Sportsfrog.com

(This is the first of what I hope to be 30 previews of 30 teams on the front page. Lofty? Sure, but hey, we shoot high around here. First up: EdRomero)

March is a wonderful month for Red Sox fans.  Peter Gammons tell us that every Sox veteran is in the best shape of their lives, every Sox youngster now finally “gets it,” and every newcomer is a perfect fit for Fenway and the city of Boston.  And I’ve fallen for it again.  Yes, an already great Yankees team improved their roster and the Rays still look dangerous, but this year’s Red Sox is a well constructed team.

Starting Pitching
The signing of John Lackey gives the Red Sox a third top of rotation type starter to go along with Jon Jester and Josh Beckett.  There has been a lot of chatter saying Beckett will soon sign a contract extension, so he’ll either be a very happy pitcher or a pitcher chasing a contract – the always motivated Beckett will do well in either situation as long as he stays healthy.  Lester appears to be entering his prime and Lackey looks to be solid if he can adjust to pitching at Fenway (and also that staying healthy issue).

For the bottom half of the rotation, the Red Sox hope Daiskuke Matsuzaka’s off year was a fluke and Clay Bucholz’s promising season was not a fluke.  If it’s the other way around, the Sox could be fluked.  If either pitcher does falter, 2009 All Star, Tim Wakefield is still around.  As he will for probably the next ten seasons, Wakefield will have a stretch of some tremendous games and then end the season terribly.  After Wakefield, Boof Bonser, Michael Bowden, and Junicha Tazawa can step in to eat some innings and help protect the bullpen with some long relief.

Bullpen
The bullpen was a strength for the 2009 Red Sox in the beginning of the season.  However, when 3/5 of the starting rotation can only pitch into the 5th inning, a good bullpen can quickly become bad.  Jonathon Papelbon has turned from one of the biggest strengths of the teams to one of the biggest question marks.  Last year, many of his save chances became adventures as he refused to throw the split fingered fastball and started walking batters.  The choice Papelbon seems stuck with is should he do what’s best for getting batters out or what’s best for his arm (and his next contract).  He says he’ll be using the split more often this year; if he doesn’t, expect some “leaked” stories about Papelbon saying or doing something stupid followed by a trade.

As for the rest, Daniel Bard is being touted as the next closer, but it’s still too early to tell. The rest are a bunch of solid veterans who should be fine unless they’re overworked.

Lineup
Gone is the power of Jason Bay and most likely Mike Lowell, but also gone are the automatic inning-enders at the catcher and shortstop positions.  As long as Kevin Youkilis, Dustin Pedroia, J.D. Drew, and Victor Martinez remain healthy, the Sox will have a good lineup, but that may not be enough even with improved pitching and defense.  They’ll need something more.
•Can Jacoby Ellsbury improve his OBP and maybe hit with more power? He’s hit some Damonesque homeruns in spring training and showed more patience at the end of last year.  But much like his pink hat fans flirting for free drinks, this could be just a tease
•Can Ortiz have a better season? I’m not expecting a repeat of last year’s disastrous start, but I’m also expecting him to get beat by good pitching while building his stats against poor pitching.
•What will Marco Scutaro, Mike Cameron, and Adrian Beltre do?  Scutaro’s coming off a career year and those usually aren’t repeated, but a disappointing Scutaro with his plate discipline will be better than last year’s assortment of shortstops .  Cameron and Beltre may bring some homeruns to Fenway, but will those makeup for the strikeouts and will Beltre stay healthy?  Even if they do disappoint, at least they can field.

Fielding
Last year, I probably didn’t even list this as a category, but Theo Epstein and Gammons have now taught me how important it is.  The 2009 Red Sox – with a calcified catcher who can’t throw baserunners out, shortstops making untimely errors, a left fielder with no range, and a third baseman unable to move – must have taught Theo that defense matters.  Or the Red Sox decided that with the available free agents, improving defense made more sense than improving the offense.

Whatever the reasons, the Red Sox now have their best fielding outfield in my 35-year lifetime (with maybe the exception of the 2008 Drew, Ellsbury, Coco Crisp outfield that occasionally played).  They also have a strong infield with gold glove caliber players at first, second, and third and a consistent shortstop.  Rounding out the defense, is the average fielding Victor Martinez, who will be playing catcher much more than he has in the recent past.

Bench
Jason Varitek as a starter was liability on the field and the plate. As a backup this year, he’s like the rest of the subpar backups in baseball and having more days off will possibly help him be better in his reduced role.  Mike Lowell will probably be traded away (again), but the Sox may want to hold onto him if they sense Ortiz’s decline is rapidly continuing .  Even though he can’t field anywhere close to how he used to, Mike Lowell can still hit (and take 40 seconds to get to first base after hitting a line drive).  If Terry Francona can massage the egos, an Ortiz/Lowell platoon should be better than anything the Red Sox can get in a Mike Lowell trade.

As for the non-elderly members of the bench, Jeremy Hermida has some potential to have a surprise season if one of the starters falters.  In 2006, Bill Hall has 35 homeruns; in 2008 Jed Lowrie was a promising prospect.  Also in 2006 and 2008, all of the Golden Girls were alive and Toyota’s were considered safe cars.

Don’t expect much help from the minors, as most of the Sox top prospects still looks to be a few years away from hitting the majors.  Last year’s favorite prospect, first baseman Lars Anderson is coming off a poor season.  Great things are being projected for this year’s favorite prospect, the slick fielding shortstop Jose Iglesias.  However, since he was born in the nineties, the Sox may need to wait a few years.

Miscellaneous
Money and a good farm system has allowed the Red Sox to make helpful midseason trades over the last few seasons.  This year, with the short term deals of Scutaro, Cameron, and Beltre along with the position flexibility of Youkilis, Martinez, and Scutaro, Theo Epstein will have a variety of options to try to improve the team. Let the Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, and Joe Mauer trade rumors begin!

Prediction: World Series Champions
Granted, this has been my Red Sox prediction for the last 30 years, and, for the Sox to beat the Yankees, something probably needs to go wrong in New York and two or three starters on the Red Sox will need to get very hot just in time for the playoffs.  All of this will happen: pitching, fielding, and lineup depth will lead the Red Sox to 100 wins and a World Series; Ellsbury and Bucholz finally “get it”; Ortiz has never felt better; Boston is the perfect place for Cameron, Beltre, and Scutaro; and Peter Gammons will have more good news about the Red Sox tomorrow.  All of this will happen because it’s the wonderful month of March.

Fun fact: Lester, Lackey, and Beckett all won deciding World Series Games before turning 25.

The NFL Network has footage that shows Taylor Mays beating Trindon Holliday at the Combine.

No big deal, right? Mays is a specimen, so that’s no suprise… is it?

Well, Mays ran an official 4.43. Holliday ran an official 4.34.

Yes, you read that correctly.

The problem likely traces in part to the fact that the timing commences not upon the firing of a gun but on the first motion of the player.  So the easy fix is to make this faux track meet more like a real track meet, and to tie the timing to the gun or the whistle or whatever.

That makes sense, and shows that even automatic timing has its flaws.

In the car yesterday afternoon I was afraid that John Clayton was going orgasm out of my car speakers when he started talking about Bruce Campbell’s combine performance.

Campbell weighed in at 314 (“chiseled” according to Clayton) and ran what was originally a 4.78 40 yard dash, but was later revised to a 4.85. (I wish that I was in the car when the revised time was revealed. Clayton’s disappointment might have made my speakers implode all the way to Bristol)

Of course, lineman don’t ever have to run 40 yards, so the applicability of Campbell’s time is effectively none, but hey, it’s a nice number, right?

And also in the “of course” file for the NFL Draft, Campbell’s Combine showing has led to speculation that he’ll be taken by the Raiders. The Raiders do need line help, so while Campbell may be a reach in the top 10, the Raiders would at least be attempting to address a need.

The girl’s got some work to do. Two crashes (neither completely her fault, but fault isn’t listed in the official scorebox) and one finish three laps down thanks to a plethora of pit road speeding penalties and general slowness on the track.

She’s not back in a stock car until the end of June thanks to the IndyCar season, and that next Nationwide race is at New Hampshire, a very tricky track for NASCAR veterans.

Patrick also participated in an IndyCar test last week and was slow there too, but who knows if that has anything to do with her dalliance in stock cars.

The woman’s still a marketing machine and three races in to a stock car career for someone who hadn’t been in a full-bodied vehicle is way too small of a sample size to draw any conclusions but to say that it’s even more evident now that she’s got her work cut out for her.

Sam Bradford?

Yep, that’s what Adam Schefter says.

My guess is that if Bradford really is taken first, the Bucs will take either Gerald McCoy or Ndamukong Suh third instead of taking Eric Berry like almost every mock draft has at this moment.

And with Bradford being taken first, the Redskins draft strategy–at this moment–changes dramatically, which may lead them to take an offensive tackle instead of Bradford. (Or if the Jason Campbell for Donte Whitner deal has any truth, maybe the Redskins draft Berry)

Ah hell, the only thing that’s certain is that the draft talk will heat up over the Combine this weekend.

Four Oregon football players have had trouble with the law in the offseason, and now wide receiver Jamere Holland is a former Oregon football player for reacting to Kristian Kiko Alonso’s DUI arrest on facebook.

It’s pretty obvious that Holland isn’t the brightest bulb based off of the postings to his facebook page, but what may be even dumber than the postings is the fact that Holland hasn’t locked down his facebook page since getting kicked off, letting anyone and everyone interested in what he had said easily find it. (You can make a convincing argument that he should have had his profile on private anyway)

Oregon AD Mike Bellotti was quoted as saying that Holland had many chances, so this was obviously the last straw. But multiple chances aside, he’s being stupid on facebook. As bad as that may reflect on Holland and the university, he’s not out possibly driving drunk or being accused of beating up his girlfriend.

It’s unknown what Holland’s past transgressions are, but if they were of the criminal nature, we’d probably already know about them. Therefore if LaMichael James and/or Alonso are found guilty and remain on the team, Bellotti and head coach Chip Kelly will have established a nice double standard.

(Of course, you can also argue that the double standard has already been set with the LeGarrette Blount incident, but I don’t want to break the site)

Is Dexter Pittman.

Pittman was purportedly 400 pounds when he enrolled at Texas as a freshman and is now listed at 290. And if you’ve seen a Big XII basketball game, you already knew that anyway. (His 6-10 listing is a bit generous as well. I saw him pretty closely Wednesday night and there’s no way he’s 6-10. More like 6-8)

And, if you weren’t following the Big XII that closely, you’d think that besides (once) being the size of a monster, Pittman was a monster on the court.

Not so.

Thanks to a five game stretch at the end of last season, Pittman got saddled with a reputation for being a great post player. Yeah, those five games were nice–except the three rebounds against Kansas–but they came because Pittman was finally able to consistently play over 20 minutes a game. Even though he’s lost all the weight, his conditioning has never been anything better than “poor.” (Last year he averaged 16.6 MPG, while this year he’s averaging 19.3)

While his MPG still reflect that his conditioning needs a lot of work–he had his hands on his knees by the third possession every time he was on the court Wednesday against Missouri–and while his stats have increased slightly, it hasn’t been the jump that some were expecting. (He’s also averaging 0.5 more turnovers per game)

Texas’s high preseason ranking was based partially on Pittman’s continued improvement, so it’s no surprise that since Pittman has struggled, Texas has struggled. In fact, they may be at their best when Gary Johnson is on the floor instead of Pittman.

Gotcha!

–Mark McGwire made his arrival at Cardinals’ spring training and of course was cheered by the best baseball fans in America. Remember, steroids are only evil if you’re a dick.

–At what point does women’s hockey become a joke at the Olympics? Unlike softball, women’s hockey at least has a couple contenders, but 13-0 against a traditional hockey nation just shouldn’t happen.

–Great column today by Ron Judd of the Seattle Times. NBC just doesn’t get it, do they?

–Apparently cable systems had the option of choosing MSNBC and CNBC’s Olympic feeds. Because, of course, NBC Universal charged cable companies more if they wanted to broadcast the Olympics.

–A Kansas City sports radio personality is starting a petition to remove Bob Knight and Brent Musberger from ESPN’s Big Monday coverage. While I like the thought, it’s the pot calling the kettle black. KK’s only popular because people think he’s an idiot.

–The Orioles’ Brad Bergesen strained his shoulder filming a TV commercial for the team. Seriously. He started throwing too hard too soon.

If it felt like the longest Daytona 500 in history, don’t worry, it was. 520 miles, to be exact.

Oh, you meant the red flags for the pothole? Yeah, those were 150 minutes.

But outside of the pothole–damn you Daytona asphalt!–that was an exceptional race, only ruined by that hole in the asphalt and some ridiculous commentating by the Fox television crew.

Jamie McMurray won, his second win in a row in which he may not be the main story. He won at Talladega in 2009 when the new (and inevitably temporary) bump drafting rules made for an awful race, and now here, where the pothole may bump him from the pedestal that he deserves. (McMurray could make a career of being the overlooked guy. Of the three “local” drivers in the KC metro area, McMurray is unheard of while all of the attention focuses around Clint Bowyer and Carl Edwards)

OK, enough about the pothole. The racing during the 500 was fantastic. It produced the most different leaders in the history of the race (21) and the three attempts to finish the race with two laps to go were exceptionally dramatic. That third to last restart when Harvick, Truex and Biffle were playing bumper cars going into turn one for the lead? Yeah, that doesn’t get much better if you’re a hardcore NASCAR fan or one tuning in for the first time.

Thing is, you had to have been a hardcore fan to hang in for that long. 6.5 hours for a race telecast with no rain is insane.

But the telecast? Oh boy. There was Chris Myers’ bumbling sociological point that Danica Patrick could be an exemplary figure for a modern women’s empowerment movement, and Darrell Waltrip’s flat out cheering for Dale Earnhardt Jr. as Junior charged from 10th to second on the final lap. (Hell yeah that was impressive. He was loose coming off of turn two.) The whole Fox telecast seemed disjointed after the last red flag. (Go here tomorrow for more.)

So yeah, screw you, pothole. You almost ruined an incredible race.

By the time you read this, Danica Patrick may not be alive, for it’s entirely possible that she’s currently drowning in a pool of the media’s slobber.

Late this week, Danica said that it wasn’t her mission to be the big story at Daytona, and she’s done nothing to bring attention to herself other than racing the car. You know… the same thing that 42 other drivers did Saturday.

Yet, that statement was met with derision by many media members. It’s obvious that two camps have broken in media circles: those obsessed with Danica’s every move, and those angered by that obsession.

(side note: Kroger Floral was giving media members roses on Thursday. A media member jokingly gave his rose to Danica to signify the media’s obsession with her. Those in the “angered” camp were furious with said media member, lambasting him on twitter. Even to the point of calling him unprofessional. Those two camps have shown the public what’s bad about NASCAR media coverage this week)

ESPN’s VP in charge of race telecasts said that he was impressed with Speed’s ARCA coverage of the race that Danica was in last week and wanted to model ESPN’s coverage of today’s race like Speed’s. (For those that didn’t see the Speed coverage, you could see DW’s spittle flying from the press box down onto the GoDaddy car. And, by the way, the ARCA race got better ratings than Pens-Caps, NCAA Basketball on CBS, golf on NBC and the NBA on ABC)

And man, was ESPN’s coverage Danica-centered. The ticker, which displays the positions of everyone in the field, simply wasn’t enough at times. So therefore, Danica got her own graphic below the ticker.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Danica and her people are the best in motorsports at using the media to their advantage. However, that power has its drawbacks, and Daytona Speedweeks was a perfect example. The media doesn’t have an off switch, especially when it comes to attractive females driving cars.