Kevin Youkilis, Shin Soo Choo, Daryl "Moose" Johnston, and now Nelson Cruz.

What do these guys all have in common?  Besides being pretty studly players for their respective teams they have names that can cleverly be pronounced to sound like booing.  I have been trying to start it the last few trips out to the ballpark but I'm going to need the help of LSB.  The "boo" style chant for a player sounds awesome on TV and it's always hilarious to hear clueless fans say "why are they booing their own player??"  We gotta start doing this for Cruz and we can all be part of starting this timeless cheer.  This has potential to be up there with the O'Day chant for the best thing about going out the ballpark.  I'm going to continue to shout "Cruuuuuuz" each time he comes up to bat as well as after he makes a good defensive play.  Let’s get loud and show our support for the phenomenal year Cruz is having.  Another great name that this chant would work with is "JeffWooWoo." WooooWooooo!

Maybe it's not a smart idea, but I just can't help but think with our current roster and depth in the farm it is a bad idea to throw away 2009 and really "go for it" in 2010 and beyond.  While I think our current plan will probably be successful for the 2010 and even more so in 2011 and beyond, I think we could easily field a team that would compete for an AL West title, especially considering how weak the other teams in our division currently are.  Now that Michael Young has agreed to play 3rd Base our biggest hole as far as the lineup is concerned would be Elvis Andrus at SS.  I know he is a very well regarded prospect and management really likes him, but I would seriously consider selling high on him.  Even in a best case scenario Elvis probably won't be an All-Star shortstop in 2009, and a worst case scenario he shows that he is unable to hit major league pitching and lowers his value significantally during 2009.  By packaging him with whoever management deems the odd man out of our overcrowded outfield (whether that be Byrd, Murphy, Cruz, Borbon, or Beltre) as well as possibly a young arm, and/or one of our catchers.  My original idea was Feliz, Andrus, MaxRam, and Borbon/Beltre for Hanley Ramirez and Ricky Nolasco.  This would be upgrading two of our blue chip prospects (Andrus/Feliz) into proven all-star level players by only giving up players in areas of depth(outfield, catcher).  Not sure if the Marlins would bite on a trade like that, but I have seen crazier things happen, and with the Marlins tiny payroll, getting four guys with bright futures with minimal salaries would probably be very appealing to them.  I think there are other similar deals that could be explored with us giving up Elvis + Beltre + one of our arms preferably not Feliz/Holland, for a stud proven SS. 

To put the icing on the cake we would just need to sign Ben Sheets and then we are set.  We all are excited for our dominant mostly young infield of Davis/Kinsler/Andrus/Young but most accept that Andrus won't be a star player until 2010 and beyond.  Why not package him with some other palyers who may be unable to ever find an open spot in our lineup but could be very valuable to other teams for someone who could help us win this year.  

Disclaimer...The only reason I was willing to trade Feliz in my very hypothetical trade scenario  is because we were gettin back a front of the rotation starter, I would not give up our future aces for anythign less than that. 

So what do yall think? Should we just wait for Andrus to go through his rookie lumps and wait til 2010 to truly compete, or would selling high and getting a more proven guy to help us compete in 2009 be a wise move?  Either way the future is bright!

This is my first post here, I'm going to lay out a few thoughts on my mind about the whole T.O. Jason Witten drama. 

The media likes to make T.O. out to be the bad guy in every situation always.  Matt Jones is caught doing cocaine, everyone forgets about it.  Plaxico shoots himself with an illegal firearm, and that's big news, until something happens with Terrell Owens, and then who cares about Plax.  For a guy that has no criminal record, and by the NFL standards is quite the choir boy off the field, he sure does have a bad reputation.  I would guess that most fans of football, and even a majority of Cowboy's fans would consider T.O. a bad guy, and honestly I cannot figure out why, except for them buying into what ESPN tells them to think.  One thing I love about T.O. is the way he loses.  When he loses you can tell he is hurting, he wanted to win so bad, and he is insulted when he loses.  As a fan I love that cause thats the same way I feel when my Boys lose, it hurts, and I hate seeing Romo smiling when he throws a pick to lose the game, and him just shaking it off as another loss.  I want my players to be hurting more than me, and I want my quarterback to come out (much like Tebow did after the Ole Miss game) and say that it was an unacceptable performance and say it won't happen again, that they'll work extra hard to make sure they don't have that losing taste in their mouth again.  I see that out of T.O.  I don't see that from most of the other guys on our team.

Ok so I finished finals yesterday and while watching ESPN I decided to take a deeper look into T.O. and Jason Witten's numbers and how they related to the team's success.  Offensive players don't really have much say on how many points the defense allows (other than turnovers and time of possession) so I didn't focus on wins and losses I focused on the # of points the Cowboys scored in each game.  The offense's best way of insuring victory is putting a butt-load of points on the board so I analyzed the yards per game for each player and how many points we scored in each game.  Might sound kind of confusing, but I basically graphed T.O.'s yards and Jason Witten's yards and the points scored each game this season, and then found the correlation between each players yards and the amount of points we scored.  The resulting correlations were as follows:

Terrell Owens: 0.4296

Jason Witten: 0.3718

Just for comparison's sake I took some other teams that had both a receiver and tight end with significant amounts of yards and looked at their correlations:

Santana Moss: 0.4556                   Andre Johnson: 0.1865

Chris Cooley:   0.1333                    Owen Daniels:  0.0011

This might seem a little confusing, but basically what it means is how dependent is the amount of points our offense scores on how many yards each player gets.  As you can see on all 3 teams, the Cowboys, Redskins, and Texans, the #1 Wide receiver was more likely to have a high correlation between yards and points.  I think this is simply because when playing against a good defense they are more likely to shut down your #1 threat, and force you to dump it off to your tight end.  I truly think T.O. is done being the whiner that he was in Philly and San Fran, and he really just wants to win.  He is reaching the end of his career, and all he wants is the ring.  He knows that when he has a lot of yards, the offense is explosive and dominates teams.  When he doesn't get the ball the offense is much more likely to lay an egg of a game.  Based on these numbers it would seem obvious for an offensive coordinator to design his game plan to get his wide receiver the ball, and for a team fortunate enough to have a stud #2 receiver like Roy Williams, it would seem like a pretty simple task to get the ball into one of their hands, whether it be T.O. or Roy Williams.  Unfortunately our offense continuously seems to focus on Jason Witten, and he leads the team in catches (although T.O. has been targeted a couple more times, the lack of Roy Williams inclusion in the game plan is befuddling). 

In our 5 losses this season Jason Witten has had more yards in 4 of them.  The one loss where T.O. had more yards in was the blowout loss to NYG (T.O. had 36 yards, and Witten was held catch-less).  In the other 4 losses Witten had significantly more yards (20.25 yards a game more).  Maybe that is a coincidence, maybe that would be true for a majority of teams, when their tight end outperforms their #1 wide receiver one would think that that something went wrong.  Well it has happened in 9 out of 13 games for the Cowboys.  We are 5-4 in games Witten outgains T.O. and 3-1 in games where T.O. outgains Witten.  2 of the games that T.O. outgained Witten were Brad Johnson starts, with us going 1-1 in those, and we are 2-0 when T.O. outgains Witten with Romo as our quarterback.  All these things seem to me to show us one thing, get T.O. the ball, stop focusing on Witten so much, and good things will happen. 

One last note (sorry this is a little lengthy but a lot has been on my mind): 

I took the last 6 Super Bowl Champions and took their tight end and how many yards he gained during that season.  Here's what it looks like...

• 2008-Giants-Boss-118
• 2007-Colts-Clark-367
• 2006-Steelers-Miller-459
• 2005-Patriots-Graham-364
• 2004-Patriots-Graham-409
• 2003-Buccaneers-Dilger-343

And for comparison's sake Witten through 13 games for the Cowboys this season has 771 yards.  I'm not going to go so far as to say the Tight End is unnecessary and a bad thing, because I think that having a great Tight End can help you out a lot in certain situations, but go back and think of the most explosive offensives in recent history, and how many great tight ends do you see on those teams?  I think the tight end has become the most overrated position on a team, and should be viewed much more like a full back is (nice player, can help you out, but nothing to build a team around) than a wide receiver is.  Another interesting list to look at is the teams with the "best tight ends" in football this year and just think about their offenses:

• Kansas City
• Dallas
• Washington
• Houston
• Oakland
• Indianapolis
• San Diego
• Seattle

How many of those offenses really scare you?  Dallas, Indianapolis, maybe Houston, or Washington, but only because of the possibility of a dominant run game.  Tight Ends have become superfluous pieces for explosive offenses, and it makes me mad that we wasted a 2nd round pick on Martellus Bennett (who seems to be a nice tight end, but certainly not worth of a 2nd round pick), after Bill Parcells had wasted a 2nd round pick on Anthony Fasano just a few years ago.  And I will agree that the blocking Tight Ends do is very important, but I am pretty much saying that tight ends should be viewed as blockers first, and pass catchers second, not the other way around. 

Get the ball to Terrell Owens Sunday night, and the Cowboys will get a victory.  Stick to throwing the ball at Jason Witten and our season is over...