Slow Blog Day

Seriously, there is not much going on worth discussing today. The Cavs play Boston tomorrow night. KU plays Iowa State tomorrow night. As of right now, the Indians have just two roster spots open (last reliever, 5th spot in the rotation), and games haven't started yet.

Perusing the Cleveland Sports Blogs, I came across a great piece from The DiaTribe discussing what a waste it is to have OF Jason Michaels around. Pauly Cousineau nailed this one:

So, with the knowledge that we are bound by reality and that C.C.’s agents have no interest in continuing discussions, the one move I would like to see the Tribe make would be to trade Jason Michaels. The move is not due to the fact that Michaels is worthless to the Indians, but 2007 reinforced the idea that he is simply not an everyday player, by posting extreme platoon splits yet again and lending more credence to the idea that Michaels projects merely as a platoon OF/4th outfielder and little else. Keeping him doesn’t seem to be (on the surface) too much of an issue, especially since the Indians employ a platoon in LF. That is, until you consider the players (with perhaps a higher ceiling) that Michaels is essentially blocking from getting regular plate appearances – namely OF Ben Francisco and 3B Andy Marte.

The Ben Francisco Treat, with his success in AAA last year as he won the International League batting title, deserves the chance to fill the role of at least the 4th OF coming out of the Spring and not be subjected to another year of “The Buffalo Shuffle”, but is blocked by the fact that he and Michaels are simply redundancies on the roster and don’t figure to co-exist on the 25-man roster.

Now that, you say, would mean that Francisco would take up the RH portion of the LF platoon? Not so fast, my friend. As faithful readers know I think that the arrangement in LF (if we’re assuming that Michaels is gone) is to create batting opportunities for Andy Marte, who is out of options this year, before he walks out of the organization if only for a slowness to adapt quickly to MLB. Forgive me if you’ve seen this before, but it is simply reiterated to prove the logic behind parting with Michaels:

Against LHP, Blake in LF and Marte at 3B.
Against RHP, Dellucci in LF and Blake at 3B.

Waiting for Next Year pegged this boring day in Cleveland Sports to a T:

You know it is a slow day in Cleveland sports when two of the top stories regard “reunions.” Apparently, Tribe players Ryan Garko and Ben Francisco attended the same high school, while Delonte West is rejoined with a former college teammate in Dwayne Jones. Apparently, West and Jones were quite the pranksters…

It's over for our friends at Hey Larry Hughes Please Stop Taking So Many Bad Shots.com. They have decided their work is done since Larry has been shipped out of C-Town.

Billy Thomas deserves some run Mike Brown!

Finally, some actual good news out of Lawrence, the #3 JUCO player in the country, Tyrone Appleton, has committed to KU and will battle for the PG spot next year. Appleton joins fellow JUCO SG/SF Mario Little (the #1 JUCO player in the country), SG Travis Releford, PF Quintrell Thomas, SF Marcus Morris, and his twin brother PF Markieff Morris in Bill Self's most important recruiting class to date.

Interestingly, in this KU Hoops notes column, Coach Self has called out his veterans for a lack of vocal leadership: “It’s not going to happen this year. We’ve been talking about this four years. It’s not going to happen,” he said, noting his last vocal leaders were Aaron Miles and Wayne Simien. It needs to come from me. I need to do a better job providing leadership. I can’t talk on the court. From an on-court standpoint, I’d hope the guards would take the team under control.”