Point Blank – August 18
Steve Spagnuolo faces Giant headaches (Camp Questions - #11)...A little adjusting of the Chris Tillman ratings…Some more bashing tonight in the Bronx…
Few teams have ever had a single-season drop on one side of the ball as much as the 2014 New York Giants defense, which fell from #4 on the Football Outsiders 2013 ratings to #26. Exit Perry Fewell as DC, and cue the return of Steve Spagnuolo, who held that spot in 2007 and 2008, earning a Super Bowl ring in the process. Spagnuolo’s success earned him an opportunity as a HC with the St. Louis Rams, which turned into a dismal 10-38 three-year run, but now he is back to the position at which he had his greatest success.
And he has a lot of work to do.
Spagnuolo’s task was made much more difficult before training camp started, when he learned that he would be without DE Jason Pierre-Paul, who earned the franchise tag in the off-season. The problem is that Pierre-Paul’s situation still has not been resolved, so the Giants are in limbo as to whether to bring another DE in. Then there are the LB’s, where new starters Devon Kennard and J. T. Thomas III have to be blended in. Now comes an even bigger challenge, trying to build a secondary that let Antrel Rolle (now with Chicago) and Stevie Brown (now with Houston) go in the off-season, hoping that rookie Landon Collins from Alabama could step in and start, and with fellow rookie Mykkele Thompson able to contribute as well. It is not working out so far.
Collins suffered a sprained MCL in last week’s pre-season opener vs. Cincinnati, and there is no timetable yet for his return. It goes without saying that any practice time missed by a rookie is major. As for Thompson, it will be wait until next year, after he suffered a ruptured Achilles against the Bengals. Who was expected to start next to Collins in the back-end, creating one of the youngest tandems of starting safeties ever? Nat Buerhe, in his second year out of San Diego State. But Berhe is not participating right now because of a calf injury.
So who were the starting safeties at practice yesterday? Recently-signed Jeromy Miles, who only has three career starts, none of them with the Giants, and Bennett Thompson, a sixth round draft choice in 2014 that missed the entire season because of knee and ankle injuries. That is why Brandon Merriweather was signed on Sunday, but Merriweather is known more for getting fined after big hits than as an effective player. The safeties are just a muddled mess right now, at the very time that Spagnuolo would like to be getting his system in place. And as for CB depth in the pre-season games there are yet more headaches, with Jaryon Hosley suffering a concussion, and Chykie Brown a sprained knee, at Cincinnati.
The Bengals rolled to 29 first downs and 432 yards against this defense, without trying very hard, the starters only playing one series. That shows how bad the current state of affairs is, but the key here is to focus both on the short-term and into the season. The process of assimilation into a new system was going to be difficult enough with at least five new starters from last season (Kennard/Thomas III, both safeties, and George Selvie at DE), but without Pierre-Paul, and with so much shuffling going on in the secondary, there is a genuine question as to how much of Spagnuolo’s playbook will be ready by the opener at Dallas. At best, this defense is going to be a work in progress, but considering the #26 finish in 2014, there is the prospect of a truly dismal campaign ahead, especially with the bye week not coming until late November, after 10 games have been played.
About Last Night…
Back in late July the turnaround by Chris Tillman was made the lead topic here, as he corrected a flaw in his mechanics and began putting a strong run together to make up for lost time. That momentum got sidetracked by a sprained ankle that caused him to miss a turn, and after sitting out for 13 days he only lasted into the third inning in an ugly loss at Seattle, getting tagged for five runs on eight hits. It raised a question as to whether Tillman was bad in that game, or still working through the injury. The answer may have come last night vs. Oakland, which means time to go back and lower the impact of the Mariner game.
Tillman checked the A’s on three hits, although two of them did leave the park, homers by Mark Canha and Danny Valencia. He did not show any discomfort. Here is why it matters – if the Seattle game is removed, Tillman’s last five starts would show a 3-0/1.77, can easily be lost in the mediocrity of this 9-7/4.54 for the full season. The Seattle game absolutely did happen, and goes into the record books, but on my own weighting it will only count for about 30 percent of a result.
In the Sights…
On a warm Monday night in the Bronx, the Twins and Yankees scored 15 runs, belting out 26 hits, including five home runs, while also drawing seven walks. Minnesota had the problem of sending out a guy that has home/away bias issues, and needs to pitch to contact, while New York threw a pitcher that was not in his regular cycle. Tonight brings an eerily similar matchup, which brings value for #912 Over.
Mike Pelfrey is a lesser version of Kyle Gibson, with little ability to throw the ball past hitters anymore (4.3 K/9), but he has been able to work the friendly environs of Target Field to a 4-2/1.97. The road has been entirely different, a 2-5/5.95, and this is not a case of baseball bounces – you can clearly see it in his confidence level. At home Pelfrey has 42 Ks vs. 18 BB, on the road he is right at 20/20, which is lovely when viewing an eye chart, but an awful ratio for a pitcher. In four of his last five road starts he has not lasted beyond the fourth inning, which if anything takes the confidence to an even lower ebb, and makes him particularly vulnerable for this lineup in this park.
Meanwhile C. C. Sabathia may have had more words written about him than any other pitcher on this page this season – he simply is who he is at this stage of his career, able to find the strike zone, but not with the kind of oomph to get the ball past hitters. Over 175 innings the past two seasons his count is 7-13/5.25, and he has only made it beyond the sixth inning once over his last 14 starts. That matters tonight because the usually staunch Yankee bullpen faces significant fatigue issues, after Bryan Mitchell’s Monday was cut short – consider Caleb Cothan, Chasen Shreve, Justin Wilson and Dellin Betances all to be unavailable this evening.
The marketplace has done us an unexpected favor in this one, allowing for a win on 9, and in a game in which it is not asking much for each side to get to four runs, that means solid value (UPDATING: OK, so markets give, and they take away, with a surge now taking this one to "9" across the board, but still enough of an edge to stay in play).
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