Hockey

Preseason Game #2 – Hawks 3, Red Wings 5 – Too Much to Not Enough, There I Saved You Some Time

By Rose Rankin 1560 0

I’m a firm believer that preseasons in basically any sport are not worth getting stressed out about. They’re an extended audition for those on the fringes of the team, ostensibly they shake off some rust (debatable), and you’re just happy if the important players don’t get hurt.

With all that being the case, don’t take anything I say too seriously (like I normally demand serious consideration around here), because the Hawks looked pretty shitty tonight but I am not—I repeat NOT—letting it get to me, and neither should you.

Box Score

Natural Stat Trick

–Robin Lehner looked less than comfortable tonight. He played half the game, gave up two goals and finished with an .882 SV%, which again shouldn’t give anyone ulcers but my bigger problem was that he was all over the place, and not in a good way. He was flopping around and losing his net; the second goal was a direct result of him using the crease as a slip-and-slide and the puck dribbled away from him and into the net. I get athleticism and all that, but flailing shouldn’t be the result.

–Kevin Lankinen did just fine, on the other hand, and the goals he gave up weren’t really on him—the defense got mesmerized (shocking, right?) on the first one, and the second was off Dahlstrom’s leg on a PK that looked characteristically chaotic. He finished with a .905.

–None of the core looked particularly impressive. Alex DeBrincat and Dylan Strome were quiet, Andrew Shaw whiffed on at least three or four shots and was pretty useless, Brendan Perlini did nothing, Slater Koekkoek was Slater Koekkoek, etc. Great seats still available.

–So Connor Murphy and Carl Dahlstrom are going to be our shutdown pairing, huh? At one point in the second period they had, respectively, 11 and 10 CF%. You did not mis-read that. But I know, I know, it’s a dumb preseason game, who cares. They ended with a 45 and 40 CF% so whatever, and Dahlstrom did get an assist, so yay?

–Who the hell is Philip Holm? I swear I was paying attention this offseason and during training camp, and I’m telling you I’ve never heard of this guy. But he scored a goal, he had a great keep on the power play that resulted in the third goal (he got the assist), and at 44.4 CF% he was behind only Murphy in possession for d-men. Sign him to a 7-year deal right now.

–The organ-I-zation is REALLY excited about Andrew Shaw being back and they want you to know it. During both intermissions they played an interview with him (hello, mute lounge), and I know my personal animosity towards him is clouding my judgement but I am already exhausted with this dummy. He nearly dropped the gloves in the third period—this is a PRESEASON game, lest you forgot. But there was plenty of stupidity to go around. De la Rose and some other oafs went after noted tough guy Alex DeBrincat late in the third after the Wings had re-taken the lead. So that shows you the level of play we’re dealing with here.

Two games, two losses, not freaking out yet. Onward and upward.

 

 

Football

The Sons Of Wilber Marshall – Week 2 Wrap

By Sam Fels 1293 0

Once again, our Bears troika comes together to pick up the pieces after Week 2’s breathless win in Denver. 

So do we feel good the Bears gutted out a win while not playing particularly well (at least on one side of the ball) or still apprehensive they don’t look all that imposing?

Brian Schmitz (@_BrianSchmitz): In this league, wins are so hard to come by, you have to be grateful no matter how they look. BUT, this win and this team has a lot of warts. I am starting to believe that they are just not that good. They haven’t faced a good team yet, and the offensive results continue to trend the wrong way. It’s even more alarming that a quick fix doesn’t seem possible. The Bears need to get better with the guys they have, but unfortunately, these guys may not be as good as they thought.

Wes French (@WFrenchMan): Any win in the NFL is a positive, and an especially high energy finish of a walk-off 53-yard FG from a team that has this kicker-shadow hanging over them should be a boost for all involved. 

That said, the images of “Club Dub” in the immediate post-game did not look like many were celebrating. The offense was scaled back to the 1950’s, going way run heavy with mixed results and seeing the same poor ball placement from Trubisky. His pass to Robinson to help complete the comeback on 4th and 15 with 9 seconds left was only his second attempt that far down the field all game, and that first one came on the first drive. 
The defense was great until it wasn’t at the end, and everyone got a glimpse of what too many blitzes looks like from the Pagano playbook. 
A win is a win and 1-1 looks way better than 0-2, but there were not too many answers to the questions that came from the Week 1 debacle. 
Brian: Yes…Trubisky continues to struggle with accuracy issues that have played him his entire career. But as this point, how do you coach this up and improve? I’m not sure you can. Also, I’m trying to figure out if Mitch is bad because of Nagy or is Nagy bad because of Mitch?
Wes: Put me in the camp of “Nagy is bad because of Mitch” for now. 

The plays are there to be made, and you can’t fault the coaching when wide open guys are missed by five yards in any direction. The two most egregious plays were the ball short to Cohen and the one over Gabriel, both of which were going for big yards if your QB can simply throw a remotely catchable ball. I don’t know if it’s coachable or how you fix it, but this is going to be a very disappointing season if they don’t find out how to manage the offense to the point they can get to 20 every week. 
Tony Martin (@MrMartinBruh): There’s an old Bomb the Music Industry song called “Even Winning Feels Bad” and that’s the best way I can describe what we saw on the field Sunday afternoon. Oof, that was an ugly one. It felt like watching the Kyle Orton years, and I’d be devastated if this team wasted another year of this defensive core and couldn’t fix the offense. 

I agree with the overall sentiment in this thread so far that the scheme doesn’t matter if the QB can’t execute, and Nagy schemed some guys wide open and those plays were not converted. 
On the plus side: David Montgomery is going to get better and better, and the offensive line was better than it was last week (not like that’s saying much). The defense got their clutch turnover, the pressure was consistent, and Eddy drilled that kick. For every holding call, there were three more that could’ve been called and weren’t. This defense beat a team that is run by someone who knows them inside and out, and maintained some level of domination considering the offense only had the ball for 28 minutes for the entire game. Mitch ran a great 31-second drill. There is room for hope, but I’m not sold yet and I doubt I will be until we see consistent QB play. 
It’s at this point it feels like the truly optimistic would point out that the offense started out extremely slowly last year too, aside from the first half against Green Bay. But they gutted out wins against Seattle and Arizona before coming alive against the admittedly terrible Bucs. Do we think there’s no chance this could be the same situation?
Wes: There is still plenty to be optimistic about, but it’s more being optimistic that the coaching staff can find a way to carry their QB until he turns their advice into action. Trubisky is still very inexperienced at the position, but has the athletic ability to be capable enough to be in most games. He still seems to do better in hurry up situations and when he’s on the move, and while that’s not ideal it’s something they could lean on in the meantime. 

Maybe getting reps in preseason would have helped mitigate some of this bullshit, but this is where we are. Monday will be another tough road test, even though Washington doesn’t look very good. The coaching staff rubbed everyone’s nose in it by becoming a running team in Week 2, now let’s see if they can balance things out and make this look like a decent, NFL level offense. 
Brian: I don’t. I am very down on this team and I think they just may not be very good. Like six or seven wins bad. The Bears haven’t scored over 27 points since last November 11th. My concern is that Matt Nagy has been figured out and hasn’t yet figured out how to counterpunch.
Hockey

You Ain’t Shane, You Ain’t Mook – ’19-’20 NHL Team Previews – Florida Panthers

By Matt McClure 2133 0

Well there are a couple of quite familiar faces, aren’t they? The departed namesake and an instant hall of fame coach will try to bring a level of sustained competitive hockey to south Florida that they haven’t seen since…well…ever. As batshit as it sounds, Uncle Dale and Joel Quenneville never even spent a full season together here in Chicago, but they’re going to try to make this thing work in Sunrise even if it kills them both. And it just might, but at least now they’ll leave behind nice bronzed and pickled corpses.

2018-2019

36-32-14 86 Pts, 5th in the Atlantic
3.22 GF/G (9th), 3.33 GA/G (28th), -13 GD
49.42% CF (16th), 48.45% xGF (20th)
PP 26.8% (2nd), PK 81.3% (10th)

Goaltending: In a full 180 from a trick they had been pulling for the couple seasons previous wherein the Cats got solid netminding from an aging Roberto Luongo and James Reimer filling in whenever something fell off of him, last season the Panthers got absolutely no goaltending to help out what was a pretty spiky offense. Luongo started 40 games last year and arguably posted the worst numbers of his era-spanning career with an .899 overall and only a .906 at evens. Reimer was only a hair better at .900 and .909 respectively. Luongo decided that was enough to call it a career, and did so officially which hilariously dicked over the Canucks in having to eat the recapture penalty for the contraband contract they signed him to. Reimer took whatever he’s got left in the tank up the coast to Carolina, leaving Uncle Dale to have to revamp his entire goaltending infrastructure. Fortunately for him, there was an aging veteran in Sergei Bobrovsky who couldn’t wait to get the fuck out of Columbus and take the bags and bags of money everyone knew Dale was going to throw at him. Bob got a max seven-year term from the Panthers at $10 million per, which should take him until he’s 37. Even with the goaltending career curve being far more protracted than other positions, there’s always a risk of Bobrovsky’s crotch detaching given the high wire style he plays, and Joel Quenneville isn’t exactly known for his judicious management of goaltending workloads.  Still, the Panthers were looking for an infusion of excitement both by landing a name and by potentially making some noise in the post-season. Bobrovsky certainly should get him there even if a) his overall save percentage numbers have been in decline for three years while staying healthy, and b) only last season did he have even a representative playoff run, having absolutely shat himself with the Jackets two trips previous. As of right now, 22-year-old Sam Montrembleaut will get first crack at the backup role, but it could be a rotating cast of thousands if Bob doesn’t play 70 games. Which he just might.

Defense: Once again Joel Quenneville will have an honsest-to-god #1 defenseman to work with, in this case it’s Aaron Eklbad, who somehow is still only 23-years-old. Q likes his top pairing guys to be able to do everything, and Ekblad is certainly capable. Over the past few seasons his overall possession rate isn’t necessarily one that’d be associated with a do-it-all blue liner, but when taking into consideration that he’s had the toughest starts out of necessity and has been paired with Keith Yandle for two years, the picture starts to get a little clearer. And the fact that Quenneville hasn’t personally drowned Yandle with his barehands in some secluded corner of the Everglades and then chopped up his body on a fanboat is truly an upset. Anton Stralman moved a little east from Tampa to Sunrise in the offseason, and while he’s always been a textbook 2nd pairing puck mover, last year he finally started to show some signs of wearing down. No one is quite sure what it is Mike Matheson does or who he is, but Dale is paying him a fairly hefty salary at $4.75 mildo to do it until the entire state is submerged. Mark Pysyk is a hold over from the Computer Boys era, so Quenneville will hate him and put him at forward. At the very least he’ll call him Mike Kostka if only out of spite.

Forwards: Sasha Barkov is probably the best kept secret in the league, and if Q and Bob have any kind of positive impact on this team, that probably won’t be the case for much longer. Barkov is probably the second best two-way player in the league behind Patrice Bergeron now that both Toews and Kopitar have aged out of that level of effectiveness. Barkov absolutely erupted for 96 points nobody saw last year when he finally had two competent full time linemates in a healthy Jonathan Huberdeau and the very shoosty Mike Hoffman, who had 92 and 70 points themselves respectively. Evgeni Dadonov was a nice surprise (albeit at 30) with 70 points of his own despite the fact that a hurt Vincent Trochek only played 55 games last year, and was hindered when he did play. If he bounces back to his formerly reliable 50+ point output, particularly with Brett Connolly here to now provide a bit more scoring depth, the Cats could have a little bit more bite (GET IT?) to an offense that was already top-10.

Outlook: Barring injuries, or Sasha Barkov turning to dust under the workload Quenneville is certain to give him, the Panthers have made enough improvements to interject themselves into the playoff picture in the east, more than likely as a wild card, as the top three spots in the Atlantic seem fairly secure in Tampa, Boston, and Toronto. There are enough “ifs” here to not make it a completely foregone conclusion, but if Bobrovsky is even slightly above league average as he declines, Quenneville’s system is one of the few in the league that produces actual, tangible results almost immediately, and the Panthers weren’t that far off the playoff pace last year. And January 21st at Club 1901 is sure to be a highly emotional reunion, count on that.

Previous Team Previews

Carolina

Columbus

New Jersey

New York Islanders

New York Rangers

Philadelphia 

Pittsburgh

Washington

Boston

Buffalo

Detroit

Baseball

Q Might Be The Only Salvageable One, And The Cubs Might Have To

By Sam Fels 1467 0

When you score 55 runs over four games, your other foibles tend to be overlooked. That’s an old baseball cliche, y’know. So this morning, everyone’s a little less concerned about the Cubs being without half of their “core four” for the rest of the regular season because of all the runs pouring like an avalanche comin’ down the mountain. On the other side, the Cubs will soon stop seeing the confused and despondent cooking-school rejects that have taken the mound for the Pirates and Reds the last four games. It actually starts tonight with Sonny Gray, and the Cardinals will sport real live pitchers for those seven games to decide the fate of us all.

So the worry is that when the Cubs need to fight fire with fire, pitching-wise (which is probably ice with ice given that offense is always considered the hot weapon and defense the cool one so “fight Sub-Zero with Sub-Zero?”), they only have two of five guys who can do it right now. If it wasn’t for Kyle Hendricks and Yu Darvish, this season may have already been taken out to the curb. The three lefties have been woeful of late. Now maybe that’s something you can paper over for 12 more games, which is all that’s left. But the Cubs have been trying to get around it for a few weeks now, so there just might not be that much sand left in the top chamber here.

Two of them are easily explicable. Jon Lester might simply be past it, and the thin margins of error he already had the past couple seasons are simply now imperceptible and unreachable. His fellow over-35 southpaw, Cole Hamels, is coming back from an injury that derailed his career once already for a year and a half, and he seems completely lost or hurt or both. To expect these two to be anything more than what we’ve seen is almost certainly optimistic at best, deluded at worst. We have the evidence of why this is happening.

Jose Quinana, on the other hand, is a stranger case. There’s no injury that we know of. He’s only 30, though has certainly piled up his share of innings. So health and age aren’t the concerns for him that they are for Lester and Hamels. And yet his recent stretch is worrying as well. With three starters rolling, you figure the Cubs could close this season out triumphantly. With only two, it becomes more of a stretch of imagination as the Cardinals spend a majority of those games making sure the Cubs aren’t actually putting up a touchdown or two.

It’s easy to forget, even if it was just a month ago, how good Q was in August. He had an ERA of 2.02 with 39 Ks and only six walks. He had a four start stretch where he gave up just four runs over 26 innings. And the numbers could have actually been better. He had an extremely weird start against the Nationals where he literally did not give up one hard-hit ball, almost all of it was on the ground, and yet it all found holes or the Cubs starting throwing it around like a shuttlecock. Even his last start of that month was good, though Maddon got a little panicky and pulled him with two outs in the sixth even though he hadn’t given up a run.

But September has been puke-tastic. He’s only seen the 4th inning once, and has given up 13 earned runs in just 10.1 innings. Again, some of this is weird, as his start in San Diego was essentially sabotaged by defense again. But it’s not like Q to fall apart after something like that, which he promptly did after Ben Zobrist did a fine Mitch Trubisky impression on a double-play ball (too soon?).

So is there something going on? On the surface, there’s isn’t a lot of change. There’s no velocity drop, it’s not like his walks have risen hugely, or anything else we jump to first. When digging around a bit, it does look a little like his change-up has flattened and lost some drop:

The past two starts he hasn’t gotten a swing-and-miss on it, which is a problem.

Still, there’s an element of weirdness, as there always is in baseball. Quintana in his last three starts has been getting way more ground-balls than he did during his brilliant stretch in August, which you would think should be a good thing. In those August starts he only got half of his contact-against on the ground once. He’s done that in every start since and including that Washington one, but with these results. Does he miss Baez the most?

What he hasn’t gotten in his last couple outings is any whiffs on anything but his four-seamer, and that’s got to change. As you’d think, or hope, that with the greater amount of grounders, even adding a smidge of Ks to it would get Q back on top sharpish. It’s likely the Cubs will need that.

Hockey

Pictures of Matchstick Men – ’19–’20 Blackhawks Player Previews – Ryan Carpenter

By John Pullega 1600 0

We may forget his name. We may forget his point. But Ryan Carpenter is here, so here we go.

2018–19 Stats

68 GP – 5 G, 13 A, 18 P

58.77 CF% (3.9 CF% Rel), 56.6 oZS%

40.98 GF% (-16.27 Rel GF%), 56.99 xGF% (0.39 Rel xGF%)

Avg. TOI 12:37

A Brief History: There’s been talk about how Carpenter is a Kampf clone, which wouldn’t be a terrible thing, given the defensive rigmarole we’re going to be drinking off this entire year. It might be even better than that though, as Carpenter has shown a bit more offensive skill than our David.

Carpenter’s 18 points last year were a career best, as were his CF% and oZS%. He’s pretty good at limiting high-danger shots in his own end in the limited time he’s on the ice. And he’s good on faceoffs, which we think is sort of the appendix of hockey skill but sure won’t turn it down if he’s got it. He can play center or wing, so he’s got some versatility in the most literal sense of the word.

His value shines brightest as a dungeon master on 5v5. Last year saw him mitigate high-danger threats in his own zone and turn the ice with regularity. But then again, he started in his own zone at just a 43.4% clip. Still, he’s always been sort of a defensive plug throughout his short career.

There’s some talk about how Carpenter can play on the PK, but I’m not so sure I buy it yet. Although Vegas was in the top half of the league for killing penalties last year (12th overall), Carpenter was sort of a ninth guy on the PK unit (or 10th if you’re pedantic and count the goalie). But given how awful the Hawks were last year, that might still be an improvement, especially if it’s minimizing high-stress defensive time that Jonathan Toews has to take.

It Was the Best of Times: Carpenter ends up as a fourth line RW/C who wins more than half of his faceoffs. Though he doesn’t spend nearly as much time in the offensive zone as he did last year, he builds off last year’s career high in points, potting 20 on the year. He takes some time away from Toews on the PK.

It Was the BLURST of Times: Shaw gets hurt and Colliton gets a case of galaxy brain and puts Carpenter on the first line.

Prediction: Carpenter is 28 and has a three-year, $1 million per contract, and that’s about the player we’ll get. He’s an older David Kampf with slightly more offensive skill. He’ll score some kind of fluky, greasy goal in the first 10 games and replace John Hayden as Eddie O’s adopted son, number and all. More importantly, he’ll do a decent job battening down the PK2 unit.

That’s about all you can ask from a guy like Carpenter.

Stats from hockey-reference.com, NaturalStatTrick.com, Corsica.hockey, and HockeyViz.com.

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

Football

Wide Receivers Are Very Special People – Inside The Locker Room – Vol. 1

By Brian Schmitz 1299 0

In dissecting the never-ending news stream that is Antonio Brown, I can’t help but be reminded of one of my favorite all-time teammates. A teammate that will re-name nameless for reasons you will appreciate as you finish reading the following story. For the sake of clarity, this teammate shall be referred to as “Not Alvin Harper.” Keep in mind, this is a story best told live, but I will do my best to provide as much detail as possible in an effort to truly capture how entertaining this entire saga was.

The year was 2003, and I was playing Arena Football for the Orlando Predators. Our coach was Jay Gruden, who also happened to be our quarterback; now that’s some Arena Football shit. Jay was the best! Super funny. Always laughing. Never taking himself or the job too seriously. Loved to party. He was just a good, normal dude. So, if being the quarterback and head coach of a professional football team wasn’t enough, Jay was also the Player Personal Director who was in charge of signing and cutting all players.

During training camp, Jay decided all his receivers sucked; so he cut all of them and signed Travis McGriff and went out and traded for a guy who was arguably the greatest WR in Arena League history; not to mention a former Super Bowl winner with the Dallas Cowboys. Unlike most of us, this guy wasn’t in the AFL because he wasn’t good enough for the NFL, he was in the AFL because he couldn’t stop drinking and blowing rails. The Arena League was the perfect landing spot because there was no drug testing of any kind. Coke, Weed, Meth, Oxy, PEDs – anything and everything was acceptable. The reason being is that the AFL did not want to pay for rehab for offenders so they just decided not to drug test anyone for anything.

Once the season started, every Monday (our off day), “Not Alvin Harper” would throw a party for the team at our housing complex pool. Except this wasn’t just some guys with pizza and cans of Bud Light listening to a radio; this was a full on jam in which he would pay for all the booze, food, and a DJ. Everyone was invited. Whether it was some professionals from Dockside Dolls or some Hooters waitresses or even some homeless dudes one time. This weekly free-for-all made Tuesday morning practices especially entertaining to watch.

Virtually every football team starts their practices in the same manner: a pre-practice period, followed by stretch, followed by an individual period. The individual period for quarterback and receivers starts by going thru the route tree on air. On this one very special Tuesday practice in which I will never forget, “Not Alvin Harper” decided to not go to bed after partying through the night. He strolls out to practice late and immediately jumps into the receiver drills. The first route he runs is a simple hitch, the easiest route in football history and one that 2nd grade football players learn on day one. But on this day, “Not Alvin Harper” comes off the line, hits his five hard mark, stops, and promptly forgets to put up his hands to catch the ball. As the ball rockets off his chest, he doesn’t recognize what just happened and simply runs back to the line of scrimmage and to the back of the receiver’s line. The next route is a slant. Again, “Not Alvin Harper” comes sprinting off the line, hits his 3-yard mark, turned on a 45 degree angle. This time he remembers to use his hand to catch the ball, but he places them about two feet too far apart and the ball hits him on the facemask which knocks the ball and his helmet into the air. What happened next is the single funniest thing I’ve ever seen on a football field: “Not Alvin Harper,” after taking the ball off the face-mask, doesn’t break stride and keeps running his route completely off the field and into the locker room. As he’s running away, something catches my eye – “Not Alvin Harper” wasn’t wearing any socks or shoes. He had forgotten to wears socks and cleats and was running around barefoot thinking no one would notice.

As if this entire seen wasn’t enough, when we returned to practice, “Not Alvin Harper” was sleeping on the floor in the middle of the locker room and his car was parked on the infield dirt inside a local minor league baseball stadium that was adjacent to our practice facility.

***My favorite part of this story was that he went out three days later and caught 11 balls for 102 yards and three TDs.

Baseball

Series Preview – Reds vs. Cubs: After The Destruction…

By Sam Fels 1256 0

vs.

Records: Reds 70-80  Cubs 81-68

GAMETIMES: Monday-Wednesday 7:05

TV: NBCSN Monday, WCIU/ESPN Tuesday, WGN Wednesday

NOT READY FOR FULL-TIME DALTON YET: Blog Red Machine

DEPTH CHARTS & PITCHING STAFFS

Note: Due to scheduling and traveling, there isn’t a Reds Spotlight today. Picture one in your head if you must. Maybe Votto’s regression or Aquino’s 12 wRC+ in September. Choose your own adventure. 

After 47 runs in three games and thoroughly burning any sense of self-worth the Pirates might have thought about having, the Cubs will look to keep it going against the Reds. The challenge with the Reds is they have one real live pitcher starting a game this series, and a couple ones in the pen, neither of which the Pirates can claim right now. And the Cubs might be without their linchpin.

We all are holding our breath to hear news of Anthony Rizzo, which will come down after this goes to print. Everyone’s expecting the worst, because when a player is helped off the field that generally means a week or two, maybe more. The Cubs don’t have two weeks or more, and face the apocalyptic seven games with the Cardinals. As if the Reds haven’t been enough of a headache. The simplest solution is a lot of Victor Caratini at first, though you may see some of Happ and Bryant there too. The latter gets David Bote’s bat into the lineup, though Caratini and Contreras both being in the lineup doesn’t leave you offensively short either. It just leaves you short of what Rizzo would provide.

Of course, another wonderful aspect of a Rizzo absence is more debate about the leadoff spot,, which has become the Cubs’ TIF funding. Rizzo moved there for the Pirates series, suddenly they turned into Loyola-Marymount, but now they have to figure it out again. Mostly you can count on Zobrist being there, and he can at least be representative. It’s basically a “So What Don’t You Want?” situation. Heyward has proven he can’t do it and doesn’t like it. They won’t try Bryant there, especially as he’s rediscovered some of his power over the weekend (if results against the Pirates even count). Contreras is another candidate against lefties, as long as we never see Almora there again. Go down the list and you see there aren’t a lot of answers.

Still, time moves on, and the Cubs have games to win. And as you know, the Reds are a spikier outfit than the Bucs. They’re coming off taking two of three from Arizona, seriously denting their charge to the wildcard. And they’ll have no compunction about doing the same to the Cubs. At least the Cubs will duck Trevor Bauer and Luis Castillo. But they’ll get Sonny Gray, who’s been one of the best starter in the NL and especially of late. Gray has quality starts in 11 of his last 13, and he had a 0.74 ERA in August. His two September starts have seen him give up four runs…so he’s slowing down? Maybe? We’re trying here. Needless to say it would behoove the Cubs to get Monday and Wednesday and consider anything off of Gray a bonus.

The rotation is another problem the Cubs have to solve. All of Quintana, Hamels, and Lester have been backing up for weeks now, and while they got to save the relievers who matter (such as they are) due to the offensive supernova against Pittsburgh, they don’t want to go to that well any more than anyone’s stomach can handle. Hamels doesn’t look healthy, and Lester might just be running out of racetrack in his career. They are wheezing to the finish line and have to find something this series and in the season’s last two weeks, even if it’s just a death rattle.

It’s only two games now. It’s one and a half behind DC while one ahead of Milwaukee. But if the Cubs can at least hold that two games behind St. Louis, that basically puts it all on the seven games they have left together. Let’s do that.

Hockey

You Ain’t Shane, You Ain’t Mook – ’19-20 Team Previews: Detroit Red Wings

By Rose Rankin 1349 0

Schadenfeude: noun, 1. Pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune. 2. When your rival team is even worse than your team. See: 2019-20 Detroit Red Wings.

2018-2019

32-40-10 74 Pts. (7th in Atlantic Division)

2.73 GF/G (21st) – 3.32 GA/G (27th)

47.1 CF% (28th) – 44.5 xGF% (31st)

18.1 PP% (19th) – 77.1 PK% (28th)

Goalies: In my mind Jimmy Howard is at least 65 years old, but turns out he’s only 34. Only. It’s safe to say his best years are behind him, and while he wasn’t a trainwreck or anything last year, his .907 SV%/3.07GAA at evens isn’t exactly going to save this shitshow of a team. Jonathan Bernier isn’t going to do it either. He’s certainly a serviceable back-up, and let’s be honest neither of these goalies are going to be what sinks the Red Wings’ season, but neither of them are good enough to bail out this team either.

Defense: Why is Mike Green still playing? I guess plenty of Wings fans could yell that right back at me but with the words “Brent Seabrook” in the middle of that sentence. But that doesn’t change the fact that if Mike Green is on your top pairing, you’ve got issues. Last season the Wings were 28th in the league in terms of shots against per game, placing them in the esteemed company of the Rangers, Hawks, and Senators. Only one defenseman (Filip Hronek) was above water in possession last year, and just barely—he had a 50.3 CF%. We know a few things about shitty defenses around here, and that’s what the Red Wings have.

Green will probably pair with Danny DeKeyser, Hronek and Dennis Cholowski maybe, and Patrik Nemeth and Jonathan Ericsson will round out to the main six. Will Trevor Daley stink up the joint for a while? Probably! But who cares? Fuck this team.

Forwards: A lot of teams are stuck with one top line and nothing else, but the Red Wings are really taking this situation to a new level. Bertuzzi-Larkin-Mantha is a decent top line—really, Dylan Larkin is probably the only good thing on this team. But all three are young and could be good pieces to build around. Or maybe they can gtfo to better teams, I don’t know.

Frans Nielsen and Valtteri Filppula are your centers behind Larkin, with Luke Glendening probably centering the fourth line. Andreas Athanasiou isn’t horrible, but I swear I hate that fucker so that’s literally the nicest thing I’m going to say. Justin Abdelkader is still playing on this team, for God’s sake.

Now, they have young guys like Filip Zadina, Taro Hirose, and Michael Rasmussen, who may develop into something, but that’s by no means certain and they weren’t lighting up the scorer’s sheet in the playing time they had last year. This team was dead-ass last in expected goals for. And so it goes with a rebuild—it’s going to be a lot of trial and error.

Prediction: Yes, Steve Yzerman is back and people will try to find the upsides, but let’s not kid ourselves—the Red Wings are going to suck this year. It’s entirely possible they’re at the bottom of the division, and I couldn’t be happier about it. If they’re not, it’s simply because the Senators are proving yet again why relegation is a viable strategy the NHL should adopt. The Wings will end up with somewhere between 75-80 points, and Larkin will be like a poor man’s Connor McDavid—not, he’s not anywhere near as good as McDavid so please do not misunderstand me, but he’s young, talented, and wasting it on a terrible team. But too bad. Fuck this team.

Stats from NHL.com, Hockey Reference and Natural Stat Trick

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Baseball

Series Preview – White Sox vs. Twins: Part Of The Procession

By Sam Fels 989 0

vs.

RECORDS: White Sox 65-84   Twins 91-58

GAMETIMES: Monday-Wednesday 6:40

TV: WGN Monday, NBCSN Tuesday/Wednesday

THEY LOVE HAWK: Twinkie Town

SERIES PREVIEW POSTS

Depth Charts & Pitching Staffs

Twins Spotlight: Dingers!

After providing far too much hope for the Mariners future, the Sox head to Minneapolis to essentially form an honor guard for the Twins. Minnesota is goal-to-go for clinching the division, with a magic number of nine. They spent the weekend taking a doubleheader from the chasing Tribe, which essentially ended the discussion in the Central. 4.5 game lead with 13 games to go is going to be really hard to gag away.

So now it’s about setting up their rotation for the Division Series, getting guys rest who haven’t had it, and figuring out who can be in the bullpen and trusted with playoff innings. It’s a nice place to be, and perhaps another lesson for the White Sox on where they want to go.

That doesn’t mean the Twins are full-strength, or will be. Byron Buxton finally had to give in on his shoulder and have surgery, and he’s done for the year. Michael Pineda got suspended for taking a diuretic, which can be a masking agent but also can just be a diuretic. Still, MLB makes it pretty clear that anything taken should be checked with the training staff or league office, so if you get caught you had outs before. Still, MLB seems only to gobble up Latin players in this. Weird, no?

Which is going to leave the Twins short in the rotation, especially as they have to get through both the Astros and Yankees, in whatever order, to get to the World Series. And those two teams chew up really good pitching staffs anyway. Jose Berrios is your Game 1 starter, but other than him it’s basically Jake Odorizzi now and then a company outing. Berrios has the capability to shut anyone down on a crisp night, but he’ll most likely have to do it twice in a series for the Twins to have any chance.

Then again, the Twins aren’t going to feel like they have to apologize for anything offensively when the playoff roll around. They’ve hit more homers than anyone, so it won’t be automatic they get out-slugged in any short series. And seeing as hoe they get homers from everywhere, that makes their lineup just as hard to negotiate. It’ll be a coming out party for them in some fashion. Dylan Covey should probably just starting turning around and looking behind him now.

For the Sox, there probably is something to finishing the season strong, as after this they’ll have the long dead Tigers and recently probably dead Indians to finish out the campaign. 70 wins or 72 wins might not really matter, but it’s been a few years since the Sox eclipsed 70 wins and any step forward should be welcomed. The Twins will either already be daydreaming of October nights or hellbent on clinching ASAP to really start resetting their roster. If it’s the latter, then it’ll be worth watching how Lopez and Giolito do, not that the latter has anything to prove. Lopez kicked Cleveland’s dick in the dirt when they were hot on the trail, so maybe the brighter lights are what he needs.

And at least the Sox will be done with the Twins after this, laying the ground for bigger games with him as soon as next season, hopefully.