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.
“Gordon Continues to Turn Heads: Pat Kirwan and Tim Ryan from Sirius NFL Radio were in Berea today, and they also hosted a show from 3:00 PM to 7:00 PM that was nothing but Browns coverage. A user over at the OBR forums did a great job giving play-by-play of all the interviews they did. Kirwin posted one tweet about the practice, and it was about wide receiver Josh Gordon: “with the Browns today…watched B Weeden run a very good 2 minute drill & Josh Gordon looks like the real deal.” [Pokorny/Dawgs By Nature]
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Talking with Urban Meyer- “Question: When did your offensive philosophies change? Urban Meyer: About 1998 or 99 when I was at Notre Dame, we were looking at adapting some of our offensive plans. I was in the I formation for a long time. At Colorado State, I was all one back with Sonny Lubick. I was with Coach Bruce for a long time; it was really tradition I and pro set. The complexity and talent of defenses made it harder and harder to move the ball at Notre Dame.
In 1999, Dan Mullen was my GA at Notre Dame. John L. Smith was the coach at Louisville and Scott Linehan was the offensive coordinator. I started watching them on film and said I want to go study them. He said sure go ahead. We ended up staying four days and had to go buy a toothbrush. I was so enamored with the style of play. That was spread the field and be extremely aggressive. The biggest issue was how to handle pressures. The tighter the formation, the more pressures. It’s really a numbers game. It was a different philosophy I had never really…after that, both Dan and I really attacked it. I started getting phone calls about being a head coach and thought about what I would do offensively.” [Fulton/Eleven Warriors]
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Getting to know Vinnie Rottino- “Rottino is a good story: he was an undrafted free agent out of Wisconsin-La Crosse who the Brewers signed as organizational fodder. Vinny had other plans, though, as he started to hit a little right away, and continued to hit a little at pretty much every level. It’s a classic minor league archetype: his career minor league OPS is just under 800, not nearly good enough to make the majors with his defensive deficiencies, but more than good enough to bang around the minors and, very occasionally, find himself on a major league roster. And, to his credit, Rottino has done everything he can to make the majors, even converting himself into a viable catcher, apparently. Final Rottino fun fact: Vinny played for Italy in the 2009 WBC.
This will not be Rottino’s first trip to the big leagues, as he has .112 years of accumulated major league service time, having done some very short stints with the Brewers and Marlins big league clubs. He started the season in the Mets organization, appearing briefly in the majors and then playing in Buffalo, before coming over to Columbus after 36 games. Since arriving in Columbus, Rottino has hit well enough and you can’t make strong arguments for any of the other candidates besides organizational loyalty. Perhaps someone would assert that a long-time Indians farmhand deserves the benefits of a few seconds on a major league roster more than a mercenary AAA guy. That’s a bit silly, though, as all of our long-time farmhands are a few moments away from being a mercenary AAA guy for another club; players of this ilk are all one pool, basically freely available to all teams if a GM really valued the player. Even LaPorta, at this point, could be had for a pittance.” [Let's Go Tribe]
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This is fascinating. You have to see the chart- “Every team, but one has received lower production than percentage of overall payroll from their best player. Interestingly enough, that team, the Miami Marlins’ highest-paid player at the start of the season was Hanley Ramirez, but after he was traded to the Dodgers, Josh Johnson became their highest-paid player. Johnson’s production is only 0.21 percent higher than the percentage that his salary takes up of Miami’s total payroll.
The team who has received the least production from their highest-paid player is the Houston Astros, with Carlos Lee. Lee, of course, is no longer with the Astros, but given the fact that Miami is paying less than $250k for his services, he still makes the most, by far, of anyone in Houston’s organization.” [DuPaul/Hardball Times]
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Finally, apparently ‘Three Blind Mice’ is frowned upon by umpires. [Getting Blanked]
