Still Gotta Come Through Chicago
Chicago sports hypotheticals; GarPax, in trouble?; Sox 2020; Cubs, Blackhawks, you know the drill..
Happy Friday, SGCTChicagoans! It feels great putting ink to paper with the weekend right around the corner. On Monday, we covered the decade in the intro and the final recap of the Bears season. Check that out if you weren’t able to then. I really enjoyed everyone’s comments on the thread this week. People are still posting, so don’t be afraid to hop in and add your moments of the Chicago sports decade.
Before we get started, if you enjoy the newsletter, tell someone to subscribe to Still Gotta Come Through Chicago:
Just a few of the moments that subscribers added to the discussion:
Philip Humber’s perfect game in 2012 for the White Sox is one of the biggest anomalies in the history of the sport. The dude had 6.44 ERA in the 2012 season and pitched a perfect game in April.
The game that started a Christmas tradition, a few friends and I going to the closest home Bears game to Christmas every year. Matt Barkley was the Bears starting QB. His stat line that day: 24/40, 2 TD, 5 INT. The 3-12 Bears lost 41-21 to the Redskins. Let’s just say in the first quarter, a man who will not be named whispered to me, “Barkley could be the guy…”
The Cubs/Pirates Wild Card game in 2015 may have been my personal favorite in the decade. After all, Game 7 in 2016 was not enjoyable, despite the results. This game was. It felt like something had spiritually changed. Schwarber’s homer off Gerrit Cole let Cubs fans it was okay to believe again. A highlight from that night, submitted in the thread:
A Hawks submission got me thinking about Joel Quenneville’s legacy, which made me consider Chicago coaches in general.
Add your favorite, least favorite, or most random moment of the decade to the thread HERE.
Who is the best Chicago coach in your lifetime? Quenneville is hard to beat for the youngins. A serious case can be made for Joe Maddon, given the Cubs history. Ozzie Guillen? Mike Ditka or Phil Jackson? What about the second best? Tom Thibodeau led a few teams completely void of talent to top seeds in the Eastern Conference. I’d throw his hat in the ring for top three of my sports-watching lifetime.
While we are on the topic of questions to consider:
Who would you rather have in Chicago?
Ja Morant on the Bulls OR Kyler Murray on the Bears?
Morant’s stats are eerily similar to a former Bulls PG’s from his rookie year:
Derrick Rose in 2008-09: 16.8 points and 6.3 assists on 47.5% shooting
Ja Morant in 2019-2020: 17.6 points and 6.6 assists on 47.7% shooting
The alternative, of course, is a (potentially) long term solution at quarterback:
Kyler Murray: 20 touchdowns, 12 interceptions with a 64.4 completion % and 6.6 yards per attempt… 93 attempts rushing for 544 yards
Mitch Trubisky: 17 touchdowns, 10 interceptions with a 63.2 completion % and 6.1 yards per attempt… 48 attempts rushing for 193 yards
Murray was in his first year with a bad team and Trubisky in his third year with a good team, but this question isn’t binary.
Comment the top three coaches, in order, of your lifetime AND who you’d rather have for the next ten years: Ja Morant on the Bulls or Kyler Murray on the Bears.
No new thread this week, so you can add any responses to the above questions HERE from Monday’s thread.
Trivia:
Chicago is hosting the All-Star game this year, which Zach LaVine swears he belongs in (he doesn’t). The last time the game was played here was in 1988 at Chicago Stadium. Michael Jordan was 17/23 and had 40 points. He also edged out Dominique Wilkins for the Slam-Dunk Championship title, his second in a row.
Jordan is the only player to win the All-Star MVP and dunk contest in the same year. He would also go on to win the All-Star game MVP in 1996 and 1998.
Only one other player has won both the Slam-Dunk Championship and All-Star MVP, who is it? (Answer at the end of the newsletter).
Now let’s get back to it—the bread and butter, the team updates for this week. Remember, I typed up a lengthy Bears section Monday, so they’re omitted from today’s rundown. They’ll be featured again on Monday. But for now: Leading off… for the first time in a long time…
White Sox:
A lot has transpired since the last time we were discussing the White Sox offseason on these pages. So long, in fact, that this is what I said the last time I commented on the newsletter. Almost a month ago from today:
I, once again, am so tired of this organization saying this year may not be the time to go all in. There are no ten-year plans in major league sports. Look at the Cubs. They won the World Series three years ago with what appeared to be the best young roster in the league and now are considering trading Kris Bryant after missing the playoffs. The Sox young core won’t be 1. young or 2. their core forever. The timeframe has screamed 2020 for them for years, and now we’re here, and the due date is being pushed back again?
Well, well, well. The Sox now have the same odds as the Cubs to win the 2020 World Series at 30/1.
Since the above quote, they have:
Signed Dallas Keuchel to a 3 year, $55 million deal
Signed minor league prospect Louis Robert (RAH-BERT) to a 6 year, $50 million dollar deal
Signed Steve Cishek to a 1 year, $6 million deal
Signed Gio Gonzalez to a 1 year, $5 million deal
Signed Edwin Encarnacion to a 1 year, $12 million deal
Simply put, a lot has changed. Those deals alone act as an announcement to the rest of the MLB and the AL Central: The White Sox are here to compete in 2020.
The Sox offseason has been as productive as any team in baseball, frankly, and Steve Cishek was a perfect way to round it out. Cubs fans know Cishek’s value. At times, he was one of only two or three guys who you didn’t say “Oh no” to when they trotted out of the ‘pen.
Cishek and his three-quarters release were consistently reliable during his time on the North Side. In 2018 he had a 2.18 ERA and a 1.038 WHIP in over 70 IP. In 2019, his numbers worsened a tad—as expected for a 33 year old—but he was still solid, posting a sub-3 ERA and a 1.2 WHIP in over 64 innings.
Even if he continues to go a bit downhill as he ages, he’s undoubtedly worth the deal the Sox gave him, and will help out Alex Colomé and Aaron Bummer in late game situations. To put it in perspective, Cishek threw about the same amount of innings as Kelvin Herrera did last year for the Sox. Herrera had a -0.4 WAR, with an ERA over three runs higher than Cishek’s.
Cishek’s signing was on the same level, in my mind, as the Gio Gonzalez deal. Low- risk and necessary signings that are imperative for actual good teams. The Sox already had some really productive players last year, that wasn’t the problem. The problem was the depth and the positions where they didn’t have really good players, because in those slots they usually had really bad ones.
Gonzalez has been a solid pitcher for his entire career. He has had an above league-average ERA in nine of 12 seasons, and two of the below average seasons came during his first two years in Oakland.
Last year, he battled injuries, but still posted a 3.5 ERA over 17 starts. If the White Sox can get 150+ innings out of him at league average production, it will be a huge upgrade from the dreadful options they were putting out there last year at the back half of the rotation, like Odrisamer Despaigne.
Edwin Encarnacion hit 34 home runs last year in just 109 games. Remember some of the designated hitters Ricky Renteria used last year? No exaggeration, that slot was designated for the one of the worst hitters in baseball most of the time, whether that was A.J. Reed or Yonder Alonso. The DH slash line for the Sox last year was a combined .205/.285/.356. Good god.
Encarnacion’s slash line last year was .244/ .344/ .531 and his OPS was 32 percent better than league average. Even in his age-37 season, he’ll be a huge upgrade in the lineup when he plays.
Dallas Keuchel committing to the White Sox was a massive deal for the organization and was, according to Keuchel, partially due to the signing of Yasmani Grandal. The White Sox have two catchers—Grandal and James McCann—who pitchers like throwing to.
He is just four years removed from a Cy Young, and even though he’s not going to produce at that level in his age-32 season, he’s going to throw a lot of innings at a slightly above league average clip. With Keuchel, Giolito, and Gonzalez, Dylan Cease doesn’t need to be a top-2 rotation guy in his sophomore season.
Reynaldo Lopez’s ERA was over two runs better in the second half of last season. Granted, he had one of the worst ERAs in baseball for the first half—6.34—but he showed significant strides towards the end of the season. In the first half, hitters slashed .297/.361/.546 against him, and in the second half, they slashed .257/.319/.427. In other words, he’s probably not going to be a top-end guy. But can he be serviceable until Michael Kopech returns? Yes. And once Kopech does return, Lopez could give the Sox another option out of the bullpen.
The Louis Robert deal is mostly notable because it means that he’ll be up with the Sox on opening day and that, again, they plan on contending for the AL Central from the start. We’ve all seen the minor league highlights from Robert. There’s no doubt that there will be learning moments in the first half of next year, but the fact that he’ll be able to get those reps in from the start is a good first step. The money isn’t significant here—if he outperforms the deal, good for the Sox. If he struggles to adjust to big league pitching, he’s making less than $10 million per year, so who really cares.
The conclusion: Baseball, at the very least, should be fun again this year on the South Side, and you’ll be able to see it at a reasonable price.
Bulls:
In this week’s edition of “Jim Boylen Should Be Nowhere Near an NBA Basketball Court Without Paying Market Price”: Daniel Gafford went down and was writhing in pain in Monday’s game against the Mavericks. The possession continued and ended with a Mavericks score. After the play, with Gafford—who, by the way, is averaging nearly 14 points and 7 boards per 36 minutes—still down, the refs blow the whistle, almost assuming that Boylen will call a timeout to get his injured player off the floor.
Boylen says he does not want a timeout and that he will sub. Well, you can’t sub without there being an official stoppage of play, like, a timeout. The game awkwardly proceeds and Boylen still does not call a timeout, which forces the MAVERICKS’ Tim Hardaway Jr. to intentionally foul to stop play so Gafford can be subbed out. Yes, the opposing team had the wherewithal to get Gafford off the court. Boylen didn’t.
Mavs Coach Rick Carlisle said after the game that he thinks the Bulls are the hardest playing team in the league, which unfortunately somewhat bailed out Boylen for the night. But as a veteran of postgame interviews for teams that just played the Bulls, I promise you this is the “say something nice about the Bulls” segment that they all engage in. Coaches in the NBA don’t like to criticize other coaches and teams, particularly when they’re bad like the Bulls are, so I wouldn’t take Carlisle’s comments all that seriously.
The only comments you need to hear are from the Bulls players after the game, who says things like this (after the loss to the Pelicans):
I’m not even sure if Dunn and LaVine are trying to be cryptic there, but that just means that your coach is outmatched.
Even if the Bulls do play hard, they don’t have much to show for it. They’re now 13-25, a season-worst 12 games below .500. They’re four games out of the 8th seed in the Eastern Conference, but that would mean catching up with the Nets or the Magic, who are both missing key players—Kyrie Irving and Jonathan Isaac, respectively. They’d also have to jump the Pistons, who are actively tanking, and the Hornets, who many thought would be the worst team in the entire NBA this year.
To make matters worse, Wendell Cater Jr., the last bastion of hope remaining on the Bulls roster, is out with a high ankle sprain for 4-6 weeks. It’s reasonable to worry that WCJ is somewhat of an injury-prone player. After all, he’s missed time for what seems like injuries to every body part imaginable. What’s an even more reasonable concern is how the Bulls will fare without him.
The Bulls net rating is actually positive (+0.7) with WCJ on the court this year, and dips significantly (-2.5) when he’s off the court. He’s an advanced defensive player and the offense works better when he is heavily involved. He’s not always heavily involved, however, because Jim Boylen is the Bulls coach and Zach LaVine thinks he’s an All-Star.
If you think things look bad right now, I’d look away for the next month or so without WCJ. The Bulls are so dreadful that it seems silly to proclaim that there’s anyone they can’t “afford” to lose. But WCJ going down is pretty much the worst case scenario, if anyone still had hopes that they’d be in the playoff hunt the rest of the way.
It’s also gives the front office another excuse to make after the season to justify underperforming. It’s a tradition unlike any other, and I have no doubt in my mind that they’ll evoke the injury card again after the Bulls fail to win 30 games for the third straight year.
Speaking of LaVine thinking he’s an All-Star. He’s been bizarrely attempting to hold All-Star voters hostage, saying he’d maybe participate in the Slam-Dunk Contest (he’s won it twice) if he was voted into the game. Then he said he’d rather participate in the three-point contest, as if you can get into such a thing by just stating your desire. He even attempted to back up that assertion with stats, not realizing that his 39.1% on three-pointers is actually just good enough for 43rd in the league. He makes the 12th most threes per game, but that probably has to do with the fact that he attempts the 11th most.
Chances are that he will be granted at least one of these wishes, simply because it will be embarrassing for all parties involved if no Chicago Bull is featured in the Chicago All-Star game. I say let them be embarrassed.
Let’s replicate the above exercise we did for WCJ for LaVine. The Bulls are better off when LaVine is not on the court, posting a -1.3 rating during his minutes and a -0.5 rating during his time on the bench. These stats aren’t definitive, and sure, there are other factors. But if you’re going to be an All-Star, your team should probably perform better when you’re on the court, yes?
FiveThirtyEight’s model now predicts the Bulls will win 30 games this season, still on the fringe of the over/under win total (depending on what you got it at). What you should consider, though, is the fact that the same model predicted that the Bulls would win 39 games before the season. Bad coaching and bad execution = not playing up to expectations.
David Kaplan said this on ESPN 1000 yesterday:
“From what I hear – and I still have good friends that work in the league, they [the Bulls] are readying a plan to overhaul everything in basketball operations.”
I wouldn’t get your hopes up. K.C. Johnson, the Bulls NBC beat writer who has been around the Bulls for almost as long as Pax has, said he expects Forman and Paxson to return.
Knowing the Bulls, they’ll change Forman’s title and hire someone else that will just be another Paxson puppet. Like the Patriots, but also completely unlike the Patriots, I’m at “believe it when I see it” mode with GarPax. I won’t predict the Patriots downfall until Tom Brady and Bill Belichick are out of the country in Week 16 of the NFL season drinking Maitais and the Patriots are mathematically eliminated from the playoffs. Likewise, I’ll believe GarPax are out when I see brand new faces in those seats in the offseason and there’s a press release with “John Paxson fired” or “John Paxson resigned” somewhere in writing.
Cubs:
The Cubs offseason has felt like a party with a bunch of drunkards waiting for a beat to drop in a song, constantly screaming the anticipated lyric at the wrong time and getting pissed at having to wait so long for it.
Did that even make sense?
Well, that’s what it feels like to me.
We still don’t know when the decision on Kris Bryant’s grievance is coming, but David Haugh reported in the Tribune that it should be within the week. The ruling will decide whether the Cubs tampered with Bryant’s service time or not, and will thus determine whether he has one or two years left before he can enter free agency. That’s important, both for the Cubs and teams that would consider trading for him.
The Marquee Sports Network, where we’ll be forced to watch Cubs games from here on out, is still hiring vital positions. Its LinkedIn would suggest that they’re launching a major sports channel in a year, not in a month. The bigger issue is that Marquee is still negotiating with Comcast to carry Cubs games this year. As Phil Rosenthal of the Tribune reports, this is dangerous territory. Both the Yankees and the Dodgers have made similar television moves. In the Yankees case, nearly a million households were blacked out from watching games during its dispute with carriers. In Los Angeles, there’s still large parts of the city that don’t have access to Dodger baseball on TV. The crux of the issue is that the carriers can’t justify paying the price for Marquee, which then raises the price for all cable subscribers, when only a small fraction of its audience cares to watch Cubs games.
The Ricketts family has elected to not hold a panel at the annual Cubs convention for the second straight year, refusing to take questions from fans.
Oh yeah, and the Cubs have still spent $0 in free agency this offseason.
I imagine the Cubs section will be quite eventful over the next month, but I wouldn’t have predicted this offseason would be this quiet up to this point. So, we’ll see.
On a brighter note, MLB.com released a new fielding metric that confirms what Cubs fans have long known:
Javy Baez is the best infielder in baseball.
The metric is derived from MLB’s Statcast, and is dubbed “Outs Above Average.”
Via MLB.com: Outs Above Average (OAA) is the cumulative effect of all individual plays a fielder has been credited or debited with, making it a range-based metric of fielding skill that accounts for the number of plays made and the difficulty of them. For example, a fielder who catches a 25% Out Probability play gets +.75; one who fails to make the play gets -.25.
With 0 as the average, Baez measured out at a +19 OAA, two better than the next best rating, which belongs to Nolan Arenado.
Here are the complete infielder rankings.
Blackhawks:
Sorry, but even if Joel Quenneville is the best Chicago coach of your lifetime, you’re stuck with Jeremy Colliton now. And the Jeremy Colliton experience, thus far, has been an unpredictable one.
The Hawks have already had five separate losing streaks of at least three games this year. Considering that, being one game below .500 almost seems like an accomplishment.
It’s not fair to blame this season’s woes squarely on Colliton, however.
Here are the Hawks who have been day-to-day since the New Year commenced:
Robin Lehner
Dylan Strome
Zach Smith
Adam Boqvist
And here are the Hawks that have been on the injured reserve list in the last 30 days:
Calvin De Haan
Brent Seabrook
Brandon Saad
Drake Caggiula
Andrew Shaw
Duncan Keith
It’s been a tough go at it for the United Center’s residents this year.
Remembering better times:
Patrick Kane has 994 career points, and it’d be nice for him to reach that milestone of 1,000 at home. But the Blackhawks are at the UC against Anaheim on Saturday and then away for the next three.
He’s already 90th all-time for total points in NHL history.
What if the stars aligned and Kane reached 1,000 career points on Tuesday, January 21st when Coach Q returned to the United Center? He’s averaging 1.25 points per game this year, and the Panthers match-up is five games away.
This weekend in Chicago:
Bulls: Home vs. the Pacers at 7:00 tonight; Away vs. the Pistons at 6:00 tomorrow
Blackhawks: Home vs. the Ducks at 7:30 tomorrow
Trivia answer: Kobe Bryant. Bryant won the All-Star MVP four times, in 2002, 2007, 2009, and 2011. He also won the Slam Dunk Contest in 1997.
Betting record: 19-9; Miami OH +14 was a winner on Monday. New pick coming in Monday’s edition of Still Gotta Come Through Chicago.
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Thanks, as always, for reading. Next newsletter, as always, will be the best one yet. And don’t forget… Still Gotta Come Through Chicago! Have a great weekend.