We haven’t talked about it because I didn’t think it’d get this far.
Also because we don’t talk much (if at all) about golf. Golf’s on our radar—we’d like to build one of our predictive models eventually for it—but it’s a low priority. I can’t remember who won the Masters this year. Sorry.
Professional golf has, in a larger way than may have ever been the case before, changed. The PGA and the closely-tied majors are no longer the only show in town. There is now also LIV Golf. I will confess: I don’t know what LIV stands for, or if it’s even an acronym in the first place, but if I must offer an explanation for those wondering what LIV Golf is, my best attempt is to say that it’s a global all-star tour with slightly different tournament formats than the PGA’s. Greg Norman has been heavily involved in its formation. So has Phil Mickelson. It had its first event last week in England. I don’t know who won that either.
There’s so much I don’t know about the professional apparatus of golf that I’m hesitant to comment much on this all, but I do find two things interesting about it, as the conflict shows no signs of immediate calm:
The first is that it surfaces again the monopolistic nature of American professional sports, and I don’t even mean on the legal side. Major sporting leagues in America are given broad antitrust exemptions, but their anticompetitive nature is more fundamental than that. There is no negative consequence for losing in American professional sports besides the misery of losing itself. In fact, losing is rewarded in MLB, the NFL, the NBA, and the NHL, with better draft picks afforded to the worst teams in the name of “competition.” This is a direct contrast to, say, British soccer, with its absence of salary caps and clear path to promotion from even being an amateur club to being one of the world’s best (unlikely or not, the path is at least there). The PGA’s monopoly is not anticompetitive within itself. There are clear, firm consequences for losing in professional golf in America, with players independent rather than being lumped into teams and owned. There are clear paths to play one’s way in. I hadn’t thought before about the PGA as a monopoly, and I think that’s because it functions so differently as that monopoly than the NFL. Yet, it’s still a monopoly, and we’re reportedly about to get antitrust lawsuits about its decision to suspend players who’ve opted to play with LIV.
The second is that the PGA might have done one hell of a job of marketing on this. I don’t know about you, dear reader, but when I hear, “LIV Golf,” I think, “Saudi Arabia.” This whole project has been so loudly tied to Saudi Arabia, and comments by Norman and Mickelson have been so outrageously indifferent to the human rights abuses of that country (and we should stress that it really is the country financing LIV, it isn’tprivate citizens from the country), that LIV and Saudi Arabia are firmly intertwined in my mind. Honestly, I was surprised when the first event was in England. I thought they were only going to play in countries that are dictatorships. It’s one of those thoughts that feels ridiculous once I say it out loud, but it was a thought! I thought it! I assumed!
The marketing spin goes deeper than the Saudi Arabia thing, though, or maybe the Saudi Arabia thing has just given the marketing a big leg up in this war: We are in an age of strong athlete empowerment in America. It’s most visibly and financially seen in college sports, with NIL and changes to the transfer portal, but it comes through with the response to bat flips in baseball, too, and with the NBA’s willingness to work with rather than against its players union. Athletes are seen as independent people more than was previously the case, and we like independent people to have choices. That’s what the word “freedom” means. So you would think, and maybe this is happening and I just have a poor read on the discourse, that LIV’s argument that these players should have the choice every week between LIV and the PGA would strike a solid chord. For Saudi Arabian reasons or others, it does not seem to be striking much of anything. Maybe Mickelson will get cheered at this week’s U.S. Open, but it doesn’t sound like things are heading that direction. Is the media, understandably rather anti-Saudi Arabia after the whole bone saw incident, spinning this? Do fans feel differently? I guess we’re going to find out.
I suppose an important distinction here is that the PGA isn’t saying its golfers can’t play with LIV. It’s just saying that if they play with LIV, they can’t play with the PGA. That’s still choice. Maybe that’s what keeps this from being freedom-of-golfers versus freedom-of-humanity.
Advantage…Warriors, Right?
Steph Curry, Andrew Wiggins, and Klay Thompson went a combined 5-for-26 from deep last night, and 5-for-11 of that was Thompson. The Warriors still won, with Wiggins more than making up for his frigidity outside, and the Warriors are now one win away from Curry, Thompson, and Draymond Green’s fourth title.
Yes, of course, the Warriors hold the advantage. They get two tries to win this now. But in the NBA, the series is going seven games, right? I guess at that point the Warriors are back at home, and they certainly seem like the better overall team. The most concerning thing for the Celtics is probably how bad the Warriors were from three last night, and how the outcome was still decided by the game’s final minute. If the Warriors are beating you up and not torching the net, you’re in trouble.
The NL East
In yesterday’s notes, I thought I’d covered the NL East but I actually only covered Stephen Strasburg. My apologies.
Before last night, Atlanta was surging. After last night, Atlanta’s still surging, but Ozzie Albies broke his foot. It’s a new situation, so his timeline is very up in the air, but it sounds like he could be back for September. The question is what exactly his team will be playing for at that point.
Atlanta isn’t quite assured of a playoff spot, sitting at four-in-five likely, per FanGraphs, to finish in the top six of the National League. Four-in-five is pretty good odds, though, as are the three-in-ten odds the team currently enjoys to win the NL East. If the season ended today, they’d be the sixth seed, playing the third-seeded Cardinals in the Wild Card Series with the second-seeded Dodgers on deck. If the season ends as FanGraphs currently projects, they’ll be the fifth seed, playing the fourth-seeded Padres in the Wild Card Series with the top-seeded Dodgers on deck. Most likely, Atlanta only needs to hold off two of the four of San Francisco, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Philadelphia to make the cut, and there really could be an advantage to sixth place compared to fifth, given that the NL Central winner should be weaker than the best Wild Card team (and the second-best division champion will naturally be weaker than the best).
Still, the division remains a possibility, and it’s not like the Mets are immune from injury themselves, or even from further injury. Atlanta’s made this division race a race, and that’s true even with Albies sidelined.
The AL Central & East (& the Other Central)
Hyun-jin Ryu is, unsurprisingly given the talk surrounding his arm, out for the year. Rough break for the Blue Jays, and for Ryu, who’s quietly been one of MLB’s most consistent best pitchers in recent seasons.
In the Central, Liam Hendricks is going on the IL with an ailment that often forebodes Tommy John surgery: The dreaded forearm strain. Same part of the body Ryu hurt (still TBA/TBD on whether Ryu’s getting Tommy John or not). Hopefully it’s not that bad.
On the other side of the human body’s cycle of destruction and regeneration, Jack Flaherty’s coming off the IL for the Cardinals, who led the Brewers by a game in the standings entering the day.
How Good Is Justin Steele?
The Cubs lost their seventh straight last night, but Justin Steele threw seven innings of one-run ball, striking out three and walking none. It was his second straight quality start, and his FIP is now at 3.22 while his xERA sits at a comparable 3.38. He has been, by all measures, the Cubs’ best starting pitcher this year after opening the season with questions surrounding his ability to stick in the rotation.
Those questions still remain, in the long term. Steele’s only thrown four and a half innings per start this year, he’s hardly got 100 innings under his belt, and he wasn’t much of a prospect when he came up last year. Still, he’s done enough that FanGraphs’s Depth Charts, ZiPS, and Steamer all project him to amass 0.6 fWAR the rest of the season, though they differ on how many innings he’ll throw (57 to 71) and how much time he’ll spend in the rotation (I believe these systems are automated in their looking at last year’s swingman role, so it adds up). The better number, I would think, is the 4.21 FIP they average to project him to post, leaning towards this year’s number more than last year’s 5.52, but higher than last year’s xERA, which was a 4.01.
What do all these numbers mean? Basically, Steele is probably a competent option within a rotation, which is a step forward for the Cubs. He’s far from a sure thing, but more likely than not, he can perform that role for the rest of this year and probably next year as well. At some point, with these projections, the question arises of whether he’s good enough to be part of a playoff rotation, but at the moment, he’s among the more obvious guys to stick on the team. There aren’t as many of those as it sometimes feels when we’re seeing the same destined-for-free-agency guys day after day.
Of course, Steele also hurt his finger last night, but he stayed in the game for a long time after that, and he’s been pitching through multiple issues around the digits this year and seems to keep being fine. Hopefully that continues to be the case.
As of right now, since we’re on the topic of 2023, I would guess you see an Opening Day roster that looks something like this:
Rotation
- Marcus Stroman
- Kyle Hendricks
- Justin Steele
- Caleb Kilian
- Alec Mills/Adbert Alzolay
Bullpen
- Adbert Alzolay/Alec Mills
- Chris Martin
- Scott Effross
- Rowan Wick
- Keegan Thompson
- (FREE AGENT)
- (FREE AGENT)
- (FREE AGENT)
Catchers
- Yan Gomes
- (FREE AGENT)
Infield
- Nico Hoerner
- Nick Madrigal
- (FREE AGENT)
- Patrick Wisdom
- Frank Schwindel
- David Bote
Outfield
- Seiya Suzuki
- Ian Happ
- (FREE AGENT)
- Christopher Morel
- Rafael Ortega
This is a rough, rough guess, but the way things are headed, it’s hard to see Jason Heyward still on the roster come Opening Day 2023, and while my best guess is that the Cubs will make two big free agent acquisitions again, it makes a little more sense for those to come for the offense than for the rotation this go-round, as the Cubs will likely try to get Kyle Hendricks right, are committed to Stroman, seem to have something good in Steele, seem to have something good in Kilian, and have a fairly proven dependable fifth starter in Mills combined with a guy-they-still-likely-like in Alzolay. Basically, they have enough starters to have a competent rotation, and they have enough pitching and outfield in the pipeline that the reports they’ll more aggressively pursue a big-name shortstop make more sense. Maybe they’ll trade Happ, and maybe this is wishful thinking on my part, but I’d imagine they keep him around. He’s still under club control through 2023, and behind him there are a lot of question marks.
Of course, injuries will affect this, and the list is full of peripheral names, some of which can be swapped out, especially in my wild guess of a bullpen (I would imagine the Cubs try to buy a bunch of trade chips again, especially if it works as well this year as it appears to be working). It’s also possible the Cubs will flip someone like Wisdom for younger assets, but that’s one of those things that, like dealing Happ by April of next year, is less than 50% likely.
Anyway, the point is that these are the guys from this year’s team you can roughly expect to be in the picture at the beginning of next year. And the point in making that point is that this is where Steele fits in.
***
Viewing schedule for tonight, second screen rotation in italics:
- 7:05 PM EDT: Rays @ Yankees, Kluber vs. Cole (TBS)
- 7:10 PM EDT: Brewers @ Mets, Houser vs. Bassitt (MLB TV)
- 8:05 PM EDT: Padres @ Cubs, Manaea vs. Hendricks (MLB TV)
- 10:10 PM EDT: Angels @ Dodgers, Syndergaard vs. Gonsolin (TBS)
