Friday, July 31, 2015

State of the Franchises: NL Central

Chicago Cubs: If Theo Epstein were Dayton Moore, this is the point where he should tell the fans to "trust the process" or something like that. Because twenty- and thirty-something Cubs fans like to pretend they've been around for the entire existence of the Billy Goat Curse. They see a team with a winning record and start talking about how long they've been waiting for a World Series, so it better happen RIGHT NOW. This nonsense is why I could never be a Cubs fan. The 2015 Cubs are a pretty good team, and they have a shot at catching the Giants or Pirates to make the Wild Card game. Renting David Price or taking a huge bite out of the farm system to get Cole Hamels just doesn't move the needle on that possibility enough. If they were neck-and-neck with the Cardinals, and adding a win here or there meant skipping the Wild Card game entirely, then sure, make a push. But as it stands, I would be a little psyched about adding Dan Haren to the back of the rotation, I would be moderately psyched that they didn't sell low on Starlin Castro, and I would still be hella psyched that the 2016 Cubs, with another big addition or two, will be ready to start breaking baseball. Of course, that's a hypothetical from the mind of this proud White Sox and Marlins fan. If I were actually a Cubs fan, I would never have bothered to learn baseball and would be cursing Theo's name for not overpaying for two months of Price.

Cincinnati Reds: Like everyone else, I had my doubts on how far the Reds would take their selloff. And given that they still have expensive and lights-out closer Aroldis Chapman on their roster, those doubts seem appropriate now. I have no qualms with the Cueto haul: Finnegan, Lamb, and another potential starting pitcher is a lot for two months of anybody. I think they did fine on Mike Leake: the Giants may have a terrible farm system, but at least they got their best guy. Were I a Reds fan, I would be moderately impressed with my team's moves right now, just as I was when they traded Alfredo Simon and Mat Latos for useful, controllable players last winter. My concern would be this: By only trading the pending free agents and nobody else, that might telegraph some really stupid intentions for the winter. There's bound to be a temptation for Castellini and Jocketty to reload instead of rebuild, to keep treating Votto, Bruce, Frazier, and Phillips as a championship-caliber core. Don't do it, dudes. Save your money and plant the seeds. Maybe they'll grow before Votto is useless.

Milwaukee Brewers: The Brewers were a lot worse in the first half than I thought they'd be, but I think they handled it just fine. Sending Aramis back to the Pirates for one last playoff run is something the baseball gods will smile upon, and getting a prospect package with a real top-tier headliner for Carlos Gomez and Mike Fiers could wind up as a classic win-win trade. Getting anything at all for Jonathan Broxton was the capper on a solid July for Doug Melvin. I don't know if I'd be that positive if I rooted for the Brewers, though. After the illusion of a .500 season in 2014, to collapse so completely that trading Gomez made sense would be a kick in the junk. So if I were a Brewers fan, I would listen to Dashboard Confessional in a dark room until November, and then see what happens after the World Series. That's probably what I'll do anyway, as my teams are just as bad.

Pittsburgh Pirates: In acquiring Tigers closer Joakim Soria at the deadline, the Buccos added an arm comparable to Jonathan Papelbon at a fraction of the financial cost. They also added a mediocre back-of-the-rotation arm in J.A. Happ to go with the ones they already had, a sort-of-usable middle relief option in Joe Blanton, and they've given a last chance to Aramis Ramirez thanks to the Josh Harrison injury. I can't complain about Soria- that was the kind of move that can loom large in the postseason by shortening the game. But all the rest were no-risk, no-reward moves, and this is a team that needed another bat and another legitimate starting pitcher if they had designs on leveling up this year. Unless the light goes on for Gregory Polanco, this could be another one-and-done October. For that matter, they've banked plenty of wins but their lead in the Wild Card isn't so big that they couldn't fall out of it entirely. I say this as someone who respects the hell out of the job Neal Huntington has done to get his team to this point, but I would be very disappointed and nervous if I were a Pirates fan. Just as a fan of baseball, I don't want the 2013 NLDS to be the furthest Andrew McCutchen goes with the Pirates. I want them to have a year, and I don't think 2015 is it.

St. Louis Cardinals: GM John Mozeliak basically shrugged his way through July- Jonathan Broxton, Steve Cishek, and Brandon Moss are the baseball version of a shrug- and why not: the Cardinals have the best record and second-best run differential in the game. Kolten Wong and Randal Grichuk are hitting, with Stephen Piscotty just called up to join them. Their front four starting pitchers have been nails, leading the best pitching staff in baseball, and that's without Adam Wainwright. All Cards fans have to worry about is Matt Holliday's health, but even if he's not good to go, the rest of the lineup's shown the ability to pick up the slack. I guess running into a buzzsaw team in the NLDS is still possible, but you can't worry about that now, and does anyone even think that's likely? I can't even imagine myself as a Cardinals fan. I'm not equipped to handle that much happiness.

States of the Franchises: NL West

You can go to any one of a dozen sites for instant analysis and projections based on baseball trades of the past month. I've read up on the prospects and the playoff odds, but I don't want to be redundant. I'm just going to do what I did over the winter: short term and long term, should you be happy to be a fan of your team? If your team participated in the trade frenzy, did that help or hurt? Six bite-sized posts over the next day or two. Here we go.

Arizona Diamondbacks: The early season deals of Mark Trumbo to Seattle for Wellington Castillo and the sale of pitching prospect Touki Toussaint to the Braves was all D-Backs fans got. They were supposedly in on some big targets like Aroldis Chapman and Cole Hamels, but came away empty handed. Despite claims of competitiveness from Dave Stewart and Tony Larussa- and, to be fair, the team's record- D-Backs fans are probably less than thrilled about 2015. But with A.J. Pollock and Paul Goldschmidt as legit stars in the lineup, and with some young pitching on the way, they're not a disaster. The team's medium and long-term future is entirely at the mercy of the aforementioned baseball bosses. I'd be hopeful for 2016 if I was a D-Backs fan, and encouraged that there was no short-term buying this month, but I'd still be very nervous about LaRussa and Stewart's talent evaluation skills.

Colorado Rockies: I asked Jeff Bridich not to make the playoffs or trade Tulo this year, because that would make them not the most boring team in baseball. Sadly, Tulo went to Toronto for Jose Reyes and a pretty good trio of pitching prospects a couple days ago. While the deal itself was interesting and decent for both sides, now we don't have the idea of the Tulo trade to speculate on anymore. Just the reality of Jose Reyes falling further from being worth his contract, and another hyped young arm in Jeff Hoffman getting introduced to the majors via Coors Field, like Butler, Matzek, and countless others before. Hmm. Maybe the Rockies are still the most boring team. I think I prefer the trade that happened to no trade at all, but I'm still wondering if Bridich has his own vision for building a winner at Coors. "Pitching prospects" looks a lot like Dan O'Dowd's vision.

Los Angeles Dodgers: While fans of instant gratification were clamoring for Andrew Friedman to acquire David Price or Cole Hamels, he decided his best prospects were too valuable to trade- so LA became a buyer in the most literal sense, adding talent at the cost of little more than money. The blockbuster 13-player deal with the Marlins and the Braves amounted to Los Angeles taking on the other teams' bad contracts while adding two solid mid-rotation starting pitchers, a late-inning reliever, and a top infield prospect. With a pair of aces now followed by a respectable supporting cast of arms, and with the team's minor league system even better than it was a week ago, there's nothing for Dodgers fans to complain about. This is what the Steinbrenner Yankees would have looked like under modern baseball rules.

San Diego Padres: With minutes to go until the deadline, Padres GM A.J. Preller made his choice. Rather than gut the major league roster he assembled so frenetically last winter, he chose to hang on to his many valuable players while adding lefty reliever Mark "Scrabble" Rzepczynski from the Indians. That Preller didn't act drastically might have been disappointing, but the blunders he made in the winter cannot be fixed by simply trading away the players he acquired. For better or worse, this mediocre team with a decent pitching staff, horrid infield, historically bad outfield defense, and a strip-mined farm system is what the Padres are going to be for now. That Preller still thinks the team has a run in them, capable of closing the 7 1/2 game deficit in the Wild Card race, is kind of ridiculous. I'm glad I'm not a Padres fan, because you never want one season's Opening Day to be the peak of your excitement for several years. But I'm hard pressed to find real reasons for optimism here.

San Francisco Giants: With a two-game lead in the Wild Card race, the Giants merely have to stay ahead of the Cubs and the Mets for two months to give themselves a shot at back-to-back World Series titles. To that end, they traded their top prospect- A-ball pitcher Keury Mella- along with another minor leaguer to the Reds for starting pitcher Mike Leake. It's a footnote to a chaotic trade season, but by some kind of wacky happenstance the teams that go far in the postseason are almost always the teams that make these useful mid-level deals in July. The Giants needed a reliable mid-to-upper rotation starter and they hit the low end of that target. Their supply of prospects appears damn near dried up, but somehow they keep finding Chris Hestons and Matt Duffys who come up and excel. I don't understand Giants Magic, I don't particularly enjoy it, but were I a Giants fan I would surely enjoy the complacency that comes from rooting for a team that wins a lot for no reason. I would be unreasonably confident for 2015, and I would have faith for the future that prospect rankings and offseason projections have nothing on Sabean/Bochy Jedi powers.

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Baseball Spitballs

I've been reading, watching, and listening to every bit of trade deadline news and speculation I can find this month. It's a good time, we all want our favorite team to get the players we want at the price we want to pay. But last winter's Jeff Samardzija trade notwithstanding, that just doesn't happen much. If you want your team to get Cole Hamels, you're going to have to accept that that involves giving up that elite prospect who you consider off the table. If you want anybody of value and you're the Mets, you don't get to keep all your pitchers. So I thought I would have a little fun with it, and make some shot-in-the-dark guesses for some of the major trade targets.

-Cole Hamels (LHP, Phillies). Phillies management has been holding out for a team to offer their best minor leaguers since the winter, and it hasn't happened yet. We can rule out a couple of teams because of financial reasons (Royals, Pirates) and a few more because they've made clear they're not mortgaging their future for anyone (Red Sox, Dodgers, Cubs, Astros). I think we can make some more cuts by looking at the teams that just don't have the elite prospects to give (Angels, Giants, Cardinals, Tigers). There's only one team I see that fits all the criteria: not on Hamels's no trade list, has the money and prospects to deal, and believes it's in a contending window. That team is the Texas Rangers. Joey Gallo is their Mookie Betts/Kris Bryant and probably won't be moved, but a package of C Jorge Alfaro, OF Nomar Mazara, and a pitcher from further down the list seems like a deal that the Phillies could accept and the Rangers could withstand. It's either that or wait for Andy McPhail to put together an analytics department and head into the winter with a better idea of what the options are, and who's going to make the decisions. It wouldn't shock me if it went that way either.

-Johnny Cueto (RHP, Reds). Cueto might be the first trade domino to fall, as Walt Jocketty was pretty much just waiting for the All-Star Game to be over before he starts the retool in Cincy. He's 29, a proven ace, and owed only $5M for the remainder of 2015. That means any team with a chance to win in 2015 will be after him, and he'll probably go to whichever team offers up the best prospect. I think Toronto, Houston, Minnesota and the Dodgers are likely to get in on the bidding war, but let's remember a couple years back, when Royals GM Dayton Moore traded a package of prospects including next-big-thing Wil Myers for James Shields. The Royals are good again this year, but there's a hole at the top of the rotation that Cueto could fill nicely. Maybe Moore is crazy enough to part with OF prospect Raul Mondesi, among other lesser parts, to give his team another crack at winning it all. Concern over Cueto's health could derail all of this, which seems in keeping with the Reds' luck in recent years.

-Ben Zobrist (IF-OF, Athletics). I don't think the A's can risk keeping BenZo and making him a qualifying offer this winter, so this could be another highest-bidder rental situation. Billy Beane wouldn't go after the highly regarded kid in A-ball, though. He would want a player who could step in in Oakland by 2016, and ideally, before then. How about Gavin Cecchini of the Mets? New York's farm system is deep in shortstops, and while Cecchini doesn't have the same upside as some of the others, he's close to big league ready and at some point the Marcus Semien era has to come to an end. I think it makes sense from the Mets' perspective for multiple reasons: they can add a versatile high-OBP bat to go with the zero they already have, and it leaves the pitching depth intact to go after another hitter. We all know the Mets aren't just one guy away from being a powerhouse, but if this was the headliner among two or three trades for position players, that might be good enough.

-Jeff Samardzija (RHP, White Sox). The big winter reload hasn't gone the way the Sox (or I) thought it would. They're not a terrible team, just a handful of games under .500, but with so many teams above them it might be time to stop dreaming on 2015 and just remind ourselves that Abreu, Eaton, Sale, and Quintana will be here for a while. So who would jump on the Shark? A team without the financial or prospect wealth to chase the available aces, and ideally a team that already has an ace and could slot Samardzija in the 2 or 3 spot. I like the Pirates as a fit here. They could build a package around almost-ready-for-primetime infielder Alen Hanson and maybe another guy from their 15-20 range. Then Shark slots in behind Cole and Liriano and the Pirates are in decent shape to take a run at the Cardinals- or at the very least, survive the Wild Card game.

-Justin Upton (OF, Padres). Speaking of offseason makeovers I gave too much credit to, let's help A.J. Preller dig himself out of this mess. Upton would instantly become the best available position player, if we assume the Brewers are going to wait until the winter to execute a full tear-down. This could easily become a bidding war situation: if you wanted Cueto and wound up with Scott Kazmir you're still better, but there may not be another outfielder with Upton's offensive ability on the market until November. Despite their front-office turmoil, the Angels are in first place with an offense that's been Trout, Pujols, and seven o-fers on a daily basis. It would cost the Angels a pitcher they wouldn't want to give up- maybe Sean Newcomb, maybe Andrew Heaney- but one of the best things Jerry DiPoto did in his tenure was establish some surplus of quality young arms. Bill Stoneman shouldn't be squeamish about parting with one of them if that's what it takes to give that playoff-caliber pitching staff an offense to match.

That's it for now. If we don't get some trade activity soon, I might just have to do another one of these.

Monday, July 20, 2015

Where We're Coming From Will Be The Death Of Us

It's been a long time since the Messed Up Movies project saw some play over here on RtH. No excuses, I'm just an inconsistent person and I liked writing about baseball and playing Magic more. But I've been binging horror movies lately, and accidentally came upon a few that fit the criteria for this series: that is, movies that get inside you and won't leave. There's no "Funny Games" or "Inside" in this set of five, but that's like saying not every sci-fi movie is "A New Hope". These are all worthwhile if you like seeing things you can't unsee and thinking things you can't unthink.

Audition (1999): I watched this one soon after my last post in this series and don't remember it too well, but lucky for me Past Dave wrote it up. Take it away, Past Dave!

In another of Takashi Miike's best regarded films, a lonely widowered film producer decides to use the audition process to find a new wife. This goes about as badly as it could possibly go. The last half hour of the film is a red nightmare, the rules of space and time go out the window, and we're put right into the psychotic mind of Asami (Eihi Shiina). I give it high marks for acting- Shiina is a great psycho. The film's pacing is agonizingly perfect, establishing so much while opening up new questions, the critical mass of which sends everything spiraling out of control. While it's not as easy to follow or cartoonishly entertaining like Visitor Q, the script and the acting are better. It gets a B-.

Thanks, Past Dave! And now, to the movies I've actually watched during my current binge...

Maniac (2012): In this reinvention of a 1980 slasher, Elijah Wood plays Frank Zito, a guy who restores mannequins when he's not taking scalps off of women. When he falls for Anna, a French artist who wants to use his mannequins in her show, the movie takes us inside Frank's head and shows us his perspective, and it doesn't let us out. He takes pills to quell his psychosis, but they're mostly ineffective to begin with and eventually they don't do anything. He lives in a delusion that his mannequins, wearing his gory trophies on their heads, are alive and part of a bizzarre harem. He sprays Raid in his back room obsessively in a futile attempt to keep the flies away from his 'girlfriends'. He has flashbacks of his mother (played by America Olivo with a very high sexy-creepiness-to-screen-time ratio) turning tricks and doing cocaine. It's not clear if we're witnessing Frank's final descent into madness or if he's been in this place for years, but it's tense, unnerving, and unrelenting. "Maniac" owes much of its existence to "Psycho", but it brings some original twists to the old Oedipal tropes, and Elijah Wood is more sympathetic and captivating than Anthony Perkins ever was. America Olivo as party-girl Norma Bates is a huge mark in "Maniac"'s favor as well. I'm giving this one an A-. One of the most intense and believable movies I've seen thus far in the project.

Spring (2014): This is one I don't want to spoil too much, because what it's really about is something very powerful that's best left as a surprise to the viewer. The plot follows Evan, a young American man who loses his father to a heart attack and his mother to cancer. He gets in a bar brawl the night of his mother's funeral, and believing the police are after him, he hightails it to Europe, where he meets British hooligans, exotic femme fatales, and a kind old man whose orchard has trees that grow both lemons and oranges. That's all the plot you're getting from me. This movie is as beautiful as it is disturbing, an inspired fusion of classic Hollywood backdrops and pacing with 21st century cinematography and characters. I'll give it a solid B.

Cheap Thrills (2013): As the title suggests, this one is distinctly American in its sex-drugs-violence theme. The one thing that makes it worthwhile is David Koechner, of Anchorman fame, playing the role of the mysterious millionaire who pits two childhood friends- down-on-his-luck Craig and mob debt collector Vince- against each other in an escalating series of dares for ever increasing sums of money. I didn't expect to write this one up as a messed-up movie. Half an hour in, I was pretty sure it was going to be forgettable stock horror, but strange things happen when you give David Koechner enough cocaine. The bluntness of his commands- proposing self-mutilation in the same tone of voice as when he offers $300 for the first man to make him a vodka tonic, while his gorgeous wife (Sara Paxton) watches with avid interest- ratchets up the unpredictability. The resulting chaotic spiral is a good ride that keeps you guessing. That said, the movie acknowledges its low ambition early and often, and it winds up being as close to a popcorn movie as anything I've written about here. It delivers exactly what it promises, and that makes it a C.

Creep (2014): While I enjoy the cocaine-and-strippers vibe of movies like "Cheap Thrills", there's something about minimalism that I take very seriously. My favorite movies in this project are small-cast, small-setting, limited timeline. With no distractions, every facial expression, every vocal tic, every extended silence becomes relevant and fascinating. This is why "Creep" is good. Written by the two actors and directed, found-footage style, by one of the two, it's the story of a filmmaker named Aaron who's hired by a guy named Josef. Josef is dying from a brain tumor and wants to leave his unborn son a video to let him know who his father was. As you might expect, Josef is a real piece of work. It's the suspense equivalent of "awkwaaaard" humor. While that cringe-y effect doesn't work for me in comedy (Seriously. Zooey Deschanel needs to stop immediately and take Kristen Wiig with her.), it's a completely different experience when it comes to horror. You're never quite sure how damaged Josef is, and in what way. You're sympathetic because he doesn't realize normal people don't call it Tubby Time, or put on wolf masks and sing the Peachfuzz song, but you're screaming at Aaron to get the hell out of the house regardless. It's going to take a while for me to be sure how I feel about "Creep", but no matter what, Josef is an original and compelling character who defines the film. I'll give it a B+, and that might be a little low. There's something very special about this film.