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thesportssoundoff · 5 years ago

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Sometimes Good Enough Just Ain’t Good Enough: 10 Challenges For The Yankees Going Forward

Joey

October 21st

At the end of the year, 29 teams will head into the latter stages of the Fall simply saying they weren't good enough. On Saturday night, it was the Yankees turn to stand up, look in the mirror and say "Not good enough" as they bowed out of the ALCS in the deciding sixth game of the series. When you win 100 games, survive countless injuries, win with a sweep in the ALDS and lose on a walk off in game 6 of the ALCS it's normally a successful season but this is New York where expectations aren't the same as Milwaukee, Oakland, St. Louis or any of the teams who played into October before finally saying "Not good enough!" as they hung up their hats. The Yankees expect championships and it's sometimes mutant fanbase (of which I am firmly a member of) are now going on 10 years of no ticker tape parades. Still let's not lose ourselves to delirium and point out that this is a damn good team with a deep core and plenty of organizational depth to take the next step. The Yankees aren't falling off or in a rebuild; they have a team that guarantees every October, they'll be talking about the chase for 28 in earnest. With the season in the rear view mirror, let's chit chat about ten things the Yankees have to do or figure out as they continue that chase for 28.

1. Fire the training staff

Easy enough! Injuries can sometimes be fluky but good lord, the Yankees were besieged with them. All three starting outfielders (Judge, Stanton, Hicks) saw IL time, their back up OFs saw IL time, their starting catcher saw IL time, starting 1B saw IL time, pitchers both high on the totem pole and in the jabroni ranks went on the IL. Clean house!

2. The same ol' same ol' scramble for a lead starter

Since the end of 2016 when the rebuild was officially over, this team has been chasing the #1 starter you normally need in the post season. At the end of the day, it's just easier to win in the playoffs when you have a game 1 starter you have endless confidence in. While Boston got away with it in 2018, they also had Chris Sale who maybe didn't pitch like an ace but was clearly one of the top 5 starters in the AL that year. The big myth is that the Yankees don't have good starting pitching and that is for the most part a lie. The Yankees pitching after the All Star break was pretty solid and in the playoffs they got quality enough from guys like Severino, Paxton and Tanaka on an inconsistent basis. The Yankees pitching rotation is NOT awful and plenty of teams would kill for a 1-2-3 of a healthy Louis Severino, Masahiro Tanaka in big games and James Paxton after the All Star Break where he went 10-3 with a 3.59 ERA and an 11 K/9. In the playoffs, Paxton was more good than bad and Tanaka shoved in two of the three games he pitched in. That said those three have all battled injuries (Paxton admittedly pitched with a knee he never quite felt great about) and all three of them weren't good enough in the playoffs. Maybe that changes with Severino healthy, Paxton more comfortable and Tanaka staying his usual course but it would be difficult to return with the same rotation in tact and say you feel confident about your chances against the Astros. This has been a chase that has spanned three years now as the Yankees tried with James Paxton, Sonny Gray and J.A Happ, were outbit on the likes of Carlos Quintana, Yu Darvish and Gerritt Cole and allegedly never tried for the likes of Marcus Stroman, Patrick Corbin, Justin Verlander and countless others. 2019 will be yet another year where they'll enter Christmas hoping to have a starter locked up.

The two obvious names will play next week when Gerrit Cole and Stephen Strasburg take the bump for Houston and Washington respectively. In the Yankees of old, George Steinbrenner would hand Brian Cashman a blank check and tell him to pay for one IF not both. Time's have changed for better and/or worse with the Yankees. Brian Cashman is a man of due diligence and a man with the longest leash in sports. The Yankees didn't spend on Corbin, didn't try on Harper and made a modicum of effort for Manny Machado last year. In the free agent market, they're likely to not play heavily unless Hal Steinbrenner pretty much demands it. Paying for Cole and Strasburg is the easier fix but it's an avenue they've shied away from recently plus there are teams who "need" those guys more. The Yankees probably aren't as desperate as, say, the Angels are to win in the Mike Trout era and they've got money to play with so why not? The solution may be the trade market where the Yankees can make some hay in their search for a #1. Brian Cashman has parlayed his farm system (which is still plenty deep) into the opportunity to trade for arms in the past which figures to once again be the case. Conversely in the trade market, the farm is thinner than it's been in recent years AND Cashman prides himself on not losing trades. Also there's not much TO trade out there. Obviously it's his job as a GM to go out and find a potential solution that maybe the public hasn't heard is available but right now who is the best starter knowing that the Mets and the Yankees won't trade? It's not a robust market.

So your solutions are to pull a rabbit out of your hat or pay or hope Severino becomes an ace again after an injury plagued season. I suppose the only potential opt out route would be to sign a Hyun Jin-Ryu or a Jake Odorizzi and hope you can just build a deep rotation of names and faces that will give you quantity (while not high end quality) at the end of it.

3. Figure out Luke Voit

Let's play a game.

Player A- .333/.405/.689 195 wRC+ 14 HR 26.4% K rate Player B- .280/.393/.509 140 wRC+ 19 HR 25.8% K rate Player C- .238/.348/.368 95 wRC+ 4 HR 32.3% K rate

Player A is Luke Voit during his 2018 run with the Yankees Player B is Luke Voit up until he got hurt in the London Series Player C is Luke Voit from July 12th to the end of the year

Voit will never be the guy who took over the MLB in 2018. The sample size was bound to even itself out over time and Voit was bound to cool off when pitchers got to know him better. Player B though is a borderline All Star level first basemen. A power hitter who could hit for average, got on base at a solid clip and play a somewhat manageable first base is an asset for any team but especially a Yankees squad that has been hungry for competent first base play since injuries robbed Mark Texeira of his ability. Then? Voit got hurt. Back issues limited down the stretch and as you can tell by the numbers, Player C was awful. He just looked timid and afraid like he had been sapped of his confidence entirely. Luke Voit got left off the ALCS roster and had to watch as the offense struggled without him. Imagine a confident and healthy Luke Voit at the DH spot instead of Edwin Encarnacion when he went ice cold in the ALCS and maybe the series is a bit different. The Yankees are saddled with determining which half of the Luke Voit story is the real one. The Yankees are a better team when DJ LeMahieu is freed up to play 2B where he's an insanely elite defender and Luke Voit could help in that regard. At the same time? The Yankees have been burnt in the past by gambling at 1B (like when they kept thinking Greg Bird would finally put it together) and options would help. Even if he ran out of gas, Edwin Encarnacion did some good work when he was healthy and few dudes hit dingers the way he does when he's locked in. There's also Greg Bird I guess? Which reminds me....

4. MAYBE chase better balance

I don't believe a team gets better by marrying itself to letters next to names ie: we have to have x amount of leties in our pen. I do think that the Yankees righty heavy lineup could use some better balance. The team was batting Gardner 3rd in the playoffs despite his inability to do much of anything for stretches because they felt like they needed someone to break up the righties at the top of the bill. With two lefties about to hit free agency, maybe the Yankees need to flirt a bit with shaking things up in their lineup. Getting back a healthy Hicks would help of course but in general, this team could benefit from having maybe one more competent lefty bat especially if Did is out of here. It's not the sexiest name alive but given Voit's struggles down the stretch and the fact that they could probably use a more competent 1B defensively, maybe Mitch Moreland (former Red Sox 1B) as a back up/defensive replacement could make sense. Coming off an injury plagued season where he was still pretty damn productive vs righties. Maybe this is even where Mike Ford (who caught on late) fits as a future part of the team.

5. Figure out your free agents

Dellin Betances- There's some serious rebound value in bringing Betances back at fair market value. The Yankees just never had a replacement for what Betances could do as a pseudo fireman; a guy with low contact rates who can K a side and come in the middle of an inning to calm things down. Betances at a multi year deal would be a fair and modest investment.

Brett Gardner- There's a group of mutant Yankee fans who hate Brett Gardner and I feel like people forget Gardner was supposed to be at the very most a part time 4th OF. Injuries forced Gardner to continually play and he answered the bell quite well every time. He'll likely take a step back next year BUT he'll also be asked to play less.

Edwin Encarnacion- Was absolutely brutal in the ALCS but hits for power and usually has composed at bats. Was always a hired gun who the Yankees were probably gonna buy out when the time was right.

Didi Gregorios- Ugh. Didi went from being one of Brian Cashman's biggest steals and a potential cornerstone to a guy who will probably be allowed to test the open market. Didi's strengths are his defense, his clubhouse presence and his better than advertised bat but the Yankees have been waiting on him to take a firm step into top 10 SS for about two years now and it's not coming. He deserves a lot of credit for battling back from injury but he was brutal outside of games vs the Twins. I also sort of feel like his approach is all wrong for the Yankees as its constructed. For a team that preaches patience at the place and commanding the strike zone, Didi's approach often gets worse the more pitches he takes so he often swings at the first pitch and often does so when it's the wrong time. Defensively it looked like he took a step back as well although that may have been due to injury. The Yankees are better with DJ at 2nd and Gleyber at short and a competent 1B manning that spot but they love Didi so much (and he's so valuable when he's right) that they kept forcing him into the spot.

Austin Romine- Catching across the league is bad and Romine, noodle arm aside, is a solid back up catcher. Those tend to get signed for decent coin and normally for multi year deals. As such the Yankees need to maybe consider their options at the BUC spot because they won't have Romine.

Cameron Maybin- I'm not entirely sure Maybin's got a real fit here now. If Stanton, Judge and Hicks are healthy then it's probably him vs Gardner because Mike Tauchman has a long term future here. I wish Cameron Maybin well, he was a breath of fresh of air in the locker room and he deserves to have a good spot on a team somewhere.

6. Figure your outfield situation out

We know Judge, Stanton and Hicks are going to be here. Mike Tauchman was a star and a half for a month and change before injuries finally sapped him of his super powers. Gardner is a free agent but I'm betting the Yankees will bring him back comfortably so. Beyond them you have Estevan Florial (a former Yankees top prospect on a slide), Clint Frazier (a borderline toxic fit for the Yankees) as well as pseudo OFs Tyler Wade and Thairo Estrada. The Yankees OF depth tends to get tested throughout the year but is Clint Frazier better suited to be a trade piece for some team in desperate need of an outfielder?

7. Settle the 'pen out a bit.

Yankees have four tremendous bullpen arms tied up with Britton, Ottavino, Green and Kahnle comfortably under wraps. Aroldis Chapman will probably opt out in a so-so closer's market and the Yankees will probably re-sign him (they took the PR smear after trading for him and then brought him back so clearly they value him). If not? Britton was an ace closer but in general the bullpen needs more arms. Remember the CLOSEST they got for a trade in July was for Bluejays closer Ken Giles so I'd imagine they'll poke around there too. If you can't find a starter of high quality and won't trade for one then you need one more big arm in the pen. It'd be pretty cool to both a) get a stud reliever and b) hurt your primary rivalries by signing either Joe Smith or Will Harris from under Houston.

8. Find a role for whatever J.A. Happ is.

The Yankees got ace level production of J.A. Happ when they had him in 2018 and even including his playoff bust vs Boston, bringing him back in some form or fashion seemed like a can't miss concept. Well it done missed. Pick whatever metric you want and Happ was genuinely bad for a Yankees team that desperately needed him to ONLY be a competent arm. He did improve as the season went along (imagine how awful he had to be that his last five starts with a 2.33 ERA that it managed to ONLY finish at a sub 5 ERA) and a lot of his game felt like it was just blitzed by the juiced ball and a lack of adapting to that. Happ is still under contract for 2020 and it's going to be hard to shake his deal so you're stuck with him. Figure out I guess if he's a long man, a 5th starter or a really overly expensive LOOGY type.

9. Battle royal the 5th spot

Keeping with that, the Yankees were roasted for their lack of SP depth and it showed up big last year. The fact that this team turned to an opener and wound up riding the likes of Chance Adams and Nestor Cortes as long men suggests they got got by the lack of options in the rotation. Turn the 5th spot into a battle royal position. Jordan Montgomery, J.A. Happ, Johnny Lasagna, a few retreads on other teams who are a tinkered arm angle away from being a competent 5th starter etc etc etc. Don't go into the year just figuring your minor league depth options are going to be enough because it probably won't be.

Unless you want to sign Zack Wheeler or Jake Odorizzi and be done with it.

10. Accept Gary Sanchez

I guess this is more for Yankees fans than anybody else. Gary Sanchez is a good catcher. Offensively when he's healthy, he's among the game's best and defensively? He's actually improving really well to be one of the better catches in the AL. He has a crazy throwing arm and while stolen bases are becoming less frequent, he's still got the ability to further mitigate that. Sanchez is a good player who plays the most physically demanding position in baseball and does a good job at it. His playoff numbers were abysmal this year but I still have faith.

#MLB #Yankees #playoffs #2019 #aaron judge #tanaka #severino #chapman #baseball #sports #hicks #stanton #sanchez

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junker-town · 5 years ago

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The 5 most fireable NFL coaches this week

Freddie Kitchens could be one-and-done with the Browns.

The Browns are falling apart (again), and that could be it for head coach Freddie Kitchens.

Week 15 was a good one for the NFL’s most embattled coaches. Pat Shurmur’s Giants got Eli Manning a win in what was likely his MetLife Stadium finale. Doug Marrone’s Jaguars found a way to ruin the Raiders’ farewell to Oakland. Jason Garrett and the Cowboys finally got a victory over a team with a winning record to wreck the Rams’ playoff hopes.

Those wins excised them from the list of the top five fireable coaches ... for one week, at least.

Two others weren’t as lucky. Matt Patricia and Freddie Kitchens felt their seats get a few extra BTUs in losses for two of the league’s most cursed franchises. They weren’t alone. A handful of teams saw their priorities flip from “Super Bowl” to “2020 draft” by way of Week 15 losses.

Even so, the brief triumphs of coaches like Shurmur, Marrone, and Garrett pushed a couple of surprising names into this week’s top five. Let’s start our list with two guys who don’t deserve to be fired after a disappointing season, but who could end up under scrutiny anyway.

5. Frank Reich, Colts

Reich’s 2019 has been a roller coaster. He started the season in a low place after Andrew Luck’s sudden retirement. Then he led Indianapolis to the top of the AFC South thanks to a 5-2 start that saw Jacoby Brissett compile a 14:3 TD:INT ratio and make his two-year, $30 million contract extension look like a bargain in the process.

Then Brissett got hurt. So did T.Y. Hilton. And the wheels came off.

Brissett missed just 1.5 games with an MCL sprain, but that was the catalyst behind a 1-6 slump that’s sloughed away the Colts’ playoff hopes. His passer rating has dropped from 99.3 in his first seven games to 79.1 in his last six. At the same time, the once-steady defense has gone from allowing 21.6 points per game to 25.4 — including 103 total points in their last three contests combined.

The nadir came on Monday night as Drew Brees shredded the Colts en route to a 34-7 shellacking. The veteran quarterback also set both the NFL’s all-time passing touchdown record and the single-game completion record (96.7 percent). That beating dropped the Colts’ chances of making the postseason to less than one percent and ensured the franchise’s fourth non-winning season in the past five years.

Reich did an admirable job of holding the Colts together early in the season, but he was always walking a tightrope. A litany of poorly timed injuries threw off that balance and forced Indianapolis down the AFC pecking order. The sudden disintegration of the team’s defense is another concern. While Reich doesn’t deserve to be fired after making the best of a bad situation, this recent slide has done enough to put his team under a microscope moving forward.

4. Anthony Lynn, Chargers

One year ago, Lynn was a legitimate coach of the year candidate. He’d revived the Chargers, producing their first season with double-digit wins since 2009. More impressively, he revitalized Philip Rivers, who had his most productive and efficient NFL season in years.

That set up big expectations for 2019. In true Chargers fashion, Los Angeles has fallen well short of them. Mistakes on both sides of the ball have doomed the club to a 5-9 record and no prayer of a return to the postseason. Lynn’s team ranks fourth in the league in yards gained per play but 20th in scoring offense. His defense is fifth in total yards allowed and just 13th in points given up.

How does that all happen? Because his team has turned the ball over 29 times in 14 games while forcing just 13 turnovers of its own. The Vikings plucked three interceptions and created five fumbles (four lost) in last week’s 39-10 shellacking in LA.

On the plus side, it did give us this delightfully self-aware opening line from Lynn’s postgame presser.

Anthony Lynn at the start of his press conference. “Seven turnovers. We got our asses kicked in all three phases. Any questions?” pic.twitter.com/VgIkARzkAp

— Eric Williams (@eric_d_williams) December 16, 2019

Lynn is undoubtedly a talented coach who should not be axed due to one snakebitten season. He may also be the victim of uncontrollable circumstance in 2020. The Chargers will be moving into a new stadium (after failing to fill their 29,000-seat soccer arena with home fans the past two seasons). They may also be forced to begin their post-Rivers era.

The veteran quarterback has gotten full seasons from wideouts Keenan Allen and Mike Williams in the midst of a breakout from Austin Ekeler, who has proven himself as one of the league’s best pass-catching tailbacks. Despite all this, Rivers has thrown just three more touchdown passes than interceptions (21:18) and has regressed to the middle of the pack among starting QBs. He just turned 38 and will have to make a decision about his future — he’s a free agent next spring.

If he retires and the Chargers leadership wants a fresh start in its new stadium, Lynn could be unfairly fired. And if he is, he’ll immediately become one of the most sought-after candidates on the 2020 hiring carousel.

3. Adam Gase, Jets

Gase, purportedly an offensive genius after stops as a coordinator in Chicago and Denver and three season as the Dolphins’ head coach, has piloted New York to the league’s 28th-best scoring offense. He’s unlikely to finish 2019 with either a 1,000-yard rusher or receiver. His team’s 4.6 yards per play is the worst in the NFL.

What’s more damning than that? The fact his former players have thrived when freed from his influence.

By the way, Drake balling. Tannehill balling. Parker balling. Bell worst season of career. Psst. There’s a commonality

— Jake Ciely (@allinkid) December 15, 2019

This year, several of the skill players from Gase’s Dolphins days level up away from him. Jarvis Landry has averaged a full five more yards per catch this fall than he did with Gase in 2017. Ryan Tannehill has put up MVP-caliber numbers after ascending to the starting QB role in Tennessee. DeVante Parker stayed behind in Miami and is having the best season of his career — one that earned him a four-year, $40 million contract extension.

Meanwhile, Le’Veon Bell is averaging just 3.3 yards per carry and 5.9 yards per target, both career lows. His 87 rushing yards in Week 15 against the Ravens were a season high. Robby Anderson and Jamison Crowder, the team’s top two wideouts, have been better but still trail their career highs in production. The Jets are 5-9 as a result and have lost games to the Bengals, Jaguars, and Dolphins.

Gase has team owner Christopher Johnson’s blessing for a second season in New York. If his past results are any indication, it’ll be the Jets’ fifth straight losing campaign.

2. Matt Patricia, Lions

Detroit hasn’t won a game since before Halloween. The good news for Patricia is that Jeff Driskel and David Blough were his starting quarterbacks for six weeks of that seven-game losing streak.

The bad news is that his defense may not have been good enough to win even with a healthy Matthew Stafford in the lineup. The Lions have given up 495 yards or more in three of their last nine games. They rank 31st in the NFL when it comes to yards allowed and 28th when it comes to opponents’ third-down conversions. They’ve only held foes to fewer than 20 points twice; once when the Chargers couldn’t stop shooting themselves in the feet, and again against an awful Washington team (to whom they still lost).

The team’s prized free agent acquisitions this offseason have been unable to help, but aren’t to blame. Trey Flowers currently has career highs in both sack and pressure rate in his jack-of-all-trades spot along the defensive line. Justin Coleman hasn’t been as efficient as he was in Seattle after being promoted to a larger role in Detroit. Still, he is allowing a sub-60 percent completion rate when targeted, has a career-high 12 pass breakups, and has greatly improved his tackling.

So who’s to blame? While that spinning wheel may eventually land on Patricia, there’s no doubt his embattled unit would have been better had the Detroit not traded away veteran leader Quandre Diggs, who has three interceptions in five games with the Seahawks. He was shipped away back in October, which turned out to effectively be a white flag.

Are the losses of Stafford and Diggs enough of a caveat to justify another year of Patricia? Ownership says yes — they committed to another year of their second-year head coach and general manager Bob Quinn.

Patricia was dealt a bad hand by both the injury gods and his own front office. He’s spent his year trying to bluff through it with Chuck E. Cheese tokens instead of actual money. Unsurprisingly, opposing teams have seen right past him. Now it’ll be up to the front office to supply him with a little extra backup next spring.

1. Freddie Kitchens, Browns

The Browns lost to the Cardinals in Week 15. This, somehow, was not the worst part of Kitchens’ day.

In the 14-point road loss — one that all but eliminated Cleveland from the AFC playoff race — the Browns were completely helpless in the face of (checks notes) Kenyan Drake. The Dolphins castaway scored four touchdowns, after having just one in the first 14 weeks, and also won his first game in 2019. Odell Beckham Jr. turned 13 targets into just 66 yards, while leading wideout Jarvis Landry gained 23 yards on five catches.

It was Landry’s worst performance of an otherwise stellar season and a game where he was outgained by second-string teammate Damion Ratley. He wasn’t shy about expressing his displeasure about Kitchens’ woeful offense either.

#Browns Jarvis Landry voicing some...umm...frustration with Freddie Kitchens. pic.twitter.com/tFtEkHDFyC

— Jon Doss (@JonDoss) December 15, 2019

That confrontation came after Kitchens opted for a field goal on fourth-and-3 from the Arizona 27 in the fourth quarter of a 28-17 game. Austin Seibert missed that 45-yard attempt, and the Browns wouldn’t get any closer than 11 points for the remainder of the game.

Landry didn’t just complain to his first-year head coach. He was one of “multiple” Browns who yelled “come get me” to the Cardinals sideline in a fruitless plea to be freed from the swirling vortex of football misery. Kareem Hunt, playing his first season with Cleveland after his release from the Chiefs, vented about his teammates “taking plays off” in the loss.

Kitchens’ players are unhappy with him and he’s in danger of losing his support from within the locker room. He’ll need to beat the Ravens and Bengals the next two weeks to avoid the Browns’ 12th straight losing season. There aren’t a lot of factors working his in favor, and Sunday’s defeat may be what pushes the franchise to find a more stable barycenter for its galaxy of young stars to revolve around.

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shervonfakhimi · 6 years ago

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The Dumpster Fire of a Laker Season

This 2018-19 Lakers season has been a disappointment. A season that glistened with hope and joy has gradually deteriorated into one where watching the clock tick towards its merciful end, whether it be a first round sweep from the two-time defending champion Death Star of a team, the Golden State Warriors, or missing the playoffs outright. This enigma of a team, that has marquee wins over those Warriors (on the road Christmas night), the Houston Rockets (at home), the Oklahoma City Thunder (on the road), the Denver Nuggets (at home), the Portland Trail Blazers (both home and on the road) and Boston Celtics (on the road) has also lost to the hapless and willfully tanking New York Knicks, Cleveland Cavaliers, an Anthony Davis-less Pelicans, Atlanta Hawks and Memphis Grizzlies. They currently, as of this writing, are 3 games back from the 7th and 8th seeds and have the 5th toughest schedule remaining (maybe that’s a good thing since they can only beat good times for some God-forsaken reason). I’m not interested in debating whether or not they’ll end up getting in. Let’s instead talk about how they got here and why the front office deserves to shoulder much of the blame for this debacle of a season.

Like David Ershon in ‘The Other Guys,’ we’ve started at the end, which is the present state of the team. The Lakers are an enigma, inconsistent bunch of young players figuring out how to play along LeBron, but haven’t due to the rash of injuries that have befallen the team, most notably to the prized free agent signing LeBron James, the best player in the league. But it is worth noting how they got there. The Lakers were a hot mess, to put it nicely, pretty much ever since Kobe tore his achilles. Losing persisted. The Lakers laughably lost on multiple free agents. Kobe’s retirement tour was the greatest win/win tank job you could ask for while not making it painfully obvious you were losing games on purpose. The losing netted multiple top 10 picks, which the Lakers used to land Julius Randle (2014, 7th Overall), D’Angelo Russell (2015, 2nd Overall), Brandon Ingram (2016, 2nd Overall) and Lonzo Ball (2017, 2nd Overall). The trainwreck of the Steve Nash trade in 2012 made these picks even more important considering that had either of those 2nd overall picks landed outside of the top 3, the Lakers would’ve lost the pick (they finally lost it in 2018, which the Suns used on Mikal Bridges after hilariously re-trading for it after losing in the Brandon Knight trade in 2015). Some shrewd Lakers trading and drafting allowed them to find contributors in the form of Jordan Clarkson (2014, 46th OVR) Larry Nance Jr. (2015, 27th Overall), Ivica Zubac (2016, 32nd Overall), Kyle Kuzma (2017, 27th Overall), Josh Hart (2017, 30th Overall) and Thomas Bryant (2017, 42nd Overall). All but two of these late find contributors remain, for an assortment of reasons: cap space. After Jim Buss and Mitch Kupchak squandered laughable loads of money in the cap spike of 2016 on Lou Williams, Timofey Mozgov and Luol Deng, the team, predictably struggled. The latter two struggled while stealing money like Biggie in ‘Gimme the Loot’ and the team continue to falter. This was a team that had been irrelevant for at least two seasons, enough to the point where Jeanie Buss fired her own brother and hired Magic Johnson as president of basketball operations and Rob Pelinka as GM. Things were supposed to get better. And they did momentarily.

After getting hired, things looked to get better from the decision makers. Not only did the Lakers have charisma and something to keep them relevant again with a former Laker great running the show, the team made good moves. They traded Lou Williams for what amounted to Josh Hart and Thomas Bryant, a pretty good haul for a rebuilding team. Then, before draft night of 2017 but during the week of, they traded D’Angelo Russell and Timofey Mozgov to Brooklyn for Brook Lopez (and his expiring contract) and the 27th overall pick, which the Lakers used on Kyle Kuzma. While I didn’t like the trade at the time, it was an important trade to make. After the whole Nick Young fiasco, the spotlight on D’Angelo grew immensely. He never was able to properly develop and showcase his skills in Kobe’s farewell tour. Perhaps he could’ve grow to the All Star he is now in Brooklyn, but he needed the change of scenery. He got it, the Lakers got closer the cap space to sign a max free agent, which was their goal. Perhaps there was another way to make it happen, but unlikely with the Lakers not willing to move Brandon Ingram at the time and that they already owed a pick. After trading Larry Nance Jr & Jordan Clarkson in the following trade deadline (for Isaiah Thomas and Channing Frye, both of whom had expiring contracts, and Cleveland’s 1st round pick, which became Moritz Wagner) and Luol Deng giving money back in his buyout which the Lakers used the stretch provision on, that freed enough money to create a second max cap spot without having to trade one of the other key figures of the young core mentioned above. While it sucked to see D’Angelo Russell leave and now flourish (that’s what happens when you epically screw up and can’t afford to wait to move on), these moves were necessary to create the opportunity to sign LeBron and possibly another free agent in the future. This is where shit starts to hit the fan.

ACT I: The Summer of 2018 and the lack of shooting

The Lakers could have signed 2 max free agents this summer. Had the Lakers traded for Paul George from Indiana in the summer of 2017, he likely would’ve re-signed. He’s even said as such. The Lakers chose to bet on him signing in free agency, electing not to mortgage young pieces who can help sustain contending teams, a bet they ended up losing as he re-signed with Oklahoma City, the team that traded for him. The same applies with Kawhi Leonard, who got traded to Toronto and now seems more likely to sign with the Clippers than the Lakers. After signing with LeBron (which after the news dropped I proceeded to scream as if I were in middle school yet again while watching ‘Wedding Crashers.’), the Laker suddenly had over $20 million to spare. Their proceeding moves essentially lit that money on fire like Heath Ledger did as the Joker.

Julius Randle essentially signed a 1+1 with New Orleans for about $8 million per season. Brook Lopez signed a 1 year deal for about $3.5million, the room exception, with the Milwaukee Bucks. The Lakers waived Thomas Bryant to help maximize cap room and he was claimed by the Washington Wizards. The Lakers did not bring in their own players outside of Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. Instead, the front office elected to bring in guys with playoff experience who can ease the playmaking load in Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Rajon Rondo, JaVale McGee, Lance Stephenson and Michael Beasley. The problem was these signings were incredible redundant. Randle’s scoring, playmaking and ability to switch defensively and Lopez’s newfound 3 point shooting provided skillsets unique to the team that they didn’t have elsewhere. Those two, like Russell, have flourished in their new digs. The Lakers already had guys who can do what those 5 they signed could do. While Pope showed he was a more than capable ‘3&D’ player last season, he has regressed this season. Lance and Rondo have shot well from deep, but the majority of those have been shots defenses have dared them to make, taking away driving lanes or other Laker action. Beasley is an older, lesser version of Kyle Kuzma who didn’t even last the season. To make matters worse, all 4 signings have had a negative impact defensively while on the court. Not only did these guys negatively impact their teams’ defense from the previous year as well, all of Rondo, JaVale, Lance and Beasley had negative net ratings, meaning their teams fared better while they were off the floor (though at least playoff Rondo made a positive impact). So instead of signing their own big men, (Brook Lopez is shooting 36.4% from 3 spacing the floor for MVP candidate Giannis Antetokounmpo; Julius Randle is shooting 35% from 3 and is scoring a career high 20.1 points per game) knock down shooters and/or 3 point gunners (Trevor Ariza, Anthony Tolliver, Seth Curry, Mike Scott, Wayne Ellington, Noah Vonleh, DeMarcus Cousins all signed 1 year deals, which the Lakers prioritized to maintain salary cap space in the summer of 2019, to name a few), the Lakers paired miscasts whose skillsets do not match the complementary skills you need to surround LeBron James and a young core who have shooting concerns of their own. Bear in mind that all year long, rookie 2nd round Isaac Bonga, who has a bright future, has ate a roster spot all season and taken away a roster spot for someone to potentially help the Lakers right now. I don’t about you all, but this sounds like incompetence to me.

Act II: The Chided One

Playing with LeBron is hard. He is the sun everyone around the league, no less his own teammates or coaches, revolve around. It took time and a slow start in Miami with young whipper snapper Erik Spoelstra calling the shots, who LeBron sort of kind of wanted Pat Riley to can and replace with Pat himself. David Blatt lasted just one year in his 2nd stint in Cleveland. So it is important to be on the same page with your coach and your players and your coach and management. But, only 7 games into the season, Magic Johnson took a different approach. He ‘chided’ Luke Walton, as ESPN reported. (Sidenote: Chided is just a funny ass word. You know how hard you have to get verbally roasted to have it be reported as ‘chided?’) This put a ginormous, mostly undeserved spotlight on Luke Walton. Rumors will persist. Altercations and disagreements will take place. Magic Johnson never hired Luke, and any time shifts in front offices take place, more often than not the new regime will want to hire ‘their own.’ While Magic Johnson never hired Luke, he at least owed him patience and understanding. Luke was put in a very difficult spot trying to mix and match this 2 faced team. His rotations were questionable (again, a reason for that being the tricky roster constructed) and has had trouble at times getting his team prepared to play schematically and mentally to take care of teams they should beat. Yet, despite the poor fit and the enhanced spotlight after preaching patience, Luke was doing a good enough job to keep them afloat, as the Lakers were the 4 seed in the West after drubbing the Warriors on Christmas and a Top 10 team overall.Then the injuries happened….

Act III: Paramedic!

I hate to blame injuries as the majority of the reason why the Lakers have faltered. Denver has been snakebit with injuries all season long, yet have torched the NBA despite it. Indiana lost Victor Oladipo and still have played over .500 ball in his absence. James Harden carried the Rockets through Clint Capela and CP3(to 6 weeks)’s injuries. It’s a little different when it is LeBron James being the one getting injured. The Lakers fell from their aforementioned Top 10 status to a bottom 10 team in LeBron’s absence with an injured groin he sustained against the Warriors on Christmas night. For a team overly reliant on transition offense, they no longer had their safety valve in the halfcourt. The lack of shooting and spacing started to manifest itself even more. The Lakers looked lost.

But it wasn’t just LeBron getting injured. Kyle Kuzma’s effectiveness suffered due to a sore hip. Josh Hart’s 3 point shooting has fell of a cliff due to knee tendinitis. Brandon Ingram has missed 11 games. Rajon Rondo has only played 26 of 60 games. Both of them got suspended early on after throwing hands with Houston. Lonzo Ball rolled his ankle and the Lakers defense disappeared along with him. Chemistry and consistency have been hard to find and sustain, only briefly taking shape in the weeks before the Christmas game. It’s going to become a lot harder to find soon enough.

ACT IV: The Brow

When Anthony Davis signed with Rich Paul, noted LeBron confidante and stout NBA agent for his own agency (Klutch Sports), everyone lost their shit and were convinced he’d end up on the Lakers. Everyone lost their shit once again once LeBron told ESPN it would be ‘amazing’ to play with Davis once he was asked what it would be like if Davis somehow found his way to La La Land. Everyone lost their shit even more than both of those events combined when Anthony Davis’ trade request from New Orleans went public. With Boston (just as big a dumpster fire, by the way!) not being able to trade for Davis due to a CBA quirk where multiple players who sign designated rookie extensions cannot be on the same together (Kyrie Irving signed one previously), this was seen as a power play to get AD to LA, Davis and the Lakers’ best shot at doing so before Boston’s treasure chest of players and picks could become available. The Lakers front office, again, handled it very poorly.

“You let your shit bubble quietly (AND THEN YOU BLOW!).” “Hey keep your cool. The only way to peep a fool is let him show his hand. Then you play your cards.” “Then he through, dealing I understand.” This was Jay-Z showing the game to a young Memphis Bleek in ‘Coming of Age.’ Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka did not follow this advice. EVERY trade offer became public, whether New Orleans leaked them through Woj or the LA Times got a piece of these offers from the Lakers brass. That is not how trades work in the NBA. There was no word a Tobias Harris trade was even imminent, let alone would occur at 2 AM central time, to the Philadelphia 76ers, no less. The Knicks trade of Kristaps Porzingis to the Dallas Mavericks fell out of the got damn sky. That’s how business is conducted. The Lakers should have seen that the Pelicans were not taking them seriously once Woj reported it would take 4 first round picks, on top of all the Lakers’ young players, for them to even *consider* making a deal. Whether it was their lust to pair Davis with LeBron or making up for not going after Paul George or Kawhi Leonard as hard as the Lakers went for Davis, the Lakers got played. They got played HARD. And it started to affect their play on the court.

Perhaps it is solely no Lonzo as to why the Lakers aren’t defending. Maybe it is because these same Davis rumors tore the locker room apart. The Lakers already had difficulties overlooking poor teams. But consistently losing to teams actively looking to tank to get Zion Williamson signifies something deeper. They aren’t playing *together.* LeBron has resorted to, at times, taking his passive-aggressive Daddy LeBron shots at his younger teammates, when, as mentioned earlier, the veterans have been a bigger issue. From the perspective of the younger players, how couldn’t trade rumors to a new location not affect their play? How do they know they have the full backing of the organization when they know they’re trying to trade you? Why should they go all out just to get swept by the Warriors in the first round of the playoffs? Some of the recent quotes from LeBron haven’t helped bridge the gap. Magic Johnson essentially telling them to ‘grow up’ didn’t help either. For some guys going through their first bout of trade rumors and the ugly nether regions of the business of basketball, shouldn’t there be a little more empathy? Maybe doing so will not just get the young players to play better (Brandon Ingram is lowkey playing some of the best ball of his entire career, averaging 21.1 points, 5.8 rebounds, 3 assists per game on 49.6% shooting from the field and 41.2% from 3. It’s almost like he’s good or something! Wow! Who’d have thought!), but help rally the team to play together and make one last push. That hasn’t happened yet, and the Lakers likely will suffer if it doesn’t happen soon.

Act V: Too Little To Late

At least Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka made some moves. With the Lakers ranking 27th in the league in 3 point shooting percentage, they finally got shooting to help spread the floor, but once the team was on the outside of the standings looking in. Acquiring Reggie Bullock for (my son) Svi Mykhailiuk and a future 2nd round pick made a lot of sense. Trading Ivica Zubac, who had been by far the Lakers best center this season, and exiling Michael Beasley for Mike Muscala didn’t make as much sense. Especially since, while Muscala is a career 36.4% 3 point shooter, they already had a big man who can shoot from 3 in the form of2018 1st round pick Moe Wagner, who has shot 37.5% from 3. What makes even less sense is acquiescing to demands for minutes from JaVale bleeping McGee (getting roasted by Joakim Noah and Jonas Valanciunas, adding them to a long list of centers who have gotten the best of JaVale McGee this season) as your reason to trade for a stretch 5 when you already have one. Remember when I said the Lakers had Brook Lopez, Julius Randle, Larry Nance Jr., Ivica Zubac and Thomas Bryant all on the same team? None of them are there now. And their frontcourt has routinely been smashed all season long. This move made no sense and has hurt the Lakers in the meantime (it also hasn’t helped that Mike Muscala rolled his ankle in his first game as a Laker). These moves also signified the Lakers realized the moves from the summer haven’t worked out, yet took too long to make a move to make up for it.

And that’s how we got here. A bickering team with a coach that surely seems like a dead man walking that is playing below its expectations of at least making the playoffs after years of rebuilding and missing the playoffs that was playing above those expectations before being decimated by injuries. With 22 games to play, the Lakers currently are tied for 10th place with the Minnesota Timberwolves, who own the tiebreaker with the Lakers after beating them three times. Will they get to the postseason? I don’t think they will, but I hope I’m wrong. LeBron still looks like he’s recuperating from his groin injury. Lonzo’s return does not look like it is coming all that soon. A three game deficit while having to hurdle over three teams is a lot to ask in 22 games. Should they miss on the postseason, Luke will almost surely get canned, and presumptively get the majority of the blame as well. While he garners some blame, he shouldn’t get it all. The majority of it should fall at the hands of Magic Johnson, Rob Pelinka and the front office. And they’re the ones responsible for finding a way to pair another star or superstar alongside LeBron before his contract expires. If this season is any indication, they have a lot of work to do. Or they won’t have their jobs either. Magic Johnson seems to agree.

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thrashermaxey · 6 years ago

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Ramblings: Wrapping Up Bubble Keeper Week

Before putting a wrap on Bubble Keeper Week, let’s start with some news items:

The Rangers have signed Brady Skjei to a six-year contract worth $5.25 million per season. Skjei receives a significant raise from the $925,000 that he was receiving on his entry-level contract the past three seasons, so this represents a major jump for his salary cap keeper owners.

After a 39-point season in 2016-17, Skjei dipped to just 25 points and a minus-27 in 2017-18. With that output, salary cap keeper owners would be justified in not keeping him. In fact, Skjei meets our criteria for being a bubble keeper. There is 40-plus point upside for Skjei, so an argument could be made about keeping him. Skjei’s power-play minutes also increased after the first quarter of the season. But remember that Kevin Shattenkirk will be back from injury, so Skjei will probably be back on the second unit. Coincidentally, Shattenkirk was Skjei’s most common defensive partner last season.

Quinn Hughes (Dobber Prospects profile here) won’t suit up for the Canucks in 2018-19, deciding to return to the University of Michigan instead. Although a tiny part of me would love to see him in a Canucks’ uniform this coming season, this is logically and completely the right move for both Hughes and the Canucks in the long run.

Bringing a teenager into the NHL can be risky. That risk is elevated when the player happens to be a defenseman, and the team happens to be a rebuilding one like the Canucks. Hughes was no guarantee to make the Canucks out of training camp, as the team already has eight defensemen under contract. Hughes will be in a much better position to make the squad in 2019-20, as both Alex Edler and Michael Del Zotto will be UFAs, and Chris Tanev could be traded by then. Ben Hutton and Derrick Pouliot will also be RFAs, and the Canucks could easily decide to move on from either if they do not take a step forward this coming season.

I just hope that the reportedly messy breakup between Trevor Linden and Canucks’ ownership hasn’t in any way affected Hughes’ desire to play for the Canucks. It’s becoming clear that the less that ownership is involved, the better that this rebuild will turn out for the Canucks. Running a successful hockey team does not follow the same prototype as running successful real estate investments. I understand that it’s the owner’s money and that an effective business owner doesn’t sit on his hands waiting for things to happen, but in hockey it’s best to let the hockey people that you hire make your hockey decisions.

To wrap up Bubble Keeper Week (in bubble wrap?) I asked those of you on Twitter for some names of players that were not covered during the past week by either myself or other Dobber writers.

If I didn’t get to your response on Twitter, keep in mind that your player may not be a bubble keeper by definition. During Bubble Keeper Week, our focus was on players outside of the top 150 – players who aren’t obvious names as keepers but fantasy owners still may need to decide on. Don’t worry, though, I’ll be rambling (or is it Rambling) quite a bit next week, so I’ll try to get those players in since it won’t be Bubble Keeper Week any longer.

Tom Wilson

I’ll start with this: All the money that the Capitals didn’t have to spend on Jay Beagle was freed up to pay Wilson. And Wilson definitely got paid. In case you missed it, Wilson was given a six-year contract with a cap hit of $5.17 million per season. But if you have heard about it, chances are that you have an opinion on it!

Players’ of Wilson’s skill set are becoming more rare, and those skills served the Capitals well in their Stanley Cup win. So a rare commodity deserves a premium, right? Not so fast. The argument on the other side that suggests that when Wilson is not on Alex Ovechkin’s line, he has the value of a third or fourth liner. Plus there is the matter of the penalties and untimely suspensions, which are collateral damage to a team employing someone who plays on the edge.

Wilson was a better player offensively when he was on Ovechkin’s line – that much we could see last season. Wilson scored 35 points in 2017-18 while playing on Ovechkin’s line for about 63 percent of his even-strength minutes, while he scored just 19 points in 2016-17 while only on Ovechkin’s line about 8 percent of the time. Shifting to Ovechkin’s line also resulted in a three minute per game increase in icetime (practically all of it even strength).

Fantasy-wise, we need to separate Wilson’s value in points leagues from his value in multicategory leagues. To give you an idea, Wilson is ranked 236 in Dobber’s Top 300, where he is surrounded by the likes of Mattias Janmark and Joonas Donskoi. All could be 40-point players given the right circumstances. On the other hand, here’s Wilson’s value last season in a multicategory league that counts penalty minutes:

Yahoo Rank

+/-

PIM

PPP

SOG

Nikolaj Ehlers

231

Tom Wilson

187

123

Mikael Granlund

193

Ehlers and Granlund were 60-point players, so those penalty minutes provide Wilson with a huge boost. The scoring increase also helped, as penalty minutes alone will not vault a player this high.

And one that counts hits:

Yahoo Rank

+/-

PPP

SOG

HIT

BLK

Jordan Staal

130

-4

160

181

Tom Wilson

131

123

250

Jaden Schwartz

132

157

So there’s a huge swing in value for Wilson that is dependent on two factors: 1) Whether Wilson is on the Ovechkin line, and 2) Whether your league counts penalty minutes or hits. If Wilson plays significant minutes on the Ovechkin line again, I’d say he has a 50-point ceiling. If he’s primarily used on the third or fourth line, then he probably won’t clear 30 points. If the latter scenario occurs, the second-guessing of his contract will only increase.

I think what we can all agree on is that Wilson’s timing was perfect in receiving the contract that he did. Being as noticeable as he was in the Stanley Cup Playoffs has helped his cause significantly.

Conor Sheary

Sheary is another player who has a vastly different floor and ceiling fantasy-wise – but for different reasons that Wilson. Dobber said it best in his Fantasy Take on the Sheary trade to Buffalo:

You won’t see Sheary get between 30 and 55 points if he plays 80 games – he’ll either click and top 55, or he’ll sputter and fall short of 30.

So just know that if you invest in Sheary that you’ll either hit a home run or you’ll strike out. No middle ground. But sometimes taking risks on these kinds of players are what you’ll need to win your fantasy league.

Sheary will have the opportunity to line up alongside up-and-coming Jack Eichel this season. But his most frequent center in Pittsburgh was no slouch either – his name is Sidney Crosby. In fact, nearly half of both his even-strength minutes and his even-strength points were on Crosby’s line.

Personally, I think there is significant risk in reaching for Sheary. Sure, there was the “breakout” 53-point season. But he struggled in the playoffs after that, scoring just seven points in 22 games and getting healthy scratched. If you’re curious about 2017-18’s playoffs, Sheary recorded just two assists in 12 games. So he’s really been in a funk for over a season. A new opportunity with a new team could be exactly what the doctor ordered. But since I’m more of a “believe it when I see it” type, I’ll admit that I’m more bearish on Sheary than bullish.

Ryan Spooner

We knew that Rick Nash would probably be a rental player for the Bruins, but do you think maybe the Bruins might want to have Spooner back? After joining the Rangers, Spooner was sizzling with 16 points in just 20 games. Add that up with his numbers in Boston and it resulted in 41 points (13g-28a) in 59 games, an average of 0.69 points per game. That placed him in line with the likes of Alex Pietrangelo, Evander Kane, Corey Perry, David Krejci, Bo Horvat, and Nazem Kadri.

That group above is where you could feel comfortable drafting Spooner in points-only leagues, but remember that in multicategory leagues, Spooner’s point totals are fairly assist-heavy, as he has never scored more than 13 goals in a season. Spooner’s non-scoring peripherals in particular are also very light. He had to receive Lady Byng consideration from someone, as he took just two minor penalties in all of 2017-18 and only took 24 hits in 2016-17. In spite of the scoring breakout with the Rangers, just two of his 16 points were on the man advantage, and his power-play time actually decreased with the Rangers.

One side note: Spooner is an RFA who remains unsigned and is scheduled for an August 4 arbitration hearing. According to Blueshirt Banter, the deal isn’t expected to be long-term, since the Rangers are on a rebuild and could move Spooner. But assuming he sticks with the Rangers for a full season, you could expect him to hold something like a second-line role with around 50 points. And remember that he’s better in pure points leagues than multicategory leagues.

For more fantasy hockey information, you can follow me on Twitter @Ian_Gooding.

from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-rambling/ramblings-wrapping-up-bubble-keeper-week/

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maddenmobile18coinhack-blog · 7 years ago

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leonidastansberr-blog · 7 years ago

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flauntpage · 7 years ago

Text

Roy Halladay Was the Person We All Aspire to Be

This post originally appeared on VICE Sports Canada.

"The late Roy Halladay." It's going to take an awfully long time before those words don't feel so wrong, so heart-wrenching, and so surreal.

On Tuesday afternoon the Blue Jays, Phillies, their fans, and MLB, lost an icon and legend—words that, as big and impressive as they are, don't even truly capture what the man called "Doc" really meant to the baseball world.

It's easy to get hyperbolic when someone dies, especially tragically, and especially when it happens when they're much too young, as the 40-year-old Halladay was. But I don't think that's what's going on here. Roy Halladay was a giant, hiding in plain sight.

Here in Toronto, in the late-2000s, when he was the best pitcher in baseball, and damn near the only thing worth watching on a series of mediocre teams, his greatness was so evident that it became a running joke. For example, my brilliant friend, Drew Fairservice, wrote in a 2008 post at his old site, Ghostrunner on First, a comically outsized portrait of "a day in the existence of Roy Halladay," in which Halladay’s "ravenous appetite for the flesh of opponents is offset by his laser-like execution of a precise, predetermined strategy and his unfailing humility. Basically, he's all things to all men." The jokes all land absolutely perfectly because they're underpinned by so much truth.

Save for maybe the no-hitter in his first playoff game, no moment showed off Halladay's unflinching, unflappable dedication to his craft better than his performance on Tuesday, May 12, 2009. By coincidence of the schedule, Halladay squared off that night against former teammate A.J. Burnett, as the latter made his first return to Rogers Centre after leaving the Blue Jays as a free agent. Over 43,000 Jays fans showed up that night—more than the next two games of that series combined—and they were out for Yankee blood. A.J.'s blood, in particular. I remember sitting in the 500s, where Blue Jays fans only took time out to stop chirping nearby Yankees to boo Burnett when he was on the field. It was like a dress rehearsal, six years too soon, for the incredible, hostile atmosphere Jays fans would bring to the Rogers Centre during the club's 2015 and 2016 playoff runs. Through it all, Roy was magnificent—he threw a complete game, five-hit, one-run masterpiece that took just two hours and 22 minutes to complete.

Halladay was as relentless a competitor and as tireless a worker as any human could possibly be. A favourite story among Blue Jays fans involves much younger teammates in his later years with the club—eager in spring to soak up as much of Doc's greatness as possible by trying to keep up with his gruelling and impossibly early starting workout regimen, they dropped off one by one until it was only the veteran ace left running up and down the stadium stairs each day before dawn.

But Halladay was also, by all accounts, just as relentless in his devotion to his family, to his charity work, and to basic politeness and humility itself. The outpouring from the baseball community following the tragic news of his death spoke volumes about who he was as a player and person, and how he'll be remembered.

Photo by Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports

"Everyone who plays baseball wishes they could be a small fraction like Doc Halladay," said Brett Anderson on Tuesday. "Roy Halladay was your favorite player's favorite player. A true ace and a wonderful person. Heartbroken for those who knew him best," added Brandon McCarthy.

Inextricable from all of this is the fact that Halladay’s was an incredible story of perseverance and redemption, too.

At this point everyone knows the story of Halladay nearly throwing a no-hitter in his second career start, yet winding up being sent all the way down to Single-A to completely rework his delivery less than three years later. What is maybe less known is the mental toll this took on him and his young family, which Tom Verducci captured in a 2010 cover story for Sports Illustrated:

Brandy Halladay happened to be holding her car keys when her husband talked about jumping out the window of their third-floor apartment near Dunedin, Fla., nine years ago. 'I would jump out the window,' Roy told his wife, 'but with my luck I would only break my leg, and I'd still have to go back out on the mound.' The macabre crack followed a declaration by Roy Halladay, a 23-year-old pitcher freshly demoted by the Blue Jays all the way to Class A ball, that he was too embarrassed to ever go back home to Colorado.

As Verducci tells it, the couple, then with a six-month-old son, "wondered if they had saved enough money for Roy to quit baseball and go back to school."

Halladay's new delivery, and the work that he did that summer with Mel Queen, was what got him back to the big leagues. But it was Brandy's discovery of a book, The Mental ABC's of Pitching: A Handbook for Performance Enhancement by H.A. Dorfman—and eventually one-on-one work with Dorfman himself—that, along with his tireless work ethic, kept him there.

He had seen failure up close. His career had been taken to the brink. Dorfman's teachings, he said, allowed him to face up to failure, and to avoid negative "thoughts creeping into your head, a picture of how things might not work out." He worked and fought and prepared and pushed to become the best player that his immense talent and power of will would allow him to be. "If you saw all the work that Roy put in for the four days before every start," said a Jays clubhouse manager in Verducci's piece, "all the conditioning, all the video work, all the studying—you would cry if he didn't come out of that game with a win."

In the years since his retirement, social media allowed fans to see another side of Halladay. Gone was the unflinching seriousness with which he carried himself throughout his career. The post-baseball Halladay appeared to be genuinely happy, making jokes on Twitter, spending time with his family, doing the things he always wanted to do, and that his success as a baseball player afforded. He came through the ups and downs of his baseball career, the endless workouts, the laser-like focus, the dedication to the singular goal of being the best pitcher in the world, and he didn't seem jaded. He didn't seem restless. He didn't seem scarred by the things the game put him through, or that he put himself through. And that, I think, is what hurts the most about his loss.

We can look at his statistics, his accolades, and reminisce about his baseball career and the great moments and the joy he brought us on the field, but the two Cy Young awards (which surely would have been three if not for a Kevin Mench liner to Doc's shin in the middle of his sublime 2005 season), the career 3.38 ERA, the 200 wins, and the seven times he led the majors in complete games don't nearly tell the full story.

This was an incredible person, who was not just a great athlete, but all the things the best versions of ourselves aspire to be—not just talented and successful, but humble, loving, devoted, charitable, tenacious, hard-working, beloved. He was everything you want your sons and daughters to be. And, freed from the rigors of big league baseball, he was out there in the world, with a beautiful young family of his own, living his best life, having fun, and all of it so unbelievably richly deserved.

That he's been taken away so suddenly, so crudely, leaving his family shattered and the baseball world to mourn, is unbearably cruel and unfair. This was going to be a time for Roy to enjoy himself, to coach his sons, to give back to the current Blue Jays and Phillies, and to be honoured for his career—on the Blue Jays' Level of Excellence, and ultimately in Cooperstown. Those things will happen regardless, but that he won't be there to bask in our love is a serious gut punch.

We tend to think of sports as a fairly frivolous pursuit, and most times that's probably accurate. But every once in awhile there are people and stories that transcend mere wins and losses, that inspire, that teach us who we are, what we want to be in life, or what we can be when we push ourselves to the true limits of our capabilities. He may have done so quietly and humbly, leading by example rather than by sheer force of personality, but Roy Halladay was absolutely that. And it's absolutely heartbreaking that he's gone so soon.

Rest in peace, Doc.

Roy Halladay Was the Person We All Aspire to Be published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

0 notes

amtushinfosolutionspage · 7 years ago

Text

Roy Halladay Was the Person We All Aspire to Be

This post originally appeared on VICE Sports Canada.

“The late Roy Halladay.” It’s going to take an awfully long time before those words don’t feel so wrong, so heart-wrenching, and so surreal.

On Tuesday afternoon the Blue Jays, Phillies, their fans, and MLB, lost an icon and legend—words that, as big and impressive as they are, don’t even truly capture what the man called “Doc” really meant to the baseball world.

It’s easy to get hyperbolic when someone dies, especially tragically, and especially when it happens when they’re much too young, as the 40-year-old Halladay was. But I don’t think that’s what’s going on here. Roy Halladay was a giant, hiding in plain sight.

Here in Toronto, in the late-2000s, when he was the best pitcher in baseball, and damn near the only thing worth watching on a series of mediocre teams, his greatness was so evident that it became a running joke. For example, my brilliant friend, Drew Fairservice, wrote in a 2008 post at his old site, Ghostrunner on First, a comically outsized portrait of “a day in the existence of Roy Halladay,” in which Halladay’s “ravenous appetite for the flesh of opponents is offset by his laser-like execution of a precise, predetermined strategy and his unfailing humility. Basically, he’s all things to all men.” The jokes all land absolutely perfectly because they’re underpinned by so much truth.

Save for maybe the no-hitter in his first playoff game, no moment showed off Halladay’s unflinching, unflappable dedication to his craft better than his performance on Tuesday, May 12, 2009. By coincidence of the schedule, Halladay squared off that night against former teammate A.J. Burnett, as the latter made his first return to Rogers Centre after leaving the Blue Jays as a free agent. Over 43,000 Jays fans showed up that night—more than the next two games of that series combined—and they were out for Yankee blood. A.J.’s blood, in particular. I remember sitting in the 500s, where Blue Jays fans only took time out to stop chirping nearby Yankees to boo Burnett when he was on the field. It was like a dress rehearsal, six years too soon, for the incredible, hostile atmosphere Jays fans would bring to the Rogers Centre during the club’s 2015 and 2016 playoff runs. Through it all, Roy was magnificent—he threw a complete game, five-hit, one-run masterpiece that took just two hours and 22 minutes to complete.

Halladay was as relentless a competitor and as tireless a worker as any human could possibly be. A favourite story among Blue Jays fans involves much younger teammates in his later years with the club—eager in spring to soak up as much of Doc’s greatness as possible by trying to keep up with his gruelling and impossibly early starting workout regimen, they dropped off one by one until it was only the veteran ace left running up and down the stadium stairs each day before dawn.

Photo by Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports

“Everyone who plays baseball wishes they could be a small fraction like Doc Halladay,” said Brett Anderson on Tuesday. “Roy Halladay was your favorite player’s favorite player. A true ace and a wonderful person. Heartbroken for those who knew him best,” added Brandon McCarthy.

Inextricable from all of this is the fact that Halladay’s was an incredible story of perseverance and redemption, too.

Brandy Halladay happened to be holding her car keys when her husband talked about jumping out the window of their third-floor apartment near Dunedin, Fla., nine years ago. ‘I would jump out the window,’ Roy told his wife, ‘but with my luck I would only break my leg, and I’d still have to go back out on the mound.’ The macabre crack followed a declaration by Roy Halladay, a 23-year-old pitcher freshly demoted by the Blue Jays all the way to Class A ball, that he was too embarrassed to ever go back home to Colorado.

As Verducci tells it, the couple, then with a six-month-old son, “wondered if they had saved enough money for Roy to quit baseball and go back to school.”

Halladay’s new delivery, and the work that he did that summer with Mel Queen, was what got him back to the big leagues. But it was Brandy’s discovery of a book, The Mental ABC’s of Pitching: A Handbook for Performance Enhancement by H.A. Dorfman—and eventually one-on-one work with Dorfman himself—that, along with his tireless work ethic, kept him there.

He had seen failure up close. His career had been taken to the brink. Dorfman’s teachings, he said, allowed him to face up to failure, and to avoid negative “thoughts creeping into your head, a picture of how things might not work out.” He worked and fought and prepared and pushed to become the best player that his immense talent and power of will would allow him to be. “If you saw all the work that Roy put in for the four days before every start,” said a Jays clubhouse manager in Verducci’s piece, “all the conditioning, all the video work, all the studying—you would cry if he didn’t come out of that game with a win.”

In the years since his retirement, social media allowed fans to see another side of Halladay. Gone was the unflinching seriousness with which he carried himself throughout his career. The post-baseball Halladay appeared to be genuinely happy, making jokes on Twitter, spending time with his family, doing the things he always wanted to do, and that his success as a baseball player afforded. He came through the ups and downs of his baseball career, the endless workouts, the laser-like focus, the dedication to the singular goal of being the best pitcher in the world, and he didn’t seem jaded. He didn’t seem restless. He didn’t seem scarred by the things the game put him through, or that he put himself through. And that, I think, is what hurts the most about his loss.

We can look at his statistics, his accolades, and reminisce about his baseball career and the great moments and the joy he brought us on the field, but the two Cy Young awards (which surely would have been three if not for a Kevin Mench liner to Doc’s shin in the middle of his sublime 2005 season), the career 3.38 ERA, the 200 wins, and the seven times he led the majors in complete games don’t nearly tell the full story.

That he’s been taken away so suddenly, so crudely, leaving his family shattered and the baseball world to mourn, is unbearably cruel and unfair. This was going to be a time for Roy to enjoy himself, to coach his sons, to give back to the current Blue Jays and Phillies, and to be honoured for his career—on the Blue Jays’ Level of Excellence, and ultimately in Cooperstown. Those things will happen regardless, but that he won’t be there to bask in our love is a serious gut punch.

We tend to think of sports as a fairly frivolous pursuit, and most times that’s probably accurate. But every once in awhile there are people and stories that transcend mere wins and losses, that inspire, that teach us who we are, what we want to be in life, or what we can be when we push ourselves to the true limits of our capabilities. He may have done so quietly and humbly, leading by example rather than by sheer force of personality, but Roy Halladay was absolutely that. And it’s absolutely heartbreaking that he’s gone so soon.

Rest in peace, Doc.

Roy Halladay Was the Person We All Aspire to Be syndicated from http://ift.tt/2ug2Ns6

0 notes

junker-town · 6 years ago

Text

Let LeBron James and the Lakers tamper in peace

It’s not harming anyone, and history says it probably won’t work, anyway.

One heretofore unremarked upon result from LeBron James signing with the L.A. Lakers this summer was that the NBA’s Tamperer-in-Chief joined forces with the most tamperiffic team in the league.

This is like a tampering Voltron. James is constantly chided for recruiting other stars to join him (often in vain), while the Lakers have been punished for tampering more than anyone else, culminating in a half-million fine over the Paul George saga.

That fine was completely absurd given that tampering in the NBA is rather useless. No one was harmed by the Lakers using back channels to communicate to George that L.A. would love to have him when he was free from contractual duties in a season. The Pacers actually benefited from PG-13 declaring he would not re-sign with Indiana — that freed the franchise to move on and trade him for All-NBA guard Victor Oladipo and top reserve Domantas Sabonis. If the Lakers helped convince George to leave Indiana, they did so at a time highly helpful to the Pacers.

And importantly, the Lakers didn’t even get George in the end!

So now we have LeBron using the media to tell Anthony Davis that he’d love to see him in Forum blue and gold. After a week-long media flirtation culminating in an ESPN game between the Lakers and Davis’ Pelicans (well that was convenient), the NBA decided to remind teams of tampering rules and make clear that it would pay attention to small acts of tampering that add up to a pattern of misbehavior.

In other words, this was a warning shot at the Lakers. While LeBron’s Captain Obvious comments about liking A.D. don’t warrant sanctions, they could be included in a broader tampering case against Los Angeles.

Of course, the NBA sent out this memo because some smaller-market teams complained to the league about LeBron having opinions. ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reports that a few general managers called Pelicans GM Dell Demps to commiserate over the Lakers’ violation of New Orleans sovereignty.

Cry me a river.

Demps is one of the NBA’s longest-tenured GMs. His team has won a single playoff series in his eight years. This is his seventh season with Anthony Davis on the roster. Despite a mixed record of transactional success amid an appropriately persistent win-now mentality, Demps has yet to build a great team around one of the world’s greatest players.

Again, Demps has a mixed record — whether the Pelicans should cut him loose or keep him is beside the point. The issue is that he was lucky enough to earn the No. 1 pick in a year with a transformational superstar available, he took that star, and he is on the verge of losing him. He’s been luckier than most first-time NBA general managers. Spare your sorrows.

The NBA’s issue seems to be that Davis is under contract with New Orleans for another year and a half, but other teams smell the blood in the water right now. Why? This piece explains the situation, but here’s a Cliffnotes version.

The Pelicans will offer Davis a super-max extension this summer, a year before his current contract expires. This is more money than any other team can offer him — the super-max will only be available from New Orleans due to the highly specific rules the NBA put in place around it. (The super-max came into existence after Kevin Durant left the Thunder, due in part to a lack of real financial incentive to stay. The biggest beneficiaries of the rule have been James Harden, Russell Westbrook, and — yikes alert — John Wall.)

If Davis rejects the extension this summer, that will signal he’s prepared to leave next summer, which means the Pelicans would be foolish to refuse to trade him and risk losing a top-5 player for nothing in 2020.

This summer — June or July, whenever Davis clearly signals he’s not signing the extension, assuming he does not sign the extension — should be the critical point. The Lakers and Celtics and every other team with big Unibrow dreams will be on high alert at that point.

So why is L.A. poking the souffle now? Because the Lakers are advantaged if, for whatever reason, New Orleans decides to rip off the bandage now, trade Davis, and tank out for a high pick. The Celtics are the chief rival for Davis’ services, but they cannot making a deal during this season as long as Kyrie Irving is on the roster. (This piece explains why).

Once the season ends, Boston is on better footing than L.A. due to its deeper pool of assets. So it behooves the Lakers to speed up the break-up between Davis and the Pelicans, if possible. (There’s also the fact that the Lakers may believe they have a shot at winning the West and maybe a championship if they can trade for Davis this season, given the Warriors’ odd campaign.)

Now that we’ve established that the Lakers should have reason to tamper right now, let’s all let them tamper in peace.

Remember: it didn’t work on Paul George, and it cost the Buss family a cool $500,000. LeBron is the only star the Lakers have convinced to come aboard as a free agent since Metta World Peace in 2009 (if he even counts). L.A. isn’t some NBA juggernaut — the only teams with longer active playoff droughts are the Kings and Suns! This is just a hapless rebuilding team trying to find an edge.

Plus, doesn’t the NBA — with special emphasis on these sniveling rivals — owe L.A. a make-up call after the last big controversial trade involving the Lakers and New Orleans was vetoed? Let’s give the Lakers a free pass on tampering with Anthony Davis and just cite “basketball reasons.”

0 notes

thrashermaxey · 6 years ago

Text

20 Fantasy Hockey Thoughts

Every Sunday until the start of the 2018-19 regular season, we'll share 20 Fantasy Thoughts from our writers at DobberHockey. These thoughts are curated from the past week's "Daily Ramblings".

Writers: Michael Clifford, Ian Gooding, Cam Robinson, and Dobber

1. Of all the Islanders, I believe Anders Lee is the player who will be least affected by the loss of John Tavares. His spot on the top line and top power play unit will be unaffected. And he will be given an elite center to work with who may just provide a better compliment of skills to his own.

Mat Barzal may have been a rookie last season but he impacted things all over the ice. He and his linemates were consistently controlling the play; providing positive a Corsi For percentage (CF%) despite being deployed in the defensive end as much or more than the fun end of the rink. Don’t let the 22 goals fool you, Barzal is as pure a passer as there is in the league. He averaged just 2.08 shots-per-game as a freshman. His 34 primary assists sat tied for eighth most in the league with Johnny Gaudreau, Leon Draisaitl and Jonathan Marchessault. His 0.77 assists-per-game sat seventh. Not bad company to keep.

Now a pure distributor gets to dish to one of the league’s most deadly finishers. Sure, Barzal will have a hill to climb. He is no longer insulated by Tavares and will earn the opposition’s top defensive pairing and shutdown line. He will be game-planned against and tested on a nightly basis. However, he’s already an elite talent and the safe money is to bet that he finds a way to be successful as the top offensive option.

Lee may not hit new career-highs in a myriad of categories again in 2018-19, but he’s ripe to slip on draft day due to the perceived loss of Tavares. You can take advantage of that by sneaking him in as category filler with a solid floor and legitimate ceiling. (july21)

2. The impending Erik Karlsson trade, what does this do to Thomas Chabot? It surely gives him more minutes, especially on the power play, but the quality of that team will be…lacking, let’s say.

Chabot was, predictably, caved in last year shots-wise when playing away from Karlsson. That’s to be expected from such a young defenseman playing on a team devoid of talent. But, who does he play with next year that could help in this regard? Cody Ceci?

Though he looks to have a bright future it could be tough sledding ahead for Chabot. It may be a few years yet before his fantasy potential is realized and it’ll have nothing to do with his play personally. Just the team surrounding him and the player he’s paired with. (july17)

3. Oliver Bjorkstrand had 11 goals and 40 points in 2017-18. Though technically his third season in the NHL, 2017-18 was Bjorkstrand’s first full season. Like most forwards on the Blue Jackets, his role fluctuated greatly, though he didn’t find himself on the top line with any sort of regularity. He often skated with Nick Foligno, Sonny Milano, Alex Wennberg, or Boone Jenner.

If that’s to be Bjorkstrand’s role this year, improving significantly on 40 points doesn’t seem likely. Bouncing around the middle-six with secondary power play minutes doesn’t bode well for a huge boost in production.

That it doesn’t bode well for a bump in points doesn’t mean one isn’t coming. Bjorkstrand is turning into a top-end playmaker to go along with solid shot rates. Had he not shot 6.7 percent last year, if he shoots just 10 percent, he has 16 goals and a 45-point season and maybe he’s viewed with some consensus as a rising star.

Bjorkstrand’s problem is a good one for Columbus in that they have solid depth on the right side. Josh Anderson had a breakout season despite the injuries, and following a slow start, Cam Atkinson reminded us he’s a very good, and very consistent, goal scorer. Bjorkstrand has the look of a top-6 winger but due to their depth, he might not see many more minutes per game than he did last year. (july19)

4. Habs’ Artturi Lehkonen fits the category of a potential deep sleeper. Don’t be fooled by the lack of offense last season. He’s a player who could pay off if drafted outside of the top 150. I’d even be willing to bet that he’ll still be available outside of the top 200. He was projected for 21 goals and 44 points in last season’s Fantasy Guide. Could he reach that total this season? You might just have to take a gamble, which is one that Dobber could back you on. (july22)

5. The Wild have signed Matt Dumba to a five-year, $30 million extension. With Dumba’s bridge deal of $2.55 million now expired, salary cap owners will now need to set aside an additional $3.5 million per season for him. He certainly made good on his contract year, recording his first 50-point season (14g-36a). Prior to 2017-18, Dumba’s career high was 34 points, so this was a breakout in the true sense of the word.

If you didn’t know that Dumba scored 50 points this past season, it might be because he got lost in the crowd. Dumba was one of 19 defensemen to score at least 50 points – a number that grew significantly from 2016-17 (just 9 d-men) and 2015-16 (12 d-men). This is the trend of the puck-moving d-man at work. (july22)

6. Evan Bouchard (Edm) and Ryan Merkley (SJ) arguably have the highest fantasy potential for 2018 NHL Draft blueliners outside of Rasmus Dahlin but both carry varying degrees of risk.

As a 1999 birthdate, Bouchard is physically ready to play in the NHL. He’s accomplished a great deal in his three years with the London Knights, including a monstrous 26-goal, 87-point draft-eligible campaign. His shot is large and in charge and he has very strong vision. He would instantly become a threat on Edmonton’s top power-play unit. That said, his skating and pace of play need to improve. Not to mention the sheer difficulty in teenagers playing defense against the very best forwards in the world. Bouchard should be targeted high in keeper leagues and is one to watch in one-year leagues if he’s still hanging around camp when the pre-season is coming to a close.

Meanwhile, Merkley is one of the most divisive prospects we’ve seen in several years. The late-2000 birthday means he’s one the youngest from the crop and also the most under-developed physically and mentally. Questions surrounding his commitment to all facets of the game, and attitude issues have followed the wildly talented blueliner for a few years.

There’s one thing that is not in doubt: when he has the puck on his stick, magic can happen. His ability to create offense is unmatched by nearly everyone in the 2018 group. The Sharks clearly aren’t too concerned with potential attitude concerns. They traded for and then committed major money to Evander Kane. You can’t have a soft stomach to make those moves. (july21)

7. The Canucks were clear when the signed Jay Beagle that it was to provide Brandon Sutter with an opportunity to no longer be buried in the defensive end – he started a ridiculous 22.65 percent of his draws in the offensive zone. The hope for the team is that they’re paying him like a second line center (4.35MM), hopefully, he can produce like one if freed up.

Having him play with an elite talent like Elias Pettersson and a bounce-back candidate in Loui Eriksson won’t hurt. However, I question his ability to drive offense on a consistent basis.

As for Pettersson, he should be able to carve out a role on the team’s top power-play unit in Henrik Sedin’s old spot on the right half wall or patrolling the right point. Having Pettersson and Brock Boeser on opposite sides will be chaos for opposing defenders but it’ll take the rookie some time to adjust. His ceiling remains sky-high. (july21)

8. This isn’t some sort of prediction of a breakout. What I’m saying is the ingredients are there for the Devils’ Blake Coleman to have a good season. Travis Zajac is in freefall and though I’m a believer in Pavel Zacha, it’s not certain he’ll be a full-time center next year. Coleman could find himself with more minutes next year depending on the performance of others and he has the skills necessary to put up a sneaky 20-goal season. Do not ignore him in deeper leagues. Even if he busts, he can be had at such a discount that replacing him on the waiver wire is easy. (july20)

9. Coleman got me thinking about Marcus Johansson, another Devils skater. Johansson missed nearly three months with a concussion thanks to a flying elbow from Brad Marchand. He eventually returned in the playoffs but for just a few games, not nearly enough to judge him, especially considering how much time he missed. He looks ready for 2018-19 and let’s hope the concussion issues are behind him.

It’s easy to forget that before getting to New Jersey, Johansson averaged 20 goals and 30 assists a season for three years. That was on a high-powered Washington team but Johansson was a fixture of the top PP unit with the Capitals.

Before the concussion issues started piling up, Johansson didn’t spend much time with the top PP unit in New Jersey. Does that change now? The three forwards seemingly locked into the top unit should be Taylor Hall, Nico Hischier, and Kyle Palmieri. Could Johansson be the fourth? It may be tough because assuming Will Butcher takes that spot again, it would give them four left-handed shots. That may open the door for someone else.

All the same, I will be paying attention in training camp. The Devils used a lot of different combinations last year but Johansson will get overlooked this year in fantasy. If he seems to have the inside track on the top PP unit, be sure to pencil him in at the end of your drafts. If he doesn’t, he can probably be left alone in most leagues. (july19)

10. Whether Jimmy Vesey takes the next step in fantasy relevance depends on usage. He’s averaged about 14 minutes a game over his first two years and that’s just not enough to put up the raw totals necessary to be relevant in most leagues. Will a new Rangers coaching regime give him more minutes or will it be status quo? It’s worth the risk in deeper leagues to draft him late but in shallower leagues he’s probably still waiver-wire material until something changes. (july20)

11. Phillip Danault has shown chemistry with Max Pacioretty in recent seasons but the captain doesn’t seem likely to start the year in a Habs uniform, pending a trade. If Tomas Plekanec is reunited with Gallagher, that doesn’t leave much for wingers to line up with Danault.

Even with top-six minutes, Danault doesn’t contribute in peripheral categories outside of face-off wins. Unless it’s a deep points league or a league with face-offs, he can be left on the waiver wire. It’s a fine real-life signing but the fantasy hockey impact is marginal. (july19)

12. The Calgary Flames gave the long-term deal Elias Lindholm had been looking for and the contract will carry him to his age-30 season.

How Lindholm will be used will ultimately determine whether this contract gives the appearance of fair value, or a great value. He has four full seasons under his belt, averaging 17:38 per game in that span, and managing 14 goals per 82 games over those four seasons. To say that it’s just because he played in Carolina, Justin Faulk scored more often in fewer games played. Lindholm somehow developing into a perennial 25-goal scorer seems like a bridge too far.

Some may point to Jiri Hudler putting up 31 goals and 76 points seemingly out of nowhere when slotting with Johnny Gaudreau and Sean Monahan. His previous career-highs were 25 goals and 57 points, which makes Lindholm’s situation a bit different.

What if Lindholm isn’t on the top line all year? Or, most of the year? Or, even half the year? If he plays 17 minutes a game in the middle-six, why would we expect more than 15 goals and 45 points? I don’t doubt that Lindholm gets minutes on the top line, it’s just a matter of how many and for how long. There’s a good chance his average draft position (ADP) gets too high for a reasonable profit. (july19)

13. Chris Tierney had 40 points last year for the Sharks. With Joe Thornton returning, Joe Pavelski still in the fold, and Logan Couture around for the better part of a decade, Tierney will be locked into that third-line role for at least one more year. That, combined with the lack of power-play time, means improving substantially on 40 points is difficult.

That doesn’t mean he can’t repeat, though. There is a lot of winger talent on this team, starting with Pavleski (though he’s really a center) and Evander Kane, then Tomas Hertl and Joonas Donskoi, and an emerging star in Timo Meier. Regardless of how the lineup shakes out, Tierney will have at least one talented winger to skate with so putting up 40 points again is possible.

Pavelski has one year left on his deal and it’s uncertain whether he’ll return. If he doesn’t, Tierney could be bumped up the lineup in a year’s time. But for 2018-19, expect more or less the same as 2017-18. (july19)

14. The Predators have signed Juuse Saros to a three-year, $4.5 million extension. Saros is worth keeping an eye on this season, as Pekka Rinne has one more year left on his $7 million per season contract. If Rinne’s playoff struggles carry over to the regular season, we could be seeing a lot more of Saros. Plus that would give the Preds a chance to see if he’s ready to take over in net in 2019-20. If so, $1.5 million per season for a starting goalie is a sweet deal. (july18)

15. This has to be the year the Ducks finally throw Sam Steel in the lineup, right? He averaged a shade under two points per game in his Draft-plus-1 year and followed that with 83 points in 54 games last year. The injury to Ryan Kesler, and the uncertainty that brings, undoubtedly leaves them one center short. He has to figure into the lineup, right?

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about the need for the Ducks to move Ondrej Kase to the top line. I’m not sure that will actually be the case (no pun intended but welcomed nonetheless). A third-line duo of Steel-Kase is something that would be worth the look for the Ducks. Scoring outside of Rickard Rakell was hard to come by in 2017-18; Kase and Adam Henrique were a distant second behind Rakell’s 34-goal total with 20 each. Being able to run forward pairs of Ryan Getzlaf-Rakell, Henrique-Jakob Silfverberg, and Steel-Kase is a good way to spread out the talent while having solid lines throughout the roster. Provided, of course, that Steel can prove himself.

I’m intrigued here. He won’t get the top PP minutes to bring significant fantasy relevance but with so much time having elapsed since his draft, outside of dynasty owners, Steel is likely to go under the radar in keeper league setups. Take a flier on him late. (july17)

16. One player whose ADP I’m excited (scared?) to see in September is Yanni Gourde, a player in the vein of guys before him like Viktor Arvidsson, Jonathan Marchessault, and to a lesser extent Ondrej Kase. A guy certain pockets of the hockey community saw a player with good underlying results in small samples, solid minor league numbers, and hoped they’d get a chance. Gourde finally got his chance and managed 25 goals and 64 points as a 26-year old in his first full season.

Assuming the reports are accurate, Tampa Bay looks like the landing spot for Erik Karlsson. The question is the return. Is Gourde part of the package? Tyler Johnson? Alex Killorn? There will surely be picks and prospects. It’s still uncertain if any roster players are part of the package. Regardless, the lineup as it sits today is not likely to be the lineup in two months.

Gourde likely slots on the third line this year, be it as the center or winger. Who plays with him? Will either Killorn or Johnson still be around? Will he be lined up with Cedric Paquette? Maybe one of their young wingers in Boris Katchouk or Taylor Raddysh, unless they’re part of the Karlsson trade.

There’s also the shooting percentage, which was over 18 percent overall and over 14.5 percent at five-on-five. That put him just outside the top-10 league-wide among forwards with 1000 minutes.

Gourde is a very good player. In cap leagues, he’s an exceptional asset. I just worry that the steam behind Tampa Bay as a team, Gourde’s superb year, and everyone wanting to get The Next Marchessault will push his ADP too high to be had at a reasonable price. We’ll see in a couple months. (july17)

17. Sometimes I wonder about Chris Kreider’s ADP this year. His goal, assist, shot, and penalty minute paces (per game) were pretty much around his career norms. He’ll be on the top line with top power-play minutes. With the Rangers going through a rebuild and Kreider coming off a season where he missed a lot of games due to injury, does his ADP get depressed? He can be a very good across-the-board roto contributor when healthy. With a new coach and true top-line minutes, this seems like value in the making. (july17)

18. For the second straight year, Filip Forsberg’s overall time on ice declined. For the second straight year, his five-on-five ice time per game declined. For the third straight year, his five-on-five shot rate declined. For the second straight year, his shots per game declined. For the second straight year, his five-on-five individual expected goals rate declined.

Anyone watching Forsberg knows he’s not in decline. The guy’s hitting his prime. Injuries played a factor last year and the emergence of Viktor Arvidsson meant fewer shots to go around when the duo was on the ice together.

One thing that saved his season was his shooting percentage on the power play. His previous career-high was 15.4 percent. From 2014-17, he shot 11.3 percent on aggregate. In 2017-18, he shot 26.7 percent. Just playing 82 games will help mitigate the drop in PP goals but a return to normalcy could still cut his PP goal totals by three or four, even with the 15 extra games. The team shot 8.8 percent with him on the ice at five-on-five from 2014-17. Last year, that jumped to 10.2 percent. Despite the team’s expected goals per 60 minutes at five-on-five with Forsberg on the ice being 2.7, they scored 3.6.

He also set a career-high in individual points percentage – the rate he tallies points on goals scored with him on the ice – with his previous high coming in 2014-15. It was a marginal record, but still his best.

Forsberg wasn’t very far off a point-per-game pace last year. The question is if he can repeat that and be an 80-point player this year. Given the high percentages basically across the board, I find it hard to believe he’ll be near a point-per-game player. Maybe he can crack 70 points but I’ll be interested to see his ADP once September rolls around. It might be too rich to search for any profit. (july17)

19. A couple of recent two-way deals I want to point out: Andreas Johnsson with the Leafs and Danny O’Regan with the Sabres.

Johnsson has to clear waivers in order to be sent down and he’s already proven time and again that he’s NHL-ready. I already have him as a lock to make the team. Why he signed his two-way qualifying offer was strategic – he’s banking on a full NHL season so that he can cash in next year. Meanwhile, my hunch is that Leafs’ GM Kyle Dubas was thinking about how to get him to sign for two or three years – and I wonder if Johnsson signing his qualifying offer caught him off guard. The Leafs will never – never – waive him no matter how horrible his training camp is. I like his thinking there.

O’Regan would have been in tough to make the Sabres and he can still be sent down without clearing waivers. So, he’s as good as off the team to start the year. But, he has nothing left to prove in the AHL. (july16)

20. Another interesting one was when Nicholas Baptiste signed a two-way deal with the Sabres. He has to clear waivers and I was having trouble fitting him into the Buffalo lineup. He played 33 games for the Sabres last year but the team is significantly more crowded this time around. And I think he’s behind Justin Bailey in terms of the depth chart – Bailey also has to clear to be sent down, is also a right shot, is bigger (6-3, 214) and was drafted higher (52nd overall versus 69th overall) and I think those things make a difference when teams prioritize who they want to see succeed more. And soon after I wrote the above blurb, Bailey signs and it’s a two-way contract. So, he’s in the same boat as Baptiste. (july16)

Have a good week, folks!!

from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-home/20-fantasy-hockey-thoughts/20-fantasy-hockey-thoughts-33/

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thrashermaxey · 7 years ago

Text

Ramblings: Impact of a new family on production. Also, the kids are arriving – Tolvanen, Andersson (Mar 26)

***

I was reading a Wyshynski article last week where he interviewed Ryan Getzlaf (link here). Regarding Corey Perry: “He has a family now. Last season was his first year with a kid. And that adds a different element to the game. It can change your preparation away from the rink and all those kinds of things. I think it all contributes into it.”

Getzlaf on his weak season 2011-12: “my first year as a dad was one of my worst years in the NHL. [Getzlaf had just 11 goals and 57 points in 82 games, and the Ducks missed the playoffs.]” And then: “there's really not a whole lot that can prepare you for parenthood. You have to just live it. Especially in our world, with how much it changes your daily life and how much more important things feel for you away from the rink.”

As I said on Twitter a few days ago, I would bet good money that a player sees his production drop significantly when he has a second or third child when one of the other children are toddlers. Significantly. No data available on this, of course. But my thinking is that if a player has a couple of tough years and then suddenly has a good one, I would check on his family – did he have a kid during that first tough year? If so, I’d be more inclined to believe that the good year is the norm and not an anomaly. The toughest year of my career (other than the last one obviously – ha) was when my oldest daughter was two and my youngest was born. Very hard – “terrible twos” is a label for a reason! Imagine being an athlete used to a workout regimen in the summer – I don’t know, three hours per day? Now suddenly it’s a couple of 30-minute sessions and a broken-up 10-minute attempt as you try to juggle.

Anyway, I found it interesting, it got me thinking and I wanted to share this new perspective. After I Tweeted these thoughts, I was quickly reminded by some followers that Cam Talbot had twins this year. So…hmmm…

Jordan Weal had a three-point game Sunday, which drives me nuts. I’m always panning for hidden gold, and Weal has come up on several occasions. A prospect who was a bit of a long shot, Weal dominated junior hockey. But most players who do that still fail to become fantasy relevant. However, he took to the AHL quickly with 139 points in 149 games in his second and third years there. Then he had a strong training camp with some clutch goals back in the preseason of 2015. Plus, he had to clear waivers that year to be sent down, so I drafted him as a late sleeper. But Weal became one of those guys who still needed another AHL season yet couldn’t be sent down there because he would get claimed – so the Kings played him sparingly and later when he went to the Flyers in the Lecavalier trade he was used sparingly there too. A complete lost season. And that almost always kills a player’s upside. So I dropped him…

Then last year, after clearing waivers and again dominating the AHL, he was called up and played his way onto the top line, tallying eight points in the final 10 games and 11 in his last 16. And that was going into a UFA summer for him. He earned a two-year contract and again I slapped on the “sleeper” status to his name. But he’s been brutal this year, even with decent linemates (often Wayne Simmonds and Nolan Patrick). Last season’s tease was good enough to get him re-drafted in my league and I re-acquired him in January as a throw-in, playing a hunch (which until Sunday had completely failed). I’m in a deep keeper league and with five draft picks I’ll need to choose between dropping Weal, Lars Eller or Jordan Staal. Or I acquire two more picks and drop all three? It was an easy decision to drop Weal until he gets these three-point games and you realize he is entering his prime and his fourth NHL season. Not a life-changing decision, but one of those meaningless ones that could surprise. And of course it will kick you in the teeth if you make the wrong one. Fantasy hockey is fun!

You laugh at the name Lars Eller, above, but he’s going to end up with 42 points which is by far a career high. And at the age of 28 he’s in his prime and could likely be semi-counted on for 45 next year. That number out of a playoff player has some small depth value in a league like mine.

It took Sean Couturier 16 games of sitting at 29 goals before scoring his 30th, but now that the monkey is off his back he scored number 31 just two games later.

Nolan Patrick has 12 points in his last 19 games. The 19-year-old is finally finding his footing.

Alex Lyon gave up two quick goals early in the second and got pulled. The 25-year-old has virtually no chance of making his mark in the NHL as a part of this organization because they have three proven NHL goaltenders plus Carter Hart on the way. So he needs to make his mark while he can – the two Band-Aid Boys have made it possible to get this audition. He’s been okay in seven games, but not strong enough to make a lasting impression.

Derick Brassard has points in each of his last six contests.

Since the Penguins acquired Brassard, Jake Guentzel has 10 points in 13 games. That being said, he had six points in the three games leading up to the trade (so 16 in 16 in all) and his season was turning around anyway. But this move certainly freed up Guentzel, as has been alluded to here on several occasions.

Sidney Crosby is seven points away from reaching 90 for the first time in four years and he has six games to do it – so it’s in the bag. Funny how it’s still not enough to get him into the top seven or eight scorers. That’s how this year has been – Vegas has added to the player pool of strong scorers and overall scoring is up seven or eight percent.

Lias Andersson and Filip Chytil have been called up by the New York Rangers. This is especially interesting in fantasy circles because the Rangers play four times this week. This is also the time of year where non-playoff teams start piling on ice time for their prospects to give them a taste during meaningless games. In my one league I had picked up Chris Tierney Sunday afternoon and dropped Adrian Kempe. An hour later I had to drop Tierney to make room for Andersson who could no longer sit in my minors. Wasted transaction. Anyway, Andersson has 14 points in 24 AHL games for Hartford while Chytil has 31 in 45. Read up on Andersson here and Chytil here.

That being said, those two are small potatoes compared to this guy. Eeli Tolvanen’s Jokerit team was eliminated from the KHL playoffs on the weekend and he can now sign with Nashville. He supposedly has one in place already, now we just need official word on the signing. Tolvanen can play as many as nine games this year – including playoff games – without burning the first year of that contract. My guess is that he will get into the lineup for several regular season games so the team can gauge whether or not he’s ready for playoff action and can make enough of a difference to burn that first year and give him a regular playoff roster spot. My second guess is that while he will be good enough to do that – I’m not so sure that they will. Traditionally, Nashville is cautious with their prospects. But I think he’ll make his mark in the regular season and make them think long and hard about it. His 19 goals and 36 points as a KHL rookie were the highest by any player under the age of 19 in that league’s history. He also had six goals in 11 KHL playoff games. Read our scouting report on Tolvanen here. He is the No.1 prospect on my Top 200 Fantasy Prospect Forwards list.

Continuing on with that theme, the Chicago Blackhawks signed their top prospect Dylan Sikura to a two-year ELC. Sikura just finished his senior year with Northeastern and tallied 54 points in 35 contests. He’s ranked 40th on my Prospects List. Read more on Sikura here.

Warren Foegele had a great training camp and has been an excellent AHL rookie so far for Charlotte (42 points in 65 games, with 26 goals). Carolina has called him up and he’ll likely make his NHL debut Monday. He’s ranked 86 on my prospects list and you can read our scouting report on him here.

Washington isn’t a team out of the playoffs, so when they signed prospect Shane Gersich on the weekend it wasn’t to play him and “see what they have”. He may get into the lineup once a playoff spot is clinched, but training camp is the time to keep an eye on him. His upside is capped. He had 37 points in 40 games a year ago, but that’s because his teammates were Tyson Jost, Brock Boeser and Tucker Poolman. With those three gone, Gersich slipped to 27 points. He’s earmarked for a future checking-line role. Read more on Gersich here.

CJ Suess was signed by the Jets. Although he had 43 points in 40 games for Minnesota State, he’s a bit of a long shot. Not only are the Jets deep with young forwards, but Suess himself is 24. He was drafted in 2014 as a 20-year-old. So he has a short window to make an impact, with little opportunity to do so. He was Minnesota State’s team captain the last two years.

With two more points Sunday, Viktor Arvidsson has 21 points in his last 18 games.

Here were Nashville’s line combos Sunday night:

21.2%

ARVIDSSON,VIKTOR – FORSBERG,FILIP – JOHANSEN,RYAN

18.8%

FISHER,MIKE – HARTNELL,SCOTT – SALOMAKI,MIIKKA

16.4%

FIALA,KEVIN – SMITH,CRAIG – TURRIS,KYLE

16.4%

BONINO,NICK – HARTMAN,RYAN – SISSONS,COLTON

With Calle Jarnkrok and Austin Watson out with injuries, I’m looking at the above depth chart and wondering where Tolvanen slots in. A checking line would be useless, so perhaps he gets in there for Craig Smith on the second line, bumping Smith to the Fisher line and taking Salomaki or Hartnell out of the lineup.

Patrice Bergeron returned to the Boston lineup for the first time since before the trade deadline. So it was interesting to see the line combinations with Ryan Donato and Brian Gionta around.

28.2%

BERGERON,PATRICE – MARCHAND,BRAD – PASTRNAK,DAVID

22.1%

HEINEN,DANTON – NASH,RILEY – WINGELS,TOMMY

21.5%

DONATO,RYAN – GIONTA,BRIAN – KREJCI,DAVID

14.9%

ACCIARI,NOEL – KURALY,SEAN – SCHALLER,TIM

But then…what does this tell us? Since David Backes, Rick Nash and Jake DeBrusk are out, we still can’t get a feel for what the playoff line combos will be.

What was most interesting is the fact that Ryan Donato was part of a four-man PP unit to go with that top line and Torey Krug.

With two more points Sunday, Brad Marchand has 80 in 60 games. His 1.33 points-per-game average is second in the NHL behind Nathan MacKinnon (1.37) and ahead of Connor McDavid, Nikita Kucherov and Evgeni Malkin. Remarkable. Earlier, I had stroked him off my Hart Trophy voting list of five players. Time to tap the UNDO button on that one.

Tyler Myers has just one point in his last 15 games. He ‘had’ been on track for a career high in points. He’s still getting solid secondary PP minutes, but he’s not producing there. Nearly half his total points came via the power play, so if he’s not getting it done with the man advantage then he’s not going to give you much production otherwise.

Embarrassing. Dallas has free-fallen out of a playoff spot by losing eight games in a row in mid- to late March. And that includes a loss to the Canucks Sunday. Not officially out yet, but…pretty much yeah. Two teams have 89 points right now and only one of them will get in – and Dallas has 84 with six games remaining. Anaheim tying the Oilers late Sunday night and winning in OT put another nail in that coffin, too.

Is Ty Rattie playing his way into an NHL job for next year? Often I would say no to this and I would say it quickly and easily. After all, he’s 25 now and has had his chance. Just another failed highly-touted prospect who is making a mark on a non-playoff team when games don’t mean anything. Usually, you’ll see that team re-sign him but also sign (or trade for) other players to fill the ranks on the wing, thereby forcing him to the press box or the minors. Or to a depth line and dismal production. In other words, my Jordan Weal example, above. But I suspect that this team could fire their GM in the summer. In which case, the philosophy changes. The focus should be on defensemen and if deals and signings are geared towards that, then maybe they count on Rattie lining up with McDavid. Why not? The Penguins did that with Conor Sheary and Sidney Crosby and it worked just fine. Draftable? If your league is deep enough, I think he’s worth a flier in the final round when hunches are played. Unless something massive happens to change things among Edmonton forwards in the summer.

Ethan Bear had his first NHL goal here:

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He also added an assist and has four points in 14 games. While I don’t see more than a 25-point year as a rookie next season, I do really like his long-term value with this team. The Oilers are dying for a puck-moving defenseman and he’s a very promising one. I assume they make a play for a game-breaker like John Carlson, though, if they can afford him. If only they didn’t have that Kris Russell contract…

I’ve been asked when the Interactive Playoff Draft List will be available. This list, which was the first thing I ever started selling on this site way back in 2005, should be available by Thursday April 5. I have the structure in place and the players, I’m just going through it and tweaking expectations and filling in notes. I will update this list on April 7 and April 9, so you can re-download it. Not only does the Excel sheet have my own playoff list, but it also allows you to run your own scenarios and create as many different lists as you like – the player projections will auto-fill based on your playoff tree. I generally run two playoff scenarios and then bring both lists into my draft. Then, based on who is taken (and which teams have the most players available) when I make my second-round pick, I throw away one of the lists and just go with one. This way I’m not tied down to a certain scenario and just go with the best situation (of the two I ran) based on how the draft is going. You can pre-order the IPDL here. Only six of you bought the Ultimate Fantasy Pack because I had to pull it from the shop due to my cancer situation. A common question I’m asked is “is this included in the package I bought last summer?” Chances are you bought the Keeper League Pack, so no – it is not included in that. Unless you were one of those six who got in early before I could pull it, you bought the Keeper Pack. At the time, I didn’t know if I would be around or if I would have the ability to put together this Draft List so I couldn’t in good faith sell a package that included it.

That being said, I feel great, things are going great, and you can expect the Ultimate Fantasy Pack to return for 2018 and come out on sale in May!

Announcement: I will be making this Draft List available FREE during all 2018 Montreal Canadiens playoff games.

(Sorry, saw that joke in social media, thought it was a marketing masterpiece! Had to share)

Another thing I’ve been asked – will I have the free playoff box pools available again this year. The answer is: yes. Look for that in a week or so. You can follow the box pool Facebook Page for the announcement when that is out.

Here are the latest 20 Fantasy Hockey Thoughts. See you next week!

from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-rambling/ramblings-impact-of-a-new-family-on-production-also-the-kids-are-arriving-tolvanen-andersson-mar-26/

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flauntpage · 7 years ago

Text

Roy Halladay Was the Person We All Aspire to Be

This post originally appeared on VICE Sports Canada.

"The late Roy Halladay." It's going to take an awfully long time before those words don't feel so wrong, so heart-wrenching, and so surreal.

Photo by Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports

Inextricable from all of this is the fact that Halladay’s was an incredible story of perseverance and redemption, too.

As Verducci tells it, the couple, then with a six-month-old son, "wondered if they had saved enough money for Roy to quit baseball and go back to school."

Rest in peace, Doc.

Roy Halladay Was the Person We All Aspire to Be published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

0 notes

flauntpage · 7 years ago

Text

Roy Halladay Was the Person We All Aspire to Be

This post originally appeared on VICE Sports Canada.

"The late Roy Halladay." It's going to take an awfully long time before those words don't feel so wrong, so heart-wrenching, and so surreal.

Photo by Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports

Inextricable from all of this is the fact that Halladay’s was an incredible story of perseverance and redemption, too.

As Verducci tells it, the couple, then with a six-month-old son, "wondered if they had saved enough money for Roy to quit baseball and go back to school."

Rest in peace, Doc.

Roy Halladay Was the Person We All Aspire to Be published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

0 notes

flauntpage · 7 years ago

Text

Roy Halladay Was the Person We All Aspire to Be

This post originally appeared on VICE Sports Canada.

"The late Roy Halladay." It's going to take an awfully long time before those words don't feel so wrong, so heart-wrenching, and so surreal.

Photo by Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports

Inextricable from all of this is the fact that Halladay’s was an incredible story of perseverance and redemption, too.

As Verducci tells it, the couple, then with a six-month-old son, "wondered if they had saved enough money for Roy to quit baseball and go back to school."

Rest in peace, Doc.

Roy Halladay Was the Person We All Aspire to Be published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

0 notes