CubColtPacer

I agree (which is part of the reason that the Granger comments at the beginning of the series are ringing true). The Pacers have 2 defenders that can do a decent job on Rose 1 on 1 (although they didn't figure that out and have George and Jones be the primary defenders until game 2 or 3) and have long and active arms inside. That's not a combination that most teams have. The Bulls haven't been able to take advantage of the Pacers big defensive weakness (the size of the point guards) because Bogans is not that type of player. And on the other side of the ball, the Pacers emphasize interior passing which is a better way to break down the Bulls then trying to drive and kick all day long. Plus the Pacers have played more consistently in this series than they have all season. If the Pacers could have played like this for most of the season they would have been at least the 6 seed and not the 8 seed and the Bulls struggling against them wouldn't look nearly as bad. The Bulls will be fine in the next series.

Tracking Garza, his FIP is now 1.25 and an xFIP of 1.93. His K rate is 12.04 (previous 3 seasons 6.24, 8.38, 6.60). His walk rate is 2.64 (previous 3 seasons 2.88, 3.50, 2.77). He hasn't allowed a home run yet in his first 30+ innings despite being a relatively high HR guy in the past (0.93, 1.11, 1.23 last 3 years). His GB/FB percentage is up to 2.33 (previous 3 years 1.04, .93, .80). His LD percentage allowed is falling fast and is now down to 27.7% with a BABIP of .414. I think it's becoming increasingly clear that this is not only a strange start but some sort of adjustment by Garza. That is especially true in the ground ball department-I'd be shocked if he ended up having more fly balls than ground balls at the end of the season. If he can keep that K rate around 9 or 10 while getting a lot of ground balls he could have a great season. BTW, fangraphs already has him as having a 1.6 WAR season through less than a month! He only had a 1.8 WAR all of last year.

Interesting to see that both starting point guards have sprained ankles. Hopefully they'll both be able to go at near their full strength tonight.

When did Garza become a strikeout/groundout type of pitcher? I'm really excited seeing what he's doing but I have no idea who he is out there. I expect his HR rate to somewhat normalize as the weather warms up but the K's and GB/FB rate I have no idea about.

No, he shouldn't "be sat" for a game. That is just asinine. Everyone needs a game off here and there. The guys 21 years old, and I dont believe hes had a game off so far this season. But the reason he is botching plays is either because of 1) just not enough repetitions yet or 2) thinking too much on the routine plays. Benching him for making those mistakes just exacerbates the situation.

Not for Vitters. He's been pretty consisently a really low BABIP guy, just like Brett Jackson has consistently been a really high BABIP guy. In Vitters case, probably the combo of being slow, slow out of the box, and hitting a lot of weakish grounders probably contributes. Agreed, but I was more referencing the fact that his BABIP is 28 points below his BA as the unusual part. He has had 2 extended stops where he had a very low BABIP (Daytona 2009 and Tennessee 2010) but both of those his BABIP ended up 15-20 points above his BA not 28 points lower.

Same number of home runs, walks, and strikeouts now on the season. Very strange. BA of .273 with a BABIP of .245 so far. That's also unusual.

Baseball can be a tough game for fringe bullpen pitchers.

Marlon Byrd batting 3rd is a joke. At this point Soriano would be a better option. And Baker ahead of both Soriano and Soto? jeebus Which player is which? 3 year splits against left-handers: Player A: .285/.361/.544 Player B: .306/.411/.524 Player C: .316/.361/.545 They're virtually the same player against left-handers. Wow, looking at the batter-pitcher numbers, nobody has very many at-bats against Lilly, but Soriano, Byrd, Baker, and Johnson have 32 combined at-bats and they are 14 for 32 with 7 singles, 5 doubles, a triple, a home run, 7 walks, and 7 strikeouts.

whats the point of even giving him flagrants? It's a slap on the wrist. You can get suspended in the playoffs if you earn too many flagrant foul points.

Foster got two flagrant 1's and will not be suspended for game four.

Should I be impressed that Vitters is striking out at such a tiny percentage or worried that he only has decent numbers even what that's true? It's clear he has that elite plate coverage tool that you can't teach but I'm concerned that he's just putting a lot of bad pitches into play. Edit: Didn't see Truffle's post that basically said the same thing until I posted mine.

Assuming his velocity is back after last night's performance, I hope he gets the callup for Tuesday night. We need some serious help in the 4/5 spot right now and he may give us the best chance to bridge the gap until Wells/Cashner come back. i don't. he still might be a pretty good prospect (was adequate last year at age 22 in a hitter's league) and is still overcoming a tired arm or something along those lines. you don't need him coming up with the risk of getting knocked around and losing confidence. just bite the bullet, start coleman and hope the other team hits the ball at our fielders. It isn't Coleman's spot they're speculating on. He's safe for a while I suspect. It's Russell's. But I would agree that Jackson definitely needs more time before subjecting him to the major leagues for the first time. Let him build up some more arm strength first. If Wells/Cashner still aren't back after 2/3 more starts then I'd at least start to consider it.

It's Jeff Stevens... Ugh...I don't care. A manager is supposed to help protect the health of his players. He shouldn't take gross negligence with somebody's arm just because they're unimportant to the team. 89 pitches for a pitcher coming off 1 day rest from a 2 inning outing who is also not stretched out is cruel. There's nothing the player can do at that point besides go out and do his job and its not right.

Yeah, and not only will his arm be gone but he'll probably get a ticket to the minor leagues as his reward for taking one for the team.

This is the downside to Casey Coleman. When he doesn't have control of his pitches, he doesn't have the stuff to overcome that. Reminds me somewhat of Jason Marquis in that way actually. It's the reason that while he's an ok bet to be a 5th stater in the league he can never be more than that and he's better as a 6th/spot starter.

Were you watching the same game I was? The Bulls had a ton of unforced turnovers. Dribbling the ball off their feet. Failing to catch passes that proceeded to bounce into the hands of Pacers. The Pacers defense forced TO's, no doubt. But all series the Bulls have just been sloppy with the ball. And it's not like that's something new...it's been something that they've done before, just never for a stretch of 3 games like this. I swear, we could probably reduce or turnovers by half if we could teach our bigs to catch a pass. The Bulls only had 15 turnovers last night (.8 over their season average). 3 of those were charging fouls and another one was a 3 second violation. The Pacers had several steals that just came from stepping into the passing lanes or overplaying guys so I don't think there could have that many left that were unforced. I do remember one stretch during the game where there was some sloppy handling of the ball by the Bulls (near the end of the first beginning of the second if I remember correctly) but it didn't really lead to turnovers. It kept squirting out right back to another Bull. so, that leaves 11 turnovers essentially to split between forced and unforced. you said that you didn't see any unforced errors so you're asserting that all 11 were stolen straight-up. No, I said that I specifically remember several were caused by the Pacers. There almost certainly were a few that were relatively unforced in the game. I'd have to see each play individually again to know for sure. It could be the definition of forced/unforced is different too. For example, there was a play where Rose was doubleteamed up top. Deng was open in the corner and started to cut baseline so that there would be a good passing angle for an open layup. Rose threw a good pass but a Pacer rotated over quickly from the other side, cut in front of Deng, and the pass went right to him instead. Is that a forced or an unforced turnover? I guess it might depend on which side you're on.

Still not thrilled with this lineup but really glad to see that Byrd is not nailed to the 3 spot (although I bet he'll still get a lot more starts there before all is said and done especially when Colvin in starting in right) and is also willing to be a little unconventional by putting Castro at 3. I don't know what Quade thinks about Soto. His spot in the batting order doesn't inspire confidence but Quade has stuck him out there for 17 of the first 19 games so he obviously wants him to play a lot.

It's hard to get points in the paint when you're getting hammered everytime you go in there. If you count the FTs we made after getting fouled in the paint the numbers won't look so bad. And neither team has been real successful at posting up. The Pacers have tried to focus on it at times but Hibbert is in one of his play poorly stretches. I don't know if post ups are regularly a part of the Bulls game but they've pretty much been ignoring it in this series.

Were you watching the same game I was? The Bulls had a ton of unforced turnovers. Dribbling the ball off their feet. Failing to catch passes that proceeded to bounce into the hands of Pacers. The Pacers defense forced TO's, no doubt. But all series the Bulls have just been sloppy with the ball. And it's not like that's something new...it's been something that they've done before, just never for a stretch of 3 games like this. I swear, we could probably reduce or turnovers by half if we could teach our bigs to catch a pass. The Bulls only had 15 turnovers last night (.8 over their season average). 3 of those were charging fouls and another one was a 3 second violation. The Pacers had several steals that just came from stepping into the passing lanes or overplaying guys so I don't think there could have that many left that were unforced. I do remember one stretch during the game where there was some sloppy handling of the ball by the Bulls (near the end of the first beginning of the second if I remember correctly) but it didn't really lead to turnovers. It kept squirting out right back to another Bull.

Maybe they feel that the economy is coming back and that they're getting an extremely team friendly deal by avoiding that awkward contract when he's like 33 and clearly going downhill. Still, 10 years is a really long time to be paying anyone a guaranteed amount of money, especially for a small-mid market team. No they feel like inflation is on their side. For example one dollar today had buying power worth $1.30 ten years ago. That 100million dollars payed out over the next ten years and backloaded will probably only amount to 70million dollars in 2011 money when the contract is over. If inflation continues at its current rate. So what do you think of the deal now? Inflation better really be on their side but I don't see it happening. The going rate for stars like Braun is about 20 million a year right now or maybe 25 at the top end. What is it going to be in 5 years when Braun would have signed this contract? 25-30 at most? He'll be 32 years old when he starts this extension so he might not be in his prime any longer. By the end of this contract in his age 36 year he definitely won't be anywhere near his prime. He plays an easy position to play and does it poorly. This isn't a situation like Pujols where his numbers are so far in the stratosphere that they can come down and still be great either. It's a ton of risk to assume that Braun will stay healthy and productive for that long and to hope that baseball salaries continue to inflate just to save 20-45 million over the life of this deal. This seems to be more of a marketing decision than a baseball one.

the bulls have played some of their worst basketball of the seaosn in this series, and they still haven't been able to win a single game. bulls have basically given them the gift of playing terribly and they still can't beat us. scrub team. Hahahaha. Yeah they're playing terribly. All of a sudden. Just coincidence. So idiotic. indiana is great at forcing unforced turnovers. I didn't see many if any unforced turnovers last night by the Bulls (as opposed to game 2 where there were some). The Pacers are long and playing a trapping style defense. Last night was a good example of what all can happen with that defense. They gave up some open 3 pointers but they also forced turnovers. In particular, Dahntay Jones is known for being that kind of a defensive specialist and Paul George is playing incredible defense in this series. IMO, the only significant Bull who has had a terrible series is Boozer. He's taken some foolish shots and gotten into foul trouble twice because of his need to constantly throw elbows around. Other than that, Rose has been pretty good, Deng was great last night and fine in the other two games, Noah's been huge on the boards, Korver has had a great series (7-8 on 3 pointers so far in the playoffs!), Bogans had 2 terrible nights but played very well last night, Gibson and Watson have been fine for what time they've gotten on the court, and Thomas gave them some good minutes in game 1. As for who was wondering if the Bulls have led by double digits in this series, apparently they haven't. Their biggest lead has been 7 in the series.

I don't think so. The Bulls have a better bench, a better coach, and two other players in Deng and Boozer that are slightly better than Indiana's second and third scorers. Indiana is just a bad matchup for the Bulls. This is the playoffs where you rarely blow out teams unless you are the 90s Bulls. I would say it's really hard to compare benches. Indiana's is asked to do a lot more than Chicago's. Chicago has 2 of its top 3 scorers on the floor for a really large number of minutes so they really just ask their bench to fill roles around those players. Indiana is much more conservative with the minutes so their bench has to pick up a lot more of the slack. Is Chicago's more talented and given the opportunity would be better than the Pacers? I don't know.

This was the night for the Bulls to have the extreme 3 point shooting advantage that the Pacers had in game 1. Bogans going 3-3 especially hurt. And the fouls were equal but the Pacers committed more shooting fouls so the Bulls had a 9 free throw advantage.

People are going to foul Derrick Rose hard. He's so strong he'll get and 1's otherwise. And considering the Bulls seem to be on a mission to have Hansbrough's vertigo return, the Bulls haven't exactly been innocent either. The Bulls have 2-3 very physical players themselves.