Losing the game of chicken...

or Beware the Idiots of March...

A little translation of professional athlete speak - I want the team to show it's committed to me. Translation - I want to see more money in a new contract.

From New York Newsday -

ESPN's Chris Mortensen reported on the night of March 15, the day after Josh McDaniels met with [Jay] Cutler and his agent, Bus Cook, that the pair requested a trade. Which the Broncos verified.

"The Denver Broncos confirm that Jay Cutler has requested a trade," a team spokesman told the AP March 16.

Cutler, during what seemed an unambiguous interview, told Mortensen March 15, "Really, it's best for me to move on."

From a Fox report -

"I was surprised they decided to trade me this soon," Cutler said. "I didn't want to get traded. This wasn't me. (The Broncos) had been going back and forth saying things, wanting me to be their quarterback and then they didn't."

"I really didn't want this. I love Denver. I really like my teammates. I didn't want it to get this far."

If Jay Cutler has any credibility in any locker room anywhere ever again, I will be sorely disappointed in his future teammates. So...was he bluffing in order to get a new contract? Did he think that by showing up his new coach and GM that he was showing his Broncos teammates his sterling leadership qualities? Is this guy really this big an idiot?

Some really quick hits...

Good win for the Celtics against a Bobcats team that's beginning to peak at the right time for a playoff run.

Not really surprised that Clay Buchholz was sent to Pawtucket to start the season, but I will be surprised if we don't see him in Fenway again sometime this season.

Tommy Lasorda just doesn't get it. In his defense of nephew Mike Piazza (related to the recent allegations of steroid use), Lasorda said that Piazza busted his ass in the weight room. That was part of his reasoning that his nephew couldn't have been using. I guess he doesn't know that steroids don't magically give one muscles, that you have to spend time in the weight room or you just get fat. He also uses the idea that Piazza is church-going in his defense of his nephew.

Let's get something straight here - just because someone is inherently a good person, or regularly attends church, that doesn't exempt them from doing something bad or stupid. Andy Pettitte, by all accounts, is a very religious guy, and a good guy in the locker room. Nailed for HGH. Then of course history is littered with religious people that just were not good human beings - take Tomás de Torquemada or Hitler (by all accounts, extremely religious). And please don't think I'm comparing Piazza to Hitler or the grand inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition - I'm only trying to point out that religiousness is no defense and no guarantee of a person being good.

It looks like Donte Stallworth is getting charged by Miami authorities. It sounds like it's what I previously called. This should surprise no one, and should Stallworth work out a deal that avoids jail time, he's still going to miss games due to whatever suspension is handed down for his lapse in judgement.

Land of the Rising Sun

It is a great public relations gimmick.

Send at least one of the league's premier teams from the previous season overseas, or to another country on the same continent to help cultivate the game in a country that's already baseball crazy.

It will be the fifth time since 1999 that Major League Baseball will start its season on foreign soil. In 1999 it was the the 1998 pennant winning Padres taking on the Rockies in Monterrey, Mexico. In 2000 the 1999 NL wild-card Mets, winners of 97 games, played the bottom of the NL Central barrel Cubs in Tokyo. Four years later, the capital of Nippon hosted the AL Champion Yankees against the bottom feeding Devil Rays. In 2001 it was the bottom scrubbing Rangers playing a Blue Jays team that missed the AL East title by a mere four and a half games.

This season it's the World Champion Red Sox opening against an Athletics squad that finished only a game out of last place in the AL West and 20 wins behind the Red Sox. Not exactly a marquee match-up.

But this is less about the match-up than about the impact of opening in a different country.

What does it really mean? Is it difficult for the team's involved to recover from the requisite travel? Or is the impact dependent on the team make-up, the manager, and any number of other factors? The numbers are less than telling.

The Yankees in 2004 got off to a horrible start, struggling in April and May, but recovered to win 101 games.

On the other hand are the 1999 Padres, just a season earlier with 98 wins and an appearance in the World Series, dropped to fourth place and 74 wins when starting the season in Mexico. Their opponents, the Rockies dropped from 77 to 72 wins.

In 2000 the Cubs slipped by two games from 67 to 65 wins, while the Mets still qualified for the wild card with 94 wins, down from their 1999 total of 97 after taking their first at-bats of the season in Tokyo. That same year the Rangers and Blue Jays won 71 and 83 games respectively. The following season, kicking off the season in (I know, technically American soil) Puerto Rico, those Rangers and Jays finished 2001 with 73 and 80 games respectively. An increase for the Rangers, but a drop-off for the Jays.

In 2004 the Yankees matched their previous season's win total, while the Rays increased their win total from 63 to 70 after starting it all in Tokyo.

Eight teams, a variety of results. Nothing telling. One team broke even. Two teams increased their win total by an average of 4.5 games, and five teams slipped a combined total of 37 games. Realistically, the Padres skew that number with a 24 game drop-off. Sixty-two-and-a-half percent of the teams experienced a drop in performance reflected in their win-loss record. The average drop, not including the Padres, is 3.25 games per team.

Assuming this is actually indicative of this season's performance, there's a 62.5 percent chance that the Sox will drop to 93 wins from last season's 96-win showing. Last year that would have put the team a game behind the Yankees in the final standings, and given the Red Sox the wild card.

What any statistician will tell you is that eight teams, eight results in over a century's worth of seasons is not a sampling that is indicative of anything.

Rapture!

Some thoughts and observations

What's wrong with this picture? Over the last six starts, Red Sox pitchers have won four games - Two by Wakefield, one by Tavarez, one by Matsuzaka. The two losses? Absolute shellings of Schilling and Beckett. I hope that we're not on the verge of seeing a repeat of last season with Beckett where he was sterling early and pitching batting practice late.

It was a good weekend for JD Drew who looks like he's breaking out of his slump. He and Dustin Padroia were a two man wrecking crew against the Giants on Friday, pretty much accounting for all of the Red Sox 10 runs.

If Padroia keeps this up, we'll be looking at two serious contenders (Hideki Okajima the other) for Rookie of the Year coming from the Old Towne Team. Also, if the adjustment that Matsuzaka made keeps him looking like he did over the weekend, he could still make a run at the award as well. I could be wrong, but I think the last time the Sox had two rookies up for that award, Fred Lynne edged Jim Rice for the honor.

And to end on a football note -

I am now officially a fan of New Orleans Saints defensive end Charles Grant...as per Peter King's Monday Morning Quarterback column at SI -

3. I think the best story I've heard in a while about a guy not forgetting where he was in Saints camp on their last day of the off season program. Defensive end Charles Grant called over the club's vice president of communications, Greg Bensel, handed him a wad of $100-dollar bills -- 20 to be exact -- and told him he wanted to buy lunch for all the women who work in the team offices. "Can you make it happen?'' Grant asked Bensel. He did, handing the $2,000 to GM Mickey Loomis' administrative assistant, who organized the luncheon field trip for the women in the building. Way to remember where you came from, Charles.