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I don't think tonight's outcome changes anything about the quotes above. Even if the Heat win they have shown that they are indeed "very beatable" no matter what NYCF says. No one had any reason to believe the Heat shooters would stop making shots at their expected rates or that Wade would be murdered and propped up Weekend At Bernie's style. This is a different team than it was when those statements were made and the people who believed Miami would roll on Indiana had more reason to believe than the people who thought Indiana had a good chance to win the series. So yes, [expletive] happens, and anyone who thought this series would be a walk a month ago (me) turned out to be wrong, but that doesn't indicate a lack of understanding of the game of basketball. There was some reason to believe the Heat wouldn't shoot at their expected rates. The Pacers did have the lowest 3 point percentage against on the 2nd fewest attempts in the regular season. Allen had two scoreless games (out of three) against the Pacers this season and went 1 for 9 from 3 during the regular season against them. Battier had games of 0 and 2 and went 3 for 11 from 3 point range against the Pacers. And Battier in particular is a corner 3 point specialist, and the Pacers just don't allow that many of those. Now was that enough evidence to believe that it would likely continue in this series? Probably not. But it didn't come out of nowhere. It was a reasonable possibility before the series started. As far as Wade, it will be interesting to see (if the Heat win tonight) how much is the Indiana defense not allowing Wade to penetrate and Wade not being a good jump shooter versus how much he's hurt. He definitely is hurt, but I'm not even seeing the same moves as I saw him make in the Chicago series. It has been shocking to see his tentativeness at times, especially after Indiana saw Wade at his best last year during the second half of the series.

If you're referring to last night as another example, that wasn't him. He was thrown out in the second inning.

Anderson's chances of playing next game might be diminishing if this tweet from NBC Sports Network is any indication: Usually when Stern comments on something he means business.

Nice double flop with LeBron/West: http://www.cbssports.com/nba/blog/eye-on-basketball/22315303/gif-lebron-james-flops-and-then-david-west-flops-off-his-flop Hopefully they both get fined. If it happens, it would be the first Heat player to be caught for flopping the entire year.

People who go to the games at Banker's Life are always shocked at how much quieter it sounds on TV. The speculation is that it might not be built to pick up crowd mics very well. Of course last night didn't give them much to cheer about either. What a great game by Miami. Just wish they would stop flopping all over the place, and wish the NBA would actually call them out on it once in a while. Wade's flop last night where he just fell out of bounds to try to get a call better get a fine, and Battier has already earned a lifetime achievement award. They play such a pretty brand of basketball on both ends that it's a shame that they feel they have to resort to underhanded tactics as well.

Shawn Bradley and Gheorge Muresan were drafted for their athleticism and ball handling skills? Bradley was a very good shot blocker and solid rebounder. Muresan had a season where he averaged 14.5 points, 9.6 rebounds and 2.3 blocks in under 30 minutes a game. Bradley played over 10 years in the NBA, and Muresan would have as well if he hadn't gotten hurt. They weren't stiffs. They had skills to go with that height.

He can't run with a shooter and if he stays on the block, Bosh has a wide open look. Still better than overplaying LeBron and watching him lay it up on you, but that's the logic. Exactly. And Miami was not running a play to have LeBron drive. In fact, it's not sure if the ball was always intended to go to LeBron at all (they had a Allen/Bosh screen that would have spelled trouble for Hibbert if he had been in the game). It's just too bad that George overplayed so badly which gave LeBron that huge lane. The play before was the much more questionable one. To take Hibbert out and then to just let Miami switch Hill onto LeBron so easily was a bad set of moves.

Knicks have signs of life. Pacers announce Hill is out for game 5 with a concussion (nobody had any idea he was even hurt). No idea if this will be ongoing or not.

The rumors were that OKC went to Golden State and Washington first and asked for Klay Thompson or Beal. They were turned down by both teams which is why they went to Houston. Making those two teams maybe even more insane than OKC. Similar problem for GS as OKC...they would have potentially a large tax bill next year, and I think they are one of teams who has never paid it so I'm not sure how willing they are to do so.

I don't even think Harden was asking for max. I think the Thunder offered him 4 years $52 mil ($13 mil average annually), and he wanted 4 years $60 million ($15 mil average annually). He ended up signing for 5 years, $80 million ($16 mi average annually). I don't really know the cap situation for the Thunder in depth, but in retrospect would the Thunder have extended Ibaka if they could do it over again? Or should they have bit the bullet and amnestied Perkins in order to free up space to keep Ibaka and Harden? I'm guessing for the later scenario, they wouldn't have been able to make it work financially for them. If it wasn't max that Harden was demanding from OKC, it was really close. Harden was still a year away from RFA, so his contract was an extension. And OKC had already used their one 5 year extension on Westbrook, so they could only offer him a 4 year deal unlike Houston's offer of 5. Since the last year is always the most expensive, that accounts for the majority of the difference between what he wanted and what he got from Houston. I don't know what OKC would do if they had to do it again. Clearly Harden is better than Ibaka, but Ibaka fits a lot better with Westbook/Durant than Harden does. And I'm not sure if Harden's value would have gone up that much playing in OKC because he still would have been playing with a ball dominant guard (short of a Westbrook injury, which of course actually happened but Westbrook was the epitome of durability before that). With the financial implications added on, it makes it really difficult to ever get proper value with Harden, either on the court or in a trade. Could they have fit all 4? Possibly. Clearly they didn't think so.

The rumors were that OKC went to Golden State and Washington first and asked for Klay Thompson or Beal. They were turned down by both teams which is why they went to Houston.

The Cubs offense is getting awfully close to league average. They are crushing the rest of the NL in doubles. The OBP deficit which was 30 points under league average a few weeks ago is down to 9. Still dead last in walks, but as expected their batting average is creeping up (and it still might have a little more room to creep up further). Their RISP numbers have been flying up recently, but still could use about another 100 points to be in line with how the rest of the league does. Obviously league average is not the ideal, but it's much better than what was expected before the season.

I have no idea why there are no games tonight. As for the rest, the Bulls-Heat was originally the Sunday ABC game with the Knicks-Pacers on Monday. But the Blackhawks have a potential game on Sunday, so the Bulls-Heat got moved to Monday and that pushed Knicks-Pacers to Tuesday. And since the original schedule had Bulls-Heat game 4 on Sunday, that meant they had to have game 3 on Friday, which pushed Pacer-Knicks game 3 all the way to Saturday (since apparently they wanted to take tonight off).

Haha yeah. Right after the Pacers had fought back from 13 down and taken a 2 point lead. The Pacers seem to have that ability to simply not show up for long stretches of play every few games. Reminded me of game 3 against Atlanta when the Hawks had a 32-6 run (with a 22-2 run to start that).

wouldn't they have had to match salaries? They could have traded him to a team under the cap, but IIRC the news around the deadline was that the Bulls weren't desperate enough to send a first round pick with him to entice a team.

I think he's said that he'll exceed that threshold for a winner. If they take the Heat to 6 or 7 or somehow find a way to advance, that could be a factor They've been about the same level for three years now (admittedly, I can somewhat see the point of not going over the threshold this season). His work with the White Sox and MLB CBA is just another indication that he does not care to spend much on his teams. I don't believe Reinsdorf. The Bulls are over the threshold this year, and unless they amnesty Boozer or trade Deng to a team under the cap they will be again next year. What if they buyout RIP? I'm already assuming they do that. The tax level was 70.3 million this year, and the Bulls are paying the tax since they have salaries just over 74 million. Even without Hamilton next year the Bulls are at about 72 million for 8 players. So even with minimum salary players filling the rest of the roster, they would be in the 74-75 million range and I doubt the tax level will jump up that much. They could try to dump Hinrich to get under, but I'm not sure who would be interested, and that might not get them enough room anyway.

I think he's said that he'll exceed that threshold for a winner. If they take the Heat to 6 or 7 or somehow find a way to advance, that could be a factor They've been about the same level for three years now (admittedly, I can somewhat see the point of not going over the threshold this season). His work with the White Sox and MLB CBA is just another indication that he does not care to spend much on his teams. I don't believe Reinsdorf. The Bulls are over the threshold this year, and unless they amnesty Boozer or trade Deng to a team under the cap they will be again next year.

They don't have Bird rights to him, so any team can just price him beyond what the Bulls can legally afford (the MLE, basically, since the Bulls are up against the hard cap), and they will. They can't even offer that much unless they clear salary. Right now, signing Nate to an MLE deal would put the Bulls over the apron (unless the luxury tax level skyrockets) and you can't go over the apron when using the MLE. They'll probably be limited to offering one of Robinson or Bellinelli the mini MLE unless they decide to dump a big salary.

Those are Starlin's stats from last year.

From looking over his career statistics, maybe a good comparison for Torreyes is Jeff Keppinger? Keppinger had a touch more power while Torreyes might be a little better defensively. Keppinger hasn't had the greatest of careers, but hitters with that level of production should be more valuable than they were even a few years ago due to declining offense. The nice thing about Torreyes too is that his skill set should give him a lesser chance of busting than most prospects. I'm very interested to watch him as he gets more data at AA.

Are the Cubs better than their record? My post is not going to get into each individual player and how they are overperforming/underperforming. For the purposes of this post, it assumes they are balancing out. If they are not that's another important variable to consider when looking at a team's true talent level. Instead, I looked into things that commonly have a baseline and can be used to measure variance. Pythagorean record, BABIP compared to league median, and performance in clutch situations. What I found is that the Cubs so far have been on the unlucky side of all 3. 1. Pythagorean record. Currently the Cubs are still 1 game behind their pythagorean record. They have been outscored by 13 runs on the season. That has gotten much closer to even with the Cubs close victories over the last few days. 2. BABIP. The Cubs are 27th with a .267 BABIP which is 24 points behind league median of .291. That is despite a line drive percentage of 19.6% (just behind league median of 20.0%), one of the lowest IFFB% (25th at 7.7%, league median is 10.35), and a GB/FB ratio that is slightly weighted towards fly balls but not much (1.17 vs league median of 1.26). Their HR/FB rate is elevated: 12.7 vs league median of 10.95. 3. Clutch hitting. This is absurd how the Cubs seem to start every season with terrible clutch hitting. Some years it has evened out, while a couple years recently it hasn't. This year is following that trend. Here's the National League total batting line so far: .246/.313/.387. Here's the Cubs line so far: .230/.283/.396. So clearly the Cubs are a very bad offense, clutch hitting or no clutch hitting. 30 points of OBP behind league average is only ahead of Miami, and they have to jump up 20 points just to reach the next team. There's no amount of variance that can even turn the offense into average. But here is the numbers with runners in scoring position: National League: .252/.340/.383 Cubs: .152/.253/.244 That's not a misprint. The National League gets better overall with runners in scoring position. The Cubs are 180 OPS points worse so far. If they were the same amount behind the National League in this category as they are in the total (which is what it would theoretically regress to eventually), they would be 205 OPS points better. The OBP difference for the Cubs isn't that bad, but it comes from actually outwalking the National League with RISP, despite being way behind in the walks category for the totals. And if you have to concentrate your base hits in one category and your walks in another, you'd want to do it the exact opposite way the Cubs have. Their RISP with 2 outs and bases loaded numbers are similarly atrocious. There is some evidence of some potential positive variance on the pitching side that I'll leave for another post, but it's not nearly as strong as the hitting side. Are there reasons the Cubs might underperform in any of these areas? Or is this really a case of an average team whose variance has gone very badly so far?

They did apparently announce last night that Werner would be playing linebacker. There are others concerned about the scheme fit, although it should be noted that the Colts don't play a true 3-4. They like some others are more of a hybrid. He'll be paired with Mathis at that position, so I would assume Werner would play some run downs in place of Mathis and then maybe occasionally slide up to end on obvious passing downs?

It is strange how this has turned into a war of attrition. 6 teams currently in the playoffs have All-Stars out (Rose, Kobe, Westbrook, Rondo, Granger, Lee). Then you have Gallinari out for the Nuggets and even Lou Williams/Pachulia out for the Hawks. So out of the 16 playoff teams, 7-8 of them have a significant player out for the season/indefinitely. That doesn't even begin to get into the players that are hurting but trying to play through it which is usually the main injury storyline of the playoffs. I do expect in this case that Westbrook will be back in time if they make the Finals though. They're saying potentially weeks depending on what they find in surgery.

Here's similar sorts of numbers for each team from 2013: http://www.kshb.com/dpp/sports/baseball/mlb-average-ticket-price--fan-cost-index-for-all-30-baseball-teams MLB average is up to 52.50 a person, but the Cubs are estimated at almost $75 a person.

I'd be interested to see that filtered to top prospects with a minimum MiLB OPS, to see how those percentages change when focused on prospects whose primarily value is in their bat/power. I'd agree with that. My feeling is that at least part of that is how major league teams use their benches. They tend to emphasize versatility and defense over hitting ability, and that makes it harder for mediocre sluggers who play corner spots to make his 1500 AB threshold. That would also be another explanation for the high correlation between successful hitters in the majors and a high minor league strikeout rate. The sluggers have already been thinned out to a degree, so the ones who do get more than 1500 AB's tend to be the best of the best. While middle infielders who have low strikeout rates but are bad hitters tend to hang around for a long time for defensive reasons. However, even if you look at the successes, Baez already has the 13th highest strikeout rate among all of them. So it's definitely something to be concerned about. I do dispute the thought though that his strikeout rate will likely rise as he progresses though the levels. While that is intuitive, I am not sure it works out for a high school prospect like Baez with so few plate appearances and who has been promoted fairly aggressively. I'm not sure if we know where Baez's strikeout numbers are going to go yet. There's too many variables involved to hazard a good guess.