FVBrewerFan

I know what you're saying, but Gamel is not a bench player.

Heart of a champion. They could have easily been happy getting 1 win in Boston. Tough shooting night and they win going away. Good stuff.

Yea, everyone sucks and they're winning. This really is an IGT!!

Really???? Thats like saying Yelich is supposed to be a good hitter, why did he just swing and miss??

If Hiura comes up soon, they go to a 7 man pen. They can shuttle guys as much as needed and have a 15 man pen anyhow. Doubt they do that all year, but it's a long season. Maybe Shaw, Aguilar, whomever gets a 10 day DL stint or two. Legit or otherwise. There's ways to buy time, but eventually they may have to decide what to do with one of Shaw/Thames/Aguilar. I think we all agree, Hiura needs to play every day when they bring him up. That leaves 4 guys to play 1B/3B and that just makes no sense long term for the rest of the season.

Smart's impact will be on the defensive side of the floor. I can see them putting him on Middleton for as many minutes as they can.

My guess is a lot of these comments are from people who don't enjoy the NBA s much as MLB and/or NFL to begin with. That's fine. The season from beginning to end is no longer than MLB, NHL, or Premier League. NFL is close. Anyhow, I would prefer this thread to be about the Bucks on the verge of reaching the Eastern Conf Finals, not pages of complaints about what's wrong with the NBA. Please take that to the "What's bugging me" thread.

Great that they did in fact make this adjustment. More often than not, Giannis got the ball on the left wing, Boston never adjusted, couldn't build the wall the same way. We saw the result. Giannis is in their head, Refs are in their head, Kyrie is messing with his own head. Bring it hard in game 4 and they're waiting to fold.

Yea, it's too long. I prefer to focus on the games and not get too worked up about the dead time in between games. I mean it is what it is, I'm not going to be any less excited about watching the game tomorrow.

Probably explains why we have one poster here who refuses to ever capitalize. Or use punctuation.

Sounds good, also sounds precisely what one would think of Chinese food.

Lopez with game high plus/minus (+10)

There's far more to it than the pitching coach. You have advanced scouts, analytics people, catchers, etc. meet before every series to walk through how to pitch opposing batters. How much of this is on the pitching coach? Who knows. But outside of the 3 young guns, what evidence is there that Johnson was any better? In fact, when Woodruff was a starter early last season he wasn't any good either. Johnson had the luxury of using these guys in short spurts out of the pen. Peralta I suppose you could point to. He had mixed results as a starter last year, but at least some starts were exceptional. I have no doubt the pitching coach is a factor, just so hard to prove how much. I will say what we're seeing is more of an organizational failing than anything else. They let them go through the system with nothing more than FB/slider and then wonder why they can't get MLB hitters out, especially more than once. I would be drafting guys with a plus change or curve, and hire the best coach I could find that knows how to teach throwing a change-up. Then require each pitcher throw it 25% of the time every single outing. You can't just bring limited guys up like this and then say "it's your fault MLB pitching coach."

Behind closed doors, there's got to be a lot of disappointment that Burnes, Peralta, and Woodruff have failed in the starters role and not much behind them. Houser got rocked in his one start, and Brown hasn't been that good in AAA. Far too early to know where this season is headed, but if they are out of it come August, I'm open to selling anyone for the right price. Chacin and Grandal are the most obvious since they're FA after this year, and have enough value to get a nice return. I would not rule out trading Cain, all about what you can get back.

Sir Charles made a point I've been saying all year. He doesn't like Giannis bringing the ball up the court to start offense, and I couldn't agree more. Waste of the shot clock and physical effort for Giannis to dribble up to the top of the key, see there's a wall (as there will be 100% of the time), stops to think, then throws it to the wing. Just wayyyy too predictable, and plays into their hands of stopping Giannis without even doing anything at all ut standing there. They should have him starting out on the wing or the low post, alternate having him in a different position every half-court possession. Then move the ball, set picks for him, and it will be impossible for them to form that wall. Seems so obvious, I don't know why they haven't made that adjustment. On defense, I mentioned this briefly earlier, but they changed their defense significantly in game 2 and it went largely unnoticed. They started switching on 3s so Lopez (or whoever) doesn't have to go around the screen to defend the 3. Great adjustment because that also keeps Lopez in the lane to defend the rim. They didn't switch EVERY time, but a lot more often than game 1. Boston will no doubt adjust, that's what makes a playoff series so much fun.

In Lake Country, Golden Mast or Seven Seas

Houser, Brown, and Nelson aren't exactly knocking on the door so Burnes will likely get another shot this year. Because it's hard to believe Woodruff, Peralta, and even Gio will just cruise along. Honestly, I would put Anderson back in the rotation when he comes off the DL and send Woodruff to the pen or Peralta to AAA. (We'll see how they do in their next start or two in the meantime.) Good reminder though why very few guys should be untouchable when trade talks come up. Turns out they may not all be TOR starters or aces, whatever. Also of note, CC did not mention anything about Burnes being a piggyback starter, or starting every other Tuesday, or any other version of that. No, he's a reliever for now- period.

I'm not as extreme as TBBC, but it could be used as an actual strategy though--taking advantage of a market inefficiency by specifically acquiring pitchers who are good to very good 2 times through an order but horrible during the 3rd time through the order. Currently, most of those types of guys end up as AAAA type starters or long relievers/mop-up guys in the bullpen--but if you purposely acquired or groomed 4-6 of them for that type of role then they could very effectively and very cheaply cover the innings normally pitched by 2 (or maybe 2.5) spots in a 5 man rotation. Playing the match-ups might mean flip-flopping certain guys who begin the game, effectively eliminating the traditional start (rest 4 days), start (rest 4 days) routine for those type of guys. Pitchers who are very good 2 times the order, bad after that are not AAAA pitchers. They are a huge % of starting pitchers in MLB.

I feel the same about House of Cards. The first season was incredible and they've just gone downhill since then. I didn't even watch last season. I guess you could say the same about True Detective. Season one was an all timer, season two really stink and season three was pretty good. Ditto on all three. I've seen every season of HoC, Homeland, and True Detective. Sure, 1st season or two is always the best for almost any series, but I still think the last season of Homeland is better than anything on network TV.

I'd say making the traditional 4th and 5th spots in the rotation a merry-go-round is fine provided nobody seems to be stepping up their game. It looks like Davies and Chacin have their spots nailed down. Great. After that, we are still in search mode for those other starting spots, and I think it makes perfect sense to use a combination of Anderson, Woodruff, Peralta, Gonzalez, and Burnes (and perhaps Nelson later in the year if need be) for those spots. Ideally, at least one guy steps up and solidifies their spot the way that Davies has done this year. Heck, maybe 3 guys will step up and we'll have a traditional 5 man staff. If that happens, let it happen, but don't force guys to struggle through the 4th and 5th inning when you have another capable multi-inning guy in the bullpen. That's exactly what they're doing now. You don't need tandems, piggyback, swap starter and long reliever every week, 4 man rotation, 6 man rotation, or any other novelty mentioned here. You can do some of that in September for specific reasons when the roster expands, and the make-up of your pitching staff at the time. This whole concept of blurring the lines between starter and long reliever is nothing more than making relievers feel better that they're not a starter.

Yes, thank you. It's anything but rigid, just like the model to have the starter go 7 followed by a set-up man and closer isn't anything more than a daily goal. It's something you hope for but adjust accordingly. And the dual starter model isn't an equal dose of both by target or plan. If one guy gives you 5, the other might only throw 2-3. The guy who goes 5 will be down for more days than the guy who goes 2-3. Maybe they flip roles and reverse their order of appearance if they happen to throw in the same next game. (The one who started last time relieves, while the one who came out of the pen, gets to start his next time out.) People are used to a set 5-man rotation and I get that. This completely scraps that and wouldn't have a set schedule. Which is probably why it's so hard to pin down. You play matchups and availability. And you cover for the shorter starts by having more starter-like pitchers. They're already shortening these starts, they may as well have a staff constructed to better handle it. And the upside gained is taking advantage of pitchers' general dominance over batters when avoiding a 3rd look on a given day. I admit I could be wrong, but it seems like you explain your plan differently every time. They're not going to flip SP and reliever roles back and forth. Why? They haven't, are not, and won't do anything close to this scheme. I really don't understand what is being acccomplished here, other than making things way more complicated than necessary. More relief pitchers who can go multiple innings? Sure. Every team is trying to do that. But making the rotation a merr-go-round, not so much.

Yes. You go into a game with a plan, not a rigid schedule. The old and still widely used plan is to get 6-7 from a starter and then finish with a set-up man followed by a closer. A new way of game planning would be to plan on two starter-like pitchers and one 1-2 inning reliever. But on any given day plans go awry no matter which model you deploy. That hasn't been true for years. Starters just haven't gone that long into a game for quite some time now. The answer has been to use several guys, each going an inning or less. This has always been a problem for me, because it's like playing russian roulette. No matter how good the relievers are, the more you use in a game the more likely one just won't "have it." So a change that makes sense is to have more guys that cover multiple innings. That doesn't require an elaborate plan of tandem starters or piggybacking. Plus, even having multiple inning guys is limited, since they will often times need to be pulled for a PH. But through all that, the goal is still to get as many quality innings in a game from the SP. Just have a short leash if you do have a few guys who can pitch multiple innings.

I expected the Bucks to win all their home games though, oh well. One big adjustment the Bucks made is switching on the pnr. They usually dont do that, but realized after game 1 they needed to adjust.

To be fair, Giannis was playing scared for 5 or 6 quarters. Scared may be the wrong word, tentative maybe? Great win, Boston still got what they wanted- one of the games. Lets get one back in Boston! Hopefully Brogdon is back game 3.

Yes. He has been playing very well. No bueno so far in this series though.