Point Blank – August 23
If Bortles is good the Jax “O” could be great…Archie Bradley may never be great…In true baseball terms, Arian Gonzalez wasn’t really great yesterday…Could there be a hint of greatness in the Cleveland WR corps…
The tour of the NFL training camps heads to Jacksonville, where Gus Bradley once showed up looking to build a defense-first team, which has now morphed have turned into something unexpected on the other side of the ball. Then time to ponder something that has been a lingering thread discussion this season – has Archie Bradley gone from “prospect” to “suspect”.
Item: If Blake Bortles has real upside the Jaguars ceiling is the sky
Quarterbacks tend to live on island in the way that they are rated by the Sports Mediaverse, getting too much credit when an offense succeeds, and taking too much blame when it doesn’t. As such the early career arc of Bortles is already a prime example –
YPP TD INT PR
2014 6.1 11 17 69.5
2015 7.3 35 18 88.2
It would have been easy to peg Bortles as “not ready for prime time” for that rookie season, and to then claim the major increase was a result of his maturing. There genuinely is a real degree of truth to that, but let’s build a different model here that might mean even more in terms of rating his past, and understanding what 2016 could bring for the Jaguars offense –
A. 2014 was a bad season to be a QB in Jacksonville
B. 2015 was a much better season to be a QB in Jacksonville
C. 2016 may be a damn good season to be a QB in Jacksonville
In 2014 Denard Robinson led the Jaguars in rushing. He is fighting to win a roster spot now. Bortles was second, many of those yards coming when he was scrambling for his life, a rookie season in which he was sacked 55 times. The leading receiver was Cecil Shorts with 53 catches, and Shorts is now scrapping to make the roster in Houston. #2 receiver Allen Hurns, #3 Allen Robinson and #4 Marqise Lee were all rookies. The OL was a mess, and the reality is that Bortles did not have much chance to play well at QB with that surrounding cast.
It got better in 2015. T.J. Yeldon was drafted to be the lead RB, and would have likely topped 1,000 yards if not for injury. Robinson and Hurns stepped up in their second seasons to catch 144 passes, including 24 for TDs, developing a rapport with Bortles, although Lee’s season was cut short by injury. Julius Thomas came on board at TE to add a dimension, and caught 32 passes despite his season also being cut short by injury.
Now Yeldon, Lee and Thomas are healthy, and Chris Ivory has been added to bring even more punch to the ground game. The OL still won’t be a strength, but the talent and depth across the non-QB skill positions rivals just about any team out there. Hence why the focus now goes to Bortles – he has the physical tools to utilize all of the weapons that are surrounding him; it becomes a matter of having the leadership and moxie to make it all come together.
Jacksonville rated #29 in adjusted offense by the Football Outsiders in 2014, and improved to #23 last year. The potential is there to go from #23 to top 10 this season, as we find out just how much upside Bortles brings.
Item: Is there anything to really like about Archie Bradley
Let’s bring Bradley font and center today, for while he has been a topic for discussions across the threads in recent weeks, not everyone is able to sort across all of those pages (we are working on better formats).
A lot of folks wanted to like Bradley when the season began, as he worked his way up the MLB chain after being the #7 player drafted in 2011. But there wasn’t much to see in his late-2015 stint with the Diamondbacks, a 2-3/5.80 across eight outings that included a disastrous 5.6 BB/9. Now he has made 26 starts for Arizona, at 135.2 innings, and I still cannot detect much hint of him being a big-time prospect.
Bradley is 6-11/5.24 across those games, and both FIP (4.68) and SIERA (4.75) have not liked him. They shouldn’t. Lack of command is the #1 issue, and to understand how bad it is let’s set some perspective, looking at all MLB starters that have worked at least 130 innings the past two seasons (there are 194 of them) –
2015-16 BB/9
Bradley 4.8
Finnegan 4.3
Delgado 4.2
Lorenzen 4.1
Liriano 4.1
Jimenez 4.1
It is one thing to be the worst, but it is another matter entirely when that rate is a half-walk per game beyond anyone else. Of course a pitcher can get away with wildness if there is something special elsewhere, like strikeouts or ground balls. But Bradley’s average fastball has only been 92.2, leading to a 7.8 K/9 that can’t overcome the walks, and neither can a 45.8 GB%.
Yes, young pitchers take time to develop, and it has not helped Bradley that the defense behind him is terrible. But instead of progress it has been an 0-2/9.00 across four August starts in which he has only lasted 18 innings, with of course the requisite 10 walks across that span (his August PPI is an astronomical 22.7). After much of this season has been spent by me watching MLB Sharps and Fantasy Gurus looking for “the buy signal” from Bradley, might there come a point at which he gets relegated to being a non-prospect?
About Last Night…
Or yesterday afternoon in this case. In the on-going battle to try to come up with the best Power Ratings there are just so many elements that get outside of the box scores, and I could not help but file this comment from Adrian Gonzalez off to the side, after he hit three home runs at Cincinnati yesterday –
“It’s tiny (the GABP) and the ball flies. Right field is short. I hit two fly balls that went out. I could have been 1-6 with a homer.”
That is an honest and open admission from Gonzalez, and also something useful. I believe one of the next waves in baseball handicapping will be “Real Home Runs”, essentially laying out an average ballpark dimension over top of all balls hit in each game, and determining which were “Real Home Runs” and which were “Ballpark Home Runs”. A few folks have pondered it, and the data is available, but I have not seen the execution just yet.
In the Sights, NFL…
Let’s go to the NFL and take a lead for Friday, with #258 Tampa Bay/Cleveland Over (8:00 Eastern), a setting in which each offense is under-valued. They are pricing the game tied as the second lowest Total on this week’s board, and that does not compute. So time to go to market now, since there are a few 41’s that can be found for a good shopper, and value exists up to 43.
The various components for the Buccaneers were part of why an Over ticket was put “In the Sights…” against Jacksonville on Saturday, and even despite an ugly first quarter from Jameis Winston the offense rolled to 28 first downs, with a pair of missed FGs by Roberto Aguayo preventing more production. In the first game in front of the home fans with Dirk Koetter as HC look for some early offensive aggressiveness, and plenty of success, against a Cleveland defensive front that may be the NFL’s worst, and I don’t mind Mike Glennon or Ryan Griffin for the latter stages.
I also expect to see a lot of aggressiveness from the Cleveland offense, which attacked well early against Atlanta last week, Robert Griffin capping a pair of drives with TD passes. But that was without Josh Gordon and Corey Coleman on the field, and for the first time in camp the Browns are practicing with all hands on deck. In analyzing the Cleveland 2016 prospects here last week that upside was noted, and how about this from two-time Pro Bowl CB Joe Haden, after going up against Gordon, Coleman and Terrell Pryor in practice – “That’s a really, really solid receiving corps. You know, each one of them running under 4.3 can take you vertical. Those are really, really good deep threats. Teams don’t have two players like that, and we have three of them. So just being able to challenge people vertically, not being able to put an extra safety in the box because you need to have two safeties deep to make sure the corners don’t get beat, I think that just stretches out the field for us in ways that we haven’t had before.”
I expect the losing team to put at least 20 points on the board in this one, which sets up solid value at the price point.
In the Sights, Tuesday MLB…
I wanted to await some confirmation before stepping in here this morning, and with Kevin Pillar being activated and projected back into the starting lineup after going 6-7 in two rehab starts, I can go against the early markets and put #912 Toronto (7:05 Eastern) into play, the Pinny opener of -160 now down to as low as -135 (-145 is the value point).
Pillar’s return is not just a major defensive boost, but it moves the resurgent Melvin Upton’s bat over to a corner OF spot, after he produced three HRs and drove in six runs over the last five games. The Blue Jays don’t just bring the better offense and better defense, but also so much more energy – the Angels have gone almost a full month without winning a road game (0-10, at -39 runs, since winning in Kansas City on July 26), and in a 3-14 overall slide they have been held to two runs or less eight times.
Tyler Skaggs exploded on to the scene by not allowing a run in his first two starts after being called up, but that adrenaline has worn off and the scouting reports are now out there – it has been an 0-2/9.88 across his last three outings in which he has allowed 30 base-runners in only 13.2 frames, including three home runs. While Skaggs does have some upside his MLB career has now topped 200 innings, at a 9-13/4.78 performance level, and the combination of that, his current form, and the lethargic team behind him does not warrant the kind of market support the Angels received this morning.
U.S. Election 2016 Power Rating: Democrats -675
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