Have NIL and the transfer portal broken college basketball? Well, reigning Wooden Award winner Oscar Tshiebwe just announced he’s coming back to Kentucky for another season, so obviously, yes. Were NIL not in existence, Tshiebwe would clearly be playing for Sacramento State this year. But nobody thinks of the little guy (more thoughts on transfer portal/NIL overreactions here).
Transfer Portal: The Latest
Nationally, the biggest news from the last 24 hours is that Jalen Bridges, formerly of West Virginia, is staying in the Big 12 and joining Baylor. It’s a bit of a weird thing, here, reacting to this, because obviously adding a player as good as Bridges helps Baylor, but at the same time, Baylor has so much talent already that the first thought is, “So what?”
In more Big 12 news, Elijah Harkless has committed to UNLV. Good pickup for the Runnin’ Rebels, tough loss for the Sooners.
With Iowa State, specifically, the biggest news is that Northern Iowa guard AJ Green is testing the NBA Draft waters and entering the transfer portal while leaving the door open to return to UNI. Green is unlikely to get a draft-worthy evaluation from the NBA, making UNI or a new program the expected destination, and with Green’s father an assistant coach on T.J. Otzelberger’s staff, Iowa State is a clear possibility, especially with the Cyclones so in need at point guard. It’s not a foregone conclusion by any stretch—I’m not sure it’s even 50% likely—but it’s likely enough that it’s news. Green is a great offensive player, and will likely grade out as a high four-star on EvanMiya when he’s added later today, somewhere around Harkless and ISU target Ben Vander Plas.
Cubs Come Back, Can’t Come Through
It wasn’t a great night by the Cubs, but they rallied from four down and then three down to make a one-run game of it twice, and that’s the kind of thing you like to see a team do, even if they don’t win. They kept grinding, they put pressure on the Rays, they made Andrew Kittredge pitch two innings (though the bastard got through them on only twenty pitches). Former Cub Brooks Raley was the victim of the second rally. What a career that guy’s had. Debuted during the awful years, bounced around through the Cubs’ successful period, now pitching for the Rays at Wrigley as the Cubs rebuild again. Brooks Raley: Icon of time.
Justin Steele had a rough night, walking three and striking out just one while recording only eight outs. Things came apart in the third inning, with Wander Franco obliterating one past the ivy and Steele then walking a batter, balking, walking another batter, and allowing a single before David Ross came out and got him. It was a disappointing outing, but one we wouldn’t have raised our eyes at entering the season, so mostly just a measure of how much Steele has readjusted expectations. His early xERA is 3.54, which is good.
On the topic of xERA, it’s probably worth looking at some Statcast stats. We’re eleven games into the season, and totals are so small that there’s a lot of noise, but xERA and xwOBA have the least noise of any holistic stat.
Notable xERA’s, with innings pitched alongside them:
- Keegan Thompson: 1.69, 9.2 IP
- Drew Smyly: 1.81, 9.2 IP
- David Robertson: 2.56, 5.0 IP
- Justin Steele: 3.54, 12.0 IP
- Marcus Stroman: 4.11, 12.0 IP
- Kyle Hendricks: 4.90, 13.1 IP
It’s hard to make much of the rest of the bullpen, since only Jesse Chavez and Michael Rucker are also at or above five innings of work and they’re at the bottom of the pecking order, but for a core of a rotation and bullpen, those are solid numbers. Smyly and Thompson will regress, Steele and Robertson likely will too, but this is different from a guy having a 2.08 ERA and 7.58 xERA, like Ethan Roberts does. xERA matters, and while I don’t know its predictive power this early, it’s the best we have.
xwOBA next, and this is coming from FanGraphs which I think adjusts to an average wOBA of .320:
- Seiya Suzuki: .493, 43 PA’s
- Willson Contreras: .415, 40 PA’s
- Jonathan Villar: .409, 29 PA’s
- Ian Happ: .370, 37 PA’s
- Patrick Wisdom: .339, 40 PA’s
- Nick Madrigal: .331, 39 PA’s
- Rafael Ortega: .306, 26 PA’s
- Jason Heyward: .299, 21 PA’s
- Nico Hoerner: .298, 36 PA’s
- Clint Frazier: .273, 24 PA’s
- Frank Schwindel: .247, 45 PA’s
Again, positive numbers. Shaped by our selection of guys who get the most playing time, but still, positive numbers! Suzuki, Contreras, and Villar have been outrageously good so far, and their combined results have reflected that as well. Happ, Wisdom, and Madrigal have all been good. Hoerner’s value is defensive, still. Heyward and Ortega aren’t getting that many at-bats, especially not Heyward relative to reactions to his playing time, which is actually maybe the most noteworthy piece of this—the Cubs are making it feel like Heyward’s playing more than he is, which seems smart! Schwindel’s struggles are concerning. That’s a very concerning number, and one aided by his fine overall results. His wOBA’s at .324, and with a BABIP of .257, he must be making just terrible contact. If your BABIP’s .257 and you have a bad xwOBA/wOBA split, you must be hitting the ball extraordinarily lightly, and looking at his Statcast page…oh gosh. Bottom 1% of baseball in Barrel %. Something to keep an eye on.
Stroman gets the ball tonight against Drew Rasmussen. The game’s been moved up to a 5:30 PM start, local time, due to impending rain (and possibly the Bulls game). Seems like it could be a shortened affair.
Winning a series against a franchise as successful as the Rays would be huge, but it’s worth remembering that this particular Rays team isn’t actually all that good. That can change—if anyone can change things like this, it’s the Rays, and they’ve got plenty of talent either sidelined via injury or working its way through the minor league pipeline, with varying degrees of possibility of return/debut—but the Rays are, on paper (using FanGraphs’s Depth Charts for this), only the 13th-best team in the Majors, closer to the Angels and the Marlins than any other teams. That’s not to say the Cubs should win this series, but it’s close to that.
Either way, a win tonight puts the Cubs at 7-5 with nine games left in April, four of which are against the Pirates. Take three of four in that Pirates series, and just one win over Atlanta or Milwaukee on the road leaves you with a winning record through April. Lose tonight, and you still just need a 5-4 record against a not-that-bad schedule the rest of the month. Of course, a better record than 11-10 would be great (and it looks like at least one game against the Pirates might get rained out, complicating matters), but the best thing we can reasonably ask the Cubs to do this year is to be competitive, and a .500 record or better in these early months certainly passes the test. With the White Sox, Dodgers, and Padres coming up in the early days of May, it would be nice to build a bigger cushion in that effort, but the bottom line is that the Cubs are in a good spot and a win tonight would put them in a spot I’d dare call great.
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Games of interest today/tonight in baseball and the NBA, with a lot of afternoon MLB action:
- Pirates @ Brewers (1:40 PM EDT, Regional TV) – Keller vs. Woodruff
- Atlanta @ Dodgers (3:10 PM EDT, Regional TV) – Morton vs. Gonsolin
- Rays @ Cubs (6:30 PM EDT, Regional TV/ESPN+) – Rasmussen vs. Stroman
- Angels @ Astros (6:40 PM EDT, Regional TV) – Ohtani vs. Odorizzi
- Nets @ Celtics (7:00 PM EDT, TNT)
- Giants @ Mets (7:10 PM EDT, Regional TV) – Rodón vs. Bassitt
- Blue Jays @ Red Sox (7:10 PM EDT, Regional TV) – Berríos vs. Pivetta
- 76ers @ Raptors (8:00 PM EDT, NBA TV)
- Bulls @ Bucks (9:30 PM EDT, TNT)
The Mets swept a doubleheader with the Giants yesterday and Max Fried tore up the Dodgers last night. Big week in those two divisions. Atlanta leaves California tonight, but the Giants are in Queens for another day trying to backdoor a split.
