Note: With expanded rosters, space is limited, so we did our best to include only the non-bozos. With these two teams, that’s a hard choice.
Cubs
Brewers
Bears Offense vs. Packers Defense
Bears Defense vs. Packers Offense
Well, hope it was all worth it.
GM Jarmo Kekkelainen wasn’t going to let his squad go quietly into that goodnight last spring, and went all in at the trade deadline, bringing aboard Matt Duchene and Ryan Dzingel for the Jackets playoff push. It got them a stunning, historic sweep of the historically good Lightning. And that’s it.
Is that enough? For a fanbase that had seen their team accomplish exactly dick for their entire existence, it may be. Those memories will last a bit. But not that long, and soon they’re going to crave real success, like a division title or conference championship, two things the Jackets haven’t come within a $50 cab ride of. And neither of those look to be coming any time soon, as the squad that brought a playoff victory for the first time to Ohio has been shorn of three big pieces…and Dzingel. It’s not exactly a husk that’s left…but it’s the h-u-s of that.
Let’s run it through.
2018-2019
47-31-4 98 points (5th in Metro)
3.12 GF/G (12th) 2.82 GA/G (11th)
50.0 CF% (12th) 50.3 xGF% (14th)
15.4 PP% (29th) 85.0 PK% (2nd)
Goalies: Jarmo probably should be sued by the season ticket holders for negligence for heading into the season with Joonas Korpisalo as the starter. The story they’ll try and sell is that Korpisalo is 24, and heading into his prime, so there’s always a chance for a big step forward. It’s going to have to be an awfully big step, because Joonas hasn’t shown much in his brief cameos as Sergei Bobrovsky‘s backup. He’s played 90 games, and has a career .907 SV%, which would be just about league-average now. League-average isn’t going to get it done for this Jackets squad.
The wildcard is Elvis Merzlikins, and no he doesn’t have the traditional back-to-school parade here in Chicago. But I will allow for all the Fu-Schnickens jokes you want to make. Merzlikins was great in the Swiss league the past few years, but it’s impossible to know if that means anything. They seem pretty high on him, but he’s going to have to do an awful lot of heavy lifting if this team is going anywhere. That would also mean Korpisalo snuffed it, which is almost certainly doom for the Jackets.
Defense: The one unit that wasn’t scorched by free agent departures. Columbus can still roll out Seth Jones, Zach Werenski (assuming he ever signs), Ryan Murray, and Markus Nutivaara for two-thirds of the game, which is a nice place to be. It’s not Carolina’s blue line, but it’s still one of the better ones around. And they’re just running it back, as there’s been no additions to it in the offseason. So the top four will still be supported by David Savard, Scott Harrington, Dean Kukan, and Adam Clendening. Or some combo thereof, to be more precise. There’s a chance that Vladislov Gavrikov is part of the equation as well. The Jackets can at least point to this and know what they’ll get, which is more than you can say for the rest of the team.
Forwards: Ouch. At the moment, the Jackets are maybe one line and a lot of questions and hope. Cam Atkinson and Pierre-Luc Dubois are still a formidable tandem, and Atkinson scored before Panarin arrived. They signed Gustav Nyquist possibly to put on that line, but Nyquist is a support-scorer these days, not a main man. Alex Wennberg and and Josh Anderson will probably anchor the second, but that’s where it starts to sound short for the Jackets. Nick Foligno and Brandon Dubinsky are still here to belch and fart and call it leadership, Oliver Bjorkstrand and Boone Jenner are going to have to seriously build on promising seasons from last campaign for the Jackets to score enough, and that’s always a dicey bet. They might need to toss prospect Liam Foudy into the deep end right away to up the amount of skill to even acceptable.
Prediction: The Jackets are in deep. They’re clearly behind the Penguins, Caps, Canes for the automatic spots in the Metro. The Islanders may have fallen farther than they did, which helps, and the Rangers and Devils probably aren’t ready to cycle back up past them just yet. Who ever fucking knows with the Flyers? So that leaves them tangling with the other division for wildcard spots, but there just doesn’t look like there’s enough scoring up front with this lot. And Jarmo already scraped the savings vault to go for it last year.
Hope those Tampa memories keep them warm for a while. It might not be enough to keep Torts from throwing himself off the roof in January.
Like Boqvist whose preview came before, it could be that Carl Dahlstrom never plays a game for the Hawks this season. But given his proximity to the top six and the likelihood of injuries/incompetence, he most likely will suit up at some point. It won’t be terribly exciting, but it might not be terribly bad either. And for this team, anything above “terribly bad” on the blue line is a step up.
’18-’19 Stats
38 G – 0 G – 6 A – 6 P 6 PIM
47.4 CF% (-1.08 Relative) 45.3 xGF% (+0.3 Relative)
37.8 Offensive Zone Start %, 62.2 Defensive Zone Start %
A Brief History: For the second straight season, Dahlstrom was called up when the Hawks blue line turned to goo, with the idea that his steady game would help to calm the waters. But unlike his first attempt, this one went well at points. Dahlstrom quickly formed a “shutdown” pairing with Connor Murphy, as they were both marooned in their own zone a ton because there was simply no other d-man who could do it. It was the two of them who saw the last-minute shifts in games the Hawks were leading and had to protect for a stretch in the middle of the season, relegating Marlboro 72 to the bench at a time that used to be their g-spot. Dahlstrom got shifted around a ton via partners and sides, but generally was as solid a defensive players as the Hawks could find. Which says a lot.
It Was The Best Of Times: In all honestly, the best case scenario is that the Hawks have six or seven d-men better than Dahlstrom and he never plays. But that’s not the case, though he might still never play. Dahlstrom is hopefully a #7 or #8 that only comes up for air during injury problems and gets you out of a week or even month with steady if unspectacular play. Perhaps even better is if he plays well enough to entice another team to give up something useful for him, whether that team is having its own injury crisis or talent shortage. Dahlstrom is going to get crowded out anyway (we hope) by Boqvist and Mitchell one day soon, unless the Hawks do some serious clearing of the decks. Maybe then he could man your third-pairing without embarrassing anyone. But you’d like to think we could aim for more here.
It Was The BLURST Of Times: Boqvist is a defensive disaster in camp and is sent down. Olli Maatta can’t prove he can escape his Olli Maatta-ness in the season’s first month or two, and ends up back in the pressbox where the Penguins and Erik Goddamn Gudbanson left him in the first place. Slater Koekkoek still blows chunks. Which means Dahlstrom has to play most every game, probably pairing with de Haan for at least a defensively aware but criminally immobile pairing, Or he reconnects with Murphy to do basically the same thing but with more mobility. Even in the worst-case, Dahlstrom’s play is hardly going to sink you, it’s just the inability to move off that floor that will hold the Hawks back.
Prediction: Maatta would probably have to shoot both Stan and Coach Cool Youth Pastor’s dog to get out of the lineup, and Slater Koekkoek seems to be the new David Rundblad when we didn’t even want the old one. So spots in the lineup are going to be hard to come by for anyone else. It’s likely that Dahlstrom starts the year in Rockford again, but will most likely be the first call-up ahead of Boqvist, enraging a certain portion of Hawks-dom, when it turns out all the above are an affront to the Lord. He’ll play somewhere between 20-30 games to give any sort of stability to a blue line that desperately needs it. de Haan is the souped up version of Dahlstrom, but his iffy health status probably opens the door for Dahlstrom for a stretch. It’s more of the I-90 shuttle for Carl.
Previous Player Previews
I have a couple friends who like to use the quote, “Be what you want to manifest in the world.” Or something like that. Maybe it’s just “Be what you want to manifest.” Throw those words in some combination, and you’ll get what I’m after here. So though I know, deep in my heart, that it’s most likely Adam Boqvist never plays a game for the Hawks this year, we still have to maintain hope. If we give him the full preview treatment, perhaps we move a little step toward seeing what we want to manifest with the Hawks this year. Let’s be the change! Because if this blue line is going to have any chance to rise above the level of “Complete And Utter Suckbag,” it’s Boqvist who will bring that about.
2018-2019 Stats (in OHL)
54 GP – 20 G – 40 A – 60 P
A Brief History: Before Kirby Dach, Adam Boqvist was the subject of a high first-round pick the Hawks swore they wouldn’t be in position to attain again. Whoops. He was at least an acknowledgement that the Hawks had to get a whole lot faster on the back end, more creative, more dynamic, which the organization promptly forgot about seven minutes later. And this is how you end up with giving up actual good players for Olli Maatta. Boqvist wowed Joel Quenneville in training camp last fall, which considering his tastes in d-men was incredibly surprising. Or Q quickly came to realize how terrible his blue line was and was desperate for any salvation from anyone who could move faster than ennui. Q made noises about trying to keep Boqvist around when the season started…until the Red Wings beat the ever-loving crap out of him in a preseason game and everyone realized it was probably best for him to spend the year racing by children in the OHL.
It Was The Best Of Times: Boqvist carries the momentum from his Prospects Camp, where he was so far ahead of everyone save Dach it’s a wonder the rest of the crew didn’t just spend the last day scrimmage curled up in the corner rocking gently back and forth singing Gin Blossoms songs (how many of those kids even know who the Gin Blossoms are? Time to move on, Sam), into the Traverse City tourney and then into training camp and makes it utterly impossible for the Hawks to keep him down in Rockford. He finally sentences Brent Seabrook to a life of pressbox popcorn (slathered in jack cheese, I would assume), and from a heavily protected, third-pairing spot is able to give the Hawks some push from the back. He quickly inherits Erik Gustafsson‘s PP QB duties, making Gustafsson expendable at the deadline for the Hawks to get $1.25 on the dollar for him. And Boqvist looks like a Jared Spurgeon-type for the next 10 years.
It Was The BLURST of times: There’s actually a couple options here. One is that Boqvist does all the things mentioned in the first two sentences above, but the Hawks ignore him anyway, terrified of pissing off Seabrook or really believing in Maatta and Koekkoek and the rest of the leaden-footed crew, and Boqvist simply wastes his time and ours in Rockford. And he sits there while the defense continues to get its doors blown off by any team with anything resembling quick forwards. Or Boqvist still looks a complete mess in his own zone in training camp, earns his demotion to Rockford or even back to London, and everyone starts asking serious questions about whether he will ever be what was advertised. And the Hawks blue line continues to be a sculptured representation of confusion made of earwax.
Prediction: Let’s be clear, Boqvist is already the best offensive d-man on the team. It’s not even all that close, and Erik Gustafsson stans can fuck right off. Boqvist’s skating and abilities with the puck are NHL-level right now. And because the Hawks have literally no one else who can do any of that, he should be on the team. But he won’t be to start. Most likely, even after turning more heads in camp, he’ll start the year in Winnebago County. But after the main roster’s defense spends a couple months getting exposed for the tractor-in-the-mud that it is, and Boqvist lighting up the AHL (as Jokiharju did which got him traded, so watch out), the Hawks will have little choice but to call him up somewhere around Christmas. And it’ll be rocky, as Boqvist is never going to be solid in his own zone. But it also be exciting as he’ll make plays on the rush that no Hawks d-man has done since…fuck, Doug Wilson? Nick Leddy like once or twice? I don’t even know.
Of course, Boqvist’s arrival–along with the impending ones of Ian Mitchell and Nicolas Beaudin–will cause something of a fissure in the makeup of the team, as someone will have to sit to accommodate him. Which will take quite the deft hand from a coach who might not be prepared for it. Buy the ticket, take the ride.
Game 1 Box Score: Cubs 5, Mariners 1
Game 2 Box Score: Cubs 6, Mariners 1
And here we go again, it’s never gonna end… The Cubs went from a sweep of a mediocre team in the Mets, to pretty much shitting their drawers against the Brewers, to doing exactly what they should have against a Mariners team that’s made of silly putty. Monday’s win felt like drunk sex, and tonight’s win just felt like what should have been. At least it got there in the end.
Let’s…
-This season has gotten to the point where I’m being threatened with basically a defenestration (though off a roof is not technically that) simply so someone can feel again. How else do you sum it up?
-A team actually intentionally walked Albert Almora. Anything is possible kids, as long as you believe hard enough.
-Schwarber got the big hit off a lefty pitcher, which only makes some earlier lineup choices even more infuriating. That doesn’t mean I think The War Bear is automatic against lefties, but at this point there’s just enough balance between he’s earned the chance of late and there being no one else that he needs to start every day until the season is over.
-Good god the Mariners are terrible. Is there anyone you think about seeing in the future?
-Against any representative team, Lester probably gets shelled tonight. Luckily, the schedule says he didn’t have to.
-Unluckily, it also says the Cardinals didn’t have to either.
-For a long time I’ve hoped that Ben Zobrist would be some kind of answer for this team, but recently I’ve come to the conclusion he won’t be any more of one than Robel Garcia or Ian Happ. Prove me wrong kids, prove me wrong.
-The fact that Bryant took a seat again tonight in recent memory almost certainly means he’s not healthy, be it knee or shoulder. The Cubs are three back with three to go. Unless you absolutely can’t, you’d be starting your best players every game. You rest them earlier for that exact reason.
-Hey does anyone remember the last time Heyward was on base?
-Is it weird that Kimbrel didn’t get an inning either yesterday or today? Especially with an off day next? Because the last time he came out of the pen throwing 95 and nothing on his curve, as he did Sunday, he was on the IL for two weeks the day after. Is he healthy? Is anyone sure?
-It’s good to see Schwarber higher up in the lineup, but he should be hitting leadoff and no one should give him any shit about the kind of hitter he is there. Because there’s not anyone else to do it, unless you want to see the Joy Division song in baseball form that Heyward is there.
Onwards…
After watching the Braves bludgeon the White Sox over the weekend, I kind of sat mystified as to how the Braves offense is significantly better than the Cubs. This could come into major relief should the two meet in the first round of the playoffs, as they would do if the Cubs flag down the Cardinals in the season’s last three weeks. Because both offenses are basically top-heavy. The Braves sport Ronald Acuna Jr., Josh Donaldson, Freddie Freeman, and Ozzie Albies at the top of the lineup. Which really shouldn’t be out-producing Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo, Willson Contreras, and Javier Baez. And really, in terms of wRC+ and other measures, it’s not.
As a team, the Cubs and Braves walk and strikeout at almost exactly the same rate. They’ve hit just about the same amount of homers (the Braves lead in this category 218 to 213), and the Braves have hit 16 more doubles, which probably doesn’t have as great of an effect as you might think at first.
It would be easy to point to the batting average, as as a team the Braves hit nine points higher (.260 to .251). And maybe it’s just that difference that’s led to the Braves having 97 more hits as a team, but when you think about it that’s just one per game. And yes, casting your mind over the season, you can find more than a handful of games where one hit instead of one out would have made a huge difference. Maybe it is that simple, and the Cubs just need that one hit more often over the last three weeks (cue Al Pacino speech about fighting for that inch).
As you were probably about to suggest, the numbers slant even more when there are runners in scoring position. The Braves hit 16 points higher in that spot, have gotten 58 more hits, and in turn 50 more runs in that spot than the Cubs. Which means the Cubs have to do more of the splashing from downtown as it were, solo homers or homers with guys on first.
And yes, perhaps it could be that simple. But as I just pointed out at the top of this, the tops of these lineups are almost carbon copies of each other. And the supporting casts really haven’t been that much different, as Matt Joyce’s late boom has been basically the same as Nicholas Castellanos’s. The Braves haven’t had the massive black holes in spots like center and second that the Cubs have had, but they’ve mitigated that somewhat by shifting guys around. It can’t explain it all.
But looking this over more, and somewhat off of our Kris Bryant post from a couple weeks ago, the Cubs as a whole just don’t hit the ball very hard.
In the majors, the Cubs rank 26th in hard-contact rate. They rank second to last in line-drive rate. Considering the hitters in this lineup, how can that be? For a clearer illustration, the Braves have eight guys who have a 40+% hard-contact rate. The Cubs have one, and that’s the dude who came 2/3rds of the way through the season in Castellanos. The Braves have five guys with a 25+% line-drive rate. The Cubs don’t have one. Line-drives don’t have to be necessarily the name of the game, but you’d like to think you could better than this.
And again, we can’t stress this enough, this is in a season where the baseball has been designed specifically so you can hit it ludicrously hard. Everyone is. Except the Cubs. The type of contact they make has nothing to do with their strikeouts and walk tendencies. This is just about when they get the bat on the ball. This was an issue last year too, where only Schwarber had a hard-contact rate over 40%.
It would be hard for the Cubs to raise their batting average in the season’s final throes, though anything is possible in a short stint in baseball, without raising the volume of their contact. And that’s probably the case heading into the future as well. Sure, they almost certainly don’t make enough contact, though that’s not quite as big of a problem as it’s been made out to be, thanks to some very memorable situations where the Cubs haven’t gotten the bat on the ball when they had to. But what might be just as big of a problem is the Cubs don’t make the right contact when they do.
Chili Davis couldn’t fix it. Anthony Iapoce hasn’t been able to fix it. Which leads you to believe it’s the players. But considering the lineup, this really shouldn’t be a problem. Why is it? We know they make less contact than anyone, but again, that doesn’t have any effect on how hard they hit the ball when they do hit the ball. The first instinct is to say that they make contact on the wrong pitches, but they have the lowest amount of contact outside the zone in the NL.
Whatever it is, the Cubs just don’t hit the ball very hard, and they don’t seem inclined to do anything about it. And that’s if they even know it’s a problem.
’18-’19: 46-29-7 (99 points) – Lost in Conference Final
2.98 GF/G (16th) 2.71 GA/G (6th)
17.6 PP% (2oth) 81.6 PK% (8th)
54.6 CF% (2nd) 56.4 xGF% (1st)
Something of the feel good story of last season, the Carolina Hurricanes are essentially going to try and run it back again, counting on maturing from youngsters and what is still the best blue line around. There have been a couple smaller additions, a loss of captain, and what feels like a real missed opportunity for the big splash that would have put this team over the top. But hey, their owner sunk an entire football league just to benefit himself, so is anyone really surprised?
Let’s see what’s under the hood here.
Goalies: The Canes have moved on from their partnership of last year, where they alternated between riding the hot streaks of Petr Mrazek and Curtis McElhinney, and have given the job to Mrazek full-time. That might be a little strange considering that Mrazek’s performance in the playoffs was something you dug out of your ear, but it’s something of Carolina tradition to have a whatsit in goal. Mrazek was very good in the regular season, certainly the best goaltending the Canes have gotten in eons. Mrazek also put up a great season in Detroit once, but there are four seasons of mediocrity in three different places between that and last year, so who is he really?
Mrazek came in over his expected-save-percentage last year (.914 to .916 at evens), and what might be most important is he does that while cheap. Mrazek has only a $3.1M hit, and that matters to Carolina. It’s a shame they didn’t spend it elsewhere that much, though. Still, the Canes make it about as easy as a team can for goalies, as they have the puck all the time. They’ll be counting on that again.
There is a more than decent insurance policy here though in James Reimer. Optimus Reim has an off-year in Florida last season, but had racked up league-average SV%s or better the previous three seasons. He has been a plus-backup for the back half of his career, and the kind that can usurp the top job for a stretch when he gets hot/the starter goes to the zoo for a bit. He has made over 39 starts each of the past three seasons, either due to Luongo’s injury problems or just taking the job, so there is a safety net in net for the Canes. Pretty shrewd here, really.
Defense: Still the team’s strength, even with the subtraction of Calvin de Haan and the addition of Gustav Forsling (assuming he ever gets out of Charlotte, which he shouldn’t). The Canes still roll a top four of Brett Pesce, Justin Faulk, Dougie Hamilton, and Jaccob Slavin (and his superfluous c). You’d be hard-pressed to find a team that can match that top four anywhere, and if the bottom pairing becomes a septic tank accident through some combo of Forsling, Haydn Fleury (and his missing e), Trevor van Riemsdyk and his missing talent, or kid Jake Bean, they can just run the top four out there between 40-45 minutes a night and not get too worried about it.
There will be some drama around Faulk this year, as he enters the last year of his deal and the whole will-he-or-won’t-he be traded or re-signed thing. Considering what the Canes could accomplish this year it would be near farce for them to trade Faulk, but one wonders what the actual budget is here for this team and we know how teams are loathe to lose players for nothing, even if they have everything to gain here. Still, it’s not that hard to make a case for the Canes to be division favorites now, and you don’t maintain that status by losing Faulk in the middle of the season.
That behind us, this unit can do just about everything, whether it’s pushing the play and supporting the offense or locking things down. You wish the Hawks took notes.
Forwards: In a dream world, the Canes would have already offer-sheeted Mitch Marner for $12M a year, and gotten ready to be the East favorite. They thought smaller however, signing Ryan Dzingel and trading for Erik Haula, who is just about the perfect Hurricane. They’ll also get a full season out of Nino Neiderreiter this time, another perfect Cane, and maybe the production they get from those three is enough to offset the retirement of Justin Williams as well as boost an offense that needs to be a touch better.
They’ll also expect a leap forward from Andrei Svechnikov and possibly Martin Necas, who was excellent in the AHL last year. They still seem intent on using Jordan Staal as a #2 center, and that’s simply not what he is anymore and likely never was. He’s a checking center and should be used as such. When the Canes go deadline-shopping, another center probably should be top of the list.
Sebastien Aho is now locked down and flourished moving to the middle last season. Our Dear Sweet Finnish Boy is still here to break our hearts. I’ve never been totally sold on Dzingel, who didn’t do much in Columbus last year after a trade there and his goal-scoring in Ottawa screams “production because someone had to score.” They look a little short on the wing as well, with only Turbo Targaryn, Nino, and Svechnikov feeling like genuine top-six wingers and none really being genuine top-line wingers for a Cup-contender. Marner would have been perfect here, just as Tavares would have been the year before.
Outlook: This is still a great team coached very well by Rod The Bod. It’s hard to see where the goaltending will completely sink them as it has in years past, and there’s no reason to think their possession numbers are going to go anywhere given the defense they sport. The only thing that’s going to nab them is a lack of frontline scoring, and Svechnikov has a chance to remedy that (but not by himself). With the Penguins and Capitals having to be in decline, the Islanders being run by Nosferatu, and the Rangers, Flyers, and Devils still in a rebuild, and the Jackets a complete mess, there’s little reason the Canes can’t take the Metro crown away from the Caps for the first time in eleventy-billion years or whatever it is. They were only five points short of that last year, and that gap is going to shrink if not disappear. There should be no boundaries for this team.
Mike Clevinger isn’t what you see when you think of the top starters in baseball. They’re usually of the Johnny Unitas type, a haircut you can set your watch to. But here is Clevinger, looking like he fell off the Allman Brothers bus, and since he returned from injury in late June, there hasn’t been a better pitcher.
The numbers pop right out at you. Since July 1st, Clevinger has the best WAR of any pitcher, the fourth best ERA, the best FIP, sixth-best K/9, and they third-best ERA-. He’s a huge reason, along with Shane Bieber, that the Tribe have been able to surge to the top of the wildcard standings and still keep some hot breath on the neck of the Twins atop the Central. And they’ll need all their pitchers to be on top of their game with the resurgence of Jose Ramirez now over thanks to a broken hand.
How did Clevinger get here? A couple of different answers. One, he has one of the best sliders in the game. According to FanGraphs, his slider ranks behind only Max Scherzer’s and Patrick Corbin’s as far as value. That’s always a nice place to be. Clevinger’s slider doesn’t have a huge amount of tilt but it does have a hue amount of sweep, moving nearly 10 inches across the zone and out of it. Which is a big reason that hitters from the right side whiff at over half the ones at which they swing.
Another reason is that hitters can’t do much with his fastball, either. He throws pretty hard, averaging 96 MPH on it, which is top-1o in the game. Clevinger gets a fair amount of run on his four-seam, which moves it on the hands of righties and away from lefties. And it’s the fastball that’s been the big difference from last year, gaining nearly two MPH of average velocity and going from a good pitch to a great one. Clevinger credited better mechanics coming into this season, getting away from using only his arm to produce it.
But it’s in the past two years that the slider became the main weapon, especially this year when he was able to really increase the tilt it got and the sweep. Raising his arm slot appears to have been a key, as you can see here:
So with the greater velocity, and the already-damaging slider, hitters don’t have much of cushion to diagnose either, and you get what you have so far this season.
Clevinger’s return to health and entrance into dominance, as well as Shane Bieber’s, made Cleveland comfortable dealing All-World Tool Trevor Bauer across the state, and probably will make it easier for them to lose Cory Kluber in the winter (they almost did this past one). Carlos Carrasco returning is also a boon to that. Kluber has two years of club options at a pretty reasonable rate left, so his value probably won’t be much higher than this for the always cost-conscious Indians.
But both Clevinger and Bieber are going to be around a while, and the base for the next great Tribe team (if that has Lindor, of course). As for this year, they’ve got six game left with the Twins that will probably decide the Central. And they have the one thing, thanks to Clevinger in part, that the Twins don’t. And that’s dominating starting pitching.
Note: We didn’t have enough space for the expanded rosters, so bullpens is by top usage.
