Sports – Page 2 – Mental Zoomies

Prime And Punishment

It’s been a busy week in the world of Coach Prime, though if we’re being honest, a) when has it not? and b) isn’t that somewhat by design anyway?

This week’s excitement came in the aftermath of Colorado’s 28-16 loss to UCLA, a game where QB Shedeur Sanders (yes, his son, if you haven’t been following this closely) was sacked 7 times and hit enough other times he had to get an injection of painkillers at halftime. Asked about the state of the offensive line in the post-game press conference, and what he would do to address it, Sanders pere‘s typically colorful response was:

“The big picture, you go get new linemen. That’s the picture, and I’m gonna paint it perfectly.“

This has set off the latest round of “Coach Prime Is Telling It Like It Is And Holding People Accountable” vs. “Coach Prime Is A Disgrace To College Football” on social media. Everyone’s staking out their positions, but there’s an awful lot of posturing and fairly little clarity.

So let’s start with the facts.

First, the line play was bad. “Defense will stipulate”, as the cop shows say. In fact, it’s been bad for most of the season. One of my first-draft points was “how can he run down his line publicly without looking at the game tape first?” but this isn’t the first time this has been an issue, only the most dramatic example. So we’ll let that one slide on by.

There has been some confusion on how many of the players were new transfers vs. how many were holdovers from the previous 1-11 2022 team. I’ve seen detractors dunking on Sanders’ inability to recruit linemen AND supporters claiming that the entire line were holdovers from the previous regime, and the truth is in the middle. Just for factual clarity, it appears there are two returning starters — center Van Wells and left tackle Gerad Christian-Lichtenhan — and the other three starters are part of Deion’s “luggage”. (As are almost all of the reserves.)

So with the facts somewhat established, let’s wander into the forbidden forest of hot takes and opinions. As with a lot of what Sanders has done in his Colorado tenure, I think it’s not so much the message being conveyed as much as it is how he chose to convey it.

First, it’s simply a question of internal vs. external… keep that shit in-house. If you want to tell your players they should be looking for new gigs next year, save it for practice when the cameras are gone. I guarantee Sanders won’t be the first or last coach to have threatened a kid’s spot on the team; but he’s the first I can remember to threaten about 10 of them to a room full of reporters. When you’re sitting in front of a room full of hot mics, a leader protects his people. YES, you can say the line didn’t play well — no sense denying an apparent truth — but you don’t offer up the kids on the o-line as red meat to protect your bruised ego. Feed ’em some platitudes about looking at the film and seeing where we can improve, and get onto the next question.

And OK, I feel like the perception of nepotism has to chafe a little, when mere sentences before, he praised his son Shedeur as “the best quarterback in the country”. And when there was no talk of getting new defensive backs in regard to his other son Shilo getting ejected for targeting after putting his helmet into the chin of a UCLA receiver. At some point it’s gotta get old being told you’re one of 73 Ringos backing up John and Paul.

(OK… maybe Shedeur and Travis Hunter are Lennon-McCartney and Shilo is George Harrison in this analogy. We’ll keep workshopping it.)

But there’s a bigger and arguably more more worrisome issue underlying his comments. It feels like on some level Sanders is abdicating the responsibility to actually COACH the players under his charge. The man has created this image of “Coach Prime”, but apparently, if you don’t protect his kid and make him look good, he’ll just get rid of you and go out and get a new batch of mercenaries to take your place. Which… lest we forget… was the same message he delivered to the players already in the program when he took over, so it’s not like this is a departure for him. Meanwhile, the line’s been bad for weeks; what has Coach Prime done about it other than threaten to kick them out of the program? Maybe he should rebrand as “GM Prime”: he recruits and assembles the roster, and then someone else does the actual work of making his players better.

And this gets into the larger question that goes well beyond Deion Sanders… it’s NIL, it’s the portal, it’s conference realignment…. Where is the ever-shifting balance between “this has become an ‘amateur’ league in name only, and results are all that matter” and “this is still ultimately a developmental league where helping the players improve their skills is still part of what’s being offered”. If this is just NFL Lite, then OK, bring in a new class of free agents and try again, but at that point let’s stop pretending that the NCAA offers anything a professional minor league couldn’t offer equally well if funded adequately. If we’re going to keep propping up the cause of student athletics as the NCAA’s raison d’etre, than I think coaches should have an obligation to stick with the guys they bring in and try to make them better, rather than better-deal them the second adversity — or the UCLA front seven — hits.

Sid Gets An Early Birthday Present, Dubas Gets His Man

It took a month of haggling, but Pens’ Grand Poobah (GM/Director Of Hockey Operations… yeah, I ain’t saying all of that) Kyle Dubas managed to get Sidney Crosby the perfect birthday present… defenseman Erik Karlsson. The deal that’s been rumored since… well, forever… finally came together with Montreal serving as the mystery third team that greased the wheels for a move.

The particulars are:

San Jose also retains $1.5M of Karlsson’s $11.5M contract, but the Pens retain a similar amount of Jeff Petry’s, so from the Pens’ standpoint it evens out.

Pittsburgh’s motivations here are obvious. They’re pretty obviously trying to squeeze one last Stanley Cup out of the Crosby-Malkin-Letang core, and to some extent they don’t care what happens after that because it’s going to involve a major retool. Sid’s retirement will do to this team what the meteor did to the dinosaurs, and we just have to be OK with that. But for those remaining 2-4 years, they add one of the best offensive defensemen in the game, even if he’s at a pretty expensive price tag and doesn’t play a lick of defense. Between this and standing pat with Tristan Jarry in net, they’re going to be leaning into winning a lot of 6-4 games. But still… it does make the Pens a more dynamic offensive team in the short term, and specifically should help the power play, which struggled mightily last year.

And OK, they got rid of almost ALL of Ron Hextall’s bad contracts in the process. For $6M, Petry needed to be a Norris candidate, not a second-pair talent; Granlund was a disastrous trade-deadline acquisition at $5M a year. Rutta ($2.5M) and DeSmith ($1.8M) weren’t horrific overpays, but they’re luxuries when you’re already bumping your head against the cap, as the Pens are. So trading $14M-ish worth of “meh” for one $10M guy who’s likely to be very good… that makes a certain demented amount of sense.

As for the other guys, Hamaliuk has some decent size (6’3″) but hasn’t produced much in the minors, Pitlick could find himself in the mix for the bottom six, but I don’t think either moves the needle much.

The only thing I don’t like a lot is that they only got San Jose to retain $1.5M. When they were talking about retaining $3-4M and making Karlsson a $7.5-8.5M acquisition, that seemed like a more comfortable landing spot. But again, it comes down to “you don’t care what happens after the meteor strikes”. If the wheels come off and Crosby retires at the end of his contract in 2 years… you can probably still ship Karlsson back out. And if you can’t, you blow the whole thing up and he’s the one salary you keep around to get over the minimum salary.

For San Jose, it’s all about paying off the credit card early. Salary-wise, Hoffman and Granlund end up being about the same price as Karlsson today, but Hoffman is done after this year and Granlund after next, whereas Karlsson had four years left. So two years from now, the Sharks will have a mostly clean ledger while the Pens will still be paying Karlsson $10M. And the Sharks get an extra first-round pick. The fact that it’s top-10 protected isn’t that critical; with Karlsson the Pens are a decent bet to make the playoffs anyway. (And I’d add that Hoffman has enough rep as a goal scorer that they might be able to flip him at the deadline and get another pick or two if he has a good first half.)

Montreal is the third team, which mostly represents Jeff Petry having a no-trade clause and not wanting to go to the Sharks. (Two reasons: 1) at age 35 going on 36, he doesn’t want to wait on a rebuild and 2) he’s expressed that he wants to stay closer to his family in… Michigan, I think?). So basically, the Pens traded Petry (plus parts) to Montreal for Hoffman, and then sent Hoffman — who couldn’t refuse the trade — along to San Jose. It’s a little hard to see why Montreal wants Petry, and it wouldn’t even surprise me if they turn around and ship him back out, but Legare (still young enough to have some prospect buzz), DeSmith (in the ballpark of what you pay for a backup goalie), and a decent draft pick in what’s supposed to be a deep 2024 draft make for an OK package to swap one overpriced veteran for another.

My prediction on Petry’s ultimate destination: Detroit. They’re a young team on the rise, they’ve got a young-but-talented defense corps that could use a veteran mentor, and if Montreal retains a little more salary, that could be a good fit. But I’m not some insider… just a gut feeling.

So there it is… after a month of will they or won’t they, the Pens finally get their man, get their salary cap situation under control, and mostly hit reset on the Ron Hextall era. (Don’t mind me, muttering things under my breath in the general direction of Jeff Carter.) Does it make them Cup condtenders? They’re probably at least in the conversation now, but hardly the favorites. Does it make them a better team? Absolutely.

Happy Birthday, Sid!

I Choose You… Who?

Sunday night is the MLB Amateur Draft, and as some of you may have heard, the Pittsburgh Pirates hold the top overall pick. Now, the MLB draft isn’t QUITE the event the NFL Draft is because baseball players aren’t generally the same level of finished product football players are. Realistically, the guys they’re drafting tomorrow will make their first appearance in the big leagues in 2-4 years. So it’s not quite the same level of immediate help, but it’s still important for a team to get the decision right.

Generally, the two best players in this year’s draft are a pair of college players: outfielder Dylan Crews and pitcher Paul Skenes. They’re teammates at LSU, they just won the College World Series, and were the best hitter and pitcher in the country, respectively. (Crews, in particular, won the Golden Spikes Award, which is college baseball’s equivalent of the MVP.) And they’re both viewed as guys with star potential. Position players are generally a safer bet than pitchers because of the risk of arm injuries, but the Pirates need pitching talent more urgently. So, you’d think this would be a straightforward choice between these two guys, right?

Not necessarily.

The problem is that historically, the Pirates tend to be cheap. Though to be fair, it’s evolved from Just Plain Cheap to Strategically Cheap. In the old days, minor leaguers could ask for whatever sort of money they wanted, so the Pirates would pick a guy who wasn’t going to ask for a lot of money over the guy who was more talented. Bryan Bullington, Daniel Moskos, John Van Benschoten… the list is long and somewhat painful. Since 2012, baseball has introduced a “bonus pool” system that’s not a firm salary cap per player, but caps the TOTAL amount of money teams can spend on their minor leaguers. So there’s SOME degree of cost control because the players and their agents know there isn’t an unlimited bucket of money, but the best guys are still going to try and get every penny they can within that range.

And here’s where the “Strategically Cheap” part comes in. The current system assigns every pick a dollar value, and the total dollar values of a team’s picks represents their total pool of money. But that doesn’t mean the team has to spend it that way. So a team can go “over slot” and pay a guy more than the value his draft position was worth, or can go “under slot” and sign a guy cheaper. And in particular, if you sign a guy under slot, that frees up whatever “extra” money was left over to use on other players.

So the Pirates’ recent strategy has been to go under slot on their first-round pick to save money at the top, and then use that on their picks in later rounds. (What that usually means is using that extra money to convince guys who can still go back to college to give up college eligibility and turn pro now.) They still end up spending all their money, so you can’t really accuse them of cheapness in the same way they used to be, but they do tend to be reluctant to pony up for the star player and prefer to spread their money around.

The 2021 draft was a textbook example of this. Henry Davis, a college catcher from Louisville, was not particularly viewed as the best player in the draft. But they were able to get him for about $2M less than his slot, which let them throw extra money at a college lefty (Anthony Solometo) and two high schoolers who had first-round talent but were considering college football scholarships (OF Lonnie White and pitcher Bubba Chandler). Chandler is struggling at A-ball, but the other two guys are doing OK.

To be fair, in 2022 when they picked 4th overall, they actually went about $200k over slot on their first-round pick Termarr Johnson. So it’s not like they’ve NEVER gone over slot. But they do seem to like to spread the risk around.

So that brings us back to Crews and Skenes. The Pirates have about $16M total in their bonus pool, and pick 1-1 is valued at $9.7M. According to the rumor mill, Crews is almost definitely going to ask for above slot (among other things, he’s repped by agent Scott Boras, who tends to negotiate aggressively). Skenes may have to take a discount for the risk associated with pitchers, but nobody sees him signing for much less than slot.

So that’s where Wyatt Langford and Max Clark come into the picture.

Langford, who played left field for the University of Florida, is viewed as the next-best college player, and in a different year might be the frontrunner for the top pick. And you can find a minority of people who think he’s even better than Crews. He actually hit for more power than Crews (28 doubles, 21 homers vs. 16 and 18 for Crews, and that’s with 10 fewer games); Crews just did everything else better — faster, better defense at a tougher position, better overall contact and plate discipline.

Clark is a high school outfielder. Now, high schoolers inherently represent a bigger risk because you’re talking about taking a 17/18-year-old kid and guessing how he’s gonna play when he’s done growing, whereas college guys are closer to finished products physically and just need to improve on the craft of the game. But some people think Max Clark’s physical tools are good enough that he could be better than either Crews OR Langford. IF he pans out, which is admittedly a huge if.

So it’s really a question of Crews at a price over $10M, Skenes probably somewhere around 9 or 9.5, or maybe see if you can sneak Langford or Clark in at $7-8M and hope the LSU guys don’t make you look stupid for doing so.

So where do I think this all lands?

I’ll start by eliminating Clark. There’s been some scuttlebutt that the Pirates are seriously considering him, but even if you want position player over pitcher, I just don’t see it being worth the risk when you have two more refined college bats on the table. (Though if one wants to briefly make the case, it’s that you could get Corbin Carroll-type speed even if his power never develops, and if his power DOES develop, you’ve got a true five-tool guy.)

A month ago, I would’ve thought the Pirates would try to work the angles and gone with Langford. Play up the fact that he hit for more power than Crews and an almost identical OPS, drop some reminders in friendly press ears that Crews’ 2022 season wasn’t nearly as remarkable… it’s a defensible pick and maybe you save an extra million or two for other guys.

But the Pirates’ pitching woes since their hot start in April now have me thinking they’re going to open up the wallet for Skenes. They already lost J.T. Brubaker for the year in spring training. Luis Ortiz and Roansy Contreras have both slid backwards; Contreras is trying to sort himself out in the pen and Ortiz just got sent to AAA. Quinn Priester, the current top pitching prospect in the organization, is in AAA, but is holding his own more than knocking down the door (though to be fair, you can make a case he’s young for the level). Right now, it’s basically Mitch Keller, 43-year-old Rich Hill, and the power of prayer. (And as a cascading effect, the bullpen has been a hot mess, so they could use some starters who can work some quality innings and take pressure off the bullpen.)

To be clear, I don’t think any of these guys represent a horrible misstep. Not even Clark, though I feel like that might be too big a roll of the dice. But I keep coming back to this: if Langford and Crews are 1 and 1A, there’s NO pitcher in this draft… or even the last few drafts… who compares to Skenes. He throws triple-digits without exceptional effort and decent control, and his secondary offerings look pretty close to major-league ready. There’s legit staff ace potential here.

But that’s just the opinion of one fan. Check back in 36 hours or so to see what the guys who actually make the decision think, because that’s the opinion that matters.