Notes note: Our recap of the fifth week of college football is available here.
I’m curious to see how Tony La Russa—who announced his retirement today—is remembered. He won a lot of games as a manager. He won a lot of titles. He also was an aggressive in-game micromanager, one whose methods are largely viewed as out-of-date and sure looked out-of-date in his years running the White Sox.
I don’t know about those smarter than I, but I’ve settled into this mode of thinking about managers: They’re meaningful. They’re not just figureheads. They serve an important function. But that function isn’t strategic as much as its chemical. Strategy in baseball can move the needle—ask any Red Sox fan their feelings on Grady Little—but even the clearest decisions often only move that needle by a handful of percentage points of win probability. The broader importance of managers, I’d venture, is fostering the right environment to get players to produce. And begrudgingly, I’ll admit that La Russa was probably pretty good at this in St. Louis, even if his approach flopped with the (much-worse-rostered) White Sox.
Some football, then we’ll come back to MLB:
What If Bailey Zappe Is the Patriots’ Answer?
An unheralded rookie quarterback takes over due to injury for Bill Belichick, and…
Well, the Patriots didn’t win yesterday. Thank goodness for that. The Packers escaped, the result was ugly but we remain in the camp of believing this team both has a lot of growth yet to unlock and will unlock it. But the Patriots nearly did the thing, and given Belichick’s history and given how Mac Jones’s young career has gone, it’s fair to wonder if Zappe really could be the answer in New England. Were it anywhere else, we’d dismiss yesterday, but it’s been so hard to believe Belichick’s really lost his fastball to this extent, or that all of the success was due to Tom Brady and Tom Brady alone. Worth keeping an eye on.
Other NFL thoughts:
The Cowboys and Eagles both look great, but let’s take a closer look. The Eagles have beaten four fringe playoff teams. The Cowboys have beaten one fringe team, one bad team, and one solid team, and they lost to someone struggling but probably good. Let’s give ‘em some time. The NFC still looks like the Packers’ and Bucs’ to lose, and part of that, again, goes back to where each team’s ceiling lies.
The Bills bounced back, getting back to 3-1 after nearly dropping to .500. With the Dolphins suddenly in disarray, that doesn’t look as entirely necessary to win the AFC East, but I’m sure it’s relieving in Buffalo. Meanwhile, the Ravens should probably be feeling pretty good even at 2-2, tied for the lead of the North. That division didn’t look this winnable before the season began.
Kansas City has been outrageously good on offense a lot in recent years, so last night’s performance was extra scary for the rest of the league. The potency is just so high with those guys. The Bucs have a great defense, right?
The Lions put up 45 despite playing with neither D’Andre Swift nor Amon-Ra St. Brown. Detroit still isn’t good, but holy heck are they fun.
The Power Five
Paul Chryst is out at Wisconsin, let go after Bret Bielema brought Illinois to Madison and spanked the Badgers, dropping the Big Ten West’s best program to 2-3 overall and 0-2 in the Big Ten. Jim Leonhard—the Badger great-turned Badger defensive coordinator-turned interim head coach—is the favorite to keep the job, but it’s now the fifth Power Five gig available, and we’re only five weeks into the season. Nebraska let Scott Frost go to get a jump on the competition. That jump’s been lost.
We talked about Nebraska when it happened, and we’ve mentioned Arizona State as a failure of Herm Edwards more than a failure, necessarily, of the Herm Edwards model. We’ve mentioned mentioning Georgia Tech, but their upset of Pitt has us checking ourselves a bit, so I’ll just leave it at: This is the second-most prominent school in the state of Georgia, and it’s in a recruiting hotbed in Atlanta, and the next athletic director should be expected to get this team up near the top of the ACC in just about everything, because there’s really no reason a school with this many advantages should have this much trouble. This is a better situation than Northwestern or Vanderbilt, and while that does remain truer of men’s basketball and virtually every other sport that isn’t football than it does of football, the ACC is scuffling so much right now that it shouldn’t take all that terrific a Georgia Tech renaissance to get this program competitive against its own schedule.
As far as Colorado goes, with Karl Dorrell out: Colorado has very poor revenue numbers for a power conference athletic department. That is a bad quality to have when you’re in a realigning conference in a period of realignment, and it’s also a bad quality to have in the NIL era, because it reflects an unwillingness by your fanbase to spend on your program. Colorado might turn out fine in the end—there’s a case to be made that it has enough advantages with Denver there and a beautiful campus and some history to survive this period—but were I a football coach, I’d take most Group of Five jobs before I took on the task at Colorado were the salary offered the same.
Wisconsin, though:
Wisconsin’s a tricky place to judge. They have been consistently among college football’s top twenty teams and rarely among college football’s best five, and they’ve been that for a long time. Their volatility within seasons is enormous, but year over year, we’ve consistently gotten good Badger teams. These guys haven’t missed a bowl since 2001, and they haven’t missed back-to-back bowls since 1991 and 1992. As with Nebraska, though, and as we said of Oklahoma this offseason, this is something that can change if you let it. When you zoom out from the results on the field, it’s a little hard to see how Wisconsin keeps achieving those results, and it points towards a healthy athletic department with a string of some hiring luck. With Big Ten divisions possibly dissolving as USC and UCLA join the fold, the danger is high, but that winning culture is important. Wisconsin has better sports across the board than Nebraska. That probably matters.
So, it’s scary, and it’s probably the right move (because the floor suddenly looks a lot lower than it used to, and Wisconsin wants a higher ceiling than they’ve had), and if you’re a Wisconsin person I imagine you’re hoping hard on the culture to come through.
Baseball’s Playoff Field: *Almost* There
The Brewers would need some magic to pass the Phillies, and the Mets would need some magic to pass Atlanta, and so we’re mostly just waiting on a few pieces of Wild Card seeding. With that, quick thoughts about each playoff team (thoughts on the Cubs’ fun little run tomorrow, I hope, we need to wait because we need to have the Willson Contreras conversation again):
- The Dodgers have the best record, the Mets might be the best team, but it’s Atlanta who has the best postseason path, and they might need it, hustling to get Spencer Strider ready as behind Max Fried, both Charlie Morton and Kyle Wright are solid middle-of-the-rotation starters, but not exactly knockout dealers.
- Morton and Wright are kindred spirits with virtually the entire Dodgers’ postseason rotation, all of whom could throw a complete-game shutout any night (not Gonsolin, but you get the point) and all of whom could also last four ugly innings and hand things over to a testy bullpen. Having the bye and having home-field advantage do a lot for Los Angeles, but they may need more.
- Here’s a way Jacob deGrom’s finger blister could work out: The Mets could try to save him for the NLDS, give it time to heal, and end up winning the series with Scherzer and Bassitt and then starting deGrom in Game 1 in Los Angeles. It’s a narrow needle to thread, and if he can go, they should use him, but it’s not hard to see this working out.
- Should the Phillies try to stay behind the Padres to avoid the Mets? Yes.
- The Cardinals aren’t bad, but their schedule has not been difficult and they don’t exactly come into October with a great win-loss record. Their BaseRuns and run differential do imply some bad luck, and they can’t be written off, but they look a lot more similar to the Phillies than they do the other four in the NL, on paper. And with the pitching: Adam Wainwright hasn’t had a quality start since August and he’s a little older than the Stegosaurus. Those trade deadline moves for Montgomery and Quintana might be lifesavers.
- It’s been rough for the Padres since the trade deadline, but their expected win total, per FanGraphs, on August 1st was 90, and it’s 89 today. These guys haven’t excelled, but they didn’t have a terrible stretch like that of the Yankees.
- How bad was that Yankees stretch? Even with a remarkably strong finish (they might win 100 games), they’ve dropped from 105 expected wins on July 8th to 99 today, with a low of 95 in between there. Are they streaky? Maybe so. That would track with the number of key pieces they’ve had injured. They, like Atlanta, enjoy a pretty good path.
- I don’t think it’s mean or inaccurate to say that the Guardians are the worst team in the playoffs. They don’t have the worst record, but they’ve been playing against the AL Central, and they have one of the luckiest BaseRuns records in the league. They also don’t have the outrageous starting pitching they’ve sometimes had. Still, they have Shane Bieber presumably starting Game 1 against the Rays or Mariners, both of those teams are flawed, and if they win that first one they only need to split the next two to get to the ALDS against a Yankees team that’s not great on paper itself. It’s far from a hopeless situation.
- The Mariners had a very fun weekend, but they’re very much limping in. Their trajectory was kind of the opposite of the Yankees’: A bad start, an incredible middle, and now some injury attrition down the stretch. They’ll be exciting—that is almost guaranteed. But I’m not sure they get themselves a home playoff game.
- The Blue Jays have a parallel situation to the Mets, possibly letting Kevin Gausman’s finger heal in the Wild Card Series and then unleashing him in Game 1 of the LDS. It’s scary, but it’s worth noting that five of José Berríos’s last eight outings have been quality starts, and that he’s got a 4.61 FIP, which isn’t good but is a lot better than his ERA. I’m not sure he can’t give them a good start at some point this postseason.
- The Astros, like the Dodgers, have a great record and a great lineup and suspect pitching, but a lot of guys who are very capable. They’re one of the hardest good franchises in sports to notice, and their path isn’t amazing, but they’re probably the reasonable World Series favorite right now, especially with more to be scared of in the NL than the AL (Jacob deGrom, specifically).
- Finally, the Rays are a ragtag bunch at the moment, with all sorts of guys lost to injury. They’re also a team we’ve theorized has outperformed its on-paper potential by unlocking in-game strategy that moves the needle enough to matter. That’s extra valuable in the postseason, where the sample size is small.
Talladega Worked Out
Improbably, NASCAR got a clean race at Talladega, with turn four on the final lap producing a scrambling race headed by Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney, two guys the sport’s governing body loves having in its headlines. Elliott won, Elliott’s in a great spot now in the championship pursuit and has a chance to nearly lock himself into the Championship Four as the circuit heads to Charlotte’s Roval on Sunday. The excitement seems overshadowed by the relief, after the leadup to the race focused so heavily on the danger the new car seems to pose to drivers, but it wasn’t a bad day for NASCAR.
In silly season news, AJ Allmendinger is going to be the full-time driver in the #16 car next year, per Jordan Bianchi. Allmendinger never broke through in his decade-plus of full-time Cup Series racing, but with a competitive car and a lot of road courses on the schedule, he’s an understandable guy on which to place a bet.
In F1 news, Max Verstappen had a rough weekend in Singapore, but his title chances remain 100%. Sergio Pérez won, keeping Red Bull on the top of the podium.
**
Viewing schedule, second screen rotation in italics:
MLB (of playoff race and/or home run chase significance, plus the Cubs):
- 6:40 PM EDT: Chicago (NL) @ Cincinnati, Wesneski vs. Greene (MLB TV)
- 6:40 PM EDT: Atlanta @ Miami, Elder vs. Luzardo (MLB TV)
- 7:05 PM EDT: New York (AL) @ Texas, Severino vs. Pérez (MLB TV)
- 7:10 PM EDT: Washington @ New York (NL), Abbott vs. Carrasco (MLB TV)
- 7:10 PM EDT: Tampa Bay @ Boston, Glasnow vs. Hill (MLB TV)
- 7:40 PM EDT: Arizona @ Milwaukee, Henry vs. Woodruff (MLB TV)
- 8:10 PM EDT: Philadelphia @ Houston, Nola vs. McCullers (MLB TV)
- 9:40 PM EDT: Detroit @ Seattle, Garcia vs. Kirby (MLB TV)
- 9:40 PM EDT: San Francisco @ San Diego, Brebbia vs. Musgrove (MLB TV)
NFL:
- 8:15 PM EDT: Los Angeles Rams @ San Francisco (ESPN)
Soccer (of interest to our futures portfolios):
- 3:00 PM EDT: Nottingham Forest @ Leicester City (USA)
