The Man in Blak

The Angels realize that Gary Matthews Jr. is 32 years old, right?

So, basically, Michael Vick is Eli Manning, trapped inside a running back's body.

Hilariously, I believe they mentioned on MNF that the NFL only allows coaches to wear the suits twice a year. Or was that just a poorly played Kornheiser joke?

1987, part deux.

Let's not get carried away. At least the Dodgers signed somebody to play center field that has actually logged major league innings at the position.

"Kingdom Come" just came across my Launchcast. This song is really fucking terrible.

He Poos Clouds is considerably better than Has A Good Home, with all of the whimsy intact. I'd move onto that, after you finish crying yourself to sleep. Also, you can probably use P2P to find the bootlegs of his performance from this year's Over The Top Festival, which has a nice mix of tracks from both albums. I'd recommend checking out "Hey Dad", specifically.

If they stuff Theriot onto the bench for DeRosa everyday and leave Jones out there to dry against LHPs, 2007 is going to be a long year for Cubs fans.

Because, if they only reported the news, nobody would watch their network.

I want to say that Jay-Z was one of the first mainstream rappers to release the a capella mix of his albums out to the public as free material for mashups and remixes (The Black Album), but I'm not 100% sure on that. Any counterexamples to that? Czech, to put that in context for you, think about Zappa's "xenochrony" approach to some of his tracks on Joe's Garage / Sheik Yerbouti. I wikied it, just for you.

1. If the team only had six drives in a game, it's very likely that they would have lost, unless all of those drives were lengthy series that led to a score. 2. I think that, as a result of having more successful scoring drives than non-scoring ones, Indy's "average real time per drive" is higher than you'd think. Remember, there are plenty of drives that end up with a punt after a half dozen plays or less that bring the defense back out onto the field in a hurry. Time of possession is kind of misapplied in football analysis (even I felt lazy and used it in my original post, even though the first down numbers support what I was saying). Big gaps in TOP between teams usually signify defensive dominance by one team, but most games don't have that big of a divide.

Well, with the market the way it is, four million may not be too outrageous for a guy that should probably get 200-300 ABs filling in for Jones in RF against lefties and spelling Theriot and other various and sundry middle infield lifeforms. COUNTER-EDIT QUOTE COMBO: Yeah, and a disturbing percentage of those came against right handed pitching. He had 27 Ks to 13 BBs against LHP in 146, which is a much nicer figure.

Call me crazy, but I tend to think the fact that the Colts D isn't that good has more to do with how long they stay on the field.

In all seriousness, though, Mark DeRosa could be a great platoon partner for Jacque Jones, if Sweet/Crazy Lou actually deploys him correctly (career line of .306/.367/.497 vs. LHP). Plus, he has an annoying tendency to take a walk from time to time.

Another hurdle cleared in the never ending quest to field an entire team of middle infielders. Vivalaultra, prepare thyself - Jim Hendry will surely be calling for proven draw Brandon Backe, to bolster the Cubs rotation.

Well, your last sentence follows my entire argument - the Colts are last in the league with 73 offensive drives, so it wouldn't take much to assume that a better run defense would equal more drives and, thus, even better stats. The fact that Indy is noticeably behind the pack in total offensive drives (the next teams up the ladder, which are Denver and the New York Jets, have 84 drives) should actually make Peyton's offensive stats that much more impressive, as he's done it in fewer opportunities than most NFL quarterbacks this season. That being said, I don't follow your commentary about drive length at all. For one, using five minutes as a cutoff point is a little strange; what's the average drive length for scoring drives in the NFL? I don't have the official stats but, just glancing at the games from last week, there are a couple of examples where a scoring drive never tops five minutes for both teams in the entire game. The Bears/Giants and Browns/Falcons games, for example, never had a scoring drive that went longer than four minutes, let alone five. I'm not discounting the point, but it would be interesting to see the time averages for other teams as well. Secondly, if we do hold the argument that the Colts have shorter drives than usual, part of the blame for that could actually be placed on the mediocre running game as well. Remember, drive times (and TOP, for that matter) are measured in game clock time, rather than real time - running plays typically correlate the two more closely, while a successful play in the passing game is more likely to stop the clock. The important part is that an offense has successful plays in general that extend a drive further down the field. Let's not forget that, with the exception of an occasional 108 yard run back for a TD, scoring drives are going to yield longer TOP than drives that result in no score. And, when it comes to scoring drives or, at the very least, extending a drive with a first down, nobody is better in football than the Indianapolis Colts. Despite having fewer drives than anybody else in the NFL, the Colts have more first downs per game (23.8) than any other team in the league. They also convert the highest percentage of their drives into scores: Team--Drives--Rush TD--Pass TD--FG--Scores--Score % IND.....73.......9........18....18....45......62% SDG.....86......19........14....17....50......58% CHI.....94.......7........17....23....47......50% STL.....89.......5........13....23....41......46% CIN.....93.......9........15....16....40......43% (Note to Al or any other moderator - it sure would be nice to be able to have the tag turned on in this folder, so that we could just tag any stats for formatting.) More often than not, they keep their defense off the field by having successful drives, so I don't see how you could argue that Peyton Manning's exception performance on offense somehow makes the Colts defense worse.

If you want to speculate on a team's success with one player conveniently taken away from the lineup, would you mind telling me how the Colts would fare without Peyton Manning?

Really, the Monday Night Football ads are more enjoyable to me than the game itself, if only because I imagine Kinetic narrating over them. With conviction.

San Diego may not be on the same tier as the Bears or the Ravens, but they're still one of the better defense in the league. And, once again, let's put their performance under some context - they were playing on the road, with key contributors missing from the lineup, against a team that's one of the best offensive teams in the league. Not only that, but Cincinnati was looking at what might have been a must-win situation, with Baltimore pulling away with the division lead. That being said, the San Diego defense was never a factor in my original contention anyway - I simply said that Tomlinson was not single-handedly carrying the Chargers offense and explained it further by pointing out that Rivers is having a damn fine season. That the San Diego offense did so remarkably well on both sides of the ball against Cincinnati further illustrates my point - Tomlinson is not the only threat on that team.

One can deduce, by your act of posting on a message board, that you have access to the internet. And I believe that TiVo pulls its program guide data through the information superhighway. (Though, I could be wrong). Therefore, no excuses.

LT's stats are nice, but you have to put them inside of a context: Tomlinson has significantly less to carry than Peyton Manning does. Has anybody watched Philip Rivers play this year? Sure, the "kid" is in his first year as the everyday starter, but to say that Tomlinson is carrying him as though he were a subpar "game manager" is a stretch; he's third in the league with a 100.4 QB rating, with 13 TDs to 3 INTs. The threat of Tomlinson barreling through the line certainly enables that performance to an extent, but the fact that the passing game excels under Rivers also opens up lanes for LT to use for breaking big gains - it's a symbiotic relationship. Compare this with what Peyton Manning has to work with in Indianapolis. Though he has the benefit of two great receivers in Harrison and Wayne, he's putting up the best passing stats in the league with a mediocre running game and an alarmingly bad run defense, the latter of which would presumably contribute to more clock-killing drives and less time on the field for Peyton to accumulate these ridiculous statistics. Manning enables the Colts to be the best offense in the league, despite having a below average time of possession (29:52) with which to work, and has orchestrated a fair number of late-game comebacks already this season. The Colts have had their share of lucky breaks this year, but they're still a 9-0 team and a lot of that has to do with Peyton Manning.

I don't think anybody's questioning the motives behind Boston's bid for Matsuzaka, especially given the lack of quality of starting pitching on the market. I think the disagreement comes with the constant positioning of the Red Sox as some woebegone bridesmaid that can never compete with the Yankees financially; that contention does look a little sour when Boston posts a winning bid that's larger than the entire payroll of some MLB teams. In my opinion, it's absolutely ludicrous that this bid isn't included in the luxury tax calculus - how is bidding an exorbitant amount of money for a Japanese pitcher with no major league experience not the very definition of a "luxury"?

I like how it's implied with the parenthesis, like an intertitle for a silent film.

I've always liked "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" from the original Smile bootlegs. The modernized production on Brian Wilson's 2004 release doesn't do it any favors, but the original recordings are quite creepy.