Say what you will about all-SEC national championships, but the script is strong tonight in Omaha. Two of the potential top three picks in the upcoming MLB draft are anchoring their respective lineups, and the third of those—or rather the first, according to a lot of mock drafts right now—is expected to appear out of the bullpen for LSU if the game is close.
It’s that third, Paul Skenes, who’s become the focal point in tonight’s game, even with Wyatt Langford and Dylan Crews guaranteed to appear and Crews winning the Golden Spikes Award yesterday. Skenes has become college baseball’s closest thing to a household name this season, managing to rank second in the country in ERA despite also ranking second in the country in innings pitched and making most of his 19 starts against SEC teams or NCAA Tournament competition. He’s first in the nation in strikeouts by a margin wide enough to separate second-place Quinn Mathews (the Stanford guy) from 30th place. No single player in college baseball can affect a single game the way Skenes can.
If Skenes does pitch this evening, it’ll be on short rest. Three days of rest, specifically, after a grueling 120 pitches over eight innings in the semifinal finale. College pitchers get a lot of attention because the pitch count and rest equation is so different from what it is in the pros, but this is World Series rest with a 2003 Dusty Baker workload. This is a tough, tough task ahead of Skenes if he does appear.
Should LSU use him? There are two ways to answer this question.
First, we can ask how good Skenes will be.
The data on MLB pitchers and rest is sparse, likely owing to the fact that pitchers throwing on fewer than the standard four days of rest is rare with the game played the way it’s played today. In 2016, the Washington Post pulled together a 121-game playoff sample dating back to 1995 of pitchers on three days of rest or fewer, but it gave us only the nugget that the combined ERA in those starts was 4.35. How does that compare to the average ERA in those playoffs? I don’t know, and we can’t just use the standard average ERA because 1) this sample overweights elite pitchers and 2) this sample overweights strong opposing offenses. If we take an aggressive approach and ask that the ERA to match one around the top ten of the league in the regular season, that leaves us with short rest making a pitcher 1.5 runs worse per nine innings. Again: This is an aggressive number. The real number is likely much less than 1.5 runs, but…we’ll get to why we’re being so aggressive. You can probably see where this is going.
To be even more aggressive: Skenes threw a ton of pitches on Thursday. 120 is a lot. His “normal” rest is also six days, not four days like an MLB starter. Proportionally, pitching tonight would be more like going on two days of rest than three if we’re using the MLB playoff example.
Still, Skenes is likely to be a better LSU option than most alternatives. Even if you doubled that aggressive 1.5-run estimate to account for the increased workload and decreased relative rest, Skenes’s expected ERA would be 4.69, better than all but seven other LSU pitchers. Of those seven:
- One started on Saturday.
- One started yesterday.
- One threw 46 pitches in relief on Saturday.
- Two threw 20 or more pitches in relief yesterday.
- Two are hurt.
The three who pitched relief have ERA’s on the season of 3.71, 3.93, and 4.30, so with rest wearing on them a little as well (though not as much as it should wear on Skenes), they’re debatably better options. All of this is small sample stuff, because the college baseball season is so much shorter than the pros, but using season-to-date data and our most aggressive approach to estimate the impact of rest on pitcher performance, Paul Skenes is the best arm available for LSU.
Second, we can ask how good this will be for Paul Skenes.
College sports sit at an awkward exchange of being the highest level of competition most athletes involved will ever experience and simultaneously serving as a developmental ground for professional sports. Paul Skenes is set to receive a big freaking signing bonus sometime in the next few months, and if all goes according to plan, that’ll be a small deal compared to the career awaiting him at the professional level. When Mathews started throwing every inning he possibly could for Stanford earlier this postseason, the calculus was different. Quinn Mathews is not expected to be a first-round pick. He has a great chance at a great career, and Skenes has a realistic chance of not making it to the Majors, but the average signing bonus for someone in Skenes’s draft territory is more than ten times that of Mathews’s, and for proportional reason. The expected value from a top-three pick is more than ten times that of a pick in the third or the fourth round. Add in the very real economic value of Mathews’s Stanford degree, and he’s in a different spot from Skenes.
Data is inconclusive on how successfully shielding pitching prospects from overuse protects their health and development. The concept broke through in a big way when Stephen Strasburg’s workload was managed so aggressively in the wake of disastrous injuries to Kerry Wood and Mark Prior, but Stephen Strasburg has had a lot of injuries himself, and the sample is again so limited that it’s nearly useless. Conceptually, throwing fewer pitches and throwing them when better rested should lead to better outcomes, but we don’t have the data necessary to know just how much or how little guys should rest. Speaking realistically, it’s hard to see one outing making any difference in Skenes’s long-term health, but if Skenes pitches tonight and gets hurt during the outing—something that’s always a possibility—a connection, fair or unfair, will be made.
So, LSU will do what most of us will do, and will try to thread the needle. Thatcher Hurd will start for the Tigers, who will search for as many good innings from the guy as they can get. Assumedly, if the game is close and Skenes says yes, Skenes will go next. Assumedly, the game will be close enough for LSU’s purposes to ask the question of Skenes. Assumedly, Skenes will say yes. From there, the question is how long they let the guy go. How long do they keep asking? How long does Skenes keep saying yes?
Will the Blackhawks Come Back?
The Blackhawks made a big move today, acquiring Taylor Hall from the Bruins in something of a salary cap dump for Boston. The move is perceived as one giving Connor Bedard a veteran partner on a front line to learn from and play alongside, but for as developmental as it is, it’s also the first move towards winning Chicago has made in a few years.
Given that notoriety, the move to add Hall takes on something of a new dimension. The plan at the United Center is not to stink forever. The plan is to get better, to build something new, to build something special like what the organization started building more than 15 years ago when it drafted Kane & Toews. It might work, it might not work, but it’ll be good for hockey if it does, because there are few hockey brands bigger at their best than the Chicago Blackhawks.
To that last point: There’ve been a few laughs at Hall for having a half-league no-trade clause and not including the Blackhawks in that half. This decision of his…makes a lot of sense? If you’re 31 years old and past your best hockey, you either want to win a Stanley Cup or live in a good place to live. Presumably, the list of 15 teams to which Hall *would* accept trades had a little bit of each, and while Chicago was presumably firmly in the latter category, it might be tops in that category. There aren’t many better cities for a hockey player to live than Chicago.
Good Trip, Bad Day
The Cubs had a good trip to London, even without managing what should have—after they grabbed a 4–0 lead in the top of the first inning yesterday—been a sweep of the not–dead–yet Cardinals. They grabbed a win, they seemed to have a good time, no pitchers were harmed in the making of a baseball game in an airflow-less stadium with short fences all around.
One pitcher was harmed, though, by Trey Mancini’s error.
The Mancini error was an ugly play that’s taken on more significance than it deserves. Marcus Stroman was likely to get a blister regardless of when the Cubs got out of that inning. The Cubs had plenty of chances to win the ballgame. Mancini took ownership, it’s being cast as Mancini’s loss, but last I checked the Cubs only registered seven hits against a bullpen that’s not baseball’s best.
That said, it was a bad play, and there was the actual dropping of the ball (which was worse) but there was also the communication aspect. Mancini broke towards the ball. Nico Hoerner fielded it. Marcus Stroman rushed to cover first, as he should have, but Mancini beat him there.
I’m not an MLB infielding coach, but I do wish Stroman had called off Mancini or Mancini had called for help once he realized what he’d done. In the moment, it seemed like part of Mancini dropping the ball came from looking towards a potential collision with Stroman in addition to looking for the throw and looking for the runner and looking for the base. Once he’d broken the wrong way, the Cubs needed Stroman to be the one receiving the throw at first.
Stroman’s injury is massively concerning. The timing is good with the All-Star Break coming up, but if the goal is to not be full-on sellers, the Cubs probably need to be about at .500 throughout July, something that means splitting games against their next five opponents, the Phillies, Guardians, Brewers, Yankees, and Red Sox, all of whom either lead the Cubs in the standings or, in Cleveland’s case, are within half a game. It’s a tough stretch, and it does get easier afterwards—the rest of July’s games are against the Nationals, Cardinals, White Sox, and Reds, which isn’t easy but is easier—but the Cubs need to be about at .500 *throughout* July. Technically, sure, they could bounce back after a rough few weeks, but you and I can’t count on that, and I don’t suspect the front office will count on it either. Triggers might not be pulled right away, but guys are going to be shopped if the Cubs aren’t right there near the front of the Central.
One of those guys who could be shopped is, frustratingly, Stroman, who could have fetched some great value as a short-term rental pitching at the top of his game but now has at least one question mark attached. Not only, then, could Stroman missing a start or two push the Cubs into uncomfortable territory, but it could also take away the best trade chip they have.
Worse still, the Cubs aren’t only affected in the start or two that Stroman might miss. Losing a pitcher who’s averaged exactly six innings per start (including yesterday’s early exit) has reverberations, especially on a team lacking 1) starting pitching depth and 2) a good bullpen. The bullpen’s been overachieving lately, but it’s a lot to ask Adbert Alzolay and Mark Leiter Jr. to keep wearing their Josh Hader and David Bednar costumes. It’s a lot to ask that of Hader and Bednar, even! Good relievers rarely stay good for long, and the Cubs are already short on good relievers.
With the starting pitching depth piece: You’d still readily trade Current Stroman for Recent Justin Steele and Recent Kyle Hendricks, with Steele’s Saturday outing the highlight of the trip and Hendricks a revelation in his return from injury. But a rotation of Stroman, Steele, Drew Smyly, Jameson Taillon, and Hendricks was already a rickety dock. Unless this results in a Ben Brown breakout (by the way, he walked three batters and hit a guy while recording two outs yesterday, which is one outing but quite the bad outing to be that one), it’s hard to see it going well for the Cubs.
On the Mancini topic:
Trey Mancini is the worst position player receiving regular plate appearances on the Cubs. He seems like an awesome guy and a great leader, but he’s just not a good enough bat to play first base. Should the Cubs stay hot and look to buy, I would like to nominate one Carlos Santana as a possible option of a short-term rental who hits lefties well and plays first base and will likely be available cheap because he’s 37 years old and hitting like he’s 41. People forget that the Mariners’ turnaround last year started by trading for Carlos Santana. What if the man is magic?
