Everything Else

The Bruins Have Saved You Before

By Sam Fels 2448 0

I know it’s dark. I know you woke up this morning not quite believing what you were in for, what you had seen. I know you’re desperately trying to awake from what seems a nightmare. It can’t be real. Not even the most vengeful of gods would subject you to this. But alas, sports are not here for a constant feel-good state. They’re meant to swing y0u from one pole to the other, so that each moment is just a little more vivid than if you didn’t know the other side. I won’t tell you to embrace this, because it’s not possible. But you will remember this when things swing the other way, whenever that might be.

Only Sophie can empathize. Yet another Boston championship…or true death.

Still, we’ve been here before. It was eight years ago. Sure, there were two less Red Sox World Series rings then, and three less Patriots’ Super Bowls (good god), and perhaps the combination of those five parades down the cursed and ill-designed Boylston St. have pushed you past the edge of understanding or acceptance. I get it. It’s a lot to battle against.

Still, there was a fate worse that awaited us in June of 2011. Do you remember how vile those Canucks were? Do you remember how they’d sat and waited until the cap ruined the Hawks and they could arise simply by watching us fall away? Wouldn’t have a Canucks victory, matching the only one we had at the moment, be worse than this? You may say no, but you’re forgetting that Burrows winner after taking an overtime penalty that could have capped a glorious comeback. Or the beginning of the Keith-Sedin Holy War.

Remember how unstoppable it all looked? Ryan Kesler beat the Predators by himself. The Sharks meekly lifted their heads just high and just long enough to have them violently chopped off. They were never in that series. Did you forget the opening games of that Final were won on goals by Burrows and Raffi Torres? You probably did, and on purpose. After Burrows should have been ejected for trying to gnaw off Patrice Bergeron’s finger, no less.

But then the Bruins saved you. Saved us all. They demolished the Canucks in Boston for two games, and though they dropped Game 5, they’d set down a marker that there was no way Vancouver was going to win in Boston. Which set the stage for one of the best nights you’ve had as a Hawks fan. Don’t tell me about soaking in schadenfreude. What is it you think we do here?

Kesler’s tears? Luongo’s 1000 yard stare? The Sedins hauling off to the dressing room as quickly as possible. They’ve done this before.

You may dread the next two weeks, and you should. You can’t believe your luck that these are your choices. And you can’t remain neutral. Neutrality in sports is for assholes. It’s hardly the point.

You don’t get to choose, at least sometimes, who you turn to for salvation. Sometimes there’s only one choice. It may feel wrong, but you know that when it’s over you’ll be glad you did. The relief will be palpable. And you’ve done it before. The muscle memory should be of some comfort. No one said it had to be pleasant. Just that it was necessary.

I’m trying here. I really am.

Baseball

The 2016 White Sox Come Back For Their Nostalgia Tour

By Sam Fels 1311 0

Deep down, you kind of love this, right Sox fans?

I’ll admit to being a bit distracted in 2016 with my side of town, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t aware of all that went on with the White Sox in 2016. And frankly, I’m happy for the reminder of just how ridiculous it was. I didn’t appreciate it enough. And how important it might be, because that team ended up smashing the previous model for the White Sox and giving fans this one, which is pretty much what they wanted for years. Except for that botched Machado thing.

When Todd Frazier and Adam Eaton were doing handbags at ten paces on Monday, all the details came flying back. Because you really have to take a step back and marvel at the pure farce that the mere suggestion Drake LaRoche should haul his hilljack ass out of the clubhouse half the time caused his dad to retire! No one asked that Drake probably couldn’t read was something that was amiss, just that he belonged out there taking grounders. I mean, if you think about it for too long your brain bubbles. An adult male, or at least a facsimile of one, was told to stop bringing his child to the office, a place of business, and he reacted by packing up his stuff and going home.

This seemed such a normal request, and no one ever bothered to ask Jose Abreu what he thought about it, being separated from his entire family for years. I don’t have to wonder too hard why Adam Laroche probably didn’t care all that much about that. But you add the layers to it and it gets so much better. Jimmy Rollins, an actual grown-up even if he was completely busted as a player by that point, needed all of eight minutes in spring training to make it clear to Kenny Williams this shit had to stop. And then he saw the reaction, took 40 games, and decided he’d had enough of this shit. And this is a guy who built a career in Philadelphia!

And it just kept getting better. If anyone was really paying attention, Adam Eaton would have been the subject of talkshows nationwide after claiming Drake LaRoche–again, a child whose marketable skill is probably chewing cud–was a team leader. Where else could this have taken place? If he had said that in New York the Post and Daily News would have euthanized him for his own good. And yet it merely passed by here.

Adam Eaton was just the torch-carrier from Nick Swisher and his Dirty Cat Salon ploy, which had everyone in the clubhouse ready to go Brutus on his ass. That doesn’t mean anyone should have sided with Frazier either. Any player Hawk Harrelson likes that much should be heavily side-eyed.

Oh, did we forget Hawk Harrelson leaving the booth to check on Frazier after like, a bruise? Where else could this happen? What did Frazier and Herm Schneider do when Hawk breathlessly and covered in sweat burst into the trainer’s room? The correct answer would have been stabbing him with a tranquilizer and going about their business. I’d really give anything to go back in time and see that scene.

I’m trying to picture Michael Kay sprinting down the Yankee Stadium tunnels to see if Gleyber Torres’s allergies were acting up, and no vision of it doesn’t have Brian Cashman catapulting him into the East River. There wasn’t one functioning element to the whole operation, and I’m really greatly saddened it basically took place in the dark.

Sox fans may think I’m mocking them, but I’m really not. If you’re going to be a dysfunctional mess, why not just go for it? Don’t half-ass it. Go big or go home. When the Sox become contenders again, the 2016 team will be talked about in bars and living rooms across town as a sign of where they’d come from. It’s their Lee Elia tirade. It’s Dave Manson chasing Mike Keenan down a hallway during an intermission.

It all went so wrong that Kenny Williams’s policy of collecting whatever veterans he could find, sometimes multiple times, and rolling the dice again and again was consigned to a dumpster out back and never to be spoke of again. Maybe the Sox won’t get there but at least you know they’re run by something resembling adults.

The Goodman or Steppenwolf needs a show about the ’16 White Sox. They need to be burnt into the memory of every baseball fan. And they’ll be a turning point for an entire organization. 20 years from now the Sox will still vow to never be that again. It’s so wonderful. You basically have the Bulls being a cover band for them now. What a gift.

Baseball

The Disconnect And The Solution

By Sam Fels 1561 0

As I watched the Cubs bullpen fritter away another lead last night, the second game in a row they’ve done so even if it came on a collection of bleeders and excuse-me’s, I have to admit I get the fans’ angst. I might not be there with them, but I can’t tell them they’re wrong. And you know how I love telling people they’re wrong, especially when I’m from the same side. The bullpen this year is perhaps the biggest spot of neglect the Theo Epstein regime has infected the team with since they slammed back into relevance in 2015.

And it of course comes back to this winter. They kept telling us they didn’t have the money for Harper or Machado, and you didn’t have to squint all that hard to see the arguments about why signings like that didn’t make sense for the Cubs. I may not agree with that assessment, but I can understand the argument. However, fixing a bullpen is far cheaper, and for the Cubs to turn their pockets out at the thought of adding the cheapest part of a baseball team was as bewildering as it was infuriating.

And yet, as the winter dragged along and the Cubs made nary a move outside Brad Brach and casting a net to find whatever various flotsam would fall into it, there wasn’t a peep out of the Cubs front office. For a team as savvy with the media (at least on baseball matters) as the Cubs are, surely there would be a leak somewhere or a nudge that Theo and Jed were as surprised with the budget closing as we were. They talked of major changes in the wreckage of a two-day slump last October, and then nothing. Surely if things had changed between then and when the markets opened up, someone somewhere would know. And yet nothing. No whispers of fidgeting anywhere.

That doesn’t mean to cast the front office as perfect. Far from it. No matter their plans, they were counting on Brandon Morrow, which was a poor choice. Perhaps they couldn’t have predicted that Carl Edwards would run farther from competence than toward it, given his age, but he wasn’t in a position to be counted on either. You can’t account for Pedro Strop getting hurt…except he has the last three seasons. While this front office has had its problems identifying and collecting pitching, this seemed an egregious error. It is not like them to stock a complete component of a team with hunches and wildcards. And yet, here we are.

Which I guess perhaps lends credence to this story from Patrick Mooney about the Cubs and Marquee. Now, no one is going to buy this hook, line, and sinker, and nor should they. There are still more than enough variables to fuck it all up, like if no one actually picks up Marquee which Crane Kenney seems so sure of. And anything Crane is sure of you best bet you should take with a whole shaker of salt.

Still, perhaps the lack of any itching or antsy-ness from the front office over the limitations this winter stems from knowing it was a one-year deal? That they would simply have to grit their teeth through this winter knowing with the money coming off the books in the form of Hamels and Zobrist, combined with greater income would turn next winter around? Perhaps they knew with the room they’ve left for midseason acquisitions they’ll be fine? We’re essentially talking about two arms here. And if Kimbrel is going to wait until after the draft to drop the compensation, a prorated salary for half a season is probably only $5 or $6M, no? Half of a Ken Giles will cost $2M. Alex Colome a little over that. I guess I shouldn’t worry.

I don’t want to be that guy who blindly trusts what he’s being told, especially by the uber rich. Still, the complete lack of agitation in the front office, apparently, makes me think something is afoot. And the Cubs being on top of the division only buys them more time. But the answers need to be relatively soon.

Everything Else

You Get What Anyone Gets – Saying Goodbye To The ’18-’19 San Jose Sharks

By Sam Fels 1597 0

You had one job to do.

Let it be known forth that the San Jose Sharks are the only Bay Area organization that can only wield its location and power to fuck itself. Whereas everyone else stationed there slowly (or not) takes over the world and is influencing their various spheres and others, the only sphere the Sharks can influence is the inside of their thigh with a warm, yellow, and constant stream. And now it’s well and truly over for them. This generation of this team, one that promised so much, is done. Charred. Finished. Fertig. Verfallen. Verlumpt. Verblunget. Verkackt. Whatever hope they might have had for beyond went out the window with Joe Pavelski’s sense of direction.

This is probably their most spectacular crash yet. They got the best defenseman on the planet for nothing. A song. They added him to a team that already had three scoring lines, one of the best d-men around (Vlasic, not Burns). And it seemed that despite their best efforts, it would work. They had a goalie doing the lindy hop in net all season. Didn’t really matter. Their coach was insistent on continually lighting a fuse of playing Brenden Dillon more than Joakim Ryan. The Sharks kept putting it out. Joe Thornton could barely move. Fine. Hertl moves to center and no one cares. Perhaps they picked the lock.

They had miracles on their side. They trashed everyone’s favorite overhyped darling in the first round. They benefitted from Gabriel LaxativeLog’s lazy ass in the second. They had perhaps the only team that’s a bigger collection of failures and stomach-acid-pukes than them waiting. They got more bounces. They had an entire city on the verge of meltdown (to be fair, that’s St. Louis’s natural state, thanks to the dangerous levels of methane that surrounds the place emitted from every resident every four minutes).

Cue faceplant.

And now it’s all ash. Peter DeBoer proved that any idiot can get a team to a Final, even twice. Hell, he just got beat by one. How did icing Michael Haley in the playoffs instead of…oh I don’t know, any kindergartner with two legs work out? Speaking of which, Dillon spent most of the playoffs looking like said kindergartner sprinting for the Sesame Street phone at playtime, and yet he played more than Ryan. Hey, did getting Karlsson back for those five games in February feel worth it? You were given the best toy in the whole league and you broke it. Fine work all around there.

This was a team that had a whole division basically fall in front of it, and still let Calgary’s line and a half plus a d-man waltz by it for the title. It was the first to contain two Norris winners in a decade, and then Brent Burns spent a month proving why his Norris should be melted down and poured over his head, if only to rid us of his hideous beard. If Burns came from Omsk instead of Canada Don Cherry would have beaten him with a 2×4 by now and they would have made that the Canadian flag.

Much like the Raiders, the Sharks probably need to be thrown out of the Bay Area now. Everyone else gets it. The Warriors are the best team in their league’s history. The Giants, inexplicably, created a dynasty out of hilljacks and sex fiends. Though the A’s trophy cabinet may be empty, they still stand for all that is progressive and cool about their sport despite drawing only parole board hearings to their games and playing in a literal sewer. The Raiders didn’t do shit, and have been sent off to where rejects go…off the strip in Vegas. Sadly, that’s not an option for the Sharks. Maybe Reno would work better.

They’ve left us with this curse of a Final. Just like they left us with Vancouver and Boston once upon a time. The Sharks have launched a bunch of plagues upon the hockey world through their incompetence. The Hawks dynasty started by running them over. The Canucks in ’11. We could have been rid of the Ducks sooner if the Sharks didn’t blow a #1 seed by trying to out-belch them. The narrative that Sidney Crosby would never get it done again was solved by a week with the Sharks. A Kings affirmation could have easily been snuffed out at the first possible hurdle. The Sharks turned it down four times.

The Sharks are everything bad about Silicon Valley, leaving the rest of society to clean up their mess without any of the benefits. They are the bubble-burst without the bubble. Somehow, they still leave the sticky residue all around without ever having put anything together. And “Sharks” is one syllable, you illiterate fucks.

Heretofore, the Sharks will be symbolized by both Patrick Marleau and Joe Thornton, their two greatest ever players who will never win a Cup, even when they flee trying to do so. You know what your problem is, Toronto? You’ve got San Jose running through you. They will soon be joined by Joe Pavelski, who definitely should have been playing and will definitely be able to identify his family in five years, and Logan Couture. Maybe Brent Burns, assuming he’s not facing the wrong way the rest of his life, which he most certainly will be.

It’s best if you just break it all up now. The happiest you will be is everyone forgets you for a few years while Hertl and Meier thrash about trying to constitute a first line. Thornton retires, Pavelski and Karlsson walk, maybe try and cash in on Vlasic and save him from the fate that awaits him. It’s not in you, Sharks. That much is clear. Like everyone else out there, you thought you had big ideas and could change things. But all you did was annoy the piss out of people and give way to something much worse. Oblivion is your only salvation.

Thanks for nothing, fucksticks. Now we have to deal with this.

 

 

Everything Else

The Doll’s Trying to Kill Me and the Toaster’s Been Laughing at Me – FFUD ’18–19 Player Reviews – Drake Caggiula

By John Pullega 1724 0

Drake Caggiula is a nice player to have in general. He’s a good combination of decent skill, board-crashing puck retrieval, and missing teeth that each and every rockhead broadcaster pollutes his britches over year in and year out. What makes Caggiula even better is that StanBo got him for Brandon Motherfucking Manning. Sane people may argue that the Strome trade was tops on the year, but we all know that this was truly the feather in StanBo’s stupid fucking cap.

Hawks Stats

26 GP, 5 G, 7 A, 12 P

49.71 CF%, 45.48 xGF% [5v5]

It Comes With a Free Frogurt!

This one’s easy. Drake Caggiula isn’t Brandon Manning. In case you’ve forgotten, Brandon Manning managed to get sent down to the AHL while playing defense on the Edmonton Oilers. There is no better metaphor that can accurately capture how fucking bad he is at his chosen profession. What an asshole.

On top of not being Brandon Manning—the PETA of hockey players—Caggiula looked serviceable if not good in his 26 games here. He spent most of his time on the first line with Daydream Nation and wasn’t a total clusterfuck up there. Granted, if your first line consists of Drake Caggiula, either your coach is an idiot or you suck, but since we know that the latter is certain and the former is a distinct possibility, you live with it. On the first line, he came close to scratching even in possession, and was above board in the relative Corsi share (+1.8). He was the guy doing what everyone wishes John Hayden would do, which is retrieve pucks and set up his more skilled linemates.

The Frogurt Is Also Cursed

Caggiula is a bonafide bonehead. Two games after spending a month in the dark room with a concussion, ya boy went out and got his skull caved in by Dustin Byfuglien, a man with hardly enough motivation to elbow his way to the front of the buffet anymore. It’s hard to have a consistently positive impact for your hockey team if you’re too concussed to play.

By virtue of being on the first line, Caggiula had plush starts, starting nearly 60% of his time in the offensive zone. This makes those possession and expected goals percentages look pretty shitty. But that’s also a function of playing with Garbage Dick, who tends to make a lot out of very little.

Can I Go Now?

Caggiula is still pretty young (24) and is on a decently cheap contract for next year ($1.5 million cap hit). Having him available to play top line minutes is a plus, but it shouldn’t be what we expect from him going forward. He looks like a much better fit as a puck retriever in the bottom six, but I’m not sure I’d trust him with the kind of defensive responsibilities you’d give to the Kampf line.

If the Hawks are going to stick with Saad on the third line, that could be a safe spot for Caggiula, especially if we’re looking at Caggiula as a center, which seems to be where StanBo and Beto O’Colliton want to slot him. Something like Saad–Caggiula–Sikura/Kahun could make for some decent depth scoring and responsible possession. With no history of defensive responsibility, you’re sort of forced to put him in a role where he can take advantage of softer zone starts. But he’s shown he can handle that in a small sample size last year.

Overall, Caggiula is a fine if not good puck retriever with OK speed and a bit more touch than the average grinder. Certainly better to have that than whatever it was the Brain Trust thought they were getting with Manning.

Previous Player Reviews

Corey Crawford

Cam Ward

Collin Delia

Duncan Keith

Connor Murphy

Henri Jokiharju

Gustav Forsling

Erik Gustafsson

Carl Dahlstrom

Brendan Perlini

Alex DeBrincat

Chris Kunitz

Artem Anisimov

Marcus Kruger

Dylan Strome

Jonathan Toews

Brandon Saad

Dominik Kahun

John Hayden

David Kampf

Patrick Kane

Baseball

Let’s Talk About Tim Anderson Because We Need Fun

By Sam Fels 1339 0

I think we can all agree that Tim Anderson’s emergence goes just a little bit beyond the field, and it goes into areas that I’m probably not qualified to talk about. Not only could the White Sox seriously use this season from Anderson being real and repeated, so could all of baseball. It’s been a ride so far,  that’s for sure.

Strictly as a player, and as a batter more to the point. Anderson is the type of player that used to piss me off. Not for his brashness, because I’ve always loved that as someone who has no swagger to him at all, but his undisciplined ways. As basically a zealot of Moneyball, I looked through glares and furrowed brows at any player who didn’t walk or even take a pitch, Anderson would have been one I would have been waving garlic at or something. Of course, if he were a vampire that would only make him cooler but that’s a much sillier discussion to have. Anyway, given Jim Hendry’s ways you can see why I was probably the most miserable Cubs fan on Earth, and that’s saying something.

Over the past couple years, I’ve grown to appreciate players like Anderson who look at our narrow vision of what an approach at the plate should be (or did), stick one finger up at it, and then go about it the opposite way. There was probably a time I would have looked at Javy Baez crossly as well, but he’s another who decided he was going to swing at even more pitches, and simply get to more of them and that’s how he would increase his numbers. As both Anderson and Baez are having their best seasons, certainly what’s become clear is that there are a few ways to skin a cat. If you’re a sick fucko, that is, because who else would come up with that phrase? Seriously.

Anyway, Anderson. He did raise his walk-rate last year to 5%, which is just about something you’d notice. But that’s clearly not for him this year, as he’s swinging at more pitches out of the zone, inside the zone, so yes, overall. And he’s making more contact on pitches outside and inside the zone than he ever has. So it’s not a huge surprise that he’s seeing less and less pitches inside the zone than he ever has, or getting less first-pitch strikes than before. It’s how these things go. Hasn’t mattered all that much, or it didn’t in April. But the theme of the day seems to be parsing out players struggling in the month of May, so here we are.

Clearly, Anderson’s May is not as good as his April. Whereas he had a .425 wOBA in the opening month, that’s cratered to .294 in May. Yes, he’s not getting nearly the rub of the green in May, but a .302 BABIP isn’t unholy. Let’s see if we can get to the bottom of this other than luck. Because Anderson never hit the ball hard enough to get that much luck, and probably needs to live with this kind of fortune.

One oddity of Anderson’s season is that he hasn’t hit the fastball well at any time. In the season’s opening throes, he hit .296 on fastballs, which is barely ok, but slugged the same exact number, which is hardly so. Anderson made up for that by hitting everything else into oblivion. .467 average and a .733 slugging on sinkers, .400 on changes, and the big improvement from previous seasons was inhaling and spitting back out sliders to the tune of a .435 average and a .738 slugging. Those last two numbers were far more than he’s ever done before.

Well, Anderson is still seeing the same percentage of fastballs, but it’s getting worse. He’s hitting .158 on them in May, while maintaining good-to-great averages on pretty much everything else. Again, like we did earlier today, has the location where he’s getting those fastballs changed? Sure looks like it:

Pitchers are going away from Anderson more, and to his credit he’s gone the opposite way more as well in May (21% in April, 35% in May). The problem for Anderson is when going the other way he just doesn’t have much pop, at least not this year. He’s got a 20% line-drive rate when going to right field, which is down significantly from last year but in line with his first years on the Southside. He’s got a decent enough 25% line-drive rate when going the other way, which is what he’s had in every season in the majors. But he’s slugged .371, with an ISO of .086 when going to right so far this year, and until that improves, that’s where pitchers are going to go at him. But it’s in him, because he’s slugged over .550 in the previous two seasons when doing that.

Anderson has seen big gains when pulling the ball this year, along with getting it in the air more. But it didn’t take pitchers long to see that came at the cost of what he used to do well. Now we see if he can combine the two.

 

 

Baseball

Inside The Slumps

By Sam Fels 1352 0

While the Cubs have trucked along pretty much in May, some of the things that were going well in April have not gone so well in May. Specifically, there are players who helped carry the offense while Kris Bryant and maybe one or two others were still trying to get the spark plugs to fire that are no definitely making weird noises and spitting up oil and smoke. So let’s go through and see what’s going on with a couple of them.

The first that pops up is Jason Heyward. There can’t be much of a stark contrast between April and May for a player than what Heyward has gone through. Here’s April slash lines: .309/.426/.509, and you can see why everyone was so excited and felt like they’d just come upon an undiscovered warehouse of peanut butter cups. Here’s May: .169/.234/.238. And that is fucking gross. Like, going to pick up your dog’s shit and realizing there’s a hole in the bag and you’re blocks from home gross (and yes, I know those of you with kids have had this feeling every day, but I didn’t make you have kids).

I think it’s important to remember than when you combine the two, currently Heyward has a 100 wRC+, .158 ISO, and a .401 slugging, all marks that are actually the best he’s had here in Chicago (sad, I know). The reason that Heyward has only been worth 0.1 fWAR is that his defense hasn’t been the usual stellar kind, at least metrically, as it usually is. However, an exactly average offensive season and return to his usual defensive prowess for the rest of the season still makes him a valuable player. But let’s get deeper than that because we’ve got nothing else.

For one, luck is playing a huge part. In April, Heyward’s BABIP was .313, which is a touch above average. In May it’s .208, which is beyond the sewers and getting to the Earth’s core. Whatever kind of contact Heyward is making, .208 is ridiculous. That’s not going to continue.

The thing is, the contact between the two months isn’t really all that different. In April, Heyward had 17.4% line-drives, 46.4% grounders, 36.2 fly balls. May it’s been 18.5%/42.6%/38.9%. Almost exactly the same. Considering the lack of line drives and hard contact, maybe Heyward was really lucky to get what he did in April with that mere .313 BABIP.

One big difference is that the hard-contact has dropped off. Heyward had 30.5% hard contact rate in April, which isn’t even that good, but that’s dropped to 25% in May. And if you go by Statcast, Heyward is right where he should be overall. His expected batting average is .252, he’s hitting .243. His expected weighted-on base is .323. His actual is .322. This is probably what he is, and I think it’s probably fine? And if he improves from this May, not even close to what he was in April but then improves, you’ll have a decent season.

Going deeper, in the season’s opening month Heyward was crushing fastballs and curves. He’s still hitting curves well, but he can’t get anything done on fastballs. Has there been a difference where he’s getting them? A touch. Here’s where he was getting fastballs in April and then May:

It’s not a huge difference, but he’s seeing more fastballs up and in than he did, and if you remember him driving outside fastballs to left you can see why that might be a problem. And J-Hey has always had a problem with high and tight fastballs. It’s just something he’s going to have to get to.

Another is Daniel Descalso. Now, counting on Descalso for much was always folly, because it’s just not what he’s been. He has one above-average offensive season to his name, and that was the last one. Now is he .216 bad? No, he isn’t, but outside of Colorado he’s always been around a .240 hitter. What we are missing is the walks. Descalso’s BB% is down 6% from last year, which is part of the problem. And he was walking in April, around 12%. But that’s sunk to 5% in May. And the Ks are up. It ain’t pretty.

The big problem is that in April, Descalso hit a ton of shit hard, to 41.8%. In May it’s 20%, so even if that .171 BABIP feels like it’s the work of a demon, you’re not going very far when only a fifth of your contact is loud.

Descalso’s success in April was basically only what he did on fastballs. He hit .440 on them, slugged .680, and his numbers on sinkers were just about the same. So he’s not seeing them nearly as often this year. He saw 171 fastballs or sinkers in April, and only 57 of them so far in May. People catch on. And he’s getting difference in location too:

What’s weird is that Descalso hasn’t been all that good high in the zone in his career, but they’re certainly more careful about pumping shit right down the middle on him. And Descalso is helpless on anything that breaks. And until that changes, this might be what you get.

Everything Else

Wait, They Get It? No, Surely Not No

By Sam Fels 1970 0

I guess at this point of the offseason, all we can really do is take the stuff Mark Lazerus and Scott Powers write, and others, and comment. We’re still three weeks away from anything interesting happening, and a month away from the draft when we’ll get some real answers. So here’s Lazerus’s piece from yesterday at The Athletic that’s essentially an interview with Marc Kelley, the Hawks director of amateur scouting. I sort of wonder if Kelley won’t be allowed to talk ever again.

The main debate we’ve had here about the Hawks #3 pick is whether or not they can add another d-man at that spot, and specifically Bowen Byram. He’s the only d-man mentioned in the discussions. Every other player around there is a forward. And the Hawks have sort of projected this idea that they already have too many d-men in the system and they’re all so precious and they just can’t figure out what to do. Which leads one to worry the Hawks will reach for a forward that won’t be worth that third pick, that won’t be here soon anyway, and whatever the Hawks do to improve for next year is going to have to be through trades and free agency. Or worse yet, they’re not all that concerned with improving next year.

Kelley seems to go against the grain on all that. First, there’s a comparison to Paul Coffey about Byram from Kelley, which isn’t a name you just toss around (though if Paul Coffey were a player today and was a Hawks, a large section of Hawks fans would hate him including the two in the booth. This is my fear/excitement about Karlsson. BUT THAT’S NOT WHY YOU CALLED). But here’s a money quote for you:

“If you feel that a defenseman is going to project out to be that No. 1, then you go that route,” said Kelley, who was careful not to reveal his cards and say Byram was necessarily that guy. “With all these defensemen we’ve drafted, it’s not our plan that they’re all going to play for the Blackhawks. The defensemen we’ve taken have all held their value, or increased their value. That’s what you’re looking for.”

So there’s a couple things there. One, he’s basically saying that if the Hawks think that Byram is going to be a true foundational piece, then they’ll take him. Kelley recognizes you don’t get a shot at this very often, and if one comes around you don’t miss. They’re obviously not going to say what they’re going to do, just in case they scare some team behind them that HAS to have a guy into trading two top-liners for the Hawks pick or something ridiculous like that. I don’t know if Byram is that guy. A lot of scouting reports seem to suggest he is. You’ll never know for sure until he gets here, obviously.

Second, Kelley for the first time makes it clear that the Hawks know they’ll never get all of their prospects on the blue line onto the UC ice, and even seems to relish how adding Byram opens them up to trade possibly one or two more of them. If that’s the route they go. We can debate all day which d-man should go (Jokiharju), but while they’ve hinted at it before around the edges, this is clear that something will happen. And very well may happen this summer.

Which is fine. Jokiharju’s or Boqvist’s value are probably still high as they can be. Maybe the latter has to prove he won’t drown at the professional level, but we’ll get there. Still, I was encouraged by something someone in the front office said. When was the last time that happened? This is why he’ll be silenced forever I’m sure.

Everything Else

The Doll’s Trying To Kill Me And The Toaster’s Been Laughing At Me – FFUD’s ’18-’19 Player Reviews: Patrick Kane

By Sam Fels 1758 0

Well this one’s easy. It’s rare that a player gets any sort of Hart Trophy buzz for a team that doesn’t even get all that close to a playoff spot. This year two of them did, and that’s Connor McDavid and Patrick Kane. Which tells you the strata Kane inhabits, and he’s doing it at over 30. 30 isn’t the cut off it used to be, of course, especially not for the truly elite in the league. Crosby, Bergeron, Marchand are all over 30 with Kane, Stamkos is 29 and you wouldn’t expect much of a drop-off there. Still, it’s clear all of them have more help than Kane did. Let’s go through it, though you pretty much know it all by now.

Stats

81 GP – 44 G – 66 A – 110P

48.6 CF% (-0.91 Rel) 43.6 xGF% (-2.18 Rel)

It Comes With A Free Frogurt!

All of it? Kane’s 66 assists, 110 points, 35 even-strength goals, 45 even-strength assists, and 80 even-strength points were all career-highs. His 341 shots were a career-high by a mile, and is probably the biggest transformation in his game. Because his 12.9 shooting-percentage is really only about career-average for him, and not the spiked 16% he put up in the year he did win the Hart. So yeah, stats-wise it was ridiculous. And if you watched this team every or most games, you know there was a period there where Kane was the only reason they were scraping to even just overtime a lot of nights, or getting the full two. And he did it with a variety of linemates, not just permanently out there with a running buddy like Panarin in 2015-2016. Six different forwards racked up at least 200 minutes with Kane at even-strength. That’s two lines’ worth getting between 15-20 games or so with Kane. And while their metrics were all over the board with and without Kane, only DeBrincat saw his goals-for percentage rise be better without Kane than with him (giving you some idea the special player Top Cat is). It was simply the most dominant season Kane has put together, and it came past when most players are supposed to have peaked. Yes, it was an offensive league this year and a lot of players saw a spike, but not like this.

The Frogurt Is Also Cursed

You really have to stretch to find things for Kane’s season. Kane has never been an exceptional possession player, but he’s never had to be. He’ll always out-shoot what his expected goals are because he’s that talented a scorer and playmaker and basically you have to be a true buffoon to screw up the chances he’s going to provide for you. Still, Kane’s metrics were the worst of his career, and if that trend were to continue and he were to have some kind of cold streak it would get kind of ugly in a hurry. Some of that can be attributed to playing with defensively inept players like Strome or DeBrincat to an extent, or to Toews not really being the two-way dynamo he once was, but Kane’s usage is probably going to have to get more and more sheltered as he gets older. There were some nights where you could tell he clearly couldn’t be bothered in his own end, or all over the ice at some points. But given the mess this team was it was hard to blame him all the time. And he would still put up two or three points.

Kane flagged a bit as the year went on, mostly due to the insane workload he was being asked. Kane averaged more than two minutes per game more this year than last, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. He would get double-shifted on nights when the Hawks were trailing, which was most nights, so not only was he playing more but he was playing more while chasing the game against bunkered in defenses specifically set out to stop him. It was only natural he wouldn’t keep up the pace, and there are a lot of players who would love to close a season with 16 points in 18 games. It just wasn’t the standard he’d set.

I guess the one question to ask is that the two best individual seasons Kane has had, the Hawks haven’t really done shit. When he won the Hart, they were bounced in the first round. He was arguably better this year, and they only waved at a playoff spot as it drove by. That’s not really on him, and speaks more to the limited influence a winger can have. We can point to Ovechkin, but he can only do so much and if Backstrom and Kuznetsov aren’t there, the Caps probably aren’t a playoff team either. Again, this is more on what’s around Kane than him.

Can I Go Now?

No matter how you slice it up, Kane was on the ice for 84 even-strength goals and 67 against, which is 55%. That latter number doesn’t rank all that highly, but that goals-for is best in the league. And there were only four ES goals he was on the ice for that he didn’t either score or assist, which is…well, insane. You feel like Kane could do that offensively again, and if there was an actual defense behind him it could bring the goals-against down and then you’d see some real shit.

You get the feeling that Kane would prefer to just have set linemates for most of the year, but I don’t know if that’s possible. The Hawks need to add a top-six forward, but it’s hard to see who they could add to set everything in stone. They’ve always been hesitant to pair up Daydream Nation for anything longer than a spurt. Kane and Strome together gets far too domed defensively. Toews isn’t the force he was at that end, so putting them together doesn’t solve everything. They would still need a two-way left-winger. Which you would think could be Saad… but there are “issues” there, let’s say. And that would leave what for Top Cat and Strome? Again, none of this is Kane’s fault.

It is unlikely that Kane will put up 110 points again. But it wasn’t likely he’d do it in the first place. If the Hawks get that top-six winger, and improve the defense so that they actually have the puck more often, and with Kane’s now heavy-shooting ways, 100 points is hardly a big ask.