Every morning, we cut right to the heart of the previous night’s, or weekend’s action.
Carolina eliminates Islanders: Good fuckin’ riddance.
Boston takes 3-2 lead on Columbus: What the fuck ever.
St. Louis and Dallas tied at 3: Fucking torture.
San Jose leads Colorado 3-2: Fuckin’ yeah buddy.
Game 1 Box Score: Cubs 4, Cardinals 0
Game 2 Box Score: Cubs 6, Cardinals 5
Game 3 Box Score: Cubs 13, Cardinals 5
Let’s get it right at the top here. Back in first place. Best winning percentage in the NL. Best run-differential in baseball. Won seven in a row. 16 of 20. It was utterly pointless to be trying to tear your heart out of your chest with your fingernail after nine games. Everyone has a bad nine games. Fuck, everyone has a bad 20 games. I understand the microscope is more focused at the start of a season. I understand it was an unpleasant winter and everyone already had the knives out and wanted to be the first to say, “I told you so.”
But it was always a good offense. Possibly great. It was always potentially a really good rotation, and one that survived an IL stint to Jon Lester. You have those two things, the pen doesn’t matter as much. The Cubs have six players with a wRC+ of 115 or higher. The only regulars who aren’t there are Schwarber, Zobrist and Descalso. And Schwarber’s is 129 over the past two weeks.
So yeah, I don’t want to hear it. This is a really good team, a team that is essentially the one that won 95 games last year and gets to use Yu Darvish and a healthy Kris Bryant. It’s been even able to carry a struggling Zobrist. They’re really good. Everyone on board.
Let’s do the thing:
-I find it funny that it took Hendricks and Contreras about an inning or two to figure out that the Cardinals were trying to jump on The Cerebral Assassin early in at-bats, proceeded to cut through them like a daisy cutter, and yet the Cardinals never bothered to try anything else. Hendricks threw seven pitches in the 7th. Nine in the 8th. 10 in the 9th. Good thing they hired Shildt full-time, huh?
-Saturday, the right decision was definitely to walk Schwarber to get to Taylor Davis. That doesn’t mean Michael Wacha had to throw him a batting practice fastball that any competent profession baseball player is going to hurt. I thought the Cardinals were smart?
-Yu Darvish is Javy Vasquez. If you remember Little Game Javy, as Yankees fans so lovingly referred to him as, he had five or six different pitches, all of them effective. But it Javy’s world, and apparently Yu’s, no one should make contact on him. Which means he pitches that way, which means he misses, which means walks, which means problems. Until Yu starts pitching to contact and taking the strikeouts when they’re there, this is what you’re gong to get. He’s never had great control, but it’s within him, he simply chooses not to. Remember, before he got to Chicago the previous two seasons saw him carry a BB/9 under three. He’s at 7.44 this year. It has to stop.
-I don’t really care how the Cubs pen does it, but they’ve been among the best in baseball since the first week. And I don’t care. It’s a bullpen, it doesn’t have to make sense.
-This is the rotation the Cardinals are going to take us down with? Ok.
-Quintana wasn’t as vintage as he’s been this year, but he was able to muscle through it which is a really good sign. Also helps that the Cubs catch everything and play defense all over the field.
-Between Bryant, Heyward, and Baez, Cardinals fans aren’t going to know who to boo when the Cubs go down there later this month. And I’m fine with a team of villains.
Onwards…
Before the playoffs, SinBin.Vegas (a Knights blog I’ll check out when I need to update myself on said team) wrote a post about how Brent Burns was actually an advantage for them in their series against the Sharks. I thought it was yet another product of unearned arrogance for a team and fanbase that hadn’t even been in existence for two full seasons yet, even though I’ve never really rated Burns defensively either. I figured he could out-produce and out-push whatever mistakes he makes in his own end, as he pretty much does during the regular season.
This has been Burns in the playoffs:
Last night was especially gruesome if you’re a Sharks fan, and truly rewarding if you’re into absurdist theater. Let’s start with Colin Wilson’s goal that pretty much ended Game 4 as a contest:
When Rantanen loses the puck into the slot, you’d assume that Burns would just slap it away on his backhand or smoothly let it roll to his forehand and then skate it out. Instead he attempts…I don’t even know…a Cruyff turn? The result is him banging it off his skates and leaving it right there for Rantanen to get a second bite at it, which left him the space for that incredible pass to Wilson.
That wasn’t Burns’s only hiccup that turned into an aneurysm, in even that period. On Carl Soderberg’s mystifying miss in the 3rd, Burns follows Matt Nieto into the corner with all the passion of getting his license renewed, and then just kind of skates around back up to the circle like a little league outfielder, while Soderberg is just standing at the side of the net waiting to y’know, score. There were at least two or three other instances in just the 3rd period last night where Burns got scorched, or was just loitering around begging for change I assume like North Shore kids in front of The Alley (sky point), or actively running away from where he was supposed to be.
The highlight had to be Sam Girard coming down the middle on a 3-on-2, and Burns on the right side of the two turning his back on Girard to cover the stationary winger along the boards, who somehow was calculated by Burns with whatever broken slide-rule covered in mustard is in his head to be the bigger threat. Girard faked that pass by like, kind of looking over there and suddenly Burns gave him a runway to the net that O’Hare would pay millions for. It was like when you fake throwing the tennis ball for your dog and they go charging off for five steps and then can’t figure out what they’re doing.
And it’s been like this all playoffs long. All the shit that Erik Karlsson used to get yelled at by red angry men on TSN in the past Burns was actively doing last night and the past three weeks. But because he’s a good Canadian boy it’s rare that this ever gets pointed out. This motherfucker has a Norris! I hate to say Drew Doughty was right, but my lord.
It’s like watching a child lost in the supermarket. You feel sorry for him but at the same time you can’t wait to see how he tries to solve this puzzle. And Burns is just charging through the produce shelves hoping to just run into mom’s knees. You’d think it’s impossible to get this lost in a contained space but Burns seems to find space where there didn’t look to be any space or creates more of it, and all in the wrong way.
It’s honestly been the most fascinating watch in the playoffs. Where will Burns charge off to next? Is he going to be at the circles when the puck is behind the net? Vice versa? Is he going to choose to cover the beer vendor? Will he actually light his beard on fire? You can’t rule any of it out!
It’s just about as freeing an experience in the playoffs. Anything could happen. There is no impossibility when Burns is on the ice. I bet you thought there would never be a rip in the space-time continuum. Buddy, let me tell ya, it could happen. His brains could literally spill out of his ear (which I assume would result in another major to Cody Eakin). He might just leap against the glass like Ron Obvious trying to leap the English Channel. It’s honestly a bucket of rainbows.
Erik Gustafsson must watch Burns and do a Joker impression. “And I thought my jokes were bad.”
vs. 
RECORDS: Cardinals 20-11 Cubs 16-12
GAMETIMES: Friday 1:20, Saturday 3:05, Sunday 6:05
TV: NBCSN Friday, WGN Saturday, ESPN Sunday (Oh boy)
GROSS: Viva El Birdos
PROBABLE PITCHERS
Jack Flaherty vs. Kyle Hendricks
Adam Wainwright vs. Jose Quintana
PROBABLE CARDINALS LINEUP
Matt Carpenter – 3B
Paul Goldschmidt – 1B
Paul DeJong – SS
Marcel Ozuna – LF
Jose Martinez – RF
Yadier Molina – C
Kolten Wong – 2B
Harrison Bader – CF
PROBABLE CUBS LINEUP
Daniel Descalso – 2B
Kris Bryant – 3B
Anthony Rizzo – 1B
Javier Baez – SS
Ben Zobrist – RF
Kyle Schwarber – LF
Jason Heyward – CF
And now to it. The first invasion of the unwashed and illiterate from West East St. Louis, as the Cubs and Cardinals test out each other for the first time at the top of the Central Division. The Cardinals loaded up with Paul Goldschmidt this winter, and while the Brewers may crow about last season, it was the Cubs the Cardinals had in mind for what they had to overhaul. And even with the horrific start, the season’s first month has borne that out.
The Cardinals are baseball’s hottest team at the moment, winning eight of their last 10. Goldy has been the juice to the offense the Cards hoped, as they’re second in runs, third in OBP, and fourth in wOBA. But he’s not doing it alone. Paul DeJong is slugging nearly .600 and playing excellently in the field which is the real upset. Marcell Ozuna has been the player the Cards thought they were trading for last year. Even Dexter Fowler has returned from the dead, or being a sleeper spy, and his managing a 133 wRC+. Goldschmidt is Goldschmidt, and he’ll be in the top-10 of the MVP picture because that’s just a thing that he does.
How much of this is real? Fowler’s .407 BABIP would suggest that’s mirage. DeJong is getting serious rub of the green as well so far. But Wong, Goldy, Ozuna, and even Harrison Bader are probably doing this most if not all the season. The wooden spoon in the lineup so far is former stalwart Matt Carpenter, who has made starting slowly something of a signature move at this point. Then he’ll hit 25 homers June-August before going back into the toilet (really anywhere in STL) for the season’s last month. Also he’s a performance art piece at third.
The rotation though might be as big of a problem as the offense is a force. Flaherty is striking out over 10 hitters per nine, but he can’t seem to keep the ball in the park and he doesn’t get a ton of grounders. His HR/FB rate won’t stay at near 25% all season but seeing as how half the contact he’s giving up has been of the hard variety, this could be a problem all season. Especially if everything is in the air. Adam Wainwright is a million years old and is having some of the same control problems he did last year as he can’t miss bats the way he used to. Michael Wacha is also in need of a GPS, and seems destined to always break your heart (or entertain you endlessly, if you hate the Cardinals like most of the world). Last year’s hero Miles Mikolas can’t get anyone out and is giving up twice the homers he did last year, at least at that pace. Sometimes when you don’t miss bats this is what happens. There’s some asshole named Dakota taking starts. This will be an issue for the Cards all season, even if Mikolas straightens out.
The pen has been able to bail them out. Jordan Hicks is finally more than just a ridiculous fastball that people still hit anyway. John Gant has a 0.90 ERA. Something named John Brebbia has also been a weapon. There are two other guys averaging more than 10Ks per nine innings, and neither of them is Andrew Miller. Miller has been better of late but has spent most of the year spraying deliveries around like an Uzi. Perhaps it was a good idea to not hand him a multi-year deal after he showed decline and injury problems last year.
For the Cubs, they’ll need Hendricks to find it again and Darvish to build on the last four innings of his last outing, otherwise the Cards can sprint out in games in a hurry. Hendricks’s first inning problems against Goldschmidt today isn’t exactly settling the stomach. But the Cubs should also get some runs off this outfit.
A sweep puts the Cubs in first. Just sayin’…
Every morning, we cut right to the heart of what happened in last night’s playoff action.
Boston ties Columbus at 2-2: Fucking done with both of these teams. Fucking end it.
Colorado ties San Jose at 2-2: Brent Burns if fucking terrible.
It does sound a little weird to say Jon Lester was in need, or even close to needing, a bounce-back season. After all, a 3.32 ERA last year and an 18-6 record would suggest that things went pretty ok (and if you’re Phil Rogers, you would say they definitely did, before pining for Curtis Granderson again). But as I wrote extensively during the 2018 season, Lester did an awful lot of dancing through and over the flames, and can thank whatever shaman he employed for getting him through the campaign with those numbers and not whiplash from turning around frequently.
Lester’s strikeout-rate was a career-low last year, and his walk-rate the highest in seven seasons. He gave up a ton of hard contact, and when you combined his walk-rate with his hard-contact rate–essentially the two things a pitcher can control–he was in the bottom third of the league. Basically, the Cubs superior defense pulled his ass out of a sling a good portion of the time, and when they didn’t Lady Luck was the one reaching over the cliff and grabbing his wrist.
So when PECOTA and other projection systems had the Cubs belching up noxious gases this season, you could certainly see why, once you were done choking on your fan-rage, particularly when it came to Lester. Surely luck wouldn’t be so friendly without exacting a bounty soon after.
And yet Lester has burst out of the gate this year, with a 1.73 ERA, 0.96 WHIP, and a 3.35 FIP which is much more in line with his 2016 season that saw him in the top-three for Cy Young voting. Granted, it’s only five starts, with two abridged due to either injury or a return from same, but how did we get here?
Well, for one, Lester is still getting luck to be on his side, and violently so. Hitters have only managed a .231 BABIP against him, which is some 66 points below his career-average. And it’s not like Lester has found some elixir to softer contact that might produce a lower BABIP, like Hendricks does when he’s on song. In fact, Lester is giving up aggressively more hard contact than he did last year, 41% this term compared to 31.9% last year. So yeah…that’s going to be an issue. On hard-contact alone, batters against Lester have only managed a .280 BABIP, when the rest of his career for Lester that mark is usually .370 or higher. A reckoning could be coming.
Second, Lester has a 96% left-on-base percentage, which means whatever runners are getting on are getting stuck out there. League average on this is somewhere around 72-73%, and Lester’s career-mark is 75%. Sequencing has also been a friend to him (so many friends!). This won’t last, though twice in his Cubs career Lester has managed an 80+% LOB%, so it might not come down as aggressively as it would for others, or his BABIP.
But hey, let’s be fair. It’s good to be positive. Lester’s K/9 is up to levels not seen since 2010, and his BB/9 is down almost a full walk. That’s good, and not due to luck. That’s what a pitcher controls best, after all. So why should that be?
There is a slight change in approach, as Lester is throwing more cutters than he ever has. Lester used to keep his cutter-usage to around a quarter of the time, give or take. This year it’s been a third of his pitches, purely at the expense of his four-seam fastball. And he’s using it differently. Here’s where Lester has generally thrown his cutter over his career:
Almost exclusively in at the hands and ankles of righties. Now this year:
Both sides of the plate, as Lester basically morphs into late-career Tom Glavine. Now, it’s not as if Lester has had pure success out there, as this chart of slugging against him on that cutter shows (again, very limited sample):
But having to account for the outside corner has kept the inside a valuable place for Lester to go, and hitters can’t just key on there and get the hips open and such.
Another small change Lester has made is getting ahead of hitters. He’s lifted his first-strike percentage so far to 62%, the kind of numbers he hit in his first two years with the Cubs but had gotten away from the last two.
So there are some things to he encouraged by, and some things to be wary of. I would guess somewhere around here soon, Lester is going to get paddled around in a start. But he’s also smart enough to keep dancing through the flames. Now let’s all take a moment to picture Lester dancing. Ok, that’s enough.
vs. 
RECORDS: Red Sox 14-17 White Sox 13-15
GAMETIMES: Thursday and Friday at 7:10, Saturday 6:10, Sunday 1:10
TV: WGN Thursday, NBCSN Friday-Sunday
FRUSTRATED WOMEN: Over The Monster
PROBABLE PITCHERS
Eduardo Rodriguez vs. Manny Banuelos
Rick Porcello vs. TBD (most likely Dylan Covey, or Dylan Arrieta to Fifth Feather)
PROBABLE RED SOX LINEUP
Andrew Benintendi – LF
Mookie Betts – RF
J.D. Martinez – DH
Xander Bogaerts – SS
Rafael Devers – 3B
Michael Chavis – 2B
Mitch Moreland – 1B
Christian Vasquez – C
Jackie Bradley Jr. – CF
PROBABLE WHITE SOX LINEUP
Leury Garcia – LF
Tim Anderson – SS
Jose Abreu – DH
James McCann – C
Yoan Moncada – 3B
Jose Rodon – 2B
Yonder Alonso – 1B
Ryan Cordell – RF
Adam Engel – CF
After digging through the muck of the Tigers and Orioles for a couple weeks, the White Sox get to…dive back into the much that the Red Sox have been for the season’s first month.
The Beantown Nine have pulled this act before. They won the World Series in ’13, and then were so bad the following season they ended up punting Jon Lester among others midseason. Apparently the party never stops in Boston when they win…except for the Patriots who aren’t allowed to party by Bill Belichek. It actually took the Red Sox two years to round back into form after the last championship, making the playoffs the last three years, and BoSox fans can only hope they’ll come around a touch quicker this time.
Maybe they already are. They come to the Southside after sweeping the equally struggling A’s at home the past three days. They put up 21 runs over those three games, so the hope would be that the offense is finally clicking into gear. Because really, there’s no way this lineup should be struggling to put together innings. And yet here the Carmines sit at 10th in runs in the AL, 9th in OBP, and 10th in wOBA.
Where the blame goes is probably the supporting cast. Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts are hitting, and Betts being a perennial MVP candidate you’d figure that. So’s J.D. Martinez. But Devers has shown very little power this year, as it’s never a good sign when your on-base is higher than your slugging. Second base has been something of a sinkhole, though Michael Chavis is putting in a strong claim at the moment. Benintendi isn’t really hitting yet and Moreland has only been ok.
The problems just don’t end there. The rotation has been a quasi-zoo. Chris Sale can’t decide if he wants to throw not hard enough or too hard to compensate, and has been getting paddled either way to the tune of a 6.30 ERA and a 5.22 FIP. Natha Eovaldi is hurt, because guys throwing max effort 97 MPH fastballs pretty much every pitch aren’t all that stable. Who knew? Rick Porcello himself has been gasoline, and one day may end up the weirdest goddamn Cy winner in history. The dude won it and hasn’t managed a sub-4.00 ERA since. How did that happen? Only David Price and Eduardo Rodriguez are holding this rotation together.
The pen has been middling, though hasn’t really missed being shorn of Craig Kimbrel or Joe Kelly (who sucks anyway). The Red Sox are big proponents of finding just any dude lingering around to fill out the pen. So far, Matt Barnes, Marcus Walden, and Brandon Workman have been excellent out of there, and the only people who recognize them are their mothers and even they’re not totally sure. Ryan Braser is the closer here, and he’s got six saves, but he allows more contact than most closers, only striking out a touch over seven hitters per nine. Heath Hembree and Tyler Thornburg are where you’d like to break through.
For the pale version of footwear, Lucas Giolito comes off the DL to start the opener, and hoping to be a touch better than his last three starts had him. Reynaldo Lopez looks to keep his momentum going, and everyone else just exhales in not having to watch Ervin Santana again. Weather could play a role again as tonight’s forecast is iffy, but the rest of the weekend looks better than it’s been. The Red Sox probably think this is their chance to really springboard into the rest of the season. The White Sox are probably just happy to not be super depressed by looking into the other dugout.
This spring will prove to most who need it to be true that anything can happen in the NHL playoffs. All you have to do is get in. The Hawks are already pumping this narrative, preparing the ground for a less than stellar summer and the distinct possibility of a 90-95 point team next year. The Kings of ’12 are always held up as this, and unless the Sharks or Bruins carry it all the way to the end, most likely this year’s Cup winner will be touted to prove the unpredictability of the NHL’s spring ninja course.
But this isn’t really the case. If you were around in 2012, you’ll remember that the Kings were preseason favorites, and spent a good portion of that season fucking around and thumbing their own ass. They fired a coach, got their ass in gear in March or so, and romped through the playoffs, which a lot of people saw coming. Some favorable matchups didn’t hurt their cause either (hi there, St. Louis, Arizona, and New Jersey).
Carolina looks poised to be this team. They’re a game away from the East Final, and having already kneecapped the Capitals, they won’t have much fear of either the Bruins or Jackets, especially if those two are hurling themselves at each other violently for seven games. And it’s true that the Canes don’t really have any stars. Sebastien Aho is bordering on one, our love for Teuvo will be the main reason cited when we are hauled off to somewhere inaccessible forever by top men one day, and Dougie Hamilton and Justin Faulk are really good too. But there’s not really anyone here that NBC is grabbing to do those weird promos in the lights on ice in September, basically.
But yet, if you were paying attention, it was clear that the Canes are one of the best even-strength teams around. And they have been for a few years now. Whatever category you want–attempts, shots, chances, or expected-goals–the Canes rank no lower than #3. As always, it was finishing and goaltending that kept the Canes down, as has always been the case, and when evaluating who is the best team in the league you can’t ignore those factors.
But then the Canes got goaltending, they finished a little better, and since the middle of the season they’ve collected just about as many points as anyone, including the Lightning. As someone who wants to see the best teams in the later rounds and then win it, the Canes count. If they’re talent matched their process, they’d probably have a points total in the same zip code as the Lightning did. That talent would also boost a power play that was barely meh.
While the Penguins didn’t have the energy or desire to really work through a Trotz team, the Canes are perfectly built to do it, even if they rode their luck a bit in Game 2. They have a mobile defense and pretty much every point, and can get up the ice and through the Isles’ trap. Trotz teams only work when they have an abundance of finish to not be undone by the small margins he plays on, like last year’s Caps. It’s fine if you don’t control possession or attempts and keep things tight when you have Ovechkin, Backstrom, Kuznetsov, Oshie, and others to maximize what chances you do get. When Josh Bailey is your #1 sniper, you are up against it.
Because they didn’t get Fleury ’18 goaltending, and they don’t play in Vegas where everyone wants a free trip to, the Canes don’t come with the ballyhoo of last year’s Knights. Except it’s kind of the same deal, just more sustainable. There’s no William Karlsson banking a quarter of the shots he takes or James Neal putting in one last year before dying. This is who the Canes are, and if they were to add another forward or two, or a goalie, in the summer (assuming Aho’s raise doesn’t completely wash away cap space) with the $30M in space they have or so, the Canes are going to be here for a while.
Of course, this being the NHL people will try and glean what the message is and copy. Not too many other teams are going to be able to assemble the talent on the blue line the Canes have, but an increasingly fast defensive corps would seem to be paramount in a league that keeps getting faster and faster. But the thing is, anything can work for a season. We’ll need a few years more on the Canes before we know if this is a real thing. My hunch is that it is.
Every morning we cut right to the heart of last night’s playoff action.
Canes go 3-0 up on Isles: Fuckin’ Teuvo…fuck, man…
Stars tie Blues at 2: I know how this fuckin’ goes.
Game 1 Box Score: Cubs 6, Mariners 5
Game 2 Box Score: Cubs 11, Mariners 0
The thing is I like Pearl Jam. It’s like this..
They’re fine. And I get that Eddie Vedder has nominated himself the #1 Cubs fan forever, even though he doesn’t know who Steely Dan is according to his own goddamn documentary (not that he should, but if you’re going to be music’s self-appointed ambassador, you’d better). But if you’re in Seattle and you’re going to make a big deal of your intro and outro music, try someone else. Off the top of my head I can name a dozen better Seattle bands:
Nirvana, Soundgarde, Dinosaur Jr. Screaming Trees. Green River, Mother Love Bone, Alice In Chains, Mad Season, Mudhoney, Sunny Day Real Estate, Heart, the Sonics. There, done. Try any of them. Honestly.
Oh right… the baseball…
-Here’s something I like. With Jason Heyward and Willson Contreras cooling off just a bit, Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo have arrived. Bryant might not have enough to show for it, but last night he managed four balls with an exit velocity over 100 MPH, and Rizzo added two homers in two games, including a big one last night. And let’s not forget The War Bear, who has hit .381 the last week and won Tuesday’s game with a homer that turned the baseball oblong. If the thunder don’t get ya the lightning will.
-It’s been overshadowed by his injury absence, but the Cubs are getting serious work from Jon Lester. He’s got a WHIP of 0.96 on the year. So far this season he’s eschewed his four-seamer for more cutters and more change-ups, and if these are the results I’m here for it.
-You still can’t trust this pen as far as you could throw it collectively, but I’m hoping that just one day off after whatever that was on Sunday just wasn’t quite enough. But then I also think that Brad Brach just sucks, so here we are. I hold out some hope that Brandon Kintzler has some use, and he did get a seriously needed double-play last night. But he also served up one to Edwin Encarnacion that landed somewhere near Victoria.
-Cole Hamels had to get too many outs, and two earned over 5.2 innings should be enough normally. He wasn’t hit all that hard so we’ll just let it pass.
-Good lord are the Mariners helpless defensively. In my shitty high school league the first thing our coach told us was, “Get the ball in play. In this league, amazing things will happen.” That’s the same for the Mariners. We said it in the preview but Encarnacion and Santana should be DHs and Bruce probably should too. But because Dan Vogelbach would probably just eat his glove, they all have to play in the field. This could be a pretty good offense and if King Felix can at least be competent it’s not a hopeless rotation, but they’re going nowhere because they’re never going to catch the ball.
-I will take anything I can get when it comes to Dillon Maples, and striking out the side in the 9th in an 11-0 game is still that. Encarnacion was diving out of the way of strikes. So was everyone else. If he could ever just keep his fastball in the zip code, he’s the doomsday device out of the pen we’ve wanted. Seriously, he could be Josh Hader from last year, if his control wasn’t a Pollock painting.
-I guess that was Javy’s response to being asked if he wants to give up shortstop.
Onwards…
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