I have a problem with the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, aka March Madness, and it’s not one of the many ways that you just thought of. It’s not the inevitable creep of gambling and the increasing potential of point-shaving or throwing games. It’s not even the looming possibility of the tournament becoming a power-conference only 80-team bloated buffet (you know if the SEC commissioner even opaquely suggests it, which he has, then it is definitely on the table behind closed doors) …
No, it’s that the games on the first two days, the most fun days of the tournament where there are 16 games from morning until late at night, are now all staggered starts for teevee purposes, meaning that there are far fewer synched-up final minutes of frantic finishes across the country…
You remember this happening. The “live look-ins” bouncing from Greensboro to Boise to Kansas City to San Jose as four games came down to the wire at the exact same time. Would the 12-seed lead wire-to-wire against the 5? The 8 and 9 go to overtime? Could the 7 hang on against the 10? The 13 finish their comeback against the 4?
That’s because when all the games were only on CBS, four games started within 15 minutes of each other, so four games would often finish within 15 minutes of each other. But now, all games are nationally televised on four different networks, and they have spaced out the start times- and thus the finish times- so much that it almost prevents those frantic finishes from happening at all...
On Thursday, for example, the first game starts here on the West Coast at 9:15 am on CBS. The second starts at 9:40 am on TruTV (yes, it’s time to re-learn where it is on your setup). The third doesn’t start for almost a full hour, at 10:30 am on TNT, and the fourth at 11 am on TBS. The fifth game scheduled to start, at 11:45 am, will be the second game at the 9:15 am location. That means there will need to be some extraordinary circumstances to have at least two games in the final minutes at the same time, never mind three or four…
In other words, yeah, the upsets are great. But for me, the true “Madness” part of March Madness came in those final frantic minutes when four seasons were on the line at the same time, and the drama was more intense because there was no chance to relax. You were shifting storylines every thirty to forty seconds and with every inbounds, every pass, every foul, and every bucket, someone’s season and college career was at stake…
That’s gone now. And that’s no fun…
What’s also no fun is not being optimistic going into the men’s tournament. And that’s what being a Kansas Jayhawks fan is this year. We are a 4-seed, the lowest we have been in a while (causing some people to say this is our “worst team in decades” and I say that’s a pretty good problem to have, considering we have been to the tournament an all-time record 34 straight years). Our number-one scorer, Kevin McCullar, has had a knee injury for a while and head coach Bill Self said he is out for the tournament. It’s a bummer for us but worse for him, as he is a 5th-year senior and this was his last go-round. Sure, he was part of the 2022 national championship team, but he was definitely “the man” this season and we have struggled to get any kind of point production from the bench…
On the positive side, 7-footer Hunter Dickinson, who separated his shoulder in the last game of the regular season, has been cleared and will be able to play against 13th seed Samford (who many are picking to upset us) in the first round on Thursday night. Unfortunately, I still see “four-guys-and-Hunter” when he’s on the floor. They just haven’t really gelled yet as far as I’m concerned, but we’ll see…
So it doesn’t look good for us because, and I’m going to mention this again, our bench guys have really not scored at all for us this season. If the five starters don’t have a good game, we lose. And not only are we bad at making three-pointers, we give up a lot of three-pointers (and apparently Samford is good at three-pointers, because everyone except us is good at three-pointers, because Stephen Curry literally changed how basketball is played) …
But the thing is, in the tournament there are so many commercial breaks- there’s that teevee thing again- that you don’t really need to play more than seven guys the whole game. In the regular season, teams use nine and ten and sometimes more players because you’re in it for the long haul. In the tournament, as you know, it’s one and done. Survive and advance. Your goal is to win those 40 minutes because if you don’t your season is over. Worry about the next 40 minutes after winning the first 40. And that means shortening the rotation. So that helps teams who don’t have a great bench win more games than they might have been predicted to. Like us…
As long as we are talking about teams winning more games than they might have been predicted to do so, the San Francisco Giants signing starting pitcher Blake Snell ought to revise some of the doom-and-gloom scenarios the vocal part of the fan base has been going on about most of the off-season…
Snell has the same agent, deal-maker Scott Boras, as Matt Chapman, and Snell signed an extremely similar deal as the third baseman did with the Giants. Officially it’s two years for Snell, but there’s an opt-out after the first year. That part I don’t have a problem with. The issue is the $30 million a year, but even then it’s sort of OK because it’s not for six years, it’s just one and maybe two…
As I went into detail last week, Snell has won two Cy Young awards, but other than that he’s never won more than 10 games in a season (so that’s 6 of his 8 seasons he’s failed to reach 10 wins) nor has he ever thrown more than 180 innings in a season (200 is about the benchmark for a starter these days) nor has he ever thrown a complete game in the major leagues, and as a starter has never even pitched into the 9th inning and has only made it to the 8th inning five times since he broke in in 2016…
Is this what a $30 million a year buys you in a starting pitcher nowadays? Is this the new ceiling? I know it’s rare for anybody to throw a complete game nowadays, but never even touching the 9th inning? Winning two Cy Youngs but never being dominant enough in a single game to even consider going the distance? It’s because the man walks a ton of batters (led the majors last year with 99) but manages to get out of jams without allowing a lot of runs (2.25 ERA, led the majors by four-tenths of a run). It’s because he nibbles instead of challenging until push comes to shove (234 k’s, tied for third) …
But as I also said last week, and continue to do so, Snell, despite his up-and-down career, has been healthy all 8 seasons. And as the great Bill Parcells says, “The best ability is availability.” With the exception of the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, Snell has made at least 23 starts every year after his rookie season. That counts for a lot…
Still, here’s hoping the other Giants ace and unquestioned leader in the clubhouse, Logan Webb, pushes Snell to be better in all those categories. Webb has not made fewer than 27 starts in his first three complete seasons (and more than 30 the last two). He led the majors in innings pitched last season with 216. He got mad he “only” had two complete games (tied for third). Webb actually had a better strikeout-to-bases-on-balls ratio than Snell last season because Webby had 194 K’s and only 31 walks. For Webb, a walk is a baserunner, and as a pitcher he’s not supposed to allow baserunners, and that makes him mad, which makes him great. Also, with the Giants leaky defense last season, he knew a baserunner probably meant a run scored against him, which is why he went 11-13 despite being better statistically than 2022’s 15-9 mark…
The Snell signing also means the Giants have to make the playoffs this season, full stop. The only other team that committed more money than them in the off-season was the Dodgers. Nobody was outspending the Dodgers. But the Giants spent enough money to build what looks like a pretty decent team. There are almost no excuses now…
Of course, they have 162 games to figure it out. It’s not one-and-done. And before the MLB season opens for real a week from Thursday, we have a Thursday of Madness to get through.
Let the games begin. One at a time, in 30-to-45-minute increments. And let’s hope a few of them come down to the final minutes at the same time, so we can feel the true Madness once again…
$30 million can buy you a .230 hitter, too.
Indeed, part of the madness was trying to follow the plethora of games, impacts, and storylines simultaneously. A day unlike any other in sports. Will be missed.
Mediocre Blake? Or, Cy Young Snell? A lot of rationalizations about the number of baserunners and his ability to escape jams. Maybe--wait for it-- he was a bit lucky last season...better a two year deal than a six year deal.
Zaidi has made a few solid decisions about who not to sign. Rodon, Bumgarner, Cueto, ...