The House of Crouse 5.17.08
Posted by Mark Crouse on 05.17.2008
This week in the House...we open a spanking new self-created mailbag. Also, season two of American Gladiators is reviewed, and The Soapbox goes to work on Spygate.
Welcome to another edition of The House of Crouse. This week, I bring back the Self-Made Mailbag, a review of the return of American Gladiators, and we head to The Soapbox where I reluctantly address Spygate and its impact on the NFL. For starters, let's open the mailbag that I write to myself every so often.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this mailbag are those of Mark Crouse, and only Mark Crouse, since he wrote the questions and the answers. All info contained in this mailbag is solely for entertainment purposes.
Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's get to the questions.
Dear Mark,
I've been hearing varying reports about teams having interest in signing Barry Bonds. Would there be a set of circumstances where Bonds would have fantasy value?
Mark
Mark,
Every team whose offense isn't clicking at this point of the year will be rumored to have interest in the future Hall of Famer. In my opinion, cooler heads leaguewide will prevail and the home run champ will stay off the field. While Bonds may have the skills to contribute to an American League team strictly as a DH, the amount of money he would demand and the level of distraction he would cause would make signing Bonds prohibitive.
If a team does sign Bonds, I can't endorse him from a fantasy standpoint unless your team has a severe lack of power. He probably wouldn't play every day, and may take some time to get in shape, meaning his limited impact would be even more limited.
Dear Mark,
John Lackey is coming off the DL to start on Wednesday. He's been stashed on my bench all season, and I need him to be an ace for me. Should I throw him in right away, or wait to make sure he's in shape before starting him?
Mark
Mark,
Great question! The initial instinct when a front line pitcher comes off the DL is to get hi in right away to make up for lost time, but it may be wise to make sure he doesn't have a few rough starts on his way back to the rotation. In Lackey's case, he had an arm injury, but had plenty of time to rehab and was not rushed back. Despite that, I would wait and keep him on the bench for at least two starts to let him knock the rust off. ESPN.com's Tristan Cockcroft had a great article about this today, and referenced the stat lines from the first starts of pitchers who had been on the DL. The results were not good: a combined 1-3 record with a 4.70 ERA and 1.61 WHIP. And that was for the top pitchers coming back from injury.
(Note: Lackey came off the DL and threw seven innings, allowing six hits and one earned run in a no decision to the White Sox. At least I'm honest, I had time to alter my answer.)
Dear Crouse,
You moron! You were dead wrong about C.C. Sabathia, and I took your recommendation and didn't draft him when I had the chance. He's given up one or no earned runs in four of his last five starts! I hope you're happy for setting me back this season.
Mark
Mark,
Easy, buddy. My prediction for Sabathia wasn't based on what I expected him to do on the mound, it was predicated on the fact that I didn't think he'd be out there for the entire year after his massive workload last year. His abysmal start was just a happy coincidence. If you own the portly lefty, keep your fingers crossed, as my prediction coming true would be a real gutshot after you stuck it out with him and started getting some production.
For the record, I don't have anything against C.C. Sabathia. I just happen to think he's less likely to avoid injury than other pitchers of his ability. Thusly, I had him rated lower than most publications and fantasy columnists.
Dear Mark,
Lance Berkman is on fire! I'm enjoying the numbers, but should I sell high and trade him, or am I just thinking too much?
Mark
Mark,
No one is hotter than Berkman (.391, 15, 43 for the season, .619 in the past 11 games). The addition of Miguel Tejada has given the Astro more protection and he's tearing it up. The big question is how long he will stay on cloud nine. He's a career .303 hitter who has hit 40 homers in a season twice, so he's fully capable of putting together a huge campaign. He is also remarkably consistent in the first and second halves the last three years.
This is contrary to popular fantasy belief, but I'm advising keeping Berkman. Even if his average regresses to the mean, there is still plenty of room left for him to produce huge power numbers. The shocking part about him is that if he puts up .320-50-120 it's not a huge shock.
American Gladiators' second season commenced Monday night, and I was on pins and needles to see if the producers tinkered with the show too much, or added to the surprising high level of action from season one. There are four points of difference the show promoted as new or improved in marketing;
Let's address these one-by-one. The arena has more fire effects and more water for the contestants to fall into. For the most part, the additions to the arena are not overtly noticeable, which is a good thing, since the new version of the show is already glitzier than the old version, which purists complain is the best incarnation of the show.
The new Eliminator features a longer fire portion of the initial swim, a tightrope walk, a teeter-totter, and a rope swing. That's a lot of rope, folks. I am a bit disappointed that producers didn't correct what I found to be the greatest sticking point of the old and new versions of the show: the Gladiators have no impact on the outcome of the Eliminator, which is essentially the entire contest. In the old version of the show, the Gladiators at least swung medicine balls at the contenders at one point in the Eliminator, but they are nowhere to be found in the new show.
The new events are being unveiled show-by-show, with Rocketball and Vertigo getting the ball rolling. Rocketball is a competition involving the contenders and gladiators being launched to the rafters on ropes in an effort to deposit, or keep others from depositing balls from Powerball into a two-tiered basket. Rocketball is action-packed, but as I watched it, I wondered why the contenders don't just pump fake their launch to throw the timing of their Gladiator's launch off. The positioning of the goals in relation to the players' launches seemed to be too far as well, as the contenders couldn't dunk the ball, being forced to rely on finger rolls to score, which made the game too difficult in my opinion. Perhaps the producers will adjust the set to make the scoring easier in the future.
Vertigo is an original event featuring sway poles which stay anchored in the ground thirty feet above the ground, with the contenders and gladiators racing to the end of a straight line of poles. There is a great chance for drama, since the participants never make contact, racing on their own set of poles. I liked Vertigo, and felt that it can be better if new gladiator Phoenix is kept as the event's specialist, in the same way that Crush is the primary gladiator for Joust.
Speaking of the new gladiators, Phoenix, Jet, and Rocket were introduced this week. While I cringed a bit when they revealed Phoenix with wings on her back, I realized that one of the great things about the show is that they don't take themselves too seriously. I mean, they have a guy named Wolf who comments on eating people for goodness sakes. As was previously mentioned, Phoenix competed and dominated both contenders in Vertigo and looked like she had some presence and, let's say "aesthetic appeal" as well.
Jet, however, failed poorly in the myriad events she was placed in. The female winner from the first season, Jet looked overmatched in Powerball and in Gauntlet. My guess is that the producers are trying to find a niche for her. She did have the look of a gladiator, with an obviously buffed up physique and more glamorous attire.
Rocket is the male winner from season one. He competed in only one event, The Wall, and maintained his reputation as the best climber in the building by catching his contender, who himself had been moving pretty quickly. When I watched last season I wondered how Rocket would fit in with the other gladiators, since he is notably smaller than all of them. He, like Jet, however hit the gym in the offseason to give him a chiseled, but not musclebound look. His role as the speed guy suits him well, and he has the image and mic ability to become a fan favorite.
The only other element I'd like to discuss about season two is the hype surrounding "The Beast," who is advertised as "a seven-foot giant" and is kept in a cage, to be unleashed upon the trembling masses later this season. Here's the problem: if our own 411 wrestling writers are correct and The Beast is none other than our stuttering friend Matt Morgan, he is less physically intimidating than Justice. Morgan is tall, but relatively thin, and while I think he has the ability to ham it up and make himself look fierce, I don't see him as a figure that would stand out over the other male gladiators. But hey, I've been wrong before.
Overall, I give the season premiere a B+, with room for improvement. The decision to add to the proceedings is a good one, since they are in prime time and remaking an old product means that the producers are one step behind on the old innovation scale. I'll be watching every Monday night.
The Soapbox is a place where I can sound off on various topics with my gloves completely off. This week, I'm going to address Spygate, the ongoing investigation involving the New England Patriots and their videotaping of other team's sidelines in an effort to gain a competitive advantage over them. I waited so long to comment on this topic because I wanted to wait until former Patriot video assistant Matt Walsh met with the NFL and turned over his video collection. That occurred this week, so let's get down to the nitty gritty.
Spygate in and of itself is a completely overblown spectacle. The basics of the controversy are:
-Did the Patriots tape other team's plays and signals in an illegal manor? Yes
-Did the NFL penalize the Patriots accordingly? Yes
-Did Walsh's long-hyped video collection shine any new light on how severe the cheating was? No
-Did New England in fact tape a run-through of the St. Louis Rams' goal line plays before Super Bowl XXXVI? Apparently not.
What does this all mean? This is a dead case until someone comes up with more evidence to the affirmative that New England cheated even more heinously than we already know. The NFL fined the Patriots, Belechick, and took their first-round draft pick in this past draft. What more do we want? What's done is done, not to mention that it is highly debatable how much of an advantage this raw, unrefined footage gave the Patriots.
Here's the big picture impact: fans and media love controversy. This story will be trotted out there until it dies completely. I personally don't think Spygate changes my opinion of how great an organization New England is. Teams cheat all the time, and from what I've read and seen, many teams in the NFL do the very same thing the Pats did, but weren't blatant enough about it to get caught. The league has handed down unprecedented punishments in this case, severe enough to deter any other clubs from taking liberties with their video departments. Until we get some new evidence, let's let this story go.
That's all for this week. Drop me a line at mark_crouse@hotmail.com with any questions, praise, vitriol, or any other opinions. Have a great week, and Godspeed!
