Get to Know: Bud Norris

East Coast Bias favorite Bud Norris:

The only player in our league that is also a manager's profile picture.

Bud Norris is one of my guys.  Just like Lance Berkman is one of Chuck's guys and Ed Wade is one of Ron's guys.  Unfortunately, Curt nabbed him with the last pick in the last round.  Although I appreciate how fitting it was to have Bud fill the role of Mr. Irrelevant, it was a crushing blow to the morale of Marginal Futility.  Not since a young Jorge de la Rosa was flying under the radar with a K/IP over 1 has this kind of talent been so unappreciated.  Granted, the wins are hard to come by in Houston but he's been slapping up solid performance after solid performance - while hitting a Jason Marquis-like .286.

Chad Billingsley 2.0?

Among his comparables through the age of 25 are luminaries such as Cliff Lee, Micah Owings, and Boof Bonser.  Be on the lookout for a blockbuster Bud Norris trade in ECB over the summer...

106 MPH?

Aroldis Chapman hit 106 according to the home gun:

Pitch f/x respectfully disagrees at 102.4 mph.

My concern in all this?  That the tattoo is safe... for now.

Basking in the Power of Espinosa

That's me in the circle during Espinosa's three-run jack in game one of yesterday's doubleheader with the Brew Crew.  It's been long enough since the Nats swept a series that I'm posting it in celebration.  And also because Curt mocked my middle infield of Espinosa and Desmond.  It's too bad I had a jacket on because the Chien-Ming Wang j-shirt I was wearing always looks good on TV.

Early Lessons

Still maybe a little too early to start drawing lessons from the 2011 season.  It's never too early to restate the things we already knew and call them lessons, though.  In that spirit, we can safely say that ST stats don't indicate much of anything.  Either the good:

Leading the Majors in spring training HRs apparently doesn't get you anything.

Or the bad:

I can't wait for Garcia to get old enough so I can refer to him as a crafty lefty.

However, the ugly in ST still tends to be the ugly in the regular season:

The NL's most embarrassing closer - he's no Joel Hanrahan.

A (Brief) Nod to the AL

Just because we're NL snobs, doesn't mean we ignore the genuinely good stories that come from the JV.  On that note, the Mid-Atlantic region is abuzz right now with a little something called 'Orioles Magic':

A 'Rule 5'-Type Draft!

It was unanimous - Rule 5-type draft here we come.  It will happen over the AS break with the basic rules as outlined below.  That should give me enough time to come up with a name that is slightly better than 'Rule 5-type draft.'  The only thing I can think of that I wasn't explicit about in the previous post was that a player can only be selected once.

I've been out of town or I would have posted this on the official day: