The SoapBoxers

Two young pitchers signed big deals last year. The Nationals signed highly touted Stephen Strasburg to a deal that will pay $15.1 million between 2009 and 2012. The Reds signed Cuban defector Aroldis Chapman to a six year deal worth at least $30.25 million (if Chapman is arbitration-eligible after the 2012 or 2013 seasons, he can convert subsequent salary amounts into bonus and go through arbitration – a great deal for him).

The Reds are seriously considering bring Chapman to Cincinnati with them to start the season (although it has become increasingly likely that Chappy will also start the season in the minors). The Nationals are sending Strasburg to AA Harrisburg to start the season (not even AAA, but AA!). Does this mean that Chapman is better than Strasburg?

First of all, why is Strasburg being sent to AA instead of AAA? One reason is that Harrisburg’s average April temperatures (average high 61; average low 41) are a bit higher than those of Syracuse (high 56, low 35). Low temperatures can contribute to injuries.

The bigger question you may be asking is this – why send Strasburg to the minor leagues at all? Why not have him start the season with the Nationals?

As with many things in life, the short answer is easy: money.

Baseball players become eligible for free agency when they have accumulated 6.00 or more years of Major League service with a team. This is based on the number of days on the major league roster (or disabled list). You can accumulate six years of service in a six years span, or you can bounce up and down for twenty years and never reach this threshold.

There is one wrinkle to this – if you send a player to the minor for less than 20 days, he still gets credit for the entire season. Send him to the minors for 21 days, and he gets credit only for his actual time served.

If you aren’t grasping the significance yet, it’s this: if you can keep a guy’s service time at 5.9 years instead of 6.0 years, you delay his free agency by a year – saving quite a bit of money on the 7th year.

The point of having Strasburg start the season in the minors, then, is to delay his free agency eligibility until after the 2016 season.

A smaller issue is whether the Nationals can delay Strasburg’s arbitration eligibility. All players are eligible for binding salary arbitration after they have 3.00 or more years of service. Additionally, amongst players with more than 2 but less than 3 years of service, the top 17% (in terms of service time) are also eligible for arbitration. These players are referred to as “Super Twos”. The cutoff for Super Twos has historically been between 2 years, 128 days and 2 years, 140 days (but it’s a moving target, since it’s based on the current year’s group of players). In recent years, many teams attempt to game the system by giving a player slightly less than 128 days of service their rookie year, in an effort to have them fall short of Super Two status. If the Nationals can manage to do this, this would make Strasburg arbitration eligible after the 2013 season instead of after the 2012 season.

So, what does this all mean for Strasburg’s salary?

Note: Strasburg also got a $7.5 million signing bonus.

• 2010: $2M (per contract)
• 2011: $2.5M (per contract)
• 2012: $3M (per contract)
• 2013: If a Super Two, salary determined by arbitration. If not, the team can impose a salary (must be at least 80% of the previous year’s salary).
• 2014: Salary determined by arbitration
• 2015: Salary determined by arbitration
• 2016: If Strasburg has six years of service, he becomes a free agent following the 2015 season. If he has less than six years of service, his salary is determined by arbitration.

At any point in this path, Strasburg and the Nationals can sign a new contract that would remove him from the arbitration process. This is quite likely, since arbitration can be quite adversarial and tends to hurt some feelings. However, if Strasburg’s arbitration year is pushed back to 2014 and his free agency pushed back until after the 2016 season, these years are worth less money, and this will be reflected in any long term contract offered by the Nationals.

You might have missed the news with the hoopla of the NCAA tournament over the weekend, but the Minnesota Twins signed All Star catcher Joe Mauer to an 8 year, $184 million deal.  Obviously, $23 million per year is a lot of money for any player, but I think this deal makes a lot of sense for the Twins.  I’ll tell you why.

It prevents fan defection

The Twins have, historically, been a bit, er, frugal.  This in spite of the fact that former owner Carl Pohlad actually had more money than Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.  Steinbrenner ran the Yankees as a hobby and desired to have World Series championships.  Pohlad ran the Twins more like a business, actually paying attention to the bottom line.  In a smaller media market such as Minneapolis, this often meant having players like Johan Santana and Torii Hunter leave to pursue more money elsewhere.

Mauer has always been a special fan favorite for the Twins.  Mauer played his high school ball at Cretin-Durham Hall, right in the Twins cities.  In 2001, the Twins made him the first overall pick in the draft.  This wasn’t a slam dunk decision.  Many observers felt that USC pitcher Mark Prior was a much better gamble than a high school catcher, regardless of the numbers he put up in high school.  Looking back nine years later, the decision to pick Mauer was clearly the correct decision.

Mauer sets a good example on and off the field.  I am unaware of him ever being in any trouble off the field.  On the field, in his first 5 full seasons, he has won three batting titles, three gold gloves, and an MVP award – and has finished in the top 6 in the MVP voting on two other occasions.

In short, Mauer is bigger than hockey in Minnesota.  Well, maybe not.  Probably bigger than curling, though.  Losing Mauer would have been catastrophic for Twins fans, and they would have stayed away from games in droves.   This is a franchise that was once on the chopping block to be removed from baseball as part of contraction (the Expos-now-Nationals were the other team).

Keeps him away from the Yankees

The big fear, of course, was that the Yankees were going to come in and grab Mauer as a free agent.  This makes a lot of sense, with Yankee catcher Jorge Posada in the twilight of his career.  Brian Cashman would have loved the opportunity to add Mauer’s bat to the lineup.

This would have been a double whammy for the Twins.  Not only would it have been more difficult for the Twins to reach the post-season without Mauer, they’d be forced to play a Mauer-led Yankees team if they made it into the playoffs.

It’s actually not a bad deal, financially

You may look at Mauer’s numbers and say “meh, they’re pretty strong numbers, but he’s not exactly Albert Pujols.”

That’s quite true, but you need to look at the context of the numbers.  Mauer is a catcher – the most difficult position on the field.  It’s very rare to get elite offensive production out of a catcher.  Mauer is a best offensive catcher since Mike Piazza.  I hesitate to even make this comparison – not because of any shortcomings of Mauer, but shortcomings of Piazza.  Piazza was a very good hitter, but it’s very generous to refer to him as a catcher.  It’s an exaggeration to say that I’m a better defensive catcher than Piazza – but not by much.

Mauer is not a catcher in the mold of Piazza, though.  He is actually a good defensive catcher.  Finding a catcher who can combine good offensive and defensive skills is almost impossible –and you need to pay for it.  The drop-off between Mauer and the average MLB catcher is enormous.

Finally, the Twins are paying for some of Mauer’s peak years.  Players typically begin their prime years around age 27 and start to fade in their late 30s.  Mauer will be 28 next year when the contract starts in 2011 and 35 when the contract ends after the 2018 season.  Those are good years to pay for, although it wouldn’t be surprising to see Mauer enter a bit of a decline toward the end of the deal.  An 8 year contract that starts at age 28 is much better than an 8 year deal that starts at age 32.

What are your thoughts on the Mauer deal?  (Let’s try not to go down the “athletes are overpaid” route too much.  Elite performers in many fields are paid insane amounts of money.)

Store Update: We’ve been busy stocking the shelves at the Hyrax Publications store recently.  Last week was the release of Sell Yourself Short: A Guide to Short Story Writing (currently on sale for 99 cents!).  Today, we’re happy to announce the release of the audio version of The Cell Window.  The Cell Window is the tale of a professional voyeur.  The audio version is 48 minutes long and features the voice of Kosmo.  Note: Kosmo is not a professional audio book reader, so keep this in mind when setting your expectations.  The price is $3.99.

Want to read The Cell Window, but don’t like audio books?  You can buy the eBook featuring The Cell Window and eleven other stories in The Fiction of Kosmo, Volume 2 ($3.65).

Want it all, but don’t want to pay the a la carte prices?  The Annual Kosmo Pass (regularly $18, currently $9 + a bonus 2 months) will allow you to download all of Kosmo’s content for an entire year.  We plan to add 3-4 eBooks (10,000 – 20,000 words) per year and are planning to populate the audio book section to include nearly all of the fiction from the site. 

Not satisfied with your purchase? Please email Kosmo at Kosmo@ObservingCasually.com and we’ll refund your money!

The big news over the weekend was Northern Iowa’s victory over top seeded Kansas.  Ali Farokhmanesh once again provided the key shot for UNI, hitting a dagger of a three pointer late in the game.  Ali had about 5 minutes to get set for the shot (look at the replay – he has time to get his feet perfectly set), so it’s hardly a surprised that he was able to knock down the shot.

Northern Iowa’s path to the Elite 8 got a bit smoother yesterday.  Michigan State beat Maryland to advance to the Sweet 16, but they lost star point guard Kalin Lucas to a torn Achilles tendon during the game.

After the game, The Soap Boxers got dozens of Google hits for our NCAA round 1 recap.  We had a brief blurb about Ali and his parents (Cindy Fredrick and Dr. Mashallah Farokhmanesh).  Interestingly, we weren’t getting hits on Ali’s name (as those were probably sucked up by the mainstream sports sites) but we did get hits on his parents’ names – particularly his dad’s.  I’m really not sure why people were searching on his dad’s name – but if some of you folks have become permanent members of The Soap Boxers community, welcome aboard!

In addition to Northern Iowa, several other teams swung by the shoe store and picked up a pair of Cinderella’s glass slippers.  We have a 12 seed (Cornell), an 11 (Washington), and a 10 (St. Mary’s) are still dancing.  In some years, the mere presence of two 6 seeds (Xavier and Tennessee) in the Sweet 16 would be cause for celebration; in a year with 4 teams at an 8 seed of higher, Xavier and Tennessee are simply afterthoughts.

How am I doing in my bracket?  I’m in last place in my pool … and I have a chance to win.  Although two of my Final Four teams have been bounced from the tournament (Kansas and my runner-up, Wisconsin), I’m one of two people who have Syracuse picked to win it all.  If that happens and a few other games break my way, I win.  I’m cautiously optimistic.

The women’s NCAA tournament also got under way this weekend.  There’s usually considerably less drama in the early rounds of the women’s tournament.  One reason for this is that many of the first and second round games are played on the campus of the top seed in that set of four teams – something the men’s tournament forbids.  This helps boost attendance for the women’s tournament, but makes it much more difficult for upsets to occur.

The state of Iowa had three teams in the women’s tournament.  Northern Iowa had punched their ticket by winning the Missouri Conference tournament and entered play on Sunday with a lackluster 17-15 record.  Not surprisingly, #1 seed Nebraska clobbered them 83-44 (although this game was NOT in Lincoln, but Minneapolis).

The University of Iowa was an 8 seed and beat 9 seed Rutgers on Saturday 70-63.  The interesting story in this game was that Rutgers’ coach, Hall of Famer C. Vivian Stringer, was formerly the coach of a very successful program at Iowa.  Stringer is originally from the East, and left Iowa shortly after the death of her husband.  She is still very much respected in Iowa.

My Iowa State Cyclones also had a first round game.  The 4^th seeded Cyclones won their game against Lehigh 79-42.  The best news to come out of the game for ISU was the return of Alison Lacey, who had missed 4 games because of pneumonia.

Notable first round upsets were 12 seed Wisconsin-Green Bay over 5 seed Virginia, 11 seed San Diego State over 6 seed Texas, 11 seed Arkansas-Little Rock over 6 seed Georgia Tech, and 10 seed Vermont over 7 seed Wisconsin.  Top ranked an undefeated Connecticut rolled in their game 95-39 over Southern University.

MY APOLOGIES TO BOB RYAN OF THE BOSTON GLOBE

Dear Bob,

I am officially the Village Idiot. In last week’s article in the Casual Observer, I called out sports columnist Bob Ryan, who is often featured on ESPN’s Sports Reporters and Around the Horn for his incredible comment that Northern Iowa was one of eleven teams in the region that could take down the mighty Jayhawks of Lawrence Kansas.

Bob, I was wrong, you were right, I am eating crow, or my hat, or whatever you want to put on my menu. Just pass the salt and pepper.

Kansas was out-hustled, out shot, and outplayed and looked quite “ordinary” in losing to the Purple Panthers from Northern Iowa.

Upsets galore dominated the first weekend of play in the NCAA men’s tourney. Georgetown goes down, Pittsburgh, New Mexico, and even Villanova all bowed out early.

Most of our brackets are in total free-fall this year, including mine, so what do you do when your brackets go down? You root for all the underdogs so everyone else gets jobbed in their office pools too!

Right now I would say that Syracuse and Kentucky look the most impressive to me after week #1. But that is the beauty of this tourney, it is more than a week long. Some teams will continue to play well next weekend, some won’t and some will start to play a whole lot better. When you get down to sixteen, anything can happen. Heck it already has.

TIGER TRAP

Tiger came out of his den on Sunday and “allowed” two different interviews. One with Tom Rinaldi of ESPN and one with the Golf Channel’s Kelly Tilghman. Both of the interviews where held at Woods’ exclusive Islesworth county club and both were a whopping 5 minutes in length. While it appeared any question was open game, Woods often times said things such as “that is a personal matter” or “that is between Elin and me” aka … there is no freaking way I am going to answer that for you.

Tiger was very guarded as would be expected. The amount of coverage and the amount of sports talking heads hanging on his every word will increase exponentially in the upcoming days and weeks leading up to the Masters. What I am curious to see is how strict the Masters committee will be with the press at Augusta. They run a VERY tight ship, and I am guessing that having four green jackets in your closet likely gets you a little bit of preferential treatment from the committee. The press will be on egg-shells, as it is the toughest ticket in sports, and likely also the toughest place to get press credentials. All it takes is one improperly worded question and you might be shown the gate … It will be interesting to see if any of the sportswriters are willing to take that chance.

I think he will be ultra focused in his return to golf and it would not surprise me in the least if he wins his fifth Masters title this year. After all since winning in 2005 he has a sixth, two seconds and a third place finish … the guy knows this golf course.

PACK OF TWINKIES

The Twins got some good news and some bad news this weekend. First off, their stud closer Joe Nathan is out for the entire year and will be undergoing Tommy John surgery to repair his arm after feeling a “twinge” and taking himself out of a spring training game just a week or so ago. This is a major loss for Minnesota as Nathan has been very consistent and one of the best in the American League over the last few season.

They did lock up all everything catcher Joe Mauer for the next eight years for a whopping twenty three million a year. If you can do quick math that is a 184 million dollar deal. He is really a franchise player and I am sure even to a guy like Mauer it would be hard to spend that much money. Heck just think of what you could do with 184 million dollars …

I for one am sure that would be enough to take Bob Ryan out for a nice dinner and apologize …

I am able to get moderate reception in the radio at my desk and am able to tune into the NCAA basketball tournament.  I managed to listen to some chunks of the tournament during the day and caught some footage on CBS last night.

Early thoughts from the tournament:

Georgetown must be the most hated team in the tournament this year.  The Hoyas put some stress on the majority of brackets across the country.  There are a few happy people, though – those who picked Tennessee (or, um, Ohio) to push into the sweet 16.

Villanova nearly became the villain ‘o the brackets.  The Wildcats had their hands full with Robert Morris on Thursday.  Some analysts feel that there were several questionable fouls against Robert Morris in the game – and these calls were critical, as the game ended up being decided in overtime.

The tournament started out with a bang.  The initial three games were incredibly tight.  The first game to go final was #11 seed Old Dominion beating 6 seeded NotreDame 51-50.  This ended up being the blowout of the trio, with the next two games forcing overtime.  BYU escaped Billy Donovan’s 10 seeded Florida team in two overtimes, and 15 seed Robert Morris came up just short in overtime against #2 seed Villanova.

Upsets were the order of the day, including #10 Saint Marys, #11 Old Dominion, #13 Murray State, and #14 Ohio.  Only one #12 seed was in action (UTEP losing to Butler), so there’s still a good chance that a #12 will pick up a win (they usually do).

Only 5 of the 16 games were decided by 10 or more points.  Two of these were #1 vs. #16 mismatches, and one was actually #14 seed Ohio’s win against Georgetown.  Hopefully the rest of the weekend’s games will be just as good.

My favorite game of the day was #9 Northern Iowa’s 69-66 win over #8 seeded UNLV.  I grew up about 50 miles from the UNI campus, and I cheer for them any time they aren’t playing my Iowa State team.  UNI won the game on a long, long bomb by Ali Farokhmanesh.  Ali Farokhmanesh is the son of an Iranian immigrant, Dr. Mashallah Farokhmanesh.   Ali’s mother (Cindy Fredrick) is the head volleyball coach at Luther College after stints at Washington State University and the University of Iowa. Dr. Mashallah Farokhmanesh continues to serve as assistant coach to his wife, as he has throughout their coaching careers.

The conference that laid the biggest egg on day 1 was the Big East.  The conference, which at a hulking 16 teams, is indeed big, placed 8 teams into the conference, including 5 teams amongst the top 4 seeds (#1 Syracuse, #2s Villanova and West Virginia, #3s Pitt and Georgetown).   Big East teams were 1-3 on the day.  Georgetown, Notre Dame, Marquette were all upset.  Villanova’s escape against Robert Morris was the BEST showing for the conference.  Ack.

What are my upset specials for day 2?  #13 Siena over #4 Purdue (playing without star Robbie Hummel), #12 Cornell over #5 Temple (this game may be over by the time you read this), #12 Utah State over #5 Texas A&M, #11 Minnesota over #6 Pitt.  And my sweet surprises?  Siena and Murray State (yep, I had Racers in the Sweet 16 on my official bracket).

What are your favorite moments about the tournament so far?

First, I’d like to welcome the new readers who came here via The Digerati Life. Hang around for a while, explore the archives, and consider becoming a subscriber. We’ve been pretty sports-heavy in the last week – if you look through the archives, you’ll see that we’re usually a lot more eclectic.

Second, I am happy to announce the release of my new eBook – Selling Yourself Short – An Introduction to Short Story Writing. Selling Yourself Short is a 2500 word introduction to the process of short story writing – from creating your writing environment to developing the plot. In an effort to keep this handy guide affordable to all of our readers, the everyday price is just $1.49. However, for the next week, the price is just 99 cents. Don’t like it? There’s a money back guarantee! Buy it today at the Hyrax Publications store.

In 1981, buoyed by a court case against Topps, Fleer re-entered the baseball card market for the first time in two decades.  They were joined by newcomer Donruss.  Suddenly, consumers had a choice of which brand of baseball card to buy.

For several years, competition made the industry better.  Each company attempted to make their brand the most attractive.  By 1988, there were four mainstream brands, with Score also in the mix.  A pack of 15-16 cards (Score had 1 more card than everyone else) went for 50 cents.  It was a great time.  I spent much time trying to compile complete sets, or at least sets for my favorite team.

In the 1990s, the game began to change.  A new brand, Upper Deck, pushed the industry into the direction of premium brands in 1989 when they debuted with hologram-enhanced cards.  By the mid 1990s, each company had several brands, from high end to the base line.

I’ll admit that I took advantage of the situation.  Personally, I wasn’t a huge fan of the flashy “insert” cards that had begun to drive the industry.  In 1993, by random chance, I had absurdly good luck getting redemption cards for Topps’ Black Gold sets in packs.  I was pulling these at a much higher rate than the published odds.

I took these cards (redeemable for either 11, 22, or 44 cards in the high end Black Gold set) and immediately traded them to my friend Justin – for unopened packs of Topps cards.  Within those unopened packs, I would routinely find another Black Gold winner, which would restart the cycle.  I completed two sets of 1993 Topps cards at almost no expense.

In the late 90s, the base set of cards began to become an afterthought as everyone chased after the rare cards that were randomly inserted.  Instead of cherishing a card of one of their heroes, people would be disappointed that they hadn’t pulled a card featuring someone’s autograph.  It had become a case of the tail wagging the dog.

In an effort to fulfill demand, the industry began to create ever increasing volumes of rare card.  Each specific example was quite limited – but there were hundreds, if not thousands, of different varieties of “limited” cards.  In some sets, nearly every pack had some sort of “rare” card.

Not surprisingly, the fact that each set contained more “special” cards allowed manufacturers to slowly raise the price of cards.  No longer could you spend 50 cents on a pack of 15 cards.  Now it was $2, $3, or even $5 for just a handful of cards.

That’s the point at which I bailed out of the card market.  It no longer made financial sense to put together complete sets.  With the base cards now just a necessary by-product of the specialty cards, the value dropped through the floor.  It was easier just to pick up a set the next year at a bargain basement price.

Years later, I still just buy a couple of packs of new cards a year.  When I buy cards, I buy things from other collectors or shops.  Sometimes these are newer cards of my favorite players, but more often, I buy cards from bygone eras.  Over the winter, I made a very pleasurable purchase, picking up a T-206 baseball card of Lefty Leifeld for $15.  For the same price as a few packs of 2010 cards, I could have a 100 year old card that was rare by chance of fate rather than by design of the manufacturer.

If the card manufacturers still consistently produced a base set of cards at a decent price, I would probably buy them and put together complete sets.  I always enjoyed the thrill of the hunt – trying vainly to find the last nine cards you needed to complete the entire 792 card Topps set.  Alas, the companies have lost their focus on what was their core product, and in the process, lost a lot of potential customers – people who were kids in the 80s and 90s and are now achieving financial success.

Editor’s note: make sure to enter The Soap Boxers’s pool. Details can be found here.
 

It is that time of year again. March Madness! Although they should change this title to something with “April” in the title as this thing is starting to drag out farther than the NBA playoffs!.

The Men’s bracket should be interesting this year. There has been a lot of debate about how evenly balanced this field is, how really it is the shortest list of deserving teams that did not get in…i.e. this is one of the weaker tournaments in recent memory. The talking heads on television and radio love the week leading up to the tourney as sports talk is spirited and millions of people hang on every word making deep analytical decisions when filling out one of their fourteen office pool brackets.

Most of us delve through the websites, watch the seemingly round the clock ESPN Bracketology specials to pick our upsets. One of the #3 seeds always seems to get beaten. The #12 seed wins 34% of the first round games recently. The TV guys love all this talk. Bob Ryan on ESPN’s Around the Horn commented yesterday that eleven teams could take down the Jayhawks in their side of the bracket.

C’mon Bob … really … eleven? You had me until you mentioned Northern Iowa as a team that could spoil it for the boys from Lawrence. Talk about a bold prediction!

Now I of all people love the underdog. It gives you something to brag about to your co-workers and friends when you look smarter than the world when you have Cornell making it to the elite 8 … and they actually do. You do have to pick a few upsets don’t you?

Nope.

This year Johnny is going straight with the chalk. Well mainly. I won’t divulge my entire bracket here, but I am taking the Jayhawks to win it all.

My pick for the team to “make some noise” Kansas State … They have a complete team and great guard play. A factor that is always important in the tourney.

On the Women’s side, well gimmie the chalk again, at least until the Sweet 16. I think the Huskers will be the first #1 seed eliminated. While the team went 30-1 this year it greatly over-achieved, even in an extremely difficult conference with seven teams ranked in the top 25 most of the year. You have to pick UCONN, if someone beats them it will be considered a major upset, after all they have won 72 straight games.

My pick for the team to “make some noise” Texas A&M. The Lady Aggies are playing fabulous right now, are very athletic and are very well coached.

I am sure I will be called a Big XII Homer by someone reading this but I don’t care. Good luck to all of you in your office pools!

The state of basketball in Iowa

The state of Iowa will be represented by just one team in the men’s NCAA tournament – Northern Iowa.  My Iowa State Cyclones faltered down the stretch after three point bomber Lucca Staiger left the program to return to play pro ball in his native Germany (yes, in mid-season).  My team to watch during the tournament will be Syracuse, featuring former Cyclone Wesley Johnson.

The University of Iowa fired their basketball coach on Monday.  Todd Lickliter, who was the NABC National Coach of the Year in his 2007 during his final year at Butler, was just 38-58 at Iowa, including 10-22 this season.  A rash of defections from the program and flagging attendance spelled the end for Lickliter.  The university exercised the$2.4 million buyout to sever the relationship with Lickliter.

Who will the new coach be?  Suggestions I have heard include Tennesee coach Bruce Pearl and Baylor coach Scott Drew (see my article about Drew from last year).  This makes no sense to me.  Why take a step down from a top program to take over rebuilding a program at Iowa?  While Iowa has a good basketball history (including one Final Four appearances), it’s hardly an elite history.  Add to that the fact that Steve Alford and now Lickliter are coaches who had significant success before Iowa and failed to win consistently with the Hawkeyes.  Alford left Iowa for New Mexico and promptly reeled off three straight winning seasons – his Lobo team is  3 seed in the NCAA tournament. 

Who, then, to coach the program?  If you don’t mind a coach with some baggage, how about Tim Floyd?  He’s a coach who has lived in the state before (he coached at Iowa State in the 90s) and he might be had for a bargain price as he seeks to creep out of the shadow of the O.J. Mayo scandal.

The University of Northern Iowa Panthers were the one team from the state to make the tournament.  If UNI can get past UNLV in the first round, they’d likely face the hated Kansas Jayhawks in the second round.  Although my team is Iowa State, not UNI, I’d cheer wildly for the Panthers to take down Kansas.

In the women’s tourney, Iowa State, Iowa, and UNI all made the tournament.  Iowa State is a 4 seed and will face Lehigh in the first round.  8 seed Iowa will face Rutgers, led by former Iowa coach (and Hall of Famer) C. Vivian Stringer.  The UNI team surged to an unexpected win in the Missouri Valley Conference tournament. Their reward – to be fed to the 30-1 Nebraska Cornhuskers.

NCAA Tournament

I’ll spend just a bit of time on the NCAA tournament.  My tournament bracket features Syracuse over Wisconsin in the title game, with Kansas and Duke also making it into the Final Four.  The odds of me nailing these picks is about as good as me getting struck by lightning.  I enjoy watching college basketball, but I’m hardly an expert.

Baylor is a 3 seed – this is a great testament to coach Scott Drew.  As I mentioned in last year’s article about Drew, this is a guy who had a complete uphill climb when he took over the Baylor program after former coach Dave Bliss left in disgrace.

I have Minnesota picked to get to the Sweet 16 largely because of their romp against Purdue in the semifinals of the Big 10 tournament.  Yes, they got killed by Ohio State in the tournament championship,  Yes, Purdue was playing without star Robbie Hummel.  Still, a Purdue team without Hummel is still a solid team, and such a decisive win cannot be completely ignore.

As is my custom, I picked three 12 seeds to advance (Cornell, Utah State, UTEP).  The lowest seed I have picked to win are the 13 seed Murray State Racers.  I have Murray State picked to upend 4 seed Vanderbilt in the first round and the aforementioned 12 seed UTEP in the second round to advance into the sweet 16.

My heart goes out to fans of Mississippi State.  They had the SEC title game – and the accompanying automatic bid to the NCAA tournament – seemingly locked up.  Then Kentucky’s DeMarcus Cousins hit a last second shot to send the game into overtime, and Kentucky escaped with the overtime win – and Mississippi State was left out of the tournament.

I’ll start the rallying cry – reduce the tournament back down to 64 games.  While having 65 teams in the tournament allows an mediocre team from a power conference to slide into an 11 or 12 seed, it looks just plain stupid on the sheet.  64 is enough.  If a bubble team gets left off, too bad.  That’s the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.

The Soap Boxers pool

Make sure to enter our pool.  Details can be found here.

Join The Soap Boxers Observer’s NCAA tourney pool.

The following prizes will be awarded:

First prize: An annual Kosmo pass at the Hyrax Publications store.  This will allow you to download all of my digital, including content not available on The Soap Boxers.  The pass has an MSRP of $18, although it’s selling for $9 right now, to reflect the fact that we have just begun to populate the audio book section.

Three random people will receive a copy of Selling Yourself Short: A Guide to Short Story writing.  Shh – this 2500 word eBooklet won’t be officially released until later in the week 🙂

Note: This is a continuation from Wednesday’s article about the Alphabet Soup League draft. Please read that article first – it will make this one make a lot more sense.

In round 6, I nabbed Indians outfielder Chin-Soo Choo, who provides a nice mix of power and steals. I also nabbed Rangers pitcher Neftali Feliz, who is a rising star in baseball. The only question is whether he starts the season in the Rangers rotation of bullpen. He hasn’t pitched a ton of innings in prior years, so the Rangers will likely take care to limit his innings, and big workload increases often result in injuries in the subsequent year. My final pick in this round is Omar Infante. Infante is not a great player, but I is a very shallow letter, and he does provide position flexibility.

In round 7, I had letters P, D, and E. P was pretty straightforward. I still needed a first baseman and Carlos Pena was on the board. I snapped up C-Pain. D was a more difficult choice. Did I want pitcher Justin Duchscherer, who has combined good skills with injuries? Outfielder Elijah Dukes, who has a lot of talent, but suspect decision-making skills? I toyed with several possibilities before finally going with Rockies pitcher Jorge de la Rosa, who pitched very well at times last year. I’m tinkering with the possibility of only playing him during road trips. E is another weak letter, and I took a flier on reliever Scott Elbert.

In round 8, I filled out my outfield by picking up Brave Nate McLouth who, like Choo, provides a bit of speed and a bit of power. My other letter is T, which doesn’t have as much talent. I go for Willy Taveras. Taveras is a one trick pony, bringing only steals to the table. My plan is to stash him on the bench and plug him into the lineup when the matchup makes it appears as if I can win the steals category with fast Willy’s help.

After making round 8 selections and awaiting everyone else’s pick, I still had holes at shortstop and third base. I’m hoping for Rockies third baseman Ian Stewart (a young player with good power but a low batting average) slips to me in the 9th and Alexei Ramierez of the White Sox slips to me in the 10th.

When the 9th rolls around, I am pleased to be able to snap up Stewie. I don’t actively seek out my favorite players in the draft, but I really need a third baseman, and I’m running out of time. I also need a shortstop, and could pick up Marco Scutaro for my shortstop and Aramis Ramirez or Mark Reynolds as my third baseball, but I roll the nice with Stewart and hope that Alexei Ramirez is still alive in the 10th. Stewie has gone from hot prospect (30 homers in the minors fresh out of high school), to a bust, to a once again valued player – and he’s still just 24.

My other letter is N. Ugh. N is an awful letter. I grab another catcher, Dioner Navarro. I don’t really need a third catcher, and Navarro will probably get cut when I pick up some free agents after the draft.

In the 10th round, I’m please to see that Alexei Ramirez did indeed drop to me.  I’m hoping that Alexei bounces back a bit from last year.  It’s worth noting that Ramirez was shifting back to shortstop in 2009 after having played second base in 2008.  In any case, at this point, I’m in desperate need of a shortstop.  My other letter is J.  As I look down my roster, I realize that I don’t have an adequate bat for the utility role – my bench hitters are pretty bad.  Nick Johnson, the oft-injured DH for the New York Yankees, joins the team.  He’s unlikely to rack up a lot of at bats, but should contribute a good on base percentage.

This is how my roster looks after the 10th round:

C: Matt Wieters
1B: Carlos Pena
2B: Howie Kendrick
SS: Alexei Ramirex
3B: Ian Stewart
OF: Carlos Quentin
OF: Chin-Soo Choo
OF: Nate McLouth
Utility: Nick Johnson

Bench: C Miguel Olivo, 2B/3B/SS/OF Omar Infante, OF Willy Taveras, C Dioner Navaro

SP: Justin Verlander
SP: Josh Beckett
SP: Tim Lincecum
SP: Felix Hernandez
SP: Yovani Gallardo
SP: Jorge de la Rosa
P: Neftali Feliz
RP: David Aardsma
RP: Scott Elbert

One thing quickly jumps out at me.  We play 9 pitchers, and while I have very good top end talent (6 of the top 20 starting pitchers in baseball, including 3 of the top 7, according to Yahoo’s fantasy guide), I have exactly 9 pitchers – I’d be short a guy if there is an injury.  We have a bonus round upcoming.  This is basically a waiver process conducted vua email.  We can pick any remaining player.  It makes sense for me to pursue another pitcher – particularly one from the letter Y or Z, since they would be elgible without having juggle the roster.

How did I do? Obviously, my hitting is a bit weak, as I sacrificed hitting in order to build an elite pitching staff. I like my position, though. I should be able to pick up win in Wins, ERA, WHIP, and Strikeouts nearly every week. I have Aardsma, so I’m not completely punting saves, and may win that category once in a while. I have some solid hitters and hope to pick up at least 1-2 wins on the hitter side each week. I can always trade pitching for hitting if I need to.

That’s not to say that the strategy wasn’t without risk. Leaving the shortstop until the last round is not a very safe strategy and could have easily backfired – and some might say that it DID backfire, since Alexei Ramirez isn’t a world beater. But I set the strategy early, stuck to it, and avoided major potholes in the road.