While We’re Waiting serves as the early morning gathering of WFNY-esque information for your viewing pleasure. Have something you think we should see? Send it to our tips email at tips@waitingfornextyear.com.
Sorry Bob, but this has a little Get off my lawn to it -”Why should a sportswriter who is covering, say, a basketball game, send out little comments about the game every five minutes? If the tweet recipients were that interested in the action, wouldn’t they be riveted to the game on radio or TV? And if the sportswriter is tweeting every five minutes, isn’t his story going to suffer? To write a decent story, you need enough time to do two things: fully absorb the nuances of the event and turn those observations into a coherent, compelling piece of writing.” [Dyer/Ohio.com]
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Evaluating the Sessions trade discussions- “While I’d be looking for a 2012 first rounder specifically if I were Chris Grant, and definitely not interested in cash or either of the two players NY was talking about, that 2016 pick – while four years later than what Cleveland needs right now – is still a first round pick. The Lakers, meanwhile, currently hold a top-20 protected pick in 2012 they received from Dallas, in exchange for Odom, as well as their own. They’re sitting with the 8th best record in the West right now, at 13-9, and if I had to guess they’ll finish this season with anywhere from the 21st to the 25th pick in the first round come June. I’d also bet, at this point at least, that Dallas will eventually finish out of the lower 20, and LA will end up with two 2012 draft picks at about the same spot; call it the 22nd and 24th pick overall this summer, or something like that. [Bowers/Stepien Rules]
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Ranking the Super Bowls. Sorry Matt, your Steeler bias is showing a bit here- “22. Super Bowl XL 2006 Pittsburgh Steelers 21 Seattle Seahawks 10 – I think Seahawks fans are STILL whining about this loss, as they feel the refs basically gave the Steelers the win. No doubt there were some calls that didn’t go the Hawks way, but the Steelers played better, and deserved to win. It was the swan song for Jerome Bettis, who like John Elway retired a winner on the games biggest stage.” [Loede/Gridiron Gab]
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“Right now, there appear to be five spots accounted for between closer Chris Perez, setup men Pestano and Sipp, as well as righty Joe Smith and lefty Rafael Perez. That leaves two vacancies and a slew of arms in the mix to battle for those jobs during Spring Training. Candidates on the 40-man roster include righty Frank Herrmann, lefty Nick Hagadone and righty Corey Kluber. Hagadone has very limited MLB experience and Kluber is more likely to be back in the Triple-A rotation. So, of the rostered candidates, Herrmann would be a “favorite,” so to speak.
Herrmann appeared in 40 games for the Indians in 2011, but I don’t see him as a “lock” for a job due to his inconsistent performance. He had a 5.11 ERA, so Cleveland isn’t going to just hand him a job without a close look this spring. Like Durbin, though, Herrmann performed well when filling his specific role. As a long man, Herrmann is most utilized in the early innings when a starter struggles or in extra innings when a bulk of his fellow relievers have already been used. Consider that Herrmann had a 0.89 ERA when he appeared in innings 3-5 or extras (20.1 innings) last year. He had a 7.50 ERA in the 6th-9th innings.
To Acta’s point, the Indians bullpen as a whole performed best when the pitchers were used in their preferred innings. It was when the manager was forced to use his relievers in other roles — a game gone awry can often dictate such adjustments — that they typically found trouble.” [Bastian/MLB.com]
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Wait, so if you get caught selling counterfeit tickets to the Super Bowl, which you will sell for hundreds if not thousands of dollars, you can get out of jail free with a $100 donation? Um, risk/reward? Come on Indy, got to do better than that- “For minor offenses, a $100 donation to the Clothe-a-Child fund can get you completely off the hook. You do the (minor, likely victimless) crime, you do no time, and kids in need benefit. Sounds like a win-win to me.
If you’re curious about what you can get away with, Deputy Prosecutor Allison Broviak told the Indy Star that minor offenses include things like public intoxication, trespassing, or selling counterfeit tickets. So maybe you can be a little more at ease when throwing back an extra shot or five, but it’s not like you have a golden pass to distribute snuff films or set a police car on fire or something.” [MJD/Shutdown Corner]
