Trot Gets Dissed By Steve Phillips. Advantage: Trot.

Steve Phillips, the man so smart he somehow GM'd the Mets into last place two years in a row despite having the second highest payroll in baseball, was on TV last night discussing his players to avoid for the upcoming 2006 fantasy season. Instead of saying obvious high-risk guys like Alfonso Soriano or Barry Bonds, he spends his time criticizing the likes of Mike Lowell and Tom's Official Hero, Christopher Trotman Nixon. Now, here are my issues.

1. No crap you shouldn't draft Mike Lowell. He had a horrible season last year and, so far, has shown no signs of coming back to his previous form. No one's going to waste a pick on him when you can just play wait-and-see during the season. You know who else you shouldn't draft? Mo Vaughn. Or Joe DiMaggio. However, I'm banking on a comeback season for Ty Cobb.

2. As much as it pains me to say it, not too many people will be drafting Trot either. He's been having way too many health issues recently to warrant anything above a late round pick. Hell, even I passed him up for some guy named Matt Murton. However, this wasn't the reasoning Phillips had for putting Trot on his bad list. He said you have to worry that there might be a "platoon situation" with Wily Mo Pena and how Trot will react to it. Hmmm... how would Trot play in a platoon. I wonder... Hey! I know! Maybe you could look to the previous three years when he was IN A FREAKING PLATOON with the likes of Jay Payton and Gabe Kapler.

I digress.

That's V-tacular

"Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is it vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished, as the once vital voice of the verisimilitude now venerates what they once vilified. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose vis-à-vis an introduction, and so it is my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V."

If I May...

As much as I tend to shy away from political musings, my hand has been forced. I just read something that left me very upset and angered. A man in Afghanistan is facing the death penalty for converting to Christianity. As much as I want to join in the let's-all-get-along-and-hold-hands parade of religious harmony, you can't read this article and tell me that Islam is a religion of peace. Remember, these aren't extremists or rebels who want him dead, but the judicial system of a nationally recognized democratic government whose constitution is based on the teachings of Islam.

Please pray for Abdul Rahman and for the leaders of Afghanistan to wake up from their backwards past and smell the friggin coffee of freedom.

Take Me Out To The Yakyu Game

I don't mean to depend on other people's writings for blog entries, but this bit from espn.com was too good not to share.

"For how well Cuba has performed in the World Baseball Classic, it's surprising to see how poorly its fans travel. Both in Puerto Rico and in San Diego, the Cuban team has been very underrepresented compared with the number of fans from other countries. If Cuba truly is the baseball-mad country it's claimed to be, you'd think a lot more people would get on a plane and fly here to support their team. So what gives, Cuba? Do you love baseball or not? It must be that you don't, because there's no other explanation for not showing up to cheer on your fellow countrymen."

And as inexcusable as it was for the U.S. to completely blow it against Mexico, it was nice seeing Japan beat Cuba to win the WBC. Lord knows they'll probably appreciate it a lot more than us, and I don't think I could handle the commies winning a baseball tournament on American soil.

Edit: Entrepreneurship continues to be the most boring class ever, so I'm adding to this post instead of worthlessly paying attention.

Red Sox trade Bronson Arroyo for Wily Mo Pena. I really like this deal for Boston, even if it probably means the end of Trot Nixon's days as a Sox after 2006. First, despite that old baseball mantra, the Sox actually did have too much pitching. Including Arroyo, there was seven pitchers vying for five spots in the rotation. I would have preferred getting rid of the treasonous David Wells, but he probably wouldn't have yielded a player like Pena, which leads me to my second point. Wily Mo is a very intriguing player. He's only 24, has seemingly unlimited potential for power hitting (45 home runs combined in the past two years while playing part time), but is very undisciplined at the plate (career .304 on-base percentage, 54/288 career walks-to-K's ratio). But like I said, he's only 24 and has the skills to develop into an incredible hitter.

Lastly, a Nixon/Pena platoon is downright scary. Nixon has .955 OPS vs. righties the past three years, Pena is .883 OPS vs. lefties. This is a very rough calculation, but assuming Boston faces 30% lefties, that comes out to a two-headed monster in rightfield with a .933 OPS, or better than the numbers Adam Dunn, Andruw Jones, Gary Sheffield, Bobby Abreu and Miguel Tejada put up last year. Also, the logical lefty/righty platoon does appear to be what the Sox are planning for in RF, and Wily Mo seems ok with it.

Hey, class is over. Whatyaknow.

Jim Caple: Thank You

"C'mon, you [expletive], pinstriped turncoat," Americans shouted at their TV screens. "For once -- just once -- in your soulless, empty life, get a hit in the clutch you greedy, insincere, two-faced, overpaid fraud!"

I Almost Have a Tan

I can honestly say, without any exaggeration, that my seven day cruise with Karen, David, Tyler, Will, Amy, Brian and Mike was the most enjoyable week of my life. The Caymans were beautiful, ATVing in Mexico was exciting, Key West and the days at sea were very relaxing, but the most important part was my friends. Thank you to everyone for an amazing time.



EDIT: Ok, the pictures are up here. I combined the best of everyone's into one single album. Once the non-digitals come rolling in I'll have those added as well. Comments will be added when I'm not feeling very bored and tired (re: not tonight).

Anti-webshots rant: Ya know, it really makes me mad. There's so much to like about it. Compared to Yahoo, it's easier to upload, organize, add comments, browse through, etc, but they have that unholy 240 photo limit for free members. That just drives me insane. So, I'm going back to Yahoo photos, whose features I don't like nearly as much but at least there I'm not forced to change accounts every friggin' year.

Oh, and I hope everyone appreciates the trouble I went through to put all these in chronological order. That gave me like five headaches at once.

FYI, I'll Be In Paradise

With seven of my best friends in tow.

Cheers.