Point Blank – May 23, 2017
Did the Celtics solve that “toughness” issue (thoughts from a window seat)…Time to begin wagering on the “black magic” of Santana to wear off…
Things are relatively back to normal here after losing a full day to a travel issue, a weekend of hobnobbing with some industry folks in one of the sports betting capitals of the world morphing into an extended and circuitous ride home. But part of that ride gets us into a key handicapping issue for Tuesday, working around the lack of an Eye Test for Game #3 of the Eastern Conference Finals, so let’s get right to it –
BOSTON/CLEVELAND – Are the Celtics really back in this thing (they may not have necessarily solved their toughness issues on Sunday)
The notion of the Eye Test is written about here often because it is the basic essence of understanding all sports performances, the various statistics doing their best to represent what took place in each competition, but ultimately coming up a bit short in precision. I go into Game #4 of Celtics/Cavs without such an appraisal from Sunday night, my knowledge of the end-game limited to the ESPN app on a taxi ride from Tocumen Airport into Panama City (WiFi has certainly grown leaps and bounds there since I kept an apartment on Avenida Balboa for a few years around the turn of the century).
So what does one do to best re-create what happened not having watched? The long Monday morning flight to Los Angeles (yes, L.A., not Las Vegas, because sometimes you have to piece it together) brought a chance to at least dig through the raw numbers, and in terms of the professional hoopsters the best place to go is the Gamebook at NBA.com. This is a terrific product, laid out well, and you can download the PDF for times like in-flight perusal when off-line. But in sorting through that there were as many questions as answers, and some of them I will put up for group discussion today for those of you who did watch.
The first instinct off of the Game #3 score would be another Boston ticket tonight. The case could be made that the Celtics solved the psychological barrier that had them knocked out of those three recent meetings with the Cavaliers, and if their heads are in the right place the line is too high, as was the case on Sunday. And once can certainly make the case that they are far better defensively without Isaiah Thomas, the PP100 measure being 16.3 fewer points allowed in Game #3 without him, than during the stretches when he was on the court in #1 and #2.
In particular that defense was solid in the second half, when Cleveland was just 11-35 from the field and had more turnovers (6) than assists (5). They seemingly got into LeBron James more and more as the game went on, and after halftime he was just 1-8 from the field, with one rebound, one assist and three turnovers.
BUT, and it is a resounding BUT, the Eye Test needed something that the stats just cannot show. In the opening two losses in this series, a game flow that carried over from their final regular season meeting, the Cavaliers attacked the rim so easily that it often appeared that Boston was only playing with four defenders, the equivalent of a hockey team having a player sitting in the penalty box. That didn’t happen statistically on Sunday. So now the conundrum – was it really Boston doing anything better on defense and hitting the boards harder, or did that early 3-point success from the Cavs become a fool’s gold that took them out of their game?
Here is where my mind ended up while grinding away the hours on COPA. I am breaking down the points in the paint on first half showings only, because the two games in Boston dove into laughers in the second half that made the statistics largely insignificant, and note just how major of a difference it was –
FG Pts
Game #1 18-25 36
Game #2 13-17 26
Game #3 4-6 8
Yes, the Cavaliers jumped out 66-50 at halftime in #3 and their offensive efficiency was off the charts. But it was a different flow – by knocking down all of those triples (imagine 22 3-point shots in one half vs. only six FG attempts in the paint) they got points on the scoreboard, but not necessarily a physical dominance of the proceedings. Boston went into the locker room at halftime trailing big once again, but this time the Celtics were not nearly as battered and bruised as they were in Game #1 and #2, when they chose to not come back out fighting.
This time they fought, and while Marcus Smart is unlikely to repeat his offensive production in the second half not just tonight, but perhaps across the rest of his career, there is now a team confidence that could have them fighting from the opening tipoff tonight. When you can take +15 with a quality team bringing some fight, it is ordinarily difficult to not do, and let’s go to Brad Stevens for more on the mental state of his team –
“They’ve done a good job of staying positive after a tough situation. I thought yesterday’s (Saturday) film session, you could see that there was some real hurt there from the day before. We didn’t want to watch very much of that. But today we had the typical bounce that we’ve had all year. I think it’s a great testament to these guys. They are extremely resilient. They’re a pleasure to coach because there’s never any finger pointing. It’s just let’s figure out what we need to do to be on the attack and try to manage our margin for error better.”
That works. But what doesn’t work is answering in the affirmative whether they have solved the toughness issue. Cleveland still won the boards 35-27 on Sunday, and when the Cavs did get the ball in the paint they were 12-19 (compare that FG count back to #1 and #2, when they averaged 21 FGAs in the paint for the first half alone). Hence why there is more study needed before putting a +15 in pocket, and it may well be that I will wait to see the first few possessions unfold this evening to get a feel for the overall energy levels, and the physical play inside, before there is any involvement.
(UPDATING: Having had a chance to do more digging, which those of you reading through the comments will see, and some market movement towards the Over, #506 Cleveland/Boston Under (8:30 Eastern) is a go at the 218 that is now starting to appear, the key being the 92.6 pace count from Game #3, which is extremely slow, and also where we are likely to see these teams flow in the non-Thomas matchups.)
There is a place I know that I will be in play on the MLB diamonds, so let’s get right to it, a continuation of the on-going discussions here of the rather remarkable opening to the 2017 season for Ervin Santana…
In the Sights, Tuesday MLB…
Over time I project the 2017 Orioles as being better than the 2017 Twins, and 2017 Dylan Bundy as being better than 2017 Santana. Yet the pricing for this evening is little more than the home field advantage for Camden Yards, so that will put #962 Baltimore (7:05 into play), with as low as -118 available in the morning trading, and this one holding value to -125. In this case the markets are buying in to enough of the Santana basic bottom line to open the door.
What do the markets see? A guy that has turned a 7-11/3.38 into a 6-2/2.07 so far, numbers that put the 34-yeard old veteran into contention for a spot in the All Star Game, and even the Cy Young race if he can keep it up. But let’s go back to the well one more time on just how Santana has really produced those numbers -
K% BB% GB% SWS% FIP xFIP SIERA
2016 19.9 7.1 42.6 10.0 3.81 4.21 4.29
2017 19.1 10.8 42.0 8.5 4.36 4.77 4.87
Instead of making a big leap in 2017, Santana’s rate stats are actually worse than 2016 in each category, and the advanced pitching metrics all show him as being more than a half run per game worse than last year. In truth there hasn’t been anything all that special about his stuff, and that includes a “last three starts” charting in which he had more walks (12) than strikeouts (11) over 20 innings of work.
So where has the magic been? This deep into the season Santana is still sitting on a .143 BABIP, which is almost unheard of over 60+ innings (if we drop the tables down to anyone with 50 innings or more there are 57 pitchers represented, and no one else below .215), and a 90.8 LOB%, which is also tilted towards the extreme. And this has not happened against a murderer’s row of batters – of those 57 pitchers at 50 IP or more, his DBF is only #45.
Santana is pitching with confidence and has been able to put the ball in the right place when he has had to at times, which is a part of that terrific bottom line of outcomes, but his general stuff just isn’t special at all, and over the course of the long MLB grind the usual laws of the sport come into play. This becomes the value setting to get in play.
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