SimonOnSports

It's PhotoHunt Time. Take a look at the pictures and see if you can figure where the 5 differences are. Click on the Image to get a larger view if needed. Then when you are done check out the answers linked below. ANSWERS

The AL West is a world for holy beings. It shall continue in 2009. 1. Los Angeles Angels The Angels have been the king of the West for a long time and should still be considered the favorites in 2009. But this season they will be challenged much more heavily than in years past and the reason for this is the health of their starting rotation. Last year they were able to overcome the Lackey and Escobar injuries with massive performances by Santana and Saunders. This year Santana is on the shelf with Lackey and Escobar, so picks up the pace? Key Player: Jered Weaver, Someone needs to hold up the fort while Lackey, Santana and Escobar. Weaver has the most potentialof the starters in the rotation but his stats have gotten progressively worse season after season after season. His ERA and Winning Percentage have gone in the wrong direction every year since his rookie season. The Angels can ill afford one of their experienced pitchers regressing even more when they will be relying so hea

First off we get the NL West, home to two of the worst offenses in baseball, possibly ever. 1. Los Angeles Dodgers The Dodgers come back as defending division winner. Their lineup shall be improved with the addition of the O-Dog and potentially the further development of their young stars like Kemp, Ethier, Loney and DeWitt. Their questionmarks however lie strictly on their starting rotation. The loss of Derek Lowe's consistency must be replaced somewhere. Will it be Randy Wolf? An improved Clayton Kershaw? They'll need someone to step up to maintain their Western dominance. Key Player: Manny Ramirez, The Dodgers spent the entire offseason concentrating on bringing back Manny Ramirez. Without him their lineup lacks the main cog, with him they'll be full speed ahead. You probably can't expect him to hit 4000 like he did last year in Dodger blue, but the typical Manny .310 35 120 is absolutely essential to the Dodgers success. Player to Eye: Clayton Kershaw, Whi

Here's the record predictions for 2009. I'll post a few points on them after you take a peek. ~The records are significantly and I mean significantly more towards the middle than last season . The reasons are as follows, I was mightily burnt by the massively incorrect predictions of the Tigers and Mariners. Massively incorrect. Second, I think almost every team in the MLB has terribly large holes. ~The numbers around the projections are just so that I can convince everyone the records work out so I don't have any jackasses this year yelling at me for having the AL win more games than the NL. They play interleague play, the AL dominates every year. They will again this year. Hence I have the AL having an 8 game over .500 record in interleague play. ~Over the course of the next few days I will have a preview up for each division. That will go into more details into what my thoughts are for each squad. ~Check Out All the Previews: AL East , AL Central , AL West , NL East , NL

I went with Vintage helmets because it added a little twist. Click on the Image for a Full Size Version. If you want the Excel File for whatever reason or have a correction to the schedule, email me at SimonOnSports at gmail dot com. Also feel free to Check Out the Other Conference Helmet Schedules . *Update, Download the Entire Helmet Schedule Here

It feels like a moment in a WWE match. You know the moment. Two heroes come into the ring to take out the villains. Everything is going well until all of a sudden one hero finds a folding chair and pulls it into the ring and all of a sudden when his partner's back is turned he smashes him to the ground. The hero has turned, he is now hated by all. Today Seth Curry makes the leap to enemy. Instead of picking a nondescript ACC School or landing at VaTech to follow in his footsteps, he chooses Duke. We should have seen it coming. Soft Jump Shooters love Duke. He's the perfect Duke villain. Silky Smooth jump shot. Limited ability to play defense. Skinny as a pencil. He's the perfect successor for the Scheyer's of the world. We shouldn't have been blindsided. It was an obvious decision. But we had hopes for a family that's added so much fun to college basketaball the past two years. The hopes are smashed, the Curry name will never be the same. S

It's PhotoHunt Time. Take a look at the pictures and see if you can figure where the 5 differences are. Click on the Image to get a larger view if needed. Then when you are done check out the answers linked below. ANSWERS

One thing I noticed when I was browsing through the ole NCAA tournament pictures on ESPN.com after the first few rounds was that there was a ridiculous amount of pictures of coaches yelling. In fact you could find a picture of basically every single coach screaming at their players or the refs or their MILF wives. So I decided to take on a new challenge and try to make a little collage photo of all the NCAA coaches yelling. The image below is 65 NCAA Coaches all screaming at someone. *Almost all of the pictures I used were actually from the NCAA tournament. A handful of pictures were from a respective conference tournament and a handful were from google images. The only coach I could not find any picture of was Danny Kaspar of Stephen F. Austin. I replaced him with George Blaney the UConn assistant that coached in the opening round.

One trend I noticed over the first weekend of NCAA play is that sometimes in the big spot the opposing defense let's you get easy buckets. Sometimes Defense Is Hard breaks down some of those occasions. The Scenario: Pitt tied up after a Levance Fields free throw goes into a press to try to force overtime. Tie Game Here Comes the Press The benefits of the press are forcing the squad to burn some clock getting the ball up the court. The negatives are if they break the press an easy basket awaits. So which route does it go. And the Beginning of the End Starts Now Sam Young let's the ball get inbounded in front of him. Now here's where the obvious issues start. Look at where the two players responsible for Scotty Reynold's are. They are way behind him. 3 on 2 Fast Break Sam Young finds himself out of position and blown by as well. Now we have a 3 on 2 fast break with great spacing. Reynolds like any good guard is going to take the ball to the middle on the break to

So who wants to drop 349 dollars on those Knicks 4th round playoff tickets? The games on June 7th at the Garden, it should be a thriller. And it's game 2, so they have homecourt, man them Knicks are going to have a superb next few weeks.

It's time to pick between two midtier pitchers who will certainly be on my players to watch list come draft day. The Fantasy Rankings CBS ranks Yovani at 135 and Greinke at 142. Yahoo Big Board says no to midtier pitching. ESPN has Yovani at 86 and Greinke at 83. So ESPN apparently loves pitching. Whichever way you cut it these two are side by side in the rankings. Projections Yovani Gallardo : 3.99 ERA, 13-9, 196 IP, 201 Ks, 1.30 WHIP Zack Greinke : 3.99 ERA, 12-10, 194 IP, 156 Ks, 1.28 WHIP The Projections say Yovani based on strikeout potential. The issue is that Greinke K'd 183 last season in just 8 more innings, why would the K numbers plummet by almost 30? Not sure I'm buying that. Surrounding Lineup The Brewers have big boppers in Braun and Prince that are significantly better than any Royals. Additionally JJ Hardy has put together back to back solid seasons. After those three there are some question marks. Will Rickie Weeks hit .220 again? Can Corey Hart get on b

It's PhotoHunt Time. Take a look at the pictures and see if you can figure where the 5 differences are. Click on the Image to get a larger view if needed. Then when you are done check out the answers linked below. ANSWERS

How many times did you orgasm last night watching the Duke game? 2? Maybe 3? That game couldn't have possibly been more enjoyable. The best part about last night was it took maybe 5 minutes of watching the game to know that Villanova had a thorough advantage in physicality and athleticism and that it was just a matter of time before they pulled away. My favorite portion of the entire night was when Duke couldn't even get a shot off for like three straight possessions. Mostly because Duke doesn't actually play defense. They play the charging game. "Oh look someones driving to the paint, let me step in front of him and try to take a charge. The refs will give me the call cause we're Duke and Paulus sucks them off before the game." Watching Duke get dominated completely made up for my bracket going boom last night thanks to the turnover machine that was Memphis. Let's carry the joy over to today by enjoying some pictures of Duke losers. That makes me smile.

People remember the here and now most, they remember the pain and suffering from last season and they remember the joy from last season. The previous years are kind of just blended in the background of the memory. In a draft you must expose this. You must look for players that had a down year that you think will bounce back, they will come at a bargain basement price. Take Aaron Harang for instance. Harang had two phenomenal seasons in 06&07. His era was 3.76 or lower, his WHIP was elite and his Ks were through the roof. And then there was last year. His ERA was a run higher he got lit up and well that is stuck in a ton of peoples minds. In reality he was both unhealthy and unlucky. His batting average against sky rocketed. Harang is going in the wee hours of your draft and could easily revert back to his stud levels in 06&07. Another player that fits this category is Robinson Cano. Cano's a little bit of a loosy goosy guy and last year he had an abominable April. It tanked

If you haven't seen how the rankings work go here . For a list of the rest of the rankings and the rest of the fantasy baseball blowout go here .

If you haven't seen how the rankings work go here . For a list of the rest of the rankings and the rest of the fantasy baseball blowout go here .

If you haven't seen how the rankings work go here . For a list of the rest of the rankings and the rest of the fantasy baseball blowout go here .

If you haven't seen how the rankings work go here . For a list of the rest of the rankings and the rest of the fantasy baseball blowout go here .

If you haven't seen how the rankings work go here . For a list of the rest of the rankings and the rest of the fantasy baseball blowout go here .

Rule #1 while picking pitchers is control the controllables. In other words key on the projections which the pitcher has the most control over and then take the others into consideration. The most controlled pitcher stat? Strikeouts. Strikeout pitchers don't emerge from thin air. Mr. Wang in the Bronx is never going to strike out 200 hitters. Meanwhile Matt Cain who you probably can get at the same point just might. The next two stats that are the controllable for pitchers are his splits, ERA and WHIP. A better pitcher is going to get outs and is going to give up less baserunners. It doesn't matter if he's on the Mets or the Marlins. Ricky Nolasco is simply going to have a better ERA and WHIP than Ollie P. Wins are simply the tie breaker really. If a pitcher is on a better team than and the stats are nearly the same the pull the trigger on the Dodger instead of the Padre. Just don't let wins carry equal weight as the other stats.

If you haven't seen how the rankings work go here . For a list of the rest of the rankings and the rest of the fantasy baseball blowout go here .

If you haven't seen how the rankings work go here . For a list of the rest of the rankings and the rest of the fantasy baseball blowout go here .

It's PhotoHunt Time. Take a look at the pictures and see if you can figure where the 5 differences are. Click on the Image to get a larger view if needed. Then when you are done check out the answers linked below. ANSWERS

If you haven't seen how the rankings work go here . For a list of the rest of the rankings and the rest of the fantasy baseball blowout go here .

Today I'm going to come out with rankings for all position players. Each position will include a spreadsheet with three tabs. Let me explain how it all works. First of all, all the stats utilized in the spreadsheets are projections from CBS Sportsline. They were easy to grab and more close to expectations than the CHONE projections which are fantastically low for anybody that's missed significant time over the past few years. Plus, chone had Eric Young stealing 40 bases and being one of the most valuable 2nd baseman in fantasy baseball, and well I don't know if he's even making the roster. Secondly the rankings are for Roto 5*5, but my leagues rules. So, the difference is my league has hits not average and innings pitched not WHIP. Don't think that makes a big difference? It does, especially hits -> average. Ok onto the explanation. The base goals are also set to the category leaders in my league last year, so for instance the winner of my home run categor

You ready for a fantasy baseball blowout? I know you are. All posts today and possibly tomorrow will be related to fantasy baseball. So get ready for a ride. Posts start in a little bit and will consist of rankings, philosophies, favorites, etc. Fun stuff. Fielder Rankings: Catcher , First Base , Second Base , Third Base , Shortstop , Outfield Pitching Rankings: Starters , Relievers Philosophies: Never Chase Wins , Search for the Comeback Kids Mancrushes: Yovani Gallardo , Matt Cain Fantasy Toss Ups: Speed vs. Power , Ellsbury vs. Victorino , Holliday vs. Hamilton , Lackey vs. Haren , Kershaw vs. Price , Lincecum vs. Johan , Upton vs. Maybin , Greinke vs. Gallardo PhotoHunt

Don't know if I've ever seen a guy chip it up to himself and then bury the bicycle kick. H/T 101 Great Goals

This psat Thanksgiving I woke up at around 8, 8:30, drove down to my buddies house and conducted beverage drinking games until around 1ish or so. Thus when I was done eating Turkey dinner I was plopped on the couch fully zonked out and possibly drooling on myself. In 2009, the NFL wants to make sure you do the same exact thing, even if you don't have a case of beer in the AM. We all have just grown accustomed to the Lions shit show on Thanksgiving, they always suck and you really want the game to but it never is. But at the very least the NFL has the excuse of not breaking tradition for scheduling the Lions in the 12:30 game. The NFL however has absolutely positively no excuse for scheduling the Raiders to the play the Cowboys in the second game. You really really really want to make sure we watch shitty football on thanksgiving don't you NFL? The Raiders have been terrible for forever and there's zero sign of them breaking out this year. Hooray for two miserable games on

Yay for safety rules and elimating the physicality out of the NFL one step at a time. So much for highlight films of big hits. Here's a run down of the 4 rules they have put through over the past week. The Bernard Pollard Rule Everyone's calling it the Brady rule. Nonsense, name it after the hero. No longer when a defender is on the ground can they dive at the quarterback. So essentially being a defensive lineman and getting knocked to the ground is like the WedgeRats getting stabbed in their foam sword battles. It's time to play dead. The NFL will probably say something moronic like, well they can get up and then when they get back to their feet they can tackle the quarterback. How many times has Bob Kraft been on the ground trying to stand up when a 350 pound man is pushing him in the back? That's going to be completely wasted effort. One injury to a high profile Quarterback and we need to turn their knees into endangered species. The Let's Try To Eliminate Kicko

It's PhotoHunt Time. Take a look at the pictures and see if you can figure where the 5 differences are. Click on the Image to get a larger view if needed. Then when you are done check out the answers linked below. ANSWERS

The fantasy mancrush tracks players that I am very high on and will target often in my drafts. Today we're going with Matt Cain. And yes, I'm in love with the mid-tier pitcher. Spring Stats The Spring stats for Cain are also a little eh. 21.1 innings with an era of 6.33 and 20 Ks. Not exactly mowing them down, but it's spring and he's been around for 3+ seasons, I'm not worried. Projections Bill James : 13-11, 3.55 era, 213 innings, 192 Ks, 1.30 WHIP CHONE : 11-10, 3.76 era, 189 innings, 166 Ks, 1.32 WHIP ESPN : 11 wins, 3.65 era, 202 innings, 177 Ks, 1.31 WHIP Sportsline : 10-13, 3.73 era, 210 innings, 190 Ks, 1.31 WHIP Everybody says solid ERA, yay for Ks,, yay for workload, and boo for wins. Rankings ESPN : #133 Overall, #30 Starting Pitcher Yahoo : #26 Starting Pitcher Sportsline : #147 overall Yahoo is slightly higher on Cain than everybody else, but the sentiment is that Cain is going to go in the 12th-15th round of your drafts. Sum Up Don't search or dra

My bracket is fantastico. 3 out of 4 final four squads. My champ and runner-up still intact. Solid. ODU, James Madison and Pacific all cruised to easy victories on the evening while Bradley just needed to hit a tiny little jump shot to move on. And by tiny little jump shot, I mean this: Well that's a solid way to win a basketball game. All in all the CIT is an infinitely better tournament than the CBI. The CBI is strictly a business proposition their to suck college programs of money without morals . The only reason the Oregon State Beavers are in their tournament is because the coaches brother-in-law is the president. Plus they had shitty St. John's in the tournament with their losing record. Meanwhile the CIT is an honest tournament. It's a tournament for the little guys. It's teams with winning records from smaller conferences most of whom coming from 1-bid conferences. It's a good way for the little guy to get a few more games in and feel good about th

The WBC has come to an end for the second time and just like the first the Japanese are your world's best baseball team despite the Koreans best efforts. The Koreans down by two in the 8th inning fought back lead by Lee Bum-ho. In the 8th Bum-ho lied a double off the wall to lead off the inning and eventually scored on a sac fly. In the 9th Bum-ho singled in the tying run after Yu Darvish decided to avoid bats by striking out two and walking two. At the end of the night the hero was fittingly Ichiro. With two outs and runners on 2nd and 3rd Ichiro fought off pitch after pitch after pitch until eventually lined the ball up the middle two score the go-ahead runs. In the bottom of the 10th with the bottom of Korean lineup up, Darvish casually used his slider to dominate and clinch the Japanese second World Baseball classic in two attempts. And now we go into random thought mode. ~TEAM ASIA DOMINATES!!!!!!! ~The Japanese may or may not be the best baseball team in the world but they ha

The fantasy mancrush tracks players that I am very high on and will target often in my drafts. First up is man crush numero uno, Yovani Gallardo. The Mexican K wonder is back and ready to make up for his fantasy groin kick in 2008 when he blew out his ACL and dashed your hopes for a consistent ace. Spring Stats The Spring stats for Gallardo are a little eh. 18.2 innings thus far giving up 11 runs while striking out 16. Obviously spring stats can be read into a little too much but it would be nice if he would throw in a quality start or two over the final weeks to make you feel a bit more comfortable. Projections Bill James : 13-9, 3.99 era, 196 innings, 201 Ks, 1.30 WHIP CHONE : 7-5, 3.50 era, 108 innings, 112 Ks, 1.25 WHIP ESPN : 15 wins, 3.40 era, 193 innings, 187 Ks, 1.26 WHIP Sportsline : 12-7, 3.36 era, 182 innings, 166 Ks, 1.34 WHIP The projections are ranging. The things with the Chone projections is that it always seems to think people who were injured last year will be i

It's PhotoHunt Time. Take a look at the pictures and see if you can figure where the 5 differences are. Click on the Image to get a larger view if needed. Then when you are done check out the answers linked below. ANSWERS

This bracket was a debacle. I doubt the Beavers and now after their easy victory by 1 point in overtime over the Catamounts of Vermont they get to host my pick for champion of the universe Stanford. The Cardinal dispatched the Shockers on the road by 14. UTEP dumped Northeastern with relative ease at home and for their troubles they get the deadly Richmond Spiders who knocked off Charleston by 2. But forget my embarassing bracket for a second and let's just contemplate the audacity of this tournament in which you pay 60,000 dollars to host a game. Stanford went 18-13 in the regular season meanwhile Wichita St. went 16-16 in a worse conference, yet the Cardinal had to go to Wichita to play? Even after two wins in the tournament the Beavers are still just 15-17. That's right they were 13-17 and still got invited to play in a postseason tournament, that's what you get when your brother in-law can make fun of special needs kids on a latenight show. So they are 15-17 current

And boom goes me bracket. I went 6 for 8 in round 2 but lost the big one. On saturday early in the AM, the Baylor Bears went into Blacksburg and whiped the floor with the Hokies 18 points and I officially lost any chance of winning my NIT bracket of one. In other games the Gators punded rival Floridians Miami. Stephen Curry's season is over as they got thumped by St. Mary's. The Kentucky Wildcats staved off Billie G's firing for another day as Creighton missed a game winning three in the closing seconds. The Fighting Irish snuck by New Mexico in the closing seconds. Penn St., San Diego St., and Auburn all advanced comfortably to the 2nd round. The ole quarterfinals start tonight with Baylor at Auburn and Penn St. at Florida. Then on Wednesday St. Mary's goes to San Diego St.

One trend I noticed over the first weekend of NCAA play is that sometimes in the big spot the opposing defense let's you get easy buckets. Sometimes Defense Is Hard breaks down some of those occasions. The Scenario: Tennessee goes up 1 and now has to stop OK St. on the Cowboys final possession. Here Comes the High Pick and Roll At this point time it's pretty obvious that this pick and roll isn't going to lead anywhere. He's headed towards the sideline and baseline and would have to take a long route to the hoop. It almost makes no sense that they would set a screen in that direction. Force The Player to the Lane? Instead of letting him take the screen to nowhere land, or at the very least having one defender hedge the screen, both Tennessee players hedge. This basically forces Eaton to crossover and head towards the paint. Exactly where he wanted to go the whole time. And Now the Help D is Needed The on ball defender is now completely toast and it's up to help

It's PhotoHunt Time. Take a look at the pictures and see if you can figure where the 5 differences are. Click on the Image to get a larger view if needed. Then when you are done check out the answers linked below. ANSWERS

Man makes funny sign + Duke Fan = Still a Tool

~Adios Cinderella, all of the little boys and gals have been put to bed. And if anyone claims Arizona is a Cinderella they should be slapped in the mouth. ~How Chalklity is the bracket? A couple of upsets in day 2. A 12 seed in the sweet 16. But really when someone tells you they have the entire sweet 16 it's not surprising. It's just umm, so you went with Arizona, good for you. ~Of the #1 seeds Pitt, Louisville and UNC were challenged while UConn dominated. Of all the 1 seeds I still think that UConn is most likely to go down in the next round. Followed by Pitt. I feel as if Purdue is one of those teams that can get lights out from beyond the arc and beat anybody, will they do it against UConn? Probably not, but its possible. In all likelihood the Chalklity bracket will let the 4 1 seeds move on. ~The Wolverines fought well against Oklahoma but were completely done in by foul trouble to both Manny Harris and DeShawn Sims. The fact that they were able to stay in th

One trend I noticed over the first weekend of NCAA play is that sometimes in the big spot the opposing defense let's you get easy buckets. Sometimes Defense Is Hard breaks down some of those occasions. The Scenario: Western Kentucky makes a bucket with 7+ seconds to go to tie the game. Someone Pressure the Ball This is only a mild mistake. One theory is that you want to get back and set up your half court D, the other is that by pressuring the ball on the inbound you can waste more time. They only have 7 seconds to shoot, every second wasted makes it harder to get off a good shot, so I'm obviously on board with pressure there. No Seriously Someone Pressure the Ball Western Kentucky opts to continue not to pressure the ball letting the Demetri Goodson get the ball to half court in a just over a second and a half. Again this isn't the end of the world if you set up your half court defense. I Guess Now's the Time to Guard Him And this is the beginning of the end. Orlando