Braves Acquire Javy Vazquez

Good afternoon WaBs, hope your Wednesday is going well so far.  I can’t really say the same, I’ve come down with a cold in the last couple days and Finals week is looming.  Now, having said that, the sports world does not stop for Finals, so here we go.

First, good read over at ESPN.com about Coach Fulmer’s last day as Tennessee’s Head Coach.  He seems like a good guy, I wish him the best.

Second, the Braves and the White Sox struck a deal last night to pitchers Javier Vazquez and Boone Logan to the Braves for five prospects, most notably Tyler Flowers and Brent Lillibridge.  As a Braves fan, I’m happy with the deal.  We have a pretty clear need for pitching and Vazquez will provide about 200 above average (albeit not by much) innings for us. Vazquez has always been kind of a career underachiever.  He has great stuff and just can’t seem to put it all together and have that great season we’re all waiting for.  He does average about 200 strikeouts over the course of the season.  It will be interesting to see how the Braves plan on rounding out their rotation.  They apparently have a 5-year offer out to AJ Burnett and I still wouldn’t rule out Jake Peavy.  They didn’t surrender any of the the players who were to be included in that deal, so it may still happen.

I spoke with commenter and Sox fan NickSwagger last night about his thoughts on the trade.  He seemed pretty happy with the deal, mostly because of monster catching prospect Tyler Flowers.  Flowers, who will be 23 in January, has absolutely destroyed pitching the Arizona Fall League this year.  He’s hitting .387 with 12 homers and 23 RBIs in only 20 games.  Granted, that’s only 20 games and the AFL is generally a hitter-friendly league, but those lofty numbers can’t be ignored.  I’m okay with including him in the deal because he’s blocked by another pretty good, young catcher named Brian McCann.

Anyway, I’m going to take a nap.  I ran out of crackers and water so I have no reason to stay awake anymore.

2008 NFL Power Rankings (Week 13)

While looking at how the rankings have changed from the “LW” column, keep in mind that I haven’t put up power rankings since week 11, so those previous rankings are from two weeks ago and weren’t just affected by this past week of games.

Rank	LW	Team	W	L	T	SOS	PD/G	Avg Rnk	Score
1	2	NY Giants	11	1	0	47.31	12.17	1.06	1221.0927
2	1	Tennessee	11	1	0	44.45	10.75	2.25	516.1139
3	4	Pittsburgh	9	3	0	48.43	8.25	2.88	328.4817
4	5	Tampa Bay	9	3	0	47.42	6.67	4.31	201.3632
5	8	Indianapolis	8	4	0	51.54	0.58	5.69	110.7575
6	3	Carolina	9	3	0	47.24	4.50	7.13	110.6411
7	7	NY Jets	8	4	0	46.41	6.00	7.75	94.8161
8	9	Baltimore	8	4	0	49.82	8.50	9.44	92.3815
9	13	Atlanta	8	4	0	47.47	4.67	8.13	87.3123
10	12	Dallas	8	4	0	47.52	3.25	8.63	77.1339
11	6	Arizona	7	5	0	49.87	2.08	12.44	46.3894
12	11	New England	7	5	0	49.24	1.83	12.19	46.1537
13	20	Minnesota	7	5	0	51.05	2.25	13.81	43.1192
14	16	Philadelphia	6	5	1	50.51	5.83	15.94	40.4850
15	10	Washington	7	5	0	50.96	-1.17	13.56	36.3478
16	14	Miami	7	5	0	46.98	-0.33	14.38	33.2037
17	17	Denver	7	5	0	46.94	-2.25	14.44	29.3968
18	19	New Orleans	6	6	0	50.77	3.00	18.31	28.7639
19	18	Chicago	6	6	0	50.18	1.08	18.50	25.5421
20	15	Green Bay	5	7	0	53.82	3.25	20.44	23.0422
21	21	Buffalo	6	6	0	42.10	1.42	21.00	19.2123
22	25	Houston	5	7	0	50.05	-2.33	21.88	14.6972
23	22	San Diego	4	8	0	52.90	1.33	23.00	14.6306
24	24	Cleveland	4	8	0	54.26	-2.83	24.69	10.9283
25	23	Jacksonville	4	8	0	50.67	-2.42	24.38	10.6248
26	26	San Francisco	4	8	0	46.28	-4.25	28.50	7.3074
27	28	Oakland	3	9	0	50.29	-7.75	28.06	4.4802
28	27	Seattle	2	10	0	51.10	-7.92	25.31	3.3085
29	30	Kansas City	2	10	0	53.17	-10.33	28.38	2.3163
30	29	Cincinnati	1	10	1	58.76	-13.25	30.19	1.0949
31	31	St. Louis	2	10	0	52.38	-16.75	29.38	0.2972
32	32	Detroit	0	12	0	53.65	-15.83	32.00	0.0321

Legend: W-Wins, L-Losses, T-Ties, SOS-Strength of Schedule, PD/G- Point Differential per Game, Score-The number my formula gave me for each team.

Let me know what you think of my formula.