It is fun to win baseball games.
Keegan Thompson Does It Again
The Cubs were in trouble again last night, suddenly tied with the Rays in the fifth with their guests threatening to score more. It had been a good start to the evening—Kyle Hendricks looked better, a Rays throwing error put Seiya Suzuki on the bases for a massive Patrick Wisdom dinger, it was such a miserable night weather-wise that everyone wanted the game over quickly and was doing their part to make that happen—but Hendricks had slid, and now, things were dicey.
Enter Keegan Thompson.
One pitch, one double play (well-executed by Frank Schwindel and Nico Hoerner both), and then three more innings of scoreless work during which the Cubs, after a beat, rallied, scraping out a run in the seventh and getting some insurance via a Schwindel long ball in the eighth. David Robertson came in to close it out, Thompson was done after 39 pitches (eleven outs in 39 pitches is quite the rate), the Cubs got another victory.
It’s easy to understate what Thompson has done so far. He has 0.75 Win Probability Added on FanGraphs, the most of any pitcher in baseball so far in this young season, and what that means is Thompson’s performance has added 0.75 wins worth of win probability beyond what an average performance in his situations would yield. Over just three outings, that’s a ton of win probability. Especially for a reliever. Especially for a non-closer reliever. Remarkable stuff so far out of the young arm, and it’s such a small sample but it’s kind of a lot of innings for a reliever, and that 1.67 xERA is something. It’s all something. Also, even if it doesn’t last, it’s already been worth a lot, as that WPA number demonstrates.
Tonight, Justin Steele makes his third start of the year, and to be completely honest, I was ready for it to not get this far. Not that I thought Steele would be bad, but I thought he was mostly in there as an opener or a piggyback guy. He’s been a great starter in his two outings (the Cubs’ best in that small sample), and with Matt Wisler heading off a bullpen game for the Rays tonight, he gives the Cubs a chance to take the series. What a series win this would be.
J.J. Kohl: Cyclone
As expected, four-star Class of 2023 quarterback J.J. Kohl announced his commitment to Iowa State last night. The Ankeny High signal caller pushes ISU up into 247’s top 25 classes in a much-too-early-to-make-anything-of-it look, and while that look is much too early for us to make anything of it, it’s better than not being in the top 25. ISU’s class now rates as the 4th-best in the current Big 12 and 5th-best in the new Big 12 (if you’re wondering, yes, it’s better than both Texas’s and Oklahoma’s, that’s how early this all is).
The NIL Takes Are Getting Wild
As the college basketball transfer portal goes into overdrive, people are losing their minds in the media and elsewhere over NIL, not least of all Iowa State folks reeling from Tyrese Hunter’s departure. It’s understandable, but at the same time: This is exactly what we all saw coming. We all said some variation of, “Boosters can pay players directly now under the guise of product sponsorship,” and with the transfer portal wide-open, we knew we were basically getting just one-year contracts with pure free agency between each season. Is this bad for college sports? I’m sympathetic to the viewpoint that it’s fun to have players spend their whole careers at one school, and I’d love it if the system were to revert back to this outcome in a lot of cases, but what’s actually wrong with the way things are? Players are getting the fruits of their value. Players have the autonomy to leave bad situations, or to seek better situations. Plenty of players are still staying for more than a year, and the vast, vast majority are staying for at least a year, because playing out the season is kind of the deal with college sports. The arguments against everything happening seem to fall into either, “This is less fun for me,” “This has changed really fast and that throws me for a loop,” or both, but people are failing to offer anything more than roundabout sentences that say nothing as actual reasons this all shouldn’t be how it is. And you know what else? A great way to get players to stay at your school is to hire coaches adept at getting players to stay, and those coaches are probably the ones who uphold the values you want out of college coaches—those who make it about the kids, those who make it a family, those who get the most out of their players. There’s a reason Armando Bacot and Leaky Black are coming back for another year at UNC. His name is Hubert Davis.
One last thing: It is wild for Iowa State fans to complain about the transfer portal after this season, when a transfer-constructed roster led to the biggest turnaround by any major program in recent memory (perhaps more than recent). I know most of the complaints are with NIL, and not the transfer portal, but the transfer portal is what makes NIL matter in these cases as much as it does, and the transfer portal has given new life to this program.
Transfer News: Collins, Garcia, Moore
On that note:
Saint Louis point guard Yuri Collins is into the portal. He grades out as a slightly better player than Hunter on EvanMiya, and as such, he is likely out of Iowa State’s league. He does have one fewer year of eligibility remaining, but that doesn’t seem likely to matter.
Shakeel Moore is also into the portal, a rising sophomore eligibility-wise who was at NC State and then at Mississippi State. He’s from North Carolina, so one would think he’d stay in the South, but who knows? He’s on the low end of EvanMiya five-star talents, which is an area I’d think Iowa State could target.
Finally, Dawson Garcia is going to Minnesota, as many expected. Glad he can be close to his family, whose health issues and tragedies are what drew him away from UNC this year. Hopefully things stabilize and improve for them. Talk about a situation NIL can really help with.
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Games of interest tonight:
- Cardinals @ Marlins (6:40 PM EDT, Regional TV) – Wainwright vs. Luzardo
- Giants @ Mets, Game 2 (7:10 PM EDT-ish, Regional TV) – Webb vs. Scherzer
- Hawks @ Heat (7:30 PM EDT, TNT)
- Rays @ Cubs (7:40 PM EDT, Regional TV) – Wisler vs. Steele
- Timberwolves @ Grizzlies (8:30 PM EDT, NBA TV)
- Pelicans @ Suns (10:00 PM EDT, TNT)
- Atlanta @ Dodgers (10:10 PM EDT, Regional TV) – Fried vs. Buehler
I’m excited for Fried vs. Buehler. The Giants/Mets doubleheader has been fun so far. Big opportunity for the Timberwolves on the road with a 1-0 series lead.
