While 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

“Well, last year Cleveland’s hot start was done with smoke and mirrors; they were outscored on the season, even when the Tribe was standing in first. That ain’t the case this year, as Cleveland is above average in run scoring and run prevention. The Indians’ offense has been a real juggernaut so far. They are first in the AL in slugging percentage, second in homers, third in on-base percentage, fourth in doubles, triples, and batting average—yeah, they are hitting pretty darn well. In fact, their team OPS+ is a comically high 121.

Strangely, Cleveland ranks just sixth in runs scored, though. It isn’t as bad as it sounds, as there is a tight pack at the top. If you shift to runs per game, the Indians are tied for third in the AL. Still, to date their bats have been at their worst when it matters most, with lousy numbers when batting in close-and-late situations, as well as when the bases are loaded. Odds are that should improve as the year goes on. Then again, they won’t keep a 121 OPS+ all season long.” [Jaffe/Hardball Times] [Read more...]

While 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

“But it’s a big boy business and that isn’t lost on Stoneburner. That’s why the mood was upbeat when the Green Bay Packers contacted him to become an undrafted free agent. Stoneburner will keep that undrafted status in the back of his mind for a little extra motivation.

“Teams didn’t pick you for a reason,” he said. “You’ve got to figure out what that reason was and you’ve got to take that and critique it. Take it with you to Green Bay and show teams they made a mistake in not drafting you. You don’t want to act too crazy up there and act like you’re some nut job that wishes he’d have been drafted, but you definitely have to have a chip on your shoulder.”

There was logic in the reasoning why Stoneburner remained on draft boards for 254 picks. He’s had two knee injuries, including a torn meniscus last season, and he never quite lived up to his potential at Ohio State, though it can debated whether that was his fault or not.” [Rowland/Eleven Warriors] [Read more...]

While 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

“Naturally, guys like Oladipo and Trey Burke are going to impress you the most being the most talented guys. Oladipo went through his workout as if it were Game 7 of the NBA Finals. Trey Burke went straight from the airport to the gym, then shot the lights out of the ball from the NBA line. Jamaal Franklin is a guy who showed a lot more than what he did at San Diego State, namely off of the dribble and with his consistency from three, which should shoot up him draft boards.

Colton Iverson is another guy who really surprised me by measuring right around 7‘0 in shoes, setting the hardest screens of anyone in the Draft, and being deceptively athletic. Then you have a guy like Peyton Siva who everyone already basically knows, but actually to see that his reputation is accurate. By that, I mean that he really does push his teammates, gives max effort at all times, and is the type of guy you’d love to have as a teammate. As with most players, you can see a whole lot more when you’re in the flesh than you do when you’re watching from your couch.” [Bowers/Stepien Rules] [Read more...]

While 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

“He has been one of the best power hitters in the league, ranking among the league leaders in Isolated Power and hiking his home run rate to 6.1 percent (up from a homer in 3.6 percent of his at-bats last year). It’s easy to dismiss his .370 batting average on balls in play as a fluke, until you see that he is hitting more line drives this year, without a single infield popout all season. All told, Santana is hitting .325/.438/.605, making him the third-most productive hitter in the game (behind Miguel Cabrera and Carlos Gomez) on a park- and league-adjusted basis.

Any time you make predictions in baseball, there is a range of possibilities that could play out depending on how well things go for a certain player or team. Santana is one of several players performing at or near best-case scenario levels right now for Cleveland.” [Keri/Grantland] [Read more...]

While 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

“Oladipo is not an offensive juggernaut, but he has the potential to be an outstanding offensive player, and it shouldn’t take him long to find a role. Of Draft Express’ Top 100 prospects, not a single one had a higher effective field goal percentage than Oladipo. He doesn’t force a thing. He plays with a non-stop motor and loves to get out in transition. 13.6 points per game on 8.4 shot attempts is outstanding. A 21% three point shooter a year ago, he got that all the way up to 44% this season, a larger improvement than even Otto Porter. He is an excellent rebounder both offensively and defensively, and would represent a massive upgrade in this regard over Alonzo Gee almost immediately. 74% of his jump shots this season were in catch and shoot situations, an indication that he understands his own limitations. He is effective attacking the basket and can finish once he gets there. Despite playing three college seasons he is young for his age and turned 21 just a couple weeks ago. There is significant room for offensive growth.

But you aren’t necessarily drafting Oladipo for his offense. He is a high energy guy who uses his length and strength to wreak havoc defensively. The combine will be interesting to see just what kind of length Oladipo really has. In his piece, Sam notes that it is likely somewhere between 6’8 and 6’11. Oladipo guarded four positions in college, and will be able to guard three in the NBA. He has the athleticism and strength to bother NBA point guards, and he won’t be bullied by small forwards. He won’t expend a lot of energy offensively and can guard the other team’s best perimeter option. There aren’t many teams who have multiple perimeter stars, so Oladipo allows you to hide Irving or Waiters should you choose to do so.” [Zavac/Fear the Sword]

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“Yes, the Buckeyes have a glut of blue chips chomping at the bit to show what they can do but as it stands, the collective group is largely unproven. In fact, Ohio State lost all four starters from last year’s front of John Simon, Johnathan Hankins, Garrett Goebel and Nathan Williams. Wondering just how significant that is, I dug into the media guide to find out the last time Ohio State turned over the entire starting defensive front. Any guess? Try 1989.” [Lauderback/Eleven Warriors]

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“The Akron Aeros’ roster has been filled with many new faces in 2013. Young prospects from Carolina and Lake County have plugged the lineup day in and day out. One face that has remained the same is Aeros’ first baseman/designated hitter Chun-Hsiu Chen. In his third season at Akron, the 24 year old Chen is becoming a veteran mainstay in the middle of the lineup. His ability to get on base, put the bat on the ball, hit for power, and drive in runs have helped the Aeros stay in the divisional race. His presence has protected some of the younger hitters and taken pressure off others. He may soon be the next in line to get a call up to Columbus, but for now Aeros’ fans can come to Canal Park and watch one of the best all-around hitters in the Eastern League.” [Tellalian/Did the Tribe Win]

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“If you were really trying to be positive, you could simply argue that Brown’s team would be at least as good as they were during his first ever season as an NBA coach. Or, maybe more fairly, you could say that his team would improve by the same margin on a per-category basis.

Meaning the 2012-13 Cavaliers who averaged 96.5 points per game–ironically enough–may average 97.6 next season. The field goal percentage of 43.4 could push up to 44.1 and the three-point percentage could move from 34.6 percent to maybe somewhere over 35, I guess.” [Bowers/Stepien Rules]

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You have to check out this interview of Nick Swisher. The ‘Bro-Meter’ is off the charts. [Yahoo on the road] (Hat tip to Big League Stew)

While 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

The Browns are the worst. Now with Math! “And now the depressing part. As you can see, Cleveland has been the worst team over the last 18 years, and it isn’t really even that close. Oakland and Arizona are the next two terrible teams, but both of them have three playoff appearances to the Browns one. Wow, that’s bad. Sure, some of that terrible record is due to having the years right after expansion included, but that doesn’t go a long way toward explaining anything. What has made the Browns so bad for so long? Some people may point to Randy Lerner, and in some respects those people are right. It was Randy Lerner’s job to hire the right people to run the Browns, and he never did that. However, some of these years were under Randy’s father Al, and even though none of the hires worked out, all of them seemed like slam dunk moves at the time.” [Dawgs By Nature]

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Good read IMO. “I’m sorry for exposing you to that, but sometimes to learn you must feel the pain of mistakes like watching The NFL Today or reading Mike Florio on purpose. Why NFL coverage is so bad across the board is something that even baffles the NFL writers I’ve talked to, who are as a whole at a loss on the issue. There are some theories, though. Like all theories, we present them for testing, because this is science, and science is nothing without hypotheses and trial.

The NFL is an access league with very few points of access. All leagues control access to media, but the NFL has a unique degree of control thanks to its corporate structure and the very design of the league itself. A paltry sixteen games, constant meetings and practice, and a well-oiled PR machine bent on protecting the marketability of its players limit the number of opportunities the media have to talk to players, coaches, and management.” [Hall/SB Nation]

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“For a long while, the league was able to mask the fact that the destruction of the human body was as central to its fundamental structure as that destruction ever was to, say, boxing. For a long while, the libertarian argument seemed to prevail; yes, the argument went, we concede the savagery and the destruction but, to paraphrase Hyman Roth, this is the business they have chosen. Both of those strategies have run their course. Scientific evidence continues to overwhelm any attempts to spin what happens to a human being over the course of a career playing football. And there comes a point at which the libertarian argument runs headlong into the question of whether it is moral for a society to allow people to commit slow-motion suicide for the purposes of mass entertainment. That leaves us with the question of what we will tolerate as an ethical and moral culture, and why. And that is the question that the NFL must answer in a whole host of areas regarding the safety and health of its employees, lest one day it get an answer that it will not like very much.” [Pierce/Grantland]

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“But instead of a level of acceptance of the bad call as part of the fabric of the game; instead of greeting this truth with grace and even sportsmanship… the reaction tends to be to hurry off and ‘fix’ the unfixable.

The saga of NFL replacement refs provide a great example. See the headlines at right. Those headlines were not outliers, they reflect the prevailing consensus among the ‘fair-minded’ at the time. My mind boggled. Like: have you all been afflicted with referee amnesia? It seemed to me then that the reporting on the replacement refs was one of the sorrier recent performances by the fifth estate (and that is really a strong condemnation). There was little sober reporting about the grounds for the ref lock-out (Did you know the average pay for an NFL ref is ~$170K and it’s a part-time job and the refs were holding out to keep it part-time and thus maintain their other employment?). But in addition to utter indifference to management’s position, there was the stunning hyperbole about preserving the sanctity of the game!! MY GOD THE REPLACEMENT MISSED A CALL AND COST SOMEONE A GAME!!! THE CARNAGE!!!” [Kanick]

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Want to know who is going to the NBA draft combine? Fear the Sword has you covered. [Fear the Sword]

While 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

Checking out some Cavalier options at #19- “Tony Mitchell – Over the last two seasons, I have been fairly practical about my pre-draft evaluating. This year, at #19, I say roll the dice; this North Texas sophomore fits that bill. Ranked 18th in the high school class of 2011, he resided above 2012 lottery picks Dion Waiters, Terrence Ross, Meyers Leonard, and Kendall Marshall. As an athletic, long combo-forward, after originally enrolling at Missouri he missed a season due to academic issues. Heading to North Texas, he flashed his impressive skills for one year, before mightily regressing this season, as his squad quit on their new coach. Certainly as the star player, the enigmatic Mitchell carries much blame for the team’s lackluster 13 – 18 record. Currently sitting 21st at draftexpress and 30th at ESPN, check out these per-game averages…” [Hetrick/Cavs the Blog] [Read more...]

While 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.

Get out the shades and sunscreen: “Dice-K’s future with the Indians is cloudy at best (currently on the AAA DL), but Kazmir’s forecast, like this week, has been sunny, warm, and clear. Yesterday he not only earned a Quality Start (6 innings, 1 run), he looked darn good doing it. He struck out 10 batters while walking 0, a feat limited in recent Indians history to pitchers like Cliff Lee, CC Sabathia, and Orel Hershiser. And more importantly, his velocity at times approached his past levels. One of the last fastballs he threw in the 6th inning was measured at 95 mph. The combination of stuff and command is beautiful to behold when on display, and when it comes from a player who even a week ago we wondered whether could stay in the majors, it’s a poweful stimulent.” [Let's Go Tribe]

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