Point Blank – May 12
Will the OKC corral be the Famous Final Scene…So far for the Red Sox, the Price has been right (let’s have a serious talk about that ERA)…Houston has been astronomically bad on the road, for a full ‘year’ now…
The Wednesday NBA playoffs brought drama from odd places, although that is no longer news in the Miami/Toronto series. The Heat got little from their starting lineup, only three assists from members of that cast outside of Dwyane Wade, and yes you could make the case with a caustic smirk that after Luol Deng went 0-8 from the field in his 24:20, his injury could not drag the team down much more. Meanwhile the Kyle Lowry/DeMar DeRozan dice rolled hot, those two combining for 59 points and looking confident in doing it (Lowry’s end-game makes will be among the lead topics when Game 6 gets previewed here tomorrow). Yet somehow with all that it was a one-point game inside of the final 2:00.
The effort from Portland was a marvel, and the respect for Terry Stotts has grown through this playoff cycle. The legs of Damian Lillard/C. J. McCollum weren’t fully there, that duo combining for just 18-47 from the field when a few more makes might have been enough to win the game, but the supporting cast played with energy and without fear, knocking down 11 triples and having both more rebounds and more steals than the Warriors. If they can add a quality big man to the mix, they can become a contender next season, but we are finished with them until October.
The question now becomes whether we will soon be finished with the Spurs as well, not just until October, but perhaps for the last time with this particular cast of characters.
The stage is set for some of the highest drama of the playoffs to date, the opportunity for the Thunder to take a step that seemed beyond their reach two months ago, and also the very real possibility that this could be the night that the curtain falls the final time for a unique group. A loss would almost assuredly mean the last we see of Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobli wearing the Spurs silver, and both the quality and style of basketball they have brought to the sport’s highest stage calls for something dignified from the Thursday jukebox. Let’s reach back to words and tempo wonderfully woven by Bob Seger into a sublime but melancholy tapestry, this one live from Chicago back in the early 90's, and ponder if it indeed this is “The Famous Final Scene” -
And how you tried to make it work
Did you really think it could
How you tried to make it last
Did you really think it would
Like a guest who stayed too long
Now it's finally time to leave
Yes, it's finally time to leave
Take it calmly and serene
It's the famous final scene
Spurs/Thunder #6 – “Think of seasons that must end…”
The starting point here is that this is a bad line in terms of projecting the outcome, if not necessarily that of splitting perception. I hinted at that yesterday when there were hopes of possibly snagging a +3; now it has come down to San Antonio -1.5 in some key precincts, although +2 can still be found. And calling it a bad line in terms of outcome is rather simple - while the Spurs indeed threw a knockout punch in the first half of the opening game, for anyone that has watched the last four games intently, two played on each court for the proper measure, San Antonio can only be a road favorite in a parallel basketball universe. The Thunder won those four games by a combined 15 points, and it is not as though any pendulums have been stretched too far in a given direction; they have simply been the better team.
Let me lay it out a different way. Oklahoma City closed at -2 here for Game 4 on Sunday. Since then there have been 96 minutes of basketball, 48 on each court, and the Thunder have won by 18. Yet this line has moved rather heavily, in the opposite direction of the basketball flow.
Why is the market trading at this price point? Because of the respect Gregg Popovich and this group have earned through the years, and a perception that with their backs to the wall the players can reach back for a special effort, and Pops can once again come up with some clipboard wizardry. It is not an unreasonable way to think, and those building that case would have won a tidy sum following those notions through the years. But does it work tonight? Is there anything tactical that can be done in this particular matchup? Let’s start by addressing some realities about how the Thunder have transformed, beginning with perhaps the most meaningful player quote there has been in this series –
“We came into tonight’s game saying, ‘We want to get all of the 50-50 balls,’ and I thought we did a great job of that for 48 minutes. We don’t want another team saying they played harder than us. I thought we did a good job of getting loose balls, getting rebounds, getting tips, and getting extra possessions to help us win the game.”
That is from Kevin Durant, after Game 5. It isn’t what you would necessarily expect from him, one of the best pure scorers to ever play the game, but it is in going from a “Pretty Team” to a “Gritty Team” that OKC has elevated to that higher level. Those past notions of the Thunder being an uptempo offense that did not do the little things necessary to win need to be removed from the imagination. After the All Star break they were only #12 in the NBA in tempo, slowly (literally) working their way into becoming a better overall team, and their rebounding has simply been ferocious – they grabbed 54.9 percent of available caroms this season, and for perspective no other team over the past four campaigns has even reached 53 percent. Over the last four games the Thunder have won the rebounding by 40. That is not an easy thing for Popovich to counter – Steve Adams is younger and quicker than anyone Pops can counter with, and he already has 60 rebounds in the series, while also scoring 28 points the last two games.
Let’s also deal with what is a lingering misconception now, though it was a major storyline throughout the season – the Thunder were indeed a terrible fourth-quarter team for much of the campaign, but in this series it has been a different story. I will discount OKC winning the final stanza of the first game 26-19, because it was an episode filled with reserves in a non-competitive game, but over the last four it has been 108-84 for Billy Donovan’s team in the final period. When it mattered most, they were not necessarily smarter, but they were younger and quicker.
San Antonio will play with the heart and basketball wisdom of a long-time champion tonight, not shrinking at all from the setting, but it is a tough matchup. It is the Spurs that actually need to speed things up, their best chance to score coming when they can beat the Thunder defense down the court to prevent them from setting up, but if you are going to run you have to get the ball off the glass first, and that is a tough battle to win against that younger front-court. I believe we may indeed be looking at “The Famous Final Scene” for cast members of a truly legendary run, and can use the marketplace to take advantage. So here we go –
If the Side is wrong, and the Total may also be adjusted a tick too low, 195.5 sitting out there after the first two series games on this court were 200 and 198.5 (the scoreboards fell 196 and 208), that means a chance to exploit them both with #544 Oklahoma City Team Total Over (8:35 Eastern), with 97 available this morning (consider it good at 98).
Item: David Price is going to be just fine (actually, he already has been)
There was a little jest going on in yesterday’s post-column thread when Palmtree, an all-around good guy but someone whose whispers often impact the early markets, began hinting at the Red Sox for today. That was potentially troublesome, because I did not want the number to get away, and fortunately it hasn’t. I was going to write about Price today anyway, but now I can both write, and play.
Price has been a terrible bust, right? Some of you probably can’t wait to bet against him, taking advantage of a fluky 4-1 W/L record that masks a hideous 6.75, with that declining velocity a sure sign he doesn’t have it. If that is you, you have company, which is why the Red Sox are back down to as low as -132 this morning. But just what kind of pitcher has Price been this season if we look at metrics other than ERA?
Career 2015 2016
FIP 3.19 2.78 2.94
SIERA 3.36 3.27 3.02
That paints a far different portrait than a 6.75. How does that happen? Because Price is actually doing some of the better pitching of his career, when we go to those Rate Charts that take baseball’s geometry out of play -
Career 2015 2016
K/9 8.7 9.2 11.5
BB/9 2.3 1.8 2.6
GB% 44.1 40.4 40.0
SWS% 9.6 11.9 14.1
Price is getting far more strikeouts than ever before, largely through so many swings and misses, and while walks and ground balls are down a bit, it is not enough for any cause for alarm. How does a guy increase his ability to make batters miss, and have his ERA take such a climb? Because baseball itself has not been kind when contact has been made –
Price MLB Rank* MLB Average
BABIP .373 #101 .295
LOB% 54.2 #103 73.4
* - Of 103 qualifying pitchers
This is why I refer to “Baseball’s Geometry” so often. When balls have been put into play against Price they have fallen in for hits at a level that will not continue, and the percentage of runners that come around to score will also decrease. It is so very rare for any pitcher to be near the bottom of both charts, but in Price’s case it has been a cluster effect – he has indeed struggled from the stretch this season in those categories, but not in a way that indicates a long-term issue.
Do you want to blame the results on what appears to be a velocity drop? You certainly can. Do you want to use that velocity drop as a play-against factor going forward? You shouldn’t. A case can be made that there is a correlation between his velocity and the temperature, and it is meaningful. Price has only appeared in two games in which the first pitch temperature was above 60 degrees, and his velocity was right where it would historically project to be in them. The rest have been either cool, or downright cold – three of seven starts have been below 50 degrees, and those are the games in which the radar guns have charted him so poorly.
So David Price should be just fine, and in fact given the early-season strikeout rates may turn out to be damn good this season. We can begin by backing him on a pleasant Boston evening that projects a first-pitch temperature in the mid-60’s...
In the Sights, Fenway…
Let’s make it #964 Boston Straight/Run Line (7:10 Eastern) as a split ticket this evening, with as high as +160 available on the RL in the morning trading being too good to pass up. A Boston win by a single run will only mean a refund, but the potential for the game to break open is high, because this is not just about getting behind Price.
Part of the reason why this line is short is the season that Dallas Keuchel and the Astros just turned in, a 2015 that offered hopes of an explosive future. So now let’s consider a couple of performance profiles –
Pitcher A 16-25/4.47
Team A 26-55
That would seem to be a rather anemic pairing, yet that is who the Red Sox are facing tonight. The first listing is Keuchel’s career road tally, and the second is something that you should learn to track when you have the time, what I call the “Running 162” chart. That measures how well a team has done over its last 162 games, a continuous look at a full season’s worth of performances. The count above just happens to be what the Astros have done on the road over their last full cycle of outcomes, including a dismal 4-11 this season. In truth, they are not yet ready for lift-off.
Why has Keuchel gone from 20-8/2.48 to 2-4/4.70? So much of it comes down to what appears to be command, tied in to a theory worth exploring - the fact that he won that 2015 AL Cy Young having hitters studying him a bit more, and becoming more patient against him.
Keuchel’s BB/9 has nearly doubled from 2015, 2.0 now 3.9, and a big part of that may be hitters recognizing his repertoire enough to lay off of borderline offerings – Keuchel got batters to swing at 33.3 percent of pitches outside the strike zone last year, but only 27.1 this time around. There has also been a reduction in GB%, and that all spells trouble against a sizzling Boston offense in this ballpark, the Red Sox leading the MLB by a wide count in AVG and SLG, and sitting #3 in OBP. Color Keuchel vulnerable here, as is a bullpen that was reduced to tinder through yesterday’s marathon vs. Cleveland, hardly the ideal before a long plane ride.
In the Sights, Yankee Stadium...
(This is a copy-and-paste from later in the thread, but it address an important topic, one that I am going to feature in the very near future, and since it also has me reaching into pocket today let's put it here...)
For benjy:
The "Firestorm in the Bronx" watch begins getting interesting as hell tonight, and will be a feature topic soon, so get ready for not only Eovadli here but Luis Severino tomorrow night as well. Here is why -
2016 Top Average Fastball Velocity:
1. Syndergaard 97.7
2. Eovaldi 96.6
3. Richards 95.7
4. Severino 95.5
5. Martinez 95.5
What happens when a guy can throw that hard, and is let know that he should never consider the 7th inning to be his domain, and instead can go out there and cut it loose? The prospects are fascinating, because that is what can happen for both Eovaldi and Severino now. There was a question of why a bullpen that already had Betances/Miller would add Chapman, and this is part of the reason - the Yankees have two young starters that can "throw it through a car wash without the ball getting wet", and can focus on those two only having to go 5-6 IPS. Pineda can be considered to be part of that mix as well.
Tonight and tomorrow will be the first starts for Eovaldi/Severino in the "BMC" era, now that Chapman is on board, and I will be watching closely to see if those radar guns possibly tick even higher. I am using #959 Kansas City Team Total Under (7:05 Eastern) as the best approach this evening, 3.5 -115 available, and because it is such a key issue going forward, and is already planned as a future lead topic, I will copy and paste this back into the opening thread as well.
Chicago Cubs 200 Prop (through May 11): 11
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