On Monday night, Joel Embiid scored a triple double for the Philadelphia 76ers in their 138-94 victory over the Los Angeles Lakers. Embiid, the reigning MVP center, achieved the mark with double-digit figures in points, rebounds, and assists.
The Triple Double in basketball requires an all-around dominant effort. Embiid scored 30 points, but was under the baskets enough to record 11 rebounds, and passed the ball on 11 occasions to his teammates to set up a basket. The decision making needed to know when to dribble, pass, or shoot is a split-second reaction that is made over and over in the span of minutes in the game of basketball. Embiid not only was efficient in all fronts, but he managed his Triple Double in just 30 minutes of game play, before the third quarter was over.
There was a chicken and the egg factor with Embiid’s night — it came surrounded by several season-high performances off the bench. Most notable, Patrick Beverly, a 35-year-old point guard who averaged 2.3 points per game heading into the night, hit four three pointers. The Lakers were forced to spend so much effort guarding Embiid and 23-year-old Tyrese Maxey (who scored 31 points), that they left Beverly wide open. Beverly isn’t the best shooter, tending to use his energy more on defense, keeping the ball on the perimeter. On offense, he moves the ball to the scorers, rather than taking the shot. His mindset is never really in “shoot” mode. According to a recent broadcast, he was working on his three point shooting last week. The Lakers were dealing with Embiid, and Beverly decided to take his shots. After nailing a few three pointers, the Lakers eventually had to guard him as another threat.
Which only helped to open things up further for Embiid.
WAIT, THIS IS STILL A BASEBALL SITE, RIGHT?
It’s been years since I’ve been able to really enjoy a Major League Baseball game. When I watch baseball, I can’t turn off my work brain. At 6 PM on Monday night, my brain was thinking about brachistochrone curves as they relate to player development, and Connor Joe being a championship bench option.
The old version of me would have kept working on Monday night. Yes, I researched and wrote almost non-stop from 8 AM to 6 PM, which is ten hours of work. The production from that work was great. I was also starting to get tired, even though my mind was still in baseball mode. I switched to my new form of entertainment this year.
I’ve been following the Philadelphia 76ers this NBA season as my team.
Basketball offers me an escape that is equivalent to what I’d imagine people who read this site get when they watch baseball. When the 76ers game started on Monday, my mind was overwhelmed with the sport to the point that I stopped thinking about the game of baseball, or any work that I had to do. I was entirely focused on the screen in front of me. By the end of the night, that singular focus had worn my mind down. I went to sleep around 10 PM, and woke up naturally the next morning at 4:45 AM, ready to write my next batch of articles.
The different sport is also giving me a different perspective on what it takes to win a Major League Baseball game. Basketball offers more of an exponential flow of energy, while baseball is a more linear process. The fundamental differences in the sports allow my mind to find where baseball is lacking in understanding about performance.
The two glaring areas are understandings of playing time and confidence.
PAT BEV
When you watch any sport, the introduction is usually the star player. I first watched the 76ers way back in the late 90s/early aughts when Allen Iverson was leading the team. I started watching them again a few years ago, before Embiid became a league MVP. Embiid and the history of Iverson were the reasons I started following the 76ers as my team.
As I’ve followed the sport more this year, I’ve started to learn the nature of the positions in pro ball, and the tendencies of different players in those roles. Mostly, I’ve been focusing on fatigue and energy expenditures.
Major League Baseball measures their game in innings and pitches, but they do not track a crucial element that we need to evaluate any player: Time.
An at-bat is a chess match. Each individual at-bat requires a batter and a pitcher to maintain a mindset and a constantly evolving strategy for several minutes, weighing many options and waiting to execute if the right one shows up. A player who has five plate appearances might spend at least ten minutes concentrating at the plate in a strategic mindset. That doesn’t count how often he’s concentrating on the field defensively. I wrote this week about Jared Triolo’s focus at third base, and how he would hit better with his nano-focus spent on an easier defensive position.
In the game of basketball, there are micro decisions to be made every second the clock ticks. It’s a non-stop chess match. There’s the decision on where to run, how fast, whether to set a pick, throwing up the hand to signal for a pass, receiving the pass, passing, dribbling, pivoting, pivoting, deciding whether to shoot or pass, fading back, going for the rebound, sprinting up the court on defense, going for a block on an opposing shot, grabbing the defensive rebound, turning around and running back to take advantage of an offensive break, and this repeats for minutes at a time. It’s an exhausting process.
The 76ers have a routine to rest Embiid for about 5-6 minutes at the start of the second and fourth quarters. The star center still gets about 35-40 minutes of game play per night, which is reduced at the end of the night if the 76ers are winning by a large margin. His game play on Monday night was limited, as the 76ers did their damage in quick fashion. He played about 30 minutes, but they were more productive minutes than most of his games, with incredible accuracy that led to the quick Triple Double.
You can imagine the energy levels fluctuate on the court. The 76ers have Patrick Beverly, aka Pat Bev, who is their sixth man and a point guard. The starting point guard is the rising star, Maxey, who has a dangerous step-back three and an inane ability to gently float the ball through the net from a full-speed charge to the basket. When Maxey is off the court, Pat Bev enters in the same point guard position.
Pat Bev is only scoring 2.3 points per game, and if you watch him play a normal game, you can see why. In the game against the Lakers, one of the best underrated plays of the night came when Beverly and Robert Covington trapped Lakers’ sixth man Austin Reeves on the sidelines late in the game. Pat Bev was guarding Reeves closely and intently, leaving him with little room on the sidelines. There was no split focus for Beverly in this moment. He was going to make Austin Reeves think under pressure, in a tight space, with little room for error. He held for so long that Covington was able to join, trapping Reeves against the sideline and ultimately watching him fall out of bounds as he struggled to get free. There’s not really a stat for that play, but Beverly shut down any chance the Lakers had of scoring, and got the ball back.
The nano-focus from Pat Bev goes heavily toward keeping the ball on the outer perimeter on defense, with no space to shoot — and that requires a lot of energy expelled. Their rising star point guard, Maxey, does not expel this amount of energy on defense. His nano-focus is spent on the other end of the court, trying to break through the opposing defense. Beverly, when he has the ball, is looking to pass to someone with more mental bandwidth available for offense. He’s also a bad shooter historically, who hit 10.5% of his three point shots through the first 15 games. Defenders have been giving him plenty of room, and defending others while Beverly has the ball on the outer perimeter. In the last week, he’s hit 50% of his three point shots, following his practice on that specific aspect. The new 76ers fan in me hopes that Beverly has found new confidence from the three point line, as that would lead to opposing defenses needing to respect Pat Bev’s shot, thus opening up the offense for Embiid a bit more when Maxey is off the court.
In a way, Pat Bev reminds me of Austin Hedges. He’s that classic “Glue Guy“, spending so much energy on the intangibles, and probably spending an excess amount of energy on lifting the energy of others throughout the game.
Yes, I just spent 1,500 words on basketball to build up to discussing the performance of Austin Hedges. Nothing feels more appropriate, to be honest.
BRAINPOWER IN BASEBALL
Every athlete, no matter the sport, is constantly putting their strategic mind through the wringer. Their ability to establish their own confidence and maintain that vibe for an extended period will be constantly challenged by the other team. The only way to stay ahead is to keep their minds moving constantly. This eventually leads to fatigue. A mind will fatigue during an at-bat, during a game, during a week of games, and at times throughout the season. The positions are meant to maintain a proper level of fatigue.
In the game of baseball, we see this fatigue more easily on the pitching side. A starting pitcher is sent out to throw as many innings as he can until he can no longer execute. A reliever is sent out for a short amount of time, but their fatigue is measured in how many days they can go with a shorter burst of activity.
On the hitting side, you have starters and reserve players from the bench. There’s also the defensive factor. A player playing a difficult defensive position is constantly going to be strategizing on that side of the ball. When it comes to the ten minutes of nano-focus moments spread across five plate appearances, the defensive-minded player might not have the energy to expend.
If every baseball player has 35-40 minutes of productive active focus time, I can’t imagine any catcher would be strategizing much in the batter’s box, in between strategizing non-stop on defense for entire innings. A third baseman would use more nano-focus on defense than most positions, waiting for the quick reactions. A first baseman would have the same effect against a lefty-heavy lineup. A shortstop would need to focus on keeping the rest of the players focused around his spot in the center of the field, while expelling more physical energy on defense. A center fielder would be more likely to expel the most physical energy, with his focus expenditure also going to managing traffic in the outfield.
Ke’Bryan Hayes is a great example of a star player in the making. He showed improvements with his offense this year, while maintaining the quality defense that would win him a Gold Glove award. He’s established a baseline of elite defensive production in the majors, and he’s improving upon that with better hitting as a veteran player.
Endy Rodriguez is an example of a challenge the Pirates face with many newer players. Rodriguez is learning to adjust to the Major League level as a catcher and a hitter. His catching work is going to get the priority, and will be quick to adapt. Defensively, Rodriguez has much more upside than Henry Davis. He has more offensive upside than Jason Delay. The Pirates have talked about the idea of getting Davis into the catching mix, and that would work in favor of Rodriguez.
If Rodriguez spends one game a week in a position where he can dedicate more nano-focus points to offense, it will allow him to improve his offense at the MLB level on a faster pace. If he’s focused on catching four games a week, he’s going to spend X amount of his weekly nano-focus capacity on defense. If he catches three games a week, that reduction in nano-focus of one game behind the plate could provide the aggregate amount of nano-focus needed for better at-bats all week long. Simply put, the Pirates could keep the mind of Rodriguez fresh by limiting his catching, which would save him more energy to focus on the many decisions that take place during his at-bats.
THE CUMULATIVE FOCUS OF A BASEBALL PLAYER
It would be nearly impossible to track a baseball player’s active focus like we’re able to track how many minutes and seconds an NBA player is on the basketball court. There are some situations that make perfect sense for the Pirates, without the need for this quantification.
**Endy Rodriguez has more offense than his .612 OPS this year, and the Pirates can get more of that by reducing his time at a defensive-minded position. The more games he spends at first base, the more his overall offense will go up. The challenge is he’s the best catching option.
**The Pirates don’t need Jared Triolo at third base, where they have Ke’Bryan Hayes, and where Triolo hit for a .660 OPS in 2023. The .994 OPS at first, or .944 OPS at second might be more sustainable from Triolo, due to the reduced defensive focus leaving more energy for the plate on those days.
**Connor Joe is a perfect example of this theory. Joe had an .832 OPS as a first baseman in 2023. He had a .788 OPS running around in right field, and a .575 OPS in the more spacious left field. These are all small samples, with 90-150 at-bats per position. They match his career trends across hundreds of MLB at-bats at the same positions. The trend is that Joe gets on base and hits for power at first; sees his power decline when he moves to right field; and he further loses the ability to get on base in left field. To his credit, he maintains decent defensive metrics at each spot, showing he’s never sacrificing his nano-focus on that side of the game. Putting him in an easy defensive spot would maximize his bat, which features some of the best on-base ability on the team.
**With Hedges gone, who is the “Glue Guy” on the field right now? Joe would be a prime candidate at first base, offering the Pirates an inexpensive solution for the position while allowing them to swap him out for Rodriguez once or twice a week. Plus, Joe should be able to dedicate his enthusiastic personality toward elevating the rest of his teammates on the field. The offense from Joe might be at its most productive at first base. Since his offense is fueled by a high on-base ability, he’d fit the team need of hitters who can set the table for the higher leverage performers.
**The 76ers lost on Friday night, with Embiid and Maxey both out sick. Pat Bev scored 26 points, including going 3-for-5 from the three point line. He added eight rebounds and seven assists as the short-handed 76ers lost 125-119.
THIS WEEK ON PIRATES PROSPECTS
The Pirates started the week with the loss of Johan Oviedo to Tommy John, the addition of minor league free agent Gilberto Celestino, and some first base rumors. I wrote about all three on Monday.
**MONDAY: Johan Oviedo, Gilberto Celestino, First Base
Robert Stephenson was one of my red flags for the Pirates this year, after he immediately turned things around with the Rays. Ryan Borucki was one of my green flags. I graded Thomas Hatch as “almost green”. He’s since been released to play in Japan, where I think his new offspeed-heavy approach will have a good chance at getting refined. I wrote about all three pitchers on Tuesday.
**TUESDAY: Red and Green Flags From the Pirates Pitching Development
What is this “nano-focus” that I keep writing about? I broke down the effort needed for a third baseman on both sides of the ball, in my look at Jared Triolo and Ke’Bryan Hayes.
**WEDNESDAY: Jared Triolo and The Active Focus Time of a Third Baseman
How do the Pirates hitters grade in leverage situations? My look at the top performers in high, medium, and low leverage situations had some interesting revelations.
**THURSDAY: The Highs and the Lows
Oscar Marin and Andy Haines are in an impossible situation as the MLB coaches. The player development system from John Baker has allowed for every individual to develop in a better overall environment, but the Pirates are still holding some of their best individual prospects back. I wrote about the lack of challenging the best prospects in an extensive article detailing the Pirates’ development issues from my experience covering this system.
**FRIDAY: The Problem With the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Player Development
Check back tomorrow for my thoughts on the new Assistant General Manager addition, Sarah Gelles.
SONG OF THE DAY
Need to reach me for anything? Email tim at piratesprospects.com
Get me on the court and I’m trouble
Last week fucked around and got a triple-double…
