For years, Fred Hoiberg built overachieving basketball teams in Ames through transfers. Not exactly located in the most fertile recruiting territory, and with little success in the conscious memories of 17 and 18-year-olds, Iowa State was not an easy place to bring high school talent. With a willingness to coach “difficult” players, though, and an administration gifting him high degrees of trust and risk tolerance, Hoiberg had advantages in Ames and within himself that, in the end, made up for it. He didn’t only tolerate Royce White—he built a team around him. DeAndre Kane, a star at Marshall plagued by his reputation for having a “temper,” spent his lone year at ISU putting up an offensive season rarely paralleled in its combination of volume and efficiency (also almost beat the eventual national champions in the Sweet Sixteen). By the end of Hoiberg’s tenure, Iowa State was so known as a transfer destination that the word has been problemed transfers would seek out spots in Ames. Roughly a decade before Name-Image-Likeness and the one-time immediate eligibility waiver kicked the transfer portal into turbodrive, Fred Hoiberg was, at Iowa State, the original transfer king.
There are three ways one can reasonably take this history of Hoiberg’s and apply it to his Lincoln iteration. The first is that, once a transfer king and always a transfer king, Hoiberg should dominate in the second round of recruitment, adept at convincing good, disillusioned players that location is not, in fact, everything. The second is that the game has changed, and the game’s changed fast, and Hoiberg’s tricks worked in 2013 but this is 2022, and a lot’s gone down over these last nine years. The third, probably the most convincing, is that the transfer world was so different in Hoiberg’s Cyclone tenure that, while his recruiting methods might still be effective, he’s no longer the only game in town, and the stronger competition for transfer talent places him in too big a pond to throw his weight around.
It’s hard to tell which of these is the best inference. We really don’t know. Each holds some validity, but the transfer portal is so young that not only do we not have a lot of seasons off of which to judge Hoiberg, but we also lack a “control group”—we don’t know how other Nebraska coaches would perform.
Which brings us, ultimately, to the real point here. Much as Miami rose with fury over the last few weeks, boosters doing what Miami boosters have long prided themselves on doing and shelling out the cash to build a strong talent base for their programs, Nebraska has the sort of committed alumni base and fan network that can make noise in an NIL portal. Nebraska isn’t much to look at on the basketball court, but they have one of the most committed fanbases in the country, and these days, that probably matters. On EvanMiya right now, Nebraska ranks eleventh nationally in overall transfer activity. Whether it’s Hoiberg or the Huskers, talent is coming to Lincoln.
Speaking of the Portal
Today’s updates:
- If Baylor Scheierman withdraws from the NBA Draft, Creighton will be where he goes. The scorer will only attend college in the Missouri River watershed, and he defines that narrowly.
Ok evidently that’s it. Boring day. I refuse to list Emoni Bates’s top six in here. We have standards at The Barking Crow.
UFO’s? UFA’s.
It appears the Packers have signed fourteen undrafted free agents so far. Of the fourteen, the one most familiar to readers of this site is probably Tyler Goodson, the former Iowa running back. Here’s the full list:
- Goodson (RB, Iowa)
- B.J. Baylor (RB, Oregon State)
- Caliph Brice (LB, FAU)
- Ellis Brooks (LB, Penn State)
- Akial Byers (DL, Mizzou)
- Danny Davis (WR, Wisconsin) – contender for most familiar to readers of this site
- Jahmir Johnson (OT, Texas A&M)
- Caleb Jones (OT, Indiana)
- Chauncey Manac (LB, Louisiana-Lafayette)
- George Moore (G, Oregon)
- Hauati Pututau (DL, Utah)
- Cole Schneider (C, UCF)
- Tre Sterling (S, Oklahoma State)
- Raleigh Texada (CB, Baylor)
Gelo’s 2022 Debut
Gelo did us well last night, guiding to two wins and zero losses in the daily bets. The Western Conference futures market is interesting—that’s where Gelo sees the early value, and it’s centered largely around distrust of the Avalanche, though that’s spread out to hope in the Kings as well. We’re really flying blind here, and it’s possible that’s going to lead to a crash, but the upside sure is high, and every day we make money is another one we can afford to lose it.
xwRC+, or, Making Statistics Easier, or, Alfonso Rivas Is Crushing the Ball
A conversation with a friend a few weeks ago keeps rattling around my head, and the bones of it are these:
Stats like batting average and RBI aren’t the most telling stats in baseball when it comes to offensive performance, but the average fan understands that a .300 average is good and that 100 RBI is great, whereas the average fan doesn’t fully know what constitutes a good xwOBA, or even a great OBP.
This is where metrics like wRC+ are helpful. They’re both telling and easy to explain. wRC+ is an all-encompassing hitting metric that measures a player’s production at the plate on a scale centered around 100 and built such that a wRC+ of 120 indicates a player is 20% better than an average MLB hitter while a wRC+ of 70 indicates a player is 30% worse than an average MLB hitter. Share wRC+ enough times with your readers, and you can start leaving out that sentence, but if you want to include it every time, it doesn’t hurt.
We run into another problem, though, at times like these: Times early in the season. I would like to communicate how well each Cub is striking the ball at the plate, but while xwOBA (the Statcast metric that offers an all-encompassing hitting evaluation of a player based on their contact quality, not their actual result) gives a great view of that, the actual numbers shared mean little to a lot of casual fans. What I really want is xwRC+, a metric as easy to explain as wRC+ but more indicative of actual performance, with the noise of luck stripped out even at this relatively early stage.
So, I built xwRC+.
I overcomplicated it at first. Did some measuring of the relationship between wOBA and wRC+ (the standard deviation of the ratio between those two among qualified 2021 hitters was 31, if anyone’s wondering). The noise introduced by wRC+ accounting for park factors (wOBA doesn’t) caused problems, though. And then, I realized it was really simple. Just take the ratio between xwOBA and wOBA and apply it to wRC+. Is it perfect? Probably not. But it gets the job done. And with that, here’s how everyone on the Cubs has been actually hitting, stripping the luck away, using xwRC+, in which 100 is average and 120 is 20% better than average and 70 is 30% poorer than average:
- Alfonso Rivas III: 161 (25 PA’s)
- Seiya Suzuki: 150 (88 PA’s)
- Ian Happ: 142 (81 PA’s)
- Willson Contreras: 136 (79 PA’s)
- Patrick Wisdom: 121 (78 PA’s)
- Nico Hoerner: 106 (71 PA’s)
- Jason Heyward: 87 (47 PA’s)
- Jonathan Villar: 86 (59 PA’s)
- Yan Gomes: 86 (31 PA’s)
- Rafael Ortega: 84 (57 PA’s)
- Frank Schwindel: 67 (80 PA’s)
- Nick Madrigal: 67 (67 PA’s)
- Michael Hermosillo: 63 (31 PA’s)
- Clint Frazier: 57 (24 PA’s)
Small sample on all of these guys, and especially small sample on Rivas, Gomes, Frazier, Hermosillo, and even Heyward (for all the noise about him playing too much, he’s hitting ok and getting fewer at-bats than Ortega, who’s hitting worse). Still, Rivas has had quite the 25 PA’s, and he could be as bad as he’s been good for 75 more plate appearances before he rolled into as bad of territory as Frank Schwindel’s currently occupying.
What to take away from all of this? Well, again, it’s a small sample, and RHP/LHP splits do matter, but if I were crafting the Cubs best offense for a must-win game right now and we took splits out of the equation, the defensive alignment (I don’t know enough to optimize batting order) would look like this:
C/DH: Contreras
DH/C: Gomes
1B: Rivas
2B: Villar
SS: Hoerner
3B: Wisdom
LF: Happ
CF: Heyward
RF: Suzuki
Realistically, looking at the roster and development considerations and all of that, it’s smart to put Madrigal in instead of Villar, but beyond that…I think this is the reasonable base lineup right now. It’s also—with the lone caveat that David Ross has Schwindel DH-ing instead of Contreras, who’s getting an extra day off (good time to do some extended rest for him)—tonight’s alignment against the White Sox as the Cubs begin a two-game set at Wrigley.
Chicago did get a lot of rain this morning—a whole inch at both O’Hare and Midway—but it isn’t supposed to be actively raining at gametime, and the grounds crew has had plenty of warning, which would make one think this game is going to get played. Michael Kopech is on the mound for the Sox—he’s been very good so far this year, with a 2.76 xERA through his first four starts—while Scott Effross gets a spot start for the Cubs after Drew Smyly was placed on the Bereavement List earlier today. Our condolences to Smyly and his family. The corresponding roster move was the addition of Robert Gsellman from Des Moines, with Locke St. John designated for assignment to make room on the 40-man roster.
The request of the Cubs is simple over these two games: Win once. Get one win. If they can do that, it’ll have been a fine set, and they’ll be that much closer to that tantalizing stretch where they play the Diamondbacks, Pirates, and Reds for two straight weeks.
***
Viewing schedule, today/tonight, second screen in italics:
- 3:10 PM EDT: Atlanta @ New York (NL) Game 1, FS1 (Morton vs. Peterson)
- 6:10 PM EDT: Padres @ Guardians, Regional TV (Clevinger vs. Plesac)
- 7:40 PM EDT: White Sox @ Cubs, Regional TV (Kopech vs. Effross)
- 9:30 PM EDT: Predators @ Avalanche, ESPN
- 10:10 PM EDT: Giants @ Dodgers, TBS (Rodón vs. Urías)
Mike Clevinger’s intriguing return from a long injury absence and our sudden interest in the Nashville Predators top Bucks/Celtics, Warriors/Grizzlies, Yankees/Blue Jays, the second half of the doubleheader in Queens, and even our beloved Chris Flexen starting against the Astros in Houston. Good night of sports. Hope those of you in dreary places can stay warm and dry.
