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

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

    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

  • Don’t Bore Us Get To The Chorus – Round 2 Weekend 2

    Don’t Bore Us Get To The Chorus – Round 2 Weekend 2

    Every morning, we cut right to the heart of the previous night’s, or weekend’s action. 

    Carolina eliminates Islanders: Good fuckin’ riddance.

    Boston takes 3-2 lead on Columbus: What the fuck ever.

    St. Louis and Dallas tied at 3: Fucking torture.

    San Jose leads Colorado 3-2: Fuckin’ yeah buddy.

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

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

    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…

     

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

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

    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.

  • Brent Burns Is The Worst Defender In The World

    Brent Burns Is The Worst Defender In The World

    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.”

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

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

    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

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

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

    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’…

  • Don’t Bore Us Get To The Chorus – Round 2 Night 9

    Don’t Bore Us Get To The Chorus – Round 2 Night 9

    Every morning, we cut right to the heart of what happened in last night’s playoff action.

    Boston ties Columbus at 2-2: Fucking done with both of these teams. Fucking end it.

    Colorado ties San Jose at 2-2: Brent Burns if fucking terrible.

  • Lester, Lester…The Bounce-Back We’ve Been After?

    Lester, Lester…The Bounce-Back We’ve Been After?

    It does sound a little weird to say Jon Lester was in need, or even close to needing, a bounce-back season. After all, a 3.32 ERA last year and an 18-6 record would suggest that things went pretty ok (and if you’re Phil Rogers, you would say they definitely did, before pining for Curtis Granderson again). But as I wrote extensively during the 2018 season, Lester did an awful lot of dancing through and over the flames, and can thank whatever shaman he employed for getting him through the campaign with those numbers and not whiplash from turning around frequently.

    Lester’s strikeout-rate was a career-low last year, and his walk-rate the highest in seven seasons. He gave up a ton of hard contact, and when you combined his walk-rate with his hard-contact rate–essentially the two things a pitcher can control–he was in the bottom third of the league. Basically, the Cubs superior defense pulled his ass out of a sling a good portion of the time, and when they didn’t Lady Luck was the one reaching over the cliff and grabbing his wrist.

    So when PECOTA and other projection systems had the Cubs belching up noxious gases this season, you could certainly see why, once you were done choking on your fan-rage, particularly when it came to Lester. Surely luck wouldn’t be so friendly without exacting a bounty soon after.

    And yet Lester has burst out of the gate this year, with a 1.73 ERA, 0.96 WHIP, and a 3.35 FIP which is much more in line with his 2016 season that saw him in the top-three for Cy Young voting. Granted, it’s only five starts, with two abridged due to either injury or a return from same, but how did we get here?

    Well, for one, Lester is still getting luck to be on his side, and violently so. Hitters have only managed a .231 BABIP against him, which is some 66 points below his career-average. And it’s not like Lester has found some elixir to softer contact that might produce a lower BABIP, like Hendricks does when he’s on song. In fact, Lester is giving up aggressively more hard contact than he did last year, 41% this term compared to 31.9% last year. So yeah…that’s going to be an issue. On hard-contact alone, batters against Lester have only managed a .280 BABIP, when the rest of his career for Lester that mark is usually .370 or higher. A reckoning could be coming.

    Second, Lester has a 96% left-on-base percentage, which means whatever runners are getting on are getting stuck out there. League average on this is somewhere around 72-73%, and Lester’s career-mark is 75%. Sequencing has also been a friend to him (so many friends!). This won’t last, though twice in his Cubs career Lester has managed an 80+% LOB%, so it might not come down as aggressively as it would for others, or his BABIP.

    But hey, let’s be fair. It’s good to be positive. Lester’s K/9 is up to levels not seen since 2010, and his BB/9 is down almost a full walk. That’s good, and not due to luck. That’s what a pitcher controls best, after all. So why should that be?

    There is a slight change in approach, as Lester is throwing more cutters than he ever has. Lester used to keep his cutter-usage to around a quarter of the time, give or take. This year it’s been a third of his pitches, purely at the expense of his four-seam fastball. And he’s using it differently. Here’s where Lester has generally thrown his cutter over his career:

    Almost exclusively in at the hands and ankles of righties. Now this year:

    Both sides of the plate, as Lester basically morphs into late-career Tom Glavine. Now, it’s not as if Lester has had pure success out there, as this chart of slugging against him on that cutter shows (again, very limited sample):

    But having to account for the outside corner has kept the inside a valuable place for Lester to go, and hitters can’t just key on there and get the hips open and such.

    Another small change Lester has made is getting ahead of hitters. He’s lifted his first-strike percentage so far to 62%, the kind of numbers he hit in his first two years with the Cubs but had gotten away from the last two.

    So there are some things to he encouraged by, and some things to be wary of. I would guess somewhere around here soon, Lester is going to get paddled around in a start. But he’s also smart enough to keep dancing through the flames. Now let’s all take a moment to picture Lester dancing. Ok, that’s enough.

  • Series Preview – Red Sox vs. White Sox: The Champ Is Here…And It’s A Mess

    Series Preview – Red Sox vs. White Sox: The Champ Is Here…And It’s A Mess

    vs.

    RECORDS: Red Sox 14-17   White Sox 13-15

    GAMETIMES: Thursday and Friday at 7:10, Saturday 6:10, Sunday 1:10

    TV: WGN Thursday, NBCSN Friday-Sunday

    FRUSTRATED WOMEN: Over The Monster

    PROBABLE PITCHERS

    David Price vs. Lucas Giolito

    Chris Sale vs. Reynaldo Lopez

    Eduardo Rodriguez vs. Manny Banuelos

    Rick Porcello vs. TBD (most likely Dylan Covey, or Dylan Arrieta to Fifth Feather)

    PROBABLE RED SOX LINEUP

    Andrew Benintendi – LF

    Mookie Betts – RF

    J.D. Martinez – DH

    Xander Bogaerts – SS

    Rafael Devers – 3B

    Michael Chavis – 2B

    Mitch Moreland – 1B

    Christian Vasquez – C

    Jackie Bradley Jr. – CF

    PROBABLE WHITE SOX LINEUP

    Leury Garcia – LF

    Tim Anderson – SS

    Jose Abreu – DH

    James McCann – C

    Yoan Moncada – 3B

    Jose Rodon – 2B

    Yonder Alonso – 1B

    Ryan Cordell – RF

    Adam Engel – CF

     

    After digging through the muck of the Tigers and Orioles for a couple weeks, the White Sox get to…dive back into the much that the Red Sox have been for the season’s first month.

    The Beantown Nine have pulled this act before. They won the World Series in ’13, and then were so bad the following season they ended up punting Jon Lester among others midseason. Apparently the party never stops in Boston when they win…except for the Patriots who aren’t allowed to party by Bill Belichek. It actually took the Red Sox two years to round back into form after the last championship, making the playoffs the last three years, and BoSox fans can only hope they’ll come around a touch quicker this time.

    Maybe they already are. They come to the Southside after sweeping the equally struggling A’s at home the past three days. They put up 21 runs over those three games, so the hope would be that the offense is finally clicking into gear. Because really, there’s no way this lineup should be struggling to put together innings. And yet here the Carmines sit at 10th in runs in the AL, 9th in OBP, and 10th in wOBA.

    Where the blame goes is probably the supporting cast. Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts are hitting, and Betts being a perennial MVP candidate you’d figure that. So’s J.D. Martinez. But Devers has shown very little power this year, as it’s never a good sign when your on-base is higher than your slugging. Second base has been something of a sinkhole, though Michael Chavis is putting in a strong claim at the moment. Benintendi isn’t really hitting yet and Moreland has only been ok.

    The problems just don’t end there. The rotation has been a quasi-zoo. Chris Sale can’t decide if he wants to throw not hard enough or too hard to compensate, and has been getting paddled either way to the tune of a 6.30 ERA and a 5.22 FIP. Natha Eovaldi is hurt, because guys throwing max effort 97 MPH fastballs pretty much every pitch aren’t all that stable. Who knew? Rick Porcello himself has been gasoline, and one day may end up the weirdest goddamn Cy winner in history. The dude won it and hasn’t managed a sub-4.00 ERA since. How did that happen? Only David Price and Eduardo Rodriguez are holding this rotation together.

    The pen has been middling, though hasn’t really missed being shorn of Craig Kimbrel or Joe Kelly (who sucks anyway). The Red Sox are big proponents of finding just any dude lingering around to fill out the pen. So far, Matt Barnes, Marcus Walden, and Brandon Workman have been excellent out of there, and the only people who recognize them are their mothers and even they’re not totally sure. Ryan Braser is the closer here, and he’s got six saves, but he allows more contact than most closers, only striking out a touch over seven hitters per nine. Heath Hembree and Tyler Thornburg are where you’d like to break through.

    For the pale version of footwear, Lucas Giolito comes off the DL to start the opener, and hoping to be a touch better than his last three starts had him. Reynaldo Lopez looks to keep his momentum going, and everyone else just exhales in not having to watch Ervin Santana again. Weather could play a role again as tonight’s forecast is iffy, but the rest of the weekend looks better than it’s been. The Red Sox probably think this is their chance to really springboard into the rest of the season. The White Sox are probably just happy to not be super depressed by looking into the other dugout.