SporTech Matter

I’m torn. I’m acting like a selfish little brat right now. I should be happy for Joe Girardi on grabbing the New York Yankees managerial position, but I’m not. Call me a bitter Marlins fan, but what should have been a follow up season to build on turned out to be a major step backwards. I can’t help but wonder if it’s partially the managers fault. It’s not Joe Girardi’s fault, he was shoved out the door by the puppet master nor his fault the Marlins took a step backwards.

The fact is we had our manager and we had him cheap. That’s something the Marlins are unable to do often. Get there man and afford him at the same time. It’s the knack of the front office to chew up guys and spit them out when they can’t afford them. This wasn’t the case. This was a case of Girardi being Loria’s guy and Fredi being Beinfest’s guy. Obviously Loria has the say and took Girardi. They butted heads midseason and we saw how that turned out. Girardi and company yelling from the dugout for Loria to shut the hell up doesn’t help either. I really don’t care what Loria thinks when it comes to Joe Girardi, the man knew how to get his guys ready to play and play disciplined. That’s something we missed this season with Fredi Gonzalez manning the pine.

Is it right for me to act like a selfish Marlins fan? I don’t think it’s right but I do HAVE the right. Joe Girardi has been walking around for the past year and a half with a chip on his shoulder and finally gets to show his managerial skills in the bright lights. I wish nothing but the best for Joe Girardi in New York City and hopefully he can find the same success that Joe Torre did for the last 12 years.

How do you feel about Joe heading off to New York?

…For designing a game that still has the Dolphin’s as an elite team. Enough already. When I buy my new copy of Madden each year (it literally has become something I must do like pay taxes every year) I expect the teams to be equal or close to the skill level in real life. Now I understand these games are released BEFORE the regular season, but how about the EA people release a “Wooops Your Team Sucks Patch” over the internet. That way I do not have to get a sense of false hope this season because Daunte Culpepper just threw for 450 and 5 TD’s against the Baltimore Ravens in Madden 08. Boom! Stop teasing me Madden. What’s my point? Well it’s the new ESPN Madden 08 Forecaster. Man talk about a lush job. Here is your assignment for the week JD. Load up Madden 08 on PS3 and simulate all of this week’s scheduled NFL games and write a report about each result. Take a fancy screenshot and copy and paste the statistics. Here is what you get for the Dolphins/Texans tilt this weekend…

Dolphins 27 - Texans 16

It took five weeks but Miami’s first-year head coach Cam Cameron finally has a win under his belt. Led by Ronnie Brown’s 120-yard, two-touchdown day, the Dolphins upset Houston, 27-16, at Reliant Stadium in Houston.

First win. Heh. One can only hope.

Check the full prediction here along with the rest of the Week 5 matchups.

”We had some fire,” Ross said. ‘Everybody was talking. Everybody was saying things to pump each other up. `We’re going to send ‘em home’ and ‘They’re going home with us.’ Foxy [first base coach Andy Fox] was running around saying, ‘C’mon guys. You don’t have to play good for the rest of the season. But, today, we have to win this game.’ We were definitely pumped.”

Even though the Marlins were able to send the Phillies to the playoffs, who happen to be even a bigger foe than the Mets, they feel gratification knowing they were able to spoil someone else’s plans. Dontrelle Willis is especially happy for his good buddy J-Roll…

“I’m happy for (the Phillies). I have a very close friend of mine that I grew up with on that team,” Willis said, referring to Jimmy Rollins. “I’m sure he’s thanking me right now.”

While I’m pretty upset the Phillies will be heading to the playoffs, I’m glad they are doing it at the expense of the New York Mets, who with all the cockiness year in and year out, are turning into a bunch of overpaid, lazy superstars who fell flat on their faces.

So this one is for you, Mr Met fan who comes out to Dolphin Stadium and curses in front of four year old kids.. You stay classy and enjoy the offseason.

Stay tuned this week for my 2007 Florida Marlins year in review.

This man should have 8th inning duties.

I know I know. Pummel me know with insults. I claimed weeks ago when Armando settled into his 8th inning role after being acquired from the Giants that the Marlins had one of the best back ends of the bullpen in the National League. It looks like the luster has worn off and Armando needs to be moved. It was known that the Marlins were shopping Armando towards the deadline so he probably wouldn’t have been with the club if Beinfest and company could have found any drunk GM’s to pick him up. After last nights blown lead, I have had it with settling for mediocrity. The time to let guys “find their groove” and “get back the confidence” has passed a long time ago. It’s time to win. Win now and win at all costs. That means not worrying about Benitez’s feelings and telling him he is being pulled from the 8th inning role. The problem? Well I think the problem was told in Fredi Gonzalez’s post game comments after last nights tough 4-3 loss. When asked about giving Armando his support, Fredi responded with the following…

Manager Fredi Gonzalez fell well short of giving Benitez unconditional support after the game. Asked if he has considered using Justin Miller in the eighth inning instead of Benitez, Gonzalez said: “I’ve been thinking about a lot of stuff.”

This quote speaks volumes of the state of the Marlins. It reminds me of the way the A’s were run in the book Moneyball. The FO calling the shots down to the manager. I suspect this is what is going on with the Fish. Fredi knows Armando is not his 8th inning guy but has no choice. You probably ask why? Armando is not being paid that much as the Giants picked up the majority of his contract when he was shipped over here. The front office has “their guys” and refuses to admit publicly that they made some horrible free agent acquisitions this offseason. Now obviously Loria and company are not going to call a press conference to announce that they as an organization, screwed up. But what they will not do is allow them to be shown up on the field by Fredi Gonzalez, who wants to win and win at all costs. Winning probably means moving someone who has handled the bullpen and pressure situations into a more important role like the 8th inning. This guy is Justin Miller. Over the last 30 days JM has pretty much been untouchable. Check out the comparisons of JM and Armando the Cabana Boy over the last 30 days…

Now take a look at the overall comparison for the year, giving you an idea of just how effective Justin Miller has been this season…

Now I’m no manager but I’m pretty sure that common sense says that Justin Miller should be your 8th inning guy. An inning that has proven to be more important for our bullpen than any other inning.

While we continue to throw away games because Loria and company are too stubborn to do the right thing, Justin Miller is being wasted in the 7th inning with no runners on base.

If Loria would just stop playing the role of Puppet Master and loosen the strings on Fredi, we might actually have 6-8 more wins this season.

I’m starting to think Loria requires a “big name” in the late innings because that’s what fans want to see. Hate to break the news to you Jeffrey, he wore out his welcome weeks ago and he isn’t putting anymore asses in the seats than Justin Miller would.

Do the right thing for the team, not your wallet.

”It’s very disappointing,” team president David Samson said Saturday after Cabrera failed to appear at the team’s annual FanFest at Dolphin Stadium. “[Owner Jeffrey Loria] and the rest of us are very disappointed that he’s not here with every one of his teammates. All the players are here except Miguel.

“We have tried to contact him and we were told he couldn’t be here for personal reasons or whatever the case was. Hopefully, when we see him, he will explain to us and the fans why he wasn’t.”

Excuse my language, but perhaps he is sick and tired of being dicked around by this organization, and is trying to send a message. Any other team would have backed the Brinks truck into this kids driveway already and unleashed an Albert Pujols type contract at him, only to avoid his arbitration years. What I find most dissapointing is this kid is the future of baseball, in fact could be the best player in baseball for the next 5-10 years. He is only getting better and hasn’t even come close to hitting his prime yet, and hasn’t been treated accordingly.

Now don’t get me wrong, I feel Cabs should have attended the Fan Fest (for the fans), but at the same time I can’t hold it against him as he is only looking out for his best interests. What worries me is the way Loria conducts business. We are not the only small market team in the league, and others have no problem locking up there premier talent to long term deals. For example the Twins just took care of Joe Mauer and even the Rays took care of Carl Crawford a few years ago. The freakin Rays? Why can’t the Marlins follow suit? The real issue here is that Dontrelle is making more money then Cabs, and isn’t near the talent that Cabrera is. Pitchers get hurt all the time, Dontrelle is bound to. Cabs is pretty healthy and hasn’t shown an issue with injuries up until now. So why not tie Cabrera up for the longterm, make him the Dwyane Wade of the Marlins, and flip Dontrelle in a trade to bring in young, ready talent (bullpen and CF options).

The bottomline is nothing will be done until Loria and his troll of an assistant are gone. This club needs an owner change badly. What are your thoughts if any?

Good afternoon Matterites! Just wanted to fill you in on some things I’ve been working on as far as updating the blog and other Saturday matter. So while you read these updates I encourage you to listen to some entertaining audio courtesy of the Dan Le Batard show. Click on the audio player below and read the updates…

• If you remember I had a link in the header for South Florida Sports feeds. I decided to remove that seeing as most of the important news is reported right on this blog by myself. I replaced it with a new photo stream link pulling up to the minute shots from the Associated Press and Getty Images for the Dolphins, Heat, Marlins and Panthers. Feel free to browse through these daily as they contain game photos and event photos for our favorite teams. Enjoy!

• I also added some commenting quicktags in the comment section for posts. This will make it easy for you to quote text, bold, italicize, and underline text. Just another feature to make your life easier. Now you will sleep well at night.

• I have reorganized my blogroll in categories now to make it easier for you to view external sites for our favorite teams! If you are interested in being added to the SporTech Matter blogroll and would like to exchange links, hit me up in the comments or on the SporTech contact form. You can find the blogroll on the sidebar towards the bottom of the page.

• This site is best viewed in Firefox. Just in case your still using that POS browser IE. Just thought I would let you know.

• One last note. I have signed up to some new blog directory sites to get some extra viewers and get the site noticed in other parts of the country. One of them has a voting option where your blog can be nominated to the top. So do me a favor, vote for SporTech Matter and vote often. Just follow the button below and the instructions. Thanks to all that vote!!

  The first site is TopBlogging.com. Click the button below to vote for SporTech Matter.
  
  

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Thanks everyone!!!

There was an unfortunate situation at the Matter this weekend as the website was exploited by some crazy Jihad anti-semite mother f&*(%$#@#. So I am here to warn webmasters and blog users to stay away from the chat script FlashChat. Some of you might remember this chat script from the NBA playoffs where some of us had a great time talking trash during the game. There is a huge vulnerability located in one of the scripts. I do apologize to anyone who might have been subjected to the obscene material that was posted on my site. I was so pissed off and offended I didn’t even take the time to read the hacked files and just deleted them. The server man took care of the issue and I got the site cleaned up today. Luckily no posts were lost and in fact nothing was lost except my admin access.

So again I warn all webmasters to stay away from FlashChat until they resolve the problem. Even then I would recommend checking out other resources for chat scripts.

Welcome back to those who actually read this site!

[FLASHCHAT FORUM VULNERABILITY]
[EXPLOIT INFO @ SECURITYDOT]

So the business trip continues. Today was the first day of the Expo and boy was it tiring. The show started at 10:00 AM and ran until around 5:00 PM. By that time my feet were numb from standing all day and my head was spinning from talking to law enforcement all day. So I sit here in the Airport Sheridan Lounge using some wifi to post some new pictures of the day. Got some pretty cool ones here.

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Here is a snapshot of a hovercraft on display by one of the law enforcement agencies present at the show. This crazy guy running the booth tried to get me to climb into this thing like it was sitting on Santa Claus’ lap for a picture at the mall. This thing was amazing in person. The back propeller can shoot gusts of wind out the back at 100+ MPH. I wouldn’t ride behind this thing if I were you.

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This chopper here was on display right across from our booth (not to mention the crazy dudes right across from us using tasers on each other, good times) and I just couldn’t help myself snapping it. Would you? Anyways this chopper is a Cleveland Police Department McDonnell Douglas MD500E. I was so amazed by the inside and outside of this chopper. Unfortunatley my camera batteries died and I couldn’t get pictures of the inside. I will have those available Friday sometime.

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So here is a picture of our booth. It’s the typical trade show booth with a nice graphic back drop and lighting. I would have to say we have one of the nicer booths at the expo. We got some excellent reactions to our Cellular Jamming backdrop. We run into a Catch 22 when it comes to our CellJammers. Since this show is filled with tons of local government such as the Ohio Police force and the Cleveland Police, we cannot legally give them any information on the product or sell it. Only federal goverment is allowed to inquire. So we are forced to give people the run around since the FCC sucks.

You can check out the rest of the Cleveland photos in the SporTech Gallery.

So that is my story for the day. I am exausted b/c I can’t sleep in hotels well and the show wiped me out. Probably won’t get a post from me tomorrow as day 2 of the show will take all my time and then we head back to sunny Ft Lauderdale for a midnight arrival.

I will update the Fantasy Football info for all users interested to finally sign up and choose team names. Just be patient I will get to this at the latest Saturday. To steal a line from my buddy The Dude and Jerry Springer, “Take care of yourself, and each other”

[CLEVELAND, DAY 1]

So I am in Cleveland, Ohio for the 2006 Enforcement Expo for my company I work for, CellAntenna Corporation. Basically it’s a trade show to demonstrate our Cellular Jamming and Cellular Repeater products. We get to talk with other people in the industry and generate great leads for our sales staff. What does this have to do with SporTech you ask? Nothing at all other then I will be out of town until Friday and posts might be at a minimum while I gone. We should get some more great tech and Tour posts from Mike aswell.

So in the meantime I will try to post some stuff. You can still sign up for the SporTech Fantasy Football league. I will try to post some pictures as my days pass.

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Here is a shot from my hotel room. Really stimulating stuff huh? I have a day shot and a night shot. Oooooooh, aaaaahhhhh! Click the thumbnail to enlarge the picture in the photo gallery. You can also check out my Vacation gallery as I update it daily with pictures. Should have some great pictures from the Enforcement Expo tomorrow.

Enjoy the week and in the meantime check out the SporTech Live Archives or the Picture Gallery. Be back Friday!

Tasteful, yet boring.

[ASTROS GET RINGS]
[WHITE SOX GET RINGS]