Gary Sheffield? Really?

In a completely surprise move, Omar Minaya has acquired Gary Sheffield to play outfield for the Mets. I'm not sure what I think of this. My first thoughts were "wtf? why?" Then I thought about it a little more and thought he offers some good protection if it turns out that Murphy isn't as productive against lefties. A double platoon in right and left is not something I'm against. Tatis and Sheffield vs. lefties (though on second thought, the outfield defense might be atrocious with that setup) and Murphy and Church vs. righties. My next thought was wow, Omar just signed Moises Alou again except with a bad attitude. So after these thoughts I was leaning towards being against the move.... until I thought about something the Mets have seemingly lacked in the past couple of seasons, swagger.

No one can claim that Sheff, if healthy, won't add that extra swag the Mets have lacked in comparison to the Phillies. Killer instinct. A desire to not just win but demolish, rip, tear apart, and crush opponents that I think Sheffield possesses.

So in the end I'm going to conclude that this could be good gamble. Low risk, high reward, high swag factor... but watch out for the Moises Alou with a bad attitude syndrome, which is in my opinion, the most likely outcome of this gambit.

Fantasy Baseball Draft Complete

My main fantasy baseball league each year is the one I've been playing with my elementary school friends since the 1999 season. That year, I won the league by a massive landslide due to us drafting 2 weeks into the start of the season which caused everyone's Sandbox pre-rankings to be all screwed up due to early season slumps and streaks. I cannot recall the exact makeup of my team but I can remember most of it. I had Pedro Martinez who was probably good enough to make any team in a fantasy point league a champion that season no matter how crappy the rest of the roster may have been. Too bad for the rest of the league the rest of my roster looked something like this:

1B - Jeff Bagwell
2B - Craig Biggio
3B - Chipper Jones
SS - Alex Rodriguez
OF - Larry Walker
SP- Shane Reynolds

Unfortunately my memory fails me when trying to reconstruct the rest of that team but suffice to say, it was extremely strong throughout with the exception of the two closers I had. I think one of them was Bob Wickman but I'm not positive. Wickman tallied up 37 saves that season but in a crappy Todd Jones, Joe Borowski kind of way. I have no idea who my 2nd closer was.

Well since then, my buddies and I have played fantasy 7 seasons (we missed a couple throughout the years before permanently rebooting it in 2006). I have won 3 years. EsP has won 3 years. And my college roommate Mike who joined in 2007 for the first time, won last season. We have always played a variation of the fantasy point settings that were used on Sandbox.com back in the day when it was still free to join and had games promising $1,000,000 prizes for 1st place (oh the dot-com era). The only real meaningful adjustment that has been made is that strikeouts no longer count as negative 1 for batters. Two reasons for this, 1) A strikeout is really the same as any other out and should be treated as such and 2) The pitcher/hitter point balance was way out of wack with SOs counting against hitters making starting pitchers far more valuable than they should've been in fantasy. Here is the point system we'll be using this season:

Stat Category	Value
GP	0
AB	0
R	1
H	1
2B	1
3B	2
HR	3
RBI	1
SB	2
CS	-1
BB	1
HBP	1
CYC	5
IP	3
W	10
L	-5
CG	5
SHO	10
SV	10
H	-1
ER	-1
BB	-1
HBP	-1
K	1
NH	20
PG	50
BSV	-5

Fairly standard and straight foward. We've bumped the size of the league up to 12 teams this season changing the traditional 10. This year my team will be called Cobra Kai, named after the legendary dojo from The Karate Kid. Our draft was this past Sunday and here is how my draft went.

1.	(1)	José Reyes	SS
2.	(24)	Brandon Webb	SP
3.	(25)	Prince Fielder	1B
4.	(48)	Dan Haren	SP
5.	(49)	Jonathan Papelbon	RP
6.	(72)	Mariano Rivera	RP
7.	(73)	Garrett Atkins	1B,3B
8.	(96)	Jay Bruce	OF
9.	(97)	Chris Young	OF
10.	(120)	Javier Vázquez	SP
11.	(121)	Kelly Johnson	2B
12.	(144)	Aaron Harang	SP
13.	(145)	Carlos Delgado	1B
14.	(168)	Justin Upton	OF
15.	(169)	Bengie Molina	C
16.	(192)	Oliver Pérez	SP
17.	(193)	Hiroki Kuroda	SP
18.	(216)	Bronson Arroyo	SP
19.	(217)	Andy Sonnanstine	SP
20.	(240)	Chris Dickerson	OF
21.	(241)	Joey Devine	RP
22.	(264)	Kevin Kouzmanoff	3B
23.	(265)	Brandon Lyon	RP
24.	(288)	Dave Bush	SP
25.	(289)	Brandon Inge	C,3B,OF

I have to say, 11 rounds in, I was absolutely estatic how the draft was going for me. I was very upset to get the 1st pick in the draft but that was tempered a bit by Prince Fielder somehow falling to me in the 2nd/3rd round. Many would question my using two fairly early picks drafting of Rivera and Papelbon but here is why. Since I lucked into Prince Fielder, Joey Votto became expendable. Therefore, the top of my draft board contained these players, Jay Bruce, Chris B. Young, Javier Vazquez, and Kelly Johnson. Feeling confident those 4 players would all drop far enough for me to grab them later, I decided to grab the top two closers out there, hopefully avoiding repeating the closer problems I ran into last season when I got Soria and could not for the life of me find a 2nd closer that managed to keep his job.

After round 11, however, not everything went as planned. Since I got the first pick in the draft, I took Kelly Johnson in the 11th round and not the 12th as I usually had done in previous leagues and mock drafts fearing he wouldn't make it to me. Normally, I would've drafted a remaining starting pitcher such as Cain, Myers, or Harang or Pablo Sandoval or Mike Napoli for C. Things looked okay until Jen's autodraft tooked Bret Myers the pick before mine in the 12th round. I was planning on drafting both him and Harang. Instead, I took Harang and after thinking for a while drafted Carlos Delgado to fill in the Util position hoping against hope that Sandoval would drop to the 14th round. Unfortunately, it was not to be as Mike took him with one of his next 2 picks. When my next two picks came around, I again made a mistake in judging when a player would be drafted in Gil Meche. I had ended up with Meche in almost every single mock draft I had done in the 16th or 17th rounds. Therefore, I decided to draft Justin Upton to finish out my young and talented OF and then fill the C position with Bengie Molina, bleh. Bad decision. Kev took Meche with one of his next two picks and from then on, I had to dreg up the remains of starting pitching available. To my pleasant surpise, Andy Sonnanstine lasted for my 18th/19th picks giving me some nice upside should Perez, Kuroda, or Harang flame out (I swear to God, Dusty Baker will pay if he screws up Harang again like he did last season. How did this man ever get a reputation as a top manager? How?).

The rest of the picks were just bench fillers. Some backup relievers for emergencies, some starters and two position bench players that I like a lot and who could give me manueverability with trades. I'd like to upgrade at C and if I have to trade a Delgado, Fielder, or Atkins, I'm confident that Dickerson can play Util at a comparable level and that Kouzmanoff could be servicable at 3rd, perhaps only posting around 100 less points than Atkins would have, which I'd be making up for and more in any trade involving any of those 3 players.

Even with the rough spots in the later rounds of the draft, I still feel my team is in great position to win it all again.

Did the Mets Sign the Right Closer?

The Mets by any legitimate quantitative analysis had a fantastic off season. They upgraded the only weakness the team had last season in its dreadful bullpen. The question I have now is, could they have done even better? I think so even if only marginally (let's disregard the horrific decision to pass on Orlando Hudson at less than $4 million to play 2B for the time being). This is the 2nd straight time that the Mets have had a gaping hole at closer and filled it with what I felt was the 2nd best option on the free market. I wanted B.J. Ryan and not Billy Wagner back in 2006. I know for a fact that Ryan was better at the time, however, due to injuries of both closer it looks like they are going to end up being of about equal value over the life of the 4 years contracts they got. Then again, maybe Ryan wouldn't have choked in the playoffs like Wagner did in '06. I'm going to give myself a win here as long as Ryan has a decent season this year with Wagner contributing nothing. I wanted Kerry Wood this time. Hopefully Omar evens the score with me for picking closers but like last time, I am positive that Wood is better at this moment in time. As always, health will be the key.

Politicians Shouldn't Do What the People Want?

“You know, I’m frankly getting tired of talking about Newt. I mean, it’s a pointless exercise. They are fly-by-night operators, and most of them stand for nothing until they see a poll about what the American people want, and then they go out and try to say one way or another what the American people want while trying to falsely hold onto an ideology at the same time — and you can’t count on them. You can’t depend on them. They will sell you out; they will throw you overboard to save themselves, faster than anything. And they’ll use you on their way up as often as they can at the same time." ~ Rush Limbaugh on Newt Gingrich


Heaven forbid a politician trying to figure out what the American people want and attempting to do that... The Republicans are seriously going to pay attention to a man who literally says that doing what the American people want is a bad thing? The Republicans may be more screwed than I even thought. They apparently can't even remember the definition of representative government. Good luck trying to ever win an election when you don't care what the people you are trying to "represent" want.

I'm not a fan of Gingrich, but at least he's not a conservative with his head up his own ass, completely and willfully ignorant to what is changing around him. At the very least, he's attempting to think and adapt rather than blindly follow old outdated ideology.

The Socialist Epitaph and the Looming Healthcare Battle

If you are like me, you are getting really tired of conservatives coming on TV and screaming about how we are headed down the road to the dreaded S-word, Socialism. Apparently, the label of liberal isn't as damning as it used to be so they had to ramp up the rhetoric. So now according to them, Barack Obama and most of the Democratic Party is just a group of Fidel Castro admiring commies. I find this to be completely counterproductive in advancing our country's political discourse. It is deliberately misusing a word in order to demonize political opponents. It is no different than when liberals call conservatives fascists. It serves no productive end. It's just a meaningless epitaph that holds no connection to the true definition of the word.

What is socialism? The very basic, general definition is, "a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole". What is capitalism? "An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market."

So the natural question that should follows is, "why is socialism bad?" Well here is my overly simplified explanation. Socialism on a micro level is completely workable. I've seen it with my own eyes on the extremely micro level. That being the Marianist Brothers who ran my high school and lived in a small society in which they shared everything and divided up the work to be done between them. The Native Americans also lived in working socialist societies. Again though, their tribes were infinitely smaller than even our least populated states. The problem is that unless EVERYONE buys in, it's doomed to fail. You cannot have half the population accepting and willing to live and work just as hard under that system and half the population saying, "screw it, I won't work because I'ma get mine anyway". On a macroeconomic level, socialism is just not workable and therefore not as good of an economic system as capitalism is.

Capitalism is simply a better economic system when it is properly regulated. When it isn't... well you get events like The Great Depression and now. But capitalism is far more efficient in creating wealth and prosperity. Implementing socialism on a population and area as large as the United Stated would undoubtedly need central government planning. Free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than government’s centralized planning because the price system utilizes more local knowledge of means and ends. It really is as simple as that.

I really don't understand how there are still so many defenders of socialism or laissez-faire capitalism left. A favorite quote of mine from Barack Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope states, “Our history should give us confidence that we don’t have to choose between an oppressive government-run economy and a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism.” I couldn't agree more.

Noting that, for some odd reason, I just don't find any truth in the claim that Obama or anyone else in the U.S. government aside from Bernie Sanders wants to turn the U.S. into a socialist economy. When Barack Obama gives a speech asking us to give up our individual property and collectively share it all, wake me up. First, it is vital to always note that we have a mixed economy that combines socialist and capitalist systems. While our system relies mostly on the capitalist system, there are times and areas of life that the free market has proved inadequate and socialist methods have been applied to provide. For example, we socialize the monitoring of volcanoes because there is simply no way the free market can profit off such an activity. We socialize much of the building of our transportation system for the same reason. Education is socialized not due to the inability of the free market to deliver, but rather our desire as a society to make sure that everyone has access to a formal education. The benefits of this far outweigh the costs to our society as a whole. The key is to use the system that better serves us as a nation in certain aspects of industry and life.

Healthcare

This brings us to the current battlefront, health care. I believe the battle is more accurately described as one about health care insurance (Despite wild claims to the contrary, implementing universal health care has absolutely nothing to do with the government being involved in the decision making process between you and your doctor. It is just about paying for the health care.) but I digress. There is no limit to the amount of times you will hear some variation of the phrase "road to socialism" used to describe the goal of universal health care. Is the government providing health care insurance to all of it's citizens socialist? Yes, it absolutely is. So is social security, so is medicare, so is the aforementioned education system. The question shouldn't be, whether or not it's socialist. It is. The question should not be whether or not universal health care will start us down the path to becoming a completely socialist economy. That's an absurd proposition using the slippery slope logical fallacy. No, the question should be similar to that of education. Is it in our best interest as a nation, to socialize the cost of health care? Do the benefits of providing everyone with access to health care outweigh the costs? That is what the debate should be centered around. Anyone who refuses to base their arguments around this does not have the nation's best interest in mind, but rather is trying to advance their ideology. I know for fact that there are good arguments on both sides to questions I proposed there are completely valid. I'd like to hear them fleshed out in a reasoned way without resorting to what amounts to scare tactics, ad hominem attacks, and slippery slope fallacies. Is that too much to ask?

Who is the Best Pitcher in Baseball?

With baseball season just a month away and fantasy preparation in full swing, I got around to thinking about just who is the best pitcher in baseball now. It's a very difficult question to answer. You've got the Santana, Sabathia, Halladay, Webb group that has been at or near the top starters in baseball for years now. On the other hand, kids like Lincecum and Hamels are on the rise and certainly should be included in the discussion. Alright, let's look at the past 3 seasons top pitchers. Ranks are based on SNLVAR (Support Neutral Lineup-adjusted Value Added with adjustments made for the quality of each batter faced).

2008

1. C.C. Sabathia
2. Tim Lincecum
3. Johan Santana
4. Cliff Lee
5. Roy Halladay
6. Cole Hamels
7. Derek Lowe
8. Ryan Dempster
9. Brandon Webb
10. Jon Lester

2007

1. Jake Peavy
2. Tim Hudson
3. Brad Penny
4. Brandon Webb
5. John Smoltz
6. John Lackey
7. Fausto Carmona
8. Roy Halladay
9. Roy Oswalt
10. C.C. Sabathia
(12. Johan Santana)

2006

1. Johan Santana
2. Roy Oswalt
3. John Smoltz
4. Chris Carpenter
5. Bronson Arroyo
6. Brandon Webb
7. Chris Young
8. Roy Halladay
9. Carlos Zambrano
10. Derek Lowe
(13. C.C. Sabathia)

It's tough because as you can easily tell by comparing these lists, pitching is highly volatile. Halladay and Webb are actually the only pitchers to appear in the top 10 in all of the past 3 seasons (Santana's bad 2nd half in the 2007 season cost him there). I think it's fairly safe to assume that Cliff Lee and Ryan Dempster had fluke seasons last year that will not be repeated. Lincecum, Hamels, and Lester are the three new appearances on the list and all are young and improving and are hard to judge against guys like Santana, Sabathia, Halladay, and Webb. I personally feel that Lincecum and Hamels are on a different level than Lester who I assume will be very good but come down to earth a little bit this season. So let's give a top 5 list for this upcoming season (a totally different and almost infinitely more important question than who has been the best pitcher in the past 2 or 3 years) a shot.

1. C.C. Sabathia
2. Johan Santana
3. Tim Lincecum
4. Roy Halladay
5. Brandon Webb

10 Greatest Presidents of All Time

I recently put together a quick and crude list of the 10 Greatest Presidents in this nation's history. While reading it is important to note that this is a "greatest" list and not a "best" list. Impact and influence need to be highly weighted. So even if you think that FDR or Regan (the two seemingly most polarizing historical presidents currently) weren't good for the country, you should not discount how much they changed the game for extended periods of time. My example for how that works is that I think Bill Clinton was a better, more effective President than Ronald Regan. However, he did not become synonymous with a political shift or movement as Regan did. Therefore, in a ranking of the best presidents of all time, I'd have Clinton above Regan but for this list of the greatest I feel Regan trumps Clinton.

Enough rambling on best vs. greatest. Here is my humble attempt to put together my list of the 10 Greatest Presidents in U.S. History:

1. Abraham Lincoln
2. George Washington
3. Franklin Roosevelt
4. Theodore Roosevelt
5. Andrew Jackson
6. Ronald Regan
7. Thomas Jefferson
8. James Polk
9. Bill Clinton
10. Harry Truman


Since I rarely get any push back on 8 of the 10 I include, I don't want to get into long explanations on what makes them so great. You all can do that on your own. However, two that I have listed are questioned quite frequently so I feel the need to explain. Those two are James Polk and Bill Clinton.


8. James K. Polk

In my opinion, the most overlooked and under rated of all our Presidents. The guy went into office claiming 4 major goals and accomplished each one in his first term. He was so successful that he voluntarily declined to run for reelection simply because he brought the country exactly where he wanted it within the 4 years of his first term.

1. Establish independent treasury system
2. "Acquire" aka steal the south west and Cali from Mexico
3. Settle the Canadian border dispute with Great Britain aka claim sole ownership of the Oregon territories south of the 54th degree 40 minute parallel
4. Lower the Tariff

All done within his first term. He gets overlooked simply because he wasn't a founding father, wasn't a "political movement" type leader (The early 1900s Progressives associated closely with Teddy Roosevelt or Regan's Conservatives) nor did he reside over an incredibly challenging time for the U.S. (ex. Civil War, Great Depression). But his accomplishments and proficiency during his run make him one of the greatest of all time to me.


9. Bill Clinton

The more arguable of the two in my opinion. I certainly may be jumping the gun on Clinton by placing him as high as I have. My thoughts on Clinton are that he was an extremely successful president even though his philosophy didn't fit in with his era. He was a liberal President in a conservative era and managed to become widely held in high regards by most besides the wing nuts on the right and a smaller portion of wing nuts on the left.

Clinton laid the seeds to finally ending Conservative rule/dominance. He was finally a Democrat who began to realize that policies and ideas that were successful and popular in the 50s and 60s no longer were. He can almost be completely credited for adjusting the Democratic party to a new era and laying the foundation for the shift in this country's political zeitgeist to the left.

I will readily admit, that 9 is the absolute highest rank that Clinton can ever achieve on any reasonable list. 50 years from now, he will either be #9 or lower. If the political cycle repeats like I think it will, it will be Obama who will be synonymous with the great political shift and the start of a new era that is really the marker of greatness. If anyone noticed, the top 6 on my list are all Presidents that have that distinction.

Now, I should clarify further to make it easier to understand what I mean. To have a constant definition of conservatism throughout different eras, I really do think that what Michael Lind described as "Jeffersonian backlash to Hamiltonian nation building" is as fundamental as it gets. That refers to desire to cut back the influence and power of the federal government. In very general terms, they favor small government, small business, and older ways of life socially. The specific policy details are driven by the era but the foundation for the core beliefs remains the same. (To read further on this, I refer you to Micheal Lind's article, "Obama and the Dawn of the Fourth Republic" here, http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/11/07/fourth_republic/print.html)

When I say that Clinton helped lay the foundation for the end of the conservative era, I really refer to his successful modernization of liberal ideology and the Democratic party. I frequently reference and make fun of the fact that today's conservative Republicans seem think it's 1980. Well, before Clinton's 3rd way or New Democrat or whatever you want to call it, liberals and Democrats were still operating as if it were 1940. Clinton couldn't end the era himself, but the electorate's memory of his success certainly helped when a true Hamiltonian nation builder came around in the person of Barack Obama. Is that enough to mention him as a top 10? I'm not entirely sure. But I'll couple that with the general success of the nation under his command and go out on a limb.

1st Post

Hey everyone, my name is Drew and I am the owner of this new blog. Since this is my first post, an introduction of myself and what I intend to write about here seems like a logical entry. To start, I don't know jack about blogging. I don't know what makes a successful blogger nor do I care. I am just doing this as a fun little hobby and view it as a good way to keep my numerous thoughts on certain subjects in one place. If others end up enjoying reading what I have to say, fantastic. If not, oh well.

On to introducing myself. I am a 22 year old student at New York University where I am majoring in Real Estate. I am currently enrolled in what I expect to be my last semester which will be followed by my nightmare graduation in the new Yankee Stadium (hey, at least I won't have to have it in the old one where so many of recent baseball history's nightmares reside). I was born in Bensonhurst, a neighborhood in southern Brooklyn and lived there for the first 7 years of my life. Then I moved to Nassau County on Long Island and have been there ever since (discounting my time spent living in NYC for college). I also attended Chaminade High School in Mineola for anyone familiar with the Long Island high school scene. Ethnically, the prefix -multi suffices. Italian, African-American, Cherokee, Irish, Swedish, and Iroquois blood all course through these veins and I'm sure I'm not even aware of some others. I've always thought my multi-ethnic background gave me a better perspective than most on racial issues although I really long for the day in this country where there is no such thing as a "racial issue". I feel as if all four of your grandparents were born and raised here, then you're an American through and through. There will be other times to discuss that, however, I suppose.

That brings me to the blog. The name of the blog is meant to describe what I plan on writing about, which is a wide array of topics since I have a fairly wide array of intellectual interests. While I claim no expertise in any of these subjects (with the possible exception of baseball, Mets baseball in particular) I am knowledgeable in and intend to discuss the topics of politics, economics, sports, Mets baseball, rap music, history, and poker. I have no idea what kind of balance will emerge regarding what subjects are covered more or less than others. I also assume that such a wide range of topics is probably a negative in terms of popularity of a blog. It seems to me that most successful blogs stick to one or two main subjects and people interested in that topic become daily readers. I really don't know of many people who would actually be interested in reading about all 7 subjects I listed and I have a tendency to go on what I call "stints". "Stints" just referrs to my tendancy to become very focused one or two of those 7 topics for weeks or months at a time and then refocusing on another for a similar length of time. If I notice that it has been a particularly long time since I last covered a topic, I will probably try to dedicate an entry to it. Hopefully, I'll be able to keep at least some people interested enough to keep checking in. If not... like I said before, oh well.