Better luck next time?

I and every true Packer fan woke up this morning with a sore right elbow. Sympathy pains for Brett Favre? Yes, but mostly from throwing the remote at the referees on TV. I'm going to spend the next hour watching Animal Planet and rooting against the zebras.



I can't completely blame the refs, nor the injuries - Favre, Charles Woodson, Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila - but obviously both were factors. The game-calling in those first 20 minutes was atrocious, especially when you see how well the dinking-and-dunking was working later in the game. And why did we decide we couldn't run against the Cowboys, even when they were dropping five guys back into coverage? Every play-action, Ryan Grant runs untouched while Favre heaves into double coverage. It didn't make any sense. Not going for it on fourth-and-inches in the fourth quarter also was a dumb call. Yeah, Mason Crosby kicked the figgie and we needed two scores, but I would've gone for it.

But the refs blew three huge calls. Al Harris stripping the ball from Terrell Owens, but no, it was uh... huh. The horrible spot in the fourth quarter that led to the field goal - it appeared Grant had the first down. And the ridiculous pass interference call when Miles Austin whined and whined until a flag came out 30 seconds - literally, if you didn't see the game - after the play ended. All were terrible calls. If just one of them goes our way, maybe the outcome is different.

I guess the news with Favre is as good as we could have hoped - he expects to be back for their next game, which isn't until Dec. 9. As for Woodson and KGB, I expected them to play last night, so who knows.

Worst of all it almost guarantees we'll be back in Dallas for the NFC championship. We have four games left - home against Oakland, at St. Louis, at Chicago, home against Detroit. We could (should?) go 4-0 against that slate, which leaves us at 14-2. But the Cowboys are at Detroit, home against Philadelphia, at Carolina, at Washington. They too could run the table. But maybe they lose one - that still leaves us tied, with the Cowboys holding the tiebreaker. So we need to win out and have the Cowboys go 2-2. Possible, but not probable.

I guess I have to be a Lions fan next week...



Wow, two lions videos in one post. Maybe it's a good sign for Detroit!

Will the status quo be good enough?

The Yankees are putting the band back together.



I was hoping for two out of the big three - Alex Rodriguez, Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada - and they got all three. And Andy Pettitte is still flirting with retirement, but he might be back, too. For all the talk after the Cleveland series about the end of the dynasty (which has been pronounced "ended" every year since 2001), the 2008 Yankees may be the same team as the 2007 Yankees.

Guys like Steve Phillips like to say that's not good enough. The Yankees can't be as good as they were last year -- they have to be better. Because, after all, they didn't win the World Series last year, so they have to try to be better, right? (Yes, these are the same guys who say every year that the Yankees are stupid for thinking they can win the World Series every year.)

But which 2007 Yankees will these 2008 Yankees be? The first half of 2007, when their Opening Day starter was Carl Pavano, and when the rest of the rotation was whoever could make the next train from Scranton?

Apparently Phillips thinks the Yankees will tie the Major League record they set last year by using 10 different starters (six of them rookies) in their first 30 games.

Let's remember: At the end of May, 22-29. At the end of September, 94-68. That's 72-39 -- a .649 winning percentage. Over a full season, that's 105 wins.

The same team, but with a better manager, a full year of Joba and Hughes, and a reasonable, non-record setting number of injuries? I'll take the status quo.

All I ask is a decent lefty in the 'pen... and better bug spray.

Posada's Pay-Day

You'd be smiling too, if you just got a $13.1 million a year contract.

Yes, following the 2010 season, this may look like a lousy deal. But I think the Yankees did what they had to do to re-sign Jorge Posada, closing what would have been a far bigger hole than the one at third base.

It's true that we won't be able to find a third baseman with 54 home runs, 156 runs batted in and a 1.067 OPS -- or even one with 35 HRs, 139 RBIs and a .915 OPS, what Alex Rodriguez did in his "off year" of 2006. But the drop-off from A-Rod to whoever plays third for the Yankees, even if it's a worst-case-scenario platoon of Wilson Betemit and Aaron Bleeping Boone, won't be as ugly as the drop from Posada to Jason LaRue or Damian Miller or Yorvit Torrealba. Now that Posada's off the market, the best option available is arguably Paul Lo Duca, who hit .272 but with a ridiculously empty .689 OPS, or maybe Michael Barrett, who hit .244 with a .653, but is a guy a smart organization would target with a one-year make-good contract. After that it's all guys who should be back-ups.

Posada isn't a great defensive catcher. Over the years, he's improved when it comes to throwing out baserunners -- from awful to below average -- and for a lot of people, that's the only factor they consider when it comes to evaluating a catcher's defense. But Jorge allows a lot of passed balls -- 13 in 1111.3 innings last year. On the ESPN leader board, that's the fourth-most in the majors. That doesn't count all the wild pitches that are charged to the pitcher but that an average catcher probably could have blocked. And when you watch a Yankee game, what's even more frustrating are the pitches that simply pop out of his glove. The ball doesn't get far enough away for the runner to advance, or there's no one on base anyway, so it doesn't go down as a passed ball. But how often is an umpire going to give you a strike if the catcher drops the ball?

All that said, here's a catcher coming off a career year -- .338 BA, .426 OBP, .543 SLG -- in a very weak market for free agent catchers. To quote Teddy KGB, "Pay that man his money."



Jorge isn't likely to put up those numbers again, so what's a reasonable projection for next year? How about he hits .262 with a .782 OPS, which is what he did in 2005 -- his worst numbers since '99, when he was still sharing the job with his new manager. That seems like a reasonable expectation for a minimum level of production for the next two or three years.

That's 100 more points in OPS than you'll get from any other catcher on the market. And 100 points in OPS makes up for a lot of passed balls.