1. After the pain of losing to an inferior Cubs team in the '03 NLDS, winning six out of seven against them makes me feel warm and fuzzy. The fact that the Braves beat Mark Prior and Kerry Wood twice each makes it even sweeter, although it again raises the "were they really that unhittable in '03" specter.
2. Jeff Francoeur, bunter? Hell, why not. If he bunted to third every now and again and drew third basemen in, he'd make himself an even more deadly hitter because he pulls the ball in that direction all the time.
3. Jorge Sosa is going to start Game Three of the NLDS in San Diego. Discuss. I'm trying not to imagine Sosa starting game three in Houston against Roy Oswalt or Bobby Cox deciding that the rotation is dicey, so he's going with Smoltz and Hudson on short rest.
4. Kyle Farnsworth is the closer for the rest of the year. Discuss. Bobby sure managed that way during this series, which means that he's seen enough from Reitsma to know that he's not going to be closing for the time being. Amazingly, I presented four closing options last week and three of them have been ruled out in short order. Reitsma is still slumping and can't close. Joey Devine isn't ready to stop major league hitters from launching grand slams. Smoltz can't leave the rotation because neither Thomson, nor Hampton are healthy. So Kyle it is until he blows up and we start demanding Blaine Boyer.
5. Not to be too negative after the Braves took two of three in Chicago, but the bats are pretty quiet right now. They've scored 13 earned runs in the last five games and that number would be lower if Mark Prior's throwing error this afternoon caused any of those three runs to be unearned. Adam LaRoche is particularly galling right now. He hasn't been hitting recently and today's strikeout in the 7th with runners on third and second and one out in a 1-0 game could have been an absolute killer. His .305 OBP and .748 OPS just don't cut it at a power position. He needs to close this year like he did last year or else those "Chipper to first" rumors are going to be hot and heavy during the off-season.
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Monday, August 22, 2005
And just when I start sensing doom...
Around the 7th inning on Sunday night, I was feeling the walls closing in on the Braves like the Death Star trash compactor. ("What a wonderful smell you've discovered.") Smoltz was petering out, as he does just about every time he gets to 80-90 pitches. (Bobby might not have figured out to lift him if his spot didn't come up second in the bottom of the 7th.) The Braves were six outs away from losing their fourth in a row on a homestand that should have seen them salt the division away and had instead seen the Phillies and Marlins close to striking distance. The offense wasn't scoring and the bullpen inspired little confidence. To make matters worse, the Braves were heading out on the road this week for a road trip that had doom written all over it: three games in Chicago, with a hot Carlos Zambrano opening the series and John Thomson and Mike Hampton pitching (and I use that term loosely, the way they've come off the DL) the next two nights, followed by a series in Milwaukee against a team with a good pitching staff that took two of three in Atlanta back in July. The end was nigh.
Lo and behold, Bruce Bochy bailed the Braves out by inserting Akinori Otsuka, who was running on fumes after throwing two stressful innings on Saturday, instead of leaving in Scott Linebrink, who mowed through the Braves on 12 pitches in the 7th, and with a little help from our friends named Damian Jackson and Mark Sweeney, the Braves rallied for a win and then made it two in a row tonight with two of our high-priced, but oft-injured stars - Chipper and Hudson - showing why they have enough money to be Bond villains. (By the way, I just watched Moonraker and started thinking what sort of hare-brained plot I would hatch if I was a fabulously wealthy industrialist. Since destroying the world to create a new one in the sea has been taken, as has a new world in space, what's left for me? New world in a volcano? No, that's been taken as well. Maybe in the center of the earth? I digress.) Hudson threw very well tonight, although he was somewhat lucky late because his location suffered, but his movement was good enough to make sure that the average Cubs bats couldn't tee off. Chipper provided all of the offense one night after he had the big hit. The guy has never missed the playoffs on any level and he's showed why for the past two games.
Other random notes:
1. After a wretched start to the year, Rafael Furcal is second among NL shortstops in VORP (value over replacement player). He's played the best defense of his career this year and his offensive surge has neatly coincided with the Braves' surge as a team. He's going to be worth at least $10M per season this off-season, but I'm coming close to thinking that he might be worth that money more than Giles, although Marcus seems to be growing into a team leader role, or at least the court jester. I'm hoping that the Braves have a plan to sign one of them, if not both.
2. The fact that Bobby let Hudson throw over 120 pitches tonight with a two-run lead tells you all you need to know about his confidence in the closing situation right now. And anyone notice that he had Farnsworth, not Reitsma up in the pen? Maybe Bobby was channeling Dusty in the home dugout.
3. Can the Braves win one of the next two? Hampton or Thomson: which one is more likely to get off the schnide first? Or are the Braves going to have to have a ten-run outburst to win one of these games? And can we see if Farnsworth can come in against his former team in an emotional situation and pitch well? Is this the test for him in advance of the October crucible? I want the truth!
Lo and behold, Bruce Bochy bailed the Braves out by inserting Akinori Otsuka, who was running on fumes after throwing two stressful innings on Saturday, instead of leaving in Scott Linebrink, who mowed through the Braves on 12 pitches in the 7th, and with a little help from our friends named Damian Jackson and Mark Sweeney, the Braves rallied for a win and then made it two in a row tonight with two of our high-priced, but oft-injured stars - Chipper and Hudson - showing why they have enough money to be Bond villains. (By the way, I just watched Moonraker and started thinking what sort of hare-brained plot I would hatch if I was a fabulously wealthy industrialist. Since destroying the world to create a new one in the sea has been taken, as has a new world in space, what's left for me? New world in a volcano? No, that's been taken as well. Maybe in the center of the earth? I digress.) Hudson threw very well tonight, although he was somewhat lucky late because his location suffered, but his movement was good enough to make sure that the average Cubs bats couldn't tee off. Chipper provided all of the offense one night after he had the big hit. The guy has never missed the playoffs on any level and he's showed why for the past two games.
Other random notes:
1. After a wretched start to the year, Rafael Furcal is second among NL shortstops in VORP (value over replacement player). He's played the best defense of his career this year and his offensive surge has neatly coincided with the Braves' surge as a team. He's going to be worth at least $10M per season this off-season, but I'm coming close to thinking that he might be worth that money more than Giles, although Marcus seems to be growing into a team leader role, or at least the court jester. I'm hoping that the Braves have a plan to sign one of them, if not both.
2. The fact that Bobby let Hudson throw over 120 pitches tonight with a two-run lead tells you all you need to know about his confidence in the closing situation right now. And anyone notice that he had Farnsworth, not Reitsma up in the pen? Maybe Bobby was channeling Dusty in the home dugout.
3. Can the Braves win one of the next two? Hampton or Thomson: which one is more likely to get off the schnide first? Or are the Braves going to have to have a ten-run outburst to win one of these games? And can we see if Farnsworth can come in against his former team in an emotional situation and pitch well? Is this the test for him in advance of the October crucible? I want the truth!
Friday, August 19, 2005
Link-o-rama
Sports Guy's intern has a reasonably interesting take on Andruw Jones. The parallel at the end between Jones and the Braves - a very good team that never quite won as much as we thought it should - is interesting and if the analogy holds true, then this October should be a real treat...if we get there.
Jeff Francoeur has caught the eye of Sports Illustrated's John Donovan, who writes that Francoeur has a lot of power, swings at everything, and brings a football mentality to the diamond. Nothing too earth-shattering there for anyone who's watched the Braves over the past month, but it's nice to see Frenchy get some recognition. By the way, can you imagine the parallels between Francoeur and Vlad Guerrero if Jeff was from the Dominican?
If you've been looking for a completely incoherent take on the Hawks' disaster, Scoop Jackson is on the scene. This joke will only resonate with people who grew up on the Macon Telegraph & News, but Jackson's paragraph-to-sentence ratio must be the lowest since Harley Bowers. (My favorite Harley memory is the year that he decided that the Heisman shouldn't be given because none of the players that year deserved it. It was some time in the late 80s and for the life of me, I can't remember the exact year.) For those of you who didn't read Harley every morning, imagine Furman Bisher writing a front-page of the Sports section piece every morning, only with even less coherence.
Stewart Mandel's SEC Preview is up. Not much interesting here, other than Mandel taking Florida over Tennessee in the East. He also predicts Arkansas to have a winning record, which is a bit of a stretch, but the Reggie Herring hire might be the reason. I didn't see anything out of Robert Johnson last year to make me think that the Hogs will be able to move the ball, but he should be much better now that he's the starter and getting most of the reps in practice. Getting thrown into a tight game against Georgia's defense wasn't exactly a situation that had success written all over it.
Speaking of Sports Illustrated, I was reading the college football preview at the gym today and caught two factual errors in the space of about 15 pages. First, they say that Marshall and West Virginia haven't played since 1915, when a simple trip to jhowell.net would have revealed an August 30, 1997 42-31 WVU win over Marshall. Second, they printed a stat that Ohio State gained around 400 yards per game in the first half of last season and then 500 yards per game in their final five games. Those are some pretty impressive numbers for a team that finished 98th in the country in total offense at a whopping 320.8 yards per game. It's possible that SI is including return yardage in their 400/500 figures, but that's incredibly misleading because any football fan will read the stat and think that SI means total offense. And so, we ask the question again: don't these people have fact-checkers? I thought that SI had, you know, editors?
Jeff Francoeur has caught the eye of Sports Illustrated's John Donovan, who writes that Francoeur has a lot of power, swings at everything, and brings a football mentality to the diamond. Nothing too earth-shattering there for anyone who's watched the Braves over the past month, but it's nice to see Frenchy get some recognition. By the way, can you imagine the parallels between Francoeur and Vlad Guerrero if Jeff was from the Dominican?
If you've been looking for a completely incoherent take on the Hawks' disaster, Scoop Jackson is on the scene. This joke will only resonate with people who grew up on the Macon Telegraph & News, but Jackson's paragraph-to-sentence ratio must be the lowest since Harley Bowers. (My favorite Harley memory is the year that he decided that the Heisman shouldn't be given because none of the players that year deserved it. It was some time in the late 80s and for the life of me, I can't remember the exact year.) For those of you who didn't read Harley every morning, imagine Furman Bisher writing a front-page of the Sports section piece every morning, only with even less coherence.
Stewart Mandel's SEC Preview is up. Not much interesting here, other than Mandel taking Florida over Tennessee in the East. He also predicts Arkansas to have a winning record, which is a bit of a stretch, but the Reggie Herring hire might be the reason. I didn't see anything out of Robert Johnson last year to make me think that the Hogs will be able to move the ball, but he should be much better now that he's the starter and getting most of the reps in practice. Getting thrown into a tight game against Georgia's defense wasn't exactly a situation that had success written all over it.
Speaking of Sports Illustrated, I was reading the college football preview at the gym today and caught two factual errors in the space of about 15 pages. First, they say that Marshall and West Virginia haven't played since 1915, when a simple trip to jhowell.net would have revealed an August 30, 1997 42-31 WVU win over Marshall. Second, they printed a stat that Ohio State gained around 400 yards per game in the first half of last season and then 500 yards per game in their final five games. Those are some pretty impressive numbers for a team that finished 98th in the country in total offense at a whopping 320.8 yards per game. It's possible that SI is including return yardage in their 400/500 figures, but that's incredibly misleading because any football fan will read the stat and think that SI means total offense. And so, we ask the question again: don't these people have fact-checkers? I thought that SI had, you know, editors?
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
CLOSER CRISIS 2005!!!
After a flawless July, Chris Reitsma has been about as bad as a pitcher can be in August. Ever since his disastrous 9th inning in St. Louis ten days ago, he's been unable to get anyone out, save for one competent inning at the end of a 9-5 win over Arizona on Sunday. Last night, he failed to record an out while facing five batters from the L.A. Dodgers, one of the worst offensive teams in baseball.
On the one hand, we might look back on this season and think that it all went south when he deflected a double-play grounder in the 9th in St. Louis. If he doesn't touch that ball, then he's left protecting a two-run lead with a runner on third and two outs, he probably gets the save, and he doesn't go through his current crisis of confidence. On the other hand, Reitsma could be going through the same doldrums that he went through last year, when he wore out and was mostly useless for the last portion of the season. As I see it, the Braves have a few options right now:
1. Keep Reitsma as the closer and hope that he pitches through his slump. This is the strategy that Bobby will employ for the time being; the question is how long will he employ it. The Braves have a four-game lead over Philadelphia in the loss column and there are still 43 games to go. That gives Reitsma a little time to sort through the demons that scream in his head every time he goes to the hill. If that lead dwindles too much, then Bobby might be forced to go to other options...
2. Find another closer in the bullpen. The most obvious candidate is Kyle Farnsworth, who has the stuff to close games and was very effective for Detroit this year. However, he's pretty emotional and he could be another Dan Kolb: a guy who pitches well in obscurity, but blows up when faced with pressure. Otherwise, I don't see another closer in the bullpen. There is a pretty good closer on the roster, however...
3. Move Smoltz back to the bullpen. This will probably never happen because Smoltz would have to be dragged kicking and screaming, but if the closer crisis gets bad enough and Hampton and Thomson are both pitching well, then Bobby will be faced with a team that has a glut of great starters, no closer, a 13-year divisional title streak on the line, and a solution sitting at the top of his rotation. Smoltz has worn down a little this year and acknowledged last night that his endurance wasn't very good. If he's only going to be a six- or seven-inning guy from here on out, isn't it better for him to move to the pen? And would doing so, changing his work pattern, be a recipe for arm trouble?
4. Call up Joey Devine. It would be fitting, in a year in which the Braves have relied so heavily on their farm system, that they would look to it to solve a closer crisis. He has a 2.37 ERA right now at Mississippi. A 1.42 WHIP isn't especially impressive, but the sample size is small. He was described as major league-ready when the Braves drafted him and it seems likely that he'll be called up when the rosters expand, unless his pitching at Mississippi has the Braves' scouts convinced that he's not yet ready. It seems unlikely that Bobby would trust a rookie to close in big games in September and (G-d willing) October, but necessity being the mother of invention, it's not impossible. I never thought that Lloyd Carr would ever trust a true freshman in a critical role, but when Michigan was 1-1 and about to lose a home game to San Diego State, voila, Carr went to Mike Hart and Michigan rode two true frosh in the backfield to Pasadena.
On the one hand, we might look back on this season and think that it all went south when he deflected a double-play grounder in the 9th in St. Louis. If he doesn't touch that ball, then he's left protecting a two-run lead with a runner on third and two outs, he probably gets the save, and he doesn't go through his current crisis of confidence. On the other hand, Reitsma could be going through the same doldrums that he went through last year, when he wore out and was mostly useless for the last portion of the season. As I see it, the Braves have a few options right now:
1. Keep Reitsma as the closer and hope that he pitches through his slump. This is the strategy that Bobby will employ for the time being; the question is how long will he employ it. The Braves have a four-game lead over Philadelphia in the loss column and there are still 43 games to go. That gives Reitsma a little time to sort through the demons that scream in his head every time he goes to the hill. If that lead dwindles too much, then Bobby might be forced to go to other options...
2. Find another closer in the bullpen. The most obvious candidate is Kyle Farnsworth, who has the stuff to close games and was very effective for Detroit this year. However, he's pretty emotional and he could be another Dan Kolb: a guy who pitches well in obscurity, but blows up when faced with pressure. Otherwise, I don't see another closer in the bullpen. There is a pretty good closer on the roster, however...
3. Move Smoltz back to the bullpen. This will probably never happen because Smoltz would have to be dragged kicking and screaming, but if the closer crisis gets bad enough and Hampton and Thomson are both pitching well, then Bobby will be faced with a team that has a glut of great starters, no closer, a 13-year divisional title streak on the line, and a solution sitting at the top of his rotation. Smoltz has worn down a little this year and acknowledged last night that his endurance wasn't very good. If he's only going to be a six- or seven-inning guy from here on out, isn't it better for him to move to the pen? And would doing so, changing his work pattern, be a recipe for arm trouble?
4. Call up Joey Devine. It would be fitting, in a year in which the Braves have relied so heavily on their farm system, that they would look to it to solve a closer crisis. He has a 2.37 ERA right now at Mississippi. A 1.42 WHIP isn't especially impressive, but the sample size is small. He was described as major league-ready when the Braves drafted him and it seems likely that he'll be called up when the rosters expand, unless his pitching at Mississippi has the Braves' scouts convinced that he's not yet ready. It seems unlikely that Bobby would trust a rookie to close in big games in September and (G-d willing) October, but necessity being the mother of invention, it's not impossible. I never thought that Lloyd Carr would ever trust a true freshman in a critical role, but when Michigan was 1-1 and about to lose a home game to San Diego State, voila, Carr went to Mike Hart and Michigan rode two true frosh in the backfield to Pasadena.
Trash Talking from Lou Holtz?
I'm not sure where to begin in discussing this statement from the former head coach of the South Carolina Gamecocks. First of all, Holtz, when he was a head coach, wouldn't pick his team to beat Tattnall Square Academy, let alone a team like Georgia on the road. Now that he doesn't have a chestnut in the fire, he's turned into Jose Mourinho? Second, he conveniently forgets to mention that Georgia does have trouble in Columbia, but the last time Lou brought his Cocks to Athens, they left with their feathers between their legs on the heels of a 31-7 beating. Third, and most amusingly, he left the cupboard bare in Columbia. Between his average recruiting efforts and the fact that he ran such a loose ship that Steve Spurrier has been forced to cut players left and right, South Carolina isn't going to be bringing a whole lot of talent to Athens.
Fans in the SEC seem to have some sort of reflexive fear of Spurrier, but they forget that he was great at Florida because he was a bright coach and because he had talent that was better than anyone else's, save for Tennessee and perhaps Georgia at the end of the Donnan era. How's he going to do with inferior talent? Well, how did he do in the NFL when he was playing with Daniel Snyder's mismatched roster instead of blue chip athletes galore? How did Lou Holtz, another very good coach (albeit one hamstrung by his loyalty to his son as offensive coordinator,) do with South Carolina talent? 33-37.
So thanks, Lou. We appreciate your confidence in South Carolina. (Maybe your fans' famously excessive optimism has rubbed off? Care to share another story about how Cory Jenkins is faster than Carl Lewis and can throw the ball farther than Kordell Stewart and harder than Billy Wagner?) Your recommendation doesn't change the fact that the South Carolina game ranks behind Florida, Tennessee, Auburn, Georgia Tech, and Boise State on the list of games that Georgia fans should be worrying about this August.
Fans in the SEC seem to have some sort of reflexive fear of Spurrier, but they forget that he was great at Florida because he was a bright coach and because he had talent that was better than anyone else's, save for Tennessee and perhaps Georgia at the end of the Donnan era. How's he going to do with inferior talent? Well, how did he do in the NFL when he was playing with Daniel Snyder's mismatched roster instead of blue chip athletes galore? How did Lou Holtz, another very good coach (albeit one hamstrung by his loyalty to his son as offensive coordinator,) do with South Carolina talent? 33-37.
So thanks, Lou. We appreciate your confidence in South Carolina. (Maybe your fans' famously excessive optimism has rubbed off? Care to share another story about how Cory Jenkins is faster than Carl Lewis and can throw the ball farther than Kordell Stewart and harder than Billy Wagner?) Your recommendation doesn't change the fact that the South Carolina game ranks behind Florida, Tennessee, Auburn, Georgia Tech, and Boise State on the list of games that Georgia fans should be worrying about this August.
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
My Top 25
I didn't put as much thought into it as I should have, but looking at the teams, regardless of their schedules, here's what I come up with:
1. Southern Cal
2. Louisiana State
3. Texas
4. Florida
5. Virginia Tech
6. Tennessee
7. Michigan
8. Oklahoma
9. Louisville
10. Miami (Florida)
11. Ohio State
12. Georgia
13. Iowa
14. Auburn
15. Cal
16. Texas A&M
17. Florida State
18. Boise State
19. Purdue
20. Alabama
21. Minnesota
22. Texas Tech
23. Oregon
24. Pittsburgh
25. Notre Dame
It's a little SEC heavy and I'm not going with my conviction that Tennessee is overrated as much as I should.
1. Southern Cal
2. Louisiana State
3. Texas
4. Florida
5. Virginia Tech
6. Tennessee
7. Michigan
8. Oklahoma
9. Louisville
10. Miami (Florida)
11. Ohio State
12. Georgia
13. Iowa
14. Auburn
15. Cal
16. Texas A&M
17. Florida State
18. Boise State
19. Purdue
20. Alabama
21. Minnesota
22. Texas Tech
23. Oregon
24. Pittsburgh
25. Notre Dame
It's a little SEC heavy and I'm not going with my conviction that Tennessee is overrated as much as I should.
Scouting the SEC for Fantasy Purposes
My college fantasy draft is this weekend (I play in a league with people from my high school and from the "we're way ahead of Kansas in not teaching evolution" rival high school) and as always, my partner and I are scrambling to put together rankings for the season. One of our usual rules is that we stay away from SEC players because 1) they tend to get drafted very high in the South, 2) everyone knows about them, whereas we have an advantage in that I'm probably the only one in the room with good knowledge of the Big Ten and its panoply of statistically productive running backs, and, most importantly, 3) SEC players haven't put up big numbers in recent years because the defenses have been ahead of the offenses. (Cue HeismanPundit telling us that SEC offenses are coached by Farmer Fran, the assistant in The Waterboy.) SEC teams produce a bevy of good NFL runners, but those runners are typically a surprise to everyone on the next level because they didn't have big stats in college. (See: Davis, Terrell or Davis, Domanick.) The league hasn't produced a great fantasy QB since Rex Grossman won the league for one team (not mine) in 2001. We, of course, foolishly drafted him the next year during the Ron Zook malaise. In 2001, we sought to reproduce our league-winning team of 2000, which was led by Chris Weinke, and went with Chris Rix early. Nice work.
Anyway, I think that that drafting rule against taking SEC players doesn't apply anymore. The league was very defensive last year. Georgia, Alabama, Auburn, and LSU all had very good defenses and, with the exception of Auburn, did not have offenses to match. Tennessee and Florida were the only major teams in the league with better offenses than defenses. This year, the league looks like it's about to take a serious turn. Look at the major coaching changes:
LSU replaces a defensive coach with an offensive one. Specifically, Les Miles did a great job coaching the running game at Oklahoma State and ought to transfer that skill to LSU.
Florida replaces a defensive coach (albeit one who didn't know his ass from a hole in the ground in terms of defensive scheming) with an offensive one and is expected to put up huge numbers this year.
Georgia loses its defensive coordinator, but retains its offensive brain trust.
Auburn loses its defensive coordinator, but retains its offensive brain trust.
South Carolina replaces Lou Holtz (an offensive coach whose teams at USC were better on defense) with Steve Spurrier, the gold standard of SEC offensive coaches.
The only teams in the conference that made changes that should make them better defensively this year were Arkansas, who hired Reggie Herring to fix their leaking defense, and Ole Miss, which hired Ed Orgeron, a defensive coach, to replace David Cutcliffe, an offensive coach.
Offense and defense tend to ebb and flow. The SEC was in a defensive stage until Steve Spurrier came into the league and forced opponents to evolve or die. (There's another nasty evolution reference, although I suppose the Luddites can always come back with "But it was Spurrier's intelligent design that forced the change!") Within years, everyone in the league was running three-and four-wide sets and throwing the ball around. Then, defenses caught up and the league went back into a defense-first posture for the past several years, mainly after 2001, which is the last year in which the best teams in the league were all offense-heavy. Now, the pendulum looks like it's about to swing back.
Anyway, I think that that drafting rule against taking SEC players doesn't apply anymore. The league was very defensive last year. Georgia, Alabama, Auburn, and LSU all had very good defenses and, with the exception of Auburn, did not have offenses to match. Tennessee and Florida were the only major teams in the league with better offenses than defenses. This year, the league looks like it's about to take a serious turn. Look at the major coaching changes:
LSU replaces a defensive coach with an offensive one. Specifically, Les Miles did a great job coaching the running game at Oklahoma State and ought to transfer that skill to LSU.
Florida replaces a defensive coach (albeit one who didn't know his ass from a hole in the ground in terms of defensive scheming) with an offensive one and is expected to put up huge numbers this year.
Georgia loses its defensive coordinator, but retains its offensive brain trust.
Auburn loses its defensive coordinator, but retains its offensive brain trust.
South Carolina replaces Lou Holtz (an offensive coach whose teams at USC were better on defense) with Steve Spurrier, the gold standard of SEC offensive coaches.
The only teams in the conference that made changes that should make them better defensively this year were Arkansas, who hired Reggie Herring to fix their leaking defense, and Ole Miss, which hired Ed Orgeron, a defensive coach, to replace David Cutcliffe, an offensive coach.
Offense and defense tend to ebb and flow. The SEC was in a defensive stage until Steve Spurrier came into the league and forced opponents to evolve or die. (There's another nasty evolution reference, although I suppose the Luddites can always come back with "But it was Spurrier's intelligent design that forced the change!") Within years, everyone in the league was running three-and four-wide sets and throwing the ball around. Then, defenses caught up and the league went back into a defense-first posture for the past several years, mainly after 2001, which is the last year in which the best teams in the league were all offense-heavy. Now, the pendulum looks like it's about to swing back.
Kudos for the Braves
At this stage in the season, it's always fun reading articles from outlets covering teams that have had disappointing years comparing their teams to the Braves. Here is this year's entry from Los Angeles.
Paul DePodesta, a Harvard-educated economist and one of the protagonists of Moneyball, has nothing but nice things to say about the Braves, referring to them as a "model." One the one hand, he can't be expected to say anything else, given that his team is below .500 and the Braves have the second-best record in the National League right now. On the other hand, if he is stating genuine admiration for a team that allegedly emphasizes scouting over statistical analysis, then that's further evidence that the dichotomy between the two schools is not as broad as was once thought. The Braves did make some Moneyball mistakes this year, like overrating the importance of saves in trading for Dan Kolb or ignoring the statistical declines of Brian Jordan and Raul Mondesi. However, they've been a perfect Moneyball team in the sense that they've gotten cheap production from their farm system, rather than overpaying free agents or mortgaging the future by making big trades.
Paul DePodesta, a Harvard-educated economist and one of the protagonists of Moneyball, has nothing but nice things to say about the Braves, referring to them as a "model." One the one hand, he can't be expected to say anything else, given that his team is below .500 and the Braves have the second-best record in the National League right now. On the other hand, if he is stating genuine admiration for a team that allegedly emphasizes scouting over statistical analysis, then that's further evidence that the dichotomy between the two schools is not as broad as was once thought. The Braves did make some Moneyball mistakes this year, like overrating the importance of saves in trading for Dan Kolb or ignoring the statistical declines of Brian Jordan and Raul Mondesi. However, they've been a perfect Moneyball team in the sense that they've gotten cheap production from their farm system, rather than overpaying free agents or mortgaging the future by making big trades.
The very personification of myopia
Put this piece from Bill Simmons into the dictionary next to the entry for "myopia". "Provincial" would also be a good spot. (And we Southerners are supposed to be the ones living in our own insular little world.) In case you haven't been following this blog from its diaper days, one of my pet peeves is the obsession with the Yankees and Red Sox, which has destroyed any enjoyment that I got from following the American League. Actually, that's not true. I have enjoyed following the other contenders in the AL this year just because I desperately want to see them knock the Sox and Yankees off to spare us from another Northeastern (read: national) media orgy when the two teams meet again.
Anyway, Simmons has decided that, although Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz are apparently book-ending Alex Rodriguez in the running for AL MVP, that's simply not enough: Johnny Damon needs to be in the picture as well. The closest analogy I can think of would be Ronald Reagan waking up on the morning after Election Day 1984 and whining that he didn't win Minnesota and the District of Columbia. You would think, based on Simmons' list and his bitched-about omission that the Yankees and Red Sox are both 75-40 and coasting towards the playoffs. Would you believe that they don't have the best record in the AL? Or that they are essentially equivalent to the A's and Angels in terms of wins and losses?
My major problem with Simmons' reasoning is this: it ought to be damned near impossible for a player on a team with a payroll in the Yankees/Red Sox stratosphere to ever win the MVP because their teams have so much talent that no one player is irreplaceable. Simmons himself admits that Ortiz and Ramirez are essentially redundant, save for the fact that Manny is bad-crazy and Ortiz is good-crazy. And how does one distinguish A-Rod from Sheffield or Matsui? Now, take a gander at the Angels' stats and notice how integral to their success Vlad Guerrero is. And then add in the fact that he's a defensive asset, unlike just about everyone else on the list, other than A-Rod. And are you telling me that we can't find a single MVP candidate from the best team in the AL? Is Paul Konerko's .898 OPS and 30 homers not enough for you?
And one other problem that causes me to question his judgment: he describes Johnny Damon going over the fence to pull back a homer in Tampa. I remember that game (mainly because ESPN seemed to be playing the highlights on a continuous loop) and unless Damon is as tall as Georghe Muresan and can jump like Josh Smith, he didn't pull back a home run, since the outfield walls at Tropicana Field are 9'5 and 11'4. Damon got back to the wall, waited, and timed an unremarkable jump to catch the ball. It was a very good play, but Simmons tries to turn it into some sort of Junior-Griffey-in-his-prime feat of stunning athleticism. And for G-d sakes, do we really want to give out the MVP based on a win over the Devil Rays?
Anyway, Simmons has decided that, although Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz are apparently book-ending Alex Rodriguez in the running for AL MVP, that's simply not enough: Johnny Damon needs to be in the picture as well. The closest analogy I can think of would be Ronald Reagan waking up on the morning after Election Day 1984 and whining that he didn't win Minnesota and the District of Columbia. You would think, based on Simmons' list and his bitched-about omission that the Yankees and Red Sox are both 75-40 and coasting towards the playoffs. Would you believe that they don't have the best record in the AL? Or that they are essentially equivalent to the A's and Angels in terms of wins and losses?
My major problem with Simmons' reasoning is this: it ought to be damned near impossible for a player on a team with a payroll in the Yankees/Red Sox stratosphere to ever win the MVP because their teams have so much talent that no one player is irreplaceable. Simmons himself admits that Ortiz and Ramirez are essentially redundant, save for the fact that Manny is bad-crazy and Ortiz is good-crazy. And how does one distinguish A-Rod from Sheffield or Matsui? Now, take a gander at the Angels' stats and notice how integral to their success Vlad Guerrero is. And then add in the fact that he's a defensive asset, unlike just about everyone else on the list, other than A-Rod. And are you telling me that we can't find a single MVP candidate from the best team in the AL? Is Paul Konerko's .898 OPS and 30 homers not enough for you?
And one other problem that causes me to question his judgment: he describes Johnny Damon going over the fence to pull back a homer in Tampa. I remember that game (mainly because ESPN seemed to be playing the highlights on a continuous loop) and unless Damon is as tall as Georghe Muresan and can jump like Josh Smith, he didn't pull back a home run, since the outfield walls at Tropicana Field are 9'5 and 11'4. Damon got back to the wall, waited, and timed an unremarkable jump to catch the ball. It was a very good play, but Simmons tries to turn it into some sort of Junior-Griffey-in-his-prime feat of stunning athleticism. And for G-d sakes, do we really want to give out the MVP based on a win over the Devil Rays?
Friday, August 12, 2005
I have to admit it's getting better
We're channeling the Beatles instead of G'n'R today (maybe "The Long and Winding Road" would have been better?) in light of the latest development in JoeJohnsonGate: David Stern has arrived to rescue the deal. Judge Gestel ruled against the majority of the Hawks' owners (hereinafter, "Owners who want to spend") on Tuesday and said that they needed approval of the NBA to remove Belkin as the team's representative on the Board of Governors. Stern has now filed an affidavit stating that the Owners who want to spend have the right to do so because Belkin's actions are material enough to trigger that right. This seemed fairly obvious to me from the outset: signing a player who would be the highest-paid player on the team by far seems like a pretty important action and one owner stopping that action from taking place seems like a pretty material action that legally binds the team. Anyway, it wasn't obvious to Judge Gestel, although something tells me that the result would have been different if the Celtics were the team acquiring the player (not that judges would ever let their personal preferences get in the way of interpreting the law.) Hopefully, the affidavit from David Stern, who has a law degree and rose from the position of corporate counsel to the commissioner's seat (see, lawyers can do productive things!), will be sufficient to get the injunction dissolved and we can all go on with our lives.
I'm something of an optimist, despite over two decades as an Atlanta sports fan, and this whole imbroglio could turn out to be a positive one for the Hawks. If it ends with Belkin getting neutered, then the net result is that everyone else in the organization will have bonded together against a common enemy. The players will view the remaining owners as willing to go to the mat for them to improve the team, especially Johnson because it will be clear to him that the Owners who want to spend were willing to fight Belkin in court to get him to Atlanta. Billy Knight ends up looking like a hero, helped in no small part by this photo:
And if the Owners who want to spend money succeed in buying out Belkin so he can cause no more mischief (a possibility that seems somewhat unlikely according to today's paper, although Belkin losing his injunction and being marginalized by the Owners who want to spend money would damage his bargaining position), then we could actually be confident in this ownership group going forward. In the end, if the Hawks end up with Joe Johnson and the whole episode brought to a head (and ultimately healed by amputation) the fissure in the group, then the franchise is better off and we can look forward to the coming years as an exciting time in which a young, athletic team will hopefully grown and improve together.
One pessimistic thought: John Hollinger, espn.com's NBA stathead, ranked the acquisition of Johnson as the second-worst off-season signing:
"Assuming this deal happens, it was bad enough for the Hawks to offer to pay Johnson roughly double what he's worth by giving him $14 million a year. It was bad enough that Atlanta's 'plan' involves Johnson playing the point full-time, even though he gets into the paint about as often as Shawn Kemp gets into a leotard. But the real kicker for me is that the Hawks are now willing to fork out two No. 1 picks to Phoenix for the right to overpay Johnson so badly. Johnson's numbers have been inflated by all the minutes he's played, but on a per-minute basis he's a pretty ordinary player."
A couple thoughts on this:
1. I'm somewhat leery of playing Johnson at the point, but his passing and assist numbers are pretty good in limited time at the position. Ultimately, he'll be best at the two with Salim Stoudemire at the one, assuming that Salim can occasionally beat defenders off the dribble. If not, he'd be a fine match with Tyronne Lue. The problem with playing Johnson at the two is that it bumps Josh Childress into the logjam at forward, increasing the necessity to trade Al Harrington for a one or a five.
2. Is it possible that he didn't drive much in Phoenix because his role was to be a set shooter? Seriously, why would the ball be in his hands when you're paying all that money to Steve Nash? He was certainly quick enough to get into the paint when he was in college.
3. The market clearly thinks that Johnson is worth the money since teams are lining up to pay him the max and trade with the Suns if the Hawks' deal falls through. Maybe they all watched Phoenix go in the tank once Johnson was injured in the playoffs.
4. Shouldn't his durability be a positive? Does John Hollinger need to talk to the Baseball Prospectus guys about this point?
I'm something of an optimist, despite over two decades as an Atlanta sports fan, and this whole imbroglio could turn out to be a positive one for the Hawks. If it ends with Belkin getting neutered, then the net result is that everyone else in the organization will have bonded together against a common enemy. The players will view the remaining owners as willing to go to the mat for them to improve the team, especially Johnson because it will be clear to him that the Owners who want to spend were willing to fight Belkin in court to get him to Atlanta. Billy Knight ends up looking like a hero, helped in no small part by this photo:
And if the Owners who want to spend money succeed in buying out Belkin so he can cause no more mischief (a possibility that seems somewhat unlikely according to today's paper, although Belkin losing his injunction and being marginalized by the Owners who want to spend money would damage his bargaining position), then we could actually be confident in this ownership group going forward. In the end, if the Hawks end up with Joe Johnson and the whole episode brought to a head (and ultimately healed by amputation) the fissure in the group, then the franchise is better off and we can look forward to the coming years as an exciting time in which a young, athletic team will hopefully grown and improve together.
One pessimistic thought: John Hollinger, espn.com's NBA stathead, ranked the acquisition of Johnson as the second-worst off-season signing:
"Assuming this deal happens, it was bad enough for the Hawks to offer to pay Johnson roughly double what he's worth by giving him $14 million a year. It was bad enough that Atlanta's 'plan' involves Johnson playing the point full-time, even though he gets into the paint about as often as Shawn Kemp gets into a leotard. But the real kicker for me is that the Hawks are now willing to fork out two No. 1 picks to Phoenix for the right to overpay Johnson so badly. Johnson's numbers have been inflated by all the minutes he's played, but on a per-minute basis he's a pretty ordinary player."
A couple thoughts on this:
1. I'm somewhat leery of playing Johnson at the point, but his passing and assist numbers are pretty good in limited time at the position. Ultimately, he'll be best at the two with Salim Stoudemire at the one, assuming that Salim can occasionally beat defenders off the dribble. If not, he'd be a fine match with Tyronne Lue. The problem with playing Johnson at the two is that it bumps Josh Childress into the logjam at forward, increasing the necessity to trade Al Harrington for a one or a five.
2. Is it possible that he didn't drive much in Phoenix because his role was to be a set shooter? Seriously, why would the ball be in his hands when you're paying all that money to Steve Nash? He was certainly quick enough to get into the paint when he was in college.
3. The market clearly thinks that Johnson is worth the money since teams are lining up to pay him the max and trade with the Suns if the Hawks' deal falls through. Maybe they all watched Phoenix go in the tank once Johnson was injured in the playoffs.
4. Shouldn't his durability be a positive? Does John Hollinger need to talk to the Baseball Prospectus guys about this point?
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Further evidence that Georgians are better than Floridians
The Florida College Sports blog takes on an admirable task - showing how badly the BCS has failed at its mission (although it's my position that its mission is impossible) - and ends up simply showing that they need a fact-checker in the worst way. In the interests of provoking a border war, let's play count the mistakes:
1. The BCS didn't exist until 1998. Before that, it was the Bowl Coalition and the Bowl Alliance. I can't remember which came first, but it's interesting to see that all the names were picked to create some perception of consensus. "Hey, they gang's all here! No need to criticize us now!"
2. I'm pretty sure that there was no Bowl Alliance in 1994. Nebraska was obligated to go to the Orange Bowl, Penn State was obligated to go to the Rose Bowl, and if unbeaten Alabama wouldn't have been upset by Florida in the SEC Championship Game, they would have been headed to the Orange Bowl. That year simply illustrates that the old bowl system was worse than the BCS and its Alliance/Coalition buddies.
3. Texas was 8-4 after upsetting Nebraska in the '96 Big XII Title Game, so I'm pretty sure that they weren't a candidate for the Sugar Bowl. Virginia Tech was indeed 10-1, but no one took them seriously because of their soft schedule and two-loss Nebraska had their way with them in the Orange Bowl. The controversy in '96 was that unbeaten Arizona State and once-beaten (and almost unbeaten; thanks, Tai Streets) had to play in the Rose Bowl. If the BCS would have existed in 1996, then the two unbeaten teams - FSU and ASU - would have played in the title game and Steve Spurrier would still be without a national title. To summarize, '96 showed that the BCS would be an improvement because it would bring the Big Ten and Pac Ten into the fold.
4. Another problem with this article: the writer has no idea how the BCS and its predecessors work. He argues that Tennessee got the slot opposite Nebraska instead of Florida or Florida State because Peyton Manning would bring in TV viewers. I was unaware that ABC had a vote in the human polls or ran a computer poll. John Saunders must work in mysterious ways. No, Tennessee got that spot because they played a tougher schedule than Florida State, they had fewer losses than Florida, and they lost earlier in the year than either of them. Blame pollsters for recency, but don't blame the BCS for that.
5. 1998 - Again, Florida State lost earlier than Ohio State and that got them to the Fiesta Bowl. Blame the pollsters, not the BCS. Also, FSU's last game was a home win over 9-1 Florida in which they allowed something like one complete pass in the second half, possibly Doug Johnson's finest hour. (That was also the game that Dougie threw at Bobby Bowden during warm-ups. In retrospect, why were any of us surprised that he was a miserable failure as the starter for the Falcons?) The big screw-up in '98 would have been if UCLA and Kansas State wouldn't have been upset on the final weekend, as that would have created the 2004 disaster (three major unbeatens) in the first year of the BCS.
6. 1999 - Does the writer forget that one-loss Nebraska was close to nipping unbeaten Virginia Tech for that Sugar Bowl bid? Or that Michigan almost certainly would have taken that bid if they wouldn't have blown a 20-point lead against Illinois, since they would have been 10-1 with the #2 schedule in the country? Ditto for Alabama surrendering a last-gasp touchdown against Louisiana Tech, as they would have been 11-1 with the #1 schedule. (Thus, Mike DuBose would have become the first coach without verifiable brain waves to lead him team to a national title game.) The point is that unbeaten Virginia Tech could have been deprived of that Sugar Bowl slot very easily by a one-loss team, again illustrating the stupidity of a two-team playoff in a sport with 117 teams.
7. 2000 - Gee, if we're suddently treating head-to-head as important, then shouldn't Washington have been the opponent for Oklahoma, since they beat Miami who beat Florida State? And is it that hard to go to jhowell.net and realize that Oregon State won the Fiesta Bowl 41-9, not 51-3?
8. The post-hoc criticism of Nebraska playing in the 1/1/02 Rose Bowl really annoys me. Yes, they lost their last game 62-36, but how can you advocate Texas or Tennessee playing in the game since they also lost their last games, Texas to two-loss Colorado and Tennessee to three-loss LSU. Again, the BCS did the best it could with an impossible task. Nebraska had a much better average margin of victory than Oregon and they had a better record than Colorado, despite the head-to-head result. Yes, Tennessee or Texas could have made matters simple (and Tennessee or Florida would have been the best opponent for that Miami team,) but they didn't and we were left with the best of the rest. Blame Fulmer and Brown.
9. 2002 was clean, but if John Navarre looks off of Braylon Edwards and finds Tyrece Butler open on the other side of the end zone, then what happens? You have one-loss Georgia, one-loss Ohio State, and one-loss Iowa, not to mention two-loss USC that had played the toughest schedule in the country. Who plays Miami then?
10. LSU's home loss to Florida was worse than USC losing to 8-6 Cal? And do we forget that Oklahoma did have a bad loss, but before that, were being referred to as one of the best teams in recent memory? Does 65-13 over Texas ring a bell?
11. Oklahoma barely scraped by against overmatched opponents? What about USC beating 4-7 Stanford by three or 6-6 UCLA by five? The rest seems reasonable, although I would add that Utah was 11-0, beating the hell out of everyone they played, also failed to get a shot at the title.
1. The BCS didn't exist until 1998. Before that, it was the Bowl Coalition and the Bowl Alliance. I can't remember which came first, but it's interesting to see that all the names were picked to create some perception of consensus. "Hey, they gang's all here! No need to criticize us now!"
2. I'm pretty sure that there was no Bowl Alliance in 1994. Nebraska was obligated to go to the Orange Bowl, Penn State was obligated to go to the Rose Bowl, and if unbeaten Alabama wouldn't have been upset by Florida in the SEC Championship Game, they would have been headed to the Orange Bowl. That year simply illustrates that the old bowl system was worse than the BCS and its Alliance/Coalition buddies.
3. Texas was 8-4 after upsetting Nebraska in the '96 Big XII Title Game, so I'm pretty sure that they weren't a candidate for the Sugar Bowl. Virginia Tech was indeed 10-1, but no one took them seriously because of their soft schedule and two-loss Nebraska had their way with them in the Orange Bowl. The controversy in '96 was that unbeaten Arizona State and once-beaten (and almost unbeaten; thanks, Tai Streets) had to play in the Rose Bowl. If the BCS would have existed in 1996, then the two unbeaten teams - FSU and ASU - would have played in the title game and Steve Spurrier would still be without a national title. To summarize, '96 showed that the BCS would be an improvement because it would bring the Big Ten and Pac Ten into the fold.
4. Another problem with this article: the writer has no idea how the BCS and its predecessors work. He argues that Tennessee got the slot opposite Nebraska instead of Florida or Florida State because Peyton Manning would bring in TV viewers. I was unaware that ABC had a vote in the human polls or ran a computer poll. John Saunders must work in mysterious ways. No, Tennessee got that spot because they played a tougher schedule than Florida State, they had fewer losses than Florida, and they lost earlier in the year than either of them. Blame pollsters for recency, but don't blame the BCS for that.
5. 1998 - Again, Florida State lost earlier than Ohio State and that got them to the Fiesta Bowl. Blame the pollsters, not the BCS. Also, FSU's last game was a home win over 9-1 Florida in which they allowed something like one complete pass in the second half, possibly Doug Johnson's finest hour. (That was also the game that Dougie threw at Bobby Bowden during warm-ups. In retrospect, why were any of us surprised that he was a miserable failure as the starter for the Falcons?) The big screw-up in '98 would have been if UCLA and Kansas State wouldn't have been upset on the final weekend, as that would have created the 2004 disaster (three major unbeatens) in the first year of the BCS.
6. 1999 - Does the writer forget that one-loss Nebraska was close to nipping unbeaten Virginia Tech for that Sugar Bowl bid? Or that Michigan almost certainly would have taken that bid if they wouldn't have blown a 20-point lead against Illinois, since they would have been 10-1 with the #2 schedule in the country? Ditto for Alabama surrendering a last-gasp touchdown against Louisiana Tech, as they would have been 11-1 with the #1 schedule. (Thus, Mike DuBose would have become the first coach without verifiable brain waves to lead him team to a national title game.) The point is that unbeaten Virginia Tech could have been deprived of that Sugar Bowl slot very easily by a one-loss team, again illustrating the stupidity of a two-team playoff in a sport with 117 teams.
7. 2000 - Gee, if we're suddently treating head-to-head as important, then shouldn't Washington have been the opponent for Oklahoma, since they beat Miami who beat Florida State? And is it that hard to go to jhowell.net and realize that Oregon State won the Fiesta Bowl 41-9, not 51-3?
8. The post-hoc criticism of Nebraska playing in the 1/1/02 Rose Bowl really annoys me. Yes, they lost their last game 62-36, but how can you advocate Texas or Tennessee playing in the game since they also lost their last games, Texas to two-loss Colorado and Tennessee to three-loss LSU. Again, the BCS did the best it could with an impossible task. Nebraska had a much better average margin of victory than Oregon and they had a better record than Colorado, despite the head-to-head result. Yes, Tennessee or Texas could have made matters simple (and Tennessee or Florida would have been the best opponent for that Miami team,) but they didn't and we were left with the best of the rest. Blame Fulmer and Brown.
9. 2002 was clean, but if John Navarre looks off of Braylon Edwards and finds Tyrece Butler open on the other side of the end zone, then what happens? You have one-loss Georgia, one-loss Ohio State, and one-loss Iowa, not to mention two-loss USC that had played the toughest schedule in the country. Who plays Miami then?
10. LSU's home loss to Florida was worse than USC losing to 8-6 Cal? And do we forget that Oklahoma did have a bad loss, but before that, were being referred to as one of the best teams in recent memory? Does 65-13 over Texas ring a bell?
11. Oklahoma barely scraped by against overmatched opponents? What about USC beating 4-7 Stanford by three or 6-6 UCLA by five? The rest seems reasonable, although I would add that Utah was 11-0, beating the hell out of everyone they played, also failed to get a shot at the title.
Quick Braves Thoughts
Went to the game last night and have the following observations:
1. Last night was the third time I've seen Francoeur double sharply to right center. He isn't a dead-pull hitter in the same way that Andruw is.
2. The Braves were very unlucky to not blow the game open in the 5th. LaRoche and Francoeur led off with doubles and then the Braves didn't score the rest of the inning, despite Brian McCann hitting a screamer right at the second baseman with a runner on second and none out and Kelly Johnson hitting a screamer right at the rightfielder with the bases loaded and two outs. It easily could have been a four- or five-run inning.
3. Bobby left Smoltz in too long, as he has in the other two Smoltz starts I've attended this year, the loss to Pedro and the Mets in April and the 130-pitch complete game shutout against the Marlins in June. John was clearly tiring in the 8th inning. After allowing two baserunners in the first seven innings, he gave up three hits in the 8th and got out of the inning with a double play. A sign to start the 9th with Reitsma? Nope, Bobby waited until the tying run was on base, which Reitsma allowed to score. And speaking of Chris, he did nothing to alleviate my fears about him being the weak link on this team. He's taken to walking around the mound and playing with the resin bag after each pitch, which is exactly what Kolb did when he was struggling in April and May. He gives off the vibe that he's struggling mentally and wants to delay throwing the next pitch. His velocity was fine, so I don't think he's hit the wall like he did last year. Maybe he's a little shaken after his blow-up in St. Louis and needs a little time to get over that.
4. How depressing would it be to be a Giants fan and watch a team that's both bad and old? It must be like it was to root for the Hawks during the dreadful Rahim/Ratliff/Terry/Big Dog era.
5. Signs I'm growing old: I used to complain every time Dad would take my brother and I to games when we were growing up and then leave before extra innings. "How can you leave when things are just getting exciting?" So who left last night after Furcal flew out to the wall to end the 9th? This guy!
6. Andruw's two homers made me start to think that he should win the MVP over Albert Pujols, but then I checked their stats this morning and there's no way to make that case. Both players have been the key offensive piece for the two best teams in the National League, but Pujols has a 63 point lead in batting average, a 71-point lead in on base percentage, and a 20-point lead in slugging percentage. Andruw is a better defensive player and plays a position at which it's much harder to find a good hitter, but those factors aren't enough to make up the difference between the two in OBP and SLG. Andruw should finish a solid second and we should all be happy with that. Derrek Lee will get some publicity, but the Cubs' fade will hurt him. The darkhorse candidate is Miguel Cabrera, especially if the Marlins push into the Wild Card. Speaking of which, would we rather have the Astros win the Wild Card and face Clemens-Oswalt-Pettite or would we rather the Marlins get into the playoffs, given their perfect record as a Wild Card?
7. I can't believe that Adam LaRoche tried to steal a base last night. Shockingly enough, he was thrown out by a mile.
8. The first four hits of the game were all doubles. The first three hits of the game all hit the wall on the fly. Odds?
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Where do we go now/a ya ya ya ya ya ya
Maybe humming a little G'n'R would make me feel better. In case you haven't heard, one Mass Hole has backed another. It's sadly ironic that an ownership group replete with lawyers allowed one figure to have veto power over everything the Hawks do. (Alternatively, they did draft the agreement properly and either their lawyers were much worse than Belkin's or the judge was inclined to side with the local boy.)Anyway, Joe Johnson is now totally in limbo. The Hawks could try to negotiate with Phoenix to strike a deal that Belkin would find acceptable, but the Suns are unlikely to bail the Hawks out of this mess and if the co-owners and Knight's view of Belkin are correct, he doesn't want the deal to go forward anyway because he doesn't want payroll to go too high. The Hawks could also call Phoenix's bluff and simply sign Johnson to an offer sheet, but all they'd be doing there is sending him back to Phoenix.
Long-term, Belkin has to go. The Hawks will never be able to sign a free agent with him still in place, which will depress the rest of the team and the fan base. (Can you imagine what the Hawks players think right now?) More significantly, as Lincoln said, a house divided against itself cannot stand. Mark Bradley made an excellent point this morning: Belkin's interference with his GM is exactly what Ted Turner used to do. The example of the one successful pro sports team in this town is that ownership should put the right guy in charge of the team and then let him do his thing, rather than meddling and pretending to have expertise in the field. Belkin clearly has not learned this lesson. He always wanted to be an owner, but it turns out that he has unquenchable desires to be a GM as well.
It just gets uglier and uglier
Billy Knight has joined the chorus of Steve Belkin critics, bolstering allegations made by the Hawks' other owners that he does not want to spend money on the team. At this stage, with a phalanx of co-owners AND the GM all saying the same thing, it's hard to take Belkin seriously, not that that will matter when a Boston judge reviews the Atlanta Spirit operating agreement for the Hawks today and determines whether the other owners have the right to remove Belkin from his appointment to the NBA Board of Governors. The level of acrimony has reached such a public crescendo that the only solution is for Belkin to allow the other owners to buy him out and much of this posturing on both sides might be about affecting the price at which the other owners will do so. Belkin has always wanted to own an NBA team and he might be intransigent because he knows that if he gets booted from Atlanta Spirit, then his chances of ever owning another NBA team become minimal.
The worst possible outcome is for the judge to rule in favor of Belkin and then for Steve to dig his feet it, waiting for a buy-out offer that never reaches the levels of generosity that he demands. We'll be left with an owner hating his other owners and having veto power over every trade they make. The pall cast over the Hawks and Thrashers by a feuding ownership group with no solution on the horizon would be significant, as if the fact that neither of the Philips tenants have been to the playoffs since the facility opened in 1999 isn't bad enough. In short, today's events in Boston are really important. If they don't go well, I have a fusillade about Mass Holes ready to fly.
Monday, August 08, 2005
Great stuff from SI on "high tech" offenses
I'm interested by this subject in part because Florida is going to be running the funkiest of new offenses this year, thus testing what happens when a major superpower gets innovative as opposed to a Texas Tech or a Louisville. I'm also interested because my friend Ben has been proclaiming for years that "the spread is dead," even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
All you need to know about Ben and his Bushian ability to ignore facts and restate his conclusions is this: he went to the 2003 Texas-Texas Tech game, which allowed him to watch in person Mike Leach's offense put up 40 points on one of the better defenses in college football, and yet he returned convinced that the game did not disprove his irrationally-held belief. (On the other hand, I dismissed his argument that pitchers took steroids and it turns out that he had a point, although my overall argument that steroid use played a role in the late 90s offensive boom seems beyond question to anyone with a semi-open mind.)
Back to the article: it isn't quite as good as Blue-Gray Sky's take on the Meyer offense, mainly because Stewart Mandel has to write for a much larger, lest technically savvy audience, but it does have nice illustrations of base plays in the offenses featured in the article. Urban, for instance, diagrams his option play where the tailback takes the fullback role and one of the wide receivers functions as a trailer. Helpfully, the defense is static during the play and Meyer's quarterback gets to the corner easily. The play illustrated the importance of defensive ends getting upfield, although it also showed the brilliance of Meyer's design. Previously, a shotgun option could be blown up by defensive ends getting upfield. By adding a triple option element by using a receiver as the trailer instead of the running back, Meyer cuts down on this.
The article also makes me like Joe Tiller less. He's oft-whining about having less talent than Michigan and Ohio State and he of course does so in the article, stating that their talent overwhelms better schemes. While he's theoretically correct in saying that, it isn't as if Michigan hasn't been gashed by other schemes using less talented players (see: Michigan State.) Tiller's scheme has also been figured out by most of the rest of the Big Ten. If anything, he's basically Mark Richt: an offensive guy who relies on a great defensive coordinator, only he doesn't have Richt's talent and he inevitably makes goofy decisions in close games. Don't get me wrong, I like Tiller and he's brought the Big Ten somewhat out of the stone age, but he's complained one too many times about opposing DBs being mean to his receivers.
The BCS Explained
Eight years ago, when the concept of the BCS was announced and the scuttlebutt was that it was part of an inexorable march towards a playoff, this is not what I hoped to be reading almost one decade later. To summarize, Brad Edwards writes that the BCS has created non-stop controversy since its inception, there have been cosmetic changes made this off-season involving new polls now that all of the old ones refuse to be associated with this miasma, and his proposed solution - a committee to pick the teams - was rejected. I'm not a big fan of the committee approach for two reasons:
1. It places too much power in the hands of a few people and there are no checks on those people because their decisions are made in private; and
2. The analogy to the NCAA selection committee is misplaced because that committee makes marginally important decisions in seeding and selecting the last at-large teams, all of whom will be done by the end of the first weekend, while a football committee would have a hugely important and essentially impossible task, thus amplifying the effects of problem #1.
All that said, I'd be very interested to read a transcript of the ESPN college football analysts' review of the game tapes of USC, Oklahoma, and Auburn last year. Assuming that they aren't using the Orange Bowl for 20/20 hindsight, I'd like to hear what some people with knowledge of x's and o's had to say in separating the three teams. Personally, I thought there was virtually no good way to do so, thus highlighting the stupidity of the current system.
1. It places too much power in the hands of a few people and there are no checks on those people because their decisions are made in private; and
2. The analogy to the NCAA selection committee is misplaced because that committee makes marginally important decisions in seeding and selecting the last at-large teams, all of whom will be done by the end of the first weekend, while a football committee would have a hugely important and essentially impossible task, thus amplifying the effects of problem #1.
All that said, I'd be very interested to read a transcript of the ESPN college football analysts' review of the game tapes of USC, Oklahoma, and Auburn last year. Assuming that they aren't using the Orange Bowl for 20/20 hindsight, I'd like to hear what some people with knowledge of x's and o's had to say in separating the three teams. Personally, I thought there was virtually no good way to do so, thus highlighting the stupidity of the current system.
You gave up a game-winning homer...
to this f***ing guy?
I was all ready to throw laurels on Jorge Sosa, Jeff Francoeur, and Tim Hudson, whose decision to bring out the splitfinger pitch was likened by my wife to Derek Zoolander busting out Magnum, and then one inning of madness by Chris Reitsma ruined what would have been a 4-2 road trip, a victorious weekend in St. Louis (the Braves will beat the Cardinals as currently constituted in the playoffs, but there's no way that they'll be this unhealthy in the postseason,) and a 6.5 game lead in the division heading into the 12-game homestand against the NL West that looks for all the world like it will be the Braves' chance to put the East away. (That, for the record, is the longest sentence ever.) Now, we have to worry that if the Braves do make it to an NLCS against St. Louis (and my suspicion is that the Astros are going to vanquish both the Braves and Cardinals,) they'll do so with a set-up man who has a double-digit career ERA at Busch Stadium and a closer whose last inning there involved allowing four runs in 1/3rd of an inning against Abraham Nunez, So Taguchi, Hector Luna, Scott Seabol, and David Eckstein. You never want to read too much into one game or one appearance, but Farnsworth and Reitsma are the keys to the team now that the starting pitching and lineup are settled and they did not have a good day Sunday.
Other thoughts from the weekend:
1. A discouraging thought about a potential match-up with the Cards: the Braves didn't hit either Mark Mulder or Chris Carpenter this weekend. On the other hand, the Cards didn't hit Tim Hudson and one suspects that John Smoltz will pitch better in October, given his history in the post-season.
2. An encouraging thought: Jeff Francoeur is the new Vlad Guerrero. Seriously, are pitchers going to start throwing him nothing but balls to see if he will get himself out? Is he eventually going to be forced to take a walk?
3. In the realm of "don't read too much into one game," here's an interesting parallel: in April, I was in Charlottesville for my law school reunion when the Braves were hosting the Cardinals. On Sunday, I was driving back listening to the rubber game of the series and Dan Kolb had his finest moment as a Brave, retiring the heart of the Cards' order to protect a 2-1 lead. This past weekend, during the Braves-Cards return leg, the wife and I were in Charlottesville for a wedding party, driving home on Sunday listening to the rubber game and Chris Reitsma blew a 3-1 lead in the 9th. Conclusion: Kolb is better than Reitsma?
4. Speaking of Senor Doodie, the wife and I went to BW3 in C'ville when we got to town on Friday night and as the Braves' pen was imploding in the 8th inning, she looked at the giant TV and then excitedly told me to avert my eyes because "IT'S DAN DOODIE!!! AAAAAHH!!!" I spun it positively, saying that an 8-1 game is exactly the sort of situation that's appropriate for Dan. (BW3, by the way, has terrific spicy BBQ sauce and the one in C'ville has great local color. On Friday night, the wife and I were treated to a local proclaiming that he could drive drunk all the way home to Waynesboro and a middle-aged floozy in a turquoise get-up with a bad blonde dye job breaking down because she forgot to pay her bill and was flagged down in the parking lot by a waiter. You gotta love rural Virginia.)
Friday, August 05, 2005
"I am not a committee!"
So says our beloved leader Steve Belkin from his perch in Boston. Rather than defer to the judgment of the other owners and investors of the team, he's done what any self-respecting American would have done: sue his partners.
A little legal background: Belkin obtained a temporary restraining order, which is just that: temporary. TROs are often granted without notice to the other side, or at least with minimal notice. In other words, Belkin's lawyers had time to draft a complaint and a motion for a TRO, while the lawyers for the rest of Atlanta Spirit LLC did not know what was coming. On the other hand, it's possible that the other owners had a good idea that Belkin was about to haul them into court, in which case they should have been prepared. If they were and they still lost, then that's a worrying sign because it means that Belkin is either standing on firm legal ground or has found a sympathetic judge. Anyway, there'll be an injunction hearing on Tuesday and that's where the matter will be decided because the judge will be deciding whether the TRO should be extended throughout the discovery phase of the litigation, which will last beyond the NBA free agent signing period. The legal issue will come down to the NBA's rules on removing individuals from the Board of Governors and/or the Atlanta Spirit LLC's operating agreement's provisions on the same subject. It sounds from the AJC article that the other owners can remove Belkin if he takes an action against the wishes of the rest of ownership, so the question becomes whether this is that sort of decision.
The article details Belkin's beef with the deal and it makes it clear that he was OK with signing Johnson, but he isn't OK with giving up Boris Diaw and two first round picks. He's not absolved from the fact that he should have stopped the deal at the outset if he felt that way, although it's possible that Billy Knight was being pulled in two different directions and decided to listen to the majority of the owners when they told him to make the deal.
Belkin does have a point in the sense that the Hawks are giving up a lot, especially if the Suns weren't going to match the contract offer anyway. (An interesting development would be if the deal falls through and the Hawks still sign Johnson, calling the Suns' bluff. On the other hand, if Johnson hasn't formally signed anything, then another team could come in, sign him, and offer the Suns a similar package of players and/or picks.) He could argue that he has the long-term interests of the team in mind and if the rebuilding project doesn't go well, then the team could ultimately end up giving lottery picks to the Suns in several years. Billy Knight knows that he won't be around in several years if the rebuilding project doesn't work, so he has no incentive not to make this deal. I'd really like to know the particulars of the draft picks given up by the Hawks and no one has printed the details yet. I assume that one of the picks is the first rounder from the Lakers, which, assuming the Lakers make the playoffs as a low seed in the West this year, would be between 15 and 20. I don't know what the timing is on the other pick. How long do the lottery protections change into mere top three protections? Sekou, where are you?
All that said, Belkin is still being penny-wise and pound-foolish. At this stage, given the hit that the Hawks will take with future free agents and their own fan base, they can't back away from the deal. Belkin, by dividing the team's ownership and embarrassing his GM, has damaged the franchise for which he paid millions. All of this because he's worried about future draft picks? One can't help but get the sense that Belkin is a schmuck. He mouthed off during the NHL Lockout about using replacement players, a useless idea that served only to further antagonize all involved and garner him a $250,000 fine. He's had problems getting along with the rest of the owners before. Now, he's reached a stand-off with his GM and fellow owners and brought a legal action, which is embarrassing and makes resolution of the matter less likely.
Yup, I'm a season ticket holder for this team.
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Pope Urban's Offense Explained
My formative Michigan football experiences have all involved losses to Notre Dame. I first started rooting for the Wolverines in the late 80s as my second favorite team (behind Auburn, but that's another story) because of the giant stadium, the great fight song, and my understanding that the school was full of Jews. Every September, the sign that college football had started was Michigan playing Notre Dame in a tight game and then losing. And Michigan had the most creative ways of losing. Loss despite not allowing an offensive touchdown? Check. Loss because of stubborn desire to show that Rocket Ismail could be tackled on a kickoff return? Check. Loss because of colossal mistake by Elvis Grbac? Check. Tie because of colossal mistake by Elvis Grbac? Check. (The bright side from those last two games was that I got to warn all of my in-laws, who are Baltimoreans, about Elvis when he signed with the Ravens in 2001.)
I matriculated at Michigan in 1993 and our first big home game was against a Notre Dame team that was a ten-point underdog. Michigan had walloped Washington State the week before, while Notre Dame and unknown quarterback Kevin McDougal had struggled to score against Northwestern. Lee Corso was predicting a 41-10 Michigan win. We were at home on a sunny day with an offense full of future NFL stars, playing a team missing almost all of its skill position talent from the previous year. So naturally, Notre Dame marched down the field on the opening drive, culminating in a long McDougal run (see, mobile quarterbacks and Michigan have a long history of making memories,) they got their obligatory touchdown from the return game, and ND won 27-23. I was taunted on the way home by a carload of elderly Irish fans and I was too young to know to blame them for the Holocaust.
Anyway, this is a long way of saying that I have no great love for Notre Dame, and therefore, my wholehearted endorsement of Blue Gray Sky as a great blog should mean something. Their piece on Notre Dame enemies is outstanding and someday, I hope to shamelessly adapt it for the Braves so I can bitch about Kent Hrbek and Eric Gregg once again. The splendidly-named Michael from BGS has written a great explanation of the Urban Meyer offense on Every Day Should Be Saturday, another fine publication. I highly encourage you to read it. Here are my thoughts:
1. The Meyer offense seems to be designed to make it easy for a quarterback to read a defense by spreading a defense out and forcing it to reveal its intentions, while the offense still retains the ability to do anything it wants. (It's the reverse of the dreadful Michigan offensive designs of the late 90s and early 00s, in which the personnel and formation determined what play was going to be run. Those Michigan offenses had a bunch of formations and few plays, which is the reverse of the Meyer or Charlie Weis offense. For that matter, the great Nebraska option offenses under Tom Osborne were also premised on running a few basic plays from a variety of looks.) In that sense, the Meyer offense is the perfect offense for college quarterbacks because it simplifies the game for them, although it also forces them to make a lot of decisions.
I'll be most interested to see how the Meyer offense does against a team like Miami (if they play in a bowl game,) which utilizes a basic 4-3 and basic coverages and relies on the superiority of its athletes, multiplied by the fact that they don't have to make too many complicated decisions. Would Miami stay in their basic 4-3 against Meyer's formations, thereby depriving his quarterback of the chance to read the defense before the play? By doing so, the defense would reveal that it's certainly in zone, but they would still be able to hide their blitz intentions. Georgia and Florida State also employ relatively simple defensive formations that ought to negate some of the advantages of the Meyer offense. I can't wait to see how his teams react to them.
2. Part of what excites me about the Meyer offense is that it smartly breaks down the barrier between receivers and running backs. Would anyone be upset if I started referring to it as Total (College) Football in homage to the Oranje? Can you imagine what a genuine hybrid player like Reggie Bush would do in an offense like this, not that Norm Chow lacked ways to use him or anything.
3. I'm intrigued by which defensive approaches will work best against this offense. The ideal would be a team that has great corners who can cover man-to-man and allow the safeties to come up to stop the run, but how many teams have four good corners who can be trusted not to get burned? And how many defensive coordinators will figure out that their best corners need to be in the slot, rather than out wide? (I can't wait to see where Jason Allen lines up for Tennessee on September 17. I bet that Chavis has him out wide because "that's where corners go.") Another ideal would be to have a dominant defensive line that can penetrate the backfield and redirect the option at the outset of every play. Absent an assumption that the defense has superior talent to the offense, what's the best scheme? Man coverage and blitzing? Two-deep zone? Man with deep safeties? I'm out of ammo on this one.
I matriculated at Michigan in 1993 and our first big home game was against a Notre Dame team that was a ten-point underdog. Michigan had walloped Washington State the week before, while Notre Dame and unknown quarterback Kevin McDougal had struggled to score against Northwestern. Lee Corso was predicting a 41-10 Michigan win. We were at home on a sunny day with an offense full of future NFL stars, playing a team missing almost all of its skill position talent from the previous year. So naturally, Notre Dame marched down the field on the opening drive, culminating in a long McDougal run (see, mobile quarterbacks and Michigan have a long history of making memories,) they got their obligatory touchdown from the return game, and ND won 27-23. I was taunted on the way home by a carload of elderly Irish fans and I was too young to know to blame them for the Holocaust.
Anyway, this is a long way of saying that I have no great love for Notre Dame, and therefore, my wholehearted endorsement of Blue Gray Sky as a great blog should mean something. Their piece on Notre Dame enemies is outstanding and someday, I hope to shamelessly adapt it for the Braves so I can bitch about Kent Hrbek and Eric Gregg once again. The splendidly-named Michael from BGS has written a great explanation of the Urban Meyer offense on Every Day Should Be Saturday, another fine publication. I highly encourage you to read it. Here are my thoughts:
1. The Meyer offense seems to be designed to make it easy for a quarterback to read a defense by spreading a defense out and forcing it to reveal its intentions, while the offense still retains the ability to do anything it wants. (It's the reverse of the dreadful Michigan offensive designs of the late 90s and early 00s, in which the personnel and formation determined what play was going to be run. Those Michigan offenses had a bunch of formations and few plays, which is the reverse of the Meyer or Charlie Weis offense. For that matter, the great Nebraska option offenses under Tom Osborne were also premised on running a few basic plays from a variety of looks.) In that sense, the Meyer offense is the perfect offense for college quarterbacks because it simplifies the game for them, although it also forces them to make a lot of decisions.
I'll be most interested to see how the Meyer offense does against a team like Miami (if they play in a bowl game,) which utilizes a basic 4-3 and basic coverages and relies on the superiority of its athletes, multiplied by the fact that they don't have to make too many complicated decisions. Would Miami stay in their basic 4-3 against Meyer's formations, thereby depriving his quarterback of the chance to read the defense before the play? By doing so, the defense would reveal that it's certainly in zone, but they would still be able to hide their blitz intentions. Georgia and Florida State also employ relatively simple defensive formations that ought to negate some of the advantages of the Meyer offense. I can't wait to see how his teams react to them.
2. Part of what excites me about the Meyer offense is that it smartly breaks down the barrier between receivers and running backs. Would anyone be upset if I started referring to it as Total (College) Football in homage to the Oranje? Can you imagine what a genuine hybrid player like Reggie Bush would do in an offense like this, not that Norm Chow lacked ways to use him or anything.
3. I'm intrigued by which defensive approaches will work best against this offense. The ideal would be a team that has great corners who can cover man-to-man and allow the safeties to come up to stop the run, but how many teams have four good corners who can be trusted not to get burned? And how many defensive coordinators will figure out that their best corners need to be in the slot, rather than out wide? (I can't wait to see where Jason Allen lines up for Tennessee on September 17. I bet that Chavis has him out wide because "that's where corners go.") Another ideal would be to have a dominant defensive line that can penetrate the backfield and redirect the option at the outset of every play. Absent an assumption that the defense has superior talent to the offense, what's the best scheme? Man coverage and blitzing? Two-deep zone? Man with deep safeties? I'm out of ammo on this one.
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