Joe’s Notes: Iowa State Got a Guy

Fears eased, excitement renewed, questions answered. Iowa State got itself a guy, and what a guy they got.

Osun Osunniyi is not the best big man in the country. He’s not a National Player of the Year candidate. He’s not KJ Williams, and he’s not the taller equal to Tyrese Hunter. He is a five-star EvanMiya transfer, though, he’s as proven as they come, and he’s a whole lot better than Iowa State’s primary alternatives down low.

An offense-first player statistically known better for his shot-blocking, Osunniyi was the best-known part of the St. Bonaventure team that entered last season with so much excitement and started so hot before stumbling to an NIT bid, which they then turned around into an NIT Final Four finish. He joins fellow Bona transfer Jaren Holmes in a likely starting lineup that goes, from 1 to 5, Holmes, Caleb Grill, Gabe Kalscheur, Aljaž Kunc, Osunniyi, with Hason Ward a more-than-capable sixth man with length, Robert Jones and Tre King competing to spell Osunniyi, and the freshman trio of Demarion Watson, Eli King, and Tamin Lipsey competing alongside Jeremiah Williams to provide depth at guard. There is no one currently under scholarship it would be shocking to see in the rotation, and while the team won’t go 12-deep, it’s nice to have those kinds of options, especially with the potential for one more acquisition still out there (a final scholarship remains available).

Looking towards the long term, it’s a bit of a daunting pickup—of the twelve players on scholarship, eight are seniors—but at the same time, T.J. Otzelberger and his staff can clearly make things work in the transfer portal. Right now on EvanMiya, ISU’s class ranks as the 12^th-best nationally, and even with one of the best players in the whole darn country leaving, their overall transfer activity ranking is 90^th, higher than that of Texas, Texas Tech, TCU, Kansas State, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State. Those teams likely aren’t done yet themselves, but the point stands—Iowa State’s capable in the portal, and that’s a good thing to be as a program.

What’s the baseline expectation for this team now, with Osunniyi on board? The simplest bet is that they’ll be expected to make the NCAA Tournament but not to compete for a Big 12 title. I would guess that the offense is significantly better, but that without Hunter, the defense is significantly worse. There’s plenty of uncertainty—how much of an offensive efficiency liability is Kalscheur, how will the team gel, how exactly will the point guard situation work out—but that’s to be expected in college basketball. Iowa State got a guy. In doing that, they survived what could have been a gutting transfer season.

Elsewhere in the Bonaventure Diaspora

Kyle Lofton signed with Florida today (it feels great to see Jeff Goodman’s tweet from earlier today about UF still being in the mix for Osunniyi), and while he isn’t an EvanMiya five-star and therefore doesn’t meet our usual threshold, he’s memorable enough to readers of this blog and Florida’s getting enough hype from it that it seems worthy of mention. Florida is having a spectacular transfer season under Todd Golden, and while that athletic department is no stranger to recent high expectations going unfulfilled, when you look at the current state of the SEC (no clear dominant force, lots of good-but-flawed programs), the post-Donovan history of Florida basketball (almost always the kind of team it’s not surprising to see play with anybody), and Golden himself (the guy’s an in-game strategic mastermind), it’s understandable why the Gators are getting the hype they’re getting. They’re on the rise, Arkansas is on the rise (from a good height), Texas A&M’s on the rise, Tennessee and Auburn should remain strong, Alabama shouldn’t be bad, Kentucky remains Kentucky despite the angst surrounding Lexington, LSU might not turn out dead after all…that’s eight teams from which it wouldn’t be a surprise to see six competing for top-four seeds in March, and maybe even two or three competing for 1-seeds.

In EvanMiya five-star land, West Virginia has landed Tre Mitchell (this is part of why the Mountaineers are one of the programs outranking ISU in the portal), whose tenure at Texas wasn’t extraordinary but wasn’t bad. He’ll need a waiver to play right away, as a two-time transfer, and I have no idea how likely or unlikely that waiver is to materialize. Regardless, West Virginia’s positioning themselves to bounce back. Mitchell’s not the only guy they’ve grabbed—they’re at four EvanMiya four and five-stars.

Schedule Release: Fun!

The NFL schedule release was unexpectedly fun. It’s possible teams’ social media personnel have been doing what they did yesterday for years and I just didn’t notice, but regardless, I enjoyed seeing the Colts’ mascot slap pies in the faces of fourteen team employees and I got a kick out of whatever that Chargers thing was.

For the Packers, the schedule looks like this:

• Week 1: @ Vikings
• Week 2: Bears
• Week 3: @ Buccaneers
• Week 4: Patriots
• Week 5: vs. Giants (in London)
• Week 6: Jets
• Week 7: @ Commanders
• Week 8: @ Bills
• Week 9: @ Lions
• Week 10: Cowboys
• Week 11: Titans (Thursday night)
• Week 12: @ Eagles
• Week 13: @ Bears
• Week 14: (Bye)
• Week 15: Rams
• Week 16: @ Dolphins
• Week 17: Vikings
• Week 18: Lions

It’s a bit dicey that they chose to not take their bye week right after the London game, though playing the Jets the next week is helpful and, having ended up with it late in the season, they could get a lot of rest over the last five weeks if they have the division in hand. The risk, it appears, is getting worn out heading into a pretty tough stretch right after that Jets game—three straight weeks on the road followed by the Cowboys and Titans at home in a five-day span. If you write off the trips to Buffalo and Tampa Bay and the visit from the Titans as losses (given the timing), the Packers could go even a disappointing 4-2 within the NFC North and still finish with a 12-5 record if they take care of business overall, going 7-1 at home, 1-0 in Europe, and 4-4 on the road. That’s a quick glance, and it assumes things like beating the defending Super Bowl champions, but that’s the gist of the first look at the concrete schedule, at least to my vague, speculative eyes.

The Sixers Situation, the Suns Situation?

The Sixers are getting the whole post-mortem today, with James Harden nearly invisible last night and yet another early postseason exit added to the filling-up Joel Embiid window. Jimmy Butler leading a Heat team with a quietly legitimate shot at a title isn’t getting as much attention as it should (the Heat have the best record of any team in this year’s playoffs at 8-3, if that means anything), but there’s time for that. It’s understandable to focus on the Sixers right now. What’s really looming is a Suns post-mortem. Because after the Mavs surprisingly thoroughly stifled Phoenix last night, the franchise that’s 0-3 all-time in the Finals and 3-7 all-time in the Conference Finals is staring down another tormenting early abscondence themselves.

There isn’t exactly a pair or collection of year-in-year-out NBA heavyweights right now or a single team-to-beat the way there’s often been. Instead, it’s a collection of franchises that have checked their box and a collection of franchises that haven’t. The Bucks are set. The Warriors are set. These Celtics have enough history and haven’t been great enough recently to have the weight of expectations, a situation that applies to the Heat as well. The Sixers? They needed this. The Suns? They need this. The Mavericks and Grizzlies? They’re pretty along-for-the-ride at this point, but hey, maybe they can do what the Bucks did last summer, and each does have a young, popular star who could turn out to be the face of the league and could also turn out to be a punching bag.

It’s familiar territory for college sports fans. There’s a hump, and the question’s whether a franchise/program/coach can get over it or not. The Cavs got over their hump. Georgia’s football program got over its hump. Gonzaga has not yet gotten over its hump. Is it fair? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. In a league like the NBA, where the postseason is a not-comically-small sample and it’s possible to spend your whole season planning for said postseason, it’s more justifiable to demand teams win championships when the possibility is there than it is in college. At the same time, though, there are things you can’t control, namely who the other contenders are in a given year. Nobody’s beating up on the Bulls for failing to win in the Derrick Rose era, and while part of that is Rose’s injuries, another part is that the Bulls were trying to go through some loaded teams. Those were the years of the Heat superteam. With no present superteam that’s functioning as intended, pressure’s heightened on franchises like the Suns. If they bow out on Sunday, they might not get the treatment the Sixers are getting, but it might be warranted.

Sidney Crosby’s Concussion, Remaining Upset Bids, and Three to Six Game 7s

The Penguins are a home underdog tonight against the Rangers, and while the Rangers did have the better regular season record, Gelo views the teams as roughly equal on paper. The reason for the discrepancy, of course, is Sidney Crosby’s absence, and that’s also the source of the questions entering tonight’s game.

There’s a piece of hockey and basketball Game 6s, and baseball Game 5s to an extent (the 2-3-2 schedule dilutes this), where it feels like if the home team has a chance to clinch the series and misses it, they’re toast. I don’t know the all-time stats on this, and I don’t know how those stats play out adjusted for things like regular season record or original series odds in Vegas, but the feeling exists, and if the Rangers win tonight, it will both be their series to lose back at Madison Square Garden, where they’ll be a 55% to 65% favorite (depending on Crosby’s health, in part), and feel like a series they’ve already won. The gap between 65% and 100% is large. The Penguins can win this in seven. But the gap between 55%, possibly the Pittsburgh win probability tonight, and 35%, possibly the win probability in that hypothetical Game 7, is also large. The Penguins would really like to take care of this in Game 6.

In tonight’s other games, the question is whether the home underdogs, who were previously not playing from behind, can survive. The probabilities say at least one of the Stars and Capitals will, more likely than not, force a seventh game, but we just don’t know.

Last night, everyone but the Wild forced a seventh game. The Bruins did it at home. The Lightning did it at home in overtime after trailing 3-2 in the third period. The Oilers did it in Los Angeles after being tied 2-2 midway through the third. But the Wild did not force it. The Blues walked away with a series win.

The Blues get a good amount of time to rest now—it appears their series with the Avalanche won’t start until Monday at the earliest—and that might be key for them. The Avalanche, of course, have gotten more time to rest, but I’d imagine rest has some diminishing returns as these sorts of gaps go on, and questions about things like rust and things like what confidence arises from having gotten through a competitive series already are worthy questions. In short, the Blues/Avalanche series is probably about what it looks like on paper. The challenger is not already spent. The Blues should come in as ready to compete as they can be, whatever that level is.

With the other three, we get Game 7 tomorrow, and the pressure would seem to be on the home team in all three of them. The Hurricanes/Bruins and Maple Leafs/Lightning series are even enough on paper that the team that failed to clinch Game 6 now has to deal with momentum questions. The Oilers are a big-enough favorite over the Kings that their expectations (and their recent history and the possibility of a second-round matchup with their local rival) outweigh the fact the Kings missed their own chance to put things away. Excited to see the atmosphere in all three locales, but especially Toronto and Edmonton, which have varying airs of desperation to them.

The Phillies Aren’t Dead, and Mike Trout Keeps Doing His Thing

Top performers from this week:

• Mike Trout (0.6 fWAR): Three home runs between Monday and Tuesday’s games against the Rays. Currently 146% better than the average MLB hitter, by wRC+, with an xwOBA almost exactly matching his wOBA (even in the shortened 2020 season, Freddie Freeman was only 86% better than the average MLB hitter).
• Kyle Tucker (0.6 fWAR): As the Astros won their eighth, ninth, and tenth straight games, Tucker notched two doubles and a home run and reached base three or more times in each game of the series. Also stole three bases. Tucker reached 4.9 fWAR last year, nearly in baseball’s top 30. He’s on pace for something like 7.0 this season, and that’s with some pretty bad luck on balls in play.
• Josh Naylor (0.5 fWAR): Forget about WAR with Naylor’s week. This guy’s two dramatic home runs against the White Sox on Tuesday were part of a single-game performance worth 0.98 WPA, meaning his performance that day was enough to improve Cleveland’s win expectancy by nearly one full win for the season. On the year, Naylor is now second in baseball in WPA despite having only appeared in twenty games.
• Bryce Harper (0.5 fWAR): A lot of this came last night, in a new series against the Dodgers, but it gets counted today, and as the Phillies have risen back to their feet, things like Harper’s four extra-base hits over these last four games (and .556 OBP over those games) are helping lead the charge. (It’s worth noting here that Harper’s partially-torn UCL is keeping him from playing the field and may necessitate Tommy John surgery down the line. Nothing easy for Philadelphia. Unless Nick Foles is involved.)
• Jean Segura (0.5 fWAR): Also helping lead the charge has been Segura, who managed an even better OBP these last four days than Harper (.562 for the infielder). A dangerous West Coast trip has begun well for the Philadelphians.
• Willson Contreras (0.5 fWAR): Providing his own pop on the West Coast was Willson Contreras, who recorded seven hits, including a home run, in the Cubs’ series win in San Diego. Contreras’s career-high xwOBA is .352, posted over the shortened 2020 season. Right now, he’s at .422. He’s thirty years old, and catchers are subject to a lot of wear and tear, but it’s possible we’re seeing him reach a new height at the plate.
• Tyler Stephenson (0.5 fWAR): Don’t look now, but the Reds have won five of seven after entering last weekend with a 3-22 record. If they continue at this pace, they’ll reach 100 wins. Just need to continue to play 116-win baseball. Where were we? Oh. Reds standout young catcher Tyler Stephenson had four extra-base hits on the week.
• Giancarlo Stanton (0.5 fWAR): Aaaand Giancarlo Stanton has been cruel to baseballs. Four home runs this week, three in the last two games.

Noteworthy team movement:

• With the Giants’ sweep of the Rockies, their division championship probability per FanGraphs’s Playoff Odds (credit to FanGraphs for all baseball numbers herein, as is almost always the case) nearly doubled, increasing to roughly 17% entering games tonight. Was helped by the Dodgers and Padres each stumbling against NL Central non-contenders, but the Giants did their part, and the impact was large.
• The Yankees’ win streak ended last week, but since it ended they’ve gone 5-1, with a two-game sweep of the Blue Jays and a win over the White Sox in Chicago last night. Their division championship probability increased by about a third, and they’re now likelier to win the AL East than the Dodgers are to win the NL West after being very much the division underdog entering the year, both compared to the Blue Jays and compared to the field. They’re also neck-and-neck with the Dodgers for the title of World Series favorite.
• The Phillies are off the mat, standing even with Atlanta and holding a playoff probability comparable to that of the Cardinals. In the NL, the Cardinals and Phillies are very much on the outside looking in (compared to Atlanta, the Mets, the Brewers, and the three NL West contenders), but they’re keeping it a race. Big swing out west so far for the Phils, who took two of three from the Mariners before escaping a near-disastrous meltdown last night in L.A.
• The Mariners and Marlins are skidding. Seattle’s now lost twelve of fifteen, Miami’s lost nine of eleven, and each is down under a 16% playoff probability, making their odds less favorable than yours of rolling a seven with a pair of dice. A couple teams of intrigue turning out to probably not be too intriguing.

Off to Arizona

The Diamondbacks have far and away had the better start to the year, but the Cubs are better enough on paper that even on the road, they should be expected to be competitive in these three games. Ketel Marte’s off to a rough start, but Daulton Varsho has exploded onto the scene, and recently-debuted prospect Alek Thomas should be a force with which to be reckoned as teams begin the process of figuring him out. On the mound, the D-Backs have been better than last year, but last year was abysmal. Of their starters, only Merrill Kelly and Zac Gallen are guys you don’t want to face, and the Cubs only have to face Gallen this series, with that matchup coming tomorrow. Zach Davies and Humberto Castellanos aren’t slouches (Davies is pitching significantly better than he did for the Cubs here in the early-going), but dodging Kelly is nice. Kelly is good.

For the Cubs, Drew Smyly goes tonight, and then if the rotation stays as it’s been it’ll be Justin Steele followed by Kyle Hendricks, but I’m seeing Hendricks listed as tomorrow’s starter in a few places, so we’ll see. No word yet on Nico Hoerner’s ankle situation beyond the reports we covered yesterday.

In other news, Adrian Sampson was claimed by the Mariners as the Cubs tried to pass him through waivers, so he’s out of the organization, and Ed Howard’s injury is reportedly “significant.” Possibly season-ending.

Finally, tonight’s game’s on Apple TV+, but it’s free. Just need the app and a login/password, which I would guess you can make happen on your computer if nothing else.

On Wheels

IndyCar’s settling in for its month at the Brickyard, running the road course at Indianapolis Motor Speedway tomorrow afternoon. NASCAR, meanwhile, is over in Kansas on Sunday.

***

Weekend viewing schedule for this Cubs blogger who prefers baseball to other sports and currently prefers the NHL to the NBA (second screen options in italics):

Friday

• 6:40 PM EDT: Brewers @ Marlins, Burns vs. López (MLB TV)
• 7:00 PM EDT: Rangers @ Penguins, Game 6 (TNT)
• 7:10 PM EDT: Blue Jays @ Rays, Gausman vs. Rasmussen (MLB TV)
• 7:20 PM EDT: Padres @ Atlanta, Darvish vs. Fried (Apple TV+)
• 7:30 PM EDT: Panthers @ Capitals, Game 6 (TBS)
• 7:30 PM EDT: Celtics @ Bucks, Game 6 (ESPN)
• 9:30 PM EDT: Flames @ Stars, Game 6 (TNT)
• 9:40 PM EDT: Cubs @ Diamondbacks, Smyly vs. Davies (Apple TV+)
• 10:00 PM EDT: Grizzlies @ Warriors, Game 6 (ESPN)
• 10:10 PM EDT: Phillies @ Dodgers, Gibson vs. Buehler (MLB TV)

Saturday

• 2:15 PM EDT: Giants @ Cardinals, Junis vs. Hudson (MLB TV)
• 4:05 PM EDT: Padres @ Atlanta, Manaea vs. Morton (FS1)
• 4:30 PM EDT: Bruins @ Hurricanes, Game 7 (ESPN)
• 7:00 PM EDT: Lightning @ Maple Leafs, Game 7 (TNT)
• 7:10 PM EDT: Mariners @ Mets, Kirby vs. Bassitt (MLB TV)
• 8:10 PM EDT: Cubs @ Diamondbacks, TBD vs. Gallen (MLB TV)
• 10:00 PM EDT: Kings @ Oilers, Game 7 (ESPN)

Sunday

• TBD? Capitals @ Panthers, Game 7 if necessary (TBD)
• TBD? Stars @ Flames, Game 7 if necessary (TBD)
• TBD? Penguins @ Rangers, Game 7 if necessary (TBD)
• TBD? Mavericks @ Suns, Game 7 (TBD)
• 11:35 AM EDT: Padres @ Atlanta, Musgrove vs. Wright (Peacock)
• 1:40 PM EDT: Mariners @ Mets, Ray vs. Carrasco (MLB TV)
• 1:40 PM EDT: Blue Jays @ Rays, Manoah vs. Kluber (MLB TV)
• 4:07 PM EDT: Angels @ A’s, Syndergaard vs. Montas (MLB TV)
• 4:10 PM EDT: Cubs @ Diamondbacks, TBD vs. Castellanos (MLB TV)
• 4:10 PM EDT: Phillies @ Dodgers, Nola vs. Urías (MLB TV)
• 4:30 PM EDT: Bucks @ Celtics, Game 7 if necessary (ABC)
• 7:00 PM EDT: Giants @ Cardinals, Rodón vs. TBD (ESPN)