I called it in my last post about the Celtics/Heat series.  Quentin Richardson woke a sleeping giant and the Celtics responded big time.  Ray Allen had a huge game and Glen “Big Baby” Davis was awesome given an opportunity to start (just like he did last year around this time).  Rondo played phenomenal defense and never let the Heat get their offense started.  Big defensive efforts were also turned in by Kendrick Perkins, Big Baby and Tony Allen.

Unless the Celtics get bored in the next couple of games, like they have at times during the regular season, I don’t see the Heat winning a single game in this series.  I feel badly for Dwyane Wade because he’s getting almost no help from his teammates.  The defensive pressure is causing him to have to isolate every time he touches the ball and there’s no way that they can win that way.

He made an appearance at the Garden and now he’s making an appearance in my blog as well.  The official mascot of Celtics blowouts: Gino!

It’s only two weeks into the season and all of the worst fears of Red Sox Nation have come true.  The supposedly weak offense has actually been worse than the experts predicted and the pitching, which was supposed to be Boston’s biggest strength, hasn’t yet performed like they are expected to.  The other place where the Red Sox were supposed to be strong, but have shown weakness, is defensively.  What makes it worse is the fact that these defensive mishaps have been committed by the new guys brought in to shore up the defense.  Their weaker offense might be acceptable if they were turning in web gems night after night, but at this early stage in the season, this has yet to be the case.

While Marco Scutaro has been one of the few bright spots in the offense early in the season, he has also been the worst offender on the defensive side of things.  These have been really bad errors on easy chances leading to multiple unearned runs that led directly to losses.  I’m sure this will change as the season progresses, but right now it has some fans wishing that Jed Lowrie could do more than tie his shoe without ending up on the DL.

Speaking of costly errors leading to multiple runs and a loss, next up is Mike Cameron.  Sox fans knew going into this season that Cameron would hit some bombs and for every one that he hit, he’d strike out 6 or 7 times.  So far this season, Cameron has whiffed 8 times without going yard.  He displaced fan favorite Jacoby Ellsbury in center because of his reputation for superior defense, but that wasn’t the case in Clay Buchholz’s last start.  Cameron had an easy fly ball clank off of his glove in the first inning that led to four unearned runs and a tough luck loss for Buchholz who pitched well after that inning.

One signing that I questioned the moment it was made was that of Bill Hall.  He was a monumental bust in Milwaukee and I didn’t see what he could add to the Red Sox roster.  So far, Hall has added more errors than hits.  He’s got one hit in eleven at-bats, but has committed an error at short and an error in the outfield.  Hopefully the Red Sox get healthy and need to fill up Hall’s roster spot with someone else.

Jeremy Hermida is showing signs of improvement.  After tonight, he’s hitting .257 with an error, but he’s hit three home runs and driven in 9.  In the long run, I do think this will end up being a good signing. 

Right now, the “pitching and run prevention” team make-up that was sold to Sox fans during the offseason isn’t panning out.  Lester is notorious for his slow stars and his performance should improve once the calendar page turns.  Dice-K is on a rehab assignment in Pawtucket and will most likely take Wakefield’s spot in the rotation.  I expect him to look a lot more like the Dice-K of 2008 than the Dice-K of 2009 since he’ll finally be healthy again and hopefully he’s done with pitching in the World Baseball Classic.

Things will turn around for the Sox and there’s no way that they’ll continue to lose 60% of their games, but it looks like the only way that the Sox will make the playoffs is if they end up with a rotation that contains two 20-game winners and two 15-game winners.  No matter how well the pitching is, that’s not going to happen without major improvement from the offense.

Unlike most of Red Sox Nation, I was a fan of the J.D. Drew signing when it happened and am still a fan of it today.  I can understand Sox fans getting annoyed with the fact that Drew tends to be a little injury prone, but I can’t understand fans getting so upset about his salary and an incorrect perception that he’s not playing well enough to warrant that salary.

I was happy to see an article in the Valentine’s Day edition of the Boston Globe explaining “Why the critics of J.D. Drew may be off-base” written by my current favorite Sox writer over at the Globe, Amalie Benjamin.  She’s a breath of fresh air from the gloom and doom, muckraker Dan Shaughnessy.

Benjamin uses data from fangraphs.com to show Drew’s “worth” compared to his salary and then she compares it to other outfielders who signed multiyear deals after the 2006 season.  I’ll list the data first and then see if you can guess who is who.

Value: $15.4M
Salary: $25.5M
Difference: -$10.1M

Value: -$5.2M
Salary: $26.2M
Difference: -$31.4M

Value: $33.4M
Salary: $41M
Difference: -$7.6M

Value: $45.4M
Salary: $42M
Difference: +$3.4M

Value: $40M
Salary: $43M
Difference: -$3M

The players are Alfonso Soriano, Carlos Lee, Gary Matthews Jr., Juan Pierre and J.D. Drew.  Can you match the players with their numbers?

Of those players, only J.D. Drew has a value higher than the salary he was paid.  You can find his numbers 4th on that list.  The only other decent signing on that list is Carlos Lee who has produced $40M of value while being paid $43M.  When you take into consideration that this takes into account a 2007 season where Drew was absolutely terrible until hitting a grand slam in Game 6 of the ALCS, it makes his 2008 and 2009 seasons look even better.  Would Sox fans have preferred that the team sign Alfonso Soriano (3rd on the list), Juan Pierre (1st on the list) or the absolutely terrible Matthews (2nd on the list)?  According to this rating system, Matthews owes money to the Angels.

There are plenty of numbers to back up why fans are wrong about Drew.  Benjamin states that only 10 players had an OPS of .900 or greater in 2008 and 2009: Pujols, Manny, A-Rod, Berkman, Teixeira, Youk, Hanley Ramirez, Holliday, Chase Utley and Drew.  Fans love Youk and his serial killer look because he’s “intense.”  Fans loved weak hitting, slow moving Trot Nixon because he was a “Dirt Dog” and dove after those balls he was too slow to get to.  Fans haven’t taken to Drew because he is quiet and reserved.  They say he doesn’t put effort into the game, but many of those fans were alright with Manny not running out ground balls and pop-ups.

Benjamin also states that in the three years that Drew has been in Boston there have been only three players with a better on-base percentage than Drew’s .390 and they are Manny (.412), Holliday (.403) and Ordonez (.397).  Adam Dunn has also gotten on base at a .390 clip over that span.

Critics always point at Drew’s low RBI and HR totals while ignoring his high run total and the number of times he gets on base.  Fans will continue to call him “Nancy” and unfairly criticize him.  I’ll continue to root for him knowing what he brings to the team.  He’ll never get credit for playing in 2007 when all he probably wanted to do was spend time with a sick child.  Now it has come out that he was battling a sore shoulder in 2009 which was his best season in Boston.  He’s the best defensive right fielder that the Sox have had since Dewey who was the best ever.  He’s never going to be the guy that carries the team on a daily basis, but he’s the type of player that you need on a winning team.  His contributions are going to be especially important this season on a team that is a little bit weaker on offense than normal.  He has to get on base for those rare occasions when Mike Cameron closes his eyes and makes solid contact with the ball.  I think it happens 20 or so times a season.  2010 would be a nice time for fans to accept Drew because they’re going to have enough to complain about with Cameron and Beltre hitting around .260 and not getting on base much more often than that.  As the Amalie Benjamin article showed, things could be a heck of a lot worse.

There’s many things to love about living in Massachusetts.  Even with the early exit of the Red Sox in this year’s playoffs, we’re still got 3 Super Bowl trophies, 2 World Series trophies and 1 NBA Championship Trophy this decade (and are the early favorite for the 2009-10 Championship if everyone stays healthy).  I’m going to stray from the more mainstream sports in this post on focus on a regional sport that most of you probably have never seen before and that is Candlepin bowling.

Candlepin bowling is a variation of bowling that is played primarily in the Canadian Maritime provinces, Maine, Massachusetts and in New Hampshire.  As you can see from the picture to the left, the ball is a lot smaller to the one used in ten pin bowling.  Candlepin balls have a diameter of 4½” and don’t need holes since you can easily hold one in your hand.  A frame in candlepin bowling consists of three balls instead of the two that are used in ten pin.  Another big difference is that downed pins (referred to as “wood”) are not cleared off of the alley between shots as they are in ten pin.  This can be both a good and bad thing.  Sometimes a piece of wood can assist you in making a difficult shot or can make an easy shot even easier by increasing your target, but they can also act as a road block shooting off in one direction while the ball flies off in other leaving the pin still standing.

Candlepin bowling is a lot more challenging than ten pin bowling.  While perfect games in ten pin bowling are frequent it has never been done in candlepin bowling.  The highest sanctioned score in a candlepin string is 245.  Throw a ball right down the middle of the lane in candlepin bowling and you’re very likely only going to take out the middle two pins.  Throw that same ball so that it hits between the head pins and a neighboring pin and you’re likely to get a good pinfall.  It can be frustrating, but the added challenge brings added fun.

I’ve been bowling since I was a kid and in bowling leagues almost as long.  Now that I’ve been doing it all of my life, I wouldn’t ever want to live somewhere that doesn’t have candlepin bowling.  If this has caught your attention and you’d like to find out a little more about candlepin bowling you can check out this link to the International Candlepin Bowling Association or check out this YouTube video of one of the best televised performances ever.  There are a ton of YouTube video out there of candlepin bowling from nearly impossible shots to breaking pins.

You may have noticed a lack of updates on the site ever since the “story” broke regarding David Ortiz’s alleged steroid use.  The reaction that I saw everywhere after the story broke was disgusting.  It seems like a lot of people were chomping at the bit to take shots at the Boston Red Sox and their most popular player.  Now the World Series victories are supposedly tainted and of course all of the critics knew all along that Ortiz had to have been using steroids.  The only problem is that nothing about Ortiz’s past screamed steroids unless you’ve got your witch hunt blinders on.

The first piece of evidence that people always point to is Ortiz’s stats with the Twins.  They cite the low home run totals, but for some reason never mention the injuries or low number of games played.  Ortiz’s 16.8 AB/HR in 2001 is very respectable.  To put it into perspective, this year Jason Bay’s AB/HR is 15.60, Justin Morneau is 15,75 Ian Kinsler is 16.08 and Ryan Braun is 17.42.  Albert Pujols leads the league with 10.84.

The only numbers that jump out at you are 2005 and 2006.  Ortiz led the American League in 2006 (Ryan Howard just edged him with 10.017) and that tied for the 26th best of all time with Kevin Mitchell’s 1994 season.  Bagwell had a season at 10.256, Frank Thomas had a season at 10.500 and Ken Griffey Jr had a season at 10.825 and they are all players considered to be clean.  I don’t see how these numbers implicate Ortiz.

A lot of people like to think that Ortiz came out of nowhere, but that’s not the case.  Ortiz hit 31 HR in 1997 for three teams between high A, AA and AAA before getting a cup of coffee with the Twins at the end of the season.  He hit 30 HR in 1999 in AAA after a rough start to his major league career.  He was a player that I always picked up as a sleeper in my fantasy leagues so it was frustrated along with the Twins when Ortiz succumbed to injuries and couldn’t translate his minor league success to the big league level.  Ortiz was a solid fielder, but never spectacular (and much better than he ever gets credit for).  When Doug Mientkiewicz showed up with a slick glove and lofty batting average, it led to the Twins deciding to let Ortiz walk.

The biggest factor in the jump in Ortiz’s statistics once coming to Boston was health.  Until the 2008 season, Ortiz was able to remain relatively healthy which he was never able to do in Minnesota.  He fractured his wrist in 2001 which cut short what probably would have been his breakthrough season.  2002 saw Ortiz plagued by knee problems which led to him getting the knee scoped.  Ortiz did what everyone expected him to do when healthy until injuries sidelined him again in 2008.

The other huge factor in Ortiz’s improvement was the help of hitting coach Ron “Papa Jack” Jackson.  Ortiz sang his praises highly and he seemed to straighten out the problems that Ortiz was having by getting him to open up his stance allowing him to get his bat on more pitches and use more of the field.  Ortiz got off to a slow start at the beginning of the 2007 season which was the first after the Red Sox let Papa Jack go.  Reportedly, he made a couple of phone calls to Jackson and found out what he was doing wrong.  He went on to have the highest batting average of his career that season.

Many people pointed to Ortiz’s slow start in 2009 and said that it must be due to Ortiz coming off of steroids.  Of course there’s no way that the injury could be a factor.  Some local pundits said that it looked like Ortiz was having trouble seeing the ball especially since he was swinging late on a lot of pitches.  Whether the new eye drops he started using were the reason or not, Ortiz caught fire after that.  His average is still pretty low, but since June 6th he’s leading the American League in home runs with 19 and as you can see from the chart above, his AB/HR is right where it usually is.

Ortiz maintained his innocence all along, but few believed him.  He held a press conference where the Major League Baseball Players Association stated that he was on the list, but didn’t test positive for steroids.  They haven’t spoken up on behalf of any other player.  It was interesting to hear Peter Gammons touch on this because after hearing all of the details released by the MLBPA about that list, he believes that there’s only around 60 – 70 different names on the list which tested positive for steroids.  Gammons also believe that Ortiz hasn’t ever taken steroids.  That hasn’t kept large numbers of people from continuing to insist that Ortiz took steroids.

What bothers me is that you won’t see one retraction.  For some reason, people would rather believe two “anonymous lawyers” who are breaking the law for a pay day over a ballplayer who hasn’t done anything to cause people not to believe him.  I guess it’s not suspect that the only names leaked this time were a couple of Red Sox by a New York newspaper about a week before a huge Red Sox/Yankees series.

If you don’t believe Ortiz then you can’t believe any player.  Whether it be Pujols, Griffey Jr, Vlad Guerrero or Frank Thomas.  There’s no way that anyone that’s clean is outhitting all of these players who have supposedly taken steroids.  With the Players Union not allowing blood tests for HGH, anyone could take it without fear of being caught.

I never understood the fun in tearing down other teams and/or players.  Hearing “Yankees suck” chants at Red Sox games, Celtics games and concerts makes me cringe.  It makes fans sound petty and sad.  If a team with 26 championships sucks then I wish the Sox would suck a little more.

Nothing good can come of outing these players from the 2003 tests.  If the Players Union allowed for HGH testing and we could definitely know who was clean, I’d be of the mindset that the list should be released, but since we don’t know if people who aren’t on the list are actually clean then there’s no use.  The list definitely shouldn’t be leaked a name at a time and Bud Selig should be doing all that he can to prosecute those two lawyers which leaked these latest two names to the full extent of the law.

Major League Baseball just gave Topps an exclusive license to produce baseball cards citing a need to bring kids back into the hobby as a reason for doing so.  Making kids suffer through their favorite players being called cheats and liars could alienate the kids that are already interested.  I know it has affected my enjoyment of the game and I’m 33 years old.  I can only imagine how little kids have reacted.  I feel badly for young fans of Ortiz, A-Rod, etc. who have to see their heroes torn down by a bunch of adults under the pretense of “the sanctity of the game.”  I don’t even want to imagine how badly I would have taken it if Dwight Evans had been labeled a cheater when I was a kid.

Who knows how fans will look back upon this era in ten, twenty or even fifty years from now.  Right now, it seems like too many fans are of the mindset that every player has used PEDs at some point in their career and don’t believe any of the denials.  There have to be some players out there not using due to the health risks or other reasons and that mindset isn’t fair to them.  A lot of players used before it was against the rules.  Are their accomplishments tainted?  It’ll be interesting to see how this all shakes out.  I have a feeling that baseball’s already hurting reputation isn’t going to get any better.

When it was announced that Kevin Garnett would not be able to play in this year’s NBA Playoffs, most immediately dismissed the Celtics’ chances of repeating as Champions.  While the road will be a lot tougher without Garnett, especially with improved Cleveland and LA teams, I wouldn’t completely count out the C’s for two reasons.

While Rajon Rondo played solidly in last year’s playoffs, he took a back seat to the New Big Three.  Most of the offense ran through those three with Rondo just dribbling the ball up the court.  In last year’s playoffs Rondo averaged 10.2 PPG, 6.6 APG and 4.1 RPG with only 1.81 Turnovers per game.  Rondo has always been a great ball handler.  Rondo’s shooting percentages last year were .407 FG%, .250 3P% and .691 FT%.  It got to the point where Rondo was not on the floor late in games because his low free throw percentage was a liability.

This year, Kevin Garnett is out and the Celtics need other players to step up.  Rajon Rondo has certainly done that and then some through three playoff games.  He’s averaging close to a triple double while frustrating the other team on defense (4 steals per game so far this playoffs).  Currently in the Bulls series, Rondo is averaging 22.7 PPG, 9.7 APG and 10.7 RPG.  His turnovers per game are up to 2.0, but that is still an astounding number and due to the fact that Rondo is handling the ball a whole lot more.  His shooting numbers so far are .500 FG%, .500 3P% and .750 FT%.

Once considered a liability when it came to outside shooting, Rondo has hit some big three pointers in the series.  He can drive on most point guards in the league and his floor awareness is amazing.  He was overshadowed by Rose for one game, but has been the more consistent producer.

Another Celtic who has stepped up is the player that is replacing Garnett in the lineup, Glen Davis.  “Big Baby” was improving steadily as the season progressed, but it wasn’t until Garnett went down and Baby’s minutes increased that he really began to shine.

Deceptively quick for his size, Davis has a knack for getting his shot off in the post against taller players.  He also spent a lot of time on what is now a very consistent jump shot.  Davis is third on the team in scoring with 19.3 PPG in the playoffs, but the most important thing that he has brought to the team is an increased defensive presence.  Davis had 6 steals in Game 3 against the Bulls and his 6 blocks for the series are tied for the team lead.  His 9 Offensive Rebounds have also been a big reason that the Celtics have been able to turn this series around.

Through three games Davis’ numbers are 19.3 PPG, 2.7 APG and 7 RPG.  That doesn't even compare to his numbers last year of 2.3 PPG, .4 APG and 1.5 RPG.  Of course, Davis was only playing 8.1 Minutes per game last year in the playoffs while this year he’s leading the team in minutes played with 40 MPG.  If he can keep up this level of play, the impact of losing Garnett won’t be as great as many thought.  The biggest impact is that Davis is no longer available to come off of the bench, but that’s why he’s playing 40 minutes a game.

Last year, the Celtics were expected to win it all.  Even though many of the “experts” were picking the Lakers to win it all, you had a feeling that you couldn’t deny three veterans who hadn’t yet achieved that ultimate goal.  This year, the team has a lot to prove and I’m going to enjoy watching them do it.