A Knicks' issued thumping, NBA and NHL collision courses, Cal Raleigh and the great Dave Kingman

Monday 5/11/26

I thought the Sixers might extend their series against the Knicks before getting crushed in Game 5 back at Madison Square Garden, but they put up little resistance and were crushed at home instead. Are the Knicks that good? How did the Sixers come back from 3-1 on the Celtics? Was the Celtics' record a mirage? There's overachieving, yes, but can you overachieve by fifteen or so wins? I guess.

But if that's what New York did to Philadelphia, what would they have done to Boston? The Knicks didn't stand out to you this year or last. Why? Who are they as a team? Then you had such a pro-Knicks crowd in that arena. A bad look for Philly sports fans. That game was over early, though. The announcers were doing filler by the end of the first half.

The future doesn't look rosy for the Sixers. They have these huge salary guys who can't stay healthy and it's not like you tend to get healthier as you go along. I wouldn't be surprised if that first round comeback win over the Celtics is the peak as such for that group. Their "greatest hit."

The Timberwolves won, but I'm not sure how good they can feel about it. The game was close, and that was with Wemby being ejected early for elbowing someone in the neck. Feels like the Spurs and Thunder are on a collision course with each other, then the Thunder and Knicks, and in the NHL it's the Canes and Avalanche. But all of that could be wrong, obviously.

The Canes have been so dominant that they'll have been off for a mini-holiday before they resume playing again. With the Bruins out of it, I do what I always do--root for series to go seven games. And then to multiple overtimes. If that's going to happen in the Wild/Avalanche series, Minnesota really needs to win tonight before the series shifts back to Colorado. Same goes with the Cavs, but their chances of evening the series don't feel that high to me. I don't like Minny much tonight either, if I was a betting man.

The Canadiens got the win against Buffalo yesterday to take the lead in their series. Admittedly, I pull for Montreal somewhat (bad Bruins fan!). I just think it's better when a team of this historical magnitude does well and is in the thick of it from time to time. They have some exciting young players, too, and there's this sense that it's a new era for the franchise, like its been revitalized, and it's been a while since you could say that. More than a while. Yes, I'm well aware of their Cup run from a few seasons ago, and I found that more compelling than most. People wrote that off even while it was happening, whereas I thought it was pretty cool.

Red Sox dropped another to the Rays. The Rays almost always find a way to be good each year but not good enough (to really contend for a World Series championship, I mean). The Sox' performance with runners in scoring position was their undoing in this one. Thought Payton Tolle was better than his line indicated (three earned runs in five innings). Trevor Story was bad in the field again. Could see him being moved to second soon. Tolle's a shot of enthusiasm. Not sure how good he'll be. Went away from his curve ball yesterday.

We're forty plus games into the MLB season, and three teams in the fifteen-team American League are over .500 (one of those teams being two games over) and a fourth team is at .500. There's a lot of not-so-hot baseball being played. The National League has eight teams over .500. The Red Sox, bad as they've been, are basically a middle-of-the-pack team.

As I imagine was made apparent in this journal last year, I never bought into Cal Raleigh as some great player or great catcher. He's a .222 career hitter who ran into a lot of balls squarely during his age twenty-eight season. I know how catchers age. And I don't like hitters of that type. I know: but you love Dave Kingman!

It's true, I do. He was a better hitter. And look at 1979. He could hit hit for a respectable average. Kingman also aged very well and Raleigh won't and I think we can see that he isn't already.

In 38 games, and 168 PA, and 149 AB this year, Raleigh is hitting .161. He has 7 homers and 4 doubles, no triples. That means he has 13 singles. He has a .244 OBP. A .329 slugging percentage. He's struck out 53 times.

He's a much worse hitter than Kingman. He'll end up as a guy who had a year. Like Brady Anderson, but not as good a player as Anderson. Catchers can be inconsistent offensively from year to year, because of the demands of the position, though I'd suggest less so these days, given that they don't play as much as catchers once would, and Raleigh DH's a bunch.

What's he going to do this year, though? Will he finish over .200? He's in his twenties, and his career OPS+ is 123. That's with a 60 home run season and a career that didn't get going until he was twenty-four, which usually gives you a statistical leg up as per rate stats because you don't have those "lost" sort of learning curve years of being twenty, twenty-one in the big leagues. (This helped my guy Carlton Fisk.)

That 123 OPS+ would be great if that's what Raleigh retired with. He's not retiring with anything close to that, though. You're going to see that number keep going down, and maybe, when he's done, it'll still be over 100, but not by much. He's not that good.

And by the way: Kingman never struck out like so many of these guys strike out. He was a comparative contact hitter by the standards of today.