Two times to St. Joseph's. Martelli is still the best coach in the A-10. I love the guy. He's crafty and smart and knows how prepare his team. As much as I love seeing Xavier lose (I never get tired of it in fact), the time off might help the Musketeers rest and heal for the national tournament. They definitely cost themselves a seed spot, but the difference from a 3 to a 4 is probably worth the extra 5 days of rest they'll be assured. In the end, not the worst thing to happen to X. It also proves, that while I think Sean Miller will be on his way to a better job soon, that Miller is not the best game coach. Remember when Matta left, people weren't sure he was ready. Just look at that Ohio State game last year and see how Miller just blew the coaching in that game. It happens. Martelli outsmarted and his team was more ready to play.

Did I mention that I love when Xavier loses? 

It's kind of funny how sometimes people, teams, companies, or any sort of entity gets a reputation for doing something.  And after a while, the reputation just gets brought up over and over, until it just becomes accepted fact that the reputation is deserved...until someone challenges that reputation, and on occassion people find that it really doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

The Hardball Times challenged just such a reputation in their season preview of the Reds.  During one of the early paragraphs of the piece, Justin Inaz states that:

[Dusty] Baker has a reputation as a manager who favors veterans, extremely so.  But...a look back at Baker's teams over the years shows that he did give a great deal of playing time to young talent.  All the following got significant opportunities as early 20-somethings under Baker's watch: Rich Aurilia, Rod Beck, Marvin Benard, Royce Clayton, Shawn Estes, Ryan Jensen, Darren Lewis, Matt Murton, Russ Ortiz, Mark Prior, Corey Patterson, Kirk Reuter, William Van Landingham, Allen Watson, and Carlos Zambrano.  So it's not like it's unprecedented for Baker to let a kid play.

Aside from the fact that I thoroughly enjoyed the first opportunity to mention the name William Van Landingham in many years, this got me very curious.  After all, we all know that Baker goes with veterans, right?  That's what everyone says about him.  It's been repeated so often people probably think that Baker is his middle name, and "hatesrookies" is his last name (who is not to be confused with Dusty Baker Burnsoutyoungarms, and that's a subject for a whole 'nother day).

Interestingly though, when I looked through the teams he managed over the years, I couldn't find a lot of examples where he played an older, underperforming player over a younger, talented player.  With the Cubs, there's the example of him playing Eric Karros over Hee Seop Choi in 2003, which Inaz points out seems to be the genesis of this whole reputation (though it's hard to say, in retrospect, that was a bad move - Choi hasn't had an MLB at-bat in two years).  And he probably could have played Ryan Theriot more in 2006 over Todd Walker, in a season where he was managing for his job.

But with the Giants, it's hard to find many instances where this occured.  Now, it also should be noted that, during his tenure with San Francisco, their management compiled one of the worst drafting and player development records in recent memory.  Most of the time, Dusty didn't have much in the way of youth to choose from.  I guess if you want to, you could argue that he should have played Mike Benjamin over John Patterson, or J.R. Phillips over Mark Carreon at some point, but overall there just didn't seem to be a history of making life hard on younger players that had serious potential.

So I guess I'm leaving it to the readers.  Are there instances that I'm missing here?  Do we think that Dusty had enough influence over personnel decisions to force the Giants' hand in signing veterans?  Am I "misremembering" history?  Or could this really be an overblown reputation?

The Bengals have the #9 pick in the NFL draft in April. There's almost no way Darren McFadden slips all the way down to them, thankfully, taking D-Mac out of the equation for the Bengals (thankfully). But, there have been several rumors and suggestions that Bengals are interested in moving up in the draft to take the Arkansas running back. To this I say, no thanks. I'm a big fan of McFadden. I think he's going to have a nice NFL career. But, running back is not something that the Bengals need, at least not like defensive tackle. And, oh wait, there's two incredible DTs that will be top 10 picks. So, if the Bengals are hell-bent on moving up, might I suggest trading with Kansas City and going to #5 where they take either Dorsey or Sedrick Ellis. Either of these guys will anchor the D-line and go a long way to improving this unit immediately. The Bengals have had a miserable history with first round running backs. Between Rudi, Irons and Watson, they have enough yards to get by. Dorsey or Ellis make the biggest impact.

I'm all for the Bengals being aggressive and moving up, just not for McFadden.

Besides, I think of the two Arkansas RBs in the draft that Felix Jones would be a bigger impact for the Bengals, as he can return kicks and punts, an area the Bengals have been awful at. So, if we go after a surprise offensive player, he better be able to pull double duty.