Author: Vin

Vin is a Philly boy who shouldn't be invited into your house because he'll judge you on your book and music collection. He owns Dawkins, Utley, Iverson, and Lindros jerseys, which is all you really need to know about him. He can be reached at [email protected].

Categories
NFL General

Brady Quinn did not lose $17M waiting in the green room


Darren Rovell’s story over at CNBC is getting a lot of attention around the blogosphere because he calculated that Brady Quinn lost $17M in guaranteed money after sliding down to No. 22 instead of being taken at No. 3 by the Browns.


So here’s how I come up with the number. At the No. 3 pick, I project Cleveland would have signed Quinn to a six-year deal worth as much as $60 million, about $27 million of which would be guaranteed — that includes the quarterback premium. At No. 22, Quinn will sign a six-year deal closer to $30 million, with $10 million guaranteed. That’s a $17 million loss.

Here’s what’s wrong with this calculation: Cleveland was never going to take Brady Quinn with the No. 3 pick so saying that he lost that money is inaccurate. However, you could make a strong argument that the Miami Dolphins should have taken Quinn at No. 9. (Instead they took Ted Ginn Jr, who Cam Cameron said would be an awesome kick returner… wait, that’s supposed to placate angry Dolphins fans?) With the ninth pick, Quinn’s contract would have been more in line with Matt Leinart’s 6-year $51M with $14M guaranteed contract. Even if you bump it up to $15M in guaranteed money, Quinn only lost about $5M instead of the $17M that’s being tossed around.

As Jaws mentioned last night, what might have cost Quinn a lot of money was a coin toss in February that gave the Browns the third pick and the Bucs the fourth. It is conceivable that the Bucs would have taken Joe Thomas 3rd and then Cleveland would have taken Quinn with the 4th pick. Still, considering how crazy the draft was and how wrong everyone’s mock drafts were, there’s no guarantee that the Bucs would have taken Joe Thomas 3rd.

Links:
[CNBC]: The $17 Million Slide & Draft Day Notes

Categories
NBA General

Around the Rim: Happy Trails, Florida



I came back for this?

1. No more magic, no more heat: The two Florida franchises were knocked out of the NBA playoffs over the weekend. Swept out even. On Saturday, the Pistons took care of the Magic in Orlando. Detroit was down by 5 points with 3 minutes left but rallied to win the game and series. The Magic weren’t supposed to be anything more than a roadbump for the Pistons and the series went as expected. The Heat, on the other hand, were supposed to defend their NBA title and set up a stellar series with the Pistons. Instead, they went meekly into the night after the baby Bulls ran all over them from the getgo. The Heat were toast after losing game 3 at home on Friday night but we expected them to salvage some pride and win a game. Nope. Despite coming out quickly in the first quarter, they couldn’t keep the lead in the second half and the Bulls took care of business in the knockout game.

2. On the brink: Steve Nash and Amare Stoudemire had stellar games for the Suns to put the Lakers into a 1-3 hole but the big story out west is the Golden State Warriors completely outplaying the Mavericks on the way to a 3-1 series lead. Baron Davis is playing the best basketball of his career at exactly the right time. He scored 33 points and handed out a team high 4 assists in Sunday’s 103-99 victory. Meanwhile, Dirk Nowitzki is playing like the anti-MVP. His stats still lead the Mavericks and he did have those two big 3s at the end of the game but it was too little too late. Already down 2-1 in the series, Nowitzki can’t wait the final minutes to start making big shots. He’s not Robert Horry, situational big shot Bob. He’s gotta dominate from the start. The Warriors have two shots to win this thing: Tuesday night in Dallas and then back home Thursday. There’s no way they win a game 7 in Dallas if it comes down to that, even though TNT is praying for that to happen.

3. On the brink 2: The Raptors might be the higher seeded team but the Nets are absolutely taking them out to the woodshed in this series. Sunday night’s game was especially embarassing for Chris Bosh and company as the Nets more than doubled them up in the first quarter and lead by as much as 33 points during the game. That’s two games in a row that the Nets have practically gone wire to wire. The Raptors will have to come out swinging in front of their home crowd on Tuesday, if not for their fans, then for NBA broadcasters who must be disgusted with the Eastern conference this year. Two 4 game sweeps that likely will turn into 3 when the Cavaliers take on the Wizards tonight. These playoffs aren’t doing much for the perception that the East is the JV league.

Categories
MLB General

MLB Cost Index for April 30 2007



Look at my payroll! I kick ass!

The MLB Cost Index is one measure of how well your GM did over the course of the offseason and during the season. The Index takes a look at the payrolls for each team and calculates a Cost per Win number. Pretty simple stuff right? But in the wide open world of baseball with no salary cap, it’s the best way we can think of to judge teams on a level (monetary) playing field.

Now that we’re through with April (almost), the MLB Cost Index gets to be a little more interesting. It used to be that the Yankees were at the bottom of the rankings no matter how many games they won simply because of their huge payroll. Well, after a 9-14 start, they’d be close to the bottom even if they had half their payroll.

After one month, the Indians and the Brewers are the biggest bargains in baseball. The Indians lead the AL Central in the standings and are ranked 5th on the MLB Cost Index. Meanwhile, the surprising Brewers are leading the NL Central by 3.5 games and rank 7th on the Index. The biggest wastes of money outside of the Yankees? The Cubs, Mariners, Orioles and White Sox all rank in the top 10 for payroll this year but are underperforming. Only the White Sox are within shouting distance of the division leaders but they play in a tough AL Central, loaded with Indians, Twins, and Tigers.

The complete MLB Cost Index after the jump.

Continue reading “MLB Cost Index for April 30 2007”

Categories
MLB General

The Full Count: Extra Innings madness



Now we can go home!

1. 4 hours and 55 minutes: The 16-inning Astros-Padres game on April 26 didn’t take long to get passed as the longest game of the year. The Padres and Dodgers nearly played two games back-to-back in a 17-inning marathon. The game was tied 4-4 after the seventh inning and then went scoreless for a remarkable 10 consecutive innings. Finally, in the 17th, the Dodgers were able to score after an error by a Padres backup and subsequent double by Brady Clark. The story of this contest was the bullpen play of both teams. None of the 11 combined relievers for both teams gave up an earned run in 25 combined innings. San Diego came close to a comeback in the 17th with two men on and one out, but then back-to-back strikeouts gave the Dodgers a 5-4 win. They are a half-game above red-hot Arizona for the division lead.

2. A game of craziness: The game between the Braves and Rockies turned out to be quite a unique one. The most notable occurrence was a rare unassisted triple play by Rockies shortstop Troy Tulowitzki. As players on second and first for the Braves were running on a 3-2 pitch, Tulowitzki caught a line drive, tagged second base, then tagged the runner coming from first. This was only the 13th unassisted triple play in major league history, and the second by a Rockies player. Also in this game, the Braves walked an incredible 13 batters, including five free passes to Todd Helton alone. In the 9th inning with the Braves up 7-5, Bob Wickman walked the bases loaded and then gave up two runs to tie the game. Only a diving catch by Jeff Francoeur saved the Braves from defeat in that inning. But the Rockies won it anyway in the 11th, as Matt Holliday hit a two-run homer to end this wild game. The Braves still won the series, 2-1.

3. Bigger than baseball: Unfortunately, a tragic off-field event overshadowed a great day of baseball on Sunday. Cardinals pitcher Josh Hancock, who had pitched on Saturday, died in a car accident coming home from the game. He slammed into the back of a tow truck, which was stopped to help another car that had crashed. The Cardinals-Cubs game, scheduled for Sunday Night Baseball, was postponed as a result of the tragedy. The Cardinals will wear #32 patches the rest of the season in honor of Hancock, a reliever who was with the team for their World Series run in 2006.

Player of the Day: John Maine, Mets: 7 innings, 3 hits, no runs, 8 strikeouts in a 1-0 win over the Nationals which improved his record to 4-0.

Walk Off: It was reported by two New York newspapers that Joe Torre’s job could be in jeopardy if the Yankees continue to struggle. This would be the stupidest move the Yankees could make right now. Torre has led the team to four World Series titles and ten division titles in a row. He is at absolutely no fault for the Yankees’ last place standing. The pitching has been simply awful, particularly the starters. There is a current trend in sports right now to fire the manager/coach if the team is underperforming, no matter what success this coach has had. Why not fire the people responsible for trading away all the Yankees’ prospects for over-the-hill veterans?

Categories
NHL General

Satuday Morning NHL Roundup


Canucks 2, Ducks 1
Here’s an interesting piece of irony: one of the guest bloggers for the NHL playoffs over at their website is the band Emerson Drive. Ironic, you say? But why? Their most notable single is “I Should be Sleeping,” which pretty much summarizes every game the Canucks play this postseason. No, no – they’re not boring. Rather, they start late (I mean, it is the Pacific Northwest) and they end even later. They went 4 OT with the Stars already these playoffs, and last night, they went 2 OT with the Ducks before winning to even the series. We assume Luongo is hitting the bottle pretty hard these days, nerves shaking and all. That water bottle atop the goal might just have a smidge of Irish Coffee in there.

Sabres 3, Rangers 2
In Buffalo’s City Hall, there’s a poster showing some magazine survey that ranked Buffalo “one of the 20 best American cities” (I have no idea what magazine would justifiably print that). Next to it, there’s a poster the Mayor put in there himself. It shows two pictures: Lord Stanley and the Vince Lombardi Trophy. Under it, it reads, “Need these.” Indeed they do. They’re another step closer – to a rematch with their arch nemesis Senators, nonetheless. Lindy Ruff has the boxing gloves ready.

[Ted Bauer will be covering the NHL playoffs for us this year. You can find more of Ted’s work at A Price Above Bip Roberts.]

Categories
MLB General

MLB Power Rankings Roundup for Apr 27 2007

Everyone is finally figuring out what the best team in baseball is. There isn’t complete agreement but it seems that the consensus is that either the Mets or the Red Sox rule. Meanwhile, the Yankees are sliding in most rankings due to their latest losing streak. The surprise team this week is the San Francisco Giants, winners of 8 in a row and moving up the charts. The Diamondbacks, after a brief fling with the top 10, are dropping as well after a 3-7 record in their last 10.

Here are the major Power Rankings this week:

Rank Sportscolumn ESPN FoxSports Sportsline USA Today TSN.ca
1 Mets Mets Red Sox Red Sox Red Sox Mets
2 Red Sox Red Sox Braves Angels Mets Red Sox
3 Dodgers Tigers Mets Mets Dodgers Dodgers
4 Braves Braves Twins Dodgers Braves Brewers
5 Yankees Indians Indians Tigers Twins Twins
6 Tigers Didgers Tigers Indians Tigers Padres
7 Padres Blue Jays Dodgers White Sox Padres Orioles
8 Twins Brewers Padres Twins Yankees Braves
9 A’s Twins Brewers Brewers White Sox Giants
10 Angels Giants Angels Yankees Brewers White Sox
11-30 more more more more more more

Categories
College Football

Odds and Ends: Six Penn State Football players charged with felonies



Anthony Scirrotto leads the charge

Six Nittany Lions football players were formally charged this afternoon for an off-campus brawl that happened only April 1st. All six players were charged with felonies but Anthony Scirrotto and Chris Baker are facing the more serious charges of burglary and simple assault. The other four players (Justin King, Jerome Hayes, Lydell Sargeant, and Tyrell Sales) are charged with criminal trespass, disorderly conduct, and harassment.

You can read the whole police report (pdf)but here’s what basically happened: 1) Scirrotto and his girlfriend were involved in an altercation on the night of March 31. 2) Instead of calling the police, Scirrotto called Sargeant. 3) Sargeant called up some other players and they barged into an off-campus part and two of the players started kicking ass. From the police report, it sounds like a couple of the players were trying to get Scirrotto and Hayes out of the situation but it was way out of control. Still, they are being charged with trespass and disorderly conduct because they shouldn’t have been in a private residence to begin with.

No word from Joe Pa yet on the incident but we get the feeling he’s not going to pull a Bobby Bowden and let these guys off the hook easily, season down the drain or not.

In other news…

Washington Times]: Gilbert Arenas will be the next NBA live cover boy

[700 Level]: Ooooh. Maybe there’s a new Subway Sanwiches curse?

[Professional Cheerleader blog]: Raiderettes lineup announced. We are unimpressed.

[AP]: See? the WNBA is just like the NBA: Deanna Jackson arrested for slugging an opposing player in Jeruselem

And finally, everyone who jumped all over Ron Artest for neglecting his Great Dane owes him an apology. It turns out that he did arrange for the care of “Socks” while he was out of town and that the weight loss was due to a bone infection. Speaking of dogs, this is the saddest story we’ve read all day… remember, all dogs go to heaven.

Categories
Cleveland Indians

You stay classy, Toledo


Last week, during a game between the Indians Triple-A affiliate Buffalo and the hometown Toledo Mud Hens, Buffalo outfielder Shin-Soo Choo was roundly booed. For his performance? Nope, he was booed and heckled because his name kinda sorta looks like Seung-Hui Cho, the Va Tech student who went on a rampage on April 16.

Choo declined to repeat what the fans were yelling but did say:


Some fans said bad things. It’s pretty close to my name. My name is spelled Choo, and his name is Cho. It upset me when a couple of fans talked like that.

We haven’t really thought about Toledo since… well, never. So we decided to do a little research and came up with this rant by a guy who moved out of Toledo:


The people who reside in Toledo are the most intolerant, inconsiderate, ignorant human beings I’ve ever come aross. They are above and beyond anything I’ve ever experienced, and quite frankly, I don’t know how that’s possible. I have encountered a good deal of slack-jawed bumpkins in my day, but nothing compares to these simpletons. They are the crème de la crème of the idiotic.

Listen up, Toledoans, perhaps it’s not fair for us to paint an entire town of 300,000 based on one man’s account of his experience or because of a bunch of ignorant baseball fans… oh yeah, you xenophobic idiots (go ahead… we’ll wait while you look that up) just booed a man for having something resembling the last name of a mass murderer. Toledo Mud Hens fans, you get the big FU of the week.

Links:
[Sports By Brooks]: MUD HENS FANS NEED TO DROP A VOWEL ONCE IN AWHILE

[Cleveland Plain Dealer]: Choo hears boos for wrong reason

Categories
NFL General

17 regular season NFL games?

Roger Goodell is wearing bad idea blue jeans again. The NFL is making a major push towards expanding to Europe and beyond (the first regular season game played in Europe will take place in London this year between the Dolphins and the Giants) and the in order to “create more inventory,” the NFL is considering expanding the regular season to 17 games by shortening the preseason.


One negative [to playing overseas games] is you’re taking a game away from fans here,” Goodell said before an annual meeting of sports editors at league headquarters in New York. “We’ve discussed whether to cut one preseason game and add a 17th week. It would create more inventory, and that has some appeal. We’re chewing on that. The issue is: How do you create more inventory?

Translation: how can we line our pockets with more dough? The NFL sees the international appeal of basketball and baseball and wants a piece. But the problem here is that you can’t add European or Asian games without putting a huge burden on the teams that have to travel. Unlike baseball and basketball where you can have a terrible road trip and just shake it off with a nice homestand, the short NFL season and grueling games make it so much harder for teams to rebound.

Some might argue that a trip to Europe would be like the Tampa Bay Buccaneers traveling to Seattle for a game. Yes, it’s about the same distance, but how many times have you picked against a team in your office pool (and we know you have an office pool) because they had to travel all the way across the country in the previous week or had to travel for a Monday Night game? Plus, if you had a team other than an east coast team flying to Europe, it’d be an even longer distance to traverse.

The NFL desire to expand to Europe is a great idea… for the owners. Sure, we’ve been clamoring for one less preseason game, but that was to minimize injury risk in meaningless games, not to create an extra game we can’t even attend. This cash grab is not in the best interest of the game.

And finally, what would 17 games do to all our records? We’d have more asterisks than a Barry Bonds wikipedia entry.

Links:
[Washington Post]: NFL Considers 17th Regular Season Game

Categories
NHL General

Friday Morning NHL Roundup


Sharks 2, Red Wings 0
I’ve written before about my fascination – perhaps of an unhealthy nature – with the San Jose Sharks. Long story short: a few weeks before my frosh year of college, my dad and I were buying posters; I liked the colors on the Sharks poster (you should have seen how I picked NCAA Tournament teams back then), and thus bought it; it led to an oddly interesting dynamic with a wallflower who lived down the hall from me. Basically, I think I made him throw up from drinking for the first time in his life (and the second, and third, but those are different matters). The Sharks, though, brought us together.

The one legitimate thing I liked about San Jose aside from their colors was how they manhandled Detroit that year they (SJ) were the 8 seed. Arturs Irbe? He was en fuego in that series. The image of those guys skating out of the shark’s mouth en route to a massive upset is something that really kept me tuned into hockey back in the mid 1990s.

It appears San Jose is still owning Detroit, because in Game 1 of the Western Semis last night, they hung a 2-0 win on ’em. Nabokov had 34 saves. Mike Grier and Matt Carle – whose name doesn’t even hyperlink off NHL.Com for some reason – provided the offense. I guess the moral of this story is, a shark will always eat an octopus (or, for that matter, a seal – you guys been watching Planet Earth?).

Senators 5, Devils 4
Two relevant things emerged from this game, in my mind, and I wouldn’t call myself a “puckhead” by any means (maybe a “puckbunny,” but that’s an entirely different tangent), so maybe I’m wrong.

1. What’s wrong with Marin Broduer? OK, he’s old. And OK, the Devils still advanced out of the first round, but Vincent Lecavalier and Martin St. Louis basically tattooed their names all over Brodeur’s back, posterior, and nether regions, smacking him around for 11 goals. The problem for Tampa Bay is, they only scored three other goals in all. Anyway, tonight he gives up a goal 90 seconds into the game – Jason Spezza – and then three more in the first period. The Devils are already in a 4-0 hole. How’s a band of brothers going to come back from that? Huh? Huh? It hurts so good, Marty.

2. If anyone cares, what’s the broader American sentiment on Dany Heatley these days? The guy is, for all intents and purposes, someone associated with murder. He also happens to be one of the best damn players in hockey; his two years in Ottawa, he’s had over 100 points per season. In this game, he was one of the Fatal Four that scored on Martin B. in the first period, after a solid first round. What’s your take: is Heatley a monster or a misunderstood offensive genius who was driving the wrong Ferrari at the wrong time? Frankly, I think mistakes happen, and sometimes they’re absolutely awful in terms of their ramifications. An Eastern Conference Finals battle between Chris Drury, the boy who can do no wrong, and Dany Heatley, the brotha who can do no right, would be an absolutely intoxicating battle of Good vs. Evil. Yea, I’m a smidgeon melodramatic.

[Ted Bauer will be covering the NHL playoffs for us this year. You can find more of Ted’s work at A Price Above Bip Roberts.]