Michael Crabtree’s Injury Fallout

Yes, on a day where the Battle of the Bay and the Sharks lose in the Stanley Cup playoffs, I’m making three posts about a sport that won’t be relevant for another 99 days. Last week, the 49ers’ young, divisive and diva-esque Wide Receiver Michael Crabtree tore his Achilles tendon. He has already had successful surgery; Head Coach Jim Harbaugh (very optimistically) hopes to have Crabtree back for the stretch run and the playoffs. Some people point at Terrell Suggs and his return from Achilles tear last season. However, Suggs’ gameday assignments mean he doesn’t have the same strain on his Achilles as Crabtree. As a pass rusher, Suggs moved essentially in a straight line and was not responsible for the same cutting and change-of-direction motion Crabtree would be responsible for as a Wide Receiver.

Personally, I think Crabtree is done for the year. The 49ers are a franchise that definitely take the long-view with their players. AJ Jenkins was drafted and essentially red-shirted last year; they believed in his development rather than trying to force him to contribute right away. In fact, last year only one 49ers rookie, LaMichael James, made any sort of impact on the roster. This was by design. The other rookies were either hurt or not ready. James was only thrust onto the field via injury to Kendall Hunter. While Crabtree could possibly return, I believe that Harbaalke will determine that he should not return, as it is in the best interest of both Crabtree and the 49ers organization to have him wait.

What next, then? How do the 49ers adapt, who benefits, who takes a step back?

Beneficiaries: Anquan Boldin, Vernon Davis, The Running Game
Over the past decade, the 49ers’ offense has had essentially one hallmark: the run. With Colin Kaepernick’s coming out party, there was a renewed interest in the passing game. Coming into this year, the 49ers have a lot of question mark at receivers. The Boldin trade makes the 49ers front office look like bona fide geniuses, as headed into the season, “Kyle Williams, WR1,” would have dumped the 49ers from Super Bowl contenders to fringy playoff candidates. Truthfully, the Niners have a very deep core of players: Anquan Boldin could be a #1 receiver on some teams, and Kyle Williams, AJ Jenkins, Ricardo Lockette, Mario Manningham and Quentin Patton would be serviceable #2-4 players in most systems. The only problem is that that entire group is a mix of unproven young guns and guys with one working knee. While these young guys will definitely benefit, there isn’t one person who has arisen yet to definitively benefit among that group. The passes have to go somewhere, so there is no reason why they should not go to Vernon Davis’s solid hands or the suddenly old-man-hands of Anquan Boldin.

The running game will definitely benefit, as the 49ers were approaching this season with an eye towards improved balance between run and pass. With the continued solid play of Frank Gore, the dynamic playmaking of LaMichael James and the return of Kendall Hunter, the 49ers have a beast of a monster at running back to take full advantage of this situation.

Losers: Colin Kaepernick, Greg Roman
Without Crabtree, Kaepernick is missing a massive release valve and safety blanket. After taking over as full-time QB last season, Kaepernick had a love-affair with Crabtree, targeting him most and reaping the benefits of throwing it up to one of the better young WRs in the game. This year, the safety blanket role is likely to be held by some combination of Anquan Boldin and Vernon Davis. There likely won’t be the same massive YAC by these two as there was by Crabtree. He did a ton for Kaepernick last year and his loss will be sorely missed.

The second big loser in this is Offensive Coordinator Greg Roman. Roman commanded one of the most creative offenses in the NFL last year, but his creativity was greatly predicated on the playmaking skills of Crabtree. With a whole different set of skills at WR1, Roman will need to learn to adapt his playcalling scheme to match the talent on the field. The 49ers offense will likely not live up to the pre-season hype thrust upon him prior to the Crabtree injury; as such, it is likely that Roman will be (unduly) blamed and his future career in the NFL could be hampered.

 

Michael Crabtree will be sorely missed by the 49ers franchise. He was their #1 receiver and in a team filled to the brim with All-Pro talent, he had the most promising of futures. Early reports indicate that Crabtree should be back around November or December of this year, but I would exercise caution in brining back Crabtree. A mis-cut or mis-step on a fully-torn Achiless could have disastrous effects on the long-term prognosis for Crabtree’s career.  As previously stated, however, I firmly believe that Harbaugh and Baalke are smarter than this and have several contingency plans in place to ensure the 49ers are contenders this year and beyond.

The Crabtree injury will definitely change the overall outlook, projection and complexion of the 2103 49ers. They are losing their #1 receiver; a #1 receiver who was set to breakout in a newly pass-focused system.  While this will definitely be a factor, I truly believe that this will not derail the 49ers season.

 

2014 and beyond—Harbaalke has made it a habit of having players believe in them. In the long-term viability of the franchise, this may have been a good scenario. If Crabtree doesn’t come back this season (and I believe he won’t; the team won’t rush a player back at risk of re-injury), then the 49ers have to sit down and determine Crabtree’s value to resign him. He has been on a definite uptick and the franchise could save some money by rolling the dice and taking the risk now on future injury. Personally, this is the best option for them at Wide Receiver in the near future.

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Something Awful Slow Mock—May 2013, Pick Three

I’ve been putting down some things regarding my draft thought process in a slow mock that I’m currently doing as a part of the Something Awful forums. My strategy with this is very similar to how I approach most of my Fantasy Football drafts; RB-RB, then fill in the rest. I pulled this off with the first two picks, going with Doug Martin and Reggie Bush with my first two picks. I was pleased with them, I believe they are both solid picks.

When I was making the Bush pick, I had a Wide Receiver queued up mentally that I would be targeting with the third pick of round three. As I noted there, there were many WR available that I would be happy to have on my team (Percy Harvin, Larry Fitzgerald, Randall Cobb, Michael Crabtree, Andre Johnson), but only one WR that I truly wanted on my team at that spot:

Percy Harvin, WR, Seattle Seahawks

Don’t get me wrong, I hope that Percy has a terrible season, as a 49ers fan. As a football fan and a fantasy football player, I am giddy and excited by the opportunity that Lamborghini Percy is going to have this year in the Seattle offense. He gives them an additional element (a real wide receiver, no offense, Golden Tate) and a playmaker who can line up all over the place. Harvin gets an additional bump in leagues with return yards and TDs, like my main Sacramento Boys league (Harvin went for $50 last year, to me, in that league). The rest of this post has the disclaimer that I have a big fat man crush on Percy Harvin.

Percy Harvin has a reputation for being an oft-injured player, one who you can’t depend on to play at least 14 games. Throw out last season and the freak injury that led to an IR stint (that had more to do with his feud with the coaching staff than any actual injury). Go look at his games played. Go ahead. I’ll wait here.

15, 14, 16 and 9 games played. That’s right, throw out last year’s injury and Harvin has been one of the more dependable players in the league since 2009. Harvin has a reputation for being an oft-injured player due to his migraine issues that led him to be questionable pretty much weekly since he came into the league.

Harvin has averaged almost 1,000 yards per scrimmage per year, including his injury-shortened 2012 campaign. A lot of the time, the Vikings offense was “give it to Adrian Peterson and stand around” then “give it to Percy Harvin and stand around.” Harvin made Christian Ponder, QB in name only, look good last year. Harvin had 62 receptions for 677 yards, for a modest 10.9 yards per catch, which puts him in the same realm as luminaries such as Danny Woodhead and Josh Morgan. Why do I have such a mancrush on Harvin? Well, no two passes are built alike.

Last year, Percy Harvin’s average catch point was 2.71 yards past the line of scrimmage. In the top 40 WRs for YAC (yards after catch), this was the lowest yards past past scrimmage. That means that for Harvin to get his 10.9 yards per catch, he had to do A LOT of work. Over 75% of his receiving yards came after he had already caught the ball. This means that Harvin was doing most of the work. This was by far the highest yards after catch percentage for any wide receiver. Second was Andrew Hawkins at about 66%. For reference, Victor Cruz, YAC poster boy, had only about 30% of his yards after the catch. These calculations were mine from data for YAC I received off ESPN.com

What does this mean for Harvin in 2013? Well, given the tricky nature of the Seahawks’ offense, I think it means big things for Harvin in 2013. I honestly think that Harvin can launch his way into the top 5 fantasy WR discussion. The Seahawks offense starts with versatile Russell Wilson, whose dual threat run/pass ability gives opposing defenses fits. Add power runner Marshawn Lynch and you already have a great start for a versatile, dangerous offense. The Seahawks rode that offense and a top-3 defense into the playoffs last year. Now they’re adding, in my opinion, the most explosive, versatile offensive threat in Percy Harvin. This team will be dangerous, and Harvin will be a big piece of that.

Harvin will be given every opportunity to succeed in 2013, and the name of the game for fantasy is finding the combination of opportunity and talent. Harvin has plenty of talent, and will be given plenty of opportunity in 2013. He, with Beast Mode and Wilson are the future of the Seahawks offense, and it will be a dangerous offense.

In lieu of making this 100% about Percy Harvin, I will talk a bit about the other players I could have taken there. Harvin was essentially an auto-draft for me, so I don’t want to say I considered these players per se, but a different person may have drafted them here.

Tom Brady, QB, New England
I don’t really trust Brady this year, and my aversion for drafting a quarterback early played itself out here. Brady, Peyton Manning and Cam Newton would all have been decent picks in the third round for some people, and all were available. The issue is I don’t know how much I trust Brady this year. Aaron Hernandez can’t stay on the field, Wes Welker has become Danny Amendola, who can’t stay on the field and Rob Gronkowski can’t stay on the field. He has a ton of talent around him, but who knows how often they can put it all together. I would consider Brady a late-third/early-fourth value pick.

Darren Sproles, RB, New Orleans
Sproles is the prototypical player whose value skyrockets in a PPR. In a standard format, he is a low-end RB2 prospect, and the more points per reception, his value boosts. In a half-PPR league like this one, he ends up around 15-16 overall. He is one of the players I would consider going RB-RB-RB for, due to the shallowness of the position and the depth at WR, TE and QB.

Now that I have my first wide receiver, giving me Harvin as a dynamic WR1, I must wait about 20 picks until my 4th round pick. I am trying to go 2 RB, 2 WR and a WR/RB depending on talent in my first five picks. The 4th and 5th round ADP shows that there are a ton of good to great WR and good RB still available to me.

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Something Awful Slow Mock–May 2013, Pick Two

If you read my last post, you know that I am currently drafting in a “slow mock draft.” While most mock drafts are fast and furious, giving owners less than 5 minutes to pick their next pick, slow drafts give players time to think through options. Picks are usually due within 24 hours, but are generally turned in much faster than that. Drafts completed this way are usually mock drafts. Since the season is months away, there is no hurry for this draft to be finished. As with all slow drafts, circumstances have changed. The person who drafted 49ers WR Michael Crabtree suddenly looks very silly. I took advantage of the circumstances by picking up Vernon Davis earlier than I would have if this draft had been completed in one day. The picks are fluid with circumstances.

I had the third overall pick in the first round, giving me the tenth pick in round two, 22nd overall. My general strategy is to go RB-RB with my first two picks, depending on what talent falls to me. If I can get Calvin Johnson 22nd overall, I’ll take my luck with whatever RB gets back to me in the third round, for example. Reminder that this is a 12-team half-point-per-reception league. Before me in round two, the following players went:

Dez Bryant, WR, Dallas
Matt Forte, RB, Chicago
Brandon Marshall, WR, Chicago
Jimmy Graham, TE, New Orleans
Stevan Ridley, RB, New England
Chris Johnson, RB, Tennessee
Aaron Rodgers, QB, Green Bay
Steven Jackson, RB, Atlanta

At the 22nd overall pick, I was looking at a few options, DeMarco Murray, RB, Dallas; Maurice Jones-Drew, RB, Jacksonville; Reggie Bush, RB, Detroit and Drew Brees, QB.

There are pros and cons to each pick, and I was looking here at a running back, given my strategy. Drew Brees falling as far as he did could have been a boon to my team, but there is just way too much QB talent falling way too far. While I flirted with the idea of going after Brees and his annual bajillion yards and dozens of touchdowns, I felt like I would be doing myself a disservice. Because of that, I turned my attention to the three running backs available to me there.

DeMarco Murray
Murray showed a couple of years ago that he can be an explosive fantasy contributor when he is on the field. Taking over for an injured Felix Jones, Murray became the buzz of the fantasy world when, in his first time getting more than 15 touches, he went off for 253 yards and a touchdown against the Rams.  Last year, however, was a different story. Injuries kept Murray off the field, and when he was on the field, he wasn’t nearly as impressive.  He was wildly inconsistent, posting consecutive weeks of 44, 38, 24, 93 & 83 yards. The issue with Murray is also the Dallas offense, he only had 6 total rushing touchdowns in two years (23 games). Murray can be an explosive playmaker when healthy. The key term there is “when healthy.” Murray’s health and his inconsistency lead me to believe that while he could be great, I’m comfortable with him being great for someone else.

Maurice Jones-Drew
MJD has perennially been a top-5 running back and his fall is solely due to his injury issues from last season. Someone will be very happy with MJD manning their RB2 slot for them this year, or very upset they took the gamble on MJD. My philosophy with your first two picks is that you should not be taking gambles or flyers with these two picks. They should be the foundation of your team. While current reports are that MJD is going to be setup to return for training camp just in time, I fear what could happen in the next few months. Given, this draft is happening now, and a lot can happen (like him punching out a security guard) before the season starts. As time goes along, he could, and probably will, move up the draft board. The problem is that a draft in May is that one would be risk-averse, and MJD is the perfect example of this fact. He could be amazing, but I am not currently willing to take that risk.

Reggie Bush
Bush’s consideration here is an example of knowing your league’s rules when considering who should be drafted at what position. Reggie Bush, in a standard format, is likely a third-round pick. In the half-point PPR league format, he gets a boost. Bush in Miami and New Orleans benefited from this format, and I feel like Detroit will give him a massive boost in value. The Lions need to get their RB involved even more, and with nothing alongside Calvin Johnson. Detroit’s passing game is prolific, and Bush is likely to be Matthew Stafford’s safety blanket in the few instances that he can’t throw it into quadruple coverage to Megatron.  Reggie Bush doesn’t have the highest upside of the three, but he definitely has the highest floor.

So there you have it. There are three running backs available here to me that are considered to be among the smart choices at the position. While MJD and Murray show that they have massive upside, they both are also saddled with pretty significant question marks. Murray has shown tremendous talent but hasn’t really been able to stay on the field consistently, and MJD is coming off of a foot injury that ended his 2013 campaign.

In the end, I went with Reggie Bush, giving me a one-two RB punch of Doug Martin and Bush. I’ll be honest, the potential downside of MJD and/or Murray scared me too much to take them here. I would say that if either of them were available to me in the early third, I probably could have pulled the trigger. The only problem is that I just fear their significant downsides more than I have a ton of confidence in Bush’s upside. Having fulfilled my RB-RB startup goal for my first two picks, I turned my attention to another position in round three…

 

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Something Awful Slow Mock–May 2013, Pick One

I read a lot of the Something Awful forums, and recently on the fantasy sports subforum, I joined a 12-person slow mock draft for the 2013 Fantasy Football season. I think a good way to garner discussion is I will write a bit of a write up about my picks. I don’t know if this will be an exercise in futility or a great writing exercise. Either way, we’ll see where this takes us!

 

I had the third pick in the first round, and the first two picks went to script. First overall was Adrian Peterson, RB, Minnesota Vikings. Second pick was Arian Foster, RB, Houston Texans.  The next pick was me at number three. There were three running backs that I was considering for this spot: Jamaal Charles, RB, Kansas City Chiefs; Marshawn Lynch, RB, Seattle Seahawks & Doug Martin, RB, Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Picking at number three, with ADP and Foster already gone, I’m not exactly making a tough pick here.

 

Jamaal Charles, RB, Chiefs:
There were tons of question marks surrounding Charles heading into last season, mostly stemming from Charles’s season-ending knee injury in 2011, which led to his draft stock falling. His stock falls no more.  Charles put up over 1500 yards and 5 rushing touchdowns, and he will likely build on that in 2013. The Chiefs last season got away with a clean split in starts between Matt Cassel and Brady Quinn, who were able to combine for 8 touchdowns and 20 interceptions, meaning defenses could key in on Charles and attempt to shut down the running game. Enter the Walrus, Supergenius and the Fisherman.

Andy Reid was brought in as a replacement to Romeo Crennel, and his entrance will immediately pay dividends for Charles. Reid’s time in Philadelphia was marked by turning out elite fantasy options at running back (Brian Westbrook for ages, then LeSean McCoy). While I wouldn’t say that Westbrook & McCoy were system backs, Reid’s system leads to success for running backs in fantasy. This should boost Charles’s value.  Along with Reid came Alex Smith from San Francisco for up-to two second-round picks. Smith isn’t a world killer, but Alex Smith 2.0 is a smart, accurate passer who doesn’t make a ton of mistakes. His biggest talent is likely his ability to audible to the correct play, which we saw tons of in the last couple of years. This should take heat off Charles and may increase his value if Reid uses him as Smith’s release valve. The Chiefs used their first overall pick on Eric Fisher, an OT. It appears as though they will pair him with Branden Albert.

Behind a bolstered line, an offense that has churned out elite fantasy options for over a decade and Alex Smith 2.0, Charles is easily a top-five option for you.

 

Marshawn Lynch, RB, Seahawks:
I’m pretty high on Lynch here; he’s entering his prime in his age 27 season, and at a few years away from the running back cliff, he’s even a great option in keeper leagues in the top five. Lynch has put up 25 rushing/receiving touchdowns combined over the last two seasons, averaging 80 yards per game in 2011 and just about 100 yards per game in 2012.  He’s clearly an elite talent that has the ability to score points for your fantasy team in bunches. He does, however, come with some question marks.

The offense is moving away from him a bit. It’s strange to say with such an amazing option, but the Seahawks are building a versatile offense, what with the young quarterback Russell Wilson’s run/pass skills and the lightning in a bottle that is Percy Harvin. He may be a victim of circumstance, as the Seattle offense turns to other options, such as Harvin, in the red zone.  The Seahawks also used a high pick in Christine Michael; putting him alongside Lynch and Robert Turbin in the backfield. This isn’t a knock on Lynch at all, but fantasy is about talent vs. opportunity. Lynch clearly has the talent, but his opportunity may knock him down a bit here.

 

Doug Martin, RB, Tampa Bay Buccaneers:
“Muscle Hamster” was the best rookie last year not named Robert Griffin III last year, rushing for almost 1500 yards and scoring 11 touchdowns in the process. He also chipped in a ton of receptions for about 30 yards per game receiving. This all happened behind a banged up offensive line and the ups-and-downs of Josh Freeman, who flashed brilliance and then vomited all over himself in seemingly alternating games. Enter a new regime, and one who clearly does not have their wagon hitched to Freeman, drafting Mike Glennon to compete with him. However, they clearly believe in Martin, and with good reason.

Doug Martin showed not only that he could take a beating going between the tackles, but that he was also adept at bouncing it outside if the play isn’t there. He also showed that he is a home run threat in any given game; amassing 251 rushing yards against the Raiders in week 8 last year with 4 touchdowns. He’s an amazingly solid second-year player, already in the conversation with Lynch and Charles. His age is also a factor in his value; he’s young and strong, which (hopefully) will help him stave off injury easier than Charles (who has already missed essentially a whole season with a knee injury) and Lynch.  His floor is equal with Charles and Lynch, but I think that his ceiling is much higher.

With the third pick, I took Doug Martin.

 

First Round Results: Adrian peterson, Arian Foster, Doug Martin, Ray Rice, Jamaal Charles, LeSean McCoy, CJ Spiller, Alfred Morris, Trent Richardson, Calvin Johnson, AJ Green.

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This draft is already in the sixth round, so I have some backlog here to discuss my picks and hopefully put some thoughts to the page. I’m really excited to already be drafting, even if it is only in May and ultimately means nothing. Just feels good to be back in the Fantasy Football mindset.

 

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Preliminary Fantasy QB Rankings 1-5

One of the things I wanted to do with MSSO is discuss a bit of my fantasy sports thought process; whether for better or for worse. I consume quite a bit of media on the topic and I’ve come to realize that everybody is just guessing at this nonsense. Granted, some are better than others, but everybody is just trying to take data from prior years and apply it to the future. It’s prediction, but it’s also guessing. 

With the NFL draft over, and teams basically how they will be going into the 2013 season, I’ve started to look at creating my own ranking system, rather than blindly going off of another person’s list. Sure, that other person is the expert, but that’s a title. They have one list of dudes on the internet, and so do I. Without further ado, I present my top 5 quarterbacks of 2013.  It was initially going to be top 10 but I was a bit verbose. I am trying to tighten up the word count to make the articles a bit easier to read going forward.

Disclaimer: All my rankings are based on who I would rather have. When things start to get dicey (see 31-40, yes, I have 40 ranked), it starts to be a matter of talent vs. opportunity. Blaine Gabbert is set to be the starter going into the season, but Chad Henne is the better player and is going to usurp Gabbert, so Henne is ranked higher.

 

Tier 1. The Best of the Best of the Best, Sir. With Honors.

1. Aaron Rodgers, Green Bay Packers – The NFL’s biggest payday of the 2013 paydays tops the list of fantasy QBs for me. He lost a big target with Greg Jennings going to Minnesota, but Jennings was basically an afterthought to this team last year. Jennings missed significant time with injury, and current targets James Jones and Randall Cobb stepped up in huge ways.
   
   The Packers added Eddie Lacy and Jonathon Franklin this offseason via the draft to finally, FINALLY, give them a non-godawful option at running back. There are others who are thinking that this will cause them to rely on the run more so than in the past. The only problem with this is that the Packers were in the middle third of the league when it came to running the ball last year.  They already ran the ball significantly last year, and they aren’t going to be taking the ball out Rodgers’ hands.
   
   Outside of the passing game, Rodgers adds to the rushing game, contributing about 250 yards and 3 rushing touchdowns a year to his already gaudy passing totals. This is one if the examples of something that may not necessarily make someone a better NFL quarterback, but does make them a better fantasy quarterback.  Rodgers’ legs make him the #1 fantasy option above three other QBs who are just as good as Rodgers, but less mobile.
   
   
2. Drew Brees, New Orleans Saints – Drew Brees is getting his head coach back in Sean Payton’s return from his Bountygate suspension. And last time I checked, he’s still Drew Brees. Jimmy Graham is still Jimmy Graham. Marques Colston is still Marques Colston. Darren Sproles is getting up there, hitting the RUNNINGBACK CLIFF of 30 years old. Sproles, however, doesn’t get the same burn as regular RBs. He doesn’t get popped by big lineman and middle linebackers. He’s catching the ball in space and playmaking; getting hit by smaller OLBs and DBs.  This should extend his shelf life a bit.
   
   There isn’t much to say about Drew Brees. The 2-3-4 guys are all bunched together below Aaron Rodgers and above the #5 QB. The only question is order. The pie is already cut up for the Saints offense, and it does nothing if not click. I like
   
3. Peyton Manning, Denver Broncos – Last year, Demaryius Thomas, Eric Decker and Wes Welker were all top-fifteen Wide Receivers. This year, they are all toys for Peyton Manning. Along with rookie Montee Ball, the Broncos already great offense is getting even better. The question for all those players is how the pie gets cut up. There will definitely be more runs and more potent runs. There will likely be more offense plays called, which means that the offensive pie will likely get bigger.
   
   Peyton isn’t getting any younger, and there are already concerns about his deep ball. Luckily most of Peyton Manning is what’s going on between his ears. He’s still, in my mind, the smartest QB in the NFL and he’ll be manning (heh.) one of the more potent offenses. He’s great, the offense is great. There isn’t a lot to say here. I liked Brees more than Manning, and Brady less. This is not reflective of Manning, but rather, reflective of Brees and Brady.
   
4. Tom Brady, New England Patriots – You can’t bet against a Brady/Belichick offense, but this one is riding into the year with the most question marks on record. There isn’t a single pass catcher that doesn’t come with an issue this year. Danny Amendola is in a new, admittedly difficult system, Aaron Hernandez is hurt (again), Rob Gronkowski is hurt (still), Julian Edelman is hurt (of course) and their rookies are, well… rookies. How they will do is anyone’s guess right now.
   
   Granted, that can all be wiped clean because of the guy at the helm. Tom Brady is the model of greatness for NFL QBs in the 2000s, and into the 2010s.  He and Belichick have built a great system that has tons of guys fade in and out with various levels of success. They will run the ball more this year, which will take some pressure off Brady, but he’ll put up another Tom Brady season.  That was top-3 last year, but I really feel like this year is just a step behind Manning the Greater.
   
   I originally had Brady third, but as I was writing up the offense, I just couldn’t justify putting him over Peyton. I also couldn’t put him below the three guys below, mostly due to their inexperience and reliance on their legs.
   
   Tier 2: You Can Run, But Defenses Can’t Hide
5. Colin Kaepernick, San Francisco 49ers – There may be a bit of homerism here putting Kaepernick at the top of these run/pass quarterbacks. “Where’s Tim Tebow?” you may ask. If you asked that, get out. OUT. Kaepernick/Cam/Wilson suffer from the same grouping as the three guys above. They all do pretty much the same thing and have the same opportunities placed in front of them.
   
   The biggest issues facing these three running QBs is the league figuring out the Read Option. I am assuming that the league pulls this off, and that the running will not come from trickery, but from designed run plays and broken plays. I think Kaepernick has the best speed out of all of these guys. Cam is known as a big bruiser, but if you’ve seen pictures of Kap shirtless, he isn’t exactly svelte.
   
   I also think that Kaepernick has the best system for his success as well as the best ability to be a “traditional” quarterback. He showed this in the NFC Championship Game last year against the Falcons. He was forced to stay behind the line of scrimmage and beat them with his arm.  Add to this a more robust receiving corps than Cam and Wilson can boast combined and the most creative OC in football, I think that this is Kaepernick’s true coming out party. Given where you can get him, I’m planning on targeting him in every single draft. And you should too.
   

So there you have it, quarterbacks one through five for next year. Not a lot of surprises, except I really feel like Kaepernick is going to take off next year in his first full season. Aaron Rodgers maintains his no-brainer top spot, followed by Brees, then Peyton, then Brady.

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Well This is Getting Embarrassing

The crazy rollercoaster ride that is the sale of the Sacramento Kings to either the “Seattle Group” led by Chris Hansen and the “Sacramento Group” led by Vivek Ranadive will, in theory, end this week. The Board of Governors is set to meet Wednesday to determine the fate of the franchise. That’s the plan, but at this point, would anybody be surprised if there was some other muck up of the process? When the Maloofs are involved, there are no guarantees. This is why the term “MALOOFED” exists… because even when you have something you think is rock solid and has no chance of being screwed up, then the Maloofs rear their ugly head, do something childish and greedy, and screw the whole thing up.

It happened with the Sacramento arena deal a couple of years ago, and it appeared to be happening to the Hansen deal (with their insistence they continue with a say in basketball operations early on upon sale).  Nothing can be guaranteed when the Maloofs are involved.  This is likely why David Stern did the verbal equivalent of taking two fingers and pointing one at each eyeball, then pointing them at the Maloofs. You can tell that recently, Stern is done with the Maloofs. He basically stated that he doesn’t give a flying you-know-what what the Maloofs have to say and that by making a deal with the Seattle group, they sealed their fate. They are going to be out of the league and he is sick of dealing with their nonsense.

They responded in a very Maloofian way this week. Brian Windhorst reported this week that the Maloofs announced that they will not sell to any Sacramento group. This is after the Seattle group threw an extra $65 million at the Maloofs.  Ray Ratto called the new plan “Plan Middle Finger” in a blogpost on CSNBayArea.com.

Plan B is to sell the Seattle group 20% of the franchise, keeping the Maloofs as controlling partners in the venture, and keeping the team in Sacramento in the rotting barn that is Arco Arena.  This appears to be the first step in some Maloofian scheme to either (a) Major League the Kings, making them so bad that nobody goes to games, so they can justify moving out of Sacramento.

(not shown, a cardboard cut out of Gavin Maloof with tear-off pieces of clothing for each win)

Or (b), which is to sell the Seattle group 20% now, making them minority owners, then transferring the rest of the shares at a later date. In true Maloofian style, they did this without understanding of the NBA rules. They still need league approval to sell those 20%.

 

So let’s say that Plan Middle Finger goes through, what happens? Well, it’s the worst-case scenario for all gorups involved. The Kings stay in Sacramento with the Maloofs at the helm. Let’s look at this from every angle

1. The Maloofs – On the surface, this looks like the best deal for the Maloofs (and let’s be honest, all they care about is the surface)—they get an influx of cash and another person to bear the load of their degrading empire by giving 1/5 of the franchise to the Seattle group. However, they stay in Sacramento. The fanbase has been shrinking in recent years because of one reason and one reason only: The Maloof Family. It’s not that the Kings
2. have been bad, the Kings were bad literally for over a decade when the Maloofs took over. However, the fans still came out and were incredibly loyal. They cheered on the likes of Kevin Gamble and Billy Owens; they bought Tyus Edney jerseys and voted for Olden Polynice for the All-Star Game. The point is that the fan base is nothing if not loyal. However, the fan base also HATES the Maloofs with a passion. At this point, the Maloof family is basically not allowed within the city of Sacramento.
   
   Keeping the Kings in Sacramento will more than likely fully degrade the already incredibly eroded fan base by keeping the Maloofs at the helm. I would be surprised if the number of season ticket holders is over 1,000 in this scenario.  The Maloofs would become even bigger pariahs than they already are. Would they come to games? They couldn’t, they’re flat out hated. What happens to the team, then? Do they become absentee owners? This is a horrible proposition for even the Maloofs; even they should understand that.
   
3. The Sacramento Group – The Kings need two things; a new ownership group and a new arena. This new deal gives them neither. Ranadive would go back to being a minority owner of the Warriors and Mastrov goes back to fitness (24 hours a day).

This is likely Maloof brinksmanship with a surprising amount of self-awareness. They know that the owners are sick of the Maloofs. They have been running the Kings into the ground for half a decade, they owe the league about $100 million, they do nothing to stay competitive and just soak up that sweet, sweet revenue sharing. By announcing that the only way the league can be rid of them is to allow for the Kings to be sold to the Seattle group, they are hoping they are forcing the league’s hand.

 

I wrote the above last night before the relocation committee’s teleconference today. It appears as though the brinksmanship will not work; they did not make any changes to their recommendations.

 

The hostage situation is almost over. On Wednesday, the Board of Governors will meet and vote on the future of the Kings in Sacramento. The Maloofs reportedly are coming around to the idea of selling to the Ranadive group, but at this point, the damage is done. There is nobody, NOBODY left in this world that thinks anything positive about the Maloofs. They have shown their hand; they don’t like to be told no. They were told they may not be able to sell to the Hansen group and they stormed around whining and crying.  The fruit of their efforts will be voted on Wednesday. No matter what happens then, the true losers in this scenario are the Maloofs.

 

 

And I understand the irony of a group getting a $300,000,000+ check losers.

 

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What’s Next for the Kings? OR FAN PREDICTION TIME!

Again, like last night’s diatribe, this was SUPPOSED to be a post about the 49ers post-draft team, but again, like last night, I am swept up in Kings fever. Now that the Maloofs are out and our team retained, my embargo on the club can end. Granted, it wasn’t a full embargo, it was more like how there are definitely no Cuban cigars on American soil and no Americans travel to Cuba for pleasure. That sort of embargo… an “I couldn’t help myself” embargo.

Unlike last night’s diatribe, this one isn’t really going to fall apart into ecstatic rambling. This one will have a bit more focus.

According to this article, the NBA revenue is expected to increase dramatically. This means a significant increase in the salary cap; considering that the salary cap is tied to profit, the cap should raise to $69.65 million dollars per team next season.  The Kings, as currently constructed, have roughly $40.71 in obligations for next season. This gives them a massive amount of salary cap room to work with, and given that in 2013/14, teams are obliged to spend 90% of the cap, that means that the Kings have to spend at least $62.69 million dollars next year.  Given that the Kings can, at worst, pick 9th, that means they will have committed approximately between $4.4 and $2.1 million to their pick next year, according to Hoops Hype.

According to PBT, the Kings are likely picking 6th next year, given how the ping-pong balls tumble. For the sake of sanity, I’m going to say that the Kings will commit $2.6 million to their draft acquisition next year, whoever it may be. Again, for sanity’s sake, I’m going to assume the Kings handle this as a hard cap, even though it is a soft cap. Going into next year, that means that the Kings have between $19.38 and $26.34 million to spend next year. Well that’s a ton of cash!

From that jumping-off point, I will mind game some ideas for the inbound Ranadive-Mastrov ownership group. First, let’s take a look at how the roster looks now, assuming qualifying offers are made:

John Salmons, Marcus Thornton, Chuck Hayes, Tyreke Evans, Jason Thompson, DeMarcus Cousins, Travis Outlaw, James Johnson, Jimmer Fredette, Patrick Patterson, Toney Douglas, Isaiah Thomas. This is 12 out of the 15 roster spots for next year, 13 occupied if you consider the first round pick the Kings will have next year. This means they have to average between $8.5 and $13 million dollars a years (thereabout) per player for next year. This is money generally reserved for the upper-tier support players, not the players a team builds themselves around. Let’s start looking at suggestions for next year.

1) Amnesty John Salmons
This is the last offseason where a team can use the amnesty clause in the new Collective Bargaining Agreement. If I were the incoming ownership group, I would take a long, hard look at the amnesty eligible players on the Kings. The amnesty clause allows a team to write a contract off their books. Given that Salmons is paid far, far more than he is owed, amnestying him makes the most sense in this situation. This updates the eligible cap and roster space to $34.42 million and 3 roster spots. Given that Salmons has been whatever the opposite of a fan favorite is after the Kings traded for him, and given that he gums up the rotation with his contract necessitating his playing, it is a slam-dunk. It also gives the Kings the benefit of dumping their highest-salaried contract.

2) Do Not Provide Qualifying Offers
Noted fan favorites and annual all-stars James Johnson and Toney Douglas, who amount to a whole lot of nothing and $7 million in salary are the next shoo-ins for being off the roster. For the record, Tyreke Evans is due a $6.9 million qualifying offer for next season. I am of the opinion that the Kings should keep Evans, but instead sign him to a 4 year contract, starting with $7 million first offer, escalating to a $9 million contract in the 2016-17 season, averaging $8.5 million a year. This is in line with what Tyreke is owed for his contributions, and provides a fair contract to both parties.  After losing Douglas and Johnson, and offering $7 million to Tyreke Evans, this leaves the Kings with 5 roster spots and $41.35 million on the cap.

3) Extend Isaiah Thomas
Thomas has a team option, and is obviously the starting PG in a non-Keith Smart offense. Smart used Thomas haphazardly, often benching him while he was the best player the Kings had to offer. The Kings would be much better off signing Thomas to an extension, say 3-years, $4 million starting with $5 AAV.  This puts the roster at 5 spots available and $44.49 million available to sign free agents.

Now that the hypothetical Kings have trimmed the fat monetarily and in roster slots, and offered extensions to two of their players, they have some moves to make.

4) Sign a Big Man
In this case, I think that it would be a perfect fit for the Kings to complement DeMarcus Cousins’ high-post threat with a true banger in Al Jefferson. Jefferson Made $15 million last year, and that would be an accurate starting point for his services. Jefferson will provide defense, rebounding and scoring and suddenly shores up their front line that has contributed DeMarcus Cousins and various nonsense (nonsense includes incredible front-court play with questionable lapses in judgement). This here gives the Kings 4 spots to fill and $29.49 with which to fill those slots.

5) Sign a Veteran Point Guard
The Kings are essentially set at starting PG with Isaiah Thomas (nobody tell Keith Smart), so the smartest thing for them to do is get a smart, great veteran locker room presence to spell IT. The only problem is that the Kings will likely end up overpaying this guy to be IT’s backup. The player that will benefit the team most is someone like Jeff Teague or DJ Augustin. Either way, this should run the Kings about $5 million next year. This gives them $24.49 million and 3 roster spots to fill.

6) Fill Out the Roster
Upon showing interest in the Kings, new owner Vivek Ranadive stated that he wished to put more money into the bench. He said that his analytics show that the bench plays 40% of the minutes, but is criminally underpaid for what they contribute. I firmly hope that this money goes to a bunch of amazing players at approximately $8 million a year. This will cause an influx of talent onto the roster in these last three spots. These spots may or may not go to recently non-tendered players James Johnson and Toney Douglas.

7) Draft the Best Player Available
I’m a huge proponent of drafting the best player available, regardless of position. This is doubly true in the NBA, where positions are mostly nonsense given that the players move fluidly on the court and there isn’t really an ability for one player to “block” another player. This means that it would be silly to not make a move on the best player available for the Kings at #6 overall. This would be an obvious improvement over what the 2012 Kings rookies are going to contribute next season. Pause for you to check the roster… The Maloofs, everybody! Made a salary-dump move without regards to the future of the franchise on the way out.

 

Well, there you have it; my stupid sports opinions on the Kings situation for now and into the future. It’s a shifty draft class for picking up a free agent. We’ll see how the Kings fare, but these were some ideas on how I believe they should coduct themselves.

 

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What a Day!

Well this post wasn’t supposed to be written today, I’m working on the post-draft hangover review for the 49ers and I’m making great progress. Today was supposed to be a ho-hum decision from the NBA relocation committee on the Sacramento/Seattle I-5 kerfuffle. Instead, around 2 PM today, the Relocation committee came back with a referendum on the situation. They stared down the proposition to move the Kings to Seattle like Gandalf stared down the Balrog. They screamed “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!” and unanimously voted against relocation of the Sacramento Kings for the 2013-14 season.

What does this mean? In short it assures only one thing: one more season of Sacramento Kings basketball. What, in all likelihood, does this mean? The Sacramento Kings are here to stay. While the league blocked the move to Seattle for this year, nothing precludes the Maloofs from sitting tight (other than crushing debt, a fan base that refuses to support the team as long as the Maloofs own it, a crumbling empire, a complete lack of liquidity, a refusal to work with local government, a dilapidated barn as a home for your internationally-known franchise, etc.), except pressure to sell. While the only thing this guarantees is one more year in Seattle, the general feeling is that this decision will have more positive ramifications for Sacramento.

Currently, the Maloofs have two offers in front of them; one from the Hansen-Ballmer group (“Seattle”) and one from the Mastrov-Ranadive group (“Sacramento”). The Seattle group was looking at the Kings to replace the Supersonics that they failed to retain five years ago. If this happened, the Kings would cease to exist; they would become the Seattle Supersonics. The Webber/Stojakovic years are lost in the past. The Kings first playoff appearance in a decade becomes a fight against themselves (it was against Seattle in 1996). The Kings would be gone.

To me, this would be the favorable outcome to the Maloofs. They would end the “Sacramento Kings” franchise, and all their failures associated with it. Anything the team does from thereon out would not be compared to any moves the Maloofs made. After all, they owned the Kings. That is a completely different franchise than the Supersonics. Selling the team would mean that if they ever found success, the Maloofs would not see that as a failure on their part. As I’ve already established, I firmly believe the Maloofs to be terrible businessmen and horrible man children. Their complete lack of transparency with regards to the availability of the Kings franchise until they announced their deal with the Seattle group is the perfect display of this immaturity.

The Maloofs could have come out of this on top. They could have been heroes. They could have announced that their financial situation made continued ownership impossible. They could have been sympathetic figures in the area. They tried their best, and maybe they hung on too long, but ultimately they understood that they were overmatched and did what was best for the franchise. Instead, they tied the success of the franchise to their own success (maybe because it’s the only thing that they haven’t sold yet), and refused to sell. The destruction of the Kings in the last few years has to has have worn on the Maloofs. They don’t know how to run an operation, considering that the Kings are the latest in a long line of failures for them. The problem is that the public at large doesn’t generally know about them selling off shares of their liquor distribution business, their shares of the Palms, and their shares of Wells Fargo. Selling off the Kings would be their most public collapse and failure thus far.

This post isn’t about the Maloofs failures, however, it is about the success of Sacramento at large. After it was announced a few months ago that the Maloofs had come to an agreement with the Seattle group, the Sacramento leaders, headed by Mayor Kevin Johnson. Sacramento rallied around their only pro sports franchise, with support from all angles. The fans and media (including KHTK’s Grant Napear and Carmichael Dave) came together, with “Here We X” nights and movements. X included, stay, buy and build. Luckily X now equals STAYED.

While I no longer live in Sacramento, it’s where I lived for 18 years, and where I grew up. I know its roads better than Santa Barbara or San Jose, where I have lived since 2004. In short, it’s home. Growing up in Sacramento, the Kings are a significant part of my identity.

I remember my first home game in Arco Arena. It was against the Jazz; my dad had gotten tickets to the luxury suite for The Good Guys, where he worked. I was able to see hall of famers John Stockton & Karl Malone. I cheered the arrival of the most recent Kings’ addition: Olden Polynice. The trade for OP was announced that night, and I was excited.

Many Kings fans earned their team being relevant. They earned the sudden relevancy at the beginning of the millennium with the Webber years. What they don’t deserve is the Maloof ownership group. This is a fan base that is loyal to their franchise to the end. The only problem is the Maloofs turned their franchise into a money pit. All we ask is that you try to field a competitive team; history tells us that Kings fans only care about trying (especially considering the Kings sold out every game in the entire decade between their first and second playoff appearances).

I’m so excited about the Kings staying, and I apologize if this post was pretty disjointed. All there is for everyone in Sacramento is pure joy. My situation is not unique, and I make no presentation that it is. Every Kings fan in Sacramento shared my joy today, and KHTK’s Jason Ross Show perfectly explained my joy today when they asked how a team that is outside of the playoffs can feel like they won the championship. KHTK today also opened my eyes with a quote from a long time caller who passed about five years ago.

“Never give up, never give in, as long as the Kings have a chance to win.”

#herewestayed

 

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49ers Offseason Thus Far: Defense

The NFL draft is tomorrow, and after taking a look at offense yesterday, it would stand to reason that on the eve of a sudden influx of new players, I would take a look at the 49ers’ moves on defense this offseason. In short, I am not very pleased with what transpired this offseason. There won’t be any weepy lamentation for players lost a la my strange piece on the 49ers Tight Ends and the loss of Delanie Walker.  Pending the pieces the draft brings to the Niners, I am a bit disappointed in their defensive moves this offseason.  Much like the offense, I’ll walk you through the changes in each group (the line, the linebackers, and the defensive backs). Let’s start with the big men up front.

Defensive Line:
Losses: Ricky Jean-Francois, Isaac Sopoaga
Gains: Glenn Dorsey

Out of all the moves in all the personnel groups, this set of moves stings the most thus-far. While Sopoaga was seeing diminishing time in the 49ers system, due to their increased use of the Nickel formation, he still was a big, beefy body. RJF was a big contributor to the 49ers’ system last year as a backup that could fit in anywhere on the line, and his loss is as big if not bigger than Sopoaga. Even with the increased focus on airing the ball out in the NFL, I still believe that the games are won and lost in the trenches, and losing two warriors in the trenches has to sting. Tying this into question marks surrounding Justin Smith’s help, the 49ers defensive line is suddenly in massive question.

The addition of Glenn Dorsey is likely to offset this; Dorsey was the 5th overall pick several years ago, and whether it was bad coaching, a lack of caring or any other myriad of reasons, he’s pretty much a bust so far. I have faith that he can be the new RJF, a backup at every position who can fill in when needed to start. I think he’ll be a good fit for the 49ers, who are no strangers to reclamation projects (see: Moss, Randall; Davis, Leonard; Jacobs, Brandon, etc.).

The lack of depth on the defensive front was an issue going into last season, and the 49ers responded by netting the loss of a starting member. Obviously, this is going to be addressed with one of the 49ers many picks this year. It looked like they would be handling this issue with their first pick, but its looking increasingly likely they’ll be taking one of the TE’s Eifert or Ertz, or safety Matt Elam with that pick. Even more likely is that they are trading up and any guess at what the 49ers will do in the draft is ultimately moot. I say cash in all the chips and bring in Star Lotulelei; or maybe 34 is where Margus Hunt ends up with the 49ers?

Linebackers:
Losses: Not much to speak of; potentially Larry Grant, Tavares Gooden & Clark Haggans
Gains: Dan Skuta and the return of Parys Haralson, Cam Johnson and Darius Fleming

The 49ers best unit, by far, was the linebacker corps. Patrick Willis and NaVorro Bowman are all-world MLB clones of each other; Aldon Smith holds the record for most sacks in the first two seasons and Ahmad Brooks is the unsung hero of the corps. Brooks was extended before last season, Willis is in the middle of his contract, Bowman signed a massive extension and Smith is still on his rookie contract. There’s not much room for movement here, except for depth. Larry Grant is a backup extraordinaire for Bowman/Willis, but is facing a 4 game PED suspension and is likely to not be resigned. Haggans was pulled off the scrap heap solely for depth, and is likely riding off into the sunset this year with the second year players Cam Johnson and Darius Fleming vying for playing time.  Parys Haralson, sidelined all last year with an injury, also will provide serious depth for the Niners.

Their only gain is a linebacker in name only. Dan Skuta is a special teams ace in every sense of the word. After Jacoby Jones ran roughshod over the Special Teams in the Super Bowl, the 49ers went out and nabbed Skuta. They are hoping he fills the Blake Costanzo role from two years ago that they sorely lacked last year.

Defensive Backs:
Losses: Dashon Goldson
Gains: something called a Craig Dahl, Nnamndi Asomugha

Much like Delanie Walker, Dashon Goldson was simply priced out of the 49ers range. He was also priced out of everybody’s range because the Buccaneers paid them more than rumors stated he was asking for. Granted, 49ers fans should be upset about the loss of Goldson. He was great in run stuffing and keyed in on big hits (sometimes at the expense of actual, real defense), but he was deservedly selected for multiple Pro Bowls. The actions that the 49ers took to fill his roster spot clearly point to drafting a safety to fill his production. The 49ers took division rival’s former safety Craig Dahl. Dahl is a smart player, and at this point in his career, he is likely signed to be a backup and mentor to whoever they take (cough Cyprien cough).

The “big” 49ers free agency signing, by name at least, is Nnamdi Asomugha. Originally with the Raiders, Asomugha was one of the most feared cornerbacks in the NNFL. He could entirely shut down one side of the field, rendering it essentially non-useable for the other team’s QB. He moved on to the Eagles, where he ceased being the same player. He routinely was burned and quickly became a shell of his former self. Some blame the schemes run in Philly. Either way, he’s on a put-up-or-shut-up contract with $0 guaranteed.  It’s another reclamation project from the Harbaugh regime. Luckily they showed that if you contribute, you play. If you run your mouth, you get suspended, then cut when no team can pick you up (Brandon Jacobs).

I like this move for the 49ers, since it’s literally no risk, all reward. The loss of Goldson stinks, but if Nnamdi pays dividends, their DB corps will have a net gain before the draft starts.

Special Bonus Shoutout to Special Teams:
Out: David “Shanks” Akers
In: Phil “Fill Up the Stat Sheet” Dawson

Dawson was the only decent player on the Browns for a long time. Akers was hurt and stunk up the joint last year. This move owns. I have no analysis for this because it’s a move for a Kicker. They’re barely even people! Gross.

 

There you have it, the major moves by the 49ers between the Ravens hoisting the Lombardi and the Chiefs drafting an OT tomorrow. It’s hard to say how they will do without knowing what new players are on their roster come Sunday, but one thing stands true: the 49ers will look significantly different than they did last year, when they were able to return all 11 starting defensive starters. Whether that is for better or worse, only time will tell.

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49ers Offseason Thus Far: Offense

Today, at 11:46 AM, Harrison sent me a text message. It simply states:

“I can’t wait til draft day, draft day is the best”

Harrison is incredibly right. Part of me wants me to just copy and paste that text message over and over until I get to 1,000 words for this entry. Day one of the draft really is the best part of the year outside of the season. Traditionally, the opening of free agency is the opening of the new year in the NFL and around the league, but I contend that the day before the draft is the end of the prior year. Free agency is ostensibly over, and your team is primed to add fresh faced rookies to its constituents. Rosters really start to take shape and coaches can start planning with personnel on hand. Free agency has really become the “off season” between the season that ends with the Super Bowl and begins with the NFL Draft.

What will come of the draft? I have no earthly clue what could possibly happen. I pay no attention to college ball; baseball, football, basketball is all a mystery to me until about a month pre-draft, then I start to pay attention. I could tell you who I think the Niners will get, but I would be regurgitating one of the Matts (Maiocco, Barrows or Williamson). I fully believe the Niners are using their massive amount of picks to move up, and any prognostication over who they will pick where they currently pick will be pointless.

Well, how did my 49ers do in the off season between the Super Bowl (which they lost) and the draft (in which they have eleventy billion picks)? I’ll take a look at it positing how they did, generally position by position. The free agent moves are courtesy of ESPN.com.

 

Quarterback
Out: Alex Smith
In: Colt McCoy

If you told me four years ago that I would feel a twinge of pain over the loss of Alex Smith, I would laugh, whole-heartedly in your face. We were coming off a year of JT “Just Touchdowns” O’Sullivan and Shaun Hill the year prior. This tells you the value of Mr. Smith to the 49ers franchise at the time. Nevertheless, Alex Smith became a massive part of the Niners’ franchise over the last two years. He was the NFL Offensive Player of the Week before he was benched following a concussion and was the hero of the NFC Divisional Game against the Saints in January of last year. Unfortunately for Alex, as he became affectionately known, Colin Kaepernick literally ran him out of town.

Supplanted by Kaepernick, Alex Smith was traded to the Kansas City Chiefs for the 34th overall pick this off-season. This gave the 49ers two of the first 34 picks; an unprecedented position for the NFC champs. This is a massive pull for Harbaalke, who managed to turn their backup quarterback into a top-35 pick.

This left a vacuum in the 49ers chain of QB-authority, leaving their backup QB slot mostly vacant. I say mostly vacant because I truly believe that Scott Tolzien is a capable backup QB in the NFL. However, the 49ers thought differently and dealt a sixth-round pick for Browns Quarterback/scrambled brain Colt McCoy. McCoy will be a serviceable backup, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Tolzien beats him out, given the athleticism required of a quarterback in the Harbaugh/Roman system.

RB: The 49ers made no significant changes at this position going from 2012 to 2013.

WR:
Out: Randy Moss
In: Anquan Boldin

If this post was written in 1999, I would be lamenting the loss of Moss, one of the best deep threats to ever play the game and a potential future Hall of Famer. This year, however, moving on from Old Man Moss to Old Man Boldin is a definitive step-up for the 49ers. Over the past couple of seasons, the biggest 49ers bugaboo has been the red zone efficiency, and Boldin represents a massive move forward in that respect. Boldin is a Tight End that has been reclassified as a Wide Receiver at this point in his career, and let me tell you, the 49ers are more than happy to have him. Moving from Moss, who was mostly a long-ball decoy to Boldin, who represents a second possession threat alongside the suddenly incredible Michael Crabtree, is a massive upgrade for the 49ers. Boldin will easily add 5-6 touchdowns to the 49ers, which, given their propensity for close games, could give them 1-2 more victories and an easy hand in the NFC West division championship.

While he isn’t a new player, the contribution of AJ Jenkins will play huge into the 49ers in 2013. They burned a 2012 draft pick on a player who received essentially no reps. Reports for the team state that Jenkins wasn’t ready mentally to handle the Rubik’s cube that is the Greg Roman offense. He is one of the young WRs who have practiced with Kaepernick this offseason (and is the only one who stands a chance of making the active roster every week), so I anticipate big things for Jenkins in 2013.

TE:
Out: Delanie Walker
In: Wishing the 49ers had resigned Delanie Walker.

The 49ers made no significant moves at the TE position in the offseason, and watched their “swiss army knife,” Delanie Walker, sign a massive-overpay contract to go to the Tennessee Titans. There isn’t much to say about this maneuver; I wish the 49ers had resigned Walker, but I wish him all the luck with the proverbial phat cash he acquired by moving on to the Titans. Thus far, the 49ers haven’t signed much of value at the TE position (I expect them to address it in the draft, specifically with Zach Ertz).  There isn’t much to say here; Walker was of great value to the 49ers but he provided average contribution across a series of areas. This draft was perfect to replace him, as there are several TEs who can replace him, including Ertz and Tyler Eifert (one of each should reach the 49ers at the #31 pick). The 49ers lost a valuable, but replaceable player in Walker this offseason.

OL:

I almost want to just leave this year. The 49ers boasted what I consider the best unit in the league in 2012. They removed human turnstiles Adam Snyder and Chilo Rachal at Right Guard and replaced them with sudden stalwart Adam Boone. If you look up at the format there is an in/out involved, but the model of consistency that is the 49ers OL remains mostly unchanged going into 2013. The major move is from pulled-out-of-retirement Leonard Davis being replaced by “don’t call it a second year” OL Joe Looney. Rumor had it that Looney would be replacing C Jonathon Goodwin, but that turned out to not be the case.

That having been said, the 49ers did not lay flat on their offensive line this off season, signing RT Anthony Davis to a 5-year extension with the Niners. I’m excited about this move and hope it stands as a portend to Davis’s draft-mate Mike Iupati, who is also due for an extension.

 

Going into the 2013 draft on Thursday, the 49ers have done a great job in making moves to put themselves back atop the NFC in 2013. However, as the 49ers eye a TE, or potentially a deep threat WR, there are some holes in their offensive roster. Going into the draft, I will take a look at the suddenly more questionable 49ers offense and their offseason moves.

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Matt Cain’s Early Season Woes Explained

Since I posted my short rant about traditional stats being insufficient, I’ve started and stopped probably a dozen different blog posts. I just couldn’t get going. The 30Q/30T got tedious. “Will player x do y?” got boring. I’ll return to it, but I want more of the season under the proverbial belt so I can delve into some in-season questions (Will Joey Votto Have More Walks Than the Chicago White Sox? / How Much Do I Hate Joeburg for Having Matt Harvey?)

That having been said, this post is to discuss the sudden struggles of The Horse, Matt Cain. Cain is a shining example of the Small Sample Size Theater that’s going on right now. This is a time of year where Joey Votto has more walks than an entire roster, but there are five reasons why Matt Cain is getting his lid blown off in, like, every start.

1. Something’s Not Right With His Fastball
The mainstay of every pitcher’s arsenal is his fastball. It’s the ball thrown more often than not. It is the basis around which every other pitch is thrown. The key to a good fastball is that it deftly sets up a changeup, a pitch which looks essentially identical but runs slower. The idea of a pitcher is to deceive, and the fastball-changeup combo is a prime example of this deception. When a fastball loses velocity, the effectiveness of the exchange is diminished. Outside of this dynamic, any dummy can tell you that a slow pitch that doesn’t move a whole heck of a lot is easier to hit than a faster pitch.

According to fangraphs.com’s Pitchf/x, which tracks all kinds of incredible statistics with pitching, Cain’s fastball velocity this year is sitting at 90.6 for the 4 seamer and 90.7 for the two seamer. This is a half mile per hour less than last year, which isn’t a huge deal.  Between 2009 and 2010, he lost a full mph on his 4-seam fastball—but he subsequently gained 1.5 mph on his two-seam fastball. In the timing of the baseball world, the loss of this half-mph puts him down into average velocity, about 90 mph. 

Why is this happening? Giants fans everywhere hope that it’s a mechanics issue, or a byproduct of small sample size, or any pile of things that aren’t what I think it is: fatigue. Cain’s nickname is The Horse because of the Giants’ ability and propensity to ride him. Since 2009, he’s been in the top 10 for innings pitched every single year. Adding on top of this the Giants’ two deep playoff runs, one can easily see that there are a lot of miles on that arm. The speed for his pitches are down across the board, but a diminishing fastball velocity raises red flags because losing a fastball can lead to a scattering of your established game plan.

 

2. Pure, Plain Bad Luck
For years, Matt Cain has been the “exception that proves the rule” as the nonsensical idiom states. Two indicators of pitcher luck, BABIP and LOB% have been insanely out of the norm that for years people in some circles considered Cain an aberration. BABIP is short for “Batting Average on Balls in Play,” and the league average is about .300. It is a measure of batting average solely on balls that end up in the field (I.e. no home runs, no strikeouts). It is an informal measure of luck because when someone hits a ball on a rope in a direction, it can be pure luck that the 1B is there to catch it as opposed to it going 3 feet to his left into the outfield.  Excepting 2008, Cain has had a very low BABIP. This can be attributed to Cain getting a lot of ground balls. Putting those into play are less dangerous than putting fly balls or line drives into play, and this year his GB/FB (ground ball to fly ball ratio) has plummeted from 1.07 in 2011, 0.90 in 2012 and 0.69 in 2013. It means that so far he has gone from giving up more groundballs than flyballs (VERY GOOD) to essentially 7 groundballs for every flyball (NOT SO GOOD). Cain is getting fewer groundballs, which lead to fewer easy plays, which lead to a lower BABIP.

Another measure of luck is the LOB% (left on base percentage), which is a measure of how many runners allowed on base are allowed to score. In theory, a player should have the same propensity for letting a batter get a hit, so the idea of “reaching back” and allowing people on base but not allow them to score is fallacious. Last year, Cain had a nearly 80% strand rate, which meant that 4 out of every 5 base runners he allowed stayed on the base paths. This year, he is at 56%. This means that for every 100 base runners Cain allows, 24 more will score than last year. That is clearly an unacceptable change in statistics. Cain is getting extremely unlucky in this regard, as well.

There has been a theory floated as to why Cain has had such a consistently high strand rate: the stretch. When there are runners on base, pitchers shorten their delivery to limit stolen bases. The idea for such a high strand rate is that Cain pitches better out of the stretch, with runners on base. This year he is not having the same success.

 

3. THE LONG BALL (for the Love of God Stop Giving Up Dingers)
When I started looking at Cain’s fangraphs and baseball-reference pages (full disclosure I do most of my research at these two sites), a number stood out to me that didn’t seem right at all. I double checked and looked through it again and Matt Cain has a 15.6% home-run-to-fly-ball ratio. 15.6% of his flyballs generated land on the other side of the outfield wall. In 2010 it was 3.7% (8.4% in 2010). When Cain is getting hit he is getting hit hard.

Taking it back to basics, and taking HBP and IBB out of the picture, there are limited outcomes to an at bat—a strikeout, walk, fly ball, line drive or a ground ball. Cain’s walk and strikeout rate have stayed fairly consistent. The only problem is that his line drive and flyball rates are up significantly, and a significantly higher percentage of those hits are going for home runs.  That’s why Cain is giving up these massive innings. It’s a confluence of him failing to leave hitters on base, mostly via the long ball.

 

4. No Deception
As mentioned earlier, a pitcher’s MO is pure deception. They intend to make sure a batter is confident he will hit a ball well, then make sure that doesn’t happen. Again turning to Pitchf/x, we can see the answers as to what’s wrong with Matt Cain: he’s not missing bats. Already not a great strikeout pitcher, Cain is failing to get deception on his pitches in 2013. The 2013 line is chilling because everything that is good for Cain is down and everything that is good for ne’er-do-wells like the LA Dodgers lineup are up. The numbers I am throwing up here assume that Cain is throwing 100 pitches a game (for the sake of turning the statistics into easily digestible numbers). Cain’s ability to garner swings is about the same as his career—45% swing percentage versus a 47.4% career. This mean Cain gets about 45 swings per game. While it is not significant, it is still down. Unless Cain is pounding the strike zone, this leads to longer at bats and shorter outings before he tires. Cain is actually doing this marginally better this year than in his career (about 1% better). The issue is that a pitcher wants hitters to swing at balls out of the zone and hold up on balls in the zone. The Horse simply isn’t doing this at the same clip as he has done in his career.

Players are swinging at about 4 fewer balls outside the zone per game this year as compared to his career. This accounts for an entire walk. This is another baserunner and another person for Cain to add to his ER tally when someone tees off on him this year, which suddenly is a thing that happens. The good side of this is that when people are swinging out of the zone, they are hitting the ball at a 10% lower clip than in the past. The only problem is they aren’t swinging.

When they are swinging, it is at Cain’s balls in the strike zone. His percentage this year is pretty much on par with his career, but his contact percentage within the zone is atrocious. This is about 7% higher than his career average. This is an incredible, incredible spike and lies at the core of Cain’s issues. His overall contact percentage is about the same, but many more are coming from within the zone.

 

So far we have seen 4 factors, which show that fewer strikeouts are happening along with more walks and MANY more home runs. Why is this not a cause for concern?

5. The Small Sample Size!
Every very good pitcher will have a couple of horrific starts per year. Hopefully, Cain got his out of the way early. Looking at his statistics will make you want to hurl; 7.15 ERA, yikes. All the junk I brought up above, egad. The only thing is that Cain has had two very good games (combined 2 runs in 13 IP) and two truly horrendous games (16 ER in 9.2 IP). There isn’t much cause for concern here because the Cardinals are a very good lineup and the Brewers went on a spree against Giants pitching. It’s a case of wrong-place-wrong-time for Matt Cain. He is starting to show the signs of breaking down, and a couple of rotation skips to extend his shelf life may be in order, but it isn’t the time to panic.

 

Giants fans are understandably nervous about Matt Cain so far this season. So far, they’ve seen Barry Zito and Tim Lincecum turn into pumpkins right before their eyes. While Cain does show signs of aging, he has turned in two very good performances and two very bad performances. If this happened in late July, the only noteworthy thing would be “Cain has two bad outings.” It would be swept under the rug and never heard of again. This article was not intended to be doom and gloom, but rather highlight the reason why Matt Cain is getting tattooed this year using statistics.  Cain is on my favorite team and my fantasy baseball team, so I’ve followed or outright watched all of these starts. I can tell you that this all fleshes with the eyeball test, as well. Cain is letting runners on, not effectively holding them, then giving up bombs. He’s not giving up a double here, a triple there; he’s piling on the baserunners and allowing an XBH… in two out of four games. After 20 more starts, I doubt anyone will be worried about these starts in April.

 

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Time for Some Soapboxing–Pointless Statistics

I’ve been doing a lot of draft prep for fantasy baseball lately, and even did a couple of drafts. Good timing, since the season started last Sunday. There are some statistics in “5x"5” (standard scoring) Fantasy Baseball that are antiquated nonsense when it comes to modern baseball. However, too many sports writers have decided that some statistics are indicative of how great a player is when, in reality, they are a kind of pointless exercise in measuring a player’s value.

There are five categories of which I speak: RBI & Runs, Batting Average, Pitcher Wins, Saves. I am going to get soapboxy here for a bit about RBI/Runs Scored and Pitcher Wins, since those are the most egregious ones to me.

RBI – Runs Batted In (The number of runs resulting from a hit made by that player) & Runs
RuThe ridiculous focus on RBI is one of the most frustrating things when citing player statistics for how good a player is. It’s two-thirds of the “Triple Crown.” This honor is bestowed upon a player who leads the league in batting average, RBI and home runs. In theory, this means that they’re the best player in the league. They made a different title for leading the league in these three categories. This is so dumb.

Don’t get me wrong, RBI was a valuable statistic when it was developed, along with runs scored. Baseball has been around for a long time. A long time. Like back when the only way you could possibly follow a team is by either going to every single game or by reading what happened in box scores. These would tell you the outcome of the game, and who did what. Using RBI and runs scored in that day and age made sense. Who could get a quick summary of who did what during the game.  Somewhere along the line runs scored and RBI became deified and distorted into a measure of a player’s independent performance. While it does measure, somewhat, a player’s contribution on the field, it is a worthless measuring stick to compare the value between two players. The same goes for runs scored. I’ll give you a reason why:

We place a player like Ryan Braun in a lineup full of guys who can’t get on base. In fact, he is the only player who gets any hits all year. He gets, say, 35 home runs. This gives him 35 RBI and 35 runs scored for the year. This is because the lineup around him is terrible and nobody gets on base for him to be eligible to get any RBI, and once he gets on, everybody else just gets out. He can’t get any runs in this situation either.

Let’s move Ryan Braun to the greatest lineup in the world, wherein every time Braun hits a home run, there are two men on base. Suddenly, Braun’s RBI jumps from 35 to 105, without Braun doing any extra work or having any more talent than the Ryan Braun of the previous example. Let’s also say every time Braun doesn’t get a HR, he hits a single, then the next guy hits a HR. Let’s say Braun gets 100 singles. That’s 135 runs scored without him really exerting any more skill or talent than the Ryan Braun who had only 35 points scored.

RBI and runs scored are more of a reflection of the team around a player and the position he bats in the lineup. However, somewhere along the line, these two statistics became a measure of individual performance and a valid method of comparing two players. They’re not, and the need to stop.

Unfortunately, there’s not really a good, easily digestible replacement for RBI and runs scored. There are things like oWAR (offensive wins above replacement) that measure the estimated contribution to a team’s overall run output by a particular player that attempts to isolate his contribution from everyone else on the team.  This, however, is not an easily digestible statistic. I don’t have problems with runs and RBI, but rather their glorification by sports writers and the general populous.  While I don’t like these statistics, they are nothing compared to the pointlessness of…

Pitcher Wins – A measurement of the talent around a pitcher.
If a starting pitcher goes at least 5 innings, and when he leaves his team has the lead, he is credited with a win. If a relief pitcher goes into a tie game in the top of the 9th with two outs, gives up two runs before getting that last out, and then his team scores 3 runs in the bottom of the 9th to win, he gets a win. Right there, that should tell you the pointlessness of wins right there. It’s like they developed the statistic and then reverse engineered the ways in which it should be used. This is such a dumb statistic for more than just the scenario outlined above.

Ladies and Gentleman, I give you Matt Cain. Matt Cain is a starting pitcher for the Giants last year (the one who got the Perfect Game, if you don’t already know). He has been consistently one of the best pitchers in baseball over the past four years or so. The only issue is that due to terrible run support, Cain has not had a great W-L record. On the flip side, moderately okay pitchers like Kyle Lohse can end up in the top 10 in wins because their squad gives them run support and lets them fall backwards into wins.

I am going to paint a picture about why pitcher wins are pointless the same way I did with RBI & runs scored. Let’s put Justin Verlander on the Astros. The Astros struggle to ever put any points on the board. If Verlander gives up only one run a game, which would be incredible, over the course of a season, but the Astros do their best Astros impersonation, and only manage to score a run in half of Verlander’s games, that means, at best, Verlander is looking at wining exactly half of his games. This is entirely because the offense around him is horrendous and can’t hit its way out of a wet paper bag.

Next, let’s put 2012 Tim Lincecum on the 2012 Texas Rangers. The Rangers averaged 4.98 runs per game last year, tops in the bigs. Lincecum had a 5.18 ERA, but was averaging giving up 3.24 runs per start. If we assume Lincecum gives up 3.24 runs and the Rangers bullpen doesn’t blow it, he has a chance to go undefeated last year.  Tim Lincecum was hot garbage until he switched to the bullpen and if you compare Lincecum on the Rangers in this example to Verlander on the Astros in the prior example, you can see that pitcher wins are even more pointless than runs scored or RBI for hitters. It’s entirely tied to the performance of everybody else on the team.

Quality Starts is a step in the right direction to give a better measure of pitcher’s individual performance (as a "counting stat" that can be accumulated). The only problem is that Quality Starts is almost as bad as wins. It is defined by six or more innings pitched with 3 or fewer runs allowed. 6 innings pitched, 3 runs is a 4.50 ERA. 9 innings pitched, 4 runs is a 4.00 ERA. The first is a quality start, the second is not. There is no real rhyme or reason as to why this exists. It’s almost as bad as wins, but not quite.

 

Statistics aren’t a perfect measure of what happened on the field, especially ones that were developed to give snapshots of games to people reading about them in newspapers 100 years ago. There are some good alternatives out there, with baseball-reference and fangraphs both doing work in advanced statistics, which are good, quick references for better statistics. I’ll go into those, demystifying it, in a future post. For now, though, I’ll step off my soapbox.

 

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30 Questions for 30 Teams, Part 3—The AL East & AL Wrap Up

Today I present part 3 of my 30 questions for 30 teams series, with the AL East. I’ll loop back around, hitting the NL East, NL Central and NL West in the upcoming week.

Over the last twenty years or so, the AL East has been the dominant division in baseball. The Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays and Rays have all been among the best teams during that span. They have all made it to the World Series (and they all have won, except the Rays in 2008). The Blue Jays haven’t been horribly relevant lately, but this year marks the 20th anniversary of Joe Carter’s walk off homerun to win the World Series. Because the path to the postseason is winning your division, the AL East has been involved in a massive arms race as well. The only problem is now the times they are a’changing. The Rays, Orioles, Yankees, Red Sox and Blue Jays have all taken vastly different paths over the last few years, their paths merging in five questions for the AL East in 2013.

 

Baltimore Orioles – Can they repeat 2012?
The Orioles were one of the darling stories of the 2012 season, along with the A’s. They came from seemingly out of nowhere to make the post-season for the first time since 1997. 1997! Wow, I guess that’s what happens when you’re not very good and you share a division with the Yankees and Red Sox dual buzz saws of the 2000s. They were ultimately the beneficiaries of the new, second Wild Card spot, beating the Rangers and eventually losing to the Yankees in the Divisional Round.

Can they repeat that crazy, out of nowhere performance in 2013? Heck, no! They had one wonderful year of flukiness and luck. The baseball mantra of regressing to the mean will hit the birds hard this year.  A cursory glance at their overall statistics---93-69, while only outscoring your opponents by seven runs all year is extremely fluky. Bill James developed a statistic called “Pythagorean W-L” or “pythag” for short. This is an estimation of what a team’s record should be based on the amount of runs scored and the amount of runs given up. Mr. James’s statistic shows that the Orioles should have won 82 games last year. This would put them so far out of playoff contention that everyone (really, no one) would have talked about the overwhelmingly okay season that the Orioles pulled off last year.

The fact of the matter is their pitchers are somewhere between bad and terrible, and closer to the latter. Outside of Jim Johnson, who had a career high in a stat that you literally have to be chosen to be eligible for (and is stupid and out dated), their pitchers alternated between significantly above average and significantly below average for the season. They had 29 one-run victories, which, if they swung the other way, plunges the Orioles into being, well… The Orioles we’ve come to love recently.

They weren’t the masters of the walk-off win like the A’s were last year, but they were the masters of squeaking by. Most of this credit can be given to their significantly above average bullpen. The “high use” relievers (50 or more appearances with relatively few innings, what some call the “7-8-9 guys and the like) all posted an ERA+ (in short, ERA plus accounts for ballpark factors and  the average ERA around the league—100 is average) above 160. That means that they were all significantly above average. Justin Verlander’s ERA+ was 160 last year, so that gives you a frame of reference—thanks to baseball-reference.com for those statistics.

The major part of their success last year was having a bullpen full of Justin Verlanders to close out those nearly 30 close games last year. There is high doubt that this is a duplicable performance as none of the men in that bullpen had previously had doe much in their career.

(Not So) Bold Prediction: I can’t even make a bold prediction about the team that doesn’t sound silly. I’ll just finish off this portion by saying how excited I am about Manny Machado this year. The guy has a ton of talent and did okay in his cup of coffee last year. I have no stats to back this up, except my gut.

 

Boston Red Sox – Should They Blow It Up?
After trading the massive contracts of Josh Beckett, Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford (and for some reason, Nick Punto) last off season to the Dodgers, the question should probably be “Should They Blow It Up Even More Than They Already Have?” It was clear to the Red Sox at the end of the last season that their roster wasn’t working, which is why they shipped off their two “big splash” acquisitions of the previous couple of years and Beckett, who was previously a high priced signing. It appeared as though they were dedicated to getting rid of the chaff on their team. The only problem is it’s hard to trade a $16,000,000 John Lackey for basically anything.

They unloaded a ton of money at the end of last season in that deal, but still have a long way to go to trim the chaff from their roster. They have over $65,000,000 tied up in the aforementioned Lackey, Ryan Dempster, David Ortiz, Shane Victorino and Stephen Drew. Essentially learning nothing from all the money they threw at Gonzalez and Crawford, they threw money at retaining Ortiz and brought in Victorino and Drew. This boggles the mind because they aren’t making different mistakes, they’re making exactly the same ones. Ortiz is often hurt, and his skills are quickly declining over the last few years. The average is there but the power is starting to drain as he gets up there in years. Not resigning him wasn’t an option. Papi is adored in Boston, and there would have been a coup d’etat if they let him walk.

The real issue is by doubling-down on putting money into the corpse of Shane Victorino, and overpaying him by about $4,000,000 a year in doing so.  The Red Sox are stuck in a cycle of keeping up with the Joneses, and in this case, the Joneses are the Yankees. They have to try to pace with them and they look up (or this year, down) at them every year. This need to not enter a rebuilding process sees them throwing cash at names, rather than production, every year. I wouldn’t be surprised if in a few years, Victorino and/or Drew get dealt a la Crawford/Gonzalez.

Bold Prediction: That year is this year, and one of their high priced toys ends up somewhere else. With the Yankees starting to look like a M*A*S*H* unit, the Red Sox can take their foot off the gas and retool for the future. They’re clearly the third best team in the AL East (behind Tampa Bay and Toronto, in my opinion) and they aren’t going to beat out whoever doesn’t take the West between Anaheim and Texas. This is going to be true for the next few years, as well. If they are smart, they toss 1-2 of their top 10-paid players to a contender and start all over. If they get a jump on New York, they can have the suddenly austere Yankees trying to keep up with them in a few years.

 

New York Yankees – WHAT HAPPENED?
I’m going to be honest with you guys, I really, really anticipated writing this part of the 30 questions pieces because the 2013 Yankees are hilarious. They have tons of money tied up in hurt, aging, overpaid stars and they rectified this by signing VERNON WELLS of all people. If you look up world’s dumbest contract, there’s a picture of Wells glued over a picture of Barry Zito.

The best part is they looked at their team, got on the phone, and offered to take Vernon Wells from the Angels. It’s like they have a minimum age and salary for Wells. With Wells joining the roster, they now have the highest paid player at First Base (Mark Teixeira), Third Base (Alex Rodriguez—more on him later), Shortstop (Derek Jeter), Left Field—actually the entire outfield (Vernon Wells) and a top 5-paid Starting Pitcher (CC Sabathia).  Look through that list again, and cross reference it with the Yankees injury report. Yup. Tex, A-Rod and Jeter are all hurt. Add Curtis Granderson to that list and things start to get grizzly.

The Yankees’ propensity for grabbing players on their second or third contract and giving them a fat payday is backfiring on them. They loaded up on talent, paid them big, and once George Steinbrenner stepped down, got hamstrung for roster flexibility. They had to let good piece players like Russell Martin go and are stuck with players like Francisco Cervelli and Eduardo Nunez playing everyday. Throw in Ichiro Suzuki and it’s clear the Yankees are built to have made a run about 5 years ago, and put the team together now, and are paying the price. And signing Alex Rodriguez to an eleventy billion dollar, millennium long contract after Rodriguez had started his sharp decline has someone reaching for the glue to cover Vernon Wells.

Unlike the Red Sox who have some relatively expensive contracts on aging players, the Yankees appear to be constructed almost exclusively out of monster contracts with players of dubious quality. Rumor has it they’re about to back up the dump truck for Robinson Cano, investing more money in locking up a player long term. They worry about now and forget about year 8 or 9 of the contract. The problem is they’re now stuck with a bunch of junk for a ton of money. The next few years are going to be rough for the Yankees, especially if Rodriguez doesn’t take a hint and back out from his contract and retire.

Bold Prediction: Curtis Granderson comes back worse for wear from his fractured forearm, Jeter is always a step slow all year, A-Rod doesn’t come back at all and neither does Mark Teixeira. Vernon Wells hurts himself around mid-season and all is lost. Ichiro makes an awesome All-Star Game speech like always but it doesn’t save the Yankees from finishing last in the AL East.

 

Tampa Bay Rays – Is It Enough?
The Rays are the anti-Yankees. Regularly coming in with a roster salary that doesn’t even match that of the Yankees infield (not even including a pitcher in that mix), they somehow vie for contention the AL East every year. They are savvy with their dollars, as those without a lot of them are wont to do. They are cautious of bringing up players to push off starting their arbitration clock (see Myers, Wil; Jennings. Desmond, ***insert any player the Rays had in their farm system here***). They don’t have any massive contracts, but they do have some great players. They are smart with their money; they signed Evan Longoria to a long term deal early in his career; the deal makes “club friendly” a massive understatement. They are geniuses with their money.

Coming into this season, James Shields was set to be their highest paid player, so what’d they do? Trade him for parts; one part is set to be a centerpiece of the Rays lineup soon (if they call him up); uberprospect Wil Myers.  It’s moves like this that allow the Rays to stay in contention year after year despite battling against the contractian dual goliaths of New York and Boston.  I love the way this team is run; it’s reminiscent of the early days of Billy Beane’s “Moneyball” philosophy. While that was built around finding market inefficiencies (determining what is overvalued and undervalued, then acting accordingly), its core ideals are at the heart of the Rays philosophy. The Rays need to make something from nothing, figuring out how to stay contenders on pittances and scraps compared to the rest of the league.

Every year they are oh, so close, always in the conversation, but not always in the dance. They are yet another team that benefits from the post-season play-in game because they’re setup to be always knocking on the door. The second playoff spot unlocks it a little bit. Unless the suddenly revamped Jays implode, they don’t really have a shot at the division, in my eyes. They are, however, a quality and savvy front office who has made years over years of good moves to position the team to be successful the best they can on their limited budget. Their patience in delaying calling up players is incredibly smart. They are sacrificing a couple months of the player’s playing time at the beginning of their career to have them around for an entire year after they are matured. It’s genius, and should be the blueprint of every small-market team. Not all small-market teams are as smart as the Rays, though.

Bold Prediction: They put it all together and nab the second Wild Card spot. They beat the Rangers in the play-in game. Unfortunately, they do not have the staff to get it going for a whole series, and having used super-ace David Price in the play-in game, don’t make it past the divisional round. In the offseason, the team tries to loosen the purse strings but sudden massive deals for Justin Verlander, and likely Clayton Kershaw set the market too high. They may see this coming and deal the hurler for pieces at the deadline if they are sellers. Either way, David Price pitches somewhere else next year. He’s simply become too expensive for the pauperish Rays.

 

Toronto Blue Jays – Are They the New Front-Runners?
The Blue Jays were far and away the offseason World Series champs. They added 2012 NL Cy Young winner, knuckleballer extraordinaire and overall cool dude R.A. Dickey to the staff. They went out and signed disgraced ‘roider Melky Cabrera and took advantage of the Marlins not being run like a professional baseball organization; pilfering Jose Reyes, Josh Johnson, Mark Buehrle and Emilio Bonifacio (and John Buck, eh) for a junky young pitcher, a high-end prospect, Yunel Escobar, a top-100 prospect and organizational depth. Hachi machi. They loaded up in a hurry, and are eying a win now. They clearly see their window with the emergence of Jose Bautista a few years ago and Edwin “E5” Encarnacion last year. The only problem is… is it enough?

All the players they got have question marks attached, with the possible exception of Reyes. Dickey has done it for exactly one year, and is 38 years old this year. The difference between him and other pitchers, though, is that knuckleballers can pitch for forever as the pitch doesn’t put the same strain on the arm as other pitches. Remember, old man Wakefield debuted just before the Battle of Bull Run and retired like 5 minutes ago, and is a poster boy for knuckleballer longevity.

Bonifacio has shown flashes, but in long stretches, he tends to fall apart. He makes a great utility player, but if the Jays have to lean on him for consistent effort, they will be gravely saddened.

Melky Cabrera of the last two years can hit the cover off the ball, but struggled with weight and inconsistency before that. The sudden surge in his career can probably be answered by the reason behind his 50-game suspension and subsequent “thanks but no thanks” from the Giants in the post-season. Now that he’s, in theory, off the juice, does fat, terrible Melky return? The Jays are banking on him bouncing back and returning to smacking the snot out of the ball.

Josh Johnson was a monster a few years ago, but the wheels fell off. The Blue Jays are clearly hoping for a bounceback with him.

Cumulatively, the Jays have enough talent to coast through the post-season. The only problem is that the games aren’t played on spreadsheets, they’re played on the field. Potential becomes reality and what happens between the chalk lines is what counts. Being the post-season champs in February doesn’t mean you’ll be World Series champs in October.

Bold Prediction: It all works, and the Blue Jays hoist the World Series Trophy. The bold prediction on this one doesn’t really need a ton of explaining because it’s so self-explanatory I honestly don’t know how to elaborate. The sky’s the limit for Toronto and I feel like they will at least make a lot of noise in the playoffs this year.

 

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There you have it, halfway through. 15 out of the 30 questions that baseball will answer this season. The AL was a lot of fun to do because the Giants are in the NL so I don’t really think about the AL that much, to be honest. This has been a fun exercise so far because I learned a lot about teams I don’t really know much about. Granted, I probably said some boneheaded things along the way, since I don’t know everything about every team. That having been said, it’s been a fun time putting this together. To put a bow on the AL part of the 30Q/30T, here are some final predictions:

AL Cy Young: Yu Darvish
I thought this before his near-perfecto, but I think Darvish gets it all together in his second year in the league. Baseball writers do dumb things for dumb reasons when it comes down to choosing the end-of-season awards, so I could see enough votes swaying from perennial favorite Justin Verlander to Yu.

AL MVP: Mike Trout
Speaking of dumb sportswriters doing dumb things for dumb reasons… Trout’s MVP snub will be rectified. He was the better candidate than Cabrera last year, but Cabrera won because of the ~TRIPLE CROWN~ he won. The Triple Crown includes RBI. RBI is a dumb stat. Trout got robbed. Screw Joeburg and his stupid fantasy team with stupid Mike Trout of stupid waivers for a stupid last round keeper pick.

AL Rookie of the Year: Wil Myers
Myers is making it up this year after the Rays wait long enough to delay his arbitration eligibility. He will slot into that lineup and I, like everyone else, think he’ll light the world on fire. He’s not going to be Mike Trout, mostly because it’s Mike Trout.

ALW: Angels
ALC: Tigers
ALE: Blue Jays
WC1: Rangers
WC2: Indians

ALCS: Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim v. Toronto Blue Jays

AL Champions: Toronto Blue Jays

 

I may take a one-or-two post break before tackling the NL. A lot has happened around sports in the past week that I want to talk about, and there’s some stuff I want to get soapboxy about, so we’ll see how that goes!

 

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