The Baseball Hall of Fame Vote

Many believe Bonds is getting what he deserves. Wrong, he deserves his spot in Baseball immortality.

I love baseball. It is the greatest sport in the world. No other sport I have ever watched has elicited such a childish joy and emotional connection. It goes back to playing catch and hitting the ball from my Dad’s soft toss as early as I can remember. I was that kid who slept with his baseball mitt on and Cleveland Indians cap on every night. To this day my wife gets the biggest kick out of how happy and child like I get when we go to a ball game. How I know all the players, I have all these stats I tell her about even though she does not care about them nor does she know exactly what half of them are. Baseball, in all it’s simplicities, is just pure. One team trying to out do the other, out smart them, out maneuver them, and yes… out cheat them. Yesterday we saw a handful of travesties on the Hall of Fame Ballot. The Baseball Writers Association declined to vote for any one person enough to allow them admittance to baseball’s most hallowed space, the Hall of Fame. I can’t really blame them, if they feel justified in this than it is what it is. Possibly the biggest travesty is that Kenny Lofton, one of the best Center Fielders to ever play the game, did not receive enough votes to be on the ballot again next year. That makes me sick, but that is not what I am here to rant about today. 

Browns get Shurmured in loss to Redskins

This one was hard to stomach. It is hard to dive too much more into it than that. Mike Shanahan once again proved that he is an expert at making second half adjustments and catering his game plan to his team’s strengths. Pat Shurmur on the other hand… not so much. The team came out with a halftime lead and made mistakes right away, and those offensive mis-steps caused the Browns defense grief as they were given a short field to defend and spent far too much time on the field. 

Choo Traded

Tribe Choo-Choo-Chooses Bauer

I got off work last night at 1 in the morning, and I looked at my phone. My jaw dropped. Shin-Soo Choo, Jason Donald, Tony Sipp and Lars Anderson were no longer Indians. I had more or less resigned myself, not that it was a bad thing, that Choo would be starting in Right Field for the Indians on Opening Day, and it would be Asdrubal Cabrera who would be traded for pitching. Well, low and behold, Trevor Bauer is an Indian. Trevor Bauer is awesome. A top 10 overall prospect going into last season, and they managed to get him for sending Choo to Cincinnati for a year and allowing the Reds to send their top short stop prospect, Didi Gregorious, to Arizona.

Colt McCoy vs Brandon Weeden

Still trying to figure out who is better…

Back when the Browns took Brandon Weeden in this years NFL draft, I was pretty upset. For a couple reasons, one being, I like McCoy. I really thought he was coming along and starting to improve last year. Also Weeden is almost 30, and coming in as a rookie. Not the best combination. But now at this juncture in the NFL season, Weeden has played 13 games, the same number that McCoy played last year. So timing wise this is set up perfectly. Lets look at their stats, shall we:

The Indians, Mark Reynolds, and Who Knows What Else…

Indians hope Mark Reynolds adds much need power to the lineup

I was sitting on the couch Sunday night when my older Brother, a die-hard Orioles fan, sent me a text saying that Mark Reynolds was going to sign with the Indians. I paused for a second, and then I started to think. Good…. maybe…. yea, its a good thing. He didn’t understand why I was happy to have the Human Windmill inserted into the Indians lineup. I pointed to the stretch at the end of last season when Reynolds was hitting everything that came near him, helping to push the Orioles in to the post-season for the first time since… well… a long time. I bet my Brother that Reynolds would hit more than 35 homers in Cleveland this year. Let’s hope I’m right.

Return Again?

So, it has been a really long time since I have done this. You know how life is sometimes. It is hard to keep up with everything. Work, life, etcetera. Anyways, not to bore anyone with that kind of stuff. I’m trying to get the posts back up again, we will see how it goes. Hopefully a year and a half of inactivity won’t keep some of the readers from coming back again. I hope I can get some of your attention and conversation back.

I don’t yet have the services of my brother back, he was more of the basketball and soccer guy, so my thoughts will be just about limited to the Indians and the Browns. We will see what I can come up with.

Cavaliers Struggle, While Hope Blooms at Quicken Loans Arena.

The Cavaliers already better than expected 6-10 record has brought me to an interesting realization about this team. We were playing well, had our struggles as every team does, but in my brief (for too brief) window of actually getting to watch this team play, I have come to the conclusion, we aren’t going to win a title this year. Obviously. But, if our young guys keep progressing, I’d say this team is 3 years, and a true Shooting Guard and a true Sixth Man away from being a contender. Now this might be all my optimistic fan talking, but hear me out. With what we have seen so far from Kyrie Irving I am not only impressed by his talent and determination, but by his potential. Tristan Thompson has shown (me at least) that he is going to be a really good NBA player, maybe even an All-Star some day, yes he needs polish but what 20-something doesn’t?  He has shown an ability to score around the basket and can (if he keeps working) can develop that mid range game to be quite the weapon. There isn’t much to be said about these guys that hasn’t been said before, so I won’t go into it in great detail. I’m more going to focus on the things I said we need to be a contender. 3 years, that one is really easy since time is going to pass, and these guys are going to develop into NBA players the more time they spend on the floor. The two positions we need to improve at, shooting guard, and sixth man. Yes that is vague but the guy on the team that gets the sixth most minutes, it doesn’t matter his true position because it is all about just having six quality guys. Everyone knows Anthony Parker is not the future of the Cavs. And after this season (perhaps even before then some people may argue) he should not be a starter for the Cavs. We need a lights out shooter to come into the fold and give us that consistent scoring option on the catch and shoot. Perhaps through the draft, perhaps with some of that money that we should have in the offseason. Preferably via draft in my opinion, a good young core is the way to go in the NBA it would seem these days. From there its a little bit of addition by subtraction, no more Casspi, the ship has already sailed, he’s not who we were hoping he would be. Less Jamison (or no Jamison),and less (or no) Parker.

The final things the Cavs would have to do, is slightly better backup Center, Erden just doesn’t do it for me, he’s just not quite good enough. And then the position I see as being the biggest question mark remaining is that 6th man role. For my money, my thought is draft a small forward and give him the starting role and let Alonzo Gee come off the bench in a big way to spell the younger guys at the 2 and 3 spots to allow them all time to develop and if the core group can stay together and improve this team could really do something. So heres to a couple more nice draft picks and in a few years a (hopefully) OKC style rise to the top. Just without the alpha dog issues they have.

So the Season is Over

So here we are again, the NFL Regular Season has come to an end and so has the Browns involvement in the league until free agency and draft season begins. Now is the time of year where we as fans get to put our speculating hats on, sit around and talk amongst ourselves and think about how miserable the season was, and come up with a million different ways that we can improve the team. Now, that is our civic duty as fans, so of course we must oblige. As my attention rapidly shifts towards the very fun to watch Cavaliers and the count down to Spring Training, I am paying less and less attention to the Browns. I barely paid attention in the build up to the final game of the season, and actually didn’t watch any of the game as I was stuck to work on New Year’s Day. There are many burning questions about the future of the franchise, where they will go this off season and whether or not they should continue on with Pat Shurmur as the head coach. We have nothing but questions right now, but let’s look at a few things from this season that we know moving in next year and the off season. Then, maybe, we’ll move on to some other things as well.

Cavs Move to 1-1, Impressions

With the win last night on the road against the Detroit Pistons the Cavs evened out their early season record to 1-1. Thanks to the free trial of NBA League Pass I was able to watch the game in full again, so for the next two weeks I will get to watch all the games. I’m excited about that, and after last night I feel a little more excitement for the team this season.

Zach’s Brown List

Running a few days behind because of the holidays and the hectic nature that comes with this time of year. The Browns did their best again to imitate a half decent team for half of a game and then just completely fell on their face and collapsed. They blew a 10 point 4th quarter lead and ultimately lost in the beginning portions of overtime. The Browns have 2 games left, Baltimore and Pittsburgh, so we are likely looking at 2 more rough losses before it is all said and done this year. 

Zach’s Brown List

The first of two contests against the hated Steelers has come and gone. The Browns were, for the most part, competitive in this matchup… But the landscape of the rest of the season was changed, and possibly the entire franchise might feel the ramifications of this game.

Zach’s Browns List

Another week, another loss. Another emberassing performance against a division rival. Sounds pretty much like standard operation for the Cleveland Browns, but this one felt so much worse. The players are getting sick of losing, and so are the fans. I have a sinking feeling, if it is even possible, that things are going to get worse before they get better.

The Prospects: Jason Kipnis

The Indians have had issues with the 2nd base position for the last several years. Ever since Roberto Alomar was traded the Indians have never really been able to fill the void consistently. I lost track a long time ago of how many different guys have played in that spot in recent years. It appears that the Indians may finally have the long term answer to the position. Jason Kipnis burst onto the major league scene last year and made a huge impact on the Tribe offense. Not only does this solidify a worriesome position, but it could be the beginning of a new star player.

Zach’s Brown List

Welcome to Zach’s Brown List. Yes, clever title is it not? Browns being the team name, and the color that is associated with crappy football, this will be a weekly segment where I dish on our beloved Brows and the laundry list of crap that seems to follow them around. Every Tuesday I will post the weekly Browns “s”hit list. Since this is the first one of the year it will be a little more all encompassing then the following week. Let’s begin shall we?

Your 2012 Cavaliers Projected Lineup!

So with this lockout finally settled and teams getting started on their off season workouts, preseason and free agency all rolled into 2 weeks, this is my predicted starting lineup come opening day/Christmas day. An NBA roster has 12 spots open to active players, and 3 IR spots that can be filled by guys not suiting up for a game. So I will list the starters the 7 bench spots, in order from 6th man to 12th man, and the three IR spots. This is of course subject to change if the Cavaliers make any offseason signings or trades.