Point Blank – July 27
Do the Vikings have the NFL’s best assistants…On trying to come to terms with Lance McCullers…Felix is not necessarily the King of anything right now…MLB is "In the Sights" all day long...
A busy early day on the MLB diamonds begins with a big-time confrontation of Strasburg/Carrasco in Cleveland, and for once there is not a single West Coast game for the late board. But on a front-loaded day in the active trading it is still time to put the NFL previews at the top of the pecking order, and as Minnesota becomes team #8 across those early previews there is a rather interesting question –
Item: Do the Vikings have the NFL’s best assistant coaches?
Minnesota was a step ahead of schedule last year, an 11-5 campaign in which the Vikings closed awfully strong, a 3-0 SU and ATS over their last three regular-season games in which they beat the market expectations by 52 points, before that shank from Blair Walsh prevented a win over the Seahawks and a deeper playoff run.
One of the keys was a vastly-improved defense, a combination of talent and tactics making a jump from #23 on the Football Outsiders adjusted charts to #13 in Mike Zimmer’s second season. You can now rate the defensive roster in the plus category across all three units, DL, LB and DB, and they should be handled well – not only is Zimmer a defensive specialist, but DC George Edwards is in season #19, DL coach Andre Patterson #19, LB coach Adam Zimmer (Mike’s son) #11, and secondary coach Jerry Gray #21. Edwards, Zimmer and Gray came on board with the HC, while Patterson is in his fifth season with the Vikings. That is a lot of experience.
But now the offense may have even more. OC Norv Turner is in season #32, WR coach George Stewart #10, OL coach Tony Sparano #18, TE coach Pat Surmur #18 and RB coach Kevin Stefanski #11. Sparano and Shurmur were added this past off-season, Turner came in with Zimmer, while Stewart and Stefanski have each been with the Vikings at least a decade already.
Here is the rarity – in Turner, Sparano and Shurmur there are 21 seasons of NFL head coaching experience. That is truly unique, and let’s let Zimmer lay it out -"The No. 1 thing is, they're all good coaches. They've all got great reputations. No. 2 is, when you're a head coach, you're never afraid to speak your mind. The possibility of all of them sitting in there, and the personalities of guys like Tony and Pat, they're not afraid to speak their minds on ideas. I just think the more good coaches you can get, the better it is. … You’re always looking for different ideas, different ways to do things. I love hearing guys say, ‘When we were in St. Louis we did it this way, when we were in Philly we did it this way,’ or Tony, when he was in Miami. Sometimes you get in one system and you get pigeonholed.”
Here is why it could particularly matter with this team – if Laquon Treadwell brings what I think he can to the WR corps, and Alex Boone and Andre Smith shore up the OL, this is a team without a weakness. While the ground game on offense is the only aspect of play that may approach top-tier status, it means that they have the pieces to run deep playbooks on both sides of the ball, and in particular this leadership can help to develop Teddy Bridgewater, who may only need to be a game manager with the pieces around him.
Might the Vikings be a little better in close games than other teams? Could this collective brain trust be that much of a difference? It will be intriguing to watch – if the various egos mesh on the sidelines, this group of assistants rivals any that I have charted across my years of studying the NFL.
Item: About those Lance McCullers BABIP charts
While Strabsurg/Carrasco highlights the early board, there is a terrific Tanaka/McCullers showdown tonight, and that means time to put the latter in perspective.
McCullers is sitting on an 11.5 K/9 this season, with a 57.2 GB% and 12.4 SWS%. There are many campaigns in which those three numbers would scream Cy Young, without having to look at anything else. As noted often, strikeouts and ground-balls are the two best tools for run prevention, and how many pitchers are there that are above 10.0 K/9 inning and 55 percent ground-balls? Only McCullers. No one has maintained that duo of plateaus over the past decade of MLB pitching, and in truth I don’t know how far back one would have to go to find someone.
McCullers is not going to win the Cy Young this season, having missed a few early starts, and with his outcomes only sitting on 5-4/3.33. Part of that is a genuine flaw, a 5.4 BB/9 that is terrible, but does not have to maintain – he worked at a 3.1 rate in 2015. But there is a count that just jumps off the page, not only because of where it resides on that page, but also how consistent the brick-by-brick has been – a .382 BABIP. There are 129 pitchers that have worked at least 70 innings so far, and McCullers rates dead last.
The distribution charts are not easy to digest. In 10 of his 12 starts the count has been .333 or higher, seven of them .400 or more, and three at .450 or greater. How does a pitcher with the stuff McCullers has go through a cycle of a dozen games in which more than half of his games generated at least a .400 BABIP?
Ground balls are a necessary BABIP problem, of course. The plus of grounders is that they reduce the opportunity for extra base hits, at the expense of the fact that a poorly hit one can still get a runner on base if it finds the right spot, while a poorly hit fly ball has a much greater chance of being an out. You will note that #127 on the list is Luis Perdomo of the Padres, who has generated an outstanding 58.3 in GB%, but is stuck with a .377 BABIP. But McCullers is far, far too extreme.
Some of this has been the Houston defense, which is #26 across the league at .309 overall, but the gap between the team count, and the individual count of McCullers begs for more explanation. It isn’t just a failure of the defense to get to ground-balls, otherwise Dallas Keuchel, with a 56.3 GB%, would not have his BABIP at .313. This would not appear to be a particular McCullers flaw either, in that he posted a .288 in the category in his 2015 debut.
Is this just short-term Baseball noise, which can happen? Perhaps. It is the consistency of the distribution that rings bells that the handicapper usually does not hear, hence why McCullers is under the microscope over the next cycle.
About Last Night…
Yesterday there was a take on Felix Hernandez, and whether there might need to be the adjustments of considering him as a genuine pitch-to-contact guy, with more focus on his sinker to get batters out than his harder stuff to record strikeouts. And another lackluster performance only leads to confusion on that front.
The Mariners have gone 2-0 in those Hernandez return starts despite the fact that he has simply been lousy, a 6.39 allowance in which he has put his team down three runs in the first inning of each outing. Through the 59 batters faced there have been 19 his allowed vs. only five strikeouts, with three home runs allowed. I thought he might have had a plan vs. the White Sox in terms of those ground balls, with 42.6 percent of all pitches being sinkers, but last night that pitch dropped to 27.3 percent of his repertoire, while a change-up that was only used 18.1 percent vs. Chicago ended up being 33.3 percent of all offerings.
Who is Hernandez right now? Style-wise I don’t know, and the distribution across those last two games tells us that he might not know either. But regardless of style, he simply has not been very good. His own post-mortem was honest, and accurate - "I didn't have good mechanics. I was missing a lot of pitches in the middle of the plate. That's what you get when you've been out for a long time."
Hernandez does show some savvy there – if a pitcher can’t win with location the next option is timing, hence the changeups. He does have a unique ability to think his way through a game. But how far is he from truly being ready to be back in the rotation?
In the Sights…
I will be a lttle shorter on detail to get posted earlier here because of the starting time, but with an unexpected market push to the Over in Cleveland this morning, we can find #968 Cleveland/Washington First Half Under (12:10 Eastern), now available with 4s hanging out there. You might have to lay -120 for that number, but that is fair.
I am not sure why this starting time was pushed up this early, with neither team playing again until Friday, but this is an ideal way to take advantage – it is unlikely that either team takes batting practice after they played a 3:17 affair last night, and there is not much experience from the batter’s boxes at all vs. two starters with terrific stuff – the Indians lineup only has 15 plate appearances vs. Strasburg, while the struggling Ben Revere (.216/.262/.302) is the only one in the Nats lineup that has ever seen Carrasco. Look for both pitchers to be ahead of the hitters on the first pass or two through the lineup.
In the Sights, Part II…
The markets have opened up another matinee, drifting Los Angeles so high (Pinnacle has gone from -150 to -183) that #971 Tampa Run Line (3:10 Eastern) can now be found at +1.5 -130 (-140 is OK, after a line drop when the Dodgers announced Taylor/Ellis in and Utley/Grandahl out for this afternoon). That is a fit. Not only does Matt Moore show outstanding form, a 3.02 over his last eight starts in which he has only walked 14 batters across 53.2 frames, but with all hands on deck the Tampa defense has come back to life, which is part of why his recent bottom line has been better. The control of Moore matters, because if you throw strikes the Dodgers are hard-pressed to challenge left-handers with the wood, with a .645 OPS that rates ahead of only the lowly Phillies and Braves.
In the Sights, Part III
We are not done yet on what has become a busy day – despite Nelson Cruz and Gregory Polanco both out of the starting lineups there has been Over money in Pittsburgh, and that has now opened the door for #974 Pirates/Mariners First Half Under (7:05 Eastern), with 4.5 showing at -115 (-120 is OK). I believe both James Paxton and Gerrit Cole are being undervalued, and with the lineups bringing mostly first looks (Aoki and Freese are the only ones with more than five PAs vs. tonight’s starters), the first two passes through the lineup should go well for the moundsmen.
Cole has not won in his first two outings off of the DL but has shown good stuff – it has been 12 Ks vs. only 3 walks allowed in those games, and his average fastball was 95.8 in carrying a shutout vs. the Phillies into the 6th in his last outing. Meanwhile Paxton is showing a combination of blazing heat at 97.0, with Clayton Kershaw the only other lefty starter at better than 94.0, plus also command, with only 2.4 BB/9, and a strong 51.1 GB%. Throw that hard, and keep the ball down, and a pitcher will eventually be successful, but a 3-4/4.18 is based largely on a BABIP of .374 that will not stay near that level (he was at .270 in 2014 and .289 in 2015).
The complete Point Blank Archive
@PregamePhd (a work in progress, feedback appreciated)