The Sports Roundtable is back after its two month hiatus. Basically, I got caught up all of March with my college basketball blog, now titled Mid Major Hoops. The Roundtable has lots to cover so lets do some quick thoughts.
- Texans are Idiots - No, not Texas citizens are not idiots, except the chief Texan in the White House. No, I am talking about the Houston Texans, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays of the NFL. Only the Texans coming off a two win season in which they had the sixth lowest point total in the NFL would pass up Reggie Bush, perhaps the most dynamic player to come into the NFL in the past several years, to take a player who got just about all of his sacks in three games, Mario Williams. If I was New Orleans, I would draft Bush immediately. Don't trade the pick. You don't know how well Deuce McAllister's rehab will go. If McAllister is healthy by training camp or during training camp, then you have a nice chip to trade.
- Zambrano Must Go..to the Bullpen - I know what you are saying fellow Mets fans. Trade Victor Zambrano for an instructional league player, a batboy, a bucket of used range balls, whatever. Unfortunately that's not going to happen, but what the Mets can do is put him the bullpen and make him the long man. If Omar Minaya is thinking that Zambrano can do less damage in the rotation than the thought of hurting the bullpen by putting Aaron Heilman in his place, well he is wrong. Zambrano hurts the club more by his bad outings which have resulted in early departures and heavy use of the bullpen. Its a much better solution to have Heilman start, give six good innings and turn the ball over to Bradford, Oliver and yes even Jorge Julio in the seventh inning before turning the game over to Duaner Sanchez (a terrific trade for the Mets) and Billy Wagner (got in trouble last night before an absolutely awesome three pitch strikeout of Todd Pratt). Of course now with Brian Bannister on the DL, chances are slim that this will happen. Still, give it some serious thought, Omar, please.
- The Cubs are without Derrek Lee for as many as two months. So how did they fil their hole? They put their starting second baseman Todd Walker at first. Great, fill a hole by weakening another position. Here's a better thought. Trade a prospect to the Diamondbacks for Tony Clark. Clark can still hit and is an excellent fielder.
- Steve Howe died yesterday when his truck overturned on a road in California. Sadly, it was a turbulent end to a such turbulent life. Steve Howe when sober and healthy was a terrific reliever but Howe for years had substance abuse trouble with cocaine and alcohol. And that trouble led to trouble with the law until the last few years. But one got the feeling over the years that Howe was not going to live a long life. Sadly it ended when he finally had got his act together. Hopefully drugs or alcohol did not play a factor in his death.
- There are so many players announcing for the NBA draft, some of which have absolutely no business announcing for the draft. Hopefully most of them will not have agents and come to their senses and go back to college when they are not drafted, or drafted lower than they thought. As I told a friend not too long ago, any player considering going out for the NBA draft should call Marty Blake, the director of NBA Scouting. Marty is the best judge of talent there is and would give any player an honest assessment of that player's chances. I will have more on this on my college basketball blog, Mid Major Hoops this weekend.
That's it for now. My son is awake from his nap.
Comments