Tribe rotation nearly set

I missed this the other day (sorry, loyal fans), but Indians manager Manny Acta on Monday gave the #4 spot in the starting rotation to Mitch Talbot.

WHO?

Talbot, 26, came over in December as the player to be named later in the Kelly Shoppach trade. His major league career to date consists of 9 2/3 innings in three appearances (one start) with the Tampa Bay Rays in 2008. He did not make the most of his opportunity, to say the least. In those 9 2/3 innings, Talbot gave up 12 runs, all earned, so his career ERA is currently 11.17. More troubling, he walked 11 men while striking out just five, and gave up three home runs. You can't win in the majors that way. But that's a small sample size, and it was two years ago, when he was just 24.

His minor-league numbers have been much better. In five seasons, he has amassed a career record in the minors of 48-40, with a 3.85 ERA. He had some injury issues last year, but went 4-4, 4.47, at AAA Durham last year. This spring, he's gone 1-1, 3.71, in 17 Cactus League innings. ESPN's Rob Neyer believes he will be a solid, if unspectacular, major league pitcher. Neyer projects that he'll put up an ERA somewhere between 4.50 and 5.00. I hope he's right. A lot of clubs' #4 starters will do worse.

Talbot joins Fausto Carmona, Jake Westbrook and Justin Masterson in the rotation, and there are big question marks with all of those guys. We all remember how Carmona had a Cy Young-caliber 2007, but has fizzled since then. But he's had a phenomenal spring (20 innings, 3-0, 0.45), and all observers say he's doing what he wants to out there, so there's reason for optimism. Westbrook has been an All-Star before, but hasn't pitched since early 2008, when he got shut down to have Tommy John surgery. Lots of pitchers have come back from TJS to be great, though, so we'll see. Masterson just turned 25 and has only made 25 major league starts, and though he has pitched reasonably well in the majors, he has had a tough spring — though he has struck out 22 hitters in just 16 innings, which is encouraging.

The last rotation spot is between David Huff, Carlos Carrasco and Aaron Laffey. Former future star Jeremy Sowers appears to be out of the running. Those are all guys who've got some major-league success. I'm going to guess it'll be Laffey, but that's just a guess.

George Mason, part two? Not really

We'll start today's post with a response to a previous post, regarding Butler's upset of Syracuse, from Of Fair Hooker's most frequent responder, Jeff Brown:

Mullett, as I'm sure you've heard by now, the Butler Bulldogs won their regional final game as well and are hosting the Final Four next weekend.

This team is a very, very good team.

They're much better, in my view, than George Mason, the other mid-major that went to the Final Four in 2006.

They actually have a chance to win the national title, whereas George Mason had zero chance.

I'm not saying that they will win the title, but I would not be the least bit surprised, not after seeing 3 of their first 4 tourney games thus far.

Of course, the Bulldogs are not technically hosting the Final Four, but Jeff is right in that it will be right in their back yard. Butler plays its home games at Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, but the Final Four will be played at Lucas Oil Stadium, the year-and-a-half-old home of the Colts. The two arenas are six miles apart. So yes, it will basically be a home game (or two).

Let's take a look at that George Mason team from 2006. The Patriots entered the NCAA Tournament at 25-7, playing in the Colonial Athletic Association, and were an 11-seed. They had failed to win their conference tournament, but received one of the last few at-large bids to that year's Madness. Give them credit for their Tourney run — they beat 6-seed Michigan State, then 3-seed North Carolina, then 7-seed Wichita State before improbably knocking off top-seed Connecticut in a thrilling overtime regional final. Most observers agreed that Connecticut would beat George Mason at least nine times out of 10, but this happened to be that one time out of 10. The Patriots then fell to eventual national champion Florida in the Final Four, losing by 15 in a game that was never particularly competitive.

These Butler Bulldogs are a different story entirely. They entered the tournament at 28-4, playing in the Horizon League — admittedly, roughly comparable to the CAA in terms of quality. Butler won its conference tournament, mauling Wright State by 25 in the final. The Bulldogs started relatively slowly, but haven't lost a game since December 22, when a loss at Alabama-Birmingham dropped them to 8-4. It's worth noting that that loss to UAB was their only loss to a team that didn't qualify for March Madness; the others were to Minnesota, Clemson and Georgetown.

Since then, they have rattled off 24 straight victories. They came into the Big Dance as the 5-seed. They easily defeated 12-seed UTEP, then had a surprisingly tough game against 13-seed Murray State before righting the ship to beat top-seed Syracuse in the regional semifinal, followed by Saturday's seven-point defeat of 2-seed Kansas State. Their next game is against fellow 5-seed Michigan State, who won an instant classic yesterday against Tennessee. I think Butler will beat the Spartans — in which case they'll face off against the Duke-West Virginia winner for the title. That Duke-West Virginia game will be a battle (which I predict West Virginia will win), and the winner of that game should be the favorite in the National Championship game. But the Bulldogs have already proven, by beating Syracuse and Kansas State, that they can play against anybody.

No mid-major has won it all since 1990, when Jerry Tarkanian's UNLV Runnin' Rebels beat Duke by 30 in the title game. Most people who are old enough to remember that don't really think of that Larry Johnson-Anderson Hunt UNLV squad as a mid-major — they were in fact a 1-seed in that tournament — but they did come from the Mountain West. So it's been 20 years since it's happened. Will we see it this year? Probably not, but that's what I'm rooting for.

Another one-seed bites the dust

Oh, my goodness, did you see that Butler-Syracuse game last night? The fifth-seeded Butler Bulldogs of the tiny Horizon League (which includes Cleveland State, in case you didn't know) dominated top seed Syracuse in the first half, but the Orange came out swinging after the break and finally took a 40-39 lead on Wes Johnson's three-pointer with 13:29 to go. But there was no quit in the mighty Bulldogs.

From that point on, it was a heavyweight prize fight, with each fighter taking the other's best punches and coming back for more. Butler came back to take a five-point lead on Gordon Hayward's trey with 9:41 left, but Syracuse tied it a little over a minute later, and it was a see-saw battle after that. Kris Joseph's dunk with 5:23 remaining gave Syracuse its biggest lead of the night, after which neither team scored for 2:10 of game time. Butler's Ronald Nored broke the proverbial silence with a three-pointer at the 3:13 mark, and the Bulldogs were off to the races.

In Butler's next five possessions, Matt Howard scored on a layup after blocking a shot at the other end, Willie Veasley hit a three-pointer and a two-point tip-in, and Hayward made one of two free throws. During the same stretch, the Orange turned the ball over once, committed an offensive foul, and missed three shots, each of which was rebounded by Butler. Scoop Jardine finally hit a meaningless layup with 34 seconds left, but by that point, the Dogs had built a seven-point lead, and it would have taken a minor miracle for the favorites to prevail.

There was no minor miracle for the Syracuse Orange, but Willie Veasley seemed to have divine intervention on his side. That three-pointer he hit to put his team up four bounced high off the rim, caromed off the backboard about two or three feet away from the hoop, then fell through the hoop. And the tip-in that followed it was crazy too. I have no idea where it came from, and I saw it happen. In any case, whether they have God on their side or not, the Butler Bulldogs have reached the Elite Eight for the first time in history.

That wasn't the only exciting game of the night, though it was the only one I saw personally. Kansas State knocked off Xavier in a double-overtime thriller that ended way past my bedtime. The other two games were snoozers, with double-digit seeds falling to big favorites — two-seed West Virginia beat 11-seed Washington by 13, and one-seed Kentucky (which has to be considered the top choice to win it all after Kansas got eliminated) topped 12-seed Cornell by 17.

The Buckeyes play in St. Louis tonight against Tennessee, who they knocked out of the tournament last year. Ohio State is of course the top remaining seed in its bracket, due to Northern Iowa's upset of Kansas last weekend. The aforementioned NIU Panthers will follow against Michigan State, playing without Kalin Lucas. Those should both be interesting games. In Houston, Saint Mary's — the only remaining double-digit seed in the tournament — will likely see its Cinderella run end against Baylor, and Purdue — playing without Robbie Hummel — is probably going to see its dream end against top-seeded Duke. But this is March Madness, ladies and gentlemen. You just never know.

Catch some Z

By the time you read this, Zydrunas Ilgauskas may be a Cleveland Cavalier again. Yesterday was the first day Z could sign with the Cavs, after they traded him a few weeks ago for Antawn Jamison, following which the Wizards cut him so they wouldn't have to pay him. To be sure, it's a perverse result of the NBA's salary cap rules, but it works out well for my team, so I'm not complaining.

Z's agent, Herb Rudoy, negotiated yesterday with Danny Ferry — Z's former teammate, now of course the Cavs' general manager — but didn't come to terms. The Cavs could either sign him for the rest of the season for about $150,000 or use their "bi-annual exception" (more salary cap mumbo-jumbo) to sign him for two years at $4 million. But Rudoy says he's confident that either way, a deal will be done very soon.

I'm glad Z will be back in a Cavaliers uniform very soon — probably tomorrow night against the Hornets. I don't think I'd go so far as to say the Cavs need Z, because they've played pretty darned well without him, but he's certainly still a useful player, and with Shaquille O'Neal out, they can sure use a true center.

Let's hear it for the Bobcats!

As a graduate of Miami University, I'm legally obligated to have mixed feelings about the Ohio Bobcats' mauling of Georgetown in what is undoubtedly the biggest upset of the NCAA Tournament so far. But the Miami-Ohio rivalry is far from Ohio State-Michigan, and any time a Mid-American Conference school pulls off a March Madness victory, it's good for the whole league. So I say, go get 'em, 'Cats.

The boys from Athens had already turned in one of the more improbable March runs I've seen in a long time, just by winning the MAC Tournament at the Gund Arena last weekend. They were just 17-14 going into the conference tourney, including a 7-9 record within the MAC, making them the 9-seed for the little dance. They needed overtime just to get past Ball State in the first round. Then they upset top-seeded Kent State, followed by my alma mater, before beating Akron in overtime to win the conference title. That alone was unlikely enough.

But to beat 3-seed Georgetown by 14 points in the NCAAs? Who could possibly have predicted that? The Hoyas came in at 23-10, playing in the much-tougher Big East, having lost their conference championship by just two points to West Virginia. How could they lose to a 21-14 team from the lowly MAC? ... That, my friends, is why we love March Madness so much.

The state's other two schools open play today. Xavier plays Minnesota at 12:25, and Ohio State faces California-Santa Barbara at about 9:35. The Buckeyes are a decent bet to go a long way in this tournament — but of course, that's what they said about Georgetown.

Cleveland Cavaliers, Central Division Champions

With last night's 99-94 victory over the Pacers, the Cavaliers became the NBA's first team to clinch a playoff spot this year, wrapping up their second-straight Central Division championship. It's a good time to celebrate, but keep the celebration low-key, because the Cavs have a much bigger goal than that. At 54-15, they now have a six-game lead over the Magic for the best record in the Eastern Conference, and a 3 1/2-game lead over the Lakers for the best record in the NBA. And as we've said many times in this space, the home-court advantage that would provide would be huge.

The game was much closer than you'd expect, given the teams' respective records (Indiana is now 22-46). But the Cavaliers were playing the second game of a back-to-back, having beaten the Pistons on Tuesday, and were obviously running out of gas in the fourth quarter. The Pacers cut an 18-point lead to just one, before our hero LeBron James took over. In the last four minutes of the game, LeBron scored six points along with two steals, two blocks and an assist. He simply toyed with the Pacers in the closing moments.

The Cavs have 13 games to go before opening the playoffs against the Eastern Conference's 8-seed, which if the season ended today would be Toronto, against whom the Cavs are 2-1 on the season, including an overtime win north of the border. (And if you think I'm getting ahead of myself by assuming we'll get the 1-seed, consider that coolstandings.com currently considers that a 99.2% possibility.) The top priority right now has to be keeping everybody healthy, followed by holding off the Lakers for the best record.

Delhomme is l'homme

So the Browns have given up on their young former quarterback of the future and given the job to a grizzled veteran who has had some success in the NFL. Sounds kind of like getting rid of Tim Couch and bringing in Jeff Garcia a few years ago, but this time the roles are played by Brady Quinn and Jake Delhomme. (Incidentally, Delhomme is two years older than Couch, who hasn't taken an NFL snap since 2003.)

My dad said yesterday that he didn't feel Quinn got a real shot in Cleveland, and he may have a point. A lot of young quarterbacks struggle until they've had a couple of years' worth of starts under their belts, and maybe 2010 would have been the year he'd have shown why the Browns took him with their first-round pick in 2007. But obviously, Mike Holmgren and the Browns' new regime felt they couldn't spend any more time finding that out.

So now the job belongs to Delhomme, who took the Carolina Panthers to the Super Bowl in the 2003 season, but who is coming off his worst year as a pro. I truly don't mean to keep comparing him to Couch, but I happen to have just looked at Couch's page on nfl.com, and Delhomme's 59.4 passer rating last year was worse than any year Couch ever had. He's 35, and I don't see a whole lot of reason for optimism that he'll do any better this year. (Incidentally, presumed second-stringer Seneca Wallace posted an 81.9 rating last year for the Seahawks, albeit throwing just 120 passes as Matt Hasselbeck's backup.)

My assumption is Holmgren plans to draft a quarterback in April, and keep Delhomme around to keep the job warm until that quarterback is ready to take over. So we're starting over at the quarterback position, as we've done so many times before. It does get tiresome, doesn't it?

Derek Anderson insults you on the way out the door

Ex-Browns quarterback Derek Anderson couldn't resist taking some shots at Cleveland fans upon his release yesterday. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter much what an ex-Brown thinks about Cleveland, but it did cause a bit of a stir in the local media. You may recall that Anderson, a Pro Bowler in 2007, stank his way through the next two seasons and lost his starting job to the also-subpar Brady Quinn. After being shown the door yesterday, he said in an e-mail to the News-Herald that Browns fans "don't deserve a winner" and that he never forgot being cheered when he injured himself against the Colts in 2008.

Look, I understand his feelings being hurt that people cheered when he got hurt. That's happened in Cleveland before — see Couch, Tim — and the fans weren't actually cheering his injury, they were cheering because he'd been playing abysmally and his injury meant the backup would get a shot. That's not very nice, but I guarantee it happens in other NFL cities too. Anderson is an adult, and should not have taken it to heart.

The release came a day after the Browns traded a late-round 2011 draft pick for Seahawks backup Seneca Wallace, whom new team President Mike Holmgren knows from his days in Seattle. I'd be a bit surprised if Wallace becomes the starter, but he'll probably get a shot to compete for the job unless they get Donovan McNabb or somebody like that. I don't think Holmgren has much confidence in Brady Quinn.

Not bad, considering ... but still a loss

With the Cavaliers in Milwaukee last night to play the 32-29 Bucks, and already playing without Shaquille O'Neal, Mike Brown decided to sit LeBron James and start Jawad Williams. He surely knew he was giving away the game, but felt that it was worth it to get LeBron some rest. Was he right? I don't know. LeBron did roll his ankle in Friday night's game against the Pistons, but Brown says it had nothing to do with that. But I'll bet there were a lot of pissed-off Milwaukee fans who paid good money for tickets expecting to see The King. (Not that that's Brown's problem.)

In any case, the remaining Cavs did a pretty decent job hanging in there, though it obviously wasn't good enough. Antawn Jamison had his best game as a Cavalier, pouring in 30 points, and Delonte West added 27. Williams, in what was probably his first NBA start (I'm too lazy to look it up) contributed precious little, tallying six points and three rebounds, and putting up a +/- of -29 in 24 minutes.

When your team is playing without its two future Hall of Famers against a plus-.500 team on the road and only loses by seven, you have to be just a little bit pleased with the effort. But still, it goes on the ledger as a loss. They said on SportsCenter that Brown is considering sitting LeBron again on Monday against the Spurs. Of course, the Spurs just lost Tony Parker to a hand injury, so maybe they can still beat them, but I'd feel better about it with LeBron in there. We're in a race with the Lakers for home-court in a theoretical Cleveland-LA Finals, and I don't think that's a small matter.

A few thoughts

* I'm glad the Cavaliers beat the Pistons last night, but the outcome of a basketball game is a lot less important than human health. When Rodney Stuckey collapsed near the bench area, it reminded LeBron James of Hank Gathers, about whom he'd recently watched a documentary. For those not old enough to remember, Gathers was a star on a very talented Loyola Marymount team who collapsed during a game and died on his way to the hospital because of a heart defect. And then there's Reggie Lewis, a former Celtics star who died the same way, albeit in an off-season practice. Stuckey's apparently OK, but that collapse was very frightening.

* That said, it was an impressive comeback by the Cavaliers. They overcame a 21-point deficit to win that game, effectively running over the Pistons in the late third and fourth quarters. But it's worth noting that Detroit was ahead when Stuckey went down. The Pistons were obviously shaken by their teammate's collapse, and played like it. They started to get it together toward the end of the game, but it was too late.

* Josh Cribbs is back in the fold. I'm glad; he's one of my all-time favorite Browns. I still think he was acting like a baby with his contract demands, but the story has a happy ending.

* The Indians won their first spring-training game yesterday against the Reds, 9-2. The Indians tattooed Cincinnati pitching all game, while holding the Reds' hitters to just two hits until Joe Smith's tough run through the eighth inning. Or maybe it was the ninth. Anyway, Smith wasn't good, but the rest of the pitchers were. In any case, it's wonderful that there's Cleveland Indians baseball again, preseason or not.

* The Buckeyes are being discussed as a potential No. 1 seed in the upcoming NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament after having won the Big Ten's regular season title. Ohio State is ranked No. 7 in the country, and should go far in March Madness.

Tribe plays first intrasquad game

I know that to the average fan, the first intrasquad game is a darned good reason to start yawning. Not me. It wasn't on TV, and the box score isn't printed in today's paper, but I'm reading what I can about it. Apparently Jensen Lewis and Jordan Brown were among the game's stars.

Brown, who's a longshot to make the team as an outfielder/first baseman, singled and homered in the game. At 26, Brown has yet to make his major-league debut, and players who haven't reached the show by 26 tend not to make much impact. But Brown did hit .336 in Columbus last year, with 15 home runs, and put up an OPS of .913. And while playing for Akron in 2007, he was named the Eastern League MVP. He's got some credentials.

Lewis, who pitched a 1-2-3 second inning yesterday, was expected to be a key setup man for Kerry Wood last year, but suffered through a 2-4, 4.61 season that saw him also spend some time in Columbus. Lewis struck out 62 hitters in 66.1 innings, but also gave up 13 home runs, and that's what cost him. If he can limit the long ball, he can help this team.

The Indians have their first real spring training game on Friday against the Reds. Yay!

Knickerbockers destroyed; Cavaliers cooking again

The Cavaliers dominated the 20-39 New York Knicks last night in a way we hadn't seen this year. The game wasn't as close as the 124-93 final score would indicate — and when a 31-point victory understates the way the game went, you know it was a whitewashing.

How thoroughly did the Cavs embarrass the Knicks? Just look at the quarter-by-quarter scoring: The Cavs won the first quarter, 38-26; the second, 36-22; and the third, 27-11. In the same game, our guys scored 74 points in the first half and held the Knicks to just ELEVEN in an entire quarter. The Cavaliers led by as much as 49 in the second half. The Knicks did outscore the Cleveland scrubs in the fourth quarter, 34-23, which was more or less irrelevant.

After losing three straight out of the All-Star break, the Cavs are now riding a four-game winning streak, and seem to be just fine without Shaquille O'Neal or once and future Cavalier Zydrunas Ilgauskas. In the game in which Shaq got hurt, they beat the fellow Eastern Conference power Celtics by 20 in Boston; then they beat the above-.500 Raptors in Toronto, albeit needing overtime to do it. And now this destruction of the admittedly bad Knicks.

The subtext of this game, of course, is that the Knicks are expected to go after LeBron James as a free agent this coming offseason. If this performance was any indication of what LeBron can anticipate after going over there, he's bound to say no. But who can guess what lurks in the mind of LeBron.

After surgery on his sprained thumb, Shaq could be back in about two months, or around the second round of the playoffs. It doesn't appear there's any reason to worry about what will happen between now and then.

Silver not quite so precious as gold, but what a game

That gold medal hockey game between the U.S. and Canada was a thing of beauty. I've never been a very big hockey fan (except for Miami RedHawks hockey), but I sat transfixed on the TV watching that game yesterday. The Americans came this close to scoring a goal in the first period, but the puck stopped just short of the line, and the Canadians were able to take a 2-0 lead.

But there was no quit in the Red, White and Blue. Playing against the nation that invented ice hockey, on its own soil, the Americans got within a goal in the second period on Ryan Kesler's rebound shot, then pulled off the nearly unbelievable when Zach Parise scored with 24.4 seconds left in regulation, with goalie Ryan Miller pulled in favor of an extra skater, to send it into overtime.

The star-laden Canadians controlled the puck for most of that overtime period, and it came as no surprise when 22-year-old phenom Sidney Crosby finally broke through for the gold medal-winning goal 7:40 into the extra session. But it was a fantastic performance by the young Americans, who should hold their heads high after coming away with the silver.

Incidentally, that silver medal was the 37th for the USA in the Vancouver games, setting a new record for total medals by any nation in any Winter Olympics. But Canada's was the 14th gold medal for that nation, which was also a record. It was a very enjoyable Olympics, and I'm just a little bit sad that it's over.