Point Blank – April 26
NBA Plot Twists – Is there a Doctor in the House…Those moments when Prince was King…The Pistons were a better playoff team than either the Pacers or the Raptors…Does Chris Sale trust his defense now, or is it just some early season noise?...Time to focus again on Bats and the Pelfrey…
There is a lot of work to do today, the NBA having broken away from the gravitational pull of its regular season, now becoming more like a meteor traveling in an uncharted direction. That Golden State path to coronation is no longer a safely prescribable orbit, and if you were looking forward to the basketball majesty of a Stephen Curry/Chris Paul showdown you will have to settle for Sega.
Since there is so much to sort through the jukebox will be called on once more, a final tribute to Prince, and this one rather significant. I had the opportunity to join in some terrific weekend discussions about his place in the annals of contemporary culture, and perhaps summed up my own feelings succinctly with the take of being a big fan of Prince, but not necessarily enjoying much of his recorded music at all. That may sound confusing but it needn’t be, so on a day in which top-level basketball talents will be the focus point, it is worth delving into.
I thought that Prince was the greatest talent of his generation, but that did not necessarily lead to the best body of work, because so much of what he did came so easily for him. In being in front of a pop audience through most of his years not all that much was demanded from him - an escape from the humdrum of daily life for 3:30 of something catchy, before returning to routine, is meaningful to many. I cannot fault that because it is real, and genuine. But it limits the artist, and from what I know of Prince’s complex existence, it was in fighting those limitations, knowing that he was capable of so much more and that he was often being rewarded for humdrum aspects of himself, that internal conflicts were created.
How much was he capable of? Try this, live from Syracuse during the Purple Rain tour, and all of those disposable pop hits get dropped to a much lower shelf, or perhaps even to a sound-proofed drawer where they can be shut away. This is the Prince that far too few got an opportunity to see, and that none of us were able to see enough -
The difficulty with soaring to unique heights is that so very few get there that navigational charts for a return do not exist. You either learn to cope and breathe the thinner air at that special altitude, or to keep climbing; there is no way back. It is why some of our brightest stars are only able to shine ever so briefly…
So who’s going to win the West?
I believe it was proper for the oddsmakers to make the shift they did yesterday, with San Antonio going to the top of the NBA Future’s board based on Stephen Curry being out for at least two weeks. It wasn’t just that the path without Curry would get more difficult, but that missing that kind of time makes for a difficult transition back into playing shape, especially for someone of his energy level. But then there was this -
Chris Paul is likely done for the season, which also means that the Clippers are done. Golden State can still beat anyone without Curry; I am not sure LAC can even get past Portland without Paul, and that is a tumbling domino that impacts others.
There was a major focus in the Monday column on how badly the Clippers offense has been flowing, and that if Paul was going to be the leading scorer in each game it was a bad sign. Last night was more of the same – players other than him shot 23-70, and note that even when Paul was on the court the offense struggled, managing only 43 points in the first half.
So now the dominos. LAC/Portland will play at least two more games, creating a bit of a breather for the Warriors. That matters not just for the Curry timetables, but for the others getting some rest – this is still a very good team without him, but one in which the key cogs have to work much harder. Then the next domino – Golden State gets an easy Round Two. Even sans Curry the Warriors can sweep a Paul-less LAC bunch, and might be able to dispatch Portland in as few as five games. So here is what to look for – stores are naturally going to downgrade the Clippers this morning, but will they properly shorten the odds on Golden State? If not, the Warriors may have a window of value cracked open for a short while today.
Now back to the “Game Inside the Game” daily flows…
Celtics/Hawks #5 – A series in search of form (though Zig-Zaggers seem to believe they are reading some)
It is not easy to identify “form” here, even after 197 minutes. One of these teams has managed at least a 16-point lead in every game, yet neither offense has found much comfort zone, the two teams combining to miss a rather remarkable 435 shots. They are pushing the pace to try to beat the opposing defenses down the court, since neither is executing well once the other side is set, but outside of Boston’s Isaiah Thomas few players look comfortable in the open court. And Thomas himself brings a major question mark – he has been the prophet Isaiah in the Boston Garden, but an Old Testament stone thrower at Atlanta.
Isaiah Thomas home/away series splits
Atlanta Boston
Pts: 43 70
FGs: 12-36 23-47
+/-: -23 +25
Thomas did not show any home/away bias at all in his regular season numbers, so do we attribute those last two games to being either adjustments or momentum? If so there is a temptation to +7, because there is more Zig Zag in the marketplace for this one than I believe there should be. The Hawks closed at -5.5 on this court in the opener, than -6.5 for Game #2, some Avery Bradley adjustment in that one. I am not sure what has transpired since then in Boston calls for this increase.
Pacers/Raptors #5 – Charles Barkley got this one right - it is now 2-2 mostly by default (seriously, the Pistons played better in the First Round than either of these teams)
Barkley can be entertaining because of his willingness to be himself, and say things that others would hold back. Unfortunately much of what he says brings little value because he also does not put a lot of work into his assignments, and he has been inexcusably lazy when assigned to the NCAA tournament, not putting much effort in at all. But the NBA playoffs are his wheelhouse, and his handicap of the Raptors may be as astute as anything you will read anywhere -
“I go back and look at my career and great teams are always greedy. Toronto is just a good team. They were content with the split. Look at their energy level in Game #3 versus Game #4, it is like night and day. You had to know Indiana was going to come out and punch you in the mouth. You can just see it in their energy level.”
It goes back to an issue that was highlighted from the start in this series – for as terrific as Kyle Lowry was during the regular season, would his legacy of having struggled in the playoffs became a weight on his psyche? And the same could be said of DeMar DeRozan, who had been alongside Lowry as Toronto got eliminated in the first round after each of the last two seasons. So far in this series those two have played poorly enough to have been swept -
LOWRY/DEROZAN combined production
FG% PPG
Regular Season 43.8 44.7
Playoffs 30.8 29.3
Add an additional note on DeRozan – a guy that was #3 in the NBA in getting to the FT line during the regular season did not get a single attempt in Games #2 and #4. That is an alarming sign, showing a hesitancy that indicates a lack of confidence.
When your key cogs are not supplying much leadership it is naturally going to impact the energy of the entire team, and in truth the only reason this series is 2-2 is that outside of Paul George, Indiana has not brought much to the table either, before Ian Mahimni and George Hill gave him some help on Saturday. The Pacers have been every bit as tentative and passive as the Raptors, but I do wonder if there was a bit of a paradigm change in Game #4 – after losing the boards by 52 in the first three games, Indiana won that battle 43-40, with Frank Vogel using a bigger lineup, Myles Turner getting a start. Turner was only 2-13 from the field, but contributed seven rebounds, two blocked shots and a steal in 26:51.
Item: Chris Sale is allowing more contact, but getting more outs and winning more games
The 2015 season was a major disappointment for Chris Sale – despite having almost 100 more strikeouts (274) than hits allowed (185), all he could get was a 13-11/3.41 for his 208.2 innings. So when you see his 4-0/1.80 to open 2016 you might think that his stuff is even more difficult to square up. But it hasn’t been -
Career 2015 2016
K/9 10.2 11.8 7.8
SWS% 12.1 14.6 11.1
Those declines might even lead you to believe there is something wrong. But there isn’t. Sale has been getting a lot more contact outs, keeping the ball down in the zone, and that is where he has made a big jump -
Career 2015 2016
GB% 44.7 42.6 50.0
By getting more contact outs Sale has worked at an efficient 14.5 PPI so far, after only finishing under that rate in eight of his 31 starts in 2015. Could this really be attributed to him having more confidence in the defense behind him? I pose that as a question because I do not have the answer, but the numbers are rather interesting. The White Sox were a dismal #27 in PADE (Park Adjusted Defensive Efficiency) and #24 in DRS (Defensive Runs Saved) last season, but are sitting at #2 in PADE and #7 is DRS as we near 20 games, when those numbers can begin to be trusted a bit.
Adding Todd Frazier at 3B and Brett Lawrie at 2B are big plusses over 2015, and while shortstop remains a concern, the position may still be better off than with Alexei Ramirez. Meanwhile if the hitters do elevate the ball, Austin Jackson and Adam Eaton cover a lot of gaps.
If Sale does have that trust, it brings something significant to his game – he can induce early contact because his stuff, and his control, are so good that hitters dread falling behind in the count and having no chance. Robin Ventura explained that well after Sale’s recent 2-1 win over the Angels – “You don’t want to wait around too long because if you get yourself in a two-strike count, the odds go up of him punching you out rather than you putting it in play.”
You should not get too excited yet – Sale’s BABIP is also at .195, which won’t last. But there may be something genuine happening here, and it is worth understanding exactly why.
In the Sights…
This one should not come as a surprise to those that have been following along, but as long as Mike Pelfrey is getting more market respect than he deserves I am going to stay in play, and that means #967 Oakland (7:05 Eastern) tonight, with the added bonus of the marketplace refusing to believe what they are seeing from Rich Hill, making him an under-rated commodity (let’s call it good up to -125).
Pelfrey enters tonight’s game with a respectable 3.68 ERA, and hence is priced competitively, despite the fact that he has simply been awful. He has faced 71 batters so far and only retired 39 of them, a Waiver Wire ratio, but it has been a rather magical run-prevention dance. Consider this slash line –
AVG .357
OBP .457
SLG .536
No MLB player hit better than .338 last year; only Bryce Harper (.460) and Joey Votto (.459) eclipsed that OBP, and just barely; and only 12 players had a higher SLG%. Yet standard baseball grading rates Pelfrey’s ERA as being better than the MLB average of 3.97 so far. How does that happen? Over his last two starts Pelfrey gets credit for two full innings worth of outs from pitches that he did not throw, with four ground-ball double plays, a line-out double play, and a base-runner being cut down by an outfielder’s throw. ERA gives him pitching credit for those outs, but other metrics are not fooled - FIP tracks him at 6.23 and SIERA 6.24, the consistency between those models telling us something. When your base-runners allowed (20 hits and 12 walks) are 4X your strikeouts (8), you are not throwing the ball well.
The same can’t be said for Hill, who is having a resurgence that brings some numbers so bright that they have caused a little marketplace blindness, and a refusal to accept. In eight starts since rejoining The Show late last summer it has been a rather startling ratio of 65 strikeouts vs. only 34 hits allowed over 48 IP, while also having more than half of all balls put into play being hit on the ground. He is making some awfully good pitches, and in seeing him fan Carlos Beltran three times in a win at Yankee Stadium last week, you can note the problem his stuff brings to even a fundamentally sound veteran hitter. The entire Detroit roster only has 16 plate appearances against him, so Hill has a chance to make a couple of good passes through that batting order tonight.
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