Hockey

You Ain’t Shane, You Ain’t Mook – ’19-’20 NHL Team Previews: Tampa Bay Lightning

By Sam Fels 1842 0

Whoops.

That ended up being the theme for the Bolts last season. They took a historically good season and a historically good individual season from Nikita Kucherov and dumped in straight into the toilet like tainted Taco Bell in four games. In some ways, it makes them more unique than if they’d just won the Cup. But that will be of little solace to them and their fans. Which makes this season something of a revenge tour. Most likely, they’ll dial back in the regular season a touch, which should be still more than good enough to win this division. And no judgements can be made until the postseason starts. But the thing with the Lightning is they don’t have some record of being playoff chokers. They’ve been to the conference final twice, a Final once all in the last four seasons. Perhaps they should have beaten the Caps in that conference final, with a Game 7 at home, but it was hardly the magnitude of an upset that last year was. They may be running out of chances.

2018-2019

62-16-4  128 points (1st in Metro, lost in 1st round)

3.89 GF/G (1st)  2.80 GA/G (7th)  +72 GD

51.5 CF% (9th)  52.6 xGF% (8th)

29.2 PP% (1st)  85.0 PK% (1st)

Goalies: A microcosm of the entire team, no opinions are going to be formed about Andrei Vasilevskiy in the regular season. We know he’s almost certainly going to put up Vezina-numbers then. He’s been over .920 in both of his seasons as starter, and .925 at evens. Unless something truly broke in the playoffs, the Lightning have no questions here.

But when April rolls around, so do all those questions. Vas-manian Devil here was simply awful in the first round, putting up an .856 over four games against Columbus. No, he didn’t have a lot of help, but when the Lightning needed a save, he didn’t provide one. This followed him somewhat falling apart in that Game 7 the previous season, so we know there are gremlins jumping around his skull in the spring. And that label dogs you until you prove it untrue. Vas is going to have to wait six months to make things right.

He’ll be backed up by Curtis McElhinney, who is about as solid in that role as you can ask. He had a brief hot streak with the Canes last year before ceding to Peter Mrazek, and was solid as a backup in Toronto the previous two seasons to the point where the unwashed rabble amongst Leafs fans (read: all of them) were pining for him last season. The Lightning won’t want to turn things over to him for too long a stretch if something happens to Vasilevskiy, but he certainly can get them out of 20-25 games.

Defense: What might be most amazing about the Lightning’s season last year is that this defense isn’t all that impressive. And it’s still not. Victor Hedman is one of the best around and certainly cures a lot of ills. But Anton Stralman started to age last year, and they replaced him this time around with a couple fliers in Kevin Shattenkirk and Luke Schenn. You could see where in heavily sheltered shift, and the Bolts can do that for him, Kirk ShattenKevin could be a find. Mikhail Sergachev had a rough go in the playoffs, but still has all the promise in the world and should get second-pairing time now.

Erik Cernak‘s play landed Slater Koekkoek here, so you can thank him for that. But Braydon Coburn is still here for reasons no one can explain. Ryan McDonagh is past it too, though Hedman covers up for a lot of that. You know Rutta and Schenn suck deep pond scum. When they were put under heavy attack last year by the Jackets, you saw what happened. They’ll need a renaissance from Shattenkirk and real steps forward from Sergachev and Cernak. If they don’t get those, they’ll have to go looking.

Forwards: Then again, it might not matter thanks to this group. They still need to cram in Brayden Point to their cap situation, as he remains unsigned. Until he is, they’ll just have to find a way to make do with Steven Stamkos, Kucherov, Ondrej Palat, Tyler Johnson (high atop our wanted list for the Hawks), Alex Killorn, Anthony Cirelli, and Mathieu Joseph. How will they ever manage?

The Bolts lit up the scoreboard on the power play and at evens, and with Stamkos and Kucherov on opposite wings there’s no reason the PP won’t go pinball noises again. There’s just little answer for them, especially with Hedman up top. It’s hard to match this depth, whenever Point gets back into the fold. They could ice just the forwards and Vasilevskiy and probably still be a playoff team. Hell, they should try a 4F-1D lineup at all times just to see what happens.

Predictions: If you got odds on this team to win the Cup, you should take them. I don’t think last season is anything other than a strange anomaly, and the only thing that could derail them again before the conference final is if Vasilevskiy truly does see ghosts in the postseason. Yeah, the defense is not special, but it’s got three puck-movers that it needs and all it really has to do is get the puck up to the forwards and say, “Go do shit.” And this forward group is still otherworldly. Is Kucherov going to go for 128 points again? No, probably not. But he doesn’t have to. This team, barring injury or goalies going inside-out, can sleepwalk to 110 points and the Atlantic title again. Any question about them is in the playoffs, and again, this isn’t a team that has a track record of throwing up on itself when it counts. That feels like a one-off. All systems go here.

Previous Team Previews

Carolina

Columbus

New Jersey

New York Islanders

New York Rangers

Philadelphia 

Pittsburgh

Washington

Boston

Buffalo

Detroit

Florida

Montreal

Ottawa

 

SF2
Baseball

Series Preview – White Sox at Tigers: Round 4, FIGHT

By Andy Jonathan 1269 0

VS

Records: White Sox 66-86  Tigers 45-107

Game Times: Fri 6:10/Sat 5:10/Sun 12:10

TV: Fri/Sat NBCSN Sun WGN

TIGER UPPERCUT!: Bless You Boys

SERIES PREVIEW POSTS

Depth Charts & Pitching Staff

Series Spotlight: The Tigers Pipeline

 

I don’t hate the Tigers anymore. I really used to, back in the early part of this decade. Much like my hatred for the Vancouver Canucks and Red Wings in hockey it’s just sort of fizzled out, leaving behind a feeling of indifference bordering on pity.

The Tigers are a bad team, perhaps even historically so. With their current .420 winning percentage (heh) the Tigers fall 3rd on the list of worst teams ever since the league went to 162 games in 1961. The other two teams? Last year’s Orioles and the Tigers again in 2003. Not exactly wonderful company to be in. They’ve already past the 2003 version of themselves by 2 games, and need 2 more to tie Baltimore which seems likely but by no means a guarantee.

Detroit already set a team record this past week by losing 17 consecutive games to Cleveland this season. They won the second meeting between the two teams back on April 10th 4-1, then lost 17 in a row to them to finish the season 1-18 setting the mark in the modern era for record against a divisional opponent.

The Tigers got this bad by basically fielding a team full of less than 1 WAR players and Nick Castellanos, who they then flipped to the Cubs at the deadline as he proceeded to go on a tear the likes of never seen in Detroit. They’re dead last in the league in hitting, and the only team that has had a negative WAR production from their offense. The second worst team is the Marlins, and even they have gotten 2.3 WAR out of their hitters, compared to the -1.5 for the Tigers. If you look up the top hitters by WAR on the Tigers, only 2 players are worth more than 1, and that’s Niko Goodrum (who is out with a groin strain) and Victor Reyes. So thankfully Dylan Covey isn’t scheduled to go during the series, as you don’t wanna let an opponent up off the mat when they’re down.

The pitching staff has actually not been as awful as the hitters, currently 10th in the AL out of 15 teams, so that’s an improvement. They’ve also produced 1100% more WAR than the offense, currently sitting at 10.1 for the season. Matthew Boyd has had a solid season thus far, posting an 8-11 record with a 4.34 ERA and a 1.20 WHIP. He features a solid 4 seam fastball and a plus slider which he uses as his punchout pitch. Boyd gets a lot of swinging strikes with it, almost 36% of the time.

After Boyd it’s Spencer Turnbull (who the Sox will miss), then rookie Tyler Alexander who was called up back in June and had his first start against the Sox, in which he went 5 innings and gave up 2 with 4 Ks in a no-decision. The kid has pitched fairly well since then, going 1-3 with a 4.68 ERA and striking out 27 in 6 starts. He was relegated to long relief for a time during August but is now back starting and will go head to head with Nova Saturday.

As for the Sox, the story continues to be the production of The Future™ in the top half of the lineup. Tim Anderson continues his quest for the AL batting title and sits .006 in front of DJ LeMahieu. Right behind LeMahieu is the outfielder the Sox didn’t want in the off-season, Michael Brantley. Hard charging a few behind him is last year’s favorite bust declaration by Sox Twitter Yoan Moncada, who is tearing the shit out of the ball in September to the tune of a .460/.500/.667 slash line.

Taking the mound for the Pale Hose will be Dylan Cease, Ivan Nova and Reynaldo Lopez who basically comprise the only starts worth watching for the rest of the season. Cease should find the waters a bit calmer against the moribund Tigers offense, and maybe help build some confidence in his fastball location.

On paper this should be an easy series for the Sox, but nothing on paper has ever worked out that way for Rick Hahn and company. I just want a batting title for Timmy, and this pitching staff should help with that goal.

 

Let’s Go Sox.

 

 

Baseball

Tigers Spotlight: Pitching The Future

By Andy Jonathan 1275 0

The Detroit Tigers are a bad baseball team. There aren’t many people out there who would argue otherwise with you, and if they did odds are they’re huffing paint outside the wreckage of Tigers stadium. Even the Tigers themselves know this, and are OK with it. For a long time, the team was very similar to the White Sox of the late 2000-2013 era. The farm system was treated like a debit card, to be swiped whenever a piece needed to be added to the roster at the deadline for a playoff run.

Much like most debit cards, there was a limit. The Tigers bottomed out of that limit at the end of the 2014 season, their last appearance in the playoffs where they were broomed right out by the Baltimore Orioles (another team that sits at rock bottom right now). This last push by the Tigers was the result of Mike Ilitch desperately wanting to win a World Series before passing away (which he eventually did in February of 2017). For the next few years the Tigers were in the sort of limbo that kills the future of baseball franchises; not bad enough to get the high ranked young talent in the draft, but not good enough to go anywhere in the playoffs.

Finally in 2017 with Ilitch dead and gone, the Tigers bit the bullet and decided for a full rebuild. The problem at that point was that all of their best talent was either on the last year of their deals (Justin Upton), in the middle of the worst stretch of their careers (Justin Verlander), or just too damn expensive and old (Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez). So the return for all these guys was not going to be the type that can jump start a rebuild and shorten it by a few years like (hopefully) the White Sox got for trading Sale, Q, and Eaton (remember forever that the Sox got Giolito and Lopez for Adam fucking Eaton).

This left the Tigers with one option, that being the “suck so bad you build through the draft” one, which is exactly what they’ve done. It’s been an ugly few years on the west side of Detroit Rock City, but it’s yielded results in terms of farm system rankings. To start the year, most analysts had the Tigers somewhere around the 10-11th best system in the league. After re-ranking the teams after the trade deadline and adjusting for some callups around MLB the Tigers now are just outside of the top 5, usually around the 6-7 position. Jim Callis of MLB.COM has the Tigers at 6th best in the league after all the deadline shakeups.

Sitting in the 1 and 2 spots for Detroit in the farm system rankings are former #1 pick Casey Mize (and #2 overall in prospect rankings) and Matt Manning, both of whom are right handed pitchers. Mize had some shoulder issues this year, but when healthy dominated the hitters of high A level and AA. He will begin next season (shoulder permitting) at AAA and much like Dylan Cease end up on the big league roster at some point after June. Manning has progressed on a very similar path, laying waste to the AA level this season and earning a few honors along the way, including Eastern League Pitcher Of The Year and Baseball America’s pick for best Tigers minor league player.

Six of the top ten spots in the Tigers minor league rankings are reserved for pitchers. Beau Burrows, Alex Faedo and Franklin Perez will all be throwing at the AA level or higher next season and Burrows may even break camp with the squad next March. Which is good for the Tigers, as they currently sit in the bottom 3rd of the AL in pitching, and without the breakout year from Matthew Boyd they might be sniffing Orioles territory.

For position players, the crop is lead by outfielder Riley Greene who’s the only Tigers position player currently in the top 100 ranked prospects in MiLB. Green is a solid contact hitter with solid power that projects out to 25+ dingers a year. His athletic tools grade out positively as well, but the kid is only 18 and probably can’t be counted on before 2021 at the earliest.

The next two callups for the Tigers offensively seem to be catcher Jake Rogers and SS Isaac Paredes, both of whom would be upgrades for the major league team as it stands. The rest are works in progress, pushing the Tigers window for contention back past 2022 which works well for the White Sox as it stands. Bless You Boys has a good rundown of the rest of the position player prospects for the Tigers here if you want to check it out.

The risk for Detroit having such a pitching-heavy top half of their system was apparent back in June when Mize was pulled from a game with shoulder pain that caused a collective gasp among the Tigers faithful. Fearing the worst, he was sent to Dr. James Death-Andrews and was given a diagnosis of shoulder inflammation. He pitched for another month and a half and then was shut down for the team for precautionary measures. Manning has so far avoided the injury bug that seems to plague young arms in the lower levels but there are no guarantees. If all breaks well for the Tigers they could have an amazing rotation in a few years. If they end up with the kind of luck the White Sox have had over the past 12 months, the window for them could be pushed even further back. With a team like the Tigers hard to watch enough as it is, it could spell doom for their attendance, which was already down almost 21% from 2017 to 2018.

The Tigers have charted a path through risky waters, but really no rebuild is guaranteed success. Their ultimate timeline will probably be more clear next June when they pick once again in the top 5 of the entry draft. If they take a polished college player like the Sox did with Andrew Vaughn it signals they expect to be competitive sooner rather than later. If they go a different route, it may signal another few long winters for the Tigers faithful. That would be quite all right with me.

Football

Bears Week 3 – Matchups to Watch: Something’s In The Air

By Wes French 1176 0

He did it again. “DJ Yung Milwaukee” lent his talents for another tandem matchups post from your resident Bears heads at FFUD.

“Big shouts out to my boy Wes for letting me drop another guest verse on a Bears positional preview; if our tandem breakdown of the Bears/Broncos was the FFUD version of Mariah Carey’s iconic “Fantasy” remix with ODB, let’s try to make this her even more legendary collab with Jay-Z on “Heartbreaker”.”

Enjoy. 

Tony on the Bears Defense vs the Racial Slur’s Offense

How ugly could Monday get? Writing about Washington’s offense is difficult. Case Keenum makes Joe Flacco look like Joe Theismann, and though I don’t want Case Keenum’s leg to explode it’s not hard to see Khalil Mack going full L-T on an offensive line missing its star LT. Statistics show that from 2010-2019 the average amount of games it takes for a first round quarterback to make his first start is 4.5, and if this game is a bloodbath (which it has the potential to be), it wouldn’t be too far of a reach to suggest there’s a chance Dwayne Haskins makes an appearance in garbage time.

Speaking of garbage time, this Washington team has gotten a lot of their offensive numbers in situations where they are down multiple scores late in games this season. So, the question is: which Washington offense shows up? Is it the offense we saw in the first half against Philly, or the offense that has played their other six awful quarters of football this season? The answer will be found through the air; “Scary” Terry McLaurin looks like a steal in the 3rd round of this years’ draft. He has speed to go over the top, finds the holes in the zone well, and with Chuck Pagano’s designed man-blitzes, look for Keenum to test the Bears with the deep ball.

Outside of Scary Terry, the skill position players on this team are a real haunted house of mediocrity. Paul Richardson isn’t a threat, Vernon Davis will put up a solid  three-catch, 24-yard performance, and the sun has set on All Day. Chris Thompson is an issue coming out of the backfield, so look for the Bears to drop down a safety or ask Buster Skrine to cover the backfield receiving specialist.

Washington’s run offense permits a pathetic average of 0.31 yards before first contact on running plays, so the Bears up front will feed. The right side of their offensive line looks so bad that any two fans sitting in FedEx field that Dan Snyder hasn’t personally banned might be able to do a better job, given they’ve had a couple $8 beers and are wearing hogs’ noses. The Bears defense is gonna steamroll these nerds.

Wes on Mitch Trubisky vs the Racial Slur’s Defense

Lets look at some numbers for this week’s exercise:

Mitchell Trubisky: 68.1, 39.1, 36.6, 15.1, 33.1 and 3.05

Racial Slurs Defense: 455, 78.3, 6, 168, 68, 34:54

Beep boop beep beep, numbers! Okay, so you’re not a computer and these all just look like squiggly lines and decimals. But here’s the story they tell…..

Trubs is bottom-10 in the league QB rankings with an overall accuracy-percentage of 68.1. This number drops to 39.1, still bottom 10, on passes that travel beyond the first down marker. Moves these numbers to 3rd down plays only, and you get a disastrous 61.1 accuracy %, which has translated to a comically bad 33.1 QB rating and 3.05 yards per attempt. That ain’t it.

Enter the Washington defense, just what the doctor ordered (or so Matt Nagy hopes). Washington is allowing an average of 455 yards/week early in the season and opposing QBs are a league-leading 78.3 in completion %. They’ve also allowed six passing scores thus far, good for 31st in the league. All of this shapes up to help improve the Bears sputtering offense, but how?

Trubs does lead the league in, wait for it…….targets to his RBs. By a lot. 36.6% of his targets have gone to RBs this season, a full 4% more than any other QB. Compare that with a sub-50% target share for his WR, good for second to last to only Baltimore (who lean HEAVILY tight end). Monday night presents the best opportunity to level this disparity out. Dak Prescott laid out the blueprint in Week 2: 25 of his 30 passes travels 15 yards or fewer through the air, continually abusing the poor coverage and soft zones to stack completions.

The Washington defense is also 31st in rushing yards allowed per game at 168. Herein lies another way to get Mitch and the offense going, through establishing the run and then exploiting the secondary through play-action. Mitch has only thrown out of play-action 15.1% of the time this season for 72 yards, more numbers that put him among the bottom third of the league. Week 2 in Denver saw Nagy lean heavily on the run after basically abandoning it against Green Bay. A more balanced play calling plan should open up the opportunity for big plays via play-action, again something everyone saw Dak do against this defense last week. That successful balanced attack shouldn’t be tough to do against a team that’s currently averaging 68 defensive snaps and 34:54 on the field each week.

Of course, the Washington defense could be looking at Nagy, Mitch and Co. and thinking the same thing – here’s the week that we right the ship against a bottom tier offense. Something’s gotta give between these two bumbling units, and which side prevails/how they execute will tell us if Nagy knows what he’s doing and if Mitch is capable enough to not waste this Chicago defense.

Passing stats from https://nocheckdowns.com/

 

Hockey

Pictures of Matchstick Men – ’19-’20 Blackhawks Player Previews – Patrick Kane

By Adam Hess 1746 0

Patrick Kane is good at hockey. I am not really sure what more we should say about this guy. He’s been the best forward on this team for more than a decade and the best player for a few years, since Duncan Keith‘s mileage caught up to him. But you know all this. I’m not gonna say much in here that will surprise you. Let’s just do it.

2018-19 Stats

81 GP – 44 G – 66 A – 110 P

48.86 CF% (-0.72 CF% Rel) – 64.01 oZS%

44.94 xGF% (-1.32 xGF% Rel)

Avg. TOI: 22:28

A Brief History: In some ways it just about flew under the radar, largely because the Blackhawks had a terrible blue line and a CPR dummy in the crease when Crawford was hurt, but Patrick Kane had the best season of his career in 2018-19. His 110 points were four more than his previous high of 106 in his Hart winning 2015-16 season. Four points doesn’t feel like a lot, but the difference between 106 and 110 is probably a bit more significant than, say, 40 and 44. There is a level of dominance that Kane attained last year that we had previously seen, but it had been three years and we weren’t sure we’d see it again. Then he did it again, in his age-30 season. The guy might be a huge piece of shit, but he’s pretty much undoubtedly the best hockey player you or I will ever see suit up for this team in our lifetimes.

It Was the Best of Times: Realistically, it’s hard to expect Kane to be better than he was last year. Give that he turns 31 this November, I’d say the best case scenario for Kane and the Hawks is that he just plays at that same level again. This team has addressed the blue line (at least on paper) and the crease issues that resulted in his historic 2018-19 being wasted, and it’s reasonable to expect that players like Top Cat and Strome will improve this year and as such take some pressure off Kane. He can give the Hawks 100-ish points, give or take a few, that’s the ideal outcome here.

It Was the BLURST of Times: Being 31 catches up to Kane doesn’t  quickly, and his hands and feet are not even close to as quick as they once were. The vision and feel for the game are still there, because those things will never just go away, but Kane’s body just doesn’t cooperate at the level he’d like and as such the production falls off a bit. This all sounds dramatic, but I don’t think it would happen to the tune of him suddenly becoming a *bad* player, but just that he would be more in the 60-70 point range at season’s end. He did have just 76 points in 82 games in ’17-18, so it’s not like this would be appear as much of a fall-off overall, but that was his second lowest shooting percentage of his career, and the Hawks didn’t have much forward group to help in then. They do now. Anything less than 75 points from Kane this year would be a bad outcome.

Prediction: Kane continues his dominance, and with Cat and Strome taking the step forward that we wanted from Mitchell Trubisky but aren’t getting (I am sensitive about it, okay), his level of production does not fall off very much and finishes the year with 45 goals and 108 points. The Hawks make the playoffs and Kane finishes second in scoring, behind only Connor McDavid of the Oilers who miss the playoffs obviously, so Kane wins another Hart. He wills the Hawks to the playoffs, where they get railroaded in the first round.

Stats from NHL.com and Natural Stat Trick

Previous Previews

Robin Lehner

Corey Crawford

Adam Boqvist

Carl Dahlstrom

Calvin de Haan

Erik Gustafsson

Duncan Keith

Slater Koekkoek

Olli Maatta

Connor Murphy

Drake Caggiula

Ryan Carpenter

Alex DeBrincat

David Kampf

Football

The Vault: 2001 Bears vs. Washington

By Tony Martin 1707 0

The Vault: Chicago vs Washington, 2001

Welcome back to THE VAULT, the place where I wax nostalgic over players that eventually let us all down in one way or another (save for Peanut Tillman, he could never let me down). The overarching theme of these so far has been “remember this time the Bears sucked?”, so today I’ll highlight a win from a Bears team that had a strikingly similar vibe to the team that the field in 2018. Seriously, look at the 2001 and 2018 Bears side by side. They each had:

-Dalton-Line level quarterback play given their respective eras
-A young defense that just absolutely wrecks shit
-An inability to sweep the Packers
-Offensive players who were useless in fantasy football
-A young, potentially dominant middle linebacker
-A free safety known for defensive touchdowns
-Beaten in the playoffs at home by the Eagles

The 2001 Bears were the first squad that really gave me hope. It was destiny: the back-to-back Mike Brown overtime walk-off pick sixes were only two of the five comeback wins that season. Jerry Azumah was about to be Devin Hester before Devin Hester was a thing, and Anthony Thomas ran for over 1100 yards, which looks like a typo but I swear is accurate. Looking at the Bears offense in 2001 is awful, but we’re two weeks into 2019 and I don’t want to watch current game tape because it’s SO SO SO BAD, so not much has changed.

A lot of the 2001 team is etched into my memory. I won an award in 2016 that the Bears sponsored, so when I won they asked me who my favorite Bear of all time was. Out of the 16 teachers that won, there were three players listed: Brian Urlacher, Walter Payton, and Mike Brown. Guess which one I picked. I really do believe Mike Brown could’ve been Ed Reed if he stayed healthy, because he was always around the ball. Book it: the Bears win Super Bowl XLI if Mike Brown doesn’t get hurt in the Arizona comeback game and Daniel Manning isn’t put back there and toasted to a crisp by Peyton Manning. Tony Parrish used to lay motherfuckers out, and Rosevelt Colvin looked like an all-time great pass rushing LB. It was literally impossible to run up the middle on this defense, sporting 700 lbs of combined BEEF between Keith Traylor and Ted Washington. Just looking at the defense lined up on Youtube today looks downright goofy with all that space those two managed to occupy. It’s also weird to see the 4-3 look so good, since the NFL seemed to make the switch wholesale to 3-4 being the dominant defensive front a few years after this season.

This shit-ass offense managed to beat Washington in 2001, but it took Brian Urlacher’s first ever offensive touchdown on a pass from the illustrious Brad Maynard on a fake field goal to push the Bears to a win. The box score tells you all you need to know about this game:

Jim Miller: 13/26, 98 yards, 0 TD, 0 INT- 59.3 QB rating
Brad fuckin Maynard: 1/1, 27 yards, 1 TD, 0 INT- 158.3 QB rating

Brian Urlacher was the second leading receiver for the Bears in this game, but the defense managed to sack Tony Banks six times and force two fumbles. This was the second of four straight wins for the 2001 Bears, a streak that took them straight into the woodchipper against the Eagles in the playoffs as demolition crews sat outside Soldier Field to begin renovations. I heard totally unfounded rumors years later that the Bears were paid to throw the game so construction could start (I’m pretty sure the dude who told me that was wearing a Korn shirt so take that shit with an entire shaker of salt), but if there’s anything that could undermine a team as fated for the Lombardi Trophy as the 2001 Bears were, it would be Chicago political graft.

To end on a positive note: two weeks after this game the Bears played the Jaguars, and Keith Traylor returned an interception 67 yards. No politician, regardless of how corrupt they are, could ever take that from us.

Baseball

Series Preview – Cardinals vs. Cubs: Death Smiles At Us All

By Sam Fels 1434 0

vs.

RECORDS: Cardinals 85-67   Cubs 82-70

GAMETIMES: Thursday 6:15, Friday-Sunday 1:20

TV: Fox Thursday, ABC 7 Friday, WGN Saturday, NBCSN Sunday

I DON’T LIKE YOU EITHER: Viva El Birdos

SERIES PREVIEW POSTS

Depth Charts & Pitching Staffs

Cardinals Spotlight: Doing What They Wouldn’t

And so it’s come to this. After a four-year stretch where it generally felt like the Cubs had switched the dynamic on THE AULD RIVAL FROM THE SOUTH, everyone in blue is prepping for the most gruesome of deaths. Maybe it comes this weekend. Maybe the more cruel twist comes on the final weekend of the season. Either way, a feeling you thought you might have left behind has come roaring back. It’s almost comforting in a way, because we’ve lived with it for so long.

Oh, but there’s hope too. A hope that this infuriating, unsatisfying, unenjoyable season could find salvation. Perhaps the previous five and a half months wouldn’t sting as badly if it ends by sticking it to the Cardinals over seven games in 11 days. Perhaps the stale and foul taste of this season can be washed away. It’s possible, it’s just that it’s not something we’re accustomed to.

In all likelihood, the Cubs have to take at least five of the seven games on offer from The Red Menace. And even that could only likely ensure a tie, as in the interim the Cubs have the Pirates while the Cardinals have three games that looked like they might be treacherous a couple weeks ago against the Diamondbacks, but assuredly aren’t now. Anything less than a sweep of the Pirates could doom the Cubs. But we’ll get there.

A split here and it’s over. Three games down with six to go means even a 6-0 finish isn’t going to be enough. And of course there’s the small matter of the Brewers lurking as well, and they finish with one against San Diego today, and then Pirates, Reds, Rockies. It could open up for them if the Cubs and Cardinals hold each other in place.

And the real fear is that the Cardinals can expose two of the bigger problems the Cubs have through their rotation. One is that the absence of Anthony Rizzo and Javier Baez is just too much to carry. The second is that the inconsistency within the Cubs rotation is another they can’t overcome thanks to the solidity of the Cardinals’ staff. The second one is debatable, as the matchups have come out ok. Both will throw top of the rotation guys in Kyle Hendricks and Jack Flaherty tonight. Both will throw question marks in Jose Quintana and Michael Wacha tomorrow, though you’d trust Q slightly more than Wacha. The weekend finishes with what look like advantages for one team (Saturday for the Cards with Hudson, Sunday for the Cubs with Darvish). But baseball doesn’t work that way.

While the Cardinals offense over the whole of the season hasn’t been impressive, it’s been more than enough of late to go by the Cubs as they sat around poking a carcass with a stick. Perhaps it was their own. Tommy Edman, the kind of young go-getter the Cardinals always produce that pop for a few weeks and make you want to reach through the screen and either throttle him or just yourself before they sink back into anonymity, has been their hottest hitter. Right behind him is the Shit Demon behind the plate, and you’re already picturing some piece of garbage off his fists landing softly enough over Zobrist’s head to not actually make a sound to drive in two in the 7th of one of these. You’ve seen it too many times. Kolten Wong and Paul Goldschmidt are both on one as well, so the challenge is set.

And you don’t want to be trailing this team late, because they’ve fashioned quite the shutdown pen of late. I wouldn’t trust Carlos Martinez with anything valuable, too many memories of him going to the zoo at the slightest hint of trouble, but he also hasn’t given up an earned run in a month. Ryan Helsly, Giovanny Gallegos, and Dominic Leone have all been great the past month. The Cardinals know exactly how they’re getting to the last out. The Cubs have to guess every night.

It doesn’t shape up well. But it doesn’t have to. A Bryant or Schwarber binge. Quintana rediscovering what worked in August to join what Hendricks and Darvish have continually been doing. A meltdown from any Cardinal reliever, and it could all swing back.

The Cubs have a lot to overcome without even considering the opponent, like injuries and general malaise. We’ll find out if they can ever truly lock it in as they claimed they would all season, or if they’ve always wanted it to just be over like most of us have.

Pessimism is for assholes. C’mon Cubs, give us a reason to keep hoping for at least another week. We’ve got nothing else to do anyway.

Baseball

Cardinals Spotlight: Doing What They Wouldn’t

By Sam Fels 1730 0

While this series doesn’t have to serve as an execution in the public square, it’s hard for Cubs fans to feel otherwise given the whiskey-dick nature of the entire season. Should it go that way, the epitaphs will range far and wide, even though it will mostly do with what the Cubs didn’t (or wouldn’t) do in the offseason. There will be articles about “Cardinals Way” or “Magic,” and you’ll customarily vomit up your ankle joints. Some will speculate whether this signals a tectonic shift in the NL Central, back to the way things were forever, or whether this was just a one-off. We’re sure you’re very excited.

But one thing to focus on, if the Cardinals should hang on, is that they’ve done what the Cubs refused to do. Because this isn’t a great lineup, the Cardinals have had to pitch their way through. And they’ve done it behind a couple of first-round picks and developed relievers. We know, it sounds illegal, but it turns out teams can actually do that.

The Cardinals spent 1st round picks in recent years on Jack Flaherty and Dakota Hudson. The Cubs will see both this series. You’ll recall the Cubs policy has been to spend high picks on hitters, because they’re more of a sure-thing (and boy don’t Happ and Almora and Russell look like sure-things!), and they would either develop the pitching in bulk in later rounds or simply buy it on the open market. And it worked there for a minute.

But they’ve been passed by a team led by Flaherty and Hudson. Flaherty is the unquestioned ace of the staff, sporting a 4-to-1 K/BB ratio while striking out over 10 hitters per nine innings and keeping his ERA right around 3.00. He’s been otherworldly of late, as he had an ERA of 0.71 in August and 1.23 in September so far. His K/BB ratio is nearly six in that time.

Flaherty of late has been throwing what is a plus-fastball less in favor of a two-seam or sinker. It’s gotten him a ton of grounders, as over half of his sinkers end up killing worms, and this month it’s been near 75%. His slider has been the real weapon, as it had been generating over half whiffs on swings taken against it. Of late though, it’s been losing some tilt and some of those whiffs, and that might be one concern the Cards have closing out the season. Flaherty has already thrown 23 more innings than he did last year, and perhaps fatigue is showing in the finish on that slider.

Hudson isn’t as explosive, but he’s been no less effective during this Cardinals charge/plague. He carried a 2.38 ERA in August and a 1.89 so far in September. He doesn’t have near the strikeout power that Flaherty does, but he does his work by getting an obscene number of ground-balls. And for once, the Cardinals infield isn’t a collection of generally bewildered carnies. They catch everything thanks to Wong and DeJong.

Hudson gets there through the use of a power sinker that averages about 94 MPH but doesn’t get a lot of swings-and-misses. It’s meant for hitter to pound into the ground, and that’s precisely what they do. Hudson will feature a cutter more often to righties, and that’s another meant to generate ground-balls.

Given that Hudson is 25 and Flaherty 23, it feels like the top of the rotation down there in Mos Eisley for the foreseeable future. Wouldn’t that be nice instead of wondering what might fall off Hamels tomorrow or if Lester is finished?

In the pen, the Cards have been able to convert Carlos Martinez from a occasional boob of a starter into an effective reliever. John Brebbia and Giovanny Gallegos were brought into their minor league system either via Rule 5 or trade and turned into effective relievers. That’s another thing the Cubs haven’t done in a while.

Now, the pen is hardly long-term fixed, and given the volatile nature of any pen could turn back into a suck factory next year. Still, St. Louis was able to fashion a successful one for a season out of spare parts and leftovers, which the Cubs have been angling for for a couple season. They’ve had to solve that with established free agents, which has had a mixed record. Then again, Andrew Miller is essentially a scarecrow these days as well.

Even with that, Flaherty and Hudson will anchor whatever the Cardinals are for the next few years. They’ve led the Cardinals to a three-game lead with 10 to go. Meanwhile, first-round flameouts like Happ and Almora and a half-season of meh (followed by one of greatness, to be fair) from Schwarber are a big reason the Cubs are where they are.

Maybe all policies on the draft shouldn’t be so ironclad.