Braves Love

After seeing the ESPN.com predictions for this year it seems like one of the trendy picks is to pick the Atlanta Braves in the National League. I’m not going to say that the Atlanta Braves won’t or can’t win the National League but it seems odd to me that they are liked so well. The Atlanta Braves finished only third last season and, on paper, they got worse. Although granted they probably underachieved last season also. There are plenty of reasons to not like the Atlanta Braves though so they are going to have to prove a lot. Here are the reasons I don’t think the Atlanta Braves can win the National League East.

Chipper Jones – If you go back to last year and look at Chipper Jones you’ll see that he actually had a very high batting average, on base percentage and slugging percentage. He’s still hitting great and probably would’ve been a MVP candidate if he hadn’t missed 30 games. A lot of people are saying “If Chipper Jones plays 150 games he can be the MVP.” There’s just one problem, “if.” And that’s a big “if.” “If Chipper Jones plays 150 games” hasn’t happened since 2003.

Starting Pitching – Those picking the Atlanta Braves seem to think they have the best starting pitching in the National League. They’ll certainly be good, but I’m not sure they are that good. First of all John Smoltz started the season on the DL and while it’s not a major injury, any time your 40 year old ace is on the DL you have think a little bit more, “is he showing his age?” Tom Glavine on other hand is absolutely showing his age. Last season Tom Glavine had his third fewest number of wins and second higest ERA since 1989. Mike Hampton has looked great in spring training, but spring training means squat. Ultimately we’re talking about a pitcher that has pitched 12 games in three seasons.

Relief Pitching - I’ve heard in the last several weeks that the Atlanta Braves are looking to make a trade because their relief pitching is soooo deep. Okay, maybe they have a lot of middle relievers that could be valuable but they still don’t have a closer. Their current closer, Rafael Soriano, only has 13 saves in 22 opportunities in his career. Some will point out Mike Gonzalez is coming back this season but he’s never played an entire season as a closer. What good is their great middle relief if the closer is going to constantly be giving up the lead in the ninth? In fact, the Braves lost their opener last season on a ninth inning homerun. That could happen a lot this season.

Shortstop – There are people that know a lot more about baseball than me saying that the Braves’ new shortstop Yunel Escobar is going to be a stud so who am I to argue with them. But people are expecting way too much right away. Guys like Ryan Bruan and Ryan Howard have made people think that “sure thing” prospects are All-Stars right away but they are actually in the minority, not the majority. There are talented prospects every week coming up to the Major Leagues and falling flat on their face. Edgar Renteria batted .332 last season and was on his way to his third straight 100 run/70 RBI season before getting injured. Escobar isn’t going to be that good in his first season. That position is a downgrade in a division that has Jose Reyes, Hanley Ramirez and the reigning MVP Jimmy Rollins at that position on other teams.

Center Field – I know the popular belief is that Andruw Jones is overrated and he is. He’s gotten worse offensively, he’s gotten worst defensively, he’s overpaid, he strikes out a lot. There are a lot negatives. But Mark Kotsay? That is your replacement for Andruw Jones? Seriously? Even at Jones’ reduced play Kotsay is only about the tenth the player that Andruw Jones is. That’s another downgrade at a very important position.

Leadoff – The Braves are going to start this season with Kelly Johnson leading off and Yunel Escobar batting second? Wow. So basically Chipper Jones is going to have to hit about 80 solo homeruns to get to 120 RBI. Seriously though, how is Chipper Jones, even if he plays 150 games, supposed to be an MVP candidate when the three batters in front of him are the pitcher, a scrub and a second year player with very little experience. Actually, the starting rotation are pretty good hitters. Chipper will probably get more chances to knock them in than Kelly Johnson.

Bold Baseball Prediction

I know a lot of my faithful readers on this blog will probably be coming over here from Associated Content and most of those people are not fans of my sports articles, but my other articles. So I won’t bore you all with my season predictions for this upcoming baseball season, especially since my predictions aren’t a whole lot different from many others. There is one prediction that I’m going to make unlike anybody else. I’m taking a step out on the limb and making one very bold prediction. Here it goes:

2008 National League Cy Young = John Maine

Yes, I know it sounds crazy. Everybody is talking about the New York Mets acquisition of Johan Santana and the health of Pedro Martinez and John Maine at this point is an after thought, but I think it’s possible. Let’s take a look at the reasons.

Last Season - Last season at the All-Star break John Maine was 10 – 4 with a 2.71 ERA. Only three National League pitchers were having better seasons: Brad Penny, Jake Peavy and Chris Young. Maine struggled the second half of the season and ended up with only 15 wins and a 3.91 ERA. Maine’s second half struggles were talked about a lot but what people failed to mention was that there was a perfectly good reason. Before last season John Maine’s career highs were 15 games started and 90 innings pitched. Last season John Maine pitched 32 games and 191 innings pitched. He pitched a full 100 innings more than the previous season. Maine will be better prepared for a full season this year and he won’t falter in the second season like he did last year.

Offense – A lot of people are talking about Carlos Delgado’s injury and I’m certainly concerned but Delgado’s injury will not ruin the Mets offense. Last season Delgado didn’t hit, Beltran didn’t hit, Reyes played awful the last month of the season and the Mets were still the fourth best offense in the National League and two of the teams ahead of them (Philly and Colorado) have offense friendly fields. The Mets role players didn’t get nearly enough credit for playing well the past few seasons and they have plenty of offense for John Maine to win a lot of games. If Carlos Beltran hits like he did two years ago they can lead the league in runs.

Age -John Maine is still only 26 years old and during this seasons John Maine will turn 27 years old. What is significant about that? There is a popular theory in baseball that the age of 27 is when a player hits his prime. It’s possible that this year John Maine becomes an even better pitcher than last season.

Rotation – Last season the Mets didn’t have Johan Santana or Pedro Martinez. John Maine had never played a full season and was counted on to be the ace pitcher. This year John Maine only has to be the number three pitcher. That is a ton of pressure off of Maine, especially in a city like New York.

Bullpen – The Mets finished just one game out in division despite everything bad possibly happening to them. Two of those things were Duaner Sanchez being injured for the entire season and Aaron Heilman being ineffective. I doubt both of those things happen again this year. If the bullpen is better then that helps the starting pitching a great deal and if by some chance Heilman and Sanchez revert back to two years ago then the Mets don’t have to worry about their starters going more than 5 – 6 innings.

Bottom line is a John Maine was a 15 game winner last season. He’s likely to get better and more experienced. He has less pressure on him, the pitching will be better and he has plenty of offense behind him. I don’t think it’s impossible to think that all of those things can equal in 5 more wins than last year and a 20 win season easily puts you in the Cy Young race.

Associated Content Update

I think I’ve only mentioned Associated Content once or twice on this blog so maybe before I give another update I should actually tell you people what Associated Content is. Associated Content is a website that I write for and make a little cash on the side. I’ve written over 1,000 articles for them and made over $6,000. What I’m most proud of is that I have 793,000 page views, which is quite the accomplishment considering this blog has about 6 page views.

I was hoping to get 800,000 page views by the end of this month but that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. I still had my best month in four or five months though. I also had two articles hit the most popular page this week. The are The Most Addictive Video Games of All-time and The Longest Winning Streaks in Sports History.

So check out those articles and here are a few more of my favorites:
The History of Women Pirates
Worst Team Names in Sports
The Five Most Overlooked Verses in the Bible
Ranking Jennifer Connelly’s Movies
Best Wrestling Games at Madison Square Garden

333 Months

I have never understood why babies go by a different age system then everybody else. When a baby is born they are never a certain amount of years old, they go by months. Babies are never half a year old or 1 and a half years, they are six months or eighteen months old. Then suddenly at around 2 years old, they stop going by months. Why? Can people not count higher than 24? I think if babies are going to go by months then we all should. So everybody send me presents, because tomorrow I will be the big 333 months old. Yay me!

Unsolved Mysteries Episode 1

A few days ago on the Associated Content forums somebody brought up the age old question, “Why do people drive on a parkway and park on a driveway.” If you’ve been a long time user of the interweb you’ve probably heard this question and several other “burning questions”, like “why does Hawaii have interstates?” or “is there another word for Thesaurus?” People treat these questions like unsolved mysteries and there are numerous websites all over the web listing them. Of course if these people stopped making these websites and simply attempted to look for the answers then they would find it’s quite easy to find the answer.

Why do people park on a driveway? This is the easier of the two. Sure, eventually you park on your driveway (or maybe) in your garage. But driveways are called driveways because they are paths that allow you to drive from your street to your garage. That’s pretty easy to understand, I don’t know why this is such a “mystery.” Also, when driveways were first invented and the world was a lot less populated, houses were farther apart, yards were bigger and therefore driveways were much, much longer. So originally you drove on them for a lot longer than you drive on most driveways now.

Why do we drive on parkways. Well anybody who is familiar with the English language knows that some words have many different meanings. Yes, park can mean to leave your vehicle somewhere, but park also has 112 other definitions. The “park” referred to in parkway is referring to either the defintion of “an area of land, usually in a largely natural state, for the enjoyment of the public, having facilities for rest and recreation, often owned, set apart, and managed by a city, state, or nation” or “a considerable extent of land forming the grounds of a country house”. So a parkway would be a way to get from one to the other. You might think, well so and so parkway doesn’t connect two parky areas. But did it when it was first built? Maybe the non-park area was built after the parkway was already named a parkway.

So that is your lesson for the day.

Oh yeah, and interstates in Hawaii are called interstates because they are paid for by the same funds as other interstates and therefore are part of the network of national interstates.

And another word for Thesaurus is synonymicon.

Hare Splitter

So far every post’s title has been the name of an episode of a television show. In this post I’m going to talk about Bugs Bunny and I had a hard time choosing a title. Should I use an episode of Bugs Bunny that has hare in the title? Or should I use an episode that uses the word rabbit? The reason this is such a dilemma is because they’re not the same thing.

Over the years there have been hundreds of Bugs Bunny commercials and almost all of them have hare or rabbit in the title but Bugs Bunny can’t possibly be a hare and a rabbit because they are two completely different things. So which one is he?

The first difference between a hare and a rabbit is the way they are born and they way their mother raises them. Unfortunately we’ve never seen Bugs Bunny’s origin, nor have we seen his mother. We don’t know from that if he’s a hare or a rabbit.

What we do know is that Bugs Bunny is very tall and long, which suggests that Bugs Bunny is a hare. Hares have longer legs and longer ears than rabbits and Bugs Bunny has both long legs and long ears…or at least we think he does. He has longer legs and ears than a regular rabbit, but he’s also not a regular rabbit. Maybe he is a rabbit and a anthropomorphic hare would be even larger than Bugs Bunny. I’m going to say that this points to him being a hare though.

There is one thing that points towards Bugs Bunny being a rabbit though. Rabbits are more known for burrowing through the ground and living in the ground. Hares usually just hide among the plants and run away from any prey they might see. Of course we know from the cartoons that Bugs Bunny usually burrows through the ground. Even if he does always take a wrong turn at Albuquerque, that still suggests he is a rabbit.

The only other difference between rabbits and hares is that rabbits usually attack in a group. Bugs Bunny never has back up though. He’s always taking on others by himself so I guess that suggests he is a hare. Unfortunately the fact that he’s called “Bugs Bunny” doesn’t help any because the word “bunny” is used for both rabbits and hares.

We may never know the truth for sure but it’s quite possible that everybody’s favorite cartoon rabbit isn’t a rabbit at all.

Grin & Bear It

Today I was writing an article about the Top 10 Fictional Bears of all-time. I briefly touched on a subject that has always bothered me about a certain fictional bear. I’ve never talked about it before because nobody has ever mentioned it before but finally I must address it here.

What the heck is up with Yogi Bear’s attire?

Okay, so dress attire has never been a strong suit (get it? dress attire, suit? Ha!) in cartoons. Mickey Mouse has pants but no shirt. Donald Duck has a shirt but no pants. Bugs Bunny doesn’t wear clothes when he’s himself, but wears clothes when he wants to be a woman (which is another whole topic.) But Yogi Bear has the most ridiculous outfit of all.

Yogi Bear wears a tie. That’s cool, i can respect that. But apparently Yogi doesn’t want to wear a shirt. Now Yogi could just tie the tie around his neck and no problem. But instead Yogi has the collar of a shirt so that he can tie his tie around his neck. However, he doesn’t wear the rest of the shirt! Just the collar. What? Why? This makes no sense!

Wearing a collar without a shirt would be like wearing shoe laces without shoes or wearing belts without pants. How ridiculous would that look? So please Yogi Bear, put on a shirt or take off the tie!

On a sidenote, my top 10 fictional bears list made me reminisce about one of my favorite bears, Paddington Bear. I used to love Paddington Bear but haven’t seen the show in probably 20 years. So of course I looked him up on YouTube and sure enough I found several episodes, including the episode where Paddington Bear takes a “dry bath” because it’s “safer than using water and much less messy.”

Rebel Without a Clue, Part 2

I have scoured the internet looking for tips on how to make my blog better. But I’ve been cursed with the desire to rebuke all good advice and therefore must do the opposite of any blogging tips I receive. That is why I will not listen to the latest tip I got: Choose your niche wisely, write about one topic and don’t be too broad.

Bah, forget about that! Stick to one? No way. I will talk about all the following things on this blog.

- God
- Video Games
- Comic Books
- Bible Verses
- Jennifer Connelly
- Green Lantern
- Pirates
- Robin Hood
- 80’s Movies
- William Zabka
- Recipes
- Coffee Mugs
- Hats
- Fairy Tales
- Shirt pockets
- Middle Names
- Hippos
- Violins
- Facial Hair
- Bicycle Chains
- Sword Fighting
- Exercise
- George Washington’s Head
- Third Base
- Prepositions
- Dinosaurs
- Cereal
- Trailers

Palindrome

I’ve found in my studies of useless information that there is a word that has been created for the fear of just about anything. There’s ancraphobia, the fear of wind, and chaetophobia, the fear of hair. There is a fear of string called linonophobia and octophobia, the fear of the number 8. There is even novercaphobia, the fear of your step mother.

But I’m convinced some of the names given to these fears are evil tricks on the part of those that named them. The perfect example is aibohphobia. Aibohphobia is the fear of palindromes. Of course we know that a palindrome is a word that is spelled the same both forwards and backwards like racecar. But the word for the “fear of palindromes” is actually a palindrome itself. Aibohphobia and aibohphobia (that’s the backwards spelling) are the same word forwards and backwards. So if somebody has a fear of palindromes then every time their doctor talks about aibohphobia it’s not going to do them any good, because they have a fear of that word. That’s just cruel people.

Fun fact: Solutomaattimittaamotulos is the longest single-word palindrome. It is a Finnish word that means “the result from a measurement laboratory for tomatoes.”

Rebel Without a Clue, Part 1

Recently I saw an article on “Tips for writing a blog.” Unfortunately I have this strange desire to not listen to what anybody says. It’s like I must rebel against any good advice I’m given. That is why instead of listening to all this good advice, I’m actually going to do the complete opposite.

This is the first piece of advice I’m not going to take in this post: Write About Something You Love

Come on. That’s too easy. I could easily write about the New York Mets or Jennifer Connelly, but I need more of a challenge. So instead I will write about something I hate: the color yellow.

Let’s start with why I hate the color yellow. I think my hate for the color yellow originated from the Green Lantern comic book. Some people think that the color yellow hurts Green Lantern, like kryptonite for Superman. That’s not true though, the color yellow didn’t hurt Green Lantern, his ring just wouldn’t work on yellow objects.

I’m pretty sure they retconned the whole yellow thing though (that means he can use his object on yellow objects now. But I still hate the color yellow. It’s just too bright. What can I say? I’m a dark person. If I could work at night and sleep during the day I would. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not goth or anything, I like reds, blues, greens and even purples. But I like dark reds, dark blues, dark greens and dark purples.

Yellow is an annoying color, look no further than a traffic light. Green means go, Red means stop, but Yellow is just confusing. I know they implemented the yellow to warn us that the traffic light is about to change to red, but it just throws me off. Do I slow down and wait for red?? Do I speed up so I can beat the red light?? I don’t know what to do! Usually I end up either running a red light or stopping in the middle of the intersection. Dangit Yellow! Why must you exist?