Baseball

Do We Believe In James McCann?

By Sam Fels 1519 0

I mean he exists. He’s real. So you should believe in that.

In something of a surprise, through the season’s first six weeks two of the three best catchers in baseball, in terms of fWAR, reside in the Chicago. Willson Contreras being the best is only a small shock, because he’s flashed this kind of thing before, if only for a month or two in 2017. Certainly after last year’s before-spinach-Popeye act didn’t portend to dominance this year, but that’s what we’ve gotten.

On the Southside is the real surprise. James McCann has put up 1.1 WAR in just 84 plate-appearances, which puts him behind only Contreras and J.T. Realmuto among major-league catchers. McCann 169 wRC+, which only trails Contreras. His .420 wOBA is also second to Contreras. So yeah, basically McCann has been an instrument of doom for the season’s first month-plus.

Anyone can have a month or six weeks, you’ll say. And that’s true, and we could while away the rest of the afternoon listing off various tomato cans and shaved apes that put up a hot month. Especially at catcher, where being a shaved ape used to be something of a job requirement. So is there anything real about McCann’s start?

More than just luck, it would seem. Clearly, McCann’s .444 BABIP would cause him to be placed right at the top of a lot of people’s “Get Outta My League Leaders!” list. That’s not sustainable.

That doesn’t mean that McCann is going to see a stomach-heaving fall. Because he’s hitting the ball really hard.

If you go by Statcast, and that’s the trend these days, McCann’s average exit-velocity is 90.8 MPH. That’s three miles per hour higher than he managed last year, or ever. It’s not near the hardest around, but it is a big improvement. His hard-contact rate, if you want to go by that, is over 40%. Statcast has this neat thing called expected-slugging and expected-weighted on-base, which basically takes your statcast data and tells you what you should be getting based on every other ball hit at those velocities and angles. McCann’s expected slugging is .501 so far and and his expected wOBA is .424. He’s dwarfing both those figures at the moment, but even if he were to sink back to what he “should” be producing, you’d take that quick enough to leave a cloud outline of yourself.

There’s clearly been a change in approach as well. McCann has dropped both the percentage of pitches he swings at outside the zone and increased the amount of pitches in the zone he offers at 4-5% each. Which has led him to hitting the ball harder, squaring it up more often, and not getting fooled as much. It’s also led to more fastballs in the zone, which he’s turning into paste at the clip of .458 and a .667 slugging.

Another big area of improvement for McCann is his production when seeing sliders. For his career he’d only hit .212 against them, but this year is hitting .350. That’s encouraging, because given what he’s done against fastballs, he’s going to see more and more of them along with curves (which he’s also hitting .333 against). The big change is that he’s getting sliders in the air far more often, about 15% more, than he did before.

The other thing about McCann’s production is it might not matter. Zack Collins is currently tearing AAA to shreds, and could be up later this season. But McCann could either act as a platoon partner for Collins’s introduction, or a trade-chip to bring something back more long-term. Either would be fine with the Sox.

We’re not at the point where you should buy McCann stock. But maybe on the watch-list.

Everything Else

Ladies And Gentlemen…The Edmonton Oilers

By Sam Fels 1553 0

To try and add to this would be the definition of overwriting, overthinking, overdoing the story, but that’s what we do around here.

Ever since the rumors started over the weekend that the Oilers brass has backed up an armored truck or six to the door of Ken Holland, and then it came to fruition, I’ve hardly been able to contain my glee. The Oilers evolution has moved from simply trying to cash in on the names of the past from their own organization to cashing in on the names of the past from other organizations. Resumes don’t matter as much as name recognition, and as long as the accomplishments on said resumes are at least 10 years in the past. It’s just so perfect. “Well, we tried hiring our famous alumni, so let’s try hiring someone else’s! That’s the ticket”

To be fair to Ken Holland and what awaits him, there is just about nothing anyone could do here. They have something like $13M in cap space, and need like, six wingers and three d-men. And a goalie. And that number could go down if they re-sign Jesse Puljujarvi, which they kind of need to because they can get him cheap. But things may already be broken between him and the team.

So essentially what the Oilers need, or needed now, is a GM who can be creative and unearth some real gems for real cheap. See things that others wouldn’t. They need this to extricate themselves from the mess their last GM put them in. Which is exactly the kind of mess Ken Holland created in the place the Wings brought in Steve Yzerman to Jazzy Jeff him out of.

Contracts to Andrej Sekera and Milan Lucic don’t look all that different than the ones given to Trevor Daley or Frans Nielsen. Again, to be fair to Holland, Dylan Larkin, Andreas Anathasiou, and Filip Hronek were found with mid-first round or later-round picks, and that’s going to be vital for the Oilers. If he can do that again, maybe two years down the road things will start to be ok.

But you wouldn’t bet on that, because Holland didn’t pick enough of them (until maybe recently) to keep the Wings from being also-rans for the last five years. It’s just so Oilers. A team that thinks its name still carries the most weight in the league and anyone associated with it receives gloss from that simply by being around goes for the only name outside the organization they recognize. Holland was never able to produce another batch of players after his first one, which he may have just stumbled upon anyway. That’s a common affliction in hockey circles, of course. We’re seeing it here with the Hawks, whose current regime was handed the core that produced three Cups and has struggled to feed the the production line behind it. Same for the Kings. The Penguins had to find a new GM to create a second reign.

The Oilers await their first wave, though. What they needed was an outside-the-box thinker, not someone who says, “Thomas Vanek could help.” Someone who can find a way to get out from under a bad contract or two and fleece another GM for a piece or two. Find another Mathieu Perreault or Nino Neiderreiter, a player who is highly effective, not expensive, and probably not rated by their team. What was the last trade Holland won? What was the last signing that portended to any kind of vision?

But vision isn’t what the Oilers do. Seeking headlines is, as well as perhaps satiating their ravenous press corps. Holland is a name everyone knows, he won a Cup or two once upon a time, and that’s all the research the Oilers did. “This will buy us some time,” had to be the overriding thinking.

It’s hard to think of another player the level of Connor McDavid who’s going to see his career chucked down the incinerator by his organization’s incompetence. There was the first batch of LeBron’s, but he was wise enough to fuck off before his prime went away. Mike Trout comes to mind, as the Angels scramble for shore or dock dragging around Albert Pujols and previous mistakes. That’s probably as close as you get, and they’ve each only seen the playoffs once.

At least Trout has the Southern California sunshine to bask in, and the thought that his team is actually trying. How McJesus would love anything on par with Shohei Ohtani. McDavid just as early sunsets and a biting wind, the emptiness between the ears of his bosses.

It would be sad if it weren’t so funny.

Everything Else

You Get What Anyone Gets – Saying Goodbye To The ’18-’19 Dallas Stars

By Sam Fels 1491 0

A loss in double overtime in a Game 7. There is supposed to be glory about it. A beautiful death. Honorable defeat. Going out on your shield. Something to earmark and build upon. A loss, but one you can still hold your head high after when the cloud of shock and disappointment clear.

The thing is, that kind of glow requires that you actually try to win the game in the first 60 minutes, not have five Buddhas out there grinning childishly sitting on their collective ass while their goalie is fending off all sorts of threats and creatures by the minute. But that was the Dallas Stars method, who both tried to rope-a-dope and be-a-dope method last night and then were beaten by perhaps the biggest dope on offer, Pat Maroon.

It was all there for the Stars, whose entire style is basically push the dude over after he punches himself out. And there is no more push-over-able dude in the league than the St. Louis Blues. Game 7 at home and finding every way to not score, you could feel the DrinkScotch/Enterprise/Blue Live Matter Center accept their fate. They were going to lose after more than doubling the Stars in shots and almost tripling them in attempts. This was the way it had to be. This was nature. They could barely lift their arms anymore, struggling to breathe as most of their fans do.

But the push never came, as the Stars became so infatuated with short shifts they didn’t bother to do much other than just change on the fly. One player would hop over the boards, maybe get get to within touching distance of the middle of the ice, and then go fleeing back to the bench like a small child seeing how far away he can get from mom before he gets yelled at. Oh sure, they had their chances to win, but that’s the buy-in from the Blues.

So even in a double-OT Game 7 loss, you’d be hard-pressed to remember anything else about the series, the Stars playoff run, or the Stars as a whole. I’m fairly sure their coach is bald. That’s about all I can tell you. Because the Stars essentially became the energy vampires of the Western Conference and happily so. They straight up admitted to copying Barry Trotz’s system and then removing all the whimsy from that.

I guess this is what you do when your GM has had six years to get secondary scoring and has come up empty each time. Perhaps by sheer dumb idiot luck secondary scoring has landed on him through Dickinson, Zuccarello, and Hintz, but let’s not be too hasty. There are a raft of names before them that flashed being able to finally support the top troika of Radulov, Seguin, and Benn and his case of reverse-fear of heights. But they all slink back into the ether, unrecognizable from the other, trailing in Jason Spezza’s apologetic and wheezing wake. Which is how you end up with four goals in 10.5 periods over the last three games and packing for the summer. Which is pretty much how the Stars wanted it, fearing crossing the red line as if it was No Man’s Land. Happy in our trench are we, sang the green-clad throng.

Speaking of Jamie “The Retort To The Downward Spiral” Benn, you have to whisper this because he’s earned such gravitas with the hockey world thanks to always looking like the garbage bag busted all over his kitchen floor, but he’s starting his slide into Future Lucic state. Two goals in 13 playoff games, 53 points in a souped-up league, the lowest amount of shots in eight seasons. He’ll turn 30 over the summer, and the aging curve for power forwards looks akin to drunk dick. The cliff is coming for Jamie, and we know how he feels about going down. Soon he’ll have no choice. Dive for the crevice, Jamie.

The Stars will be confident is being right back here next season, with their hopes built in the sand of a 6-6 goaltender with various hip and leg problems who hasn’t taken a full slate of starts in four seasons. Seems real sturdy, that. Radulov will be 33, and even Seguin is starting to slide out of his prime years.

None of this might matter, as Jim Montgomery continues to abandon his principles to play a system that’s essentially singing campfire songs in a bomb shelter. The margins become so thin, and any long-term injury to THE BISHOP! can undo it all. The Stars could change this if they had any puck-movers on the back end…oh I know what you’re going to say, but it can’t be long before Monty’s system and Texas itself kills the spirit of Klingberg and Heiskanen. Didn’t they fire Hitchcock for this very reason?

This is about as good as it’s gotten for the Stars, and probably as good as it will. Two playoff series wins in 10 years, and both followed by Game 7 spit-ups. One conference final appearance in 20 years. Even the Blues have more, Dallas. Think about that for a second.

The Stars will continue their seeming never-ending journey to/occupation of the middle, that team you stumble upon on NHL Center Ice on a Thursday night and are surprised you haven’t checked in on in a while. Then after 10 minutes you remember exactly why that is. You will merely be intermission acts for Luka Doncic from here on out. Just like you were for Dirk. Maybe you can drop Hintz’s stretcher one day to get anyone to take notice of you.

It was there for you, Stars. Next time, try.

Everything Else

The Doll’s Trying to Kill Me and the Toaster’s Been Laughing at Me – FFUD ’18–19 Player Reviews – Chris Kunitz

By John Pullega 1696 0

On July 1, the Hawks signed Chris Kunitz, Cam Ward, and Brandon Motherfucking Manning. Of this Triumvirate of Suck, Kunitz was the least odious, both in the moment and throughout the season (probably). He was here, he is gone (likely to retirement or Pittsburgh), and that’s just fine by us.

Stats

56 GP, 5 G, 5 A, 10 P

51.07 CF%, 48.65 xGF% [5v5]

It Comes With a Free Frogurt!

It took half a year, but once Kunitz got slotted where he belonged, the fourth line, things weren’t a total dumpster fire. He was one of just six Hawks forwards to post a CF% greater than 50 (with Toews and Saad being the only regulars to do so). He managed to do that while spending most of his 5v5 time in the defensive zone (56+%). His 5v5 xGF% was second only to Sikura among Hawks forwards. You’ll take small victories where you can get them.

Also, according to a more in-depth look by Stephen Yatsushiro, Kunitz seemed to not actively hurt David Kampf’s performance when they played together, which was kind of shocking. We all knew Kampf had defensive chops, but knowing that playing with Kunitz made Kampf better metrically was a nice surprise. The entire Krusty Komedy Klassic line was generally fine in its dungeon starts, and Kunitz wasn’t terribly out of place there.

He also played in his 1,000th game, which is neat.

The Frogurt Is Also Cursed

The Kunitz signing was redundant for any of the reasons you can think to sign a guy like 39-year-old Chris Kunitz. If they signed him for his grit, they already had Andreas Martinsen to do it more dumbly, Luke Johnson to do it more moon-facedly, and John Hayden to do it more arrogantly.

If they signed him to be a fourth-line grinder, see above, and then add Kampf, Kruger, and any other number of IceHogs who could have done the exact same thing.

If they signed him for his veteran leadership, why? Toews, Seabrook, Keith, and Kane have all won three Cups. Crawford and Saad two. Does winning a fourth Cup as Sidney Crosby’s passenger matter that much?

His contract wasn’t a back-breaker (though the NMC was curious at best) or anything. It was just fluff. Kunitz just seemed like a guy Bowman (or Q) wanted to have for REASONS. If you want to point to his play on the PK, why? That sucked too.

Can I Go Now?

There’s no reason to re-sign Kunitz, just like there wasn’t a reason to sign him in the first place. He’s had a nice career, and the players seemed to like him, so great. He was here and then gone. He certainly wasn’t good, but he wasn’t as bad as he could have been. And that’s probably the best way for his Hawks career to end.

Previous Player Reviews

Corey Crawford

Cam Ward

Collin Delia

Duncan Keith

Connor Murphy

Henri Jokiharju

Gustav Forsling

Erik Gustafsson

Carl Dahlstrom

Brendan Perlini

Alex DeBrincat

Everything Else

You Get What Anyone Gets – Saying Goodbye To The ’18-’19 Columbus Blue Jackets

By Sam Fels 1594 0

Well that was quite the party. And like any good party, everyone worth a shit now leaves before they stick around past the point that all the creatures of the night do. You know those people, the ones who a Saturday night turns into a Sunday afternoon with the curtains drawn. They where all black and love to tell you about the weird sex they have. That’s where the Columbus Blue Jackets find themselves…amongst the New Order records. No one wants to be the last to leave.

What a historic spring for the Jackets. Causing one of the biggest upsets in first-round history, they’ll join such luminaries like the ’91 North Stars, the ’93 Blues, the ’93 Islanders, and ’09 Ducks in the pantheon of…wait, you don’t remember any of these teams? Of course you fucking don’t, because they’re nothing more than quirky trivia. Something that helps you win the three free rounds at a pub quiz while you pretend you’re having fun. But hey, that’s more memorable than the Jackets have ever been.

We’ll spend the next day or two wading through various love letters and bouquets thrown at Jarmo Kekalainen, a man who has been allowed to be GM for six years with one playoff series win, no division titles, and never actually earning home-ice in a playoff series. What a record! Oh how he went for it! Oh what dash he showed! Why don’t more GMs show such gumption, they’ll cry!

Yes, selling out your future for six playoff wins so that your two most important players tell you to do one a couple weeks later than they were going to truly is foresight. It’s a wonder Jarmo isn’t a goddamn Vulcan. And when Duchene and Dzingel see Panarin and Bobrovsky fuck off, we’re sure they’ll be heavily tempted to commit their futures to a rest stop between known cultural centers of Cleveland and Cincinnati. Wonder how much longer Zach Werenski is going to want to commit to North Louisville after all that as well.

This is what you don’t get, Columbus. Once a college town, always a college town. Just because you’re strangely podunk and the home of an insurance company that keeps foisting Peyton Manning on the nation like a proud mother doesn’t mean you’re a destination. You go to Columbus, you stay for a few years, you get measurably dumber and then you move on to fix that. Those who stay around their college towns after graduation are always desperate and weird. If you’ve seen Buckeyes fans gather in Evanston or whatever Wrigleyville/Lincoln Park Date-Rape Palooza  bar they call home, you know of where we speak. It applies to the Jackets, too.

You needn’t sweat it. Your contemporaries the Minnesota Wild haven’t accomplished anymore than you. You two are what everyone thinks millennials are. Bad clothes, bad decisions, loud noises and few accomplishments. At least the Wild actually got a free agent or two to show up. And no, Nick Foligno wanting to stay doesn’t count. That’s more of a metaphor than you’re prepared to face right now.

Everything will be fine, you say. Cam Atkinson and his recent damn fine impression of Patrick Roy era Gabriel Landeskog  is still here. So’s Pierre-Luc Dubois. Josh Anderson and whatever brains didn’t leap out his ear thanks to McAvoy last night are too. Jones and Werenski. We’ve got a base. You sure do. Those 89 points that base will collect as they stare at whatever punter is in net wondering how that went in will be glorious. We’re sure you’re looking forward to it.

While the press lavish praise on Jarmo, because he gave them so much to write about, one has to ask if the truly brave call wouldn’t have been to cash in on Panarin and Bobrovsky for actual assets that will be around Ohio longer than until the keg goes dry. Perhaps something lasting instead of a cheap thrill and a parlor trick. These same writers will be doing “Was It All Worth It?” articles in March when the Jackets are five points out of a playoff spot. This will of course follow the “No One Believed In Us!” articles that come in November when the Jackets have the same five-game winning streak every team does.

No, the coach will still be a bullhorn, and his boring-ass style and hard-ass ways are going to get a lot more scrutiny when there are more losses than wins. And then one might wonder just how many more coaches Jarmo “Balls To The Walls” Kekalainen gets. And then won’t those make for some fun Athletic posts?

Face it Columbus, no one wants to be there. No matter what any player or team does it’ll be Page 2 behind which OSU running back showed up to spring practice in a Tesla. Oh wait, I think Urban Meyer is bending over again to show just how much this means to him. It doesn’t even matter that he’s not coaching anymore, he cares so damn much he’s killing himself out there!

You’re just a misplaced SEC town with the hillbillies to match, except you didn’t bother to include Nashville’s nightlife or music scene. You’re a jumping off point, and will always be leverage to get somewhere better. Which is just about everywhere. Rick Nash was only the first. He’ll hardly be the last. But hey, you’ve got a cannon, right?

Everything Else

The Doll’s Trying to Kill Me and the Toaster’s Been Laughing at Me – FFUD’s ’18-19 Player Reviews – Alex DeBrincat

By Adam Hess 2124 0

There isn’t much left to say about Alex DeBrincat that we haven’t already said a few hundred times in this space or the podcast. If you’ve missed it, I will catch you up – he’s really damn good. I never ever ever want to forget that the Blackhawks got him with the pick that they acquired from Montreal in exchange for Andrew Shaw, which is the most Montreal shit of all time. After a good rookie season in 2017-18, he followed it up with an elite 2018-19. Let’s dig in:

82 GP – 41 G – 35 A – 76 P

49.68 CF% – 46.47 xGF% (5v5)

It Comes With A Free Frogurt!

DeBrincat quickly cemented himself as the third best forward on the team this season, proving that he doesn’t need to be just Patrick Kane‘s running mate to produce. That’s not to say that he didn’t spend a good amount of time with Kane or didn’t play well when with Kane, but he also spent enough time playing at a high level away from ol’ Garbage Dick to prove that he’s capable of essentially carrying a line’s offense on his own. It certainly helped that he got paired up his OHL running mate back in Dylan Strome not long into the season, but I would argue that Top Cat did more to elevate Strome’s game than the other way around.

One of the most important non-linemate developments for Top Cat this season was his development as a power play assassin. Obviously the improved power play was a huge credit to Jeremy Colliton, and there are very few players who both helped cause that PP boom and benefited from it as Top Cat. He scored 13 of his goals on the PP, and added 11 assists on that unit as well. That equates to nearly one third of his goals, assists, and points coming when on the ice with the extra man, which will certainly help inflate the numbers, but is also just what offensive dynamos like DeBrincat are supposed to do on the powerplay. For context, Nikita Kucherov had 15 of his 41 goals, 33 of his 87 assists, and 48 of his 128 points on the PP, and all of those numbers are more than a third of the total production. So not that anyone was really doing so, but don’t let the heavy amount of PP production make you think his production numbers are any less impressive.

Top Cat is proving to be far and away Stan Bowman’s best draft pick and may even be a large reason that Stan still has a job. Despite being picked 39th overall in the the 2016 draft, Top Cat has the fourth most total points of any player picked in that draft, and has a better PPG at 0.78 than two of the players above him in Patrik Laine and Matthew Tkachuk, who both sit at 0.76. Granted, that’s pretty minimal difference, but it’s still better and I am a homer so we’re counting it as a win. Thanks.

The Frogurt is Also Cursed

Yet again I find myself in a position where trying to find anything negative to say about Top Cat is a bit of a stretch. However, as I thought more about it I realized that there was one thing that kinda bothered me as I thought more about it, though I usually think of it as entertaining and fun. And that is his desire to throw his body around a bit and play a bit of a tough guy when the opportunity is presented.

It’s not that he is a stupid player when it happens – he only took 15 total PIM this year, which is more than fine. But he sometimes works his way into scrums and did get involved in one fight this year, which is one more than I want to see him have. I know hockey has “The Code” and everybody us out there wanting to stick up for their team, but Top Cat should leave that to his less technically gifted and more ham-brained teammates. It’s not a major issue, and usually in the moment I find it cool, but I quickly switch to dread over the thought of him getting some bullshit injury from off a cheapshot from some dipshit in a scrum. Let’s just avoid the possibility all together, okay?

Anyway, Top Cat is great and I love him. Pay the man.

Previous Player Reviews

Corey Crawford

Cam Ward

Collin Delia

Duncan Keith

Connor Murphy

Henri Jokiharju

Gustav Forsling

Erik Gustafsson

Carl Dahlstrom

Brendan Perlini

Everything Else

This Is Why You Don’t Hang Your Refs Out To Dry

By Sam Fels 1637 0

We’ll never know if John McIsaac and Kelly Sutherland had thoughts of Vegas-San Jose Game 7 traipse through their head when trying to assess a penalty to Charlie McAvoy last night. It would not be a surprise if it did, and what happened to those officials. Officials want to rise to the top of their profession just like anyone else, and seeing their colleagues hung out to dry and then sent home for the summer certainly could easily have been a factor.

Make no mistake, Charlie McAvoy should have been given a major penalty, booted, and suspended for multiple games. He left his feet, came from the blindside, and hit directly to Josh Anderson’s head. I don’t know what other qualifications you need.

But the because the NHL is so terrified of pissing off its knuckle-dragging fans and media (probably more the latter), because for some reason it’s mortified at the thought of a Don Cherry or Brian Burke rant on Canadian television about how the game is lost, this is what we get. A minor penalty, which won’t do much to deter hits to the head that the league claims it wants to do away with to preserve the safety of its players.

And because officials have seen what happened to other refs who have deemed to punish to heavily, they are gun-shy. NHL officials always have been, and while I try and give them as much credit as I can because the refs in other sports can be so awful, they often lean too far the other way. “Let the players decide,” is a fine mantra, but lean into too far and you’ve ended up ignoring what the players have decided. When one player forces another into a penalty/foul, they have decided that one team gets a power play. When you ignore that, all normal hockey goes out the window and you bring your star players down to the level of those who can’t emerge from the muck. You may bitch about NBA refs being too obtrusive, but the NBA playoffs are still a stage for the best they have to do what they do and they dominate the headlines (some of that is the difference in the sports). When you’re asking Nathan MacKinnon or the like to survive being tackled and now possibly beheaded at every turn, you ground down what makes them rise above the rest, and hence their team.

That’s also the not the exact discussion here. When the league threw its refs from San Jose-Vegas under the bus, it pretty much pulled the rug out from under all the refs. The idea, in theory, is that the officials are the representatives of the league and are administering the game. All the NHL has done is create a separation, make it seem like they work for the teams now, and leave the refs on their own. Which would undermine their authority.

And that gets even more undermined when they’re terrified to make the right call, for fear of being singled out by the league again. No team deserves an apology for a ref’s call. The ref didn’t make the Knights give up four power play goals in five minutes. The refs didn’t make them not score in overtime against a depleted and exhausted team. The refs aren’t why the Knights lost.

Bad calls happen to every team, and it’s part of the accepted system as currently fashioned. The refs weren’t looking out to screw the Knights, the only situation that should have earned an apology. If the league thought those refs made the wrong call, there is a grading system in private already in place and they should have just been quietly not assigned the next round. All referees accept this when they take the job.

“Not deciding the game” is also a red herring for officials. After all, not making a call can swing an outcome just as much as an over-aggressive call. Last night’s miss on McAvoy probably didn’t cost the Jackets the game, but you can see where a similar one would. And now if the league were to suspend McAvoy, which it should, it will be publicly hanging out their refs to dry again. It will have no choice.

The league could help refs of course by clearly outlining that any hit to the head is a major, game misconduct,  and a suspension whether you meant it or not. Do you want these hits out of the game? Miss on the high side then. It can’t get more clear-cut than McAvoy’s hit last night, but there will be others. You’re not going to change the behavior and make players adjust how they play until there are serious consequences, no questions asked. It will be an uncomfortable six months, or full season, with some questionable decisions and old men yelling at clouds before they soil themselves.

And then it would change. Players wouldn’t take hits they weren’t sure of. Muttonheads who can do nothing else would be out of the league, and that would be a good thing. Players adjust. Look at what happened with interference calls and slashes and hooks. They’re still around, but players know the deal and play the game differently. It’s pretty simple.

The league needs to back its officials, even when they’re wrong. It’s part of the game right now, and they need the support. Did Marc-Andre Fleury apologize to the fans for turning into Wile E. Coyote for a period? No. His mistake(s) were no less than the refs. It’s just a matter of degree. The refs won’t call this how it should be if they don’t think their bosses have their back. The refs are out there in the field of play and take the brunt. They’re the ones enforcing the decisions made above them. They’re the ones influencing games, rightly or wrongly. How can they do that when they feel they have no backup?

Baseball

Series Preview – White Sox vs. Cleveland: Out For My Own, Out To Be Free

By Sam Fels 1199 0

vs.

RECORDS: White Sox 14-18   Cleveland 18-14

GAMETIMES: Monday-Wednesday 5:10

TV: NBCSN Monday-Wednesday 

THEY’RE STILL SHITTY: Let’s Go Tribe

PROBABLE PITCHERS

Ivan Nova vs. Trevor Bauer

Lucas Giolito vs. Jefry Rodriguez

Reynaldo Lopez vs. Shane Bieber

WHITE SOX PROBABLE LINEUP

Leury Garcia – CF

Yoan Moncada – 3B

Jose Abreu – 1B

Yonder Alonso – DH

James McCann – C

Nicky Delmonico – LF

Tim Anderson – SS

Yolmer Sanchez – 2B

Charlie Tilson – RF

CLEVELAND PROBABLE LINEUP

Francisco Lindor – SS

Jason Kipnis – 2B

Jose Ramirez – 3B

Carlos Santana – 1B

Carlos Gonzalez – LF

Jake Bauers – DH

Jordan Luplow – CF

Tyler Naquin – RF

Roberto Perez – C

 

After two consecutive self-immolations against the Carmines, along with three straight losses after a pretty satisfying walk-off win against the title-holders, the White Sox escape town and head to the familiar environs of The Jake. There they’ll find a Cleveland team that is no longer on the AL Central throne as had been custom, and one that has a few too many guys in the infirmary.

The big issues for the Tribe is that two-fifths of their rotation (three if you count Danny Salazar, but that’s iffy) is on the DL and not for a short time either. Mike Clevinger is out until at least June with a back-iotomy, and Cory Kluber has forearm-knack after taking a liner off of it. He’s out at least a month, and could be longer. That has slotted Jefry Rodriguez and Cody Anderson into the rotation, which is clearly a downgrade.

Sadly, the rotation is still being held together somewhat by professional butthead Trevor Bauer, though he is riding the good side of the BABIP Dragon and any market correction on that .221 mark could be violent. He’s giving up line-drives far more than he did last year, and you know about the Cleveland outfield defense. Carlos Carrasco is on the other side of the coin, seeing a 5.00+ ERA even though he’s striking out over 12 hitters per nine innings while walking less than two. You could easily argue that both of their market corrections will even out.

They’ve needed everything they can get out of the starters, because the offense has not clicked into gear at all. In fact, it’s shambolic. Jose Ramirez is hitting .200. Lindor is hitting .229. Jason Kipnis has a 24 wRC+, and he’s been forced into the lineup. Only Carlos Santana is going up to the plate with something other than a side of beef. And with the power show the Twins are putting up, Cleveland is not going anywhere if Lindor and Ramirez at least don’t get back to their MVP-form of yesteryear and probably get some help.

It’s not the funk out of the pen these days either as it used to be. Closer Brad Hand (and his rad band) has been excellent, but beyond that it’s been iffy, though of late old war horses Tyler Clippard and Oliver Perez, along with Adam Cimber, have straightened that out.

The Sox will try and relocate their offense, which produced four runs over the last three games against the BoSox. Hey, sometimes Chris Sale will do that to you but you shouldn’t be getting it up your giggy by Rick Porcello. Ivan Nova against this lineup is probably the definition of a taffy pull, but if he’s going to get right against anyone this would seem to be the time. And hey, two weeks against the Erie Warriors and Blue Jays is better than the Astros and Twins, which await after this.