An NBA Owner Provides

And he does it even when he's not appreciated, or respected, or even loved. He simply bears up and he does it. Because he's an owner of a local basketball team.









The Hawks have been purchased by Gus Fring! I can hardly contain my excitement! I've been in a major Breaking Bad phase this summer as Mrs. B&B and I have ploughed through the first three seasons and asked ourselves the same question that we asked last summer when we were catching up on Mad Men: what took us so long? I have been ruminating on an "SEC Coaches as Breaking Bad characters" post (Gus is obviously Nick Saban, Bobby Petrino is Tortuga, Les Miles is Tuco, Houston Nutt is Saul Goodman, Mark Richt is Walter White [with 2007 Evil Richt as Heisenberg], etc.), but now, Atlanta Spirit has saved me the trouble by selling the team to a Latino restauranteur.* If only Alex Meruelo were from Chile instead of Cuba. Josh Smith might want to keep an eye out for boxcutters in the dressing room if he keep hoisting up 21-footers early in the shot clock.

* - Because a sample size of one tells me that people from Southern California can be prickly about analogies made for rhetorical or humorous purposes, let me make clear that I am not accusing Meruelo of being a psychopath like Gus Fring, nor am I making the claim that his other business interests include an industrial cleaning facility with a meth lab in the basement. I heard Pizza Loca and immediately thought of Pollos Hermanos.

As far as my actual opinion of the purchase, it sounds good. Anything is better than the irretrievably broken Atlanta Spirit. The Hawks might get some local goodwill as a result of a new ownership face. They can certainly use the boost after a disappointing year at the box office. I have little time for the idea that team ownbership requires one face. The Braves' solid performances over the past two years on mid-level payrolls illustrates that corporate ownership can be just fine. Conversely, the people who claim that they wish that the Braves had an Arthur Blank-style face of the franchise might consider that Jerry Jones and Dan Snyder are also the faces of their franchises. That said, Atlanta Spirit was a disaster, so Meruelo is a welcome addition. As long as he has the money to run the team without cutting corners, then I'm happy. The story that he started with one pizza restaurant when he was 21 and turned it into a business empire speaks well to his acumen.

Hopefully, that acumen has identified the Hawks as a neglected asset. For most of its history, the franchise has struggled to convert its place as Black Hollywood's home team into butts in the seats. Atlanta remains a good basketball town and a very good NBA market without being crazy about the Hawks. The roster is fairly good, outside of the colossal disaster that is Joe Johnson's contract. If Jeff Teague's playoff burst is not ephemeral, then the Hawks have a good starting lineup, a notch below Miami and Chicago, but not too shabby. The team lacked depth last year, which is a problem that an emotionally invested owner with a checkbook can remedy. Also, if a new labor deal has retroactive effect to erase (or at least ameliorate) insane agreements like the Johnson deal, then Meruelo will be in great shape. Mike's services will not be required.

Brady Hoke and Mahmoud Ahmadinedaj

The complaints of Michigan fans about Lloyd Carr seem quaint at best after the Rodriguez-apocalypse, but this seems like a good time to revisit the primary gripe, which was the existence of the “non-scoring offense.” Carr’s teams had two offenses. The first was the offense that was actually designed to maximize scoring. This offense would come out when the team was behind and/or playing an opponent that frightened the coaching staff. The second offense was a bland disaster that would be deployed against inferior opponents and/or when Michigan had leads (and not necessarily substantial leads, at that). In the last two years of Carr’s tenure, the non-scoring offense was marked by endless zone left runs where Mike Hart would predictably get the ball, take it behind Jake Long, and then find 11 defenders waiting for him. It was the existence of the two offenses that led to one of the more amazing stats of Carr’s tenure: Michigan was more likely to win a game when trailing by one score going into the fourth quarter than they were when they were leading by one score in the same situation. (HT: I Blog for Cookies.) In retrospect, Michigan fans (and I include myself in this group) should have given Carr more credit for recruiting great offensive players and overseeing the implementation of a scoring offense that could be so successful against top opposition. Instead, we took that for granted and griped about the fact that Carr seemingly chose not to maximize the potential of his offenses.

Here is what I wrote about the “scoring offense” phenomenon in 2008*:

There are a number of reasons why Michigan fans were not overly upset to see Lloyd Carr retire despite the fact that he had a good record in Ann Arbor. One of the most prominent reasons was Lloyd's tendency to make each game a self-fulfilling prophecy. Lloyd assumed that most games would be decided in the fourth quarter. He perpetually underrated the talent advantage that his teams had over most of the team's on their schedules. (Lloyd does deserve credit for recruiting well and creating the talent advantages in the first place.) Thus, Michigan would employ sub-optimal offensive strategies (read: running between the tackles and horizontal passing) until threatened, at which point Michigan would use its best assets: NFL-caliber quarterbacks, wide receivers, and offensive linemen in a spread passing attack. If Lloyd would have used the Citrus Bowl offense that ripped Florida to shreds as the team's base offense, then the Appalachian State debacle never would have happened. If he would have used the spread passing attack with Tom Brady as the base offense in 1999 instead of giving the ball to Anthony Thomas 25 times per game from the offset I, then Michigan wouldn't have played nine games decided by one score (nine!?!) with a future NFL Hall of Famer under center.

* – That post should be interesting to Georgia fans in retrospect. The impetus for writing it came from Georgia eking past the inept 2008 Auburn team on the Plains. In it, I found that Georgia was more likely to play close games than other top programs (five per year during the Richt era) and they had a very good 26-14 record in games decided by one score. 2009 continued with this pattern, as Georgia went 4-2 in one-score games, but then 2010 was completely against type as Georgia went 1-4 in such games (and that doesn’t include the losses at South Carolina and Mississippi State, both of which were tight games that were ultimately decided by more than one score). The 2010 team was completely against type for Mark Richt. That ought to be encouraging for Georgia fans going into 2011.

Well, meet the new boss, same as the old boss:

Possessing the ball, running it, and taking care of the football is an important part of team's success. "Mike Martin I'm sure would love to get zone-blocked all day long."[ed: bler.] The pro-style offense brings a different physical aspect that helps build team toughness. They need to hold onto the ball to help the defense, and the pro-style offense brings that. "We like points, don't get me wrong," they aren't going to hold the offense back from scoring, though, except in end-game situations.

“We like points, don’t get me wrong.” The fact that Hoke feels it necessary to include that caveat is telling. You know how you can tell that something insulting is coming as soon as someone starts a statement with “with all due respect”? You know how someone is about to whine when they say “I’m not a whiner, but…”?* You know how you know that something racist is coming when someone says “I’m not prejudiced, but…”? (Some of my high school classmates were masters of this technique. My ears always perked up when I heard it so I could have a reminder as to why I was supporting Bill Clinton.) The fact that the speaker has to make a disclaimer is the giveaway.

* - Heath Evans used that clause in the aftermath of the 200 Citrus Bowl as a prelude to claiming that the Michigan offensive linemen must have been holding because Michigan was able to run the ball on Auburn. Yes, Heath, an offensive line with one future NFL perennial All Pro (Steve Hutchinson) and two future NFL starting tackles (Jeff Backus and Maurice Williams), all blocking for a future NFL offensive rookie of the year (Anthony Thomas) had to hold to run the ball. How was a Michigan team with that amount of offensive talent in the Citrus Bowl with an 8-3 record? Take a look at the start of this post.

College football is great for a host of reasons, one of which is the scarcity of product. We only get three months and change of games, so we go crazy in anticipation. By August, we are totally stir-crazy, like kids at the end of a car trip, and we end up over-analyzing every utterance of our coaches. In the same way that foreign policy analysts pore over the statements of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and opine on the implications of his statements for the rivalry between Iran and Israel, people like me look for evidence of a head coach’s style based on tiny snippets of press conferences. In both cases, we ask the questions like “does he really mean this or is he just saying it for domestic political consumption?” and “surely he realizes that this is a terrible idea, right?” We do this because what else is there to discuss in August?

SEC Football Started in 2006? Who Knew?

Heisman Pundit, allow me to introduce you to Stephen Orr Spurrier.  For ease of reference, here is his Wikipedia page.  You may remember him from such awards as the 1966 Heisman Trophy, the 1988 and 1989 ACC Coach of the Year, and the 1990, 1991, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2005, and 2010 SEC Coach of the Year.  I suggest that you familiarize yourself with Mr. Spurrier’s body of work because you attempt to tell the recent offensive history of the SEC without reference to Spurrier.  This is a little like telling the story of the Civil War without mentioning Abraham Lincoln.

Heisman Pundit’s thesis is that everything changed for the SEC when Urban Meyer came into the league because Meyer brought the spread offense with him.  With a keen ability to confuse correlation and causation, HP then claims that the league’s five straight national titles is the direct result of the spread’s arrival.  This argument is wrong for a variety of reasons:

1. Urban Meyer won his first national title in 2006 with a stumbly-wumbly version of the spread that never scored more than 28 points in any SEC game.  Florida was out-gained on a per-play basis by LSU, coordinated by Jimbo Fisher whom HP thinks is a dolt, and equalled on a per-play basis by an Arkansas offense that HP dismissed at the time as a high school offense.  (Funny how things have changed now for Gus Malzahn, the offensive coordinator of that team who feuded with the rest of the staff, and David Lee, who came up with the Wildcat concept for that team.)  Meyer’s first national title came not as a result of his offensive scheme, but rather because of other strengths as a coach, such as making good staffing decisions on the defense, as well as the good fortune of following a head coach who was a very good recruiter. 
2. Les Miles won the national title in 2007 with a gumbo of offensive concepts, coordinated by a guy whom HP and I would agree is no savant.
3. Nick Saban won the national title in 2009 with a pro-style offense that HP tries to shoehorn into his world of sophisticated offenses by confusing formations with schemes, thus rendering the distinction between offenses meaningless.  (If use of the Pistol and Wildcat is evidence of a spread offense, then so would use of a shotgun, four-wide formation.)
4. HP tried to dismiss the SEC has having won only two national titles in the seven years before Meyer’s arrival.  However, the seven-year period in question also saw Auburn go unbeaten and not get a shot at the title (I assume that HP thinks that Al Borges runs a sophisticated offense, as evidenced by the fact that he listed Brady Hoke as one of the ten best coaches in college football and Hoke relies on Borges for his offenses) and Georgia go 13-1 and meet the same fate.  Both Auburn and Georgia were simply unlucky in that they had great seasons in years in which two major powers went unbeaten.  The seven-year period also includes the 2001 Florida team that was one of the best teams of the decade, but managed to lose two games because of a weak defensive coordinator (I thought that SEC teams only lost in this period because of backwards offenses?) and Ernest Graham getting hurt twice.

The funny thing is that HP could actually tell the story he’s trying to spin if he set 1990 as his starting point instead of 2005.  When Steve Spurrier came to the conference, it was in the throes of basic I-formation football.  The 80s were dominated by Vince Dooley early and Pat Dye late, with Johnny Majors having some success sprinkled in the middle.  Running and defense was the dominant style.  Spurrier’s passing attack took the conference completely by storm and his teams proceeded to finish first in the conference for six of the next seven years.  Spurrier’s success led the rest of the league to innovate, with such examples as the Hal Mumme/Mike Leach Air Raid offense at Kentucky, Auburn going spread-ish with Dameyune Craig, and Tennessee modernizing its offense with David Cutcliffe.  Spurrier had a massive impact on the SEC and opponents either imitated or died.  Thus, the conference that Urban Meyer joined 15 years after Spurrier’s arrival was anything but the backwater that HP imagines.

Two other unrelated notes:

1. HP thinks that Florida is insane to turn its offense over to Charlie Weis, but he also holds Bobby Petrino in high regard.  Schematically speaking, how much difference is there between the Petrino and Weis offenses?  When answering this question, consider Mike Lombardi’s statement that Petrino’s offense is the closest simulation to modern NFL offenses.

2. In the realm of statements that reflect that HP doesn’t understand his own purported specialty, check out this gem:

If John Brantley couldn’t complete throws in a passing scheme as simple as Urban Meyer’s spread, I’m not sure how he’s suddenly going to do so in the far-more-complicated Charlie Weis system.

The Meyer/Rodriguez/Kelly variant of the spread has simple passing concepts because of the running threat that it poses.  Specifically, the offense is so good at running the ball based on its ability to use the quarterback as a runner and therefore outnumber the defense in the box that it causes opposing safeties to freak out.  Thus, receivers are open and quarterbacks have easy throws to make.  This is how Alex Smith because the top pick in the draft.  The offense didn’t work with Brantley because Brantley can’t run and therefore, receivers weren’t as open as they were for Tim Tebow.  (The comic stylings of Steve Addazio were also a factor in the Florida offensive Gotterdammerung.) Weis’s offense does not rely on the quarterback as a running threat in order to pressure a defense, so it ought to be a better fit for Brantley.  If producing NFL busts by making quarterbacks look much better than they are is the measure of a good college offensive mind, then Weis is right up there with Jeff Tedford.*

* – This argument would have worked better before Aaron Rodgers.

A Centerfielder Who Gets On Base!?! Where’s the Fainting Couch!?!

Frank Wren came towards the trading deadline with a team in dire need to a centerfielder who can hit.  The Braves have trotted out two players at the position during the year: Nate McLouth, whose production at the plate is average at best and who is a below-average defender in center, and Jordan Schafer, who cannot get on-base, but does add good defense.  Faced with an obvious weakness and armed with a deep farm system that is both a blessing and a curse at the trading deadline (a blessing for obvious reasons; a curse because potential trading partners know what the Braves have and therefore demand a higher price, not unlike trying to scalp a ticket with hundred-dollar bills peeking out of one’s pockets), Wren addressed the team’s need by fleecing the Astros for Michael Bourn.  Bourn gets on-base, he is one of the best base-stealers in baseball, and he is an above-average defender at a premium position.  For the first time since Rafael Furcal was playing for the team, the Braves have a true leadoff hitter.  And given Fredi Gonzalez’s insistence on playing fast guys in the lead-off spot, regardless of whether they can get on base, it’s critical that the Braves have a guy who fits the bill.

The reaction to the trade has been uniformly positive.  Here is David Schoenfield explaining that Bourn is a better player than Hunter Pence if we use wins over replacement as the measuring stick:

FanGraphs.com and Baseball-Reference.com calculate WAR in different ways, but both rate Bourn as the more valuable player since 2009:

FanGraphs WAR, 2009-2011
Bourn: 13.3
Pence: 9.9

Baseball-Reference WAR, 2009-2011
Bourn: 11.8
Pence: 6.4

The differences in value primarily come from different methods in evaluating fielding (FanGraphs likes both players' defense better than B-R).

You don't have to agree with or even like the WAR statistic. It's just a tool -- a very good one, in my opinion -- in evaluating player performance. I think the main confusion or disagreement comes in understanding the position importance. Bourn is compared to other center fielders; Pence to other right fielders.

For example, here are Bourn's 2010 and 2011 average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage lines compared to the average National League center fielder:

Bourn 2010: .265/.341/.346
NL CF 2010: .260/.329/.406

Bourn 2011: .303/.363/.403
NL CF 2011: .267/.336/.417

And here's Pence compared to the average National League right fielder:

Pence 2010: .282/.325/.461
NL RF 2010: .264/.334/.443

Pence 2011: .307/.355/.468
NL RF 2011: .265/.338/.437

That's a bunch of numbers, but it translates to: Bourn gets on base more than the average center fielder. So despite his lack of power, he's still a productive hitter for the position (more so in 2011). Pence is hitting better this year but overall he's about league average or slightly above for his position.

I was going to look at these numbers, but Schoenfield crunched them for all of us.  Braves fans should be very familiar with the premium placed on players who can both hit and run enough to play centerfield.

Here is Jayson Stark listing the Braves as one of the winners at the trade deadline:

They lost out on Pence. They got outbid on Carlos Beltran. The best bats on the market were dropping off the board. So the pressure was mounting on the Braves this weekend, not just to keep up with the Phillies and Giants, but to make a move that made a real impact.

Enter Michael Bourn. Take a guy who has a .354 on-base percentage, add him to an offense whose leadoff hitters ranked 26th in baseball in OBP 'til he showed up and see what happens.

Now consider the lineup-changing effect of Bourn's 32-SB wheels (injected into a roster that had swiped 42 all year). And, finally, add in his top-of-the-charts defense. And this was a monster of a deal, especially considering the Braves were able to make it without giving up any of the elite pitching prospects they had balked at trading for Beltran or Pence.

If Bourn fits in and does what he was imported to do, said one scout, "this team is going to be dangerous."

Now, it bears mentioning that Stark has both the Giants and Phillies listed as winners at the trade deadline.  Thus, by improving the team, the Braves essentially stayed in place relative to two other prime contenders in the National League.  That said, the Braves paid less of a price than the Giants and Phillies did, hence the plaudits for Frank Wren.

And speaking of that price, here is Keith Law savaging the Astros and salving the consciences of Braves fans that the team gave up too much ($):

Bourn's best tool is his glove -- he covers a ton of ground in center and is one of the league's best half-dozen or so defenders at the position. At the plate he has almost no power, but despite that can at least foul off better fastballs that beat most zero-power hitters, and he draws enough walks to keep his OBP up over .340; his OBP of .363 this year would be third in Atlanta's lineup. Bourn is probably worth more than a win to the team during the rest of the regular season, but this move looks like it's more about improving run prevention in the postseason while reducing the number of automatic outs in Atlanta's lineup by one. He's under control through 2012, solving one position for the team for next year as well.

The return for Houston, however, is shockingly poor -- quantity over quality, to say the least -- and can't do Ed Wade any good in extending his status as GM beyond "lame duck." It makes me wonder if Houston had a ranking of Atlanta's top 25 prospects but looked at it upside-down.

Again, the merits of the deal won’t be felt so much this year – the Braves are better, but the Giants and Phillies also added outfielders who can hit – but rather over the coming years when the prices of the three deals in terms of prospects come into full view (assuming that the general consensus of the value of the minor leaguers traded by the three contenders turns out to be correct).

Here is R.J. Anderson of the Baseball Prospectus noting that the deal will increase the Braves’ already-excellent odds of making the playoffs and it will also have the knock-on effect of reducing the odds that the team will pick up Nate McLouth’s 2012 option ($):

With that in mind, Bourn is going to solve two problems for Atlanta. The first is obvious, as he will take over center field on an everyday basis. The Braves have not received much production out of the position from Nate McLouth or Jordan Schafer this season, and along with the other options they’ve run out there, they have a cumulative line of .241/.322/.324. As for the Braves leadoff hitters, they have hit .254/.306/.365 this season but somehow have managed .320/.389/.443 to open games. There probably isn’t much to that discrepancy other than selective sampling breeding some weird results, and Bourn should be an upgrade overall.

Bourn will not qualify for free agency until after next season, so this isn’t the typical rental situation. The guy who stands to lose the most in Bourn’s acquisition is McLouth as he will concede playing time and now stands even smaller chance of returning next season—although his play and the looming team option valued at over $10.5 million were doing a nice job of eliminating that possibility on their own. Barring the Braves doing something silly, like demoting Jason Heyward, McLouth figures to slide into a reserve role once he returns from the disabled list.

The Braves held an 87 percent shot at the postseason prior to today’s trade; look for those odds to increase and for Bourn to appear in the playoffs for the second time in his career this October.

The only downside will be for headline writers, who will now have to pick between bad “Brave New World” puns and even worse “Bourn[e] Identity” puns.

Brady Hoke, Meet Andy Gray. You Have So Much To Discuss.

Before he was fired for making sexist remarks regarding a female linesman (linesperson?), British footie pundit Andy Gray was most noted in recent years for his claim that Barcelona and Leo Messi would "struggle in a cold night at the Britannia Stadium" in Stoke.* Gray’s line of thinking is apparently that it is hard to play slick passing football against a physical opponent in the rain and that the Iberian Peninsula receives no precipitation.

* – Gray’s claim is idiotic for a host of reasons, but the most obvious is that Barca have played just fine in adverse weather conditions. Leaving aside the fact that there are parts of Spain that get very cold, Barca played crunch road games in the Champions League at Rubin Kazan and Dynamo Kiev in November and December 2009, getting a draw in Russia and a win (with Messi scoring) in Kiev. There are few, if any climates in European football that are harsher than trips into the former Soviet Union for games at the end of the group stage.

Gray’s Cro-Magnon outlook has been lampooned far and wide, but the best skewering came yesterday from Rob Smyth in The Guardian. Here is Smyth taking Gray to his logical conclusion:

Yes, Xavi can thread the ball through the eye of a needle at will, but can he handle a bit of needle? Sure, Lionel Messi can play keepy-uppy for half an hour with the little toe on his left foot, while also playing Tetris and debating the merits of a capitalist culture. That's nice for him. But could he manage it for 30 seconds during a damp crépuscule in deepest Staffordshire? Surely it's time for Fifa to test this hypothesis and arrange an annual match between Stoke and a World XI.

Better still, some boffin could surely simulate a match between an all-time World XI and the current Stoke side. OK, Diego Maradona spent 15 years thriving against some of the most malevolent swine ever to roam the green, but how many 50/50 balls did he win against Mamady Sidibe? Exactly.

It's inevitable that any such match would end 2-0 to Stoke, with Rory Delap's long throws creating both goals for Kenwyne Jones, one off each nipple from a combined distance of 0.00002 yards.

There is no real reason for restricting the Stoke Question to football. What Jesus Christ did with the loaves and fishes and the five thousand was admirable, Jeff, but could he have done it in the midst of a zesty downpour in the Potteries? Scarlett Johansson is one of the world's most formidably sexy women, granted, but could she seduce a fortysomething called Trevor, who still lives with his parents, in a Stoke pub on a Tuesday night when he's preoccupied with the darts on the telly and a two‑for‑one offer on purple WKD? Would Pippa Middleton's bum look big in Stoke? Could Josiah Wedgwood really have cr ... oh, never mind.

I was reminded of Gary’s comments when I read Brady Hoke's remarks at the Big Ten's media day. Hoke’s steadfast commitment to refer to Ohio State as “Ohio” is a little annoying. It’s hard to imagine a more juvenile, message board-level taunt than by calling an opponent by the incorrect name.* Hoke is going to have little credibility when he lectures Michigan players on not taunting opponents when he is engaged in exactly that behavior in press conferences.** Moreover, Ohio State has owned Michigan for a decade, so Hoke needs to have some success against the Buckeyes before he starts tweaking them. Right now, it just comes off as sour grapes.

* – Yes, I am aware that Woody Hayes referred to Michigan as “that school up north.” There is a difference between a euphemism and actually getting the name wrong.

** – And you know that Hoke, as a staid Michigan Man and Carr disciple, isn’t going to let his players behave like Miami or FSU from the late 80s. I don’t expect Michigan to start stomping on midfield logos anytime soon.

While the references to “Ohio” are a little annoying, this line of thinking (paraphrased by MGoBlog) is really bothersome:

Why would you worry about changing schemes, when they were so successful last season? "Two sides of the ball in the game of football." As a defensive coach, when you play against a pro-style offense in practice, you build a toughness. This is a physical league, and you need to stop physical offenses.

Right, so just like Barcelona would not be able to play on a cold rainy night against players who get stuck in, Michigan cannot run the spread offense because then the defense will have no experience with defending against physical offenses. That makes perfect sense. Let’s take a gander at the defensive rankings from 2010 to test this little hypothesis. TCU was second nationally on defense and they run a variant of the Spread. (And remind me what happened when they played Manball Wisconsin in Pasadena? The same thing that happens most of the time when a big, physical team from the Big Ten takes the field in the Rose Bowl.) Ditto for #3 West Virginia. Florida and Oregon both had top tier defenses running the spread. OK, I have no idea what Florida was running last year, but the Gators also had excellent defenses in 2008 and 2009 when they were most definitely running the spread. Florida also had a great defense in 2006 when they were running a Leak-compromised version of the spread. Perhaps Hoke should ask his defensive coordinator if his 2006 Florida defense lacked toughness because they didn’t see a bevy of I-formation runs off tackle in practice. Or maybe Hoke should ask the athletic director of the newest member of the Big Ten if his defensive players all took up sewing because they didn’t see a pro-style offense every day. The spread is basically a better version of the old triple option offense. There’s no reason why it can’t be just as physical as a pro-style attack.*

* – And has Hoke considered the flip side of his theory, which is that his teams will now be unprepared to deal with spread offenses? You know, the offenses run by Illinois, Northwestern, Purdue and in bastardized forms by Ohio State and (on occasion) Penn State?

I should be at the stage as a sports fan where press conference comments don’t bother me. They are often more for public consumption than they are a reflection of reality. Hoke may feel that the Michigan fan base is rejecting everything about the last three years and therefore that they’ll love comments in support of a pro-style offense.* San Diego State’s offense was not conservative or plodding last year. It’s also possible that Michigan will start out with both pro-style and spread elements and then as reality smacks Hoke and Al Borges in the face, they’ll emphasize the latter, i.e. the plays that gain yards, over the former, i.e. the plays that don’t.

* – To Michigan fans who think this way: please learn the difference between correlation and causation. Yes, the defense sucked during Rich Rodriguez’s tenure. No, the defense didn’t suck because of the offense that it saw in practice. The defense was bad because the players weren’t very good and they got lousy instruction from their coaches. Hoke and Greg Mattison can solve these problems without repudiating the one schematic approach that worked last year.

However, there is a third, more depressing possibility, which is that Hoke actually believes what he says. If you want a scenario that would ensure that Michigan doesn’t make a bowl game for the third time in four seasons, then how about this: maybe Hoke was willing to give Borges latitude to run a sophisticated offense when they were on a campus with palm trees, but now that they are in the porterhouse Big Ten, they are going to change the approach. Maybe Michigan is going to take a college version of Leo Messi and play route one long balls to him because that’s apparently the only approach that works on a cold night in Iowa City. Jerry Kill me now.

Stay Calm and Carry On, Trade Deadline Edition

Yes, it’s hard to watch the Braves abortive attempts to score runs.  Yes, I have a hard time looking at the batting averages of the position players and processing the fact that the local baseball collective has the third-most wins in baseball.  Yes, I would like Frank Wren to acquire a centerfielder who can hit.  Yes, a friend forwarded me Buster Olney's tweet:

Observation from an NL official about the Braves' interest in Hunter Pence: "They don't value on-base percentage as much as other teams do."

And I nearly lost my lunch.  (Further grist for the mill that the Braves’ sterling patience at the plate last year that led to the best on-base percentage in the NL was a big accident like the discovery of penicillin.) 

All that said, the Braves should not mortgage the team’s future to add a bat.  If the Phillies want to give up their two best prospects for two years and change of Hunter Pence, the more power to them.  Almost every member of that team’s core is at or over the age of 30, so they are in a win-now mode.  The Braves have a wealth of young pitchers, as well as Freddie Freeman, Jason Heyward, Brian McCann, and Martin Prado.  The future of the franchise is bright.  It would be nice to win the World Series this year, but it would be just as good to win it in 2015 and that goal is significantly more realistic for the Braves than it is for the Phillies.  That’s why Frank Wren’s seeming conservatism makes sense.

But don’t take my word for it.  Here is Jayson Stark explaining the Braves’ reasoning:

So an official of one team who spoke with the Braves said he was told, "We've only got to weather the storm for 14 days, until [Brian] McCann gets back." By then, they hope Chipper Jones will be healthy; Peter Moylan will be back in their bullpen; and they will feel like the urgency to DO SOMETHING will have lessened. If not, there's always August.

After all, what month was it last year in which the team that won it all picked up its World Series cleanup hitter (Cody Ross)? It wasn't July. It was August -- on a waiver claim. And how'd that work out?

It’s possible that the Braves made the statement about simply needing to wait for August as a negotiating posture.  After all, it’s easier to get a good price when you are not desperate.  That said, if Stark is right that the Astros’ asking price from the Braves was two of Teheran, Vizcaino, Delgado, and Minor, then Wren would have been nuts to pull the trigger. 

And here is Mark Bradley also advocating for patience:

Wren wants to win a World Series, same as you, but there’s no assurance a big-ticket hiree makes you a champ. Fred McGriff panned out. Teixeira didn’t. B.J. Surhoff, acquired by the Braves at the 2000 deadline, didn’t. Denny Neagle, acquired in 1996, didn’t. (Though he would win 36 games in 1997 and ‘98.) But Mike Devereaux, who arrived in an afterthought trade for the minor-leaguer Andre King in August 1995, became the most valuable player of the NLCS en route to the Braves’ only World Series title.

This touches on something that has seemed odd to me about all of the trade deadline hysteria.  The Braves are very likely to make the playoffs as the wild card team.  Baseball Prospectus has the Braves at 85% likely to play in October.  If an outfield bat were the difference between making the playoffs and watching them on TV, then it would be important to get a bat.  However, with the Braves in great position to make the playoffs, the new bat would be relevant for as few as three games and as many as 19.  The baseball playoffs are a lottery.  Some teams have better odds than others, but in the end, there is a high degree of chance involved.  Making the team better at one position is nothing more than buying a slightly better lottery ticket.  With the small sample size involved, there’s no telling who is going to be Mike Devereaux and who is going to be B.J. Surhoff.

Update: Baseball Prospectus crunches the numbers on deadline deals and finds that the vast majority do not make a difference in whether a team makes the playoffs ($):

Looking at deadline deals since the introduction of the wild card in 1995, we see a bevy of moves. By rough count, looking at the past-season WARP of the players acquired versus the players given away, we can see that 180 of those deals were ones in which a team was buying talent as opposed to selling, or moves in which little talent was moving in either direction. (In this instance, the buyer is the team that acquired the player with the highest same-season WARP.) But how many of those deals had a significant impact on the division race? Reviewing the record, there are just 10 teams that made "impact" deals…

Finding one or two players who can combine for significant value is difficult, and getting those players to have a hot streak on cue is harder still. Most teams get into a position to acquire talent at the deadline by having a roster stocked with talented players, and how those players perform down the stretch is generally far more important than the work of one or two players brought in to bolster a squad.

That last sentence is a perfect description of why deadline deals are typically overblown.     

Question Time

The right honorable gentleman from North-Decatur-upon-Lullwater wants to know two things:

1. If Chipper Jones would have been drafted by the Cardinals instead of the Braves, how would his career have been different?  In other words, how would things be different after the inevitable blow-up between Chipper and Tony LaRussa as to Chipper’s reliance on his father for hitting advice?  That advice surely violates one of LaRussa’s myriad unwritten rules for baseball, like “I get a virgin in heaven for every pitching change I make” and “a pitcher can hit a batter only in one of the following 17 situations…”

2. In light of the fact that Bret Bielema is apparently the best coach in the Big Ten now that Jim Tressel is no more, how many head coaches in the SEC are better than the best coach in the Big Ten?  Put another way, would Georgia fans trade on-a-seat-of-indeterminable-warmth Mark Richt for any coach in the Big Ten?  Would LSU fans take any coach in the Big Ten over Les Miles?  Am I being too partisan here or does Jim Tressel’s demise at Ohio State really bring into full view the sorry state of coaching in a conference that has the money to do so much better?

Negative Grohmentum Commences Operation Grand Slam

When last we met with Negative Grohmentum, it was coming off an unprecedented year in which only four of the nine reigning conference coaches of the year saw their teams regress.  Nick Saban won a national title as one of three reigning SEC coaches of the year.  Brian Kelly led Cincinnati to an unbeaten regular season as the reigning Big East coach of the year.  Paul Johnson won an ACC title had a good year on the field as the reigning ACC coach of the year.  With another year like that, Negative Grohmentum was threatening to go the way of my previous pet theory for identifying overrated teams: the Charles Rogers Theorem, which died after it spat out eventual national champion Florida in 2006 and then eventual #2 Georgia in 2007.  Thankfully, 2010 was a return to glory, and not in a Ty Willingham, we kept getting outgained, but won because of a collection of punt blocks and terrible calls sort of way.  Behold the regression!

SEC - Nick Saban – regressed by 3.5 games
Big Ten - Kirk Ferentz – regressed by 3 games
Big XII - Mack Brown – regressed by 7 games
ACC - Paul Johnson – regressed by 4.5 games
Pac Ten - Chip Kelly – improved by 2 games
Big East - Brian Kelly – regressed by 7.5 games

Now that's a fire!  Five of the six coaches of the year regressed and not by a small margin.  Negative Grohmentum wasn’t screwing around last year.  It grabbed Mack Brown by the lapels and turned his team from a participant in the national title game to a team sitting out the bowl season.  It beat on Cincinnati like Sonny Corleone on Carlo Rizzi.  (I guess the Pitt game was the equivalent of getting beaten with a trash can.)

And best of all, the Big Ten maintained its lengthy winning streak.  Since 1992, no Big Ten coach of the year has seen his team’s record improve the following year.  Jim Tressel just resigned got fired and the only empty spot on his resume was a Dave McClain Coach of the Year award.  Tressel led the Bucks to an unbeaten season in his second year with an underwhelming squad and wasn’t the coach of the year.  He won or tied for the conference title in each of his last six seasons in Columbus, but the Midwestern media never saw fit to honor him with a plaque.  Lloyd Carr suffered the same fate.  Carr won Michigan’s first national title in 49 years, but Joe Tiller was deemed to have done a better job in 1997.  Carr won the conference title in 2004 with a true freshman at quarterback and lost the coach of the year award to Kirk Ferentz.  (I guess that it must have taken a superhuman coaching effort by Ferentz for Iowa to lose to Michigan by only 13 points that year.)  Meanwhile, the Queen of England has won the award three times, despite the fact that he is a combined 5-16 against Tressel and Carr.  Apparently, the key to winning the Dave McClain award is to have crappy seasons so that your good ones stand out.

So which teams are marked for death in 2011?  I’m glad you asked.

SEC – Steve Spurrier – South Carolina
Big Ten – Mark Dantonio – Michigan State
Big XII – Mike Gundy – Oklahoma State
ACC – Ralph Friedgen – Maryland
Pac Ten – Chip Kelly – Oregon
Big East – Randy Edsall – UConn & Charlie Strong – Louisville

Negative Grohmentum is pretty confident about this bunch.  Expecting South Carolina to regress after its first divisional title is a pretty safe bet;* it’s pretty much the same thing as asking “are one of Florida, Georgia, or Tennessee going to wake up?”  (Question: was 2010 South Carolina any different than the collection of good, but not great Gamecock teams that have graced the SEC since South Carolina joined the conference?)  Michigan State is the Platonic ideal of a Big Ten team that would get its coach a Dave McClain award: gaudy record, unremarkable underlying stats, and a near certainty for regression.  Mike Gundy looks to me like George O’Leary minus Ralph Friedgen.  Speaking of Georgia Tech’s former offensive coordinator, Maryland was so impressed by Friedgen’s work last year that they pushed him out the door, a move that made sense when Mike Leach was the rumored replacement and makes little sense now that Randy Edsall is in charge.  Chip Kelly’s Oregon team is bound to regress because there’s almost nowhere to go but down after going 12-1.  The only teams that might defy Negative Grohmentum are UConn and Louisville, because it’s reasonable to improve on 8-5 and 7-6 in a conference where everyone is the same.  The Huskies and Cards will likely determine whether Negative Grohmentum succeeds in setting off a nuclear device inside of Fort Knox.

* – Counterpoint: Spurrier won the SEC Coach of the Year award in 1990, 1991, 1994, 1995, and 1996 and kept right on winning conference titles.  The media in the SEC reward the coaches of the best teams, as opposed to the media in the Big Ten, which looks for the coach whose team overcame bad recruiting by winning a bunch of close games in improbable fashion showed guts and moxie en route to getting a hiding in Orlando or Tampa.  Can you tell, by the way, that I am having fun with Strikethrough this morning?  Windows Live Writer is so much fun!

Cesc and Thiago

I was going to write a post examining Barcelona’s pursuit of Cesc Fabregas in light of the emergence of Thiago Alcantara, but this piece on the Spanish Football site does my work for me.  Here is the argument in a nutshell:

Xavi is 31, Iniesta is 27, Fàbregas is 24 and Thiago is 20. Fàbregas would fill the 11 year gap between Xavi and Thiago and the 7 year gap between Iniesta and Thiago.

It would help Thiago to keep improving without the pressure of having to replace the two most important midfielders in Barça’s and Spain’s history. Fàbregas, being the more experienced player of the two, would share that responsibility with him.

Thiago has had a great summer.  He was one of the stars on the Spain side that won the European U-21 tournament, scoring a clever goal in the final against Switzerland.  This week, he added an award as the best player at the Audi Cup after scoring once in the semifinal against Internacional and both goals in the final against Bayern Munich.  His performances could lead to the conclusion that Cesc is unnecessary, but as Miguel points out, throwing Thiago into the mix at age 20 in place of either Xavi or Iniesta would be to pile enormous pressure on a prospect.  If Cesc arrives, then he serves as the buffer so Thiago can be put into the first team gradually.  Given that Barca are likely to play something in the neighborhood of 60 games this year, there are plenty of potential minutes for four central midfielders.

My first impulse after Thiago’s performance yesterday in Munich was to think “great, this will drive down Arsenal’s price for Cesc because it is clear that Barca doesn’t really need him.”  I quickly changed my mind when I remembered that Arsenal have no great need or desire to sell Cesc.  If this were a normal transaction with a buyer and a seller, then the buyer learning that he doesn’t really need to product would tend to drop this price.  This, however, is not a normal transaction because the seller doesn’t want to sell, but will do so reluctantly if its (possibly inflated) valuation of the (dissatisfied, wanting to move) product is met.  If Barca decides that they don’t need Cesc, then Arsenal’s likely response will be “great, we’ll keep our captain” instead of “hey, let me knock £5M off the price.”  

Why I Hate New York Teams, Vol. XXIV

My morning sports consumption, in three acts:

1. Wake up just before six and do a quick check of the headlines on ESPN.com. I learn that the Braves played a 19-inning game against the Pirates that ended with one of the worst calls in recent memory.* Is this game, a match-up between the NL Wild Card leaders and the team that is improbably in first place in the NL Central after almost two decades of consistent failure, the lead story on ESPN.com? Does it get top billing in light of the fact that it was the longest game of the season and ended in a bizarre fashion? Nope. The top story was CC Sabathia shutting down the Mariners. Yes, the captivating story of the highest-paid pitcher in baseball dominating a historically bad offense was the big story in American sports yesterday.

* - I went to sleep in the tenth inning when Scott Linebrink came in and gave up a one-out single. That seemed like a sufficient indication that the Braves were going to lose their fourth in a row. Imagine my surprise this morning when I realized that I had missed a complete game shutout from Scott Proctor and the Lisp.

2. Watch SportsCenter while getting ready. What's the big story in the middle of the show? An interview with Jerry Jones in his car, followed by a lengthy feature on Rex Ryan and the Jets.

3. Listen to sports radio on the way to work. Surely, after my education on all things New York from ESPN, I'll get some local content, right? After all, the Falcons are about to wade into free agency and the Braves just played an epic game last night. Instead, for the majority of my commute, the Mayhem crew were peppering former 790 the Zone employee Chris Cotter (whom I always liked when he was on the air here) with questions about what it was like to cover Willie Randolph when Randolph was the manager of the Mets and what New York City is like in terms of interest in college football and the NFL.

So, if you ever want to know why I have a per se rule against rooting for New York teams, this is the evidence for the rule. Regardless of merit, their teams get showered with attention.*

* - This reminds me that I have a rant percolating in my head about the lionization of the New York Cosmos. Don't let me forget to write that in August.

Two Thoughts on ESPN

[Sorry for the lack of content over the past couple weeks. It's a combination of being busy at work, followed by vacation, with a splash of the July sports doldrums.]

A Few Belated Thoughts on L'Affaire Feldman

I like Bruce Feldman's work. I like Mike Leach. I dislike Craig James. I dislike Joe Schad. With those preferences, I am naturally inclined to side with the college football blogosphere in its #FreeBruce outrage that followed the report from Sports by Brooks that ESPN had suspended Feldman. After thinking a little bit about the issue, however, I can't say that I find much fault with ESPN. The bottom line is that: Feldman was working closely on a public project with a former coach who was suing ESPN. Is it that hard to imagine that ESPN would be squeamish about one of its employees being in that situation? I'll acknowledge that the timing of the "suspension" was poor, indicating that someone at ESPN only realized belatedly that Feldman was cooperating on the autobiography of a party legally adverse to the network. That said, without knowing what communications went back and forth between Feldman and his superiors, it seems plausible that Feldman deserves some blame in that he should have gotten a definitive answer from ESPN's management when Leach sued his employer.

That said, I co-sign on Blutarsky's reference to the Longhorn Network as a great example of a conflict of interest that ESPN ignores while pontificating on Feldman's relationship with Leach.*

* - I do not co-sign on Blutarksy's argument that the NCAA could not have subpoena power because it is a private organization. Yes, the NCAA is private, as are the American Arbitration Association, FINRA, and a host of other entities that enforce subpoenas in private dispute resolution settings. Those entities are all creatures of contract. An employer and employee sign an arbitration agreement in which they submit to the rules of an arbitration entity and part of those rules provides for compelling the production of documents. If one party refuses to comply with the process, then the arbitration entity can issue an enforceable award against it. Now, I suspect that the Federal Arbitration Act gets involved in the analysis at some point and whether the NCAA would be able to benefit from the FAA is a question that I haven't thought through. That said, it does not seem implausible to me that the NCAA could, for example, enter into agreements with all coaches and players in NCAA-sanctioned sports that they will comply with reasonable requests for documents and information after their eligibility expires. The NCAA can't get subpoena power over unaffiliated entities (read: Cecil Newton's church), but it can expand its ability to get information and documents from former players (read: Cecil's son).

Why Must we Keep Hearing "Back, Back, Back, Back..."

There are few subjects that unite the blogosphere quite like disdain for Chris Berman and Dick Vitale. Good luck finding any online commentary regarding these two along the lines of "yes, Chris, hit me with another reference to the Bay City Rollers" or "I can't wait for Dick to tell me which 17 assistants deserve head coaching jobs, all while he maintains that no coach should ever get the ziggy." I'm halfway through Those Guys Have All the Fun and the infliction of Berman and Vitale on American's eardrums makes more sense to me now: these guys have been around since the very beginning. They made their bones at ESPN when it was losing millions of Getty dollars, so they come with institutional weight.

ESPN faces the same issue that the Yankees faced with Derek Jeter and the Braves faced with Chipper Jones. In both of the latter cases, two successful baseball franchises overpaid to keep iconic stars who were and are well past their best. It is never easy for a sports entity to part with a declining legend. This phenomenon doesn't make it a good idea to pay Chipper $14M per year or send Vitale to Duke-UNC so Dickie V can be the FTD of verbal bouquets, but it does at least explain what would otherwise seem to be inexplicable.

My New Game

It's very simple. I listen to sports radio on the way to work in the morning (most of my podcasts are either taking the summer off or are operating a little below normal levels) and wait for a discussion of an event that actually took place on a field or a court. I'll admit that starting this game the week before the All-Star Break was a little unfair, but I had a solid, one-week streak going. During that week, I was enlightened on the following topics:

• Steak Shapiro going to New Orleans for the wedding of Tulane's play-by-play guy;


• How excited the 680 morning crew were to see Zookeeper;


• Floyd Mayweather being a "punk" by burning hundred-dollar bills at a club;


• Nick Cellini deciding not to go to a friend's 40th birthday party in Vegas because the group going was going to waste hundreds of dollars on table service (no s***, they discussed this without a hint of irony one day after venting about Mayweather wasting money); and


• Wall-to-wall James Harrison discussion (nothing lights the fire of sports radio hosts like negative comments about teammates).

Truly, this is sports radio in name only.

So this morning, Sandra Golden finally snapped the streak by discussing her experience watching the Women's World Cup Final, so I only made it a little more than a week without hearing a discussion about an actual sporting event. The discussion on 790 was on the changes at 680, which Shapiro naturally credited to 790 winning in the afternoon slot.

In reality, the change in the lineup could be a good harbinger for sports radio in this town. I've never been a big fan of Buck & Kincaid, mainly because Buck isn't especially interesting to me and Kincaid fills out the caricature of a sports radio host to a "T": opinionated Northeasterner who spends as much time trying to rile up his audience as he does thinking of something intelligent to say. In other words, emotion over intellect.* I much prefer Matt Chernoff and Chuck Oliver because they seem less emotionally manipulative. In fact, I reached the decision that the sports radio medium had left me** when I realized that the two local shows that I like the most - Chernoff & Oliver on 680 and Tony Barnhart & Wes Durham on 790 - are both in the wasteland of late morning and that it's probably not an accident that the shows with the best sports content are in the worst slots, while the "how can I titillate or annoy the most people?" shows get drive time. Putting a likeable, sports-heavy show in PM drive time is a good step.***

* - Shapiro made the point that the comments to Rodney Ho's AJC articles on sports talk radio reflect the strength of the medium because of the passion displayed by the commenters. By the same reasoning, I suppose that the race wars that break out in the comments sections of news articles show the strength of American democracy. If your sole goal is to rile people up to the point that they express how much you annoy them, then yes, you are a success. If your goal is that people get out of their cars when they get to their homes or offices and say to themselves "that was a quality product and a good use of my time; I'm happy with how I just spent my commute," then hundreds of negative comments on an AJC article are not an indicator of success. It's like the difference between reading intelligent sports commentary on the Internet (and Alex Massie is right; the college football blogosphere is rife with smart analysis) and "look, boobs!" posts on Deadspin. The latter gets a ton of clicks, but at the expense of credibility. As some guy from Hibbing once sang, all the money you made will never buy back your soul.

** - No lineup change is going to address the fundamental issue that sports talk radio has, which is that it's inferior to a good podcast. If my choice is to listen to a 30-minute interview with Tim Vickery or a seven-minute interview with Darren Rovell, followed by a lengthy commercial break and then recitation of scores that I can get on my phone at a moment's notice, I am going to choose the former every time. Even when the local stations get good guests and assuming for the sake of argument that the hosts asked good questions, the chopped up format of sports talk radio prevents the guests from ever getting into detail with their answers. The format has not evolved with technology, specifically the facts that: (1) listeners now have commercial-free options; and (2) there is no point in wasting time on scores that listeners can get with ease if they are so inclined.

*** - Though Cellini has scratched his schtick itch a bit too much in the morning slot, my favorite drive time show on either channel was the Cellini-Dimino afternoon program. Oliver & Chernoff seem like a good replacement for that.

Drew Sharp: The Most Ironically Named Man Outside of Rush Limbaugh

Newspaper columnists tend to be respectful to one another.  Whereas bloggers are prone to pissing matches of all shapes and sizes, our mainstream media counterparts will rarely call one another onto the carpet.  They represent the civility of a bygone age … or they just don’t get the fun of calling another writer a mouth-breathing troglodyte.  Either way, a columnist has to have written something really dumb in order to get another columnist to spend an entire piece railing on a bad argument.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Drew Sharp.  I read Sharp for my four years in Ann Arbor and his sole value was to raise my blood pressure.  Sharp is a Michigan graduate who quickly figured out that his place in the world is to make bomb-throwing statements to anger the local fan bases, most prominently that of his alma mater.  In his mind, Sharp probably thinks of himself as a noble scribe telling truth to power, regardless of the reaction.  In reality, the next well-constructed argument he makes will be the first.  Remarkably, both approaches can lead to a negative reaction, only Sharp (and apparently his bosses at the Detroit Free Press, who have employed Sharp for years) doesn’t understand the difference between the two.

I haven’t clicked on the Free Press’s web site since that newspaper committed journalistic malpractice by giving Mike Rosenberg license to publish a wildly slanted and misleading piece about the practice habits of Michigan football players.*  Mark Bradley does not operate under the same constraints, so he found Sharp’s piece about how Jair Jurrjens would be a .500 pitcher in the mighty American League and tore it to pieces.  Again, when you have caused a veteran columnist to go Fire Joe Morgan on you, then you have really screwed the pooch.

* – Here’s a thought experiment: if Michigan took Ohio State’s approach to NCAA violations, what would it’s response to the NCAA’s notice of inquiry have been?  Maybe a letter suggesting that Michigan get more practice time than the rules permit for the trouble of having to respond to such trivial allegations?  Seriously, look at the disparity between one school referring to “a day of great shame” when it concluded that it had misclassified stretching time and another school stating that it would be “shocked and disappointed and on the offensive” if the NCAA went beyond the ludicrously light sanctions suggested by the school in response to its head coach burying evidence of violations and thereby riding five ineligible players to a Big Ten title.  With that hyper-partisan aside behind me, we can get back to mocking Drew Sharp.

Because he is polite and I am not, I was expecting to have to pick up where Bradley left off, but Mark hit all of the high notes: the minor statistical difference between the AL and NL (Sharp has apparently missed the fact that offense is down in both leagues this year), the fact that Jurrjens has done well against the AL in 2011 (in two starts, Jurrjens has allowed one earned run in 14.1 innings, striking out 12 and walking three), and the fact that velocity isn’t the be-all, end-all for pitching (a point to which Braves fans are especially keen after years of watching Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux mow through opposing lineups without cracking 90 on the radar gun). 

The one point that I would add to Bradley’s fine work is that Jurrjens has gotten better this year despite dropping his average fastball velocity from 91 to 89.  Dave Allen at Fan Graphs noted this change at the start of June, positing that Jurrjens controls his slower fastball better, thus leading to fewer walks and more bad contact as Jurrjens gets opposing hitters to swing at pitches just outside of the strike zone.  Christina Kahrl has noticed that Jurrjens has dropped both his walk rate and his opponents' ISO rates.  We are dealing with a sample size of 110 innings, so there is a good chance that there is noise in the numbers.  It’s eminently reasonable to assume that Jurrjens will not be able to keep his ERA at Maddux levels for an entire season.  However, there’s no way to deny that Jurrjens has been outstanding in 2011, possibly because of a reduction in velocity that has yielded better control.  In that sense, Drew Sharp is backwards when he criticizes Jurrjens for noth throwing hard enough.  After a sample size of thousands of columns, we can safely say that Sharp’s performance is representative of his true quality.

“Goal Goal USA!!!”

I’ll say this for American soccer: we’re never boring.  Our men might punch below our weight (if you measure weight by GDP and number of kids and teens who play the game), our women might have struggled for the last two World Cups to replicate the magic of 1999, but we produce some memorable matches.  In the past year and change, we have had Landon Donovan’s injury time winner against Algeria, the memorable Gold Cup Final, and now Abby Wambach scoring the latest possible equalizer.  I can picture Uncle Sam shouting “are you not entertained?”  We may not have a defined playing style, but we do have a terrific “we can do this, no matter the circumstances” attitude in late game situations.  Our former colonial masters should take note.

Random thoughts:

1. Great lede by Grant Wahl:

This U.S. Women's World Cup campaign has a chance to get big now. It's one of the slowest weeks on the U.S. sports calendar, so there's not much competition, and any time you mix patriotism and miraculous comebacks and appealing athletes who play for the purity of the sport -- and the winning, of course, always the winning -- well, you've got something that could blow up.

I’d add in Hope Solo, a star goalkeeper who is attractive, has a great name, is terrific at what she does, and comes with a fascinating personal story.  This team has the capacity to draw attention to their sport in the same way that the 1999 team did, although I ought to make the Debbie Downer point that any sort of effect on the struggling domestic professional league would be transitory.  (It makes more sense for the best players in the world to play in Europe one women’s teams attached to established clubs.  Add the branding of Arsenal or Olympique Lyonnais to women’s teams and then they have more of a chance to succeed than they do as the Western New York Flash.)

2. It’s hard to remember a day where Brazil were considered to be big game bottlers, but the women’s team is actually following in a tradition that the men’s team had between the epic performance in 1970 and the return to glory in 1994.  Brazil’s exits from the World Cup in the 70s were acceptable – they lost to the brilliant Cruyff Netherlands in ‘74 and went out in suspicious circumstances without losing a game in ‘78 – but their failures in the next three World Cups were spectacular failures.  In ‘82, Brazil brought one of the great attacking sides of all time to Spain and managed to get knocked out by Italy (in a match in which the Selecao only needed a draw) through a series of comical defensive lapses.  In ‘86, Brazil missed a penalty kick that would have won the match against France and then went out in penalties.  In ‘90, Brazil comprehensively outplayed Argentina, missed a raft of chances, and then lost when the entire back line panicked on the only occasion that Maradona ran at them.  These failures formed Brazil’s reputation when I was becoming a footie fan.  The men have banished the reputation with two more World Cups, but the women seem to have taken the mantle.  Losing in penalties after a late equalizer from a cross is a nice synthesis of Brazil’s failures in the 80s. 

3. Part of what I like about soccer is that it doesn’t have football’s fascist tendencies (and I say that as someone who considers football to be his favorite sport).  There are a host of ways to make this point, but the easiest is that soccer fans honor creative goal celebrations, whereas football authorities think of new, more draconian ways to punish them.  “Let’s fine players who use props.  No, that’s not enough.  We can’t have too much exuberance from these scary Black men.  Let’s take away touchdowns for celebrations that are punctuated with something that might strike a given ref on a given day as excessive.”  That said, soccer could use a governing body that makes the trains run on time.  There is a very simple solution to the simulated injuries that mar the end of matches such as yesterday’s: if a player is down for more than 20 seconds, then the stretcher comes off and the player stays off the field for a minimum of five minutes.  Soccer has an issue with incentives.  Players have an incentive to fake injuries to waste time and break up play, so they do it.  (My beloved Barca are no angels in this department.)  Football players would do the same if they had the same incentives (and indeed, defensive players have faked injuries before to slow down no-huddle offenses).  If FIFA were capable of anything other than sweeping gross acts of corruption under the rug, then it would alter the incentives of players to fake injuries.  It is not, so it will not.

Relievers, Please

In assessing the Braves at the All Star Break, my prevailing sense is “how is this team 16 games over .500?”  The pitching has been phenomenal, but it’s painful to look at the current batting lineup, where most of the starters are hitting under .250 (and not drawing enough walks to make up for their low averages).  As usual, the Braves are getting below-average production from the outfield spots, and this despite the fact that Nate McLouth has exceeded expectations.  Martin Prado got off to a terrible start and then got injured as he was dragging his numbers back to respectability.  Jason Heyward has been a major disappointment, struggling through injuries that raise the question as to whether he’s a German Tiger or Panther tank.  (Awesome when functioning properly, but prone to breaking down and hard to repair when they do.)  Jordan Schafer has had to fill in and his on-base percentage is below .300, which is something of a problem for a leadoff hitter. 

The outfield seems to be the most logical place to upgrade the team, ideally with a new centerfielder so Nate McLouth can become the fourth outfielder and Jordan Schafer can go back to Gwinnett.  If the Mets find themselves out of the race, then Carlos Beltran will be a logical option if Liberty Media is willing to add payroll.  Fred Wilpon is certainly looking to shed it.  Whether the Mets would be willing to help a division rival is an open question.  Maybe Frank Wren can convince them that they are really screwing the Phillies.

The other obvious spot for an upgrade is the bullpen.  The top of the pen is outstanding.  Jonny Venters, Eric O’Flaherty, and Craig Kimbrel have all been outstanding this year.  We should feel fortunate to be watching a modern incarnation of the Nasty Boys, although that happiness is tempered by the knowledge that all three pitchers are headed for a ludicrous number of innings and appearances because: (1) the Braves play a lot of close games because of the team’s weak offense; and (2) there is a huge drop-off from those three guys to the rest of the pen.  Those three pitchers combined for a 6.2 WAR.  In other words, they have been worth a tick over six wins to the Braves.  The rest of the bullpen has been worth 1.8.  By most other measures (ERA, WHIP, etc.), there is a major drop-off from those three to Scott Linebrink, George Sherrill, Scott Proctor, and whomever else is filling out the roster.  In terms of gut feel, I just don’t have confidence that the Braves can win close games when the top three have been used.  If we envision a meeting with the Phillies in October, Friday night’s game is a frightening prospect: a tight, defensive battle that is decided as soon as the Braves deploy one of their suspect relievers.  Even Saturday was dicey, as Sherrill came dangerously close to losing the game in the tenth before the Braves’ offense could win it in the eleventh.

There are three potential solutions here.  One is that the Braves use one or more of their mega-prospects in a Neftali Feliz-type role in September or October.  Julio Teheran and Arodys Vizcaino would both seem to be candidates for that task.  It would be a nice introduction to Major League Baseball: get these three guys out in a massive situation in October.  The second is that Peter Moylan and Kris Medlen will get healthy and fill roles.  I would take either of them over the Scotts.  Third, the Braves would acquire one or more relievers on the market.  Relief help is usually easy to find on the market in July.  What good does a top reliever do for a bad team when most relievers are on short-term contracts and their performance varies from year to year?  Knowing Liberty Media, they will opt for options one and two.  Regardless of what they choose, the goals are simple and achievable: (1) reduce the workload for the three top relievers by finding other options who can be trusted in the late innings of a close game; and (2) ensure that no one named Scott throws an inning of consequence in October.  

Al Borges, Get Thyself to Univision

Despite being the host nation for this summer’s Copa America, Argentina are off to a dreadful start.  Through two matches, they have two draws, one goal scored, and one goal conceded.  They have achieved these meager results against Bolivia and Columbia, two teams that did not make last summer’s World Cup.  It’s not like Argentina are struggling against the strong South American sides that made such a good showing in South Africa.

Argentina’s struggles come despite the fact that they deploy the undisputed greatest player on the planet.  When we last saw Leo Messi, he was scoring the winning goal in the Champions League Final.  He was wrapping up a season in which he scored 50 goals and added 21 assists in 47 games.  He’s the best player on the best team in a generation.  Because Messi is following in the footsteps of Diego Maradona and Maradona’s greatest achievement was dragging the Albiceleste to the ‘86 World Cup title, Messi needs to add international success to his resume with Barcelona in order to vault into the Pele/Maradona pantheon of the greatest players of all time.  Playing for Argentina at home with a wealth of potential attacking partners* seemed like the perfect opportunity.  At present, it looks like the Copa America is going to be another missed chance for Messi.

* – In the match against Columbia, Argentina had the following players on their bench: Kun Aguero (about to make a 45M Euro transfer from Atletico Madrid), Angel di Maria (starting winger for Real Madrid), Gonzalo Higuain (starting striker for Real Madrid), and Diego Milito (the star striker for the Inter side that won the treble in 2009-10).  No team in the world has the collection of attacking talent that Argentina possesses.

Why has Argentina struggled?  To use a term from our football, it’s a lack of constraint plays.  Argentina are trying to mimic Barca’s style, which entails Leo Messi playing in a central role between the forward line and the midfield.  This role takes advantage of Messi’s passing ability, as it gives him forward options on either side to pick out.  Ezequiel Lavezzi is in the side ahead of a number of other bright attacking options specifically because he can play the cutting winger role that Pedro and David Villa play for Barca.  The role also puts Messi in a tough spot for opponents, as he is between defense and midfield.  However, any player, no matter how talented, can be negated with the right tactics, and Argentina’s opponents have played in a narrow, defensive style to surround Messi and his compatriots on Argentina’s front line.

Why does this tactic work against Argentina and not Barca?  Barca has two primary countermeasures.  The first is Xavi and Andres Iniesta crashing into offensive areas.  If Messi is drawing a lot of attention from the opposing defense and midfield, then this creates space for Xavi and Iniesta to occupy.  Barca’s opener in the 5-0 thrashing of Real and their critical second goal in the second leg against Arsenal were both scored by Xavi running into space created by opposing defenses being occupied by Messi & Friends.  The second is that Dani Alves, ostensibly a defender, bombs forward on the right wing to take advantage of the space that defenders have created by clogging the middle of the field.  Alves scored several goals this year, including an important one against Shakhtar Donetsk, by making runs into open space on the right.

Argentina either don’t or can’t make the same options work.  Here is Michael Cox describing the issues against Columbia:

With Messi-minding left to Sanchez, this meant that Argentina had 4 v 3 in the midfield when Messi moved deep, a situation they didn’t take full advantage of. A slight problem with a 4-1-4-1 is that when the holding midfielder is taken away from the centre (or if he departs completely, like Pepe in the Champions League semi-final first leg) and the midfield doesn’t drop deeper, there can often be too much space between the lines. Neither Ever Banega nor Esteban Cambiasso moved into that ‘red zone’ often enough – it was (surprisingly) the latter who did find himself in space there on 30 minutes, but Argentina didn’t play the ball to him.

Colombia’s tactics higher up the pitch worked excellently. They let Nicolas Burdisso and Gabriel Milito have time on the ball, confident that neither are technically proficient enough to provide clever passes from the back. Instead, they dropped deep into their own half and pressed as soon as the ball was played into midfield, forcing Cambiasso and Javier Mascherano to return the ball to the back. The two Colombian wide players tracked the full-back, where there was less overlapping than in the first game, with Zabaleta not a great attacker, and Zanetti on the ‘wrong’ flank (albeit somewhere where he is comfortable).

And here is Cox explaining the midfield issue against Bolivia:

That problem was related to the role of Banega, who did a decent job with the ball at his feet connecting midfield and attack, but was cautious with his movement off the ball. When Messi plays in the centre and drops deep he attracts two or three players to him, opening up space for an attacking midfielder to exploit – at club level, most frequently Andres Iniesta. Banega remained quite deep, however, and there was no real need for him to do so with both Javier Mascherano and Esteban Cambiasso in that zone, plus no real driving runs from midfield from Bolivia.

It’s hard for Argentina to make players like Ever Banega and Pablo Zabaleta play in the same way as Xavi and Dani Alves.  They just haven’t been taught to play those roles and two weeks is not enough time to learn.  The situation is especially difficult for Zabaleta and the other Argentina fullbacks because they are playing with slow center backs who will struggle if they are put into the space that Gerard Pique and Carles Puyol are used to handling.*

* – One of Argentina’s center backs is Gaby Milito, a player in whom Barca had so little confidence that the Blaugrana deployed defensive midfielders Javier Mascherano and Sergio Busquets at center back in the biggest matches of the season rather than trusting Milito.  It’s always possible for an older player to come up big over a short international tournament (see: France ‘06), but Milito looks a shell of himself before his knee injuries.

In short, Argentina lack constraint plays.  They lack the threats that would make opponents pay from taking away the primary option.  Brian Cook’s post on constraint plays and the Michigan offense gave me this idea.  The Michigan version of Leo Messi running wild in the space between defense and attack is Denard Robinson running wild in whatever space the offensive line can create.  Al Borges now faces a similar quandary to Sergio Batista.  He has a supremely talented offensive player who thrived in a system that was perfect for that player.  Those systems were run by Rich Rodriguez and Pep Guardiola, both of whom are experts in the systems.  Can Borges do better than Batista at mimicry?  Conversely, if Borges tries to shoehorn Michigan’s personnel into a more conventional offense, is he going to have a collection of players who have no idea what they are doing, not unlike Messi’s Argentina teammates trying to copy the movement of his Barca teammates?  Futbol often presents fascinating test cases where club stars have to function in different systems when they play for their countries (and vice versa).  American football doesn’t have as many change scenarios, but Michigan’s offense presents one this year.      

Jurrjens’ Gem

Nine innings, no runs, one hit, eight strikeouts, one walk.  According to ESPN’s Game Score measure, Jurrjens’ start was the fourth best of the season in all of baseball.  Jair’s ERA is now 1.89, which is a half a run better than anyone else in the National League.  (If you look at defensive-independent ERA, then Jurrjens drops to 16th, right behind Tim Hudson and Tommy Hanson.)  He came into his start against Texas two weeks ago with an ERA of 2.13 and he has lowered that ERA in each of his last three starts.  I keep waiting for regression to the mean and Jair keeps making great starts.

I can keep going with the stats.  Jurrjens is first in quality start percentage, fifth in WHIP, and fourth in opponents’ OPS.  (If you want to know why the Phillies and Braves have emerged as the two best teams in the NL, look at this list.  Their pitchers hold six of the top seven spots in opponents’ OPS.)  Jurrjens doesn’t strike many batters out, but the flip side is that he is highly efficient.  He’s second in the NL in fewest pitches per inning and tenth in fewest pitches per plate appearance.  While Jurrjens is like Tim Hudson and Derek Lowe in that he doesn’t strike or walk a lot of hitters, he isn’t a groundball pitcher, as his groundball to flyball ratio is less than one.  Lowe and Hudson are third and fifth in the NL in groundball ratio; Jurrjens is 37th.  Jurrjens is, however, very good at avoiding preventing line drives; he is fifth in the NL in lowest line drive percentage.  Combine that low line drive rate with Jurrjens’ fofth place showing in lowest homers allowed per nine innings and  our lesson should be that Jair is pitching to bad contact.  Opponents can put their bats on balls, but not the good parts of their bats.

ESPN’s Dan Braunstein has two interesting notes on Jurrjens’ performance last night:

• Jurrjens kept the ball down, with 63 of his 112 pitches (56.3 percent) tracked down in the zone or below it. Jurrjens got 15 of his outs and six of his eight strikeouts on low pitches. For the season, Jurrjens is 5-0 with a 1.00 ERA in five starts this season when more than 50 percent of his pitches are low.

• Jurrjens took advantage of a generous strike zone. He got 11 called strikes on pitches out of the strike zone, tying his most in a start in the last three seasons. Six of Jurrjens' eight strikeouts came on pitches out of the zone, tying his most in a start in the past three seasons. Five of those strikeouts were on pitches the Orioles chased out of the zone.

The liberal strike zone.  Jurrjens got one strikeout of Matt Wieters in the seventh on a called third strike that was a good nine inches outside.  Eric Gregg would have been proud of that one.

Ode to an Oft-Whiffing Shortstop

The Braves passed the halfway pole of the season yesterday by scoring five runs against Felix Hernandez (I know, I’m as surprised as you are) to complete a sweep of the Mariners in Seattle and move 12 games over .500.  Despite an offense that has been painful to watch, the Braves have a three-game lead over the field for the wild card spot.  As we learned repeatedly through the 90s and 00s, all that matters in baseball is getting your playoff lottery ticket.  When it comes to winning the World Series, William Munny was right: deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it. 

So why are the Braves having a good season?  The pitching is an obvious answer.  As Joe Lemire points out, the Phillies and Braves are both in striking distance of becoming the first teams in 22 years to have a team ERA below 3.00.  This morning, I want to give credit to a less obvious candidate: Alex Gonzalez.  I was not happy when the Braves swapped Yunel Escobar for Gonzalez, reasoning that we were buying high on a player who was hitting at an unsustainable level.  A year later, my fears about Gonzalez regressing to the mean offensively have been realized.  Gonzalez has a miniscule .274 on-base percentage and an OPS+ of 76, which means he is well below the norm in terms of his production at the plate.  After his 23 homers last year, he has all of seven this year.

Despite being close to Uggladom with the lumber, Gonzalez is second among the Braves’ position players in WARP (Wins Over Replacement Player).  How is that possible?  Well, according to the Baseball Prospectus, Gonzalez has been the most valuable fielder in all of the majors in 2011.  His glove work has generated ten runs of value for the Braves above and beyond what a replacement-level player would have done in the same spots; no other player in baseball is above nine runs of value.  This is one of those instances where an advanced fielding metric matches up with what our eyes tell us.  I am certainly not alone among Braves fans in having marveled at Gonzalez’s work in the field this summer.  It’s been a pleasure to follow my Twitter feed during games to see fans repeatedly compliment the guy for being an ace with the leather.  Jair Jurrjens, Derek Lowe, and Tim Hudson – a trio of low strikeout, low walk, groundball machines – ought to be particularly grateful to be playing with Gonzalez.  If there is any justice in the world, then Gonzalez will win a Gold Glove.  It’s just too bad that he’s not in the AL so he could lose to Derek Jeter.

It’s good that Gonzalez is having such a good year, because otherwise, it’s a grim season for Braves position players.  Because of an average year at the plate and a bad season in the field, Chipper has been a tick below replacement level.  Freddie Freeman has been at replacement level, which is good by the standards of Braves first basemen since Andres Gallarraga and is forgivable for a young player in his first year as a regular in the majors, but still isn’t going to get a team to the playoffs.  Whether because of a sophomore slump or bad instruction (I refuse to consider that he isn’t going to be a great player), Jason Heyward has been one of the lowest-performing right fielders in the NL.  Martin Prado has recovered from a bad start to be solidly average, but that’s a major step down from his 2010.  Nate McLouth is only passable in comparison to his lost 2010.  And the less said about Dan Uggla, the better.  The Braves have experienced a team-wide offensive collapse.  Other than Brian McCann, every player on the team is at or below expectations offensively.  That’s a sign of a coaching failure, which means that the Braves need to be thinking about making a change with the hitting coach.  It would be a shame to waste an MVP-type season from McCann, a Gold Glove-type season from Gonzalez, and a terrific season from the pitching staff collectively because Larry Parrish has apparently told the Braves to go up there and swing at everything that moves.

The team’s weak performances with the bats make me a little leery of the idea that trading for a big bat in the outfield will be a panacea.  Normally, I would look at this team and say to myself “man, we are one bat away from being right there with the Phillies.  It makes financial sense for the Braves to push themselves over the top.  Let’s not let the desire to save money in left field be the difference between making the playoffs and staying home in October.”  That said, if Parrish can turn Dan Uggla into the second-worst second baseman in the National League, then what is he going to do with Carlos Beltran? 

I can also see an argument on the part of Liberty Media that the team’s attendance does not justify an increase in the payroll.  The Braves are 15th in the majors in attendance, despite the facts that they are coming off of a season in which they made the playoffs and they have been over .500 for the vast majority of the year.  At times, it has seemed as if the Braves have more fans on the road than they do at home, a popular team that doesn’t draw at home as well as they should.  Liberty Media is not in the business of losing money, so the argument for taking on a big, expensive bat in the outfield is less persuasive than it would be if the team were drawing 35,000 per game.

How did I start this post singing the praises of Alex Gonzalez and then end on such a grim note?

Rocky Top You'll Always Be La Segunda To Me

Georgia is emerging as a chic pick to win the SEC East this fall, but I'm a little bothered by the reasoning. There is legitimate cause for optimism among Dawg fans. Aaron Murray looks like a difference-maker at the most important position on the field. There is a new, exciting option at running back. The defense is in its second year in Todd Grantham's system and finally has a natural fit for one of the key positions in the 3-4: nose tackle. In a lot of ways, last year looks like a season in which Georgia took their lumps and will come out stronger.

However, the second part of the argument is that Georgia's SEC schedule is significantly easier than those of the other contenders in the division. The broad consensus this summer is that Alabama and LSU are top five teams nationally and then Arkansas is behind them in the 10-20 range. Georgia doesn't play any of those three teams. Florida plays LSU and Alabama on consecutive weekends. Tennessee plays all three of the top teams in the West and like Florida, plays Alabama and LSU back-to-back. South Carolina's load is a little lighter, but they do have a trip to Fayetteville on the schedule. In short, Georgia comes into the season with a major advantage that has nothing to do with the team's merit on the field.

I've been struggling to come up with a way to make SEC football more equitable and it took a riot for me to arrive at a solution: two tiers with promotion and relegation. SEC football takes a back seat to nothing in terms of raw passion, but imagine if the stakes were so high that winning or losing would decide whether your team would be in the first or second division the following year? Would the results maybe match this:

Near the end of the game that doomed them, inside River's stadium many wept, and some rioted in fury. The match was abandoned after 89 minutes as seats and missiles rained on to the field. A sense of sinking was swallowing up the River support. Players were distraught leaving the field under heavy police escort. Mayhem continued in the streets of Buenos Aires. The local hospitals were busy treating wounds on fans and riot cops. Misery and depression sent Help phone-lines into overdrive - I am a River Plate fan. It's the end of the world.

Conversely, imagine the fun that rival fans would have at mocking the supporters of elite teams that got sent down. How much fun would Georgia and Alabama fans have had over the past several years making jokes at the expense of Tennessee playing in SEC-B? Also, relegation would be a useful way to punish bad management. As The Economist points out, River Plate's ignominious drop from Argentina's first division is the result of inept decisions at the boardroom level:

Since its last championship in 2008, River has tried to reinvent itself from scratch after every setback, churning through two club presidents, six different coaches and 64 different players. Its management’s desire for a quick fix and need to service its $19m in debt has caused it to sell off young talent prematurely and place too much faith in washed-up, overpaid veterans. Although Argentina’s promotion-and-relegation scheme is designed to prevent clubs from tumbling to the second division following brief periods of poor performance—the formula is based on a team’s record over the preceding three years—River was unable to halt its downward spiral. After finishing 17th out of 20 clubs in the top league, it needed to hold off Belgrano in a two-game series to keep its spot. River lost the away match 2-0, and mustered only a 1-1 draw at home, when it could not hold an early lead and had a penalty kick saved.

Doesn't Tennessee deserve the same fate for Mike Hamilton's reign? They are coasting merrily along despite the debacles that were the end of the Fulmer era and then the inexplicable decision to hire Lane Kiffin. (Note to Dave Brandon: I'd bet that Kiffin interviews really well.) They ought to be in SEC Segunda, playing Vandy and Ole Miss.

The advantage of this approach would be three-fold. First, it would make for important November games for more teams in the conference. Not only would the best teams in the conference be playing for the conference title, but the teams at the bottom of the top division would be fighting for their lives to avoid relegation and the teams and the top of the second division would be busting their tails to get promoted. Second, it would make expansion a viable prospect. Right now, it makes little sense to add attractive targets like Florida State and Texas A&M because a 14- or 16-team league would be unwieldy. However, if you break the league up into two seven- or eight-team divisions? Magic. Third, the format increases the likelihood of top teams playing one another. Right now, if there are top teams in the East and West, they only have a 50% chance of playing one another in a given year. Those odds would drop to near zero with a two-tiered system.*

* - The only way that it wouldn't happen would be if a second division team turned out to be top shelf. For instance, last year's Auburn team might have been in the second division based on the results of the past two seasons. The odds of such a radical turnaround are fairly low, so the benefits of ensuring that the best teams are in the same division outweigh the downside, but I should acknowledge that there are potential negatives to this plan.

So how would this work? Based off of last year's standings, SEC Primera would be:

Alabama
Arkansas
Auburn
LSU
Mississippi State
South Carolina

Those teams had the six best records in the conference. Florida and Mississippi State were tied for sixth and we give the nod to the Other Bulldogs based on a head-t0-head win. Those teams would all play one another, with the winner being the team with the best divisional record.* They would then play three games against teams from SEC Segunda:

Florida
Georgia
Kentucky
Ole Miss
Vandy
Tennessee

The games against the teams from the Segunda would be tie-breakers. Those games would also allow the preservation of rivalries, so Georgia would still play Auburn, the Egg Bowl would still happen, etc. The advantages of this approach aren't as great when power has shifted to one division, as it has in the SEC over the past several years, but in short, we would replace a number of games in which top 25 teams from the West will massacre Ole Miss with games between those teams and South Carolina. In the end, we get more good games.

Another disadvantage of this approach is the end of the SEC Championship Game, but as someone who doesn't love the idea of a playoff in which a less deserving team gets a neutral site shot at a better team (see: 2001 LSU-Tennessee), I'm not crying over this. The SEC was at the cutting edge when it went to the two division, championship game format. Every major conference has copied that format. (The Big East is arguably not major. It would certainly go to the format if it could find 12 teams worth having.) The SEC could be cutting edge again by being the first American sports league to introduce the concept of a relegation riot.