So I tuned into the World Baseball Classic for the first time ever last night to see the end of USA-Japan.  I feel a little happy and patriotic and shit to see us win, but I’m so confused on how Japan of all teams could fuck that ending up the way they did. Let’s run this down…

In the top of the 8th inning, third baseman Nobuhiro Matsuda errored on a ground ball to allow the game winning run.  That was shocking because I thought Japanese players never have errors.  Apparently the rain fucked with them because they have to play most of their games indoors to dodge typhoons.  That might be a reasonable excuse, but I still think this dude should take the ‘bu’ out of his first name and start going by ‘No-Hiro’ to distance his family from shame.

The real perplexity came in the bottom of the inning.  Down 2-1, Japan subbed their famous catcher and hot dog eater Kobayashi for a pinch hitter who got the leadoff single.  So far so good for the Japs, especially with their leadoff hitter coming to the plate.  Unfortunately, they decided to fuck themselves over by having this aforementioned leadoff hitter (their best hitter) BUNT their runner over to second!

What?? Are the Japanese still living in 2007?  Did they just completely ignore the sabermetrics revolution?  They’re so good at math, but for some reason they’re unwilling to apply it to their beloved baseball team…

For those uninitiated to basic (and I mean basic) sabermetrics, Brandon Linthicum from One Strike Away has a concise and insightful explanation on why sac bunts are stupid, especially when moving someone from first to second.  In essence, having an extra out to play with carries significantly more value than advancing a runner one base forward.  This specific bunt by Japan actually decreased their chance at tying the game by 24%.  Amazing…

Naturally, their next three hitters went strikeout, walk (hmm), and lineout to end the inning without scoring.  What a dishonorable way to lose a game.  Why not just steal instead of doing the kamikaze-bunt?  Is it simply too hard for the Japs to tamper down their sacrificial values?  I hope nobody ever drops a bomb on manager Hiroki Kokubo by giving him a copy of Moneyball because he may start considering seppuku by the end.

In the end, it may be a shitty new era for America as a whole, but it does feel nice to see us outsmart some harder-working foreigners once again.

I have to admit I pretty much never watch FC Dallas.  The MLS puts their playoff games in the middle of NFL Sundays for some reason, so I’ve never had a choice but to not give a shit about them.  That’s changing tonight though, because we’re in the semifinals of the CONCACAF Champions League.  Fuck yeah, feels good to be awesome at another sport!

We’re playing some Mexican team Pachuca.  They’re good – I know because I actually do follow Liga MX here and there (its the best league by far to gamble on because the crowds and the Mexican announcers make the dopamine rush feel sooo good).  However, it still looks like free money taking us at +158.  Apparently we’re the best MLS team, and the Mexicans just lost their striker…

Hahaha suckeerrrrss!!  Also, I wonder if we’re gonna start any “build that wall!!” chants during our set pieces?  We’ll see I guess.

Our women’s soccer team got thrashed 3-0 by France yesterday, which locked them into a last place finish in some tournament called the SheBelieves Cup (what?).  Last fall in the Olympics, we suffered an ’embarrassing’ upset to Sweden in the quarterfinals.  I’ve gone over this before and I’d like to reiterate now that they’ve stopped winning…  Can we finally stop pretending to give a shit about these broads?

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t hate all women sports and I’m not a complete misogynist.  Serena Williams is one of the most exciting athletes in the world.  Simone Biles is cool as hell.  Our soccer team, however, has no fucking reason to be in the limelight because they’re boring as shit.

I’ve tried watching before and can never make it through 20 minutes because these games are just flat out unentertaining.  The most positive thing I can say about them is that women sustain longer possessions because everyone is so slow that the playing surface is essentially larger.  It’s like watching Olympic hockey, but with middle school hockey players instead of NHLers.

The worst part about this team is, despite being boring as hell to watch, they’ve been throwing a big fucking tantrum for years about how important they’re supposed to be.  They tried to go on strike and get paid like the men’s team, yet there was like 3,000 total fans at that Sweden game in Rio.  They called FIFA sexist for having artificial turf fields in the Women’s World Cup even though half the MLS teams and every single high school team plays on that.  They even complain that their jerseys are too attractive.  I actually get excited when they lose now in the hopes that they start shutting the fuck up.

I’m all for women’s rights and shit, but this type of kowtowing is counterproductive to the cause.  When you feed into the SJW agenda like this, you’re giving the real chauvinists the ammunition they need to start their movements.  Let’s be better!!

Boogie Cousins, widely renowned as a basketball cancer because he somehow always had problems with the Kings, committed the big bad crime recently of collecting his 16th technical foul.  Yesterday, he felt the full wrath of the NBA when they threw down their suspension and forbade him from waking up and going to work today.  Poor dude!!

In all serious,  barring any NBA political bullshit, I can’t see how this trade doesn’t end up with championship parades in New Orleans.  When you have two MVP candidates on a team, you’re a top contender in the NBA.  Period.  And not only do the Pellies have two MVPs now, they have them at the 4 and 5 in a league with barely any good bigs.  We’re zigging like the rest of the league is zagging – comparative advantage like you read about!

I get that the rest of the team apparently sucks, but that doesn’t really matter.  Team building is for losers.  Superstars are the winners in this league.  Ask the Hawks and Grizzlies how their ‘team building’ is going.  The Rockets did all that investment into analytics and never won shit because they couldn’t sign Bosh.

The Pelicans, on the other hand, know where its at.  Find a way to get fucked over in a CP3 trade so the NBA has to ‘randomly select’ your lottery ball for AD.  Then trade rape the Kings.  Boom!  I guess they could find some ‘3 and D’ role players or whatever just to be safe, but upcoming championship parades here are pretty much a foregone conclusion now.  Dope.

I thought the debate over TO being Hall of Fame worthy would be interesting, albeit inconsequential.  I’m shocked, however, by this unanimous outcry over his rejection.  It’s unreal tbqh.

Listen, I know he’s one of the most talented players of all time.  I know his stats are transcendental.  However, I also remember him canceling out all that production by being literally the worst teammate in the history of professional sports!  He played for five teams in his career (six if you count the Seahawks), and all five (six*) ended up booting him out the door as quickly as possible.  Hall of Famers are supposed to be invaluable pieces to their franchises, yet someone who got canned by half a dozen teams is supposed to be a shoo-in?  Fuck that.

Look at the QBs he played for – Steve Young, Jeff Garcia, Donovan McNabb, Drew Bledsoe, Tony Romo, Carson Palmer.  They’re all Pro Bowlers.  Some are even legends.  They all hated him!  That’s insane.

It feels weird seeming alone in this viewpoint, because I was one of his biggest fans.  He was a troller’s dream.  Nothing was better than the 07 season when you could show up to bars on Sundays with his jersey on and trigger everyone without saying a single word.  One time, I wore his jersey to a Mavs-Hornets playoff game in New Orleans and got shit thrown at me.  It was awesome!

Even then, though, I knew he had to go.  He dropped a shit load of passes (especially in big moments) and was a malignant fucken tumor to that locker room.  Jerry Jones is arguably the greatest troll of all time and even he ran out of patience with TO’s shit.

I guess it’s common to romanticize the past, but lets chill out with the hysteria over his annual ‘snubbing’.  Besides, if you think about it, this is actually working out perfectly for TO.  Now, for a couple weeks every election season, he’s relevant enough again to partake in his favorite pastime – whining to the media.  It also helps him get interviews and shit so he can try to be less broke.

*seven teams if you count the Ravens trading for him and then saying ‘never the fuck mind on that’ after his subsequent bitch fest

PS – yes, this is a moot point if McNabb didn’t throw up during the Super Bowl. The Eagles also wouldn’t be ringless anymore. Oh well!!  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As some of y’all may know, I’m a fucken savant when it comes to betting on soccer tournaments.  Having a job again has made me less tapped in to soccer, but I’m still confident I’m gonna make some extra stacks this spring and you can too if you follow my pick.

Underdogs never win in this tournament, so lets take a look at the top seven favorites…

Barcelona +300 – They still have the MSN offense and I wouldn’t blame anybody snapping up this line, but I’m shying away.  Messi’s been in a funk (relative to his standards) since choking away the Copa America, their midfield is getting too old, and their defense leaves a lot to be desired.  The Vidal injury is a final deal breaker for me as well.

Bayern Munich +400 – The team is loaded as always, but they’re getting way too old for me to trust.  They were lucky as fuck to beat Juventus in the first round last year (more on this later), and now for the first time in years they have competition in the Bundesliga keeping them busy.

Real Madrid +450 – I said last year that Madrid was the Cavs and what Madrid had in Zidane was what the Cavs were pretending to have in Tyronn Lue.  I still stand by that – the Cavs got lucky while Madrid actually got their shit together.  Madrid is even better now and I think this is a great bet.

Atletico Madrid +800 – Nice juicy odds on Atletico if you feel like getting your heart ripped out from you in a few months.

Manchester Shitty +1000 – I don’t think this team sucks as much as everyone else thinks, but there’s no way they win.  Swiss cheese defense and intense domestic competition will due them in.

Borussia Dortmund +1200 – Not in the same league as these other teams.  I’m only listing them to get to the next.

Juventus +1200 – I’m shocked by these odds.  Two years ago they were in the final.  Last year, they were up 2 at Bayern with 10 minutes to go.  They had major injuries, a bullshit offsides call, and several other near misses to allow Bayern even a chance at a miracle comeback.  Juventus has always had a great defense, and now they all of a sudden have a dope offense with Allegri’s new tactics and Higuain at striker.  They’re also the only team with their domestic league locked up and able to fully focus on UCL.  I don’t think they’re better than Madrid, but they’re pretty damn close and at three times the odds you can’t pass this shit up.

The Bruins fired Claude Julien this week, and all the rage right now is to harangue the front office for scapegoating a legend after building a piss poor roster.  It’s true that Claude Julien was and is a top tier coach who is better at his craft than anybody Boston could replace him with.  It’s also true that collective performance of current GM Cam Neely and his predecessor (Peter Chiarelli) has been an abomination since the 2011 title.  However, as counterintuitive as it may seem, several metrics indicate that this coaching move could actually be just what the Bruins need to kickstart a resurgence.

Right now, Boston leads the NHL by a healthy margin in two popular stats amongst hockey sabermetricians: PDO and FenClose.  Allow me to briefly explain both for those of you who don’t speak hockey nerd…

PDO – is simply shooting percentage + save percentage during 5v5 situations.  This stat usually regresses to 1.00 over long periods of time, and the theory behind it is that players who shoot with a high percentage are often taking risks that result in defensive liabilities. If you have a low PDO, it can indicate that you’ve been suffered bad ‘puck luck’ more often than not.  At .967, Boston has the lowest PDO in the league and most other teams are not even close.

#	Team	Sh%	Sv%	PDO
1	Boston	6.00	90.68	0.967
2	Colorado	6.44	90.59	0.970
3	Philadelphia	6.60	91.04	0.976
4	Carolina	7.51	90.40	0.979
5	Los Angeles	6.41	91.92	0.983

Obviously, as is the clear case with Colorado at #2, there are instances where PDO is less an indicator of luck and more an indication of that you just plain suck at both offense and defense.  To determine which of those two buckets a team falls into, hockey nerds like to pair this stat with a shot volume metric, with my favorite being FenClose…

FenClose – is a derivative of Fenwick, which in itself is a derivative of Corsi.  Corsi is a shot differential metric calculated as a percent of shots on goal + shots missed + shots blocked + goals vs those same shots that you concede during 5v5 situations (so a Corsi of 50% means that you’ve shot a puck towards the goal the exact same number of times that your opponent has).  Fenwick is the same as Corsi, except it excludes the ‘shots blocked’ tally because a blocked shot is generally a result of good defense.  Finally, FenClose is the same as Fenwick, but only counting shot totals in situations where the score is within one goal.  The idea is to control for factors where teams are more or less aggressive on offense in blowout situations.  Again, Boston is the league leader in FenClose, and this time it’s by a wide margin.

#	Team	FenClose	Points
1	Boston	55.6	58
2	Los Angeles	54.0	58
3	San Jose	52.8	70
4	Edmonton	51.9	66
5	Pittsburgh	51.9	72

As you can see, Boston finds themselves in much better company this time around, and now you can make a clear case that the Bruins record might not be a true reflection of the talent on the ice.  It could be bad luck, but it could also be a case where Julien’s long tenure has run its course and a fresh voice could get Boston’s mojo running again.

A great individual example on the roster is David Backes, the former five year captain for a very good St. Louis team who is now serving the first year of a heavily criticized five year $30M contract.  Throughout this decade, he’s consistently produced about 20+ goals  and 50+ points per year, but is projected to fall short of 20 in both goals and assists this year.  Might part of his problems be due to a peculiar and temporary shooting % drop? (see 2012 Ryan Getzlaf)

These stats could all be bullshit, but if you’re a believer then the Bruins might not be a bad buy at 40:1 future odds right now.  It’s also worth noting that Boston has the #2 penalty kill right now, huuuggee for the playoffs.  They’d only have to win one round before you could lock in a profit with hedges.  If they get in as the wild card, they draw the choke artist Caps.  Otherwise, they’d get division rivals Toronto, Ottawa, or Florida.  Seems pretty doable to me.

P.S. these same stats say to watch out for the Kings, especially when they get Quick back.  25:1 to win the cup and 11:1 to win the West, not bad…

It’s been 16 years since Stoops’s thrilling 13-2 Orange Bowl victory brought the Sooners back to Switzer era levels of glory.  Since then, however, he’s been complete trash on the big stage…

2004 Orange Bowl vs USC: 55-19 loss

2006 Fiesta Bowl vs Boise St (lol): 43-42 loss

2007 Fiesta Bowl vs West Virginia: 48-28 loss

2008 BCS Championship vs Florida: 24-14 loss

2010 Fiesta Bowl vs UCONN: 48-25 win

2012 Cotton Bowl vs Texas A&M (lol): 41-13 loss

2015 CFB Semifinal vs Clemson: 37-17 loss

So there you have it.  Six blowout losses and one win against mighty UCONN! It’s almost as if that gutsy Josh Heupel performance to outduel the almighty Chris Weinke has allowed Stoops a free pass for 16 years.  For some reason, I was expecting such a supposedly prestigious program to have higher standards.

But wait – I forgot…  Turns out they do have higher standards because I forgot about that time three years ago when they beat Alabama in the Sugar Bowl!!  Sure, everyone in New Orleans knows the whole Alabama squad was out on Bourbon St. strip clubs until the morning of the game.  Sure, a historic kick six the game prior might have left the team a tiny bit unmotivated to play in the ‘lowly’ Sugar Bowl instead of a third straight national championship.  Those players needed to understand that it’s still the Sugar Bowl and it’s still important!!  Stoops’s players knew that, and that’s why he’s on par with Nick Saban (according to every Sooner alumni I meet).

That being said, I do have to admit that Stoops finally put this debate to bed last night with Sugar Bowl victory #2 against the big bad Auburn Tigers (and their backup QB).  ‘SEC!  SEC!  SEC!’  Lol, wasn’t it so cute how the OU section chanted that for the entire second half??  Man they really own that conference now.  I don’t even see the point of watching Bama vs Clemson next Monday, the Sooners sit on the real throne of college football.

PS – I’m sure it’s going to get way better for Oklahoma in the near future.  It doesn’t matter if they’re losing half their squad to the NFL while Oklahoma State is returning everyone.  It doesn’t matter that they have to play Ohio State on the road instead of at home.  Who cares about that badass QB that West Virginia transferred over.  Tom Herman?  I’m sure he’ll be just as easy to beat as Charlie Strong.  And to top it all off, they don’t have to play Houston next year!!  Sooners 2017 National Champions = lock.

PPS – thank you so much to the Auburn students who booed Joe Mixon and chanted ‘you hit women!’ every single time he touched the ball.  I almost forgot that he did that!

 

While I certainly can’t wait to revel in the “misery” of Cubs fans tonight, I’m also gonna thoroughly enjoy seeing baseball fans finally wake up to the fact that Kyle Hendricks is a fucking joke. Somehow, the same wimpy little shit that got lit up by the Mets last October is now being touted as the ‘true ace’ for the Cubs and a legit Cy Young candidate. Just a little ANALysis, however, makes you realize that’s all bullshit.

16-8 with a 2.13 ERA is eye popping, yes, but dig a little deeper and you’ll see a 3.70 SIERA that puts his ERA-SIERA split of -1.57 as the 14th lowest in all of MLB. For those of you who haven’t yet learned the language of baseball nerd, it means nobody has benefited from luck or the Cubs admittedly lights out defense more than he has. Some might say “he’s a ground ball pitcher it’s smart for him to let the defense do the work blah blah blah.” That is kind of true, but also shut the fuck up.

There have been a whopping 3.1 innings pitched in high leverage situations for Hendricks this year, probably due to the fact that he’s a #3 starter in a division full of garbage rotations. He’s always matched up against scrubs and gets gifted generous leads to hold. Perfect spot for the Cubs to hide their faux talent pussy.

Also, like a pussy, Hendricks is significantly worse on the road than he is at home….

Home: 3.01 xFIP, 86.2(!) LOB%

Road: 4.17 xFIP, 77.3 LOB%

Like his SIERA split, those are some of the higher discrepancies you’ll see in all of MLB. It’s as if everything around him needs to be absolutely perfect for him to truly be lights out, so it’s truly unfortunate for him that he starts game 7 at Cleveland against the Klubot. Oh yeah and he also has to pitch against DHs instead of pitchers, forgot to mention that. Fucken NL pussy.

Tribe +120 = hammer time 🔨💰🔨

Yesterday at O’Hare, I was greeted by an Uber driver with a Cubs flag on one side of his car, a W flag on the other, and about $300 of Cubs swag decking him out from head to toe. Obviously I wanted nothing to do with him, but the cubbie craze is unavoidable in chi town right now so I figured to have a good attitude and make small talk anyway. I told him how much I loved Aroldis Chapman and that I wished the Rangers had traded for him last winter, and he responded with a “which player is that?” Fuck that shit…

Any baseball fan who’s been here enough times knows that this fanbase is a giant fucking fraud. Its true that they’re always filling up the stands no matter how poorly the ‘lovable losers’ may be playing, but take out all the tourists and yuppie transplants whose fanhood and Wrigleyville hangouts are merely fads for their 20s and you’re left with mostly shitheads like the aforementioned uber driver. They go on and on about the misery they (pretend to) have endured, buts that’s a load of shit as well. Even if you’re as young as 30 in Chicago, your sports life has been blessed with…

-the coolest basketball/sports dynasty of all time during the 90s

-the best hockey dynasty of all time right now

-Two Super Bowls with Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers (granted for only about 50% of Cubs fans)

-a baseball World Series. Yes. They had one in 05. And yes, Cubs fans were all in on that celebration.

Spare me the fucking grief, Chicago. Also, the team itself is annoying as fuck. Maddon is an arrogant prick who failed the nation when he lost to philly. Lester and Lackey committed great crimes against society by giving massholes the ammo to become even shittier massholes. Arrieta is a one year wonder/juicer that can kick rocks. And Baez’s MLB logo neck tattoo is the stupidest shit I’ve ever seen on an athlete.

Do yourself a favor and don’t fall into this crap narrative about the Cubs that everyone is propogating. I promise – you will end up regretting this twice as much as you currently regret cheering for the Pats to unseat the Rams back in 01. Go Tribe!