MLB: 2014 & Spring Training // NBA: Today's Standings; Denver Nuggets, Slipping Back

sports-notebook.blogspot.com . . . FOR MORE ANALYSIS, GO TO "MILE HIGH SPORTS RADIO," AM1510 or FM93.7, and to Denver’s best sports blogging team---milehighsports.com. SPORTS NOTEBOOK posts its columns Tuesday and Friday of each week. Ed., Publ., Marvin Leibstone; Copy & Mng. Ed., Gail Kleiner. . . MLB: 2014 & Spring Training // NBA: Today’s Standings; Nuggets, Slipping Back. . . // MLB---SPRING training for the year’s baseball is about to happen, and on opening day in early April it won’t seem to have been enough for attacking 162 games across six MLB months. Of course, no MLB club or player can start the season perfect, but some will get closer to that than others, and they will probably be the clubs and players that during Spring training advanced the three S’s---Skills, Strengths and Smarts---by raising expectations slowly yet surging past innings when embarrassed by mistakes quickly, never sulking, moving on to new innings and purchasing game-winning pride through “the right fixes,” that is, looking at Spring training as “starting at the beginning, blowing away that which is excess and that which isn’t enough very carefully.” It’s been obvious over the years that during Spring training, some managers and GM’s make the mistake of understanding what they see “too quickly,” they make judgments sooner than they need to and the wrong guy gets sent back to Triple A . . . Also, different philosophies, strategies and tactics will apply in late February and March, ranging from line-up manipulations differing almost day by day, to starter rotation and bull pen experimentation, on to changes in defense and tests imposed on individual players. Theories will be spouted by fans---“It’s ‘base-running’ that wins a game, so a bunt’s as good as a hit.” “No, it’s ‘outs’ that matter most, therefore the strikeout hurled is the best trick for winning.” “No, it’s that lead-off hitter doubling and next man a triple, then the HR, and so heavy hitting is key to a post-season billet (as if teams could always enact this).” “No, it’s ‘a starting rotation’ that can create leads and keep them for six innings straight---pitching is where it’s at.” But analyze all this and each concept will be found to mean the same, each surely matters, some ideas more than others depending on the team being faced. Boiling it down, the more rational manager will say, “It’s the most runs that wins the day, and you go for that any which way you can and it’s never from just one thing.” . . This month and next, some ballplayers, having failed to stay in shape during the off-season, will be pushing through sorrow and anger about that, while others will wonder why having stayed in shape and played in a South-of-the-border league hadn’t upgraded their skills and value as much as they’d hoped. Middle of a line-up batters will be differently located and no two will appear to be as they were the year before, some better, others less so, and who in heck is this new guy who might be taking over in left field? Uh-oh, the promised magic that the Angels expected to have last year from 1B Albert Pujols, OF Josh Hamilton and OF Mike Trout, seems like another “less than expected” outcome. This March, scouts and reporters at Tampa, Florida, might be saying that the dude taking A-Rod’s place at third base can’t be the hitter that A-Rod may still have the juice for. But this team is banking now on pitcher dominance, having signed RHP Masahiro Tanaka from Japan, his ERA last year, 1.27. Much attention will drift to Texas, where the Houston Astros will begin a push from the bottom through broad reformation. Unexpectedly, the USA Today-Sports Weekly listing of what the newspaper’s sportswriters believe are the top new 100 MLB players, includes 13 from the 2013 battered Astros, more than from any other club. Astros OF George Springer ranks number seven, SS Johnathan Villar number 13, LHP Brett Oberholtzer, 23. Another team that finished low in the 2013 standings, the Colorado Rockies, has but one player on the list, OF Corey Dickerson, number 14. And, why would the Rockies give up the competent OF Dexter Fowler and LHP, Drew Pomeranz, for players of questionable qualities, and will the Rockies relievers not just protect but advance leads established by starters, with a closer that can close consistently?” Will 1B Prince Fielder, traded by the Tigers, make a major difference for his new team, the Texas Rangers? Will 2B Robinson Cano, over from the Yankees, be the difference for the Seattle Mariners this year? Spring training and the first months of the 2014 season will appear, for the most part, and as in all baseball seasons, like the early chapters of a whodunit---Uncertainty will reign! . . . // NBA---OF six NBA division leading teams of a week ago that have kept their leads, four have lifted to where those leads are commanding, hard to catch up to, the exceptions being the Western Conference-Southwest Division’s 38-15 San Antonio Spurs two-game lead over the Houston Rockets, and the Eastern Conference-Atlantic Division’s 28-24 Toronto Raptors two-game lead atop second place team, the Brooklyn Nets. Of today’s division commanding leads, the Eastern Conference Central Division’s 40-12 Indiana Pacers is far ahead with a 13 game lead over second place team, the Chicago Bulls. The Pacers are also the East’s leading team, next in line the East’s Southeast Division’s top franchise, the 37-14 Miami Heat, which has a 12 game lead above second place franchise, the Atlanta Hawks. The West’s Northwest Division’s 42-12 Oklahoma City Thunder leads the West and has a six game division edge over the Portland Trail Blazers. The West’s Pacific Division’s 27-18 L.A. Clippers has seven more wins than second place team, the Phoenix Suns. The Thunder is now the leading NBA team, two up on the Pacers. . . // DENVER NUGGETS---OF teams that have dropped considerably in the past week, the now 24-27 Denver Nuggets lost four games, going below .500 and into fourth from third place within the West’s Northwest Division. It’s the All-Star break now, and the Nuggets have to decide how to regroup, get their all into their game, return to how they played when they beat the Pacers and the Spurs in January, when they enabled a seven game winning streak November into December, and a five game winning streak in January that included a win vs. the Thunder. Looking at the Nuggets losses since January 1, standing out are injuries, especially that to a team’s indispensible player, guard Ty Lawson. No player on any team should be “the indispensible starter,” a player without which a team will always have much difficulty winning a game. Even Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, now LeBron James and Kevin Durant have understood it’s the “We” that gets the victory, not the “Me.” Lawson’s absence has hurt the Nuggets more than it should have, in spite of grand efforts by guard Randy Foye and forwards Wilson Chandler and J.J. Dickson. Lawson has been key to plays kicking in swiftly at the right time and in the right way, positioning himself for back-up shooting and for exploiting the opposing defense’s mistakes hurriedly and driving to the glass. When Lawson isn’t afield, hesitancy and loss of momentum has been a problem for the Nuggets. So, too, has weak transitioning from offense to defense been a problem, it’s when a team is most vulnerable to turnovers and the opposing team’s fastbreak points. And, Nuggets defense improvements of earlier months within the 2013/14 season have become readable, predictable, allowing opposing players to make points from their sidewinder shots, rebounds and a return to the offense. Also, the systematic rostering for fair breakout of minutes per starter and bench player, this could be interfering with what could be the better combos for what the court situation demands at a given moment, that is, it may be best for forwards Wilson Chandler and Kenneth Faried and for guard Evan Fournier to stay or leave based more on existing situational factors than on anything else. END/ml