Baseball

All The Boys In The Band Know How To Get Down – 2019 Sox Player Reviews: Zack Collins

By Andy Jonathan 1369 0

2019 Stats

.186/.307/.349

3 HR 12 RBI

13.7 BB% 38.2 K%

.285 wOBA 77 wRC+ .656 OPS

-4 Defensive Runs Saved

 

Tell Me A Story: While not on the same level of anticipation for the likes of Luis Robert and Eloy Jimenez, Zack Collins’ minor league career was watched very closely this season with the expectation he would be up and making a difference with the big club sooner rather than later. The waiting game ended on the 19th of June when Beef Welington went on the IL with some type of brain damage and Collins’ contract was purchased by the White Sox, officially putting him on the 40-man roster.

The expectation among sportswriters, bloggers, and fans alike was that Collins would be getting ample playing time at catcher, first base and designated hitter. What would the point of him being up at the major league level if not to see what he can do? In Collins’ first full game against the Rangers on the 21st of June, he showed just a taste of what he could do by smoking an Ariel Jurado fastball just right of dead center in Arlington (estimated at 445, no cheapie) for his first ever major league hit and home run.

Unfortunately that would be the only highlight of his first stint in the majors, as he played less than half the time before he was sent back down to Charlotte on July 14th. During that three-week span that he was up, Collins only started in seven of a possible 21 games, losing playing time and at-bats to White Sox legends like AJ Reed and Yonder Alonso. Why did the White Sox call up Collins and start his service time clock to park him on the bench 66% of the time? I honestly have no idea, and I have a sneaking suspicion neither does Rick Hahn or Renteria. Hahn would later claim that they saw something wrong with his approach at the plate and banished him back to AAA to work on it.

Credit where it’s due, after being sent down to Charlotte to work on that nebulous issue Collins began to absolutely rake at the plate. He slashed .281/.403(!)/.951 the rest of his time down there until he was inevitably called back up during roster expansion this past September. After being called back up, Collins got consistent playing time the rest of the month, both behind the plate and at 1B. He started out slowly after his return, but caught his stride the last 12 games of the season, hitting .293 with an .882 OPS and just under half of his hits being the extra base variety.

Behind the plate, Collins seemed to struggle to manage the game effectively. Runners stole bases on him at will, only being caught 11% of the time. He was at least able to keep the ball in front of him, however, only accounting for one passed ball which makes him look like a young Pudge Rodriguez compared to Welington Castillo. Granted he only started 6 games at catcher after being recalled, which again is kind of weird considering the Sox would certainly want to see what he has defensively if he’s going to be in the mix for catching in The Future™.

Contract: Team control next season, arbitration eligible 2023. Base salary is $550,000

Welcome Back or Boot In The Ass: Unless there’s a team out there who tosses an offer Rick Hahn’s way that he absolutely cannot ignore, Collins is coming back to the Sox in 2020 and will most likely be with the big club the entire season.

The main question concerning Collins’ playing time will be answered here shortly in December at the winter meetings. If Hahn is able to secure a player like Yasmani Grandal to play with the White Sox in 2020, Zack Collins’ positional future is gonna be in flux. In that scenario, Collins would most likely be splitting time between first base and designated hitter, with occasional starts behind the dish at catcher.

Even if the Sox don’t land Grandal, Hahn will most likely be shopping for a backup catcher as long term profile for Collins doesn’t show much more than occasionally spelling James McCann full time behind the plate. In a perfect world, the Sox sign Grandal and create a rotating conga line between 1B, DH and C for Grandal, Collins and Jose Abreu (who is almost certainly a lock to return.)

If Collins is able to progress at even half the rate Yoan Moncada or Eloy Jimenez has, the Sox will have themselves the kind of player who can get on base at an excellent clip (I don’t expect him to have a +.400 OPB again, but even .370 isn’t out of the question) and occasionally hit for power from the left side of the plate. Guys like that don’t grow on trees, and with some advancement in skill it will be worth the Sox time to try and find a spot in the lineup for him, wherever that may end up being.

Hockey

It’s Time…For Time

By Sam Fels 1535 0

I was reading Ryan Lambert’s article today about how the Oilers pretty much have to run Leon Draisaitl‘s and Connor McDavid‘s ice-time tank to the “E” every night, and began thinking about how the Hawks will manage the same thing this season.

The Hawks aren’t a deep team, though they’re deeper than the Oilers even with Drais-Cube and McJesus. If the Hawks are going to do anything this year that you might remember, they’re going to do it on the backs of Kane, Toews, and DeBrincat doing remarkable things. So how much should Jeremy Colliton toss them over the boards? We know the answer is a lot, but finding the right amount is going to be tricky.

As we know last year, Patrick Kane only trailed Draisaitl and McDavid in time last season. He had a jump of a full two minutes per game from the previous season, breaking over 22:00 per game. That was also the highest of his career, at age 30, and even though his insane workout regimen has been well documented, it seemed less than ideal.

And that was bared out as the season went along. Kane went for 16 points in his last 18 games, which pretty much every other player on the planet save a handful would consider the best streak of their lives. But it doesn’t look as good when you consider that in the previous 38 games Kane went for 65 points (seriously). And sure, there’s some variance in there with power play scoring and shooting-percentage and such. But anyone who watched the Hawks in March and April last year (or would admit to it and then accept the concerned looks from their friends that would follow) knows that Kane looked a half-step slower in the season’s final throes. And why wouldn’t he?

Now maybe after a season of doing it, Kane is more prepared to take on 22 minutes per night, and wouldn’t you know he played 21:30 in the season opener. Still, 22 minutes a night for a winger seems a tad high, though we’re likely to get it again as this Alex Nylander thing blows up in their faces down the road. At least until my guy Philip Kurashev comes to save the day!

Toews also saw a big jump in his minutes last year, and also a career-high, clocking in at a flat 21:00. The Hawks are probably even thinner at center this year than they were last, though perhaps Ryan Carpenter is a push to Artem Anisimov depending on how you look at it. This would be less of a problem if Kirby Dach is kept around, but we’ve had that talk. How much do you want to push Toews at 31? Toews also tailed off a bit last season toward the end, though not as sharply. He had 15 points in the last 18 games where he’d gone 45 in 38 before.

Perhaps it’s DeBrincat who might see the real push in time this year? Top Cat only averaged a shade under 18 minutes a night last year. Now it would be easy to point out he doesn’t kill penalties and needs to be sheltered in shifts, but you could say the same things about Kane. Perhaps Top Cat doesn’t create as much offensively as Kane does, he’s more of a finisher, but he’s also not bereft of inspiration for his teammates either. He’s never been asked to do it much, always installed as the finisher on a line or power play. But it wouldn’t hurt to see if he can do more when shifted occasionally with some plugs, because it’s in his locker.

It might also help if Brandon Saad could author some streaks to warrant pushing 20 minutes a night, but that ship might have sailed. Same goes from Dylan Strome, and that ship is very much still in port.

Needless to say, the Hawks need these guys on the ice as much as possible, without cracking 22 or really even going over 21 minutes a night if they want Daydream Nation to still have anything in the tank come spring. The hope is that Strome and Top Cat make themselves available and necessary for 19-20 minutes per night as well. If that happens, the Hawks might actually do something. If they have to lean on the plus-30 Kane and Toews over 21 minutes a night again, they’re probably in that spot with the upstream and no paddles thing.

Baseball

We Know Your Nature – 2019 Cubs Player Reviews: Anthony Rizzo

By Sam Fels 1747 0

We move up the diamond a little to first base, where we find the Cubs captain. It should have been such an inspirational story, and yet the Cubs found a way to fuck up Anthony Rizzo hitting the shit out of the ball on one leg in a series they had to have. Instead they got swept. There’s your season right there. Let’s go through The Main Ingredient’s 2019…

2019 Stats

.293/.405/.520

27 HR  89 RBI

11.6 BB%  14.0 K%

.390 wOBA  141 wRC+  .925 OPS

-6.9 Defensive Runs Saved 

Tell Me A Story: If I told you in March that Rizz would set a career-high in batting average and on-base,  and have his best slugging in three years, you’d probably think the Cubs got a hell of a lot closer to 90 wins than they did. You’d probably think they’d have been over it. It wasn’t discussed much before the season, but Rizzo had something of a small slide in ’17 and ’18, especially 2018 where everything had dipped below the level he had set (such as .380+ OBP or .500+ slugging and such). As I will probably say with every review here, we don’t know how much to slide the bars for the baseball filled with gremlins, but we can safely assume this was a bounce-back year for Rizzo. Even if he didn’t need that much bouncing back.

Rizz was able to raise his line-drive rate, which is good. But his fly ball count went down and his ground-ball rate went up because of it, which is less than  good. According to Baseball Savant, there was a significant drop in his launch angle this year. Now that could be an intentional adjustment Rizzo made to hit more line drives, or it could be something else which would start to push you toward frowny-face. Also, even with the ball as it was, Rizzo’s exit-velocity didn’t really move from last year, which is curious. Which also plays into how the Cubs as a team just didn’t hit the ball very hard. If he were doing the same things, you’d think that would jump up even a little just given the nature of the thing. Still, it’s not like Rizzo heavily outperformed his expected batting average or weighted on-base, hitting those on the nose with his actual numbers this season.

If there was a big difference in Rizzo this year, it was his work on bendy stuff. Rizzo came into 2019 with a career average of .235 on sliders, .259 on curveballs, and .294 on cutters (which are really just baby sliders). Those numbers this year were .294, .305, and .429 with much higher slugging as well. And it doesn’t appear to be noise either as all three of those have much higher line-drive percentages than his career norms, so this was something Rizzo was focusing on.

Even more encouraging, considering Rizzo’s age, is that he was deadly on inside pitches this year. Here’s his career slugging by zone before the year and then this year:

You don’t think of Rizzo yanking outside pitches over the wall, because he stands so close to the plate it doesn’t look like they’re outside pitches. This year he turned on the pitches that jammed him even more. The worry with players crossing the age-30 threshold is that they can’t catch up to velocity and can get jammed inside. Neither of those things were a problem for Rizz this year.

If there are red flags with Rizzo, it’s health. 6-4 first-basemen who have had back issues for three straight years now should make anyone breathe a little deeper for a moment. This year was by far the most amount of games he’s missed. Some of that was due to a freak ankle injury, which isn’t anything chronic. The rest was the back issue in August and April, and now that he’s in his 30s that’s probably just going to be a thing that happens. When it starts to slow down his performance, that’s anyone’s guess.

Contract: Rizzo has two team-option years left at $16.5M each.

Welcome Back Or Boot In The Ass: Face it, there would be a small to medium uprising if the Cubs ever thought of moving Rizzo. Given his production and salary, he would have huge value of course, but this is essentially the heart and soul of the team. The real debate will be in two years when he’s a free agent and also 32, but let’s table that as long as we can. Given his adjustments, it’s hard to see Rizzo falling off a table production-wise in 2020, unless that back causes him to miss more than just 10-15 games a year.

Perhaps the only thing new we’d want to see from Rizzo is something we can’t quantify and don’t actually see–which means we’re only guessing–is his leadership of the team. It’s not that he isn’t a leader, because he’s THE one. But this team played loose all year, in the bad way, and we know that Maddon’s style caused some of that. But players should hold their teammates accountable too, and Rizzo hasn’t really been that type of guy. He’s a loose, fun dude too. And while he might seem boisterous to us from the outside and leading things in the dugout, those in the know will tell you he’s not really a hard ass ever or trying to keep the team coloring within the lines. That’s mostly going to come from the new manager, but it wouldn’t hurt that if inside the clubhouse there’s a sword that needs swinging, it’s Rizzo who’s doing it. But this is nothing more than a minor complaint or tweak.

While we read too much about trades that didn’t work out for the Cubs, remember the Cashner-for-Rizzo one helped get Josh Byrnes fired. We’ve got at least two more years to not worry about first base. And probably a lot more than that, before Rizzo’s #44 is on the right field foul-pole.

Football

Sons Of Wilber Marshall – Week 5 Roundtable

By Sam Fels 1395 0

So what do we make of this loss and the 3-2 record at the bye? On the one hand, the Bears looked bad for most of three quarters against a bad team and the game was still there to be won and they gave it away. On the other, they were missing two of three starters on the d-line, and were with a backup QB who proved last year he can get you out of one game but not much more. Just one of those days?

Tony Martin (@MrMartinBruh): For about ten minutes, I was optimistic that the Bears would’ve somehow gotten to the bye at 4-1 and had a week to get healthy and make a real push. This one stung, for more reasons than one. The defense got pushed around, that special teams sequence that gave Oakland a first down on the eventual game winning drive was awful, and the offense once again abandoned the running game.  Honestly, Daniel played well enough to win the game, but they just didn’t have enough. That first half was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen as a football fan.

I didn’t see Chuck Pagano blitz too much today, and the Bears got run on in a way that I haven’t seen in a long time. Get well soon, Akiem.
Brian Schmitz: As I wrote, I am under the impression that this team may not be as good as everyone thought they were. The offensive line is either really hurt or really bad, but they are probably both. The run game is nonexistent. But MOST importantly, the offense is getting out-schemed at every turn. That is where the truth lies.
Tony: I’m pretty sure Kyle Long is either done mentally or no longer physically effective. He is becoming an actual detriment on the offensive line. In fact, the line is one of the biggest problems with this team. No matter who is at QB, they’re being rushed and there are no real seams opening up for the running game unless David Montgomery is creating them via the cutback.
Is there any tweak to the o-line or offense over the bye that you’d like to see? Or is even possible? Obviously new personnel isn’t really an option. 
Tony: The offensive line simply needs to improve, by any means necessary in my opinion. You’d think it would be obvious to Nagy, who works with the most fearsome defensive line in the NFL, that if his offensive line isn’t holding up to switch it up to shorter dropbacks and quick hitting plays. The Bears have been beaten this year on defense when the quarterback gets rid of the ball quickly and the running game is established; I’m wondering when he game plans similarly for his own offense.
Brian: The only way to tweak the O-Line would be to put them in a better position to succeed. Which would entail more roll outs in the passing game and more outside runs in the running game. Getting outside in the run game requires your TE’s and receivers to be responsible enough to block. So basically, we are asking out skill guys to run block because the line cannot. This will assuredly end well.
Tony: Kyle Long- as Lizzo said: “I’m crying because I love you (but you probably shouldn’t be starting at guard)”
Baseball

We Know Your Nature – 2019 Cubs Player Reviews: Victor Caratini

By Sam Fels 1846 0

Quite the year for Victor, who started spring training as something of an afterthought and now could very well be in line for a starting job in 2020, be it here or elsewhere as trade bait. Has he earned that? Let’s find out…

2019 Stats

279 PA

.266/.348/.447

11 HR  31 RBI

10.4 BB%  21.1 K%

.338 wOBA  108 wRC+  .794 OPS

+4.3 Defensive Runs Saved

Tell Me A Story: When the Cubs were in Mesa, most every Cubs blogger and fan was losing their mud over the fact that the Cubs didn’t have a backup catcher. One of 2018’s major problems was Willson Contreras playing far too many games and tiring out, and Caratini’s brief cameo didn’t really convince anyone. It went from that in March to Caratini playing well enough in the season’s opening weeks that everyone found more mud to lose (it’s getting unhealthy now) when he broke his hand and had to miss a month (but hey, it gave us the Taylor Davis grand slam against the Cardinals. Boy it seemed so innocent then). And now it’s ended with some calling, or just thinking the Cubs think, that Caratini is absolutely a viable option to take over as starter if the Cubs move Contreras for pitching or centerfield help. As the one true Jokes would say, “Oh what a day what a day…”

So how was Caratini able to go from an offensively-absent seat-filler to a productive hitter? Becoming extremely patient certainly helped, as Caratini nearly doubled his walk-rate from ’18 to ’19 and was well above league average with that 10.4% mark. While Caratini still chased the same percentage of pitches out of the zone (though he did so at well below league average), he became far more aggressive on pitches in the zone. This saw him up his hard-contact rate to about a third of the time, which isn’t great but was definitely better than he’d been. And like with everyone else, we don’t really know how to adjust these numbers for the baseball.

Perhaps more encouragingly is that Victor was able to hit a range of pitches. He didn’t just hit mistake fastballs, though obviously one can make a career out of that. Victor did most of his work on fastballs but also mashed on changes and sliders, including a .622 slugging on the latter. Curveballs from right-handed pitchers were a bit of an issue, and one he might see more of with greater playing time.

Defensively, Victor improved massively as well, doubling up Willson’s framing numbers in about half of the time, which is where some people’s focus is centered. Victor doesn’t have nearly the arm that Willson does, but he bought his pitchers a lot more strikes, and was actually up among the best in the league in framing runs even though he hardly played full-time. So the question for the Cubs will be which is more important as we roll along here.

Contract: Team control for next season, arbitration eligible in 2021

Welcome Back Or Boot In The Ass: Most certainly welcome back unless some other team makes a generous offer for him. Considering he costs nothing at the moment, at worst he’s one of the better backup catchers in the league. The question will be whether the Cubs think he can be a starter, depending on if they have an inclination to see what’s out there for Contreras. Caratini is 26, so while his experience level suggests there could still be some growth, his aging curve suggests this is probably about what he’ll be. And that is a very good receiver with only a passable arm at best, and just about a league-average hitter. Over a full season he might be a 2-2.5 WAR player. But then that’s really only a tick or two below what Contreras was this season, though that’s partly due to injury and his framing problems earlier in the year.

The Cubs could carry Caratini as a starter with a few adjustments. One, a heavy return on Contreras. Two, they’d have to get more offense from second base and center field, or just a lot more offense from one of them. Third, they’d probably have to have a backup with a big arm for Lester starts, and whoever ends up being in the rotation aside from Darvish, Hendricks, and Q. Otherwise teams in big games will run all over Lester.

There isn’t a lot of air to Caratini’s stats, so a major regression doesn’t seem on the cards offensively. He doesn’t whiff a lot, which the Cubs will be curious about. He doesn’t have an alarmingly high BABIP or anything. But he also doesn’t hit the ball very hard. And remember, to give him the starting job you’d be giving one of the best offensive catchers in the game, which just don’t come around that often. It’s a big risk. Does Caratini’s framing and contact make it worthwhile? A lot of variables here, but it would not be a surprise if the Cubs bet that it does.

Previous Cubs Reviews

Willson Contreras

 

Baseball

All The Boys In The Band Know How To Get Down – 2019 Sox Player Reviews: Welington Castillo

By Andy Jonathan 1513 0

2019 Stats

.209/.267/.417

12 HR 41 RBI

6.4 BB% 29.5 K%

.287 wOBA 78 wRC+ .684 OPS

-10 Defensive Runs Saved (ouch)

 

Tell Me A Story: Ahhh Beef Welington. The latest in the long line of White Sox free agent signings that made me go “I like it!” and ended with “give this asshole to Elon Musk and let him fire him to the moon.” Almost immediately his two-year, $15 million dollar contract proved to be a ginormous mistake when he was busted for PEDs in May of 2018. This resulted in an 80-game suspension that lasted till the middle of September, after which he hit a very pedestrian .241/.293/.478.

Castillo said he was going to double down on his efforts over the winter to make sure the Sox got their money’s worth out of him. Undeterred, Rick Hahn came up with a Plan B in the form of James McCann, which turned out to be a very wise move indeed. Castillo came out of the gate in April sputtering, only managing to hit .204 while McCann blasted everything thrown at him. It wasn’t long after where Castillo began to lose more and more playing time to McCann, essentially relegated to being Reynaldo Lopez’ personal catcher before long.

Castillo was brought aboard the team strictly for his ability to hit for power, which while not ending up as Yonder Alonso-levels of shitty, was still not what the Sox thought they’d be getting when they signed him to the deal. In 2017 with the Orioles he hit .282 with 20 home runs with a 25% K-rate. With the Sox, his K-rate spiked to 29% and he only managed to hit 12 bombs. His career line drive rate of 21% was merely wishful thinking in 2019 as it fell to a career low 16.5%. His hard hit rate also dropped about 6% during his tenure with the Sox. I’m not going to say the lack of PEDs in his system resulted in this power dip, but I’m also not not saying it.

His defense became an issue as well. In the past, Castillo was a bat-first defender but had posted a few years with a positive DRS score, most recently in 2017 with the Diamondbacks when he was a +3. In the month of September in 2018 he managed a -6, and then in 2019 it all fell apart. Any ball in the dirt or above his shoulders was going to the backstop, and he made the entire thing look like he was being attacked by a swarm of bees.

The Sox were in the bottom 3rd of the league in allowing passed balls with 13. A whopping nine of them were attributed to Castillo. When you consider the fact that he was only the primary catcher in less than a quarter of the games the Sox played, that’s pretty fucking terrible.

Contract: Team option for 2020 at $8 million dollars with a $500,000 buyout, which the Sox will exercise.

Welcome Back Or Boot In The Ass: Big ole boot in the ass for this one. The Sox will exercise the $500,000 buyout for Castillo’s last year and send him on down the road like sad Bruce Banner in the Hulk TV show. With Zack Collins and James McCann available for catching duties and the looming possibility of Yasmani Grandal being available it makes zero sense to keep Big Beef Welington around. I’d say it’s been fun, but that would only be true if I were comparing it to the time Yonder Alonso spent here. Hard pass on both.

Previous Sox Reviews

James McCann

 

 

Hockey

Waiting On Dach, Homestand Charge, And Whatever Else I Can Think Of

By Sam Fels 1720 0

It’s been one of the stranger starts to the season, in its lack of action. The Hawks have played one game, while some teams have played four, and we’re just sitting around basically still waiting for the season to get started. We can’t draw any conclusions after one game (we’re not Toronto), so we don’t know anything more or less than we did before. So we’ll try and clear whatever’s going on, which is a whole lot of not much.

-Perhaps the biggest story to watch over this homestand is when Kirby Dach will get into the lineup, and how he will do when he gets there. Given that the nine-game “trial” only covers the games he dresses for, this could go on all month. Which probably wouldn’t make Saskatoon all that happy, but no one has ever given a fuck what Saskatoon thinks and no one ever will. The Hawks are being awfully cautious, though at this point it doesn’t seem to have that much to do with his injured brain.

It’s looking like the Hawks won’t dress him for the home opener, given that he’ll only have a handful of “real” practices under his belt. We all wish to have seen him in preseason, but in preseason he would have been beating up on AHL-level talent for the most part and we’re already pretty sure he can do that.

The other part, as it always is with the Hawks, is the worry about his defensive game. It feels like a lot of the time the Hawks always see what a player can’t be instead of what he can, and the one time they saw what a player could be they ended up with Alex DeBrincat never having to step foot back in junior or in the minors at all. They certainly see what a player could be when they trade for him, i.e. Strome and Nylander (jury’s out there) or Koekkoek (jury’s definitely in there) and we could go on. But when it’s from their own system, they’re awfully harsh.

To me, we already know this team is going to blow defensively. There’s like, no hope that they’ll ever be good. So really, they need to try and outscore all of their problems. Installing Dach right between Saad and Kubalik would help you achieve that. Or the truly ballsy move, which would never ever happen, is to put Toews there to give you a hybrid checking/scoring line and let Dach play with Kane and Mystery Doofus on the left wing and let them only play offense. Teams would be tempted to play their top lines against that one, and probably do very well doing so, but would also run the risk of a Saad-Toews-Kubalik unit running roughshod over their second and third lines. But this will only happen in my mind.

The thing is, Dach is not going to learn that much about defense playing against children he’s putting up 120 points against. We pretty much know he’s physically dominant in that league. It is possible to drip-feed him responsibility at the top level, with some rough nights assuredly in there. With DeBrincat’s extension, we know the Hawks are merely focused on the next three to four years before a hard reset for just about everything. There actually isn’t that much time to waste.

-It’s a little silly to say in October, and things can change down the line, but the Hawks kind of do need to crush this season opening homestand. For one, the only world-beater on the docket is the Knights, who have spent three games looking like the West’s best, which makes me feel made of vomit. There’s also the little nugget that the Hawks have never beaten them. There’s a couple actually bad teams on here, a couple middling (though the Hawks just got their ass kicked by one of them). And whatever the Jets are right now, which is probably all of these things in one. Except without a defense.

But more importantly, if the Hawks don’t gain some kind of energy from even a 4-3 or hopefully 5-2 or better, you’d have to think there would be even more questions about the stewardship of this team or what it’s meant to do. You can’t really ask for more at the start of a season than seven straight home games. Everything the “Magic Training Camp” was supposed to do can be most easily instilled with this many home games. Everything you want to do, you’re supposed to be able to do at home. Especially when the opposition isn’t all that daunting for the most part.

If the Hawks still look disjointed and ill-equipped, there won’t be the excuses of “having to change systems on the fly” like there was last year. Or getting used to a new voice. Or figuring out what team they have. They’re supposed to know, and these seven games should show one way or the other.

The schedule, if you can judge it only a week in on who you think is good and isn’t, doesn’t really get daunting until the end of November. But we’ve seen what happens when this team has to chase later in the year. Here’s a chance to start to carve out a trench.

-Anyone else think it’s weird that training camp started with worries over Calvin de Haan’s shoulder and now it’s his groin that’s keeping him questionable?

-One thing we haven’t discussed a lot, and probably should have, is how Jeremy Colliton will handle a goalie controversy. We can expect Lehner and Crawford to split starts just about to begin. But what if on these seven games Lehner severely outplays Crow? If it’s the other way, that’s easy. Crow is the pedigreed veteran everyone loves. But if Lehner starts to earn the lion’s share of time, is this something a young coach in his first full season is ready to handle? Can he actually sit a vet with far more accomplishments than he has? And if he does, why does it have to stop there?

At least it’s interesting.

Baseball

All The Boys In The Band Know How To Get Down – 2019 Sox Player Reviews: James McCann

By Andy Jonathan 1852 0

2019 Stats

.273/.328/.461

18HR, 60 RBI

6.3 BB% 28.8 K%

.333 wOBA 109 wRC+ .789 OPS

5.0 Defensive Runs Saved

Tell Me A Story: Well lets kick this thing off with the best thing Rick Hahn did during the off-season, which was sign James McCann to a 1-year deal at a value of $2.5 million dollars (with an additional year of arbitration control for the White Sox). When this move was initially announced during the winter meetings back in December, I was supremely disappointed as Yasmani Grandal was still just sitting out there, like Fry’s dog in the Jurassic Bark episode of Futurama waiting for someone to sign him. Up to that point Grandal had better stats in pretty much every category available to us including the all-important framing ones. At the end of the season? Well Grandal still outperformed him in most categories except defensively where he was a -1.6 DRS, but the differences between the two were not the chasm I assumed they would be at the start of the season.

McCann started out the first half of the season pretty gangbusters, as he pelted opposing pitchers to the tune of .317/.374/.883 with 9 dingers through the end of June. This performance earned him his first ever All-Star nomination and the rave reviews of his teammates. You all know what happened next, however. After the All Star game McCann’s stats went plummeting off a cliff, resulting in a .224/.273/.667 line through the end of August. At this point folks began to question whether or not McCann was the real deal (and rightly so). He was able to lock things in again in September, however, and brought things back to a more respectable .242/.324/.763 to close out the campaign.

Whether or not McCann was pressing during July and August to justify his All Star selection we will never know, but one interesting thing popped up to me. McCann has been given a lot of credit to the turnaround of one Lucas Giolito this season. When I looked at their game logs for the first half of the season when McCann was raking at the plate, Giolito was doing the same on the mound. Then after the All Star break ended and McCann dove into his swoon at the plate, Giolito similarly fell off as well, though not to the extent that McCann did. It may be coincidence but it’s definitely worth noting.

Either way, Giolito credits James McCann for a good portion of his turnaround this season, and it’s certainly hard to deny the results. Giolito was an absolute mess by any measure last season, and turned into the Must See TV Ace Of The Future™ this season that we all know and love. Stuff like that can’t be discounted in the slightest. Defensively, McCann was above average this year in every category compared to most of his past seasons except for runners gunned down attempting to steal. He was 5th in the AL with 17 catches, which was a low for him. The Sox were 3rd best in the AL catching category with McCann behind the dish, which is a marked improvement from the previous half decade.

CONTRACT: One year of arbitration left, then unrestricted free agent in 2021. Would expect a raise of about 1.5 million this off season if the Sox tender him (They Will)

Welcome Back Or Boot In The Ass: Unless the Sox think that Zack Collins is the catcher of The Future™ and will be able to play 100+ games behind the dish (they don’t), then expect the Sox to tender him this off-season and then work out a long term deal with him shortly thereafter. Doing so would not hinder you from offering up a contract to Yasmani Grandal if you so desired.

Bringing in Grandal could create a rotating quadfecta at 1B and C, with Abreu, Collins, McCann and Grandal each taking time at C/1B/DH as the year goes along (Abreu won’t catch obviously). Even if they don’t get Grandal, McCann has proven enough this year to deserve another look behind the plate as the primary catcher. With Beef Wellington gone this winter the Sox will need a catcher to spell McCann if they don’t think Collins can play that many games back there.

I would think a 4 year deal at 4.5 million each would most likely be enough to buy McCann out of his last year of arbitration and keep him working with the young Sox pitching staff for seasons to come. With Michael Kopech returning from Tommy John surgery very soon and Carlos Rodon/Dane Dunning shortly thereafter, having a calming presence behind the plate goes a long way towards solidifying the rotation.

The other option would be to tender him, then flip him for whatever you could get at the winter meetings if you think you need to sell high on him or that this year was a fluke. With the progress Giolito made this year, I think this is very unlikely. The Sox got the most production out of the catcher position since Carlton Fisk hung up his cleats, and I don’t think they’re likely to give that away, which is totally fine with me. Besides, it would be really hard to replicate the FAR (Fashion Against Replacement) he brought to the clubhouse this year.

Baseball

We Know Your Nature – 2019 Cubs Player Reviews: Willson Contreras

By Sam Fels 1719 0

Figured I’d start these off with the player I feel, and somewhat fear, is going to be the name you hear most in trade rumors. Seems like the Cubs, both fans and front office, have forgotten what a unique toy they have in #40. But he also might be the most expendable, even if he isn’t all that expendable.

2019 Stats

.272/.355/.533

24 HR  64 RBI 

9.3 BB%  24.9 K%

.368 wOBA  127 wRC+ .888 OPS

-0.3 Defensive Runs Saved

Tell Me A Story: Ok, so here’s the thing. How many catchers had a better wRC+ than Contreras this season? One, that was Mitch Garver (one of the 27 Twins to hit 30+ homers out of nowhere for no reason, in case you were wondering). How many catchers had a better OPS? Again, one. Again, Garver. Again, for no reason. So you’re dealing with basically a unicorn when it comes to offense from catchers in Willson. Since he became the full-time starter in 2017, the only catcher with a better wRC+ is Yasmani Grandal, and no one has a better wOBA. He’s a genuine treasure, with at least the bat. We’ll get to that in a second, though.

The problem for Contreras in the 2018 campaign is that his power went to the land of wind and ghosts. He only hit 10 homers, and slugged .390. We knew it was strange then, and probably something that wouldn’t continue. Willson’s hard-contact rate was below 30%. Maybe he made an adjustment, or maybe he was carrying an injury the whole time. Whatever it was, all of his numbers jumped this year back to what we know they should be, and in fact were career-highs. You have to normalize it with the golf ball being used every day, but still felt like he was returning to the norms of his first season and a half in the Majors.

There was a lot of discussion about Willson’s defense, specifically his framing, throughout the season. And a good portion of it is noise, but let’s work it through. It’s been two seasons since Willson posted a positive Defensive Runs Saved mark. One part of that is the league is now so aware of his arm, that he almost never gets to use it. When he does, he seems so excited by the opportunity he’s lasers it into the outfield more often. So he doesn’t get much of a chance to throw out runners to boost that metric.

The other part is obviously framing. But here’s the thing, midway through the season Contreras’s framing stats were all in the negative. He ended the season on the positive side of the ledger, though still some way behind Victor Caratini. Or at least close to it, depending on whose numbers you use. It’s something he was clearly working on, made an adjustment, and if the Cubs were to hire…oh I don’t know, David Ross as a manager, he would have someone with him every day to work on it with. He probably will never be Grandal back there, but he can be good as there’s still time for him to upswing.

The issue for Contreras is the contact. His contact in the zone and overall still lags behind league average, and this is something the Cubs are obviously going to try and improve somewhere next season. He’s always lagged behind, and in the season’s dying embers he seemed to be a poster-boy for poor approach with runners on, and one I was happy to echo. The Cubs have to improve their contact skills somewhere, after all.

Contract: Arbitration eligible for next three seasons. Likely to earn $5M or so.

Welcome Back Or Boot In The Ass?: This is so hard. Again, you just don’t find catchers who can hit like Willson, and the defense can and probably will improve if he wants it to. Even as he heads into arbitration, he’ll make nothing compared to the production you get. If Grandal is basically the same guy, at least offensively, he makes at least three times more than what Willson will likely get in his first arbitration spin and even that was considered low-ball.

Except all of that is also why he probably carries the most trade value. And unlike Schwarber, you probably don’t have to pay through the nose to replace him, as you have an in-house candidate in Caratini. He’ll never hit for near the power of Contreras and runners might pass out from joy when he’s catching Lester next year, but he’s the better framer and makes more contact. You’d still be downgrading the position, even more so if robot umps are in our near future, but not so much you couldn’t justify it.

Justify it depending on the return, that is. Just like anything else, you can’t trade Contreras just for the sake of it. You won’t have another like him behind the plate for years, and we know this because the Cubs didn’t. But if you can get a starter that slots ahead of Quintana and Lester for him or more, you would have to think long and hard about it. Maybe even a long-term solution in center, though I have no idea who that would be. And when I say starter, I’m thinking like Thor. And don’t tell me you couldn’t get the Mets to bite on that one, because you can get the Mets to bite on anything.

Or the consolation is you bring the best or second-best hitting catcher in the game back, have him keep working on his defense and take your .900 OPS or thereabouts and get on with your life. Doesn’t seem so bad.

Football

Three Things We Learned From Week 5

By Sam Fels 1337 0

Hello! This is something I did at FanSided last year. But Fansided is dumb and evil, so I’m bringing it to you, the people. It’s not mean to be serious, because you shouldn’t take the NFL and the Bears seriously.

You Can Only Get Away With A Backup Defensive Line For So Long

For one week, the Bears rolled in backups, beer vendors, and a couple janitors into the rotation against the Vikings and they were all getting to pose behind the line after making a play. They didn’t need Akiem Hicks or Bilal Nichols that week, and you wondered if they were just unearthing people like Sarumon and the Urukai. But there’s a reason Hicks is an All-Pro level player, and you’re supposed to struggle to replace him. Trying to do it for a second straight week showed that.

Without Hicks, the Raiders seemed to figure out they could throw multiple people at Khalil Mack and Eddie Goldman, and no one else was going to be able to make them stop. And that’s how it proved. We’re doing the Leonard Floyd early-season thing, where we wonder why he isn’t running wild when only facing one guy. Backups proved to be backups. It’s football, injuries happen, and they determine a lot of what will happen in January. It went well for the Bears last year, which is why it still feels like such a missed opportunity.

If Hicks’s elbow suddenly putting up a carnival tent inside his skin keeps him out long-term, it’s a huge problem. Especially for however long Nichols is out along with it. Once you get your backups on film, you give everyone a chance to see what they can and can’t do. The Raiders and Jon Gruden pretty quickly figured out what they couldn’t. At least the Bears will know what’s coming.

You Can Only Get Away With Your Backup QB For So Long

It shouldn’t have been a surprise, because we did this last year. Chase Daniel gets you out of the Thanksgiving game, as backup QBs are kind of designed to do. Get you out of a game. One. Two is pushing it. So the next week, Daniel made enough plays to keep the Bears in it against the Giants when the defense took the week off, but he also made enough plays to get you beat. He got you out of the Vikings game. Here comes a second straight game with him behind center, and boy didn’t it look the same? Enough plays to give you the lead, enough plays that put you in that hole to begin with and then lost you the game. That’s kind of what a non-starting QB in the NFL looks like. There’s a reason every rule is meant to protect starting quarterbacks. Your season is fucked if they get hurt.

There were two sacks at least that were from Daniel holding the ball too long, possibly because he’s not much taller than a fire hydrant. In more Rex Grossman comparisons, he has a nasty habit of running straight backwards when under pressure instead of stepping up, possibly because stepping up into the pocket would cut off his vision even more. He should have had three INTs, got bailed out by a roughing-the-passer call for one (and game-changing penalties appear to just be things that are going to happen every week). The other two were bad.

He didn’t get much help. It went a touch overlooked in the buildup to the season, but the Bears couldn’t really run the ball last year. We pinned it on Jordan Howard or Matt Nagy’s over-creative nature, but there weren’t many places for Howard to run. We wanted to think the more explosive and elusive David Montgomery and another year of Nagy’s schemes would get around it. Yeah, well, Kyle Long is made of more spare parts than the car they give Matt Damon at the end of “Good Will Hunting.” Charles Leno was doing his own version of Hamilton out there, and has been. Again, switching Whitehair and James Daniels…was that really so clean?

The difference in football is that you can’t solve it from outside the organization. In the other three sports, if your right fielder can’t hit or your second-line left-winger gets hurt or you need a new small forward, there’s a trade deadline for that. Football doesn’t work that way. How do you solve this internally though?

Everyone Is An Expert On Jet Lag Now

This was an argument making the rounds right around the second quarter, and it was the Bears decision to fly out to London on Thursday evening, arriving Friday morning. What it ignored was that the last time the Bears had to do this, they thwacked the Buccaneers after flying out on Thursday. Most teams fly out on the Thursday. They get a plane you and I will never see. They have experts on this we don’t. They weren’t attempting to sleep in a coach seat next to the smelly guy while sitting up. It’s fine. Whatever. They lost because they got their ass whipped, not because they were groggy. Shut up.