Baseball

Series Preview – White Sox vs. Mets: Take A Bite

By Andy Jonathan 1516 0

vs.

 

RECORDS: White Sox 46-57   Mets 50-55

GAMETIMES: Tuesday/Wednesday 7:10 Thursday 1:20

TV: Tuesday WGN, Wednesday/Thursday NBCSN

And that’s when the CHUDs came at me: Mets Blog

 

PITCHING MATCHUPS

Reynaldo Lopez vs. Noah Syndergaard

 Lucas Giolito vs. Jacob deGrom 

Dylan Cease vs. Zack Wheeler

 

PROBABLE METS LINEUP

Jeff McNeil – LF

Pete Alonso – 1B

Robinson Cano – 2B

Michael Conforto – RF

Wilson Ramos – C

Todd Frazier – 3B

Amed Rosario – SS

Juan Lagares – CF

 

PROBABLE WHITE SOX LINEUP

Leury Garcia – CF

Yoan Moncada – 3B

Jose Abreu – 1B

James McCann – C/DH

Eloy Jimenez – LF

Jon Jay – RF

Tim Anderson – SS

Wellington Castillo – DH/C

Yolmer Sanchez – 2B

 

This has the makings of an interesting series. The pitching matchups are about as marquee as the Sox could hope for. Tim Anderson and Eloy Jimenez are both going to be back in the lineup, which hopefully means less Adam Engel and AJ Fieri on my TV set. Also, the MLB trade deadline is tomorrow which could add some intrigue to the games, as both the Mets and Sox have pieces to move.  Some of which have been linked to the other team. While I’m not holding my breath that the Sox will trade for Syndergaard or Wheeler, it would be pretty hilarious to watch one of those guys amble out of the Mets dugout and walk across the field to head right into the Sox one.

The Mets come into the series on somewhat of a roll, having won four in a row and five out of their last six games. Overall, they’re 10-5 since coming out of the All Star break having scored 94 runs in that 15-game span.  Their pitching has been pretty lights out, having only given up 48 runs in that time. Syndergaard in particular has looked more like his old self after having a rocky first half of the season (just in time for the trade deadline!). In his last seven starts he’s gone 3-1 with a 3.43 ERA and 45 Ks compared to 15 BBs. This is a far cry from the 5.00+ ERA he sported at the end of May. He’s still vulnerable to the long ball, which works in the Sox favor playing at home and having Eloy and Tim back.

On the offensive side, the Mets still have their table set for them by super utility man Jeff McNeil and Amed Rosario.  Both of them get on base at a prodigious clip and allow rookie (and noted Paul Konerko Fan) Pete Alonso to knock them in. Alonso has slashed himself to a .258/.363/.596 line with 34 HR and 77 RBI so far in the season. The scary thing about that line is his BABIP currently sits at .269, which shows despite the gaudy stats he’s actually had pretty bad batted ball luck.  If he were to rise to the mean…man. Dude is a pretty special hitter, and I’m super glad to have him on my fantasy team.

On the other side of the field the Sox have been the polar opposite of the Mets.  Having gone 4-13 after the All Star break and scoring a meager 51 runs in that span while giving up 92, the Sox are hoping the return of Eloy and Tim to the lineup and the ejection of Dylan Covey to the Negative Zone will help those splits. They’ll have a decent chance with Lopez, Giolito and Cease taking the bump against the Mets. Lopez has been above average post ASB with a 1-1 record and a 1.90 ERA over his last three starts. Lopez’ has found the control on his fastball, being able to dot it at the top of the zone with added movement. In addition his off-speed offerings have been in the lower part of the zone, keeping hitters off balance. Most importantly he’s lasted longer in games, as he’s gone 21 innings in those three starts.

Offensively the Sox have been…offensive. Anyone not named Yoan Moncada has been scuffling, especially Jose Abreu. Hopefully with some protection in the lineup for him now Abreu will settle back down and his OBP will rise back up to it’s usual .390 area. Anderson hit pretty well during his rehab stint in Charlotte and had no issues in the field so the hope is that he can hit the ground running.

Trade deadline implications aside, the Sox have a decent shot at winning this series if all breaks their way. I’d prefer to not think about the other side of the coin. Here’s hoping that not only they win the series, but score a starter from the Mets in the process to fill that void in the rotation.

Let’s go Sox!

 

Baseball

Mets Spotlight: Brodie Man

By Andy Jonathan 1773 0

With the trade deadline looming, and the Mets already active in it with their acquisition of my personal Man-Crush Marcus Stroman last night, I thought it would be fun to take a look at the man behind the madness, Brodie Van Wagenen. Plus I find the inner workings of professional sports teams fascinating, and this gives me the perfect excuse to delve even further down that rabbit hole.

Van Wagenen was hired this past off-season after previous GM Sandy Alderson decided to take an extended leave of absence to spend more time with his remaining brain cells. Van Wagenen previously had been a player agent, having represented some of the Mets top talent (and Tim Tebow) like Jacob deGrom, Robinson Cano and the remaining ligaments of Yoenis Cespedes. While you might think that hiring a former agent to be the GM of a baseball team that has previously negotiated with said agent might be a conflict of interest, it’s not without precedent. Former A’s and Blue Jays ace Dave Stewart went from being a player, to an agent, and then eventually to GM of the Arizona Diamondbacks.

The issue that a lot of people in baseball had with this move is that as the agent of some of these players, Van Wagenen was privy to the medical information of his clients which he could then in theory use against them in salary negotiations.  Granted, the likelihood of that is slim as it would immediately result in a grievance being filed against the Mets by the player’s union but it’s not a concern without merit.  This didn’t deter the Mets, however, as they signed Van Wagenen to a five-year contract last October.

Van Wagenen didn’t waste much time making moves, as he sent their top rated OF prospect Jared Kelenic and Jay Bruce to the Mariners for the 2018 saves leader Edwin Diaz and the corpse of Robinson Cano and it’s $100 million dollar price tag.  Also in the deal was the Mets top pitching prospect Justin Dunn who also sits in the top 100 ranked ML players as of last week.  He also signed free agent catcher Wilson Ramos and added infield utility man Jed Lowrie to one year deals.

The only one of those moves that has panned out thus far is Wilson Ramos, and then only just barely as he’s been worth 0.2 WAR thus far this season slashing .259/.335/.387 with 10 dingers and 45 RBI. The guy he replaced behind the dish was Travis D’Arnaud, who ended up with Tampa Bay and has produced 1.2 WAR for them with a .249/.316/.482 line. Whoops. Robinson Cano has predictably continued the downward spiral on the back half of his career.  He’s been worth -0.2 WAR thus far and played below average D at 2B.  He’s also logged a decent amount of time on the IL with various maladies.  Edwin Diaz has been a shadow of his former self at the back end of the Mets bullpen.  His ERA currently sits at an ugly 4.95, and he’s blown five saves thus far and has been worth 0.4 WAR.

Even if that brutal off-season wasn’t enough, Van Wagenen seems to be a might bit…unstable.  Earlier in the month it was reported that during a post game meeting with staffers Van Wagenen lost his shit and ended up throwing a chair around the room. He’s also been known to manage games from the comfort of his home by calling Mets staffers to relay instructions to manager Mickey Callaway regarding the pulling of deGrom from the game. This new style of management certainly brings back memories of George Steinbrenner doing the kind of shit that made him such a great Seinfeld character.

All this brings us to the trade deadline, which in typical fashion Van Wagenen has jumped by trading top pitching prospects Anthony Kay and Simeon Woods Richardson to Toronto to bring in Marcus Stroman.  On the surface, the move doesn’t seem to make much sense. The Mets currently sit 11.5 games back in the division and six games in the wild card race.  Stroman was largely regarded as the best pitcher available on the market other than Noah Syndergaard at the deadline, and was actively being pursued by the Braves and Yankees.  Granted Stroman has another year of team control before hitting the market, but it seems the Mets need more than just him to compete next year as Zack Wheeler and Syndergaard himself are not long for the team.

Which might be why he traded for Stroman, as a potential replacement for Syndergaard if he’s dealt at the deadline.  If that’s truly the case, it will be very interesting to see the return the Mets get for him. In addition to that, I would sincerely hope that Rick Hahn would be calling and asking about the price for Thor as he’s an immediate upgrade over anyone not named Lucas Giolito.  The main question at this point would be asking price.  Syndergaard has two more year of team control left, then hits the free agent market in a year pretty devoid of starting pitching.  If the Mets were to ask for Michael Kopech, would Hahn be open to making that deal? I think I would, though it would be a tough pill to swallow. I’m hoping Hahn isn’t the one to break Van Wagenen’s streak of terrible deals by getting fleeced by him. Though I’m not expecting much out of this deadline for the Sox, Thor would be a nice surprise as long as the price is right.

Should be an interesting few days.

Baseball

Series Preview – Cubs vs. Cardinals: Here Comes The Salt

By Sam Fels 1462 0

vs.

RECORDS: Cubs 56-49   Cardinals 56-49

GAMETIMES: Tuesday and Wednesday 7:15, Thursday 6:15

TV: NBCSN Tuesday and Thursday, WGN Wednesday

BARF: Viva El Birdos

PITHCING MATCHUPS

Yu Darvish vs. Adam Wainwright

Kyle Hendricks vs. Miles Mikolas

Jon Lester vs. Jack Flaherty

PROBABLE CUBS LINEUP

Kyle Schwarber – LF

Willson Contreras – C

Kris Bryant – 3B

Anthony Rizzo – 1B

Javier Baez – SS

Jason Heyward – RF

Robel Garcia – 2B

Ian Happ – CF

PROBABLE CARDINALS LINEUP

Tommy Edman – 3B

Dexter Fowler – CF

Jose Martinez – RF

Paul Goldschmidt – 1B

Paul DeJong – SS

Tyler O’Neill – LF

Kolten Wong – 2B

Matt Wieters  – C

 

So I would love to tell you that this is where the Cubs can make things right. Even just a series win would leave them with a 4-5 road trip, which isn’t exactly acceptable but could be explained away by the anal horseshoe the Giants are toting around. It wouldn’t be total disaster, let’s say. If we want to get ambitious, a sweep would leave the Cubs with 5-4, and even with all the problems and concerns and ulcers provided over the weekend, in the end you’d have to be satisfied with that. As long as you continue to clean up at home, that is. You’d put three games between you and the Red Menace, with an August schedule that isn’t that demanding.

But if you were betting people, and drawing on the life lessons you’ve learned, would you lean toward the Cardinals making things all right or pouring more salt in the wound? I thought so.

What’s insulting is the Cubs shouldn’t be anywhere near this team. Its offense is not good. Its rotation is not good. Only its pen has been able to keep them from sinking into the locker, and the Cubs have hung and hung just long enough for one hot-streak to put St. Louis right in the middle of this. For shame.

While Godlschmidt’s binge the past month has propelled them, over the year as a whole only Ozuna has been a plus-hitter for them, and he’s on the shelf. DeJong continues to deflate from April, Fowler has been hot of late but overall barely average. And worse yet, this team is beat up. Carpenter and Ozuna are either unlikely to feature this series (Carpenter) or out (Ozuna). Molina is still out, though whisper this around that part of the country but Wieters has been better offensively than Yadier would have managed because if they hear you they’ll definitely whip their arm fat at you. But of course, they lose their “soul” without Yadi, or some such horseshit.

The rotation has been the very definition of “meh.” Not one carries an ERA below 3.80 nor above 4.20, which can’t be called anything other than fine. Jack Flaherty has been really good the past month, but Waino, Ponce de Leon (get a new name, jackass), and Hudson have been straight gasoline. Mikolas has evened out a bit with three quality starts in a row and four out of his last five, and of course is just the special kind of fuckwit who will allow the Cubs two hits over seven while striking out like, one guy. Can’t wait.

It’s the pen where lies the Cards’ strength. They strike out the second-most hitters in the NL, have the second-best ERA and FIP. Over the past month they’ve been the best in the league in pretty much every category. Giovanny Gallegos, John Brebbia, Andrew Miller have all been lights-out. And now converted starters Michael Wacha and Carlos Martinez are coming out of there, with the latter acting as a de facto closer at times. Though you still wouldn’t trust him to not go to the zoo for an inning, he’s just less likely to do that when he’s only pitching for one inning. It would be a good idea to not enter the back half of games trailing. Not that it really matters with the Cubs’ pen, because they’ll soon be trailing anyway. The dark arts would swallow the Cubs in the late innings when they had a good pen in that haven of asshoolery, so why would now be any different?

For the Cubs, one of the bigger stories will be off the field in the next two days, as in what they do before the One Deadline To Rule Them All, assuming the Ricketts Family keeps the billions somehow concealed from view to the point where even they can’t see it. Truly a wondrous trick. The Cubs need at least one more arm in the pen, and probably another bat, but probably can’t get both. Hail Marys on Zobrist and Happ will probably the orders of the day.

I would say the Cubs need dominant outings from their starters, but they got that in the first two in Milwaukee and lost both. What they need is the offense to actually assert itself for three games, which it hasn’t done on the road in who the fuck knows. Score a goddamn touchdown every day and worry about the rest later.

This is now the business end of the season. Keep in mind that starting 8/27, the Cubs will have two days off the rest of the season. They don’t want to hit that stretch looking up at anyone, which means they need head-from-rectum removal right fucking now. But it feels like we keep saying that.

Baseball

Cardinals Spotlight: Paul DeJong And Fiendish BABIP Kung Fu Treachery

By Sam Fels 1170 0

If you want to be truly embarrassed by the spot the Cubs find themselves in the standings, tied with the Cardinals for first, consider that in terms of fWAR, Paul DeJong is the best player on the Cardinals. By some distance actually, as he’s accrued nearly twice the WAR of Marcell Ozuna in second. And that’s with DeJong unable to hit a bull in the ass with a snow-shovel since April. Some of that is Paul Goldschmdit’s struggles and playing first base (thus getting little to no defensive credit), and Matt Carpenter being ouchy, old, and grizzled (the official motto of St. Louis). But yeah, the Cubs are tied with a team whose best player got there almost entirely through defense.

If you feel like the Cardinals have been advertising DeJong as a future star for half of eternity at this point, and being influenced on another level by some big homers against the Cubs, you’ll probably be shocked to learn he’s still only 25. But their version of Javy Baez he has not become, nor anywhere close, and let’s all revel in the fact that Cards fans so desperately want their own version of Javy who also happens to be white.

For a minute there, DeJong looked like he might just be that in April. That month saw a .342/.403/.607 slash-line, good for a 163 wRC+. To go along with his spectacular defense, and it looked like you had a real player here, and us lamenting the Cardinals finally being right about a product of their system.

DeJong has been living in an abandoned boxcar since with one can of baked beans, at least offensively (by defensive runs he’s been the best SS in the NL). He hit .200 in May, .218 in June, and .225 in July. His wRC+ have been 95, 66, and 100, as he walked a ton in May (17%), and slugged just enough lately to barely claim average.

It’s not hard to find the discrepancy in DeJong’s start and the rest of the season. DeJong’s BABIP in April was .389. It hasn’t been above .236 since. And yet DeJong, for the most part, has hit the ball extremely hard. Only in June did DeJong not have a hard-contact rate above 45%. Since May 1st, DeJong has the worst BABIP in the National League.

It’s weird. DeJong doesn’t hit an abnormal amount of flies, which tends to lower one’s BABIP because they don’t just fall in when they don’t go out of the park all that much. He doesn’t hit a ton of line-drives, which would help, but that rate isn’t so low as to explain three months of taking it in the moon fortune-wise.

It doesn’t really work to say the past three months have just been market correction on DeJong’s April, because that would entail a higher force equaling out DeJong’s numbers simply to balance the universe. And as we all know because we’ve been told all our lives, if there’s a higher power it definitely works for the Cardinals. Still, DeJong’s numbers are right where they should be according to Statcast, as his batting average and weighted on-base are right in line with his expected-batting average and expected-weighted on-base.

And yet that low of a number over three months seems a tad harsh. DeJong doesn’t have an abnormal amount of flies not leaving the park, as his HR/FB rate is about league average at 12%. As we said, he doesn’t hit an abnormal amount of fly balls. It’s just weird.

Still, with all of that DeJong is a couple of weeks away from his best season in the majors, which was 3.3 fWAR. And if he finds any luck at all in the next two months, he might give Baez a run for title of best shortstop in the National League (0.5 fWAR behind right now). It’s been an odd year for him, and you wonder what the Cardinals might conclude about him if it doesn’t change. They’ve given up on better players, y’know.

Football

Bears in Bourbonnais: Boring Ain’t So Bad

By Wes French 1804 0

Do you hear anything? No? Me either. No noise. No torches and pitchforks. No jobs on the line (yet). It’s pretty boring around here.

Usually in late July we’re all too eager here in Chicago to begin HOT TAKE SZN surrounding the Bears and the NFL. This July, though, feels different. Is everyone just happy to banter about the Cubs division chase and Sox future potential? No, we’ve been doing that every July since 2015. The NBA had a pretty big summer, but the Bulls largely sat that out and everyone is just content they MIGHT make a surprise run at the 8-seed in the East. Hawks prospect camp and convention?? OK, I’m done.

So with nothing new or exciting going on in major sports around the city, why is this late July so different? The Bears, coming off their first playoff appearance since 2010 and second in the last 13 years, have had the quietest offseason in about as long. No new head coach/GM/Front Office personnel. No major signings/high draft picks. Hardly any turnover on the roster/staff, and no real starting positions up for the taking. GM Ryan Pace didn’t even get to make a draft pick until the third day, and there’s been little discussion about the his team or the impending camp since.

The biggest offseason story? Kickers. Cody Parkey long fired into the sun, the talk of both mini-camp and now training camp is the kicking sideshow. Each day’s camp breakdown thus far has started with the accuracy for that day’s kicker; Elliot Fry is 17 of 20 so far! He’s hit from 60 and banged in from 48 and 51 in the driving rain! Eddie Pineiro hit from 63 after doing his best 80s macho movie hunk routine – after his coaches asked him to try from 60 he replied “nah, how ’bout 63”! Suh gnarly, broseph.

The crowds are another HOT story coming out of Bourbonnais. Attendance day one? OVER 8,000!!! Videos tweeted of fans LIGHTLY JOGGING to get front row standing room to see the Midway Monsters strap on the pads and paw at each other! Whoa, did you see that 50-yard bomb from Mitch to Gabriel?? Kahlil Mack and Eddie Jackson are sooooo goood OMFG!!!! I mean, it’s great to see the guys you want to excel succeed in practice, but that’s the bar here, no? To be as good as advertised?

This shit is BORING. But boring doesn’t really mean bad. Consider:

-There was one major coaching change in the offseason, but not the normal refrain of a deficiency in some area. Vic Fangio left to go be the head coach in Denver because his defense was so amazing (while the rest of the team was total ass for most of his tenure). The ensuing hire? Chuck Pagano, a highly regarded defensive mind in his own right that mostly just needs to keep the ship on course. There also are no ‘hot’ seats to speak of at the moment. Weird.

-The players lost to free agency were seen as priced out of their worth at Halas Hall and nary a tear was shed for Adrian Amos or Bryce Callahan. The replacements and other new signings were mostly budget buys met with a collective “meh”.  HaHa Clinton-Dix and Buster Skine swap in for Amos and Callahan. Mike Davis and Cordarrelle Patterson are here to do something in the backfield. Great, fine. I bet you didn’t even know they signed Ted Larson, again, for O-Line depth or Marvin Hall and Peter Williams. Only one of those guys is made up, but I’m guessing you have to look it up to tell me which one.

-The draft was pretty uneventful as well, unless you count trading up 14 or so spots in the 3rd round “eventful”. Sure, they got their GUY at running back in David Montgomery, or so they’ll tell anything with ears. Even he hasn’t generated much buzz since the draft, a soft spoken type that just does his work and stays quiet off the field. Booooooring. The rest of the draft was all lottery tickets and undrafted free agents because Pace only had five picks to work with. They got a Ridley? No, not the one from Alabama.

-There aren’t any big injuries to get all worked up about, either. Adam Shaheen hasn’t practiced in two days, but that’s basically his whole bag of tricks since being wildly overdrafted three years ago. Someone named Emmanuel Hall is recovering from groin surgery. HaHa is on the PUP list, rehabbing a lower body injury but expected back before too long. Whatever.

So this late July, the start to camp is boring. Embrace the boring, it means that most of us are looking forward to September and could give a shit about what happens between now and then. We don’t even get another open practice for a few days; the team has a shorter, closed practice today and is off Wednesday. There’s a preseason game a week after that, so maybe by the weekend we’ll start to get some real battles for the edge of the roster. Those are the positions that help to define serious championship contending NFL teams from the dregs they beat up.

Boring kinda sucks, but we’ll take it after the last decade worth of summers overstuffed with tough questions. Wait and see how these jokers fighting for their NFL lives fair in game reps in a week or so. If you need your fix the rest of this first week, keep refreshing that twitter account of your favorite beat writer to see where Steady Eddie P tells coach he’s spotting his next kick. HOOOOO BABYYYYY!

@WFrenchman on Twitter

Baseball

Is There Anything Wrong With Lucas Giolito?

By Sam Fels 1215 0

Things have been rough for the White Sox in July. A 7-15 record, injuries have kept Eloy Jimenez and Tim Anderson out for either all of it (Anderson) or part of it (Eloy). They were swept by the Royals and A’s, and after showing some life against the Rays, they chucked that into the bin by laying an egg against the Marlins and Twins.

In the grand scheme, their July record doesn’t matter. Whether the Sox compete or don’t as soon as next year won’t be because of a couple wins not gotten in this month. Unless you’re using it as a referendum on Ricky Renteria, though most concluded long ago that when the Sox matter in the standings again, Ricky is going to get himself left by the side of the road and chasing a piece of meat tossed out of the car as it speeds away. Again.

Still, the month has been rough for Lucas Giolito. After a May and June that got him to the All-Star game, introduced him to the top echelon of pitchers in the AL, July has seen a 7.08 ERA, and a slash-line against of .291/.358/.547. That’s some bad slashes right there. Certainly if Giolito were to have this current balls-up continue through the rest of the second half, one would have to reconsider the projection of him on top of a rotation next year.

However, if you’re a Sox fan you don’t have to worry, because that looks unlikely.

The overriding factor on Giolito this month has been luck. In that he can’t seem to get any. Some of it is a bit of a correction, as in May and June, Gio’s left-on-base percentage was 84% and 90.5%. In July it’s 63%, which is about 12 points lower than average. So far more runners he’s letting on are scoring, which basically speaks to sequencing. And there are more getting on base against him because his BABIP in July is .357, just about 80 points above his season mark.

Because Gio isn’t giving up any different contact. His line-drive rate is actually lower in July than it was in May and June. His hard-contact rate is lower than it was in May, and only three points higher (31.8 vs. 28.1) than it was in June. It’s just more of those baseball are falling, though the Sox defense in spots could have something to do with it as well. Still, this is mostly bad fortune.

That doesn’t mean everything is rosy, though most of it will be corrected simply by regression and what not. As I mentioned in the Royals recap, Gio’s change-up has lost just a touch of bite.

Now it’s been the same in June as it was in July, which speaks to luck again, but isn’t getting off the barrel or bats quite as much. You can see that in the greater amount of slugging against it:

That’s against both righties and lefties, but Gio mostly throws the change against lefties. It’s movement away from them, as with most change-ups from right-handed pitchers, that’s the key. But it’s actually righties who have been crushing the change this month, slugging 1.200 against it even though he throws it about half as often to them as he does to lefties. And the difference from earlier in the season is that he’s been leaving it up too often:

These are easy corrections though, and as soon as Gio’s metric even out, things should be fine. He has to throw the change to righties sometimes, as otherwise he’s just fastball-slider, but when he keeps it low and in, he’ll find the mark once again.

Hockey

Hey Everybody! An Old Man Full Of Himself Is Talking!

By Sam Fels 2521 0

I suppose it will be a real sign of growth and maturity (or I’ve just gone on to do something real with my life instead of playing in this sandbox in adulthood) when I just let an interview with John McDonough slide by. But I’m not there yet, not by a damn sight. McDonough loves to talk, especially when the subject is himself, and these days he’s got a lot of figurative ass to cover. Especially if he’s going to survive a third-straight playoff-less season, or justify that season without the major changes the front office looks more and more like it needs. So he’s already starting, and as always we will stand as the gatekeeper. We can’t go through the whole thing, as his interview with The Athletic’s Scott Powers goes for two parts. But we’ll go through some of the “highlights.”

“We don’t compensate the players. The players come in. Because our players, like the Cubs’ players, they get it.”

Yes, well, I’m sure there’s no benefit to getting free suites in a five-star hotel for young men in their primes of their lives. Can’t imagine what it would be. Maybe it has to do with the reason Sox players used to call SoxFest “SexFest.”

Powers: Have you had a chance to reflect on that season, what that Cup team means to the city?

Well, I think that was kind of the lightning strike.

Yeah ok, there’s a lot to unpack here, or a lot to unpack to find all the ways McDonough is trying to give himself credit for when he was mostly along for the ride. I’ll do my best.

First off, the 2010 nostalgia tour that you’re going to see a ton of this season is understandable, but also extremely awkward. Because most of the core of that team is still here, and if you asked them they would tell you they’re not done trying to win Cups. If Marian Hossa didn’t have that skin condition, he would almost certainly be still playing as well. He probably isn’t comfy looking at his career in the past tense yet either. So it’s an odd celebration when in some ways, you’re still in that window.

I get it. 10 years is a nice round number. And it’s rare that the core of a championship team is so young (except the Penguins were too) so that they would still all be playing in the same place 10 years later. And hey, the Hawks very well might have to be selling something come February and March if this defense is as bad as it could very well be and the goaltending isn’t as good as we think it will be.

As for McDonough’s “lightning strike” comment, that’s a load of shit and he goes on to contradict himself like five sentences later. As McD points out literally in the next sentence, the Hawks did manage to go to the conference final the year before, were just about everyone’s pick to win, and even the year before that had barely missed out on the playoffs, which was the true lightning strike.

While it happened fast, the Hawks had sucked for six seasons or so and had accrued draft picks like Keith, Seabrook, Crawford, Bolland, Brouwer, Hjalmarsson, etc. Even before Toews and Kane capped it off, and they’re the most important picks no question, people were starting to notice the Hawks had a fair amount of prospects coming through.

And the regular season in our sport doesn’t even resemble the postseason.

This is a continuing theme throughout the interview, and it’s really frightening for what’s happening to the team now. Yes, the NHL playoffs are different, if only because of structure, but to say they have nothing to do with the regular season is false. Two of the three Cup wins for the Hawks were as division champs, one Presidents’ Trophy winners. The other they were a 100+ point team that watched Kane miss the last quarter of the season through injury in his first MVP-level performance. Generally, the best teams in the regular season kind of remain the best teams in June.

The Hawks seem to be banking on the notion that the Blues have somehow disproved all of this, because they keep saying it. Jonathan Toews gets it, because he’s the only one in the organization who has rightly pointed out that the Blues first half was nothing more than a massive underachievement. After their ’18 summer, the Blues were picked by many to be near or at the top of the Central, which they would have been had they gotten their head out of their ass before January. And thanks to the Jets and Predators, they were anyway.

The Hawks keep making it clear they’ve learned all the wrong lessons from what they think the Blues did or are, and this idea that they have to be heavy to get through the playoffs they very well might not make is going to take everyone down. Which it probably should.

I think one of the events that helped changed the course of the franchise was the outdoor game at Wrigley Field.

Oh do you now? You mean the event you strong-armed and pleaded with the commissioner to get?  You think getting that game had tangible, on-ice results later? Look, it was a fun day and a definite marker that the organization was finally taking itself seriously and the team was on the rise, but it’s a marker, not a direction-changer. How many ribs did you have removed for this one?

The importance of hiring Joel (Quenneville), how he was the perfect fit for all this. Bringing in Marian Hossa, that in my opinion, we don’t win three Stanley Cups without Marian Hossa. I don’t know if you win any. But you got Marian Hossa come in and Brian Campbell and other free agents that played a role, and other players that just emerged in the 2010 Cup team. It wasn’t just your primary players, you think back now and you had Andrew Ladd and you had Dustin Byfuglien and Colin Fraser and Adam Burish and all these guys who played a role, it was a significant role.

Funny how all the moves he was a part of are at the top here, where all the players that were drafted were here when he got here. And what did Fraser and Burish do again, exactly? I’ll hang up and listen for my answer.

That we’ve seen the game go in the last 10 years from being a heavier game, more physical game, fighting played a role in the game before, now it’s speed and skill, and it will probably at some point spin back again. 

No, it won’t, and you need to stop building a team that acts like it will.

So, you’ve got to make real good decisions, prudent decisions on the complimentary players, people that you know may not show up on the scoresheet every night, but they add a lot to your culture.

How’s that gone the past few years? The Russian judge just asphyxiated.

But we recognized, and we did recognize a few years ago, the conference is tougher.

You did? What have you done about it, then? You said a lot of things, we’re still waiting.

We talk about our process and our system every day, and I’m a real big believer that if you do have a good process and a good decision-making system, the wins are going to come, the results are going to come.

Here we go with this happy horseshit again…

It was difficult last year where obviously our penalty kill … we had a very poor season on the penalty kill. It was almost indescribable that we would be ahead in a game and relinquish that lead in many instances within 60-90 seconds or two minutes, and that kind of became a trend. And our penalty kill was just ineffective.

Y’know, all offseason the Hawks have addressed their problems on the kill as something that just happened to them, instead of rightly pinpointing that they had the worst defensive corps in the league and really haven’t improved it that much. Get better players, and you’d be amazed at how much better the kill would be. They think they can solve this systematically, and they can’t.

the St. Louis Blues had the worst record in the NHL on Jan. 1. That’s just the reality of our game. The L.A. Kings won the Stanley Cup a few years ago as the eighth seed in the conference. So, those things can happen.

Per my last email…

Over a period of time, he (Jeremy Collitoin  did a terrific job of earning the respect of our players.

Oh, I think I could find one that might disagree on that one…

I’m not even going to get into the soliloquy about the new scoreboard, but man is he taking credit for that like it’s a new signing.

The fact that we are able to tap into our season-ticket waiting list and they can fill that back up, I think that is remarkable and great credit to Jay Blunk and Chris Werner and their respective staffs to be able to come up with creative ways to do that.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret, folks. They didn’t just tap into it. They burned through almost all of it, and another season missing the playoffs and you’re going to see some shit.

I don’t want to emulate other franchises. I want us to be inventors. I want us to be trailblazers.

This might be my favorite part. He’s talking about game presentation here, the arena experience. And anyone who is even close to the Hawks knows that when McDonough took over, in order to improve the in-game experience at the United Center all he did was follow the Hawks on the road and lift what he liked from other arenas. Even the new scoreboard is following a trend, as Tampa, Denver, and a few other places have brought it the Tyrana-scoreboard years before. McD doesn’t have an original idea anywhere in his body nor within arm’s reach.

When I mentioned to you earlier, what I’m seeing now more than ever before and it’s been an eye opener I think for everyone in our sport, the regular season and the postseason, they don’t resemble each other. The Tampa Bay Lightning were tied for the best record in the history of the NHL. They were swept. There’s a cautionary tale there. You almost need to have two different teams, two different styles, and that’s not easy. 

Again with this. It’s simply not the case. Playoffs are different but they’re hardly uncoordinated to the team you’ve built to get through the 82. What you need is a flexible team, especially when you’re really good, because in a series teams are going to try specific things to beat you that they’re not concerned with in February. The Hawks didn’t fundamentally change their ways when they won in the playoffs, they just turned it up. They could wade through trapping teams because of their skill and they could out-run-n-gun anyone who tried that (except for the Kings that one time) They never out-heavy’d teams. If you tried to be the Blues against them, and the Blues tried it once in that run, they just skated around you, got the puck up the ice quicker, and took advantage of all the odd-man rushes they had.

It feels like this organization’s brain broke when it comes to building a team, and McDonough is all too happy to showcase that.

Ok I’m tired now. Enough.

 

 

 

Football

Camp Tales – Vol. 1

By Brian Schmitz 2262 0

It was the year 2000, I had just turned 22-years-old and like most of my friends, I was about to begin my first post-college job. Except I wasn’t interviewing with insurance companies or cardboard box manufactures or board of trade firms. Instead, I was living in Albany, New York, playing for the New York Football Giants.

I had no idea what to expect from my first NFL training camp – the closest I had ever come to an NFL camp was driving up to Platteville, Wisconsin one summer only to see Jim McMahon taking a piss in a garbage can. I was 7-years-old…something like that cannot be unremembered.

4 years of high school training camp in the mid 90’s was as uncomfortable as a Cody Parkey Today Show interview: Two-a-days, full pads, full contact, extra conditioning, and no water breaks – all while being told you were a pussy. Like a 15-year old needs to question his self confidence even more.

Training camp in college was much easier; mostly due to the fact that I was now strictly a kicker/punter. This was the type of shit I could handle – no hitting, rarely a full pad practice, and a specialist period that accounted for exactly 1/12 of the total practice time. Kick for ten minutes with the team, go to a side field and kick some more, then socialize – teammates, coaches, managers, trainers – finding literally anyone who would listen.

As I arrived in Albany as the 3rd specialist alongside Brad Maynard and Brad Daluiso, I was overwhelmed by the fact that I had no idea where I was going or what in the fuck I was doing. After a few days, I eased myself into the monotony of an actual, real life, NFL training camp: the morning session for specialists would be reserved for individual work on a side field, while the afternoon session included an early special teams team period. After the special teams period was over, we would head back to our side field for some more individual work, after that we were free to leave. So, to recap, we would basically walk back to the locker room 25 minutes into practice and our day was done. We would then make our way back to the dorms and sit around for hours until team dinner in the cafeteria.

What made these boring afternoons exponentially better was that when we arrived back into our rooms, the extremely fappable Angie Harmon was often there waiting for her fiancé, Jason Sehorn to return from practice. Until he did, Daluiso, Maynard, Angie Harmon, and I would sit there for hours on these shitty, used ass, SUNY-Albany owned couches watching TV and talking about who the fuck knows what. I do recall her saying that Calista Flockhart needs to eat a cheeseburger and that her dad still cuts articles about here from the newspaper and puts them in scrapbook. Other than that, my afternoons were filled by watching her watch TV and try to hide my erection. For the record, she was extremely gorgeous of course, but she was also very kind and borderline funny for a girl. I also remember thinking, like every guy in the world does about the boyfriend of a hot girl; what is she doing with this clown? Aside from his good looks, athleticism, and millions in the bank, what does he have going on that I don’t? It’s amazing to look back and think I was truly convinced that if I could just continue to make her laugh, she eventually couldn’t resist the 165 pound kicker with a non-guaranteed contract who was going to be cut six weeks from now.

So, in conclusion: high school training camp is the absolute worst. Training camp for kickers is the best. And I used to think Angie Harmon was going to dump Jason Sehorn and start fucking me instead. Fast forward almost 20 years later and I am selling industrial warehouses by O’Hare airport and writing football blogs on a hockey website. Sweet!

Sidenote: I apologize if you began reading this with the assumption that you were going to get some super informative Bears training camp talk – I’ll have that for you as well, but I’ll also be sharing my personal experiences from various training camps I’ve been in over the years.

 

Baseball

Series Recap: Sox Lose 3 of 4 To Twins – Whammy

By Andy Jonathan 1230 0

Game 1: Sox 3 – Twins 10

Game 2: Sox 2 – Twins 6

Game 3: Sox 5 – Twins 1

Game 4: Sox 1 – Twins 11

 

This is exactly how I feared this weekend would go. The Sox aren’t hitting very well lately, the starters (minus Ivan Nova, what a world) aren’t pitching very well, and Renteria isn’t coaching very well. Oh, and I guess Rick Hahn hasn’t GM’ed very well so far either. All of that adds up to a very miserable weekend of baseball on the South Side, and (based on the groan I heard from Wrigley last night) in Chicago overall. Time to sift through the rubble and talk about what went wrong (lots), and what went right (not lots). To the bullets.

 

Numbers Don’t Lie

-Let’s just get this out of the way: Dylan Covey is just plain awful. He’s not a major league starter right now, and I’d put the odds at 1,000 to 1 that he never will be. Thankfully he was banished back to Charlotte after the game, which on a personal level has to suck something fierce.  Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Renteria told him there was an Uber waiting for him at the curb when he walked to the mound in the first inning.  I have no idea what or who the fifth starter is going to be, but the spot won’t come up until after the trade deadline so maybe Rick Hahn will pull something fun in the next few days that will help with that (Narrator: He didn’t).

-Lucas Giolito has had three shitty starts now out of his last five and is winless in the month of July. I know he talks a lot about knowing what’s wrong with his fastball and change, but knowing what’s wrong and doing something about it are two totally different things. Regression was inevitable for this Sox team, I just didn’t think it would all happen at once. Giolito will get one more chance to score a July win on Wednesday, but no guarantees there as it will be against Jake deGrom.  Here’s hoping.

-Whoops, Nelson Cruz just hit another fucking home run. Good thing the Sox were never considering him as he wasn’t on Manny Machado’s iphone Favorite Contacts list.

-AJ Reed pitched a scoreless inning Sunday, which is the best thing he managed for this team all weekend. On the other side of the ball he went 0-10 with a walk, an RBI, and six left stranded on base. Best case scenario the Sox got him and Covey an Uber Pool ride to MDW and they’re never seen from again.

-Yoan Moncada is a badass.

-I’m kinda starting to like Ryan Goins, and if the Sox happen to move on from Yolmer or Leury Garcia at the deadline Wednesday I’d be OK with him getting more reps in the infield.

-Ivan Nova is having a mini-resurgance, as that’s two solid starts in a row now. He’s gone 15 innings in those two games, giving up one ER with six hits and one BB.  He’s not striking anyone out, but for a 5th starter (which, in a perfect world he would be the Sox 5th starter instead of their 2nd) you can do a whole lot worse. Keep it up.

-Dylan Cease had yet another terrible inning in the middle of a pretty solid start. These are the growing pains you have to deal with when young pitchers come up, and I’m WAY more willing to watch that than a Covey/Despaigne/Homeless Guy From Outside Al’s Beef start.

-Eloy is back, and that’s the best thing that happened Sunday. Odds are Timmy is back Tuesday for the Mets, so that would bring the total dead spots in the Sox lineup down to two. Huzzah!

-Next up is the Mets, who have an even bigger tire fire in their front office than the Sox do.  Unfortunately for us, Syndergaard and deGrom are the 2 potential starters unless Thor is traded (from what I’m reading on the tweets, however, is that the Mets asking price for him involves the Hope Diamond so I think we might be outta luck). Sure would be nice to have a few quality starts from Lopez and Giolito to erase the shit show the post-All Star break start has been.

Baseball

Series Recap – Cubs Blow Their Own Toes Off Two Of Three Times Vs. Brewers: So You’re Serious About This?

By Sam Fels 1450 0

Game 1 Box Score: Brewers 3, Cubs 2

Game 2 Box Score: Brewers 5, Cubs 3

Game 3 Box Score: Cubs 11, Brewers 4

Whatever hopes I had of the Cubs turning into an actual plus team, or at least one that can fake it, pretty much died this weekend. That doesn’t mean they can’t win the division. They still very well might, and I am tempted to say probably might. They could even win a series or two in the playoffs. Stranger things have happened.

But that’s just it. I’m now sort of relying on the “stranger things have happened” portion of my baseball brain/fandom. This was a chance for the Cubs to play like the big boys they claim to be. They didn’t do it. And there are just enough flaws0–the bottom half of the roster and the bullpen–that can’t be entirely fixed before the trade deadline and will just keep the Cubs from ever ripping off 14 of 17 or something like it to put this division to bed.

It’s going to be the drunk sex-est version of the last two months possible. Let’s run it through.

The Two Obs

-Let’s start right at the headline of the weekend and that’s Joe Maddon’s handling of his pitching staff. Now, according to any spreadsheet or analysis, pulling Hendricks after five on Friday is actually the right move. The value of one more inning out of Hendricks, the max you would get, is not equal to Kyle Schwarber taking that AB which essentially became a leadoff one after Bote homered with no outs. In a vacuum, or usually, that would be the right move.

Usually.

However, that doesn’t factor in the utter shambles the pen is right now, and Joe’s plan to get 12 outs involved absolutely nothing going wrong. With this bullpen. It’s the same thing that got Joe in Game 163 last year (what is it about the Brewers?). Normally, not letting your starter see the lineup for a third time, as Joe chose to do back in October, is the right call. But that assumes you have anyone who can consistently get outs from the pen, which you don’t have. In this case, the actual tools at Joe’s disposal outweigh what the “right” call is.

So things don’t go right, everyone throws too many pitches, and you have to use Strop. Who can claim he’s healthy all he wants but it’s pretty clear he isn’t.

-Then again, we’re not talking about any of this, probably, if Eric Thames is rightly rung up. Check out #3 here:

Or there was a pitch to Hiura before that that was a strike. If I want to be Sammy Sunshine, then the Cubs take two of three and we don’t worry so much. On such margins…

-Let’s skip to today and then get to the rest. Still up four runs, Joe pulled Q to get to a pen that just set the season on fire again. Yes, it was a bad 5th inning, but it’s not like Q was getting whacked around. The walks were bad, but he had gotten Saladino to strike out, Cain to lazily fly out, and Yelich’s double was off his fists and simply flared out to the right spot. Yes, you’ve got the off day tomorrow, but you still need innings from your starter. Joe got away with this, but had it gone balls-up it was not hard to see Joe looking for a job by Tuesday.

-Of his last eight outings, Cishek has only managed a clean one in two of them (no hits, no runs). He’s going to be toast earlier this season than last because Joe goes to him five times a week. Using him in the 8th last night was inexplicable, and Wick getting the Cubs out of it only made it more so. Yeah yeah yeah, not wanting to toss an untested kid into big spots and all that. Well that’s if the rest of your pen isn’t disgruntled clowns. He’s here, he has to pitch. This isn’t so hard.

-Right, to Kimbrel. I feel like anything this season we’re just going to have to live with, given the weird build-up for him. The dude probably hasn’t had March-June off since he was like eight years old. Most of the time he’ll look fine if not great. But there are going to be spotty outings, and that’s even with ceding the fact that sometimes the reigning MVP will just do that to you sometimes.

-Maybe moving out of the leadoff spot leads to the Schwarber binge. Maybe it’s too much pressure. That’s two high-leverage situations he finally homered in, so that’s a whole thing. That second homer is a juiced ball joke there, as that was a defensive swing. Then again, so was Yelich’s last night, so it giveth and taketh away.

-The importance of walks and hustle. Happ extends two innings for Schwarber. Contreras beats out some shoddy Brewer defense before Caratini’s homer. At least this was the kind of shit the Cubs weren’t doing earlier.

-Bryant looked terrible the past two days, and it would be a major surprise if he escapes an IL stint to deal with the knee that’s bothering him.

Hey, it could all still look ok with a sweep of the Cardinals. Onwards…