I’ve decided that Jeff Francoeur is so bad that he doesn’t deserve to be named after a major country. Yes, his play is actually insulting to France. I’m thinking Luxemcoeur, or possibly Slovenicoeur.
SEC Picks, Week Three. Home team in RED.
Alabama 33, Western Kentucky 9
Georgia 27, South Carolina 12
Kentucky 31, MTSU 16
Ole Miss 38, Samford 3
LSU 52, North Texas 19
Auburn 26, MSU 10
Vandy 40, Rice 12
Ike 77, Texas and Arkansas 0 (Stay dry, guys)
UAB 21, Tennessee 20
I think MTSU might actually give Kentucky a game. I hope they do, anyway.
Mac what do you know about Samford that I don’t?
Didn’t Ga Tech drop 60 points on them last year? (Not that Ole Miss is as good as Ga Tech was last year.)
Re: last thread
Dr Andrews does surgery on NFL guys too… I wonder if he has any NON pro athlete clientele.
Mac, how about a bonus pick for SoCal and Ohio State?
I believe my pick in that game was USC 55, OSU 6.
Ewww… we’re sending Hampton out against Santana… that hardly seems fair (never mind that Hampton has had a 22 win season and Santana only a 20… that was a LONG time ago for Mikey).
#3 – I know Dr Andrews has clients who are non athletes and he even meets with him. However, I think Dr LeMack performs the surgeries on these clients. LeMack is pretty well known also, mostly for knee surgery though.
fwiw, Santana is 0-3 lifetime vs the braves
Francoeuristan. Oh, the thought just gave me a migraine.
Weather permitting, I’m headed to The Bronx tonight to see the mighty Rays. Gonna be curious to see how many people show up for their last visit to the park, given the club’s current death march.
Rain, rain, go away…
I see that a lot of people disagreed with my two contentions that Francoeur has no trade value and that Francoeur is a 4th/5th outfielder.
I’m sure that we might be able to get another team to take a chance on him in exchange for worthless organizational filler, but that’s really not value. There’s no chance we could get something of value for him, like anything above a Grade C+ prospect, and even that would be pushing it. Like I say, we’d be better served just to bust him back to the minors.
Anyone know if he can catch? We all know he can outhit Corky, and he did play football in high school.
Oh, and how about Madagascoeur?
It’s actually “Lemak”, CSG… Dr. Lemak actually had the Birmingham USFL team dumped on his lap back in the eighties. The principal owner went belly-up (in the Savings & Loan debacle, I believe) and Lemak got stuck with the team. He needed a lot of surgeries to get out from under that.
Here’s one of Darvish:
Pause at 5:54 and you can see in the 2007 that he hasn’t planted his foot, but he has a full-blown inverted L going. From what I understand, this leads to an arm timing problem. He’s not ready to rotate his shoulders before/at the moment he plants his front foot and that’s pretty bad.
Ohhh, anybody notice that headline to the left? Apparently because of Ike there’s a chance the Cubs and Astros might play at Turner… that could be interesting to go see (wonder if they’d have nice cheap ticket prices for those games).
I like the place too much to apply Francoeur to the most fitting country and call him “Belgique” (French for Belgium).
However, part of the country speaks the language, it is the part of the ancestral home of the Franks (Charlemagne’s capital was at Aachen, just across the border into Germany FR. Aix La Chappelle), and they probably have little clue about baseball (unlike their Protestant kinsmen to the north in Netherlands who do pretty well with baseball).
Pretty good beer, too.
Cubs-Astros, with all the Cubs’ fans that swarm around like locusts, could outdraw Rockies-Braves at Turner Field.
There is no question but that it would. The only question is if they’d get double the attendance.
I’m French and I agree with you, Mac. Although Jeff is to baseball what France is to war. He seems to be batting with a white flag, so that somewhat fits!
At least France won some wars, back in the Napoleonic Era. Jeffy hasn’t been good since high school.
I wonder if McCann ever honestly wonders to himself how he got selected after Francoeur in the 2002 draft.
#19
Able was Jeff, ere he saw major league pitching?
gnihctip eugael rojam was eh ere ffej saw elba
Nope, doesn’t work.
Francoeuristan, ubbuba?
What about just Francinstan?
What we need, Mac, is a Jeff Francoeur sonnet, limmerick, or haiku contest.
Appropriate, Cliff. The late, great Douglas Adams held that “Belgium” was an unspeakable profanity in most of the universe, and Jeff’s play is certainly unspeakable.
I’m not sure this is going to get the job done against Johan:
Infante LF
Johnson 2B
Prado 3B
McCann C
Escobar SS
Kotchman 1B
Whiffy the Out Machine RF
Anderson CF
Hampton P
Unless the “job” is getting two or fewer hits, um, no.
I don’t think Johan is quite the platoon demon that Bobby evidently does. Nobody hits him. Sitting KJ tonight (as opposed to sitting him against Perez, who destroys him) is really kinda dumb, even for Slugging Second Baseman Martin Prado.
There does seem to be a lot of rain in the New York area tonight, maybe we’ll get lucky.
We did. Washout.
Of course, we’ll just have to play twice tomorrow, unless it rains some more. Stupid Phillies hanging around the pennant race.
When was the last time 5 games were rained out in the same night? Sheesh.
(re earlier: I had forgotten the obnoxious Cub fan factor at the Ted… never mind).
When was the last time there was a hurricane twice the size of Texas?
I should probably know this, but what’s the word on Stockman?
Fraq.
Kris Medlen really rocked again for Mississippi–he has had an amazing year and during the playoffis he has pitched as well as Hanson, Diamond and Rohrbough. I am starting to be a believer in the pitcher than got lit up as a reliever at the start the season….
Too bad for the Pelicans…Rohrbough got hit, but Kimbrel at least got it back together….
I like Medlen’s K rates.
great story from ajc:
Cox and the destroyed sink
Not many people know it, but Cox once ripped a sink off the wall of a bathroom adjacent to the visitors’ dugout at Shea Stadium.
Cox shared the story Friday when someone asked for the strangest thing he could recall from his many visits to Shea.
“Who was the pitcher that hit [Phil] Niekro?” Cox asked. It was Craig Swan. “Yeah, Swan hit Niekro in the head,” he said. “I got [ticked] off and tore the sink off the wall in the bathroom. Water everywhere. I had to pay for it.”
The incident occurred June 5, 1979. Swan beaned Niekro, setting off a benches-clearing brawl. Swan stayed in and threw a two-hit complete game in a 2-1 Mets win before a crowd of 9,808.
Bases are loaded
And Frenchy is at the plate
$#!+, a double play
WOW, that USF KU game was something!
I’ve been saying this since last year, but USF is the 2nd best NCAA team in the state of Florida. Who’da thunk that five years ago?
#36–One reason that I am starting to believe that Medlen might be the real deal is that when Kotsay returned from rehabing at Mississippi, he came back very impressed. Stats and trajectories are important, but the testimony of a current major league ball player means a great deal. Given that Medlen has been a starter for less than a year, it will be interesting to see how he pitches in Richmond….
Stephen, read anything as to why Heyward didn’t play in the last couple games?
I am not completely sold on Diamond. I am afraid he is the left handed version of Todd Redmond / James Parr.
Matt Harrison shut out the A’s….
Went to Yankee Stadium tonight, hung out in a bar until the game got rained out. On the train back to Manhattan, I ran into a group of Rays fans, some of whom were rocking South Florida gear.
I said, “Don’t y’all have a game to watch?”
And they all replied, “Shhh! It’s 20-20 last we heard. Don’t tell us the score.”
I just got home, watching the replay and it’s 34-34 now. Seems like a helluva game.
And…a helluva finish.
KC–If I remember correctly, Heyward missed a few games in late July and early August due to a minor knee problem. I am guessing that may have something to do with it.
My question is what has happened to Jon Mark Owings, who was having a great season at the Beach; I am guessing that once again he is injured.
Otherwise, I would not give up on Diamond, who has just completed his first season of professional baseball. Redmond may be another HoRam, but at least it has to be said that he was Southern League pitcher of the year. Again, his future may be brighter than the Pirates realized…
@23 Haiku for Francoeur
Defiant Jeffy
In right, bitter tears sting
Runners left on base
Kevin–Thats pretty good….
I am happy that Liverpool beat Manchester United and now we will have Manchester City play Chelsea–which really means its the Al Nahyan family versus Abramovich….
Lets go Vandy!
Thank you, Steven!
Can you recommend a book or guide that sorts out who’s who among soccer teams?
I know the famous Manchester United name, but, normally, Liverpool is where the Beatles originated. I know Elton John owned a team.
I know just enough about hockey history to appreciate Les Canadiens and Gretsky and such, but if mype hyperactive grandson takes an interest in big-time soccer, I’ll be lost.
mikemc,
What are you talking about? Harrison’s last game was the sixth. He didn’t pitch yesterday against Oakland. He may be 7-3 this year, but his ERA is 5.76 and he has only struck out 29 batters in 65 2/3 innings. I don’t miss him yet.
Come to think of it, he hasn’t been much of a strikeout pitcher in any place that he has been. I wonder if he’ll be able to increase his rate that much in order to be a successful starter.
Kevin–I really don’t know of a book which would serve as a good introduction–though it hardly means that it does not exist. There are a number of good websites which can enable you to learn more about the game.
For my part I moved to Singapore more than 10 years ago and discovered that the Singaporeans were rabid about soccer. It was fun to catch the fever and one thing that I like about it is that it is a truly international game. The coverage in Singapore was all EPL (English Premier League) which looked like a legacy of colonialism, but then when one looks at the teams you discover that most of the players are not English!
One more quick point: following the EPL (and other leagues) gets you ready for the World Cup. The World Cup is great fun and I am already looking forward to the 2010 editon…
If you missed it, the game thread is up.