutch play. The man was one of the five worst clutch players in history considering his ginormous ability. Also, he’s in a top five un clutch moment in the history of sports. Add into the equation that every time during the peak years of Sacramento when they were legitimately challenging the Los Angeles Lakers during their title runs, he passed up big shot after big shot and deferred to Mike Bibby every time. He was almost afraid of ruining it for his team and thus did not want the rock, even if his team believed in him. I to this day believe the Kings were better than the Lakers in 2001, but just had incredibly bad luck.