Weekend Thoughts

I actually started work on a couple of things last week that I was never able to complete which I hope to get up here over the next couple of days. Because of that I'm going to be kind of brief right now.

1) Slowly I am becoming a Craig Hansen believer. His past few outings he has looked great. Meanwhile, Manny Delcarmen has taken over Mike Timlin's role of the reliever that comes in in the late innings of a close game and gets rocked turning a lead into a deficit or a small deficit into a laugher. Quite honestly, for as long as Delcarmen has been around he may even be as old as Mike Timlin.

2) Lance Berkman is having a monster year for the Astros. You heard all about it all weekend. Lance Berkman also probably cost me at least a shot at a fantasy title last year with my last second decision to use my first round pick on him over Matt Holiday back in March of '07. Hey no hard feelings though. Anyway, I write, just to say that I was curious to see if he was one of those guys that puts up huge stats but does not really scare you in big spots - Vlad or A-Rod are a couple that come to mind - of if he was one of those guys like Gary Sheffield in his prime who absolutely terrified you whenever he came up, especially when the game was on the line. Well I can officially report that Berkman is carved entirely of the Sheffield mold as opposed to the A-Rod/Vlad mold. Whenever he came up in a big spot over the weekend it seemed like he delivered, the one exception being against Papelbon on Friday night. While I can't say I endorse the nickname ("Big Puma"?) I can fully endorse the player.

3) I think now is a good time to point out that when Omar Minaya pointlessly acquired Bartolo Colon in 2002 while acting as the GM of the Expos, three of the players he gave away - Cliff Lee, Brandon Phillips, and Grady Sizemore - will all more than likely be All Stars this year. It kills me, living in the city which houses the former Expos that nobody here knows enough to blame Minaya even partially for the shit product that the team has put on the field since coming to DC in 2005.

4) Speaking of Omar Minaya, it also bears mentioning that he has saddled the Mets with paying Johan Santana almost $138M through 2013 for the downside of his career. You know it worked out well with Pedro right? In this, the final year of his 4 year, $48M deal, Minaya has gotten out of him 1 good year in 2005, half a mediocre year in 2006, a lost season in 2007, and now what is looking like a bad year in 2008. Great contract there. If he had even paid the slightest bit of attention to his diminished performance his last two years in Boston and his historic frailty, maybe he would have for once eschewed the big splash and made the practical decision. That's not how Omar rolls though and of course the media loves him for it.

5) So why do I hate Omar Minaya so much? It's pretty simple, the media fawns over him and constantly tells us what a good guy and GM he is despite him never putting together a World Series winner and being the architect behind one of the most dysfunctional teams in recent history. Also, I heard he talked trash about not wanting to trade with the Red Sox for a stupid reason which I cannot recall back in his Montreal days and I have held a grudge ever since. I don't care how true it is, I am holding strong to that grudge.

6) So this is TV related, but does anybody else have a tough time taking Krayzee-Eyez-Killah (Curb Your Enthusiasm if you are confused) seriously as Joe Everyman on the Progressive and KFC ads he constantly finds himself in? Just too weird for my tastes.