Far more credit will go to Jerry Manuel than he actually deserves, but, whatever the spark, the New York Mets are charging hard.  The Amazins have won eight straight games and set a modern-day record by allowing three or fewer hits in each of their last five victories.  New York was the pick of many prognosticators to be the class of the National League, and while that has not come to pass - at least not yet - they sit only a half-game out of first place in the NL East.  It just may be that the Mets rule the roost in the senior circuit before the season is over.

It's that time of the year again for the annual GSI BLOG Mock Draft. The draft is set up for a 10-team league in yardage+TD, head-to-head scoring format. Over the next couple of weeks we will draft 14-man teams and offer our takes:

RECAP: ROUND 1

Here's Round 2:

11. FISCHER - RB Marshawn Lynch - BUF
12. WETZEL -  RB Marion Barber - DAL
13. SIMON - QB Peyton Manning - IND
14. SIMS - RB Willis McGahee - BAL
15. MURDICO - WR Reggie Wayne - IND
16. DINSMORE - RB Ryan Grant - GB
17. BOLTON - RB Brandon Jacobs - NYG
18. HUMBERT - WR Terrell Owens - DAL
19. CLASGENS - RB Maurice Jones-Drew - JCK
20. PREUTH - RB Willie Parker - PIT

My Pick: I am not big on Jones-Drew but he was good value here. Fred Taylor has managed to stay healthy for a couple years in a row now, but healthy or not the Jags have said that Jones-Drew will be the team's No. 1 back this year. That's the pro. The cons include a YPC average that drop from 5.7 in '06 to 4.6 in '07. Not that's bad, but it is more than a yard per carry difference. Opportunity though is the bigger obstacle, the 5-foot-7 running back did not have a single 20-carry game last season and only eclipsed 15 carries twice. I wanted a Tier 1 wideout but with so many left on the board, I will worry about that in Round 3 (three picks from now) and keep PREUTH from grabbing a guy that I consider a top 12 running back with significant upside.

Biggest Reach: Willie Parker scares me this year. He's coming off a major knee injury and now will have to give way to Rashard Mendenhall, particularly at the goalline. Parker only had two TD's in '07 and I'm not even sure he's a top 20 running back, much less a guy that is taken with the 20th pick overall.

Final Take: The round pretty much followed the script I expected to. I would've like to seen a better back fall down, but with only 2 QB's and 3 WR's taken in the first two rounds, you can fully anticipate the top 15-20 backs to be off the board in the first two rounds in nearly any league. It will be Rounds 3 through 6 that will go a long way towards determing which teams can compete for championships.

I thought the whole steroids/blood doping issues couldn't get any worse, but they just did.

Two blind runners, Royal Mitchell and Nelacey Porter, were suspended after testing positive for a banned substance at the U.S. Paralympic Track & Field trials.

I guess my reaction is...what the hell???  Is there that much cache involved in winning in the Paralympic Games that this is worth it?  Is there no field in sports where doping of some sort isn't a possibility.

Well, the floor just got lowered on that one.  You almost can't trust anyone's results anymore.  And people wonder why I don't believe in the fairy tales of sports anymore...