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Here is my take on the Iowa Men’s Basketball team right now, based on my personal observations and a bit of statistical research.  I have watched all of the Bowling Green, Texas and Wichita State games and about half of the Virginia Tech game, so my opinions are based on a fairly limited sample size.

In the games that I have watched, we have shown some promise on offense.  We tend to play good offense for significant periods of games, and by this I mean that we have good passing and good patience, which generally leads to good shots.  I know many people complain about all of our 3 point attempts, but during the games that I have seen, many of our 3 attempts have been open shots.  I think, in time, some of those 3s will fall.  Gatens and Tucker were both excellent outside shooters last season and I don’t think it was just a mirage.  We don’t have anybody who is a particularly good driver, but Gatens, Tucker, Payne and May have shown a few flashes of good driving ability.  They obviously lack the athleticism to be great at finishing in traffic, but eventually I think they can be OK at getting into the lane and finishing.  However, their strength will always be 3 point shooting and passing.  Unfortunately, we tend to have about 5-10 minutes per game where we are just God-awful on offense, leading to a 10 or 15-0 run for the other team.  During this time, we tend to take highly contested shots and turn the ball over. 

I don’t know why we only play 30 minutes of good offense per game.  Is it our lack of experience (which can be remedied) or lack of athleticism (which can’t be remedied) or lack of depth (which can be remedied next season)?  I think it’s a combination of all three of these things.  Due to our lack of athleticism, our guys must work harder than their defenders to get to the ball – otherwise, the defenders will win, due to superior athleticism.  Our 10 minutes of crap offense seems to happen when our guys get a little bit lax, either due to fatigue or just not being used to playing at the high D1 level for 40 minutes.  This lackadaisical play is manifested with guys not getting open and lazy passes on the perimeter, both of which lead to turnovers and transition dunks for the other team.  I don’t think that we are THAT lazy, it’s just that given our lack of athleticism, any lack of intensity on our part makes us look like we are in slow motion.  By next season, our improved experience and/or depth will hopefully allow us to play our best on offense for 40 minutes.  If we do put together our best 40 minutes of offense, we will be a very good offensive team because of our shooting.

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I noticed that our ERA at the end of the year was 14th in the national league.  This was surprising because Duke and Ohlendorf both pitched pretty well this year, while Maholm and Morton were both OK (Morton was pretty good, sub-4 ERA when you omit that disastrous 10ER performance at Wrigley). If 4 of our starters were OK, why is our team ERA still ranked 14th in the NL?  I looked at our team pitching statistics after 159 games (so the last couple games are missing).

The first thing that jumped out at me is the number of innings pitched by guys who stink.  When I sort our pitchers according to ERA and break them down into guys with ERAs above 5 and ERAs lower than 5.  I find that guys with high ERAs pitched 421 innings for us this year; 30% of our innings were pitched by guys who stink.  I compared these numbers with teams that have league average pitching staffs (like Colorado) and found that decent pitching staffs tend to have way less than 421 innings pitched by guys who stink - they tend to be around 200.

                                                                                IP             ER          ERA

        Innings by pitchers with ERA over 5:      421          282         6.06017192

        Innings by pitchers with ERA under 5:    977         428         3.942681679

        Totals:                                                           1398        710         4.578019774

The biggest offenders were:

Karstens  105.2 IP,  5.37 ERA

Snell 80.2 IP, 5.36 ERA

Capps 54.1 IP, 5.8 ERA *These were especially costly, Capps cost us several games this season*

Hart 53.1 IP, 6.9 ERA

Vasquez 43.2 IP, 5.98 ERA

The unholy tetrad of Karstens, Snell, Hart and Vasques pitched 280 innings for us last year!

Let's look at the bright side, this means that we will probably be better next year.  For example, I expect Dan McCutchen and Brad Lincoln to collectively eat up most of those 280 innings.  Suppose McCutchen and Lincoln take up all 280 of those innings and have a 4.5 ERA (nothing spectacular, mind you, a very reasonable expectation).  Suppose also, that Capps can get it together and put up a 3.8 ERA (again something he has done before).  If all these highly plausible things happen then our collective staff ERA would be 4.24.  This is also assuming that the collective production for the other members of the staff remains constant.  A 4.24 ERA would be middle of the pack in the NL.  A few other points are worth mentioning:  1.  Morton could very well have a sub-4 ERA next season (if you omit that nightmare at Wrigley, then he had a sub-4 ERA this season).  2.  Lincoln and McCutchen could do better than a 4.5 ERA.  3.  Our defense was dramatically worse after the trades and if we don't do something to improve defensively at 2B then Maholm and Duke may give up a lot more runs next year, due to their tendencies to pitch to contact.  I think our pitching staff can take a big step forward next year but we need to ensure that they have a competent defense working behind them and we may need to sign a reliever or two.  One thing is clear, our collective ERA will improve dramatically if we cut out some of this deadwood (Karstens, Vasquez and Hart) and replace it with guys who are serviceable.  The replacements don't have to be great, just serviceable.  I think McCutchen and Lincoln can be serviceable next year.  What are your thoughts?

Pedro Alvarez has been promoted to Altoona, according to John Perotto.  I don't see any coverage of it yet on the post gazette website, but I am assuming that Perotto has a reputable source.  I must say I am VERY surprised about this promotion.  Pedro has been striking out in 30% of his ABs all season.  His power has improved steadily but a 30% K rate is a major red flag, just look at Jamie Romak's performance this season in AA.  From what I have heard/read, Alvarez has had trouble with breaking stuff in the dirt (my own opinion is that it is probably in 2 strike situations when he is trying to protect the plate and be over-aggressive).  He has also hit straight stuff a long way from what I have read.  He has had a few monster, multi-HR games in the last week but his overall stats for June (or the last week for that matter) aren't that great.  He tends to follow up his monster games with 0-4, 3K performances in which he also commits an error in the field.  Hopefully he will be able to hack it at AA, but I can see this being a total disaster where he hits 0.180 the rest of the way a la Romak.  I just don't think he is ready for AA pitching yet.  I guess we are gonna find out.

When I first read Brooks Pounders profile, what I saw was a tall, somewhat overweight kid who has 4 decent pitches but doesn't really have the velocity that you would expect from someone with that frame.  Something rang familiar about that description and then I realized that it sounds a bit like descriptions of Stephen Strasburg when he was coming out of high school.  Here is one such description that I found on the internet:

So who is this guy and if he is so good why wasn’t he drafted out of high school?  Currently Strasburg is listed at 6′4″ and 220 lbs.  In high school, he was slightly shorter and about 50-60 lbs. heavier. His fastball barely touched 90 mph.  San Diego pitching coach Rusty Filter saw something in him and insisted on having him in camp.  In his freshman season, Filter but Strasburg on a conditioning regimen that included hot yoga and as a result, Strasburg shed 30 lbs.  Not only that, his velocity began to creep up.  By the time he was a sophomore, his fastball was consistently clocked at 97-99 mph with occasional touches of 100 and 101.  Strasburg also possesses a plus-plus-plus slider at 81-84mph.  He has a plus change that he uses infrequently and a plus curve in the 70s.

That description above is from mopupduty.com and they are describing Strasburg.  A high school 6'4'' 270lb pitcher whose fastball is only 90mph sounds an awful lot like Brooks Pounders too doesn't it?  Lets have Pounders do some "hot yoga", whatever that is.  Maybe he'll be hitting 100mph in a couple of years.

There is much debate about (1) whether this deal was a salary dump and part of the 18 year pattern of trading our only good players etc. and (2) whether the guys we got back were good enough to justify trading Nate, what kind of players do they project into etc.  One thing that hasn't been discussed so much is what is the future of our OF?  Morgan has been a very pleasant surprise but despite his decent/good OBP and good defense, he has no power at all.  Because of this, as well as Nate's lack of ideal speed for CF, I had always envisioned Nate sliding over to left field when Cutch came up, with Cutch in center.  Given the dimensions of PNC park, this would be a great defensive alignment, since a tweener CF/corner hybrid is exactly what we need in left at PNC.  Nate would have been a great defensive LF for us, and his bat would have been above average in LF too (though not as good as his bat plays in CF).  This trade leaves our organization with no real power above A+ (w/ exception of the constantly injured Doumit and the oscillatory Adam LaRoche).  Where are we gonna get the power from?  We seem to be stockpiling AAA pitchers with these trades as though we want to be decent again in 2010 or 2011 - we also now have a very good defensive team and a lot of guys who can get on base (Andy LaRoche, McCutchen) but where will the power come from?  Or is the plan to use our speed at the top of the lineup to "manufacture" runs?  If so, that strategy sounds familiar doesn't it?

Hey guys, I'm a slow pitch softball player who played little league baseball. Obviously, I've never had much coaching and it hurts my game. In particular, my throwing arm is poor for someone with my size (6'7, 220lbs). I am looking for suggestions for websites where I can learn more about throwing mechanics and also hitting mechanics (more interested in throwing though). Any advice on instructional websites would be much appreciated.   Thanks very much!

Do we have the cap room to make a competitive offer for him?  He is only 29 years old.  I know he missed several games last year due to injury.  How serious was the injury?  Will it affect him long term?  Assuming he is healthy, he could give our line a major boost.  We could insert him at RT or LT (and move Starks back to the right side).  Either of those moves would improve our OL immensely.  I have no confidence in Willie Colon whatsoever.