The Laker Nation can breathe a sigh of relief -- Andrew Bynum has signed an extension. It's three years with a team option for a fourth. I'm not even going to talk about the money, because who can evaluate it? The guy has had 35 good games in his career, plus a nice two games to start 2008-09. The Lakers had to get the deal done, though, because otherwise he'd be an unrestricted free agent at the end of the year. They couldn't take the risk that he'd be as good this year as he was last year, or better, and thus became a guy that every single team in the league wanted. Locking him up was the only option.
Drayton Moore on the newly acquired Mike Jacobs: "Obviously we like him a lot. He was among the top hitters in all of baseball last year, I think ranking 11th or 12th."
Ok, what? On what possible scale did Jacobs rank 11th or 12th? What stat could Moore be talking about? Jacobs was 129th in batting average, 142nd in on-base percentage, 30th in slugging, 67th in OPS, 22nd in homers, 153rd in hits, 112th in doubles. Advanced stats? His .273 EqA doesn't put him anywhere near the top-30, and his VORP ranked 133rd. In short, Jacobs is a good power hitter, but he makes way too many outs to be regarded as the 11th or 12th-best anything.
I cannot fathom this. The only explanation I can think of is that Moore thought he traded for Brandon Jacobs, who most certainly is a top hitter, if in a different sense.
Things I've learned from the first two nights of the NBA
I watched Cleveland vs. Boston and the Lakers vs. Portland on Tuesday and I saw most of Phoenix vs. San Antonio last night. I haven't yet watched the Lakers' blowout win over the Clippers. So here are some things I've learned.
The Cavs are good. LeBron is as good as ever, if not better, Mo Williams adds a very nice extra scoring option to the team, as well as a real second banana, and the teams has pretty much everything you can name that you want from a team. Size (Wallace, James, Ilgauskas, Varejao), speed (Williams, Wallace, Gibson, West), shooting (Gibson, Wally, Williams, Pavlovic), offense-creation (James, Pavlovic, West to an extent). The thing you still have to be wary of is that they don't have a point guard. Delonte West is an ok player, but he's not really a starting point guard in this league. Mo Williams is basically the definition of "combo guard," and has a score-first game. This means that, just like in the past, Cleveland will be relying on LeBron to handle the ball more than you'd like given that the guy has a propensity to dribble around and heave up jumpers.
The Celtics really need a backup point guard. The dropoff is palpable when you go from Rajon Rondo to Eddie House handling the ball. It's been said before, but it ought to be said again: House is a fine spot-up shooter, but he's not a point. Those just aren't his skills. He's miscast basically because he's short and because Boston has no one else. Boston is also maybe the team most vulnerable to injury in the league: if they lose Garnett, Pierce, or Allen, I think they drop from "best in the East" to about fifth-best just like that. Hell, even losing someone like Kendrick Perkins or Rajon Rondo would really hurt them because they just don't have any depth. Contrast this with the Cavs, who will be terrible if LeBron gets hurt, but can survive an injury to basically anyone else, or the Spurs, where we can say the same about Tim Duncan, or the Suns with Steve Nash. I don't understand how the "Executive of the Year" gets that label when he's built a team where his best bench player is Tony Allen.
The Blazers look young. The Lakers harassed them and harassed them into miss after miss along with multiple shot-clock violations or heaves with one second remaining. There's a lot of talent there, to be sure, and Rudy Fernandez looks for real, even with that awful "I'm European" ten o'clock shadow he's got going. But they're still coming together into a unit where they all know where each other are going to be, know the offense like the back of their hands, and so forth.
Contrast this with the Lakers, who were in sync on Tuesday, and apparently so again on Wednesday as they blew out the Clippers. Kobe didn't have to do too much, Andrew Bynum looked only a little lost (although his jump-shot is ugly -- he needs to figure out quickly that he isn't Pau Gasol), Pau looked like Pau, Lamar Odom played very well with the second unit, and it seemed like everyone made one of their signature plays: a fearless drive to the basket by Jordan Farmar, a three with a chest-pound by Sasha, a high arcing three with 22 seconds on the 24-clock by Vladi, and on and on. Granted that the Blazers and the Clippers aren't exactly the class of the West, L.A. has looked good. As long as Lamar Odom stays happy coming off the bench (and can I just say that L.A. is doing exactly what I wanted them to? Of the triumvirate of Odom, Gasol, and Bynum, there are two on the floor at all times, with Odom always playing PF, Bynum always playing C, and Gasol shuttling between the two -- everyone gets a lot of minutes, no one gets overworked, and everyone is in a position to succeed), this is a dangerous team.
The below-left story shows what someone like Fay Vincent can do when they're unshackled from the Commissioner position -- call out Bud Selig for his treatment of the rain-marred World Series, call out Bud Selig for the way he half-assedly handled the Bonds all-time home-run record situation, and acknowledge that the owners "do collude." (Although his gut tells him that they didn't do so against Bonds.)
The ESPN scroll just informed me that Sean Hill will be the 49ers' starting quarterback next week. San Francisco, of course, has no such player. They do have a Shaun Hill, however.
This is silly. The argument seems to be that the Lakers can't keep Lamar Odom because his salary is so high. This misunderstands or ignores the NBA's salary cap rules. Odom's deal expires after this year. If the Lakers are worried about salary, trading him doesn't help because the players who come back have to have salaries close to Odom's. Expiring players typically are dealt for non-expiring players. (See Kwame Brown for Pau Gasol and also basically every other trade in the NBA over the last seven years.) If the Lakers don't want Odom's deal on the books, they keep him and let him walk in free agency after the year. Anyone they get back is going to cost them more, not less, because they will probably be multi-year players.
The claim that the Cavs are better-run than the Indians is the most absurd non-habeas-petition thing I've read in months. The Cavs! They have made exactly two positive moves in four years: drafting LeBron and trading for Mo Williams. There's been a lot of lateral movement, a lot of churn on that team, but actual steps forward? I don't see it. (Hat tip: True Hoop.)
Mike Gallego is back! After four years as third-base coach in Colorado, the A's have lured him back to the organization where he began his career to serve in the same position. Don't ask me why this makes me excited, but I kind of love Gallego.
Apparently the attraction is that he's well-regarded as an infield coach. This could be important in coming years as the A's will likely be breaking in some new infielders: Daric Barton is still a work in progress at first, Mark Ellis will likely be replaced by either Jemile Weeks or Adrian Cardenas in 2011, Bobby Crosby will be gone after 2009, and Eric Chavez ... who knows. Maybe it'll be Jeff Baisley over there for the next five years. Weeks, Cardenas, and Eric Patterson are also all better known for their bats than their gloves, the same way Chavez and Crosby were before Ron Washington turned them into excellent defenders.
And in case you were interested, Gallego was drafted in the second round of the 1981 draft out of UCLA. Some notable names were drafted in that round: Mark Gubicza and Mark Langston were drafted in the spots immediately following Gallego, and Frank Viola, Sid Bream, and John Elway were all picked later in the round. The A's didn't have a great draft in 1981, getting four players of note (and only six who played in the bigs): Gallego, Curt Young (now the pitching coach), Mickey Tettleton, and Alvin Davis. Tettleton ended up having a nice late peak from ages 28-34, but this was unfortunately well after he was released by the A's in the aftermath of a 194/292/322 season at age 26.
Mike Nolan, long rumored to be on the hot seat, finally got fired today, the day after San Francisco's losing streak stretched to four games. Just as across the Bay, the 49ers promoted a non-coordinator to be the new head coach. Mike Singletary was a linebackers coach, as he has been since 2005, although he had also earned the label "Assistant Head Coach," so this doesn't look like a promotion over the top a la Seattle's succession plan, where the defensive backs coach, former Niners assistant Jim Mora, will be the head coach next year and decide whether to keep his boss, the defensive coordinator, on the staff.
Anyway, Nolan had quite a bit of time to build a winning team, and the pocketbook has been open: Nate Clements and Justin Smith are among the major parts that have been added to the team via free agency. Further, in his first year, he had Alex Smith, the #1 overall pick, to work with. Smith struggled in every year that he wasn't playing for Norv Turner, both with his performance and with injuries. This year was no different: he apparently lost the spring training battle to lifetime third stringer J.T. O'Sullivan, and was soon thereafter placed on IR with a shoulder injury. One has to wonder whether he has an NFL career left at all, much less one in San Francisco. While the offense's struggles were somewhat expected as the team lost its first two offensive coordinators, talented play-callers, to head coaching jobs (Mike McCarthy and Norv Turner), the defense's difficulties, given Nolan's reputation as a defense-minded coach and the amount of money spent on players brought in from outside, were far harder to swallow.
Nolan also apparently had communication difficulties with Smith, the man who was supposed to be at the center of San Francisco's resurgence. The two clashed far more often than you'd hope a quarterback and head coach would clash. The Jeff Garcia-Jon Gruden situation this year is somewhat reminiscent of the Smith-Nolan difficulties. The difference is that Garcia is a proven NFL quarterback and Gruden is one of the very best coaches in the league, and may well go down as one of the best in history (as well as a fan favorite -- everyone loves "Chucky"). Smith and Nolan simply don't have that kind of leeway.
So that's all in the past now. The future is with Mike Singletary. I confess, I'm excited for this. Obviously, no one knows what he will do as a head coach, but he has quickly earned a reputation around the league as a guy who should be a head coach, and a good one. He has had interviews for head coaching jobs in the past (Wikipedia tells me the Cowboys and Chargers have shown interest). For that reason alone, I'm glad San Francisco made this move now, preempting Singletary potentially leaving for greener pastures at the end of this season if the 49ers dithered over whether to keep Nolan or not. One could compare the situation to the way Texas fans feel about defensive coordinator Will Muschamp -- the man is well respected, a great coach at what he does, and potentially a great head coach. And everyone's worried that Mack Brown will stick around so long that they'll lose their shot at getting Muschamp to be their head coach.
I'll admit that part of my love for Singletary goes back to a profile in Boys' Life, the Scouting magazine, I read when I was about nine. He's one of the greatest linebackers in history, a proud part of the Chicago linebacking tradition, and an intense and intelligent competitor who overcame less-than-amazing physical skills to be a dominant force at the position. Now, my irrational love for the man has very little to do with how well he'll do as a head coach. And let's not forget that Nolan himself was a hot head coaching prospect as well. I was ecstatic that he was coming to San Francisco to remake the team after the disastrous Dennis Erickson years. He would be the new Steve Mariucci, a whiz kid, albeit on the defensive side of the ball.
Going forward, I hope Singletary takes a look at the offensive side of the ball. J.T. O'Sullivan and the play-calling continue, in my opinion, to be the issues on this team. O'Sullivan simply isn't a good enough quarterback to be taking seven-step drops and looking downfield as often as he does. He doesn't protect the football, as he's fumbled and thrown interceptions far too often. Mike Martz quarterbacks always take a beating, but they have to be able to protect the ball in the face of that beating.
Singletary has to ask himself, "If I were sitting at middle linebacker, which guy would I not want to see with the ball in his hands?" The answer is obvious: Frank Gore. Gore should be getting 25 runs a game and five more catches: a couple of screens and one or two checkdowns. For one thing, Gore's massive talent is going to waste in the here and now. For another, Gore can't be happy getting the kind of work he's getting, which makes it more likely that he'll leave the team in free agency at some point, something no one wants to see happen.
As for the passing game, Singletary should ask who presents the most matchup nightmares, and the answer is equally obvious: Vernon Davis. San Francisco should be using him like Indianapolis uses Dallas Clark, lining him up in the slot or at the end, getting him downfield, throwing short passes into the flat, seven-yard ins over the middle, etc. In short, variety. I know the story on Davis is, "But he's such a good blocker!" Ok, fine. So let him block for Frank Gore when you're running the ball. But for goodness sake, is there any linebacker in the league who can run with Davis? Is there any safety or corner who can tackle him, or muscle him off his route? When the battle for the title of best receiver is between Isaac Bruce and Josh Morgan, you need to get creative about your offense.
If Mike Martz is such a genius, he should prove it by adapting to the talent at hand. That's what great managers do, in sports, in business, in life. They take the materials they have and maximize the potential of those materials. Martz has not shown an ability to do that this year with San Francisco, and Singletary could do worse than to sit him down and have a talk about who the best players on the team are. Whatever they come up with, the answer is not going to be "J.T. O'Sullivan."
Deadspin points to the video. (But first, let's be clear about something: USC plays in Los Angeles. This team is South Carolina. They are not USC. I refuse to stand for this, Deadspin.)
But second, and more importantly, that's an awesome hit. I can't find video of it, but there's a mildly funny Buffalo Wild Wings ad where the referee goes under the replay hood, which is really video-conferenced to the local BWW, where they tell the zebra, "We don't want to go home yet. Can you send this one to overtime?" He proceeds to make a call a particular way. The closing shot, though, is the relevant one: wide receiver has broken free down the sideline until, oops, the referee sticks his foot out and totally takes the guy down.
So, in short, yes, college football has devolved into an ad for a chain sports bar.
The Brewers could use some out-of-the-box thinking in their search for a manager. Ken Macha is decidedly in the box. Davey Johnson? The next Joe Maddon or Manny Acta? Tell Earl Weaver he can manage from his living room? Ken Macha or some other "experienced" manager isn't going to hurt this team, but they won't help it either.
Mike Sando sees the same thing watching the game as I did in the box score: the 49ers can't win games if JT O'Sullivan is giving the ball away two or three times every outing.
I'm by no means a Colts partisan, but did they get the ol' screw job today from the zebras? I think the announcers pointed out a missed illegal formation, there was a blatant illegal contact on a throw to Dominic Rhodes that turned a should-have-been first down into a fourth down, and a missed pass interference call on a throw to Reggie Wayne in the situation. (That last one didn't end up mattering because on the fourth down play, there was another pass interference on a throw to Wayne, this one called.) In a game with a combined 21 penalties, it's a little unclear why the refs were unwilling to call one or two more.
I guess I should be careful before Benito Goodell comes down on my head with a $25,000 fine.
From John Perrotto's column today in BP: "McCourt's baseball people reportedly had to be talk him out of demanding that [Andruw] Jones refund part of his salary after such a poor season."
I can't say I'm happy about Mark Ellis signing a multi-year deal to stay in Oakland. Regardless of how good his defense is, he's 32 next year, has played 150 games just once in the last four seasons, and seems more likely to repeat his 2008 90 OPS+ than his 2007 110 OPS+. Why did the A's get Adrian Cardenas and Eric Patterson in trades while also drafting Jemile Weeks if you're going to bring Ellis back for three years? (That's not even mentioning the existing second basemen in the organization, like Cliff Pennington and Kevin Melillo.)
So what does next year's offense look like, knowing that Ellis is inked in at second base? I think aside from Ellis, pretty much the only position we can say is locked down is catcher, as Kurt Suzuki isn't going anywhere. First base could be Daric Barton again, but youth or not, the A's can't afford another 226/327/348 year out of that position. They could try Wes Bankston there, but he didn't exactly mash in his major league time, either. I'd guess it'll be Barton. The A's aren't really the type to give up on young talent.
I'm going to guess that shortstop will belong to Bobby Crosby again. He didn't really hit this year, despite his 39 doubles, but who else is there? Cliff Pennington? Apparently Adrian Cardenas is working at shortstop in the Arizona Fall League. That lack of options makes me guess we'll see Crosby back for one more year in Oakland before heading out on free agency in 2010.
Third base is anyone's guess. I can't deal with another year of Jack Hannahan. I hope Billy Beane and David Forst feel the same way. Eric Chavez ... who knows. One would like to think he'll be healthy and ready to come back next year, but he played 23 games this year. You just can't count on it. Jeff Baisley? He got some time late in the year, and I'd guess his upside is higher than Hannahan's. I'm going to guess that Hannahan is done with the A's, and they'll hope that Eric Chavez can come back and play next year, with Baisley serving in the Hannahan role.
The outfield is just plain full up. I think Carlos Gonzalez will be back in center, Ryan Sweeney should be back, and Aaron Cunningham made something of a case that he's ready to play the other corner. I'd bring Rajai Davis back as the fourth outfielder, defensive replacement, pinch-runner, etc. His 25 steals added an element to the team that has been missing for years, and proved that the A's are not averse to running if they have a guy who can actually do it successfully. (They're just averse to actually paying money for that skill.) But what of Travis Buck? He only hit .226 this year, but he was the only power threat on the team aside from Jack Cust (.200+ ISO) and he's shown the ability to take a walk in the past. The outfielders also include Cust, although if Frank Thomas doesn't come back, he'll be the full-time DH. (Seeing as how Thomas was hurt and not really hitting for power this year, I'd advocate telling Thomas (again) "thanks for the memories.") The outfield I'd like to see is Gonzalez, Sweeney, and Buck, with Davis as the fourth outfielder, someone (Chris Denorfia?) as the fifth guy, and Aaron Cunningham (who's only going to be 23 next year) on the farm for another year (or partial year -- you never know with this team).
