COAS Picks the 2016 MLB All Stars

As is my custom, it is the end of June, MLB All Star Game ballots are due, and I need to exercise my right as a sports fan!

I kind of abused a similar system earlier this year and was one of the idiots who repeatedly voted for John Scott to get into the NHL All Star Game. That's more of a for-fun thing though. The MLB All Star Game, for reasons I still don't totally understand, still determines home field advantage in the World Series.

Since this is the case, I take my voting for these honors very seriously. As much as I want to spam vote Cubs, I can't in good conscience do that. The All Star Game should be a showcase of the best talent Major League Baseball has to offer.

I always want to wait on casting my ballots until right before the deadline, though MLB tweaked the rules this year and imposed a daily vote limit. This means I won't cap out on my 35 allotted votes, but I'll be close. Below are my picks for this year's Midsummer Classic in San Diego.

American League
1B- Miguel Cabrera, DET
2B- Ian Kinsler, DET
SS- Xander Bogaerts, BOS
3B- Manny Machado, BAL
C- Salvador Perez, KC
DH- David Ortiz, BOS
OF- Mookie Betts, BOS
OF- Mike Trout, LAA
OF- Mark Trumbo, BAL

Most of these were pretty straightforward. Miggy and Ian Kinsler are putting up some fantastic numbers in Detroit, Xander Bogaerts has been ridiculous, Manny Machado is a homer machine, as is Mark Trumbo, Mike Trout is obvious, and Mookie Betts is the best of the rest of the outfielders. David Ortiz, especially in his last year, is a no-brainer. Catcher was a little trickier because there aren't really any outstanding picks, but Salvy is the obvious pick of this bunch.

National League
1B- Anthony Rizzo, CHC
2B- Ben Zobrist, CHC
SS- Corey Seager, LAD
3B- Kris Bryant, CHC
C- Wilson Ramos, WAS
DH*- Nolan Arenado, COL
OF- Dexter Fowler, CHC
OF- Yoenis Cespedes, NYM
OF- Marcell Ozuna, MIA

Major League Baseball needs to revamp the fan voting and since they allow a DH vote for the AL, they need to allow an automatic write-in for someone in the NL to be the DH. I actually swapped Nolan Arenado for Kris Bryant on the Tuesday before the deadline after Kris Bryant did things to baseballs no one has ever done before. It's a fairly Cub-heavy lineup, which is a little biased, but who of the Cubs on this list, other than Arenado for Bryant, can you justifiably argue? Maybe Paul Goldschmidt or Wil Myers for Rizzo, but Rizzo has a legit argument. You could also easily put Daniel Murphy ahead of Ben Zobrist and I wouldn't complain, though Zo was scorching hot in May to get here. I don't know that you can argue many outfielders ahead of Fowler; Ryan Braun, Carlos Gonzalez, or Starling Marte might be justifiable choices. Bryce Harper's average is too low for me though. Elsewhere, as much as I'd love to keep up the David Ross write-in campaign going, Wilson Ramos has had a phenomenal year. Really, as long as the guy who spits on umpires who is inexplicably deified by idiot Cardinals fans doesn't win, I'm good. I can't in good conscience vote for Addison Russell to be in the game. Corey Seager has been phenomenal for the Dodgers and gets my vote. The other two outfield spots go to Yoenis Cespedes, who has been excellent for the Mets again, and Marcell Ozuna, who's having a breakout year in Miami.

2016 NBA/ABA Tournament of Champions: Group Play Introduction

Congratulations to the Cleveland Cavaliers, our 2016 NBA Champions! You have entered the ranks of the immortals, teams who will forever be remembered in history as champions. But just how good are you historically?

That's what I'm setting out to answer this summer... again. I'm taking the last 65 NBA champions, as well as all nine ABA champions, and putting them into one big tournament with the intent of finding the greatest of them all.

Now, all of the preliminary stuff has been settled. The nine ABA champions have finished off their mini tournament to rank themselves, and those rankings are set to go. Meanwhile, I have whittled down the 74 team field to 72 with the recently completed Play In tournament.

At this point, we can get to the nitty-gritty. Before the tournament started, I preranked all the NBA champions based on their performances in the 2013 and 2015 tournaments. I then broke those rankings up into groups of teams, most of them seven-team groups; the top seven teams formed a group, followed by teams 8-14, and so on. The exceptions came in the middle, where I only took teams 29-34 for the purpose of adding the 2016 Cavs, and then at the end, where I took the last nine teams and divided them up for the Play In Tournament. Ultimately I ended up with nine pools of seven teams, then added in the ABA teams to the respective pool that matches their finish in the ABA Seeding Tournament.

With that information in mind, I can officially set up the groups. I will once again have eight groups for double round robin play, where each group will receive one team from each pool. This is an effort to keep each group competitively balanced, or as close to it as possible. Each of these groups will simultaneously run a double round robin tournament, where every team gets home and away games against everyone else in the group. Of the nine teams in each group, only four will advance on to the Elimination Round, meaning only 32 of our 72 teams advancing to this stage get to play beyond the first week of August. So with our teams in place, here are the groups for this year's Tournament of Champions.

2016 NBA/ABA Tournament of Champions: Play In Round

We're into the month of June now, and we're nearing the start time for pool play. However, we have some narrowing down of the field to do.

Last month, we got the 2016 Tournament underway with a round robin for the ABA teams. With those results in, our nine ABA champs are ranked and have groupings to combine with our NBA champions that participated in last year's tournament. We're also throwing the upcoming NBA champion into the exact middle of the pack among the NBA teams at 33rd out of 65, just because that seems like the fairest place to put them. However, to get down to our cutoff mark of 72 champions, we need to trim some teams from the bottom.

Before the tournament started, I ranked every NBA champion from 1952 onward based on their performances in prior Tournaments of Champions. I have broken all of them up into nine groups of seven with the exception of the group at the bottom of the rankings, which has nine teams. We're then taking the bottom five teams from that group and having them play a double round robin during the NBA Finals to eliminate the worst two of the bunch.

I easily could have just done this based on the results of my rankings themselves, which would make this a lot easier: our bottom two teams have gone a combined 1-35 over the last two NBA Tournaments of Champions: the 1953 and 1954 Minneapolis Lakers. The '53 team has the dubious distinction of being the only team in the Tournament of Champions that has yet to win a single game, while the '54 Lakers beat the 1958 St. Louis Hawks in their penultimate game last year. The tricky part comes in the form of a trio of teams with just two wins apiece over the last two tournaments. The 1955 Syracuse Nationals won a pair of first round games in 2013 against the 1969 Celtics before bowing out, while the 1956 Philadelphia Warriors and the 1959 Boston Celtics each went 2-12 in their respective groups last year after getting swept in the opening round in 2013. But honestly, I don't think that's entirely fair to the '53 or '54 Lakers, who haven't played these teams in the tournament.

Now, 20 games is a lot to get done over a short span of time here this month, but I ultimately decided the fairest way to play this was to take all three: the '55 Nationals, '56 Warriors, and '59 Celtics will join the '53 and '54 Lakers as my play-in teams. These five squads will play a double round robin tournament. The top three teams will remain alive and get to play in Group Play once again, while the bottom two teams are done early. In the event of a tie in the standings involving an elimination spot, head to head record will be your first tiebreaker, followed by record against teams above the tie, then against teams below the tie, and finally point differential.

Since this is a double round robin, teams are playing a home-and-home with each team receiving two byes. All simulations are provided by WhatIfSports.com. Let's get this tournament officially underway.

The NBA Finals, Legacies, and Tournament Berths

Basketball's biggest stage gets lit up tonight, as the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors begin their grudge match for an NBA Championship. Over the next two or three weeks, there's a lot on the line.

I haven't talked a ton about the NBA this season, other than preparing for the upcoming NBA Tournament of Champions, which I'll have more on later. For now, I want to actually look at the ramifications of this upcoming series.

On one side, you have a Cleveland team led by the best player of his generation. This time though, LeBron James actually has his full supporting cast in the form of Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving. James and company romped through the East to bring Cleveland to its second straight Finals, while LeBron is playing in his sixth in a row... a mind boggling stat.

On the other side, you have rewritten history. As early as November and December, I thought it was blasphemy for anyone to be uttering this Warriors team in the same breath as the 1996 Chicago Bulls. But Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green have carried this team forward and, after a major scare against Oklahoma City in the Western Conference Finals, are back to finish their title defense.

I have no idea who is going to win this series, and I'm not making a prediction because I haven't seen enough basketball to really make an educated guess. What I do know is that multiple legacies are up in the air at this point.

If the Warriors complete the season, they absolutely enter the conversation for greatest team of all time with the '96 Bulls and the 1986 Boston Celtics, who a lot of people forget about when talking all time great teams. 73 wins broke the Bulls' 20 year old record that I never thought would get toppled, but I saw an interesting stat earlier this week.

Even if GS sweeps CLE, they'd finish 89-14 (.864), their season win % would not be as good as the 95-96 Bulls' 87-13 record (.870)

— Mike & Mike (@MikeAndMike) May 31, 2016

The biased kid who watched that '96 Bulls team wants to scream this stat from a mountaintop, combined with the fact that Golden State got taken to the limit by Oklahoma City, while the Bulls didn't run into nearly this many problems in the playoffs as Golden State has. But the Warriors had to deal with Steph Curry missing a few games and getting back to himself, and Oklahoma City was no slouch of an opponent. As much as I hate to admit it, the '16 Warriors just might be a better team.

That brings us to the flip side of this argument. Given the Warriors' historic success, LeBron has a lot riding on the outcome of this series as well. If you've read Confessions of a Sportscaster since the beginning, you'll note that I am not a fan of LeBron James. I've moved past the debacle that was The Decision, but I do still think LeBron flops and whines too much. The former point is a bigger sticking point, since Jordan whined to a degree too in his day. One thing I won't critique LeBron for on the whole is his Finals record.

Don't get me wrong, 2-4 is not good, and in my opinion based on that he will never be better than Jordan. At the same time, his Finals record isn't really his fault. Of the four Finals losses, you can only blame him for 2011 against Dallas. You could also argue he got bailed out in 2013 by Chris Bosh and Ray Allen, but they still had to play Game 7 that year. Otherwise, LeBron has done pretty much all he could and even willed some pretty mediocre teams to the Finals. Look back at the '07 Cavs; I'm not sure MJ could have willed them to the Finals.

That said, if the Cavs are able to pull this out, LeBron skyrockets up the all time player chart for me. He's fairly high up as it is, but a title against the most successful regular season team of all time pushes him up another level entirely. Even if they don't win, if LeBron plays incredibly well and/or pushes this series to the brink, he still goes up quite a bit. I still don't particularly care for him, but damn it if I don't respect his place in history.

And all of this doesn't even take into account the NBA Tournament of Champions! The winner gets an entry into this summer's field of 72, which includes some hellish matchups. The field is almost entirely set, with the Play In Round currently in progress. When both the Finals and the Play In Round conclude, I will unveil the groupings for this tournament.

2016 Stanley Cup Final Preview

I lost track of the second round playoff series in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, so I forgot to get a post in for the conference finals. Fortunately, I have plenty of time to get the Cup Final prediction in.

After the first round, we lost our last four Cup winners, as well as five of the last six, with a guarantee that we'll have a team that hasn't won a Cup since as far back as 2009. It's an interesting new matchup that, even if may not be a sexy ratings pick, is a compelling storyline and will be a series between two very, very good teams that deserve to be here.

Stanley Cup Final

San Jose Sharks (46-30-6, Beat Kings in five, beat Predators in seven, beat Blues in six) vs Pittsburgh Penguins (48-26-8, Beat Rangers in five, beat Capitals in six, beat Lightning in seven)
Teams each won 1 of 2 regular season meetings

Photo by Rocky W. Widner (NHL/Getty Images)

The Penguins have been a league darling for a decade straight now, but haven't made much postseason noise, making just their third Cup Final in that stretch and their first since they won the Cup in 2009. They take on a Sharks team that is making its first ever trip to the final round after years of missed opportunities. Pittsburgh has been fairly balanced in its scoring, with eight players recording at least 10 points through three rounds. Phil Kessel leads the team in goals (nine) and points (18), while media darling Sidney Crosby has played very well to the tune of six goals and nine assists, though he is a -2. They're getting a little thin on defense, with Trevor Daley out now, but young goaltender Matt Murray has been phenomenal with a .924 save percentage and a 2.22 goals against average. On the other end, Martin Jones has played incredibly well as well, with a slightly worse save percentage (.919) but a better goals against average (2.12). San Jose's offense has been more potent, with Logan Couture (eight goals, 16 assists) and Joe Pavelski (13 goals, nine assists) leading the charge, and an excellent defensive group with only two skaters logging a negative plus/minus. Brent Burns is +8 so far, while Marc-Edouard Vlasic is a team-high +13. They're going to need to be on their game all the more against a star studded Pittsburgh attack.

My heart wants to take the Sharks here, because I can't stand the lovefest for Sidney Crosby who has done nothing in the Kane-Toews-Keith-Q Dynasty and also because they saved the black cat that scrambled onto the ice during Game 1 against Nashville and found her a forever home. My head is initially leaning Pittsburgh because Crosby and company seem to have finally figured things out after six years of playoff disappointment that had featured only one trip to the Eastern Conference Finals. With their issues of defensive depth against a ferocious attack though, I'm thinking I should switch sides. It's going to be a long, hard-fought series, but at the end of the day, give me the newcomers and the debate of who Pavelski hands the Cup to first: Patrick Marleau or Joe Thornton. Sharks in seven.

Conn Smythe Trophy Winner: Joe Pavelski, Sharks

2016 NBA/ABA Tournament of Champions: ABA Seeding Tournament

It's time to get the 2016 Tournament of Champions underway!

If you read my intro post, you know I'm going bigger this year. I didn't feel that it was enough to just bring in the 2016 NBA Champion. This time, since I had the resources, I wanted to include the nine ABA champions in the mix as well.

I have no idea how good these teams are in relation to the NBA champions that have participated in the last two tournaments, and I wasn't sure at first how I wanted to integrate the ABA teams into this. Originally, I was going to have seven groups of nine teams from the NBA for pool play and have the ABA be its own group. However, that guarantees four ABA teams advancing to the Elimination Round, and I'm not convinced those teams deserve four guaranteed spots.

Thus, the fairest way to do this is to pre-rank the ABA champions, and to do that, I am having those nine teams spend the early part of the month of May playing a round robin tournament. This one is only a single round robin to minimize the mileage on these players, though they'll have a month after this to rest up and prepare for the big time. In the grand scheme of things, these games don't really mean anything other than pride and the best ABA champion getting to avoid the '96 Bulls until the Elimination Round.

So, here's ultimately how this is going to work. The placing by each ABA team in this portion of the tournament will correspond to which pool that ABA team will join for the filling of the eight groups for Group Play. My simulator doesn't do neutral courts in the NBA, and normally given the schedule this would be a problem, as I usually play with the left team on the road at the right team. However, my scheduler decided to put the '73 Pacers on the left hand side of every round, which would have them playing eight road games while four teams get five home games. I went through and remedied this issue on the schedule page, with the Pacers' home games getting a special note to signify it. With this in place, every team will play four games at home and four games on the road, all determined randomly (including the case of the changed games, where I just switched home teams for the '73 Pacers).

In the event of a tie in the standings, head to head record will take care of any two-way tie. In the event of a three or more-team tie, head to head record will remain the top tiebreaker, but in case there's a rock-paper-scissors tie, I will go down to record against teams above the tie, then record against teams below the tie, then point differential. All simulations are once again provided by WhatIfSports.com.

Good luck to these ABA teams, and welcome to the Tournament of Champions!

2016 Stanley Cup Playoffs Second Round Preview

I don't think I needed the couple days to digest the Hawks falling short in Game 7 against St. Louis. It's a bummer and a disappointment, but the Blues are a very good team, and they earned their first trip to the second round under Ken Hitchcock. I tip my cap.

I ended up doing a terrible job overall predicting the first round this year, and the scheduling weirdness means that this is getting posted after the second round gets underway. But in the interest of full disclosure, I wrote my preview for the one game taking place on Wednesday of the second round in advance, because I had to wait for the Game 7 between Nashville and Anaheim to be played out to fully preview this round.

With a (somewhat) heavy heart, I soldier on. Here are my predictions for the next round.