T.J. Otzelberger has been extended.
He’s also getting a raise.
This isn’t altogether surprising, even if it caught us a little off guard. It adds up, but with Otzelberger not at all rumored to be a candidate elsewhere and with his contract not particularly close to expiration, it wasn’t something we’d consciously considered. In college basketball and football, traditionally, you want your coach to be as far from lame duck status as possible, balancing that security for recruits against the size of the buyout and the coach’s contentment with his or her current compensation. That’s the equation Jamie Pollard and his like have to solve, and in this case, it works out to an extension and a raise for Otzelberger. It makes sense.
Otzelberger is unusually nondescript for a coach in Ames. Over the last ten years, in football and men’s basketball, Iowa State’s coaches have been: a hometown hero, that hometown hero’s replacement, a man in whose character the broader Cyclone community took pride even when the wins didn’t materialize, and the at-times hottest young coach in the country. Matt Campbell is a big name in college football. Fred Hoiberg was a big name in college basketball and the biggest name in Ames. Steve Prohm was an object of national fascination as he entered the Cyclone State, taking over what had been an idyllic situation and immediately being at least somewhere within the national picture. Paul Rhoads might not have been a big deal around the country, but I’d guess I’m not alone in having gone back at times to watch the video of that locker room speech in Lincoln. Otzelberger? He’s got big biceps, he’s familiar with the school, and he orchestrated one of the most impressive single-season turnarounds in college basketball history. Yet: Who is he?
Maybe I’m out of the loop on this. Maybe others feel more of a personal connection to the guy. I don’t begrudge the absence—he’s effective, and the corollary to his lack of visibility is that Iowa State is outwardly a players’ program at a time when it’s good to outwardly be a players’ program. It just surprises me, because it feels out of character for this athletic department.
Either way, he’s extended, and that’s good for Iowa State, because an active concern when the split happened with Prohm was whether ISU could find anyone better, and they definitely have. They’ve found someone who can scrap it out in the transfer portal. They’ve found someone who can recruit. They’ve found someone who can win basketball games against the best the country has to offer.
The men’s basketball program is in good hands, and with the extension, it can be expected to stay that way at least a little while longer.
Draft, Draft, Draft
In the bigger college basketball news of the day, NBA Draft withdrawal decisions are due around midnight tonight (depending on your time zone), and if you’re looking for a good list, here’s Jeff Goodman’s. A few names that stand out from last night and today’s announcements:
- Rasir Bolton and Julian Strawther are coming back to Gonzaga. No word yet on Drew Timme.
- David Roddy is leaving Colorado State and going pro.
- Dalen Terry is leaving Arizona and going pro.
- Jalen Wilson is returning to Kansas for another season. No word yet from Kevin McCullar, who left Texas Tech but would play for Kansas should he return to school.
- Kris Murray is coming back to Iowa.
There are plenty other names out there, but Timme’s the biggest focus right now, with no word from a few others as well, including Iowa State transfer target A.J. Green. Unless this paperwork can be submitted pretty secretly, we’ll know on all by morning.
The Cubs Got a Win
In a relief after the doubleheader sweep on Monday, the Cubs won a competitive one last night, Willson Contreras lighting a ball on fire in the first inning—116 miles per hour on a straight line to the left field basket—to first grab the lead, then Patrick Wisdom sending one to Waveland in the eighth to grab it back one last time. In between, the rivals played a fun game, with three triples (Ian Happ, the ever-effervescent Christopher Morel, reemergent villain Christian Yelich), four doubles (Clint Frazier, Contreras, Frank Schwindel, Tyrone Taylor), another two home runs (P.J. Higgins, old friend Victor Caratini), two ties, and a couple lead changes. Wisdom was on base three times. Frazier was on base four times. Andrelton Simmons had a big hit at one point. Rowan Wick struggled—he allowed the Taylor home run—and Brandon Hughes ran into some trouble, but Mychal Givens and David Robertson were solid, Justin Steele was adequate, and the Cubs got a relieving win.
In a season like this, it takes little things to keep us all afloat, and one of those things is simply how competitive a team is. This team might stink sometimes, but it’s competitive. At least right now. It isn’t laying down and quitting, or anything of the sort. Morel’s been the face of this—a breath of the freshest air at a time when things had gotten painfully stuffy—but it’s been there. The Cubs have been out of the playoff possibilities for a long time, but every night, there’s still the possibility of a feisty game. That’s a basic expectation, but it’s still nice to have.
Tonight, the Cubs try to split a series with the Brewers and get back to .500 on the season against their rivals from the north. Kyle Hendricks on the mound opposing Jason Alexander, a 29-year-old minor league journeyman making his first career MLB start. On the season so far at AAA he’s got a 3.78 FIP over nearly 50 innings, so he should be expected to be competitive, and I wouldn’t expect the ball to be flying especially far in a cooler, more still climate.
In roster movement, Nick Madrigal’s back, taking Seiya Suzuki’s place on the active roster as the latter went on the IL Monday with that finger issue; Jason Heyward’s back, taking Nelson Velázquez’s spot on the active roster and Manuel Rodíguez’s on the 40-man as the former heads to AAA and the latter goes on the 60-day IL; Drew Smyly’s on the injured list as expected, and Michael Rucker is off the injured list. Madrigal is the focus here, as he remains an important piece in the Cubs’ future plans and has not been right so far this year.
The Phillies Should Bounce Back
Things are approaching a boiling point in Philadelphia, with the national media zooming in on the NL East’s second-most underachieving team in recent days. Joe Girardi might be on the hot seat. The offseason investments were, to hear the story told, bad ones. There is an unmitigated disaster on our hands in America’s former capital. You simply have to play defense.
I don’t know if the Phillies will be fine this year. Dumpster fires can be hard to extinguish. But is this really all that surprising? Preseason, FanGraphs’s Playoff Odds gave Philadelphia only a 61% chance of reaching the playoffs. Today, that percentage is at 18%. That’s a big drop, but it’s not ridiculous. The Phillies entered last year’s trade deadline on the verge of contention, decided to push in what chips they had, and left us wondering at the time how they’d ride it out if it didn’t work. They doubled down this offseason, adding Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos on big deals, but even that left them with a lot of holes and no great way to improve midseason should they want to. They didn’t decide to eschew defense by choice: They had to pick something to not do well, and defense was what they chose. What’s played out through two months is not at all outside the bounds of reasonable possibilities. There’s time for them to turn it around, and they haven’t been that bad. Schwarber and Castellanos are each projected to finish the year around 2.0 fWAR, which is only slightly under the value their contracts imply. The defense isn’t, at least by FanGraphs’s measurements, the worst in the league. They’re seven games out of playoff position, but they remain better on paper than two teams currently occupying playoff spots and all but one of the teams between Philadelphia and that pair. But again, dumpster fires can be hard to extinguish.
What’s more true is that the Phillies should be expected to be pretty solid next year. No, significant reinforcements are probably not coming by then from within. But a team that’s willing to spend has something like one hundred million dollars coming off its books, it has a strong core, and it has some assets it could flip this deadline for longer-term stability should it come to that (Kyle Gibson’s xERA and FIP are both under 3.50 through ten starts).
The Phillies are not in a phantastic position. But they’re not in all that worse of a position than the Padres found themselves in last September. Look at the Padres now.
David Bakhtiari Update: Not Great?
This is hopefully a small thing, but Matt LaFleur included the word “hopefully” when referring to Bakhtiari being available for training camp when asked about the left tackle not practicing during OTA’s. The fact Bakhtiari isn’t practicing is the more noteworthy thing here, but a veteran star coming back from a significant injury sitting out OTA’s isn’t all that concerning. The concerning thing is the implication there’s some uncertainty about his health and availability for September, by way of their evidently being some uncertainty about his health and availability for August.
Another Avalanche
What a game last night in Denver. Fourteen goals in a sport where every goal is a big deal.
I was curious how quickly Gelo would react to that total, since Gelo reacts pretty quickly to large margins of victory, and…it wasn’t a big swing. Gelo’s prediction for last night was 6.50 goals. Its prediction for tomorrow night is 6.53 goals. This doesn’t mean Gelo will always only increase its outlook this much when 14 goals are scored—a key element of the system is that it determines the Gelo change first and then sifts it out between Ogelo and Dgelo, and a two-goal win for the Avalanche was unsurprising—but I would imagine we will be betting the under again tomorrow.
On the psychological side, you can’t be too upset if you’re the Oilers. You have a big goaltending question, but you already had that, and now the Avalanche have one too. Also, you were the team that rallied from four goals down to nearly tie things in the last minute. That’s not as good as being the team that won 8-6, but it’s better than being the team who hung up its skates when it went down 7-3 late in the second. It’s easy to read too much into trends, but the Oilers had a similar thing happen in the opener of their series with the Flames: Goals were scored all over the place, they lost. Over the next four games, though, the Oilers kept scoring, the Flames did not, and the Oilers walked away with a relatively comfortable series win. The Avalanche, of course, are much better at putting the puck in the net than the Flames are, but if anything, the takeaway from last night to my eyes was that the Avalanche might have more trouble than expected keeping the Oilers off the scoreboard.
Tonight’s a great game on paper, with the Rangers’ home-ice advantage meaningful. They’re the series underdog, which seems to amplify the importance of holding serve, but each team has kind of surprised so far on the postseason, which doesn’t mean that will keep happening but does make us all a bit more hesitant to talk with much certainty about the matchup.
***
Tonight’s viewing schedule (second screen rotation in italics):
- 6:05 PM EDT: Giants @ Phillies, Rodón vs. Nola (MLB TV)
- 7:05 PM EDT: Angels @ Yankees, Detmers vs. Cortes (FS1)
- 7:07 PM EDT: White Sox @ Blue Jays, Kopech vs. Ryu (MLB TV)
- 8:00 PM EDT: Lightning @ Rangers, Game 1 (ESPN)
- 8:05 PM EDT: Brewers @ Cubs, Alexander vs. Hendricks (MLB TV)
No late-night games tonight. Get some sleep. Read a book.
