Author: vet4golfing51

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Sports: College Football Playoff Wrap Up

Ohio St. defeated Notre Dame 34-23 to win the first 12 team College Playoff and secure the National Championship. It was their first National Title since 2014 when OSU won the first 4 team college playoff. I guess Ohio St. can’t wait for the first 16 team college playoff. After Notre Dame had the most perfect opening drive where they scored a touchdown and ate up almost 10 minutes of the 1st quarter, the Buckeyes dominated the next 27 minutes of the game scoring 31 unanswered points. For the game, Ohio St. had a solid statistical edge, outgaining the Irish, 445 to 308, while holding Notre Dame to just 53 yards rushing. Despite all this, after trailing 31-7 midway through the 3rd quarter Notre Dame made a valiant comeback that they almost pulled off. After that great opening drive to start the game Notre Dame shot themselves in the foot to stop their next two possessions. In the 2nd possession penalties stopped that drive. On their next possession a faulty snap on 3rd down that hit the man in motion ended that drive and Notre Dame was lucky that they did not turn the ball over on that play. These miscues proved extremely costly as Ohio St. could not be stopped in the first half and scored touchdowns on all 3 of their possessions to take a 21-7 lead at halftime. Ohio St. made it 28-7 with another long touchdown drive to start the 2nd half. Notre Dame turned it over on downs in their own territory on the next possession that led to an Ohio St. field goal to stretch what seemed like an insurmountable lead of 31-7. Notre Dame put together a nice drive aided by a correctly called pass interference penalty to cut the lead to 31-15 with a successful 2 point conversion. Ohio St. was on the move again, but they turned the ball over when Notre Dame recovered a fumble on their own 21 yard line. The rejuvenated Notre Dame offense drove the ball down to the 9-yard line where they had first and goal. It was 4th and 9 after one run and two unsuccessful pass plays. Notre Dame elected to try a field goal, which I agreed with the decision. Unfortunately, the ball clanged off the left upright and Notre Dame came away with no points. If they had made the field goal it still would have been a 2 score game, but now 2 scores would have won the game. They needed 2 scores and two 2 point conversions just to tie the game. There would have been much more pressure on OSU had the field goal been made. As it was Notre Dame force Ohio St. to punt and quickly drove down the field and made 2 points again to make the score 31-23 with over 4 minutes to go in the game. It could have very well been 31-26 and the heat would have really been on OSU. Ohio St. came up with the big 56 yard 3rd down pass play to Jeremiah Smith to put the ball on the Notre Dame 10 yard line to set up the game clinching field goal. You have to give Notre Dame all the credit in the world. They battled back and came close to making the biggest comeback in Championship Game history. It was a great close to the College Football season.

Will the playoff system remain the same next year. I think it will for two reasons. All the seeded teams won in the first round and all the seeded teams lost in the 2nd round. I still like the fact that conference champions get a first round bye. It will be interesting to see what might happen if all the first round bye teams lose next year. Will that lead to expanding the field to 16 teams so there will be no byes. Frankly, even though I know this won’t happen, I would rather see just an 8 team field. The 5 conference champs and 3 at large berths. No matter what happens, one thing is for sure. A true College Playoff system is here to stay. I still can’t believe it took this long.

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Pirates Morning Report: Free Agent Dead Zone

I have been wanting to write this article for a while now, but every time I thought about doing it, I figured there would be a slew of free agent signings right after it. Now with only about 3 weeks to spring training there are still around 20 quality free agents that are unsigned, but teams are obviously being cautious because of perceived warts that all of these players have. The one thing that all of these players have in common is that they are 30 years old or older. I am sure the sticking point for every one of these players is the length of the contract. Teams do not want to give them more than 3 years, with players and their agents thinking more like 5 to 7 years. Many players had a down year on their contract year that added fuel to the fire that most of these players are on the downside of their careers. Recent history of some very bad long term contracts of players 30+ years are making teams proceed even more cautiously. The Pirates of course are in a terminal dead zone when it comes to signing free agents. Despite this, there is one available free agent that is just screaming for the Pirates to sign and get out of that dead zone.

Anthony Santander plays right field and has slugged .455, .472, and .506 over the last 3 seasons. His OPS+ has been 120,121 and 134 over this period of time. No Pirate, including Brian Reynolds, has come close to putting numbers up like that in the last 3 years. Last year he had his best production hitting 44 home runs and driving in 102 runs. He is just turning 30 years old. The Pirates have a gaping hole in right field. He is a below average fielder, but the Pirates are used to having that in right field. Most baseball sites put a contract value on him at 5 years for about 17 to 18 million a year. If the Pirates are really serious about winning, which I doubt, this should be a no brainer signing. There is really nobody else out there that the Pirates really need. There are lots of relief pitchers available that would sign 1 year deals. If they would only sign Santander, it would be much less than they spent on free agent garbage last year. Unfortunately, this will probably not happen. If they would sign him, I would just go out my back door, fall face down in the snow and just lay there until I died. There have been 1 year rentals, like Alex Verdugo mentioned as possible signings to fill the right field void for the Pirates. I will be surprised if that even happens. Verdugo’s OPS+ the last 3 years has been 102, 100 and 83. He has never hit more than 13 home runs in a season. He seems to be in decline. After further thought, this does sound like the perfect Pirate. They’ll sign him. The garbage will be picked up on opening day.

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Sports: College Football, The Finals

It will be Ohio State vs. Notre Dame in the NCAA College Football Championship game. Both teams won hard fought semifinal games over Texas and Penn St. respectively. Both games were similar in several ways. Both had huge turnovers near the end of the game that allowed Notre Dame the opportunity to win the game and sealed the victory for Ohio St. The favorites won both games but both offenses especially Ohio States, had more trouble moving the ball than was expected. In my preview of the Penn St.-Notre Dame game I wrote that the team that ran the ball better would win the game. Penn St. ran the ball 26 times for 141 yards in the first half and led 10-3. They drove 90 yards for their touchdown on 15 plays. Thirteen of those fifteen plays were running plays. When the 2nd half started James (I Prefer Balance Over Winning) Franklin was quoted as saying he wanted a more balanced attack and get his quarterback more involved in the game. The question becomes why? I guess Franklin has never heard of that old football adage of keep doing the same thing until they stop it. They only tried 16 running plays in the 2nd half for 63 yards. In fact, on the fateful last possession of Penn St., the first play was a nice 13 yard run by Nicholas Singleton. Penn St. had all of its timeouts left. It would have been possible to run the ball into position for a field goal. Penn St. passed on the very next play and Notre Dame picked it off to set up the game winning field goal. I feel a little sorry for Penn St. fans, although they know one thing with 100% certainty, as long as James Franklin is the head coach, Penn St. will never win a Big Ten Championship, let alone a National Championship. I think they are stuck with him into the early 2030’s. The Ohio State-Texas game had as many key moments as the rest of the playoff games combined. Ohio States early offensive momentum was throttled by an unnecessary penalty by TreVeyon Henderson. This was the beginning of many offensive penalties that would stop Ohio St. drives. Texas got 2 huge breaks when they fumbled the ball twice within a span of 5 minutes but recovered both of them. It looked for certain that the 1st half was going to end in a 7-7 tie. Texas allowed Ohio State to score on a 75 yard screen pass with 29 seconds left in the half to send Ohio State to a 14-7 lead. This was the biggest play of the playoff season so far. It looked like Ohio St. was going to continue that momentum when they started to move the ball at the start of the 2nd half. Will Howard threw an interception that ended that very quickly. Texas had tied the score 14-14 when Ohio St. started their long 88 yard 13 play touchdown drive. The big play of the drive was Will Howards fourth and 2 quarterback designed run, where he would have scored if he had not just fallen down on the 15 yard line. Texas drove right down the field on their ensuing drive and had 1st and goal at the 1. After failing to move the ball on a run up the middle, Texas tried an ill advised pitch play and loss 7 yards. This eventually set up the 4th downplay that resulted in a scoop and score for OSU and the game was over. It set up the meeting between two Midwest power houses on January 20th.

Ohio St. right now is a 7.5 to 9.5 favorite to win the game. I think they will win but I am not too sure they will cover the spread. What will Notre Dame have to do in order to pull off the upset. First, they are going to have to revive their running game. Against Georgia they ran for 151 yards and Penn St. a paltry 116 yards. This from a team that averaged 210 yards per game during the season. They need to run the football and control the clock to keep Ohio State’s offense off the field. It will be interesting to see if Notre Dame employs the same defensive strategy as Texas, playing a lot of deep zone and super covering wide receiver Jeremiah Smith. I think Ohio St. adjusted to this defense really well. It was all the penalties in the 1st half that derailed the Buckeye offense. Notre Dame needs to play a clean game and win the turnover battle. Will they be able to get a special team’s touchdown like they did against Georgia? All of these things need to happen if Notre Dame is going to pull out the victory. Ohio St. has too many offensive weapons and certainly their defense is far from chopped liver. Ohio St. still needs to continue the philosophy pass first and run later. Their wide receiver corps is just about unstoppable as proven by Carnell Tate’s performance of 7 receptions for 87 yards when Texas overloaded on Smith. No one has been able to stop Ohio St. in the playoffs. Ohio St. did stop themselves in the Texas game and Texas did slow them down, but it still was not good enough to win the football game. Notre Dame will have to do more than that if they are going to win. Ohio St will prevail, but it will be a battle royale. Monday cannot come soon enough. A great college playoff season should come to an end with a great championship game.

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Golf: Playing The Game, Part 4

I originally was going to do this blog under the title things we should do but don’t. I realized that all the things I was about to write about happen when we are playing the game. I am not sure I would classify these things as mental aspects of the game but more on how we process a round of golf. These are the things we need to do in order to get a round back on track, or to accept on how a round is going, and what if anything to do about it. We all have the goal to score as well as possible during a round. There is no question for most of us that is our biggest failure. How to turn around a bad start or better yet just how to avoid a bad start.

The first thing you have to do is to accept the vagaries of the game or some like to call it the rub of the green. When tour players scores vary by 6 to 7 shots on a day to day basis, then we should never get upset when that happens to us. If you start out a round by missing a couple of 4 to 6 foot putts in the first 3 or 4 holes you had better come up with a strategy to deal with that. You have to get out of the mindset that you will try and make up for the misses. You should get into the opposite mindset and begin to play super conservative. Even on shots from about 70 yards and out start to ignore the pin and get the ball on the green. Drive the ball to the widest part of the hole. If you make a longer putt or push or pull a shot relatively close to a pin and make a birdie, then you may take a little more aggressive attitude. Let the round dictate your play, not you trying to dictate the round.

You must correct mistakes quickly. What does this mean? It means that if you leave a 20 foot plus putt about 4 feet short on the first hole, your next putt of that length better be long. Sometimes that next putt may not happen for 3 or 4 holes. Maybe you miss the green on the next couple of holes but hit the chip shots real close to the hole. You could hit one of your approach shots very close to hole and make a birdie. It might not be until the 5th hole or so that you have another putt over 20 feet. Regardless, you want to hit that putt past the hole even if it causes you to 3 putt, if you knock it way past. It is the only way you are going to get a true feel for the greens. If you don’t make the adjustment quickly you may never make it, and it will certainly cost you more than one stroke.

The same thing applies to bad shots. Let’s say your opening shot either goes way right or way left. Maybe your opening tee shot is good, but your iron shot is either a big pull or push. A quick fix for this is to aim your next shot where the bad shot ended up. If you hit a big push slice on your tee shot, then on the second hole aim to the right. This should allow a little more over the top action and a better release of the club, allowing you to get closer to the middle of the fairway. What should you do if there is trouble on the right on the next hole? Take a 3 or 5 wood off the tee. Just do the opposite if your opening shot is a big pull or duck hook. If there is trouble on the left, then to avoid another big push to right, swing with less effort and aim down the middle. Do the same for iron shots also and you should correct your errors quicker with no conscious swing changes. Once you get back on track you can begin aiming at your projected target again.

Finally, you should feel that the round is going to progress naturally with no interference from you. What I mean by that is that the round should start out slowly. No matter how much you get to warm up feel that you are swinging easily and in control. In the beginning of a round your distance should be less. In the early holes take more club. If you are at a 7 iron distance then take a 6 iron for your approach. Eventually your distance will increase during the round. It will happen around the 3rd to the 6th hole. You will notice this with your driver. Then use the normal club for your iron distance. If you get off to a hot start, then this may happen quicker and eventually if some adrenaline is kicking in you may see an increase in normal distance. Do not fight this. In this case when you have a 7 iron distance go to the 8 iron. Remember to always evaluate your lie. A tight fairway lie is going to travel less than a lush fairway lie. A ball in the rough will go farther than a ball in the fairway. A ball in the rough is much more unpredictable on what it is going to do than a ball out of the fairway, so plan accordingly. Remember let the situation dictate what you are going to do. Do not try to force the situation. If you can do all of this during a round of golf, you will score much better on a day to day basis. Trust me this is easier said than done. I know from experience. Hopefully, I finally get better in doing all of this. See you on the links.

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Sports: College Football Semifinals

We are down to a final 4 in college football, Penn St. Ohio St. Notre Dame and Texas. To me the most surprising game was the way Ohio St. handled Oregon. In fact, Ohio St. was the only winner to have a statistical edge. Let’s face it Buckeye fans, which I am a proud member, this football team looked like it was doing it with mirrors all season. They habitually got off to slow starts and trailed such teams as Northwestern, Akron, Indiana, only scoring 7 first half points against Iowa, almost losing to Nebraska at home, and finally ending the season with that abysmal performance against Michigan. That loss to Michigan must have woken up the entire team and coaching staff because this looks like an entirely different team in the playoffs. The key to their success is they have used the passing game to set up the running game rather than the usual reverse. They have started both games on fire, leading Tennessee by 21-0 and Oregon by a whopping 34-0 before the first half ended. I wasn’t a believer after the Tennessee game because Tennessee had many key injuries, but after this game Ohio St. is the odds-on favorite to go all the way. My second biggest surprise was the way Georgia shut down the Notre Dame running game. Neither offense shined but Georgia outgained Notre Dame 296 to 240. The two turnovers for Georgia and the opening half kickoff return for a touchdown by Notre Dame to take a 20-3 lead were the keys to victory. Although no surprise to me but I think this was lost on the media, was the way Arizona St. totally dominated Texas, but lost because of ineptitude in Texas territory and one of the worst non targeting calls in the history of college football. Arizona St had drives that reached the Texas 25, 34, 19, and 2 yard lines and walked away with no points. The drive that ended on the 2 did eventually give ASU a safety, but at a minimum they left 16 points on the field which would have won the ball game easily. ASU out gained Texas 510 to 375, made 29 first downs to 17 for Texas and controlled the ball for almost 38 minutes of the game. Arizona St. was clearly the better team, but the inconsistent Texas offense came up with enough big plays and returned a punt for a touchdown to pull out the win. Boise St. put up a game fight against Penn St. even outgaining them 412 to 387. Four turnovers and a critical hands to the face penalty nullifying a 20 yard pass and run touchdown which would have made the score 24-21 with 30 seconds remaining in the 3rd quarter were the things that sealed the victory for Penn St. Both of these controversial 3rd and 4th seeded teams put up competitive games, but we may still see a new way to seed teams’ next season. On to the semifinals.

The first game will pit Notre Dame against the Penn St. Nittany Lions and their disgusting incompetent coach James Franklin. Notre Dame should win this game on that fact alone. Despite not being able to run the ball in their normal fashion Notre Dame played about as complete of a game as possible. They played great defense, scored a special teams’ touchdown and quickly scored when Georgia turned the ball over deep in their own territory. Georgia never really threatened to make a game of it thanks to the Notre Dame defense. Many people felt that Penn St. had the easiest road to the semifinals because of the way the committee seeded the teams. I disagree. SMU for whatever reason just could not get out of the gate in their last 2 games of the season. Whether it was the pressure who knows. Boise St. played a good game and could have beaten Penn St. The Nittany lion defense has played well the whole playoffs. This game is going to come down to who can run the ball better. I think Notre Dame has two other advantages. They have the better coach by far and Notre Dame’s quarterback, Riley Leonard seems to be able to improvise better than his Penn St. counterpart. It should be a good game but I think Notre Dame prevails.

The second game will see the red hot Ohio State Buckeyes go up against the Texas Longhorns. The Texas offense will be the key to this game. I do not think they can go 42 minutes without scoring against Ohio State and win this game. When the Texas offense is on, they are explosive and pretty much unstoppable. The two overtime periods showed how this offense is so inconsistent. In the first overtime it took a 4th and 15 30 yard touchdown pass to save the day for Texas. In the 2nd overtime they scored on one play. Their defense will have their hands full with the Ohio St. offense. The Texas offense needs to control the clock and score points in the process. Texas has had offensive inconsistencies all year. It is unlikely that they are going to find that consistency one game down the road. If OSU gets out of the gate fast for the third straight game, Texas is going to be victim no. 3.

We should see Ohio St. and Notre Dame in the championship game. I called the Penn St and Notre Dame game correct in the quarter finals but missed with the Buckeyes. I should have had the big upset pick, but Arizona St. couldn’t turn total domination into a win. The pressure will really be amping up and it will be fun to see how each team responds. Even though it has had its ups and downs it has been a great playoff season so far for College Football. The only question remains is what took you so long to do this NCAA College Football. It is a shame that this has not been going on for 50 years. See you after the semi finals.

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Golf: 2024 Golf Season Put A Wrap On It

It is officially 2025 which means that the 2024 golf season is over. Since I last wrote about my season on November 6th, I was able to play another 17 eighteen hole rounds of golf to make a grand total of 152 rounds for the year, which is my all time high for 1 year, breaking the previous record by 2. I shot my age another 4 times including three 73’s to bring that total up to 22 times for shooting my age. Nothing spectacular happened during these last 7 weeks of the season. Just a continuation of my up and down play. I have developed a new short game philosophy which has lasted more than 3 rounds and seems to be working out fairly well. The last round of the year was on the 30th under less than ideal conditions with some pretty high winds and temps in mid 40’s.

What am I looking forward to in 2025? Hopefully to play more golf and continue to improve becoming more consistent. I hope this new chipping philosophy works out. I have pretty much concluded that the key to consistency is to forget about physical keys. This can be difficult because when things are going bad in a round, you try to do various things, such as getting closer to the ball, changing ball position, or making a different swing move or temp. None of this ever really works and by chance if it does it is only for a short time. The mental process is the key. Having confidence in your club selection, the line of your putt or your overall shot plan will be the thing that makes a good score. All of this is rather a moot point at the moment because it does not look like it is going above freezing for about the next 10 days. Eventually I will get out there to start 2025, maybe this will be the year, if not I know I will drink lots of beer. Hit em straight.

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Sports: College Football Quarterfinals

The first round of the College Football Playoffs (CFP) was not good for the ACC and the playoff committee. The two controversial picks by the committee got smoked as well as the ACC conference champion Clemson Tigers. The first round did not have any real surprises except that SMU had the big game chitters again and Ohio St. blew away Tennessee. There were no upsets and the top 8 seeds are in the quarterfinals. The quarterfinals should be more competitive with the committee’s automatic seeding process under close scrutiny during this round. The committee needs both Boise St. and Arizona St. to put in good performances against Penn St. and Texas or there will probably be a different way to seed the teams next year. I like the honoring of conference champions with a 1st round bye, so I am hoping that both of these games will be competitive. Let’s take a look at the quarterfinals in chronological order.

The Fiesta Bowl: Penn St. vs Boise St. Penn St. is once again a solid favorite, but I find it hard to believe that if the game is close, James Franklin will not blow it. The question will be if Boise St. can keep it close. I won’t be shocked if Penn St. loses this game, but I think they will wind up beating Boise St., but it will be a close one. If Boise St. can somehow run the ball and control the clock, then Penn St. may be in for a long day.

The Peach Bowl: Texas vs Arizona St. Texas is an even bigger favorite to beat Arizona St. Texas is coming off their most impressive win of the year. Arizona St. seems to have a lot of momentum as they finished the season strong. Texas’s offense has had its ups and downs this year. I think Arizona St. wins this game with the surprise of the playoffs so far.

The Rose Bowl: Ohio State vs Oregon. Even though Oregon is in the Big Ten now this has the feel of a good old fashion Rose Bowl. The Buckeyes are around 3 point favorites and I will be pulling for them, but Oregon I still feel is the cream of the crop, with Ryan Day getting back into his big game mode. Oregon wins and it might not be that close of a game.

The Sugar Bowl. Notre Dame vs. Georgia. You could say this is the marquee game of the quarter finals. With Georgia’s problems at quarterback and Notre Dame’s stout running game I like Notre Dame to win this game solidly.

I think this round will have much better games as the pressure will ramp up on all 8 teams. The great thing is to have all these meaningful games on New Years Eve and Day. I feel the final 4 will be Penn State (grudgingly) Arizona St. Oregon and Notre Dame. We will see how right or wrong I am. See you before the semis.

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Golf: Playing The Game, Part 3

In this blog I am going to discuss the most important part of playing the game, putting. Putting can save your round or destroy your round. This will not be a how to putt article. There has been more written about putting than any other aspect of the game. I am going to look at 2 mental aspects of putting. One that I am very good at and the other that I am very bad.

The first one is you should expect to make every putt you attempt, no matter how difficult or long the putt is. If you don’t make the putt you should feel the disappointment. You don’t need to go ballistic over it but you need to really feel disappointed when it does not go in. This legitimizes your expectations. I do not advocate trying to get the ball in the 3 foot circle on long putts. In my view the more you are trying to make the putt the closer you are going to get the ball to the hole. I make my fair share of putts over 20 feet and that is because I expect to make it every time I’m over the ball.

Now we come to the dreaded short putt. Let’s define short as any putt that is 18 inches to about 6 to 7 feet from the hole. There are two things that make short putts unique. We not only expect to make the putt but we add that dreaded word should to the process. Ah, that word should. Like we should exercise more, eat better, sleep longer and make all putts between 2 and 6 feet. The 2nd unique thing about short putts is you have choices. You can try and bang the ball in the back of the cup, die the ball over the lip, or just try to find a happy medium. Even though longer putts can go in using all 3 speeds, no one is standing over a 20 foot putt thinking I am going to bang this in the back of the cup. Most of the time on long putts you are thinking of dying the ball in the cup or just going a short way by the hole. For whatever reason we rarely think of dying the ball in the hole on short putts. There was only one tour player who advocated dying the ball on short putts and that was Cory Pavin. Getting back to the dreaded word should. Why is it so bad? Because as soon as you start thinking should, it creates tension in the stroke, which leads to disastrous results. When you combine should with the perceived importance of the putt your chances of making the putt drops to well under 50%, no matter how short the putt is. As I wrote in the beginning of the blog, I am terrible at all of this and miss more than my share of short putts. I do not have any permanent solution. For me, if I make short putts early in the round then I will usually go on to have a good day. On the other side of the coin, if I miss them early then I have a hard time turning it around. All that I see on TV, I’m not the only one having this problem.

There will be one more post on playing the game and that will be on the short game. This post may be awhile because I am working on some things and with winter I may not be playing all that much to evaluate them. If I ever come up with a short putt solution I will pass that along also. All I can say until then, is get out and play, it is the only true measure of how good your golf game is.

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Pirates Morning Report: Any Team In Need Of Mediocre Infielders Just Call The Pirates.

The one positive thing, pretty much the only positive thing, about the Pirates is their abundance of high quality starting pitching. An old adage in baseball is you cannot have enough pitching. However, the Pirate’s front office must feel that you cannot have enough infielders. In the case of infielders, quality is not even a consideration. Here is a list of the players that the Pirates have available to play 2nd, 3rd and shortstop. All of these players are on the 40 man roster and they have played any one of those positions for the Pirates or in the minors. Some of them have played in the outfield but all of them have a decent number of games in the infield. Here is a list of the future Hall of Famers with the position they have played the most in the infield or what I consider their best position: Liover Peguero 2b, Nick Gonzales 2b, Ke’Bryan Hayes 3b, Isiah Kiner-Falefa 3b, Jared Triolo 3b, Enmanuel Valdez 2b, Alika Williams SS, Ji Hwan Bae 2b, Nick Yorke 2b, and finally Tsung-Che Cheng SS. Count them, 10 players for 3 positions. The Pirates also have no. 3 ranked prospect Termar Johnson, who is projected to make his major league debut in 2025, playing, you guessed it, 2b.

These infielders have a lot in common. All of them are below average major league hitters. Half of them are not that good of fielders. The Pirates have 11 infielders that have the potential of being on the team this year. Granted Bae saw practically all of his limited action in 2024 in the outfield but he still has played 69 games at 2b for the Pirates. So, what’s a mother to do. The Pirates only carry 13 position players. It would be shocking if the Pirates wound up only carrying 12 pitchers. Will the Pirates just have a massive DFA party around March 24th? Most likely it would be Hayes, IKF, and Gonzales as the starting infield opening day. Quite frankly, these players would be the only ones that would generate any trade interest. I do not think that you would get much for them but certainly you could get some bullpen pieces. What if the Pirates traded all three of them. The new infield would look something like this, Triolo, Peguero, and Valdez. In reality this is not much of a drop off. When you add both groups’ OPS+ they come out exactly the same at about an average of 73. If Valdez gets off to a rough start, you always have Johnson waiting in the wings. You still have Williams, Chang and Yorke as replacements also. If you are going to get bullpen help, this seems the way to do it.

What do the Chicago Cubs know about Cody Bellinger that nobody else does. They traded him to the Yankees for a pitcher that is 30 years old and has pitched in only 24 major league games in his career. Plus, they had to give the Yankees 5 million dollar. Talk about a salary dump trade. The Pirates had to give up more to acquire Spencer Horwitz who has not had 400 major league at bats. It will be more than interesting to see how Bellinger does in the big apple. Will the Pirates ever pick up somebody and pay him between 15 and 25 million ? Highly unlikely. Let’s just hope they don’t spend another 35 million on garbage. I would rather see them do nothing that just pick up these washed up free agents again. Not only do they not produce but they block the progress of the younger players. One thing is for sure, the Pirates have enough infielders to field 3 teams. The sad thing is it does not matter what players you plug in, the 3 infields are going to perform about the same. Mediocrity is a hard thing to overcome. It may also be a hard thing to trade. Please, answer this cry for help, the other 31 teams in baseball. The Pirates need a right fielder and some bullpen arms. We can only pray.

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Golf: Playing The Game, Part 2

In part 2 of playing the game let us look at the type of shots you need to execute in order to play the game, when to apply them and what to do if you cannot. There are four shots you need to do in order to play the game well. You need to hit the low shot, the high shot, the intentional draw and the intentional fade or cut shot. This is not going to be a how-to article. There are plenty of places you can go online to see how to hit each shot. There are many methods and they all will work. Each player needs to find a method that suits their game best. What this blog is going to be about is when to hit these shots, and the mindset you need to have in order to play the shots. I am going to take the shots in order of difficulty starting with the easiest and finishing up with the most difficult.

Hitting the ball low is by far the easiest of these shots. It is the go to shot on a windy day. In fact, you might want to play the low shot even when playing downwind. Most people would think that you want to hit the ball high when playing downwind. This is true when you are driving the golf ball. However, if you are trying to hit the ball a certain distance then keeping it low is still the way to go. Wind is so unpredictable you want to keep the ball down out of the wind if at all possible. If there is a bunker or a ditch in front of the green, then you will have to go high on the approach shot to the green. Depending on how far you are from the green it still may be better to hit the low shot a little right or left of the green. If the green is open in the front and you are playing on a windy day going low is the best way no matter which way the wind is blowing. You also need to go low if you are too close to trees that you cannot go over. At times when you have to go really low don’t hesitate to hit the driver off the deck to keep the ball low and have it go a fairly decent distance. Even though it is the easiest shot of the group, it is by far, the most important shot of the group. If you are ever going to reach your potential on the golf course, you must be ablet to play the low shot. Go out and find a method and then practice that method until you can hit a low shot with 100% confidence.

The high shot is the next necessary shot if you going to play golf well. Going over trees and bunkers to a green will come up every once in a while, during a round. If you are close enough to the green the high shot takes care of itself because of the loft of the club. There is more skill required if you are trying to hit a fairway wood up to about a 7 iron with some height and maintain the distance. The most dangerous of the high shots is when you are trying to go over trees. If possible, it is always better to go low around or between trees rather than try to go up, unless you have a high skill level on hitting the ball high. The high shot comes in handy but do not overdo it. Most of the time you are better off thinking low rather than high.

Next, we come to working the ball, hitting left to right or right to left. The left to right shot is the easier of the two to hit. The fade or cut shot is a great control shot and has many useful applications during the round. There is one cardinal rule, never curve the ball toward trouble. If there is more trouble on right of a hole than on the left do not hit the fade. The next rule which should be obvious, but most players do not seem to want to do this, is to aim left. If you are going to move the ball from left to right, you have got to give yourself enough room to aim the ball to the left so it will move back to right and end up in the fairway. This is the shot that you can swing fairly hard at. The harder you swing, within reason, the ball will have a tendency to move left to right. You don’t want the ball to curve toward trouble, but you don’t want to have to aim at trouble in order to allow the ball to curve back to the middle of the fairway. There will be times when the best shot to play is fairly straight.

The hardest shot to hit is the draw or the hook. There are situations on the golf course when the draw is by far the best to play. Anytime you want more distance, and the course is wide open, the draw is the shot. When you want an iron to have a little more distance the draw is the shot. A pin on the left side of the green where you can aim to the center of the green and let the ball work toward the pin. This is another shot where you must commit by aiming far enough to the right to allow the ball to work back to the center of the fairway. Draws are harder to control because they will roll further and at can easily snap into the dreaded duck hook. In the execution of the shot, you must swing easier to create the right to left movement that you want. Overall, the draw is not as intuitive as the fade. The rules are the same as they are for the fade but even more so when it comes to not curving the ball toward trouble. This particularly needs to be worked on at the range if you want to try and incorporate it in your game.

I think that anybody with a reasonable game can hit the ball low. It requires a little more skill and guts to hit the high shot in certain situations. Working the ball in different directions takes a lot more skill, time and effort to perfect. So, what are you supposed to do if you lack any of the three. Your game will have to be compromised but it does not mean that you cannot score to your full potential. Every golfer has a certain flight pattern to their normal shots. If your shot pattern is generally left to right, then you have to be more conservative when there is trouble on the right. You should never go flag hunting on pins that are on the left side of the green. If your game is off, you may need to swing a little harder than you normally would. It is the exact opposite for players who have a tendency to draw the ball. When your game is off you may need to swing a little easier. There is advantage in being able to work the ball but is not a game ender for those of you that don’t. For those of you that don’t work the ball the plan for every shot should be low, high, or normal. Always think low when the hole is tight and there is trouble on the right and the left. The final thought should be aggressive or conservative depending on how the hole sets up and where the pin is located. For players that work the ball the addition of right to left or left to right should be added. Playing the game of golf simply means playing to your strengths, avoiding problems until you reach the green or the green area. Once you are there the fun begins. It’s called putting. I will tackle it in the next blog.