The first shot of the game for LSU was an air ball. It didn’t get much better after that, as UK (14-3, 2-1 SEC) racked up a quick 12-2 run, then a 29-point halftime lead, and then an 82-44 final score in beating LSU (10-8, 2-1 SEC). “That’s just a good old-fashioned ass whooping,” LSU [...]
The Kentucky Kernel
In the second quarter of Alabama’s decimation of MSU, Crimson Tide running back Mark Ingram broke five tackles on one play, and as ESPN’s announcing team pointed out, reminded people why he was the Heisman trophy winner last year.
SportsGrid
Five Christmas Plotlines That Have Been Beaten to Death
What’s Going On At Uproxx
Today when the Detroit Lions face off against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Raymond James Stadium the Bucs will come in the clear cut favorites. At 8-5 and still very much alive in the playoff hunt the Buccaneers need only win and they’re in. But this Lions team is much better than its 3-10 record and won’t go down easily. Here are the keys to the game:
1.) No Turnovers
There’s always a place atop the keys to the game for not turning the ball over. The Bucs should be the better team, but in the NFL when you give away the [...]
The Pewter Plank | A Tampa Bay Buccaneers Blog
Posted in Rule 5 Draft
Here are some comments from other prospect-experts from around the web.
On Brad Emaus
Sandy Alderson, as quoted by Adam Rubin at ESPNNY: We’re very high on his potential as an everyday player out of the Toronto organization. [Former Jays GM] J.P. [Ricciardi], [and new Mets scouts from Toronto] Roy Smith and Jim D’Aloia, Paul [DePodesta] know him pretty well and felt strongly about him. So we’re very pleased that he was there.
Baseball America staff report:
Offensive-minded utility type, chance to be a regular maybe, can’t play SS though.
Emaus on Emaus, as quoted by John Manuel:
“…right now I’m just very ecstatic, excited to be given another chance by
the Mets. … I’m just a blue-collar guy, a solid
guy who has to know the game, has to have some (baseball IQ) because I
don’t have great tools. I’m not flashy but I bring my best every day and
go out trying to find an edge.”
Kevin Goldstein at Prospectus:
“Ceiling only of nice bench player, but might be there now.”
Two seasons ago, in March of 2009, Goldstein ranked Emaus as the Blue Jays’ #7 prospect and wrote:
Perfect World Projection: A solid everyday second baseman.
Glass Half Empty: A utility type who can play anywhere in the infield except shortstop.
Emaus did not make Goldstein’s Jays list in 2010.
Jason Grey of ESPN.com:
When he’s on, he features a stroke that scouts call “short to and long
through.” In other words, a short path to the ball, and his bat stays in
the hitting zone a long time.
On Pedro Beato
Alderson: “A power arm, probably out of the bullpen, and somebody who can compete for an everyday job. So we’re happy with that.”
John Manuel at Baseball America: Beato’s fastball has average velocity and peaks at
93 mph with sink and tail, and he has a decent sinking changeup and
slurvy breaking ball. …. He profiles as a middle reliever.
Goldstein: “…stuff is still well below draft-level, but he found some consistency and success this year as a two-pitch reliever.
There’s a chance, probably a little better than even money, that neither Beato nor Emaus play significant roles for the 2011 Mets. However, there’s a chance that Beato contributes as a middle reliever and Emaus plays his way into the second base job in spring training and holds then holds onto it. There are certainly no sure things as baseball players, but both Beato and Emaus are potentially nice, cheap additions at thin areas for the Mets.
I’ve been asked to handicap the Mets spring training battle for second base between Emaus, Daniel Murphy, Justin Turner, Luis Castillo and Ruben Tejada. Right now, I’d say it’ll be a battle with Tejada starting behind the other four thanks to his youth and punchless offensive game. Turner brings the most defensive versatility of the rest, while Murphy brings the most pop in his bat. Emaus brings a tremendous plate eye. Castillo merely brings the final year of an ill-advised contract.
Posted in Analysis,Rule 5 Draft
The Mets drafted three players in the minor league phase of the Rule 5 draft and did not lose any. These guys aren’t subject to any roster requirements and are now team property.
With the sixth pick of the AAA phase, the Mets picked RHP Ronny Morla from the Cubs. Morla, who turned 22 in May, is listed at a lanky 6’3″ and 190 pounds and struck out 86 while walking just 20 in 78.2 innings with the Peoria Chiefs in the Midwest League in 2010. He was part of the package the Cubs received for sending Jake Fox to the A’s last December. Baseball America had him sitting 91-92 mph and thought “his changeup would seem to have a bit more potential than his slider, but if he commands at least one of them he could find success as a reliever.”
Look for him to start 2011 in the advanced-a St. Lucie bullpen.
With their second pick in the AAA phase, the Mets picked RHP Richard (Ricky) Brooks from the White Sox. The Sox moved Brooks to the bullpen when he graduated from the South Atlantic League to the advanced-A Carolina League in 2007. He’s coming off a 2010 in which he had a 4.54 ERA for AA Birmingham in the Southern League. His strikeout to walk ratio was a sterling 3.8 (38 K/10 BB) in 41.2 innings, but he was awfully hittable in the zone with 54 hits allowed in 41.2 innings pitched. Or he just had a crazy-high .378 BABIP. In 2009, he had a .222 BABIP in 37 innings at AA.
Brooks grew up in the Buffalo area and attended North Tonawanda High School, so if he joins the Bisons, he will enjoy a nice homecoming of sorts. He talked about the transition to pro ball in this 2008 piece in the Niagra Gazette. The White Sox drafted Brooks twice: in the third round of the 2005 draft out of East Carolina and in the 11th round in 2003 out of NTHS.
The bet here is that he breaks camp in the Buffalo Bisons’ bullpen.
In the AA phase, the Mets drafted CF Quintin Berry. The left-handed hitting Berry hit .210/.306/.284 in 99 games split between the Eastern League and the Texas League in 2010 as a 25 year old. Berry’s a speedster, but hit above .275 just once, in the SAL in 2007. He stole at least 48 bases every year from 2007 – 2009 before swiping 27 in 2010. I think he fits as a piece of insurance for the AA outfield.
A great and odd weekend of tennis: Four of the five rubbers played in Belgrade were essentially blowouts, matches you might have walked away from if they’d been played at a normal tournament. Yet it was the most dramatic—operatic—event in tennis all year. Credit this, of course, to Davis Cup. Team sports have it easy, don’t they? You don’t need to have a good match, to have a good match.
There was plenty to see and hear and feel—emotions ran the absolute gamut. Looking back, the only way I can make sense of it is to capture a few isolated thoughts and observations that stuck out of the morass of blue and red.
***
This tie was reminiscent of the 2002 final, when Russia also beat France in a fifth rubber. The hero then was Mikhail Youzhny, who came back from two sets down to win the decider. But the undersung MVP was Marat Safin, who won both of his singles matches to keep his team alive. This weekend Victor Troicki played the role of Youzhny, coming off the bench to clinch, while Novak Djokovic was the Safin-esque stopper. He kept the Serbs in it with two straight-set wins over quality opponents.
Most impressive was his victory over Gael Monfils, who had looked as good as he’s ever looked in trouncing Janko Tipsarevic on Friday. Djokovic pulled off the difficult trick of playing tennis that was as intelligent as it was inspired. He was revved up, but he didn’t let that extra energy take over his game and make it riskier than it needed to be. He claimed the broad center of the court with high and heavy topspin balls and forced Monfils to go for spectacular shots from the edges to win points. Other than a slight case of nerves in closing out Gilles Simon on Friday, it was a masterful overall performance from Djokovic, one that gives you an idea of how good—how energetically solid—he can be when he’s completely dialed in and his mind is uncluttered.
***
How about the other franchise player, Monfils? As he was beating Tipsarevic, I thought, just for a second, or a split-second, or a nanosecond, that we were seeing the beginning of a second career for the Frenchman. Monfils, a class above his opponent, was imperious and imperturbable throughout. If he could continue that play on Sunday, it would be something significant to build on in 2011. Then he ran into Djokovic, and he was the one who was outclassed. There wasn’t a ton he could do about it—sometimes the other guy really is too good, and sometimes you just don’t have it. While Monfils tried his share of low-percentage jumping ground strokes, he didn’t cave. He broke serve early in the third set by taking the ball earlier than he had been. But in the next game, he retreated again, went back to the pointless bailout drop shot he’d been using earlier, and faded down the stretch. His smothered backhand into the net on match point was capitulation in motion. We continue to await Monfils 2.0 in vain, but he is improving.
***
Picking Llodra over Simon was not a rousing success for French coach Guy Forget, was it? I had thought going into the weekend that that was the smart pick. Llodra was hot in Bercy, was clutch in the doubles, and Simon didn't offer a whole lot of resistance against Djokovic on Friday. But from the first game you could see Llodra was a step behind pretty much every shot of Troicki’s, and the Serb looked totally comfortable even when it seemed like he might get tight in the third. Hindsight is 20/20 (20/10, really), but I remember watching Troicki play Andy Murray at Wimbledon a couple years; he looked utterly bewildered by the Scot's softball style and couldn’t create any pace off of it. That’s exactly how Simon plays, and it has worked like a charm against Troicki: He’s 4-0 against him. As we know now, Troicki is a different player when he has a target moving toward him at the net (especially a slow-moving one). Maybe it will be Troicki, rather than Monfils, who will use this weekend as a Verdasco-esque springboard to better things in 2011. But he'll have to recover from the celebration in time.
***
The doubles match was a classic, glacial Davis Cup turnaround, and one of the best matches of the year, whatever the format. Five sets and four people on a court offers a lot of story lines. Troicki versus Clement was an interesting side dynamic. The Serb started out as the surprise best player on the court, while the Frenchman was the weak link, shanking easy ground strokes and looking off balance in general. But as Troicki cooled off over the last three, Clement came to life and ended the match as the emotional heart of the French team. How many overheads did he hammer for winners?
Doubles is a game of trade-offs. You had Zimonjic serving lights out for long periods but coming up just short on key backhand volleys and remaining unable to find an answer to Llodra’s lefty serve into his backhand. On the other side of the net, Llodra’s volleying wizardry was set off by his inability to get a return down at his opponents’ feet on multiple break points. The match also included my favorite moment from the tie. Late in the fifth set, Zimonjic rifled a volley at Llodra's chest. There didn’t seem to be any way he could return it, but he somehow fought it off and nubbed it back over to Troicki, who dumped his passing shot into the net. The look on Zimonjic’s face as that ball hit the net was as priceless as it was painful. Disappointment, frustration, disbelief, exasperation: They were all etched there at once.
***
The Davis Cup began in 1900 as a two-team competition between the most powerful countries in the world at the time, England and the United States. Their co-Empire spanned the globe and was reinforced by a wave of inter-marriage between their upper-class families. The Cup was in part a sporting acknowledgement of their special status and relationship—Dwight Davis, its founder and namesake, went on to become U.S. Secretary of Defense (then called by a blunter name: Secretary of War). The competition retained a royalist spirit for decades. It kept the Challenge Round—the previous year’s champion sat out of the tournament and awaited its winner—in place all the way into the early 1970s. This helped the U.S. and Australia, the two premier tennis nations of the century, put a chokehold on the Cup.
Now, since the elimination of the Challenge Round, the opening of the amateur game in 1968, and the institution of the World Group in 1981, everything is upside down. The Davis Cup is the place where tennis spreads its international wings and welcomes new countries into the elite fold. Germany, Sweden, Russia, Spain, Croatia, and now Serbia have had their names engraved on the Cup. The quest to make it there is still the most dramatic in tennis. The Serbs shaved their heads in victory; Llodra sat inconsolable in defeat. The importance for Serbia can be summed up in a Tweet that Tipsarevic sent out afterward. It went something along the lines of "Serbia is a ————- world champion!" For a small country that's seen its share of trouble, that's a major statement.
And that's the best part: All of these guys had a chance to play for history, something only Djokovic is likely to do anywhere else. As I watched Troicki and Llodra walk out for the deciding rubber, I wondered what they could be thinking. Each had been told that morning,or maybe the day before, that they would have to play what was essentially the equivalent of a Wimbledon final. All or nothing, with nothing to catch you when you fall: There’s no more exciting or frightening feeling in sports than that, and you could feel it as Troicki and Llodra began their unlikely closing match of 2010. It was a great way to cap a long season. Davis Cup isn't perfect, but it always comes through in the end.