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The question is though, why would a team give up anything knowing now that the Texans pretty much had to cut Carr if they couldn't work out a trade. Why give up a pick needlessly and then go through having to re-structure the deal? On to your other points: 1) Not from what I was hearing. What I gathered was that either Williams or AJ Hawk would be the first defensive player to go. But both would likely be gone in the top 5-7, not really worth the risk to trade down if Williams was truly the man the Texans wanted. 2) No disagreement here. That was an awful trade for the Texans, despite the good return they got. 3) I don't see anything that even hints that they didn't make an effort to trade him. Everything I've heard is that they tried all offseason making it known he was available and trying to ship him off. It's just everybody knew he would be cut and were willing to pick him up on a 1-2 year deal. I thought the Jets really wanted Bush and wanted to trade up? It's true, the Jets were at least somewhat interested in trading up-every mock draft had Mario Williams going #2 to New Orleans though, so if Houston had dropped down to #4 they would have missed their chance to draft him.

CBS never switched the game-that was bad. Oregon was up 2 shooting free throws with a second to play, and they never even switched over. They ended up hitting both, so it didn't matter, but UNLV almost had a shot to try to tie that game at the buzzer.

UNLV is coming back quickly-this was a 12-14 point game that now has a small chance of being a close game-6 point game, 1 minute left.

Wow-I was sceaming for Green to kick that out, but he somehow knocked it in anyway. Great shot for him, and it just seems like the top seeds cannot lose this year. 3 1's and 3 2's are already in the Elite 8, and it could be 4 1's-this is just ridiculous. The silly person who picks chalk every year will actually probably win this year.

The play where Horford starting backing in from the free throw line or so and bumped Crone 3 times and then made the basket plus fouling Crone out of the game was just a killer for Butler.

4 minute timeout-Butler down 1, heading to the line.

Butler's getting into some bad foul trouble now-unfortunately, their foul trouble and Florida getting into the bonus might be their undoing. Butler's up 1 at the 8 minute timeout.

This appears to be the type of game Butler wants though. I'm watching the Vandy/Georgetown game so I don't know the pace of the other for sure, but it seems to be a slow, low-scoring game - which favors Butler. What channel is the game on? I've got the Butler vs. Florida game on CBS, but that's it. CBS is airing both games in different regions-myself, I'm watching Georgetown-Vandy on my television and Butler-Florida online.

Oh well-Butler played awful for most of the half, A.J. Graves had some shots that he normally makes and has 0 points, and Florida is hot from behind the 3 point line, and Butler is still only down 6. That's not really that bad at all-if Graves can pick up his game in the 2nd half, it will be very interesting.

These might be the worst announcers ever in the Butler-Florida game. That's the 2nd time that the officials signaled for a timeout, and instead James Brown called it a jump ball and gave it to the wrong team. Not to mention, he said that Sidney Green was Mike Green's father from Butler, not the correct choice of Taurean Green's father from Florida. It's just brutal how bad they are.

There you go Butler! I hope they don't panic when Florida makes their inevitable run, but if any team doesn't usually panic, it's Butler (fewest turnovers per game in Division 1).

Come on Butler-you're getting the shots you like to get-now let's knock some of them down!

I think you mean the kincks-2 years, 1.6 million http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2809958 It would be the first time that I can remember where a player might play in the NCAA tournament and the NBA playoffs in the same season.

Kevin Hart-a pitcher with a high K rate but not much else. He's not much of a prospect. The interesting thing is that Bynum gets a hate on here that some of our other bench options at the beginning of last year do not get, and he was easily our most productive bench player that was here at the start of the year.

Ok-here is my trading so far Damon for Tejada Baldelli for Uggla Markakis for Adrian Gonzalez Beltran, Jenks, and Barrett for Crawford and Hamels So here's my team now: C-Mccann 1B-Adrian Gonzalez 2B-Uggla SS-Tejada 3B-Teahan OF-Guerrero OF-Crawford OF-Carlos Lee Util-Bill Hall Bench-Cuddyer Bench-Renteria Bench-Luis Castillo DL-Nick Johnson P-Halladay P-Daisuke P-Rich Hill P-Hamels P-K-Rod P-Todd Jones I will have two extra spots available now. I'm thinking of picking up Corey Patterson and either Borowski/Dempster. Are those good pickups, and is there any other part of my team where I need to get stronger?

The cut Domanick Davis as well. Their GM should realize that you can, you know, trade players that are on your team and get something back. It said in my link that they tried to find somebody to trade Carr to, but nobody would trade anything for him.

If Ronny turns into a viable starting shortstop, that might be Lou and Co's greatest accomplishment. I would tend to agree with that, and I think it's possible (although not this year) if they put him in situations where he can be successful and allow him to gain confidence and become more composed at the plate instead of wildly hacking at everything. The errors on routine plays, the wild swings, they were all indicative of a player who had lost all confidence and was trying too hard to do anything to get it back.

Piniella played the matchups today (Cedeno was 3 of 6 against Lowery) and it worked out! Great job Cedeno.

Carr got released today: http://www.houstontexans.com/news/detail.php?PRKey=3377&section=N%20Latest%20News Let's just say that I didn't expect this.

BTW, I heard when Callis was on the radio yesterday (from another board) that he likes Graffanino and Counsell for the Brewers, but that he doesn't like DeRosa or Izturis, and they said that Callis implied that he was surprised that Theriot was a major leaguer at all. With all those assumptions, it makes it easier to understand why he would pick the way that they did, although I wouldn't personally make many of those assumptions.

Just had to point out that I feel that this is just very inaccurate, unless you have an extremely demanding definition of "a lot." Do you realize how bad the production out of CF and 1B was for the Cubs last year? Even average seasons out of Lee and Sori would be vast improvements over last year. Yeah, but we could very easily be last year's Phillies, with tons of runs scored, but enough allowed to negate that. That's true-we could be that. The only pitching staff that I can see in the division though that is probably better than the Cubs though is the Brewers. Everybody else has serious question marks, and most have serious question marks in both the rotation and bullpen, while the Cubs have at least more than 1-2 quality arms in the pen.

Now that's a lineup I like to see. Somebody noted that Izturis's ABs are pretty low this spring. I think it's interesting that Ronny is in there. I can understand why-Ronny is the last position player if they are deciding to keep or not this spring-it makes sense that they want to get him PA's to find out if they need to make a trade or not. As far as Izturis's AB's being low, I don't think it's that surprising. He has batted no higher than 8th for all but about 3 games, and he's not all that far behind some of the others in PA's. For example: Soriano-50 Jones-47 Lee-46 Ramirez-46 DeRosa-45 Izturis-37 Before today, he has started just as many games as several of the other starters (Sori, Jones, Lee, Ramirez), 1 more game than DeRosa, and 2 more games than Barrett.

Contract has a lot to do with it. Ideally or not, he was signed as the 4th starter if anything. 5th starter has been discussed as a battle between Miller, Prior and kids ever since November. If he was a 5th starter then his status wouldn't have been as locked down as it is. There was never any question that he'd be in the major league rotation. He's not a 5th starter. His contract demands that he does a whole hell of a lot more than put up a 95 ERA+ type of season to be considered to have "done his job". I disagree, and I base it on all the other pitching salaries that were signed this offseason. Look at some of them that were around Marquis: Name Last 3 years ERA+ Adam Eaton-87, 90, 92-3 years, 24.5 million Miguel Batista-101, 109, 104-3 years, 25 million (note: being 36 by the time the season starts this year has a lot to do with his contract) Vincente Padilla-96, 96, 104-3 years, 33.75 million Mark Mulder-106, 117, 62-2 years, 13 million Orlando Hernandez-136, 87, 95-2 years, 12 million (40 years old) Here's Marquis-113, 103, 73-3 years, 21 million All of these players have something bad about them, which is why they signed for as little as they did. For Batista and Orlando, it's age. For Eaton, it's just that he hasn't been good. For Marquis and Mulder, it was being terrible in 2006. Padilla has been a little better but still not great, but he got more money than everyone else on this list. How many people on this list could you reasonably expect to be over 100 ERA+ this season? 1/3 of them? The money Marquis got in the most current pitching market is consistent with a slightly below average pitcher. Therefore, if he performs like that, he'll be right at what the market says he should be at. Edit: BTW, that's all the salaries that are around him. I didn't just pick out the bad ones-I tried to pick out 2-3 year deals that were around the money per year that Marquis is making, and I think I got all of them. That is the whole market for paying that type of money to a pitcher.

What backcourt player are the Pacers eyeing? They have huge voids at both guard spots. That GS will put them in mediocrity for many years... That's the problem-it seems like 9 of the top 10 picks are big men. The problem for the Pacers is if they don't get a top 10 pick, they won't have a pick in the draft at all (1st or 2nd round) and that definitely won't help them get any better. If they get a top pick, they may just have to pick a big man and blow up the team through trades.

And at least half of them have been ticky-tack crap. the officiating in that game was awful... are these really the best college basketball refs? They must be, and that's the sad state of officiating. I've seen it in high school games too. Officials just seem to be getting worse all the time. This game was weird, though, in the fact that they would let obvious calls go (JaJuan getting thrown around on the final rebound) and call ticky-tack fouls (hand checks right beside each team's bench) all second half. It honestly looked like two completely different officiating crews in each half. No excuse though, we had a 20 point halftime lead - we should have won that game but we blew it. Believe me Dew, if you saw that play again, you'd agree with me on this one. I've watched it about 5 times, and it was completely incidental contact-the OSU guy was backing up to run down the court and the UT player almost fell on top of him-if he had fallen to the ground, the officials might have been forced to make a call, but there was really no foul there.