One Week Removed, More Browns Draft Thoughts
May 4, 2013Indians Rack Up Sixth Straight Behind Kazmir, Early Power
May 5, 2013While We’re Waiting serves as the early morning gathering of WFNY-esque information for your viewing pleasure. Have something you think we should see? Send it to our tips email at tips@waitingfornextyear.com.
Leading off, Michael Hattery at IBI takes a look at some early season trends with Tribe hitters Lonnie Chisenhall and Carlos Santana, “I think in Chisenhall’s case we have all been struggling with confirmation bias, being that we highlight his plate discipline as the reason why he struggles when he struggles. And if you just look at his strikeout-walk ratio it is easily justified. However, his O-Swing% changes are positive and perhaps cause issues for the assumption about Chisenhall’s plate discipline being the key issues so far. This would be a second consecutive season of improvement for Chiz, and this statistic should stabilize with a slight shift to either side over the rest of the season. O-Swing% will always be a statistic worth monitoring for the lefty and hopefully its positive gains will start to effect his overall production.” [Indians Baseball Insider]
Over at Cleveland Wins!, Jim says that Rob Chudzinski will get no free pass from the Cleveland fans, “Rob Chudzinski and the team is the only logical way for the Browns to start to wash away the dirt and cleanse the organization. We all know that it is the wins and losses on the field that ultimately determines their success or failure. So Chudzinski sets in the unenviable position of being the only logical redemption for the rocky and perilous start of the Joe Banner era and the easiest one for him to blame if things don’t go well. He has a proven Head Coach standing right below him running the Browns offense and a defensive coordinator that might be a bit more committed to his rise up the coaching ranks then the Brown’s success.” [Cleveland Wins!]
Eliminating the MLB Playoffs? It will never happen, but FanGraphs writer Alex Remington gathers some thoughts around the baseball community on it, “Essentially, Selig couched fairness in terms of distributive justice. Posnanski and Beane would couch it in terms of procedural justice, and I would agree. I would argue that it is procedurally unjust for a better team to lose in the playoffs to a worse team just because random chance went against them. So would Beane. “The playoffs are a great thing for our sport – I want to make that clear,” Beane tells Posnanski. “But let’s call it what it is: we allow small sample sizes and random events to determine the champion. That’s how it is in baseball.”” [FanGraphs]
The guys at DraftBrowns have been working hard over the last several months. I gave my thoughts on the draft yesterday, but here’s Ryan Alton’s, “Allow me to entertain this. While I’m not in the meeting rooms with Michael Lombardi, Joe Banner, and Defensive Coordinator, Ray Horton, I think it’s fairly obvious to see what the philosophy is. We all remember the phrase Horton used to describe the type of players he wanted for his “attacking” style defense when he was hired back in January. “Big guys that can run and small guys that hit.” Quite simply, the Browns decision-makers in the personnel department are acquiring the types of players that fit Horton’s scheme.” [Alton/DraftBrowns]
Finally, Glen Rice Jr. is taking a unique path to the NBA. Playing in the D-league last season, Rice was mocked to the Cavs in the early second round in at least one mock draft recently. Jonathan Givony at DraftExpress has more information on Rice Jr.’s journey, “With his reputation in the mud, and his college resume spotty at best, Rice decided not to enter the NBA Draft or transfer to another school, which would have forced him to sit out for a full year. Instead, he signed up for the D-League, but had to wait until the fourth round of the draft to hear his name called, as the #55 pick by the Houston Rockets’ affiliate, the Rio Grande Valley Vipers. With that, he became automatically eligible for the 2013 NBA Draft, as unlikely a goal as that may have appeared at the time.” [DraftExpress]
1 Comment
that’s the whole magic in MLB. everything is tilted towards the big money teams, but if you can get into the playoffs and get hot, then anything is possible.