Baseball

The Zack Collins Era

By Sam Fels 1470 0

Sox fans got another toy to play with (well, watch) last night when it leaked out that Zack Collins will be called up in time for the NBC Sports Chicago Holy War at Wrigley Field over the next few days. Collins is the White Sox top catching prospect, though there is some conjecture about whether he can stick at catcher over the long haul. But we’ll get there. He’s going to have to catch to play in the next two games, as there won’t be a DH, and the Sox aren’t going to sacrifice Jose Abreu.

Collins certainly has impressive numbers in the minors, especially for a catcher. He had a .364 wOBA in Charlotte this year, and a .363 wOBA in AA last year. Especially for a catcher, you’d take that in a heartbeat. They’re not other worldly, and pale in comparison to the totals that other prospects like Jimenez or Moncada put up before getting their call, but the parameters are different for catchers. Also, considering AAA has gone to the major league baseball this year and have hence been flying around like Canadian soldiers before drowning in Joba Chamberlain’s sweat, you might want to see it a touch higher (now that’s a reference for you!).

The big concern with Collins is the whiff. His strikeout rate has gone up every season and promotion to every level in his journey to 35th and Shields, and in AAA this year his K% was a scary 32.9%. Yes, it’s a strikeout game, but what that portends to at the top level is enough for teeth-grinding and collar-tugging. What Collins does have that a lot of young players k-ing at that rate don’t is an absurd walk-rate. He was getting a free pass at 17.5% this year, and was at 19.4% last year. For comparison’s sake, the leader in walk percentage in the majors is Mike Trout at 21%, and that’s MIKE TROUT who most are terrified of. The next is Dan Vogelbach at 18%, so you can see where Collins’s handling of the zone is unique. You’d think that someone who knows the zone that well would get the bat to the ball more often, but we said the same thing about Adam Dunn. Still, if you’re on-base is over .370, as it has been for Collins at every level, you don’t really care where the outs come from. And if he ever did improve his bat-to-ball skills, then you really have something.

It may just be as an injury fill-in for Welington Castillo, who tweaked his back yesterday. Most Sox fans are happy to see the back of Castillo, as he’s been outplayed by James McCann by some distance and an appetite for Collins. Still, you wouldn’t want to call Collins up and then have him be simply a backup. Perhaps the Sox can get him ABs at first and DH, where Yonder Alonso is leaving mostly a foul smell after his Manny Recruitment assignments lie in ruins. Collins did play nine games at first this year for the first time in his pro career, so you know the Sox were at least thinking about this.

And it might not even work that way. Don’t look now, but McCann’s numbers have been sliding since April. His hard-contact is down, his average is down, his grounders are up, and he’s no longer getting the ridiculous fortune of righteous BABIP Kung Fu Treachery, which was over .400 for a good portion of the season. He still very well may be an All-Star, but it’s a trend worth keeping an eye on.

It’s hard to pinpoint why McCann’s contact has dropped off. He’s being thrown the same mix of pitches as before, though over the last month fastballs up in the zone have been the go-to. But if McCann continues to slide, it only opens up a larger window for Collins.

Exciting times on the Southside…until Despaigne takes the mound at least.

Everything Else

So Much For That Plan

By Sam Fels 1952 0

It was never likely, as the Hawks were under the impression they didn’t need him or couldn’t afford him, but it was also a good plan. Erik Karlsson has re-upped with the San Jose Sharks for $11M a year for eight years, pretty much getting the “max” deal we didn’t think his exploding red crotch dots wouldn’t allow for. Sure, it’s too many years, but this is Erik Karlsson after all. The Sharks are all about the next two years right now, you’d think, and Doug Wilson probably isn’t around anyway when Karlsson’s age becomes something of an issue. Not that Doug Wilson will age, because he can’t.

With Karlsson off the market, that means there’s basically nothing on defense in free agency. We’ll go over these again I’m sure next week after the draft, but Tyler Myers sucks, Dion Phaneuf is even worse, Alex Edler is old and useless, and Jake Gardiner is like, a person who stands behind the forwards. You can probably talk yourself into Jake Gardiner, but the acquisition of Maatta makes any acquisition of Gardiner nonsensical. Which is maybe why the Hawks would do it.

So it’s either a trade or nothing, then. Though god, can’t we see the Hawks being smitten by Myers’s size? You can see it, can’t you? I’m going to see how far I can get this spoon down my throat.

Which does put a slightly different take on the draft, though doesn’t alter it that significantly. The Hawks are saying that what their pick an do next season isn’t really a factor on what their choice will be, and that’s fair. A pick this high should be around for a decade and that’s the view you take. Still, immediate improvement on the blue line, if the Hawks even conceive that they need it, basically can only come through another trade or Byram now. That shouldn’t be the only factor, but if they can’t split Byram and Turcotte, perhaps it’s a deciding factor?

As far as trades, it’s hard to believe the Hawks think they’re done. But as we’ve said all season, and last season, and will probably be saying all summer, we have no idea how they view the upcoming season. It it urgent they leap back into the playoffs? Do they see it as one more developmental season before Boqvist, Mitchell, Jokiharju, maybe Kurashev and others are ready to make a real impact in ’20-’21 and beyond? Do they know? Are Keith, Kane, and Toews willing to toss away another season in a limited amount of them left? Have they talked to them? Have the players talked to the front office? Was last season a developmental one or a massive cock-up from a team that doesn’t know how to build a defense? We’ve been asking these questions for about two years and we still don’t know.

Maatta’s arrival means making a move for Ryan Murray is a touch redundant, as they do the same thing (though the latter far better than the former, and we don’t even know if the latter is all that good either). Calvin de Haan was another name mentioned, but that’s the same again. And even if the Hawks have called the Canes about de Haan, or Faulk, or Dougie, the Hawks don’t have what the Canes need, which is frontline scoring (not wanting to use Schmaltz to get Faulk last summer is looking a real swift decision now).

So even the trade targets are limited. I would think HAMPUS! HAMPUS! is worth a phone call, but after the hiring of a new coach it’s hard to know what the Ducks think they are doing, and they may be more interested in trying to stick you with Perry or Getzlaf and that spoon is only getting deeper now.

You can’t force what’s on the market, and teams get in deep trouble making moves for the sake of making moves. It’s starting to look like the Hawks might have to readjust whatever their sights were. Then again, they just made one bad trade, so who knows anymore?

Everything Else

There’s No Plan, But There’s A Process

By Sam Fels 2146 0

Dear reader, I want you to remember those words as the Hawks go through the offseason and whatever they do. Repeat it to yourself after every move, every pick, every move that isn’t made. That’s what John McDonough told The Athletic right after the season, and I think it’s important to understand how the Hawks operate. Or don’t operate, as it were.

It’s hard to parse what the Hawks are thinking after the acquisition of Olli Maatta, itself we covered here. The fear is that the Hawks think their problem is they didn’t block enough shots. When the actual problem is preventing those shots at all, or gaining mobility or skill or…you know this could keep going and I’m going to get upset. And I don’t want to do that.

There’s also a fear that the Hawks think they’ve created this “strength” by having a logjam on the blue line. But they don’t. They have a clogged toilet. Remember, and I can’t stress this enough, Olli Maatta was nothing more than a third-pairing d-man on a team that’s been much better than the Hawks for two to three seasons now. Maybe even four. And last season ended with Maatta not even on their third-pairing. He’s not a difference maker. He’s a warm body, and that’s something he can barely claim because he’s a generally a pylon when he’s even upright.

And he’s just another third-pairing-or-below player. There are maybe two d-man amongst the NINE(!!) that are in contention for spots next year. And that’s not even counting Boqvist or Byram (a wish) pushing in training camp. Keith can still probably give you second pairing minutes and assignments with the right partner. Connor Murphy definitely can. That’s it. So seven players for what should be two spots. Good work there.

Do they think they can package some amount of this crap and get anything in return? Who thinks anything more of Slater Koekkoek than the Hawks do? The answer is no one, because if anyone did they could have gotten him from the Lightning for a song, too. They didn’t. Gustav Forsling? Everyone has seen what that is. And of course the main problem is they’re terrified of a demoted to a part time player Seabrook causing hell in the dressing room, so he’s going to be in the top six. His play has forfeited that right, but saying it out loud in the organization is somewhere around saying, “BEETLEJUICE!” three times with them.

More worryingly, although every GM says this after whatever team wins, is that Stan today was beating the, “ALL WE HAVE TO DO IS GET IN AND ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN!” drum, which is horseshit. Yes, a team from nowhere does occasionally win. In fact, before the Blues won the last team to win a Cup that wasn’t consistently at the top of the standings was…hang on, I’ll get this…I’m sure it’s there…the Hurricanes? Except they had 112 points that year. Oh here we are, the Canadiens in 19 NINETY-FUCKING-THREE.

The myth of any NHL team being able to win once the playoff field is set is perhaps the most annoying in the sport. That doesn’t mean you have to win the Presidents’ Trophy or even a division. The league’s gimmick-heavy standings system makes it hard to distinguish between 100-point teams, really. But you do have to be near the top. The Cup-winner generally comes from a group of five or six. The Capitals had been around the top of the league for basically a decade. Same the Penguins. The Hawks, the Kings (and don’t start with the ’12 Kings because they were a preseason favorite that played with their head up their ass most of the season, and then were consistently near the top of the standings for the next three seasons). The Bruins were kind of a surprise, but then spent the next few years at the top of the standings too.

Simply “getting in” isn’t a sustainable plan. it’s not a plan at all. It’s the absence of one. Being a consistent, 100-point team or more is, and then maybe things break your way in the playoffs. And you need less of them when you’re actually really good. Look all it took for the Blues. A team quitting on its coach, a team not trying to score and a Game 7 OT, a team where everyone was hurt, and then that again in the Final. That doesn’t happen every year.

On the other side, it’s hard to tell what you need on the blue line anymore. There are many ways to skin a cat, so it’s very possible a team with a great blue line can and will win again. The Hurricanes look poised, the Predators have been contenders. But the last four Cup-winners have had suspect or underwhelming collections of d-men. Letang was hurt for one, remember, leaving Dumoulin as the only genuine, top-pairing guy on that Penguins team. Fuck, you could argue he’s the only one of the last four, though John Carlson and Alex Pietrangelo have strong arguments. Maybe you just need a collection of guys who won’t self-immolate at the first sign of trouble.

But the Hawks don’t even have that. They’re not even close to that! And the acquisition of Maatta doesn’t convince anyone they know how to get to that. Whatever our complaints about the Blues defense, and there are tons, Dunn, OrangeJello, and Parayko aren’t concrete-shoe slow. The Hawks are. Maatta only adds to that. What are they searching for?

And the worrying thing is they might not even know.

 

Everything Else

The Children Better Be the Future, Cuz We Ain’t Got No Present – Bowen Byram

By John Pullega 2433 0

Welcome to the FFUD #3 Pick Preview. Each day, we’ll look at one prospect the Hawks might have a chance at with the #3 pick and walk you through the ins and outs, the what-have-yous, the strands going through ol’ Duder’s head. We’ve narrowed it down to five guys, and much like the restaurant chain, you’ll likely walk in thinking, “This was a good idea,” and walk out grabbing or clenching some part yourself that you shouldn’t have to. Today is Bowen Byram.

Physical Stats

Height: 6’00”; Weight: 194 lbs.; Shot: Left

On-Ice Stats (2018-19)

League: WHL; Team: Vancouver Giants; Position: Defense

26 G, 45 A, 71 P, 80 PIM

Why the Hawks Should Take Him

Bowen Byram is the best player likely to be available to the Hawks at #3. Just about every scouting outfit has him as the #3 best prospect. Though we have a tenuous-at-best relationship with scouting reports around here (“DeBrincat will top out at 20 goals,” dear reader), this is what we’re working with.

Byram is fast and an outstanding skater. The Hawks have precisely zero of those on their blue line. According to Corey Pronman, he’s one of the best skaters available, full stop. In case you weren’t watching me evacuate my bowels all over every wall that I could about it last year, the Hawks need better skaters out of the backend.

Keith isn’t it anymore, no matter how much anyone wants to wail for it to be 2013 again. Murphy’s never really been that guy. Gustafsson can be recklessly creative but he’s the kind of fast you see when the slowest horse wins because all the other ones fell down. Forsling sucks. Seabrook blows. Maatta is blue line Anisimov. The rest of the flotsam have names that sound like their skill levels. This blue line is hot garbage, and unless the Hawks find real contributors, they are going to suck out loud again.

With Byram, the Hawks can have their cake and eat it, too. They don’t need to decide between best and need, because the best player available is the one they need. Unlike the current crop of defensive prospects the Hawks have in Harju, Boqvist, Beaudin et al., Byram projects to be ready on both ends of the ice immediately.

His 71 points in the WHL were third among all WHL D-men. His 26 goals led all D-men by far. He played on the PK, and his PIM numbers show he’s no shrinking violet, so he’s got appeal to both nerds and the hardest giardiniera farters in town. And he was only seven-fucking-teen!

You probably won’t ever get anything like that from Harju. There aren’t grumblings about his defense like there are with Boqvist and Beaudin. Though you never want to pin your hopes on an 18-year-old D-man, Byram is about as ready as you can be.

The Hawks should take Byram because their defense is a shambles. Maatta is a $4 million prayer who’s had more bad seasons than good. On a team comprised of two second-pairing guys (Murphy, Keith), a ton of 6s and 7s, and a bunch of kids who might not actually know how to play defense, Byram would immediately stand out. He’d also give the Brain Trust breathing room to trade someone like Boqvist or Harju as part of a package for a real D-man.

This shouldn’t be hard. The Hawks need better, faster, NHL-ready D-men. Byram is that. Pick him.

Why the Hawks Shouldn’t Pick Byram

More than anything, the Hawks shouldn’t pick Byram for Byram’s sake. As the years have gone by, it’s become clearer that good defense is born-on-third-Bowman’s clitoris: He can never find it, always looks in the wrong spot, and the things he does when he thinks he’s found it cause more agony than ecstasy. But man, oh man is he going to brag about even getting in the area code.

Re-signing Jan Rutta. Trading Rutta for Koekkoek, then re-signing Koekkoek. Not (yet) capitalizing on the Myth of Erik Gustafsson. Bragging that Brandon Motherfucking Manning was just about to enter his prime. And that was all just last year! You look at just some of these moves and wonder whether Bowman even remembers how the Hawks won all those Cups. It wasn’t with bloated and middling-at-best D-men. Yet, that’s his refuge of late.

The last successful D-man that they’ve brought up through their system was Hjalmarsson. The last successful D-man they even fostered was Nick Leddy. Is this a fate we want for a rising star like Byram?

More seriously, you can maybe make the case that the Hawks have a logjam at defense and that Byram might not have room to fit. Disabuse yourself of that notion, because it’s horseshit. The “logjam” is Seabrook; Forsling; Koekkoek; Dahlstrom; a fading Keith; and a bunch of defensive maybes in Boqvist, Beaudin, and Harju. Byram could walk into camp and break that logjam up in one or two sessions. But you watch Stan & Co. make that argument when they draft someone other than Byram and continue trotting out this Eric the Clown blue line next year.

Verdict

Unless the Hawks made the Maatta move as a table-setter for someone like Dougie, it’ll be a huge disappointment if they don’t take Byram. He’s a gifted skater with proven offensive skills who is good at worst at playing defense. This Core isn’t getting younger, and if the Hawks want to squeeze one more Cup run out of it, they need fast D-men who can push play and hold their own in their own end. Byram is that guy right now, and he’d be the only one with those credentials on the Hawks for Game #1 if they take him.

Pinning your hopes on an 18-year-old D-man. Just slap us sideways and call us the Sabres.

Baseball

Series Wrap – Cubs Lose Three Of Four To Dodgers: You Can’t Miss The Bear

By Sam Fels 1280 0

Game 1 Box Score: Dodgers 7, Cubs 3

Game 2 Box Score: Dodgers 5, Cubs 3

Game 3 Box Score: Cubs 2, Dodgers 1

Game 4 Box Score: Dodgers 3, Cubs 2

There was a chance to get out of this road trip in better health. With a record that didn’t make you wince. There were essentially three coinflips on this swing, the first game in Colorado and the last two in Los Angeles. The Cubs only got one of them, and they really have the pen to thank. Jim Deshaies was pointing out last night, before the Cubs got their first win of the season when trailing after six, that the reason that record is the way it was, and is, is that their pen can’t keep deficits down. We kvetch about the blown leads, but that’s almost as important. You saw the proof of that Saturday, though it helped that the pen was only asked to provide three outs before turning over a lead to Strop. Kimbrel will obviously help with this, but it won’t be a cure-all.

Steve Cishek is a good reliever, and it’s not like he’s getting continually shelled all season. But he does leak runs here and there, and that’s not good enough. Especially when you’re playing teams like the Dodgers where the margins are so thin. Cishek exits the game with a 3.38 ERA, which is not an embarrassment. But successful pens are trotting out relievers with ERAs under 3 or even around 1.00. The Cubs don’t have that. This wasn’t a trip of the pen having the world crash around them. Cishek twice, Montgomery once let runs just leak in. Get those two wins and suddenly it’s a 4-3 trip and that would be a success. On such margins are things decided.

Losing three of four to that team that’s 23-4 in its last 27 homes games doesn’t make this team a failure or anything resembling. And who knows what each could look like come October. But it does plant a seed of doubt about how the Cubs would find a way around that monster. Even a pen augmented by Kimbrel and one or two more arms is not automatic to get through that lineup. And remember, they didn’t have Seager either. And the Cubs can’t think about October when they’re still a game back and merely seven games over. There’s a lot more woods here.

The Cubs have built a really good team, and one that very well might get better. It just might have been timed to keep running up against a team that’s just better in just about every area.

Anyway, let’s run it through.

The Two Obs

-If Albert Almora didn’t run like old people fuck, the Cubs tie that game or maybe even win it. I’ll never be not amazed at how he can be such a good center fielder, which he is, and be that slow. Oh well, he is what he is so this is shouting at the rain.

–Cubs Insider ran a pretty interesting piece on why Jon Lester can’t seem to get his change-up to be that effective. It was definitely a problem on Thursday night, and you can’t get through this lineup with two pitches.

-You’re never going to feel comfortable about a pitcher going on the IL with shoulder inflammation, as exciting as getting a look at Adbert Alzolay will be. If that’s the route the Cubs go, that is. It feels like if the Cubs are truly careful with Hendricks, he’s going to miss three or four starts. This is not something you want to fuck with.

-Still, Anthony Rizzo kept this from becoming a complete disaster, and who knows how big that homer could be down the road.

-The only Dodgers starter the Cubs got out before the 7th inning was Clayton Kershaw, which is something.

-Baez is definitely slumping. His line-drive rate is down to 11% in June and his hard-hit rate dropped 13 points from May. And he hasn’t walked once. He’s never going to walk much but he at least did it enough in the season’s first two months to let pitchers know he was capable. He’ll have to get back to that, and he will.

-Hopefully this is a springboard for Darvish, and it should be. An awakening will soften the blow of Quintana struggling to find it right now and any Hendricks injury layoff. One walk in his last two starts is highly encouraging.

-You’ll never convince me Dave Roberts has any idea what he’s doing, and the 6th inning was an excellent example of that. Getting one more inning from Ryu was hardly worth leaving him in to bat with one out when you can take the lead. And then you know that the Cubs are going to bring in a lefty to face Pederson, which is hardly better than Hernandez facing Kintzler right now. Should have taken more advantage.

Onwards…

Baseball

Series Recap – Sox Split With Yankees: The Boulder Rolleth Down Again

By Andy Jonathan 1253 0

Game 1: White Sox 5 – Yankees 4

Game 2: White Sox 10 – Yankees 2

Game 3: White Sox 4 – Yankees 8

Game 4: White Sox 3 – Yankees 10

 

 

This series against the Yankees this Father’s Day weekend was the entire season in a microcosm.  You had the dizzying highs of watching Giolito twirl another gem, Eloy bombing 2 HR in a game, or Leury Garcia win an 11 pitch battle against Adam Ottavino to send the game winning home run over the right field fence.  Then you had the terrifying lows of the back 3/5ths of the worst starting rotation in the major leagues being unable to find the strike zone, to Ricky Renteria’s mystifying lineup decisions to getting a taste of .500 and having it snatched right back from you.  There have been plenty of times in the past I’ve been frustrated with the White Sox front office, but their insistence on filling the rotation with trash heap rejects might be the worst it’s ever been.

To the bullets

NUMBERS DON’T LIE

 

 

– Watching Leury Garcia and Tim Anderson take game one by the nuts and drag it over to the White Sox side of the win column was a thing of beauty.  Timmy went down and popped a pitch that he had no business getting to and put it over the center field fence to tie the game when Nova tried his best to gift wrap it to NY.  Then watching Leury go down 0-2 to Adam Ottavino (who is no joke in the reliever department) and fight off 8 more pitches before he finally got one he could do something with was just awesome to behold.  I see Leury as a Ben Zobrist type of player where he will be in the field every game, just not in the same position.  Fangraphs has him at a 2.6 defensive WAR which is highest on the whole damn team by more  than a full point (McCann is next at 1.2).  For that price, he’s well worth the roster spot.

– Eloy is blazing hot right now, as he now sits with 11 home runs.  That doesn’t seem like much, but when you consider the fact that he’s hit 8 of those 11 since May 20th that picture becomes a little clearer.  On top of that, he’s seeing the ball better in the box and laying off more and more breaking pitches out of the zone.  His K rate is still kinda high, but if he’s averaging one tater every three games I’ll take it.  Plus the kid is hilariously awkward on TV:

– Lucas Giolito wasn’t at his sharpest in this game, but he certainly did enough to keep the Yankee bats at bay until the Sox could respond to the Luke Voit solo shot he gave up in the first.  He walked 4 on the night, which is the most he’s had since the last time he faced the Yankees back in April.  The fact that you’d pitch a little more carefully to this team speaks more to the heavy bats of the Yankees (Now even heavier with the acquisition of Edwin Encarnacion from the Mariners) than to a lack of control from Gio.

-Kelvin Herrera came in game one and struck out the side in the 8th to set the table for Aaron Bummer’s first save of the year. Apparently Colome was not available after throwing almost 40 pitches in his 5 out save the previous game.  Bummer looked competent in the role, which may be where he ends up if Hahn decides to move Colome for another Tommy John surgery in the making at the trade deadline.

-Reynaldo Lopez really only had one bad inning in his start, but it was enough to do him in.  He’s still not attacking the zone enough, but his underlying talent and promise continue to merit him a start every 5 days.  It’s not like there’s anyone else to take the job from him anyways.

-Yonder Alonso has played 5 games in the month of June and gone 1-15 in that span.  Jon Jay is dead in a ditch somewhere, and Manny Machado and Bryce Harper are not here.  What a bang up free agency season for Rick Hahn (OK fine James McCann has been awesome, but there is not a single person out there who thought he was going to be anything other than 1 game a week).

– O-Driss went from being a very small, novelty pumpkin to a gigantic first prize in a county fair one with his start on Sunday.  Happy Fathers Day to all those Sox Dads out there who had to watch that steaming pile of shit that he shoveled out there.  I know the Yankees fans appreciated it.

– Next up are the 2 games up in Wrigley against the Cubs.  Who’s pumped to try and take back the Crosstown Cup Sponsored By BP Oil and Probably Papa John’s Pizza or Maybe Ankin’s Law Office With Ozzie Guillen?

-Sisyphus White Sox meme idea courtesy of @TheBennettK

 

 

Everything Else

Hawks Attempt To Improve Slow, Unskilled Defense With Slow, Unskilled Defenseman

By Sam Fels 4107 0

I suppose I should rejoice that they’re doing SOMETHING. And the quickness with which it was done lets you know the Hawks know they need to make changes and are urgent to do so. I’m not sure that matters when your changes are wrong.

In case you didn’t see the news, the Hawks traded Dominik Kahun and a 5th round pick this year to Pittsburgh for Olli Maatta. I’m not going to sugarcoat this for you. Olli Maatta sucks. He’s sucked for years now, and the only reason anyone would be attracted to him is a first-round draft pedigree that is now seven years old and buried under the dust of underwhelming when not straight-up bad performance. This is how Pierre McGuire would make trades.

Maatta is SUH-LOW. In a league that’s getting faster and for a team that lacks any mobility on the blue line, I guess he’ll fit right in but he doesn’t fix anything. He also can’t make up for it by making plays or the like, as the Hawks could get away with a slow d-man who can at least get the puck out and up to the forwards quickly and crisply. Maatta cannot do that, or at least hasn’t shown he can.

Maatta spent a majority of the season on the Penguins third pairing, which he was eventually punted from when Marcus Pettersson proved to be more useful and after the acquisition of Erik Goddamn Fuck You Gudbranson. That’s right, Erik “If And Italian Beef Shit Were A Hockey Player” Gudbranson was much preferred over Maatta in the playoffs. And before you say, “Well, maybe the coach is an idiot?” remember Mike Sullivan has two rings.

You can at least try and find the pinch-hold that Maatta started an overwhelming amount of his shifts in the defensive zone this year. But his zone-starts weren’t really noticeably worse than Letang’s or Dumoulin’s (the guy the Hawks probably should have been calling about) but his metrics far worse. And in the previous three seasons, Maatta’s zone starts have been more forgiving and his possession numbers are still awful.

Maatta has never managed more than 30 points in the league, so he’s not offensively gifted. He’s not like, an awful passer, but he’s far from a dynamic one.

To add to that, he’s made of duct tape and snot. He’s gone the route of 82 games just once in six seasons, and has missed more than 15 games in a year four times in his six year career.

One more thing, he’s not even that cheap! Maatta makes $4M for the next three seasons, but seems awfully expensive for a third-pairing d-man, which is all Maatta has ever proven to be. Good thing the Hawks already had like, five of those.

And this isn’t some love letter to Dominik Kahun. He’s a useful player that can help a team a lot from the bottom six, but he’s also the type of player you’re supposed to be able to find with regularity. And the Hawks might already have with Dominik Kubalik, any step forward from Dylan Sikura, and possibly a surprise from Phillip Kurashev who I’ve decided to adopt as my guy for really no other reason than my love for Xherdan Shaqiri. Kahun will do well with the Penguins, but the Hawks should be able to plug that hole. You’d hope.

Where Maatta slots is another questions. He’s left-sided, so he’d be best paired with a fast, puck-moving, right-sided d-man. Let me look over who fills out that role for the Hawks. Oh that’s right, fucking no one. Boy, guess we’d better hope Boqvist makes the team out of training camp, huh? Except that Maatta won’t be able to cover for all his booboos in the d-zone. Wonderful. I’m now going to go eat a stainless steal pan.

If this is what the Hawks diagnose as their problem, they’re fucked. If they’re scouting Maatta as the mobility or assuredness they need, they’re fucked. Maatta is a bottom of the roster fix when the top is still emitting noxious fumes. You have to pray this is only the start and not the coup-de-useless.

Otherwise, great trade.

Everything Else

Friday Foofaraw: Father’s Day

By Sam Fels 1450 0

It’s become something of a tradition around here, but if any of you are new I’ll give you the short story. I am not the only writer in the Fels family, but I am certainly the worst. My father George takes the crown, and you could give me another 100 years and I’ll never get in his ballpark. Dad was the back-page columnist for Billiard’s Digest for over 30 years, and on Fathers’ Day weekend I like to share some of my favorite works of his. Today, I present “When Jack Played Mizerak,” a hilarious story of the time Dad’s best friend got to play one of the world’s best pool players at the time, Steve Mizerak. Enjoy, and Happy Fathers’ Day to all. 

And yes, that is my father as the picture. Now you know. 

When Jack Played Mizerak

By George Fels
[Reprinted from February 1994]

Hey, Jack. You wanna play Mizerak?”

As either of my late parents would shriek in bitterness if they were able, I was a speech major in school and therefore attuned to how something is said as well as to what. And there was something I heard in my best friend’s obscenely proud “Yeah!” that gave me unrest.

The setting, in the early ’70s, was innocent enough: Open a commercial billiard rooms with Brunswick tables and among the perks was an exhibition by one of their advisory staff as part of your grand opening. At the time, that staff included Steve Mizerak, and while it’s sheer conjecture as to when the great player’s game might have peaked, the rolls weren’t exactly going against him back then. Four consecutive U.S. Open straight pool crowns, two World Championships not long after that, plus newfound television advertising stardom. Big Miz had Big Mo. Jack Gunne sounded all too eager to thwart that momentum and I leaped into the breach to lend what I must have thought was assistance.

“Now I hope you understand, Jack,” I tried, “that there’s a sort of protocol to this. The challenger is expected to play wide open — no defense — so that the champion can show what he can do; and the champion is expected to give the challenger some turns at the table, so he can do some scoring too. The theory is that the challenger can’t win anyhow, so they might as well put on a good show. That’s how it’s supposed to go.”

“Bleep that,” Jack Gunne reflected thoughtfully. “I’m playin’ t’ win!” “No, ox,” I said with miraculous patience, born of utter despair. “There is no winning. It’s 150 points and he can run out. You can’t. It’s just that simple. He can take it easy on you, or he can pulverize you.” Now Jack had two favorite sextets of words. One was, “I can’t play; I’m too upset.” And the other was, “I don’t want to hear it.” On this occasion, he chose the latter. While it is well beneath me to propose such a stereotype as all Irish are stubborn, I can assert with certainty that this one was, who made up for a great many who are not.

But it would be just as easy to judge him by his competitive streak, which was at least a kissing cousin to his stubbornness. Win or lose — usually lose — Jack was still ready to play every day without fail. His theory was that pool was the only aspect of his life where bad luck evinced itself at all, so it might as well be exorcised. And his luck at pool was genuinely horrible, almost as if predestined. He was easily capable of running 30 or 40 balls, but it was much more like him to luck into a way not to run the balls and jovially broadcast his misfortune to everyone else. Opportunities got away from Jack, who played pool very much as he lived, which frequently seems to be the case.

On the night of the exhibition, however, he was the champion of uncharacteristic conservativism. And when he ducked his cue ball behind the stack after sinking the match’s first six balls, with other shots still available, I distinctly heard one of the several hundred spectators mutter, “Aw, Jesus.” Mizerak gave Jack a studied stony stare but returned the safety in silence. Jack proceeded to take all the pace out of the match. Run a few, duck; return a duck; duck again. Brought to the table all too often merely to roll out of safeties and back into them, Mizerak was showing his lower teeth within the match’s first four racks, no sanguine sign. By the eighth rack, he was talking to himself, even more ominous.

However, just as it is said that the elephant schleps through the jungle but gets where he’s going all the same, the game did make grudging progress. Down 90-60 or thereabouts, Jack was still within that attainable 30-ball run when, to add a bit of local color, he maneuvered the Mighty Miz into the game’s ultimate humiliation, three consecutive scratches. Mizerak and the 3 ball were the same shade of red. He rebroke the full rack of balls; Jack disdained safety play for once and vaingloriously slammed an object ball into the rail, breaking open many others.

Having watched his worthy adversary flush billiards exhibition decorum down the tubes long since, Mizerak was not about to restore any. Speaking directly to Jack but clearly meant to be heard by one and all, Mizerak orated grandly, “Well, you can just siddown now!”

True to character, Jack remained standing through the first 45 or so of the inevitable 75-and-out, as though he were in his regular lunch hour sessions with me; and Mizerak made it a point to make eye contact after every one of those balls. “Six!” Plop. Stare. “Thirteen!” Plop. Stare. And he began to swagger and call his next shot position while the balls were still rolling; his A-game moves. “I can’t play anyway,” Jack confided to me at one point, enlarging his customary utterance by one word. “I’m too upset.”

Finally, he melted back into the chair for the run’s last 30 balls, and circulation returned to the audience’s collective buns. The next day, the Chicago Tribune primly reported that “Steve Mizerak, Perth Amboy, N.J., defeated Jack Gunne of Chicago, 150-58, in a pocket billiards exhibition.” Jack had the clipping laminated and mounted in a professionally drawn caricature of himself; his “thought bubble” read, “Brutal. Just brutal.”

Jack’s gone now, dead at 46; it’s probably only Mizerak and I who remember the game, and maybe not even that many. What I remember most was thinking just how much of you ultimately shows up in your pool game, whether you plan it that way or not; and how watching Jack lose like that was probably the hardest thing our friendship would ever ask me to do. Until I lost him too. As things turned out, his luck wasn’t that terrific outside pool either.

Baseball

Is It In My Head?

By Sam Fels 1468 0

You couldn’t have scripted a better baseball game than last night’s Cubs-Dodgers one to come on the same day as Ken Rosenthal wrote this on The Athletic. 10 runs scored, all on home runs. That goes along with the 17 strikeouts combined by each team, which these days isn’t even that high of a number. A lot of days one team reaches that on its own, but it’s not too hard to remember a day when that didn’t happen.

Many pundits and professional viewers have been complaining about the lack of action in baseball for a couple years now. And the numbers prove that it’s become a Three True Outcome game (homer, walk, strikeout). There are definitely less balls in play. And now we just have homers to make anything happen. We have more of them than we know what to do with. Or do we?

Certainly, over the past two seasons especially I’ve noticed how the game has changed. But would I notice as much if there weren’t writers like Rosenthal or Joe Sheehan (both of whom I really like, I have to point out) and many others (which I don’t) pointing it out seemingly daily? I might, but then I might not. But when you have someone screaming every day that “Nothing is happening in these games!!” surely you look more for the action that isn’t happening.

If I were in a vacuum, at least a media one, would the lack of balls in play really bother me? After all, I enjoy watching pitchers with overpowering stuff. It’s fun to watch someone blow 97 MPH by hitters or send them spiraling into the ground like that thing the Ninja Turtles used to get to the Earth’s core to bother Shredder and Krang with a deflector-shield curve/slider. And every baseball fan enjoys watching one of those get sent to the goddamn moon. They say that too much of a good thing is bad, but I’ve never been convinced. Sure, I love a bases loaded double or triple too, but were those all that common 10 years ago? Their uniqueness is what makes them special, at least in part. I’m not sure I get that bored of homers, and I don’t think I’m alone.

So do the baseballs being golf balls ruin my enjoyment? A touch, but rarely. Bellinger’s first homer last night felt a bit cheap, because even he didn’t think he hit it very well. And then it sails over the wall the opposite way in Dodger Stadium at night, which is supposed to be really hard to do. I’m biased, because I’m a Cubs fan who loathes the Dodgers and is starting to feel the same way about Bellinger individually, but that was one that had me looking side-eyed at. But I don’t find myself doing that too often. The explosion of homers doesn’t feel like Wrigley with the wind blowing out, where harmless flies are carried out as hitters slam their bats down and then sheepishly jog around the bases. You can’t base anything on feel, but it feels like it’s just well hit balls that probably would have gone out anyway going even farther out.

The only thing about the juiced-ball that I find strange is MLB throwing its hands up and claiming to not know anything about it or not having anything to do with it. They’re either lying or stupid, possibly both. How could you not be in total control of like, the entire center of the game? And if weren’t then why aren’t you now? Hell, the NFL went to war with one of its own franchises over the condition of its ball, and that’s a sport where they let teams control their owns spheres/spheroids.

Do fans care about there being too many homers? I wonder. Sure, attendance and viewership is down, and maybe that’s the only argument you need. But that could just as easily be about so many teams not even trying, and one of your truly good teams playing in Tampa. What would Baltimore’s attendance be if they had the Rays team? I’m not sure there’s a large swath of fans who have been turned off because there’s a lot of homers. Football has a lot of touchdowns, doesn’t seem to bother them much.

I guess my other complaint about a juiced ball is it doesn’t fit in with the natural evolution of the game. We know hitters are trying to lift the ball more, pitchers throw harder, shifting defenses, all that. So if more homers were only due to that, you would just say that’s how the game has grown and eventually will shift again when more pitchers are at the top of the zone and more hitters have to work with the open spaces they have. The game using a Titlelist as a ball causes all of that to be slowed or stopped completely, because more guys can just hit it over shifts and walls, deservedly or not. Homers would be on the rise without the Slazengers because of a change of style, but they wouldn’t be like this and it wouldn’t feel as artificial.

It’s funny, because writers like Rosenthal bemoan how attendance is down and baseball is falling behind, and then spend just as much space telling you why the game sucks. And I’ll agree with them that it is fun to watch players like Baez run the bases or Kiermaier or even Bellinger make plays in the field. And they’re getting less chance to do so. But you wonder how many defensive plays that bring people out of their seats are being sacrificed for homers that also bring people out of their seats. After all, more balls in play will result in routine fly balls far more than the diving catch in the gap or the nailing of a runner at second. I would take some convincing that this is what the routine fan is crying out for.

Something tells me a normal baseball would still see a lot of home runs being hit. After all, these are better athletes than they’ve ever been with faster bat-speed turning around pitches that are being hurled at greater speeds than ever before. It’s probably easier to get a 95-MPH fastball to go far than an 88-MPH one.

I notice games like last night’s now, and I definitely remark how different it is than what I grew up with. I don’t know that has to be a bad thing, and I don’t know how much I’d notice if everyone wasn’t yelling for me to notice. I guess I’m undecided, and I would guess most fans are too, despite what those with the pens and microphones keep telling us to think.

 

Everything Else

Offseason Trade Target: Nazem Kadri

By Sam Fels 2435 0

Before we get started, we didn’t do one of these yesterday because talking about hockey didn’t feel right yesterday. When you’re in this morass, do you really want to even think about next season right now? But anyway, this is our charge now so let’s resume.

Ok, Nazem Kadri is a complete penis. He’s more likely to do something horribly damaging to your team when it matters most than help it. In fact, had he kept his head on straight for once the Leafs might have actually beaten the Bruins. Any future infraction from this dickhead is going to result in a long suspension, and seeing as how you can’t trust him to learn or trust your substitute teacher of a coach to straighten him out, the risks are quite clear.

But here’s the thing. When he’s not trying reenact the Battle Of Saxony by himself, Nazem Kadri is a hell of a player. He has four 50+ point seasons on his resume (one was at that pace in 2013), and he’s done that mostly taking the dungeon shifts as a checking center either as the #3 center behind Matthews and Bozak or Tavares this year. He won 55% of his draws this year, which you know will still make some people in the Hawks’ front office tumescent. He put up 44 points this year mostly playing with a corpse in Marleau and something called Connor Brown. He’ll produce with just about anyone.

And the Hawks have a need, whether they want to admit it or not. As it stands right now, you don’t really want Jonathan Toews taking a massive amount of draws and shift-starts in his own end. But the Hawks only have one other player who can do that in David Kampf. Strome needs to be completely sheltered, and really so does Anisimov until you finally get him off this roster. Swapping in Kadri and punting Arty to wherever will take him for an Edible Arrangement gives you two centers you can leash to the d-zone, allowing Toews to really focus on the offensive end. At this point in his career, it’s one or the other for the most part.

Second, Kadri is cheap. His cap-hit is essentially the same as Anisimov’s, but you get a ton more. You get more skill, more speed, and a far better defensive player. Sure, he’s signed for three more years but at 28 he’s not likely to fall off a cliff before it’s up. And even if the offense starts to dry up you still have a pretty hellacious checking center on your hands. And there’s really nothing in the system at center unless the Hawks take Turcotte (which they’re going to), but you can worry about that shuffle whenever Turcotte is ready. Or you could just not take Turcotte if you swing for Kadri here.

Where this all falls apart is that the Hawks don’t really have anything the Leafs want. The Leafs need NHL-ready d-men. If they were run by a complete jackass, as they were in the past, you could probably really sell them on the offensive production and the cheapness of Gustafsson, which would still allow them to make moves considering he makes nothing. But Kyle Dubas probably isn’t a complete moron. Prospects don’t do the Leafs a whole lot of good as they are all about NOW NOW NOW, unless you could involved a third team for them to swing those prospects to. If you were looking for an actual landing spot for Keith, you might be able to sell him on this given Babcock and their chances but I don’t know that you could sell the Leafs on it. But there’s been no whisper that Keith has asked out or that the Hawks have asked him if he wants out.

Yes, Kadri wouldn’t solve your top six winger deficiency. But if you’re going 19-17-43-64 down the middle you can probably live with some third-line winger moonlighting on the top six. No, he doesn’t help the defense but his cap number is low enough, especially with any jettisoning of Anisimov, that you would retain all the flexibility to do something about that as well.

Yes, the gray matter is a concern. The hope would be that even with an overmatched coach, a leadership stable of Toews, Keith, Seabrook would keep him in a line a ton better than whatever it was in Toronto. The Hawks have made that bet before.

It hinges on just how sick the Leafs are of his bullshit. You get the sense if you could have made this trade in April they would have given him to you for a song. But now that time has let everything cool, it’ll be harder. But it makes sense, if the Hawks want to get creative.