Baseball

Series Preview – Marlins vs. Cubs: Funtime Rolls

By Sam Fels 1474 0

vs.

RECORDS: Marlins 9-24   Cubs 19-12

GAMETIMES: Monday-Wednesday at 7:05

TV: NBCSN Monday and Tuesday, WGN Wednesday

VICE CITY: Fish Stripes

PROBABLE PITCHERS

Sandy Alcantara – Cole Hamels

Caleb Smith vs. Jon Lester

Jose Urena vs. Kyle Hendricks

PROBABLE MARLINS LINEUP

Curtis Granderson – LF

Martin Prado – 3B

Brian Anderson – RF

Neil Walker – 1B

Starlin Castro – 2B

Jorge Alfaro – C

Miguel Rojas – SS

PROBABLE CUBS LINEUP

Daniel Descalso – 2B

Kris Bryant – 3B

Anthony Rizzo – 1B

Javier Baez – SS

Kyle Schwarber – LF

Willson Contreras – C

Jason Heyward – RF

Albert Almora – CF

 

Now that the Cubs have ascended through the Central Division to the top like Beatrix Kiddo swimming through the dirt to emerge from the grave, they seek to keep the ball rolling. And there’s no better way to do that than having a series with the Miami Marlins, pretty much everything that’s wrong with sports today.

The Cubs will send Lester and Hendricks out to build on their dominant outings last out, while Cole Hamels will attempt to clean up a little after his slight wobble against the Mariners that saw him not survive the sixth, though he didn’t get much help from his defense that night. Luckily for all these guys, they’ll be facing a lineup that’s essentially that cartoon holding an umbrella while the anvil descends.

I don’t know why anyone thought Derek Jeter and the money he didn’t have were going to save the Marlins. Maybe it’s because he simply wasn’t Jeffrey Loria, who would have been kicked out/barred from any sport with an actual commissioner armed a passing interest in protecting anything resembling integrity. Jeter learned his cues from Michael Jordan, who continually has proven the only interest he has in owning a team is having access to an owner’s suite where he can smoke cigars. That’s pretty much Jeter. Jeter has only ever been interested in himself, and this should have been abundantly clear when he wouldn’t move off of short for Alex Rodriguez, a categorically better player than he was in every way.

The Marlins are at least four-and-a-half games behind anyone else in the NL, having won only nine games when everyone else has at least won 14. They have yet to score 100 runs, are second-to-last in OBP as a team (ahead of only the Giants, which, woof) and are 35 points behind the next closest team in wOBA. If you wanted to demonstrate how you tank an offense, this would be it. There isn’t a hitter worth mentioning here, aside from maybe Neil Walker and only because there was a time when he was a real thorn in the ass of the Cubs. He’s also one of two regulars in the lineup who are having anything resembling an average season in terms of wRC+, with the other being Jorge Alfaro. Alfaro is the only player in the lineup who might matter one day down the road when the Fish aren’t an embarrassment, but he’s 25 already so even that’s a touch of a stretch. The only help in the system that might arrive in the next year is Monte Harrison, but everything else is years away.

Somehow, the rotation hasn’t been that bad, ranking in the middle of most categories in the NL. It’s been remarkably healthy, which helps. The Marlins have been able to run out the same five guys through April. Pablo Lopez and Caleb Smith have been highly effective, and the Cubs will miss Lopez. Jose Urena has the stuff to be a top-half rotation starter, but just can’t seem to put it together. And he’s 27, so it could just be this is what he is.

Of course, that doesn’t matter much when your rotation is trying to hold up one or two runs from your offense, if that many, and your bullpen comes out armed with a variety of blow torches and Molotov cocktails. There’s nothing the starters can do that the offense and pen can’t ruin.

Remember, this is how the Marlins wanted it, despite their protestations this isn’t what they expected. They simple exist to siphon off tax dollars from Miami for their stadium no one wanted and everyone got (stuck with the bill). They are now Jeter’s plaything, are years from being memorable, and before then they’ll probably blow it up anyway because no one wants anything to do with them and MLB makes it exceedingly easy and rewarding to not try. But hey, that owner’s suite for Jeter…

Everything Else

You Get What Anyone Gets – Saying Goodbye To the ’18-’19 New York Islanders

By Sam Fels 1702 0

Oh right, the Islanders.

It’s not easy to wipe away the buzz and impact of sweeping a long-time tormentor with just the flick of a wrist, but then nothing has been normal about the Islanders since…well, ever. You’re supposed to carry the momentum of a franchise-turning win like the first-round sweep of the Penguins into something that will define this era and be remembered for a while. Scoring five goals in the next four games, including getting two and a half games against the perpetually bewildered Curtis McElhinney reduces that first round to odd trivia shared in various Long Island and New York bars where Tammy from Queens will offer to blow you in the bathroom but won’t remove her bubblegum to do so.

The Islanders sold their soul already, assuming they had one. You can’t blame them, really. This is a franchise that has managed consecutive playoff appearances just once in the past 15 years. So you see why they turned to Barry Trotz, the Jose Mourinho of hockey (though about 1/130th of the asshole). You’ll get results, your defense will improve, but good god it will be about as entertaining as checking your dog for fleas. And if you give him a historic collection of offensive talent, he just might get your team to grunt and belch to a Cup (though it’s important to note no other Trotz team has ever made a conference final, which seems his destiny in wherever the Isles call home). There’s definitely a floor you acquire with Trotz, you’re just going to end up on it if you watch them for more then two weeks straight.

You’ll hear a lot over the coming weeks about how the Isles future is so bright after this. Yes, clearly a GM who has acquired Matt Martin twice and Leo Komarov  for a second team, who has openly admitted he hates playing players anything, and is managing a team with literally no home is sure to steer this club into the sunshine. Nothing hockey players love quite like shaving every day and having to throw a dart to remember where the home game is today! Certainly worked out well for the last big free agent the Islanders had, all the way back to last summer. Can’t help but notice Brock Nelson and Anders Lee haven’t re-upped yet. Perhaps they and their agents are going over the Lamiorello, “Every player is overpaid,” comment and wondering just how much they enjoy life between the highways of Long Island and commuting an hour to an arena where the structure and the fans are constantly off-center.

And the Islanders need them, and then probably another two top six forwards. See how they do that when they’ve never been a free agent destination before. Thomas Vanek once went here to die, I think. Andrew Ladd did die, and he’s only got four years left on his deal. If you sign in Brooklyn in the summer you’re going to end up smelling like Brooklyn in the summer…sweat and mistakes. No, the Isles acquire players when they essentially become Australia and other teams send their unwanted contracts there just to get them off the books. And then they stay, because much like a prison a lot of Islanders realize they don’t belong anywhere else.

Still, this is the Metro Division and you can stay around the top merely by floating for a while. The Penguins are exhausted, the Flyers, Rangers, and Devils are too busy trying to give themselves enemas orally. So maybe your future can remain bright by doing literally nothing and watching everyone else fuck up. That must be what Isles fans are getting at. Assuming both their goalies don’t quit the team to go build the wall on the Texas border themselves, or bring guns into the dressing room (which is hilarious, because would the NHL actually punish anyone for doing that?).

But hey, the Islanders have now won a round in consecutive playoff appearances, which they haven’t done since 1985. And yes, those playoff appearances are three years apart, but when you’re an Isles fan or player you have to grab onto whatever you can. That, and perhaps the most boisterous atmosphere in the league, for the 10 games the Isles play on Long Island that is. Just another lesson in how Brooklyn pretty much ruins everything. Tell us about your parking lot tailgates again though, which you have to have because there’s literally nothing else in Nassau. Is Nassau even a place? I don’t know and I don’t care and no one else does either. It only is inhabited because Robert Moses built a kingdom on getting white people to flee black people. And the only team that belongs in Brooklyn plays in Chavez Ravine.

So farewell to the Islanders, who will spend the next few years wondering if an arena can be built next to Belmont Race Track, which will hinge basically on how to get at train to go backwards efficiently. No really, it will. You have to take a moment to realize the wonder of a sports organization longing to get to a nowhere place like Elmont, NY. Every other team wants to get downtown, the Islanders want to get to a freeway exit. That pretty much tells you everything you need to know.

 

 

Everything Else

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

By Rose Rankin 1940 0

We made it through the defense, everyone. I know, it wasn’t pretty, but we did it. Now onto the forwards where the situation is…better? It’s better, right? Yes, it couldn’t be worse than the defense, so yes.

When Brendan Perlini and Dylan Strome came over in the Schmaltz trade, Perlini was actually the more known quantity and Strome was the question mark who hadn’t really realized his potential. That’s not how the narrative played out once they got here, though, as Strome found his groove and ended up being one of the Hawks’ best players (and a rare pleasant surprise in a season of mostly unpleasant ones). Perlini, on the other hand, was a bit of an enigma with the Hawks, having one burst of scoring and playing decently on the second line, sandwiched by benchings and periodic irrelevance. Let’s dig in:

(With the Hawks): 46 GP – 12 G – 3 A – 15 P

45.4 CF% – 40.4 xGF% [5v5]

It Comes With a Free Frogurt!

Brendan Perlini had basically one really good week. OK, that’s not entirely fair, it was like two really good weeks. Between March 2nd and March 16th, he scored eight goals in seven games, including his first-ever hat trick against his erstwhile team, the Coyotes. And all of that was extremely fun and when you’re scoring, everything is great.

Aside from that stretch, Perlini was a serviceable linemate for Strome and Top Cat on the second line. As a line, their possession at 5-on-5 wasn’t exactly stellar, especially considering that these guys weren’t taking dungeon shifts (49.5 CF% with 68% oZS). Still, he was able to be in the right places at mostly the right times and proved he can play well when on a line with other good players…I know, what an accomplishment, right? But this is where we’re at, and we’ll take it. His shooting percentage jumped from a sickly 5% with Arizona in the first part of the season to 15.6 with the Hawks, showing that Perlini can be effective given the right tools to work with.

The Frogurt is Also Cursed

Perlini seems like kind of a character, and to me that’s not a bad thing. The dull facelessness of hockey players, which is an all-too-common occurrence when the majority of your athlete population consists of rural Canadian white kids with a seventh-grade education, is irritating and tiresome. So I’m cool with players actually speaking their minds and having a personality, and so much the better when they have perspective on life and playing a professional sport. However, it seems that Perlini’s outlook may just be fucking with his give-a-shit meter, which hovered dangerously low at times this season for a guy still proving he’s a top-six player.

If you’re Patrick Kane and you’re being lazy and it leads to a dumb turnover, you’re going to get away with it. If you’re Brendan Perlini, clearly you won’t, as his benching and scratching shortly after his scoring streak showed. He was particularly lazy against the Sharks in March when the Hawks ostensibly were still shooting for a playoff spot, and Beto O’Colliton stapled his ass to the bench and then made him sit in the corner and think about what he did for a little while.

Now, was that totally deserved? Eh, maybe Colliton was making sort of an example of him, but again, you’re Brendan fucking Perlini, you better act like a try-hard. None of his numbers—possession, scoring, high-danger chances, nor that shooting percentage—were good enough to justify him not at least trying his damndest to win puck battles consistently. This team is also slow, so as a younger guy on the second line, he needs to bust his ass to push the play, and besides, Dylan Strome isn’t fast either so it’s really not asking all that much effort-wise.

Can I Go Now?

Perlini deserves another chance next season, and even if he doesn’t stay with Strome and DeBrincat he can probably be a decent bottom-sixer. Let’s say he ends up being “a guy”…at least he’s a 22-year-old guy and not Artem Anisimov, an older and even slower guy. He’ll also be a cheap signing, maybe around 1 mildo or so. And who knows, maybe he’ll do some peyote in the desert or something and have a revelation about working his ass off.

Previous Player Reviews

Corey Crawford

Cam Ward

Collin Delia

Duncan Keith

Connor Murphy

Henri Jokiharju

Gustav Forsling

Erik Gustafsson

Carl Dahlstrom

Everything Else

Series Wrap – Cubs Sweep Cardinals: Everybody Shut The Fuck Up

By Sam Fels 2650 0

Game 1 Box Score: Cubs 4, Cardinals 0

Game 2 Box Score: Cubs 6, Cardinals 5

Game 3 Box Score: Cubs 13, Cardinals 5

Let’s get it right at the top here. Back in first place. Best winning percentage in the NL. Best run-differential in baseball. Won seven in a row. 16 of 20. It was utterly pointless to be trying to tear your heart out of your chest with your fingernail after nine games. Everyone has a bad nine games. Fuck, everyone has a bad 20 games. I understand the microscope is more focused at the start of a season. I understand it was an unpleasant winter and everyone already had the knives out and wanted to be the first to say, “I told you so.”

But it was always a good offense. Possibly great. It was always potentially a really good rotation, and one that survived an IL stint to Jon Lester. You have those two things, the pen doesn’t matter as much. The Cubs have six players with a wRC+ of 115 or higher. The only regulars who aren’t there are Schwarber, Zobrist and Descalso. And Schwarber’s is 129 over the past two weeks.

So yeah, I don’t want to hear it. This is a really good team, a team that is essentially the one that won 95 games last year and gets to use Yu Darvish and a healthy Kris Bryant. It’s been even able to carry a struggling Zobrist. They’re really good. Everyone on board.

Let’s do the thing:

The Two Obs

-I find it funny that it took Hendricks and Contreras about an inning or two to figure out that the Cardinals were trying to jump on The Cerebral Assassin early in at-bats, proceeded to cut through them like a daisy cutter, and yet the Cardinals never bothered to try anything else. Hendricks threw seven pitches in the 7th. Nine in the 8th. 10 in the 9th. Good thing they hired Shildt full-time, huh?

-Saturday, the right decision was definitely to walk Schwarber to get to Taylor Davis. That doesn’t mean Michael Wacha had to throw him a batting practice fastball that any competent profession baseball player is going to hurt. I thought the Cardinals were smart?

-Yu Darvish is Javy Vasquez. If you remember Little Game Javy, as Yankees fans so lovingly referred to him as, he had five or six different pitches, all of them effective. But it Javy’s world, and apparently Yu’s, no one should make contact on him. Which means he pitches that way, which means he misses, which means walks, which means problems. Until Yu starts pitching to contact and taking the strikeouts when they’re there, this is what you’re gong to get. He’s never had great control, but it’s within him, he simply chooses not to. Remember, before he got to Chicago the previous two seasons saw him carry a BB/9 under three. He’s at 7.44 this year. It has to stop.

-I don’t really care how the Cubs pen does it, but they’ve been among the best in baseball since the first week. And I don’t care. It’s a bullpen, it doesn’t have to make sense.

-This is the rotation the Cardinals are going to take us down with? Ok.

-Quintana wasn’t as vintage as he’s been this year, but he was able to muscle through it which is a really good sign. Also helps that the Cubs catch everything and play defense all over the field.

-Between Bryant, Heyward, and Baez, Cardinals fans aren’t going to know who to boo when the Cubs go down there later this month. And I’m fine with a team of villains.

Onwards…

 

Baseball

Series Wrap – Sox Lose 3 of 4 to Red Sox: When Fun Turns Into Not Fun

By Andy Jonathan 1606 0

At least the first night was fun, right?  If you didn’t watch another game in this series after Little Nicky Delmonico walked off Ryan Brasier in the 9th inning Thursday night you’d have been so much better off for it. Just when things were kind of sort of looking up, the water went right back to it’s own level. Everything flew off the rails in pretty spectacular fashion, and now somehow the Sox pitching rotation is even worse off than it was before they put Ervin Santana back in the discount aisle where they found him.  There’s a LOT of questions to be answered about this team, and I’m starting to wonder if Ricky Renteria is the guy I want on that wall answering them.

BULLETS

 

-Let’s get the worst thing out of the way: Carlos Rodon is most likely done for the season and headed to meet Dr James Andrews in the Don Cooper Ward at Our Lady Of The Shredded Elbow Hospital.  He left his start on Wednesday after 3.2 innings not looking right at all.  Turns out he wasn’t, as an MRI later revealed he had bleeding in the muscle tissue in his forearm which is usually an indication of a torn UCL.  It’s really getting kind of ridiculous how badly the health of the young Sox pitching talent has gotten.  If Rodon truly does go under the knife for a Tommy John surgery, that would make him the 5th one under the age of 27 to do so in the last 3 years.  Most of it is probably bad luck, but I can’t help but wonder if something was wrong with Rodon Wednesday, why the hell Renteria threw him back out there in the 4th inning?  I know he’s a bulldog and doesn’t wanna come out of games but Ricky’s job here is to protect these players from themselves.  At any rate, this makes an already grim situation worse as it probably means Dylan “Soft Toss” Covey riding in to take his rotation spot.

 

-After this series the Sox added onto their league lead for worst ERA by a starting rotation, all the way up to 6.82.  That is hilariously bad.  I can’t remember in my time as a Sox fan watching a rotation this inept at getting people out.  Even the great starts from these guys don’t make it out of the 6th inning, as we saw with Reynaldo Lopez against the Tigers.  Giolito and Lopez have a tendency to nibble at the strike zone instead of attacking it, and Nova couldn’t find it with a fucking GPS.  The bullpen, while not any great shakes to begin with, is horribly overtaxed and results in the type of outings seen today, where a 2-2 tie turns into a 9-2 loss in the span of an inning.  I’m pretty well done with the whole “Coop’ll fix em” mentality, as he hasn’t been able to bring a young starter along since Sale, and he was basically like “fuck you, I’ll do it myself”.  Knowing Jerry Reinsdorf’s mostly misguided loyalty to his guys, Don Cooper isn’t going anywhere soon but maybe he should be.

 

-Manny Banuelos is going to need some serious therapy after the 3rd inning on Saturday night.  The poor bastard gave up a whopping 9 earned runs on 10 hits in the 3rd as Ricky left him out there to watch the Red Sox lace his offerings off, under and over each outfield fence.  He didn’t even make it out of the inning, and out came former 1st round draft pick Arson Fulmer to hack up another 5 earned in 1/3 of an inning pitched.  What a nice reward to the 30,000+ people in attendance to see such quality major league level pitching.  At least they got an R2-D2 bobblehead to take home with them, so when they look at it they can be reminded of the soothing sound of a baseball traveling at 100+ MPH splashing down in the shitty water feature at the Goose Island Beer Garden.

 

-Moncada has traded places with Jose Abreu now, as he’s gone from taking what the pitcher gives him to trying to pull everything again.  It’s resulted in a lot of weak contact and K’s, and it might be time to give the kid a day off to clear his head.  Abreu meanwhile has been smoking the ball to all corners of the field, and has found his power stroke.  If there’s one positive to take away from the last 3 games this is probably it.  Yonder Alonso sucks.

 

-Tim Anderson’s average is down to .333 and everything is terrible.  Look on the bright side, however!  Friend of Manny and OF professional Jon Jay is on an extended spring training so help is on the way!  At the very least it means I won’t have to watch Adam Engel and his wacky Used Car Blowup Man act in the batter’s box much longer.

-Next up is the Tribe, who just took 2 of 3 from Seattle despite getting Banuelos’ed today 10-0.  They haven’t been hitting all that well, but as the BoSox proved today the White Sox rotation is the perfect medicine for that particular illness.

Everything Else

Brent Burns Is The Worst Defender In The World

By Sam Fels 3168 0

Before the playoffs, SinBin.Vegas (a Knights blog I’ll check out when I need to update myself on said team) wrote a post about how Brent Burns was actually an advantage for them in their series against the Sharks. I thought it was yet another product of unearned arrogance for a team and fanbase that hadn’t even been in existence for two full seasons yet, even though I’ve never really rated Burns defensively either. I figured he could out-produce and out-push whatever mistakes he makes in his own end, as he pretty much does during the regular season.

This has been Burns in the playoffs:

Last night was especially gruesome if you’re a Sharks fan, and truly rewarding if you’re into absurdist theater. Let’s start with Colin Wilson’s goal that pretty much ended Game 4 as a contest:

When Rantanen loses the puck into the slot, you’d assume that Burns would just slap it away on his backhand or smoothly let it roll to his forehand and then skate it out. Instead he attempts…I don’t even know…a Cruyff turn? The result is him banging it off his skates and leaving it right there for Rantanen to get a second bite at it, which left him the space for that incredible pass to Wilson.

That wasn’t Burns’s only hiccup that turned into an aneurysm, in even that period. On Carl Soderberg’s mystifying miss in the 3rd, Burns follows Matt Nieto into the corner with all the passion of getting his license renewed, and then just kind of skates around back up to the circle like a little league outfielder, while Soderberg is just standing at the side of the net waiting to y’know, score. There were at least two or three other instances in just the 3rd period last night where Burns got scorched, or was just loitering around begging for change I assume like North Shore kids in front of The Alley (sky point), or actively running away from where he was supposed to be.

The highlight had to be Sam Girard coming down the middle on a 3-on-2, and Burns on the right side of the two  turning his back on Girard to cover the stationary winger along the boards, who somehow was calculated by Burns with whatever broken slide-rule covered in mustard is in his head to be the bigger threat. Girard faked that pass by like, kind of looking over there and suddenly Burns gave him a runway to the net that O’Hare would pay millions for. It was like when you fake throwing the tennis ball for your dog and they go charging off for five steps and then can’t figure out what they’re doing.

And it’s been like this all playoffs long. All the shit that Erik Karlsson used to get yelled at by red angry men on TSN in the past Burns was actively doing last night and the past three weeks. But because he’s a good Canadian boy it’s rare that this ever gets pointed out. This motherfucker has a Norris! I hate to say Drew Doughty was right, but my lord.

It’s like watching a child lost in the supermarket. You feel sorry for him but at the same time you can’t wait to see how he tries to solve this puzzle. And Burns is just charging through the produce shelves hoping to just run into mom’s knees. You’d think it’s impossible to get this lost in a contained space but Burns seems to find space where there didn’t look to be any space or creates more of it, and all in the wrong way.

It’s honestly been the most fascinating watch in the playoffs. Where will Burns charge off to next? Is he going to be at the circles when the puck is behind the net? Vice versa? Is he going to choose to cover the beer vendor? Will he actually light his beard on fire? You can’t rule any of it out!

It’s just about as freeing an experience in the playoffs. Anything could happen. There is no impossibility when Burns is on the ice. I bet you thought there would never be a rip in the space-time continuum. Buddy, let me tell ya, it could happen. His brains could literally spill out of his ear (which I assume would result in another major to Cody Eakin). He might just leap against the glass like Ron Obvious trying to leap the English Channel. It’s honestly a bucket of rainbows.

Erik Gustafsson must watch Burns and do a Joker impression. “And I thought my jokes were bad.”

Everything Else

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

By John Pullega 1730 0

Carl Dahlstrom is a nice #7 D-man. He’s neither so good nor so bad that you notice him. I would stop the review right there if I could, since that’s about all worth knowing about Dahlstrom, but they’re going to take my thumbs if I don’t expound. So let’s shit on Stan Bowman for a little while.

Stats

38 GP, 0 G, 6 A, 6 P

47.32 CF%, 43.72 xGF% [5v5]

It Comes With a Free Frogurt!

The Hawks had to ask a lot of Donald Dahlstrom in what was technically his second time in the NHL. This is a thing that happens when your GM is too much of a sniveling, mealy-mouthed coward to fire the coach he so desperately wanted to fire before the season began. Never forget that Stan Bowman unironically signed Brandon Manning in a passive-aggressive salvo against Joel Quenneville, leaving Colliton frantically searching for bodies to throw on the blue line in response.

Dahlstrom happened to be one of those bodies.

Given the situations he got thrown into, Dahlstrom was fine. According to Corey Sznadjer (@ShutdownLine) and CJ Turtoro (@CJTDevil), Dahlstrom was good at cutting off play at the blue line this year, but the sample sizes are small, both for this year and his career.

Playing dungeon shifts with Our Large Irish Son, his CF% at 5v5 was 47+. That’s pretty good when you consider that he started just 38+% of his time in the offensive zone.

He played on the PK and was a guy out there, on the ice for 10 PK goals allowed in about 71.5 minutes. He also had the highest PDO among all Blackhawks: 103.8 at evens.

But buddy, if we’re hanging onto an unsustainably high PDO and small-sample-size entry-defense stats as highlights, there’s not much behind the curtain.

Dahlstrom isn’t useless. He played 38 games and was OK. He’ll have a cap hit of $850,000 in each of the next two years. That’s not terrible. He’s a depth guy that should be splitting starts with Seabrook. That’s all.

The Frogurt Is Also Cursed

It’s important to restate that Dahlstrom got thrown into the deep end because Stan Bowman thought it was more important to give Quenneville a defensive monolith than to sign literally any other D-man than Brandon Manning. The only way it might have been worse is if he’d signed Roman Polak, and I assume the only reason he didn’t is because “Ric Flair of the Offseason” Jim Nill managed to get on the phone with him first. Because of that wretched signing and eventual trade, Dahlstrom had to pick up the pieces, and it wasn’t always pretty.

Among all Hawks D-men, Dahlstrom had the worst High-Danger Corsi For percentage at evens, with a 36.92%. That means he was giving up a shit-ton of high-danger shots while he was out there. But given the dungeon shifts he and Murphy were expected to take, typically against better competition, that number makes more sense. It’s still not good, but it’s not as awful as it seems in context.

In trying to think of other examples of any outlandishly bad play, I’ve come up short. He’s not particularly fast, which means he’s more inclined to play conservatively. His conservative play and positioning mean he’s usually not terribly out of position, but it also means he’s never going to contribute offensively. Given Colliton’s lust for run-and-gun, man-to-man defense, it’s hard to picture Dahlstrom having any sustainable success here, outside of spot starting.

Can I Go Now?

Donald Dahlstrom is here for another two years, barring a trade. You’ll hardly ever notice him, given his ghost-like features, and that’s fine.

In an ideal world, he and Seabrook would split starts right down the middle. But that would require Colliton to have the spine to scratch Seabrook, Bowman to have the mental wherewithal to trade for a true #1 D-man rather than vainly and embarrassingly comparing his team to the Islanders, and Brent Seabrook to be the leader everyone trips over themselves to say he is and swallow the scratches for the sake of the team.

I don’t like those odds, and you shouldn’t either.

Previous Player Reviews

Corey Crawford

Cam Ward

Collin Delia

Duncan Keith

Connor Murphy

Henri Jokiharju

Gustav Forsling

Erik Gustafsson

Baseball

Series Preview – Cardinals vs. Cubs: Oh That’s What That Smell Is

By Sam Fels 1470 0

vs.

RECORDS: Cardinals 20-11   Cubs 16-12

GAMETIMES: Friday 1:20, Saturday 3:05, Sunday 6:05

TV: NBCSN Friday, WGN Saturday, ESPN Sunday (Oh boy)

GROSS: Viva El Birdos

PROBABLE PITCHERS

Jack Flaherty vs. Kyle Hendricks

Michael Wacha vs. Yu Darvish

Adam Wainwright vs. Jose Quintana

PROBABLE CARDINALS LINEUP

Matt Carpenter – 3B

Paul Goldschmidt – 1B

Paul DeJong – SS

Marcel Ozuna – LF

Jose Martinez – RF

Yadier Molina – C

Kolten Wong – 2B

Harrison Bader – CF

PROBABLE CUBS LINEUP

Daniel Descalso – 2B

Kris Bryant – 3B

Anthony Rizzo – 1B

Javier Baez – SS

Willson Contreras – C

Ben Zobrist – RF

Kyle Schwarber – LF

Jason Heyward – CF

 

And now to it. The first invasion of the unwashed and illiterate from West East St. Louis, as the Cubs and Cardinals test out each other for the first time at the top of the Central Division. The Cardinals loaded up with Paul Goldschmidt this winter, and while the Brewers may crow about last season, it was the Cubs the Cardinals had in mind for what they had to overhaul. And even with the horrific start, the season’s first month has borne that out.

The Cardinals are baseball’s hottest team at the moment, winning eight of their last 10. Goldy has been the juice to the offense the Cards hoped, as they’re second in runs, third in OBP, and fourth in wOBA. But he’s not doing it alone. Paul DeJong is slugging nearly .600 and playing excellently in the field which is the real upset. Marcell Ozuna has been the player the Cards thought they were trading for last year. Even Dexter Fowler has returned from the dead, or being a sleeper spy, and his managing a 133 wRC+. Goldschmidt is Goldschmidt, and he’ll be in the top-10 of the MVP picture because that’s just a thing that he does.

How much of this is real? Fowler’s .407 BABIP would suggest that’s mirage. DeJong is getting serious rub of the green as well so far. But Wong, Goldy, Ozuna, and even Harrison Bader are probably doing this most if not all the season. The wooden spoon in the lineup so far is former stalwart Matt Carpenter, who has made starting slowly something of a signature move at this point. Then he’ll hit 25 homers June-August before going back into the toilet (really anywhere in STL) for the season’s last month. Also he’s a performance art piece at third.

The rotation though might be as big of a problem as the offense is a force. Flaherty is striking out over 10 hitters per nine, but he can’t seem to keep the ball in the park and he doesn’t get a ton of grounders. His HR/FB rate won’t stay at near 25% all season but seeing as how half the contact he’s giving up has been of the hard variety, this could be a problem all season. Especially if everything is in the air. Adam Wainwright is a million years old and is having some of the same control problems he did last year as he can’t miss bats the way he used to. Michael Wacha is also in need of a GPS, and seems destined to always break your heart (or entertain you endlessly, if you hate the Cardinals like most of the world). Last year’s hero Miles Mikolas can’t get anyone out and is giving up twice the homers he did last year, at least at that pace. Sometimes when you don’t miss bats this is what happens. There’s some asshole named Dakota taking starts. This will be an issue for the Cards all season, even if Mikolas straightens out.

The pen has been able to bail them out. Jordan Hicks is finally more than just a ridiculous fastball that people still hit anyway. John Gant has a 0.90 ERA. Something named John Brebbia has also been a weapon. There are two other guys averaging more than 10Ks per nine innings, and neither of them is Andrew Miller. Miller has been better of late but has spent most of the year spraying deliveries around like an Uzi. Perhaps it was a good idea to not hand him a multi-year deal after he showed decline and injury problems last year.

For the Cubs, they’ll need Hendricks to find it again and Darvish to build on the last four innings of his last outing, otherwise the Cards can sprint out in games in a hurry. Hendricks’s first inning problems against Goldschmidt today isn’t exactly settling the stomach. But the Cubs should also get some runs off this outfit.

A sweep puts the Cubs in first. Just sayin’…