Elegy (R)
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Giant Fake Cow Wars, round two
From the “I can’t believe this is all real” files the Phillies have finally fired a shot back at our hated rivals … namely anyone who tries to support their baseball team with a giant, evil cow, or something.
So a couple weeks ago Chik-a-fil and the Atlanta Braves teamed up to give us this monstrosity:
Well, now the Phillies have teamed up with Turkey Hill to strike back with a giant cow of their own. The picture and more after the jump.
Why the Phillies are still in first place
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| Jose Reyes |
| NYPost |
Brian, over at Depressed Fan, ventures a guess. He’s talking about a play where Mets’ SS Jose Reyes side armed a throw that Carlos Delgado missed. Reyes was charged with an error and was not happy about it and responded by pouting, at which point our trusted narrator just rips into him. One of rules is talk bad about the Mets = get linked to. Simple as that.
Now I know why certain Mets fans think Reyes is a cancer. He is.
[snip]
It isn’t just Reyes, though. The entire Mets team is a disgrace to the sport. You’ve got Billy Wagner as the only accountable guy in the clubhouse. Delgado refusing to give curtain calls to his own fans. David Wright wearing white shoes. It disgusts me to watch that team.
[snip]
I don’t think I’m doing justice to exactly how much Reyes’ actions pissed me off. How can you expect to win when one of your “leaders” shows up his teammates on the field? Reyes deserves a code red, the only problem is there isn’t anyone man enough on their roster to do it. Wright’s too busy jumping around like an imbecile. Delgado’s a pacifist. Alou’s an octogenarian. I don’t know what Beltran is, I guess just a guy who strikes out looking to end the Mets’ best chance at a World Series title since 1986. Who is their leader? Luis Castillo, the slap-hitting second baseman they overpaid for?
Mets announcer Keith Hernandez noticed too. At least we’re not those guys.
The Aaron Rowand Problem
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| Aaron Rowand |
| bricksandivyradio.com |
Bill Baer, writing at Baseball Digest’s blog recently took a look how much, if at all, the Phillies are missing Aaron Rowand this year. After some statistical heavy lifting here is his conclusion:
Overall, there’s no question that Rowand is outperforming all of the Phillies center and right fielders (though Werth is close offensively but with over 100 less at-bats). If we hypothetically back-track and imagine that the Phillies were paying Rowand $8 million only for this season and weren’t bound to him contractually afterwards and never signed Jenkins as a free agent, they’d be paying about $8.5 million to Rowand and Victorino in center and right, respectively, and they’d be getting pretty good production.
Instead, the Phillies are paying about $7.2 million collectively to Victorino, Werth and Jenkins for less production, but save about $1.3 million. Jenkins, by far the most expensive of the bunch, is dragging them down significantly.
To answer my own question, no, the Phillies are not better off this season without Rowand, at least so far. Considering the contract he wanted and eventually got from the Giants, though, the Phillies are better off in the future.
I agree on all counts, and still wouldn’t have thrown they money that San Fran did at an aging center fielder but I feel like this might miss a pretty crucial aspect of Rowand’s game, namely leadership. It is worth mentioning that during his stint as a Phillie the team never lost the way we have recently.
Obscure Sixer Free Agent Options
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Everytime someone writes a look at which free agents the Sixers might have interest a few usual names - Antawn Jamison, Josh Smith and a few others - come up. Rarely do you see the Sixers linked to other free agents, probably because of the weak class. Anyway, in his column today ranking the best available free agents Chad Ford looks at two guys the Sixers might be considering that I hadn’t thought about. Their names and my thoughts after the jump
Brian Mitchell Talks DeSean Jackson
And plenty more. PhiladelphiaEagles.com caught up with the soon-to-be HOF running back / return guy in a good ‘where are they now’ segment. Here is he on the WR from Cal:
“The first thing I look for in a return guy is that he has to be fearless and from the clips I have seen on DeSean he is fearless,” Mitchell said. “I also like his speed and shiftiness, but a return man cannot be scared because I think it is the most dangerous job on the football field. This kid is fearless so I think he will be successful.”
Mitchell also talks predictions, Philly fans, and the ‘Body Bag Game’ where he took some snaps at QB against the Birds. Worth a read.
Barkley on the Sixers
Barkley on this Sixers’ cap space “just because you got it doesn’t mean you have to spend it.”
My general thought is that he’s right - with the weak free agent market out there I’d be fine with rolling the cap room forward and being open to adding a real stud when one comes becomes trade bait. Of course, Sir Charles says it better than I can so be sure to watch that video.
Barkley also talks AI2 “he’s got to improve his jump shot”
Josh Smith “he won’t make the Sixers the team to beat in the east.”
the Phillies “they’re going to have a chance to win a championship for the next five years” and “they’re cheaper than Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods,
and Philly fans in general “they’re always tougher on black guys here.”
h/t the 700 level
UPDATE: the video is acting up, but if you hit the link above it should take you to a clean version
Morning Rounds, June 30th
Morning Roundup: “Can I say his job is secure?” I don’t know what to say, if you want to know the truth. We’d have to find somebody to do his job first, I guess. … We’re trying to get him right, Myers’ best year is 14-9 as a starter [in 2003]. You stop and think about it, that’s not lighting it up. I mean, look, that’s not what you call a huge season.” - Charlie Manuel on Brett Myers
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| Phils opening-day starter Brett Myers |
| mopupduty.com |
Three lines on their world:
Congrats to Spain, your Euro 2008 Champion, Wimbledon is getting serious, and World Records are falling in the Olympic Trials.
Three lines on ours : The Phillies are awful, but remain in first, and the Sixers introduced their newest member (and kinda called him lazy).
Phillies, Birds, Sixers, Flyers and more from the interwebs first day away from the royal we, after the jump
Gunnin for that #1 Spot
I meant to get to this earlier today but got stuck reading about Deadspin’s turnover and trying to figure out what obscure Memphis Grizzles bloggers thought about the OJ Mayo/Kev Love trade (I see you, threeshadesofblue.blogspot.com, whoever you are). Anyway, I’ll try and keep this short and sweet — and only partly because Drew Lazor already did this better than I could in 200 words and I know if I run it too long you’re just going to opt for that one.
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| Tyreke Evans soars for two |
| Gunnin’ |
Last week I had the chance to catch an early release of Gunnin’ for that #1 Spot, a documentary tracking eight of the best prep school basketball players in the nation as they prepared for the first annual Elite 24 high-school all-star game.
As a basketball fan, the movie had a few real hooks for me, the first being the talent level of the game. Out of eight kids they profiled, five were drafted into the NBA yesterday, two are headed to college this year as Top 5-rated recruits, and one is Lance Stephenson — Marbury and Telfair’s little cousin who is getting New Yorker profiles written about him already. He’s about to be senior in high school. So just seeing them on the court together was interesting to me, and if you’re a hoops head, I recommend the movie for that reason alone. Seeing Mike Beasley demanding that he guards Kev Love because the latter is going off is great stuff.
The second was to get a look into the players’ lives off the court. You thought Beasley was a clown at the draft? Check him at his coaches’ home, or on a bus with the players. You think Jerryd Bayless was calm under pressure at ‘Zona? Maybe it was all that yoga he was doing.
The film has its flaws, and they’re obvious ones — the movie comes off rough and disorganized; MCA (yup), who directs the movie, doesn’t seem to waste film, which is odd considering the climax of the movie is the game itself, which several of the players do not perform well in and several other players who are undocumented are the stars of. Beyond that, you’re left with the feeling that most of what you saw you could’ve gotten at home by your computer. The Elite 24 game tapes are all over the Internet, as are the YouTube clips the movie literally lifts directly from the Interwebs and throws up on the silver screen.
Gunnin’ is a great idea, and I hope it becomes a tradition, for the reason that it immediately becomes basketball history. If you watch it as a movie, you’ll be let down, but if you watch it to try and see the future (I guess the present now) play ball, there are a lot worse ways to spend a couple hours.
Bissinger and Leitch: On Blogs and Media
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The Sports Complex is a blog that operates under the banner of the City Paper, a print outlet. As such we have sometimes come to a crossroads over what we should and can write here, and how it should be presented.
For example, when this blog was first starting I came across a pretty shocking anecdote about a local athlete. Both the athlete and the story were good enough that it would probably have drawn some attention. I had heard the story from someone I know and trust, and believed it to be true. But since the Sports Complex is a part of a traditional (well, as traditional as alt-weeklies can be) outlet, we knew that we couldn’t run the story without fully reporting it out. We came to a crossroads where one type of media had intersected with another. We decided not to run the story anywhere, for reasons both legal and ethical.
If we were a more traditional blog, we probably wouldn’t have run into the same problem, but in the long run it was probably good to have the check in place that we did. Anyway, I’m bringing this all up because today Will Leitch, the outgoing editor of deadspin, is running a Q&A that he had with Buzz Bissinger about this subject and more.
Those two, if you remember, have quite the history.
It is well worth checking out.
Full NBA Draft recap
After telling you what NBA teams should have done and how they should have done it, I think it’s only fair to provide what I’m calling “draft caps” - summaries on how teams actually fared.
ATJ your very own NBA draft recap from the Atlanta Hawks to the Zashington Wizards (see what I did there?)
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| last year’s entire first round |
| nba.com |