casimir

The retaliation was cheap and embarrassing, no question. A small part of me wonders if Wagner’s move was intentional or klutzy and looked worse than it was. Regardless, it didn’t look good. It’ll be easy for the league to suspend Magic players for leaving the bench. What will be interesting is how it might apply suspensions to the Piston bench. It’s easy to say they didn’t leave the bench because that’s where the skirmish was. However, will they look for a certain level of hostile participation? It didn’t appear there was anything egregious outside of the 3 participants, but who knows what the league will see.

For as well as he shot, the one shot he missed was waaaaaaay off. I’m not sure it even got rim.

That's a good point about his speed, it is pretty much forward straight line.

You would think Ivey's quickness would be a defensive asset as well with the proper coaching. I wonder how much of the scoring increase overall throughout the league is actually just worse defense.

Orlando Magic vs Detroit Pistons

Soto? One can hope, right?

I like the trade. A pretty good position player (ie, everyday player) prospect for one season of an historically up & down one inning per outing relief pitcher? I'd like another of those trades, please.

Yet.

The take a turn offense and the constant pick & roll switching on defense have probably just become numb to me when watching them. Ivey stuck with someone (Wall/Jackson) last night instead of switching off with the big and it caught me by surprise. No idea the result of the play, I was just busy trying to figure out if I actually saw what I think I saw.

Damnit, I wish I saved the prognostication post of the next playoff team with Daz Cameron included on it.

Just to go into it a little further, Lue pulled the Clipper starters out around the 14 point deficit at 4 minutes. Their bench made the run against the Pistons starters. He held off on bringing the starters back in until under a minute despite being basically and even game for a minute prior. Pistons' TV surmised that the earlier benching was to save themselves for a game in Toronto the next night. They were really pretty stunned withy what Lue was doing. Right or wrong, they pulled it out in the end, so kudos to them. A tough lesson for the young Pistons, although maybe one worth going through in terms of development and, of course, draft lottery.

Drinkin' the egg nog.....

I forgot to record it, so I had to watch it live, which seems so primitive sitting through all of the damn lawyer commercials. I missed the beginning of the 1st and a bunch of the 3rd.

Some changes tonight with the substitution pattern and with moving the 3rd quarter collapse to the 4th quarter. Pretty good game if you stopped watching it with 4 minutes left in the 4th.

He’s too busy counting Scrooge McIlitch’s shekels.

I don’t know. Shouldn’t you be writing a sequel soon?

Castro will be 24 next season and has had some decent minor league success. Nothing wrong with this move.

Los Angeles Clippers vs Detroit Pistons

The hard hit % stuck out to me. It seems like that might have some predictive quality to it based on pitch movement/velocity/stuff. But the thought occurred to me (while shoveling snow of all things), I might have mistaken hard hit % for barrel rate.

Sure, I understand that to a point. Bauer just crosses the line for me. He's way too arrogant and self aggrandizing for my liking. And like I said before, that was before the issues because of which he found himself suspended. He makes Jack Morris seem tolerable. Although now that I think about it, maybe the difference between the two is just the era in which they played and the fan access/awareness via social media.

I either forgot or didn’t realize how Profar’s BB% and SO% fit well into what Harris wants. Same for Segura on the SO% side.

No confidence in Cisnero?

I agree, I don’t think they’re actively tanking. As for free agency, it’s possible they’ve got a few guys picked out and they’re just waiting for the pool to thin out a bit. Maybe they have offers out and all participants are just weighing options. For whatever reason, I recall the Tigers offering the same contract to Rondell White and Reggie Sanders but willing to sign only one of them. Yeah, I know, I’m old.

Not to parse words, but “hope” sticks out at me. I wouldn’t think they are going out anyone on the roster and hope they perform. I would think they feel confident that a player can perform or a player is old enough in terms of contract/age that it’s time to perform. Perez is only 23, so no need to “hope” he is MLB ready.