A Good Draft, a Bad Irene

Imagine if you never had to see Mike Pelfrey pitch again……in your entire lifetime….Pelfrey-free….aahh.

But this won’t be about the Mets. After all, what can anybody really say? Just, please God, don’t make me watch any more Mets wheel-plays. And the latest highlight of the Mets fortunes was Jason Bay’s arm-less lunge for home plate with his arms pinned to the ground under his body.

The Mets won that one so Jason gets a pass, but it was the most ridiculous slide I’ve ever seen.

Enough said about the Mets. Even if David Wright had a really nice night and Tejada made the tough play he had to make to close the game out. It was like old times. Reyes was back smiling and Wright was playin’ energized and Duda came through with a nicely- measured swing to win it. I could really get used to watching baseball like that.

I just watched a replay of the Jets-Giants exhibition game from Monday night. I thought it was bad the first time around. It was worse in Round 2. The Giants, who lost 17-3 to their Green rivals, looked ordinary at best. The Jets were just a little more impressive.

If it seemed to you that Eli Manning had no clue as to where his receivers might be going, join the club. If it seemed to you as if nobody ever came open for him, you’re not alone.

The Jets actually looked better defensively to me than they were last year. The offense needs a little work right now but that could be said of a number of teams. They can still run the ball, especially if Shonn Green stays healthy. Once again, their only fly in the ointment might be New England. The Pats will be a huge fly to swallow.

But most people here are just getting over the wrath of Irene, the raging waters, the dump from the sky. Trees down, power lines down, rivers swelling, politicians swaggering, and Weather-Channel scaring the life out of you every step of the way, but especially before the event . Irene was a big fat girl wagging her fatt butt all the way up the Jersey coast.

But I stood ready for her, pump ready for the onslaught. Around 2 PM on Saturday, the pumping began. But its little 1/6 HP heart couldn’t keep the waters below the 18” retaining wall between the garage and house proper, could it? Well, it pumped its little brains out for about 27 hours straight and saved our butts from a watery ending.

The power held up for me. There’ll be a generator in my future. The worst wind I got was as Irene was dragging her disgusting ass out of here. She was worn out by then, all that torrential rain for all that time having dragged the venom out of her. Her home invasion was finally over by mid-afternoon Sunday.

I’m thinking about giving my pump a name.

But right before the deluge, that would be Saturday morning, we had our fantasy draft. That was fun. Once again, I tested my QB-first strategy with a guy everybody seems to have forgotten about, Drew Brees. He had no running game last year at all and still managed to have himself a nice year.

But it’s all about risk. The first pick should offer the highest risk-reward. If running backs get hurt waaay more often than QB’s, how can you pick a RB first? There were four who loomed over the rest of the ball-carriers, Arian Foster, Adrian Peterson, Chris Johnson and, arguably, Rrrray Rrrrrice. In our new world of two-back systems, you could throw a blanket around many of the rest.

I should point out too that passing TD’s count as much as running TD’s in our league and QB’s fantasy scores vs. RB scores are always a lot higher overall.

Then there is the matter of variability, week to week adherence to a standard. Drew Brees is like a machine. The opponent doesn’t matter that much, he’ll score against Green Bay and Buffalo too. He won’t be a target like Vick or slide around a lot like Rodgers or have a Manning neck or a Brady benching in Week 13.

He’ll just be cruisin’ this year, handin’ the rock to Mark Ingram, making the play-action go. And there’ll be the same guys on the other end, Colston and Meachem and Henderson and Mohr. His line is good, his coach is smart and they like to score points….every week.

I could have had RB Jamaal Charles, as things turned out. He was one of the four leading the pack and perhaps my favorite among those. But will all of those four guys finish the season? Would Jamaal Charles have been the odd man out?

Anyway, my second pick was 21 overall and I still didn’t particularly like any of the running backs there so why not grab a top wideout? And if you could get yourself a Giant at the same time, why wouldn’t Hakeem Nicks be the logical choice? Then at 28 overall, there was Jersey-boy Miles Austin edging out DeSean Jackson and the possibly resurgent JET Shonn Greene. I see lots of catches in my future.

A lot of nice players disappeared from the board before my next pick. Fearing a run on tight ends, I jumped on Jermichael Finley, Rodgers’s favorite target most Green Bay days. I could finally select a running back so I jumped on Knowshon Moreno of the Broncos, who does a little bit of everything pretty much all by himself in Denver.

I may have actually taken a risk with Julio Jones, Atlanta’s multi-pick alleged wonder, but I still wasn’t sold on any particular RB. I did get a nice reliable guy in Fred Jackson of Buffalo, who got them his thousand yards last year and seems to be the star in lowly Buffalo. And, um, circle the wagons.

And Detroit will be my defense. Good Luck.