Point Blank – May 2, 2017
Does “Compete” become the Jazz melody…There don’t appear to be many Wizards behind the curtain…On why Matt Harvey’s last start may not matter at all, but why the early form of Jeremey Hellickson and Cole Hamels indeed does
The anticipation that Monday’s NBA second round matchups might bring some high levels of basketball drama went out the window rather quickly, Cleveland and Houston playing at levels that the opposition could not match, and in particular the markets now have one of the more challenging reads in their setting of Game #2 in San Antonio for Thursday.
Now time to head to Boston as the Wizards/Celtics resume, in particular with some questions about the Washington bench corps, which could be magnified if Markief Morris is not 100 percent, and then the challenges out West that come when the handicap is all about the margin, and now about which side is going to win.
There is also plenty of MLB to sort through today, some starting pitcher’s bringing key talking points, and that means a long read that calls for the Jukebox to be plugged in for some background (the general rule of thumb here will be that 2,000 words or more call for something to make the ride easier). So if the Jazz are going to be a major talking point let’s head in that direction, Jeff Beck and Stanley Clarke wondrously accompanying you to the end of today’s scribbles, live from the North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam -
Washington/Boston – There just aren’t any Wizards behind the curtain of the starting lineup
As noted here heading into the opener on Sunday, I believe the Wizards starting cast is better than that of the Celtics, but did not want any part of a series ticket beforehand because of the circumstances of that game – while both teams had to travel for a quick turnaround, and Isaiah Thomas did not even land in Beantown until around four AM after his cross-country flight, Washington going road-to-road made it a bit tougher for the underdog. Now I can go down the street a bit (Southpoint here in Las Vegas) and take as high as +290 on the Wizards to win the series, but am still hesitant until more is known about the status of Markief Morris. Why does a guy that has not been playing all the well in the playoffs matter so much? Because there just isn’t much behind him.
Washington’s lack of depth was a lead topic here during the second half of the season, noting that the cast of Wall/Beal/Porter/Gortat were all in the Top 30 in minutes played, the Wizards being the only team to have such a distinction. Then Ian Mahimni was lost for the Atlanta series, and is still not ready to go yet. So what has happened when Scott Brooks goes to the bench? Let’s go to Net PP100 counts through seven playoff games for the first three guys off the bench -
Min +/-
Oubre 124:35 -25.5
Jennings 105:11 -15.3
Bogdanovic 148:16 -9.9
I would add Jason Smith, who has also been ineffective, but he is working through a strained calf and was limited on Sunday. They hope for more minutes from him tonight, but will they be quality minutes?
There was a hope that adding Brandon Jennings would help to spell Wall, who finished #5 in the league in minutes played. It hasn’t happened. The problem is both one of talent and chemistry – Bogdanovic did not join the team until after the All Star break, and Jennings first donned a Wizards uniform a week later. Scott Brooks would like to have the reserves playing as a group, but they have not had time to develop a chemistry, and may not be all that good anyway.
If info emerges after today’s shoot-around that Morris looks ready to go I will have some #501 Washington (8:00 Eastern) in pocket, and take a bite of series price as well, but they really need some quality minutes out of Morris; there just don’t have a good way to patch it up without him (and that will limit the volume of any investment that does get made).
Utah/Golden State – If a team is only really looking to hang around, does that make them better at the task
If you are going to develop an ability to beat the betting boards in the long run you have to be able to adapt, and losing forces one to – you change or you go broke. I had a category that beat me up pretty good in my early stages of playing, the low double-figure underdog, and Jazz/Warriors brings a good time to revisit the notion.
For several years I had a dead-zone of a category, consistently losing money with teams taking short doubles, staying with them because some of the game flows led me to believe that my thought processes weren’t bad, but that I was unlucky. I was enamored by underdogs in that range that I thought had a chance to actually win the game, and on many occasions they were right in the hunt, but ultimately failed. It wasn’t really bad luck, however, but a mindset thing. Over time I learned that the odds of the underdog winning the game outright, and of covering the spread, did not necessarily go hand-in-hand.
Here is the gist – if I thought a team was capable of winning, it would tend to mean they felt the same way themselves, and would prepare accordingly. And when your goal is to win the game you stay with it, until the scoreboard takes that goal away. What happened on many occasions to my investment? A team played hard as long as they could win, but once it got away there was often a collapse. With the goal gone, the focus was terminated. Over time I learned to avoid the traps that these games bring, and sometimes take advantage in the other direction, usually through In-Running or Halftime wagering as the flow unfolds. And from the other end of the spectrum I learned that underdogs that were just coming in to compete, without an expectation of winning outright, often provided value because they would stay with their plan regardless of how the scoreboard read.
I believe this is a good way to approach Jazz/Warriors. Usually when a team has a playoff series win under their belts they get to the “eyes on the prize” at this stage, but I don’t believe that is the case for Utah. While there are veterans like Boris Diaw and Joe Johnson around this is a young group building for the future, and they may play loosely throughout this series, not being burdened by expectation.
This notion came front-and-center for me after reading about the prelude to their Game #7 vs. the Clippers, when Quin Snyder only wrote one word on the chalkboard – “Compete”. They went out and did just that, with seven players scoring in double figures through a solid if unsexy floor game (24 assists vs. only eight turnovers), and they won the boards 46-38 despite foul trouble for their bigs inside.
If that is the mindset this series becomes interesting, even if it won’t last long. The Jazz are a difficult team to blow out of games because of their balance and depth, and Rudy Gobert patrolling the paint means that they are rarely dominated around the basket (it was remarkable that they handled LAC as easily as they did on Sunday with Gobert fouling out in just 13:26 of court time).
Will their mindset be to play the best 48 minutes they can tonight, regardless of W/L considerations? It may be, all the while the favored Warriors would be more than happy to win by 10-12 points without exerting more energy than is necessary. There is a mind-set notion that urges some caution here, Golden State more than forewarned because the Jazz won 105-99 as +10 here three weeks ago, when all of the key Warriors played except for Klay Thompson. But I will take a small piece of #503 Utah (10:30 Eastern) if a +14 shows, and if I don’t see one will be on the look-out for something I can take advantage of during the In-Running.
Now let’s head to the Tuesday diamonds…
Item: What do we do with Matt Harvey’s last start?
After a strong opening to the 2017 season, a 2-0/2.84 through four starts in which he did not necessarily have brilliant stuff, but worked to a nice rhythm, it would appear that the wheels came off for Harvey in his last outing, a 7-5 loss to the Braves at CitiField. But did they? The game provided a grading challenge that carries over to his return match against that same lineup tonight.
Harvey left in the top of the fifth inning after facing 24 batters, six of them getting hits, five drawing walks, and only one striking out. That was as many bases-on-balls allowed as his previous four starts. But there is an * that may need to be attached.
Noah “I don’t need an MRI” Syndergaard was originally slotted to start that game, which began at 1:10 Eastern, Harvey slated to work the following evening at Washington. As such, Harvey stayed with his usual routine of spending part of Wednesday in the weight room, and he was not notified he would be starting until Syndergaard was scratched just a few hours before first pitch. He wasn’t ready physically, and perhaps not mentally.
Want some evidence of how much that change in the scheduling impacted Harvey? Let’s look at his average fastball rate, in order, through his first five starts –
Braves 94.9
Phillies 93.4
Marlins 94.5
Nationals 93.0
Braves 91.8
I have already reduced the weighting of the Atlanta outcome significantly. Based on how Harvey’s stuff looks tonight, I may end up throwing it out entirely; because of the circumstances of that game it may tell us nothing of value about his current abilities.
In the Sights, Tuesday MLB…
On Monday there was a focus on using key early-season “Rate Factors” in gauging how well pitchers are throwing the ball, outside of the baseball geometry that can have such a short-term effect on the base outcome statistics, using Julio Teheran as a prime example (and there are indeed emerging reasons to be concerned about Teheran).
There are a couple of others bringing early-season notions that the markets may not be reading properly, and that will open up a pair of opportunities to put these thought processes into play, with #908 Chicago Cubs Run Line (8:05 Eastern) and #926 Houston Team Total Over (8:10 Eastern) going to pocket. The focus today is anti-Jeremy Hellickson and anti-Cole Hamels.
Hellickson’s bottom line looks nearly brilliant, a 4-0/1.80 that means being in the running for a spot in the All Star game. That is a lot for a guy that has been a steady career performer, but at 65-58/3.83, with a 4.28 FIP, he has generally been no better than average. So has Hellickson reached back and found something? He is throwing strikes at a rather superb rate, but there really has been nothing special about this stuff. So let’s do some comparisons of the last three seasons -
W/L ERA K% GB% SWS%
2015 9-12 4.62 19.0 42.4 10.3
2016 12-10 3.71 20.0 40.7 10.8
2017 4-0 1.80 9.6 32.3 8.1
Storm clouds on the horizon – Hellickson’s bottom line is much better, despite far fewer strikeouts, far fewer ground balls, and a shrinking SWS%. Despite being off to what looks like a great start to 2017, those three categories are all career lows, and of the 53 pitchers that have worked 30 innings or more this season his K% is dead last, while his GB% is #51. So why has the bottom line been so good?
BABIP HR/FB%
2015 .291 13.3
2016 .274 12.7
2017 .196 4.4
Here is where you can see some early-season roulette. Hellickson has been getting a lot of fly ball outs, which is the single most difficult way for a pitcher to survive. It gets even more difficult when you have to pitch in Wrigley with a slight wind blowing towards right field, which is where the Cubs left-handed power will be pulling a guy that does not throw hard enough (average fast-ball at 89.9) to prevent it.
Then there is Hamels, who has been a consummate pro’s pro on the mound, which can inevitably work against a guy, in this instance because he has compiled 10 consecutive seasons of at least 183.1 innings, eight of them over 200, including the last seven in a row. Might he be wearing down? A 2-0/3.03 does not send up smoke signals anywhere, but let’s do the same thing that we did with Hellickson, and put the last three seasons in perspective, this time shortening it up to the basic early-season rate stats –
K% BB% GB% SWS%
2015 24.4 7.1 47.7 13.3
2016 23.6 9.1 49.6 12.2
2017 11.5 9.2 46.5 7.5
And while I often mention that O-Swing% can’t be used with as much confidence because there is some judgment involved I believe it matters here, because as a guy slows down the hitters get a much better chance to read the strike zone –
O-Swing%
2015 34.8
2016 35.0
2017 25.1
Like Hellickson, Hamels has been successfully walking a tight-rope, giving up a lot more contact but getting away with it, in this instance a .219 BABIP that is on the heels of .294 and .299 the previous two seasons.
Want to set a perspective that perhaps helps the most? The pitching metric xFIP looks at the various components inside of the Hamels/Hellickson lines, assuming a league-average HR/FB rate, and here is the game-by-game for each of them so far this season -
Hamels Hellickson
4.61 5.80
5.14 5.46
5.66 5.71
5.25 5.56
5.30 3.77
Quite a way from 2-0/3.03 and 4-0/1.80, isn’t it?
I’ll back the Cubs to have an opportunity to break tonight’s game open, with nothing particularly wrong with Jon Lester in his 0-1/3.68 opening (you can get a small underdog return on the R.L. right now, and value extends to -105), and use the Astros offense into Hamels and the Rangers bullpen, opting to not rely on Mike Fiers (the going rate is 4.5).
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