What’s Wrong With Phil Hughes?

I’m still not convinced that there is really anything wrong with him.  Yes, the results have been horrible this year, and his stuff seems to be a bit off, but it’s still relatively early in the season.  If he goes 15-5 over his next 20 starts this horrid start will all be forgotten.  I am a steadfast Hughes supporter, but I don’t think that will happen.  But I do think that if he gets a couple of decent starts in a row, he could get on a role.  I hope that in the wake of his latest outing, people don’t forget how great he looked in Chicago last week before the rain forced him out of the game.  If he had pitched 6 or 7 good innings that night, people probably wouldn’t be jumping on him as much after an outing like tonight.

I’m also not of the opinion that a trip to AAA will cure all of whatever isn’t going right.  Let’s say the Yankees do send him down (again, I DO NOT THINK THEY SHOULD) and he gets rocked his first time out.  Then he gets rocked his next time out.  Uh oh.  What do you do then?  Send him down to AA?  I think the Yankees made a mistake, panicked, and rushed him to the majors last year.  Could his struggles this year be in some way connected to that?  I don’t know.  I’m still confident that Phil can turn it around this year, and will be a very good pitcher for a very long time.  It’s not even May yet people, lay off the kid and be patient.

Weekend Football Review

I didn’t do very well this past weekend with my picks (the first weekend that I posted actual score predictions).  I only picked 2 results correctly.  To my credit, however, I did get the scores of those two games exactly right.  I picked Chelsea to win 2-1 and a 2-2 draw between West Ham and Newcastle.  I also picked the Chelsea game as my “joker” in my fifa pick ’em, which netted me a cool 100 point bonus.  As I’ve said before, I pick the scores and post them here for fun.  I don’t claim to have any special talent for picking games and I don’t claim to be an expert.  It’s just fun.  I know a decent amount about the leagues in England, so those are the games I’ll post scores for.  Anything else would be a blind guess.  I’m going to keep a running tally of my season record of correct picks as well as my all time record.  I won’t give myself extra credit for picking the correct score, only for picking the correct result.  So, here’s the first one(!):

 

07-08 Season Record: 2-9 (2 correct picks, 9 wrong picks)
All Time Record: 2-9

 

As for some insightful analysis, it’s pretty simple for Palace: win on Sunday and we’re in the playoffs.  Nothing else matters.  We played decently well at Hull from what I’ve read, and Mr. Warnock should have the boys ready to go this weekend.  Shame I won’t be able to catch it on TV.

 

As for Man U and Chelsea: Michael.  Ballack.  Enough said.

Things I Like #8: Drafts

I like drafts.  Not the military kind, but the sports kind.  It is the culmination of scouting, projection, and prospects and I love those things (hmm future posts perhaps??).   Just to top it all off, they are exciting and involve high risk… what happens if you waste a #1 pick on someone who doesn’t pan out?  Drafts often mark turning points for the franchises involved… either for better or worse, so there’s a lot riding on them.  Drafts really are great.  Watch one sometime and see for yourself!  I highly recommend the Major League Baseball, NFL, and NBA drafts.

Things I like #8a: Fantasy drafts.  The closest most of us will ever come to having our own professional team.  Great fun.

Things I Like #7: My Imaginary Apartment / House

I’ve been very lucky to have lived with amazing people in apartments / rented houses, but that hasn’t stopped me from dreaming.  My imaginary apartment began as a four bedroom.  One for me, one for Matt Damon, one for Vince Vaughn, and one for Matthew McConaughey.  Morgan Freeman lives upstairs and is our landlord.  Like I said it began with four of us but, after this weekend’s two goal performance against Manchester United, I am prepared to bring der deutsche Supermann himself, Michael Ballack, into our humble abode.  So there you have it.  I think we might have to move into a bigger place.  Me, Damon, Vaughn, McConaughey, Ballack, and Freeman.  If ever there was an all star house, that would be it my friends.  That would be it.

New Schedule Coming

Since I’ve decided to combine my blogs into one, I’m going to be making a new combined schedule that will be released sometime this week.  There will, as always, be plenty of random posts as well.

Jorge…

…is likely headed for the DL for the first time in his career.  I have to admit when I heard it I really didn’t believe it.  I guess I just don’t want to admit it.  Now the Yankees are without a crucial part of their lineup, and more importantly one of the best catchers in baseball (in my humble opinion, especially when it comes to understanding the Yankees pitching staff).  There’s really no decent catcher out there to bring in, so I’d be willing to bet that the Yankees are going to be content with Molina behind the plate.  If he gets hurt (as he already has this year) the situation changes, but for now he’ll do.  Jorge is one of my all time favorite Yankees.  A great guy and real pro.  Let’s hope the news from Dr. Andrews isn’t terrible.  At the very best expect the news to be bad.

Tough One For the Palace, Sweet Victory for the Chelsea

Palace gave up a late goal and lost at Hull 2-1 yesterday.  I didn’t see the game, but from people’s comments it sounded like a fairly even, back and forth, up and down the pitch sort of game that could have gone either way.  Luckily, other results went our way, and we’re still in 6th position!  If we win next weekend against Burnley at home we’re in the playoffs, with an eye on winning promotion.  It would have been nice to clinch a spot yesterday with a win, but I can hardly believe how exciting and nerve wracking the final weekend of football is going to be.

Chelsea, on the other hand, pulled out a monumental victory over Manchester United at Stamford Bridge on Saturday, by the score of 2-1.  Herr Ballack (der deutsche Supermann) netted both goals, one on a redonk header, the other from the penalty spot.  I still haven’t seen video of the hand ball that gave Chelsea the penalty, but the linesman rarely makes a call like that unless he is absolutely sure of it, so I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt.  It’s not like United deserved their goal either… What does the result mean?  The two teams are now level on points with two games left.  United have a far superior goal difference, so that’s an extra point for them, but if they slip up in the last two Chelsea could end up winning the title.  This was unimaginable to me a couple of weeks ago.  Come on Chelsea!  My dad is a Chelsea supporter, so I root for ’em too (unless they’re plaing Palace, that is)!

The Trenton Thunder Answer My Question!

Check out the post from Mike Ashmore over at his Trenton Thunder blog:

http://thunderbaseball.wordpress.com/2008/04/26/you-asked-they-answered/

The “Mike” that asked a question?  Yup, that’s me.

Recap of Things That I Like

Now that I’m moving this over here, I figured I’d give a recap of the things I’ve already listed that I like.  Head on over to: http://whatmessmanlikes.wordpress.com/ to read more about them.  They are listed in no particular order.  Therefore, #1 does not indicate it is the number one thing that I like.  I’m going to number them on here from now on as well, but it will only be to keep track of the order I post them and total number of them.

1. Using the third person

2. Post It Notes

3. Gmail chat smilies

4. MTV

5. Mike and Mike in the Morning

6. Johnny the Bus Driver.

What’s New This Week?

Passport Records!  I know they weren’t released this week, but they’re an important new source of information for us researchers.  I haven’t been able to explore them yet, but from the descriptions I’ve seen they are going to be very valuable.  Some will even include pictures!  My initial thought is that they’ll be somewhat the equivalent of naturalization records for people who were already citizens.  I’m excited to see what I can uncover!  I’m not assuming that I’ll find too much, but if I can find just one record I’d be thrilled!

Here’s the link to the ancestry.com database: http://content.ancestry.com/Browse/list.aspx?dbid=1174&path=