On Friday, I declined to watch Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals, lamenting an NBA Playoff season full of blowouts and, where blowouts have been absent, buckets of slop that would make a Big Ten West head football coach blush.
Game 7 was sloppy.
But at least it was fun.
Jimmy Butler is an anomaly in today’s NBA, not necessarily more proud and competitive than his peers (though you could make a case), but proud and competitive in a different way. The Celtics are also anomalous to an extent—more in terms of their construction, with Jayson Tatum a very good player but not on the level of most playoff teams’ best players, and in the absence of a notorious copilot not reputationally there with, say, the Warriors—but Butler is of a different mold than much of the rest of today’s NBA. A junkyard dog playing alongside the domesticated. This makes him very, very fun, especially to those of us who cheered him with the Bulls, cackled at his exposure of the Timberwolves’ ethos, and lamented his and The Process’s defeat at the hands of the Raptors in 2019. Is he for everyone’s taste? No. There are reasons people who like this iteration of the NBA like this iteration of the NBA, and for some of those people, Butler’s intrusion on their vibe is an offense. Of course, this reflects poorly on them more than it reflects poorly on Butler—if you don’t like Jimmy Butler, do you actually like sports? Or are you a reality television fan? And if you’re a reality television fan…why don’t you like Butler, again?—but the point stands: I understand that some people don’t like Jimmy Butler, and I understand why some people don’t like Jimmy Butler, and it makes me think a little bit less of them.
More likely than not, Jimmy Butler will always be simply a cult hero. He might get a title, possibly as a well-loved veteran down the line, but it doesn’t appear particularly likely that he’ll win one as the sole main man in Miami. As he was releasing that three last night—an open three for a shot at the lead with eighteen seconds left, basically the exact shot you want when you’re down two late in a basketball game, just maybe fourteen seconds earlier than you want it—there was a chance it would work. As the rebound was gathered by Al Horford, that chance disappeared. Now, it appears more likely that Butler might win one the current way, possibly by joining forces with Joel Embiid, who is unabashedly with us in the pro-Butler camp, a feeling Butler openly reciprocates towards Embiid. Butler, the junkyard dog, might settle down. Get adopted. Take naps on the couch. Win a title when his turn comes. This is fair. This is the way the NBA works right now. Would this be a little sad? Yes. It’s been fun watching Jimmy Butler vs. The World. But if it happens: What a way to get there. Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo playing NBA-quality basketball while Kyle Lowry pulled every pickup trick in the book, Victor Oladipo hauled his beleaguered soul up and down the court, and Max Strus pulled two incredible plays out of an otherwise very DePaul-product performance, pulling the Heat out of the depths of double-digit deficit after double-digit deficit to nearly take down the East’s best team…what a way to get there. And after Friday night? When he dropped 47 in Boston in a game his Heat were thoroughly expected to lose? That was fun. That was really, really fun.
The Celtics are being written off against the Warriors in a lot of narratives so far (not so much in the betting markets, tellingly), but this gets back to the anomalous part of their whole thing over there: Jayson Tatum is a good player, but he’s not on a Jimmy Butler level. That’s not how the Celtics are doing this, and the instinct seems to be to either write them off or to elevate Tatum to a level he doesn’t occupy. They’re playing a different game than most of the rest of the league. Clearly, it’s working. The Warriors are a wagon—possibly able to just win whenever they want, if you want to take postseason results so far at through a literal lens—but their core has aged and lost Kevin Durant since we last saw them on this level, and for as good as Jordan Poole is…he’s not Jayson Tatum! (There it is.) Should be a good series. Partially because this is the NBA. Would guess the games are closer, too. Partially because this is the NBA.
The Avalanche Answered
I thought we had ‘em.
We’ve been fading the Avalanche in our Best Bets (more on those below), and when the Blues led Game 6 on Friday with almost just half a period to play, the tide seemed to have turned. Then, the powerplay. Then, the tying goal. Then, the buzzer-beating, series-winning goal to stun St. Louis and reestablish Colorado as the team to beat (not in Gelo’s eyes, which is why we continue to fade the Avalanche, but in the narrative and the markets). I don’t know how much of a statistical difference this makes, but it can’t hurt psychologically to have had your back scrape the wall a little bit and to have gotten out ok.
In the Eastern Conference, we get a Game 7 tonight between the Hurricanes and Rangers, the former of which (to our growing astonishment) keeps winning at home and losing on the road. I don’t know what to make of that but I am growing more convinced by the game.
Is This Going to Be the End for the 2022 Cubs?
There is a lot of Cubs roster stuff going on, so let’s cover all of that before talking about those games this weekend.
- Clint Frazier is back from his appendectomy.
- Wade Miley is onto the IL with a shoulder strain.
- Jonathan Villar is onto the IL after getting hit in the mouth with an exercise band that snapped at a very inopportune time (as someone who has a mildly swollen lymph node on the right side of my tongue, I can empathize with the terror mouth injuries bestow upon their host bodies).
- Michael Hermosillo is still on the IL, but it’s the injury one again and not the Covid-but-we-can’t-say-Covid one.
- Brandon Hughes is back in Iowa—he was never added to the 40-man, just a Covid-but-we-can’t-say-Covid replacement for Hermosillo.
- Mark Leiter Jr. is back up.
- Ethan Roberts has been moved to the 60-day IL.
- Matt Swarmer is up and starting the first game of today’s doubleheader (has been added to the 40-man—that’s the Roberts move).
- Nelson Velázquez is up.
- Anderson Espinoza is up as the 27th man for today’s doubleheader.
Velázquez, whom the Cubs drafted out of Puerto Rico in 2017, has been obliterating the ball in the minors for upwards of three years now. He’s a Christopher Morel-adjacent prospect—lot of question marks, specifically with consistency, and he’s not a top prospect, but he’ll be a lot of fun when he’s on, and prospect rankings have a margin of error. Espinoza, the return from the Jake Marisnick trade last summer, has had a lot of arm trouble over his career but got back on the mound last year. Some upside, lots of strikeouts, and he’s been stretched out as a starter, but he’s fringy as a prospect and his injury history is a concern. Swarmer is effectively a non-prospect, but he’s got a 3.46 FIP so far this year at AAA, and importantly for the Cubs’ purposes, he might survive waivers if they DFA him once this start is over.
Speaking of that start, the rotation currently lines up as follows through the rest of the week:
- Monday: Drew Smyly Game 2, Swarmer Game 1
- Tuesday: Justin Steele
- Wednesday: Kyle Hendricks
- Thursday: TBA (would assume Keegan Thompson)
- Friday: TBA (would assume Marcus Stroman)
- Saturday: TBA (would assume Smyly), TBA (wild card—maybe Espinoza, maybe Swarmer, maybe Leiter, maybe Daniel Norris, maybe Scott Effross)
Now, the action:
It was almost such a good weekend. The Cubs took the first game of the pair in comfortable-enough fashion, jumping on Johnny Cueto and getting five effective innings from Thompson. The Cubs had the lead in the second game entering the bottom of the ninth, but Gavin Sheets slapped a ground ball down the third base line, David Robertson was a little wild, and P.J. Higgins let one through the five-hole, allowing a possible-definitely-scoring-but-who-can-say run to score. The Cubs then had a two-run lead entering the bottom of the tenth, and a standard one-run lead entering the bottom of the eleventh, and they eventually lost in the bottom of the twelfth as the game entered farcical territory, with the White Sox showing off their worst-in-the-majors* defense while the Cubs did their best to keep up, even with a wacky runner interference play briefly resurrecting the effort. A debilitating loss in a few ways, the first being that while you don’t have to care about the White Sox, it’d be nice to not hand them a gift victory when they were trying to hand you a gift victory and they were also on the brink of meltdown; the second being that it was the second game of an eleven-game stretch against the White Sox, Brewers, and Cardinals that will either end with the 2022 Cubs officially dead, the 2022 Cubs still in the doubtful region of stasis, or the 2022 Cubs improbably resurrected. It’s hard to see that third one coming to pass after a win got away like that. Would have been a spunky 7-2 week away from getting back to a season-best 78-win projection on FanGraphs. Are now a nigh-impossible 8-1 week away from that, and that’s not particularly good.
*The White Sox defense isn’t quite the worst, actually, but it’s about as bad as the Phillies’ using our best available stats, and there has been a lot of digital ink spilled about the Phillies’ decision to abandon the concept of defense this year.
Brandon Woodruff Goes Down
Brandon Woodruff is on the IL with a sprained ankle, which is bad news for the Brewers, who went from having three great pitchers last year to having possibly five great pitchers this year and are now down in the three-great-pitchers place again, at least briefly, and without their semi-longtime ace (it would have been better for them to lose Adrian Houser, if they had to lose someone).
Milwaukee’s offense has been significantly better this year than it was last year, with its 103 wRC+ 12th-best in the Majors entering play today (last year’s 91 was 23rd-best, right behind the Cubs’ 92). Their rotation’s 5.0 fWAR, entering play today, is fifth-best in the Majors, and with FanGraphs’s Depth Charts expecting Freddy Peralta to return in time for nine more starts or so and Woodruff to return rather quickly from this injury, the rotation is second-best in the Majors on paper. That’s pretty optimistic, but it does have a 4.20 FIP from Eric Lauer and a 4.40 FIP from Houser, and each is outperforming that right now (I’m not seeing xERA on FanGraphs today, so can’t double check using that). Aaron Ashby has a 3.52 career FIP, too, so maybe they had a six-man rotation all along, and now it’s down to four.
Overall, the Brewers are in trouble, but they deepened themselves up enough that the trouble is still on the theoretical side. David Stearns is good at his job.
In other injury news, Tim Anderson and Josh Donaldson are both on the IL, with a groin injury and a shoulder injury, respectively. I don’t know if I’d call that a “fun” coincidence, but it’s a coincidence of note.
Teams who helped themselves this past week, teams who hurt themselves:
- The Blue Jays finished the week on a five-game winning streak in St. Louis and Anaheim, climbing to seven games above .500, narrowing their gap with the Yankees by a game and a half over the seven days, and raising their division championship probability by half and their World Series probability by a third from where it was a week ago on FanGraphs’s Playoff Odds.
- The Mets lost two of three in San Francisco, but their sweep of the Phillies kept the division lead comfortably in their possession. Altogether, they raised their division championship probability by an eighth, raised their probability of a bye to the Division Series by a quarter, and raised their World Series probability by a sixth. Productive seven days.
- The Dodgers are culturally expected to do things like take six of seven in Washington and Phoenix, but it’s easier to write that down than it is to do it, and they did it, climbing to nearly 20 games above .500, taking over the best record in the league, and pulling their playoff probability up to 99.0%, making them the closest team right now to effectively clinching a postseason bid.
- The Rays are now over 50% likely to make the playoffs, per FanGraphs, and FanGraphs is lower on the Rays than the market. They’re a game ahead of the Blue Jays, still, having taken four of six from the Marlins and Yankees.
- On the other side of those Blue Jays and Mets sweeps, the Phillies and Angels are hurting. The Angels are still roughly three-in-five likely to make the playoffs, but that’s down from nearly four-in-five entering the week. The Phillies are just better than one-in-four likely to make the playoffs as an up-and-down season in Philadelphia continues.
The best players, from last Monday through yesterday:
- Mookie Betts (0.9 fWAR): Betts stayed hot, homering four times on the week and reaching base eight times over Monday and Tuesday alone. Betts trails only Manny Machado in fWAR, and he’s closing the gap.
- Dansby Swanson (0.8 fWAR): Swanson had a good week in Georgia, recording nine hits in a three-day stretch early in the week, then stealing two bases yesterday against the Marlins. The defending champions have closed their deficit to just two games under .500, and for as disappointing as Swanson’s bat was through his first two years, his xwOBA’s over the last four years, including this year’s so far, go .350, .354, .332, .360, with .320 league-average. This guy is working out, and that Shelby Miller trade was bananas.
- José Ramírez (0.7 fWAR): Just three more home runs on the week from one of baseball’s best. Also, three doubles. Also, three stolen bases. 2019 was this guy’s worst year of the last seven, and he was still in the top half of the league’s third basemen. Every other season in that stretch, he’s been in the top ten in fWAR. For all MLB players. Not just third basemen.
- Joc Pederson (0.7 fWAR): The slap was a bigger story, but Pederson’s four home runs between Tuesday and Wednesday were the harder contact.
- Trevor Larnach (0.7 fWAR): One of the Twins’ top prospects but something of a middling rookie, Larnach might be breaking out. Reaching the 100-plate appearance threshold yesterday, he hit his third home run of the season, which was also his third home run of the week.
- Rafael Devers (0.7 fWAR): Betts’s old friend also stayed hot, hitting his tenth and eleventh home runs of the season, doubling four times, and reaching base multiple times in five of the week’s seven games as the Red Sox continued clawing their way back into the picture.
- Tyler Anderson (0.7 fWAR): Two good starts for the Dodgers’ third or fourth starter, who more than did his part on the road trip, striking out fourteen over fourteen innings against the Nationals and Diamondbacks. Just one walk across the pair of outings.
College Baseball: We’ve Got a Bracket
The college baseball NCAA Tournament bracket was announced earlier today, and to nobody’s surprise, Tennessee took the field’s top seed. Also hosting Super Regionals (should they win their regional and be available to host) are Stanford, Oregon State, Virginia Tech, Texas A&M, Miami, Oklahoma State, and East Carolina. Also hosting Regionals this coming weekend are Texas, UNC, Southern Miss, Louisville, Florida, Auburn, Maryland, and Georgia Southern. There’s a fun basketball Regional in College Park featuring Maryland/Wake Forest/UConn/Long Island, while Florida State drives up to Auburn, Oklahoma and Florida are matched up together, Michigan and Oregon are down in Louisville, LSU’s over in Hattiesburg, Georgia’s in Chapel Hill with VCU, Virginia and Coastal Carolina are each at ECU, Arkansas and Missouri State are both in nearby Stillwater, TCU’s down at A&M with Louisiana-Lafayette, and Georgia Tech’s up in Knoxville. Not an exhaustive list, but there’s a little of the intrigue for you. Games start on Friday.
College Basketball: We’ve Got Transfers
On the big-name side of things, Matthew Mayer’s headed to Illinois, KC Ndefo’s headed from Saint Peter’s to Seton Hall, and Rocket Watts is back to the Great Lake State, where he’ll play for Oakland. There are also a lot of NBA Draft decisions coming through, but it’s hard to parse exactly which were and weren’t foregone conclusions, so we’ll just direct you to Jeff Goodman’s list and call that good. I believe the deadline for withdrawal is Wednesday night.
How the Bets Are Going
Tough day yesterday for the bets: We had Charles Leclerc, we had both Tony Kanaan and Felix Rosenqvist, we had Kyle Larson, each of those four had a moment when it looked like they were going to win (our other five flopped), none won. At Monaco, it was poor communication between Ferrari and Leclerc concerning pit timing, opening the door for Sergio Pérez to take a lead he wouldn’t relinquish in a rain-shortened race. In Indianapolis, Rosenqvist’s car just wasn’t fast enough when his opportunity came, and Kanaan couldn’t get a jump on Pato O’Ward on the final restart, making it O’Ward vs. Marcus Ericsson, a battle Ericsson won. In Charlotte, Larson wrecked on the first overtime restart as Austin Dillon tried for a dramatic pass, with Denny Hamlin inheriting the lead and holding on through the second OT. Fun day of racing, gambling on racing is a good time if done responsibly, we unfortunately lost nine units on the day.
We’re now 151.77 units below water, with a negative four percent average return that, when you don’t do any rounding, equates to a 50.2% record if all our picks were -110 odds, which they have not been. We’re a longshot-heavy effort, generally, and the motorsports picks have been especially longshot-based and unproductive. 72.9 units of our deficit—nearly half—comes from cars. I do think it’ll even out eventually, but the general assessment of our approach is that we’ve spent too many units trying things out and not enough units hammering things we’re good at. Hopefully the MLB futures help take care of that—we’re investing 520 units, our median return has been around 50% on those over the three years of doing this, that should be enough to bring us up out of the red—but we’d like hockey to come through in the meantime (Go Rangers, Go Lightning, Go Oilers), and it’d be nice if we could hit on more on the motorsports side as those seasons go on. If we don’t, we may have to shut those efforts down until next year, when we’d still like to have predictive models built out. The possibility is on our radar.
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Viewing schedule today/tonight (Yes, the first Cubs game is almost over, it is a slow holiday Monday around here, apologies if our savant-like analysis is hitting you eight innings too late [also, second screen in italics]):
- 1:05 PM EDT: Brewers @ Cubs, Small vs. Swarmer (MLB TV)
- 2:15 PM EDT: Padres @ Cardinals, Martinez vs. Naughton (MLB TV)
- 4:05 PM EDT: Giants @ Phillies, Webb vs. Gibson (MLB TV)
- 7:40 PM EDT: Brewers @ Cubs, Ashby vs. Smyly (MLB TV)
- 8:00 PM EDT: Rangers @ Hurricanes, Game 7 (ESPN)
