Point Blank – May 27
Can Durant/Westbrook "Deal" with Game 6 pressure (and yes, it applies to Lowry/DeRozan also, but they could play well and still lose)…The best time to play any trend is right before it happens…There aren’t many Rays of sunshine for Chris Archer these days…
The pressure mounts in the NBA Conference Finals now, with potentially three teams facing elimination the next two days – naturally the Raptors and Warriors pack up their season if they lose, but might Saturday night in Oklahoma City in effect be an elimination game for the Thunder as well?
There is a lot to get through today, but the focus will go right to the key talking points for both series, as the “Game Inside the Game” aspects continue. And to set it up we’ll stay with the Bay area catalog of the Classic Jukebox, the Grateful Dead properly setting up what may be akin to a big-time Old West poker game on Saturday night; based on what I saw Thursday “Deal” becomes extremely pertinent. One of life’s realities can be told well from a poker table, the classic notion of it not being the quality of the cards you hold, but instead how well you play them. This one is live from Buffalo in 1989 -
Since it cost a lot to win
and even more to lose
You and me bound to spend some time
just wondering what to choose
We could call this “The Ballad of Russ & Kevin”. So let’s go to work.
Warriors/Thunder #6 – A pair of Aces is great to open, but only if the Aces are indeed Aces
The roller coaster ride of the Thunder has been a fascinating study of the human psyche, and of sport, over these playoffs. They have been a team good enough to beat both the Warriors and Spurs on the road, and to blow them out at home, yet a group also capable of losing outright as -14 to Dallas, by 32 at San Antonio, and by 27 at Golden State. This has all been in the span of five weeks.
In Games 3-4 of this series OKC played some of the best basketball we will see in this era. There was a full team commitment to winning the games, and Billy Donovan found it easy to fill out a flush or a full house from those first two aces. Then Game 5 happened, old habits returned, and Donovan’s unmatched pair got beaten by a Golden State straight. Durant/Westbrook returned to “Hero Ball”, and it opens some genuine questions about Saturday night.
You’ll see some misleading stuff out of the sports mediaverse today. From the AP lead story there is “Kevin Durant scored 40 points and Russell Westbrook added 31 points, eight assists, seven rebounds and five steals for the Thunder”, those statistical totals reading like some form of basketball brilliance, yet not acknowledging that in reality neither played well, nor in fact gave their teammates much of a chance to.
Here are more important numbers – that duo took 59 of the 91 Thunder FG attempts, only making 38.9 percent of them, and nearly had as many turnovers (10) as assists (12). They were 5-19 from 3-point range, far too many attempts given the overall team shot count, and no you can’t blame that on late forces – only two of those triples came over the final 3:00. Getting seven rebounds apiece is nothing special given their minutes, 44:36 for Durant and 40:52 for Westbrook; Steph Curry had seven boards in only 37:27. After coming up with three blocked shots in each of Game 3 and 4, Durant only had one.
When things are working for the Thunder, and they are in the lead, they have shown an ability to remain focused, which has led to great team play and some of those shocking scoreboard margins. When they fall behind they have tended to lose that concentration, Westbrook in particular. The key stretch of Game 5 may well have been that sequence in which the Thunder went to the lead midway through the third quarter, because in the frenzy of that scramble, Westbrook turned the ball over three times between 7:03 and 3:59, all three being rushed fast break attempts, two of them in which he was outnumbered and trying to force his way to the basket. Make those mistakes against a team as good, and as sound, as Golden State, and it will almost assuredly show on the final scoreboard. In this case it did.
That makes Saturday’s setting fascinating for the observer of both the sport and the human psyche, but not one that is easy to invest in before tipoff. Will Durant/Westbrook play under control, get their teammates involved, and do the things they have to do to win a game? Or will the pressure of the moment alter their senses the way it did in Oakland on Thursday? Once again there will be many early “tells” available for the In-Running. You can trust the Warriors to bring an even keel to the proceedings (seriously, is there anyone more calm under pressure in today’s NBA than Andre Iguodala), yet that may not be good enough if the Thunder have the proper focus. That is the conundrum for now – OKC will bring great energy, but will there be enough basketball patience and savvy to go along with it?
Cavaliers/Raptors #6 – We can trust LeBron to be LeBron, and then?
Through five games in the Eastern Conference Finals there has not been the hint of a close wagering decision – no game has fallen closer than 7.5 points to the market projections, the average outcome 17.5 points from the closing line. That is not what we expect to see at this stage – the markets have been watching the teams for nearly seven full months to develop proper power ratings, and usually the teams alive at this stage bring the consistency that comes from quality. Not here, and in particular the outcomes have been bizarre because there was only one hint at a close outright outcome, all but Game 5 being decided by 15 points or more.
It has all been Home/Away disparities, which are unexpected when quality teams are in play, but Toronto is the wild card here. The Raptors are under-talented and inexperienced for what we are usually handicapping on the final weekend in May, yet despite being out-scored by 67 points are still alive. Part of that, of course, stems from Cleveland not having been good enough to put them away.
Some of the particulars are not easy to decipher. In rolling at home the Cavaliers have taken 51 of 227 shots from beyond the arc. In the two losses in Toronto, it has been 82 of 162, 41 being launched in each defeat. Cleveland has lacked the patience to attack the basket on the road, only getting to the FT line for 25 attempts in the two defeats combined. In another game in which I am unlikely to invest before tipoff, that is where the early “tell” will likely come from – will the Cavalier offense show the patience to work inside-out first? Some of this was Dwane Casey baiting them a bit, putting up a defensive wall that choose roll the dice and allow some open perimeter looks, and Casey can add another brick to that wall with Jonas Valanciunas getting back into the rotation. But it was still dice being rolled – Cleveland only knocked down 27 of those 82 triples. Should those shots fall at a higher rate, there is not much of a Plan B available.
Can the Lowry/DeRozan tandem make enough plays to offset that? That door remains slightly ajar because there is the fact that as long as Kyrie Irving is on the floor he has to guard one of them. They will play with passion early, driven by what will be one of the most intense crowds from these playoffs, but as was the case on Wednesday, if they lose contact there is the potential for it to get ugly.
About Last Night - On Jose Fernandez and “trending”
There are not many day that go by without me remembering a moment or two with “Old Joe”, who is recounted here often, and in taking advantage of what I believe was a bad line from the marketplace yesterday (I am not sure if Drew Smyly has any childen, if so they should get him a “I was once favored over Jose Fernandez” t-shirt for Father’s Day), it brought back on of our favorite axioms – “The best time to bet a trend is right before it starts”. It was the obvious notion of how the betting markets are constantly looking for patterns, which means that adjustments get quickly made as they emerge. There is a flip side – it also means knowing just when to ignore a pattern that has gone beyond is expiration date, yet one that others may still be following. Which takes us to Fernandez.
His Home/Away splits have been a buzz across the betting community, and even after yesterday’s strong showing (he struck out 12 of the 28 batters he faced) here is the career tally –
W/L ERA
Home 21-1 1.64
Away 8-10 3.54
That looks substantial, but I am not sure it means a damn thing going forward. For a performer of his abilities that kind of bias should not exist, though I believe some of it was actually a self-fulfilling prophecy, the early outcomes getting in the head a bit of someone that has not yet turned 24. The W/L records are naturally out of balance for the performance levels, but getting rewarded so well at home would naturally lead to more confidence, while the fact that he was losing on the road, despite pitching well better than league average, would create doubts. Remember that while Wins and Losses for a pitcher are of marginal importance as a handicapping factor, those numbers absolutely do matter to them (in fact, the only real value they have for the ‘capper is knowing how they impact the psyche of the pitcher).
I do not believe those road doubts exist anymore. In this last three starts from opposing mounds Fernandez has rolled to wins over the Dodgers, Nationals and Rays by a combined 14 runs, with more than twice as many strikeouts (31) as hits allowed (15). That should be more than enough to have cured whatever confidence issues that may have been lingering, and in my own Power Ratings I will not be docking him at all for the slow start his career got off to in road games.
In the Sights…
A bucket into the anti-Tampa well has brought back a nice return the last two days, and I will stay in play as long as their prices remain off. As noted back on Monday there was the potential for a market mistake in not grasping the full value of both Logan Forsythe and Kevin Kiermaeir being on the DL, and the Rays have responded so far with a 1-3 vs. a mediocre Miami team without Christian Yelich for the series, and Giancarlo Stanton for half of the games. I don’t think the markets are pricing Chris Archer properly either, so that means #919 NY Yankees (7:05) this evening, a chance to play in a pick’em range with a team that may have the better pitcher on the mound for each of the nine innings.
Archer has interesting stuff, and developed quite a reputation when he exploded from the gate last season. But after opening 9-4/2.01 in 2015 it has been a 6-14/4.63 since, and in the 3-5/5.16 of this season he has consistently labored – Archer has only made it to the seventh inning once, and has recorded a PPI of at least 16.7 in nine of 10 starts. Hitters are learning his ways, and in particular note the drop in O-S%, from 33.2 last season to just 27.2 this time (the percentage of times a pitcher induces opposing players to swing at something outside the strike zone). By not getting swings at those pitches Archer’s BB/9 has climbed from 2.8 to 4.5.
Meanwhile Masahiro Tanaka has an arc heading in the opposite direction – in addition to his already-established command of the strike zone he is inducing ground balls at a 55.4% rate – of 104 qualifying pitchers that pegs him at #12. With all components of BMC available (Joe Girardi gave Betances and Chapman some work from behind last night to help keep them in rhythm), it puts a lot of pressure on a Tampa offense that I believe has over-achieved to this point, and will eventually grade out as being below average.
In the Sights, MLB Saturday…
Michael Pineda and Matt Moore are both throwing the ball much better than the bottom lines of their outcomes suggest, and they face some vulnerable offense today. That means time to get in play with #974 Rays/Yankees Under (4:10 Eastern) as long as the 8’s hold on, and in the wee hours it appears that they will. Pineda checks in at 2-5/6.34 and Moore at 1-3/5.47, but neither those W/L records or ERA counts are even close to the pitches the two have been throwing.
Pineda is at 10.2 K/9, 2.7 BB/9 and a 45.4 GB%, with a dazzling 13.9 SWS%. Hence, xFIP is 3.54 and SIERA 3.47. Moore has also been solid across the board, with 8.7 K/9, 2.8 BB/9, 43.3 GB% and 10.8 SWS%. So go to the advanced metrics and xFIP is 3.90 and SIERA 3.87. Now Pineda brings that advantage of having the BMC cast behind him in pretty good shape, except for Joe Girardi wasting pitches from Aroldis Chapman on Friday (he is still likely to be available here), while Moore gets to face a Yankee offense that is #27 in OPS vs. left-handers, which brings a logic that tells us that may be where they belong. All key arms in the Tampa bullpen are also rested and ready.
In the Sights, MLB Sunday…
A couple of familiar wells bring the opportunity to re-fill the buckets today, including one coming from the marketplace this morning that I did not expect. So let’s play two, and it will be #920 Tampa Bay Team Total Under (1:10 Eastern) and #926 Oakland (4:05 Eastern).
Nathan Eovaldi has been a common theme here of late, in particular focusing in on him on days where all of BMC are available in the bullpen, and that is the case here. Not only is Eovaldo #2 to Noah Syndergaard in fastball velocity, but his GB% is up for the fourth straight season, to an intriguing 54.8 – if you keep throwing as hard as Eovaldi is, and yet induce ground balls as well, there is a lot of upside. Over his last two starts it has been 10 strikeouts vs. only three hits allowed, and if that ground ball up the middle by lead-off hitter Jean Segura had not hit second base two starts back at Arizona, Eovaldi would not have allowed a run in either game. Only five of the last 41 batters he has faced have reached. Now he is only being called on to go out there and cut it loose for six innings again, and he is showing a comfort in that groove (his fastball average 97.3 against Toronto in his last outing).
Meanwhile the morning trading has brought the Rich Hill/Mike Pelfrey pitching mismatch down into the mid 130’s, which is the wrong range for where those two are. The markets continue to be slow to appreciate how good Hill is at this stage, a 9-4/1.97 over the last two seasons still not being picked up by the radar screens. FIP calls him 2.60 across that same span, so calls for him to regress to the journeyman he as pre-injury may be missing the boat.
There is also no particular reason to believe Pelfrey’s 0-4/5.55 is anything less than an accurate description, taking his four-year tally to 11-31/5.01. There is nothing all that fluky happening – FIP is 5.92 and SIERA 5.05, and having allowed a pair of home runs in each of his last two starts, one has to wonder how much longer the Tigers will try to save face, sending him back out there to try to justify an awful contract. The A’s are certainly nothing special, the starting pitching matchup is being mispriced enough here to play.
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