Thursday, December 3, 2009

The Vent: 12-3 Edition

Things in the Sports World that confuse me , annoy me and/or make me scratch my head:

5-Henry Blanco Gets Another Year In The Bigs

One of the certainties of baseball, if your a back-up catcher, you get to play for as long as you want, even if you aren't a high-enough caliber player to start. Blanco is a player who does one thing well (throw out base-stealers) but seeing him play into his late 30's reminds me of the time on Family Guy where Chris Griffin yells out loud "how does Kevin Costner keep finding work?"

At some point every year, i'll be watching a game that Blanco is playing in and my mental gut reaction is: This guy is still playing in the bigs?. While he has value on the defensive end of thing, he doesn't bring much to the line offensively with a career line of .228/.292/.366 67 OPS+. On the bright side his bat should fit in well with the rest of the Mets offense.

4- Marco Scutaro, high demand free agent?

Another thing i've noticed this winter is that several teams have expressed interest in Marco Scutaro. I'm calling it right now, some team is going to horribly over pay for him and regret it for the next 3-4 years. While he is a smarter investment than Blanco and is good enough to get a starting job somewhere, he doesn't strike me as a player worth this high of a demand.

Yes he did have his best season offensively (at age 33). Based on his track record, it seems likely that he will regress to the slightly-below league average hitter he was in every season prior to '09. Any player generating this interest and having Tony Graffanino rank second in career similarity scores seems like a recipe for disaster.

Also, part of his improved output can be traced to being a bit luckier as his BABIP last year was .308 which is higher than his .293 career BABIP...this is another reason why teams should not be lining up around the corner to sign him....

3- Alcorn State....beyond bad

Alcorn State.....98-31....sure these money games against big schools are going to end in lopsided losses but....this makes their 130-68 loss to Arkansas look respectable in comparison......not even the New Jersey Nets have been this terrible.....but like the Nets they have a legitimate chance of not winning a game all season

2- Running Backs Dropping Like Flies

My fantasy team's inability to stay healthy at Running Back....Turner, Portis/Betts........possible downfall to my season

1-Bucks 1-5 in the last two weeks

It's not like the Bucks have a high past standard to play up to. It was inevitable the Bucks would struggle at some point and Jennings was going to experience some growing pains.....still doesn't make it a desirable thing to see. My concern lies more with this teams inability to close out close games than anything else. Jennings will eventually adjust to the league but this teams failing to capitalize on winnable games against Dallas, New Orleans, Washington and Orlando gives me the gut feeling this will be the root of their eventual demise (whenever that may be)

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