#90! Your order is ready.

So it seems that even though he had an awesome season and was basically crapped on by the NFL in not being named to the Pro Bowl, Mario Williams was just crapped on again. You know... just in case he forgot.

Mario Williams was a more deserving Pro Bowler, in my opinion, than the named starters of Jared Allen and Kyle Vanden Bosch. He was also more deserving of Jason Taylor who was named a reserve. After realizing their fuck up, Williams was named an alternate. Ok... not great, but thanks.

Then when Taylor announces that he can't go due to injury, Aaron Freaking Schobel was named in his place. Um... excuse me Mr. Williams... here is your shit burger with a side of fuck you fries.

So, let's play the mystery man game. Because I like that game.

.......................Sacks........Tackles.........Solo.....FF
Player A........12..................60...............48.........4
Player B.........15.5..............65...............56.........3
Player C.........11..................55...............43.........4
Player D.........14..................59...............43........2
Player E.........6.5.................57...............45.........5

Ok, if I look at this and pretend I don't know who's who, I'd say Player B looks the most dominant, followed by Player D, then Player A, then Player C, and finally, Player E. I figure that the variation in tackles is too small to really make a judgment. Other than Player B, solo tackles also don't show enough variation. FF are largely based on luck, so Sacks is pretty much the tie breaker.

Now, let's see who's who.

Player A: Kyle Vanden Bosch
Player B: Jared Allen
Player C: Jason Taylor
Player D: Mario Williams
Player E: Aaron Freakin' Schobel

So, let's eliminate my bias here and I'll agree that Allen should be the starter. Williams and Vanden Bosch are close, so I won't bitch... too much. Williams is clearly stronger than Jason Taylor. And there should be no argument between Williams and Schobel.

Add to that that he's only in his second year, constantly, had people yelling at him that he sucks (with no real basis) and you'd think that perhaps people would at least throw him a little bone here.

But the silver lining in all of this is that it's just going to fire him up more. Before this year, and to a certain extent even early in this season, I think that all the doubters and haters did get to Mario a bit. I think it motivated him, but at the same time, I think it planted that tiny seed of doubt in his mind. Now, that doubt is gone. He took it to the league, and now he knows he can dominate.

He should be better next year just by virtue of the fact that he's gotten more experienced and the normal learning curve for a DE in the NFL is about three years. That's a scary thought in itself.

Now, we can add in the fact that he'll keep the wrapper to this shit burger in his pocket and force feed a fuck you fry to every QB that he crushes. I can't wait.

But for now... order up!

Hello, my name is: Houston Astros

If you don't recognize the Astros next season, don't feel bad. Kind of a lot has happened to the team since we last left but it can really be summed up with two major points.

1. The team has really changed as many new faces have come on board
2. The whole Mitchell Report - Miguel Tejada thing

I'll touch on #2 in a later post as I think there's a lot I have to say about it, but at the same time I just want to put my thoughts down once... I don't want to get into a whole bitch session on steroids. So for this post I just want to look at things from a baseball perspective.

Along with Tejada, the Astros have picked up Kaz Matsui to play 2nd, Michael Bourn to play CF, and multiple new bullpen faces including closer Jose Valverde. Additionally, Hunter Pence moves to right field and J.R. Towles becomes the new catcher with Ausmus moving to a backup role.

Heading out the door now are Luke Scott (whom I really liked), Adam Everett, Brad Lidge, Troy Patton, Matt Albers, Mike Lamb. There are others who came and left, but these are the major ones.

Ok... now that the introductions are done, let's hit the bar. I've heard a lot of discussion about how we haven't really improved or how we gave up too much or how we gave up our high character guys for guys with, ahem, questionable morals. But here's the deal, and there's really no getting around it: we were 73-89 last year. There's no way we could expect to appreciably improve without some drastic changes. This is a theme that I think we'll keep coming back to.

So what I think I'll do between now and Spring Training is take a closer look at these improvements in segments: outfield, infield, starting pitching, bullpen.

And you thought you were rid of me

And we're back. Yeah, I know it's been a while. I know it seems that I got home and never posted again, and I guess I deserve the criticism, but in my defense, there was kind of a lot going on. Anyway, the more time that passed the more I kind of felt like I needed a great topic to jump back in. Then I figured screw it... why set a high standard now?

So there's a bunch of little topics that I've been wanting to touch on. They're mostly sports related so if you're not into that, well, sorry.

And as I write this, Kerry notes that I have not yet cursed... fuck.