Saturday Morning Links Part 1

The Dodgers tied the D’Backs for first place last night in 11 innings. Watched the end of this game and let me just say this now, Jonathan Broxton is going to be one of the filthiest closers ever.

The Angels outslugged the Red Sox, although John Lackey didn’t look particularly tremedous against his nemesis Manny Ramirez (in spite of his milestone performance). I know everyone likes to jump on the Angels bandwagon and say that “They never get any respect” or “East-Cost bias”, and that may be true to an extent, but their record against Boston the last few years is awful. If they can’t get the Red Sox monkey off their back (no pun intended), they will not go back to the World Series.

The Florida Marlins are Jamie Moyer’s, ummm, well we have sponsors now, so let me just say, whipping boy. Also there is word from Brett Myers that he is ready to return. I assume if he isn’t then the Phils will just say “boom, outta here!”

Tampa Bay finally snapped a losing streak . Kudos to the caller on the PM Jab yesterday who said “good pitching doesn’t slump for long”. Indeed.

The Mets saw their 10 game losing streak come to an end thanks to Bronson Arroyo. The Phils snuck back into first thanks to this Mets loss. John Maine is struggling. Thanks to Joe Namath for the correct pronunciation on that.

Richie Sexson drove in a run in his first at-bat for the Yankees, and Mike Mussina got his 12th win of the season.

The Cubs lost in Houston on Hunter Pence’s walk-off double. Ted Lilly’s performance was wasted, and Kosuke Fukudome did not resemble an All-Star. Also there is word that the leading candidate to buy the Cubs is a good friend of Bud Selig.

CC Sabathia was dominant again, and the Brewers look like geniuses right now. Sabathia also got it done with the bat again last night.

Speaking of Milwaukee, Gilbert Arenas takes a shot at the land of cheese and beer in his latest blog entry saying “No one wants to live in Milwaukee”. Ouch.

Ronny Turiaf is officially a Golden St Warrior.

Kevin Love is averaging a little over 20 points a game for the T’Wolves summer league team, coached by Jerry Sichting who is an FOTV (Friend Of the Vortex). We will try and have him on again after the summer league is over.

The Islanders schedule has been released, but we still don’t know who is going to coach them.

That is all for now, there will be a special edition of “The Vortex” this afternoon as Jon Shields from Bleeding Blue and Teal will be on with us to talk Mariners (the Red Sox play Seattle starting on Monday). The interview will be posted about a half an hour after it’s done, and hopefully it will be in pure MP3 format for you.

Friday’s Free Thoughts

Kevin Love brings his game to Minneapolis

The NBA Draft wrapped up at 1 past midnight this morning as Adam Silver was being greeted with chants of “We want Russ (Granik)”. Classy fans I tell you, classy. Derrick Rose and Michael Beasley went 1 and 2 respectively, there were a couple of trades, and the draft can be recapped here. The biggest deal was made after 2am, when Minnesota, who probably realized that they could have had OJ Mayo teamed up with Al Jefferson and thought “Wow, that would make sense, we better fix this quick” and made a trade with the Grizzlies that sends the draft rights to Mayo, Marko Jaric, Antoine Walker and Greg Buckner to the Grizzlies in return for the draft rights to Kevin Love, Mike Miller, Brian Cardinal and Jason Collins. The analysis? this gives the Wolves a great frontcourt anchored by Big Al and Love, a shooter in Miller, and dead weight contracts in Cardinal and Collins. The Grizz get a franchise player in Mayo who could actually put people in the seats, Antoine’s wiggle (which has 3 or 4 more year remaining, yeesh) and not much else. Jaric and Walker have AWFUL contracts, so this one is a head scratcher to me. I do believe that the Wolves won this deal, of course if Mayo becomes Lebron 2.0 it may look ridiculous one day, but I doubt it. Score one for the long-armed GM. By the way did I mention the Grizzlies GM is Chris Wallace?

The Celtics draft highlight was trading for K-St forward Bill Walker. If this kid is healthy, watch out.

In other news the Yankees and Mets are playing a Day/Night doubleheader today at Yankee Stadium and at Shea, which will be the last dual location day/night DH for the two ballparks, as they are due to close down at the end of the year(in case you hadn’t heard). Dan Giese and Sidney Ponson will start for the Yanks, who may be putting Hideki Matsui on the DL with a knee injury. The Mets will counter with Mike Pelfrey in Game One and Pedro Martinez in the night cap.

Why was Erin Andrews not at the NBA Draft last night?

On a show and site note, we had a great time at Chicago Dogs in Scarborough, ME for the NBA Draft last night. You can listen to the show in the Talkshoe Widget at the top of the page, it’s the “NBA Draft Special”, it was a great time on The Sports Vortex last night.

Jerry Sichting Interview

Jerry Sichting, former member of the Boston Celtics and current assistant coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves, was on the Sports Vortex this morning talking NBA Finals, Celtics/Lakers history, and Minnesota Timberwolves draft. Check it out, it is in the widget at the top of the page that says “Sports Vortex” (just click play) or you can check out the link here if the widget doesn’t load for you. Regardless, enjoy!