Happy Opening Day

Yesterday was Opening Day in baseball for several teams, including the Tigers. Justin Verlander squared off against Minnesota's ace, Vance Worley. If you haven't heard of Vance Worley, you are... entirely justified. Other than trotting out the Francisco Liriano roller coaster, the Twins haven't had a legit ace since Santana left. Minnesota tends to staff junk-ballers who pitch to contact, which incidentally is the Tigers' weakness. Worley fits the same mold, except the Twins' defense isn't what it once was, and the Tigers exploited it.

Anyway, Verlander was good (as expected), and that shaky bullpen held off the Twins for the win. As promised, here's the National Anthem from the Yankees game:

 

I swear Robinson Cano starts to crack a smile at around the 2:00 mark & bites it off because he knows there are 50 bajillion cameras covering this. Anyway, how over the top was Constantine Maroulis? Thoroughly enjoyed it.

Apparently the Pistons played last night & won. I'm having trouble following them, so I missed it. Oh well. They're still in the 5 spot for the NBA Draft Lottery, and I only expect them to win 3 of their last 7 games at most. There's a high potential for variance in Detroit's drafting position though, especially if they go on a hot streak (unlikely). There are 5 teams within 2 wins of the Pistons, so it'll be interesting to see how the tanking plays out.

Zach Lowe broke down Detroit's crappy defense in this way:

The Detroit Debacle

The Pistons are 3-15 in their last 18 games, and their "defense" has allowed 112.0 points per 100 possessions in that span — 2.4 points worse than Charlotte's league-worst mark for the season, per NBA.com. There are mitigating circumstances, of course. Detroit traded a decent wing defender in Tayshaun Prince and received a minus point guard defender, Jose Calderon, in return. Prince's departure has them playing overmatched small lineups more often. Andre Drummond's back issues robbed Detroit of any rim protection, and Brandon Knight's ankle injury removed another rotation cog for a stretch.

But the fall-off has been disturbing. Greg Monroe remains slow and out of place, and Lawrence Frank still has all his bigs hedging very hard on pick-and-rolls — often to results like this:

And it's not just the defense. Detroit's offense during those 18 games scored at a rate that ranks among the league's worst offenses (currently a tie between Phoenix and Washington, per NBA.com). Hopefully Drummond can provide some much-needed good vibes in these final handful of games.

Lowe is pretty good, and is a certified NBA nerd. The Charlie V hedge is a pretty good example of why D is so bad in the D. Both the defenders in the play lack foot-speed. A hedge is supposed to push the ball back towards mid-court, but if your big man isn't fast enough (which most of the Pistons' bigs aren't), then it results in both your defenders being WAY out of position. This hedging stuff may work well with Drummond or a guy like Jerebko, but maybe Frank should steer guys like Monroe & Villanueva away from it...