Periphery of Sports

There's not much going on, at least on the surface, of Detroit Sports. Well, not until the Big Dance starts anyway. But there are tons of things happening in what I'll call the "Periphery of Sports". For example...
 

Yep. Miami, Detroit, others. But $ for DEs isn't there across the board. RT @brooklynpod: anyone shown any real interest in Osi?
— Mike Garafolo (@MikeGarafolo) March 18, 2013

Via Twitter a fan asked USA Today writer Mike Garafolo if there were any teams interested in signing Giants DE Osi Umenyiora. Osi might not FIX the Lions' hole at DE, but he would go a long way towards plugging it up for a couple more years. The Lions are also getting a couple compensatory picks this draft, putting them back in the 4th round and giving them 8 picks in total. So that's good.

The Pistons lost again, sliding them potentially into the 5th spot in the draft. So that's good, I guess. There was also good news regarding Drummond's recovery. At least good for me, since I'm going to a game April 15th and want to see the kid play. ESPN's Rumors section also postulated a return for Drummond in the "near future". Personally I'm leery of news articles with question marks in the headline, and the Rumors section is full of those.

Jacob Turner - the elite pitching prospect the Tigers traded last summer for Anibal Sanchez and Omar Infante - is apparently not doing too well, and may lose his rotation spot. He may pan out in another year or 2, but the Tigers are built to win NOW. Thankfully they jumped on the opportunity to grab a couple good players, and as the saying goes, "there's no such thing as a pitching prospect".

I'm going to try to keep this blog relatively free of references to my fantasy baseball team because really, you probably don't care. Sometimes I can't help myself though. We're allowed to keep 5 players a maximum of 3 years each, and here's the list of the top players currently available (in order as ranked by CBS Sportsline):

• Edwin Encarnacion, 1B - hit 42 HRs last year
• RA Dickey, SP - had a season pretty comparable to Verlander's, won NL Cy Young
• Robinson Cano, 2B - best 2nd sacker in the game
• Verlander, SP - arguably should've won the CY Young last year
• Adam Jones, OF - gives you good production in all 5 categories
• David Price, SP - managed to beat Verlander for the AL Cy Young
• Curtis Granderson, OF - injured, but not enough for me to drop him more than a couple spots
• Michael Bourne, OF - crazy steals
• Felix Hernandez, SP - really good, unfortunately still plays for Seattle
• Alex Gordon, OF - 5 category guy with better teammates this year

There are 12 owners, but that's a pretty strong first round. I left out Melky Cabrera because of the steroid thing (and I don't think he's likely to duplicate last year's success) and Derek Jeter (coming off an injury, also don't think he'll duplicate last year). Anyway, I'm pretty stoked by the pitchers available. 2 of them won the Cy Young last year, Verlander won in in 2011 and Hernandez won in 2010. 

Anyway, my dad and I are doing our research this weekend and our draft is Sunday. I'll probably post about it again on Monday next week and hopefully lay off it for a while.

Last but not least, I would be remiss to mention my wife coming out & supporting me in the 10k on Sunday. It was pretty cold & windy and she saw me off, cheered me on at about the 3 mile mark (which helped me keep a good pace), and then at the finish line. It means a lot to have someone you know & love cheering for you, so if you're into running or any other kind of competition, marry somebody super supportive. Free advice for the day.