Devils trade Brian Boyle

It's been a long hockey season for the New Jersey Devils and myself.

The Devils, because of their record which is the second worst in the league, one season after a surprise playoff appearance and as for me- in my first season without the NHL package, I haven't seen many games other than the occasional game against Washington.

The decision to not buy the package this season has resulted in not a lot of writing about the Devils and that's mainly because I'm not 100 percent comfortable writing a lot about a team that I am not seeing most of their games.
I think it's unfair to post analysis and criticism when you aren't actually able to see the games for yourself and I tend to try to avoid that.
I've missed having a winter team to cover (Devils or Cavaliers) and next year, I would consider ponying up the bucks to see one or the other, but for now- I've been pretty bored this winter.
Now that I've bored you with my viewing, onto the Devils at the trade deadline, which is where a bad team needs to accumulate whatever they can for whatever they can to improve for the following season or beyond.

New Jersey traded veteran forward Brian Boyle to the Nashville Predators in exchange for the Predators second-round draft pick in the next draft to start any proceedings in a rebuilding process along the deadline.
The 34-year-old has scored 13 goals with 9 assists this season with the Devils and would have been a free agent at the end of the season.
Boyle has a chance for a career high in goals as his current total of 13 is only two behind his second best season (15), but would need some luck to reach his best season in goals at 21.

Boyle was signed by New Jersey before the 2017-18 season but announced that he had chronic leukemia, which held him back from starting the season with the team.
Boyle would finish the season with 23 points and would win the Masterton Trophy for courage and sportsmanship at the conclusion of the season, but Boyle's best memory might be from earlier in this season when he scored his only career hat trick on "Hockey Fights Cancer" night.

Brian Boyle's strength makes him a solid penalty killer along with being a good piece for a team's fourth line.
Still, a second-round pick seems like a high price to pay for a player of his type.even for a contender that will be picking at the end of the round, but there is another factor that makes Boyle worth that price.
Brian Boyle brings a work ethic and a character that a team that hasn't won a Stanley Cup always values and even more so with the locker room presence that Boyle brings with his background.
Many times the "Character Guy" phrase can be overused and less valuable than you think, even if the player is what the description states, but in the case Brian Boyle, Boyle will be exactly what the Predators are paying for.

For the Devils, a late second round pick is a strong return for a 34 year old soon to be a free agent and gives Ray Shero another trading chip for the off-season.
I'll miss Boyle, but I would have missed him even more losing him for nothing.

Bullpen Moves

Photo Credit; Kelley Cox-USA Today

Two minor trades as the trucks begin to roll to Arizona for spring training from Cleveland and San Francisco and pitchers and catchers prepare to report.

The Indians might have helped their bullpen for the season with the addition of 28-year-old righthander Nick Wittgren from the Miami Marlins.
Wittgren appeared in 32 games last season for the Marlins, finishing 2-1 with an ERA of 2.94.
Wittgren struck out 31 in over 33 innings but is noted more for control than as an especially hard thrower.
Wittgren's best pitch is noted to be a curveball and looking at his numbers along with what he makes (isn't arbitration eligible until next off-season), I'm really not sure why the Marlins virtually gave away what appears to be a pretty solid reliever, unless the notoriously tightwaddish Marlins are concerned about that 2020 arbitration.

Cleveland traded minor league pitcher Jordan Milbrath in return for Wittgren.
Milbrath spent most of last season with AA Akron (2-4 3.42 ERA 1 save) with a brief stint at AAA Columbus.
Milbrath is also 27, has a plus fastball and seems to be a player that others value (Milbrath was taken and returned by Pittsburgh in the 2018 Rule 5 draft), but has enough flaws to not be considered a top prospect.

The Giants bought righthander Jake Barrett from the Arizona Diamondbacks for cash.
The 27-year-old Barrett spent most of last season with AAA Reno with a record of 4-0 with 8 saves and an ERA of 2.87.
Barrett appeared in seven games for the major league squad finishing 0-1 with a 5.14 ERA.
Barrett did appear in a combined 96 games for Arizona in 2016 and 2017, so he has major league experience and for the small layoff of a few dollars, it's worth the Giants time to give a chance for Barrett to add to the bullpen.

Cavaliers trade Rodney Hood

The Cleveland Cavaliers last season brought Rodney Hood into town to help for the present and attempt to help win another championship.
This season, the Cavaliers are shipping Rodney Hood out of town to help build for the future as part of a rebuild to eventually hope to win another championship.

Cleveland traded the 6'8 swingman to the Portland Trail Blazers for two players that might just need playing time and two second-round picks as part of the getting something rather than nothing program.

Hood was averaging twelve points a game for the Cavaliers and to a contending team, such as Cleveland thought last season, could be a potential help in the postseason.
Hood wasn't going to be part of the future, at least in what turned out to be the 2018-19 season results and it only made sense to move Hood along.

Hood turned out to be a disappointment in the 17-18 playoffs for Cleveland as he averaged only five points a game and had a few celebrated attitude issues that included refusing to enter a game in the fourth quarter as only the contract status of Hood managed to keep the player and the team together for another season.
Despite decent numbers on a bad Cavalier team this season, Hood wasn't seen as a franchise building block and was likely to walk away at the end of the season.

The return was mainly about the pair of second rounders (Portland's 21 and 23) that are obtained for future assets far more than the two players obtained.
Second rounders rarely provide helpful players, but they often are helpful in trades as filler in larger trades.
As for the players, both were one-time first-round draft picks and both never lived up to that level.
Nik Stauskas was once a lottery pick for the Sacramento Kings (8th overall) in 2014 out of Michigan, where he was the Big 10 player of the year as a sophomore, but the 6'6 shooting guard has never managed to average double figures in seasons with four teams (Sacramento, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, and Portland) and has never shown potential to be any more than a three-point shooter off the bench.
Stauskas does shoot the three well (34 percent) and he might be the type of bargain that could turn out to at least receive minutes on a bad team.
Stauskas will be a free agent at the end of the year, so if the Cavaliers don't care for his game, they could let him walk, but at the same time, he has a chance to impress enough to earn a new contract.

Wade Baldwin is another player that are high reward and low risk and the Cavaliers aren't hurting themselves when they add players like Stauskas and Baldwin.
Baldwin was a first rounder (17th overall) by Memphis in 2016 from Vanderbilt after his sophomore season, but after two and a half years in the league and two teams, Baldwin has only played in 56 games over that period of time.
The 6'2 point guard was playing only six minutes a game when he did play for Portland, but the intriguing things about Baldwin are these-He is still only 22 and when he was sent to the G League, Baldwin has played very well in the minors.
That gives me some hope that Baldwin could turn out to be another player that might thrive playing as a backup to Collin Sexton on a crummy team and could earn himself a contract for 2019-20 with a strong finish,
Baldwin is, like Stauskas, a free agent at the end of the season and if he doesn't play to the Cavaliers liking, could easily be allowed to walk away.

I like this deal.
Second rounders are a more valuable commodity to trade than use and the Cavaliers added two more to a stockpile acquired this season (The Cavaliers have added six second rounders from other teams) with two players that might need time to develop after both spent only two years in college with little investment in either player should they decide to keep or cut bait.
The Cavaliers likely aren't finished before tomorrow's trade deadline, so I'll be back when more deals warrant.

Cleaning out the Inbox

The inbox needs cleaning and this is mostly a non-sports edition as most of the items that have accumulated are non-sports.

First, though, I wanted to take the time to thank the one person (no names this time) that loves the PPM.
The PPM started as a throwaway column to notch my picks for the season and used to feature a lottery machine as the face of the series- hence the name "Pigskin Pickin' Machine" before one day for a reason that I cannot even remember, I decided to add a picture from social media (I don't even remember the platform) of ESPN's college football reporter Heather Cox at Clemson with Frank Howard's rock.
This was in 2013, we've had a different "host of the PPM" each year since and the six various hosts certainly have brightened up the PPM and added a different variable to the series.
The race for the 2019 host has left the gate and three candidates are well ahead of the others.
I'd be surprised if next years host wasn't among those three, but one never knows what that committee will decide!

The article of the week for me arrives from the New Yorker, where Robert Caro, who is still working on the final volume of his series on Lyndon Johnson, writes not just of Johnson, although his life is the center of attention, but of Caro himself with the focus on just how the author arrived at the topic, how he managed to cajole information out of people that didn't always want to give such information out and at the end, Caro addresses the big white whale- his age and whether or not he will not only finish a memoir of his life, but also the final book of the LBJ collection.
It's a terrific read and I couldn't do anything else until I had completed the article- it was that interesting.

We move to the New York Times and their opinion columnist Frank Bruni where Bruni writes of "The Loneliness of the Moderate Democrat".
Much of the article centers around centrist Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo, her policies and
how they don't always mix with an increasingly left-shifting party.
As someone that considers themselves without a party in many ways, I found it intriguing as each side of the fence seems to hate anything remotely resembling working together.

Vanity Fair writes of the 1980 Democratic presidential primary between sitting President Jimmy Carter against the challenge of Senator Ted Kennedy in an excerpt of a new book that looks at that race.
Jon Ward's book on this battle seems to be well researched and I wonder if we could see another challenge of a sitting President in 2020?

The Atlantic writes of the human aspect in the demise of spacecraft as it seems the Martian rover Opportunity may be finished with an inability to recharge its batteries.
The rover, which landed on Mars in 2004, is suspected to have had its solar panels covered in dust last June and has been unable to restore contact since.
The article is not only focused on the craft but on the people associated with machines that ended their time before their time was scheduled to be complete.

A higher return rate for Legos than stocks or gold?
Vox says so and as one usually should when dealing with the value of collectibles, read between the lines to realize the actual truth, but still, Legos have to have a strong market as a collectible.
Legos never go out of style, always has a built-in age group with new infusions of users as others leave and has some appeal to the adult market as well, so I can see special Lego sets having value, but again, read between the lines- you aren't getting rich buying the 4.95 Lego set at Target in a few years.

I'll wrap with the only sports note as SABR's Chip Greene writes about the baseball history of Three Rivers Stadium.
I learned a lot about how the stadium was built and the problems getting an agreement to build Three Rivers in the 60s.
It's a SABR article, so it's about the Pirates history there, so if you are looking more on the football side, it's a little light there.

Boxing Challenge: Kovalev's Revenge

Photo Credit: Top Rank 

In Frisco, Texas in front of a packed crowd of fight fans that included our own Ramon Malpica and his stunning wife, Ryan, Sergey Kovalev answered the questions that almost any boxing fans thought needed to be answered after his knockout loss to Eleider Alvarez last August as he flourished under new trainer Buddy McGirt on his way to a clear unanimous decision and regaining the WBO light heavyweight title.

I was back and forth all week and at various times was prepared to select either fighter.
Kovalev was the more skilled fighter, but more often than not, the general rule in boxing proves true- In a rematch, the winner usually wins easier than in the initial encounter, so I reluctantly selected Alvarez, although I would have been just as reluctant to take Kovalev as the fight looked to be that close.

It wasn't as Kovalev shrugged off the barbs of Andre Ward and seemingly everyone at ESPN (other than Tim Bradley) tracing back to George Grande in the pre-fight analysis to deliver arguably the best performance of his career.
Kovalev threw many more punches than Alvarez, took the occasional counter right that stopped him in the first fight, very well, and dominated the fight by controlling Alvarez from the outside with the left jab.
Steve Kim of ESPN put it best, this Kovalev fought more like the technician that dominated Bernard Hopkins and less like the Krusher that steamrolled so many light heavyweights.
Kovalev turned back the clock and with his promoter (Main Events) having the ability to work with Top Rank, Kovalev could find himself in unification talk with WBC champ Oleksander Gvosdyk and new Top Rank signee IBF champion Artur Beterbiev to prove this version of Sergey Kovalev might be the best of all.

It was a crazy night for ESPN and fans watching this card.
The undercard ran from 7 (All times EST) to 10 on their streaming service before cutting to the main channel then for two title fights and then back to ESPN+ for prospect Teofimo Lopez and the Kovalev-Alvarez fight.
I understand the finances of Kovalev-Alvarez on ESPN+, but the network might have been better served just putting the entire card online.
Two lopsided blowouts led to way too much talking and some of the comments mentioned earlier were noted by what would be my choice for the crew that I would say I like least in the sport.
By the time both fights were completed on ESPN+ and the Kovalev/Alvarez interviews were completed, it was just short of 2 AM Eastern time.
Hopefully, someone involved with the boxing program will begin to see just how unpopular the late finish along with the jumping from platform to platform like one steps on rocks to cross a stream and attempt to avoid situations as these again.

I might try to work on a piece this week that looks at the broadcasting talent and production from each of the three forces in televised boxing, you might want to count on some less than flattering words on ESPN.

The ESPN+ fight that preceded Kovalev-Alvarez allowed the best prospect in boxing to get some work and he delivered not only a beating to former world title challenger Diego Magdaleno for seven rounds- he also added the early leader for knockout of the year.
Teofimo Lopez did about everything one could ask for, he boxed, punched, scored a sixth-round knockdown and he carved Magdaleno's face into pieces before finishing him in as an impressive manner as you could imagine with a left hook that landed with booming force and sent Magdaleno crashing to the mat without the consciousness to even try to break his fall.
The only bad part was with the concussed and prone Magdaleno out on the floor, Lopez, who had already danced a small jig and leaped to the turnbuckle, then ran across the ring to stand over Magdaleno and offer a walk-off swing, which could be considered a baseball uppercut or even a long drive off the tee.
Magdaleno's corner was justifiably upset with former world champion and Diego's brother Jessie leading the charge, but fortunately, any incident was avoided.
Lopez is fun to watch and has loads of talent, but behavior like that is ridiculous.
I know part of building a fan base can also be making fans want to see you defeated, but there is a line and Lopez crossed it.

The two ESPN fights ended early with Richard Commey dispatching Isa Chaniev in two rounds to win the vacant IBF lightweight title along with a ticket to unify his newly gained title with that of WBA/WBO champion Vasyl Lomachenko in April.
Commey showed the power that he hadn't shown often of late as he dropped Chaniev near the end of the first round, put him down again in early in the second and then punished Chaniev along the ropes until referee Lawrence Cole was forced to end this one early.
Richard Commey will give Vasyl Lomachenko a tougher fight that he's been used to (Jorge Linares aside) and he just might have some moments roughing Lomachenko up to a degree that hasn't been seen since Lomachenko's only loss, the controversial split decision to Orlando Salido.

Oscar Valdez kept his WBO featherweight title in his first fight in eleven months with a relentless performance over Carmine Tommasone with a seventh-round knockout.
Tommasone never threatened, although he did what he could with the limited skills that he brought to the fight, and was knocked down four times including the knockdown that ended the fight.
Valdez did exactly what he needed to do, get some rounds in, dominate an overwhelmed foe and be ready to move to the next and hopefully more competitive opponent with the hopes that might be IBF champion, Josh Warrington.

In the boxing challenge, Ramon Malpica tied the challenge at 20 for the year as he scored six points to my four on the evening.
Ramon added two points each from Valdez, Commey and Lopez, while I posted two from Lopez and just one each from Commey and Valdez.

The Final PPM

Wrapping up with the final PPM of the year and our host Annie Yu, who started the season with FOX 5 as their weekend and ends as the main anchor for weekday mornings for WUSA (CBS).

I'm really not excited about the Super Bowl and honestly, I'm far more excited about next Sunday's AAF kickoff.
We'll be rooting for and covering the Arizona Hotshots and I hope to have a preview of the team along with a few words about the league sometime this week.

Last Week: 0-2
Overall: 151-50-1

Rams over Patriots 31-27

Boxing Challenge

The boxing challenge is one network only for the weekend with ESPN and ESPN+ with all four fights.

The main event is the anticipated rematch for the WBO light heavyweight title between Eleider Alvarez and Sergey Kovalev.

I was stunned to watch from my hotel room in Wytheville, Virginia in August as Alvarez had lost every round before pulling the stunning upset as "the Storm" knocked Kovalev down three times in the seventh round before the referee called off the bout.
The once fearsome Kovalev has now shown in his two knockout losses (to Alvarez and Andre Ward) that he has a real inability to grab and clinch when hurt and now with questions about his chin, one wonders if this fight could mean the end for the Krusher.
Still, this is a fifty/fifty fight as few seem to remember Kovalev dominating the fight before he was caught by Alvarez and I wouldn't be surprised to see Kovalev regain his title.
I've been back and forth all week on my decision on whom to pick and I'm still not comfortable with either fighter as my selection.
The skills of Kovalev are intact and at his best, there would be little doubt, but will Kovalev's mental state and chin remain at a championship level?
It'll be fascinating to find out.

Dynamite lightweight prospect Teofimo Lopez battles his sternest test in former title challenger Diego Magdaleno.
Lopez has been spectacular in blowing away each opponent thus far and takes a step up against Magdaleno, who once lost a junior lightweight title challenge to Rocky Martinez by a split decision.
The problem is that was in 2013, he's fought just twice since 2016 against outclassed opponents and in his last fight against a world-class opponent in 2015, he was stopped in two after being knocked down three times by then WBO 135 pound champ Terry Flanagan, who at his best reminded no one of Alexis Arguello.
I look for another dazzling performance from Lopez, who may have to visit the top ten in his next fight to try to find a test.

WBO featherweight champion Oscar Valdez returns after an almost one-year layoff to defend against Carmine Tommasone of Italy.
Valdez defeated Scott Quigg, who came in massively overweight, via unanimous decision in March 2018 in a great fight, but considering the size difference, may have been better off not fighting.
Valdez deserved the decision but took plenty of punches from the larger man and suffered a broken jaw in the victory.
Tommasone is undefeated and unknown, with his only win over a remotely ranked contender was a 2015 unanimous decision win over Jon Slowey and since then has fought just four times with his last three wins over fighters with records of 3-2, 4-25-2 (no typo) and 8-8-1.
This looks like a squash match to me, but one that I am Ok with considering Valdez's downtime and wanting to test the recovery of the broken jaw, which likely won't be tested by Tommasone, who has stopped just five of his nineteen victims.

The IBF lightweight title vacated by Mikey Garcia will be decided between the winner of the first bout of the evening as Richard Commey and Isa Chaniev will not only face off for the championship, there is an even bigger prize as both fighters have agreed that should they win, they will face WBA/WBO lightweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko in a unification of three titles.
Commey, who has lost both of his career losses on the road via split decision, is the favorite, but not a prohibitive one as Chaniev won an impressive unanimous decision last May in handing a loss to well thought of Ismael Barroso.

WBO Light Heavyweight Title. 12 Rds
Eleider Alvarez vs Sergey Kovalev
R.L: Alvarez KO 4
TRS: Alvarez KO 8

Lightweights. 10 Rds
Teofimo Lopez vs Diego Magdaleno
R.L: Lopez KO 3
TRS: Lopez KO 2

WBO Featherweight Title. 12 Rds
Oscar Valdez vs Carmine Tommasone
R.L: Valdez KO 8
TRS: Valdez Unanimous Decision

Vacant IBF Lightweight Title.12 Rds
Richard Commey vs Isa Chaniev
R.L: Commey KO 9
TRS: Commey Unanimous Decision