Football

Long Journey to the Middle – Bears Positional Report Cards: Defensive Line – All Sunshine and Rainbows Until Akiem Hicks is Missing

By Wes French 1177 0

2019 is gone and we’re happy to send a lot of the Bears season with it. That isn’t entire the case when you get to the defensive line. The group started strong and battled through an in-season IR stint from team leader Akeim Hicks to produce one career year and plenty of positives to build on.

The Bears playing out of a 3-4 base and guys like Khalil Mack and Leonard Floyd being considered outside linebackers can make this group a little under-appreciated and overlooked on Sundays, but of all the units we’ve been through/still have to go through the DTs might have the best marks on the season.

I would confidently call this unit the best on the team if not for that eight week Hicks absence, the one that kinda sorta kicked off the mid-season spiral to hell…

The Good

Nick Williams had himself a career year at the old (NFL) age of 29. The fifth year veteran hadn’t even dressed for more than five games in a season since his rookie campaign (and even most of the 14 games from that year came via special teams work), but his 2019 saw him arrive in a big way. Williams entered the season with zero career sacks, zero turnovers or turnovers created, zero passes defended and all of 18 tackles over four seasons. His 2019:

So he nearly quadrupled his total tackles, added his first six sacks and his first two fumble recoveries for his entire career in his fifth season. Williams did his best to keep things churning along as the team dealt with long absences from Hicks and Bilal Nichols, but unfortunately his efforts weren’t enough on their own to save the team from the losing streak that sunk the season. Still, Williams at least did enough to get himself paid after taking the minimum and bouncing around the league for a few years (probably outside of Chicago), and we can all be happy about that.

While the team as a whole struggled to put pressure on opposing QBs all season, the D-Linemen accounted for 10.5 sacks among themselves and that’s with Hicks playing a mere third of the season or so. Toss in another dozen or so tackles for loss and you’ve got yourself a pretty steady, rounded rotation. The problem was not enough of the other groups on defense could match the consistency or

The Bad…and Ugly

Williams having a career year was not simply because he announced himself in training camp and stormed out to rule the season from day one. The Bears saw injuries to Hicks and Nichols very early in the season, forcing Williams into a lot of action starting in Week 2 when Nichols broke his hand. Roy Robertson-Harris (2.5 Sacks, 30 tackles) took advantage of the additional playing time as well, not to the tune of Williams but enough to be noticed early as another possible gem found by Pace along the defensive front.

This all quickly went out the window when Hicks left the Week 5 London game and didn’t return until December. For all the positives this group accounted for and next-man-up abilities, missing Hicks shone brightly. Many of the accolades discussed for Williams and Robertson-Harris came early in the season, as neither standout recorded a sack after Week 10. Eddie Goldman is a fine young nose tackle, the type of guy you hardly notice in a good way, and he was impacted by the Hicks injury with his arguably his worst overall season after signing a nice extension last year. Goldman posted his lowest tackle and tackle for loss total in three years and his lowest sack total (1) in his entire five year career.

The long and short of this is that Akiem Hicks is a massive force for this defense, and without him the whole system damn near collapses around itself.

Any Hope?

The team will return a hopefully healthy Hicks and Nichols, Goldman, and holds RFA status on Robertson-Harris. Ryan Pace hasn’t ever gone over an original round tender on an RFA (See Cam Meredith and Bryce Callahan), but with Williams surely gone and a few warm bodies left behind him it probably stands to be worth the additional $1.13M to slap a 2nd round tender on Robertson-Harris and ensure a strong severance should someone want to sign him away.

The real key is making sure Hicks and Nichols are healthy and ready to start 2020 and that they stay that way. If we learned anything in 2019, it’s that Hicks stirs this drink on defense. The EDGE rushers are better with him causing chaos in the middle of the line, which  makes life on the ILBs and secondary easier and leads to many more turnover opportunities and so on. Even with strong replacements on the roster, no one is Akiem Hicks, and it turns out that’s something this Bears team really, really needs.

Final Grade: B-

Baseball

Cubs Trade Tony Kemp, Which Shouldn’t Matter, But Kind Of Does, Which Is Sad

By Sam Fels 1678 0

It’s a minor move, and it was hard to figure where Tony Kemp would fit onto this team anyway. In fact, the whole thing with Kemp was weird, as he was received for Martin Maldonado, whom the Cubs only had for a couple of weeks while Contreras was hurt. And they gave up an actual arm for that, even though Mike Montgomery asked out. But he might have been nice to have when the whole bullpen and rotation was burning in September. Like I said, just weird.

Anyway, Kemp was shipped out to Oak-town for Alfonso Rivas today. Rivas is a mid-level 1st base prospect who apparently can’t hit for power, at least not yet. But hey, that carries on a tradition for the Cubs that started with Mark Grace and extended to Hee-Seop Choi, which Grace is still complaining about. Rivas got about eight games above High-A last year, and probably figures to start in AA this year. Nothing more than a lottery ticket.

While Kemp’s production was never going to be anything, and appears to be the second year in a row the Cubs got fascinated with the idea of a pinch runner for playoff games they ended up never playing, it makes the Cubs bench even uglier. And dear reader, it was ugly before. This is the kind of bench that you’d read the names of to punish your children for breaking the rules of the house.

As it stands: Albert Almora, Victor Caratini, Daniel Descalso, Robel Garcia, and Hernan Perez. That’s one glove, a backup catcher who might be good, a backup infielder who isn’t, a switch hitting Pedro Cerano who’s not nearly as fun, and whatever Hernan Perez can do (i.e. not much).

Some of this will be alleviated if Nico Hoerner can make the team out of Arizona and shift David Bote back to a support role. But if that doesn’t happen, the fear is that the Cubs will face a situation where all their regulars are stepping on their tongues come August and can’t finish the season strongly or at all, like we saw with Baez, Bryant, Rizzo, and one or two others last season. And there isn’t anyone out of Iowa who can help solve this right now.

It doesn’t even help the Cubs on the payroll front, as Kemp wasn’t even arb-eligible so the savings are minimal. Most estimates have the Cubs still $2M-$6M over the $208M threshold, which is clearly where they’re aiming to get under. So how they can improve the bench while still cutting payroll is going to be a neat trick. And by “neat” I mean “awful and probably make you feel bad.”

Of course, a simple trade of Quintana while taking no salary back will solve this, except it would weaken the rotation something fierce. But then again, the Cubs don’t seem to care about that kind of thing. Y’know, the thing where you try to win games, and like a lot of them so you can go to the playoffs and possibly win more games and even like, 11 of them. Did you know they give you a trophy for getting under the luxury tax? Yep, gonna fly that flag right out there in right-center field.

Hockey

Atop the Sugar Pile – Post-Holiday Hangover

By Rose Rankin 1662 0

It’s time again for the good, the bad and the decent in the world of the Blackhawks…

The Dizzying Highs

Dominik Kubalik. With two goals in Saturday night’s win over the Ducks, Kubalik tied Victor Olofsson for the league lead in goals for a rookie. He’s had five goals in his last four games, and in the game before the goal streak began, he had a playmaker with three assists. Kubalik is doing good things away from the puck, too. Tying up the d-men at center ice helped set the stage for Toews’s goal on Saturday, and his possession at evens is at 50.2 CF%, and that’s with less than half of his starts coming in the offensive zone (47.1 oZS%). On a good team, Dominik Kubalik would be a role player on a hot streak. On THIS team, however, he’s an elite player who has firmly earned his place on the top line. But it’s a hot streak nonetheless and the Hawks need all the help they can get.

The Terrifying Lows

Jeremy Colliton. It seems too easy, right? Maybe it is. It’s easy to knock the coach of any team anytime things go sideways, and it’s really easy to knock a neophyte with a turd of a roster that needs to be polished. However, at this point there are serious issues with Jeremy Colliton’s decision-making that any Hawks fan or observer should raise. I’ve railed about them in game wraps recently, so let’s summarize: first, lineup choices. Colliton’s loathing of Dylan Sikura makes no sense. The guy finally popped his scoring cherry and is still in the press box. Ostensibly, this was the complaint about Sikura, although that view just shows you how little the Hawks’ brass values speed in a player. So fine–you hate him. You clearly need to trade him because what good is he if he doesn’t play nor do you get a player you don’t hate to replace him? But by marooning Sikura in the press box, Colliton isn’t even increasing his trade value by showcasing whatever skills he has to less stupid coaches and GMs. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Second, line composition. Again, I’ve bitched about this plenty but the fact remains that Patrick Kane isn’t a third liner and shouldn’t be stuck with Flotsam and Jetsam. Even he can’t make Alex Nylander look good. David Kampf is not a winger and isn’t helping Kirby Dach or Alex DeBrincat, nor is he providing the help at center that the team actually needs. And John Quenneville isn’t an NHL player, much less a top liner. The sensible choice is pretty damn clear (8-19-88; 12-77-95; Kampf centering two oafs; Carpenter centering the remaining two oafs), yet Colliton’s willful ignorance of this–or anything at least close to this–has long passed any excuse of greenness or knowing something that others don’t. It’s just bad coaching. Oh, and he can’t count how many guys are on the ice at a given time either.

The Creamy Middles

Jonathan Toews. If Kubalik wasn’t going off right now, Toews could be considered the team’s best player over these last couple games. He’s had four points in his last two, and he did some standout work defensively on the PK against the Flames earlier in the week. Since the start of the new year, he’s got a 58.2 CF%, which leads all forwards with the exception of Caggiula and Nylander (??), but those two have had exponentially less ice time than Toews. Captain Marvelous has had over 67 minutes on the ice, while Caggiula played 20 minutes in one game and Nylander’s had barely 30 minutes in that time, so they can fuck off.  It’s still a truism that Toews can’t always deliver both offensively and defensively, but recently he’s been managing it, so let’s enjoy it.

Hockey

Game #46: Ducks 2, Hawks 4 – And I’ll Be Satisfied Not To Read In Between The Lines

By Rose Rankin 1955 0

They’re not bad because they’re inconsistent, they’re inconsistent because…well, tonight I won’t bother to finish that sentence. The Hawks beat a crappy team, as they should, so let’s take what we can get, right? To the bullets…

Box Score

Natural Stat Trick

–Early on, it felt like things were going to go off the rails again when Max Jones scored less than five minutes in. But the Hawks righted things well enough, to the point that while their play in the first can’t be described as “good,” it can be described as “not horrible.” Jonathan Toews had a great opportunity where he actually shot the puck through John Gibson‘s five hole but it bounced off the post in some weird quirk of physics. But, he made up for it minutes later with a wrist shot, again five-hole, but buried it straight up. The best part was, he was on a 2-on-1 with John Quenneville and at no time in the entire sequence did he even pretend like he was going to pass it to Quenneville. He was absolutely right in his decision-making, but the lack of even the slightest pretense was great.

–Dominik Kubalik is tied for the league lead in rookie goals. He now has scored five goals in his last four games, two of which came tonight so he was basically the difference maker and was deservedly the first star of the game. The first goal was off a beautiful backhand feed from Patrick Kane, who’s got a six-game scoring streak of his own going, and the second was a tap-in of a rebound off a long shot from Zack Smith. Kubalik has made it impossible for Colliton to reduce his ice time or maroon him in the bottom six, which you could just tell this doofus was itching to do, and that brings joy to my cold, black heart. The team really tried to get him a hat trick with an empty netter, but you know how empty net attempts go for the Hawks. No big deal anyway, Kubalik was great tonight.

–Adam Boqvist had a good night too, or at least, a much better night than his last game. In the second, Keith had his stick vaporize in his hands, giving the Ducks an easy breakaway and Boqvist hustled to strip the puck, bailing out Keith and preventing even a shot on goal. He also generated a chance in the second, which was his only shot of the night but it was the kind of play we’re all looking for–a nice wrister from the dot after a nifty move into the zone. Boqvist finished with just a 41 CF% at evens and had the least ice time of any defenseman, but he was faster and more confident than Thursday against the Predators.

–Connor Murphy, on the other hand, did not have a good night. He gave up a couple bad turnovers, including one that led directly to Jones’s goal. And yet he had a 58 CF% so it wasn’t all bad, but it wasn’t passing the eye test, either.

–Robin Lehner looked excellent in his first game back after a bruised knee or bruised ego or whatever it was. He ended the night with a .946 SV% and made a number of key saves in the third to keep the Hawks in the lead (if the Ducks had tied this oh lord I don’t want to think of how that could have ended). There was a particularly crazy save on Gudbranson early in the third that you’ll see on highlight reels somewhere soon. All the way around, a quality start for Lehner.

–If Olli Maatta scores on you, you know you suck. That’s all I have to say.

They needed to win against this shitty team and they did. It doesn’t mean all their woes are solved but it’s better than losing to a shitty team, no? Onward and upward…

Line of the Night: “Getzlaf had a chance but instead of shooting, he tried to pass.” –Eddie O describing…Ryan Getzlaf’s MO

Beer du Jour: Beach Blonde lager, Crystal Lake Brewing

Hockey

Game #46 – Ducks vs. Hawks Preview: Picking On Your Own Size

By Sam Fels 1361 0

vs.

RECORDS: Ducks 17-22-5   Hawks 19-20-6

PUCK DROP: 7:30

TV: NBCSN Chicago

OC GANGSTAS: Anaheim Calling

After dropping yet another two games against teams they want to catch to barely hang on to the playoff chase, the Hawks get a rare Saturday night home game against one of the few teams in their wake. The Anaheim Ducks are in the middle of the rebuild the Hawks won’t allow themselves to take on, transitioning from the Getzlaf-Perry era to whatever Sam Steel and the rest of the kids can produce.

We’ll start with the Hawks, who are once again trotting out this mess of a lineup. As we said in the lineups post, yes the Hawks have injuries. And yes the roster wasn’t very good to begin with. But this is as mangled group of forwards as you’re likely to ever see. David Kampf is not a winger, much less a scoring winger, and has no business playing with Dach and Top Cat. Patrick Kane is a third-liner with one worker bee in Ryan Carpenter and one dunderhead in Alex Nylander. Dylan Sikura, still better than any of Nylander, Highmore, or Quenneville, has whatever confidence he might have gleaned from breaking his duck (sorry again) by sitting for another game. John Quenneville, whose next contribution that you’d notice will be his first, remains on the top line with Kubalik and Toews.

This is a one line team right now. So make it one. Put Kane up there with Toews and Kubalik and play them 22 minutes. Pair Sikura with Top Cat and Dach to give them speed and something of a puck-winner with skill. Use Kampf and Carpenter and Caggiula as a checking line. Mash a fourth line together and play them sparingly. The answers are simple. None of them have been taken, and it’s no wonder these players refuse to bother until they’re on the verge of getting embarrassed.

Anyway, Lehner starts even though he missed the morning skate as he’s over his knee- or ankle-knack.

Right, to the Ducks. Who suck. Truly down in the muck. Not sure why you should give a fuck? If you’re looking to us for help, you’re out of luck. You’ll see as soon as they drop the puck.

Let us have our fun.

Much like the Hawks, the Ducks are a top-heavy team. When Getzlaf and Silfverberg (who’s hurt anyway) and Henrique are out there, they can control the play. When they’re not, they get crushed. There’s a fair amount of kids out there now, like Steel, Comtois, Jones, Larsson, Ritchie (also hurt) and one or two others. The Ducks have admitted one era is over and it’s time to find the next one.

It’s still a pretty solid blue line with HAMPUS! HAMPUS! and Cam Fowler and Josh Manson (he’s mad…he’s bad…), despite Erik Gudbranson’s best efforts. Jacob Larsson is the kid back there that they will hope rises to meet the other three one days soon.

What the Ducks haven’t gotten is Vezina-level goaltending from Josh Gibson like they did for most of last season before he gave in to exhaustion. Ryan Miller hasn’t been much better, sending him back to his My Bloody Valentine records. Gibson has had it especially rough of late, so maybe Miller gets the start.

The Ducks don’t do anything especially well, but they might be eager to get out there in what could be a rare road win for them. It’s really about keeping their top six from going totally off, and you can do that through matchups if Colliton were ever bothered (he’s not). Toews has almost always caused Getzlaf to shrivel and give up, and probably can still in both of their advanced ages.

And if the Hawks can’t get this one before heading out on the road…well, that’s probably it. It’s probably it anyway.

Hockey

Game #46 – Ducks vs. Hawks Spotlight: Getz Shorty

By Sam Fels 1315 0

In the easiest sense, Ryan Getzlaf’s legacy is more than secure. Other than Teemu Selanne, he’ll go down as the greatest Duck in their history (whatever that’s worth). He’ll be a Hall of Famer, thanks to the 1,000 career points he’ll rack up before too long. It might even be first ballot, buoyed by having two gold medals for Team Canada which is seen as delivering your people out of the desert up there. He’s even got a ring, which came as a second center at a very young age. There’s not much to point to on the surface.

Still, those in the know we’ll say that once this became Getzlaf’s team, once he was the #1 center, he didn’t stand up to be counted when it mattered most. The Ducks managed two conference final appearances in that time, and in those springs he was chucked to the curb by either Jonathan Toews or various Predators. His style of floating around the outside and looking for passes didn’t inspire his team to greater heights. There was never a charge to the middle to get the goal his team had to have, both literally and figuratively. The past 13 seasons since the Ducks won have been short. Even the crosstown Kings have basically erased the memory of the Ducks one championship, and capitulating to Anze Kopitar in their one playoff series doesn’t help much.

And that might be what most remember, the string of Game 7 losses at home (there were five) where Getzlaf wasn’t anywhere to be found. These are the moments that people remember about players, and Getz doesn’t have any. There is symbolism in Toews or Kopitar or even Johansen scoring in those games and Getzlaf just waiting until it was time to grab his golf clubs. Maybe the points and the paycheck were always enough for him. Only he will know.

The Ducks are clearly ready to move on to the next generation, as Sam Steel, Max Comtois, Isac Lundestrom and others are getting serious time. Perhaps there’s one more move to make.

Getzlaf has the option of taking on one more chase for a ring, being that final, veteran piece. He has one year left on his deal after this one, and at the deadline or even in the summer he would still have value to a contender that needs a second line center. One that can flourish if someone else is taking the heavy fire. Getz’s $8.2M hit is big, but not so large that a team couldn’t make it work. The Ducks don’t have a ton of room to absorb some of his salary or take bad money back, but it’s it can be worked.

Is that what Getzlaf wants? The word on the street is that he’s always been happy to be out of a spotlight in Orange County, and you can’t argue with being warm all the time and amassing points that don’t matter beyond scrutiny of a ravenous fandom and media. You get the impression a market like Toronto or Boston or Vancouver would eat him alive. It would for a lot of players. After all he has accomplished and the money he’s made, you can certainly see why he feels he can duck it (sorry).

And those questions will certainly fade when he retires, which could be as soon as summer 2021 when that contract runs out. They’ll just see the statsheet. Will Ducks fans themselves think there should have been more? Perhaps with another bounce or two, or more inspiring performances from Getzlaf, they could have won in ’15 or ’17 or even ’14. Maybe it was always the goalies’ fault. That would be his and Bruce Boudreau’s argument.

A ring, two gold medals, 1,000 points. It doesn’t sound like a disappointment. But if that’s how it ends, it probably should be, just a little bit.

Hockey

Game #46 – Ducks vs. Hawks: Hedley Lamarr’s Mugs, Pugs, And Thugs

By Sam Fels 1234 0

Erik Gudbranson – It’s actually surprising this wasn’t the pylon the Hawks opted for in the summer. He would have fit right in. Gudbranson is the perfect Tallon player, in that he’s big, slow, and dumb, and sunk the Panthers and Canucks in his past. But the most frustrating thing is that this Mongo kept Olli Maatta out of the lineup in Pittsburgh, and the Hawks thought that qualified to give up Dominik Kahun (three assists last night) for. The Hawks opted for a player worse than Erik Gudbranson, at least in the eyes of a more successful organization than them right now.

Ryan Getzlaf – They say Kirby Dach could be a young Getz. That’s the last thing you’d want, because if he spends his career loitering around the outside and taking his 75 easy points without ever getting between the circles when it matters, the Hawks will go nowhere for a long time. Thankfully, it hasn’t looked like that at all. Yet.

Max Comtois – Sounds like something you need three drinks before getting the courage to ask your girlfriend to do it.

Hockey

Game #46 – Ducks vs. Hawks: Lineups & How They Were Built

By Sam Fels 1020 0

Ducks

Notes: Lot of kids in the lineup these days for the Ducks, as they look to move on to the next generation. Seven players 25 or under in the lineup…Gibson has had a rough start to January with an .885…Getzlaf has one goal since December 6th…That top line has been utterly dominant in their brief time together…but good lord those bottom six metrics…

Hawks

Notes: Here we are with this dumbass lineup again. David Kampf is not a winger, much less a scoring winger. Qunneville on the top line. Erasing all the confidence Sikura might have gained from his first goal by sitting him behind Nylander, Quenneville, and Highmore who are all terrible. Kane trying to make something with Carpenter and Nylander. You can say the Hawks are injured, and they are. You can say the roster wasn’t good enough to begin with, and it wasn’t. But this is absolutely the worst way to deploy it and not giving it its best chance.

Baseball

Trading Quintana, DH, Other Stuff

By Sam Fels 1776 0

Dreary Fridays lend themselves to notes and the like. So we’ll do that for baseball too today.

-As the Cubs still look for ways to dig under the luxury tax threshold like Fantastic Mr. Fox, one option that will probably gain steam (if it hasn’t already) is moving along Jose Quintana. It certainly wouldn’t cause the hysteria that a trade of Kris Bryant or Willson Contreras would. Q doesn’t have the same sheen as those in the eyes of Cubs fans, mostly because he walked into Theo Epstein’s office in July of 2017 with a shotgun and made him give up Dylan Cease and Eloy Jimenez for him, both of whom has since shot to multiple All-Star game appearances

Wait, I’m being told that’s not what happened. Huh.

Anyway, the actual act of finding takers for Quintana should be far easier than for Bryant and Contreras and their rightly astronomic prices. Quintana does make essentially nothing for this season–$10.5M–which for a #3 or #4 starter is still a bargain. and Q was a little better by some metrics than you might think, with a FIP under 4.00 and a fWAR of 3.5 (much higher than Darvish, to illustrate). Teams are going to want that.

Still, on the other side of the coin, there’s something more depressing about trading Q. With Bryant and to a lesser extent Contreras, while the main goal has always been the money there was a companion argument of replenishing the pipeline with some arms the Cubs simply don’t have and at least providing more that will be here after 2021. If you squinted, you could see the benefits of it while acknowledging they don’t come close to outweighing the drawbacks.

But with Q, you feel it’s just a salary dump. Surely you wouldn’t get anything in the rotation in return that was cheaper, unless it was a flier on some prospect or two. And they almost certainly wouldn’t be anywhere near major league ready. Which means you would have stripped your rotation even further, and the rotation wasn’t good enough last year after Hamels got hurt. Which means you rotation would be the Kyle Hendricks (pretty much a known at this point), the hope that Yu Darvish’s second half is the new normal, the four-to-five innings you’re getting out of Jon Lester at 36, and then praying to whatever god happens to be listening at that moment (hat tip to The Dag for that one, and also hit me up).

Doesn’t really feel like you’re going anywhere with that, does it?

Even sadder, there hasn’t been any mention of the Cubs getting below the the luxury tax this year so they can spring out ahead of it the following season with no repeater penalties, as the Yankees and Dodgers have done in recent years. You would think the theory was that by that time the money from Marquee would allow the Cubs to do that, except now the prevailing wisdom is that they’ve royally boned this whole network thing, sparked by not having a deal with Comcast yet, and that windfall might never actually come. Say, why does Crane Kenney still have a job?

The fear is that the Cubs will always want to be below the luxury tax, which means they might lose more than you already thought they were going to before the Free Agent-acolypse of the winter of ’21-’22. Or at least until we know what a new CBA looks like, which means the Cubs might be half-assing two seasons instead of one. That’s fun.

Of course, there’s always the hope the Cubs could make a baseball trade for Quintana, or at least use what little wiggle room it would give them to bolster this year’s roster with…well, maybe it’s best to not look at what’s still available. This was all well-timed.

-Kris Bryant and the Cubs settled for $18.6M and avoided arbitration. Hopefully this isn’t the last time they talk, and that money is going to seem a complete joke if he stays healthy all season and put up another 7-WAR season.

-Jayson Stark was having some fun today about predictions for the coming decade, and one idea I’ve kicked around here before. It’s bringing a modified DH to the NL and AL, where your DH stays in the game as long as your starter does. Basically instead of one guy hitting for a spot, he hits for a specific player. From there, you’d have to pinch-hit for every reliever or let them hit for themselves.

It seems to split the happy medium of those who cling to the “strategy” of the NL game and those who have no need to see pitchers hit anymore. How long do you leave your starter in? If he’s getting torched and has to go in the 2nd, how do you stretch your bench throughout the rest of the game? Would relievers who can go multiple innings be even more valuable? Could you leave in another DH for a reliever who does go two or three innings and whose spot comes up multiple times? Would this end the idea of an opener?

To me all those questions are kind of exciting. Certainly with a 26-man roster now the answers are a little more available. I hope this is what they go to soon.

-There’s also a bit about automated strike zones, and how they zone will probably have to be amended to deal with the strict interpretation that cameras would give you. I say “FUCK. THAT.” The example Stark uses is a pitch that nicks the bottom of the zone and a catcher catches an inch off the ground.

But that’s been the problem. Strike calls shouldn’t have anything to do with where the catcher catches it. Hitters shouldn’t even be looking at that, and neither should umps. That’s where the zone is, so adjust. It might lead to some ugly arguments or controversy for a couple months, but you’d get past it. I suppose it won’t be the end of the world if the zone is moved to the top of the knees or wherever, but the idea that we’ll all lose our shit because of where the catcher catches a pitch is the exact problem we’re trying to solve.