NBA News: Andrew Bynum excused from team for “family medical matter”
November 12, 2013Uni Talk: Recruiting, Oregon and Multiple Helmets
November 13, 2013Cleveland sports fans are waiting. Thus, while we’re all waiting, the WFNY editors thought you might enjoy reading. Because you never know how long we might be waiting. So here are assorted reading goodies for you to enjoy. Send more good links for tomorrow’s edition to tips@waitingfornextyear.com.
“But, although I thought long and hard about putting Melvin atop my ballot, in the end I went with Francona. Like Melvin, Francona made a difference on offense, not with in-game tactics but with his lineup cards, compensating for an offense short of star power by exploiting platoon advantages as often as possible. Francona secured the platoon advantage a remarkable 75 percent of the time, second only to Melvin’s MLB-leading 77 percent. In this, Francona leaned heavily on position-switching regulars such as Nick Swisher and Carlos Santana and plugged in position-flexible journeymen such as Mike Aviles and Ryan Raburn.
That wasn’t Francona’s biggest area of impact, though. Other managers had to deal with injuries within good rotations or breaking in young talent there while contending with it, but Tito had to deal with both challenges. Francona delivered a wild-card team despite getting just 73 quality starts from his rotation (“good” for 13th in the AL). In part, that was because Francona didn’t ask too much of Danny Salazar, Zach McAllister or Corey Kluber, but the frenetic use of his bullpen — with an MLB-leading 540 relievers used — compensated for a rotation that pitched only 5.7 innings per start (12th in the AL). If the bullpen is where a manager makes the biggest in-game impact these days, I chose to recognize that a deep Indians bullpen — and Francona’s cultivation and employment of it — was critical to their winning one of the AL wild cards despite a rotation that couldn’t contribute as much. Francona got great work from guys such as Cody Allen and Bryan Shaw to paper over the midgame innings gap that could have quickly killed off talk of Cleveland’s contending. So, Francona was my choice for 2013 AL Manager of the Year.” [Kahrl/ESPN]
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“It’s Irving’s approach and aggressiveness, specifically–more than any scheme scribbled on a dry erase board–that provides Dion Waiters and Jarrett Jack an opportunity to combine for 83 points in a three-guard lineup alongside Irving that would’ve made Don Nelson proud of Coach Brown’s offensive innovation.
But when the 21-year-old All-Star comes out shooting 5-of-19 like he did against the Chicago Bulls on Monday, it’s almost impossible for these Cavs to overcome.
They finished Monday’s road loss with 13 assists and 18 turnovers as a team, according to ESPN, while allowing Chicago to dish out 24 dimes and only commit 11 turnovers. The Cavs also got out-rebounded (41-38), out-hustled and out-classed by a Bulls team who expects to compete with the Indiana Pacers and Miami Heat for an Eastern Conference championship.” [Bowers/Stepien Rules]
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“Furthermore, if you told me that Andrew Bynum was healthy and playing, then I’d have told you that he needs to be in the starting lineup. And that’s where we are at this point. Bynum has played in 6 games, coming off the bench for his first five. He’s averaging just 15 minutes per game, but logged a season-high 21 minutes on Monday against the Bulls. His health is coming along better than anybody could have hoped and he’s slowly but surely shaking off the rust that comes from sitting out for an entire season.
The first game with Bynum in the starting lineup was a little bit rough. There were some miscommunications and Brown seemed frustrated at Bynum’s lack of touches in the paint. But the potential benefits of having Bynum out there with the Cavaliers’ other best players is obvious. At Tuesday’s practice, Mike Brown indicated that, when he’s healthy, Andrew Bynum will remain the starting center for Cleveland. [Kaczmarek/Fear the Sword]
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“On Saturday, Ohio State will be handed an opportunity to match a win streak that lives in Buckeye lore – 22 games, set by the Super Sophs who led Ohio State to the 1968 national championship. Generations have past since then and the Buckeyes ended their national title drought more than a decade ago, but the significance of the current streak contains the same meaning.” [Rowland/Eleven Warriors]
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When you find yourself on the JumboTron, you might as well go for it. [YouTube]
23 Comments
Excellent JumboTron twerk or whatever that was!
A Boston Globe columnist thinks John Farrell wuz robbed! Poor baby.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2013/11/13/voters-wrong-naming-terry-francona-american-league-manager-year-not-john-farrell/KSGxJy0zlosctmB6JCTW6N/story.html
That link makes the award so much sweeter.
hey, he only started the year with a $154mil payroll. and, they only added another $20mil through the season (Peavy trade + $8mil Napoli escalators – not sure if any other added too). it’s hard to win when you cannot even spend $200mil/season on players.
best line from that link:
Oh, Dustin Pedroia, Jacoby Ellsbury, and Ortiz could be considered
superstars, but the remainder of the team was just a bunch of
hard-working lunch-pail type guys.
yep, and those pesky superstar laden Indians had it easy 🙂
It is hard to put a roster together for 189M! That is ONLY an average of 7.5M a year per player
we would be on cloud 9 if we got up to 100!
I promise not to get mad if CLE wins the WS and our manager does not get AL manager of the year
If you think manager of the year goes to the guy who did the most with the least on-field talent, I think you have to give Joe Girardi the award. I’m not surprised he didn’t win because YANKEES and all, but if you don’t look at the uniforms and don’t look at the payrolls and just look at the actual talent on-field…. well, it is amazing that those guys won 85 games and had a shot at the playoffs.
I’m not saying I agree with everything in the article, but I think if I was a Red Sox fan I’d be a little miffed. A big payroll does not make a winner (as last year’s BoSox proved).
But… like all managers of high-payroll teams with a lot of talent, I think Farrell is going to have to consistently dominate to get any praise for himself. Phil Jackson has like forty-six NBA championship rings and one COY award.
Think these types of awards were created to placate small market teams.
a good case can be made for him. with all the injuries, the constant shuffling of the roster, CC’s demise, an uncharacteristically weak bullpen, and no real emergence from young talent.
large payroll doesn’t equal success, but it makes it easier.
think back to April, which rotation would you rather have had to deal with:
Lester, Lackey, Buchholz, Dempster, Doubrant (then they added Peavy)
or
Masterson, Ubaldo, Myers, McAllister, Carrasco/Kazmir/Bauer?
I was looking at their roster this morning and… good god… just awful… Jayson Nix played 80+ games at third… adding Mark Reynolds was an upgrade…. average rotation… terrible bullpen… it was like a team from the retirement home and little league…
yes, I remember discussing it during the season too. They managed to keep getting just enough out of scrub veterans and dumping them once they tanked. Girardi did a really good job of keeping them alive.
Of course it makes it easier… and obviously they had a better all around roster… I’m just saying that winning with talented players, many of whom usually have huge egos, is extremely difficult too. Winning a series, whatever your team, is extremely difficult.
I guess it just bugs me that I hear praise for Tito like “last year’s team quit so he had to come in and change the entire environment”, yet Farrell did the same thing there.
Then you’ll hear criticism of Farrell like “well, they just spent and brought in FAs so this year’s team is pretty much completely different”. Well… you could say the same about Tito and the Indians this year.
Also in that vein: Tito gets credit for bringing guys in with his aura alone, yet if you were to say that about Farrell people would roll their eyes and say “it was just the money”.
Just saying there’s sort of a double standard in how people perceive these things. And I get why, if I were a BoSox fan, I’d be a little upset. Not so much that Farrell didn’t win, but that people are so quick to dismiss the good job he did there.
To support your point about successful big-payroll managers not always getting their due, look at Jim Leyland. He got one second-place vote and that was it.
Of course it makes it easier… and obviously they had a better all around roster
we agree. Farrell did a good job, but I think Melvin and Francona got more out of less, which would be part of the criteria in voting for me. You go to a big payroll team, then you have a better chance at winning and a WS, but less a chance at manager of the year. I think he’s okay with that trade-off.
Take away her flawless body, California Beach blonde hair, and girl next door smile and Heather Thomas could have passed for Bea Arthur.
Can we make a pledge as a fan base now? If we ever get on a ten year plus run of championships in all three sports, can we promise not to attempt to act both too smug, and at the same time like hard scrabble underdogs?
I would rather deal with some frontrunning 90’s superfan wearing a Bulls hat, Yankees jacket, and Cowboy star tattoo on his forehead.
Give New York credit, when they get on a roll they don’t act like anything other than insufferable jackholes
And I value winning the Series quite heavily. So I sort of disagree that Francona got more out of less. I’d say Farrell got more out of more.
Congratulations Mr. Manager!
these are regular season awards voted on before the playoffs begin. that gets thrown out in these discussions because it’s meaningless for the voting of these awards.
I realize that. I think that’s just another reason that the award is silly.
I don’t know. You get a WS ring for doing well in October. I don’t mind a prize for doing well in April, May, June, July, August and September (in addition to the chance to play in October itself of course).
I guess it’s just one of those things where I look at guys who have won it in the past… and a lot of them went on to suck. Guess it shouldn’t negate them having a good year and all, but it just makes the whole thing seem somewhat arbitrary.
Basically to have a chance, you have to turn around a small/medium market team that sucked the year before.