This draft featured four name-worthy quarterbacks – Sam Bradford, Tim Tebow, Jimmy Clausen, and Colt McCoy.  It’s noteworthy that both the 49ers and the Raiders had the opportunity to select any one of the last three – a few times, even – and passed.

The Raiders opted instead to trade a 4th-round pick to the Redskins in exchange for Jason Campbell, who was bumped from his starting spot with the arrival of Donovan McNabb in Washington.  Campbell figures to push and perhaps mercifully replace JaMarcus Russell.

The 49ers’ decision to pass on the available QB talent suggests that they are quite content with their trio of Alex Smith, David Carr, and 2009 5th-round pick Nate Davis.

Or does it?

Perhaps there’s another possibility.  Perhaps the Raiders and the 49ers have realized that, although their quarterback situations remain less than ideal, it doesn’t make sense for them to burn precious picks  in the top rounds to acquire a signal-caller.

They only had to look on their own rosters to learn that painful lesson.

The incumbent starters in San Francisco and Oakland - Smith and Russell –  are both former No. 1 overall picks.  Both have been colossal busts thus far in their NFL careers.  Injury prone (Smith), perpetually out of shape (Russell), poor decision-making and a lack of leadership (both) – you name  a quarterbacking attribute, and this duo lacks it.  When the six-year rookie contracts of Russell and Smith are up, the two Bay Area franchises will have paid more than $100 million for some world-class clipboard holding.

To be fair, Smith showed flashes of hope last season when Coach Singletary experimented with a spread offense, the system Smith thrived in at Utah in college.  But Singletary has made no secret of his distaste for air-based offenses and San Francisco’s 2010 draft suggests the team plans to continue toward the conservative ground attack he prefers.

Smith (who turns 26 in May) and Russell (25 in August) are too young to completely give up on.  But their organizations have already had to give up on the hope of earning surplus value from their rookie contracts.

Surplus value is term that’s talked about a lot in baseball economics.  As any fan of a small-market team can tell you, one of the keys to small-market success in MLB is having a few great core players in their first three major-league seasons, when players can be paid the league minimum of $400K.  These star players can produce at a level that would cost their teams millions, on the free-agent market, yet they are paid a fraction of that. 

Similarly, the key to success in the NFL, and any hard-salary cap league, is acquiring these bargains – players who can outperform their contracts.  The most likely source of bargains in the NFL is the draft, and sure enough, perpetually successful teams like the Patriots and Colts are those that covet draft picks and then draft very well.

Russell and Smith, even if they enjoy a mid-career renaissance in their late-20s, stand no chance of outperforming their rookie contracts.  Smith is about to enter the 5th year of a six-year, $49.5 million pact he signed with San Francisco in July 2005.  He may have a small chance of becoming an elite NFL quarterback – but it won’t happen under his current deal.  So far, you’d have to consider the $35M+ the 49ers have invested in him to be wasted money.

Russell’s situation is similar.  After a lengthy hold out, he finally signed a massive six-year deal worth $68 million on September 12, 2007.  The Raiders might as well have lit the first $40M of that deal on fire.  Even with three years left on his rookie deal, Russell stands no chance of outperforming that rookie contract.

One wonders if the Rams are headed down that same dreaded path.  This year’s No. 1 overall, Sam Bradford, figures to sign a six-year deal worth nearly $80 in the coming months, with $40M in guaranteed money.  That’s a hell of an investment in a 22-year-old who played three games last year before having his shoulder operated on. 

It appears other teams continue to be drawn in by the mystique of the franchise quarterback and the temptation to hit a home run on draft day.

Rather than repeat these mistakes, the 49ers and Raiders have chosen to invest in safer top draft picks this season.  They’ve accepted that their quarterback play might be middling this season or worse, but they’ve given themselves better pieces to build around.  

It was a hard, expensive lesson to learn, but it appears they’ve learned it.

3-0, 24 IP, 21 K’s, 2 BB, 1:13 ERA, 0.96 WHIP.

That’s Halladay’s season stat line after his latest brutally efficient outing in Friday night’s win over the Marlins.  As absurd as it sounds, people need to get used to this.  If Halladay remains healthy all season – he’s averaged slightly more than 230 innings pitched the last four years – he could join a very rare fraternity atop the single-season wins leaderboard.

These are the seven pitchers that have won 24 or more games in the last 30 years:

Steve Carlton, 24 in ’80
Dwight Gooden, 24 in ’85
Roger Clemens, 24 in ’86
Frank Viola, 24 wins in ’88
John Smoltz, 24 in ’96
Randy Johnson, 24 in ’02

and…

Bob Welch, with 27(!) wins in ’90.

Welch’s feat is remarkable in the modern day era of strict pitch counts, max effort pitches, ultra-patient hitters, five-man rotations and 35-start seasons for starting pitchers.

(Slight tangent:  If you ever get into a bar-stool argument about “which sports record is the least likely to fall?” you can end the debate pretty quickly by bringing up pitching wins.  No starter is going to match Old Hoss Radbourn’s 59 wins in 1884 or Cy Young’s 511 career wins anytime soon.  You know why?  Because pitchers today don’t have bad-ass names like “Old Hoss Radbourn.”  That name was probably worth half a dozen wins all by itself).

Welch won his 27 games in only 35 starts, and we know Halladay will be working within the same constraints.  Let’s look at how their situations compare:

Welch was great in 1990, but he also benefited from playing in front of one of the truly dominant teams of the last 30 years, the 1990 Oakland A’s, who were upset by the Reds that season in their third consecutive World Series appearance.

Halladay plays for, arguably, the only truly dominant team in the National League, and probably the best offensive club in the NL. With apologies to Tim Lincecum, he’s probably the best pitcher in the game, which will become more apparent now that he’s left the AL East meat grinder and switched to the lighter-hitting Senior Circuit.

Both Welch and Halladay also understand that strikeouts are Fascist.  Welch earned a decision in an incredible 33 of his 35 starts in that 1990 season, which is only possible by consistently pitching deep into games.  To consistently reach the 8th inning against patient, modern-era lineups requires an efficient use of pitches.  Although Halladay has much better stuff than Welch did, he shares the same aversion to walks, and has never come close to striking out a batter per inning in his 11 previous big-league seasons in Toronto.  That pitch-to-contact approach is part of what has enabled Halladay to rack up 25 complete games in the last three seasons.  No middle relievers ever vulture away wins from Doc.

Winning 20+ games requires a lot of luck, being a part of a great team, and obviously being a great pitcher.  Winning 25 or more would require a tornado of positive factors all blowing in the right direction, and Roy Halladay seems to have that in 2010.

Can Doc become only the second pitcher to 25 wins since the 1970′s?  Can he match Welch’s incredible 27-win season?

Time will tell.  But you can expect national columns about “Old Hoss Halladay” and the chase all summer long.  Consider yourself warned.

Bad news for Thunder fans, so sayeth the common wisdom.  Basketball blogs have been saying for weeks that every other West team simply wanted to avoid that first-round date with LA.

So will this match-up produce the typical #1 seed vs. #8 yawn-fest?

Not so fast.

We’ll break this series down in greater detail from a few different perspectives later this week, but here’s a couple of quick LAL/OKC thoughts to chew on:

*First of all, it never makes sense to me that bloggers, fans and beat writers obsess over first-round matchups and seeding at the bottom end of the bracket.  Of course, home-court advantage is critical, and so the focus on the jockeying at the top of the playoff bracket is worthy of attention.  But why should the Thunder or their fans care whether they are the sixth, seventh, or eighth seed?   Either way they will need to beat the best to be the best.  Sure enough, year after year, players always say as much whenever they are interviewed on this question.  Here’s a mind-numbing thought for Thunder fans:  if you harbor even the faintest hopes of your team winning the title this season, perhaps you’d actually prefer to face the defending champs in the first round.  With Andrew Bynum out indefinitely and the Lakers having lost six of their last 10, there’s no time like the present to attempt the impossible.  And again, either way, they would need to eventually beat the best to be the best.

*This will be Kevin Durant’s first career trip to the postseason, no doubt the first of many.  The Durantula’s breakout season will end with his first career scoring title, 30 points per game, and a likely top-3 finish in MVP voting.  It might end with a thud, though, when Ron Artest and Kobe Bryant take turns pushing, shoving, and elbowing him all series.  Durant Twittered earlier this year that Artest was the toughest defender he’s faced; can the slender forward withstand that punishment and still provide 35-40% of the Thunder’s offense in a six or seven-game series?  I don’t think so.  Phil Jackson and his staff have a week to prepare for this young man, and then a two-week series to analyze and make adjustments to his every movement.  Think about this:  Durant has probably never had an opponent prepare for him as much as the Lakers are about to.

*Thunder coach Scotty Brooks is a front-runner for Coach of the Year, and is widely respected for both the effort his team plays with and his X’s and O’s.   Can he out-coach Jackson in a seven-game series?  He would have to for OKC to have a chance to win.

*Derek Fisher can’t chase down lightning-quick point guards anymore.  Russell Westbrook is a lightning quick point guard.  However, Westbrook is turnover-prone and a bad shooter, and I think Fisher has enough veteran guile to avoid being badly outplayed in this matchup.

*Remember this name:  Thabo Sefalosha.  If you’re a casual NBA fan, he might be the best player you’ve never heard of.  But you’re about to hear his name a lot, because his performance might be the difference in this series. Who is he?  Sefalosha is OKC’s shooting guard, and arguably the best perimeter defender in the NBA. He will be guarding Kobe for 40 minutes a night in this series, and his defense will be the difference between blowouts in the Lakers’ favor and close games that the Thunder has a chance of winning with a few breaks.  No pressure, Thabo – you just have to slow down one of the two best players in the world. Can he force Kobe to take 30 shots to get his 30 points?

*An 8-seed has beaten a 1-seed only once in the history of the seven-game first-round format, and that was during the 2007 playoffs when the Warriors upset the Mavs.   The lightning-quick Warriors played uber-small ball and gave Dallas fits at the offensive end, as Dirk and Dampier hopelessly lumbered after a barrage of three-point bombers. Perhaps the Lakers share a few parallels to those Mavs: an aging, star-filled team, prone to lapses in concentration, with a soft 7-foot scorer, facing a smallish, young upstart team that’s willing to go through a brick wall for its coach.

But there’s one huge difference – the Mavs’ best player (Dirk) was a defensive liability in that series, and Kobe is one of the best defenders in the game.  I think that he and Artest will combine to make Durant’s first postseason into a trip that he will soon hope to forget.

Lakers in five, closing it out on their own home floor.