Point Blank – May 15, 2017
It is Last Call for Wizards/Celtics…It was an F for the A’s bullpen, but how does that impact the rest of the team (on the psychology of Baseball, redux)…
Sunday’s Western Conference opener brought quite a stir to the basketball consciousness, the Spurs playing loosely and confidently to thoroughly out-play the Warriors well into the third quarter, until Kawhi Leonard had to depart. Now it appears that Leonard will likely not be available until Game #3, which creates all sorts of handicapping conundrums for Tuesday night. But before then we have our first Game #7 on the 2017 playoffs, and likely our last one, so time to head to Boston…
WASHINGTON/BOSTON – On Game #7 in general, and how much of this comes down to Wall/Thomas in particular
There is something special about a Game #7 in a playoff series, and in particular in basketball or hockey, where physical energy plays such a key role (on the MLB diamonds it can be much different, the key being to remain calm rather than shift to a higher degree of energy). It is also what makes tonight’s showcase a fascinating because: A. These teams lack experience for such a setting; and B. The two key cogs that will play the biggest roles have been defended rather well by the opposing defenses over the last four games.
I’ll dismiss the first notion quickly, though the Sports Mediaverse will have all sorts of numbers floating around today, in particular about how good Boston has been in these games. There is indeed a strong history for the franchise, but there is nothing applicable for any of the players wearing Celtics green and white. Only Al Horford has any appreciable playing time in a Game #7, that coming with Atlanta, while Jae Crowder (Dallas), Amir Johnson (Toronto) and Gerald Green (Miami) have been involved with other teams, but largely as spectators.
For Washington it isn’t much different – Marcin Gortat (Orlando), Brandon Jennings (Milwaukee) and Ian Mahimni (Indiana) have been a part of the set-up, but were not necessarily important cogs on the floor. This is new for these groups, and let’s let Scott Brooks set up the psychology – “The pressure of playing in the NBA game is just playing hard. If you put pressure on ‘I have to make shots, I have to get 25, I have to get 35 or whatever,’ you’re probably going to set yourself up for maybe not a lot of success. But you just focus on playing hard and trying to take care of your teammates. I think that’s the pressure that needs to be applied on everybody. If you do that, you can live with the results.”
So who do we trust under the pressure? That is a difficult question to answer. The markets are running the Celtics a couple of pennies higher than the average line for the earlier three games on this court, and there has been a pronounced statement regarding the Total –
Open Close Score
Game #1 215 216.5 234
Game #2 219 218 228*
Game #5 215.5 218 224
Game #7 212.5 210.5 ?
*-In regulation
And naturally that 210.5 I listed above is the current line, not necessarily where the closer will be.
Does it make sense that defenses get better the deeper a series goes, having seen just about everything the opposing playbook has to offer, plus the particular moves of each player? Yes. But have the markets adjusted too far? Should the 50-50 plateau for this game be sitting 18 points below the average score in the series on this court? That is the question of the night, in particular because this setting is rather unique – while a Game #7 often means a layer of fatigue attached, this is only the fourth game being played over the last 11 days.
And that takes us to John Wall and Isaiah Thomas, the last major memory of this series being the clutch triple that Wall knocked down on Friday night.
When this series began I did not believe that either team would do a very good job of defending the other, especially the catalysts at PG. But while Wall and Thomas exploded in the first two games, their offensive efficiency has dropped significantly since that memorable OT affair in Game #2. Let’s look at how the splits in their performances have been in terms of converting their shot opportunities –
First Two PPG FG% L4 PPG FG%
Wall 30.0 48.1 24.5 34.9
Thomas 43.0 51.8 19.3 38.9
In particular a surprising development has been Wall shooting better beyond the arc, 7-19 for 36.8, as on his attempts to finish near the basket, 23-66 for 34.8, though the last ofur. That was a storyline brought into play prior to Game #6, and while Wall drained the most important shot, he had only been 8-24 prior to that.
Now comes the biggest decision aspect for me of this game – has this been a case of the defenses tactically getting better, or has it been some physical/mental fatigue for those two key cogs? The answer is naturally a bit of both, but to what degree? The emotional roller coaster that Thomas went through was one of the more unique cycles any athlete will ever have to face, especially with all of the travel involved, while there may be the residual for Wall of being #5 in the regular-season for minutes played, and #1 in these playoffs. For a player that relies so much on his physical energy to get the ball to the rim, that can matter.
What does it leave? I believe the markets are just a pinch high on the Side, and a pinch low with the current Total, although it has gone up after reaching 209.5. I have a “go” with the Washington Team Total at 101, which came close to appearing when the early wave of Under money was flowing (Pinny is back to 101.5 Over -125 as I write this), but unless that appears it will be a matter of watching closely for In-Running purposes, with nothing in pocket at tipoff.
Item: On that Oakland bullpen, and the psychology of Baseball
An on-going talking point across these pages and the follow-up threads is how different baseball is from the other sports in terms of physical energy exerted, and the psychology. The “team” components do not connect up nearly the same way on the diamonds as on the football gridirons or basketball courts, with the bulk of play being a series of one-on-one encounters between batter and pitcher.
As such, measuring team performances can be such a gray area – the players on the field for the Mets and Orioles were much better than the players on the field for the Marlins yesterday, yet New York and Baltimore got tagged with losses, and Miami got a win, because of major variances in the quality of pitching. The Mets scored nine runs on 15 hits and the Orioles eight on 13, which could mean the hitters going to the box with added confidence in the next game, despite the loss, while the run production for the Marlins was connected to a three-run pinch hit HR by Tyler Moore. How confident do the other position players, who combined for just four hits, come out of that game, despite it being a “win”?
I bring this up because there is one of the more unique settings we are going to find coming up with the Oakland series at Seattle, the A’s off of a frustrating weekend in which they led Texas in the seventh inning or late in all three games, and came away with an 0-3 collar. The bullpen was simply a disaster, working to a 19.28 ERA across those defeats. How would you liked to have been Bob Melvin this weekend?
The question going forward is whether this impacts the psyche of the entire team as they got on the plane for Seattle together, or if it something that only involves the psyche of the relief pitchers that were involved. Let’s go to Oakland starter Kendall Graveman, who carried a 4-2 lead into the bottom of the 7th -
“That’s the game of baseball. We still trust those guys. There are going to be 162 games this year. There are going to be times when stuff like this happens. But I have full confidence they will bounce back. You make one bad pitch in the bullpen and it seems like a bad outing. That’s the difference between those guys and being a starter. I gave up two runs in the first and was able to put up zeroes after that. Those guys don’t have that luxury.”
And from Ryan Madson, who came in to protect the lead, but had a bad outing - “There is no `shoulda’ in baseball. It’s baseball. There are no guarantees until the last out is made. That’s true on both sides. It’s just the game. The outs get tougher the deeper you go into the game. I wanted to be that guy today where we get out of that funk. I wanted to be that guy to get us on a good run. It didn’t happen. So the next game, whoever goes out there first, here’ going to try and start that wave in the right direction. That’s all you can do. It’s a long season.”
In the Sights, Monday MLB…
One of the laments I have noted in the discussion threads this season is that notions of wanting to back Chris Archer and Carlos Carrasco early this season have brought a lot of company, and hence not much line value, though they have both gotten out of the gate well. This evening in Cleveland they go head-to-head and there is just enough of a price edge to get in play with #958 Cleveland/Tampa First Half Under (6:10 Eastern), with 4 Under -120 being written on the wish list this morning, and getting filled at a nickel less than that.
One of the teams must get to three runs for this ticket to lose, and note that has happened only twice in the 15 “First Half” sequences by these two. In nine of those 15 the opposing team was held to one run or none, and of course even if one of the starters allows three there can still be a winning ticket at 3-0, or a push at 3-1.
How dominant have these two been in the early stages of games? Let’s look at the slash lines in their first two passes through the opposing lineups –
1st Pass 2nd Pass
Archer .145/.181/.203 .197/.264/.242
Carrasco .183/.222/.350 .175/.230/.296
There isn’t anything special about the offensive form of either side right now, and in particular note The Tribe this weekend vs. Minnesota – the hitters generated six runs over 2.2 innings vs. Hector Santiago, but only three runs vs. the Twins pitchers over the other 23.1 frames.
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