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Tuesday, September 06, 2022
I estimate there are 10 or 12 clever intros left for this thread, but I can’t think of any.
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Golden State: I legitimately thought they weren't going to make the playoffs. Ripping off 5 straight wins without Curry has been impressive.
I think the teams in the 9-12 slots in the East (ATL, WAS, CHI, TOR) are the ones to watch. Each one had relatively high hopes entering the year but now finds itself with a losing record. Maybe a couple of them pivot and become sellers, sensing that there are way more buyers than sellers and it's an opportunity to jumpstart a rebuild.
Has the top half of the league ever been this tightly bunched by SRS? No one is above 5. There are 10 teams in the 2-5 SRS range, and that doesn't even include the team with the best record in the West or the defending champs.
I think that's why this year feels so weird. Every good team is basically at a fake contender level, like Miami last year. Further exacerbating that, a lot of the teams that are at that fake contender level have a ton of question marks.
For Cleveland and the Pelicans, they haven't been late in the playoffs before.
For Brooklyn, it's the whole Kyrie headcase thing.
The 76ers have questions about Harden in the playoffs.
etc.
And that's comparing to last year, which itself was a high parity year (Celtics led at +7).
The heart of this basically seems to be that there are a lot of heliocentric superstars to go around. Like, you typically need a top 3 player in the NBA at minimum to win a chip, but there are probably 10 or so players with a case for "top 3 player in the NBA". In this case, you'd think the one with the best sidekick would win, but the only teams I see with a case for "star and another top 20 player" are the Lakers, Nets, and Sixers, all of whose stars have big injury concerns. (Maybe the Warriors, but that doesn't invalidate the clause.) The Nets are the only team that clearly has a player in the very top tier and a player in the second tier, which is probably why Vegas (proxying public opinion) has always been so high on them both last year and this.
+370 Boston
+624 Milwaukee
+685 Brooklyn
+900 Clippers
+999 Golden State
+370 seems like a slightly longer-shot compared to other season's favorites at a similar time, even in the post-KD/Warriors NBA. Not sure how many teams are in the "so you're telling me there's a chance" range compared to other seasons, but also would suspect that's higher than ever as well. As I bet +624 is a longer shot for the second place team as well. I haven't looked close enough to be sure on that one.
EDIT: He did it! Raptors legend. Annnnnd promptly missed the 2nd.
Who I like there, I dunno. I sort of do like the Clippers. I'll just go with the deep roster/good coach/moneybags owner/theoretical superstars combo, even though the theoretical there should probably be in bold and all caps and is the most important part of the equation.
So even if you hypothetically would favor the Clippers against the Bucks, Nets or Celtics, the fact that they have bad matchups against the West should push them down IMO.
Damn that's embarrassing. Inexcusable.
They are not a lot of fun to watch, that's for sure. I think they need to make some moves honestly.
Even with Middleton, their half-court offense against focused defense has always been mediocre, just barely good enough to be a title contender. They could use more guys who can dribble and pass. If they can get Alec Burks without giving up a FRP, I'd be looking to do something around that. He's not a difference maker on offense, but he's a good all around player, which they lack.
Outside of that, it's a bit hard to tell who is actually available. FVV for matching salary, a FRP, and Beauchamp - if Toronto wants to pivot to tank for Wemby. That'd be interesting. Jrue and Jevon Carter are more 2 guards on offense anyways.
55 Celtics
52 Nets
51 Bucks
51 Cavs
50 Sixers
44 Knicks
--
42 Heat
40 Pacers
40 Hawks
39 Raptors
--
39 Wizards
38 Bulls
27 Magic
25 Hornets
25 Pistons
54 Grizzlies
51 Nuggets
50 Pelicans
48 Mavericks
46 Suns
43 Warriors
--
43 Clippers
42 Kings
42 Blazers
41 Jazz
---
39 Wolves
38 Lakers
33 Thunder
24 Spurs
22 Rockets
So if you finish at the top of the West, maybe you draw the Warriors in the first round, or maybe the Clippers, or maybe the Kings. Feels like that's a real big difference and a good chance that the standings order won't reflect the team strength order. Which I'm sure happens a lot but this feels like that on another level. Hopefully in the future they let the top seeds picks their opponents. I'd love that. All the narratives and drama and disrespect talk.
An All LA play-in game would be something else.
East seems pretty straight forward, but I know things can change drastically. Celtics were 18-19 on this date a year ago.
ugh.
This is exactly what I was proposing to a Detroit fan at work. Burks could help a number of contenders, but the Bucks seem like the best fit to me.
There is no mercy rule, otherwise TNT would need alternate programming.
EDIT: Kevin Harlan: "It is 63 to 25, I don't think I've ever seen that score."
did i ever tell you how i got these scars? you see, i followed the process...
Related/unrelated, was listening to the Dunc'd on awards pod--All-NBA for guards is going to be a bloodbath.
1st team:
Luka/Steph
Then you have about 10 guys for 4 spots:
Donovan Mitchell
Kyrie
Harden
Lillard
Halliburton
SGA
Ja Morant
Jaylen Brown
Trae Young
Devin Booker
That is a lot of good players, but I feel like Kyrie will not do well with media voting (despite cruising in fan voting for the All Star game, very predictably)?
Maybe it'll be different when the 71 point game is further from memory, but I think between that and Cleveland's ascension to the top of the East, that Mitchell is a near lock for one spot on the 2nd team. After that, it does become difficult, and is probably too early to call. I personally am planting flags for Halliburton/SGA/Morant and the olds (except Curry) have seen their time come and go.
My personal take is that Harden's days of deserving all-NBA are done, but who knows if that means he'll actually stop getting them.
Morant has been low key not great this year.
Player A: 15.6 points, 13.4 rebounds, 1.6 blocks, 69% TS, 3.1 points better defensive rating on/off
Player B: 13.2 points, 12.3 rebounds, 3.2 blocks, 71% TS, 9.1 points better defensive rating on/off
Guards by EPM 1 Luka 2 Steph 3 Dame 4 Harden 5 Mitchell 6 Haliburton 7 Shai 8 PG (forward?) 9 Ja 10 Booker
Guards by EPM wins 1 Luka 2 Mitchell 3 Haliburton 4 Shai 5 Steph 6 Dame 7 Ja 8 PG 9 Booker 10 Harden
Guards by BPM 1 Luka 2 Steph 3 Haliburton 4 Mitchell 5 Shai 6 Ja 7 Dame 8 Harden 9 Booker 10 PG
Guards by BPM wins 1 Luka 2 Haliburton 3 Mitchell 4 Steph 5 Shai 6 Ja 7 Dame 8 Harden 9 Booker 10 PG
The numberz are really into Haliburton it seems.
my first thought was jared vanderbilt, but that appears to be wrong.
my second thought was horford, but then i remembered that was two years ago.
my third thought was that abomination of a deal between HOU and OKC, but then i remembered that everyone involved was immediately released.
that's three strikes, so i'm out.
OK, I am NOT going to defend the trade. I was not super into it back then and (duh) it looks worse now. But I feel compelled to offer some slivers of hope about the Wolves.
The two young players that I would argue are critical to their future are Ant Edwards and Jaden McDaniels. Both of them are still very young, but both continue to take steps forward. Both Ant and Jaden have upped their TS%, and Jaden at the same and Ant at higher usage rates. Both are at career-high 3pt%. Since KAT has been gone Ant has shown some pretty good playmaking (way more than I expected), and yes his turnover % is up, but that is both expected and one of the things that tend to decrease with age and experience.
Jaden has maintained his defense while improving his shooting and Ant has even made some incremental defensive improvement (steals and rebounds show up in the stats), but he also seems more engaged on defense when they let him be "point Ant" more often. He is also (very slowly) making fewer dumb mistakes on defense (to be clear his offense is better AND has improved more than his defense, but there are some mildly encouraging signs for his defense).
Again this season has kind of sucked. The Gobert trade was terrible (thus far). The injuries have been bad. DLo needs to go away (especially since Ant can take much of the play making from him) - hopefully in exchange for something. The coaching has not been steller. The fit of the highest paid players continues to be ... ummmm ... questionable. And the record displays all that very well.
But, the cry of the sad fanbase in all sports, there are some optimistic signs. It is not as bad a trainwreck as it would appear. It could - not will, but could - turn around such that this season is a mere disappointment and not a tire fire. The future still has a chance of working out (not as well as if the Gobert trade had not been made, but sunk cost).
It is indeed Gobert and Kessler. It's pretty remarkable that Utah acquired the best center in the trade.
It's a worse trainwreck than it appears. Gobert's money is an albatross that lasts for three years after this one.
The Wolves have, already committed, in 2023, a payroll of 120 million. The cap this year is 123.
They are in a Bird rights trap with Russell, where they basically have no way to replace his production so they are incentivized to bring him back at his current number. That will place them in the tax and give them no path to improving the team.
This team desperately needs to trade KAT or Gobert at this point and probably has no other path.
I think that is a conclusion not warranted by the data you presented. I mean come on. Kessler is playing 18 minutes a game in a career that is less than half a season in. He might end up better going forward than Gobert, but let's not be silly about this.
They can't trade KAT. Like really, not until the summer. And there is no way they trade Gobert this season. And while I am not on board with the trade, given the amount the two have played together it seems a bit early for complete hair on fire panic that they can never play together. Especially since selling now would be selling at the lowest possible price.
Things are never as good as they appear, but they are also never as bad as they appear.
Nah. I think it is very likely they trade Russell before the trade deadline. They might resign him, or sign and trade him, but I don't think they are stuck with him. They didn't sign him in the offseason, and all that applied then.
that being said, MIN isn't exactly the best-run franchise, so i would not at all be surprised to see them double down on donatello.
Possible solution - trade him for players making equivalent 2022/23 salary, that might be worth keeping into 2023/24, and wouldn't require draft capital to acquire. The other team clears cap space for next year.
From DET: Burks, Noel, Joseph, Diallo. Burks and Noel are under contract for another year.
From CHO: Higglepuff. I don't think Minny does this without getting a pick, and I don't think CHO gives up a pick.
From HOU: Gordon, Tate. I don't think Minny does this. Gordon is worse than D-Lo and Tate isn't excess value on his deal.
From SAS: Richardson, McDermott. I don't think Minny does this.
From OKC: Nothing makes sense.
So it's really only Detroit that works here, at least until there's another obvious seller.
The other trade that's been rumored is for Lowry.
There are reasons to like and dislike that trade for both teams.
The problem is on the basketball side. DLo doesn't function all that well with KAT as it turns out. And he is not super awesome with Ant. Most people thought he would thrive offensively with Gobert, but it turns out that is not working all that well either.
Rumor has it he is well-liked in the clubhouse, so it is not that, but his play just does not fit with the other pieces. I mean the same thing could be said about like half the roster (OK, probably more than half the roster, the Wolves are the island of misfit toys in terms of team construction), but DLo is in the final year of his contract and he is not the guy picked by the current front office. He is far and away the most likely to get the boot in a desperate bid to keep the salary slot and find pieces that fit together a little better, and they will likely have to lose the trade in terms of talent (and that is OK).
All he had to do was just sit back and watch the team for a few months. They went from 23 wins to 46 wins last year. Regression was always the most likely outcome. Keep the band mostly together, see how the parts fit and how the kids (Ant, Jaden, and others) evolve (or don't), and then at the trade deadline or next year then you start to push chips into the middle.
Going all in when he did was so dumb I suspect it had to be ownership that said we cannot have regression, so do what you can, make a splash, and keep the train running. And Tim said, OK. He is so highly regarded I can't imagine this mess is all him, I am much more willing to believe ownership is to blame (it is the wolves, just look at ownership, they are the absolute worst).
But I guess it doesn't matter. We are where we are.
Move DLo, let the season play out, fiddle around the edges. Moving either Towns or Gobert this season seems like a huge mistake.
This is where I'm at, and why I think they'll end up bringing him back with Bird rights.
Is Kyle Lowry fixing this team? Obviously cooked Kyle Lowry who is owed 30 million next year?
Who else are you realistically thinking you're getting?
Thoughts on Jazz so far since I'm guessing it's mostly Booey and me watching them.
Markkanen: he's great. Can score at all three levels and so hard to matchup against since he can just shoot over vast majority of guys quicker than him and is quicker than most guys bigger than him. His summer performance has me thinking a lot of this improvement is real, though it obviously wouldn't be a surprise if this was his best season. But if he's close to this level he's what...a #2 guy on a contender? It helps that he can get his offense within the flow of the offense so easily and so could play off a superstar.
Conley: very important to Jazz this year but only because they have no other PG, but he can't finish at all and since his minor injury apparently has had to change his shooting form to avoid pain, so uhhhh yeah pretty sure he's just cooked.
Kessler: I think he's going to have a very long career and even ignoring contract I might take him over Rudy going forward. Rudy is I think still pretty clearly better from what I've seen watching Wolves and the stats, though I do think he looks slower and less impactful and I don't think it's just adjusting to a new team/system. There were a few warning signs even last year, and I also wonder if playing so many summers for France is just wearing him out. I think Kessler def has the potential to be an elite defensive rim protector/drop big, so if he's going to be more than solid starter probably will have to add strength and mobility (so he can switch as Rudy developed). Offensively I don't see any reason to think he'll ever be able to shoot from three, so mostly hoping he can improve on screens and develop some sort of post game if smalls switched onto him.
Clarkson: love him, but not surprised his early passing improvement didn't last. If he's happy here, I'm happy keeping him around. I don't think he will hurt a tank much, so I'm not looking to move him unless a team actually wants to give up real assets for some reason.
Beasley: amazing shooter who needs so little space to get good shots off. Jazz have a team option so I'm not moving him unless I get at least a FRP. I think the Lowe Post ideas for him all were at least reasonable.
Vanderbilt: probably the most disappointing to me because I thought he was supposed to be something close to a defensive stopper and decent rim protector. He's not close to either. He's basically just an energy guy who can create chaos, which I like well enough, but I think I'd be looking to move him while his reputation still seems a bit higher than that.
Olynyk: he's decent enough but man that trade sucked and I really don't like him with his history of dirty plays and incessant flopping.
THT: wish he was good since who doesn't love a thicc king on the floor, but he is an absolutely god awful shooter and just doesn't do anything else well enough to come close to compensating.
Sexton: crazy fast, seems like a great finisher and foul drawer, good shooter. Plays hard on defense, so just a question of if he can slow down enough at times to make the right plays. If he does, sixth man on a good team since size really just makes it hard to envision him being more than that and playmaking never gonna be close to good enough for a PG.
NAW: long, pretty athletic, and is shooting much better and seems to have cut out some of his dumb shot selection that's plagued him. Depending on how much of the shot improvement is sustainable, could see him being a decent backup combo guard.
Rudy Gay: so done the toaster should be on fire. Not sure if I want him off the team or to play 30+ minutes a night to help tank.
Fontecchio and Agbaji: both have had glimpses of being useful wings off the bench. Neither high upside though.
There are two goals in any DLo trade. Since they will be over the cap you want to get something for that salary slot rather than lose the slot for nothing. The second goal is that the something you get fits in with the core players on the team better than DLo does. Right now DLo just doesn't fit. Yes, he is not that great, but he does have some ability, but what he has just doesn't seem to basketball-mesh-well with what other (more important) players do.
So if you trade for someone who fills that salary slot, has more than this year on their contract, and fits better with the other players (but very likely is not as good in terms of pure talent) then you make the trade.
The other possibility is trading to a team, picking up a worse contract, and the team you trade him to then lets him walk (this assumes the other team ends up under the cap and so is in a different cap place than the wolves).
I am not enough of a capologist or ... well basketball expert to know who they might trade with, or what they might get, but those are the basic parameters.
Note: Just recently, days after a long players-only meeting, Finch left DLo on the bench for the end of the game(they won). Finch also didn't play DLo at the end of the playoff game last season. They have mostly played fine without DLo this year. Yes, they likely need more ball handling if they trade away DLo, especially until JMac gets back from injury (assuming he ever does), but it is pretty clear the front office (did not sign him to an extension in the off-season) and Finch both seem to have not very much invested in keeping DLo. It is possible they do, but it doesn't look like it.
Nothing. If he walks, the slot disappears since they will be over the cap. That is my second-hand understanding anyway.
They find a trade they like, or they resign him - letting him just walk is the worst of the three outcomes, probably. I am not even saying that absokutely won't resign him, I mean it is possible I guess, but it would probably be at less than he is making now.
Which is not exactly exciting, I admit. I mean, they are in a bad position, no doubt. I am just arguing they are not absolutely in the Bird Rights trap, honestly, he is not valuable enough, he doesn't give them enough, for them to be forced into resigning him.
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