Cheech Tremendous

Do you have any idea who my team is?

I'm confused by this topic. Are we picking guys who have drawn the most? Drawing the most currently? Are most likely to draw the most in the future? Most likely to draw if booked correctly? I just don't know what the criteria is supposed to be.

Four out of the five ESPN guys picked the Heat, so I don't see where you are getting your info. But that's besides the point. All I'm trying to say is that Chicago really screwed themselves last night by blowing an easy chance at the ECF and ending up with the two best teams in the east.

Regardless of whether or not they can actually beat the Heat, the Bulls go into the series as the underdogs. If by some chance they do come out on top, they have to go face the Pistons. That's not an easy road no matter how you slice it. If they would have taken care of business last night they would have had a cake walk to the ECF.

Eric Wedge has to go in Cleveland. They've underperformed their pythagorean W-L by 20 games (!) the past four seasons. It doesn't appear that he has learned how to manage a bullpen in high leverage situations either, which will continually bury this team. Paging Buck Showalter.

If he keeps this up he's going to get himself another $200 million.

I think your math is a little off. If they won 70% of their remaining games that would give them about 108 wins, which would win the division by about 20. They need to win 58% of their remaining games to finish with 90 wins. That's not out of the question for a team with as much talent as they have. You never want to get in a hole at the beginning of the season, but every team has slumps. Their slump just happend to be at the start of the season. It could be a lot worse. Brett Myers could be in the bullpen and Ryan Howard could be hurt.

I have a hard time accepting that you can see enough of a coach in one season to make this sort of move (with the one glaring exception being Art Shell). It just seems like a reactionary move and Musselman is being made the scapegoat for a poorly constructed team.

You guys are the best.

Is there a reason why you asked this again after posting it in the music folder?

The Blue Jays are 4th in runs scored and 2nd in OBP. The offense isn't really a problem, although losing Glaus hurts. I don't see how the Reed Johnson injury is going to affect them, seeing as he is being replaced by a much better player in Adam Lind. In fact, Reed's probably not going to see the field much anymore, even after he recovers.

Now that the regular season is over, can we officially call this the most miserable season of the past twenty years? I know it was a cheesy article, but Bill Simmons may have had a point that the fans deserve to be MVP this year after putting up with six months of total crap. I'm hoping that the playoffs can save the day like last year because I can't think of another time when my interest in the NBA has been lower.

San Antonio was the best team in basketball during the second half of the year. I don't know how you can discount their chances this year. I wouldn't go so far as to say their the favorites, but they are a deep, well-coached, experienced team and can play a variety of styles. Speaking of the Spurs, I was thinking last night that if you take away Fisher's 0.4 shot and the stupid Dirk foul last year, they might have won four consecutive titles. Two freak plays that will probably change their place in history as one of the all-time great teams to one that was good, but not dominating.

Tough night for the Bulls. Not only did they fall from the 2 seed and a possible Eastern Conference finals appearance to a probable first round defeat, but New York's win greatly reduced their chances of getting one of the top picks in this year's draft.

Still thinking SA will lose in the first round, King? That's bold.

Calm down a little. It's only been 13 games.

The reason they hired those guys later on was that their WCW contracts either expired or they accepted buyouts from Time Warner. Those guys were all ridiculously overpaid and if the WWF wanted them during the invasion, they would have had to take on their multi-million dollar deals. There was a reason that WCW was losing $80 million a year at the end and most of it had to do with the payroll. I don't think the WWF wanted to put themselves in that sort of financial burden just the enhance the appeal of one angle. Not that I necessarily think that the WWF took the best course of action with the invasion, but you have to remember where they were at that point in time. They were a meticulously run, highly successful organization. They had just come off their most profitable year ever, where they obtained their highest ratings and buried their competition to the point that two rival organizations went under. It would have been a hard sell to their employees and shareholders that they were planning on cutting profit margins and expanding their roster to include a bunch of guys from a failed organization. Sometimes there is more to the story than it appears on the surface, and this one of those situations.

Quoted for emphasis and agreement.

Moving Youkilis down in the order takes at bats away from him which is not a good thing. You are also punishing your offense by taking guys off base for Ortiz and Manny. That's just an all around bad decision. It's irrelevant that Coco succeeded in the 2-hole before. As of today, he can't hit anything in sight. If it really is a pressure thing, moving him to a higher profile slot in the order will only compound the issue. From a defensive standpoint, I don't think Wily Mo is any good, but I don't think he's that far behind Coco. Coco, to me, looks like a below average centerfielder. His routes are weak and his arm almost makes me long for the days Johnny "T Rex" Damon. Pena is somewhat of a disaster defensively, but his speed and arm can cover for his boneheaded plays. Hell, you could even swith Drew back to center and let Pena get some time in right. Once again, I don't want to be too reactionary with Coco after a handful of games, but he needs to start hitting soon. If he keeps this up through say Memorial Day, it's going to be hard for the team to stick with him. They just don't have that margin of error this year.

He has 9 rings.

That doesn't make much sense. The offense is already struggling, why would you want to move one of the team's best hitters to the bottom of the order in favor of one of the worst? It would probably be a better idea to just bench Coco in favor of Wily Mo for a week or so and let Coco work out privately with the hitting coach. He's in the kind of slump now that playing every day is just making things worse. I feel bad for the guy and I do think he has a lot of potential, but he's playing himself right out of town with a better CFer sitting on the bench and one knocking on the door in the minors.

Come again?

By the way since you mentioned him, JD Drew's been mashing so far this year for Boston. Small sample size and all, but he's been exactly what I expected coming into the year. If the Dodgers struggle to put up runs this year, I wonder how many of them will change their tune on Drew and wish they had him back.

Doesn't impact the streak at all. It would remain at 17 games if he did not record any official at bats.